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Personal opinions about grammar
I've mentioned my obsessions with grammar, including proper use of the subjunctive and apostrophes. Seeing them misused really chafes at me. Recently, some people have been going through various comments I've made in blogs and then criticized my writing style for not living up to grammar-nazi standards. (The most amusing of these comments was when I ended a sentence with the word "is" and was told that I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. So sad.)
Despite my personal obsessions, there are a few things that are simply "invented grammar" that we have been told are "rules" but really aren't. A lot of these rules were handed down by Henry Alford in his Victorian-era pamphlet, "A Plea for the Queen's English." This work grafted the grammar rules of Latin (the "perfect language," after all) onto English in an effort to standardize it. This is where we received all of those rules about how you cannot split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition. Honestly, I think rules like that are bunk. I may be a grammar taskmaster, but the structure of English allows one to split an infinitive so easily that forbidding it makes the language more awkward. Ending a sentence with a preposition has enough of a pedigree in pre-Victorian literature that it's perfectly acceptable, as long as the object of the preposition uses the accusative form. (e.g., "Whom are you talking to?" is fine)
The authors of Grammarphobia.com wrote a list of grammar myths which correspond closely to my own views on the these matters. (No one is ever going to convince me that declarative sentences can start with "but" or "and," though.)
Humor day.
First, courtesy of Baratunde Thurston:
India and Pakistan will set up a telephone hotline to avoid nuclear conflict. In a symbolic victory, India will operate the call center.
Next, Dick Cheney and The Editors at The Poor Man play poker.
Those of you who know me know that I can be a grammar Nazi. In that spirit, here's a cartoon lesson on the proper use of the apostrophe.
This reminds me of an exchange on one of Orkut's discussion groups entitled "Grammar Nazis":
A: Do you think the group name is offensive?
B: Not as offensive as "Grammar Nazi's."
Check out The Ancient City of Athens, the photographic archive of the archaeological and architectural remains of ancient Athens.
I won't come up with a big chronicle of the "scandal," juicy as I find it. Here is everything that needs to be said about Washingtonienne.
And don't forget to check out today's daily roundup of Washingtonienne stories over at Wonkette for your fix.
I just want to give a big shout-out to Batdorf & Bronson Coffees for their Mexican Organic coffee. Sure, my parents would be ashamed of me for splurging on such an extravagance, but... mmm... mmm... good.
Great listening material-- The Top 10 Teen Tragedy Songs. Along with the songs mentioned there, I should also recommend Skeeter Davis's "Tell Tommy I Love Him" (technically the sequel to, but actually written before, "Tell Laura I Love Her"). Also, I recommend the Ricky Valance version of "Tell Laura..." instead of the original.
I have been trying to think of more modern teen tragedy songs outside of The Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma," but I'm coming up short. One of the best teen-themed bands around is The Donnas, but they've never been particularly tragic.
Please, somebody, explain to we what the hell Bring Me Edelweiss is. As the lyrics seem to explain, there seems to be quite a bit of "Rhythmic yodelling" and "Scratching an Alpine melody" to the tune of Abba's SOS.
What on earth is this? Where did it come from?
The Psychopathology of Pseudoconservatism
A good friend and long-time Republican put it this way: "Your average enthusiastic movement conservative is basically so adolescent and emotionally fragile that he does not see political activity as a contest of principles. He needs a white knight who comes riding in on a horse in order to redeem America."
The problem for these people, of course, is even more serious when they mistake the village idiot for that white knight they were hoping for.
[A]s I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi?a alike, are calling for Jihad...
I haven't been updating this so much, mostly because there's little point in pointing to the latest article that I've read on the front page of Slate or Salon magazines or some article linked to one of the same six weblogs I read every day. So I've kind of slacked off.
However, sometimes I'm inspired to link to something particularly striking. Rather, a year of striking things to link to. A year ago, we invaded Iraq. On the continuum of things the United States could do, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. It wasn't the most intelligent, either, of course, but that goes without saying. Over the past 18 months since Bush advisor Andrew Card said that Bush would be calling for an invasion of Iraq in September 2002 because " From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," the war has caused people to flip over the edge. Instapundit went from an interesting weblog on legal issues from a conservative law professor to a war-drum-beating rabid right-winger denouncing all those who would question the wisdom of the president. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart went from being a news satire show to a program where the host's mind became boggled by the continuous stream of idiotic statements from Bush such as being unable to "distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," and watching the "real" media let him get away with it! Online, friendships frayed over whether one was against the war or a hardcore "warblogger." Media personalities like Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias tried to play up what mature young liberals they were by supporting the war before realizing in the spring of 2003 that they were being taken for a ride by the misguided Bush administration.
And now look what's happened. It's not just Baghdad that's burning. Whole cities are being taken over by insurgents. Our occupation has succeeded in uniting Shi'ites and Sunnis against us!
The reason this journal exists is specifically for the purpose of poking fun of the absurd. And of course, it was fun. Starting around the end of 2002, it became all the easier, as the Bush administration became futher and further detached from reality. But then you read an account like the link above, and it's not funny, anymore.
A big mystery that has been bothering me for a while has finally been resolved. Namely, I'd been wondering what ever happened to Frusen Glädjé ice cream. The answer was not, as one would assume, that after asking around, I ran into someone who explained to me that, he "ate all the Frusen Glädjé!" Rather, in one of the strangest cases of corporate snafus I've ever heard of, Kraft/General Foods Inc. sold its license to Frusen Glädjé to Unilever Corp. in a sale of several products. Unilever, however, claimed that this particular product was never part of the deal, and Frusen Glädjé became lost in the paperwork. Kraft believed it had no right to produce it, and Unilever didn't realize that it had acquired the brand.
Bummer.
On a strange related note, apparently when Frusen Glädjé appeared on the market, Haagen-Dazs sued Frusen Glädjé for trademark infringement based on the accusation that Frusen Glädjé was copying Haagen-Dazs's idea for marketing a premium, Scandanavian-themed ice cream. In a case of judicial rationality, Haagen-Dazs's case was thrown out of court. This is more evidence that public criticism of "trial-lawyers" is a scheme invented by even slimier corporate lawyers to keep the heat off themselves.
Another blogger has her own recollections of Frusen Glädjé.
This is the sort of campaign ad I'd like to see candidates make for real.
Words on my mind:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
It makes me want to howl.
In response to a discussion about the Sesamet Street Pinball Song, the composer decided to chime in on the history of the song's recording. You can buy the Pinball song on a 12" record.
