I'd actually planned to do a search on homoeroticism and Kerry/Edwards. For whatever reason, I had picked up something -- charged -- in the images I had seen of the two of them. (Needless to say, I'm not suggesting anything about the two of them; there is just something about the way they are being presented.)

Well, Robert's Virtual Soapbox beat me to it, complete with photocollage, and excerpts from various media outlets talking about the physical closeness of Kerry and Edwards.

Another article about blogging in the NY Times:

The New Pamphleteers. The polemics of today's bloggers and hardballers have their origins in the give-no-quarter attacks of the colonial era. By By ALAN WOLFE.

It continues:

Yet if the technologies used by bloggers and hardballers are new, the form is older than the Republic. While they appear as books -- and are staples of the best-seller lists -- today's give-no-quarter attacks, as George Packer noted recently of bloggers, have their origins in the pamphlets of the colonial era. ''Whatever the gravity of their themes or the spaciousness of their contents,'' Bernard Bailyn has written of these 18th-century op-ed articles, ''they were always essentially polemical.'' Long before deconstruction, we were fond of a hermeneutics of suspicion.

This seems like another "Cervantes was already postmodern" arguments. There were polemics then, there are polemics then, therefore one thing must have its origin in the other. But why? A "return of the repressed?" A rearticulation of historical circumstance?

Thinking about this more, the suggestion of delaying the elections (and, worse, announcing that we are thinking of delaying them) is especially galling considering how Bush was given the presidency. In Bush v. Gore, the majority argued that the "safe harbor" (which was, in fact, a rather soft date") had to be met in Florida; since there was no time to do that and come up with a standard for vote counting, the votes could not be counted.

So we won't, you know, make any delay in election procedures in order to actually achieve a democratic result, but we will do it for the terrorists.

Via Trash Heap, Spiderman: The Musical!

Saw this on Scripting News and was alarmed:

Newsweek: "American counter-terrorism officials, citing what they call 'alarming' intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the US this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack." 

Do you think we should give Bush the power to postpone the election? 

 But I found myself wondering what I would want to happen on election day itself? If it disrupted voting in a major city, thus possibly throwing a reliable Democrat state to the repubs?

Of course, that is probably not what they are talking about. They are almost certainly thinking about attacks occurring before the election.

I recall that Giuliani, or some of his reporters, were suggesting that he should extend his term in office past the legal date because of 9/11. It was, of course, a ridiculous idea.

But then again, this is a time when republican call people traitors for suggesting that Bush be voted out of office, as if there should be no election. (But, of course, this is well-trod territory.)

Good observation about this on Dohiyi Mir:

Assuming we can divine AQ's intentions at all, this whole thing strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do in the face of threats to interfere with the November election. If the terrorists do want to disrupt things, wouldn't announcing that you are drawing up plans to postpone the election in the event of an attack play right into their hands? Talk about incompetence.

Another group of naked men bicycling outside my window on Market St.

Funny to note that they were wearing helmets, but nothing to protect far more dangly bits. (So who says gay men care more about their dicks than their brains?)

This entry at This Modern World reminds of a story I read but now I can't find it. At the time, I was sure much more was going to be made of it -- I don't know if the story was since discredited or if it going to break again. The story had to do with a contractor for the D.O.D. raping a teenage boy in Abu Ghraib. 

Update: The German broadcast does relate a story that's already broken in the American press, but it's worth watching, probably even if you don't speak German.

(Remember all that talk of "far worse to come." When do we finally get to know about that?) July 08, 2004

German TV news report (and take a deep breath, folks): Children at Abu Ghraib

Three days ago, a German TV newsmagazine called Report Mainz broadcast an eight-minute segment reporting that the International Red Cross found at least 107 children in coalition-administered detention centers in Iraq.

The report also quotes from a yet-unpublished June 2004 UNICEF report, which (as near as I can tell through my crappy German) confirms that children were routinely arrested and "interned" in a camp in Um-Qasr. UNICEF seems particularly vexed with the "internment" status, since that means indefinite detention.

Another storm seems about to begin. Possibly a large one.

and there is pansies. That's for thoughts

Found this via logos: 15 Ways to read an RSS feed.

Has a pretty comprehensive list of the options. I'm just starting to look into the web-based ones. Why? I'm not sure.

I just noticed that if you do a search on Technocrati for Zizek, my blog is responsible for 1/4 of the search results. Guess I've gone off the deep end.

That is how I tend to do things. I get obsessed with authors or topics; I actually find it hard to read anything else during these times (except, well, for the obligatory 12-15 newspapers and 20 or so blogs that that net has long since made part of my daily routine.)