Infinitive Splitter

How do your decisions rate on your regret index? High on mine, for the time being, is moving to a neighborhood whose community pool closes at 7 p.m.

Addendum: Having just used whose inanimate, I recalled a draft post that was never published (originally inspired by Tony Snow's seemingly excessive use of "of which" in his statements to the press). Here's the part I put together before realizing my disinclination to spend any time reading White House press briefing transcripts:

Take it away, Chicago Manual of Style:

The old Fowler's Modern English Usage might give you a chuckle. After some ridiculous examples that use "of which" in order to avoid "whose," the article closes with, "Let us, in the name of common sense, prohibit the prohibition of whose inanimate; good writing is surely difficult enough without the forbidding of things that have historical grammar, and present intelligibility, and obvious convenience, on their side."

Right?

Second addendum: excellent. 

Three brief things:

• Caught on tape taking a $100,000 bribe? Give up and resign, idiot.
• Al Gore: run!
• The government (and now the big telecommunications companies) are relying more and more heavily on an absolute "state secrets privilege" to get civil cases thrown out of court. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, says "50% to 90% of our government's secret documents should not actually be secret."

Kevin Drum says:

I'm a little late on this, but let me join the bandwagon of mockery directed at members of Congress who have finally decided that the executive branch has overstepped its congressional boundaries. After six years of signing statements, domestic surveillance, habeus corpus violations, torture of prisoners, and secret overseas prisons — all done with no oversight from Congress — what finally woke them up was a raid on a congressman's office. That can't be tolerated. Not for one second.

Well, naturally. If there's one part of the Constitution on which these brave, elected defenders of liberty will not countenance an attack, it's Article 1, Section 6.

It was only overcast for about twenty minutes, but those were the twenty minutes I spent wandering around Home Depot trying to decide which flowers might look nice in front of the house. Sandwiched at eye level between gray skies and concrete floors, they all looked like they were dying. I was hungry and very tired and disinclined to spend my afternoon saving them. If it was going to rain this afternoon anyway, this was all a waste of time.

But I was already there, and the flowers I wanted were only 95 cents each, and they wouldn't be any worse off for a few days on our deck than they would at the store.

So: annuals or perennials? Hah, this is a rented house.

We had agreed on something blue, but I got red ones.

And then the sun came out while I walked to my car. The clouds and I were going the same way, so I raced them home and won.

Now I've got a dozen-and-a-half red flowers ("salvias") in planters by the front stoop. They look brilliant in the sun.

When they were all in, I sat down on the steps, looked up at the blue sky, and wondered when it might rain.

The ads on the right appeared in Gmail next to an email I just received.

19 billion is an awfully large number of songs for retailers called "MyMusicInc.com" and "AllCoolMusic.com" to have on hand.

Unbelievably large, actually.

According to the New York Times, even the comparatively inventory-free "My-Free-Music.com" seems (at 99 million songs) to offer about four times as much music as has ever been recorded by human beings:

From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages.

Assuming an average mp3 file size of about 3 megabytes, 19 billion songs would eat up 57 million gigabytes.

As one knowledgeable correspondent notes, "That would be one hell of a datacenter."

Addendum: Even iTunes only claims to have 3 million songs.

Late last night:

After more than a month of delay as Republicans feuded among themselves, the House early Thursday narrowly approved a $2.7 trillion spending plan for next year.

The vote, 218 to 210, came at 1 a.m. after Republican moderates dropped threats to withhold support unless they received commitments to add $3 billion for education, health and community-development block grants. In a nod to the moderates, House leaders included a statement "recognizing" that those programs should receive more than President Bush had requested if savings could be found in other areas.

If only! Oh wait, next paragraph:

The vote occurred hours after President Bush signed a bill extending his signature tax cuts.

One wonders, as always, whether these decisions are driven more by ignorance or maliciousness.  Seems to me they just don't care.

(I know, EXTRA! EXTRA!, right? I guess I can still be surprised sometimes.)

Scientists can now make light move faster than light!

…in the latest example of logic-defying tricks that physicists can now perform with light, Dr. Boyd and his colleagues demonstrated an optical fiber — a glass strand that transmits pulses of light — with a couple of odd characteristics:

• A pulse of light shot into the fiber departs before it enters.
• Within the fiber, the pulse travels backward — and faster than the speed of light.

Perhaps most amazingly, Dr. Boyd’s results do not violate any law of physics. The effect is indeed predicted by the equations describing the propagation of waves.

So fast, and yet still within the law!

Email from a friend:

A guy, named Guy Goma, was at the BBC for a job interview.  They called his name (he thought) whisked him through and fitted him with a mic.  He assumed it was all part of the interview process until he realized he was on live TV, answering questions for another guy named Guy Keweny, who is an expert on the Apple ipod case.  Basically, the BBC got the wrong Guy (haha).  Anyway, you can see the video here…it is a riot…

Hilarious!

The title of this post is for my good buddy Max. Look at our old pals now!

Yesterday was a good day for right-wing bedwetters in my parents' neighborhood.

Republican Tom Stevenson of Mt. Lebanon was beaten by political newcomer Mark Harris, a 21-year-old recent college graduate.

How about that!

Here are two jokes I have invented in the last week:

Q: What did the artistic magician say when he turned a toilet on its side?

A: Dada!

Get it???!!!!!

Q: What did the apathetic journalist say to the economist who wanted to talk about Chinese currency?

A: Yuan.

Get it????????????!!!!