We can dream, can't we?
So here we are, folks, the moment of truth, when you find out how long your existence will be permitted on this little spherical madhouse we call Earth once my ascendancy to the vaulted position of Arbiter Of All Things has been achieved.

To solve the dire problem of world overpopulation, I would immediately implement a program of Intelligent Design. Simply put, if you're intelligent, you can stay in my design. Otherwise, you get erased, or in today's computerized world, "Moved To Trash."

This week, getting booted off the island are:

1. Bush voters. If you voted for Bush in 2000 but not in 2004, you'll last another week, maybe. If you voted for him twice, well, it was nice knowing you. But not that nice.

2. Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions. If you think I'm going to hell just because I don't agree with you, well, you're going there first.

3. Anyone who believes in the potential legitimacy of Intelligent Design (meaning creationism, not this program) as a viable alternative to evolution, or just doesn't believe in evolution period. Gone.

4. Anyone who asks me, "Oh, you're an archaeologist? So do you, like, look for dinosaurs?"; "Why do you have class on Saturday?", or "Doesn't it suck not living in your college?" Gone.

5. Racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, ageist, or weightist people -- you're gone. If you only hate stupid people, however, I just might offer you a cabinet post. Speaking of which, I don't want a cabinet. I want a commode.

6. If you read less than 5 works of literature or scholarship per year, you're gone.

7. If you're of middle class background or higher but have never been to a museum, you're gone.

8. If you're of middle class background or higher and scored below 1000 on the SAT, you're gone.

9. If you're liberal or moderate but can't seem to stand your ground against the above willfully ignorant lunatics (Alan Colmes, I'm looking at you), you're useless to the cause. Bye.

10. If you can't say "nuclear," I'll teach you how to say nuclear.


This concludes Round One. Join us next week for another installment! In the meantime, sleep well and enjoy the newly-unoccupied space around you. Especially you two in Kansas. Lots of breathing room there, I bet.

Ahhh
I'm supposed to be finishing my stats homework, so I'm blogging. Logical? Certainly not. Typical? Of course.

I'm not going to DC tomorrow to lobby and Save The Arctic!! because I'm sick and I need rest. Oh well. To tell the truth I've had it with activism. I'd rather have adventure. I'm already dying to go to Machu Picchu next year after seeing the sweet new exhibit in the Peabody.

Also, speaking of the Peabody, Jeff Quilter from the Harvard Peabody (which is all Anthro/Archaeo) is coming tomorrow. One good perk about not going to the rally. Ooh I want to go to Harvard so bad! And Chicago. I just remembered that Indiana Jones went to Chicago. But then again, he wasn't technically a very good archaeologist. And he didn't exist. Details.

But Harvard...well. Harvard is the second largest purchaser of renewable energy among U.S. universities. Yale doesn't even make the list! PresLev is supposed to make some important energy decisions this month regarding the proposal we Climate Campaigners helped develop...there I go again. Activism. Bleh. I think activism made me sick. That's whay I can't go activate at the rally tomorrow. Fair enough.

What's really important for college students to be doing? We're still in training for our world takeover. Why jump the gun? We should learn as much as we can right now and THEN, when we're ready, go impact society. All these youth spending more time out carrying signs than they do studying are prematurely cutting off their potential as influential citizens. I mean, it's like eating cookie dough instead of waiting till the cookies bake. Cookie dough expands, people. That's why you put it in tiny balls on the sheet so they don't all run into eachother when they're baking. Similarly, our minds will expand as we're baking in the college oven. Then we will be ready to provide the planet with all our nutritious goodness while the doughpeople who learned how to protest in college will still be protesting and never properly learn how to think.

When there's a chance at really solving a problem rather than just pushing back certain doom (as will be the fate of any noble endeavor while Bush is in office), I'll get off my butt. Till then, it's cookies for me.

It's not just about the polar bears
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, people from every political persuasion have addressed the “lessons” to be learned from the horrors of the storm. While the most tragic costs were the personal ones sustained by the citizens of the New Orleans area, the tremendous blow to the Gulf Coast oil supply was felt nationwide. Yet the timing of the disaster could have further tragic repercussions next week, as Congress prepares to vote on a budget that would allow for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Proponents of drilling have used the hurricane’s economic impact as evidence that we need oil from wherever we can get it, even in one of the last truly wild places in Alaska. After all, with gasoline prices shooting past the three-dollar mark, it seems hard to argue that the U.S. should shy away from securing any additional oil.
However, one needs only to step back and look at the bigger picture to see the inherent problem with this reasoning. An economy less wedded to fossil fuels would not have taken such a hard hit when its pipelines and refineries were ravaged by the hurricane. The economic damage wrought by Katrina does not demonstrate the need for more oil sources; rather, it glaringly reveals our country’s dependence on oil and the dangerous effects thereof.
From this perspective, opening the Arctic Refuge up to drilling could not be further from the right response. The oil we could obtain from the refuge – a mere six months’ worth by National Geological Survey estimations – would not repair the havoc wreaked by Katrina. It would decimate the Porcupine caribou herd, displace hundreds of migratory birds, ruin one of the last habitats where polar bears can den, and disrupt the subsistence lifestyle of the Gwichin people. Most importantly, though, opening up the Arctic would set a precedent for allowing drilling in virtually any formerly protected area, further spoiling the landscape and increasing our country’s addiction to oil. As the devastation of the past few weeks demonstrates, this dependence is a major weakness of our economy.
Many have argued that the U.S. government should have been better prepared to adequately respond to the hurricane. While we can’t change the way Katrina was handled, we can take steps now to ensure better preparedness for future disasters. The truly appropriate response to Katrina – and the best safeguard against similar crises – is a new energy policy based not on fossil fuels, but on renewable sources that are cleaner, safer, and ultimately cheaper. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge thus represents a major step backward not only environmentally, but also economically.

