Careful what you ask for... WSJ.com - Bush Taps Paulson as Treasury Chief: "Among other things, the 60-year-old Mr. Paulson, according to a person close to him, has been assured that he will rank with the secretaries of defense and state in the Bush inner circle"

Oops. Maybe he should ask Colin Powell about the "status of the Secretary of State." The Bush White House runs on relationships, not titles.  ¶ 1:53 PM 1 comments

  What's on your iPod? The "Bidness" Mix - for keeping the energy up at workathon/schmoozation conferences:

Banditos (Replacements)
Bright Future in Sales (Fountains of Wayne)
Scooby Snacks (Fun Lovin' Criminals)
Supermodel (Jill Sobule)
Maria Bartiromo (Joey Ramone)
Code Monkey (Jonathan Coulton)
I'm Too Sexy (Right Said Fred)
Short Skirt/Long Jacket (Cake)
Gimme the Prize/Kurgan's Theme (Queen)  ¶ 8:46 AM 0 comments

  We resemble that remark! Gothamist summarizes a New York Observer article about Williamsburg Hipsters Vs. Park Slope Yuppies:

You're vintage-clothes wearing, kickball-playing, getting-drunk-all-the-time, crunchier liberal arts shools-graduates if you live in Williamsburg, you're a stroller-pushing, contemporary-literary-fiction-reading, $200-jean-wearing, Ivy League graduate if you live in Park Slope.

I object! I do not have any $200 jeans.

UPDATE: My wife informs me that she actually does have $200 jeans. So, I guess they pretty much nailed us.  ¶ 11:13 AM 0 comments

  Dear Democrats.... I know we're all ready to coronate Hillary, but can we just remember something please:

When the Democrats run Southern Governors, they win.

When they run Northern Senators (or Governors), they lose.

Come on, people. It's sure not fair, but its the way the game works!  ¶ 5:50 PM 1 comments

  That explains it... "LONDON (Reuters) - More than 60 percent of Britons use items such as screwdrivers, scissors and earrings to remove food from between their teeth, according to a survey on Friday.

The National Dental Survey found that when it comes to oral hygiene, people use whatever is close to hand to pick their teeth."  ¶ 11:25 AM 0 comments

  American Cultural Hegemony? A German publisher writing the NYT this weekend laments American "soft-power" and offers this lament:

"Hard power can by defanged by coalitions and alliances. But how do you balance against soft power? No confederation of European universities can dethrone Harvard and Stanford."

I'm not sure I believe this. At least three European universities have global brands: Oxford, Cambridge, and Sorbonne. If they really reformed to offer a better educational experience and research environment (and more funding for star researchers and grad students), they could steal a good deal of Harvard and Stanford's thunder. They just don't have the money that Harvard and Stanford have, and as public institutions, they would have to get that money from the government, which might be hesitant to commit several billion dollars to building and endowing a world-class university.  ¶ 11:24 PM 0 comments

  Don't know 'em, but I might... I just realized there's a certain class of entertainer/author/celebrity that I have a weird relationship to. These are people my age and attended either NYC high schools or Ivy-plus colleges where I knew at least a few people. They have blogs/websites, and share my sense of humor. I don't actually know any of them, but I feel like I do, which is a little strange. The most recent ones to fall into this category are:

Jon Coulton, a snarky Yalie troubador who lives in my neighborhood
Eugene Mirman, an "alt-comic" who grew up in Brooklyn and went to Hampshire
Gary Steyngart, a Stuyvesant/Oberlin grad who writes funny novels

They're not like real celebs from planet hollywood or anything, just thirtish geeks who're doing cool stuff in a fairly successful way. But the strange thing is I interact with them mostly the same way I interact with many of the people I actually do know -- by reading their blogs and seeing things they've done online.

Come to think of it, I'm probably not the first person to think of this...  ¶ 12:13 PM 0 comments

  Or, on the other hand... In my previous post, I suggested that all countries under 10 million people (which include some troublesome ones) be disbanded.

I'd like to offer an alternate idea, which is that counties be CAPPED at 10 million, and free to form alliances with other 10 million-person countries without regard to geography. So the US would be about 30 countries, China would be about 120, etc. The UN would have about 650 members.

You'd probably have a fair number of Libya-style dictatorships, but my guess is you'd also have a bunch of NYC-style plutocrat-friendly social democracies. And you'd probably quickly have an international alliance of major metros (Bejing, Rio, Moscow, NYC, London, etc) that would soon run the entire world.

Hmmmm....  ¶ 5:49 PM 0 comments

  Everyone with fewer than 10 million people, shut up. Perhaps it's because I'm a New Yorker, but I'm constantly amazed by the amount of trouble generated by countries with fewer than 10 million people. Here's a list of countries by population from Wikipedia. Countries that should shut up include:

Rwanda
Haiti
Israel
Lebanon
Libya
Jordan
Croatia
U.A.E
Ireland
Cyprus

All countries under 10 million should be tossed out of the UN, the WTO, and all other international bodies, and re-admitted only if they form coalitions of common interest.

Well, it's just a theory.  ¶ 10:53 AM 0 comments

  Stephen Colbert, the only man with balls in Washington God bless Stephen Colbert. He truly has "Huevos Grandes." His speech at the White House Correspondents dinner was merciless to both the White House and the press. Within 10 feet of George Bush, he had the C. O. Jones to deliver the following lines:

"No matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."

"I think the government that governs least governs best, and my that measure, we've created the best government in the world in Iraq."

(on the press) "We didn't want to know, and you didn't tell us."

Video here. If you haven't seen it, please watch it. It's incredible.

Eschaton has a partial transcript.

The most amazing part was that after guffawing at the President's tame self-satire before hand, the room was almost in shock. The MSM is toothless. They've also essentially buried this story.  ¶ 11:49 AM 0 comments