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Thursday, February 05, 2004 |
The Torn Document. THE TORN DOCUMENT....So what's the deal with the George Bush AWOL story? There are a million tedious details, but as near as I can tell here's the nub of the whole thing. Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in... [Calpundit]
10:01:47 AM Permalink
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Unsound unscience. Check out Chris Mooney's post on the latest move in Washington to gut government science, which cloaks itself in bogus terms like "sound science." This dreadful campaign probably won't get much attention in the national media, but its effects--on conservation,... [The Loom]
8:48:10 AM Permalink
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Chris Heilman: "Kerry won in AZ, and just about everywhere else. He's like Bush with shaggy hair, so it's 4 more years no matter who wins. On NPR, EJ Dionne said the only difference would be the judicial nominations." [Scripting News]
What utter nonsense. First, saying the "only" difference is the judicial nominations is saying something pretty big. But beyond that, there will be big, big differences in the way environmental laws are enforced, a cutback in the mixture of government and religion, a big change in the rhetoric of fear, division, and bigotry that comes out of the White House. Just because your guy loses doesn't mean that the guy who wins is no good.
8:46:20 AM Permalink
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Cory Doctorow has published his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe. Like his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory's made his book freely available for download under a Creative Commons License.
Cory has a write up of what he's trying to do:
The future is my business, more or less. I'm a science fiction writer.
One way to know the future is to look good and hard at the present.
Here's a thing I've noticed about the present: more people are reading more words off of more screens than ever before. Here's another thing I've noticed about the present: fewer people are reading fewer words off of fewer pages than ever before. That doesn't mean that the book is dying
-- no more than the advent of the printing press and the de-emphasis of
Bible-copying monks meant that the book was dying -- but it does mean
that the book is changing. I think that literature is alive
and well: we're reading our brains out! I just think that the complex
social practice of "book" -- of which a bunch of paper pages between
two covers is the mere expression -- is transforming and will transform
further.
(The comments are also quite worth reading.)
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8:42:01 AM Permalink
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Fox gay marriage poll
There is an opinion poll (unscientific and all that) on the front page of Fox News right now, asking "To what extent should gay couples be legally permitted to commit to one another?"
As expected from its mosty conservative audience, the "should not be legally recognized" option leads by 67% right now. But spread the word, and we'll see... [Secular Blasphemy]
8:22:11 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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SFX. The website of 