the art of writing is discovering what you believe
excerpt from: Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
Or, to put it another way, have we learned anything in the past three years? Read (or re-read) that excerpted chapter and, if possible, push politics aside: do you feel good about where we are now?
You don’t have to worry about Florida using electronic voting.
Florida would have to have electricity for that to happen.
My brother-in-law in Flagler Beach, Florida.
The September Project: For Libraries:
On Saturday, September 11, 2004, people across the country will come together at public places like local libraries to discuss ideas that matter. Through talks, roundtables, and performances, people will share ideas about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism. Libraries are perfect places for such events: they are free, they are open to the public, and they are distributed nationally. There are over 16,000 public libraries in the U.S. and this does not include university, research, K-12, and places of worship libraries. The September Project is a collection of people, groups, and organizations devoted to making this happen annually and internationally.
I expect a library is on my list of destinations tomorrow. Has it really been three years? Somehow it seems like it was so long ago . . . .
Now playing: Magazine: Feed the Enemy from the album “Secondhand Daylight” | Buy it
The Poor Man: Elementary Logic:
Tell me: how rich would you be right now if, every time something was posted on a right-wing message board, or everytime Drudge had an exclusive, or any time Rush Limbaugh revealed a secret truth that the liberal media won’t tell you, you called up your bookie and put down $20 even money on “bullsh*t”? The correct answer is: “pretty f**king rich”. The correct answer is: “I would never, never lose.” So, if anyone doubts my methodology, I have a crisp new $20 bill that just told me that I’m 100% right and you’re just too dumb to see it. If any of you champs out there think me and Andrew Jackson are both wrong, well then, today’s your lucky day, because we’re paying 2:1.
It’s been interesting reading all these comments about how the Bush TANG service documents must be fake since anyone can easily achieve the same typographic elegance with Word. It doesn’t occur to the clueless that Word’s designers were emulating previous standards in typography. Nor does it occur to them that typewriters were pretty damn sophisticated by the 1970 and 80s. Not that any of them have ever seen one, let alone depended on one to get their work done.
<rant>This has not been a great week for creative reuse, as I like to think of it. Yesterday, I claimed some old window sashes to turn into cold frames for gardening. Within hours — I wasn’t supposed to pick them up ’til today — someone else had jumped my claim and taken them when they came for other stuff. It’s good that the stuff went somewhere it was wanted, but claim-jumping is crummy.
Today, I went to collect a refrigerator that was billed as “runs like a top” and clean, only to find it had been hastily shoved outside when it’s replacement was installed, never cleaned, never so much as wiped down, and left outside. I shoulda opened it up first, especially since I had to drive to the next county to collect it. It’s especially upsetting since the person I got it from took two weeks to collect something from me, with multiple missed collections along the way. I try to be patient and allow people some slack, but using me — and FreeCycle — to skip out of paying a dump fee is just not right.
I relisted this thing but no takers. Looks like I’ll be hauling it to the dump myself, taking the $16.40 dump fee on the chin.
Just now, I helped someone load a like-new. never-used full-sized range for pickup. When I think of the stuff I have given away, it makes situations like this very frustrating. I sent a note to the local moderators to consider posting some reminders in their next admin note: when you offer something, make sure it’s something you would be glad to get or at least be clear about what the person is getting. And at the same time, takers need not commit to something that isn’t what they expected.
</rant>
When I read about the assault weapons ban expiring next week and then saw this image of a political leader with a Kalashnikov leaning against the wall behind him, it struck me as serendipitous. You know he’s in favor of an armed populace: does that mean people here who feel the same way are like him in other ways, too?
Dig this: Verve records, the jazz label of reknown, is combing through the vaults out-of-print material through the iTunes Music Store. What a great idea[1]. Wish I had thought of it[2].
fn1. http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?p=1034
fn2. http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?p=1086
Now playing: Simple Minds: 30 Frames a Second from the album “Themes for Great Cities” | Buy it
Boing Boing: Did the White House release forged documents about Bush’s service record?:
Charles at Little Green Footballs presents a persuasive argument that the memos recently released by the White House about President Bush’s National Guard service are forgeries.
My reply to Mark:
I don’t think I would find anything at LGF persuasive (I’d verify the weather myself, if they posted that it was raining): Josh Marshall commented on this earlier.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_05.php#003456
When someone’s entire experience with typesetting is Microsoft Word, their arguments are not all that credible. Perhaps the folks at MSFT did their best to make a slavish imitation of an old IBM Selectric as a sop to people who don’t like modern typefaces?The fact that the White House was passing out a memo with a subject line of “CYA” suggests these were bona fide documents that didn’t originate with them.
The better question, as Brad DeLong points out is, why were these copies in the Lt Colonel’s files but not in 1st Lt Bush’s? If you take the argument that they were file copies only, not to be distributed, why weren’t they discovered before now? This is the slowest, most slipshod “discovery” process ever.
Since I collected a well-used beater bike a few weeks back (viva Freecycle!), I have had to become more familiar with bike workings than I have in a while. To ease my bafflement, I was told to get Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.
I found it at my local library and after skimming through it, I have to admit, it’s both complete and accessible. I think this and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance should be part of the purchase of any bike, but I’m sure bike shops could count on losing hundreds of dollars in repair work if they did that. You gotta love any author who remains “convinced that anyone with an opposable thumb can perform any repair on a bike.”
I’ll be adding them to the bookshelf as funds allow. In the meantime, I’ll put the copy I have into practice.
