December 6th, 2003
Posted by fad at 10:56pm
December 5th, 2003
Posted by fad at 4:35pm
Odd.
A key suspect in last month's Istanbul suicide attacks fled to Syria shortly after the bombings, Turkey's interior minister said Friday.Now why ever would he choose to flee there?
Posted by fad at 3:16pm
Oh yeah, now that archiving is more or less working, I've shrunk the front page here down to just the last 7 days. Should speed things up just a bit.
Me. Always thinking of you.
Posted by fad at 3:04pm
More alcohol and health news.
Low to moderate drinking may cause a loss of brain tissue in middle-age people, a study found.Yes, but while drinking may shrink the brain, sadly, we all know it expands the ego.
[...]
Ding said researchers cannot make a definitive cause-and-effect link between drinking and brain atrophy because the MRIs were done only once during the study and because they found only a small reduction in tissue.
Posted by fad at 2:16pm
Impressive. Firebird just crashed on me for the first time since I started using it a couple months ago. I hope it's not because I just installed the gestures extension yesterday.
Posted by fad at 1:45pm
"Red Wine May Protect Against Breast Cancer"
That's red wine. Not the white zin from the Franzia box some get at the bar to look classy.
Posted by fad at 1:36pm
Here, waste some time.
Posted by fad at 9:39am
Yesterday I barely touched on it, but since the boss is out, I figured I'd babble on a while about what larger thing I see in the attempt to create the "Liberal" talk radio network. I'm really not concerned about the politics of such a thing, rather than what it exposes about some people's views on how markets (and I'll be misusing terms left and right in this. Pedants, please try to relax.) work.
Read this long waste of time
Posted by fad at 9:29am
Few things, at least in the life I am able to lead, are as disappointing as anticipating an evening with a cigar only to find the cigar has gone completely rank (due to bad storage). Thankfully, I had some black cavendish on backup.
Posted by fad at 8:36am
The internet allows free exchange of ideas and information, as well as disinformation and sweet, sweet porn. Because it is such a powerful and flexible thing, bureaucrats and statists cannot stand to see it out of their control.
A controversial plan to grant governments broad controls over the Internet has stolen the spotlight of a United Nations conference on IT next week, where China and Cuba will be among its strongest supporters.Consider the two named supportive nations. Whatever reason would those two governments have for wanting to have control over the internet? I sure hope dear Castro doesn't want to use it to control the information the people under his rule (I refuse to call them "his people") get to see. Ditto on China. Of course those behind this plan have the most noble of intentions.
"What we are looking at is the future management of the Internet. It's not about who owns it or who will be regulating the laws, but what is best way to manage what has become a natural resource for all of humanity," a summit official said.They just want to get involve to make sure it stays free! See, they can't know if things are running freely while it is running freely. They must control it so that it isn't controlled. Freedom and good, as we are to understand them, only come from the careful consideration of a bureaucrat. Once they give the big thumb up, then we know we're in the clear.
"Governments have shown they are very interested in getting involved on a domestic level and now they are looking at the international level."That's cheering.
Posted by fad at 8:06am
Anti-Bush and "Civil War In Iraq Is Better Than Any US Presence" groups have it easy. They can get attendence without as many problems as those who would try to hold a rally in support of the troops or in support of the idea of leaving Iraq better than it was found. Why? Well, the latter have jobs and actual community life things to attend to. They are busy being society. The former are mostly students or professional protesters or people who have an amazing amount of free time on their hands.
Doesn't hurt that they get uncritical, free advertisement in papers such as the Star Tribune.
Posted by fad at 7:58am
Bombing in Chechnya, or "near" it, as the report stresses.
A bomb tore through a commuter train near Chechnya on Friday, killing 36 people and wounding scores of others in a suicide attack possibly aimed at spreading alarm before weekend parliamentary elections.Well of course they are treating it as an "act of terror". Murdering dozens on a commuter train just for being people on a commuter train, no matter what relativistic convolutions a post-modern mind wants to go through, sure as hell can't be defined any other way.
[...]
Authorities treated the attack as an act of terror, but did not single out any suspects, said Vladimir Rudyak, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in the southern Russian region.
Posted by fad at 7:16am
Now that Conservatives are getting a few wins here and there, they have decided to overplay.
