Transatlantic Zeppelin

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July 27, 2005

Forty lost years

When a Nor'easter shut down New York City in late January, I walked home to find a Harlem father in the street having a snowball fight with his two sons. I don't know why I found this scene so quaint. Maybe it was because it reminded me of my own childhood in Indiana, a bit of Norman Rockwell on West 122nd St. Or maybe it was because the scene was one of the few times in this neighborhood that I've seen a father tending his children rather than smoking weed at midnight outside the bodega at 123rd & Malcolm X.

City Journal's new Summer edition [via] has an interesting essay that covers the evolution of the family in ghettos like Central Harlem: "The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies." The essay argues that much of the reason for the existance of a permanent underclass can be summed up by noting two facts:

1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city.

By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children. Sophisticates often try to dodge the implications of this bleak reality by shrugging that single motherhood is an inescapable fact of modern life, affecting everyone from the bobo Murphy Browns to the ghetto “baby mamas.” Not so; it is a largely low-income—and disproportionately black—phenomenon. The vast majority of higher-income women wait to have their children until they are married. The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate and unequal—one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken, and far too often African-American.

Before the collossal failure called the War on Poverty began, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a prophetic report noting how the ghetto family was in disarray. “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" wrote a prescription for resolving the growing existance of a black underclass, but black pride and feminism prevented an adequate response.

More than most social scientists, Moynihan, steeped in history and anthropology, understood what families do. They “shape their children’s character and ability,” he wrote. “By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child.” What children learned in the “disorganized home[s]” of the ghetto, as he described through his forest of graphs, was that adults do not finish school, get jobs, or, in the case of men, take care of their children or obey the law. Marriage, on the other hand, provides a “stable home” for children to learn common virtues. Implicit in Moynihan’s analysis was that marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children’s prospects. Single mothers in the ghetto, on the other hand, tended to drift into pregnancy, often more than once and by more than one man, and to float through the chaos around them. Such mothers are unlikely to “shape their children’s character and ability” in ways that lead to upward mobility. Separate and unequal families, in other words, meant that blacks would have their liberty, but that they would be strangers to equality. Hence Moynihan’s conclusion: “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure.”

Over the course of the next 40 years, Moynihan's predictions proved themselves true.

Throughout the 1980s, the inner city—and the black family—continued to unravel. Child poverty stayed close to 20 percent, hitting a high of 22.7 percent in 1993. Welfare dependency continued to rise, soaring from 2 million families in 1970 to 5 million by 1995. By 1990, 65 percent of all black children were being born to unmarried women.

In ghetto communities like Central Harlem, the number was closer to 80 percent. By this point, no one doubted that most of these children were destined to grow up poor and to pass down the legacy of single parenting to their own children.

By the mid-1990s, the ghetto's problems finally bottomed-out as the national conversation turned to traditional family values.

All told, the nation is at a cultural inflection point that portends change. Though they always caution that “marriage is not a panacea,” social scientists almost uniformly accept the research that confirms the benefits for children growing up with their own married parents. Welfare reform and tougher child-support regulations have reinforced the message of personal responsibility for one’s children. The Bush administration unabashedly uses the word “marriage” in its welfare policies. There are even raw numbers to support the case for optimism: teen pregnancy, which finally started to decline in the mid-nineties in response to a crisper, teen-pregnancy-is-a-bad-idea cultural message, is now at its lowest rate ever.

And finally, in the ghetto itself there is a growing feeling that mother-only families don’t work. ...

If change really is in the air, it’s taken 40 years to get here—40 years of inner-city misery for the country to reach a point at which it fully signed on to the lesson of Moynihan’s report. Yes, better late than never; but you could forgive lost generations of ghetto men, women, and children if they found it cold comfort.

Forty years after the Moynihan report, perhaps we will start to see more Norman Rockwell in Central Harlem.

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July 25, 2005

Vote in this straw poll

An old friend from college, Patrick J. Ruffini, has a straw poll of 2008 Republican Presidential candidates running on his popular blog.

Personally, I support My Man Mitt, though this is purely for selfish reasons. A number of people in my professional network are close, long-term friends of Mitt (the current governor of Taxachusetts), so a Romney presidency would be desireable. Mitt has proven himself a very capable businessman and a tough-nosed politician in a state that is generally considered to be allergic to common sense.

