November 15, 2007
November 14, 2007
Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Through the Nexus in a Lexus
Weird Net News
“News quite quirky lurkies out there on the net for all to see.”
Chocoholics unite! You have nothing to lose but your sobriety!
So, without further ado, Ye Olde Scribe presents the latest in the “Thank GOD They Were Lost” episodes of Star Trek; this one entitled…
Through the Nexus in a Lexus
The year? Well, it HAD been the 24th century. Riker, Troi, Geordi… and Robby the Robot piloting a Lexus through space. He’s on loan from the long defunct set of Forbidden Planet because Data was off satisfying his new found love interest: a toaster from the planet Screwyoutubathon… where they manufacture both every tuba and uterine tube tying device in the known, unknown and semisortof-known-butmostlyforgotten universe. Thankfully he has been returned to his more intelligent design after being hijacked for the “Robot” role in the genre’ genocidal Sci Fi atrocity known as Lost in Space.
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The Insanity of Bush Hatred
Peter Berkowitz, The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2007
Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents.
But Bush hatred is different. It’s not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.
This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr’s excellent new book, “Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.” To put in context Prof. Starr’s grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.
To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner–and perhaps mischievously–I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?” His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing.
ORU Faculty Gives Richard Roberts a Vote of No Confidence
April Marciszewski, The Tulsa World, November 14, 2007
A quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted “no confidence” in President Richard Roberts and voted in favor of “greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances” in a 3-1/2-hour meeting Monday night.
Donald R. Vance, professor of biblical languages and literature and one of three authors of a summary of the meeting, said tenured professors want to help ORU’s board of regents do what is right. The professors’ motions let regents know the voice of the faculty, he said.
The vote of no confidence in Roberts as president and CEO of the university was made “without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university” and “is not to be construed as a judgment of guilt or innocence with regard to the present lawsuit against the president and the university,” according to the list of motions and summary of the meeting faxed to media by Gary Richardson, an attorney for the three former professors who are suing ORU, Roberts and other ORU leadership.
Vance said he did not give the report to Richardson.
The vote regarding Roberts did not address his leadership of Oral Roberts Ministries, and “most people personally like him,” Vance said.
Tough Times At the Russia India Summit
Russian president Vladimir Putin and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh after realizing they hooked up the night before. (www.236.com)
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Super Rudi Can Do It All
Rudi Guiliani, (R-9/11) during a visit to Southern California, declared that he could mediate the current writers strike in Hollywood. In a statement Guiliani said “I don’t know the issue……I’d be more than happy to help, as a fair-minded mediator.” Nice. Rudi doesn’t know shit about the problem but he says he can fix it just like he fixed New York City. Maybe Rudi will use his excellent delegation skills and appoint his good friend and soon to be convicted felon Bernard Kerik to fix the strike.
Does HRC tip enough to be president?
Iowa Waitress Speaks Out: I Didn’t Get Tip From Clinton, Media Has Misplaced Priorities
For the past week, Anita Esterday’s life has been turned upside down. A single mother of two, she found herself in the middle of a media circus when it was reported that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign failed to leave her a tip after they were waited on at a Maid-Rite in Toledo, Iowa. In the ensuing frenzy, the Maid-Rite manager insisted that a tip was, in fact, left. But Esterday says the manager just told a fib to make the attention go away. And the press, she adds, needs to get a perspective on what actually matters. Esterday took time to answer questions from the Huffington Post.
Huffington Post: What is it like to be in the middle of a campaign-related media frenzy?
Esterday: It is nuts. Even going on the web for anything. There was a website in Cedar Rapids that said I had committed suicide. I understand that whoever wrote this meant it as a joke, but I have family in Cedar Rapids and I know people in Cedar Rapids and my mother committed suicide. So it wasn’t a joke to me… It’s taking it to an extreme and I guess in America now that’s what people like and it’s a shame that the media ran with this.
Does the press have misplaced priorities?
In this country, look at how many homeless people there are. There are millions. There are people just like me. I’m not the only parent who has had to raise two kids and barely makes $20,000 a year… This is supposed to be the United States of America, the strongest nation in the world, and we can’t even provide places for our homeless. The media should be focusing on that.
Point taken. But could you set the record straight about the tip?