Conservative Republicans angry over an unflattering television movie about Ronald Reagan want to put his image on the dime in place of Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Some Conservatives can truly be stupid sometimes. They put all their energy into the wrong battles that alienate some who may have hitched along for other reasons. Just to be sure, let us quote again what inspired this latest move.
Triggering the dispute is a TV movie that depicts a doddering Reagan dominated by his wife, Nancy. The movie is being aired by Showtime after CBS canceled its plans to show it last month in response to pressure by Reagan supporters.See what I mean about stupid? "Hey, we have a lot of support out there! Let's waste it all on this nonsensical, petty battle! What? Massive spending and subsidy bill? Sure, let that by. I haven't time to think of it; I'm fighting for the Reagan dime!"
"It's what precipitated me introducing the bill at that time and why it was a lot easier to get a lot of support," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind.
Posted by fad at 6:56am
This evening is my company's Gathering For No Particular Reason And Don't You Dare Suggest There Is One party. I will not be attending, though. The invitation stressed formal wear with a strong suggestion that gentlemen wear a tie. Well, as I am not a gentleman and do not even own a tie, nor any dress clothes. I'm one of those lucky few who, when they try to dress up, look even more slobbish than normal. I tried to clean up a bit a few years ago, but I realized, as I am fond of saying, you just can't pretty up a shit pie.
I'm actually rather convinced the dress code this year was designed to scare the riff-raff (in other words, most of the company) away from attending. Oh well, another missed opportunity to show my dedication to the TEEM.
Posted by fad at 5:24am
December 4th, 2003
Posted by fad at 6:50pm
Ok, I'm getting flooded with pr0n spam from "youkickedmydog.net". I just got 7 all at once and they are still coming in.....
Posted by fad at 3:37pm
Capital punishment is a very divisive topic that intelligent people can differ strongly on. Because it is such a charged topic, and because it is a matter of life and death in every way, life and death should not be exploited in its discussion.
The arrest of a convicted rapist in the kidnapping of a college student has stirred anger over the man's release and brought calls from the governor to bring back the death penalty in Minnesota.This is the wrong time to have this discussion. Passions are inflamed. Reasonable discussion, while not impossible, is very difficult with the surrounding circumstances. Most importantly, it changes the topic from the possible (and, sadly, probable) death of this young woman. She's no longer a person who may be lost. She's now a statistic and a puppet to be used and exploited in arguments. Let her be a human being; let the fullness of this incident fall in before she is converted into a symbol.
Posted by fad at 3:27pm
Down just a few cubes from me is a fellow who has all sorts of anti-Bush and anti-capitalism posters (though he always has the finest and most expensive toys). I just saw that the guy across the mini-cube barrier from him has posted up an upside down American flag as his little protest. I've heard these guys discuss during the early days of Afghanistan, long before Iraq, that the whole "war on terrorism" was just "bread and circuses", in their words, to distract from the failures of Western capitalism and the onset of the Bush police state.
Posted by fad at 2:37pm
Raise your hand if you're surprised that the New York Times made it through a whole editorial about the Kyoto protocols putting all blame of non-ratification on the Bush administration without once mentioning the Senate or that it had voted 95-0 that it would not ratify the treaty if it were submitted. Put your hand down. Yeah, you; you're just trying to be funny. I know you find the Times' ommissions as predictable as its arguments.
Posted by fad at 1:40pm
Note to self: Try to remember to write up something explaining why you think the attempt to create the "Liberal" radio network shows a classic misunderstanding about how markets work in which they assume that the market is created top down via corporate machinations that create need or desires and make choices for consumers whereas the right-wing radio market grew organically in response to a need or desire that previously existed that was not being served.
Either that or hope someone else does it for you.
Posted by fad at 12:38pm
There are a few weird things in this Oddly Enough! dispatch from Reuters. First, Reuters appears to find government oppression cute.
Police have shut down four of the Iranian capital's Western-style fast-food restaurants, popular with youngsters as meeting places to mingle with the opposite sex, in an apparent crackdown on un-Islamic behavior.Otherwise, why would they put a story about a government crackdown (though a mild one) in what is essentially the humor files?
Restaurant owners said the closures were ordered 12 days ago by a branch of the police notorious for closing down shops and eating places deemed to have contravened the Islamic Republic's strict moral code.
