I'm underemployed, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 587
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 29 sign-ups; 15 cancellations; Total= 14
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 6 sign-ups; 2 cancellation; Total= 4
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Reed Waller, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
BONDY, France (AP) -- In the latest anti-Semitic incident in France, a Jewish amateur soccer team was attacked during a training session in a Paris suburb, police said Thursday.
Fifteen hooded attackers wielding sticks and metal bars assaulted the team of teen-agers from the Maccabi Bondy association, a Jewish group, late Wednesday after making anti-Semitic remarks.
Few North Americans read Joanna Trollope, and fewer still respond to key words in her vocabulary such as Aga. An Aga cooker-stove is so expensive and versatile, it does everything but peel the potatoes, and its presence in a kitchen tells you so much about the occupants that in the Brit book review pages, the phrase "Aga romance" perfectly categorizes a novel.
YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD OF HIM: John Pierce died. I know you never heard of him. Learn why you should have, please.
There aren't so many folks left who recall that Clarke's idea of "satellites" was mocked without mercy.
Rockets into space! What nonsense! They couldn't get there, they'd have nothing to push against!
This was the actual commonplace wisdom of newspapers, magazines, and pundits, a mere few decades ago. Only a few decades earlier, flight in the air, other than via hot air balloon, was obviously impossible. Today, nanotechnology is similarly inconceivable, and the possibilities of biotech and genetic research are viewed either with fear or incredulity.
The 17-year-old boys, all wearing yarmulkes, were walking home from a friend's house at 12:30 a.m. Saturday when two men with closely shaved heads approached them near Reeves and Cashio streets in Beverlywood.
"For no other reason than that they were Jews, one of the men punched one of the boys," Deputy Chief David Kalish said. The attackers knocked two of the boys to the ground and continued kicking and punching them, Kalish said. The men reportedly shouted anti-Semitic slurs, including "Heil Hitler," before fleeing in a dark-colored car with two other people.
Two of the teenagers were "beaten pretty badly," suffering cuts and bruises on their faces and necks, Kalish said. One needed several stitches above an eye. The third boy was unhurt.
[...]
Last year, 28 of 97 hate crimes in West Los Angeles were directed at Jews.
OILY THEORIES: I keep pointing out that "the oil companies" have become the Masons of the new millenium: the Hidden Hand wild-eyed conspiracy theorists always point to as Behind It All, whatever the "all" of the day is. Spinsanitylooks at the We Attacked Afghanistan To Get Oil theory as put forth by, yes, Ted Rall; I previously commented on this here.
Spinsanity also hears from Kirsten Selberg, the activist who compiled the list of "48 dubious achievements of President Bush" Michael Moore used without attribution or citation in Stupid White Men.
Still posted on the Voters March Web site, Selberg's list contains 47 of the 48 facts about Bush mentioned in Moore's book -- in the exactly the same order and with very similar wording. The only difference is that, unlike Moore, Selberg provides sources for almost all of her facts.
Representatives for Moore did not respond to requests for comment.
COCKBURN ADDS MORE FUEL:Remember Alex Cockburn's rambling anti-semitic piece the other week? Here's an even more incoherent followup.
Cockburn begins:
For those of you eagerly awaiting further uproar from this columnist on the unspeakable assaults on Palestinians on the West Bank, the carnage in the camps, the siege of the Holy Church of the Nativity by Sharon’s troops, a word of warning: this column contains reflections on barbecue, a subject that arouses even more passion than matters affecting the peoples of what used to be termed the Holy Land, so parental discretion is advised.
[...]
my cellphone rings. It’s a fellow from The New Republic called Frank something or other, who is eager to quiz me about some recent remarks of mine about the Internet being awash with anti-Israeli material. Amid the crackle and hiss of the ether and the roar of the interstate it’s hard to hear Frank through the no-hands speaker on my dashboard, but eventually I catch his purpose, and ask him flatly, in more-or-less these words, "Frank, is your purpose to accuse me of disseminating anti-Semitic libels, under the guise of relaying rumors on the Internet?" Frank allows jovially that this is indeed his intent. I tell him that in my opinion the stories about Israeli spies, as categorized in a DEA report discussed on Fox News, by the French site Intelligence Online and various other news sources including the British Jane’s, are legitimate topics of comment, as are the stories about anthrax dissemination involving an anti-Arab researcher.
We go back and forth on such issues until the static gets too bad. Later I retrieve a magnanimous message from Frank saying that he is conferring with associates about whether to deal with me in The New Republic. So I assume that at some point Cockburn will be stigmatized yet again as the purveyor of anti-Semitic filth. It’s all pretty predictable. The viler the actions of Israel, the more rabid and undiscriminating the assaults of their troops on Palestinians in the camps, the shriller become charges here that almost any discussion of Israel or of the Israel lobby here is by its very nature anti-Semitic. The day there’s a photo of an Israeli soldier shooting a child next to the font in that Bethlehem church you’ll find a big story in The New York Times about the troubling resurgence of anti-Semitism, with plenty of quotes from Abe Foxman of the ADL.
