In New Spin on Tradition, Turkey Pardon Goes to 'Katie'. President Bush spared the first female turkey in the history of White House Thanksgiving turkey pardons. By Elisabeth Bumiller. [New York Times: Politics]
...I'm betting he pardoned a female turkey to get them crazy feminists off his back for killing those women when he was governor. I mean, he's pardoning a female turkey! Feminists should rejoice, right?
Funny is watching a geek go flying across the room with a knife in hand, attempting to kill a very small pig, while screaming "That'll do, pig!"
Thank you, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for making my world a slightly better place.
National Story - canada.com network--Bush... "that idiot". Opps, another Canadian politico is caught with memo referring to Bush as "that idiot";
National Story - canada.com network [Blog Left: Critical Interventions]
A media firm advising the Alberta government called Bush "that idiot" in a memo talking about the "moron" story...and in their spin to recover from this, the firm says "George Bush holds a BS from Yale and an MBA from Harvard ... and cannot be fairly characterized as uneducated or unintelligent." So, what, no morons with rich daddies ever came through the Ivies before? That's PROOF he's not an idiot?
Regardless of whether he actually IS an idiot (answer: vehement yes), it's truly pathetic that we have a president whose intelligence is so low that there can even be a debate as to whether he's a moron. Cue the music...!
Pardon.. Bush Pardons Turkey. Ratio of the number of pardons George W. Bush has issued turkeys to those he has issued human beings : 2:1 [MetaFilter]
(cue the music!)
God bless America...
Had an interesting discussion at work today with a friend of mine. He's a libertarian, but doesn't really care to get involved very much. ie, he didn't vote this last go-round. He jokes that by voting, I've made myself complicit to the corrupt system. Of course, I point out to him that the opposite is true, but hey, that's not the point of this post. He can be a bit of a Bush apologist at times - he's repulsed by the name Kennedy, dislikes the idea of "liberals"...you know the type. I mention the Canadian Bush-is-a-moron incident, and agree with the sentiment. He's not quite so sure, so I need to back up my argument. Here are the reasons I can come up with off the top of my head.
Well, that's all I could come up with off the top of my head. Give me more - I want all the reasons, non-policy-wise, that we know Bush is a moron. True, the Ashcroft appointment could fall under policy, but as I said, that would prove he's just evil, which we'll assume isn't the case here. Most of his horrible policies could have been motivated by greed, owed favors to donors or family friends, or stupidity - that's not quite as easy to rule out as evil is.
According to this story, at least 105 suspected terrorists were issued visas to enter the United States since last November. So not only is the federal government prying into our personal data, engaging in blatant racial profiling, and far more fun civil liberties-violating activities...but all that isn't freakin' working? This is a joke. This whole administration is a joke, and I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could take them seriously.
a title!. "It is binding on all Muslims wherever they are, to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty" Muslim leaders call for the head of the author who wrote that Mohammed would look for a wife among the contestants and subsequently sparked huge riots, killing 200 people in Nigeria. [MetaFilter]
What makes it even more disturbing is that, as The Raven points out, the guy who issued the fatwa isn't even a religious figure. He's a "Minister of Information". That's right - this Nigerian state's equivalent of Ari Fleischer issued a death sentence on a wiseass journalist. Wow.
Nic Cage and Lisa Marie Presley are already getting divorced. This is about three and a half months after they got married. That's shorter than her marriage to Jacko, right?
Tivo thinks I'm gay. My Tivo thinks I'm a gay pregnant man! This article documents the struggles that some people have gone to in order to gear Tivo's programming to their interests. As one man said of himself: " [I] often [order] cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of [me]. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer,". [MetaFilter]
My TiVo is insistent that I watch M*A*S*H. A lot of it. That, and bad cop shows, and stuff from Animal Planet. As best as I can tell, this is due to me recording Simpsons, South Park, and Sports Night, Law And Order (in all its varieties), and anything I can find relating to dinosaurs. It was grabbing me history documentaries for a while, but it seems to have gotten bored with that and gone back to M*A*S*H and the Crocodile Hunter.
In a comment to this post of mine, Maxine (of Maxine's Radio Weblog fame. Go read it.) berates the Democratic party for not being liberal enough - which we all know I heartily agree with - and the media for not giving the left any coverage - which is painfully true. But what's still banging around in my head are her last two sentences:
"I am too old, too female, and too fed upo to fight this battle anymore. Let 'em eat sand."
