Saturday, February 26, 2005

Herald.com | 02/21/2005 | Murder by media: The Dean Scream

Herald.com | 02/21/2005 | Murder by media: The Dean Scream

The Eyes Have It

Hubble Opens Its Eyes ...and our eyes as well.


As above, so below...

"After a two-month hiatus, it is a tremendous boost to all of astronomy to see Hubble back in action," said Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Hubble science operations center in Baltimore, Md.

O to be a Carolinian!

Longings for Home. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass

Friday, February 25, 2005

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

anonyMoses circa 1995

While posting a comment to Sally Greene, I was reminded of a quote by Buckminster Fuller, and that I had posted that quote in the past. It turned out to be 10 years ago, on a strange page I concocted called "Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature" and also "Important Things to Know, Part One" and "Part Two". The page does some fun things that were fairly cool in the olden days of the Internets.
Just thought I'd share.

The quote was:

"The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity."
- R. Buckminster Fuller


There are also some excellent quote by Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, Schopenhauer, Emma Goldman, Baudelaire, as well as perhaps the only place you'll find the word, "boogerfinger".

Among the fun quotes are the following. Can you guess who said them?

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be specialists. For their nature is to make the whole of existence their problem. . . .

All the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability . . . and tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalizing principles.

The reader should study, if he can, the real authors, the men who have founded and discovered things; or, at any rate, those who are recognized as the great masters in every branch of knowledge.Let him buy second-hand books rather than read their contents in new ones.-

If a thing is new, it is seldom good; because if it is good, it is only for a short time new.

A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate at their source.

Great, genuine and extraordinary work can be done only in so far as its author disregards the method, the thoughts, the opinions of his contemporaries, and quietly works on, in spite of their criticism, on his side despising what they praise.

His [the genius'] mind will have no further aim than to be constantly active. This will be an inexhausible spring of delight; and boredom, that spectre which haunts the ordinary man, can never come near him.

But there is an understanding among them. An abiding trust. A life of eternal care. And all because they relate, cooperate, synergize as a whole, reaching beyond the physical perimeter of monkey members and into the world. A fragrance of flowers wafts down a mountainside and brings renewed life to wary breathtakers.

To achieve advanced tones of voice, be it inner or outer, one must speak from the diaphragm, use rounded vowel sounds, have a preponderance of well-resonated vowel sounds, articulate the prestigious consonants, sexualize the voice, aspirate with bedroom eyes, so to speak, and use poetic diction.

Where have you been?

via Littlebear Holler
bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

The Tar Heel Tavern opens at midnight February 26th

The Tar Heel Tavern

From the host:
"I will host the first inaugural edition on my blog, Science and Politics, around midnight February 26th 2005. I believe that the inaugural issue should be special, as everyone is getting intoduced to everyone else. The first issue needs to come in with a big splash, it needs to be big and good. Thus, for the very first issue, we will bend the rules a little bit. First, you may submit not one, but two entries. Second, your entries can be as old as you wish, as long as they are posted on your current blog. Show off your best writing ever!"

New Strategies for Southern Progress -- February 2005

More fun in Chapel Hill today...

Was Gannon Bush's Monica?

WorldNetDaily: Sex to go: Call White House press office

World Largest Collection of Slowheaded, Hateful Paraphernalia: Exhibit A

Right-Wing Stuff

Want to know if you are a Rightwinger? See if you can identify with these ungrammatical, hateful, pollutive, wasteful, imprudent, and backward products. It pretty well sums it up, and it's not a pretty picture.

Take, for example, the first item. It says:

"TAKE THAT HIPPY - FOUR MORE YEARS!"



How can six words have four errors, you ask?

These are the standards, or lack thereof, of these folks.

But beyond grammar, look at the sentiment.
!. Lashing out.
2. Enjoyment of inflicting pain.
3. Hatred of fellow Americans.
4. Hatred of Peace-lovers, such as was Jesus.
5. Hatred of Non-conformists.
6. Hatred.

And this is just the first one!

Or parse this jewel:



Even on drugs, Rush is right? Well, no, it doesn't say "right", it says, correctly, "Right". No doubt about that. He is Right. He is just rarely right. But how convenient that they sound exactly the same. But then to try to imply that even when he is f*ucked up he makes sense? So NOW it is okay to do drugs, since Rush lead the way!

And then there is that middle part which pays homage to the NRA and the Eric Rudolphs. The ad, which is what it is, ends by licking the arse of Oil and overpriced, overvalued vehicular overstatement devices, commonly known as SUVs.
But then there is the parading of the fact that they are among the top consumers in the world. The danger in watching TV is that you are forever coerced into believing you need to give them your 50 thousand dollars.

Hey! It's YOUR money! Not theirs! Don't let them trick you into thinking like they do, for it would not, in most cases, qualify as a step up the brain chain.

The others are too repugnant to display or even talk about.

Sufficient evidence that these folks are not hip. I'm glad I'm not one of their suckers.

