| |
 |
Thursday, December 16, 2004 |
BOBBY RAY
BOBBY RAY: "Bobby Inman, oldest of the old school, in his particular field.
This is the conclusion of an absolutely fascinatining interview in Slate:
Inman: If Rumsfeld were to be there for the next four years there will be a lot of my military colleagues who will be very unenthusiastic about it. But as much as they dislike Rumsfeld, they would not want to see a change in this immediate period. With the run-up to the Jan. 30 election in Iraq, you don't want to disrupt the chain of command.
Slate: After the elections, your military colleagues might welcome a change at the top?
Inman: They would not be greatly disappointed if he did not turn out to [serve] a full four years.
Slate: One assumes they feel the same about Paul Wolfowitz; we saw a lot of him and the neocons in the Iraq war run-up. They have virtually disappeared. Why is that?
Inman: They don't want to take the blame. … They were willing to take credit for things earlier; they don't want to take blame.
Slate: Who is going to take the blame?
Inman: I think we'd better stop there.
Slate: We're can't go opining about certain members of the administration?
Inman: No, no. Not gonna do that.
Slate: And the administration has sealed most of their documents for years to come.
Inman: Yeah, the historians are going to have a field day in 30 or 40 years.
"
(Via Gibson Blog.)
3:04:15 PM Permalink
|
|
Kinky Friedman for Governor!
According to this post, the Kinkstah will announce his candidacy for Governor of Texas in early Feburary! It's almost worth moving to Texas to vote for the guy. He's gotta be better than the steroid gulping movie star we have running California!
1:45:04 PM Permalink
|
|
Inside the Mac Revolution
Inside the Mac Revolution: "Twenty years on, one of the engineers who helped create the Mac writes his memoirs. But programmer Andy Hertzfeld's account is no dry paean to code: It's funny, engaging and deeply human. Wired News interview by Leander Kahney."
(Via Wired News.)
Hertzfeld's book looks like fun, though it sounds like I've read tons of it on Folklore.org. It's interesting, too, that Jef Raskin doesn't care for it as it tells a different version of the story than his. I've always been dubious from what I heard, about the extent of his contributions.
10:33:04 AM Permalink
|
|
Conservative Correctness Agenda in Public Schools
Conservative Correctness Agenda in Public Schools: "
United States: The loony fundies are rampant in Texas again. This time they're throwing a hissy fit over textbooks and, surprisingly enough, winning the fight to force their narrow minded, bigotted beliefs on the rest of the country.
Christian Conservatives on the Texas state Board of Education are rewriting textbooks to bring them in line with their neo-conservative social agenda. These are the same kinds of people who have been insisting for years that the liberals are driving their agenda in schools... but that seems to have been a case of Freudian Projection all along.
Where a textbook says something that doesn't agree with their warped take on reality, these people simply change the textbook. Here are some examples of changes proposed and changes in the past:
- References to
marriage must be defined as a lifelong union between a husband and a wife (not between two people, because that would imply that gays and lesbians married in Massachusetts, Canada or many parts of Western Europe actually exist).
- References to
partners become husbands and wives .
- Adolescence brings about an
attraction to the opposite sex ' not attraction to others (even though adolescence plainly does bring about attraction to others of the same sex for gay youths, it isn't part of the universe that these conservatives accept, therefore it must be written out of the book.)
- The last ice age took place
in the distant past not millions of years ago (because the earth is only 6000 years old).
Unfortunately, because textbook publishers don't want to create separate editions of their books for the red states versus the blue states, large red states like Texas often end up getting their way, and religious and conservative convictions become hardwired into textbooks to promote a Conservative Correctness agenda in our public schools.
Revision Marches to Social Agenda - Los Angeles Times, 22th November 2004 (via Morons.org).
"
(Via The Pagan Prattle Online.)
9:35:47 AM Permalink
|
|
The Psychics Sure Can Pick 'Em
Looks like the psychics had a pretty typical year of it, in which nothing they predicted came to pass, and they failed to predict major events that did occur.
Over the next few days, Osama bin Laden will die of kidney disease. Saddam Hussein will be shot to death. Fidel Castro will die. A live dinosaur thousands of years old will be captured. The Hoover Dam will collapse. And Rosie O'Donnell will adopt Siamese twin girls.
8:03:13 AM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