Psychologists said shutting restaurants would have the opposite effect to that intended."Psychologists". That means to my simple grammar knowledge that they spoke to more than one psychologist. Hence the plural. However, I think this is the standard, lazy dispatch writer's cheat of talking to a standard source and considering it the vast opinion of all. That's why you get "experts" or "sources" when, most likely, the writer spoke to a maximum of one person. Sometimes, though I have no concrete proof, I believe these journalists just write what they believe to be common sense and declare it the viewpoint of some mythical source or expert.
"By closing such places they are channeling that behavior indoors where anything could happen. You cannot suppress young people's instincts," one psychologist, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.This part struck me as very odd. So odd, I didn't even strike back. Why would a psychologist specifically ask not to be named? The dispatch is datelined Tehran by a Paul Hughes. My assumption would have to be that he either had no source and made it up, or he did talk to a psychologist in Iran, but that psychologist feared reaction from the Iranian rulers for going on record about this.
So we have a lying dispatch writer, a casual pass about state repression, or some rare psychologist making a non-controversial point but still not wanting to be named. I guess I'll leave it up to all of you to decide which is most likely.
Posted by fad at 10:07am
I just got spam from someone claiming to be named Frisky P. Hobos.
I wish my name was Frisky P. Hobos. Maybe then the ladies would finally take me seriously.
Posted by fad at 9:29am
Why doesn't this guy just write:
Americans are weird and stupid.for every diary entry and save everyone a lot of time, print and bandwidth.
Posted by fad at 9:00am
Trainspotting was on this weekend. During one of Renton's frequent attempts to get clean (trying and failing to break addictions being a favorite hobby of mine as well), he included a bottle of Lucozade which finally gave me a clear glimpse at the basis for one of my favorite images from a song, Orange Fell by the "Trash Can Sinatras":
all our plans were made
on streets the winter paved
as streetlamp lucozade
orange fell
Must be why that song has been in my head off and on ever since I caught that part of the movie.
Posted by fad at 8:12am
For all of Lieberman's relative strengths as a Democratic choice for president, it is stuff like this that guarantee I can never vote for him.
Warning: Jelly doughnuts may be hazardous to your child's health. That's what Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman is telling America's parents as he seeks a federal investigation into the marketing practices of junk food companies.This is also a reason that I become more and more convinced that it would be healthier to require candidates for federally elected office who currently hold a federal position, appointed or elected, to resign that position upon becoming a candidate. While this does match Joe's character, it is also a shameless use of tax dollars and legislative time to get some free press time to promote his presidential campaign. You'd think campaign finance reformers would be up in arms about this sort of thing.
The Connecticut senator, who led the fight to put parental warnings on movie, video game and music advertising, wants the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether there is a connection between junk food advertising and the rise in obesity among youngsters.
Posted by fad at 8:07am
As far as terrorism cases go, the Patriot Act (and for this sake I'm going to give full benefit of the doubt on its use) increased sentences and strengthened investigation. However it is not violations of things in the Patriot Act that are getting the convictions. Most convictions have been in the area of providing "material support", money or administrative assistance as defined by a 1996 law, to terror groups. The 9th Circuit declared that portion unconstitutional.
"According to the government's interpretation... a woman who buys cookies from a bake sale outside of her grocery store to support displaced Kurdish refugees to find new homes could be held liable," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote in the 2-1 decision.There may be a point there. Yes, we are fighting those who would kill us. And yes, it looks those convictions based on that law involved people honestly trying to assist those who would see us dead and destroyed. However that is no excuse for bad law, especially vague law, which could harm us all as well. I need to learn more about this.
In addition, the court wrote that it is unconstitutional to criminalize donations of personnel or training, which fall under the "material support" section of the law, because that "blurs the line between protected expression and unprotected expression."
Posted by fad at 8:00am
The most cynical thing I've heard this week was just now a radio commercial for the Saudis. A woman, speaking flawless, accentless English, begins by explaining, in soft terms, that the reason Americans don't trust that they are reforming is because Americans don't trust other languages and cultures. In other words, we're racist, so it's our fault. She then went on to say all the wonderful things they are doing, from new legislation (thought you needed a real representative body for that, otherwise they're just edicts) and allowing open voting. It then ended with an almost over-the-top British accented voice praising "progress". Why an overly British voice? I can't say for sure, but I think that I'm not the only person who believes that Americans tend to hear an accent from that realm and assume the speaker is more of an expert and reasonable voice.
