John Schwartz, writing in the New York Times (AKA "The White Hot Center of Liberal Hell and Leftist Pinko Moonbat Kerry-Kissing Revisionism Now Coughing Up Only a Death Rattle on a Daily Basis Times) wisely and correctly notes in his surpassingly brilliant and for once utterly true (for at least two paragraphs) Pultizer Prize quality (for at least two paragraphs) article found at: in The New York Times > Week in Review > When No Fact Goes Unchecked
It's true that Kerry and Bush supporters live in "different universes," said Gerard Van der Leun, whose blog, at americandigest.org, blends conservative political views with coruscating humor. But he disagrees strongly with the notion that one side has a monopoly on truth.I note he left out my best anecdote about the two groups in two tents with opium pipes, but I'm sure that Schwartz's editor (AKA: Spawn of Satan! ) cut that out so as not to offend Frank Rich with whom he shares a goat."I think it's evident that both sides play about as fast and loose in this political season as they possibly can," he said.
Now, I admit that might have been misquoted in the article, but due to my recent misfortune ( Blogger's Head Explodes) I'm can't be sure.
Still, I have been reanimated and reconstructed enough to say:
"Hi, my name is Gerard and I'm a Timesaholic. If I can kick it, so can you. " Here's my Program: "NY Times Anonymous: The Twelve Steps. Keep coming back. It works!"
I also realize that there may be among you those so depraved and bottomed out in Timesaholism that you have finished the Sunday Crossword in ink before coming here. To me this can only mean that you will also be casting your vote for the last Democratic candidate for President for at least a generation, John Kerry.
To you I can only say that you will want to come back here on the day after the election. I'll be posting the National Suicide Hotline list, with some special secret phone numbers so you won't have to spend three hours on hold.
A special service for my liberal readers. Both of them.
UPDATE: Reviewed ruthlessly by my wonderful wife at Cheaper Than Therapy .
“What have I turned into? How did I become so reflexively partisan, so blinded by rage, so intemperate in my rhetoric that my own arguments are being echoed by a man who planned and enjoyed the mass murder of Americans?”
"How the hell did I reach the point where I agree with Osama bin Laden on Bush?"
Posed by: The Kerry Spot
"Okay, let's go over this one more time.... think, think....
One forty-five caliber automatic squirt gun;
Two boxes of nutrient supplements for taking off nagging belly-fat;
Four days' concentrated emergency bile;
One drug issue containing ludes, morphine, X, uppers, downers, lithium;
One copy Candian Suicide Hotline 800 Number
One miniature combination French Phrase Book and Greatest Hits of Andrew Sullivan;
One hundred dollars American, one hundred dollars in gold equalling $12,463 dollars Canadian.
Nineteen pounds of primo medical marijuana -- better make it 20 in case it takes more than a day to get there.
One prophylactic (small.)
Three lipsticks in my favorite trendy shade -- "Ghoul";
Three pair of nylon stockings in case I get a runner.
"Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
AFTER NO LITTLE EFFORT I'm pleased to report that I've secured a house in the Queen Anne section of Seattle. The movers deliver next Tuesday and at some point soon after that I should be able to resume ranting at regular intervals.
The alert bookworm bassist Cameron at the stylish Way Off Bass has directed my attention to Mark Steyn's latest, a 3 page declaration of the coming Bush Tsunami, If Bush goes, I go.
Needless to say, Steyn's not going anywhere, but if he does I'm renting the next condo over. Here are three picks from each of three masterful pages.
PAGE ONE: IF IT IS NOT CLOSE, NOT ONLY CAN'T THEY CHEAT, THEY CAN'T EVEN LITIGATE.
So my hunch that that first Harris poll is the correct one is only that -- a hunch that Bush is ahead outside the margin of error. Unfortunately, on election day, he also has to be ahead outside the margin of lawyer, which is a tougher call. The Democrats already have thousands of chad-chasers circling the courthouses in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and even New Hampshire, alas. It's important for Bush to win big enough both to compensate for Democrat fraud and to deter litigation.
PAGE TWO: ANGRY WHITE MEN VS. RETIRED JEWS IN NEW MEXICO
Continued...With the huge momentum and capital built up by Google in the past year, it's only natural to wonder what's next. Many say, with the advent of Google Desktop Search (We note in passing that Google has no time for the Macs of the World), the Google Browser. But really, isn't that just so 1990s? Browser wars? Been there, done that, have the T-Shirt and the stop-loss forms. So, the real question is "Just what does Google want?"
The answer isn't long in coming. Google wants the world and it wants it ... if not now, by and by. D. Weinberger at Joho seems to be on the case with: Google browser browses the world. He looks at some recent purchases and releases from Google and states google+google=world. What would this item from Google ultimately look like?
It would not be a Web browser. It'd be a world browser. It would find pages on the Web, of course, but it'd also find the ones on my desktop (Google desktop). It would know about my email (Gmail). It would know that my own photos are categorically different from all the other jpgs on the planet (Picasa). It would let me browse the physical earth (Keyhole) and show on a map the documents that talk about any particular place (Keyhole Google Local).Desktop? But isn't that real estate pretty much owned by Redmond? I wonder why Steve Balmer at Microsoft is spending his time spamming, ranting and railing at Open Source. Seems to me that the Microsoft Oasis is being slowly surrounded by sneaky little seach agents with gleaming scimtars clenched in their geeky little teeth. Then again, Microsoft has a habit of batting last.And it wouldn't be just a browser. It would let me work with the information I've found: Manage my photos (Picasa), manage my desktop files, translate documents (Google Languages), shop...
If that's what Google's aiming at, they need a file manager (no big deal) and would probably want to have a e-wallet and maybe a digital ID offering (Whoogle? — currently owned by AK PRadeep in Berkeley).
The result would replace current browsers but wouldn't look much like them. You'd do so much of your daily work in it it that it would feel more like a desktop...
...which is where it gets really interesting.
Yes, this is where it gets really interesting....
Continued...Was It Something They Said?
Large liberal media continues to slide down the long slope towards Total Loss Farm. The Los Angeles Times, which brought in Michael Kinsley as an editorial tourniquet a few months back, admitted today that it has suffered a large if not catastrophic loss in circulation during this election year -- a time when readership traditionally grows for newspapers.
The LA Times which is widely known as a liberal hotbed of news hit pieces ( The recall election in California saw it shine in this regard.), enjoys a virtual monopoly in Los Angles. Still, it cannot seem to shake itself out of the stupor which has overtaken most liberal media.
The numbers of the last year tell the story.
Continued...Study of these Steps is essential to progress in NY Times Anon . The principles they embody are universal, applicable to everyone except Hopelessly Addicted Liberals. In NY Times Anon, we strive for an ever-deeper understanding of our addiction to NY Times Blather and devote ourselves to ending it forever. We are always mindful that even one small sip of a Maureen Dowd column can lead to a life of despair and intellectually bottoming out.