I'm not saying that people who read The New York Post are stupid (I certainly read it from time to time), but stupid people are invariably New York Post readers
I might add that stupid people write for the New York Post, as well.
I have just written some original content examining state-by-state per capita trends in Howard Dean's letter-writing campaign.
This post on Robert Kennedy was nominated for the 2003 Koufax Award for Best Blog Post
Wow! Exciting pictures of Mars now available!
Interesting interview with Howard Dean up discussing his background in politics. The choice quote:
... polls don't make a front-runner. The real front-runner is George Bush and the real long-shot is the American people and we need to stay focused on that.
Apologies for the lack of updates. There aren't that many really interesting articles that I've read, but this deconstruction of Christmas music was highly entertaining. My favorite-- the take on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
"Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" is usually taught as inspirational verse and a statement against prejudice and mockery: Rudolph is visibly marked and consequently discriminated against, yet he rises above the catcalls to achieve fame and success. Sounds great, right? Let's look a little closer. Rudolph's moment of redemption comes not as the cause of any consciousness-raising, but because his difference (superficial as it is) is shown to have utility to the corporate body. He is accepted by his peers not for his own merits, but because circumstances conspired to harness his idiosyncrasy and turn it into profit for his employers. What is the real lesson we take from the fable of Rudolph, boys and girls? ***Difference will be tolerated and celebrated only if it can be put to the service of the power structure.*** Otherwise, you're just a wacko, and you can forget about those reindeer games for good. Once again, Santa Claus is portrayed here as an unfeeling, self-absorbed cad -- he makes no intervention in Rudolph's persecution until he needs to save his own ass (at least the TV special got that part right). But does Rudolph get his moment to tell the boss to screw himself; that his hypocrisy won't be tolerated? No, he's the first one tethered to the sled, happy to take the whip of his former oppressor as long as he can feel both useful to the corporation and validated by his peers. If I had a kid, this would be about the last lesson I'd want to teach her.
On a similar note (no pun intended), we also have the Worst Carol Contest. The winner was by far the most deserving recipient of such ignominy-- Little Drummer Boy. Contest voters write:
"I believe it is played nonstop in one of Dante's circles of hell." .. L.Z.
The most embarrassingly mawkish song ever composed." K.K.
Another voter points us to this tidbit from Prairie Home Companion:
"... Refuse to patronize stores that play it. Refuse to enter malls with strolling singers who perform it Wear this `Thank You For Not Drumming, Little Boy' button. If you're at someone's home and if they put on a CD with `The Little Drummer Boy,' don't hesitate to speak up Together we can overcome `The Little Drummer Boy,' but we need to be united. Zero tolerance is the key..."
This is interesting... an article on the dynamics of Jesse Jackson, Jr., Al Sharpton, and the former's endorsement of Howard Dean. Provides a lot more context, particularly the role of the press spokesman Frank Watkins played.
Heroes. Just because they save you doesn't mean they like you.
John Scalzi on why the Cubs and Red Sox Must Go Down. Because America needs its losers.
With the departure of Ari Fleischer as White House Press Secretary and his replacement by Scott McClellan, Russell Mokhiber has replaced his old feature, "Ari & I" with "Scottie & Me"
Also of interest-- Individual Traffic Rankings for Candidates' Websites.
A hypothetical Oval Office conversation:
The president sits up straight. "Listen, Karlsbad. How many elections have I lost, huh? Answer me. How many elections have I lost?"
"Well, sir, if you count --"
"Presidential elections, Rover! How many dang presidential elections have I lost?"
Karl takes a deep breath. "Well, sir, in my opinion, none."
E.J. Dionne analyzes the Democratic primaries dynamic and shows, once again, why the newsprint press is more competent at analyzing such things than television.
When I take the time to check this on google, I'll mention the source. For now, this just amused me:
We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are represented in this programme. It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are concerned more with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than the problems of government, nor to suggest at any point that they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the well-being of the people they supposedly represent nor to imply at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of concern for the vital societal problems of today. Nor indeed do we intend that viewers should consider them as crabby ulcerous little self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might find offensive. We are sorry if this impression has come across.
While typing a URL into my web browser, I accidently typed www.theonion.com instead of my intended destination www.thenation.com. I will leave the snarky comments to the readers.
Norah Vincent writes on abortion.
TBOGG discusses an interview with Rick Santorum regarding what marriage is all about.
I'm the last guy who would ever throw in my lot with the sort of people who write for The Weekly Standard, but they have an interesting article about Howard Dean. The choice quote:
It's more accurate to say the race has become Howard Dean versus a half-dozen blow-dried shills...
I have just returned from vacation. While I was gone, the show George W. Bush's Playhouse seems to have jumped the shark.
On a personal note: I took some pictures of Howard Dean campaign events on Independence Day.
From the Washington Post: Two cranky articles about Howard Dean-- one an analysis of Howard Dean's online fundraising strategy, and the other a look into the discontent he's tapped into.
The bottom line to think about on Independence Day: if your ancestors had a choice, would they have chosen you to come build their new world with them, or would they have chosen the guy who washes dishes at that little storefront chinese restaurant that delivers cheap food when everyone else is closed?
And here we have Dennis Miller confronting himself from 1988.
From VH1.com: You're an 80s Child If...
Finally, the most reasonable theory I've heard to explain why Bush was intent on attacking Iraq despite the lack of an apparent threat to the US:
It may be argued that the Bush administration and the Hussein Regime are both in a race against time to gain access and control of the Stargate in the ruins of Uruk or some other location in Iraq, before the prophesied return of the Anunnaki.
I mean, none of the other reasons held up to scrutiny, so this sounds like as good as any of the fantasical reasons given by the White House.
Certain guests on the Jim Lehrer News Hour have been more than happy to offer reviews of books that they admit they haven't read. Never shy to pick up a trend of professional pundits, blogger Hesiod provides reviews of books he hasn't read for his fans.
I've been procrastinating by reading Footnotes to History.
Via slashdot.org: an account of when Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos saw the Segway, complete with all the profanity Steve Jobs is known for.
The abridged script for The Matrix: Reloaded.
Hey, I give no ground when it comes to knowledge of 80s trivia, but this Plastic.com discussion on Christian Rock contained a comment on 80s hair bands that belies an extensive in-depth knowledge of names and dates from the 80s I'd rather have forgotten.
I read an interesting article on whether 3G is dead in the water.
For those that need a Brunching Shuttlecocks fix now that Lore has stopped updating the site, you can check out his weblog at Bookofratings.com.
An interesting interactive electoral map from the web site of John Edwards for President.
