Cocaine is a Hell of a Drug.

My car got broken into last night outside of the Spider House coffee shop in Austin.
They smashed the driver-side window and grabbed my shoulder bag, which
contained my iPod, a Discman, a minidisc player, a digital voice
recorder, a digital camera, and a thumb drive. Of course, this is
mostly sort of useless bullshit that I don't really need and it's not
that big a deal.

The real kick in the teeth is that they got my passport, which I now
have to hustle to replace before I go to Japan, and they got three
books, including two pretty expensive academic books that i need for
my research and one library book . . .

All in all, I'm out about $1500 in replacement value, and will have to
immediately drop about $300 to replace stuff that I have to have
immediately or soon. There's the remote possibility that my renter's
insurance will cover it, but . . . remote.

On the other hand, I did get really lucky - they missed my laptop,
which has a lot of writing on it that I don't have anywhere else. I
would have been really devestated if they got that. I also had my
phone, wallet, keys, a pen and a highlighter on me at the time, so I'm
at least not completely screwed.

Anyway, I'm sure this is no biggie for those of you who have been
robbed at gunpoint, but it's the first time I've ever had something
like this happen and I felt like sharing.

UPDATE

Yay, seems likely that I will get at least some sort of insurance
coverage on this - everyone, GET RENTER'S INSURANCE, it apparently
includes global property loss, not just stuff taken or damaged from
your residence.

Mine has a $500 deductible, but since he who shall henceforth be known
as The Crackhead Upon Whom I Will By Sheer Force of Will Inflict
Gonhorrea (TCUWIWBSFOWIG for short) got way more than $500 worth of
stuff, and some of it was things I didn't really want anyway, my
losses could be pretty minimal if things work out. I think it's
unlikely they'll cover the replacement cost of my passport, which is a
biggie, but this is still fantastic news. The battery on my iPod was
dying anyway.

Now I'm going to go get to work on a list of what I lost, and the
replacement value thereof, which actually should be pretty fun. After
that comes the I'm sure much less fun process of actually filing a
claim.

The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

A conservative website called Human Events has compiled the definitive list. It was based on a vote taken among conservative authorities, so it's not as if one person assembled the list on a logical basis that we can somehow take to underpin conservative thought. But it's still pretty wild that The Communist Manifesto beat out Mein Kampf. There are lots of ways to justify it that would probably satisfy the more even-keeled among us - for example, the fact that the Holocaust represented the culmination of the mounting historical weight of anti-Semitism, whereas Communism was a real historical break whose suffering was brought about entirely thanks to Marx. But still, it's weird.

The rest of the top ten is actually surprisingly solid. Most of the books they cite as harmful have had harmful effects that noone can really argue with, even if, from a liberal perspective, their overall effect has in fact been positive. The Kinsey Report may have led to sexual freedom and greater enjoyment for all, but it has also led, indirectly, to higher divorce rates. Beyond Good and Evil advanced human self-understanding, but there were also obviously people who couldn't quite deal with that. And I think most Americans would agree on the harmfulness of Sayings of Chairman Mao.

The real wierdness, the heart of darkness, if you will, doesn't begin until you get down into the honorable mentions. Unsafe at Any Speed? Is there some underlying anti-car safety tenet in conservatism that I've missed? Then of course there are Silent Spring and Origin of Species, and Mill's On Liberty, all of which represent things that conservatives fear because they threaten the foundation of willful ignorance that undergirds their worldview.