1. We admitted we were powerless over The NY Times -- that our reading lives had become unmanageable.Continued...2. Came to believe that a Fox News greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, truth, justice and the American Way.
3. Made a decision to turn our New York Times subscription (and our lust to feel smarter than the guy next door who reads the LA Times) over to the care of Fox News as we understood It.
4. Made a searching moral inventory of Howell Raines, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Pinch and the other tight bodies giving backrubs in the NYet Times editorial hot tub.
5. Admitted to Fox, to ourselves and to Andrewsullivan.com the exact nature of our misplaced credulity and lust after a front page review of our next book in the NYet Times Sunday Book Review.
6. Were entirely ready to have Fox News and our local proctologist remove all copies of the NY Times from our memory banks.
7. Humbly asked Bill O'Reilly to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed by quoting the NY Times in arguments and blatherfests, and became willing to send them gift subscriptions to the National Review.
9. Watched Fox News wherever possible, except when to do so would cause our teeth to burst into flames.
10. Continued to guard against reading the NY Times and when we slipped promptly watched Fox News.
11. Sought through Anne Coulter to improve our conscious contact with Fox News as we understood it, praying only for Geraldo.
12. Having had a huge amount of spare time added to our lives, especially on Sundays, as the result of not reading the NY Times, we tried to extend our watching of Fox News to others who were still addicted to the NY Times.
Van der Leun head assembly schematic.
From AMERICAN DIGEST NEWS, October 27, 2004
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- The reassembly and reanimation of blogger Gerard Van der Leun's head went forward quickly over the last 24 hours. Mr. Van der Leun, the latest victim of Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB, has had the remnants of his head taken to JPL by a crack team of actors from CSI:Las Vegas. "We used Shop-Vacs to make sure we got every smidgen," said the lead investigator on the case. "There's no proof of crime except a general crime against humanity brought on by over exposure to punditry."
Van der Leun, whose head injuries were reported yesterday in Blogger's Head Explodes, is expected to make a full and complete reassembly and reanimation on the lab benches of JPL. "If we can put a man on Mars," said Professor Blunt, "we can certainly put this blogger back into his blather in no time. What? We haven't put a man on Mars? Give it time. I'm part of the Kerry transition team and we've got great plans for George Bush."
===
In other news, Donna @ Pajama Pundits has found other upsetting examples of Exploding Head Syndrome sweeping the Blogsphere this week.
Aftermath
From AMERICAN DIGEST NEWS, October 26, 2004
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a blogger whose head literally exploded in the final week of the election!
No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but a small room at the blogger's residence was sprayed with blood and brain matter when Gerard Van der Leun's head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB .
"He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the screen and his fingers frozen over the keyboard," said Laguna Beach early responder, Miguel Wilsonista. "He seems to have hit 'Post' for what had to be the 3,456,856th item of inept political photoshopping this year when the blast occurred.
"His browser history documents that he went from Drudge to Real Clear Politics to Talking Points Memo to Instapundit to Fox News to The New York Times to MSNBC to Kos to Roger Simon to Little Green Footballs to The Corner to Atrios to Google News to Allah to The Belmont Club to Wonkette and finally, and probably fatally, to Andrew Sullivan . All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, Van der Leun's head popped like a firecracker."
Incredibly, Van der Leun's is not the first case in which a blogger's head has spontaneously exploded during these last few days of the campaign. Five bloggers are known to have exhibited of HCB in the last week.
The most recent explosion occurred just two days ago at Instapundit, when Glenn Reynolds' skull burst but his blog kept on updating itself oblivious to Mr. Reynold's absence. Documents unsealed in Washington today, disclosed that fading blogger Andrew Sullivan's head actually exploded in early 2004, but duct tape, chewing gum, and love has kept that blog's keyboard humming in the grisly aftermath.
"HCB was once an extremely rare physical imbalance," said Dr. Anatoly Martinenko, famed neurologist and expert on the blogging brain who did the secret autopsy on Andrew Sullivan early in 2004. "It is a condition in which the circuits of the brain become overloaded by repetitive punditry. The explosions happen during periods of intensely boring political activity when lots of current is surging through the blogger's brain but no new connections are or can be made. Victims are highly intelligent people with great powers of concentration. Both Mr. Van der Leun and Mr. Sullivan were intense people who tended to keep those cerebral circuits overloaded. In a way it could be said they were literally too smart for their own good."
Although Dr. Martinenko says there are probably many undiagnosed cases, he hastens to add that very few bloggers will die from HCB . "Most people who have it will never know. Their heads will explode and they will keep right on posting. At this point, medical science still doesn't know much about HCB . And since fatalities are so rare it will probably be years before research money becomes available. This tragedy today is just another instance where human embryo stem cell research could not have made a bit of difference, but we'd have been glad to have the money from the Federal Government anyway."
In the meantime, the doctor urges bloggers to take it easy and not think too hard for long periods of time concerning the outcome during the last week of this election.
So this afternoon my brother Tom and I are driving home up The Five from San Diego. We're in the long stretch from Oceanside up to Beach Cities that runs through the fringes of the Pendelton Marine Base.
Tom's a retired elementary school teacher. As such he's seen into the black heart of what is called the "California Teachers Union" and its members a few too many times for his own good. He's worked for decades right next to all the bizarre manifestations of dedicated econuts, experimental educational consultants, and other strange species of moonbats that suck a check out of the state for confusing our young on a monthly basis. A lesser man might have been subsumed by the tidalwaves of BS that wash through the California school system and build up in the shallows, but our father taught us to have independent minds above all.
In addition, Tom's an unreconstructed Jacksonian with a lot of friends in the Highway Patrol, a big Harley in his garage, and a regular gig singing at his
Continued...
The Bazaar of Violence in Iraq
John Robb @ Global Guerrillas casts a cold eye on the business of terrorism in Iraq in GUERRILLA ENTREPRENEURS.
In this item as well as others he's written in the past and linked to this essay, Robb lays out the "economics" of the war as seen from the other side. Often lost in the emotional back and forth about the battles in Iraq are the sheer business details that allow it to go forward. Some bullet points are:
Continued...Today's entry in the "I try to become more cynical every day, but lately I just can't keep up." sweepstakes comes out of the mouth of the "I think he was funny once" Bill Maher:
"I always call religion a neurological disorder. I really do believe that. I mean it's not criticizing. I'm just saying if you took religion out of it and somebody went to a psychiatrist and said you know I believe in you know this crazy, illogical thing, the shrink would say, well you have a neurological disorder. And you need to really get therapy or take a pill."It's nice to know what Bill "really does believe." Seems to be almost a religous obsession with him.