November 13, 2007
The Police don’t miss a beat
Sting leads the Police last night at the Garden. (Robert E. Klein for the Boston Globe)
Email|Print| Text size – + By Jonathan Perry Globe Correspondent / November 12, 2007
The last time the Police played Boston Garden, on April 12, 1982, Larry Bird was in his third season with the Celtics. Michael Dukakis was about to win re-election as governor, and Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
The vision of the Police – three bleached-blonde virtuosos darting though their polyglot mix of New Wave pop hooks and skittering, reggae-accented grooves – was something even their most hopeful fans were convinced they might never again witness after the band broke up in 1984. (The trio did play a June 10, 1983, show at Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough). But the Police have reunited – for now – and they’re in the midst of a world tour.
For those who swore they’d never see it, last night’s trenchant, sold-out performance at TD Banknorth Garden marked the group’s third Boston concert in four months, following a pair of robust summer shows at Fenway Park, where improbable, and once-impossible, dreams apparently do come true.
One hundred minutes, nearly two dozen tunes, and two encores began with a kinetic “Message in a Bottle” that was a transportive reminder of the days when the Police were a brash young band with as much promise as peroxide. They’re older now (singer-bassist Sting is 56, guitarist Andy Summers is 64, and drummer Stewart Copeland is 55) but the music remained fresh – as lean and sinewy as Sting’s T-shirted torso.
The frantic “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely” rode Summers’ spiky guitar hooks with racing, libidinous urgency. (Summers, playing with workmanlike understatement, nevertheless turned in a blustery, blistering solo on “Driven to Tears,” his best of the night). Copeland was a picture of fierce focus throughout, a syncopated shopkeeper of all manner of percussion; surrounded by cymbals, deftly tapping out the “thousand rainy days” of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” in double-time with marvelous efficacy.
Sting, a supremely confident, relaxed presence onstage, was in fine, flexible voice – his preening, choked sob and killer reggae record collection intact. The only concession he made to not hitting his once-preternaturally high registers – jarringly lowering the key of the chorus of the oddly muddled, tepid “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” – cost the song. But coming back to the Garden after 25 years, anyone’s bound to be a bit rusty. Even Larry Bird might miss an occasional three-pointer after all this time.
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Yahoo Buys Off Families of Chinese Democracy Dissidents They Helped Jail
Yahoo, a leading internet company, has settled lawsuits brought against them in the case of two jailed Chinese dissidents, Shi Tao and Wang Xianoning, that Yahoo helped to land in prison. Yahoo helped the Chinese government to identify democracy dissents that used the internet to further their cause, including the two dissidents whose families they settled with today.
Yahoo has denied that they purposely helped the Chinese to find and jail the dissidents. However, under questioning before Congress, Yahoo’s Chief Executive Jerry Yang admitted that Yahoo had provided the information to the Chinese government. Yang blamed the incident on a bad translation of the government’s request. It was discovered that the translation originated at Yahoo’s Chinese offices and was done by native Chinese employees. For this reason Yang’s explanation has wrung hollow with several US Congressmen, including one who called Yang, and Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan, moral pygmies.
Obviously Yahoo hopes to correct the damage done by their actions by buying off the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xianoning. Both men were sentenced to 10 years in prison after Yahoo turned over their email messages to the Chinese. What is clear by Yahoo’s complicity in the jailing of the men and the settlement of the lawsuits is that the company is far more interested in making money in China than there are in protecting the privacy and rights of Yahoo users.
Boycott Yahoo. There are many other search engines and email providers that will not violate your privacy
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Abstinence-only
I don’t usually include a rant with my toons, but I wanted to share a story with you.
My daughter is in the Upward Bound program, which is designed to help kids get to college. The first year that she attended, the Saturday morning classes consisted entirely of abstinence-only sessions. One day she complained about how boring and stupid these “classes” were, so the very next Saturday I went to class with her.
I had to agree that it was boring. I watched three propaganda films which had little to do with factual education. There was nothing technically incorrect about them, but the real kicker came when the program director started spinning the information.
She emphasized the fact that condoms do not provide very much protection against HPV (Humpan Papilloma Virus). This is technically true, since HPV can be transmitted via any skin-to-skin contact. But then she proceeded to drill into these kids’ heads that, because of this, “condoms are a joke.” And that’s what they took away from this one class – the idea that it doesn’t do any good to use a condom because they don’t protect you.
I was livid, and immediately pulled my daughter from this part of the program. As a father, I don’t like the idea of my little girl having sex, but even less palatable is the idea of her contracting a fatal or debilitating disease that could have been easily prevented.
So why does this program, designed for helping kids get to college, include such a harmful element? Funding, my friends. The Bush Administration has been trying to kill programs like Upward Bound by cutting off the money, but abstinence-only programs are fully funded by the federal government.
But in the ensuing power-play, our kids are being sacrificed like pawns.