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Do Most People Even Know What They're Eating? Pork is served as veal; tilapia as red snapper and who knows what goes into sausages and other processed meat and fish products? You don't have to be an observant Jew or Muslim to be worried. How many years have those chicken pieces been frozen? How much pork and beef have been added to them? As food is increasingly disguised (fish fingers, chicken nuggets, beefburgers) to hide its origins, feeding on hypocritical popular revulsion with animals' existence, death - and carcasses! - aren't consumers setting themselves up for an ever greater measure of food fraud? That is, if they still care. (And no, it's not just an American phenomenon.) [Via The Daily Gullet. ]
comment posted at 8:41 PM on Jan-23-04
comment posted at 8:42 PM on Jan-23-04

Republican Dirty Tricks "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics. The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November." They just can't get Nixon out of their system, huh?
comment posted at 8:05 AM on Jan-22-04
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comment posted at 8:17 PM on Jan-22-04

Don't Miss Bobby Gillespie's Fantasy Festival On Saturday And Sunday! It's on BBC's rather good Radio 6. Just a heads-up to admirers of Primal Scream's constantly astonishing vocalist and producer - and, yes, the Rolling Stones are in. Strangely out are other Great Scots like Ivor Cutler and Roddy Frame, to mention only other undisputed geniuses. As a bonus, here's The Scotsman's very intelligent list of the 100 Best Scottish Albums. And don't mention Postcard Records! Ah, the "Sound of Young Scotland"... some dead; some turning 40. What and who are the new Scottish talents? *sigh*
comment posted at 3:42 PM on Jan-21-04

Campaigns track voters' personal data. Ever wonder why you get mail and calls from particular political groups, and not others? Turns out the political parties are developing far richer datasets on individuals than the government is. Aristotle International, Inc. (mentioned in the article) is the giant in the field, but there's much smaller ones all over the place (Weave, for instance, helps with environmental activism, and Local Victory is an example on the right). On the one hand, with limited resources, campaigns would say they must do this. On the other hand (as the article points out) it may partially explain why fewer and fewer seem to participate in the electoral process.
comment posted at 9:02 PM on Jan-20-04

George W Bush and the real state of the Union. Today the President gives his annual address. As the election battle begins, how does his first term add up? It's all been said before but it's good (?) to see it all nicely put together.
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Jan-20-04

onehitwondercentral.com I just discovered a song that I haven't heard in twenty years over there: pac-man fever, by Buckner and Garcia. What long-lost tune do you need to remember?
comment posted at 9:59 PM on Jan-19-04

Viacom's CBS today rejected a request from liberal group MoveOn to air a 30-second anti-President Bush ad, saying the spot violated the network's policy against running issue advocacy advertising. This, despite running anti-drug and anti-smoking ads. So, is it only issues about which they disagree?
comment posted at 4:59 PM on Jan-16-04

George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics "Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing? - Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce....He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973" "So if you go on Fox News....and the question is, 'Are you in favor of the President’s tax relief program or are you against it?' -- it doesn't matter what you say. If you say, 'I’m against tax relief,' you're still evoking that framing. you're still in their frame..."

"George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the University of California Berkeley, is a specialist in the technique of "framing," a communication tool that creates a "frame" for a message that defines the terms of the debate." (Interview with Lakoff )
comment posted at 10:57 AM on Jan-15-04

What they didn't teach me about Israel's 1948 war in religious school.
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comment posted at 6:01 AM on Jan-14-04

Clinton believes Iraq had weapons of mass destruction: Portugal PM Ok. The Dems and the GOP. But what did Ralph Nader say about WMD?
comment posted at 12:54 PM on Jan-9-04

Are you tired of two-party politics? Cheer up. You can be a Beer Drinker or a Nazi [possibly NSFW] or a Fascist. Join the Pot Party or even the anarchosocialist Birthday Party.
comment posted at 2:33 PM on Jan-7-04

Laura's Girls Jenna and Barbara have not campaigned or reined in their adolescent rebellions. They have not appeared engaged in any of the pressing issues their generation will inherit, nor shown empathy for the struggles facing their mother and their father, the president of the United States. They have not treated with respect their Secret Service details, those highly trained men and women who literally would take a bullet for them. They don't show their faces at the White House often. So far, they have shown little inclination to embrace the life of public service modeled by their parents, uncle and grandparents. They are girls born rich, blessed with intelligence, good looks, trust funds, loving parents, boundless opportunities, freedom from many of life's daily vexing challenges. Yet they persist in seeing themselves as victims of daddy's job. In this attitude, they have been subtly encouraged by their mother.
comment posted at 11:41 AM on Jan-7-04
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comment posted at 4:20 PM on Jan-7-04

