Monthly Archives: August 2008

Mood, and a thought on Partisanship

I am not in a bad mood. I am in an awful mood. I’m doing my best to remem­ber that “I’m bet­ter than this,” but I need to get out, get my mind off where it wants to go. I hate how my past defines me, let me put it that way. And I hate that …

August 31, 2008 – 8:40 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, personal, politics | Comments (5)

Resolved: On Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year”

for Nancy The New Year Death Cab for Cutie (lyrics and song avail­able at songmeanings.net/jango) So this is the new year And I don’t feel any dif­fer­ent The clank­ing of crys­tal Explo­sions off in the dis­tance in the dis­tance So this is the new year And I have no res­o­lu­tions For self-assigned penance For prob­lems …

August 30, 2008 – 5:43 pm | By ashok | Posted in music | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Politics of Denial: On Senator Obama’s Acceptance Speech (Warning: This is Very Partisan)

I’m going to rebut Sen­a­tor Obama’s posi­tions with Repub­li­can talk­ing points, and then make a broader com­ment about what a sen­si­ble lib­eral has to do in order to achieve the most impor­tant items on their agenda. The speech I’m quot­ing from is here. I will pro­vide links to the sources back­ing up my argu­ments as …

August 29, 2008 – 1:22 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , | Comments (24)

Links, Russia-Georgia Conflict Edition, 8/28/2008

Globalsecurity.org is very reli­able, and often con­tains facts you don’t see reported any­where else, but are vital to mak­ing a judg­ment of any sort. Some­times a judg­ment is made in the mere report­ing of facts, for exam­ple from their front page on this topic now: “Russ­ian offi­cials and Russ­ian com­men­ta­tors mag­ni­fied the sig­nif­i­cance of this …

August 28, 2008 – 4:54 am | By ashok | Posted in links, politics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Not Terribly Objective Thoughts on a Portion of the Democratic Convention

I only saw Sen­a­tor Kerry, Lt. Gen. Kennedy, Rep. Chet Edwards and the Spielberg/Hanks video, Beau Biden and Joe Biden, so my remarks are lim­ited to that alone. Dis­claimer: I do vote Repub­li­can, sup­port Pres­i­dent Bush, and am vot­ing for McCain. 1. Sen­a­tor Kerry did his best to com­pletely derail the Obama cam­paign. He remarked …

August 28, 2008 – 3:33 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged | Comments (0)