30 June 2004 – 11:40 pm +0800
Nobody here but us mindless automatons:
Yes, that’s right, I’ve just been completely brainwashed by the realities of one hundred years of history, two world wars, countless dictator-furnished genocides, a few hundred million dead innocents, the complete and utter failure of communism and socialism in more countries than I can name, and fifty years of bureaucratic [...]
30 June 2004 – 8:41 pm +0800
David Friedman, Bob Cresse, Herschell Gordon Lewis… Michael Moore?
That’s what John Haber suggests. I almost buy it, but not quite.
And, much as I despise him, I cannot call Moore untalented. A hack, a loathsome human being, and more, yes, but he has talent.
He just wastes it.
30 June 2004 – 8:06 pm +0800
I begin to think that anyone with a journalism degree should be forbidden the job of reporter. Why?
Here’s what the Washington Post reported:
The refusal of Marine commanders to recognize Fadhil’s new title has fueled particularly intense anti–American sentiments here. In scenes not seen in other Iraqi cities, U.S. convoys have been loudly jeered. [...]
30 June 2004 – 11:23 am +0800
Okay, I’ve got Google’s Gmail (thanks for the invite, Jessica!). I shall update the front page sometime this week, but I’d like to use it as my primary as much as possible, so you can send comments to
ianhamet -AT- gmail -DOT- com
Thus far, with a scant two messages, it seems pretty nifty. Heck, [...]
29 June 2004 – 11:11 pm +0800
Well, the remainder of my personal library arrived today, after about two months in shipping. Though I divested myself of at least 90% of my total collection before leaving, I still own too many books.
I seem to be missing a book or two—lost in shipping?—but nothing to get in a fret over. Lord [...]
29 June 2004 – 6:17 pm +0800
Jay Solo’s remarkable wife has just written a post you should read.
Facts have become irrelevant to an increasingly large group of people, and it frightens me.
[...] I have a very good friend who I can’t even bear to talk to anymore because of her conviction that a certain overweight filmmaker is more credible than the [...]
28 June 2004 – 11:56 am +0800
I love Cox and Forkum, but their latest isn’t comedy, it’s simple distillation of the truth:
27 June 2004 – 10:15 pm +0800
Victor Davis Hanson assesses the war:
We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, [...]
26 June 2004 – 11:45 pm +0800
Nantong: nice. Not spectacular, but nice.
Giving a presentation on less than five hours’ sleep: not something I ever wish to repeat. I did well, but I had to be told that.
Meeting Nancy, a Chongqing (Chunking) native and graduate of Shanghai Normal University with her own DV camera: oh, hell yeah!
Me: [...]
25 June 2004 – 10:53 pm +0800
Less than 36 hours after my plane lands, I must depart Shanghai once again, this time for a bus trip to Nantong and back in the same day. Three hours each way. Yech.
Funny, though, I was going to observe sometime soon that I’ve never been so locally confined as I have this year. [...]
25 June 2004 – 3:25 pm +0800
Does this bother anyone else? Al Gore equates open criticism and reasonable dissent from his position with the thuggery of Hitler’s brown shirts:
The administration works closely with a network of “rapid response” digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for “undermining support for our troops.”
This debases the language, and political [...]
24 June 2004 – 11:55 pm +0800
…the city of Xiamen is incredibly beautiful.
And hot.
And humid.
But very, very beautiful.
It is nestled in with some small mountains, right on the Pacific. And when I say “nestled,” I mean that there is one peak in the city that is nearly free–standing, and the local architects have used it as a guideline [...]
24 June 2004 – 9:43 am +0800
I spent last weekend reading about the disaster of making Twilight Zone: The Movie. I knew about it in a cursory way before, but my god, John Landis should be in prison.
But something struck me odd, a little piece of hypocrisy mixed in with the hubris and tragedy.
You know how Hollywood is always lecturing [...]
23 June 2004 – 6:25 pm +0800
(Warning, poached link ahead)
Belle de Jour (which, be warned, is the “diary of a London call girl”), has a hilarious list of things we can learn from the animals, including:
A rhinoceros’s horn is made of hair. Men who are lacking in the horn department, on the other hand, are not advised to grow ponytails to [...]
23 June 2004 – 4:51 pm +0800
To people my age, the Apollo program is just history, something that occurred in that strange, dim territory before memory begins—in fact, before existence begins. We hear about it, see the pictures, perhaps even video recordings of the landings themselves. We see movies and miniseries which present a different time, a different culture, [...]