Political trategy tips from Zizka: It's hard to think of a snappy way to say that liberals should be less civil and more paranoid, but that's what I'm saying.
Take the Geek Test.
Here's an interesting take on obesity in the USA. Could it be that the influence of junk food pales in comparison to the fact that we are couch potatoes? What kind of anti-American car-hating Eurotash would say that the problem is that we are too lazy too walk anywhere but instead would rather drive down the block??? :)
Ever heard or seen the word asshat bandied about? The word, of course, has been registered as a domain name.
Sadly, The Brunching Shuttlecocks is now gone. It has joined the great humorous web sites like Suck and SatireWire in that Great Internet in the Sky. They came from an era when someone with a quick wit and some web design skills could go into online publishing and attract a following. And now they're gone. I leave you with two of my favorite Brunching Shuttlecocks pieces: Ratings: Sesame Street Characters and Smartass Answers to the 80's Quiz.
Ha! What was one of Jayson Blair's plagiarism sins at the New York Times? Wrote fabribrated story about Iraq possessing massive sockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Thank you, The Onion.
Cat lady busted in Watertown, MA... after she was thrown out of her Beacon Hill apartment. Authorities removed 52 cats. Crazy people are everywhere. Plus, check the "Recent Articles" sidebar to see previous titles of similar stories from the Herald's pun-happy editorial staff.
Ken Layne manages to explain what is wrong with Bill Bennett's gambling problem without using the h-word.
E.J. Dionne sums up the Democratic presidential candidate pool based on Saturday's debate.
Oh, that Iraq thing? False Alarm.
Josh Marshall has an entertaining writeup about Larry King's coverage of the Laci Peterson Case. I won't excerpt the most amusing parts. Read for yourselves.
It's always good to read a nice crass rant on the New York Times war coverage. To wit:
[Neil] Lewis' cover story last week, "Detainees from the Afghan War Remain in a Legal Limbo in Cuba," was one of the most disgraceful pieces of journalism I've ever seen. And I read the New York Post every day.
Oooo... Just what you've been waiting for... The Republican Wife-Cheating Hall of Fame.
The meme that won't die: All Your Iraq Are Belong to U.S.
New York City is so frustrated with Albany that a councilmember is threatening to have the City secede from New York State
Via Metafilter: The faith and science behind Ethiopian Orthodox IconsNormally I shy away from journalism-about-journalism articles to highlight there, but this one is tough to resist. The Orange County Weekly reports that The Orange County Register has dropped Bill O'Reilly's column because, unsurprisingly, "The columns were more and more about Bill O'Reilly and Bill O'Reilly's relevision show and what happened to Bill O'Reilly on Bill O'Reilly's television show."
In his following column, Bill O'Reilly sublety attacks the editorial staff of the Register as "ideologues masquerading as news people."
Truly, The O'Reilly Factor has now become the "Irony Free Zone."
The Rabbit writes:
Tuesday is a whore. Monday? Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But Tuesday is dust and dribbled milk and spider webs and dry skin patches and birds flying into windows like they're risking their lives to tell you sometime. Tuesday is procrastination and lukewarm coffee and vacuum cleaners with no sucking action so they can't pull dog hair or potato chip crumbs out of the rug.
Found art: The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld
Here's an article written shortly after September 11th about eastern Christians under Islam, both yesterday and today.
This might save a lot of work for entries on the off-days.
Here's a good explanation of the war to Peaceniks.
Things sure do change in a couple weeks, don't they? Here's an open letter to the Washington Post outlining the claim that the major casualty of the war in Iraq is the credibility of the American media. Possibly, like GM's execrable Cadillac marque, it's possible that the media could commercially support itself on American consumers alone.
This is the most awful thing I have seen.
Many months ago, Paul Weyrich of the right-wing Free Congress Foundation wrote a column entitled Integrity of Passion in which the otherwise right-wing author hailed Paul Wellstone for his idealistic passion in office before his untimely passing. Mr. Weyrich said that initially Wellstone "bought into the Left's caricature of [Jesse] Helms as a comic book villain," but eventually the two came to have mutual admiration for each other's principled stands. After doing some digging through the Free Congress Foundation, I was able to make an educated guess about Mr. Weyrich's e-mail address and replied that, in fact, Sen. Wellstone's loathing for Sen. Helm's came from when Paul Wellstone used to live in North Carolina and had the (mis)fortune to watch Jesse Helm's 60s-era talk show in which he would rant about the evils of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights act (interestingly, video tapes of Jesse Helm's television show episodes have been destroyed). Lo and behold, at the end of the next column by Mr. Weyrich the text of my reply appears!
Wow. Even investment bankers feel the pain in the recession.
The sponsors of a group offering a 5-day vacation in an Israeli west-bank settlement need to realize that $5,500 is a bit of a steep price to pay merely for "slumming it" to enjoy the danger. That said, it's too bad I don't have an extra $5,500 burning a hole in my pocket. Heh.
In other news, the Patio Pundit complains that "[Ron] Jeremy is now the first porn star who has to worry about how a news story may mess up his reputation." (see my March 3rd entry)
Please let this turn up on some poor guy's pro-Saddam poster:
Shortened summaries for most linked-to political articles you might find here. A great time-saver.
A good essay explains the internet as the "World of Ends."
John Scalzi makes the fine case that Bush is incompetent. How so, you ask? Scalzi explains it plainly:
Let's be honest enough with ourselves to admit it takes a special kind of stupid to drive otherwise largely rational allies to prefer to be seen to side with a gleefully genocidal murderer than with you.
Tracking gentrification in NYC-- here's the Manhattan Starbucks distribution map. (via Gawker) I can hear the stampede of hipster footsteps out of midtown, now.
Metafilter falls into ruins.
It didn't take long for this story to result in some obvious comparisons.
Any takers to help save Salon?
On the other hand, The Rittenhouse Review has comments on what, exactly, is wrong with Salon.
Here's fascinating article in Salon about Michael Powell and the further deregulation of the media industry. Given that radio deregulation has been such a bad deal for consumers, the move to deregulate the rest of the media is hitting a snag.
So this is what that terrorism orange alert was for!
Damn. I'm in no mood to be witty.
Clinton National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger was "totally preoccupied" with the prospect of a domestic terror attack. He warned his replacement, Condoleezza Rice: "You will be spending more time on this issue than on any other." Problem was, she didn't. Despite many warnings like Berger's, including the recently revealed Central Intelligence Agency briefings last summer, the new administration treated the so-called war on drugs as more important than terrorism, and on that basis even made overtures to the Taliban leadership.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld blocked an attempt to move $800million from his pet missile defense program into counter-terrorism.
