progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

Above is a pic of Montgomery College, Rockville MD campus taken this afternoon. I understand if it doesn’t seem particularly auspicious. Let’s see if I can make it more interesting.
There is a minor piece of trivia about this campus: this was the fictitious home base of the mock-documentary/horror flick “The Blair Witch Project.” But that’s not why I’m bring it up. It’s the best location for longboarding I’ve found anywhere in DC.
The wide berth of the parking lot allows me to get fairly impressive speed on my longboard without bailing out. Instead I can carve uphill and regain control. Then I can pick up speed on a successive run without worrying about going so fast that my brain explodes.
Roughly speaking, my brain explodes around 10 mph. That’s the point that I start to panic, wave my arms around and start swearing. On a narrow downhill run I’d try to jump off the board. At ten mph it’s pretty tough to hit the ground running, which means that you’ll scrape the pavement with your kneepads for a few yards. Assuming you were wearing knee pads. Again, that’s the beauty of lots like this, you turn uphill, regain composure and take it up a notch.
It’s like snowboarding without the price of a lift ticket. At some point I hope to get proficient enough that my brain will explode at 15 mph, 20 mph, etc. I have no doubt that the lot allows for speeds in that neighborhood.
I wanted to take a moment and review how I got here. I wasn’t trying to take up a new hobby, or live out some middle-aged fantasy. I just thought it would be funny. And maybe something I could make a documentary about.
Next: How I got here.
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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.
95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
We're asking you to put some of the money you plan to give Obama "in escrow" until he demonstrates progressive leadership on the issues we care about, like warrantless wiretapping. [Link]
The report notes that the administration has gone to “unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost” of the wars. [Link]
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen said during his appearance at the National Press Club. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." [Link]
It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration. [Link]
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be ans [Link]
It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. [Link]
BOULTON: There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom. BUSH: Of course, if you want to slander America. [Link]
In a subsequent e-mail to the employee, Cargol described himself as “a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy.” [Link]
Democracy Now! Radio and TV News [Link]
Let's take a look at how the Los Angeles Times covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the claims made as part of selling the Iraq war, and compare it to how the editorial page of the Washington Post, by which I mean Fred Hiatt, sees the e [Link]
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" an [Link]
Hertzberg's analysis is noteworthy because he appears to be able to allow several ideas to coexist in his head simultaneously, which quite an achievement these days. [Link]
That night, George Stephanopoulos, who was then a top aide to Mr. Clinton, declared that it was “mathematically impossible for Brown to get the nomination” — the start of a campaign to declare Mr. Clinton the presumed nominee, even as several other [Link]
If Obama is the nominee, Tonay said, McCain will be just fine with her. "In the end, I won't vote for Obama because I don't know who he is, and I don't trust him," she said. [Link]
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd,&q~ adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. [Link]
Some speculate the Senator Clinton would want the spirit-killing Vice Presidency because she would be willing to wait for two terms so as to be the likely nominee in 2012. I believe that she could well contemplate this scenario. [Link]
A subsequent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that gas prices fell by 3 percent, meaning that only three fifths of the savings from reduced taxes was passed on to consumers. [Link]
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is filing a complaint with the IRS today challenging the conservative group Freedom's Watch status as a non-profit. [Link]
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth. [Link]
So what's changed? I asked Reich. "I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. [Link]
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