Bob Lefsetz:

And although poised, Obama was so young, and so thin! Could this guy really be an effective President? Steve Kroft asked him about his experience.

Barack Obama responded that there are many old, established companies in America, but only one Google, young, rich and successful. And that sealed the deal. I’m an Obama man.

Question of the Day:

Why are there so many people that find a night hotspot so cool that they’ll sit and wait in line for an hour while it doesn’t move because the only people that can actually get in are people who know people?

A friend was in town last night, and we started out at OM in Harvard Square, where he knew a few people so we got a nice line up of desserts on our table.  That was a nice little perk.  Well, then we decided to try and go to Alibi at the Liberty Hotel.  We get there, and the line wasn’t that long, so we stood there until I realized we hadn’t moved in 20 minutes, yet people were flying by us around the line.  Sure, it happens all the time, but it doesn’t mean I have to deal with it, like it, or stay there.  I truly believe that there couldn’t be a place so good that warrants a completely unmoving line, with the bouncers not giving a hoot about the people shivering, and the people shivering actually letting others pass them without somehow feeling demeaned, like a cattle horse waiting for food (was that extreme?).

Not for me.  I won’t pass judgment on the people who do choose to stand in those lines (I hope they’re getting some sort of fulfillment out of it!), just don’t ask me to.

Ford may be on its way to at least pulling itself out of an advertising rut.  They hired a team of acoustic engineers and musicians to disassemble  their cars and reassemble them into musical instruments.  Incredibly cool.

Why do some people feel the need to ask questions in the most philosophical, academic and elitist way possible?  Or use language that makes me feel like I’m reading a peer-reviewed journal?  Or a political address from the 1930s?  Maybe it’s because I just went through business school, where conciseness is key, but jeesh!

This is just a prewarning (redundant?), but I’m back at school, with an absolutely gargantuan reading list (not even going to tell you the credit card ding at the bookstore, and I don’t even have all my books yet).  What does this mean?  Probably less of my babbling, although I might start babbling about class topics.  What am I taking?

Islam and Politics
World Financial Markets
The United States and East Asia: 1945 to the Present
Central Asia and the Causases
Foreign Policy of China

I really wanted to take Iran in Global Politics, but they won’t let me take that many classes.  Dammit.

Fruitful discussion to be had.

Question of the Day:

In CSI, why do they talk about the victims before they leave the room, before getting 10 feet from them?  And why don’t the victims hear them?  Really, why the heck can’t they make that one small detail more realistic?

Reminiscing about XMC…..

Question of the Day:

“Why did they bother painting that bomb? All they’re going to do is kill people with it.”

Courtesy of Deb, watching the history channel.

From CNN, 9 January 2008 (http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/01/09/dead.mans.check.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

NEW YORK (AP) — Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.

David J. Dalaia and James O’Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron’s body from the Manhattan apartment that O’Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.

“The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side,” Browne said.

The men left Cintron’s body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store’s clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O’Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.

A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron’s body, and “it’s immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead,” Browne said.

The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O’Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron’s body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O’Hare there, he said.

Cintron’s body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner’s office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.

“He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two,” Browne said.

Dalaia and O’Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.

A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O’Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn’t have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O’Hare.

Question of the Day:

Should I be happy or sad that it’s going to be 60 degrees out on this January day?