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Saturday, June 29, 2002 |
The Conservative Way to Call People Nazis
So Ann Coulter evidently thinks it's OK for conservatives to call people Nazis, but not liberals:
That is a liberal tactic to pretend not to understand irony, hyperbole, sarcasm. The quotes I have of liberals calling Republicans Nazis or comparing Republican policies to the Holocaust of bringing back slavery to throwing women and children off the -- off the -- whatever it is -- they're always being thrown off something ..... Those are not said in humor. They are not meant to be funny. They are meant to frighten people.
This when challenged to explain how Katie Couric is "the affable Eva Braun of morning TV." But it's OK for the good people to do that sort of thing.
5:29:01 PM Permalink
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Glad to hear this!
An extensive study shows no link between vasectomy and prostate cancer, even 25 years after the fact.
2:31:02 PM Permalink
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Literary Baseball
In 1936 Jorge Luis Borges, pitching for the Washington Senators, threw a slow curve ball to the first hitter he faced in relief. The ball never arrived at the plate. In 1945 a ball clearly not thrown by the pitcher was swung on and missed by Brooklyn left fielder Luis Olmo. Olmo later testified that it was definitely an American League baseball.
1:35:35 PM Permalink
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Rats Won't Stay Where There's Music
Nice collection of links to internet radio shows playing old-time music. Jeez, I hope this stuff can survive. [ExpectingRain]
In a somewhat related link, Mike passes along a link to drylongso, with some terrific music on it.
I'm takng a road trip this week, and it strikes me that one trouble with this internet radio stuff is that I can't pull it into the car, which is where I listen to music a lot.
12:40:23 PM Permalink
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Atlantic Flashbacks
I've mentioned before how great the Atlantic is for putting up their archives. The Flashbacks does more than just list or link articles, but provides a narrative tying them together.
Life, the Universe, and Everything is a collection of articles published over the last two decades dealing with efforts to understand the deep nature of the universe.
Who Deserves To Die is a group of articles going back to the 1940s discussing the death penalty.
The Atlantic is a deep site, befitting a distinguished magazine with a long history.
12:33:08 PM Permalink
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Respecting Religion
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart - HL Mencken
12:24:30 PM Permalink
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Original Silence
Short piece in Andante (via Progressive Review)about the high cost of silence; intellectual property seemingly run amok:
Mike Batt, the British composer and producer behind such crossover successes as violinist Vanessa Mae and Bond, the photogenic string quartet, has discovered that silence doesn't come cheap.
For the debut album by The Planets, a group of eight handsome young men and women wearing snug black outfits, Batt composed variations on several classical staples, including Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Debussy's Claire de Lune. He also included a silent track, titled "A One Minute Silence." In a nod to John Cage's silent 4'33'', Batt listed the composers as "Batt/Cage."
The credit was "just for a laugh," Batt told the London Independent last week, but he has received a letter on behalf of Cage's publisher, demanding royalties. The silent track, the paper reported, had "enraged representatives of the avant-garde, experimentalist composer."
"My silence is original silence," Batt complained, "not a quotation from his silence."
12:23:07 PM Permalink
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The Sons and Daughters of Liberty
In 1756, in Boston and other cities and towns, the coming of the American Revolution was speeded by mechanics, merchants, and artisans who organized against British tyranny. Calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, they set up committees of correspondence in the colonies to spread detailed news about British attacks on their liberties. They focused on the general search warrant, which allowed customs officers to invade and ransack their homes and offices at will.
In the spirit of the Sons of Liberty, on February 4 of this year, some 300 citizens of Northampton, Massachusetts, held a town meeting to organize ways to—as they put it—protect the residents of the town from the Bush-Ashcroft USA Patriot Act. On that night, the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee began a new American Revolution. Similar committees are organizing around the country.
Speakers at that town meeting were defying John Ashcroft, who threatened dissenters in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. He denounced those "who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty. . . . Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies."
But speakers at the meeting emphasized that the USA Patriot Act and the the succession of unilateral Ashcroft-Bush orders that followed apply not only to noncitizens but also to Americans in that very hall. William Newman, director of the ACLU of Western Massachusetts, pointed out that law enforcement agencies are now permitted "the same access to your Internet use and to your e-mail use that they had to your telephone records"—and may overstep their authority. "The history of the FBI," Newman warned, "is that they will do exactly that."
12:04:38 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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