I'm not criticizing Maxine for this, not by a long shot. Rather, this reminds me why I HAVE to fight this battle. I'm young, white, male, and well-off. I'm comfortable - I don't need radical change to the way things are in this country for my own sake, not in the least. If I were to follow the established political path for guys like me, I'd be voting Republican by age 40. Fuck THAT - ain't happening. But I need to do more than just sit here and spew punditry into the blogosphere - I don't expect I'm changing anyone's mind, just providing another voice in agreement. So what can I do?
Here's my problem - I'm easily bored. I'll talk 'til I pass out, but I'll lose interest in doing something pretty quickly. What is there that I can do that won't bore me, as dumb as that sounds? How can I use my position (not in terms of money, but the advantages I have due to my gender/age/race/profession/etc) to move the Democratic party to the left? The ideal would seem to be to work for a candidate - a candidate exciting enough to keep me motivated. But that's a difficult thing to find right now. There's no one on the local level. There's no presidential candidate I know who could even possibly get me that interested. What is there, then? Anyone have any ideas? Or am I just being pathetic?
Boston.com. The Democrats get their war on. Their target: Saudi Arabia. Given that 15/19 attackers on 9/11 were Saudis this makes sense. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
OK, I'm just as disgusted by the US support for Saudi Arabia while we're going to war with Iraq, but I'm not exactly pro-war there either. Gutting our support? Yeah, definitely. But not war.
That said, I'm really enjoying the spread of "get [your|their|his|her|etc] war on" into the world. As memes go, that's a good one.
"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" tickets for sale (4) [Bureau 42]
...which means it's time to find a theatre around here that's going to do the midnight premiere on the 17th of December. Last year, I had to go in to Boston, to the Fenway theatre, to do this. I'm hoping that the Lowell Showcase Cinemas will be doing it this time - what with that being a 10 minute drive from my apartment and all. I should check with them and find out...
Local kid picks up Sox. Boston Globe Nov 26 2002 6:12AM ET [Moreover - Boston news]
The new GM of the Boston Red Sox is the youngest GM in the history of major league baseball. He's 28 and 11 months. In other words, he's just about exactly four years older than me.
This means I still have a chance to get into baseball. =)
New ape population found [BBC Science & Nature]
Ok, so really I'm just all about the picture of the orangutan. But it's pretty cool - they've found 2000 more of 'em in a forest in Borneo. This actually increases the total number of orangutans by 10%. That's sad - but this should really help preservation efforts.
Fatwa Laid On Miss World Journalist. Plastic::Media::Dumb: Isioma Daniel - whose published claim that the prophet Mohammed would have been happy marrying a Miss World contestent, leading to riots in Nigeria that killed over 200 people - has been issued with a fatwa. [Plastic: Most Recent]
This whole Miss World situation (whenever I hear Miss World, I think Hole, which makes this all even stranger) can't be real. Seriously - this is way too bizarro to be real, right? And is it wrong that I think it's f'n hilarious? Anyway, best way to sum it up is a South Park quote:
"Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here."
Truer words have never been said.
If you came by here in the last couple days, hoping to get your fix of Dreaming of China-blog-goodness, I apologize - I didn't sleep Sunday night, for reasons I won't get into, I've been having computer troubles, I've been busy at work, and I've accidently developed a life. I know, I know - neglecting the blog is not a good thing, but I do apologize. More to come over the day today - I've got to wade through a tremendous chunk of News Aggregator fun...
The investigation Bush wants to keep secret: Saudi cash link to 9/11 probed [The Smirking Chimp]
Oh, this makes me feel better about the world.
You know what's fun? I mean, really fun? Computers. I love 'em.
What prompts me to mention how much fun computers are? Here's the story: yesterday morning, my laptop dies. No warning, nothing interesting like a blue screen o' death...just blackness. I'm thinking it might be somehow related to my sketchy power cable - I have to wiggle it every once in a while to keep the power flowing properly. So I wiggle it, and try turning on the laptop again. Here's what I get - beep-beep-beep ... beep-beep-beep ... beep. And nothing. There's power to the laptop, the fan's going, but it ain't doing anything else. Black screen - not gray, not just a cursor, no power at all to the screen. Huh.
