Geeky Chic

As I have expressed on a prior occasion,
I am not sure if public memorials serve any real function.  But at
the same time, in the wake of Fred Korematsu’s passing (which LYLee
pointed out to me), my heart warms to the idea of a memorial for the Japanese internment.  Particularly, in these days when civil liberties are under increasing attack.

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I’m also deeply disturbed that Majority Leader Frist is conflating
the use of the filibuster to block Bush’s conservative judicial
appoinments to the civil rights movement, “The filibuster was once
abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people
of faith.”  In the 50s, Strom Thurmond used the filibuster to
block civil rights legislation that would have ended segregation. 
Blocking judicial conservative appointments does not do anything to
“restrict” the rights of people of faith.  Rather, it protects the
rest of us from their (the Religious Right’s) attempts to break down
the wall between church and state, and their attempts to restrict our
individual rights (i.e. the right to privacy).  One reason why Reagan’s conservative nominee Robert Bork got borked
was not only because he wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, he also wanted
to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that guarantees your
access to contraceptives.

Apparently, these are this year’s “It” names with the edu-ma-cated.  I think Clementine is on there solely because of the popularity of Eternal Sunshine of  the Spotless Mind with my set.

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And before anyone cracks a joke, I am more interested in baby names as
a form of “self branding,” rather than as person in possession of
ovaries.

First, a completely random thought:  I wish that my office had one of those cafeteria milk
dispensers.  It would really help mid-afternoon brownie breaks.

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Back when I was a high school prepster, the Burberry plaid scarf meant
something.  It was the garment that most represented the East
Coast boarding school establishment, and it was scarce in and
inpractical  for San Francisco (it was mainly spotted on Japanese
tourists during these years).  Then in 2001-2002, after a few
years of growing momentum, the  scarf “took off” and became the
trophy item of the masses and the bling bling set, thus, destroying its
once exclusive aura.

It appears that baby names undergo this same process.  Certain names are popular with the upper-middle class in year 1, but within 5-10 years, they trickle down to mass popularity. 
For instance, during the 1990s, in California, Madison and Lauren, were
in the top-5 for upper-middle class names.  By 2000, these names
reached spots 3 and 6 respectively on the most popular overall
chart.  Hence, around the time when new parents everywhere started
swathing their new babies in Burberry-patterned bunting, they bestowed
upon them the Burberry equivalent of names.

Let’s hope that little Greta’s name is safe.  When I was compiling
a list for our pater familias, it came up as 705 in overall
popularity  for 2003 in the Social Security Adminstration database.  But it is trending upwards (it was only 845 in 1999).

I had not thought of my apartment as the proper analogy for one component of my date setting / planning paralysis until Bob Morris pointed this out:

So it probably didn’t come as much of a surprise when you discovered that low-key doesn’t necessarily mean low maintenance or even stress-free. Like a yoga class that ends up giving people lower-back trouble, or a minimalist loft that ends up a logistical nightmare because there’s no storage, these days it can be easier to be over the top than under the radar.

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Here’s an old animated short (7 years old), featuring one of the most haunting New Order tracks. 

I’m running late for dinner, but this article (courtesy of the divine Saruchie), has me fuming.

Toasty has joked that I’m too obsessed with the concept of generations
as destiny, or generation as a component of one’s psyche, but here we
go anyway:

I don’t know what the significance is of it yet, but I believe that the
ongoing generational shifting has accelerated lately.  On the
macro-level, with Pope John Paul II’s passing, the only Pope that my
generation has known is gone.  Also, during the past year, nearly
all three networks have lost their nightly anchors.  Brokaw,
retired.  Rather, forced resignation.  And now, even though
he has not thrown in the towel, Jennings has lung cancer, so his
mortality is apparent as well.  Though no one watches the nightly
news anymore, I still view this as a signifier that the plates are
shifting.

On the micro-level, someone pointed out to me, that we’re in the midst
of the greatest transfer of wealth that our nation has ever
known.  With the passing of the WWII generation, vast sums of
money are moving to the Baby Boomers.  Hence, the GOP’s pressure
to do away with the inheritance tax (I’m actually neutral on this
issue).  Oddly, with this shift, we are simultaneously losing the
values of frugality instilled during those lean years of the Great
Depression and WWII, and the Boomers are gaining the material wealth
required to power their lifestyle, since I think that many Boomers have
already maxed out their lines of credit and home equity lines while
playing catch-up with the Joneses.  But what this all means, I really can’t say.

As a member of the legal profession, I feel that I have been
assaulted.  First, during the presidential election, the GOP felt
that they could demonize my profession for political gain.  Now,
in the aftermath of the Schiavo saga, a key Republican Senator has tried to spin the recent bouts of violence against judges as a sign that the public is unhappy with the judiciary:

Nevermind, that the man who killed the husband and mother of a Federal
Judge in Illinois was schizophrenic, or that the man who shot through a
courtroom in Atlanta was trying to escape during a rape trial,
aren’t exactly representatives of “public” sentiment.  Spin. Spin.
Spin.  Is this the message that we should be putting out when
we’re trying to teach the Iraqis that they shouldn’t blow up their
judges?  Do we want to live in the specter of a place where people
don’t want to be judges for fear of violence? Think of judge killings
in Bogota related to the narcotics trade; it’s not exactly pretty.

Also, if you want to review and verify Senator Cornyn’s comments in their proper context, here’s the link.