One Small Step for a Man
“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” Armstrong said in a statement. “I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word.”
History can be codified by punctuation marks.
(thanks to John B.)
Bloody Sunday
Time
What does Mick Jagger know that I don’t?
If…
If Kazkhstan is so angry at Borat then why don’t they look at it another way and sue him for back taxes?
A History of Drug Prohibition
. . . and a prediction for its abolition and replacement from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation (UK).
1969. USA – Mexico.
‘Operation Intercept’ targets the smuggling of cannabis into the USA over the Mexican border. The two-week operation (involving a three-minute inspection for every vehicle passing over the border) adversely impacts the local economy on both sides, and has a ‘negligible’ [4] effect on cannabis supply to the US.
The zeal with which Operation Intercept is conducted is at odds with its short timescale and relatively low effectiveness in stemming the flow of cannabis, adding weight to the impression that the drug ‘problem’ is being used for geo-political leverage. G. Gordon Liddy writes in his autobiography: ‘The Mexicans, using diplomatic language of course, told us to go piss up a rope. The Nixon administration didn’t believe in the United States taking crap from any foreign government. Its reply was Operation Intercept.’ [5]
[4] Letter from Mexican Foreign Secretary, Antonio Carrillo Flores, to US President Nixon in September 1969
[5] Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1998) p.185, quoted in Doyle, K, Operation Intercept: The Perils Of Unilateralism (2003)
Mark Foley, R-Fla
I wonder if Mark Foley will now go to live with his brother, Matt Foley, in a van down by the river.
For Amy & Deron
Happy Anniversary.
Prehistoric Bowl
“It’s a pretty big deal. To find something intact where it’s been for 1,000 years is pretty unusual,” said Gila archaeologist Carol Telles.
Martha Holmes
No Shit, Sherlock (Welcome to the Party, Bob)
As depicted by Mr. Woodward, this is an administration in which virtually no one will speak truth to power, an administration in which the traditional policy-making process involving methodical analysis and debate is routinely subverted. He notes that experts — who recommended higher troop levels in Iraq, warned about the consequences of disbanding the Iraqi Army or worried about the lack of postwar planning— were continually ignored by the White House and Pentagon leadership, or themselves failed, out of cowardice or blind loyalty, to press insistently their case for an altered course in the war.
A Wandering Daughter Job
Desert Blond May Be Missing Coed, Belief of Parents
[Milwaukee Sentinel (?), circa January-February 1941]
Belief that the scantily clad blond recently reported roaming the Paradise valley, near Las Vegas, Nev., might be Miriam M. Misky, missing University of Wisconsin coed, was advanced Tuesday night by her father, Hirsh Misky, Brooklyn, N. Y.
He asked the missing persons bureau in New York to investigate the possibility. He described his daughter as an attractive blond, about 5 feet 4 inches tall. Both he and the girl’s mother attributed her disappearance to despondency over scholastic difficulties.
Miss Misky, 19, failed to return to her classes after spending the Christmas holidays at home. It was learned she stayed at a Milwaukee hotel Jan. 7 to 14.
Last Sunday tourists told a Las Vegas constable they had seen a pretty blond dressed in a flour sack in the desert area near Las Vegas.
“The Skinny on Skinny”
Ask a designer why they book skinny models: because that’s what the agents are providing. Ask an agent why they promote skinny models: well that’s what the designers want. And around we go.
Cousin Mosquito #1
By Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker
Aerocar
Could Deron love this car unironically?
David Lynch
“As soon as you put things in words, no one ever sees the film the same way,” he said at one point, when the line of questioning turned too specific. “And that’s what I hate, you know. Talking — it’s real dangerous.”
“You May Have Been youtubed.”
If you don’t like what RateMyProfessors.com has done for the image of professors, get ready for the YouTube effect. YouTube is the immensely popular Web site where people post videos of themselves and their friends hanging out, doing mock television shows, watching television, or just about anything you can imagine in front of a video camera of some sort.
Stoned Professor
One More for Cindy
Rubberball meets a car.
For Cindy
Barton Myers
Chess King Can’t Flush
He reportedly concluded by saying, “My dignity does not allow me to stand this situation.”
Picasso and American Art
Chicago Manual of Style
And so starting tomorrow the manual — sometimes known as publishing’s Miss Manners — will be available online by subscription, meaning that those who need to know, pronto, whether it is ever all right to capitalize the first letters of e. e. cummings’s name will no longer have to search through the more than 956-page volume to find the answer.