I hope this is remembered when the historians write their books.
I've suddenly discovered why the website of Tim Cavanaugh received no updates between May 12, 2002 and December 30th. Cavanaugh has been an editor at Reason Magazine. This story has been covered in an article in the Village Voice. What brings Cavanaugh and the other Reason editors together? Why, a common New Jersey heritage. Wise words about my home state from Reason editor Nick Gillespie:
"To grow up in New Jersey is to grow up an existentialist, to realize the world is indifferent, if not downright hostile. You have to be on the lookout for other people's bullshit, because you're constantly being told that where you're coming from is useless. After a while, you realize that a lot of political and social distinctions are not about reality and truth, but about people trying to put you in your place so they can better regulate your behavior."
Now I understand what has been going on at White House Press Conferences for the past 2 years.
In the tradition of a web log linking to a newspaper column about an online news magazine, I give you an article in the Providence Phoenix about Slate. Mickey Kaus does not do well. :) But no comments about Slate's unwieldy "Fray" comments format.
Well, this should pretty much wrap things up for everyone:
| "As far as you know, how many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens: most of them, some of them, just one, or none?" | ||||||
| % | ||||||
| Most of them | 21 | |||||
| Some of them | 23 | |||||
| Just one | 6 | |||||
| None | 17 | |||||
| Don't know | 33 | |||||
One is tempted to now give up on any rational, fact-based discussion about war with Iraq, now.
Tired of reading the same old crappy commentary? You've run up against them on a regular basis... it's the 10 Most abused forms of criticism, showcasing all the irritating columnist cliches...
America is experiencing technical difficulties. Please Stand By.
Check out The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002 .
Sometimes memories of what I was like as a youth smack me full-force in the head. Though maybe that guy in the back with the beard is a sign of what I'll become.
Even the stopped clock of the National Review tells the right time twice a day, when it comes to what the Dixiecrats stood for, lest anyone forget. (via Atrios)
On Friday, Ken Layne declared December 13th "Not a very good week for crooked old frauds!"
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz observes why the Lott flap took so long to get coverage. The choice quote is further down when he quotes Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit:
The guy's majority leader. Reporters, as opposed to bloggers, depend on him for access. The hinterlands are full of bloggers who don't care whether Trent Lott is nice to them or not. That makes them different from the Washington press."
On the other hand, the Dec. 13th entry from The Daily Howler argues: that the press tends to bow to conservative power, especially when "dirty secret" segregation groups are involved. Does TAPPED'S buddy-buddy theory make sense? For example, did the corps ignore the Georgia [confederate/segregation-era] flag flap because it was just so chummy with Peach State participants?
The Tribute to Paul Wellstone is now located at Cursor.org.
Hm. Strange events happening in NYC.
Oh, I neglected to call for Terry McAuliffe's head, as well. Consider it done.
On a related note, What kind of world do we live in where the governor of Virginia is a Democrat and the governor of Maryland is a Republican? (courtesy of Adam Magazine via The Rittenhouse Review)
Bring me the heads of Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt.
Joe Conason sums it up.
I found an mp3 of the infamous song "A Man Like Putin." Lyrics are available from Yahoo News (UK).
Wow... nostalgia. A recent article in the Washington Post discussed the history of the cassette tape and its imminent demise. No more mix tapes for us.
I recently received confirmation that somebody does, in fact, read this.
I don't know how long this will be up, but Media Whores Online has a tribute to Senator Paul Wellstone on its front page (be patient while it downloads).
Incidently, if anyone actually reads this, e-mail me.
This is taken off someone's entry in Salon Blogs -- An article explaining why engineers seem so cynical.
Hmmm.. Everyone "knows" what a kook Cynthia McKinney is in the House. So why didn't a certain congressman from another political party get pilloried in the national press for saying many of the same things?
John Scalzi has a weblog entry poking fun of the music industry's attempt at fending off mp3 sharing via teen-targetted propaganda. An amusing excerpt:
The music industry is using the same style of rhetoric against file-sharing as responsible adults used against drug use in the 60s and 70s, during which time, you'll recall, the kids made drug use pretty much the cornerstone of youth culture. Because anything that really pisses off the grownups is worth doing more than once.
Now, this is not going to be an exact analogy, and thank God for that, since the last thing the world needs is a Cheech & Chong-like pair of wacky file sharers making movies about ripping off the music industry...
The site additionally compromises its position by featuring an area that details the civil and criminal penalties parents can face when teens download files, thereby informing the kids that here is yet another way that they can get back at their parents for having birthed them and forcing them to grow up in suburbia. Good move.
I am seriously disturbed at the FTC's attempts at increasing online security awareness. This reminds me of the government's previous attempt at increasing safety awareness. (I learned about that last little piece of federal propaganda from when I saw Atomic Cafe' in high school.)
Soon after I saw the article making fun of alt-weekly cliches in the San Francisco Weekly, links to the article appeared on Media News, Plastic, and Metafilter. I have links to all of these places on my list of the Useful Sites that make up my daily reading. This is clearly a sign that I need to find a little more diversity in my choice of reading material.
As a fan of various alternative weekly newpapers, I found an article from the San Francisco Weekly hilarious and spot-on. Namely, "some rotten chestnuts we wish the alternative press would quit serving up." Yes, all those stories in the alt-weeklies you've read 100 times before. My favorite alt-weekly cliche mentioned:
8) Why [insert name of local citizen] thinks [insert name of obscure bureaucratic agency] is up to no good. And why [same local citizen] isn't going to take it anymore. An irate resident, pictured on the cover with arms folded in front of a flag-draped City Hall (slightly out of focus), says the County Mosquito Abatement Commission has been spraying where it shouldn't. This is his/her story.
But hey, I actually like Nat Hentoff (#5).
E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post has a column extolling the virtues of democracy in Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that the local politics of the city is the endless target of derision, D.C. seems to have pulled off a flawless primary election despite the fact that neither of the major candidates in the Democratic primary were on the ballot, and 91% of the votes were write-ins. Compare this to Florida, ostensibly a "major" state, in which the elections were once again a fiasco. In the words of Jon Stewart, "Florida, we're going to have to let you go."
Another claim is made that irony is not dead. To wit:
our corporate-elected tribal elders who, through TV and radio pulpits, speak to us in times of crisis. What did they tell us about our fate after 9/11? America has lost its innocence. Irony is dead...
let's just say that what we saw was simply a case of mistaken identity, since the pundits in fact meant that satire was dead. Which as we now know is like saying that a vampire is dead, because it never really is. It's undead, and it's eternal. And in order to survive, it must suck the blood of the living boneheads.
