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13 February 2005

Some sundry happenings on in the past few weeks

A lot many things have happened in the few weeks I stayed away from these pages. To start with: it amazes me how much foresight must have gone into the design of a belt. I noticed for instance that the length between loops shortens the further away they are from the centre and until a few days ago this would have merited no attention had I not noticed that the belt I use never has a wagging tail. California released a quarter in honour of John Muir as part of the statehood quarter release which stands to generate $1.5 billion in profits for the U.S. Treasury which intrigues me because this is the first time I have heard of a governmental agency talking of profits. Students from Stanford stripped naked to raise funds for tsunami relief. They plan to sell calendars costing $10, only $5 of which go towards relief efforts and the remaining as Tejaswi surmised is probably going towards clothing the students. And while on subjects generally titillating in nature, the esteemed Court of Appeal for British Columbia reflected and weighed in on whether physical self-gratification in "an illuminated room before an uncovered window while unknowingly being observed by neighbours is an indecent act in a public place". A mysterious doodler doodled away on British prime minister Tony Blair's desk at the World Economic Summit and all of the British media eager to pounce on the beleaguered man had lots of egg on its face when it was found to their collective dismay that their choicest epithets of "not a natural leader" and "struggling to concentrate" should instead have been addressed to Bill Gates. The BBC of course sanctimoniously reported the entire thread of events making liberal use of the quotes.

Meanwhile, Blair's transatlantic counterpart having made his second inaugural address appeared exuberant and optimistic in the first press conference of his second term. In the transcript of the press conference, I could count at least 26 usages of various forms of the infinitive "to look forward to" in the 47-minute press conference. It is a fair assumption that at least a third of this time is spent in asking questions and in the U.S. president taking shots at his press entourage. So out of approximately 30 minutes of actual serious talk, there were 26 references to look forward to. Some were acutely funny:

I'm looking forward to the work ahead. And now I'm looking forward to answering some of your questions.

Dr. Rice and I look forward to moving forward.

And that's what you're seeing with Chairman Thomas. And I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to my visit with him this afternoon.

When I've talked with people, I feel like people are looking forward to working with us.

And I'm looking forward to working with as many members as we can. Condi Rice is a fine, fine public servant, greatly admired here in America, and greatly admired around the world. And she will make a great Secretary of State. And I'm looking forward to working with her.