Gore-Gasm!

To the fiery pit of Tartarus with the Oscars, the Emmys, the Daytime Emmys, the Tonys (that’s the one where they give awards to plays), the People’s Choice Awards, and the Golden Globes.  July 31st is far and away the greatest day on 2007’s entertainment calendar, as both 300 AND Pathfinder hit the shelves on DVD.  In [...]

The British Make the Best Polemicists (Quote of the Day)

From Christopher Hitchens‘ latest installment of “Fighting Words” on Slate:
“Just look at the gang that strove to prevent the United Nations from enforcing its library of resolutions on Saddam Hussein. Where are they now? Gerhard Schroeder, ex-chancellor of Germany, has gone straight to work for a Russian oil-and-gas consortium. Vladimir Putin, master of such consortia [...]

“According to Jim”: 6 Years. “Carnivàle”: 2?

 by Civilizer 
I’m not saying anything very profound by asserting that most of TV is unadulterated crap.  It’s like saying that Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” theodicy is rendered irrevocably and eternally inadequate by the events of the Lisbon earthquake.  I mean, duh. 
Personally, I don’t mind that most of TV is a fetid cesspool of brain-dulling [...]

Ode on a Predator Drone

  by Civilizer
Lately, the War on Terror hasn’t been going exactly the way the American intelligence community would like.  The recently released National Intelligence Estimate, the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies (not, however, the view of Cheney’s shadow government, which continues to pursue the completion of a mysterious device referred to only as “Project: Big [...]

Waziristan: Like the Hamptons, but for Terrorists

 by Civilizer
The summer vacation season is now in full swing, with Americans cramming into cars, buses, and plush, high-tech, space-age plastic, angel-winged specimens of much-better-than-your-flying-tenement-Airbus A380 ‘murican aerospace technology, happily traipsing south to exotic climes while crude prices just as happily wave to them while heading in the complete opposite direction.  If you’ve got a trip [...]

But Still, It’s Probably Because of ‘Ferrners (Quote of the Day)

From Volume 11, No. 8 of the “Current Issues” letter from the New York Federal Reserve Bank:
“The absence of any consistent pattern in the fortunes of individual industries suggests that while trade-related competition may have driven job losses in some sectors, layoffs in many other sectors occurred for reasons unrelated to trade.  Indeed, in a [...]

Good Thing SOMEBODY Has Their Eye on the Ball

From Abdul Sattar Murad, governor of the Afghan province of Kapisa, interviewed in Newsweek:
“The U.S. is not receiving full cooperation from Pakistan. Pakistan is cooperating, but the ISI faction, which knows where Al Qaeda is, is not really forthcoming to U.S. intelligence. Inside Afghanistan, there is also a lack of cooperation. The recent resentment created [...]

But Surely They’ll Realize He’s Insane, Right?

Mark Blumenthal asks the interesting question: if McCain drops out of the race, where do his supporters go?  He posts a Cook Political Report survey that weighs in on just that, and the winner is Rudolph William Lewis Giuliani:

I lack utterly the inclination to study polling mathematics so I’m not going to try and argue with [...]

Fading Roses, This Garden’s Over

 
Sound the trumpets, it’s time for the very first “All Things In Their Place” book recommendation:
 
“The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman.
What if we all just up and vanished one day?  Doesn’t matter how, you can pick your poison – nuclear holocaust, Captain Trips, Rapture (nyuk, nyuk) – it’s ballgame for homo sapiens.  How would [...]

al qaeda Relaunches Its Brand

Religious terrorism is like anything else that needs a fairly large base of support to maintain itself: you’ve gotta sell it.  A terror organization like al qaeda isn’t any different than Coke, Nike, or Apple – it needs money and personnel, and to get those things, it needs to sell itself in such a way that [...]