We're lax about English grammar. That's why you should join the campaign the save the English language's subjunctive tense.
A claim for the return of irony in public discourse.
Apologies for the lack of updates. Not like anyone is actually reading this, anyway.
But I did come across this fascinating essay on Robert Heinlein. This covers the essence of the love/hate relationship most of us sci-fi fans ultimately have with Heinlein. As Heinlein aged, he had his moments of sounding an awful lot like Ryan and Jacob.
I also saw this essay on rare but interesting side effects of meditation. If there's an online reference to some of Fr. Seraphim Rose's essays on mental illness, I will link to them, as they were somewhat reminiscent.
Yes, it's been a while. Same with Heather Havrilesky. So there.
Charles Krauthammer writes on Disturbed Nerd Chic. Whoo-hoo! :)
I came across a critique of Libertarianism called Libertarianism Makes You Stupid on the website of Seth Finklestein. This is so old (1997) that I'm surprised I never came across it before. It's not timely, but I never claimed this was a trendy weblog, just a diary of things I come across over the course of the day.
Those who have had the misfortune to have received the spam from Ryan and Jacob can find their website at eternalambition.com. Clearly the result of a pair of kids who read too much Ayn Rand and J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as teens and took them way too seriously. A better deconstruction of their e-mail than I could ever do is at The Truth According to Iago (& Mrs.) Steele.
Reason Magazine by way of Alternet reports on Mick Jagger's recent knighting as an event heralding the death of rock(tm): Or, more precisely, the death of rock's pretensions to Dionysian excess and subversive power, once widely understood to be its very raison d'etre... As Frank Sinatra memorably put it in 1957, rock "is sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons. By means of its almost imbecilic reiteration it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth." Exactly. And therein lies its great and enduring appeal...
[R]ock itself, which after more than five decades now ... so endlessly gestures toward maturity and responsibility that you almost suspect rockers to be suffering from repetitive-stress injuries. Is there anything more appalling than the sight of dried-out rock stars ranging from Alice Cooper to Steven Tyler extolling the virtues of booze-free living like so many reformed drunks testifying at a 19th-century temperance revival meeting? As if fans had ever looked to rock stars for role models rather than vicarious thrills.
Overhead in regards to the pledge of allegiance fracas: There may have been a more senseless, ridiculous decision issued by a court at some time, but I don't remember it. - Joe Lieberman
Think hard, Mr. Vice President
REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT
Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border
Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.
The FBI was served with a $4.4 million verdict against them, today for screwing with the lives of a pair of environmental activists.
Here's a eulogy for Dee Dee Ramone in the Village Voice who points out that his ability to live until 50 was just as remarkable as his stellar career.
I came across what is perhaps one of the most insightful articles on the music industry I've yet seen. It compares the state of the music industry to the mid-century book industry-- one in which Hemingway and Salinger were cultural rock stars before the book industry became something thrown to the margins of pop culture. So, too, the era of megastar status of rock music is coming to a close, thanks to Napster. The prediction:
The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone. Instead, it will be a low-margin, consolidated, quaintly anachronistic business, catering to an aging clientele, without much impact on an otherwise thriving culture awash in music that only incidentally will come from the music industry.
Buzzflash has a special feature on 10 Questions E-mailed to mom about September 11th. I might add that I don't think Bush used September 11th as a "pretext" for anything, only that his entire administration was pretty darn clueless about anti-terrorism.
Ted Rall writes on dealing with bumbling journalists in Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing.
Charlie Reese explains that the complete secrecy of the terrorist operation absolves Bush or the Bush administration for not seeing any warnings of the terrorist attacks and ends explaining what the one advantage terrorists have: choosing the time and the place,
John Scalzi has an amusing article on why we should legalize pot. Namely-- getting rid of stoner culture:
Once pot is legal, the decades-old fetish culture that has sprung up around weed will last about as long as a community joint on the 20th of April... we must free marijuana from the resin-stained wretches who are currently its keepers--and make it so mainstream that nobody ever finds a reason to talk about it again.
I read a review of VH1's Greatest One-Hit Wonders. Rating The Macarena ahead of Tainted Love is criminal, I tell you. Criminal.
William Saletan has an article in Slate providing a counter-argument to those blaming the adminstration, U.S. intelligence, and law-enforcement for not "connecting the dots." He points out that a journal article in 1999 proposed a scenario in which the Tamil rebels could possible attack the USA, especially since they are the #1 supplier of suicide bombers. Saletan argues that any number of scenarios were proposed that did not occur, the al-Qaeda scenario being just one of them. Not mentioned, of course, was that al-Qaeda, not the Tamils, had attacked US targets before and that it was the FBI, not academic researchers, that proposed the possible attacks and that the USA never captured a Tamil rebel who discussed such attacks against the USA, as a Pakistani terrorist in US custody did during the Clinton adminstration.
"It's worse than you think. Remember that warning we got last month?"
Courtesy of MediaWhoresOnline
Let's recap the events of the past week: It was revealed that the FBI knew that al-Qaeda was training pilots to airliners use as weapons since 1996. Not coincidentally, also in 1996, Trent Lott and Orin Hatch stalled anti-terrorism legislation during the Clinton Administration. At the start of the Bush administration, Clinton's obsession with "getting" Osama bin Laden was considered "too much," and Bush told US intelligence to back off of investigation of the bin Laden family. Bush was told of plans for a "Major Assault" against the USA while he was on a month-long vacation in Texas. Around the same time, Attorney General John Ashcroft started taking leased jet aircraft instead of commercial jets because of a terrorism threat. Finally, by early September, a report from the United States Commission on National Security warning that internal security needed to be overhauled was rejected by Condoleeza Rice.
Here is another place to see how the dots connect.
Let me editorialize for a bit, here. We were told how Bush's lack of intelligence, or at least lack of intellectual curiosity, wasn't that important, as long as he surrounded himself with "good people," and how Bush was good because he'd "bring people together." Look, the time for "bringing politicians together" was during the 90s. I kind of wish we had a president with a strong enough analytical capacity to connect the dots from "al-Qaeda training pilots" to "major assault against America" to "improve anti-terrorism security." Cynthia McKinney sure sounded like a kook to me a few weeks ago. She's the one that turned out to be smarter than we thought. Oh, the bitter irony.
If this wasn't shocking enough to all of you, what really made things shocking was that it sparked Maureen Dowd to write an intelligent column.
I just found the American Crusade Trading Cards. Hah.
