Well, I guess he should know about putting his foot in his mouth in public — Jerry Falwell has weighed in on the Dixie Chicks controversy. Of course, I don’t think the woman who said this, Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas. . . . need…
April, 2003
-
-
Cathy Young notes that a quote attributed to Steven Spielberg that has the director saying meeting Fidel Castro was “the most important eight hours of my life” is, in fact, a fake. According to Young, the quote originated in the Cuban press and then was picked up by Western news media. Unfortunately, Spielberg’s quote last…
-
My freshman year in college I took an introductory survey course in philosophy in which the instructor assigned a reading which included a defense of homosexuality (among other things). After the class discussed the reading for awhile, the instructor said he was surprised that nobody had mentioned the author’s comments on homosexuality. The reason, it…
-
Today I was reading a story that the Christian Science Monitor ran in early March about the trial of Pauline Nyiramashuhuko. Nyiramashuhuko is the first woman ever formally charged before the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity. She was a major player in the Rwandan government and numerous witnesses testified they saw…
-
The right-hand sidebar on the front page of this site features recent headlines from other sites I manage. This is accomplished using a macro in Conversant that reads the RSS feeds from those sites and then displays the two most recent posts on the weblogs there. Which is cool, except it used to cause the…
-
This is one of the more annoying things about using Userland software — it’s great if you happen to do things Just Like Dave Winer, but the software tends to leave you high and dry otherwise. Dave thinks that all a news aggregator should do is present a reverse chronological view of the news rather…
-
The hometown paper ran a really embarassing story a week or two before Easter about the origins of Easter eggs. Never send a bad reporter to do a historian’s job — the reporter had obviously done some research about the history of Easter eggs, but had apparently stopped when she reached the Middle Ages. So…
-
A number of people, including Henry Hanks, are upset at a comment made by Republican Senator Rick Santorum, but I can’t figure out what the controversy is. Gay rights group Human Rights Campaign wants Santorum removed from office because he said, If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex…
-
I’m a big believer in the idea that things that appear to be good to be true usually are. So when people e-mail me with stories or links to web sites that seem too good to be true, I want to see some pretty serious source documentation before repeating the claim. For example, if someone…
-
Dan’s Data has an extensive review of Konami’s DigiQ Tanks — mini-IR remote battle tanks that you can pit against each other in battle. Only downside is they will cost you about $50-$60/tank on E-Bay (not yet released in the United States), which is a lot to pay for something that’s not even 3 inches…