So I go to work today to deal with this - I need to do some work this afternoon/evening, so if I can't get the laptop working, I'll need to be in the office anyway. I try hooking it up to the power supply at work: same thing. Well, this is why we have corporate tech support, right? I give them a call - I get run through the standard bad-battery/power-supply tests, and no luck. I'm told to charge it for a half hour or so, try again, and if that fails, talk to support on Monday. Argh.
Now it's time to hit the web. It takes me a while, but eventually I find an IBM page with explanations of the various beep codes made by an IBM laptop model very similar to mean. Lo and behold, I find mine - three short beeps, a pause, three short beeps, and one more beep. The explanation? Either something with the DIMMs or the system board. Great - now I have to figure out how to get at the DIMMs and try taking them out and replacing them...if it's the system board, I'm just screwed, so I'll have to invest all my hopes on the DIMMs. I find a small screwdriver, and start pulling screws out of various places on the laptop, trying to find where the DIMMs are. I get lucky - the second place I try is where the DIMMs are. I take 'em out, put 'em back in, and bam - the system boots up. I need me a new laptop, I think. It's due to be replaced in a couple months...I think I'll see if I can speed that up.
We need a better term for the left in American politics. Sadly, the best one - liberal - has been stolen from us by the Limbaughian right, and I doubt we'll get it back. Progressive gets a lot of play, but do we really want to be described using an insurance company's name? Progressive doesn't have any ring to it, doesn't have any style. We need style - we've got the substance down, but the Republicans have long had the Democrats whipped when it comes to style. They talked about this on the Daily Show earlier this week, and suggested the Democrats call themselves the Dragonslayers. Because if the Democrats are Dragonslayers, then, ipso facto, the Republicans are against slaying dragons. Hey, it's better than "progressive" has done for us.
But seriously, does anyone have any ideas? I know, it's shallow to be focusing on appearance, but I want to start winning some hearts and minds. I want to win elections, goddammit. We need new buzzwords, new catchphrases, new style. We need new labels - we've got a couple years to get the content of the message down; let's get the presentation rolling now.
Are you reading Maxine? Because you should be.
Bill Maher back on cable?. Bill Maher back on cable? AP is reporting that Bill Maher will host a late-night talk show on HBO starting Feb. 21. The hour-long news and comedy program, which has yet to be titled, will air once a week for 20 episodes. I personally think ABC were a bunch of pussies for cancelling him, and I think the new show will rock. What do you think? [MetaFilter]
Hey! This is good - Bill Maher is one of the few TV personalities worth paying attention to, and he'll be a lot more unfettered on HBO than Disney ABC. Plus, this should lead to more Arianna Huffington appearances, which is always good. I've found it interesting how both Maher and Huffington have moved to the left since their respective emergences onto the pundit-scene.
Bush, at NATO Meeting, Firms Up His 'Posse'. President Bush garnered support for disarming Iraq from European leaders at a NATO summit in Prague this week. By Elisabeth Bumiller. [New York Times: International]
No, seriously. This guy describes his goal as having a "posse" to go after Saddam. There's plain-spoken, then there's poorly spoken. I'm sorry, but this is poorly spoken.
Oh my - Driver 8's got a great joke that riffs on "Who's On First", the Chinese leadership, Arafat, and Bush. Read it. Giggle.
Pentagon defends plan for search of data [The Smirking Chimp]
You know how the right gets their jollies out of calling the left un-American or unpatriotic? Let's tear them apart on this one. The Total Information Awareness project is about as un-American as you can get. Let's start hitting them with some buzzwords and catchphrases - President Bush's appointees are pushing this hard, right? They seem to want to turn the US into Soviet Russia, right? Stalin, right?
Yeah, it's dirty, but I'm tired of being nice. I'll be nice when they stop calling everyone who disagrees with them traitors. I'm not saying we need to call the Bush Junta traitors, but it sure won't hurt to call 'em as I see 'em.
Dozens killed in Miss World riots [BBC World]
Now there's a headline you don't see every day.
Knute Berger: 'Springtime for Hitler?' [The Smirking Chimp]
A reference from Woodward's new book: "Bush's master political strategist, Karl Rove, was said to have compared the post-9/11 display at the World Series in Yankee Stadium to a Nazi rally."
This is not my country.
