I hope that when my daughter gets older, she will go to bed earlier!
Radio Waves
"Second perspective-alterer. Yesterday on All Things Considered, a very young thoughtful and sweet analyst, Mikel Jollett, explained slowly and carefully why rap music is a way for us old folk to look inside ourselves and find our parents and grandparents, disapproving of us as we now disapprove of the younger generation's music."
I guess we were listening to the same program. It"s a reminder that NPR is the best broadcast has to offer.
Dave Winer Gets Gay Marriage
"I don't buy the arguments that people in hetero marriages lose anything by gays marrying. That's like saying that because someone reads a book somehow your reading a book means less."
Rule of Thumb
HealtheTech offers tips for measuring portion sizes.
Truth Is the First Casualty
The Washington Post reports an erosion of support for the war in Iraq among military families who feel the President launched the war under false pretenses.
Home Cooking
I cooked Djej Emshmel -- chicken with preserved lemons and olives -- tonight, and I was quite pleased at how it came out. I need to work on the presentation, but the taste was delicious.
Reading
Choosing one's reading more carefully is a sign of getting old. When I was growing up, I simply seized on anything that looked interesting. As I grow older, I am not only unable to find as much time to read, but I am also acutely aware that I will never be able to read everything I would like to.
Software Abroad
Morocco has a Linux Project.
A Sometime Thing
Yahoo! News - Study: Blogging Still Infrequent
The impression out there is that a lot of the blog activity is very feverish," said Lee Rainie, the Pew project's director. "That's not the case. For most bloggers, it's not an all-consuming, all-the-time kind of experience."
Perils of Law Blogs
:: net.law.blog - Internet Tools for Lawyers
"For most lawyers, blogs would be a fiasco, possibly even dangerous. On the other hand, for a few lawyers, they could be perfect."
The Douglas
I spent the evening with baby watching In Harm's Way on American Movie Classics. Ostensibly a 1965 vehicle for John Wayne as a take charge admiral (starring opposite Patricia Neal as a Navy nurse and his main squeeze), the film is a much more interesting portrayal of his executive officer played by Kirk Douglas. An embittered veteran driven to drink by an incompetent commander, Douglas sobers up when Wayne arrives on the scene and makes Douglas his executive officer. After commiting a terrible crime, Douglas seeks to escape disgrace and punishment and redeem himself on a one man suicide mission that discovers the enemy fleet, including the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato. Having provided the intelligence crucial to victory Douglas perishes in a dogfight with four enemy Zeroes. I thought the role particularly interesting because it foreshadows the kind of role his son Michael would later play, rather than the more unidimensional Douglas of such films as Spartacus. The timing of the film, made as the nation was sinking deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam, is cause for reflection: hearkeing back to the moral clarity of World War II, the film is even shot in black and white to recall the old WW II propaganda films.
Oppression
It is a commonplace of American history that one way the Southern planter aristocracy maintained its dominant social position was to focus the hatred of poor whites on African Americans. So long as the white poor could comfort themselves with their supposed superiority to African Americans, they were unlikely to analyze the true source of their misery and turn their ire on their white betters. According to the New York Times Magazine, a similar story appears to be playing itself out in today's France, where the large and growing North African population, frequent victims of discrimination, vents its frustration on France's Jewish minority. The result is a wave of anti-Semitism in France unparalleled since the end of the Second World War.
Men Kissing in the Streets
The Motley Fool debates gay marriage. (Registration required.)
Sowing the Wind
Halley Suitt gets it right . . . again. She has the insight to see that it is not just gays who will rally against the President's bigotry, but their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends, in addition to people who believe that the Constitution is too important to serve as a vehicle for hate ever again.
Slavery Today in the USA?
Yahoo! News - Report: Slavery Alive and Well in Florida
"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Modern-day slavery is alive and well in Florida, the head of a human rights center said Tuesday as it released a report on people forced to work as prostitutes, farmworkers and maids across the state."
With this kind of thing going on in Florida, why is our nation focused on trying to prevent people from getting married?
Pruning Time
George Bush continues to be a master of talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he decries "partisan anger" and touts a commitment to opportunity and responsibility. On the other hand, he wishes to amend the Constitution to take away the right of people of the same sex to be married. The President apparently sees no contradiction in these two positions. Hopefully, the electorate is not so blind.
Responsibility
Op-Ed Contributor: Lawyers, Guns and Mayors
"The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would shield irresponsible firearms manufacturers, wholesalers, dealers and trade associations from any form of civil liability in cases in which they recklessly or negligently supply firearms to criminals."
Fabulous
Give me a break
It is hard to take seriously a New York Times article by Leslie Wayne whose thesis is that wealthy Arab-Americans are raising large amounts of money for Bush but whose examples are mostly Iranian or Pakistani.
The ongoing stooory . . .
Norse Map or German Hoax? Still No Rest for Vinland (washingtonpost.com)
"When it surfaced in 1957, it was too good to be true: a purported 15th-century world map depicting an island to the far west labeled Vinilandia Insula -- the fabled Vinland -- proof positive, it seemed, that Norse explorers had reached North America long before Columbus."
My father still has a copy of the original book Yale published touting the Vinland Map -- purporting to show the Viking discovery of America -- before ithe map was exposed as a forgery. I grew up in the certainty that it was a clever fake, and that the University had been fooled. It seems not everyone is willing to let the matter rest, however.