LINK

ALA President Not Fond of Bloggers

via Slashdot

Phil Shapiro writes "American Library Association president Michael Gorman is not too fond of bloggers and blogging. '[The] Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'"

Thursday, February 24, 2005

It is not Luntz. It is the Enrons that hire him...

Daily Kos

Frank Luntz is the reason I yanked the cable from my house, and haven't paid Time Warner a penny since. You hear that Time-Warner? You hear that MSNBC?

During the vote count in 2000, MSNBC hired Enron's Frank Luntz to hold town meetings to "gauge" public opinion. Yeah, right! Gauge! You mean sway, don't you?

And sway he did!

He had "Florida Democrats" saying that Gore should just "move on" and "drop it". It's called begging the question. It's called partisanship posing as impartiality. It's called BushWorld.

Want to learn subtle ways to lie? Listen to Frank Luntz. Enron did.

He is just another Gannon. Someone to whom the MSM turn a blind eye.

Words of the Year 2004

From the keen eye of The Real Paul Jones

Santorum!

The trenchant and interesting Chapel Hill Meetup

as transcribed by the masterful quill of Sir Anton Zuiker, Blogmeister extraordinaire.

An evolving community of good and smart hominids.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Speaking of the Greensboro Film Festival...


CNN.com - North Carolina: Fans connect with film sites

Films and movies have been good for North Carolina, and North Carolina has been good in return.
Show your appreciation for the magic of the cinema by celebrating in the green city, Greensboro...which, as John Cleese (rhymes with cheese) reminds, should be pronounced "greensburra", like "Edinburgh". Confusing isn't it? What with those teeth. I should talk!

You yes. Neglect what I say at your peril, as I am fond of overspeak, yet exuberating at the pleasures that spill from my ladle.

Now CNN, we see, forgot a nugget or two, one of which contained the fearful mug of yours truly, and no it wasn't Gone with the Wind. It was Gone with that Wind, what one might call a me-too movie. But alas, I am in jesture, as the correct answer would have to be a little known film called Black Rainbow -- a film, well, a movie starring Jason Robards, Jane Wyman, Tom Hulse and Patricia (or was it Roseanne?) Arquette, and which was filmed in Charlotte, just months before it went nowhere.

I played a person in the audience, all of whom stampede for the door after a gunfight breaks out while Arquette is being psychic on stage. I'm the fellow in the long black cashmere overcoat and white scarf sitting beside a young lady who looks not entirely unlike Katie Couric, had Katie darker hair.

My second gig as "extra" was in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the grounds of a lovely private school, where Sean Astin, Wil Wheaton, Lou Gossett Jr., and a few others gathered to create Toy Soldiers -- another movie famous for lacking quotation marks.
There I played a teacher who, yes, you guessed it, was in a room when gunfire broke out. (Gotta love that gun lobby!) This time it was an auditorium. It was while shooting Toy Soldiers that I met a couple whom I adore, named Jonathan and Alexandra, he from Oxford, she from Washington and Lee, and both among the most gentle, tender souls I have had the good fortune to meet. Jon and I were teachers at an elite boy's school, in the movie, and we got paid to throw frisbee with Sean Astin, who unlike the others, was a real human being, who, in addition, felt no need to separate himself from the locals, who he probably recognized were not exactly Jethroes. (Oh God I'm having a Dan Quayle moment!)

So anyway...during the shooting, I suggested to the director, Daniel somethingoranother -- who also directed Big Easy, and is a son of a director with the same name -- that "do you think teachers would just sit here if one of our students takes a riflebutt to the stomach?" So he agreed that it would be better to have some reaction.
Sadly...the plan was to be that Jon would react, but I, having noted the terrorist at his back with a rifle, would reach over with my head and, pointing behind him, tell him to desist. The sad part is that it looked like I kissed him. Not that I don't adore him, which I do. In a manly, art-cowboy way though. Klymt Eastwood maybe.

Enough of that.

Go to the movies.

Play "Rewrite the Headline"

The previous post is an example of playing "Rewrite the Headline", which I just made up, but for a purpose. By a large margin, most people only read the headlines, and never delve into the body, unless they are drawn in by the headline. And yet the headline can also be deceptive and leading. It is a form of framing. As such, every headline should be reconsidered after reading the body, and maybe rewritten, if only in the mind.

But why make it work? Make it play! As God once said: "Work is alright, but play is more valuable."

It's Romney vs Edwards in '08

The Prettyboy Wars

A Massachusetts Republican against a North Carolina Democrat. Either would be light years ahead of the current fumblesmith.

2004 Koufax Award Winners

Wampum: 2004 Koufax Award Winners

Jobs Market Online

Triad Jobs Market

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Q. What starts with R, ends in S, and has 10 letters?

Yahoo! News - Bush Says Talk of Attacking Iran 'Ridiculous'

A.
RIDICULOUS
and
READMYLIPS

Fun with Random Activities

Corpus Callosum who found it at Screwy Hooligans from the great Asheville, North Carolina.

