Entries from December 2006The Posts You Asked For
Publishers Weekly needs better reviewers
Posted 12/31/06
Warning: Plot spoilers to Tim Green’s Exact Revenge follow; also for A Separate Peace, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Sixth Sense.
This is a running theme, and I’ll come back to it whenever I see a particularly egregious example. Today I saw one.
Note to reviewers: If you give away huge chunks of the book of [...]
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Bush tripled aid to Africa; pledges more by 2010
Posted 12/31/06
I’ve never liked people who either praise or bash everything the President does simply because they love or hate many of his policies. Blind faith in anything as either good or evil is never a good idea.
That said, this article deserves mention:
Bush Has Quietly Tripled Aid to Africa
Increase in Funding to Impoverished Continent Is Viewed [...]
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An open response to Mrs. Helen Hicks
Posted 12/30/06
I received the following letter from a Mrs. Helen Hicks in response to my recent USA Today column about cell phones. In the column, I had brought up concerns about the capabilities of most phones — that they can be turned into microphones to act as roving wiretaps, and that the Federal government had gotten [...]
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Gerald Ford supported gay marriage
Posted 12/28/06
Seriously. It’s apparently one of those little tidbits that was overshadowed by the Nixon pardon and Chevy Chase pratfalls.
Via Pandagon:
The former president was a member of the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), a gay-straight board of heavy hitters, including former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, which advocates “making homosexuality a ‘non-issue’ for the Republican Party.” (An FYI: [...]
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You know you’re buying something heavy…
Posted 12/27/06
… when your shipping options look like this:
(Click to enlarge.)
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What the heck is going on in Maryland?
Posted 12/21/06
Your bang-your-head-on-the-wall quote of the day:
Citing state data, the (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail reports that 28 kindergarten students in Maryland were suspended for sex offenses in the last school year — 15 of those suspensions for sexual harassment.
Link
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Pot that won’t die
Posted 12/20/06
Oh-oh. It’s “Roundup-Ready” marijuana.
Now, if someone could isolate the gene that lets the marijuana plant produce THC and splice it into kudzu… well, that would certainly change things, wouldn’t it?
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Right-wing blogs: Let’s make up stuff about the AP
Posted 12/19/06
This is funny.
An AP reporter in Iraq, Qais Al-Bashir, wrote a story about Shiites burning Sunnis alive. Conservative bloggers, who hate the AP and the media in general for daring to report what’s actually happening there, called into question a source for that story — and indeed a source for a lot of AP stories: [...]
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New bumper sticker
Posted 12/11/06
Just ordered from the folks at Zazzle.com. You either get it or you don’t. :)
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Time says it too: Newspapers are far from dead
Posted 12/11/06
Not too long ago, I opined that despite (or because of) the Internet, newspapers are far from dead. In fact, I wrote, they’re one of the most profitable industries in the world.
Now Time magazine backs me up, albeit a few months later.
According to Time, only commercial banks (32.4 percent profit margin) and pharmaceutical companies (24.2 [...]
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Some of my best friends are ignorant redneck cheerleaders
Posted 12/11/06
The story: A Kentucky high school is rife with Confederate symbols. [Link updated 2/26/2007 to one that works.]
The quote:
“To us it’s not about the hatred,” said Tiffany Owens, an 18-year-old cheerleader at Allen Central High School in eastern Kentucky. “I have colored friends around here and they never say anything.”
Update (12/12):: Steve Gilliard points out [...]
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You really will put your eye out, kid
Posted 12/11/06
From the Consumer Product Safety Commission: GAMO USA Corp. Recalls Air Rifles That Can Unexpectedly Fire.
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So close to a Darwin award
Posted 12/10/06
The following is true. If you hear this story someday and think it’s an urban legend, drop me a note and I’ll get you in touch with the actual participants.
My sister in law — we’ll call her “Dee” — went out with her husband (“Jay”) while Jay’s teenage son stayed at home. For unimportant reasons, [...]
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Bible verses they skip over in Sunday school
Posted 12/6/06
2 Kings 2:23-24:
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in [...]
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Odd AP style notes
Posted 12/6/06
Apparently it’s against Associated Press style to use the following contractions — contractions that I bet many of us use regularly.
I’ve, as in, “I’ve been looking for you all over.” Why? Because an apostrophe can only replace an “o” or an “i” (can’t for cannot or he’s for he is).
She’s as in, “She’s gone to [...]
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Strange requirements at Classmates.com
Posted 12/5/06
A friend of mine sent me a link to a page in Classmates.com. To access it, I needed to sign up. It’s free, so I did. When it asked for an e-mail address, I did what I always do: I used an address that would let me track any spam that came from their selling [...]
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Suggestion for you flyers
Posted 12/4/06
If you pass gas while on a plane, lighting a match to conceal the odor is a bad idea. People get a little nervous when they smell burning matches in mid-air.
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White Castle: Better than you thought
Posted 12/4/06
…at least, according to Amazon, by way of Eric Berlin.
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