Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a lovely panoramic view of NYC lit mostly by the moon (and Mars) during the outage:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030818.html
And in the Darn Good Neologisms dept., today's Word of the Day at Wordspy.com is "rumint":
http://www.wordspy.com/words/rumint.asp
Snip:
(ROOM.int) n. Intelligence information based on rumors rather than facts.
Example Citation:
Ray McGovern, a retired C.I.A. analyst who briefed President Bush's father in the White House in the 1980's, said that people in the agency were now "totally demoralized." He says, and others back him up, that the Pentagon took dubious accounts from emigres close to Ahmad Chalabi and gave these tales credibility they did not deserve.
Intelligence analysts often speak of "humint" for human intelligence (spies) and "sigint" for signals intelligence (wiretaps). They refer contemptuously to recent work as "rumint," or rumor intelligence.
—Nicholas D. Kristof, "Save Our Spooks," The New York Times, May 30, 2003
Avram -- Oh, I know it, but that doesn't surprise me at all. What did surprise me was that (a) he was willing to note that a "so-called war protester" might actually have a rational point, and (b), more remarkably, he made no mention at all of my bashing Bush as a president and as a human being by comparing him unfavorably to Clinton. He didn't even mention it in the radio segment, which I'm told went on for a good ten minutes. He didn't use the Bush-bashing as a way of tearing down anything further I had to say. (And he linked to the entire op-ed from his web site instead of only quoting parts out of context. I doubt that Michael Moore would have been so professional.)
I don't think he "just" used my comments as a club. He did that, yes, but that's what he does as part of his shtick. Predictable. The whiff of "I'm so correct even the Lefties are agreeing with me" does pucker my brow. But the fact that he was willing to say that a Pinko Leftie Bush-hater had a reasonable idea in his head, without simultaneously labeling me as a Pinko Leftie Bush-hater, is what struck me.
Speaking of speaking out on "action faction" tactics --
After this op-ed piece was printed in last Thursday's Oregonian (the state's big daily), not only did I get a call from a local TV news reporter wanting to interview me, but Rush Limbaugh made it the centerpiece of a segment on his radio show and his web site.
Dogs and cats are sleeping together, bowling pins are singing arias, black is white, I'm on Limbaugh -- and he (in his sidelong way) agrees with me! Next up: ice cream concessions in Hell soar!
Maybe by being on Rush's show, I'm now flagged as a Friendly in Ashcroft's national loyalty database. Don't know how I'd feel about that....
From Joe Conanson's Journal at Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/politics/conason/2002/09/04/bush/index.html):
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Dumped by Middle America
A mainstream media executive has finally summoned the taste and decency to tell Ann Coulter to beat it. Not anybody at CNN or MSNBC or any of those other powerful portals of the "liberal" media, which promote her bilious maunderings almost every day. No, just a newspaper editor in central Pennsylvania, where old standards still prevail.
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It includes a link to the newspaper editor's published pink-slip editorial. I wrote a "well said, well done" email to the editor involved and received a robo-reply stating (without surprise) that no reply is possible due to the "thousands of email messages concerning his column about columnist Ann Coulter."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 8 |
| 2002 | 2 |
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