The fish that threatened national security. Lara Hayhurst, a student at Pace University, needed to take one small thing through the checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport: her pet beta fish MJ. This was, however, an apparent threat to the security of the airport and Lara's flight home to Pittsburgh for winter break. Flush the fish or become a felon? Read about Lara's decision and how the TSA forced her hand. Remember, when 2" long tropical fish can freely gain access to our airliners, the terrorists have... yada yada.
comment posted at 3:03 PM on Dec-30-03

Wounded British soldier gets lawsuit for Christmas?! Thankfully not.
Alan Tudball was supposed to marry his fiance Claire McCombe in April of this year, but unfortunately Iraq -- and friendly fire from two U.S. A-10 tankbusters (video) -- spoiled the wedding plans. Tudball would have died if not for brave Christopher Finney, who rescued the grievously wounded Tudball, even as the U.S. planes circled around for another strafing run. The M.O.D. refused to pay the wedding's cancellation fee, and the Leasowe Castle Hotel -- not knowing of Tudball's circumstances -- initiated a lawsuit, but after media attention and several concerned phone calls (mine included), I am pleased to announce that the management of the Leasowe Castle Hotel has announced that they are not only dropping the lawsuit, but that they will host the wedding of Mr. Alan Tudball and Miss Claire McCombe free of charge. It's worth noting that when our leaders seem to only be capable of serving up plastic turkeys, the action of ordinary people working together can still bring about honest-to-goodness Christmas miracles.
comment posted at 3:03 PM on Dec-23-03

The Bush Administration has advocated, and Congress recently approved , the repeal of a 1994 ban on U.S. research and development on new, low-yield nuclear weapons, setting the stage for pursuit of a new generation of such weapons. "The Administration had sought to remove this restriction because of the chilling effect it has had on nuclear weapons research and development," wrote Linton F. Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration in a December 5 memo(PDF). A detailed Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on "Nuclear Weapon Initiatives: Low-Yield R&D, Advanced Concepts, Earth Penetrators, Test Readiness" was updated last week. (PDF)
comment posted at 12:09 PM on Dec-19-03
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comment posted at 2:53 PM on Dec-19-03

Rally the Real Grassroots? Many Americans look to the Dean Campaign and MoveOn.org as a new kind of grassroots politics, but is there model really that unique? The Chrsitian Coalition has been organizing along similiar lines without the internet for years, and now the Bush Campaign is throwing their hat in the grassroots ring after sending out this e-mail: [text inside]
comment posted at 12:01 PM on Dec-19-03

Who you calling Poindexter!? Certainly not geeks with guns.
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Dec-18-03

The Greatest Car Ever Built O mighty Slant-6 engine, most magnificent creation of the coal-steel industrial heart of America at the zenith of her manufacturing genius! (NY Times, req required).
comment posted at 3:09 PM on Dec-18-03
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Dec-18-03

"What a Crappy Present" [via waxpancake]
comment posted at 3:22 PM on Dec-17-03

PETA plans to hand "Your Mommy Kills Animals" flyers to kids at Nutcracker performances. The fliers urge kids to "ask your mommy how many dead animals she killed to make her fur clothes" and include a color drawing of a woman plunging a large bloody knife into the belly of a rabbit.
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comment posted at 4:34 PM on Dec-18-03

Saddam Reported Captured - So what next? A trial at the International Criminal Court (which the US does not recognise), a trip to Cuba or a trial in Iraq? And is this finally the decapitation of the resistance in Iraq?
comment posted at 3:46 PM on Dec-15-03

Warfare rules in Iraq. Are there any? Should the US even be following the Geneva Convention in Iraq? (transcript) Warning: Graphic video embedded.
comment posted at 6:36 PM on Dec-11-03

The Humane Society of the United States rips Dick Cheney on "canned hunting": "This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets." According to another news source, "five-hundred pheasants were released in front of Cheney and his men; and the ten-man hunting party killed 417 of the birds. Vice President Cheney alone shot over 70 pheasants. The birds were then plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight back to Washington, DC."
comment posted at 2:05 PM on Dec-11-03

Project Last Stand, a forest conservation group, has a new spokesman, and he's a hobbit. Monaghan also works with the group Future Forests, and is officially CarbonNeutral. He seems to have taken the warning of the trees to heart. I guess working with an animatronic ent has an effect on a person.
comment posted at 3:43 PM on Dec-10-03
comment posted at 4:16 PM on Dec-10-03