Ethics cost money. Ethics cost money - The Los Angeles Times discusses the effect of Levi Strauss's ethical standards on their place in a competitive marketplace. Can a company succeed when they place their morals ahead of their money? [MetaFilter] 
11:30:07 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Playing the doctor card.

I just noticed something.

It starts with Mike advocating Sex in Politics:

It would be a far better world if more politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it. Every minute Clinton spent banging Monica Lewinski he wasn't screwing the rest of us or the world. Every time she knelt before that mighty cigar - she was a heroine.

Because - unlike most Americans - She could take everything a politician could put out - and swallow it !

Result - the greatest economic expansion ever - a massive decline in the murder rate - the biggest corporate party that anyone has ever attended - and something close to world peace was achieved.

Monica Lewinski deserves a frigging medal for all that.

After she stopped seeing the president, this country started going to hell.

(Mike, you got your asbestos suit? You're standing in the blast zone, dude.)

Then there's Britt on the Democrats' cognitive linguistic trump card [~] the one & only equally strong & nurturant role model that can beat Bush's stern daddy act. The Doctor.

Think about it. Doctors, at least professionally, aren't afraid of sex. Thanks to professional training, good doctors are fearless around the whole damn thing. It ain't no big deal. Fucking is fine. Blowjobs are fine.

(I loved The Onion's story "Clinton Emotionally Ready to Start Getting Blow Jobs Again".)

Anyway, seems to me there's a connection between the Fear Thing and the Sex Thing.

Not fearing sex is great training for not fearing anything else. Including how you look and sound on TV.

The democrats need to be The Fuckit Party this year. They need to be straight and honest and remind Americans of what they're giving up to the droning fearmongers who run the country right now.

Here's Bush's weakness: He can't ad-lib anything but platitudes, and he sucks at that, too. Yes, he's a wartime president who looks and acts the part; but he has trouble talking his walk, no matter where he's going.

Of course, if he nails Saddam and Osama, brokers peace between Israel and Palestine, and gets a decent government working in Iraq, give it up. It won't matter how bad he talks. Deeds trump words.

[The Doc Searls Weblog] 
2:05:06 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Time keeps on ticking ticking ticking. In 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... 1... 1... 1... "In this footage obtained exclusively by The Memory Hole, watch as the President of the United States sits and does nothing after learning that his country is under attack." Andrew Card whispers about plane #2, POTUS remains engrossed in book. (Warning: Quicktime, little kids reading slowly in unison for five long minutes.) [MetaFilter] 
2:02:40 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Transparent Web Caching Patented. John Public writes "BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, ... [Slashdot] 
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Lightning Jets Blow Sky High. Scientists are startled to discover a new form of lightning -- gigantic plumes that shoot up from cloud tops nearly 60 miles into the upper atmosphere. Some compare the discovery to biologists finding a new body part, and wonder how they could have missed it. [Wired News] 
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Pulling Up by Their Sandal Straps. Ecosandals.com, an online retailer of sandals made in Kenya, is managing to survive the dot-com shakeout -- and is bringing hope to Kenya's poor. The Internet may change the world yet. Jennifer Friedlin reports from Nairobi. [Wired News] 
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Black Elk Speaks. The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,--you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Black Elk speaks. [MetaFilter] 
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Orwell's Centenary. Today marks one hundred years since the birth of George Orwell. He may have died in 1950, just after finishing his master work, but he has remained culturally relevant ever since, and never more so than during the past two years. [MetaFilter] 
12:50:31 AM      comment []   trackback []