The Nation has a featured article on the Republican obsession with unseating Paul Wellstone. I guess having one boogieman embodied in Ted Kennedy is enough for them. Another tidbit: Bush tried to nickname Wellstone "Pablo" when they first met. What is with this nickname fixation? Did Bush ever really move out of the DKE house?
I have been reading a fascinating if long article on the evolution of language and syntax.
Here in Massachusetts, there is a budget crisis because revenues have fallen with the recession. As you might imagine, this is causing problems not only because the cuts are falling on schools and health services for the indigent, but also because there is a push to raise taxes. Massachusetts has a reputation as a place with high taxes. However, let me just say that this reputation is an uneqivocal load of crap.
Allow me to explain. First of all, we have a flat income tax of 5.6% (this is being lowered to 4.6%, soon). This is much lower than the maximum tax rate in many other states, and the number of deductions we are allowed is quite generous (eg, everyone can itemize their deductions, no matter how small, and renters get a rent deduction of up to $6000). Unlike NH and NJ, property taxes are much lower in MA. Long term capital gains taxes are extraordinarily low when you cash in your investments if you sell them after holding them for at least 1 year. It gets even lower if you've kept them for more than 5 years. Unlike New York and Philadelphia, the major cities of MA don't have a separate income tax. Gas prices are also lower than neighboring Connecticut and lower than most parts of the midwest.
Some people may point out that Massachusetts has a high a state tax burden per capita ($2,532, ranking it 5th behind Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Delaware). However, when calculated against the tax burden per $1,000 of income, MA comes in 23rd. Quite simply, MA residents pay a lot of taxes because, by and large, they make a lot more money than people from, say, Idaho (who rank 27th in per capita taxes they have to pay but 14th in amount of taxes per $1,000 of income). This doesn't even take into account local taxes, which in states like NJ and NH are quite high-- especially difficult when real estate is a family's biggest asset.
So, yeah, I guess MA residents pay a lot of taxes, but that's like saying, "it must be terrible to pay as many taxes as Donald Trump." Hey, I would love to have Donald Trump's tax burden.
Source: The Tax Foundation - The same group that invented "Tax Freedom Day." I think they'd be mortally offended if they found out I was using their data to explain why my state tax burden really isn't a big deal.
Tragedy has struck. The Moscow Times reports that General and Governor Alexander Lebed has died in a helicopter crash. I used to run the Alexander Lebed fan page. He had such great potential as a presidential candidate for Russia and was responsible for ending the first war in Chechnya in 1996 as Russia's National Security Advisor under Yeltsin. Unfortunately, Yeltsin fired him in November, though he went on to become governor of the Krasnoyarsk region of the Russian Federation. I found this tribute to Lebed on Bluejack.com.
Along with being distracted by car shopping, I also needed to move to a new apartment.
That doesn't mean I'm no longer procrastinating by poking around the web. Ken Layne has written a hilarious column about the papier-mache puppets that appear at anti-globalization protests. He sums up the problem quite simply with:
is it simply the only thing a bunch of stoners can make?
Ted Rall has an interesting column of the Bush administration's response to the Venezuela coup. Also featured are the New York Times' fawning coverage of Chavez's erstwhile replacement, Carmona, once again backing up my roommate's assertion that the New York Times is just "Reader's Digest" for the educated set.
If you're wondering why I've now commented twice on the Venezuela coup, it's because the entire Chavez presidency, messy as it's been, has allowed me to engage in a substantial amount of snarky schadenfreude when it comes to watching how the Bush administration handles him, and this coup fiasco was really just the icing on the cake.
Wow! I have a new favorite political site I'm going to check weekly. It's called Ari & I staring Ari Fleischer, Bush's press spokesman, and White House reporter Russell Mokhiber. Every week, Fleischer gets confronted with one for Mohiber's uncomfortable questions, and we get to see Fleisher's amusing attempts at evasion. Slate Magazine had an article on Fleischer's sheer compulsion for evasion. They summed it up quite nicely with this take on Fleischer's handling of the press:
Anyone can sound evasive when he's being evasive. It takes talent to sound evasive when you're not being evasive.
Fleischer speaks a sort of Imperial Court English, in which any question, no matter how specific, is parried with general assurances that the emperor is keenly aware and deeply concerned and firmly resolved and infallibly right and the people are fully supportive and further information should be sought elsewhere.
From Tom Tomorrow's Weblog, I found this article on the aborted coup in Venezuela. An unnamed Bush administration official gave himself a place as a finalist for the award of, "Most Ironic Political Quote of 2002" with this choice of words about President Hugo Chavez:
"He was democratically elected. Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however."
This is true. Sometimes legitimacy is conferred by a snafu in the voting system of a state run by your brother with cooperation from a compliant supreme court. That was certainly worth a cheap chuckle. My thinking was hardly original, though, as MediaWhoresOnline also made similar jokes about it.
Whew! I just finished my taxes. (How's that for an original entry in a weblog?)
The NY Observer has this great article about how conservatives are now eschewing the CNN talk show "Crossfire" now that the "left wing" hosts are actually liberal and argumentative, rather than moderate lapdogs.
Sorry about the delay. Car shopping has taken over my life.
The Brunching Shuttlecocks finally came up with something interesting, as opposed to all their time spent on movie reviews. Today I found their ratings of slang words that mean "good." On the word "phat":I can't help but suspect that the "ph"--if not the whole deal--was dreamed up by the same slick-haired record exec who gave us Kris Kross.
Words of Wisdom:
The Optimist says, "The glass is half-full."
The Pessimist says, "The glass is half-empty."
The Engineer says, "The glass to too big."
I've tried as hard as possible to keep this from becoming a weblog where I sound off on whatever I'm thinking over the course of the day. I only occasionally give myself over to editorializing. Rather, I just wanted to write down the things that I read on the web while procrastinating from work. However, it still bears notice to link to this piece on a weblog which sounded off against Eric Alterman's attack on Andrew Sullivan for Sullvian's weblogging. Yes, I think Sullivan is as much of a dink as the next guy. However, taking webloggers to task for not abiding by the standards of journalism is pathetic. Isn't The Nation supposed to stand up for the little guy?
Incidently, yes, I realize that you can all now say to your friends, "I read an online journal that mentioned a weblog about an article in the Nation about Andrew Sullivan's weblog," thus deeply embedding the meta-commentary on The Issues of Today (tm). However, this one bore special notice.