-- CBC News Indepth
One can almost see Bill at his shrink's office, deep in the 15th year of the talking cure, wondering why so many have turned away from him in the last years. He's in there on the couch wondering why those golden years of prime time seem to have slipped away. He's unsure about the fickle love of the people that have cast him down from network into a squawk show that features more of Jeanne Garofalo than anyone, even her long tail of ex-lovers, wants to see.
In his sessions, Maher returns again and again, like a dog to his vomit, to knowing that the love he once felt beamed towards him from the faceless multitude has gone from a torrent to a trickle, that his income and ability to afford a "must-see" Hollywood shrink six times a week is becoming more and more limited. He knows that his chances for a theatre with his name on it in Branford for his declining years are slim to none. His Vegas bookings seem to be sliding into oblivion. His HBO ratings are working on negative numbers. His nose is enlarging and his hairline receding. The chill fingers of andropause grip his inner cortex. His phone simply does not ring.
Nothing since mid-September, 2001, has been really working for this guy. Everything slips slowly away. A few people in the media are still sort of interested in what he has to say, but that's tailing off. He hasn't had an invitation to the White House since, well, since Bill. Nothing he does gets him forward in his "career." And he just doesn't understand why.
The doctor, knowing that Bill is thousands behind in his fees, decides it is time to write this bozo off and open up an hour for someone who can still pay. "Bill," he says, "it is time we re-evaluate our relationship. This is the last session until you pay in full and even then I can't promise you I'll have time to listen to your whines on a regular basis."
"You can't do that, Doctor. You can't. Who will I talk to? What will I do?"
"This is your last prescription, Bill. Your last. I'll make it out for 30 five grain Seconals. The way I see it you can either take them all at once or try...."
"Try what, Doctor?"
"Prayer, Bill. Prayer."
"Prayer? Hummm, well, okay Doctor, but only because you say so."
A few days after writing, The Meeting , [below] I received a mysterious email from what looked, at first glance, like a Hotmail account, but whose headers pointed to a point of origin somewhere inside the "pentagon.mil" domain. The subject line read: "A Far More Plausible Scenario."
Whether it is "a more plausible scenario"or not, I will leave to my readers. Still, it does have an ending more chilling than any I could have imagined. And when you find conclusions that outstrip your imaginations, it is always a sign you are looking at something that just might have a grain of truth at the core.
Date: xx/xx/2002 Place: A cave in Tora Bora
The scene is lit by a four Coleman lanterns in the corners of the cave. In the center is a blindfolded figure in native Arab garb. Even bound to the chair, he exhibits defiance. He's surrounded by Special Forces troops. One is taking the picture that's going to buy him a new boat back home.
All of them snap to attention as a crisp "Ten-hut!" comes from up the cave towards the entrance. Even the trained eyes of the Special Forces Ops widen slightly when they see who is there.
"Sir!" they all snap salutes.
"Good job men", he answers. "Is the prisoner secure?"
"Sir,yes Sir!" they all answer with hardened pride.
"Excellent. Consider yourselves all promoted. Now leave us for a minute."
"But, sir...."
"No buts soldier. I'll assume you're right up the tunnel if I need you. I have some personal messages I need to pass on".
With a knowing, but restrained, smirk, the soldiers file out.
The visitor waits until the footsteps fade down the tunnel. "So", he begins, "we finally have you."
The prisoner doesn't react, but you can sense a black seething from beneath the blindfold. The visitor reaches forward, and pulls it off.
"Come on Osama, did you really think we wouldn't find you? You know, Uncle Sam gets really, really mad when you do live up to your end of the deal."
Continued...BRITISH NEWSPAPER CALLS FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF GEORGE BUSH:
"On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"One might ask more handily, "Where is a V-2 rocket with target co-ordinates set to the Guardian's offices?" The "entire civilized world"? Surely they don't include themselves. From the context, I guess we are to assume the Guardian would have gone for the killing of Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan too.
-- Guardian
The email address of the "columist" who thinks it would be great if George Bush is assassinated is: charlie.brooker@zeppotron.com
The email address to comment directly to the newspaper that thinks it would be great if George Bush is assassinated is: reader@guardian.co.uk
A brief note about comments:
As many know, "comment spam" is a vile and unceasing problem in the blog world. Usually I weed out these noxious items as part of my early-morning ritual, but after being away last week I returned to find that more than 1,500 comment spams of particularly odious content had been posted to the page.
The result is that I am still, in fits and starts, working to remove them. But in the meantime I've set comments off by default.
In the near future we will install a more advanced blogging system and I'll be able to return things to normal, but in the interim please bear with me.
If you do have something you would like included, please email it to me at the link under the Jasper Johns' American flag in the upper right hand corner. I'll do my best to fit it in.
Thank you.
Between 9 and 11 PM, on September 12th, 2002, the four regular Security guards at the Dulles Private Aviation Center in Washington, DC, all called in sick. Their places were taken over by last-minute replacements. The rest of the night staff was told about "food poisoning" at a birthday luncheon for the senior security guard. At 1:55 AM, the six people on the night staff were called into the manager's office and given a 20 minute lecture on his new plan for making the night shift more efficient.
At 2:00 AM on September 13, 2002, a black Chevy suburban with Virginia plates pulled through the gate to the field and rolled up to Hanger 10 at the Private Aviation zone at Dulles in Washington, DC. The wide doors of the hanger opened slightly and the Suburban moved smoothly inside, coming to a halt next to the Dassault Falcon 900EX that gleamed in the center. Behind it, the hanger doors slid shut again.
Three men, fit in their black suits, emerged and made a pattern search around the Falcon and the hanger. A fourth went into the plane itself with a small electronic device. In less than a minute all four reported their zones clear. The driver of the Suburban got out and opened the back door.
"Okay, sir," he said. A short man in a heavy overcoat carrying a locked document case got out and walked briskly up the stairs and into the plane. The driver went with him to help him settle in for the night.
Finally, seeing that all was secure inside, the driver sent a brief signal in clear on his radio, "Staccato. Staccato. Staccato."
In three concentric rings of security spreading from the hanger for a radius of more than a mile, no less than 36 agents came to full alert at their posts. Each one, regardless of the disguise that let him blend in to his surroundings, was wired into the ComNet, had a GPS locator slaved to their vital signs, and carried, besides a side-arm, a case of one kind or another holding a small submachine gun with extra clips. Above, at 50,000 feet, four F-16s held station.
Back in the hanger, two of the three agents that had run the initial security checks, changed into the blue pants, white shirts and red ties that were favored by the pilots of private planes that made Dulles their hub. Then they boarded the 900EX, ran a host of system checks and signaled their satisfaction with the state of the aircraft.
The man in the back of the Falcon finished reading a thick briefing paper he had started an hour before in his office, and then settled back into the tobacco brown leather easy chair at the rear of the cabin for some rest.
For everybody else involved in the operation, it was going to be a very long night.