Would have been more convincing if the woman who did the voice over were allowed to drive to the studio if she were in the Saudi area.
Posted by fad at 7:33am
Ah, my favorite part of the political season. Once again it is time for campaign staffers to go off.
Two top union presidents accused one of Rep. Richard Gephardt's senior campaign advisers Wednesday of threatening political retribution if the unions' Missouri members campaigned for Howard Dean, Gephardt's Democratic presidential rival.Of course, this was totally without her boss' knowledge.
[...]
Aboussie suggested that she would take steps to get a key collective bargaining order for state workers rescinded if the two unions tried to help Dean in Missouri, McEntee and Stern said.
"Dick knew nothing about this. He did not give authorization for this to happen. And as far as he's concerned . . . when Joyce was in this meeting, she was not speaking as a representative for the Gephardt campaign," Molstre said.Which is probably true. I'm willing to give Gephardt the benefit that he's not that stupid. What I'm guessing happened is that there has to be a lot of anger in the Gephardt campaign over Dean getting a lot of big Union endorsements. Those unions were supposed to belong to him, after all he's done. This sounds a lot like a "Won't somebody take care of these troublesome unions?!?" moment in which an overzealous staffer decided to act on all that anger.
Posted by fad at 7:09am
Young love. It warms the heart.
After the argument, the boyfriend tried to give the girlfriend a makeup kiss. Instead, she bit off a large part of his tongue.Lucky for him it was only during a kiss.
Posted by fad at 5:23am
December 3rd, 2003
London's Metropolitan Police said [Sajid] Badat was charged with three offenses, including that between Sept. 1, 2001 and Nov. 28, 2003 he "unlawfully and maliciously conspired with Richard Reid and others unknown" to cause an explosion "likely to endanger life or cause serious injury" in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.If this is true, I wonder if authorities are on to a network, here.
Posted by fad at 12:21pm
This is one of my favorite headlines in a while:
"White House favors Bush's Mideast plan"
What a shocker. And here I thought sure the White House would oppose itself.
Posted by fad at 11:36am
My dad has been a teacher for 35 years now. He's dealt with many a parent with unreasonable belief in their own child's genius and specialness. Thankfully none this bad.
Posted by fad at 9:46am
That Howard Dean. What a jokester. When he sealed his records, he said this on Vermont Public Radio:
"Well, there are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."And since lying on Public Radio would make baby Jesus cry extra hard, people, strangely, took him seriously. But they were wrong, because now he says:
"That was sort of a smarty remark. I mean I wasn't really being very serious about that.""Huh? Wha? Oh, that! Um...Just kidding!"
If elected, I hope he doesn't make these kinds of mistakes whilst in talks with the Soviet Union.
Posted by fad at 8:25am
Yesterday I linked to this story about the sloppiness in privacy of a database Minnesota law enforcement officers use. Today there is more on this.
For months, access to a massive database of police files was available to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of computers and an Internet link, according to a man who said he looked up files on the system several times.They say they've upgraded (meaning "actually added") security now, but it is still frightening. They made available online a database containing information about anyone who has been convicted, a suspect, a witness or otherwise connected to an investigation. Their first instinct was to just put it up there with no meaningful security (based on experience and seeing lots of half-assed login efforts, I can guess what they did). Hell, it doesn't even sound like that information is protected by any encryption even.
[...]
"It was pretty simple," the hacker said of the system, intended for police use only. "There was no security, no warning, no nothing."
The man said he accessed the system by simply adding the words "PersonSearch/PersonSearch.asp" to the end of the link's normal Web address, http://www.mjno.state.mn.
I link to this case in Minnesota because I cannot believe it is the only state with something like this. I've seen the kludgy, terrible efforts by Missouri when it tries to put information online. It is very easy to create a database and populate it with information. It takes a little time and money to properly secure it yet still make it easily accessible to those who should be accessing it. Security doesn't appear to have crossed too many minds.
Posted by fad at 7:44am
December 2nd, 2003
UPDATE: On second thought, maybe I don't want to get involved in all the nonsense that linking eventually leads to.
Posted by fad at 6:54pm
I will never use Bank of America as my bank.
Posted by fad at 3:41pm
House of Squalor alert.