Cockburn then sails off into:
And on the topic of the Times, have you noticed how that great paper has had a front-page piece rubbishing the Catholic Church as a nest of molesters every day for some time, especially since Sharon invaded Ramallah? The uncharitable could see this as a preemptive strike against papal criticism of Israel’s actions, and also to shift attention away from the blood-stained molestations of the adherents of one of the other monotheistic religions.
I won't quote the rest of the piece: it's an incoherent mishmosh pinballing from barbeque to the Queen Mum to death row to god knows what.
It's hardly necessary to point out that Cockburn in his previously noted piece simply listed a variety of non-sequitur insinuations and accusations against Jews, saying nothing about Israel at all. This incidentally earned him astonished commentary by such as Matt Welch and Dr. Frank.
When asked about his anti-semitic assemblage by "Frank," above, he jags off onto how he's only talking about Israel. Which, of course, he wasn't.
There's no doubt that Cockburn has moved into Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran land, where they can no doubt obtain the blessing of Billy Graham; how long until Cockburn is explaining that September 11th was the act of Mossad remains to be seen, but I won't be surprised when he reveals it.
Addendum: Dr. Frank has further comment. Franklin Foer's chastisement of Cockburn is here.
ELECTION ROUND-UP: You heard that Ron Kirk won the Democratic nomination for the Texas Senate race. Lesser news, though, is that Scott Armey, Dick Armey's son, lost his race for the Republican nomination for the 26th District of Texas seat in the US House, and Republican Robert Ray, fresh from his special prosecuter job, pulled out of the New Jersey Senate race..
4/10/2002 02:31:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW, I expect, or by Thursday at the latest: the script to the soon-to-be-released Star Wars: Attack of The Clones. And, yes, from my knowledge of the film, the parts I've read so far are authentic. Well, mostly, anyway; probably some bits have been altered as a tag to reveal where this leaked from. Start picking your times in the pool for what hour LucasFilms will have their legal e-mails out by.
Addendum: retrospectively, I tend to think this is more likely a fan-written script based on the extensive and detailed plot outlines that have been posted on the Web for months now. I think this for several reasons, including that the script is still up, and that much of the dialogue seems questionable to me. In any case, I think you can rely on the general plot thread and set of scenes being largely correct; whether any further detail here turns out to be correct remains to be seen in the not very distant future.
Rumors that alternative names of this blog, incidentally, included "Anakgdikin" and "Nabgdoo" are only rumors.
[Halle] Berry, the first black woman to win an Oscar in the 74-year-old history of the Academy Awards, for her role as a death row widow in Monster's Ball, returned to the set with an inflamed cornea.
You can't blame them for missing Gone With The Wind. It's so obscure: who's even seen it?
Rumor has it, by the way, that people who aren't actors win Oscars, but that's probably not so.
"We hate you," one of Yasir Arafat's senior aides, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, said last week, addressing the Israelis on the Al-Jazeera network. "The air hates you, the land hates you, the trees hate you—there is no purpose in your staying on this land."
Smoking marijuana does not have a long-term effect on intelligence, say researchers in Canada who have followed volunteers from before birth to early adulthood.
Heavy pot smokers did experience a dip in their intelligence quotient (IQ). But people who had once smoked heavily and then given up were right back up to normal, the study found. Light smokers appeared no different from non-smokers.
[...] Fried concedes that while IQ may be spared, memory and attention may be harder hit and is examining the effect now: "The most-often stated reason for quitting was they felt their short-term memory was affected."
The technology harnesses network technology usually associated with file-sharing programs such as Napster to quickly and efficiently distribute signatures identifying spam. The machine learning component of the system automatically identifies new junk email by making a probabilistic judgement of the content of a message.
AND THE SMOKE SAYS: This is good Vatican politics, regardless of what the conclave ultimately decides:
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's doctrinal chief, said an African papacy would "only be to the Church's benefit".
Cardinal Ratzinger, 74, is viewed as a possible king-maker in the conclave that will eventually choose the Pope's successor.
The Bavarian-born prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told the German newspaper Die Welt that the Church's African leaders had all the qualities required for the papacy.
"They are absolutely up to the level of such a position," he said. As a result, it was entirely plausible that the "next Pope may come from there."
Yet Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledged that racism could prevent an African succession and that there were still "great misgivings in the West about the Third World".
But sources close to the terrorism investigation said Monday that, contrary to a report in Newsweek, it was not information from Ibn Al Shayk al Libi that led investigators to Zubaydah.
Al Libi, a trainer in the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, is in Egyptian custody. It is unclear when he was transferred from U.S. custody.
The sources said al Libi is providing information to interrogators, but they refrained from calling it cooperation.
I'll bet. The US didn't transfer al Labi to be nice to the Egyptians; it was done, I'm quite sure, because of their ungentle interrogation techniques, illegal under US law.
