...looks a lot like Jim Carrey. Right? At least in this photo.

Snow urges Congress to raise debt limit - Yahoo! News:

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow warned lawmakers on Thursday that a legally set limit on the government's ability to borrow will be hit in mid-February and urged Congress to raise it quickly.

Failure to do so potentially risks throwing the country into its first default in history, Snow warned in what has become virtually an annual rite as U.S. borrowing needs spiral.

'The administration now projects that the statutory debt limit, currently $8.184 trillion, will be reached in mid-February 2006,' Snow said in a letter to 21 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate released by Treasury after financial markets had closed.

Oh, and:

The debt limit was last raised in November 2004 by $800 billion to its current level. The letter to Congress does not specify an amount the Treasury wants the ceiling set at this time.

Call me nuts, but I have a feeling those limits are there for a reason - namely, to keep us from falling hopelessly, forever into debt. Why didn't anyone plan for this? What happens when the debt hits $10 trillion? Do we all have to sell our houses to the Chinese?

CNN.com - Poll: Most think Bush is failing second term - Jan 26, 2006:

But 51 percent of those polled said they were more likely to vote for a candidate in congressional elections who opposes Bush, while 40 percent said they were likely to vote for a candidate who backs the president.

How embarrassing would it be to be the President of the United States, offer your support to a congressional candidate, and hear back: "Yeah, uh, thanks, but... we're all set."

I'd like to suggest this one.

The funniest part is when he tries to sing along and doesn't appear to know the words.

Dueling rallies mark Roe v. Wade anniversary - Politics - MSNBC.com:

"Abortion rights have been slowly whittled away while we haven’t even been looking," said Kitty Striker, 22, who decorated her hair with small coat hanger replicas for the counter-protest. "That’s what’s so shocking and so scary to me."

Maybe I'm confused, but I'd think that if you're trying to make a statement in support of abortion, you'd want to avoid all references to coat hangers. You might be trying to make the point that without legal abortions, people would get them done in back alleys, but it just looks like you're celebrating the off-label (if you will) use of coat hangers.

CNN.com - U.S. rejects bin Laden tape's 'truce' offer - Jan 20, 2006:

'Clearly the al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run. They're under a lot of pressure,' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. 'We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.'

Very bold! But you might want to take a peek at Iraq first. Those explosions and kidnappings seem to indicate that no one is quite out of business yet. Far from it, actually.

Mich. Pair Wins Beer Pong Championship - Yahoo! News:

A pair of recent University of Michigan graduates are each $5,000 richer for being the best at a national tournament involving a campus drinking game popular among many college students.

Jason Coben and Nick Velissaris are the champions of the 'World Series of Beer Pong,' which took place earlier this month near Las Vegas. The two beat out more than 160 other competitors to split the $10,000 grand prize.

What I wouldn't give just for the opportunity to play in that... there are no words.

Some interesting stuff on this page, including the answer to the question, "Am I a bad person for giving my dog beer?" Which is actually what I was wondering in the first place when I searched for "dog beer bad".

Dog Secrets:

HOW OJ SIMPSON'S DOG PROVED HE DID IT

The only known living witness to the Nicole Simpson murder is Kato. The dog, that is, not Kato Kaelin. But why didn't Kato (the dog, or the one with brushed hair), try to stop the murder, and why did he behave so oddly afterwards?

Why didn't the Akita attack the killer that night? The dog probably not only knew the killer, but the killer was a boss to him or he would have attacked him. If the killer is also a boss to the dog, he becomes confused, doesn't know who to defend, and does nothing. 'An Akita will attack someone harming his family unless it's another dominant household member,' says Barbara Bouyet, national coordinator of the Akita Rescue Society of America, and author of Akita: Treasure of Japan.

How else did the dog prove that OJ did it? People who have dogs know that when they come home, their dogs greet them warmly. But OJ's dog barked angrily at him when he saw him right after the murder.

When OJ arrived back home in his white Bronco after the famous chase, the Akita, who had been taken to OJ's home, did not act normal. He did not greet O.J., or go up to anyone in the car. 'Instead, that dog looked into the car, stiffened, backed up, barked, and backed up again when he saw OJ,' says Bouyet who watched the scene on local TV.

Why did the dog show such defensive behavior? 'I don't believe that an Akita would ever behave that way toward someone unless that person had done something very bad,' she says.

Did Nicole's Akita do anything else incriminating after the murder? People reported that they heard strange howls of a confused and anguished dog. 'These are quiet dogs,' says Bouyet. 'They hunt silently like cats. I think he was confused because the person attacking his mistress was not an outsider.'

Nagin: God mad at America, black people - Hurricanes' Aftermath - MSNBC.com:

"It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," the [New Orleans] mayor said. "This city will be a majority African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans."

Nagin described an imaginary conversation with King, the late civil rights leader.

"I said, ‘What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?’ He said, ‘I don’t think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.’ He said, ‘The thing we need to focus on as a community — black folks I’m talking about — is ourselves."’

Way to go, Mayor. By bringing up race in the first place and declaring that New Orleans will one day become a "chocolate city", you're the racist one. You made any white (or Latino, or Asian) person standing in that crowd feel unwelcome. You fail to see that bringing race into the conversation in any way is invariably detrimental to a society that should know better than to think that way.

Algae - like a breath mint for smokestacks | csmonitor.com:

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.

After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.

I'm tree-huggingly excited about this. Two birds, one stoner.

Mularkey resigns as Bills coach - NFL - MSNBC.com:

Mike Mularkey submitted his resignation to the Buffalo Bills on Thursday, a person familiar with discussions between the coach and the team told The Associated Press.

