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The NHL? Fix it for forget it. ESPN suggests how we could start over.
comment posted at 12:10 AM on Jan-13-05
comment posted at 11:21 PM on Jan-13-05

"I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord," said George W. Bush yesterday. (Really? I do.) While giant crosses are banned from next Thursday's inauguration, Jesus likely won't be, despite Michael Newdow's protestations. By the way, the benediction is scheduled to be delivered by The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who also got the honor in 2001. Back then, he said to millions of bowed heads gathered to mark the beginning of the Bush presidency: "We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name that's above all other names, Jesus, the Christ. Let all who agree say, 'Amen.'" After gay rights, is discrimination against atheists the next great civil rights battle of our time? Or should we just shut up and move to France?
comment posted at 10:07 PM on Jan-12-05

Linguists Gone Wild Linguists from The American Dialect Society and the Linguistic Society of America recently met to vote for the Words of the Year, in various categories—Most Useful, Creative, Unnecessary, Outrageous, and Euphemistic; Most and Least Likely To Succeed; and an overall Word of the Year... no one really cares unless we pretend that These Are Important Words That Define Us as Americans. Still, that's marginally better than the alternate interpretation: This Is How Scholars Waste Their Time When They Could Be Doing Real Work.
comment posted at 12:47 AM on Jan-13-05
comment posted at 12:48 AM on Jan-13-05

Apple has announced the following:iPod shuffle, Mac mini, iWork. MacMerc has a play by play of Job's keynote address at Macworld. I suspect 2005 is the year Apple takes over the world.
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Jan-11-05

Do you want to be a writer? "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?... Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too -- the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that." Luminous and wise writing advice from Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, one of the most beautiful books written in the last hundred years (published when Dillard was 29). As a writer myself, I am often asked by younger folk how to become one. Dillard says best what I would tell them.
comment posted at 1:25 AM on Jan-11-05

Nick Cave -- Babe I'm On Fire -- The greatest music video of all time. The RealVideo file has better audio. Lyrics (useful)
comment posted at 1:15 AM on Jan-10-05

Meta meta meta self. Photographer Donald Andrew Agarrat plays -- er, poses with himself.
comment posted at 6:10 PM on Jan-8-05
comment posted at 7:00 PM on Jan-8-05

Because "honky" is fun to say, and a lot of us could use some angry, profane, hilarious, and well-intentioned advice.
comment posted at 6:06 PM on Jan-8-05

The Reality of Red-State Fascism, by Lew Rockwell. We consistently say "Man, we're on the road to fascism" yet people fall all over themselves to say "We're nowhere near it.". Well, when do we say "Holy shit...we're there"? Everybody's favorite libertarian gives us a timeline of the descent, and lets us know how we are now not just on the brink, but in the midst of Americanized Fascism:

"If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state...In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences....it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs"
comment posted at 11:35 PM on Jan-6-05

Ever dreamed of building a boat and sailing away? Two clearly mad Canadians decide to built a yacht. Clearly mad because they actually do it! It's a bit of a saga but well worth the read for the vicarious pleasure. I'm green with envy! N.B. the site navigation can be a bit dicky so you may have to change the url to get to the next day sometimes. It goes up to day 222.
comment posted at 12:32 AM on Jan-7-05

CNN Cans Tucker Carlson of 'Crossfire' - To quote chief executive of CNN Jonathan Klein, "I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp." (via)
comment posted at 6:46 PM on Jan-5-05
comment posted at 8:44 PM on Jan-5-05

A scene by scene comparison between the Matrix and Ghost in the Shell, a critically acclaimed japanese anime that was released four years before the Matrix.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Jan-5-05

The Great Eastern ran on CBC Radio from '94 until '99. Sublimely funny, the show lives on with complete episode archives, select clips and some detailed backstory. I haven't heard anything as well written in a long, long time. Subtle satire at its best.
comment posted at 5:44 PM on Jan-5-05

Gift cards are evil. Or so says Dan Gross at Slate. I love Slate, but too many things in this article are just ridiculous. (more inside)
comment posted at 8:11 PM on Jan-5-05

Is N+1's review of the Life Aquatic more than a bit snobbish or dead on? While I agree with much of the review, particularly how Life Aquatic seemed to lack a plot, I can't help but feel icky having read this. (Link via TMFTML)
comment posted at 7:55 PM on Jan-5-05

Rumor has it: Six Apart is buying Live Journal. via Waxy
comment posted at 9:54 PM on Jan-4-05
comment posted at 9:58 PM on Jan-4-05
comment posted at 4:17 AM on Jan-5-05
comment posted at 8:16 PM on Jan-5-05
comment posted at 8:24 PM on Jan-5-05
comment posted at 11:53 PM on Jan-10-05

