September 15, 2002
What's our government doing right now? Nobody cares.
What's our government doing right now? Nobody cares. (via David Cogswell) "There is this gap, you see, this enormous, gaping separation between what the honest and ardent and yet often shockingly misinformed populace believes drives the heart of this great nation, and what actually drives it." Slap a new adhesive flag over the one bleached by the summer sun and let's get to it. This really has to stop.
An Editorial from Jane's, 9/11: in search of context and meaning
An Editorial from Jane's, 9/11: in search of context and meaning "Fiction, non-fiction, news, news analysis and opinion... And unfortunately we continually mix and merge these groupings, using them in similar ways and often believing them to contain similar weight and importance." "We now tend to respond to the news rather than attempting to get behind it and create policy."
On Iraq, Where Are The Democrats?
On Iraq, Where Are The Democrats? "Oh, the party's leaders speak: They appear on talk shows; they write op-eds; they convene congressional hearings. But most of what they say is best understood as highly articulate evasiveness. They have devised a series of formulations designed to make the party appear to be offering a clear response to the president's proposed war, when it is actually doing the opposite.". But now some are willing to outright question the timing of our newfound desire to eliminate Hussein: "It's hard not to notice that the sudden urgency of war with Iraq has coincided precisely with the emergence of the corporate scandal story, with the flip in the congressional [poll] numbers and with the decline in the Republicans' prospects for retaking the Senate majority"
Bob Greene Quits after Affair with Teen Revealed
Bob Greene Quits after Affair with Teen Revealed No big deal in the broad scheme of things, perhaps, but for those who know of/have read Greene, this story is an extra-large helping of irony - basically, one of the high priests of wholesome, 50s-era Americana taken down by a sex scandal. On the other hand, it's not clear that he did anything legally wrong; nevertheless, the paper gave him the quick boot. We expect high ethical standards in politicians' personal lives, but is it fair to expect the same thing of journalists?
IRAQFILTER: Coercive inspections - COMPLY OR ELSE. Full 60 page .pdf from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. TRANSCRIPTS: Donahue and Ollie North square off on Afghan covert ops and Iraq. Scott Ritter squares off with Fox News. SUBSTANTIVE DISCUSSION (inside, as per request):
Do you know this girl?
Do you know this girl? C'mon people - lend this guy a hand. Let's face it, he needs all the help he can get...
Today's comic was too cool to pass up.
Today's comic was too cool to pass up. I'm normally a big fan of Foxtrot to begin with, but Bill Amend really pulled a fun stunt in today's online comic. Who can spot the inside joke first? Does anybody else have a favorite memorable inside joke from the funny pages? c'mon, I couldn't resist so lets just pretend it's still Friday...
This pidgin bible translation
This pidgin bible translation gives me the creeps. What happened to promoting literacy by example? Sure, it's important to use language that your readers
are comfortable with, but come on already. Is it any wonder that
education in Hawaii stinks?
Who the heck cares if Saddam Hussein gets a nuke?
Who the heck cares if Saddam Hussein gets a nuke? Not Pat Buchanan, who provocatively suggests we have little to fear from an Iraq armed with a nuclear weapon. Pat's isolationism and fundamentalism are obvious, so let's examine the specifics of his argument instead: "Stalin acquired nuclear weapons in 1949, but did not blackmail us out of Berlin. Mao acquired nuclear weapons in 1964, but did not blackmail us out of Taiwan...[F]or him to threaten us with it would invite annihilation...Why would Saddam, who sleeps in a different bed every night to stay alive, risk the utter destruction of himself, his family, his dynasty, his monuments, his legacy?"
"Pax Americana"
"Pax Americana" "The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC)."
Television as a weapon of mass subversion? Netanyahu is suggesting that the US broadcasts such subversive programs as Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 in Iran...
New 100m world record
Matthias Wandel's Home page
Matthias Wandel's Home page is reminiscent of an earlier time in the online world. It's a homepage in the pre-weblog sense, and it's full of the sort of interesting things that made me excited about the Internet in the first place. From marble machines that can divide by six to homemade pipe organs and the story of his dad's old sawmill, there is almost nothing on the site that fails to be interesting.
« Previous day | Next day »