By reading this page, you're living in the past — which is fine; I'm a sentimentalist myself. But here's the latest at derekbaker.com.
#53 :: January 31, 2006
Okay, I thought I was finally sick of Mozart — which I never thought possible, but it almost got to that point, what with the whole 250th birthday celebration. But then we got the Alan Greenspan retirement, and everything from "Marketplace" on NPR to Jon Stewart went nuts over this guy.
Good grief, it's been 70 days since I've added anything to this site! And it's not like the news has been slow, or me not interested in it. But work and life is always busy near the end and beginning of the year (note to entrepreneurs starting what they hope will someday be a Fortune 500 company: don't end your fiscal year with the calendar year in December, and I'd say don't even end it in March, June, or September, either, just because that puts you on the same quarterly schedule as everyone else, including most of your customers if you're in the "B2B space" as we space cadets like to say. I'm just sayin'...). If it were up to me, the fiscal year would end in August, I think. Start over with budgets and whatnot in September, when people are reasonably rested, and not just because they got a few days to fall apart during the holidays. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there's something to Microsoft's success due to the fact that their fiscal year ends in June, when people and customers aren't, generally, yet on vacation, for example.
This probably seems an awfully arcane consideration for most people who might be reading this, but trust me: most of the ills visited upon people and society by corporations are ultimately due to the unintended consequences of generally accepted acounting principles.
Of course, December is busy anyway for anyone involved in a church, and that of course includes me. Plus, we're all, regardless of belief or lack thereof, at a point of holiday triage by this point, I think, where we do trade-offs between gifts or gift certificates; handwritten notes, simple signatures, or photo cards with only a printed greeting; and even trees or merely a sprig or bough, at most. I think I've received more post-Christmas cards this year than ever before -- just as I mostly ended up sending last year myself, though they were officially "Epiphany" cards -- which is either a sign that I'm not the only one who's finding the pre-Christmas push to get cards and notes out increasingly difficult, or else people for whom I wasn't on their list got one from me, and sent me on in return after the holiday.
But I digress...hence the parenthesis around my name at the top of this site, in the first place.
So here's a brief run-down of various things that have occurred since I last posted on this site on November 14, back when I was still 40 for another day, and it was still only 2005 and not the downhill side of the decade, in probably more ways than one.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi — he who is most associated with discredited prewar intelligence on Iraq and who apparently passed American secrets to Iran — met with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on November 14. (Associated Press, 11/14/2005)
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld both say that the Clinton administration had the same intelligence on Iraq that they had -- thereby admitting that the Clinton administration, which didn't start a war based on false premises, was a lot smarter than they are. (Voice of America, 11/15/2005)
The Defense Department admits it used a banned chemical substance against enemy combatants...but it's okay, because we never signed the international treaty banning it! (BBC, 11/15/2005) Later that same day, Bush chastised China for human rights abuses, no doubt in a tone of ironic detachment.
In a game of meta-irony, Dick Cheney lies by accusing Democrats of lying about Bush and Cheney lying (Associated Press, 11/16/2005). Cheney, at this point, has misled the country more than 50 documented times about Iraq ... not even including today's "I know you are, but what am I" lies.
Bush job approval rating falls to 34 percent. But who's counting? (Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2005)
Congressman John Murtha, D-PA, says we should begin discussions now to have troops redeployed from Iraq starting within six months. (ABC News, and just about everyone else, 11/17/2005). The GOP's Cybercast News shill service begins gearing up the Swift Boat treatment for Murtha, and wil soon release "news" stories questioning the legitimacy of Purple Heart awards for yet another Democrat traitor who shamelessly and unpatriotically neglected to dodge the draft.
Jeez, that was just 3 days in November, and I'm already up too late and need to go to bed. Perhaps I'll have a chance to complete this list some other time. I'm going to have to keep from recounting anything but the major offenses committed by the Bush administration (and, as we know, December and January were busy-busy for them) if I'm to ever to catch up with the news. Perhaps I'll manage to add more to this post, even as I try not to ignore what's going on in the world today in posts up above, for a change. We shall see.
Happy belated New Year, by the way. If I didn't send you a card at Christmas, I mean.
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January
On January 1, in 45 BC, the Julian Calendar first went into effect. Scotland wouldn't adopt it until January 1, 1600 — after Venice, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands had already adopted the more accurate Gregorian Calendar; Russia adopted the Julian Calendar as late as January 1, 1700. Scotland updated to the Gregorian by 1752, but Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian Calendar until 1918 — when some other stuff was going on there at the same time, or so I've heard
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves became illegal in the U.S. Of course, slavery itself didn't end in the south until Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation — and didn't end in several Union or Union-held states until after the war, through other means and, in the case of Kentucky, until the actual ratification of the 13th Amendment. (Slavery was legal in New York state until 1827.)
And on January 1, 1892, Ellis Island opens to begin accepting immigrants to the United States, in view of the "new colossus," which welcomes the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of other countries' teeming shores. Over a century later, the descendents of earlier immigrants form the "Minuteman Project" to keep later, browner immigrants from entering the country illegally from Mexico.