You Are a Suspect. Yesterday, the horrendous and corrupt Homeland Insecurity Act passed and in yesterday's NYT William Safire blasted the Total Information Awareness problem run by Iran/Contra crook John Poindexter that we warned you about last week; Safire doesn't hold back, check this out:
You Are a Suspect [Blog Left: Critical Interventions]
Read this. Get angry. There are so many disgusting aspects to the Fatherland Security Act that it's hard to imagine any one being more monstrous than another. The assault on workers' rights, this utterly nauseating attack on privacy, the pork (I especially love that companies that move off-shore to evade taxes can get contracts wih the FSD)...for opposing a few aspects of this, Max Cleeland was tarred and feathered out of office as unpatriotic. Christ, I consider it unpatriotic to have voted FOR this damned thing.
US Now Relying on Mercenaries in Afghanistan. Can Mercenaries Protect Hamid Karzai? The US govt is hiring private mercenaries to do it's dirty work overseas. In short, by hiring private military contractors such as DynCorp, the U.S. government has found an effective way to conduct foreign policy by proxy and in secret. These proxies cannot be monitored, are effectively immune from all criminal sanctions, and are dangerously hard to control since they answer to corporate bosses, not military brass. (easy registration required) [MetaFilter]
I just love seeing the term "private military contractors" and the fact that there's a mercenary company named "DynCorp". Why can't we just cut to the chase and call them hired thugs, anyway?
US seeks coalition for Iraq war. The US asks dozens of allies for military backing as it prepares for conflict in Iraq¸ though UN inspectors say war can still be averted. [BBC News | WORLD]
Bush calls for new Nato capabilities. The US president says Nato forces must become more effective and mobile to deal with new threats. [BBC News | WORLD]
"That's right! I want 'em to do what I tell 'em to do! And QUICK! They ain't from Texas, what do THEY know, anyway? Huh? Stupid Europeans..."
Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials [Slashdot]
It's about that time - time for another spate of "Salon's gonna DIE!" stories to spread around the web. Putting aside my many reasons to hope it doesn't go away and the actual question of whether or not it's going to, there's another question of real importance to me (and most likely at least a few of you reading this): if Salon really does blow out all of their cash by the end of the month, what happens to us? Will we get moved to Userland's servers? Hopefully we'll never *need* to know, but I'd feel a little more comfortable if we did.
Oh, and Scott (Rosenberg, editor of Salon), if you're reading this - cut Andrew Sullivan. I'm sure he doesn't bring in near as much in subscriptions and ad revenue as he costs. And even though I love-love-love Joe Conanson and Arianna Huffington, they might also be too expensive to be worth keeping around. And if you need it, ask your subscribers for an extra 10 bucks - I'll ante up, no problem. I'm terrified of having to face weekday mornings without Salon there to greet me. Ick. That's a world I don't want to live in. =)
Byrd, at 85, fills the forum with Romans and wrath [The Smirking Chimp]
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Robert Byrd is a dick. He's an obstinate little bugger who gets his jollies out of being difficult. He did a lot of these things during the Clinton administration that he's doing now. At the time, I just thought he was, well, a dick. Now I realize that yes, he's a dick, but he's also got an ideal of what an elected representative of the people should be, and he's sticking to it no matter what anyone says or thinks. What's more, he will berate his fellow Senators and Congressmen for failing to uphold these ideals. Is it a little nutty? Sure. But this is a man who honestly cares about the Senate and the role of a Senator beyond which corporate donor is taking him out to dinner tonight. Robert Byrd isn't going to get bought off by the White House. He's going to keep fighting them at every turn - not because he vehemently disagrees with their politics (you'll notice the other 8 Senators who voted against the bill are universally left-wing...ie, Kennedy, Jeffords, Feingold, etc...) but because he finds their methods revolting. Combined with Kennedy, the great liberal of the Senate, Byrd can go a long way towards protecting the country from the Bush Junta, especially if his fellow elected represenatives listen to him.