Slate Magazine has an article on Merlot. Apparently it used to be quite trendy but is now considered passe'. I added my comments which got noted as "featured comments from The Fray." (scroll to the bottom of the article). Namely, I said that I never liked Merlot because it was too dry, but this is what probably made it trendy-- there's no sophistication in drinking something that actually tastes good. A followup poster to my comment said simply, "Dean is an idiot. Cabernet is more dry than Merlot."
Let me quote PJ O'Rourke:
What the F---? I mean, what the F----ING F---?
This, in reference to an article on the Bush family connection to the Whitewater investigation. The relevant quote, is this:
The elder Bush's White House counsel C. Boyden Gray and Secretary to the Cabinet Edie Holiday spoke with high-ranking law-enforcement officials in the weeks before the 1992 election. Those conversations prompted inquiries from Washington to investigators in Arkansas about pressing ahead with a criminal probe that would have named Bill and Hillary Clinton as potential witnesses.
The pre-election probe was stopped by Charles Banks, a Republican U.S. attorney in Little Rock who concluded that the Bush administration wanted to provoke an investigation so the embarrassing news could be leaked about Clinton and used to reelect George H.W. Bush. The prosecutor refused to go along.
WTF!? Nearly all of Whitewater was prompted by the edler Bush's campaign team? Well, now I've seen everything.
More on Ted Rall's infamous comic. The columnist John Scalzi has his own take on it, referring to himself as a "pretty good friend" of Ted Rall. In fact, I loved this description of Ted:
Ted's not one of those people who easily backs down from much of anything, and pushing him to act one way will generally make him dig down harder.
Wow. Now that's a guy I can relate to-- one whose innate stubbornness can lead him into self-destructive behavior. :)
Alternet has a story on a former member of the World Bank who now places himself among the "antiglobalization" protesters. Wow, he even got a rebuke from my fellow MIT alumnus Larry Summers. (former Secretary of Treasury and current president of Harvard University)
Putting my penchant for 80's nostalgia to work, we can apply the simultaneously amusing and disturbing foibles of those politicians to today and still apply the funny songs:
|
|
You've got to pick up the pieces C'mon, sort your trash You better pull yourself back together Maybe you've got too much cash Better call, call the law When you gonna turn yourself in? Yeah You're a politician Don't become one of Hitler's children ... If there's one thing that makes me sick It's when someone tries to hide behind politics I wish that time could go by fast Somehow they manage to make it last - The Ramones, "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)" |
Ken Layne's March 18th entry rips into Ted Rall and provides links to other rants he's made against Ted Rall over the past year or two.
Behold... the Tom Ridge Rainbow of Doom:
(Courtesy of MediaWhoresOnline.com)
As a followup to William Bennett's new project, there's a column pegging AVOT as a group that is manufacturing the perception of an anti-war movement.
Heather Havrilesky's March 14th blog entry has good advice for the lonely.
Alternet.org has this story about William Bennett's new project, "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism." Are they a grassroots effort to help combat terrorism abroad by supporting our troops? Are they a domestic effort to report on suspicious neighbors? Actually, neither. They are apparently a PR group dedicated to opposing anyone in America that publicly questions Bush's policies in the war effort. Thanks for looking out for us, Bill. I feel safer, already.
On a completely unrelated note, the March 10th entry in Punditwatch (scroll down) points out that, especially given the 6 month anniversary of Sept. 11th, war criticism was completely muted and off the airwaves.
A columnist in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune makes the obvious comparison between the never ending war on terrorism and constant war against ever changing enemies as an excuse for political and social repression in George Orwell's 1984.
Speaking of which, Neighborhood Watch has been enlisted to help in the war on terrorism. Now, Neighborhood Watch is great for things like reporting the local drug dealers at the park down the street and getting the police to chase them away, but I have this vision of grandmothers in upscale suburbs calling the authorities about swarthy looking men or poorly dressed graduate students walking through their towns. The National Neighborhood Watch Institute has printed up signs that say We Support Homeland Conformi.. uh, I mean Homeland Security/All suspicious persons and activities are immediately reported to our Law Enforcement Agency. I'm glad people are looking out at me.., I mean for me.
In a column by the Ombudsman of the Washington Post, the Nixon tapes are described by a colleague as "the gift that keeps on giving," in reference to the latest revelation of anti-Semitic remarks of Nixon and Billy Graham.
Ted Rall, a cartoonist I really enjoy, penned an extremely controversial comic alledging that some September 11th widows were publicity hungry. Needless to say, this provoked the predictable outrage. Ted Rall responded to the critics, and, surprisingly, his syndication company is supporting him. I really like Ted Rall, but he does get off the wall. However, if I wasn't looking for ultra-extreme biting cynical commentary, then I would read something else! In polite company, we would never say such things about widows of September 11th, or anyone with the misfortune of losing a spouse, but Ted Rall gets paid to write about and illustrate our darker natures, and that's why I go to his comics. Nice to see he's doing a good job.
Heather Havrilesky writes about "Avoidant Personality Disorder" in her March 6th entry. On dealing with relationships:
One of you breaks down and cries, and you both sleep badly, and then wake up and eat pancakes and talk about how everything will be different from now on, starting today...
The other person thinks that from now on, things will be different because you will remind him or her repeatedly how deeply flawed you are, and how you're so thankful that he/she accepts you given your fundamental unsoundness as a human being. You are forever indebted to this generous, caring soul, who will forgive you, day in and day out, for not hearing the bell - provided you grovel and apologize enough.
She also had an NPR Segment on Becoming Californian. I sympathize, as I lived the California lifestyle for a little while. Fortunately, I escaped.
The Nation has an analysis on the defeat of Riordan in the California Republican gubernatorial primary. I have to admit, I'm pretty shocked he got clobbered last Tuesday. This may be a victory for California conservatives, but the Bush adminstration was gunning for Riordan. What the heck happened?
A writer bedridden with the flu got a chance to catch up on her latest Sesame Street Episodes and wrote a review of them. Sadly, our worst fears seem to have come true-- Sesame Street has gotten lame. We all knew that Elmo embodied just about everything that was wrong with the new Sesame Street, but now we've found that even The Count (my favorite) has been forced to replace his thunder and lightning with confetti. This reminds me of one of the early Brunching Shuttlecocks issues which had a Ratings of Sesame Street Characters.
One of Slate Magazine's lamer features is the "Diary" section. Apparently, they admitted to having been duped by a guy claiming to be an autoexecutive. Yeah, like we missed anything.
