FINANCING THE INSURGENCY: Alaa has thoughts.
Archive for 2007
April 13, 2007
“THE DON IMUSES OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT:” Some of them even wore hats.
UPDATE: Tim Lambert says some of the quotes are fake.
ANOTHER UPDATE: In response, Lambert is called a serial misrepresenter. I’ve found him to be unreliable in the past.
FOLLOWING UP ON SOME OF MY EARLIER POSTS regarding Letters of Marque, here’s an article on privateering from Alex Tabarrok.
UNCLE LEO’S MEDALS: Eric Muller notes an astonishing conclusion to his family story.
ACTUALLY, I FIND THIS A BIT SCARY: “American Girl” fans mob Dick Cheney.
Kinda like the final chapter of The Diamond Age. . . .
MARKOS IS ALSO UNHAPPY with the DNC’s RIAA relationship.
HONESTLY MISSING IMUS: “I did indeed appear on the show once when I was promoting my book, and I was, in all honesty, very happy to do it, because his show did move books.”
That’s okay. There are other book-moving venues!
“SCALPING STANDARDS” FOR THE BLOGOSPHERE? Daniel Glover writes:
In my years of blog-watching, I have been amazed at how quickly today’s online watchdogs are to drop the f-word. I’m not talking about the one banned on the airwaves by the FCC; I’m talking about the one spelled f-i-r-e-d, or its face-saving sister, r-e-s-i-g-n. Nary a scandal, real or imagined, goes by without some blogger on the right or the left demanding that so-and-so resign or be fired if he refuses to go quietly. . . .
But every controversy does not warrant a firing or a resignation, and demanding as much runs counter to another goal of many bloggers: candor and transparency in politics.
Yeah, people make the jump pretty quickly from criticizing someone to demanding that he/she be fired. As I’ve noted before, that’s usually overkill.
THE DEMOCRATS’ FIRST 100 DAYS: Well, not everything was divisive:
Nine of the seventeen are bills to rename post offices and courthouses, which appears to be a bipartisan process–one of them is the ‘Rush Hudson Limbaugh Courthouse.’
Insert “ditto” joke here.
UPDATE: The GOP folks are quick off the mark with a video retrospective. How did people do politics before YouTube?
UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: I just noticed that K.C. Johnson has a book coming out on the Duke Lacrosse case, coauthored with Stuart Taylor. I’m sure it will be worth reading.
I CALLED THE WALTER MURPHY STORY THE 2007 VERSION OF THE NANCY ODEN STORY and that’s looking to be the case.
Hell, I’ve got a better claim than Murphy over an air travel incident. After all, Rush Limbaugh spent several days denouncing me last fall for my saying the Republicans didn’t deserve to win the elections. Obviously, I was bumped from this flight as a kind of underhanded payback. And on the return leg, my seat wouldn’t fully recline. . . . .
MARY KATHARINE HAM puts on a peep show.
THE TALIBAN APPARENTLY BEAT UP THE WRONG DRAQ QUEENS, and wound up being attacked by angry drag-queen-defending villagers.
TAXES TOO HIGH, BUT FAIR. Hmm.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT GETTING ANY LOVE from Cory Doctorow: DNC appoints RIAA shill to run Public Affairs for convention. I don’t find this quite as shocking as Cory does, but it certainly illustrates the closeness of those two operations. Not that the GOP has been willing to stand up to the RIAA much, either, even though it would seem to be in their interest.
I MENTIONED BEFORE that Nashville blogger Katherine Coble is being represented by the Media Bloggers’ Association with regard to the JL Kirk / King & Ballow libel threats. Bill Hobbs has posted a copy of the letter.
More thoughts here.
THE ANALOG HOLE IS WORTH 24 CENTS: It’s amusing to me to be reading about the “analog hole” from a guy named Ohm. But then, I’m a geek.
STARTING SOON: A Bathrobes for Brian movement!
MEN JUST WANT TO have fun.
SOME MEDIA CRITICISM ON THE SURGE from John Wixted — plus actual numbers!
UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer has a related column. Excerpt:
By the day, the debate at home about Iraq becomes increasingly disconnected from the realities of the war on the ground. The Democrats in Congress are so consumed with negotiating among their factions the most clever linguistic device to legislatively ensure the failure of the administration’s current military strategy — while not appearing to do so — that they speak almost not at all about the first visible results of that strategy.
Read the whole thing.
FOLLOWING UP ON LAST YEAR’S RAZORBLOGGING, I should note that a couple of weeks ago I got a nice gift — a fancy shaving brush, some upscale brush-style shaving cream, and a razor handle that uses the Gillette Fusion blades I use anyway.
Using the brush is kind of fun, actually, and to my surprise both the Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter say that it leaves my face noticeably smoother. (Insta-Daughter: “Your five o’clock shadow looks more like two o’clock now.”) I don’t know if it’s because the brush raises up the whiskers or if the overpriced shaving cream is actually worth the money. Either way, it was a nice gift.
AFTER ALL THE FLAK HE GOT for his Belle Meade mansion’s energy use, Al Gore is installing solar panels. Ecototality has a report, and photo.
A WHILE BACK, WE DID A PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH MISCHA BERLINSKI about his novel Fieldwork.
Now Stephen King, writing in Entertainment Weekly, says that he loves the novel but that the publisher has managed to bury it:
This is a great story. It has an exotic locale, mystery, and a narrative voice full of humor and sadness. Reading Fieldwork is like discovering an unpublished Robertson Davies novel; as with Davies, you can’t stop reading until midnight (good), and you don’t hate yourself in the morning (better). It’s a Russian doll of a read, filled with stories within stories. . . .
Why, why, why would a company publish a book this good and then practically demand that people not read it? Why should this book go to waste?
More thoughts here. It is a good book, and I highly recommend it too.
TERRORISTS IN SPACE? Well, sort of, as the Tamil Tigers hack Intelsat. Rather a black eye for Intelsat.