Officers wearing oxygen tanks to protect themselves from the stench removed 49 dead cats from a garage where they had died while waiting for a woman to find them new homes, authorities said.There have been worse houses of squalor, including one in Illinois where an orangutan or baboon so dominated the second floor of the house that the other animals feared to go upstairs, but this case here is worst I've heard of in a while.
[...]
They found cages full of dead cats, birds and rabbits stacked throughout the garage, which was littered with urine, feces, maggots and flies. In a nearby modular home, officers found 29 live animals, mostly beagles, inside cages or locked in rooms with floors soaked in waste.
Posted by fad at 1:46pm
Rather than go on the long rant I want to write about the database here that makes my work life living hell (short version: Data isn't relational to itself, only by means of a hard coded client. Also there are no integrity checks to make sure data entered is correct, nor is there an agreed upon naming convention for various things, so everyone does it their own way.), I'll just link to this story about some of the civil rights issues caused by easier to create and access databases.
Posted by fad at 10:45am
Yay Drug War!
Posted by fad at 10:17am
.....They are pumping in tinny Christmas music into the office....
I am the Angel of Death. The Time of Purification is at hand.
Posted by fad at 9:25am
Two Japanese diplomats were killed in an ambush over the weekend. One of them, Katsuhiko Oku, left behind a diary.
Oku wrote how the death of a Canadian friend in the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad in August had spurred him to greater efforts.
By chance, amid the rubble of the building, Oku found the name card of his friend, the UNICEF worker Christopher Klein-Beekman.
He wrote in his diary: "It was as though the card was telling me: 'My Japanese friend, go straight ahead. Don't hesitate. There are things that must be done.'"
In November, after visiting the site of a suicide bombing in Nasiriyah, he wrote: "What we should learn from this tragedy is to have stronger determination not to yield to terrorists. Terrorist attacks could happen anywhere in the world. The elimination of terrorism is therefore a goal to be sought by all of us."
Posted by fad at 9:16am
I haven't read Maureen Dowd in months, but I catch what her latest snark is when others mention it. Maybe she has already done this, but I am surprised she hasn't tried to do a Paris Hilton/"Simple Life" tie-in with Bush yet. In her world, they are both vacuous, spoiled heirs completely out of their element. It's one of those completely without merit pop-culture tie-ins she loves to make in which she tries to sound like she's still "hep" and "with it" unlike the stodgies all around here, but ends up sounding ridiculous (didn't she do a cringeworthy column about her girlfriend's digging Eminem?). Maybe I should write it for her.
Posted by fad at 9:07am
Another health breakthrough could be right around the corner.
A growing number of UK hospitals use maggots to help patients' wounds heal more quickly.Nature's wonders continue to surprise and disgust.
Studies have shown that maggots speed up healing by eating dead tissue while leaving healthy tissue alone.
"What we are trying to do is to take the maggot out of the equation," Dr Stevens told BBC News Online.Story of my life.
Posted by fad at 8:46am
As had to be expected with the obsession about obesity right now, a panel has recommended that doctors check your fattitude whenever you come into their office for whatever reason.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said behavioral interventions and high-intensity counseling can yield a "modest, sustained weight loss" in obese patients. All patients, including those seeking treatment for unrelated medical problems, should generally be screened for obesity, the task force said in a report being published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.That magazine is one typo away from one hell of a 6th grade joke. Anyway, this intervention and "high-intensity counseling", defined as at least twice a month for the first three months, produces weight loss. How much?
According to the report, high-intensity counseling and behavioral interventions can typically result in weight loss of between 6.6 and 11 pounds by the end of at least one year.Ok, that, well, that just seems pathetic when we're talking about the actually obese who have plenty of pounds to give. We're not talking about the person who is maybe 15lbs overweight, but obsessed with how "gross" and "fat" they are. I know from personal experience that a rather obese person, with just minor changes to their lifestyle, can drop nearly 10lbs a month until the last 20 or 30 pounds. So you'll forgive me if I have my doubts about how beneficial this "intense" intervention is for 11lbs in a whole year.
Posted by fad at 8:21am
I have a little side script I use that checks Weblogs.com to see when any of my favorite sites that ping have updated. There is one site out of the thousands and millions and billions and Saganions of sites that breaks the stupid XML file because the owner of the site had to put stupid special characters in the title. It takes hours for enough other sites to update to push this one off the list, leaving my script as useless as the rest of me.
