debitage: 02/10/2002

Nevada Nuclear Site Is Affirmed
"Bush affirmed Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recent finding that the proposed project beneath Yucca Mountain is "scientifically sound and suitable," and would enhance protection against terrorist attacks by consolidating nuclear waste in an underground desert tomb."

More proof that Bush can use September 11 to justify anything.

Ugh. Here's a cheesy publicity photo for you. It was the big photo on the Washington Post site, accompanying the story about the cloned cat.

You would think that at 6:13 a.m. I would be heading to bed. But when I got home from The Maroon-News, I went into the kitchen to put away some sodas and discovered that Bethanie had made the cranberry-apple yogurt stuff. So now I have to find an excuse to stay up long enough to eat a bowl of it, as I don't want to run the risk of it being all gone by the time I have dinner tomorrow. Mmm, cranberry-y.

Va. Nixes 10 Commandments Bill
"Lawmakers said that the measure, even with the other texts added, would not sustain a court challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a similar law in Kentucky was unconstitutional."

The "In God We Trust" bill is still active, though.

Happy Robert Thomas Malthus' birthday! While you're out appropriating this special day for celebrations of love, take some time to remember the doomsday predictions of the great 19th century economist. Love often leads to reproduction. Reproduction causes the population to grow geometrically. Eventually population growth outstrips our capacity to produce food. Then we all starve.

"When you have a pile of crap, you don't want it to be bigger."
-- Greg, talking about a writer who writes very little, poorly

Virginia Senate Approves Motto Bill
"The Senate today followed the House of Delegates in passing a bill to require all public schools in Virginia to post the national motto, "In God We Trust," in a prominent place."

I'm taking a collection. If we buy in bulk, it won't be too expensive to get a little plaque to put on the desk of every federal or state legislator that says "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!" If we're lucky they'll actually look at it.

Webmail's suckitude has driven me to set up Outlook. See what you've reduced me to, webmail?

OK, so now I've switched to multimania.com for my comments. And the commentcount thing was working. Then I transfered the comment files over from coolfreepages.com, and suddenly commentcount no longer works. It's those darn French, I tell ya. Ah well. It's got no pop-unders, so it's a step up.

I'm getting really tired of the way either webmail or webmail2 is always broken. Hey ITS, I talked to your mom last night...

Danielson's Second Law: The potential validity of a commentator's opinion is inversely proportional to his or her inclination to use the term "chattering classes."

Marty may be giving up on the media, but I'm finding myself drawn more and more to it. AASA led the service at church this week, and it was a really good service. The Sojourners sang, and there was a jazz combo type group that played. But I couldn't properly enjoy it because the whole time I was thinking "you know, this would have made a good photo box for the Maroon-News, or at least for the UC newsletter, if only I had brought the digital camera." And I've gotten really nitpicky about some things that slip into The Maroon-News. I'm not talking about obvious mistakes, like the Arts&Features headline about "Colate Students." I'm talking about the sports story that said "ten" instead of "10," or the place in Doug Miller's article where there was a period outside of quotation marks. Heck, I even have strong opinions about whether to do dashes "tight--like this--or with spaces -- like this. Spaces all the way, man. Now if only the AP would change its rule about not using a comma before "and" in a list.

The problem is, I suck at reporting. I'm bad at it and I don't like doing it. But I can't just skip straight to copy editing and layout, and I certainly can't just go on to being an opinion columnist. So I don't know.