August 2, 2003

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Gay Marriage a Done Deal

Michael J. Totten: Enemies of the Future

Conservatives are going to lose this fight, and they know it. Opposition to gay marriage, which was recently overwhelming, is cratering. If gay marriage isn't stopped soon it will never be stopped. And so they want to freeze the debate right now while they still have a slim majority on their side. That's cheating. It's like calling off a baseball game in the fourth inning, when your team happens to be ahead, and going home and calling it a victory.

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Zen Mugging

Jumped by a Zen master@Everything2.com

Last night, walking home through a particularly shady part of Central Square, I was jumped by a Zen master! He waved a knife at me and said, "I will ask you a question. If you give an unsatisfactory answer, I will stab you four times in the chest. If you give a satisfactory answer, I will still stab you four times in the chest. However, if you do not answer, I will slit your throat. Your question is: tree-nature and branch-nature, same or different?"

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From Four Quartets

East Coker

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before.
I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again?
In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

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Death Does Not Stop Celebrity Scandal

Lindbergh Update

Lucky Lindbergh, or Lover Lindbergh?

Mark Landler NYT Saturday, August 2, 2003
Report tells of a 2nd family, in Munichï¿Š

FRANKFURT Charles Lindberghï¿•s sympathy for the Nazi regime in prewar Germany has long been a stain on his gilded legacy ï¿‘ a puzzling detour in a life of heroic adventure.Now, a prominent German newspaper claims that Lindbergh had more personal ties to Germany long after World War II, through a relationship with a woman in Munich, with whom he had three children, the paper says.

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You Can Give Him A Cray or Hit the Back Button

Computer Collection Wish List

I'm looking for one or maybe two more good mainframes. Top of the list would be any machine Seymore Cray had a hand in, but particularly a Cray 1, Cray Research X/MP-4, CDC 7600 or Cyber 175-176-760. As always I'm looking for a complete system. These machines could be a problem because of the dimensions and cooling, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

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Basic Biology

Michael's Web: Whale DNA

I'm sure almost everyone has seen the results of the study of Whale DNA, which shows that the diversity in Whale DNA can't be accounted for by the counts of whales provided by whaler's reports during the height of the whaling industry.

What's amazing to me is that anyone ever thought that these counts were accurate. It's like telling a 10-year old boy "Tell me how much candy you eat so we can control how much you get".

What parent in their right mind would think they'd get an accurate count?

I'm also a little amazed by stories which claim that this may be a good thing, because we've decimated the top of the ocean's food chain (sharks, halibut, etc), and therefore there are less whales to starve because there's less of them to compete with us for these species.

Hello? Basic biology here! Whales don't eat sharks and halibut. The few carnivourous species eat salmon, seals, and giant squid, and the rest eat krill.

Sigh.

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MWD Hunt: The Short Form

InstaPundit.Com

OBVIOUSLY, THE ANTHRAX-BY-MAIL ATTACKS NEVER HAPPENED -- otherwise surely the FBI would have found something by now...

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VW Beetle Bites the Dust

Farewell, Beloved Bug of My Heart

The classic VW Bug was appropriately named because you would have been squashed like a bug if you ever got into a serious accident in one. The model was phased out in most countries, but it lived on in Mexico, where about half-million are still in use. The last classic Bug -- No. 21,529,464 -- was just produced at a VW plant in Puebla, Mexico.

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On the Self in Prayer

David Warren ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES

Note this paradox: that people who are self-obsessed, assume that the pursuit of self-interest is intrinsically wrong. Not wrong when it leads to some specific evil, but wrong in itself. This lying to themselves is at the root of their vanity, their narcissism: they are so self-obsessed that they deny even their own self-interest.

I know that is itself a hard thought to assimilate, but worth the mulling, for it helps explain so much of the politics today -- in church, and out -- that is loosely called "liberal"; the fay rhetoric which declares "our side" must be in the wrong, since we are acting in self-interest, or even self-defence. It is near the root of all the nonsense of "multiculturalism", in which we abase our own culture in order to admit the claims of all other cultures, while confusing between the individual and the collective, thus blinding ourselves to what is truly common to all civilized men.

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Death by Environmentalism

One Hand Clapping

The environmentalists' war against Africans Environmentalist concerns for the lives of mosquitos are killing enough people every day to fill seven Boeing 747 airliners every day - "one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually."

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Most Dubious Home Improvement in History

Gizmodo : The gadgets weblog

The Screenfridge #Category: Misc. Gadgets Remember that multi-media refrigerator from LG? Well Electrolux has gone even further with its Screenfridge, a prototype refrigerator which has a digital camera inside that snaps pictures and uploads them to a server every time its door closes. Then when you're at the store and want to check what you're out of, you can just check the latest photos on the server using a cellphone or a PC.

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All you need to know about Pirates

Roger L. Simon: PIRATES ON PARADE

The last one on my block, I went to see "Pirates of the Carribbean" Friday night (short review: Johnny Depp--terrific; movie--not so terrific).
Posted by Vanderleun at August 2, 2003 1:31 PM
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