I'm still wondering who shot Zubaydah in the groin while he was trying to escape, but I confess to not losing sleep over it in the least.
IT'S NORML that Kirsten Danis was smokin' with this story:
Being mayor can be such a drag.
A pro-marijuana group is using a pot-positive quote uttered by Mayor Bloomberg last year, in a new $500,000 ad campaign to be unveiled today.
"Great. I'm thrilled," Bloomberg quipped sarcastically yesterday when asked about the ad after a joint press conference with the Fire Department.
Bloomberg bluntly admitted to New York magazine in April 2001 he had smoked marijuana in the past - and definitely inhaled.
"You bet I did, and I enjoyed it," Bloomberg said at the time.
FIGHT THE GOTHS!: What about the Vandals? The WashTimes has the story on the release of this year's "Pig Book," the annual report on pork from "Citizens Against Government Waste". Their lede:
A youth-outreach program in Missouri expected to spend $273,000 to combat "Goth culture."
Surely more should be spent to fight the fearsome threat of clove cigarettes, and really really pale people? Perhaps a goth version of "Up With People!" should be formed: "I'd Be A Vampire, But I Suffer Ennui." No exclamation mark, of course: too much effort.
I AM SO A VICTIM! is essentially the cry of Andrea Peyser, New York Post columnist. Well, her, her views, people on the right-wing, and "white" people, more or less. She takes some heat in the letters section of Romenesko's Media News for her assertions about the Photo Pulitzers, including:
I think the proof of the politics behind the Pulitzer jury's decision is obvious in the pictures. The Pulitzers today represent the best politically correct and left-leaning journalism. It so happens that the best newspaper photograph of the year features an American flag and three white male firefighters. By Pulitzer's standards, that made it a loser.
Unlike most mere mortals, Peyser is able to determine that there is One Objective Best in aesthetic quality. Next: Ayn Rand rises from the dead to immortalize Peyser as a protagonist.
(A couple of those awful left-wing photos that won can be viewed below.)
I'll point out, by the way, that the Culture of Victimization, like most things in life, is unique to neither left nor right. Everyone can play! Most people like to. Most people genuinely feel that My Side Is Most Ignored By Powerful Powers and is The Rightful Underdog.
Unsurprisingly, those on the flip side find that view incomprehensible, and conclude that this is further evidence of the other side's hypocrisy and outright malicious dishonesty. Whump, there it is.
Huzzah! They're both wrong! Both sides are sincere! People just don't spot the biases towards their own views and against the side they oppose, and since it's invisible to them, it obviously doesn't exist and is a lie. Wacky mishaps ensue.
WATCHING THE WATCHMAN: Although I'm generally a lot more positive about the New York Times than most bloggers -- left and right; I'm always amused about how friends from each side are so utterly convinced that the Times is so obviously biased to the [right/left] -- I'm in agreement with Dr. Manhattan's analysis of this editorial.
4/09/2002 05:48:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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BROWSER CHECK-IN: If you're reading this with Internet Explorer 6, could you drop me a line at gfarber@savvy.com and let me know, please, along with what OS you're operating under, and which iteration of IE 6? If you've had problems loading the page with that or any other browser, please let me know. Also, is anyone reading this via IE 5.0 (not 5.5, but 5.0) and Windows 98? I've one complaint that it can't be read that way, but not so heard from anyone else. Thanks.
4/09/2002 05:21:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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ALWAYS READ CALVIN TRILLIN, I say, because he's a writer whose every paragragh is gold: malleable, conductive, and brilliant. Why, he's the James Lileks of the Old Media world!
Here is a typically charming piece about the extraordinary and eccentric Shopsin's restaurant in Greenwich Village.
Normally, they take only a brief glance at the menu—a menu that must include about nine hundred items, some of them as unusual as Cotton Picker Gumbo Melt Soup or Hanoi Hoppin John with Shrimp or Bombay Turkey Cloud Sandwich—and then order dishes that are not listed, such as "tomato soup the way Sarah likes it" or "Abigail's chow fun."
When Kenny gets a phone call from a restaurant guidebook that wants to include Shopsin's, he sometimes says that the place is no longer in operation, identifying himself as someone who just happens to be there moving out the fixtures.
Here is a piece on the subject from 1975, which never mentions the name or location, and here is an interview with Trillin, where you can find some worthwhile thoughts about good journalism.
But most papers and magazines and television networks only went to Indiana when there was an important Presidential primary or a natural disaster. When they did end up there, they explained to readers in about the second or third paragraph why the story was larger than simply what was happening there, and therefore worth the time of important persons like themselves.
CHAVEZ VS. VENUZUELA CONTINUES: Yesterday the work slowdowns and stoppages in the oil industry began to come to a head: Chavez, in predictable fashion, threatened use of the military and made his usual attempts to rouse populism on his side.
In a long nationally televised address on Sunday, the president said the military could run oil production and refining sites if necessary. He also took the opportunity to announce that he had fired 7 dis
