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Lakoff say - mellow frames sooth savage Thanksgiving : The guru of framing offers a handy free excerpt from his all-the-rage book, just in time to defuse tense Thanksgiving dinner situations ( All fall asleep - Lakoff or the turkey ? ). Says Penny Kolb, on the practical magic of Lakoff's approach : "....By last night, the chat room was civil. An amazing (to me) number of posters turned off their capitalization and we were actually having conversations."
comment posted at 3:38 PM on Nov-23-04
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Nov-23-04

Nuclear Terrorism videos and links here...plus a blast map-enter your zip code and see how far the effects go.
comment posted at 6:22 AM on Nov-23-04

Ever copy your ass on the office copier? According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce.
comment posted at 9:27 PM on Nov-22-04

A tale of two elections : compare "This election did not meet a considerable number of international standards for democratic elections" with "voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices." Ukraine 2004 election vs. US 2004 election : Despite virtually identical allegations of vote fraud and vote suppression ( backed up, in the US election, by hard data from the incumbent-friendly partisan controlled electoral system itself ), one election receives widespread international press attention, the other a nearly complete news blackout. In the contested Ukrainian election, a disparity between exit polls and the official election results - which show a "surprise" upset victory for the incumbent - are cited as evidence of fraud and the election, world media reports, did not meet international democratic electoral norms. These norms include 1) transparency of voting process, 2) equal access to voting equipment, 3) impartial professional administration of voting systems, 4) and a uniform national system : all lacking in the US 2004 election.

American machine politics of an earlier era are accepted history : does mainstream US media refusal to acknowledge a new era of machine politics indicate a press and punditocracy now compromised by class interest that aligns with the prerogatives of power and wealth ? (more inside)
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George "Don't mess with my homies" Bush. So, evidently, our president got in a scuffle. Yes, a scuffle.
comment posted at 8:55 PM on Nov-21-04
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comment posted at 9:48 PM on Nov-21-04

Dating website bans seriel shagger. DatingDirect.com kissed Clive Worth buh bye after he slept with over 100 of its female ranks in 5 years and women started complaining that he "lacked commitment." Seems wrong to ban someone from a website for being good at what he does, though.
comment posted at 8:44 PM on Nov-21-04

Who Lost Ohio? As more evidence comes in disproving voting fraud in the 2004 Presidential election, perhaps the real lessons for Democrats can be gleaned from this NYT (Reg required, of course) feature on ACT, a Democratic 527. Lavishly funded by George Soros and unions, this high tech organization turned out a record number (2.66 million) of Democratic voters in Ohio, but were out-organized and beaten by a grass-roots Republican effort operating below their radar. [MI]
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comment posted at 11:15 AM on Nov-22-04

For November we are offering a toy modeled after the penis of an Akita. This is for you if you've ever wondered what it would be like to have sex with a dolphin, a grizzly bear or even a lion. All anatomically correct - and mostly a little bit frightening. The site is NSFW - unless you are a dildo maker...
comment posted at 8:47 PM on Nov-21-04

"I will drink Pepsi Holiday Spice for 45 days, and nothing else...no water, milk, nothing...but Pepsi Holiday Spice."
comment posted at 8:52 PM on Nov-21-04
comment posted at 8:53 PM on Nov-21-04

Republican Congressman Jerry Weller of Illinois just got married-- to Zury Rios Sosa, a current member of congress in Guatemala. "The U.S. Congressional Historian in the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives confirmed this would be the first ever inter-parliamentary marriage between a sitting U.S. Representative and someone currently serving in national legislative body abroad. "

What Rep. Weller's own site omits is that his new wife is the daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efraim Rios Montt, friend of Ronald Reagan, born-again Christian, and, according to many, genocidal thug.

The unholy union was reported in the local press, but one reporter who had been following the congressman's connections turned up brutally beaten outside his apartment under mysterious circumstances.
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Nov-21-04

Born-again liberal Christians. Do you think that mainline denominations are hemorraging members? Wrong. Fundamentalist Christianity is the way of the future and all US Evangelicals worship the same political party? Not so fast, buddy. Many scholars and theologians think that it's time for liberals to take Christianity back. Oregon State's Marcus J Borg, for example, argues that Christianity "still makes sense and is the most viable religious option for millions". He contends the earlier paradigm, based upon a punitive God, simply doesn't work anymore for too many people. It is an argument for an alternative to the literalist and exclusivist tradition that has dominated Western Christianity in the modern era. According to Borg, "So different are these two views of Christianity that they almost produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and language. A time of two paradigms is virtually a tale of two Christianities." There is, for example, an alternative view to the Resurrection Narrative not as report of an actual, physical event but as means for Jesus' early followers to express the miracle of his continuing spiritual presence among them, after his execution. It is in short an 'emerging paradigm which has been developing for over a hundred years and has recently become a major grass-roots movement within mainline denominations'. Just don't be afraid to ask questions. Not even about the dogs beneath the Cross. More inside.
comment posted at 10:14 PM on Nov-19-04
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comment posted at 9:32 PM on Nov-22-04

Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you'll face. Let's hope this legislation goes lame duck like this session of Congress.
comment posted at 10:24 PM on Nov-19-04

Addiction to porn is destroying lives, Senate told. Experts compare the effect on the brain to that of heroin or crack cocaine.
comment posted at 11:32 PM on Nov-19-04

Go home, children, you're all about to die.
comment posted at 11:41 AM on Nov-19-04

GOP looking to repeal food labeling law. Would this have anything to do with our recent impasse with Mexico (and with the EU) over GM foods? Or of recent reports of a possible mad cow case in the US?
comment posted at 11:36 AM on Nov-19-04
comment posted at 11:36 PM on Nov-19-04

Daily commute getting you down? Thinking of ending it all? Just step out in front of a train and it'll all be over in a moment. Or maybe not.
comment posted at 6:01 AM on Nov-19-04
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comment posted at 6:54 AM on Nov-19-04

How not to pull a car out of the water: A visual guide. [via prolific]
comment posted at 5:52 AM on Nov-19-04

"We will come and kill you in your beds, cut your throats, and wipe you from the face of the earth... if Alexander the Great were alive today he would grind you gypsy dogs into the dust, dig your dead from their graves". Since Oliver Stone chose to make his first foray into historical epics with a biopic of Alexander (based on the biography by the Oxford academic Robin Lane Fox), rivers of blood have been spilt -- figuratively at least -- in a propaganda battle between Greek and Macedonian nationalists over who has the right to claim the all-conquering hero as their own. The movie also deals with Alexander's omnivorous sexuality, in particular his fondness for eunuchs. With such treacherous ground to negotiate, and amid thunderous lobbying from both sides, Stone has chosen a middle course (like giving Alexander and the men of the Macedonian phalanxes Irish accents, while the Greeks speak clipped English RP).
comment posted at 10:00 PM on Nov-18-04
comment posted at 7:10 AM on Nov-19-04

Florida is the New Florida Although many discussions of voting anomalies focused on Ohio, a statistical analysis of Florida voting patterns performed by sociologists at University of California, Berkeley suggests that electronic touch screen voting in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade may have credited George Bush with up to 260,000 extra votes in Florida. The discrepancy is not enough to change who won Florida, but it could have narrowed Bush's lead to 90,000 votes instead of 350,000, highlighting the need for better auditing of elections with electronic voting.
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comment posted at 7:33 AM on Nov-19-04