Yeah, it's an incredibly petty thing to bitch about, but this is my site and no one is reading it anyway.
Posted by fad at 7:54am
On the way in this morning, I heard a brief interview on NPR (I don't control the radio) with Wesley Clark. He had a couple interesting things to say. First he said "Saddam Hussein was never an immediate threat," an obvious bone to that "imminent" threat canard. When asked what he would do now in Iraq, he of course said we needed to bug out as soon as possible. He stated that most of the country could have its sovereignty returned, a backhanded way of saying that, indeed, most of the country is stable, something he'd never directly admit. His idea would be to have the local elected counsuls send representatives to a temporary national government. When the interviewer mentioned that those are the very things the terrorists are targetting, Clark said yup, they are. He then said that the point is to convince the Iraqis they are fighting other Iraqis, not the US. So, his plan is to bug out as soon as possible with Iraqis fighting Iraqis.....sounds like Gen. Clark is more than content to leave behind a viscious civil war. That's sound nation building.
On economic issues, and those were very briefly discussed because, well, it ain't the boy's area of expertise, his plan for the economy is to raise inflation and unemployment via a large increase in the minimum wage. Also he will create jobs by taking money away from the private sector and handing it over to government bureaucracy for more employees. He also blathered about the textile industry and how it needs protection, which, though he never discusses trade, does make me think he's all in favor of our brewing trade war with China.
But, again, these are all assumptions because Clark is vague even by usual candidate standards.
Posted by fad at 7:42am
December 1st, 2003
A body was found inside United Nations headquarters on Monday, a U.N. spokesman said. U.N. security and the New York police department are investigating the matter.Weird.
The U.N. spokesman said the person had been shot, and that the body was discovered inside the building's third-floor lounge at about 11:30 a.m.
Posted by fad at 1:40pm
Even science bows before the Simpsons.
The new drug is derived from a blowfish poison -- a substance so dangerous that a mere trace can paralyze a person within minutes.There is a downside.
The blowfish is known to gourmets as the source of the sometimes deadly Japanese fugu delicacy, a dish that can be prepared only by trained and licensed chefs, because the slip of a knife can poison the food, causing the diner to drop to the ground convulsing and gasping for air.
[...]
But the drug derived from the poison, tetrodotoxin, has already passed two phases of clinical tests, and doctors conducting early surveys say it eased pain in terminally ill cancer patients, where no other pain medication had worked.
The company says Tectin differs from other painkillers in that it doesn't have the same side effects as morphine and its derivatives, doesn't interact with other medicines and is not addictive.Not addictive? Then what the hell is the point!
Posted by fad at 11:25am
I'm sure most will see this item elsewhere today (Instapundit already has it, though no word on who sent him the link).
For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.But since the Bush administration always lies, we certainly can't believe this news. In truth, they were most likely negotiating for cotton candy machines. As with everything in life, there is an amusing twist to the story.
The officials now say they believe that those negotiations — mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government — were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles.
Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials.
As war with the United States approached, though, the Iraqi files show that Mr. Hussein discovered what American officials say they have known for nearly a decade now: that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is less than a fully reliable negotiating partner.Gone quicker than Castro could snarf a trillion dollar bill. But $10 million for nothing.....why does that sound so familiar?
In return for a $10 million down payment, Mr. Hussein appears to have gotten nothing.
The small incorporated city of Irwindale, 20 miles east of Los Angeles, learned an expensive lesson about dealing with Davis. The city gave the Raiders $10 million to show its good faith in 1988, but environmental issues, financing problems and regional opposition scuttled plans to turn a gravel pit into a $115 million, 65,000-seat stadium. The deposit was nonrefundable, and Irwindale never got a penny back.Evil, everywhere it is found, has a pattern.
Posted by fad at 8:21am
Sounds like the steel tariffs are coming down.
President Bush is expected to announce this week that he will immediately lift most of the tariffs he placed on foreign steel in an effort to protect American industry, bowing to a ruling by the World Trade Organization that his administration had violated global trading rules, industry officials who have been in negotiations with the White House said on Sunday.'Bout time. I doubt that the tariffs would have garnered many votes in the first place, but I know his cynical willingness to play with the economy like that just to buy votes is one of the reasons I wouldn't want to vote for him.
