Monthly Archives: August 2004

It’s not a double standard when one side has no standard

Woody Allen once said that you should defend to the death the right of the KKK to march—and then go and meet them with baseball bats.
“KKK” has now been replaced, apparently, with “anyone who disagrees with us,” as reported in The American Spectator:
Not once during the Democrats’ convention did I see any large number of [...]

Well, yeah!

Charles at dustbury writes about women:
I had concluded, after too many fashion magazines, that while there actually are women this tall and that thin, it’s the purely artificial photographic environment which creates the illusion that they’re actually somehow attractive, and besides, they never, ever smile.
Two of them were in front of me in the checkout [...]

Open Memo to Ron Silver

Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie writes about the RNC’s opening night:
Ron Silver… has invoked 9/11 in powerful terms (all quotes approximate): “We will never forget, we will never forgive, we will never excuse.” He’s gone on to invoke Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower—and to praise Bush as “doing exactly the right thing” in waging the war [...]

“Ah hell” means “continuous fire” in Minbari

My ideal plan upon arriving in Shanghai was to get work associated with film or TV production. Anything, really, from grip work to voiceover acting.
Didn’t happen, of course. (Although I must say I was contacted out of the blue by an American actor who has done a goodly amount of Hong Kong work. [...]

Attribution notation

Colby Cosh wants a better notation for “hat tips,” or links to sites where bloggers found information they comment on. The older form was via, the current is “Hat tip,” and Cosh doesn’t like either of them.
He proposes the dagger, and I like the idea. (He’s even taken to using it regularly.) [...]

Political Junkie Heaven

Over the weekend I got an email from Kevin Aylward of WizBang Blog, asking me (and many others) to promote his latest project, a portal blog which will feature excerpts from every post made from the Republican National Convention by accredited RNC bloggers.
RNCBloggers — Bloggers Cover The Republican National Convention looks like a [...]

Back. Kinda.

Okay, finally got my connection going (two days late, natch). And now I don’t feel like writing. In fact, I am simply wiped out right now. Hopefully some noodles, a big bottle of beer, and lots of sleep will recharge the batteries and I can get some make–up posts up tomorrow. [...]

Back tomorrow, maybe

Don’t wanna kvetch about my connectivity troubles—which led to this site being without stylesheets for several hours today, indirectly—but supposedly all will be resolved tomorrow. Of course, supposedly all was going to be resolved today between 4 and 5 p.m., and I didn’t find out that was off until after I sat waiting around [...]

It’s never enough, is it?

(Note: this is a month–old post that, for some reason, I never posted. It is put up now to fill in the time I am unable to post directly.)
So Richard Gere, who has made exactly two good movies in the last ten years, playing a shallow scum–sucking publicity–hound attorney in both of them [...]

Thotful thoughts

(Note: This was intended to be a much longer post, but I wanted to put something up while I’m unable to make posts, so I will likely continue it later. Probably much later.)
I don’t think in words.
Which will strike some of you as odd, others as obvious, and still others as “so what?”
Somewhere, [...]

While I’m away…

…here is some reading to keep you busy:

An interesting article on the Singularity and SF. It explains the idea of the Singularity pretty well, although some of the phrasing tries to suggest that it’s a crock. We’re not gonna know until (after) it happens. (Hat tip: Paul Hsieh.)
Henry Thoreau, hypocrite? For [...]

Hero opens in the US this week

And you should see it.
If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is somewhat similar in that it is heroic fantasy, but quite, quite different in most other respects.
I have put off writing my review of it (after only one viewing, and that now much more than a year ago), because I wish to discuss [...]

Umm

No posting for a while. Maybe tonight and tomorrow, but after that, it’s going to be a few days.
Or more.

Tell me again

Why am I wrestling with XHTML, CSS, and design instead of watching the Olympics?
Whatever reasons I had flew out of my mind when I saw this.

Which is the greater danger?

Dr. Leonard Peikoff has come out and endorsed John Kerry in this election.
(Note: I am not someone who sneers at him for calling himself Ayn Rand’s “intellectual heir,” though it does seem an odd formulation to me. He is a highly intelligent man, and one should not judge his intellect by his awkwardness. [...]