In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.
It’s about time Americans started eating at home more and dining out less. This video from my old Slate V buds is a great start.
(Is it weird that the footlong burger looks pretty awesome to me? “You can really taste the length.”)
My current work project, in a nice coincidence, brought me back to the homeland. Tonight we made it out to PNC Park, where the Pirates made me feel more at home by losing. (They even gave up an inside-the-park homerun. Nice.)
Gotta give it up though for the best stadium in baseball:
This post is coming to you courtesy of the new HTC Incredible I picked up today and the equally cool WordPress app for Android.
Here’s hoping it leads to increased updates around here.
You mess with the whale, you get 40 tons of that whale all up in your grille.
For real, this is the most whaletastic boat-ownage since the wreck of the Essex.
(Image from South African EPA via NPR.)
In my new self-appointed function as official DJ of patrickstack.com, we’re going with the infamous proto-punk outfit for this inaugural feature. Rock out:
I love watching the world’s best players every four years, and seeing these guys in action makes me curious about their pro careers, but I know it’ll be 2014 before I follow soccer again. In talking to my World-Cup-loving friends, who should be prime candidates to follow MLS or the Premiership, I’ve learned I’m very typical in this regard. I have the NFL and the NHL, and I’m cool with that.
Rather than the tiresome debate between the misguided American pro-soccer optimists and the xenophobic “Real Americans hate soccer, and get off my lawn” grumps, let’s just enjoy the World Cup Olympics-style: as a fun, international treat that comes along just often enough to be special.
And the requisite highlight vid:
With this Sunday’s World Cup final fast approaching, I realized I have to pick a favorite team among two countries about which I care not at all. I’ve never been to Spain or the Netherlands, I don’t have any acquaintances from Spain or the Netherlands, and I don’t even care that much for paella or whatever it is they eat in the Netherlands that isn’t Heineken. (Actually I’m pretty curious on that one, so feel free to fill me in.)
But in my quadrennial soccer-fan career, I have really enjoyed this 2010 World Cup, so I feel I should go ahead and find a side to support. My man Tony argues for the benefits of historical symbolism in World Cup matches, so I’m taking a page from that.
Because Ireland deserved to be in this Cup and was unfairly cheated out of it, and because I’m of Irish descent, I’m going to base my decision on Irish history and go with Spain. Spain and Ireland had the Catholic thing in common, they had the Spanish Armada thing and the subsequent Black Irish myth, and today they’re both known as PIIGS. Meanwhile, the Netherlands was the home of William of Orange, the infamous usurper of James II and winner of the still-a-sore-spot-in-Ireland Battle of the Boyne. (Coincidentally, that battle ended on July 12, and the game is July 11.) Maybe Spain and William were on the same side in that fight, but I’m not about to let facts get in the way of this nerdy argument. The Dutch dudes even wear orange uniforms — this one is a no-brainer.
So ¡Vamos España! — let’s all eat tapas and fight some bulls this Sunday. I look forward to my last day as a soccer fan until 2014.
Tonight for dinner, I had kielbasa and sauerkraut. It was delicious, but sadly, I was out of pierogies.
A few days ago, a friend asked, “What’s that called when you have an area that’s contaminated with hazardous waste and there’s some federal money to clean it up?” and I instantaneously chimed in with “Superfund“.
You can take the dude out of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take the Pittsburgh out of the dude.
I just installed WordPress 3.0 to run this thing, and as always since the later 2.x versions came out, the upgrade was silky smooth. The biggest change is the integration of the WordPress MU function, which allows multiple blogs to run off of one installation. It seems from the WP Codex that most of the highlighted changes are back-end upgrades with better hooks for developers, as the dashboard interface looks almost identical to the late 2.x versions. There are some new features, like the easy creation of custom menus and headers, and the most visual change is the adoption of the new Twenty Ten default theme.
My big hope is that WP is moving in the direction of a direct competitor to larger-scale CMS products like Joomla and Drupal — as this BusinessWeek article notes, the user-friendliness of WP (both for users and developers) is the differentiator. Let’s hope!
And on a totally unrelated note, this is a grouping of two awesome dudes.