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July 24, 2005

All that glitters

One is advised to hold tight to his wallet whenever he finds himself buying something that is bought mainly by men for the women of their affection. Examples: chocolate, flowers, romantic dinners, and diamonds. Also beware when purchasing services that appeal to horny men. Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp, reportedly has sales per employee of over $1M. In other words, the site is a money machine.

Flowers are another easy way to part a person from his money. Having scoured nearly every flower delivery site on the web, I'm convinced that they're all rip-offs. (Women, this does not mean that I won't occasionally be ripped-off for your pleasure.) A nice potted vase shown at $30 will likely cost $60 before it is delivered, the other $30 being hidden costs that aren't revealed until the end. Add a $10 "transmission fee," plus $10 "delivery fee," plus $10 for the vase itself. Flower delivery suddenly becomes a very profitable business.

The biggest money-maker is the diamond industry. Diamonds have no inherent value except in some industrial cutting applications. The worth of a diamond derives from DeBeers' successfully restricting their supply on the world market and the willingness of some other sucker to pay an inflated price for the carbon. The latter is a bit like tech stocks in the '90s: Yahoo is worth $300/share to me because tomorrow someone else will pay $301.

Now Dateline runs a story discussing diamond appraisals, a wildly successful marketing ploy designed to further inflate the value of carbon.

“I think it’s probably one of the more shameful things in our industry — appraisals used as marketing tools,” says Don Palmieri, a senior member of the American Society of Appraisers. “You get a high appraisal, you walk out thinking you just got the last great deal. But you just got misinformed with that document.”

... [Palmieri] said in most cases the appraisals were grossly inflated. “Those prices came from the market imagination, I believe, of the retailer and the laboratory,” he says.

Dateline bought diamonds from various stores, took them out of their mount, and sent them back to the labs for appraisal. When they arrived back, almost none carried the same grading as the original appraisal.

Some of the grades varied significantly from lab to lab — and in fact, except in one case, none of the diamonds was graded the same by [Dateline's independent appraisers] and the labs.

Are rubies, emeralds, and sapphires this bad?

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July 23, 2005

Anywhere is cleaner than regular Mexico (except maybe Harlem)

Activists have their panties in a bunch over another product at Urban Outfitters, this time a shirt that advertises New Mexico as "cleaner than regular Mexico."

The activists are again complaining about the wrong thing. First, the shirt's message is true. Just like when Mexican President Vicente Fox spoke out about what sort of jobs Mexicans take in the US. He took a lot of flack for it, but he was speaking the truth. Second, the shirt isn't nearly as racist as certain things sold by the Mexican government.

Perhaps the people who waste ink complaining about Urban's clothes should spend some time helping 'disadvantaged' people get jobs, understand the healthcare system, or succeed in the educational system. Here are two organizations that are worthy of their time: one, two.

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More about American girls abroad (see next entry too)

Either the Enquirer has a good source on Natalee's case or they have very active imaginations. Look for the MSM to report this in a few weeks.

As The National Enquirer reported last week, [Aruban] police theorize that Natalee died accidentally, possibly drowning after she fell and hit her head in a drug-induced stupor. Police also believe Joran [van der Sloot] confessed to his father that Natalee had taken ecstasy and when she died, Joran panicked and decided to get rid of the body. [It was dumped in shark-infested waters and eaten.] But he needed help — and knew where to find it.

"Joran is believed to be friends with a known ecstasy dealer in Aruba and police think that's where he got the drug," said the source.

"When Natalee died, Joran got in touch with the dealer. The theory is that the dealer had an incentive to dispose of her body so that police wouldn't trace the drugs back to him. But the dealer made it clear to Joran that if he talked he'd disappear too."

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Birkenstocks in the air

This is mandatory reading for all you girls going off to Europe for study abroad. Be sure to read both articles on the page.

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July 22, 2005

Speaking of pandas

Part of this MSNBC story on piracy in the Straits of Malacca makes you not want to get up in the morning:

Because of the kinds of weapons they're carrying, they're use of flack jackets, a high degree of competency and tactical prowess ... it seems apparent that they’ve had some relatively vigorous training.