The Bills were pathetic under him. I don't know why he wasn't fired at the same time as the 6 or 7 other coaches around the league who got the boot.

And by "promise", I mean "suppose"... or maybe "conjecture". I can't ensure you that I won't feel like talking about it again in like an hour.

Anyway, I had my appointment this morning. Dr. Robbins sent in his female alter-ego backup doctor, who for the record drives a measly Mercedes SLK. I knew it was hers, because no guy spends > $50k on an automobile and settles for the white one. Turns out my eyes are progressing well; actually, "very well" according to Dr. Probably-Paid-to-Say-That. And you know what, I'm not sure if it's just the placebo effect or what, but today is the best day yet. Very little dryness, and very clear vision all-around (I actually think the two are connected somehow - I notice my vision is worse when my eyes feel itchy and dry). She said it would probably be at least a few more weeks before the night-vision problems go away altogether, but I can live with that. I haven't hit any bicyclists yet, and frankly, I wouldn't care if I did anyway.

I had been assuming that there was no need to use my lubricating eye drops (which I'm supposed to use once every 1-2 hours during the day) at night. I'm not sure where I got that idea, since I've woken up with very dry eyes every morning since I got LASIK'd. SO, last night I used a couple of drops per eye before going to sleep, and did it again when I woke up in the middle of the night... and waddayaknow, today's a huge improvement over the last two days. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's not.

It's been a week + one day. I was told to expect "fluctuating vision" during the first few weeks, and for the past two days, I've been experiencing what I can only assume and hope is a "down" fluctuation. For the first three or four days, I saw almost perfectly, except in certain lighting conditions. Recently, though, I'm feeling a little bit blurrier. Not terrible, still very driveable, and still an enormous improvement over my old vision, but not as good as it was even the first day. I'm not worried when I think rationally about it, but it's hard to think rationally about your own eyesight. I keep thinking "WHAT IF IT NEVER EVER GETS ANY BETTER?!?!?!! SHIFT ONE SHIFT SLASH"

This is, of course, probably crazy talk on the part of my brain, especially considering that the doctor told me to expect exactly what I'm experiencing. But still, I'm looking forward to my second post-op check-up on Thursday, when I plan to annoy the hell out of the doctor with several dozen questions he's probably heard every single day since he became a LASIK surgeon (other than the 5-6 days a week he spends on his boat, or swimming in an actual pile of gold like Scrooge McDuck).

Or you'll get what you deserve:

A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man’s house and set it on fire.

Since I'm fortunate enough to have nothing out of the ordinary to report about my LASIK surgery, I'll keep this brief.

Had my pre-op a week ago, which seemed to me to mostly be their opportunity to try and up-sell me on their more expensive version of the procedure, "Custom Cornea" LASIK. They actually had me sit and watch a 15-minute promotional video for it (which the receptionist referred to as a "PowerPoint", because she apparently believes that anything displayed on a computer monitor is a PowerPoint). They also sent in some lady whose entire job appeared to be to try and convince me I needed Custom Cornea. I resent being upseld when I'm already dishing out big money for something, so I refused and went for the standard procedure more on principle than anything else. Once I actually got to see the doctor, he admitted to me that there wasn't much reason for me to get the expensive surgery since I was a prime candidate for regular LASIK. I wanted to ask him why I had to sit through the video and the rest of the propaganda, but I decided not to harrass someone who would soon be using sharp implements and hot pointy lasers on my eyes.

(So much for brief. Sorry.)

I had my surgery two days ago, on Monday. Right away they give you Valium, which I was pretty excited about. What a disappointment that stuff turned out to be. I'm not sure if it did anything... if it did, it wasn't anything more than a little bit of calmness. Truth be told, I was pretty calm about the whole thing anyway - everything I had read said it was pretty quick and painless. That turned out to be true - though there are a couple of disturbing things during the surgery, which I will present in ordered list form, because lists rule:

1. In order to get at the cornea, they first have to get past the outer protective layer of your eye (whatever it's called). Jimmy had PRK, wherein they basically sand it down until it's not covering the cornea, then give you a protective contact lens to wear after the surgery for a few days until it heals. In LASIK, they cut about 90% of a circle around your cornea with this little blade, then use the remaining 10% of the circumference to act as the hinge as they peel it back, do the surgery, then put it back (they use tweezers to do this). So, the disturbing part: it's actually a little motorized mini-buzzsaw that does this, and it goes WHIZZZZZZZZZZZ really fast, and that's pretty startling the first time. But if you think about it, it still would be better than having some doctor hacking at your eye with a little razor blade.
   
2. When the laser is actually burning the flesh of your cornea in order to reshape it, you can smell it. It smells like burnt cornea flesh. But that's OK, because you get to watch this wicked blue-laser-light show while it's going on, and listen to the laser machine's soothing female voice: "20% completed. 30% completed...".

After I sat up on the operating bed, I noticed right away that I could see - the world was kind of foggy, like I was in a steam room or something, but I could already tell that my vision was much improved. After the eye-numbing drops wore off at home, I was treated to two hours of fairly painful burning sensations in my eyes, but that went away and I got to walk around the house scaring Steph with my big googly goggles. The next morning (yesterday), I drove myself to the doctor's office for a follow-up with no problems at all, and today, aside from some dryness which is a normal side effect for a week or two, it's like I have glasses on but I don't. I was able to read the line for 20/15 vision yesterday, and looking around my office right now, I think I can see everything just as well as I ever did with contacts or glasses.

So, long story short, it seems to have gone great. Mad props to Dr. Robbins, though I could have done without the sales pitch for more-expensive surgery that I obviously didn't need.