Solaris: A New Dawn for Sci-Fi?. Science-fiction buffs madly debate online the merits of Steven Soderbergh's upcoming remake of an obscure Russian film. Could the new Solaris, starring George Clooney, signal a revival of smart sci-fi? By Jason Silverman. [Wired News]
It could be the start of a new trend, but first it needs to make money. If it's profitable, there'll be more like it. If it doesn't make money, it'll be a unique case. But what's jumping out at me is the description of the original Solaris as "an obscure Russian film". It's certainly not obscure to anyone who knows anything about Russian film - the three movies you're most likely to hear when referring to Soviet cinema are Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, and Solaris. It's not like Tarkovsky, the director, is a no-name. It's not like it didn't get decent penetration in the States. Sure, it didn't get mainstream play, but neither did Truffaut, and you don't hear people describing The 400 Blows as an obscure French film, do you?
Aaah! The Law And Order/HBO connection in this episode is even stronger - the mother from Six Feet Under has one of the homicide detectives from The Wire as her lawyer.
I really need a better hobby, don't I?
In another episode of my ongoing obsession with recognizing HBO TV show actors on Law And Order, I just saw the mother from Six Feet Under on a '99 episode of L+O. I'm gonna have to do a concordance on this like my Aaron Sorkin Concordance from a few weeks ago...but this one will take a few, y'know, weeks. =)
U.S. Says Revealing Names Would Aid Al Qaeda. The Justice Department argued on Monday that disclosing the names of hundreds of people arrested on immigration charges would help terrorists. By Neil A. Lewis. [New York Times: National]
What the hell? Loose Lips Sink Ships, is it?
Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying. Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying Big Brother much? John Ashcroft is well on his way to becoming the next J. Edgar Hoover, or worse. The government can already secretly spy on what books we're reading, thanks to the Patriot Act. Previous MeFi threads have covered the evils of Total Information Awareness and how it makes everyone a suspect. Now a "secret court" gives the government a green light to spy while the ACLU tried to figure out if there is any recourse. [MetaFilter]
Ashcroft could make Hoover look like a weirdo in a dress by the time he's through (oh, he *was* a weird in a dress? Fancy that. heh.). We are, after all, talking about the leading American Mullah. It's worth pointing out that the initial "secret court" decision on this matter was unanimous - 7-0 against giving the US the right. There are still further appeals - but Congress could speed up the process by banning these absurd spying adventures.
At some point most likely tonight, this blog will pass its 10,000th hit. I get a real sense of satisfaction out of that. Sure, I'm willing to be that at least 1,000 of those hits are from me reloading trying to figure out if this page design or that style sheet tweak worked, but still - I've made something that's managed to get to five digits of hits in less than 5 months. I'm proud.
Now if you're only reading my blog (and you know who you are. =) ), go read somebody else's. Read Mark Hoback's Fried Green al-Qaedas - he's got a daily tour of the Salon blog community, pointing out the day's posts of note. Always worth reading, and a great place to start your introduction to the wider Salon blog world.
Salon's been doing a weekly series of success and horror stories of online dating - and to be honest, on reading them, it's hard to know whether they're true. The idea of Internet dating still seems a little surreal - and this is coming from someone who had his first online relationship about 8 or 9 years ago. It wasn't much of a relationship - some emails, some chatting, some phone calls - and maybe that's colored my view. But still - tell me you haven't thought the same. It's not that I didn't think people are really out there. I know they're out there - but my god, the unappealing ones are sooooo unappealing.
I've got an ad at Salon's personals site (which is also the Onion's, Nerve's, Boston.com's, the Village Voice's, and god-only-knows how many other sites...) and no, I'm not telling you which profile. If you can figure it out, I'm impressed. I actually left a hint in there leading back here, but I doubt anyone's noticed. Anyway - I've had ads at a couple other sites, but never got any responses at any of them, nor had any real interest. At Salon, though, I've had a couple encounters. The first was with a nice girl who, it turned out, wasn't really my type. It wasn't helped by the fact that I was in the grip of a panic attack for most of the date. I'm not sure whether meeting someone from online is more stressful than a blind date would be, having studiously avoided blind dates. But I can say that meeting someone you feel like you've already met online is hellishly intense.
