Whatever: When Ministers Say Goddamned Stupid Things
John Scalzi has a little response to Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson, who compared Ken Lay to Martin Luther King, Jr, and to Jesus. This is worse than PTI comparing Jonathan Papelbon to Mariano Rivera.
By the way, if you’re a fan of science fiction, or even if you aren’t, check out Scalzi’s books. I’ve enjoyed them. His blog’s not bad, either.
Deafening silence in the blogosphere – Sepia Mutiny
Found this on BoingBoing. It seems that, for a change, the “old school” news guys covered this a lot more thoroughly than the “new school” bloggers did.
I can’t really say why I didn’t say anything about it. It’s certainly a big deal. An unnamed political blogger quoted in the article said that he didn’t post it because he had nothing to add, and I probably don’t, either.
I have to say that my technique for finding things to write about is that I post something when I notice and article that interests me. Often things are going to slip through the cracks.
I don’t mean to trivialize the importance of what happened there. This is a big deal, not only for those directly affected, but for the world.
I think it reminds us that bloggers and traditional journalists don’t have to be on opposite sides. The success of blogs does not have to come at the expense of traditional journalism, and I think we’ll find a good middle ground where everyone (except close-minded and insecure jerks) can live in peace.
I want people to read my blog. I have pipe dreams of getting 200,000 unique hits a day and making a living with Google Adsense. I like to think that I have interesting and humorous things to share with the world (My mommy and my fiancee tell me they think my blog is good). In my quest to expand my readership, I’ve been searching around for other blogs and such where I can contribute a comment with a link back to my site, so that maybe I’ll say something interesting, and someone will come read a post or two here, and they’ll enjoy it, and keep coming back. So I was poking around at del.icio.us, looking for interesting things to read. Wow, are there some crazy people out there. There was one person who dissected and refuted an Onion article, accusing them of pushing their agenda, whatever that is. I won’t link to the post, because I don’t want to encourage her to post anything ever again. I found an article from some reputable news site that claimed to talk about politicians in Washington regulating the internet, but never really saying anything. Politicians regulating the internet is a big deal. There’s lots to say. Why write an article about it and not say any of them? I don’t know, either.
My point is that you never know what you’re going to get when you read a blog. So you need to be careful. If you read a story at the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, you’re probably getting someone who at least did some research. And of course, everything you read here is thoroughly researched, down to the most mundane detail. I swear.
But what about those scurrilous bloggers who would deceive you with lies and half-truths? They’re out there. You’ve got people paid by companies to promote products. You’ve got insane people making things up as they go along.
I’m here to tell you not to trust anyone. Except me. You can trust me. Just ask my mommy.
US wants passenger info before overseas departures – Yahoo! News
This article is a little thin on details, but apparently DHS wants to get a list of all passengers on a plane, plus a bunch of info about them, before any plane in another country leaves the gate bound for the US. Each passenger must then be cleared by customs before the plane can leave.
Does anyone really think this makes us safer? Do we somehow have a list of the names and addresses of every terrorist in the world? If so, maybe we’d be better served by going to their respective houses and asking them to please stop being terrorists.
This seems like an excellent way to delay plane departures and make a show of making us safe without actually doing anything. And there’s the added bonus that most of the passengers will blame the airline, not the government. It’s really a stroke of genius by Homeland Security.
Treehugger: Climate Change Threatens Vineyards
Climate change is making more and more areas unsuitable for growing grapes to make wine. This is an outrage. Who cares about dumb jaguars (Note – it’s more fun to say jaguar in Spanish – the “j” sounds like an “h”. Try it!) and worthless giant pandas – they can’t mess with my wine!
Actually, I’m just kidding. I care deeply for jaguars and giant pandas. And the article is making predictions for 2099. By then, little nano-machines will be making wine from raw carbon without all that work of growing grapes and fermenting them and all that.
I wonder how long it takes before climate change starts affecting something that everyone cares about? I mean, it’s easy for someone to say, “I don’t care about the rainforest” if you’ve never seen one. The whole “we need them to survive” thing doesn’t seem quite real. It’s the same with melting ice caps. They’re far away. Not to diminish the impact they have on our lives, but it is certainly easy to ignore.
Maybe someone should get Al Gore on this. He could make another movie called “A Sobering Picture” all about how wine is good for you, but the Republicans are trying to destroy it.
Newsvine – Political Strategists to Launch Web Site
Well, not quite all my life. Looks like “Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Clinton” are starting up an “Internet information venture designed to interact with America’s opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web”.
It’s supposed to be a social networking site for grownups. And it’s supposed to be bipartisan, focusing on informed debate rather than the self-serving crap we get from the Democrats and Republicans now.
It remains to be seen if it will be anything worthwhile, but I would love to see this work out. Imagine! A place to get real information from both sides of our political spectrum.
Anyway, keep your eye out in October for HotSoup
CNN.com – Bush heralds improved deficit figures – Jul 11, 2006
Bush says:
These tax cuts left nearly $1.1 trillion in the hands of American workers and families and small business owners. And they used this money to help fuel an economic resurgence [leading to higher tax revenues and a smaller deficit]
The AP says:
Impressive profits and big income gains by the wealthy are largely responsible for the surge in [tax] revenues and, in turn, the deficit drop.
Does the AP mean to point out the half-truth here, or are they honestly just trying to add some analysis? I have to think the former, because I can’t imagine that the AP would be that clueless. But I don’t really know for sure.
“I did insult him, it’s true,” Materazzi said in Tuesday’s Gazzetta dello Sport. “But I categorically did not call him a terrorist. I’m not cultured and I don’t even know what an Islamic terrorist is.”
I wonder – was this quote translated from Italian? Does Materazzi speak English? If he does, how fluently? Regardless, the fact remains that Zidane is a douchebag.
Treehugger: Pearl Jam Announces Carbon Portfolio Strategy
Pearl Jam has announced that they are giving “$100,000 to nine different non-profits ‘doing innovative work around climate change, renewable energy, and the environment'”, and hope to get to 0% net emissions for their tours and business.
I haven’t listened to much Pearl Jam lately, mostly because I haven’t liked much they’ve done since “Ten”, but “Ten” was one of the top five or so albums released in the last 20 years, and ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS STUPID. Just kidding. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t necessarily stupid. They’re wrong, but not necessarily stupid.
This does make me want to go out and buy the latest Pearl Jam cd. Do you think they’re selling a DRM-free copy?
Unfortunately, I can’t really say why yet. I’m curious, though – in 64 pages, we’ve gone from the birth of her grandmother to Bill proposing – what the heck is she going to talk about for the next 450 pages? One thing I’m sure of, she’ll mention wonderful people who’ve become lifelong friends. And she’ll probably pat herself on the back for being so gosh darn eager to change the world through dialogue and diplomacy!