They're = they are. It's "their use of flack jackets," not "they're use of flack jackets."

MSNBC should know better.

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Subway IQ

New York cops have started searching bags on the subway. Unfortunately it's all bark, no bite. There are 4.5M riders a day on the NYC transit system, and only a few hundred bags a day will be inspected. If anything of London's scale happened (some 40 pax dying), then one's odds of being killed are 1/100,000, assuming he uses the system on the day a blast occurs. Walking down the street is far more dangerous than riding the subway.

It's also worth remembering that London had four bombs, which means that cops would have to stop all 4 bombs from entering the system. Let's assume that by sheer luck, 3 of the 4 bombers are stopped. There would still be a successful terrorist attack on the subway.

As I pointed out earlier, the cops would be far more effective if they rode the subway with the great unwashed and arrested the panhandlers, soliciters, grifters, drunken homeless, graffiti-makers, and people with bad BO who are encountered nearly every day on NYC's slimy subways.

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July 21, 2005

Long live the Queen!

In rural areas like Indiana, the county fair is a highlight of the summer. Local kids, many of whom come from well-known local farming families, get a week to show-off their heifers, goats, swine, corn stalks, and giant tomatoes. Also not to be missed are the tractor shows, demolition derby, and Lions Club ring toss. It's one of the red-state activities that makes middle-America great, one of the things not quite understood by those whose neck is only red because of the skylights in the Ferregamo boutique.

Paranoid blue-staters have decided that it's all a little too much and are forcing the 4-H organization to eliminate its King and Queen titles. Reports the Gary Post-Tribune:

The titles of king and queen have been eliminated in the name of gender equity, specifically Title IX, a 33-year-old federal law that bans sex discrimination in education. The 4-H program is administered through land grant colleges like Purdue, through its extension service, under the auspices of the the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

...

Next year, in a pilot program, the king and queen will be replaced by "achievement ambassadors," said Grott, and applicants will be chosen — without bias to gender — by out-of-county judges.

"Acheivement ambassador"? Lisa Simpson, call your office. The great thing about beauty pagents, properly administered, is that they show that nerdy people can also be beautiful. Calling the nerds "acheivement ambassadors" is not a way to convince impressionable youngsters that they ought to try to acheive something besides looking good. Let's enjoy the beautiful Queen and handsome King at the County Fair and then go check out the swine barn.

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July 20, 2005

A panda walks into a cafe

For the pedant in us all, I cannot more highly recommend last summer's surprise bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Killjoy old Brit Lynne Truss delights the world's sticklers when she lets loose on the "appaling ignorance" of people who never learned how to make a plural (it's CDs, not CD's) or use a comma. She reserves her harshest criticism for those who should know better, including retailer Lands' End. (She doesn't acknowledge that Lands' End admits the name is wrong, which was discovered after the first catalogue went to the printer.) To demonstrate the life-or-death implications of poor grammar, Truss writes:

A panda walked into a cafe. He ordered a sandwich, ate it, then pulled out a gun and shot the waiter.

"Why?" groaned the injured man.

The panda shrugged, tossed him a badly punctuated wildlife manual and walked out.

And sure enough, when the waiter consulted the book, he found an explanation.

Panda: large black and white mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Woe be the stickler nowadays:

It’s tough being a stickler for punctuation these days. One almost dare not get up in the mornings. True, one occasionally hears a marvellous punctuation-fan joke about a panda who “eats, shoots and leaves”, but in general the stickler’s exquisite sensibilities are assaulted from all sides, causing feelings of panic and isolation. A sign at a health club will announce, “I’ts party time, on Saturday 24th May we are have a disco/party night for free, it will be a ticket only evening.” Advertisements offer decorative services to “wall’s – ceiling’s – door’s ect”. Meanwhile a newspaper placard announces “FAN’S FURY AT STADIUM INQUIRY”, which sounds quite interesting until you look inside the paper and discover that the story concerns a quite large mob of fans, actually – not just the lone hopping-mad fan so promisingly indicated by the punctuation.

All of which is why I was happy to find this website today. I'm procrastinating far too much on the "list of errors" page.