The rising whine of the three Honeywell turbofan engines woke him at 6:45, but the agents had pulled down all the shades so he couldn't see as the Falcon slipped out of the hanger and onto the tarmac. It came to a halt across from the field entrance of the Private Aviation Center and waited, engines at whisper quiet, for the second passenger.
The man on the plane didn't have to see to know how the limo came up, how the gates rolled open and the limo drove onto the tarmac. He didn't have to see the gaunt, tall man with the large shock of gray hair clamber out of the limo and make his way up the stairs, stooping as he entered the plane. Gawky and clumsy despite his constant attention to sports, the tall man irritated him to no end, but this was politics and you didn't always get to choose who you spent time with. In fact, you almost never got to choose who you spent time with.
"This is all a bit cloak and dagger, don't you think," said the tall man with the assumed almost European tone that belied his humbler origins.
Continued...We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-- Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
"We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their scheduling. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?"
-- In conversation, July, 2004
THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers.
Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule.
All these things we know. We know the nature and goals of our enemy well. Our army is at the ready and in the field. And yet we hesitate.
We hesitate because we are having an election in which we think the outcome will somehow determine what actions our enemy will pursue. We are a foolish people grown fat and fearful during the long peace.
We stay our hand and hobble our warriors and walk on wrapped in our suburban slumber. Our President and the man who would be President cruise about the country on buses or play electric guitars surrounded by doting egoists whose own celebrity removes them from the sense of their doom.
The party in power shambles about speaking in color codes and hushed words of warning. The party that yearns for power forms lines in front of our cinema
Continued...From that inscrutable poet, Pool Report:
Kerry Hunt News Flash
Geese flew overhead,
a dozen shots fired.
Kerry just returned.
Four geese killed.
Kerry carried
his own gun
but had someone
carrying his goose.
We're loaded up
to move back to hotel.
Will file full report
shortly.
National Poetry 101 will convene soon to analyze this inscrutable verse, and to determine exactly whose goose is cooked.
While they promise them liberty,
they themselves are the servants of corruption:
for of whom a man is overcome,
of the same is he brought in bondage.
-- The Second Epistle of Peter 2:19
Listening to John Kerry whip out his plodding French to pander to the sad Haitian vote yesterday put me in a nostalgic frame of mind.
I lived in France for a number of years. I have a lot of French friends. My daughter was conceived in France. I lived in Aix, Paris, and along the Western Front. Unlike others, not all my thoughts of France are negative. But when I consider what the Democratic Party's perverted primary process disgorged as their offering in this year's election, and when I listen to half of it spout execrable French and the other half denigrate mothers and librarians after a career of hunting billionaires to extinction, it brings out the French in me.
When I hear Kerry-Heinz speak, I think "Ah,nostalgie pour la boue." They say that their campaign is about the future. It's not. It is about the past; about nostalgie pour la boue.
The Kerry Campaign is not some expression of deep American values and ideals, but an expression of the lowest realms of American Political life, something that has always been part of our politics -- the subconscious yearning for American defeat.
We saw this in the Revolutionary War with the die-hard monarchists who worked without end to thwart the Revolution and return us to the Crown. We see the same pasty anti-patriotism today in the doddering foolishness of Jimmy Carter and his "one-world" pap.
We saw it again in the traitorous "Copperheads" of the Civil War who worked within the Union for its ruin; that their treason could command a place in history. It did, it gave them a place in historic ignominy.
The Cold War and Vietnam engendered millions who played and protested that this country become less free --- and they did it under the banner of "freedom." They were often, as the years wore on, celebrities or the very rich; those who knew that they could live on the bounty of the society they betrayed. They were also the millions spewed out by the twisted academies that year after year filled up via nepotism with failed socialists, thwarted communists, half-baked artistes, malevolent poets, doomed scribblers and all the other remnants of the intellectually insane of America who couldn't get fat jobs in the mainstream media.
Over time, these elements made up the American Al Queda [Translation from the Arabic -- "the base."] From that base we got decades of insipid, irony-drenched, heavily nuanced and depraved "underground" movements that oozed ever upward until the underground was above ground displaying a few fine tattoos inked deep into its behind.
Continued...
"First you say you do
And then you don't
And then you say you will
And then you won't
You're undecided now
So what are you gonna do?
Now you want to play
And then it's no
And when you say you'll stay
That's when you go
You're undecided now
So what are you gonna do?"
1) I WILL SURVIVE!
[Quicktime, 3 megs.]
2) I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!
[Quicktime, 4 megs.]
We're looking for other upbeat numbers to help the fallen face the dawn and party like it is 1999. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
An amazing flash from Bommer at Free Republic: When The Man Comes Around blends Johnny Cash, George Bush and the Apocalypse.
See it and send it along. And you can dance to it.
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse.Continued...There's a man goin' 'round takin' names. An' he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around.
The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. For you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter's ground. When the man comes around.
This has gone to the top of my Christmas giving list. It is a simple device that
"Hangs on your keychain and turns off virtually any television in 3 continents! "If you're like me and have grown to loathe the increasing penetration of television into every niche of public life (bars, airports, laundromats, restaurants, waiting rooms, etc. etc. etc.), this is a gift from God.
-- Order from TV-B-Gone From Cornfield Electronics
Imagine being able to simply sit in a place and have a quiet drink, a decent converstation over coffee, or just wait and read quietly. Hard to imagine since the plague of television has now spread over our public spaces like the chicken pox of the soul.
Don't get me wrong. I "like" television. I like it too much when I'm at home. But when I do not like it is when it is assumed that every place in the world needs to have a televison going lest people have to sit down with themselves and others. i especially don't like it since the tubes are invariably tuned to insanely boring shows with the sound cranked over the top of the range of the human voice, or muted. It's a distraction for mouthbreathers.
With this subtle item on your keychain, you've got the power to alter the world for the better in many, many places. I'm expecting great things from this little item. Great things.
P.S. Yes, yes, Wired did an article on this, but I got this pointer from the far hipper and more valuable growabrain. [Which if you are not checking out regularly, you are missing out regularly.]
"...relaxed but clearly wearing his game face."
Included in Jann Wenner's strikingly bland Rolling Stone interview with John Kerry: > Iraq, Iraq, Bush, Vietnam, Iraq, Environment, Vietnam, Iraq, Bruce Springsteen, Favorite Beatles and Stones songs, Apocalypse Now, Iraq ....
Mysteriously not making an appearance in the interview: Gay rights and gay marriage. You'd think Jann would want to know.
Jon Stewart: Just your average, lawn mowing,
concerned American millionaire. Sincere, too.