Odds are he/she isn't near as attractive as you expected them to be - if you've seen a picture, you're almost certain to have overestimated the qualities you found attractive in it, and underestimated the qualities you, well, didn't find attractive. This isn't necessarily a crippling blow in and of itself, of course, but it can set things off on the wrong foot. Which is something I definitely didn't need. She wasn't unattractive, this first girl that I met, not at all, but she wasn't what I expected. Her voice sounded slightly off, she was louder than I expected, a bit more awkward in what she said and how she said it. Not a disaster of a date (and considering it was my first date after a 3 year relationship that carried over from my last year and a half of college through my first year and a half of NOT college, it was actually quite successful) but nothing to write home about. I awkwardly said goodbye, we chatted online a couple more times, I haven't seen her since. She has my copy of American Gods, though - hope she's enjoying it. =)
I've received a couple collect calls - when someone sends me a message asking for ME to front the credit to initiate real communication. The cheap way to express interest, basically. I bought 25 credits ages ago - I'm always a sucker for throwing money at Salon - so I've answered every collect call I've gotten - what the hell, right? Well, they've all been, well, creepy. Really, really strange. Most notably is one girl who insisted I immediately chat with her on AIM, and then that I call her right away. I'm bored, so I do so. She kind of disturbs me, and is way too tall for me, but what the hell, I'll talk - free long distance, right? Well, I move to Lowell, and it turns out she lives a mile away. Next thing I know, she's driving over here. Turns out she's four inches taller than me, not skinny, and has hairy arms. The last one really was the kicker, as un-PC as it is. I basically cowered, waiting for her to leave so I could emerge from my shell. After that, I basically gave up on finding anyone online. Not that I ever really thought I was going to, but these two experiences, combined with moving to Lowell (which doesn't have very many girls looking for guys online, to say the least) put a bullet in the concept.
Or so I thought. I still replied to a profile here and there - you never know, right? And hey, I'm spending credits I've already purchased. Might as well use 'em. So I send a message off to a girl with a funny profile and no picture. She's short - which, I have to say, is a big plus for a short (5'6") guy like me. She's left-wing - an absolute necessity. Her profile reads like absurdist comedy - and she mentions how much she loves Mr Show. Hey, that's worth a credit right there. Well, turns out she's read my profile and would have sent ME a message, had she any credits. We talk for a week and a half, and then she suggests we meet. Which is cool, to say the least - I don't have to go through the "Is she going to say yes?" obnoxiousness. And we go out, as I talked about a couple weeks ago. And it goes really, really well. No panic attack, no hairy arms - I feel good about the world.
A week ago Sunday, we went out again - don't go see Bowling for Columbine as a date movie, by the way. And then Friday I went to see a production of the Mikado that she is working on wardrobe for. The show went late - we'd planned to go to a Chinese/Polynesian restaurant afterwards, but the place turned out to be karoke hell. So, well, we came back here and watched Wednesday's new South Park. Seriously. When I walked her back to her car at 2am, we joked, for the third time, about how awkward we were with goodbyes. Our emails even end weirdly. The jokes went on for a couple minutes as we looked at each other and tried to figure out what to do. Then she said she was going to kiss me, and then she DID kiss me. And it was good. I know, I shouldn't be saying this on the open web, privacy and all that, but she can't read the blog - it won't load properly on her browser. =) And I just feel a need to write about this. Suddenly, I've realized that I've found a girl whom I'm more attracted to than any girl I can remember for a good long while, and I'm dating her, and it's going great, and I met her online. Wow. This doesn't yet fit into the Salon article's "heaven" category, but it sure isn't "hell". I'm dating a girl I met online, and she's great. Wow. Ok, I'm just babbling. I'll go to bed now. =)
Osama Is Under Your Bed. As the Bush administration rams the Homeland Security bill through the Senate, Osama bin Laden makes one of his rare appearances. Just coincidence? [AlterNet]
Actually, considering the opposition to some of the most disgusting pork inserted into the bill in the House, I'd say we're seeing a good fight on the Homeland Security crap. Not as good as I'd like - the union-breaker clause is still in there no matter what - but the leading Dems and McCain aren't giving up on the nasty pork.
Great Simpsons moment on the rerun tonight - Chief Wiggum says that sugar made Ralph hyperactive. Ralph, while bouncing up and down, says "I'm happy and ANGRY at the same time!" I get the giggles.
Life lesson learned from the Sopranos tonight: interventions don't work out very well with a roomful of mafioso.
Watching Friday night's episode of Firefly while waiting for football to go away, and I see a brief appearance (maybe longer, he good show up again) by a cop whom I recognize - he's an Oz guy, played the basketball-playing prison guard who got his Achilles tendon severed. I keep going "hey!" whenever I see someone from Oz. It's become a habit.
