Monday, December 09, 2002

Suitor Interest in Bayer Drug Unit Fades. But after a flurry of interest from potential suitors, the outlook for Bayer has dimmed. By Suzanne Kapner. [New York Times: International] Oh no! My outloook has dimmed! Oh, they meant the drug company? ... I'm sorry, I can't resist making Bayer aspirin puns. It comes with the name.
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Enter ... the Rawhide Kid!. Enter ... the Rawhide Kid! Marvel is about to unveil the first openly gay gunslinger. Name's the Rawhide Kid. Its creators say it will likely be campy. With a name like that, how could it be anything but? [MetaFilter] Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas, the editorial powers-that-be at Marvel, have really had a thing for controversy! controversy! controversy! and having a gay cowboy character from the '50s is just another logical step. Oy.

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Nifty - all I had to do to get the new laptop online was plug it in. No bother registering the new MAC address or anything. Now I just need to figure out why the display is a little too bright...
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One more time to clear up a couple other annoyances - and I figured out what my problem was re: slow right-click menus. McAfee - for some reason, it hosed the system when I tried to right-click in IE. Kill McAfee, and I'm fine. It's a crap virus scanner anyway. =)
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...well, that didn't actually work worth a damn. Radio somehow reverted to the default template...here's an attempt to get it straightened out...
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Just transferred Radio over to the new laptop. Seems to be running ok, if a little cranky - there's a delay whenever I right-click on anything in an IE window, for a good second or two. I'm sure this'll go away, probably with the next reboot, but it's still a little annoying. This is my last test - if this upstreams properly, I'm going home and trying tonight without the old laptop. Wish me luck - you might not hear from me again 'til sometime tomorrow. =)

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Police infiltrate swingers' club; Pelham orders shutdown. WBZ Dec 9 2002 6:10AM ET [Moreover - Boston news] Local TV GOLD! There's nothing to make local TV newspeople happy quite like a story that lets them say "Police shut down a house where people pay a cover charge to have sex with strangers!" Which is exactly the bit I heard in a commercial during the Simpsons last night. Ah, what a wonderful world we live in...

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Bush's next target. North Korea: The west is running out of patience with North Korea's leadership, writes Simon Tisdall. [Guardian Unlimited] Tisdall makes an interesting point: one reason that Bush can be expected to go after North Korea eventually is that he made this about him and Kim Jong-Il, declaring his hate for Kim. We all remember his repeated, almost manic naming of bin Laden as an "evildoer", casting the erstwhile "War on Terror" as a very personal conflict (one which Bush has pretty decisively lost, so far). And who can forget his argument that one of his casus bellis against Iraq was that "he [Saddam Hussein] tried to kill my dad." Is this healthy, turning geopolitics into an individual battle? It doesn't feel appropriate to me, not in the least. There's a certain irony to Henry Kissinger, master of realpolitik, working for a president who doesn't seem to grasp the concept in the least. When Bush was running for President, his foreign policy inexperience was questioned, and his pre-9/11 time in office did little to bolster his reputation in that regard. Since then, nearly everything he's said about foreign policy or other foreign powers has been expressed in a personal sense. The country's enemies become his personal enemies. His personal friends become the country's allies. Is this the only way he can function on the global stage? It may be a healthy and rational way for him to react to the role that history has thrust upon him, but is it good for the country? I tend to doubt it.

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Knicks' Stars Are Calling for the Ball. The equal-opportunity nature of Coach Don Chaney's motion offense limits individual production, say Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston of the Knicks. By Chris Broussard. [New York Times: Sports] "Star" players complaining that they're not getting enough touches - a sure sign that a team is in the shitter. And have no doubt, the Knicks *suck*. Bad. Which pleases me to no end. The world is a better place with the Celtics 7 ½ games ahead of the Knicks, and then there's the 4-1 whipping the Bruins gave to the Knicks' sister team, the New York Rangers. I was going to mention how the Bruins are 13 points ahead of the Rangers, but it turns out that's not quite as significant as I thought - in the NHL, Boston and New York aren't in the same division. You could *never* do that in basketball, baseball, or even football. In all the discussions surrounding realignment in the NBA (expected to come after the new Charlotte expansion team is awarded, bringing the league to thirty teams), there are only a few cardinal rules. The biggest? Boston, New York, and Philadelphia *have* to be in the same division. But in the NHL, the Rangers and Islanders are in the Atlantic division, along with Philly, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, while the Bruins are in the Northeast division with Buffalo, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. Which also makes sense, when I look at it - Montreal v. Boston is another classic rivalry, a greater one than Bruins v. Rangers. I'm sure you all really cared about this little sidetrack, so I'll stop talking now. =)

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