Yesterday, "Right Wing Notes" or something like that over at Salon ** linked to American Digest: Dear Jon Stewart, I Want You To Be Honest Too. Since that time we've had a few visits from the Salonistas irate that I should note Jon Stewart is becoming a very rich man off his "Hey, It's Not Really a News Show for John Kerry, It's Just a Joke" daily "Aw, Shucks" strut on "The Comedy Channel, " and his number one best-seller, America. It would seem that, in their cry for "facts," these refugees from a blighted secondary and collegiate school system can't do the math in their heads.
So, here's a back of the envelope look at what Jon Stewart and company are making from the book they've spun off the show:
Continued...
The New Non-Action Army.
A lot of money and energy has gone into patrolling rivers in the last half of the 20th century, as if it is important. Well, when it is all you've got, I guess you'd think it was important. To me, what matters to the present and the future are the river patrols of today.
Photo by Zack Frank
"A Marine attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit watches the shores as his watercraft patrols the Euphrates River outside Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah, Iraq, Oct. 1, 2004. The Marine is with Small Craft Company, attached to Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. The 24th MEU is currently conducting security and stability operations in Northern Babil province. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Zachary R. Frank" -- DefendAmerica Photo Essay - Patrolling the Euphrates
1:25 AM, on a hill above an ocean, a high wind and rain falling.
We remember the past
and God remembers the future.
Then we forget the past,
God forgets the future,
and the world returns to chaos.
From: The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy:The Touch of Longing is Everywhere by Yehuda Amichai
Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld
[Republished from American Digest, July 29, 2004 as a Homage to Hugh "It's gonna be a blow-out" Hewitt]
Democratic Party Electorial Prospects Post-Convention: Pick One
I'M FRIGHTENED TO WATCH THE KERRY SPEECH TONIGHT FOR THREE REASONS:
Yup, it doesn't matter what he says or does from this point forward. Kerry and the Democrats are about to transform themselves from people into smouldering slabs of toast come November. The good part is that they're going to spend lots of money doing it.
So before the formal canonization of Kerry, I'd like to go on record as saying, along with a few other brave souls, that it is no longer a question of Kerry and the Democrats losing in November, but only one of how great and lasting their humiliation and degredation is going to be.
As far as I can see it is going to be massive: a Tsunami of rejection; a battering of the Bozos with no ref to stop the fight in the sixth round; a comet impacting dead center in the Democratic Fantasy World and smothering all but the deepest burrowing small rodents in a layer of ash half a mile thick; a landslide in which the entire north face of Mount Everest decides to take a vacation on the shores of the Indian ocean; a blowout equal to the hotspot under Yellowstone deciding to displace Krakatoa as the loudest implosion heard in recorded history; an "L" branded on the forehead of the Democratic party so large and so deep that travel agencies from Japan will divert a whole season of Grand Canyon tours to the nearest Kerry Compound just so they can marvel and photograph themselves standing at the brink.
Continued...
- England's New Scientist takes a look at the ramifications of the US Election 2004 and is generally ticked off that somehow the United States is not measuring up. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown. But all in all, this selection of articles underlines how essential to the world the United States is, whether they like it or not. New Scientist tends not to like it. After all, just look at stem cells, will you? Please.
- For those guys that can't resist a sharp quiz, we recommend the dubious Cooking to Hook Up: The Bachelor's Date-Night Cookbook, which will tell you what kind of girl you are. I took it and, no, I'm not telling. If you're smart neither will you.
- But should you decide to confess, Lulu.com is into Self Publishing in a big way and will make it cheap and easy for you to get your salacious little gender-bending memoirs out there for a waiting world. And in that case, guys, we will all know just what kind of girl you are.
- And if, after taking the test and writing the book, you are still in a state of confusion, the scholarly study "The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production" will set you straight. Or not. Could this article be "The Bell Curve" for gays and lesbians. That depends on the orientation of the people making the study and that's not out yet.
- Moving right along, thank God, we direct you to the latest manifestation of Cassini's work in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Pictures of the South Pole... of Saturn.
- Back on Earth and matters much more mundane here's a meditation on When Email Attacks .
- And finally, if you've been patient enough to bear with me through all that, something truly remarkable: "This Wonderful Life." No, not that movie, but another, much shorter, and completly computer-generated short film that packs an amazing range of human emotion into what are really, at bottom, just bits and bytes. In the future, this is going to be how a lot of movies are made. And made well. See if you don't agree.
I actually caught Jon Stewart's on-air evisceration of 'Crossfire' last week, and I have to admit I enjoyed the discomfort and confusion he brought to the dual tools of that broadcast. At the same time I also noted what a large, self-impressed tool Stewart has become.
I don't know about you but my gorge rises when a TV personality who's made his bones with long ironic sighs and sideglances starts to speak phrase like "We need you to be honest!" And that was only the center cut from Stewart's Tripe Store. I was especially taken by Stewart's reference to himself as one of the guys who is out "mowing his lawn"" while "Crossfire" fails to protect the Republic. Hey, I need Stewart to be honest. The closest people like Stewart come to mowing their lawn is telling their personal assistant to drive to some Southern California crossroads and hire an illegal alien to work the Weedwhacker.
All of which is why I was pleased to note The Daily Show's ratings were tanking . Not because I don't think Stewart is a funny-enough guy (even if his faux-serious pose is becoming a bit much), but because I think Stewart, like most other celebrities, is far too full of himself for his, or our, good.
But why, you might wonder, would The Daily Show tank? Well, one of my favorite curmudgeons, Uncle Mikey's , got it all figured out:
I just couldn't stand the not-so-veiled implication that I must be a real moron to want to vote for Bush any more, regardless of his and Kerry's relative merits. It's not funny. Stewart pretends to be unbiased in his assaults on the candidates, but he can't hide his distaste for W and his crew, and neither can he hide his admiration for John Kerry. Like the mainstream press, he thinks the 200 Swift Boat Vets for Truth are liars and Republican shills, but Richard Clarke and the nine Swift Vets who support Kerry are honest men who speak their consciences. In short, he's delusional and paddling as hard as he can to get the Kerry boat to the other side of the river, and in that he is no different from Dan Rather and Newsweek editor Evan "the media wants Kerry to win" Thomas. Nobody they know thinks any different from them, so when they encounter those who do, they must be crazy, or stupid, or just mean.Stewart, like Bill Maher and a hundred other celebs, have seen the "Kerry Wavelet " as a kind of "Come out, come out, wherever you are " yodel for the cosseted intellectually insane "stars" of our besotted media age.
It's as if people like Stewart at MSM and elsewhere have had this secret meeting and decided they can do whatever they want to influence the elections and never have to pay any penalty. After all, why should they? If we take the famous Newsweek editor's admission that the "media" was going to to "put a glow" around Kerry/Edwards that would be worth 15 points, it's pretty clear to see why Stewart, Rather, Springsteen, and all the rest of this cozy little club is in panic mode.