I must stop neglecting this blog!
Mood:  cool
Yes, as our seemingly-three-headed dragon friend over at Fafblog did two weeks ago, I have taken a weeklong break where no break was warranted. But The Medium Gibnir has made up for it, and so shall I, albeit not as funnily.

By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you clearly need to get on the Fafblog bus. Like right now, friends. With this blog linked to my facebook.com profile, I never know who's reading it these days.

Anyway. For fear of sounding too much like a LiveJournal, I'll make a few points on the real world before launching into a boring documentation of my own marginally interesting life.

1. Hurricane Katrina. I missed the boat on slamming Bush's response to the crisis. I think it was actually my dad who noted that an evacuation plan that involves getting in the car and driving yourself out of town is not an evacuation plan. Not to mention the socioeconomic and racial inequalities the disaster so harrowingly exposed. Well this Friday there will be benefit dinners and concerts and the like. We're also accepting about 25 students whose colleges have closed to study here. Good job Yale.

2. The California statelegislature passed a bill legalizing gay marriage! It's only of secondary importance that Arnold's going to terminate the bill; the landmark has been made. Yeah, that's my state! Unfortunately for the fruits, the nuts are in charge this time.

3. RIP Rehnquist. And John Roberts...eh, as long as Scalia's not chief justice, things could still get worse. I think.

4. And now from the Department of Bad Timing: The Bush budget gets voted on the week of September 20th, and if passed the Arctic Refuge will get the axe, setting a precedent for opening up pretty much any place imaginable for drilling. So four busloads of Yalies are joining students from all over in what might become the biggest environmental rally in history. Unfortunately, with headlines like "Gas Supply Falls to Lowest Point in Five Years," it might be a hard sell.

So it goes.

Like I said: middle of story. Good things coming. Like maybe in a few decades.

Right?

As the world came crashing down..
There is nothing to say about the events of this week that hasn't already been said. Surely Hurricane Katrina is one of the greatest disasters we have ever faced in this country, but what saddens me even more was the stampede in Iraq that killed narly a thousand, just because it was so preventable.

And yet in our ivory tower, no one is talking about the devastation. How can we? It's the kind of week you really can't think about without crying. We're talking about the classes we're starting, the summers we had, how great the renovations look. And so we go about our lives in hollow awareness, reading without feeling, pushing back the outside horrors as they burn up against our consciousness.

You run out of words in times like these.

FOOT Fetishing
I'm. So. Psyched. For. FOOT.

My co-leader Alexander finally arrived last night. He's going to be great! We've done a little bit of planning this morning and will go out to eat together tonight to bond before the arrival of the froshstorm.

I facebook searched all my FOOTies online. They sound really cool, seriously. I think I'm in love with them as a collective. Two are in D-port. I can't pick favorites...that's the hard part.

Our route is very nice. It's moderately hard - we summit two peaks including Bear Mountain, the highest in CT, but we hardly do any hiking the first day at all. Unfortunately, we have to hike down a steep and confusing trail in the dark on the last morning to make it to our bus pickup on time. Supposedly we have some very nice views and waterfalls.

Six day trips are arriving today. The chaos begins...praying for dry weather.

The annual I Love Yale/FOOT/New Haven entry
I love Yale!

I love FOOT!

I love New Haven!

Note to self: read this again in December. Laugh bitterly.


But seriously. I forgot how green it gets here! The weather is great; though rain is coming, it's scheduled to miss the two arrival days of the freshmen. Which I can't wait for!!!! All the preparation has been pretty fun, too. These people are just awesome, and I have my own little room in Bingham with a beautiful windowsill to sit in. I am so psyched for the trip and meeting all the frosh! I'm also dying to start classes. I looked at my textbooks in the store and want them now.

I'm so glad I'm here. So so so glad...

No! Not Peru!!!
Rumsfeld's smuggled his dirty little self into my beloved Peru, which I believed safe from all things Bushist, says the NYT.

I'm sure his face was in their newspaper, besmirching its once pure pages. Oh woe.

I still want a Prius...
Apparently, it is possible to modify these cars yourself, adding enough battery power to hit 250 mpg. That's just plain brilliant. I'd probably have to go to a gas station about four times a year.
Read more about it here.

The Must-Read Op-Ed of the Month
Forget your summer reading for English class, kids. Frank Rich's piece in today's NYT should be required reading for all Americans. I give you the last two paragraphs:

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.