Ha!

Good! I think McCain just threw away his chance at the presidency with his VP candidate choice. After all those ads about Obama's lack of experience and "is he ready to lead?" messages, McCain choses a running mate whose experience in governing consists of one term serving as mayor of a town in Alaska and less than two years serving as that state's governor? That's who he is putting in place to be "a heartbeat" from the presidency when one of the largest issues surrounding his candidacy is his age and whether or not he'll be around to even serve out a full term? Wtf were he and his handlers thinking?
I think the choice of Palin is such blatant pandering by the Republican Party to "the female vote." One 30-second look at Palin's stand on the issues will convince any voter that she is a far cry from Hillary Clinton's positions on the issues and women will not now be suddenly, magically flocking to support McCain because he chose a "hockey mom" with a husband who races snowmobiles as his running mate. Is this supposed to offset the elitism of McCain not even knowing how many homes he owns?
I think he's blown it. My dad, sister and I were all in the car on the way to lunch during Palin's speech and my dad even said he wouldn't be voting for McCain now. Most of the time he's a pretty pro-establishment guy (my Dad), and if he is turned off by this decision, I'm sure many other are as well. And I don't think it will convince anyone who was already on the fence about choosing McCain over Obama, to swing in McCain's direction.

Jia You!

James Fallows is now posted to Beijing and is blogging about the Olympics.
Nice to read some coverage of the games from someone who's there, understands the place and is not pushing any particular government's agenda. He has always been one of my favorite journalists.

A Reasonable Likeness?

Found this cool site and made my own avatar. (It's over there on the right ---> )
I guess it kind of looks like me. I have a hard time understanding what I look like since there aren't any particularly distinctive features to my face. About all I can say about it is that it's a long oval.
My hair is a little shorter than this. The only choice that matched my length had wavy hair, and mine is not wavy. (Not without serious coaxing anyway.)
Suppose anyone who reads this and knows me could comment as to whether it looks anything like me.

Ew!

The supermarket I frequent has a sign outside the entrance touting their brown rice sushi. I don't think I've ever bought their supermarket sushi, but I have seen the Asian dude (have no idea of his actual ethnicity beyond that) behind the sushi counter near the deli. Today that particular corner of the market was unmanned and instead I witnessed some tall, dirty looking guy in a red t-shirt and jeans open up one of the packages of sushi, scoop out all the gari (pickled ginger) from that box and then put it into the box he was buying.
It was so disgusting. And I could smell the ginger from several feet away.