Here they've given their boys a 15 point edge and they're still lagging, and lagging seriously. It's like betting on a shaggy nag in a horse race because you can put the fix in and then standing there and seeing your "sure-thing" horse come out the far turn and into the home stretch with only one leg. That while the cowboy on the Pinto is way out in front and opening up the distance with every stride. Not only is that no way to run a fixed-horse race, but it also seems that there's going to be a price to pay for fixing the race to begin with.
As I alluded to in the brief essay yesterday about "Intelligence" most celebrities seem to have a built-in contempt for the very people that hand our celebrities their wealth and fame. This kind of contempt was once called "noblesse oblige" - the obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous, but like everything else with a French connotation this concept has been perverted. In the bald hectoring and pot-kettle-black attacks by people like Stewart on his counterparts at CNN all we can see is an exercise in vaingloriousness that is much more often the mark of these talking heads than anything remotely generous or noble.
Now you might say this is because we've stopped expecting them to be noble and generous, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If the Stewart ratings tank is anything to go by, when a celebrity is seen to betray his bias openly, and when that in turn betrays his his own small-mind, the audience will turn away. Not that Stewart has any real worry about putting food on the table. That's what those guest slots at Las Vegas strip mall casinos are for. And if that fails him, I'm sure he'll be able to find work telling his peers in 2010 how to dial up their perfect sleep number.
====
Update: I note a strange sort of Blogsphere mind-meld on the Stewart issue today. Check protein wisdom ; Ghost of a Flea ; Jim Treacher ; Hog on Ice , and INDC Journal. Probably only scratches the surface, but I love it when this sort of thing happens.
Plus: Jeff Goldstein pops in this ancient link from, like last month, Twenty-first in a series of real-time empirical observations and calls it "Related." Whatever happened to the word "prescient?"
In a previous life, back when I had a Bobe , I'd note that whenever we came to a question of politics she'd say, with millions of other Bobe's, "Yes, but is it good for the Jews?"
Martin Perez asks the same question today about John Kerry and gives us the answer.
I've searched to find one time when Kerry --even candidate Kerry -- criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I've come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union's continuous hectoring. Another thing that bothers me about Kerry is the deus ex machina he has up his sleeve: the appointment of a presidential envoy. It's hard to count how many special emissaries have been dispatched from Washington to the Middle East to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's easy to see is that none of them has gotten to "yes."
-- Kerry the Clueless
We'd strapped him to his bed for over a year,
Paid a fat, black woman to wear a white dress
Change his bed pan, and sit with him at night,
But when the bone white pigeon banked
Between the buildings in a pale twilight
The old man's brain liquefied.
Foam, whose tiny bubbles reflected my face,
Bloomed on his lips as he swallowed his tongue.
It said 5:47 on the red crystal clock by the wet bar.
His breath rattled around the room like some
Tired exhaust fan from the Roaring Twenties.
His wife was out shopping at Woolworths,
Or trying to sell something at Cartiers.
The black nurse was downstairs flirting
With Desi the tap dancing doorman.
Prince the chauffeur buffed the black Lincoln,
And wondered what he do when the old lady died.
My wife was teasing our toddler in the living room.
Everyone else was trying to get home from work.
Somewhere inside his skull sore nerves
Kept sending signals down to his heart.
I blotted his lips in that wheezing orange room
As his arms flapped like a beached fish before
The fisherman brings down the club.
I turned from the bed, pulled up the beige blinds,
And gazed out the window wondering
Where the bone white pigeon had gone.
Then I called the Doctor's number listening
To his breath until the call was answered.
"He's dying," I said to the man I'd never met.
"You should send an ambulance and a team
Of medics right now. He's going. Going fast."
The voice echoed back from far across town,
"He's home. He's been dead for a year, you know.
We just change the sheets and pay the nurses.
I can keep his body going as long--as long--
As long as you want. You need to tell me.
Look outside. How heavy's the traffic on Fifth?"
I looked down on a solid ribbon of oozing steel.
"Wedged," I said. "Hardly moving at all.
"Look at his eyes," the voice said. I looked
Down into his eyes and they had no bottom.
"Who's there?" the voice asked on the phone.
"No one I know," I said. "No one at all."
I held the phone and waited looking over the park.
"I'll send an ambulance when you tell me," he said.
The bone white pigeon came sweeping out of the light
And settled on the sill as calm as the quiet in the room.
"Send them when you can," I said.
"No hurry. They'll just be caught in traffic."
"US Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry walks toward a crowd of supporters after delivering a speech .... "In the end, George Bush and I just have fundamentally different approaches to jobs and the economy," Kerry said."
Via: LILEKS (James)
One of the most suspenseful moments in modern journalism came to an end today, when The New York Times, after months of coy beating around the bush, came out for Senator Kerry.
Although the final selection process was described by an unnamed insider as "A very close run thing," in the end it was John Kerry's unflinching celebration of the lesbian lifestyle of prominent Republican families that put him over the top.
"Maureen," said our source " was just not going to be denied and neither was Frank Rich. Once Kerry said "Lesbian Daughter," they both got so wet we had to mop the corridors between their offices twice.
"We knocked around the idea of supporting Bush quite a bit in the newsroom and up on the executive floor, but when Pinch came out of the Publishers' Suite and announced he was wearing pantyhose under his suit in honor of 'lesbian daughters everywhere,' we knew we had to go for it."
In editorials smeared all over the Saturday and Sunday editions, the Times shocked its conservative of readers on the Upper West Side, the West Village and the Meatpacking district by playing the moral high card.
Kerry "has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent," the newspaper said. "He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core."Reaction from the White House was swift, surprised and disappointed.After "examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character," the Times said "we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president." -- Kerry Collects Major Endorsement
"We'd been preparing a statement all weekend for Monday release that we really thought could turn the tide at the Times," said an unnamed senior aid to the President who spoke on deep background (and whose initials are K.R.) "We saw how the celebration of lesbian children was swaying the Times and we were going to fire back with our own heartfelf admiration for of Teresa Heinz Kerry's classic collection of cast-iron sex aids. But we just couldn't jam them in the right news cycles fast enough to satisfy the Times. Next time, we'll use Kinkos."
Asked if the Times endorsement was costly, the source replied candidly, "Why yes. We were really counting on the Times to deliver their numberless hoard of readers who have been enslaved to the paper so long that they do the Sunday Crossword in ink."
Early analysis by John Stewart (fresh from his on-air disembowelment of the entire CNN Pundit Team and feeling frisky) indicated that the Times endorsement had moved "...more than two and less than five undecided Times readers into the Kerry column. This is obviously a stunning and unexpected blow to the President. The only way he can possibly recover is by coming on my show every night between now and November 2. I remind you that The Daily Show really is the only place left on TV where a man can demonstrate integrity, integrity, integrity. On the other hand, since the lead-in to my show has a cast of a bunch of puppets, the editorial board of the Times would fit right in as well."
