Selfish Crab

As a big fan of the West Wing, I got curious about who the current personal aide to the president was (aka the real-life Charlie Young.) I found the idea of the position fascinating.

President Bush’s personal aide is a young college-aged kid named Blake Gottessman. I dug up an ABC News Story about presidential candidate assistants during campaign coverage. And in a Dallas Morning news story about President Bush’s inner circle.

And then NY Times goes and writes a whole mini-profile on him. The Ask the White House clipping the article mentions can be found here. They scooped me.

# 2005 May 31    {Life}    #

From this NY Times story about an epidemic spreading among Tasmanian devils, a description of their mating process:

Devil sex turns up the volume. In March and April, males engage in vicious, blood-soaked combat, said Dr. Menna Jones, a wildlife biologist who also works in the environment department. Females select “big butch dudes,” Dr. Jones said, and allow themselves to be dragged by the scruff of the neck into a burrow. There they scream and fight for several days, mating many times for hours at a time. At the end of such bouts, the male thrusts his sperm into the female every two minutes.

Quite a wholesome relationship, really.

# 2005 May 31    {Life}    #

Continuing the process of growing up, I am moving off my student bank accounts (that’s also based in another state) to a retail bank account here in the City. Anyone have suggestions? High satisfaction with online banking options preferred. Candidates so far: Citibank, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia.

# 2005 May 30    {Life}    #

ABC’s new summer reality show contest The Scholar offers 10 high school kids a shot at a full ride scholarship to college. The juicy part lies in who the judges, or “Scholarship Committee” are: Peter Johnson is described as “currently Senior Associate Director of Admissions at an Ivy League”. The non descript “Ivy League” is in fact Columbia (directory lookup). The same goes for judge Shawn Abbott.

Just to re-iterate: two Columbia College Admissions staff members are reality show judges on a primetime network. Oh, delight of delights. This is going to be car-wreck viewership.

# 2005 May 29    {Columbia}    #

A week full of changes. Read the rest of this entry »

# 2005 May 20    {Life, greatest hits}    #

I’ve watched two and been through one. Here’s what I’ve learned about the CC/SEAS graduation experience.

1. Bring sunblock and water (graduates and audience) — all ceremonies take place outdoors at peak sun hours. Elderly and those with weak constitutions should take advantage of the special viewing areas set aside for such concerns.
2. Explore your seating options (audience) — Everyone always packs into the west side of South Lawn. Unbeknownst to many, the east side is also available and always has prime available seating against the hedgerows.
3. Pre-arrange meet times (graduates) — On Class Day, fix a time and location at which point after the ceremony your friends can coalesce and take pictures together. Without a pre-arranged time, you will not be able to find everyone you may want to take pictures with. There are thousands of people wandering and milling about.
4. Get some rest (graduates) — The entire week of Class Day and Commencement ceremonies is grueling. Pick your “going-out” nights carefully. Between being out in the sun all day (which is always strangely draining), you are also in the process of packing 4 years of acquired crap, and possibly running around doing errands like apartment hunting for post-graduate life. Get your sleep when you can. Only go out and drink away when you are in the clear or when it’s one of those “last ever…” situations

# 2005 May 20    {Columbia, Life, greatest hits}    1

Thoughts arisen from watching the webcast of the Commencement proceedings.

• Bollinger speech: don’t be an idealogical blowhard. Keep an open-minded chamber in your heart and call it Columbia.
• Brinkley: Good lord, did anyone else notice that this man has a radio voice? The man looks like a mousey bookkeepers, but booms with thunder.
• The Sundial dias makes a great maestro platform
• I just noticed SEAS is one of few schools

For those interested, the whole thing was webcast, an archived version should appear.

# 2005 May 18    {Life}    #

Having conquered CSS2 and HTML, last night I decided to follow the caravan towards XMLHTTPRequest and some other stuff I’ve seen in Google Maps, like client-side XSLT. And if you’ll allow me a JWZ moment: holy shit, XPath is a bit of a mind-fuck.

# 2005 May 4    {nerd}    #

Watching a webpage grow step-by-step from barebones HTML to CSS extravanganza.

# 2005 May 4    {Links, nerd}    #

Everyday I become a little more aware of what a fat blob I have become. If you see me, please mock me and my state of fitness. Hopefully, it will come to a point and I will break down and go exercise. Thanks.

# 2005 May 4    {Life}    #

I was going to post about how I thought the Spec was being irresponsible by publishing the name of this year’s Bachannal Concert performer, but then I stopped giving a shit.

# 2005 May 2    {opine}    #