Doug’s Dynamic Drivel: Sunday funnies:
funny, funny stuff. Makes me glad I don’t fly anymore. Do not attempt to drink while reading these.
Category: books
note to incoming administration: read those briefings
LiberalOasis: Archives For The Week of April 11, 2004
But wouldn’t it be interesting to find out if there’s any evidence that someone in the White House tried to cover-up how aggressively Clinton treated the terrorist threat?
Commissioners were vague on details, citing secrecy rules, but indicated that the document rebutted assertions by Ashcroft and others that no clear kill order existed.
So Clinton may have left a standing order to take out Bin Laden that no one saw fit to follow through on?
The English disease
This malady, otherwise known as bronchitis, currently has me in its thrall. Rather painful, especially when it’s time to sleep. I doubt most people even know you can get cough suppressant syrups with codeine (it really helps) . . . . for my part, I didn’t know this condition was part of the national identity. What’s bred in the bone will come out of the flesh . . .
how to reach JK Rowling?
About Scholastic Software and Intenet Group
This question shows up so much on my search query page, I figured I could help out: if you really want to reach an author, the standard practice is to send it to them, in care of their publisher.
So you could try:
J K Rowling
c/o Scholastic Books
557 Broadway
New York, New York 10012
And make sure you include a stamped, self-addressed envelope (ask about International Reply Coupons at the Post Office, unless you live within the same postal service area as she does): she may be a billionaire, but you don’t want her fumbling for stamps, do you? She’s got two more books to write . . . .
warheads
So I had to run a couple of errands (some beans from Peets and some more effective cough suppressant) which mean listening to some news on the radio. I caught some of “To the point” and was able to hear some commentary on the recent Spanish election. The central argument seems to be that by voting out the Aznar regime, with it’s sympathies to the Bush Doctrine and commitment to troops in Iraq, the people of Spain have essentially voted for terrorists and any regime that is less than firm with them.
Continue reading “warheads”
what happened in Madrid?
I have heard a lot of commentary and analysis about this, so what makes me think I have anything to add? Like that’s ever stopped me before . . .
The timing isn’t just a matter of being 6 months off from the September 11 attacks. If ETA was the culprit, that would strengthen the hand of the ruling party, and with an election coming up 4 days after this attack, that could be significant. But if someone else, like Al Queda, were the ones responsible and it’s considered retribution for Spain’s support of the Iraq war, then the anti-war side may have an edge.
What if ETA took a leaf from Al Queda’s book and used their style of attack? Of course, the goal of terrorism is to call attention to one’s cause and they have denied responsibility so far. So that’s doubtful . . .
This may mean Al Queda is not as moribund as we’ve been told and that they’re willing to strike outside their traditional targets but with their traditional methods.
What I haven’t heard referenced is any reference or link to the historical Islamic presence in Spain: it was a part of an Arabic, later Islamic, empire for seven centuries.
brutal anniversaries
Death in Madrid
At 7:40 this morning my commuter train had pulled into the main station in Hamburg, and I was on my way to the U-Bahn to go work. At the same time in Madrid, 190 commuters in Madrid were killed by at least 10 explosions at 3 commuter stations. I can only think of the words from the memorial service for the victims of 9/11. To paraphrase for todays events… this was not 190 people being killed, it was 1 person being killed, 1 person with home, family, friends, 1 person being killed…. 190 times.
While I realize that it is necessary to find those responsible, be they from the ETA or al Qaeda, but on the other hand I find the speculation on which group is responsible to be somewhat cynical. Does it really matter to the victims for which supposed cause they were killed? Doesn’t the attention given to the perpetrators and their motives give them a false legitimacy and encourage similar attacks in the future? At this moment, I would rather think of the father and husband who, unlike me, was not able to step off the train and onto the platform at 7:40 this morning, than about the twisted reasoning and motives of those who killed him.
Now the world has twice-annual reminders of the handiwork of terrorists. Scott’s words echo Mrs Thatcher’s resonant phrase “the oxygen of publicity”: the only thing of hers I can recall agreeing with.
(sorry for the redundant quoting, but I couldn’t find just one quote: one has to decide when to stop splitting a diamond.)
<update> the other eerie resonance is that the attacks were 911 912 days apart . . . . (so the resonance is lost, now that I have done the math correctly (it would have been right in a non-Leap Year))
[via Ton]
Wendi Dunlap, girl reporter, or Google, the Great Leveller
Slumberland » TBT Towing speaks out:
Last week I wrote a post here about predatory towing, which referred to the business practices of TBT Towing, as reported in the P-I.
I’m not poking fun, as I hope you’ll see.
Local weblogger Wendi Dunlap posted some comments about some really crummy tactics used by local towing companies, essentially staking out locations at closing time in order to tow cars without giving the owners an opportunity to drive away. It seems the GM of one of the companies did a little Googling for his company’s name in response to a news story about it and didn’t like what he saw.
You can read it all at the linked post. What I found interesting was that the towing guy was treating a weblog he found in Google’s results as a a news organization on par with the Seattle P-I. He seemed to think he had the attention of the editor/publisher of a newspaper (and in a sense, he did). I’m inclined to be charitable to someone who engages in a dialog, even if I don’t agree with all their facts.
This is part of the hype about weblogs, the whole notion of everyman’s printing press. But this is the first time I have seen a weblog treated as part of the press this way.
<updated> mispelled name of our heroine fixed: sorry about that
redefining marriage
The more I read and hear about this, the more clear it becomes: how have I missed the obvious? Marriage is about procreation, about having children, of course, something same-sex couples can’t do. If I’m reading this correctly, defending marriage means making sure only people who can conform to “nature’s norms” can be married (we’ll leave out the documented instances of same sex relationships in the wild). No one should be allowed to be married unless they already have children, which means they indulged in premarital sex and are therefore unworthy of marriage.
So no one would get a marriage license at all: we’d all get “Learner’s Permits” that are redeemable for the real thing once we demonstrate our procreative prowess. Then we could claim to be married. Childless couples are unraveling the fabric of society by claiming to be married but ignoring the true meaning of it. Older couples who marry for love and companionship? No deal: we may have to devise some special class for them. If they have children from a previous marriage, perhaps that will suffice, but if that marriage ended in divorce, what then? Have they let the side down?
The more I look at it, the less sense it makes. If you take it at face value and work out who can be considered “married” it becomes a reductionist exercise where you may end up with no one . . . . marriage will be some unattainable goal for anyone.
Panther prevents printing?
JimFL notes that an “upgrade” to Panther removes a perfectly good printing setup . . . .
Sounds familiar[1]. But it can be fixed[2].
One annoyance is that you can’t really see how an existing printer is configured: the closest I have been able to find is to look at /etc/cups/printers.conf.
<DefaultPrinter red>
Info
Location
DeviceURI http://red:631/printers/lp
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>
lpstat -v is OK for checking your work, as well.
Setting up the print queue at the other end is whole ‘nother matter . . . .
My annoyance over sleep, wireless networking, and Rendezvous service detection not playing well together hasn’t been resolved. That’s why the ipp queue turned out to be the way to go for me.
fn1. grumble
fn2. sigh