Stephen DenBeste, one of the most lucid minds around, posts a very interesting graph and an even more interesting analysis of the trend behind the months of presidential polling in Poll Trends, 20041016
His analysis is very compelling:
....My first suspicion would be that the test equipment was broken, but in the case of opinion polls there is no such thing. My second suspicion would be fraud.Pointer from History's EndIn September, I think there was a deliberate attempt to depress Kerry's numbers, so as to set up an "October comeback". Of course, the goal was to engineer a bandwagon.
Public opinion isn't usually as ephemeral as these polls suggest that it is. But there can be long-term trends, and I find it interesting that such a thing actually does show through. It's quite striking how close some of the data falls to the long term trendlines which I've drawn in.
The reason the Democrats and the MSM are getting frantic is that they're losing.
Roger Simon rolls the entire "plan" of the Kerry squad into a nice tight package:
The brutal truth is that the basic subject of the entire election, of the future going forward, is the neocon argument that (militant if necessary) export of democracy is the only viable solution to endless (possibly nuclear) conflagration . Bush bought into it to one degree or another. The Democrats seem to oppose it. I emphasize the seem because all they offer in opposition is a vague "plan." What this plan is is a mystery to everyone. I think there is a reason for that. There is no other plan.
-- Roger L. Simon: Tick-Tock
In the course of joining the "Lesbian Daughter" slugfest du jour, William Kristol asks, in passing, "How stupid does John Kerry think the American people are?" -- "Fair Game"
Mr. Kristol, while it is clear Kerry does not know the American people all that well, he does have a long and deep understanding of the Democrats among us.
The fastest replicating virus infecting the Windows machines of the world this week had to be Google Desktop. Millions asked for it and millions got it. After all, it is free. Now. But in the future, it just might cost you some information if you want to get "enhanced functionality." And who doesn't want their functionality enhanced?
Paolo Massa has seen the next step and, well, it is interesting to contemplate:
When millions of users will have Desktop.google.com installed, Google will simply release a new version in which the user can check a box and say "Share the files in my disk" (maybe only files in a certain directory). This will create in a second an enormous P2P (peer-to-peer) network, in which you can search for files directly on other users' disks. What do you think? Make sense?Oh, it makes sense. Much too much sense and it will add to the already amazing list of "What Google knows about you." [Take a moment to look at that link, also by Massa, and think about it.]
-- Paolo Massa Blog: Enormous P2P Network by Google
Back at the beginning of the 1990s, when I was employee #2 at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and the web was the HTML/HTTP protocols slumbering on Berners-Lee's server at CERN), we fretted endlessly over the FBI/CIA/NSA/LLE snapping up your computer, getting a backdoor key to your ISP, having a secret decoder right for any cryptography that could be invented, and generally getting to your private information. That fretting continues today at numerous and multiple nodes across the web. It is a fretting only out-fretted by Spamfret. The EFF and other well-meaning wonk tanks in search of the Fountain of Funding continue to harvest planks from this petrified forest.
But nature always sides with the hidden flaw and the hidden flaw in this case was the users. It never, in our wildest speculations, dawned on us that the most potent and persistent threat to privacy on the Net would be the users themselves. If any of us had proposed at the beginning of the 90s that millions upon millions would give away the vast amount of information listed above to a company in exchange for a few chunks of code, we would have been barred from the next House/Senate sub-sub-committee on POTS subsidies to Podunk.
And yet, here we are. Big Brother in the form of a "Do no evil" company whose "benign" intentions are taken utterly on faith and without question by every connected soul on the planet.
Does anyone remember when Microsoft became the evil empire? It was at a point that was well below the position of ubiquity now enjoyed by Google. The result for Microsoft has been an unremitting stream of lawsuits and regulations extending well over a decade with no end in sight.
Can anyone imagine the same thing happening to Google? Perhaps, but only if a hard look at Google's plans and potential begins in the very near future.
Another couple of years and it will be well-nigh impossible. Why? Google will quite simply know too much.
It seems like everyday I'm confronted with something the deeper meaning of which utterly confounds me.
Case in point : The Conference Bike Movie
To my mind the deeper meaning could be one of two things:
1) This proves that the terrorists can never win.
2) This proves that the terrorists deserve to win.
Which is it? You tell me.
"Meanwhile most Americans have already quietly made up their minds"
Terrorist killing, like the first World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole, certainly was not seen as the logical precursor to 9/11 — the expected wages of a quarter century of appeasement that started with the weak Carter response to the Iranian hostages and was followed by dead soldiers, diplomats, and tourists about every other year. No, these were "incidents" like 9/11 itself — "law-enforcement" issues that called for the DA, writs, and stern prison sentences, the sort of stuff that barristers like Kerry, Edwards, Kennedy, and McAuliffe handle so well.Continued...This attitude is part of the therapeutic view of the present struggle that continually suggests that something we did — not the mass murdering out of the Dark Age — brought on our present bother that is now "the focus of our lives." We see this irritation with the inconvenience and sacrifice once more reemerging in the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, and the New York Times: We, not fascists and Islamist psychopaths, are blamed for the mess in Iraq, the mess in Afghanistan, the mess on the West Bank, and the mess here at home, but never credited with the first election in 5,000 years in Afghanistan or consensual government replacing autocracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
....The artists, musicians, and entertainers have also railed against the war. In the therapeutic mindset, the refinement and talent of a Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Bruce Springsteen, or John Fogerty earn respect when they weigh in on matters of state policy. But in the tragic view, they can be little more than puppets of inspiration. Their natural gifts are not necessarily enriched by real education or learning. Indeed, they are just as likely to be high-school or college dropouts and near illiterates, albeit with good memories, voices, and looks. The present antics of these influential millionaire entertainers should remind us why Plato banished them — worried that we might confuse the inspired creative frenzies of the artisans with some sort of empirical knowledge. But you can no more sing, or write, or act al Qaeda away than the equally sensitive novelists and intellectuals of the 1930s or 1940s could rehabilitate Stalin.
One of the oldest and most beloved beverages,is going closed source in this new method of brewing.
The yeast fuses itself to the surface and feeds the wort at an increased rate, meaning the fermentation process takes only a few hours.Look for that new microbrew, Basement Beer.Any normal brewer's yeast can be used in his process but the lifespan of the yeast is much longer than in traditional processing, where yeast degenerates after three brews and starts to affect the quality of the beer, says Heiliger.
"We tested it and after a year the yeast was still good. The beer still tasted fine. We wouldn't normally keep the same yeast for that period of time but it shows that you can do without cleaning for, say, six months," he says.
"My system is closed so once you put the yeast in, it stays there. You do not need to touch it. The more you touch the yeast, the greater risk of getting an infection which is deadly in a brewery."
Heiliger says that his device takes up about 30 square meters, whereas traditional systems can be up to 300 square meters in size.
