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2007 2 February :: 12.46 pm
like most of my witty, cynical entries, this is from slate.com:
A U.N. scientific report says the best-case scenario for global warming is already catastrophic. Calculations: 1) By 2100, at projected gas-production rates, temperatures will rise 3.5 to 8 degrees, with a significant chance of an even greater increase. 2) Sea level will rise 7 to 23 inches and will keep rising for 1,000 years, with historical evidence that levels could end up 20 feet higher than today. 3) Arid, subtropical countries will lose another 20 percent of their rainfall, exacerbating drought. 4) All of this is happening because of industry. Idealistic view: Finally, we see the threat and are mobilizing to save our planet. Cynical view: Last one out, turn off the air conditioner.
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2007 23 January :: 5.28 pm
The following is an excerpt of a book review by Jack Schafer on Stephen Poole's 'Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality.' It describes common words and phrases that can encompass an entire political point of view without having to start or defend an argument, used especially by politicians and media giants that eventually filter into popular use and our subsequent interpretation of 'reality.' I chose this excerpt because it makes some brief but strong points on word usage in reference to sexual orientation and religious groups in America:
Poole calls community one of the most perfect political words in English because it can mean several things at once, or nothing at all. It can conjure things that don't exist, and deny the existence of those that do. It can be used in celebration, or in passive-aggressive attack. Its use in public language is almost always evidence of an Unspeak strategy at work.
The plasticity of community allows it to encompass geography, ethnicity, profession, hobby, or religion, and in the mouths of diplomats and journalists can expand to include everybody, as in the international community, a concept that Justice Antonin Scalia once described—rightly—as "fictional."
We're drawn to the "semantically promiscuous" word, Poole writes, because it allows us to simultaneously express our tolerance for a group and our discomfort. For example: the homosexual community and the black community. People rarely refer to the heterosexual community, the white community, or even the Christian community, because in the United States and Britain, they are the "default" positions and carry the "privilege of not having to be defined by a limiting 'identity.' " Likewise, a group defined by the majority as transgressive, say, the Ku Klux Klan, would never qualify as a "community" even though it organizes itself with the same conscious effort as the "anti-war community."
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2007 20 January :: 2.15 pm
Ok Laurence it took a really long time for it to register that you and most others had changed your Disney icons, lol. New theme? What's next? Or are we on our own for a change.
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2006 29 November :: 6.17 pm
i hope it snows a ton this year. a ton
3 cents |
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2006 28 October :: 2.04 pm
A pretty good series of articles written for non-scientists on where we're at with stem cell research:
Read more..
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2006 17 October :: 3.57 pm
I wish, just once, that when Georgie Boy says one of his dumbass, made-up words or phrases to a foreign diplomat (or anyone for that matter, as long as there are cameras there to catch it), that he or she look at him with a dumbfounded, puzzled expression and say, 'Huh?'
"And I suspect that what you'll see, Toby, is there will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered. Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses." —Speaking with reporters along the Gulf Coast, Gulfport, Miss., Aug. 28, 2006
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2006 20 June :: 8.56 am
There's no excuse, but here's an effort at explanation:
http://www.slate.com/id/2143250/
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2006 8 February :: 10.22 am
Laurence, you've opened Pandora's Box
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2006 7 February :: 4.58 pm
lmao - that's laughing my ass off to you
The extent of Ashleigh's mathematical knowledge:
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2005 22 December :: 8.09 am
slate.com, on the religious right's push to get Christ back in Christmas
When so many of the religious groups they belong to today, didn't want him there in the first place a couple hundred years ago:
http://www.slate.com/id/2132387/nav/tap1/
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2005 15 December :: 3.03 pm
not very intellectual but still funny:
http://filmstripinternational.com./
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2005 6 December :: 3.13 pm
it seems so fickle to me to write down a list of things that you want, have someone else buy them for you and wrap them up so you can't see what they are, then act all surprised and happy when you get what you told them to buy in the first place.
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2005 28 November :: 11.44 am
it's evident that any investigation into faulty pre-war intelligence is just going to be a back-and-forth game of semantics:
http://www.slate.com/id/2130884/?nav=tap3
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2005 16 November :: 11.27 am
the interesting parallel between being a cursed pirate and being clinically depressed:
Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the living, and so we cannot die, but neither are we dead. For too long I've been parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing; not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh.
~Captain Barbossa, from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
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2005 10 November :: 2.54 pm
Bush Abandonment Watch
Q: Would you welcome President Bush to Arizona to campaign for you?
A: I would welcome President Bush to Arizona to come with me along the border and see the problems that the ranchers and the law-abiding American citizens are having there. I would welcome President Bush to get tough on illegal immigration and understand that what happens on the border of the United States and Mexico is just as important as what's happening on the border of Syria and Iraq. ...
Q: Yeah, I was gonna point out that, of course, that wasn't even coming close to answering my question.
[Crosstalk.]
Now why don't you just answer my question. Would you like [President Bush] to come to Arizona and cut some campaign commercials for you and run them on all those TV stations in Phoenix and Tucson and Flagstaff and Prescott, and all?
A: In a word, no. Not at this time.
Q: That's being pretty honest, congressman!
—Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R.-Ariz., posted in Slate Magazine
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