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Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Matthew Yglesias has a nice rhetorical line: "The last time a Republican has balanced the budget, the president in question was named Ike. The last time a Democratic president balanced the budget was the last time there was a Democratic president." [Davos Newbies] 2:34:30 PM  Permalink  comment []

Coyle and Sharpe. From the always excellent Sharpeworld comes a true gem: her father's comedy duo's site, Coyle and Sharpe. Harking back to another era (1960's San Francisco), the site features images, articles, and videos, but the hidden audio tracks of man-on-the-street bits are not to be missed. They have all the innocence of Candid Camera, but are quite a bit funnier. [MetaFilter] 2:10:44 PM  Permalink  comment []

Does the Future Need Us?. Freeman Dyson responds to Bill Joy's Why the future doesn't need us and Michael Crichton's Prey with an essay in the NY Review of Books titled The Future Needs Us! After dismissing Crichton's "fairy story", Dyson summarizes nanotech: "The idea of nanotechnology is to build machines on a tiny scale that are as capable as living cells, but made of different materials so that they are more rugged and more versatile. One kind of nanomachine is the assembler, which is a tiny factory that can manufacture other machines, including replicas of itself." [kuro5hin.org] 2:06:11 PM  Permalink  comment []

Like father, like son. This Reuters graphic published in Yahoo! News - Politics yesterday speaks volumes:   [Christian Crumlish (xian): salonika] 2:00:58 PM  Permalink  comment []

Chuck Hagel and voting machines --- the plot thickens. The Chuck Hagel voting machine ownership story gets even scarier. In today's Best of the Blogs, Jerry Bowles reveals more bizarre details about the Chuck Hagel/voting machine story, including the fact that the majority ownership stake in the voting machine company that counted Senator Hagel's upset victory in 1996 (and his reelection in 2002) is held by a man long associated with the radical organization Christian Reconstruction, which believes in overturning democracy and replacing it with a Christian theocracy. This is really weird and frightening stuff, if it checks out. [MetaFilter] 1:51:05 PM  Permalink  comment []

Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. Hit Man On Line The book was initially published in 1983. 13,000 copies of the book are now in existence. There has only ever been one case where the book was associated with a crime, in that case the criminal had recently finished a lengthy prison sentence and had a history of prior violent crime. It is our opinion this book has never incited a murder, that the settlement of the Paladin Press case was wrong and forced by the insurance company, and that this book, and no book, should be banned. We invite the public to judge for themselves.... [Moon Farmer] 10:20:05 AM  Permalink  comment []

"I don't like to be talked about." From a link on Expecting Rain comes a link to this amazing interview with Phil Spector. ' I have not been well,' says Phil Spector, choosing his words carefully. 'I was crippled inside. Emotionally. Insane is a hard word. I wasn't insane, but I wasn't well enough to function as a regular part of society, so I didn't. I chose not to.' He pauses. 'I have devils inside that fight me.' 8:39:04 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.