Posted by fad at 7:38am
Finally some more activity at Guantanamo Bay.
More than 100 prisoners will be released from U.S. custody at the detainment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and more will follow, military officials said.Sounds like some lengthy negotiations with their home nations have been going on that will result in some being tried or held in their homelands, while others being set free.
Posted by fad at 7:04am
November 30th, 2003
Posted by fad at 3:24pm
Is there some Tori Spelling cult at MSN obsessed with finding pictures of her new husband, Charlie Shanian? That's the only thing that can explain this totally unknown site getting a bunch of hits from MSN searches for them.
Posted by fad at 1:38pm
Andrea Harris recently wrote a post touching on a type of people that really annoy me. These are those who cannot dislike something just be because they don't like it or it is not to their taste. No, they have to completely dismiss it making clear that it is beneath them. You see, they are very smart and discerning. Therefore if something is worthy of intelligent, discerning people, they would like it. So since they do not like something, it is not because they just don't like it; it is because they are too good for whatever it is. It is not only that they don't like whatever this is. Rather, no one should. They use a mere matter of taste to elevate themselves.
The case in Andrea's post related to the dismissal of The Lord of the Rings as literature. Mass appeal and (modern) faerie tales have no place for the intellectual. There are the great works of literature, and now the works of today meant to make the reader uncomfortable and have contempt for those things of mass appeal which only the unthinking can like. Mass appeal must always mean lowest denominator. At least thinking that way is easier than evaluating each as they come. Reading should not be something one does just to pass time. Reading is for soul searching, edifying and all sorts of other things that make people insufferable if it is the whole of their lives. I knew a person in college who was an English major. As English majors are wont to do, she took her English majory very seriously. To be a proper English major, one should read the highly recommended books as reviewed by the New York Times. She gave up on this after the fourth book in a row contained a scene of child molestation or abuse that, she said, rarely had anything to do with the story at hand. They existed to make the reader feel icky (and probably to expose the thin veneer of societal appropriateness that barely hangs over bourgeoisie blah blah freakin' blah).
But one need not be an aspiring literati to be like this. I have heard and read many people go on about how they don't watch Reality TV because they are too smart for it. Not just that they don't like it, but they are too good for it. The extension of that argument is that everyone else is stupid. You know, the "sheeple" argument. Reality TV isn't the limit of this. Certain other shows, movies or music see the same reactions. I don't like it, not because I just don't like it, but because my superiority puts me beyond its reach.
Another example is news intake. Someone reaches a saturation from Fox News' sensationalism, a point not hard to reach, so flees to another news source. But instead of just trying to increase their news sources, many of these people feel great satisfaction in themselves for listening to non-American news or NPR. Their superiority is fed by having their news read with an accent or poor production. Many times on non-American sites, after someone makes a Fox News crack, I've seen some comment along the lines of, "Oh, dear sir, you do not know the half of it!" This is not to praise or support Fox News. The only show (and one thing that must be seen about that channel is that it is a news show channel, not a news reporting channel) I ever watched was the one with Brit Hume. But an accent and measured tone does not eliminate sensationalism or bias. In fact, it just makes it harder to detect and more insidious. American news services do a pretty lousy job of covering world events, that is true. However it also does a pretty lousy job of covering American events too. You're more likely to find coverage of some small country than you would Wyoming. Well, outside one of those New York Times articles in which a bemused reporter discovers stereotypes and, to his amazement, the occasional person with a thought in his head. And that's nominally the Vice Presidents home state!
Too many people are concerned with how smart they are rather than in actually thinking or enjoying life. I have actually had, in different times and states (in pretty much any meaning of the word), had friends or acquaintances inform me that the reason our group of friends all hang out is because we're all smart. My response is always, "Um..I'm not all that smart." I hang out with people because they're fun to watch football with, or drink beer with, or they're just funny, or, in some cases, they have great tits. This self-congratulatory nature of friendship bugs me a bit. Are these people so caught up in their self-perceived superiority that they can't just enjoy something without thinking, "I enjoy this because I'm smart"? It's like that one Democratic Underground post declaring that the members of that list were in the top 20% of intelligence which therefore meant everything they believed was correct. They are smart. They think these things. Therefore these things are smart. They constantly seek external confirmations so that they and others will always know how special they are. What a boring life that would be.
And what boring people that makes.
Posted by fad at 1:32pm