Tuesday, January 13, 2004

BBC to broadcast silent orchestra. The BBC is to broadcast a live radio performance of an orchestra playing four-and-a-half minutes of silence. John Cage's seminal work 4'33" will be the highlight of a concert on Radio 3. The piece consists of four minutes and 33 seconds' worth of nothing. [Ananova] Recently I pointed to some discussions on the fate of classical recording, in which the point was made that there really hasn't been much worth recording written in the last hundred years. Today I saw this story, and having determined that it did not come from The Onion, I offer it as strong evidence in support of that point. 6:47:03 PM    comment () TO PROWAR CONSERVATIVES AND "LIBERTARIANS": IT'S "LIBERALISM, WITH VERY SHARP TEETH". In this discussion of Richard Perle's and David Frum's hubristically-titled An End to Evil, the writer makes an interesting point that I hadn't come across before, at least not this explicitly: The book has generated much debate. In a review in The Washington Post, New Republic Senior Editor Lawrence Kaplan (former executive editor of The National Interest, the foreign policy journal published by Irving Kristol, the man referred to as the "godfather of neoconservatives") says... [The Light of Reason] 6:32:08 PM    comment () Mercer on O'Neil. Ilana Mercer asked me a while back if I could contribute a blurb to her new book, BroadSides (for sale on her web site, www.ilanamercer.com). The recent book by former Secretary Paul O'Neil, which has caused the Bush adminstration to... [LewRockwell.com Blog] An arguement for the theory that O'Neil was fired for being too honest for Washington. 2:44:33 PM    comment () Army War College slams Global War on Terror plan. The U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute calls the Global War on Terrorism, as currently envisioned, "politically, fiscally, and militarily unsustainable." Operation Iraqi Freedom was "unnecessary." And these guys work for the Army. [Back to Iraq 3.0] No doubt the Crusaders will be ranting about how the Army War College is "anti-American" and "pro-Saddam." 10:32:20 AM    comment () Documenting the Undocumented. Trying to figure out what to think about the president's proposed guest worker program? The Urban Institute has a handy compilation of data on undocumented immigrants. (Kudos, by the way, to whomever invented the phrase "undocumented immigrants", the chief function of which appears to be pissing off cryptoracists—call them "illegals" dammit!—who will now send me angry emails explaining that they're not cryptoracists...) [Hit & Run] 10:02:21 AM    comment () New Report: Mac Marginalization. If we can't even use Macs in the country's electronic VOTING systems, we've got a serious problem.... [MacInTouch] That's the government for you. They do everything they can to give Microsoft a monopoly, then sue Microsoft for having a monopoly. But does that stop them from trying to create a Microsoft monopoly? Of course not. 9:20:35 AM    comment ()

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