CNN
We require a team manager, 2 web developers, 3 graphic designers, 1 multimedia designer and 3 reps to join up as a full time team in website design and graphic design to run as a freelance team as you will all be from different parts of the country (most likely)."...different tears for the type of role you play" and "Tem Members" are dead giveaways. Speaking of which, if you take this kind of job, you don't want to be handing out your home address, less the admin team "assess you as a person" up close and personal.All of you will have to be in contact with each other for at least 8 hours per day from 7am to 10pm via MSN Messenger or another IM program providing we all have it you will be all on my list so me and my admin team can monitor your online times and send you info etc.
Each of you will be given a business email addresses (first.lastname@company.com) which will have been registered for the .net service which will be your msn email address.
You will be paid an annual wage per month either by wire transfer or paypal, possibly a cheque, payment is in different tears for the type of role you play. All payments are calculated by the hour in 15 minute increments. You will be held at a basic payment price per hour for the first 2 months to allow me and the admin team to assess you as a person and also your work produced.
-- Tem Members (Online, UK) - Freelancers.net
Pointer via Need To Know 2004-10-15
Based on this report from our reporter in Minnesota, the editorial board at American Digest can only conclude that we were mistaken in our original enthusiasm for a Lileks candidacy. Therefore we take Mr. Lileks at his word (not to mention his actions ) and declare we will no longer support or report on this woeful incident in the history of the blogsphere.
We do this not just for Mr. Lileks, but "for the children."
=== JASPERWOOD, MN: EXCLUSIVE TO AMERICAN DIGEST ===
At his first and last news conference held in the elegant Tiki Lounge at Jasperwood, James Lileks today made the extent of his political ambitions clear. They are somewhere south of absolute zero.
In a stunning wrap-up to what has to be the most meteoric political career in
Continued..."The bow paddler is only an engine, paddling straight ahead. The stern paddler is the captain and makes all decisions: "Paddle, stop paddling, switch sides, back paddle." The stern controls direction by paddling with a J-stroke -- back and out - or using the paddle as a rudder. The passengers sit still in the middle. Nobody stands up."
-- Robert Fulghum
Integrity. Intergrity. Integreedy. Integrot.... aw, the Hell with it.
America's been through the rockiest start of a century in its history and yet, to judge by his accomplishments, John Kerry just hasn't been punching-in at the factory and getting it done.
It is coming up on 5 years into the 21st Century and, for all intents and purposes, Kerry is a no-show on the legislation front. All in all, you'd say his is career that spans 20 years, has about 9 "products shipped," but none in this century. Can somebody please tell me where I can get a job with those requirements? I'll take a pay cut, especially with Senate benefits.
It's well known that Kerry has been phoning in his career from his many different homes over the years. You can't miss 70% of your days at work without careful, assiduous planning and a lot of other places to hang out.
But if you look at the 9 (count 'em, nine) Bills and Resolutions by Kerry that actually became law, you'll note -- aside from the inane subjects they cover -- that all of them took place in the 20th Century. [See below]
Kerry started slow in the 1980s with one resolution to help a "Kil Joon Yu Callahan " -- which we assume was something done in response to demands from Kerry's Irish/Vietnamese constituency in Boston.
Then in the 1990s he set the Senate aflame with 5 (five) laws and 3 (three) resolutions that, among other things, changed the name of a building in Waltham, Massachusetts, got some change to protect marine mammals, and twice (2 times!) made the world aware of its population.
Whew! What a decade! No wonder the guy had to take a break from 1994 to 1999.
You'd expect someone with that many notches on his legislative gun to really start to shake up the Senate in the 21st century, but strangely there has been nothing out of JFK. Nothing at all.
He must have been saving it all up for something. Whatever could it have been? What could all his nothing have been for?
(Kerry's Stuff is here)
Continued...To keep those who would corrupt the process, the intent and the spirit of the Republic out of office.
EXHIBIT A:
Any other questions?
Hey, it's news to me:
- An amazing and stunning online exhibition: "Laura Ferguson: The Visible Skeleton""
- Very Thoughtful: "Design by Fire: Please make me think! Potential dangers in usability culture" seeks to send Jacob Neilson into early retirement. All right by me.
- Looming Traffic pileup on the Information Superhighway: CSS Gridlock (Arcane unless you're into this sort of thing.)
- Joel was on a roll when he wrote "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." Then he had to spoil it all by focusing on Lotus Notes.
- You are just a seething mass of bacteria, most of which isn't even you.
- Russian Males vs. the American Guy
- Elements of History: Fiction = Entertainment. Truth = Power
- "The disagreeable fact must also be faced that in Africa life has always been cheap, that extraordinary cruelties have been all too common, and that anything even vaguely resembling notions of human rights in its traditional societies were entirely unknown."
- I wasn't going to read the Dylan autobiography, but "Dylan Brings It Home: Memoir Is a Ballad To the Beat Village" has changed my mind."
- Ode to that coolest of tools, the pencil. [Not to be confused with Pencil Sharpener Imposters !!! ]
- First Rule of the Browsing the Web: If you haven't seen it, it's new to you.
- The 12 Tribes: From those that believe in everything to those that believe in nothing and how they vote in America.
- Excuse me, Captain, but could you make those soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima a bit more representative of a diverse and fair America?
- Smarter than the average motorcycle helmet.
- Jonah Goldberg has had it up to his kiester with the war wafflers.
- Lurk by the side of the road. Leap into the grill of a fast car. Ride it 25 miles. Extricate yourself. Wander back into the woods and munch a few green shoots. Just another day in the life of DeerDevil.
Monroe : That region of the Congo's uninhabited.
Dr. Karen Ross : Well, something inhabits it.
Dr. Peter Elliot : What exactly did you see on that tape?
Dr. Karen Ross : A camp destroyed. People dead. A grey gorilla...
Dr. Peter Elliot : There's no such thing as a grey gorilla.
Dr. Karen Ross : Well, I saw one. -- "Congo, 1995"
One story that’s strong on buzz today is the all-new, ‘this time for real’, remake of “CONGO.”
Rumors of a "new kind of great ape" have got the Bigfoot crowd humming and booking tickets to the Congo. It’s very exciting to think we’ve discovered a “new” species of great ape, and perhaps we have. Except for the fact that this great ape may not be all that “new” after all.
What might be new, but not all that new as these things go, is the new public smackdown between two competing primatologists, Shelly Williams, wearing the white pith helmet armed with a video tape, and Karl Ammann, wildlife photographer, bushmeat activist, and a man who has been on the "Big Chimps of the Bondo" case for many years. What's also new is some National Georgraphic money in the mix.
It’s a popular notion that science is above the petty bickering of politics, but the reality is closer to Henry Kissinger’s famous remark: “Why are academic politics so vicious? Because the stakes are so small.“
Today’s story updates several that Shelly Williams did last year, but brings us a
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