Um, okay. I predict that Rohit will chime in any day now with a post
declaring his undying affection for Sarah Michelle Gellar and/or Alyssa
Milano after reading the recent Rolling Stone and Maxim cover stories
about them, respectively. Then he will spend every Sunday from here
till marriage in the Newsroom Cafe on Roberson in Beverly Hills reading
the Economist while sucking down veggie burgers at the hopes of meeting
Miss Right or at least Miss Vampire Slayer.
Meanwhile, my thoughts lately are mostly about gas. I continue to be
astonished by gasoline prices that adjusted for inflation are at their
lowest price ever in this country. 90 cents a gallon in Pasadena -- and
just last summer we were paying $1.50 a gallon here! Of course, all of
this is just a subtle maneuver by Saddam Hussein simultaneously to make
a fortune off the oil futures market and to lull Americans by the droves
into a false sense of gas price security so they trade up their minivans
for even-more-gas-guzzling sporty road utility vehicles which with a
lock-in of 5-to-10 years should have us all pretty toasted by 2001 when
the gas prices shoot back up to a price level commensurate with
inflation, allowing President Gore to preside over the worst stateside
recession since George "Read Your Lips, Got the Tee Shirt" Bush.
But enough of what I think -- that's too depressing. Let's talk about
how stupid the American public is, to cheer ourselves up again. [Wub
used to say, "Think about how stupid the *average* American is, and then
think about the fact that half of them are even stupider than that..."]
A recent survey cited by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Zay N. Smith
reveals -- and please bear with us to get to the punch line -- that:
89% of Americans are happy with the Postal Service;
85% with the Park Service;
79% with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
76% with the Department of Defense;
75% with the FDA (tired of typing these out so I'll just use TLAs);
73% with NASA;
70% with the FAA;
69% with the EPA;
68% with the USDA;
67% with the FBI;
62% with the Social Security Administration;
61% with the Education Department;
59% with Veterans Affairs;
58% with the Commerce Department;
56% with the Justice Department;
53% with the FTC;
51% with Housing and Urban Development; and
51% with the CIA.
However, only 29% are pleased with the federal government as a whole,
says Smith, "which means there must be some other agency at about 1% if
this is to balance out, and no, it isn't the IRS, which is at 38%, so we
will have to keep looking."
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
It's like that Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert asks some woman if she
wants to go to lunch together next week and she replies she's not
hungry.
-- John Dobbin