Death and Taxes: A Visual Look at Where Your (U.S.) Tax Dollars Go
comment posted at 10:12 PM on Jan-3-05

Metacritic Books. Metacritic has been covering reviews for movies, music, and games for years, but now has started aggregating books reviews, with about 150 books so far.
comment posted at 9:18 PM on Jan-3-05

must drive fast faster faster The use of cocaine is widespread among Formula One drivers, a former Ferrari team doctor has claimed. Although random FIA tests have never returned a positive result, Benigno Bartoletti said in Rome that 'as many as one third' of the current field take the drug as a stimulant prior to grands prix.
comment posted at 10:35 PM on Jan-3-05

Anathema, darknets, master rippers, and currys: The Shadow Internet. [via Volokh]
comment posted at 11:13 PM on Jan-3-05

A high IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married while it is an asset for men, according to a study by four British universities.

The study found the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 per cent for boys for each 16 point increase in IQ. But for girls, there is a 40 per cent drop for each 16-point rise, according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The study is based on the IQs of 900 men and women between their 10th and 40th birthdays. (via)
comment posted at 11:19 PM on Jan-3-05

"You can be happy. You can live the life you want to live. You can become the person you want to be. This is what I've figured out so far."
comment posted at 9:53 PM on Jan-2-05

Obsession: Mr. Singh’s Search for the Holy Grail American visionaries, cranks and con men have long sought the simple key to boosting the efficiency of the gasoline engine. Now a barefoot tinkerer in India believes he has unlocked the door. Is he for real?
comment posted at 10:47 PM on Jan-2-05

Well, now what do we do with them? "The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts, The Washington Post reported Sunday.... As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told the newspaper."
comment posted at 12:27 AM on Jan-2-05
comment posted at 2:16 AM on Jan-2-05
comment posted at 3:11 AM on Jan-2-05

Anti-Bloatware A very nice list of tiny apps. Get small!
comment posted at 11:44 PM on Dec-31-04

Compare the death count from the tsunami to the deaths at the World Trade Center using graphs. Rob Cockerham took a break from his victimless pranks to help put things in perspective. Those without a giant monitor will have to do some horizontal scrolling.
comment posted at 6:51 PM on Dec-31-04

Our country is more humanitarian than YOURS is! No it's not. Yes it is. See? We donated more aid than you did. Well, we doubled our donation. So there. But yours are loans, not donations. Nuh uh. They're donations. Are not. Besides, we'll triple ours. And we'll send planes. You wouldn't. Watch us. Well then, we'll just octuple ours. Yeah? I bet you won't. I quadruple dog dare you. I hate you... you know that, right?
comment posted at 7:52 PM on Dec-31-04

Why Does Archbishop Desmond Tutu Hate Our Christian Moral Values? In an interview with MSNBC, the nobel prize winner slams George Bush. "I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view."
comment posted at 1:03 AM on Dec-31-04
comment posted at 1:03 AM on Dec-31-04
comment posted at 1:57 AM on Dec-31-04

Suprnova.org is back... with a vengeance?! It was just last week when suprnova.org, the most popular site online for finding BitTorrent downloads, shut down their site. The MPAA and RIAA crowed, but it appears the celebration was a tad premature. Suprnova's new site mentions a special announcement tomorrow at 9 PM GMT on NovaStream.org radio. Rumors suggest that it will introduce Exeem, a decentralized, BitTorrent-driven software client that turns every user into a tracker, removing the requirement for a centralized site such as suprnova, while providing users with easy searchability, the swarming powers of BitTorrent, and a network that is far harder to shut down.
comment posted at 6:28 PM on Dec-29-04
comment posted at 10:00 PM on Dec-30-04

Forget Verdana, here’s sIFR: anti-aliased text in your browser in any font you like.
The next big thing? Just a kludge? Heard about it already?
comment posted at 5:36 PM on Dec-29-04

Chuteless Jumps: Russian I.M. Chisov survived a 21,980 plunge out of a plane with no parachute. He landed on the steep side of a snow-covered mountain with only a fractured pelvis and slight concussion.
comment posted at 6:07 PM on Dec-30-04

A trickle of reports coming out of North Korea paint a picture of a regime in its dying days
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Dec-29-04
comment posted at 5:10 PM on Dec-29-04
comment posted at 5:29 PM on Dec-29-04
comment posted at 5:40 PM on Dec-29-04
comment posted at 6:08 PM on Dec-29-04