Virtual, but permanent.
Missives from the most primitive place on earth.
On some level, it’s infuriating to know that houseboats in Amsterdam get better internet bandwidth than the most luxurious penthouse in Manhattan or San Francisco.
L.A. Traffic Causing Premature Births: Study: Discovery News.
The number of studies linking the poor air quality to pulmonary problems and generally poor health are numerous. Now, a new study shows that smog adversely affects pregnancies. Yet, somehow, one cannot believe that this will effect any more action in a populace long since drowned in utter apathy.
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Ruth Madoff forfeits asset claims, left with $2.5 million | Reuters
$2.5 million is not a bad take at all for suffering through decades of lavish living at the clients’ expense. One wonders why someone how has absolutely no bargaining power vis a vis the prosecution of a confessed criminal is granted such a healthy settlement when a huge number of the defrauded clients are left with absolutely nothing.
The soup thickens, indeed.
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BBC NEWS | Americas | California ‘to scrap textbooks’
This doesn’t mean that California school children won’t be educated. The ones with computers and an internet connection will manage. The ones who cannot afford the technology required for electronic textbooks will make Arnold Schwarzenegger sound educated.
This economic slump has an infinite upside for Schwarzenegger.
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The story is dated, but timeless. The acts described in it are unforgettable, yet frequently forgotten. As of this writing, the crime remains unsolved, and the motive remains the subject of speculation. In as much, one is left with the impression that these unforgivable acts are somehow condoned or tolerated.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband World: Mapping the global picture
Extolling the virtues of a “pure and unadulterated capitalism” has always been in vogue in the United States, and it has never changed the fact the country is lagging in many critical measures of quality of life, chief among them life expectancy and infant mortality.
Now we can add broadband speed to the list, though broadband speed is hardly a measure of quality of life. It is a damn nice measure of excess, that one characteristic for which the USA is best known.
It’s nice to know to know that monopoly power is still worshipped in the United States for the excess power and wealth it concentrates in the hands of the few. Who cares that monopoly power never delivers better service at a lower price, innovation (Microsoft still doesn’t get the iPod), improvements in infrastructure, or a functioning marketplace?
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Congressional computers continue to be used to vandalize Wikipedia – Wikinews, the free news source.
It is entirely not surprising that the Congressional IP addresses belonging to those who “vandalize” Wikipedia and Wikinews belong disproportionately to Republicans. The Republicans are surpassed in their opposition to reality only by the red Chinese and the communist Cubans. Even Hugo Chavez has greater tolerance of the truth. (Which is not to say that he is tolerant of the truth.)
As if propaganda outlets like CNN, Fox “News”, network news, Rush Limbaugh and his coterie of “conservative pundits” weren’t enough, Republicans seem to feel the need to tamper with an open medium that meticulously documents the source of every minute datum entered into it.
Whether the motivation for these attempts at averting truth arises from fear or malice, the scenario bodes ill for the party of Lincoln.
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BBC NEWS | Americas | Gay marriage row at Miss USA show
You know you live in the primordial soup when a ditzy beauty queen objects to the offense that a gay gossip queen serving as a judge may have have felt at her objection to homosexuality and to gay marriage.
Should gay men be judging heterosexual female beauty pageants? Does being a gossip columnist qualify one as a judge of beauty?If yes, would this mean that American standards in beauty have been elevated, or that the “gay mafia” is exerting its influence. Should a decidedly naive beauty be disqualified from being queen for being a bigot? If yes, would this constitute an elevation of American beauty standards?
Within this primitive confusion lies the incontrovertible assertion that the Miss America Pageant represents absolutely nothing. No other fact can possibly account for the Pageant’s pathetic grasps for publicity.
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Don’t know how many people are as fed up with NPR as I am, but if you are, go to the NPR contact page, choose “share a comment” and then “The Ombudsman”, then choose Morning Edition or any program that you want to complain about, and send them the following. Just be sure to customize it for the program of your choice.
Morning Edition has been decimated. It is now two hours of garrulous banter punctuated by a few scant minutes of barely competent reportage.
The interview format is stupid. It is condescending, it is wasteful, and it is deceptive. It makes no sense to have incompetent anchors like Steve Inskeep or Rene Montaigne interview a competent reporter like Anne Garrells or Nina Totenberg. In this manner, the interview format takes time away from a perfectly competent and knowledgeable journalist. This format reduces the amount of information being reported.
The interview format is also a means of muzzling the journalist and/or deceiving your listeners. A perfect example was Linda Wertheimer’s interview with your business editor on Sunday’s Weekend Edition. The editor (whose name I can’t be bothered to look up after the embarrassing piece she delivered) gave us a rosy picture of the US as the world’s leading manufacturer. This assertion cannot be true given consolidation of the European markets. Furthermore, America’s preeminence in production does not remedy its economic ills. The drop in production–and the drop in exports–is a persistent trend. We could very well remain the world’s greatest producer and still have a shrinking economy.
Naturally, Wertheimer participated in this deceptive argument by avoiding asking any of the questions raised above. The pathetic script did not allow it, and the very existence of the script makes NPR a propaganda source.
I have gone beyond the point of halting all donations to my local NPR stations as a form of protest. I am going to start writing my politicians to kill NPR.
NPR is no longer a disinterested source of news. Its content is nearly 50% Republican propaganda, as demonstrated by the persistence of useless “analysts” like Cokie Roberts and Juan Williams. NPR no longer produces as much original reportage as it did 20 years ago. It no longer adds to what the wire services deliver to everyone effectively for free.
In as much, NPR is useless, and I want it off my precious airwaves.
If you want sentiments like mine to balloon into a movement, keep doing what you are doing.
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Steele In Serious Hot Water With Social Conservatives
In confirmation of his previous affirmation that neither he nor the Republican Party have any balls at all, Michael Steele bowed to his masters again today and withdrew his earlier assertion that he views abortion as a choice.
The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.
Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?
I think Roe v. Wade—as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?
The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.
The bigger story, perhaps, is the fact that the entire Republican Party apparatus is oblivious to the irony of it all: Michael Steele is a leader who is expected to obey the rank and file. Only the Republican Party apparatus–a cadre of apparent illiterates incapable of grasping the semantics or the political process of leadership–would expect full compliance with failed policies from its new leader.
The conclusion is inescapable. The party of Lincoln is now the party of slaves. Resistance is futile. You will conform.
Boy.
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