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July 19, 2005

A gay lion, a gay giraffe, and even a gaggle of gay geese

Scientists are working on a gene that, when modified, turns animals gay. The always-PC NY Times managed to tap dance around that issue.

The male mouse's rule for dealing with strangers is simple - if it's male, attack it; if female, mate with it. But male mice that are genetically engineered to block the scent-detecting vomeronasal cells try to mate rather than attack invading males.

Then there's the ever-popular fruit fly:

Last month Barry J. Dickson of the Austrian Academy of Sciences provided an elegant proof of this idea by genetically engineering male flies to make the female version of the fruitless protein, and female flies to generate the male version. The male flies barely courted at all. But the female flies with the male form of fruitless aggressively pursued other females, performing all steps of male courtship except the last.

Among the various studies reported, perhaps the one that made the most sense was this:

A remarkable instance of genome-environment interaction has been discovered in the maternal behavior of rats. Pups that receive lots of licking and grooming from their mothers during the first week of life are less fearful in adulthood and more phlegmatic [fearful or cowardly] in response to stress than are pups that get less personal care.

Last year, Michael J. Meaney and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that a gene in the brain of the well-groomed pups is chemically modified during the grooming period and remains so throughout life. The modification makes the gene produce more of a product that damps down the brain's stress response.

The system would allow the laid-back rats to transmit their behavior to their pups through the same good-grooming procedure, just as the stressed-out rat mothers transmit their fearfulness to their offspring.

"Among mammals," Dr. Meaney and colleagues wrote in a report of their findings last year, "natural selection may have shaped offspring to respond to subtle variations in parental behavior as a forecast of the environmental conditions they will ultimately face once they become independent of the parent."

I'll think of this next time I watch the rats scurry about the 125th St. subway stop. My only remaining question is how to measure phlegmaticness among rats?

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July 18, 2005

What does the Bible say about building on solid foundations?

My former apartment [click for views out the window] was located across the street from Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian church. In 2004, the church decided to sell the rights to the air above the church to a developer, who proposed to build a 64-story condo tower in the air above the church, with a small entrance on Delaware Pl. They even gave it a ridiculous name, Project Light, even though the tower would cast the church in near-perpetual shadow.

View from my old apartment in Chicago. Click for larger.

In May, the 42nd Ward alderman Burton Naturus decided to oppose the tower's approval. (I just learned of this.) Chicago aldermen are particularly powerful, so Natarus's opposition might effectively kill the project. More realisticly, the tower might be scaled down to a more manageable size, something perhaps in the 30-40 story range. Since Naturus came out against the tower, there has been little news, except perhaps this article in today's Tribune, which makes no mention of the proposed tower.

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July 17, 2005

The huddled masses

In travel, it's always best to stay one step ahead of the huddled masses yearning to hear their tourguide, buy cheap trinkets, cram onto air-con busses, take pictures of "colorful" locals, and disappear back onto the cruise ship at dusk. That's why this article is so tragic. Equally tragic was the author of that 1000 Places book suggesting that Bhutan should be the next destination for the Rick Steves crowd. (Bhutan, to its credit, still holds tight to its policy of being very selective about who gets in--mainly because of its $200/day fee to be in the country.)

As for places that are a step ahead of the crowds, try the coast of Montenegro, a two hour drive south of Dubrovnik, or venture north to Mostar or Sarajevo. Latvia and Lithuania are still enjoyable, but Estonia is becoming an annex of Finland. Poland is eerily beautiful in winter, and I would like to hit the Curonian Spit in Kaliningrad (Russian enclave) sometime. Oman is blissfully untouristed but has excellent infrastructure.

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July 16, 2005

Don't dis the Enquirer

The National Enquirer is not as bad a news source as some might believe. First, there is an update on Oprah's bizarre claim that she's a Zulu. It's not online, but here is a synopsis:

The July 4, 2005 National Enquirer has a two page article about Oprah that reports that “her claims to noble Zulu blood has been disputed by the leader of the seven million-strong tribe, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi.” Even if she is a Zulu she might not like the fact that as a single woman she is not allowed to cover her breasts at traditional events. The Prince says she has everything it takes to be a Zulu [i.e. she's black] but she is probably from a West African tribe.