I've just discovered the Punditwatch Blog. There's a link from there of one of Colbert King's Washington Post columns about Robert Byrd, a sequel to a hilarious column poking fun of a who-was-more-poor exchange between Byrd and Treasure Secretary O'Neill This column mentions Byrd's former history in the Ku Klux Klan. Truly Robert Byrd is the Democratic Party's Strom Thurmond. Incidently, Byrd and Thurmond are the only two remaining members of the US Senate who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Jesse Helms did not join the Senate until 1972, lest any of you think that he might have voted for it).
Ken Layne who used to write for the late, lamented Suck has an excellent insightful article about the "Greedy Record Industry". He summarizes the problem well by excerpting a statement from Neil Straus of the New York Times:
If you're Sony, and you're making $4.6 billion in music sales but taking in $40 billion in sales from electronics, who are you going to listen to: the music industry complaining about people downloading music without authorization, or the electronics executives trying to make better, more expensive CD burners and MP3 players?
Ok, here's an amusing little quote from a poster on the conservative web site Free Republic... In a discussion on the War on Drugs and a parody of the anti-drug Superbowl ad by the Libertarian party, one poster decided to point out:
Never fear! Our allies are in control of the opium trade in Afghanistan now, and Bush has waived sanctions against the narcotics trade in their case. So now when you buy smack, you're joining in the fight against terrorism.
Well, there you have it. You know, I feel I have to say that the original Superbowl ads were much better than people give them credit for. Plenty of people refuse to buy Nike shoes because they feel they support sweatshops. I don't go to the ballet because I don't want to encourage the destruction of women's bodies. Certainly we should be conscious of the fact that spending money on drugs is funneling money to any number of slimy characters. Next, of course, we'll hear people encouraging people to make sure their wares are "Made in the USA" when they buy drugs. I'm not going to touch that one. :)
I've been quite busy, lately and haven't had much time to update. This is a disturbing tidbit, though: Afghan warlords and the taking on of young male lovers. Is there really a thing with warlords and pedophilia in Afghanistan?
One of these days I'll write my rant about how rich, overcapitalized non-profit organizations exploit their young, highly qualified employees. For now, though, I'll just provide a link to an article about how Minnesota Public Radio has become an organization whose programming has decided to serve an exclusively elite audience.
So it turns out that bad guys use PCs and good guys use Macs in popular culture. Does this mean that PC users will become as stigmatized as men with long hair and/or accents? (gosh, while my parents bought me a PC growing up, I guess I should be thankful that they raised me with English as a first language and that I got my hair cut, last year-- that'll throw everyone off before I whip out my Thinkpad)
Here's a report that the Bush administration has suddenly pulled thousands of scientific documents from public view and is restricting the ability of researchers to publish certain details of their scientific results in papers. The Bush administration has been said to be run like a "well-oiled corporation." I'll refrain from commentary except to link to Sunday's NYT Op-Ed talking about Enron in the context of A Corporate Fear of Too Much Truth, and I'd like to express a certain fear that the Bush administration is going to plunge the USA into a scientific and intellectual dark age.
This is more of a rant about a site than a commentary on a particular article. The Brunching Shuttlecocks, a humor site, has apparently switched to an all-movie review format. The four most recently posted features have been movie reviews, which is now more than half of all recent features posted on their front page. I used to double over in laughter at some of their writing, and now all I see is reviews of movies I have no intention of seeing in the first place. The archives are still worth reading, though.
There is an article on ZDNet about a British study to determine if cell phone antennas cause cancer. Eeek.
Today's editorial in the Harvard Crimson covers possible solutions to grade inflation. Half of all grades at Harvard are A's or A-'s, and 90% of the students graduate with honors. I think I'll refrain from adding commentary to that.
Plastic has a special discussion on "The Valentine That Got Away. < sniff > Sometimes life really is like a depressing French movie.
From Something Awful:
Heather Havrilesky (scroll down to the Feb. 13 entry) wrote about tutoring kids who were constantly told they were idiots by their teachers. This reminded me of Mrs. Taylor, my 7th grade math teacher who handed out our tests in order of performance. Needless to say, I ended up hanging around for a while in my 30-person class before I received my test. Havrilesky contrasted this with her teachers, who knew her older siblings were really bright and cruised her right through, and her mother, who constantly reminded her how intelligent she was. This reminds me of my advisor, who, when he's pissed off with my lack of productivity, tells me I'm a bright and capable programmer, so clearly the problem is that I'm not doing any work. In addition, not too long ago, a "close friend" told me how I was incredibly brilliant (without irony, I think) because I was able to come up with such obscure, detailed readings on how and why and where there were problems in everything I saw, and I had an intelligence that was able to think with such a high level of complexity because because I could see the the problems and explain them in extreme detail when noone else could. This was flattering, in a morbid sort of way.
The American Prospect has an article about how a certain reporter on the White House beat gets ostracized by the Bush administration because he isn't shy about writing articles unfavorable to the administration. Now, this doesn't surprise me, and it's a fairly interesting read, but there are some people who need a daily reminder that the essence of conservativism is control and power, which many people confuse with morality. Those news junkies like me won't find the article telling them anything they didn't already know, but this is an interesting profile of one journalist's experience.
The New Republic has an editorial about what the real Enron scandal is. I don't get out much, so I haven't heard the word on the street from the outside world, but I've read some spin on the Enron scandal being that since the last minute pleas from Enron executives to the White House came to naught, there is clearly no political scandal. This ignores the long history of deregulation and lack of oversight that made the Enron debacle possible, for example Sen. Phil Gramm's connections and the connections of his wife, Wendy Gramm, to the policy making that made Enron possible. Enron lobbied for these deregulations and used their influence to make their collapse possible. TNR examines this in detail to explain why the real problems started years ago. This article is surprising, because TNR has taken a conservative turn, these days, which is why I started subscribing to The Nation.
Salon.com talks about the movement to subpoena sales records of bookstores to check up on the buying habits of suspects. Yet another reminder to support your local bookseller and pay in cash, instead of making those credit card purchases over Amazon. On the other hand, the local bookstore doesn't stock the art monographs I'm in the market for.
This is the way creationism ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Courtesy of Slate Magazine, we learn that Ohio is the next state to make itself a scientific laughingstock of the USA, thanks to their latest "controversy" over the evolution curriculum.
Matt Welch discovers that expatriat communities of Americans are caught in a timewarp left over from when the first moved out of their home country. Clearly this man hasn't encountered enough immigrant communities in the USA which have been caught in a timewarp from when they left their own home countries. No big surprise here, but it's amusing to see it from the other perspective ("dude, your attitudes are, like, so early-90s!").
Yeah, I went through the Modern Humorist celebrity Valentines. Enjoy.
