Tuesday, January 27, 2004
 Watching Tim Russert interview Wesley Clark this morning, it occurred to me how dysfunctional the system is. I saw the Great Dean Scream another dozen times. I heard the chief of the Democratic Party asked if he thought it was the end of the Dean campaign and he said the obvious -- it wasn't, and it should't be. Then they asked if Clark had screwed up by letting Michael Moore call the President a deserter. Later Russert repeatedly asked Clark to denounce Moore for saying that, but he wouldn't. The system is so perverse that Clark just danced instead of coming out and saying the obvious, yes, he's President, and yes, he got elected without his character getting the kind of examination the Democrats are getting. "So Tim, let's turn it around," Clark might have said, "Why didn't you grill Bush on that during the 2000 election? How did he become President without that getting vetted?" I might go further and wonder how he got the nomination without his military service being fully examined. If the Republicans cry bloody murder, let's go back and figure out who painted Dean with "angry" label. Yeah, it was the Republicans, in case you were wondering.  [Scripting News]
9:44:40 PM 
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Jesus, I hope his wife knows what she's got here...not a God so much as a visionary, innovative genius who gets it. Fundamentally gets it.
Linus as Antidote. Linus just has a way with words, don't you think? BusinessWeek did an interview with him, and he said some useful and some memorably funny things about SCO. My favorite first: "Nothing to lose is a bad situation to be in. They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them." He was asked what he thinks is motivating SCO: "I think there was a fair amount of bad feeling when IBM dropped out of the Monterey project [a joint-development project with SCO]. That was a big deal for SCO, and they had a hard time with that. Never mind the fact that it had long since become clear that the project wasn't going anywhere, and IBM would have been crazy to continue with it. "So you have some pent-up anger at IBM, a failing business that was losing its market, and put it together with a greedy new CEO who has fought legal battles before, and what do you get?" Linus totally gets it that the Novell-SCO copyright dispute has no significance in the greater IBM context, because their claims, in his view, are shaky anyway, even if the copyrights were theirs, because they can't seem to come up with any copied code: "The validity of their claims has always been very shaky, even regardless of the fact that Novell claims SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights in the first place. "The SCO claims have been shaky from the start because they haven't actually been able to show any particular copied code. It's like me claiming copyright on some article you wrote for BusinessWeek [without being] able to specify which article and which part of it I would have written. The fact that Novell now contests the SCO copyright ownership just makes them even more shaky." There is lots more in the interview, so hop on over and have a nice visit with Linus. Passing time with Linus is a good antidote to thinking about and writing about Dark Darl. [GrokLaw]
9:20:31 PM
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If you have not read this remarkable man's book "Ghost Rider", do so immediately. I mailed this book to a close friend who had lost his wife after a long illness, and he kept it for his library, and sent me a fresh copy. It was that resonant.
Neil Peart speaks about lyrics. "Writing lyrics is a tremendously demanding form of discipline; it requires precision. ... I'm not happy with spontaneity musically either." [Blogcritics]
8:26:52 PM
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This is your brain in love. In a fascinating new book, evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher examines the chemistry responsible for the giddiness, fixations and overarching lunacy associated with romantic love. [Salon.com]
8:17:21 PM
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