Actually, she's probably of several West African tribes, just as most white Americans are of several European nationalities. If the height of the American slave trade was roughly 1750-1809 (I'm guessing), then a typical American black of Oprah's age is 6th generation or more. Unlike whites, black slaves had little choice of marrying within their tribes/nationalities. This means that Oprah may have 64+ ancestors who arrived as American slaves and therefore as many as 64 tribal affiliations. On one hand, this gives credence to her claim that she has Zulu blood, at least a few drops. On the other hand, it shows the fruitlessness of attempting to ascribe oneself to any particular tribe.

Then there is this, the first plausible explanation of how Natalee Halloway died. If the kid were smart, he would have shut-up and said nothing. It's very hard to prosecute a murder when prosecutors can't show a body or even prove that a murder happened. Remember, Joran, justice is only approximate.

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July 15, 2005

Suzanne Somers has nothing on me

The paparazzi have been out lately. Somebody took a picture of a friend of mine and I as we had lunch at the Marriott Times Square on Tuesday. Then on Thursday I demonstrated how to use a Thighmaster in class, and the paparazzi emerged again. As soon as I obtain one of the photos, I'll post it here.

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July 13, 2005

Helping women

There is a poster around school that advertises "Help another woman get pregnant." Having already helped many women get pregnant, I'd be happy to help another. (I'm supposed to call 1-866-GIVE-EGG to make arrangements for the encounter.)

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July 11, 2005

The multiplication of division

I don't know where the "unite not divide" language in politics derives, but it seems a bit ridiculous when applied to the Supreme Court, as in this one-sided AP article. It is particularly hypocritical of the Dems to demand a "uniter" on SCOTUS: their favorite judges are hardly uniters. The Democrats on the Massachusetts Supreme Court tore the nation apart when they usurped the legislature and discovered a right for gays to marry. The Democrats on the 9th Circuit (the most liberal and most overturned of all the circuits) divided the country when they struck down the Pledge of Allegiance. On SCOTUS, the most liberal members like Brennan and Ginsburg have hardly been "uniters".

Liberals' demand for a "uniter" shows how Democrats misunderstand the role of the courts. Unlike a President or Legislators, only the most activist judges can do anything to unite a country. Courts decide cases. Courts interpret law. Courts weigh facts. Courts do not unite.

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July 10, 2005

Beavis & Butthead meet Robin Leach

The latest in a string of shows that combine Beavis & Butthead with Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous is Princes of Malibu. David Foster plays a father who has decided that his kids are too spoiled, and his wife begrudgingly agrees. I loved The Simple Life because Paris actually makes her own money in real life. Foster's kids have all the annoyance of Paris with none of her endearing qualities like her motivation.

The show also features some annoying excesses that expose the actors as actors and not reality stars. Foster declares Nobu perhaps "the most expensive restaurant in California, if not the world." Hardly. A group of nine has dinner for $700, or $78/person. It's a good thing they haven't discovered Per Se (with the cheapest menu being $175/person) or perhaps Daniel's menu (which starts at $92/person for three courses). Then there's Masa, which doesn't have a menu. Rather, the chef prepares you whatever he wants and charges $300/person for the experience, before tax, tip, and sake. When the spoiled kids go to Masa every night, old man Foster can really complain.

(Astute viewers of The Simple Life will remember that Nicole Richie successfully got a last-minute reservation at Per Se as part of her job; normally the wait is up to 2 months.)

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July 09, 2005

A matter of time

The cops were all over the subway yesterday following the London attacks. That's swell, but why should a subway rider feel secure in the cops' ability to stop terrorists from blowing up the subway when they can't prevent simple crimes? E.g.:

• Panhandling. It's all-to-common on subways, even though it's prohibited.
• Soliciting. There is an Asian woman who makes a very good living selling pirated DVDs on the 2/3 north of 96th St.
• Sleeping. New York City's homeless shelters have significant excess capacity, yet a rider at 2AM is likely to find himself joining a sleeping homeless person complete with cart and bags.

If the cops can't handle bums, beggars, and hawkers on the subway, there is no way that they can handle mini-Osamas.

