apple juice

Trolling in the toll lane, in the same old jam

If 394 as a whole does not move more efficiently, then the wrong strategy has been implemented.

Amen, brother.

This is what drives me so insane about highway planning. What is the root problem? Too many people trying to go one direction. Solution, less cars! Definitely not… “make an under-utilized toll lane so some people can get there faster”.

Abuse Week – Behind Bush’s latest assault on the press. By Jacob Weisberg

Newsweek hardly bears sole responsibility for rioting deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which were fomented by anti-American agitators and reflect both a pathological religious fanaticism and anger over many other issues. What’s more, Bush’s flacks are in no position to prosecute this case. When it comes to torturing inmates to death, sexually humiliating prisoners, and otherwise doing our best to outrage the religious sensitivities of devout Muslims, Scott McClellan has nothing to say. But faced with an erroneous charge that an American guard might have insulted a copy of the Quran, he turns livid and demands satisfaction. There’s something of a pot-and-kettle problem here.

But the problem with the Bush administration excoriating Newsweek’s insensitivity to Islam isn’t just hypocrisy. There’s a larger issue of bad faith and an underlying lack of appreciation for the necessary role of a free and independent press. With increasing forcefulness, Bush has tried to undermine the legitimacy of the media, or at least that subculture within it that shows any tendency to challenge him. When the Bushies say there ought to be more of a check on the Fourth Estate, they aren’t really asking for more care and accuracy on the part of journalists. They’re expressing frustration that they still have to put up with criticism at all.

Reminds me of a certain Wilco song…

It’s become so obvious
You are so oblivious to yourself

You’re tied in a knot
But I’m not gonna get caught
Calling a pot kettle black
Every song’s a comeback
Every moment’s a little bit later

I guess Bush hopes we’ve forgotten about everything else they’ve done.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my musical favorites, so here’s a little update.

First off, after much prodding from my sister, I’ve been listening to “Transatlanticism” from Death Cab for Cutie. It’s been sitting on my Audioscrobbler recommended list ever since I got an account over there, but for some reason I’ve resisted listening. Maybe some of Matt‘s indie-tude had been rubbing off on me. (Just kidding Matt!) But anywas, I really have been enjoying this album. Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service share Ben Gibbard as lead singer and songwriter. Whaddyaknow? As soon as I started in to “Transatlanticism”, visions of The Postal Service immediately danced in my head, and that is not at all a bad thing. The Postal Service album, Give Up, is one of my favorite albums, ever. It’s just funny that I got to Death Cab for Cutie by way of The Postal Service, and not the other way around, (since DCC has been around for quite a while)

Secondly,as long as I was listening to indie-darlings, I thought I’d give Bright Eyes a try, another band that has been on the Audioscrobbler list forever, and not only that, Matt loves this band. I’ve now heard “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning”, “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn”, and “Lifted, or, Keep Your Ears to the Ground, The Story is in the Soil”. I guess he enjoys long album titles. I’m not one to give eloquent reviews, but they’ve been in heavy rotation for the past couple weeks. (BTW, did you see him on The Tonight Show the other night? That gave me the goosebumps. I can bet Jay won’t invite him back there any time soon. Although on further inspection, Jay does say, “performing his protest song” so maybe they knew what he was going to sing?)

Third, new album by Spoon, “Gimme Fiction”. This is playing on the iPod as I type, track 7 of 11. So far it’s awesome. Their earlier albums, “Girls Can Tell”, and “Kill The Moonlight” are some of my favorites, and I can already hear that this will be a favorite as well.

I also bought two other albums today, “Cold Roses” by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, and “Blinking Lights and other Revelations” by eels. Looking forward to both of these albums. I’ve passed over the previously most recent albums by these two artists, but both of the new discs come highly recommended.

I’m not the only person with a weblog that geeks out about Bio-Diesel on a regular basis… case in point, Bill Maher, posting on the new blog that’s all the rage these days, The Huffington Post, says that Bush needs to stop paying lip service to alternative fuels, and start providing some leadership!