It's a stupid little thing, but I hate when the afternoon football game on Fox runs late. It derails my whole evening of TV watching - Futurama gets delayed, and then so do the Simpsons. Screws up my TiVo recording, which is definitely irritating. I keep rooting for no out-of-bounds and no incomplete passes - just 2 1/2 yards a play, no stopping of the clock. Won't happen, of course. Arrrrrgh.
Massachusetts Anti-Spam Legislation. The Massachusetts Attorney General is working on a new state Anti-Spam Bill. Some highlights of the bill include requiring unsolicited commercial e-mail to contain "ADV:" at the beginning of the subject line (which would make filtering spam much easier), and violations would be punishable by $500/message. [kuro5hin.org]
Here's the thing - I'd love to see all spam marked as such. Cisco, and a number of other corporations, I'm sure, has a piece of software filtering through all mail sent in to our systems. If the mail matches its definition of spam, the string "[SPAM]: " is prepended to the subject, similar to what the MA anti-spam bill would require. I love it - I filter such emails to my trash, but I don't have to - I could delete them manually or not even delete them. I see it as a quite realistic and fair rule, and would love to see it rolled out nation-wide.
The anti-forgery aspect of the bill, though, is a lot sketchier - the bill would make it illegal to mask the origin of an email. This means, for example, if I send an email through Cisco's SMTP server but use my old computer science account from college as the From: address, I'd technically be breaking the law. That's uncomfortable, but unlikely to be enforcable.
Here's a sure sign that the Doom Generation is old and rich: they have their own aerobics now. [Memepool]
What makes Punk Rock Aerobics even more surreal is where they hold their classes - the Middle East in Cambridge, a quality restaurant and great place for music. It's not *punk* per se, a la CBGB's - if this were at some place like CBGB's, punk rock aerobics would make sense there, but the Middle East is an epicenter of Boston rock, not in the traditional punk sense but in the Mission of Burma/Throwing Muses/Pixies/Fort Apache sense. Which is even more incongrous than punk rock aerobics, I think.
North Korea admits nuclear arsenal. Official radio in the communist state says - for the first time - that it has developed nuclear weapons. [BBC News | WORLD]
Well, I'm feeling even better about the world myself. How about you?
Democrats Seek New Messenger and a Message. The absence of major figures atop the Democratic ladder has contributed to a flurry of activity by some lesser-known presidential contenders. By Adam Nagourney. [New York Times: Politics]
Continued proof of how irrelevant the Democratic Leadership Council has become, with this quote from Al From, executive director: "But to me, it's not rocket science. If we want to expand our base, expand our ability to win elections, we're going to have to continue to move forward to where the voters are." This dingbat seriously believes the way to win elections is to become Republicans. It's been said before, it'll be said again - the Republicans are far better at being Republicans than the Democrats. If Al From and the DLC want to be conservatives, they can go join the Republican party.
My idea of an intriguing and interesting way to spend a Saturday night: watching All The President's Men while bouncing over to the Washington Post's Watergate Chronology and reading the Woodward + Bernstein articles I see Redford and Hoffman researching and writing, as they're researching/writing it. This is *fun*. I am a dork, true, but this is fun.
Strength in numbers. A conversation with Bill James, the famed statistical baseball analyst just hired by the Red Sox. [Salon.com]
I just love-love-love that Bill James is working for my Red Sox now. This interview reminds me why - James is not only a statistical wiz, but, first and foremost, a huge fan of baseball. The Sox owner, John Henry, pushed to hire James - he got James' number from ESPN.com's Rob Neyer after an interview, and then proceeded to cold-call him and recruit him for the Red Sox brain trust. James has already handed in a 70 page report on both major league and minor league free agents, with reccomendations on who to go after. This kind of thinking - not an attempt to find the next Alex Rodriguez but role players to fill the holes in the Sox lineup cheaply - is exactly what the Red Sox need.
Alan Moore's alternate history of the DC universe [bOing bOing]
If you are a comics geek, you need to read this proposal - Cory links to a Google newsgroup search for "Twilight Of The Superheroes," Alan Moore's follow-up to Watchmen. It never happened - for very obvious reasons, once you read the proposal and hear about the problems Moore was having with DC at the time. But the proposal has circulated around the comics community ever since, and has had a greater impact on how superhero comics have evolved over the last ten years than almost anything else. I've got a copy lying around, and I'd post it up here as a story, but I don't feel like getting nasty legal letters from DC lawyers... =)
EDIT: Oh, bugger it. Here's the proposal.