1.Grab the nearest book.
2.Open the book to page 123.
3.Find the fifth sentence.
4.Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5.Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.


...language itself, on the one hand, originated in "infantile, pregenitcal exuberance, polymorphously perverse" and that conscious attention, on the other, was a "libidinal hypercathexis".
-John Barth, "Chimera" (quoted in The Oxter English Dictionary) (I better take better care of the it, as it goes for over a hundred bucks now. I figured it would have value...)

New Voices: Blogger Corps Delivers Greensboro101

New Voices: Blogger Corps Delivers Greensboro101

Hoggard gets his wish

BloggingPoet.com - Go Greensboro Bloggers!
Billy on David on Greensboro and the World...

Blogs: "bringing information you can't get in print right to your door"

Welcome to the Digital Edge

Through the keen eye of Southern Rants, we find a neoblogger from Brooklyn who discovered all the keys to the blogosphere in the flash of a day. His account is fascinating, and illustrates the importance and potential of blogging...

Excerpt:
I spent 15 minutes setting up a 90-day trial Weblog account, then devoted the next few days to developing the site. I blogged a mugging half a block from my apartment, and uploaded a video still of my kid playing at the corner playground (is that renovation project still out to bid?). I found some interesting neighborhood people to profile, including a cartoonist, a columnist for The Onion, a gourmet pickle entrepreneur and some “post-punk” vegetarian cooks who produce a public-access TV show out of their apartment.

Within 24 hours, my neighbor Frank Lynch had already found and blogged about my site: “Why wait for your precinct sergeant to set up a blotter?” he wrote. “It's time for a shout out to our neighborhood blog … If you think about it, this is the potential of the Internet: bringing information you can't get in print right to your door.”

Whoa. Was he reading my mind?

Frank’s comment evoked the opportunity - and challenge - that will confront traditional news publishers that want to tackle hyper-local media. Because it’s so already simple to publish and publicize, it will be difficult for newspapers to get behind this force already in motion, though some have made important strides in the right direction. Newspaper Web sites published by Advance.net, the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record and others are actively adding blogs and soliciting reader contributions.


You should read it for yourself, as there is much more, and it is wondrously and copiously hyperlinked.

Per request: The War Song of G. Dubya Bushrock

The War Song of G. Dubya Bushrock

Sunday, February 20, 2005

For a country to have a great blogger...

On the rise of the Blogovernment

"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor writers."
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Letter to Karl Marx from his Leipzig publisher

Writers get no respect...


Dear Herr Doctor,
You are already 10 months behind with the manuscript of Das Kapital, which you have agreed to write for us. If we do not receive the manuscript within 6 months, we shall be obliged to commission another to do this work.
- Letter to Karl Marx from his Leipzig publisher

(From The Paris Review and the late George Plimpton)

The Bush Tapes - Excerpts

"Sure I snort crack and shoot marywanna. How else are you gonna explain my naps?"

"I ain't gonna discriminate against no gayum or lesbiana. I just ain't gonna hire 'em!"

"Amazingistic!"

"I think there IS an 'e' on the end of potatoe."

"Ah! To be Warren Harding!"

"My favorite president? I'd have to say Franklin!"

"I voted for compassion...before I voted against it."

"We are going to spread feareedom"...

"Finders keepers, losers weepers."


This is an imaginary and fictitious guess at what is on the tape, which is soon to be destroyed by the Bush Library.

REAL LINKS to the story:

Buzzflash headlines

Secret tapes say Bush used pot, report says

E&P: Bush's tapes show he was hostile to the press from the get-go. Also: Did we mention it's sad when even Dan Quayle speaks disdainfully of your fitness for office?

NYT Bush tapes reveal that Shrub circa 1998 feared cocaine scandal, and said he refused to "kick gays." That's "kick," not "demagogue a proposed rewrite of the Constitution to strip them of rights."

Bush's high times: W. confessed on tape to smoking marijuana, which people in Texas are spending years in prison for

E&P: Bush's tapes show he was hostile to the press from the get-go. Also: Did we mention it's sad when even Dan Quayle speaks disdainfully of your fitness for office?

From the Buzzflash archives: Doug Wead, Bush tape leaker and religious liaison, invited Christian evangelicals to a 2001 prayer breakfast hosted by Washington Times owner who claims to be the Messiah

The Tar Heel Tavern Is A Go!

from Science And Politics

Google Search: "Blog it forward" Results 1 - 10 of about 16,200

Well, I guess I ain't gonna be inventing THAT one!

It has already happened. Blog it forward is already in motion. What form it is taking, I do not know. My own idea was pretty simple: You learn to blog? You teach three other people how to blog, and then get them to teach three people...on down the line. I am currently teaching two people, one of whom has agreed to teach three, and the other will probably do so as well.

The Charlotte Observer has been running a series on "Pay it forward" and so the concept is quite familiar here. "Blog it forward" should also be a fairly easy grasp.

Already, North Carolina is in the vanguard of blogging. To exponentiate matters...blog it forward.