Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate thanks you for bringing this movement to a greater audience.
Hmm, I grew up semi-Catholic and we always called the bird's tail a Pope's nose. It always seemed a little naughty but not the kind of thing one would face eternal damnation for.
As with pretty much everything related to the Church, I have mixed feelings about John Paul II. Way too traditional, but he also speaks out forcefully on issues like captial punishment and social justice.
I certainly don't want to see the man suffer, and I fear who the College of Cardinals may elevate next. It's an all-around bad situation.
Now, Jerry Falwell, on the other hand, I have much less sympathy for.
I'll allow that a good HR department can be an asset, but I've only experienced one that was uniformly good (at a startup - it was the acquiring company that wielded the hatchet) and I have no basis to say anything bad about my current employer's HR department.
I have, however, had HR people violate confidences that they should not have concerning people I managed (most of which I already knew about from the horse's mouth).
So, for better or worse, my instinct is to not trust 'em.
As I understand it, PG&E led the cheerleading squad for the absurd partial deregulation that set them up perfectly to be fleeced by the likes of Enron. Basically, they still had a cap on what they could charge ratepayers for electricity, but there was no such regulation for suppliers.
During the crisis, it was still cheaper for me to run my electric space heaters instead of the absurd gas wall heater I had in my apartment.
Unfortunately, it's not like the executives at PG&E got hurt - it was the CA taxpayer and lots of ordinary PG&E employees who took it on the chin.
(Have we drifted far enough off topic yet?)
Temperence - HR? Evil?
Personally, I think of them as the people who would have been in the Stazi if they were born in East Germany. Now that we have the Department of Homeland Security, it may become hard to find good HR people.
Alex - I'm down with the space elevator if it has a free transfer to the J train at Marcy Ave. (Preferably cross-platform.)
Well, I was just digging at McCartney's age, not his talent. He could phone things in, but he generally doesn't.
This afternoon, I was having a really excellent (and slightly but not crazlily expensive) burger at a restaurant, when I noticed McCartney chatting it up with the Fox commentators during the pregame. I commented on it to my server - I think he was all of 19 - and he said something to the effect that I had to remember the whole Beatles thing first-hand. I felt compelled to tell him that I was knee-high to a tadpole when they were at their peak, and that while I really enjoy their music, it's not what's on my iPod. :-o
I'll chalk it up to the fact that when you're 19, almost anybody over 30 looks ancient, and that he may have been fuzzy on his timelines.
Yes, that's what I'll do.
mayakda - I think the press would have to make the connection explicitly, and that isn't gonna happen. Especially since Hearst bought the Chron. I don't think anything is going to be able to redeem Gray - a politician worthy of his given name.
Besides, at this point there's no getting back what Enron stole from the people of California. If the media is going to point any fingers, they should be pointed straight at Bush's appointees at the FERC who allowed the whole fiasco to happen unchecked.
Yep, the liberal media (Viacom, GE, Disney, Time Warner and News Corp) are gonna be all over this.
I think Sir Paul was selected because of the low likelihood of a wardrobe malfunction.
High-risk for Fox, 'cause if there was one, well, they'd have been paying for a lot of therapy.
I wonder if the tasty iPod shuffle comes packed with a side of "Silica Gel Do Not Eat" (as the packets always seem to say).
Tim - It's been a long time since I read Jane Eyre, so maybe my opinion is colored by the mists of time, but I find it hard to find any value of "worth it" to make having read that book a good experience.
But, of course, your mileage did vary.
FWIW, I hated Henry James's Washington Square too, but lots of people love it.
I rather doubt that too many Senators will have the balls to vote against Gonzales, lest they be percieved as "soft on terror". Expect to hear that phrase even more if AG faces a serious challenge in the Senate. Remember 9-11 changed everything. Kind of the way the Reichstag fire did.
Lucy - Thank you for posting that link to the Guardian article. I wonder if/when the tv program will make it across the Atlantic.
We live in scary times, and we need media pieces like this now more than ever.
Marilee - I'd suggest being ruthless about triaging what you keep, but do keep enough old family things so that they're there for your relations in the (hopefully) distant future when they (and not you) will have to worry about such things.
Just because a parent teaches a child to discard the past doesn't mean that the child will internalize the lesson as an adult - they may genuinely want some of that stuff.
I'm yet another who's in the midst of the Baroque Cycle, currently paused between books 2 and 3. Instead of pushing on, I've taken a detour and started reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
On the non-fic front, I'm reading Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible which is a collection of short essays, each reflecting on a book of the Bible. I'm reading it stroboscopically, a page here, a page there, and enjoying the result.
Giuliani wouldn't fare too well with the true believers in the US, even if he could stand up to a Parliament (which is doubtful, IMHO). He may be appropriately authoritarian, but he's sufficiently gay-friendly that he lived with a gay couple when his wife threw him out of Gracie Mansion.
In short Giuliani is viewed as a RINO, so whatever his talents or opinions might be, his political future is pretty much limited to New York State. (And I think the upstate Republicans wouldn't vote for him because he's too closely tied to NYC, which they despise.)
CNN seems to have picked up the story, but they've filed it under "Business". Go figure.
Also, I've just had a Charlie Brown "AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!" moment. I re-read my prior post, only to discover that I left out an apostrophe in "denomination's", wrote "the" for "they" and left in an extra "they" due to an editing error. This on a site run by an editor. I blame it on having had only one cup of coffee this AM. (Have to blame something. Commenting is Hard Work™.)
Slightly OT for this thread, but still closely related, Josh Marshall (of Talking Points Memo fame) is tracking the refusals by NBC and CBS to air ads from the United Church of Christ.
Why? Because the emphasize the denominations openness to gays and minorities.
Here's a link to Josh's coverage and a link to the UCC ad.
Looks like the SCLM has decided that they the only religion they can acknowledge is the fire-and-brimstone, hate thy neighbor kind. So much for recasting progressive ideas in a religious frame. (OK - maybe it's a bit early to be so negative, but this is a pretty poor start. The SCLM is also ignoring the story, since it makes them look bad.)
If you look at the Salon archives for other articles written by Mr. Provigil, you'll see that he's their official recreational drug tourist. Therefore, it should be no surprise that he treats Provigil like just another opportunity for some chemical-laden fun.
I don't think that this will hurt the access of people with on-label diagnoses to this drug. Since it's so amazingly expensive, I'd even predict that there should be some novel compounds rolling down the pike real soon that might be more effective with fewer side effects.
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| 2005 | 14 |
| 2004 | 93 |
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