I once tried to impress a girl by putting Philip Glass on the stereo, she shot me a look of faint disgust - 'oh, architect music'. I was an architect at the time and most of my more anally retentive 0.1mm ink drawings were fuelled by the mechanical trance that onsets after six hours of Glassworks on repeat play. So Philip Glass came to San Francisco this week, and we went to see him play along to a series of short films which were mostly great, but then we had to sit through half an hour of turgid travelog and cutesy, derivative nature shots sponsored by Bulgari - sorry Bvlgari! Philip Glass is the apotheosis of modern, a musician that even dresses like a modernist architect, how weird then to be watching his troupe accompany silent films. How strange also that the only people wearing black polo necks last night...
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Christopher Hitchens' excellent 'Why Orwell Matters' will be the subject of a week long dialog between Hitchens and Sullivan
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"What does this mean for non-geeks? You'll be able to boot the phone company" You'll have to boot up your phone more like.
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Clayton Cramer who describes himself as ‘I’m a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older)’ says “Oh, you mean the laws don’t work when criminals want guns?” to somehow explain that Britain should not be so restrictive with guns. Well Clayton, even with the terrible increase in crime in the UK, gun related homicide rates are still 150 times less than in the US.
Do a favor for the safety of your children and drop the illusion.
Nick Denton rails against Islam again, but is it really a question of the secular US against Islamic fundamentalism, in a country where 90% of the population regularly attend religious ceremonies.
Christopher Hitchens Interview “Why is the United States so prone to any kind of superstition, not just organized religion, but cultism, astrology, millennial beliefs, UFOs, any form of superstition? I’ve thought a lot about it. I read Harold Bloom’s book The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1992) about the evolution of what he thinks of as a specifically American form of religion. There was a book by Will Herberg in the 1950s called Protestant, Catholic, Jew where he speculated that what was really evolving was the American way of life as a religion. And that this was a way of life that wasn’t at all spiritual or intellectual but in a sense believed that all religion was valid as long as it underpinned this way of life. Somehow religion was a necessary ingredient. In other words, religion was functional. I think that’s true but it’s not the whole story.”
… One Mid Adult Woman Only, Caucasian, One Person, 20s, One Young Woman Only, Content, Coffee, Portrait, Human Hair, 30s, Sitting …
A nice illustration of the power of the masses: Slashdot debunks Microsoft’s ‘switch’ (i.e. Mac -> PC as opposed to vice versa) PR bullshit, which rather sadly has to rely on fake people, by finding the Stock image of the model used. Microsoft then takes down the page, but it is captured by a blogger
via scripting
The page with the model
Microsoft’s ficticious Mac user
evaginate One to try at my next meeting – “hold on I just need to evaginate my bag to get my laptop”
Britain strips power from Catholic-Protestant hands, resumes sole control of Northern Ireland
So runs the headline in the Boston Globe. It may be the fault of Sinn Fein, but the Brits look bad here. However it’s the reaction of the Unionists that is worrying and they are going to become more and more of a problem for the UK government, with or without the indiscretion of Sinn Fein. As the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wanes due to the higher birthrate amongst Northern Irish Catholics, the Unionists will increasingly be on the defensive and will be likely to overreact in future, if they are not already.
So why can’t the European Union do anything about this? We’ve had the predictably useless role of the UN in sectarian control in Bosnia, so admittedly the idea doesn’t leap out of most politician’s mouths – but hell, lets at least call the federalists bluff, lets see if ‘Europe’ can take a neutral but useful role – allow and force the UK government to relinquish control. And while we’re at it, lets take the whole bloody mess to the European courts – why hasn’t anyone challenged the Protestant marches through Catholic areas as ‘incitement to racial hatred’ which is illegal under European directive.
And there are those that would accuse Bush of spending too much…
According to WordNetDaily, the self proclaimed US government waste tracker
‘In other words,’ as Jeffrey Birnbaum of Fortune magazine says, ‘the war on terror is being used as a ruse to justify all sorts of spending.’ He points out that 2000-2003 spending
or could it be this…
“…sentenced Rex to six years on her guilty plea to forgery, suspending four years of the sentence. The first of her four years on probation must be spent on house arrest.
Rex admitted stealing a total of $500 from three elderly residents of the home in West Lafayette. But she paid a total of $700 in restitution.”
So what’s the bet for Koslowski’s punishment, could it be this…
“Federal judge stands by mild sentence of embezzler
A federal judge sentenced a former bank executive convicted of embezzlement to serve eight hours in custody for a second time after an appeals court asked him to reconsider the sentence.
U.S. District Judge Edwin Nelson on Thursday ordered Mari Sanders of Vestavia Hills to serve a day in jail, six months in a community corrections facility and pay a $10,000 fine for stealing $187,000.”
Which works out at a pretty good salary – 2 x 187 – 10 = $364,000 per year