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July 08, 2005

My new occupation

I've changed my occupation on my friendster profile to "cat herder" from "annoyer of Frenchmen."

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July 06, 2005

The Brits get it

While America chases away talented immigrants, the UK is actively recruiting them. A new law with a special "MBA Provision" allows grads of the world's top 50 MBA programmes to come and live in the UK with no job, no sponsor, no nothing. If they become "economically active," they'll be eligible for UK permanent residency after four years. One of the biggest trends in the world economy is the globalization of trade, investment funds, and managerial talent. The Brits get it.

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July 05, 2005

Signage around the world

O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, CHICAGO, IL: Four years ago I was here and left the country for the first time. Since then, I have accumulated a collection of signs from around the world. This collection of 22 pictures (click the continuation below) is part two in a series that began with McDonald’s Around the World.

A lot of signs deal with bodily functions

1. Düsseldorf, Germany. “Please use the toilets.”





2. Amsterdam, Netherlands. “Have your dog crap on the kerb, not this sidewalk.”

3. Lillehammer, Norway. “Put a damper on your farts.”





4. Moscow, Russia. “Please do not allow your car to fart.”









5. Stockholm, Sweden. “You fart.” (Swedish for “Exit”)

Signs telling people to do or not to do certain activities are common. Generally they are written in English and then the local language. Others are English-only, like the “do not sit here” sign in Paris’s Centre Pompidou. The best English-only sign is this one:

6. London, UK. “Stupid tourist, if you haven’t noticed, we drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road here.”









7. Paris, France. “Do not drive your car into the Seine.”









8. St Petersburg, Russia (at Peter & Paul Fortress) . “Do not walk off the castle parapets.”





9. Lokrum Island, Croatia. “Come frolic, fat 50-year-old dudes.”





10. Beijing, China. “Chinese New Year celebrations prohibited here.”





11. Singapore. This one takes the cake for ridiculous signs directing people to do or not do something. It demands that people wait on certain parts of the subway platform for “smoother boarding and faster alighting.”





12. Sarajevo, Bosnia. This is my worldwide favorite for things not to do. Posted on the grounds of a mosque, it demands no flirting, no smoking, no mobile phones, no hunting, no dogs, no bicycles, no attractive women, no eating big sloppy sandwiches, and no making-out. Apparently some people think that mosques are good make-out places.

Then there are the street signs.

13. Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic. The stop sign has become pretty universal, though in some countries it seems to be more a decoration than a road rule.





14. Cancun, Mexico. Mexican stop signs reading “alto” can also be translated to “short.” This “short” sign even includes an arrow pointing at David, who isn’t known for his height.





15. Vilnaus, Lithuania. A break-away artists’ republic has established their own rules within the Lithuanian capital. “Be happy, drive slow, admire our art, and don’t drive your car into the Seine.”





16. Brussels, Belgium. Brussels’s street names can be long and unwieldy. Try giving this street name to a cabbie. The languages are French (top) and Flemish.

Advertisements can produce some memorable signs

17. Lillehammer, Norway. This 1920s-era sign for Buchanan Whisky advertises whisky “For Automobile Drivers.”

    
    

    

18. Moscow, Russia. If this “Crapdogs” stand were open, I could tell you how a Crapdog tastes.





19. Aachen, Germany. If crapdogs aren’t your thing, there’s always Weinerland.





20. Mostar, Hercegovina. Rooms are available in this hotel a few blocks from the Yugoslav Civil War’s front line, but a roof costs extra.





21. St. Petersburg, Russia. Eastern Europe is full of signs that advertise opening hours till “Last Guest,” especially at strip clubs and places of ill-repute. This sign is noteworthy because it notes opening at the ultra-specific time of “midday.”

Other signs are so devilish that they defy classification

22. The Vatican. The Vatican’s museum includes this evil audioguide entry. The associated painting is of amateur astronomers a little while after Galileo.





23. Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw’s coat-of-arms features this bare-breasted mermaid bearing a shield and sword. And we make fun of Polanders?

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July 03, 2005

Quotation of the day

Quotation of the day:

You look nothing like you did in high school.

Heard in a nightclub tonight from a girl I had a crush on during high school.

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