At Home In The Wasteland Travel Blog

Tony took a short break from rebuilding the Iraqi Air Force (seriously) to photoshop some signs for a protest (date TBD) in front of the Department of the Interior, where the anti-wiffleball National Park Service is headquartered. Thanks, dude. I think we’ll also need wiffle bats, a drum circle, face paint, bullhorns, and whatever else [...]

The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor is generally a very useful resource on the region’s hot topics, but this slight mistake in Monday’s edition was quite amusing: Kazakh Court Decision Against Chevron Carries Political Implications: But to ensure stable oil deliveries from Tengiz the BTC managers will have to increase the pumping capacity of the [...]

100 meat patties, 100 slices of cheese, 19,490 calories. Yes, someone did order a 100×100 (at an In-N-Out in Vegas back in ’04) and managed to document the entire process, with plenty of photographs. Only 21 days until I am back in California. Not that I’m, uh, keeping track or anything.

My brain has literally been turning into mush since I’ve left LSE. I was once again craving the classroom environment, so I signed up for the Environmental and Natural Resource Economics course at the USDA Graduate School last spring. If you’re living in the DC area, I highly recommend taking a class or two there. [...]

Here is my first attempt at customizing Google Maps. It basically chronicles the majority of my travels (all international, some domestic) from 2002 to the present. View Larger Map It’s viewable in Google Earth (KML file) as well. Granted, it still needs a bit of work, but overall I think it’s rather useful in giving [...]

Just learned from the PWL Commish that the bureaucrats over at the National Park Service are putting an end to our glorious wiffleball Sundays at Gravelly Point: The formality and lack of a personal nature caused my senses to prepare for bad news immediately. I’d received several notices from the United States Department of the [...]

This is not an article from The Onion…this really happened: The Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a fake news conference this week, with agency staff officials, pretending to be reporters, peppering one of their own bosses with decidedly friendly questions about the response to the California fires, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged Friday. [...] [...]

Drove down to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center today. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum doesn’t have enough room at its location on the National Mall, so they built the Udvar-Hazy annex near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia to display more of their collection. It opened in December 2003, but I hadn’t made it [...]

From Bush’s most recent press conference (don’t bother reading the entire transcript, it’s too painful). Q. And what would it mean for Russian democracy if, when you leave power, assuming you do, in January 2009 — (laughter) — if Vladimir Putin is still in power? THE PRESIDENT: You know, one of the interesting — well, [...]

Saint Seraphim’s most popular quote was “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved.” Fitting for a guy who was recently declared the patron saint of Russia’s nuclear forces: This month the secretive, nuclear 12th Main Directorate of the Defense Ministry celebrated its 60th birthday…Today Russian nukes are produced by the Rosatom [...]