Bio-Delicious

With oil prices above $50 a barrel, President Bush has intimated he may finally cheat on the oil and gas industry. His mistress? Biodiesel, a clean-burning alternative fuel produced in a simple refinery process from everyday fats and oils.

Check it out. And I promise, no more bio-diesel posts for a week or two.

How is this not littering?

(All those white things are cigarettes.)

You could say I’m extremely upset about this:
Twins reliever Juan Rincon suspended

For years, Twins players have chuckled at assertions that someone on their team — known for pitching, defense and lack of power hitting — could be using performance-enhancing drugs. One of them, outfielder Torii Hunter, was floored by the news.

“I feel bad because I know [Rincon],” Hunter said, “but I don’t know what is going on and I have to get the details. … We have to get steroids out of the game. I can’t believe that it may be one of my teammates, but we’ll see.”

Twins closer Joe Nathan, who has become good friends with Rincon, said the news was hard to believe. “I know what kind of guy he is,” he said.

It’s unclear when the appeal process will take place, or what the chances are that Rincon’s name will be cleared. But, as of now, Rincon has become a focal point in the league’s efforts to rid the game of steroids.

“He’s crushed because baseball is his entire life,” Setlik said. “He loves the Twins, and he loves his teammates and he’s worked nine years to build his reputation.”

I’m willing to wait until this is fleshed out to pass judgement, because obivously I want to believe that the Twins were somehow special. But man, doesn’t this just destroy our image? I’m probably in denial and being naive. I think if it’s true, and Rincon took steriods, I hope he will come out today during his press conference and just straight admit it. I can hope, right? I wish the whole team would say, look, test us all. But that’s not going to happen.

Grr….

From Dome houses to biodiesel, fair trade coffee to compost bins, we saw it all at the Living Green Expo today.

There were quite a few people there, and less hippies than you would expect! Lots of normal looking folks just seeing what they could do in their homes and lives for the environment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any new sources of biodiesel, and the person staffing the biodiesel desk didn’t seem to know too much about it.

But we had one major find… a compost bin. Yes! Straight from Canada no less!

We came into the exhibitor area and started around to our left. The very first booth had a compost bin, just like the one that is barely standing, broken, in our back yard! We learned from the helpful person at the desk that they could be purchased across Como Ave., just follow the signs! “Okay!”, we said, and we were off to check out the rest of the exhibits.

There were a few booths dedicated to Wind-Energy, and I was proudly telling them that I had called Xcel to purchase the wind-blocks. They were universally unimpressed. It will be a while before I am accepted by the enviro-geek community.

We also bought a few more CF lights for the house. In my forthcoming book, “Environmentalism for Everyone!”, I will extol the virtues of replacing all your household lighting with compact fluorescent lights.

Okay, so I’m not actually writing a book, but I will geek out on the lighting for a second:

Most of the lights in your house are probably 60-75 Watts. CFLs that put out the same amount of light are 15-20 Watts. So you can save a lot of energy (~75%) by switching your bulbs over. Lighting is about 20% of your total electrical bill, so if you switched all of your lights to CFLs, and your monthly electrical bill was $100, you’d save about $15/month. Not bad. Pays for itself in just a couple months!

Okay, enough of the sales pitch.

Anyway, good times. Carrot juice and all.

Oh, and the canadian compost bins. This was a funny scene. So you leave the fairgrounds, and go into the field across the street. About 600 meters (yes we use the metric system around here now) away, there was a semi-truck trailer, 4 porta-potties, and 5 canadians. One guy took the money, one guy stood around in a mustache, trench coat, suit, tie and hat. The remaining 3 guys were loading the boxes into cars.

I guess they drove all the way from ontario to sell compost bins to the environmentally conscious people of minnesota. If only i had know about this, I could’ve saved all the trauma last week with the Talking Deer!