Saturday, August 10, 2002

I'm flipping channels and find the Patriots game on. I don't really care that much about football - any chance I had about being a football guy got ruined by Super Bowl XX followed by the Celtics and Red Sox having great years in '86. But I recognize the guy getting interviewed during halftime - the VP of Player Personnel for the Patriots, Scott Pioli. I was stranded in the Philadelphia airport waiting for a flight back in to Providence in March, and Scott Pioli was sitting in the corner with his wife, chatting away on a cellphone. Eventually I heard him calling someone and introducing himself...my mutant memory kicked in and I remembered the name. Nothing notable - I didn't say anything to him, of course. It was just strange to think of someone with a major position on the team that had just won the Super Bowl getting stranded by a delayed flight.

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Bush Unplugged: Home on the range. [Salon Headlines] Various tidbits on a Bushie day on vacation. My favorite bit: "Most Americans don't sit in Martha's Vineyard, swilling white wine," he says. Yeah, George, and most Americans don't get into Yale because of who their daddy is get a sweetheart deal for their oil company because of who their daddy is get out of an SEC investigation because of who their daddy is get to be named President by the Supreme Court because of who their daddy is Am I missing anything?

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Taiwan rallies back Chen comments [BBC World] Good for them. It's completely idiotic that everyone is forced to play into this subterfuge that Taiwan is not a seperate country from China. Everyone knows it's not true. Taiwan isn't going to come home like some prodigal son, nor should they. Taiwan is a friggin' DEMOCRACY. A functioning one, at that. There aren't that many of those in the world. We should be standing up for the right of a democraticly elected government to assert its indepedences on the world stage. This, by the way, may be the only thing Jesse Helms and I agree on.

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posted by xian August 10 2:31 PM | 3 comments. Regime change required for a rogue nation? In a soundbite disseminated by the White House and duly picked up by the media, Bush the younger asserted that "the world's worst leaders" will not be permitted to "harbor and develop the world's worst weapons." With the U.S. hinting at a new, unilateral war effort abroad and suspending constitutional rights at home, Adrian Hamilton writes in the Independent (U.K.), "The government which is spending by far the most on weapons of mass destruction, and is now planning to raise its budget by an increase greater than the total defence spending of Europe, is, of course, based in Washington." [MetaFilter] That last quote is a good point. Personally, I'd say Bush is one of the world's worst leaders - he's a friggin' bonehead who rules one of the largest powers on earth yet was never elected. And he sure as hell harbors and develops the world's worst weapons...really, it's an open-and-shut case. We need to regime change in the US now.

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Schroeder rules out Iraq 'adventure' [BBC World] I'm trying not to just blog every vaguelly relevant Iraq story, but some of this has to be noted. The German Chancellor thoroughly ruling out any German role in Bush's little fantasy rumble with Iraq is big. Earlier, I read a story discussing Iraqi opposition leaders meeting with US Powers That Be in Washington. As best as I can tell, the only 'leaders' who actually have many people to lead in the first place are the Kurdish dissidents. Of course, we've betrayed the Kurds numerous times in the past. Oh yes, and we can't give them what they want now anyway - a free and independent Kurdish state. Turkey would have an absolute shitfit - and we kinda need Turkey to let us use their territory to invade Iraq. The other opposition 'leaders' seem to be, well, full of shit. I can't believe we're actually heading toward this, that the Bush Junta is actually going to go ahead and invade Iraq. It's not that no one realizes it's a stupid idea - pretty much everyone who doesn't have a personal stake in invading Iraq has said it's a stupid idea. So why is this happening? What the hell?

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Teen mails death threat to Bush. Teen goes to jail. [FARK] A couple interesting tidbits: the teenager in question also sent a hoax anthrax letter to an attorney. Said attorney represented said teenager when he was convicted of threatening to kill Clinton in 1999. The kid's 19 now, so he must have been 16 or so back then. But it gets better - when he sent the death threat to Bush and the fake anthrax letter to his lawyer, he was 'an inmate at Lincoln Hills School'. OK - so I have no idea what Lincoln Hills School is, but the fact that he was an inmate suggests that we're talking about either a juvenile detention facility or a school for...unbalanced kids, shall we say. While I like the idea that an inmate at either of those facilities would be able to send mail without it being checked by Powers That Be first, it's still a little strange that he was able to send a DEATH THREAT TO THE PRESIDENT without someone thinking twice. Especially since HE HAD DONE IT BEFORE. And was most likely in that place BECAUSE HE SENT A DEATH THREAT TO THE PRESIDENT. Hello? How oblivious can you possibly be?

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Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers [Slashdot] This is all completely insane. They say they don't want Justice to go after casual users, but 'network nodes'. Of course, with P2P file-sharing, is there really a difference? I guess I'm safe - I tend not to use file-sharing software very often, and only when I'm specifically looking for something. But many, many college students, for example, just leave the apps running on their systems, sitting in their dorm rooms sharing 24/7. Are they going to be arrested now? And since Ashcroft is involved, I'm sure the first to get busted will be people sharing Rage Against The Machine and the like... God, this is all just so stupid. I can explicitly and definitively state that I buy MORE CDs because of file-sharing. If I hear a song or two from an album on the radio, I'll hunt down more songs from that album on MP3 so that I know whether it's worth buying. Previously, I had to hear more, or borrow an album from a friend, before I'd be willing to spend 15 bucks on it. Now? Hell, I just spend 25 dollars on a CD that just came out in the UK and won't be coming out at all in the US. If I hadn't been able to listen to most of the songs from the album on MP3, I wouldn't have bought it. Straight-forward and simple. I really should stop buying new CDs. The local chain that I buy most of my music at (Newbury Comics) carries a whole lot of used CDs as well as new ones; as long as I'm willing to be patient and accept that I won't be able to get every album I want right when I want them, I can keep myself stocked with music I haven't heard yet, save money, and not give a cent to the bastards at the major labels...

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Killer Muppet Show site [FARK] This is great, great stuff. I love me my Muppets - first movie I ever saw in the theater was the Muppet Movie; the second was the Great Muppet Caper. When my mom needed me to sit still when I was a toddler, she'd put on the Muppet Show. I can't wait for them to start putting out Muppet Show DVDs - I need more Muppets. But this site should tide me over for a while - a GREAT character guide, and a really nifty episode guide. Check it out.

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Colombia's Uribe sends in the spies [BBC World] ...sung to the tune of 'Send In The Clowns'. =)
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