No 'Left' Left In American Politics. Plastic::Politics::Politics:Democrats: Sit in as Joe Klein and Robert Reich kick around the future of the Democratic Party. [Plastic: Most Recent]
This story links to the definitely-worth-reading series of exchanges between Joe Klein and Robert Reich at Slate last week. The big question, as the writer at Plastic words perfectly, "[I]s the proper direction for the party 'Republican-Lite', 'FDR', a combination of the two, or something entirely new?"
We can all guess where I emphatically DON'T stand on that. I say it's a combination of FDR/LBJ/RFK and something entirely new. That seems to be where Klein and Reich are getting. Klein bemoans the dominant role special interests play in the party - most notably trial lawyers, the AARP, and the unions. I can definitely see his point on all three, though I believe that unions, like the Democratic party, need to realign and reinvent themselves, moving the leadership away from the old-line manufacturing unions and towards groups like the SEIU (Service industry - janitors, cafeteria workers, the like), the great farm worker unions of California, and white-collar wage-slaves (telemarketers, call center staff, administrative assistants, legal assistants, etc..). After all, the traditional union jobs are leaving the country AND auto workers, for example, make a whole lot more than even I do - these are groups that are dedicated to keeping things as they are, not changing them. The union movement needs to be an agent of change on behalf of all American workers. That, and it's time they start really organizing in Mexico.
Reich really nails it all, though - screw the middle. Approximately 40% of the electorate votes Democrat every time out, and another 40% votes Republican. Conventional wisdom in the Democratic party has been that the way to win is to appeal to the 20% of active voters who go back and forth. Hey, it worked for Clinton, right? But remember a few details: this 100% total we've got from Repubs, Dems, and undecideds only represents maybe 60% of registered voters. And while I think that a majority of those eligible to be registered are, it's not an overwhelming majority. Far, far more people don't vote than vote consistently for either party. What's more, the demographics show that the non-voters are likely to tend Democratic than Republican - most of the non-voters are working-class or poor, which are the groups Democrats, in theory, do the most to help. The way to win elections is to appeal to those groups of people who are marginalized from the American system now - politically and economically. Find policies that can help them, and push hard for them. Reich has the big one already lined up: payroll tax cut. Immediate help, focused almost entirely on those who make less than $65,000 a year.
Bush Is Said to Pick Ridge for New Post. President Bush has decided to nominate Tom Ridge, his domestic security adviser, to be the first secretary of homeland security. By Neil A. Lewis. [New York Times: National]
...because those color schemes he came up with for terror alerts were really amazing? Or just because he's already got the office, so they might as well not make him move? Has Ridge really done anything that merits giving him this post? Are we really more secure now than when he was appointed? Nah.
From the 'well-that's-obvious' department:
Dating is fun. No, seriously! Last night proved it to me, even if the Chinese/Polynesian place was truly frightening - by the time we got there, all its business was in the "cocktail lounge" where suburbanites were doing bad karoke. And then a leather-faced bottle-blonde walked by and was convinced she recognized my date, which my date assured her was very unlikely. Turned out she ran the karoke and seemed very proud of the fact that her name was on a display. We ran away at this point, but had a good time the rest of the evening. As I said, dating is fun. Whoddathunkit?
Lord of the Peeps!. One Peep to rule them all, and in the darkness eat them. It's not Friday, but any day is a good day to see "Lord of The Rings" executed with marshmallow peeps. There's also a "PeepHenge" on the site...mmmmmmm, PeepHenge. (God bless Bifurcated Rivets.) [MetaFilter]
The fact that someone has actually taken the time to *do* this kind of frightens me.
U.S. states ranked according to smartness.. U.S. states ranked according to smartness. The ranking was based on such factors as average high school dropout rate, how much teachers earn and how frequently they are attacked, etc. There are probably some other relevant factors they might have included, but didn't. What criteria do you think would be most appropriate for measuring a state's relative intelligence? [MetaFilter]
Woohoo! Massachusetts ranks seventh! Obviously, we couldn't rank first - we elected Mitt Romney governor.
