I move a lot. It's been nearly nine years since I've lived anywhere for more than eleven consecutive months. Recently I've been moving internationally, packing all my posessions into the 60kg airplane baggage check limit and jumping off to unknown places. This is liberating in a way. If you're not at home particularly anywhere, technically you're at home everywhere.  ¶ 3/28/2004 03:53:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

In my delusions of grandeur moments, or when arguing about foreign policy, I like to describe my viewpoint as "post-national." According to this pet theory, nation states, national boundaries, patriotism and the like are unfortunate anachronisms which are, tediously, still hanging around as current realities. Their existence is doomed, antiquated beyond a doubt, but still lingering like a WWI ideology that just hasn't quite fizzled out yet. The future, naturally, is globalization, multi-national corporations, global media, global labor mobility etc. With the EU, the UN, the WTO and so forth, nation states will still exist, but will be irrelevant, somewhat silly even. Hence, we will be post-national. I'm so far ahead of my time on this.   ¶ 3/28/2004 03:34:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the trial of Saddam Hussein will begin approximately two months before it's time to re-elect George W. Bush.  ¶ 3/28/2004 08:40:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

The problem with having a templatized blog, such as I do, is that the whole thing looks eternally the same as when I built it four years ago. So my identity is frozen in time, a 21-year-old with mild anarchistic tendencies, a love of purple, and ironic self-aggrandizement humor. I haven't the time to hassle with redesign, so even though the content is somewhat new, the branding is all off.   ¶ 3/22/2004 05:07:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

Pigeon feeders will almost certainly burn in hell.  ¶ 3/20/2004 11:01:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

My passport has the worst English: "The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen / national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection." What kind of sentence is that? I think that if you're going to print millions of copies of a document, you could invest in an editor.  ¶ 3/17/2004 04:45:00 AM 0 comments links to this post

One of the reasons for insultingly simplistic pop song lyrics, apart from the age of the intended audience, is that they're actually sold to markets all over the world. And global markets don't have the best English to begin with, so any poetic subtlety would be wiped away anyhow. If I'm an America-happy Swedish kid, I want my chorus short, simple, and repeated. Hence, Dido.  ¶ 3/15/2004 04:16:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I wonder if spell check will obviate the need to memorize spellings. These days I hardly remember long division, and get annoyed when I don't have a calculator handy. The next generation of kids will be the same - who really cares what the appropriate spelling is? Microsoft word will fix it. They won't even bother to notice which is correct.  ¶ 3/13/2004 04:11:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

I've suspected this for a long time.  ¶ 3/02/2004 01:44:00 PM 0 comments links to this post