From the December 2nd WSJ:

Paul McCartney has learned how dogs and cats in China are killed for their fur, and says he'll never perform there and will boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics in protest. "This is just disgusting," the BBC quoted him as saying. "It's just against every rule of humanity." So is China's imprisonment, torture and murder of Tibetans and other human-rights activists. Just not disgusting enough to provoke Sir Paul.

I looked up the original BBC News story and found that I was repulsed by the description of the practices involved. So I guess you could say, I'm with Sir Paul on this as far as it goes. But the writer above makes an interesting point: When will the plight of millions of people around the world who live with horror every day be worth the ongoing attention of the media and of our rock stars (Bono excluded, of course)?

Here's a birds-eye view of Brest. It's especially colorful at night local time - about six hours ahead of us here in the Eastern time zone.

From the WSJ today:

Several relatives of Citigroup Inc. executives each were paid annual salaries ranging from $143,900 to more than $2 million in 2003, according to the company's 2004 proxy statement.

Doesn't this strike you as somewhat obscene, or is it just me? After all, I don't begrudge Citigroup executives their paychecks, but is it really necessary to pay their husbands, wives, kids, etc. on top of that? Whatever happened to anti-nepotism rules? Do they only apply to the rank-and-file?

Some tech blogs recommended by Lee Gomes of the WSJ:

• John Battelle's Searchblog focuses on new media and search technologies.
• Tech Crunch by Michael Arrington is focused on new web products and technologies.
• tech.memeorandum by Gabe Rivera is a weblog/news aggregator that Gomes calls a "blog-tracking service".

So I'm in my local Taco Bell this morning for my 9am Pepsi, and the folks inside are scrambling about as usual (i.e. I had to wait on them to setup the register). What wasn't so normal was the conversation I overheard between a management type (her) and one of the shift leaders (him). She was saying things like "unfortunate incident" and "unprofessional behavior" and "saving your job", while he was trying to explain ... what? I don't know, but I kept wondering if nobody could see me. I'm pretty large and fairly noisy, especially when dispensing ice. I don't envy that guy.

6-4, 285 - ding! (see Dan Patrick show on ESPNRadio for obscure reference)

Anyway, I'm back and hope to get back in the swing of things again. Thanks for reading!