May, 2003

  1. I Missed the Weblog Memo

    Boy did I miss the boat. Here I thought that a weblog was simply a series of posts organized in (usually reverse) chronological order. Who knew they were all about giving free reign to authentic voices? The personalities of the writers come through. That is the essential element of weblog writing, and almost all the…

  2. LA Times Memo on Abortion/Cancer Connection

    Thanks to Henry Hanks for pointing out this LA Times memo about a recent front page story that newspaper did on claims that having an abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer. Assuming its genuine, the irony here is that the claim that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer has been…

  3. Fox News on Yaweh Ben Yaweh

    Fox’s Roger Friedman has a story about Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown apparently forming ties with the Black Hebrew cult. The thing that caught my eye about the story was how Friedman describes the case of Hulon Mitchell Jr., In 1990, a U.S.-affiliated offshoot sect of Black Hebrews in Miami — led by Yahweh Ben…

  4. Leon Panetta on Iraqi War Costs

    While doing some Google searching on another topic, I came across this tidbit from the Jan. 15, 2003 edition of USA Today, Panetta says a new war with Iraq has to exceed the $60 billion cost of the last one because combat is likely to last longer than the 43 days of the 1991 conflict:…

  5. How to Fix Disney

    Newsweek has an article on Disney’s financial problems and how management is approaching them, and Cory Doctorow has some intersetig ideas on how Disney could turn things around. Anywhere, here’s my grand plan on how Disney can stop mismanaging its licensed properties. Everyone at the company should be forced to sit and watch Piglet’s Big…

  6. Installing Movable Type

    Since I had nothing else to do today (not!), I figured why not go ahead and try to install Movable Type on my laptop. Why the heck would I want MT on my laptop? Well, because I wanted a weblog I could easily access, post to and search that was only locally available (i.e. for…

  7. Mbeki Continues to Adopt the U.N. Approach

    Thabo Mbeki has really done an excellent job of adopting the United Nations approach to wars, ethnic conflict and human rights violations in Africa. Just ignore the proble, court dictators, and justify the unjustifiable 90 percent of the time, and then once or twice a year make a pretty speech at an international conference. Whitewash,…

  8. Oh, No, Not Another Saddam Statue . . .

    The New York Times has an interesting story on the folks who had to make all of those statues of Saddam Hussein that littered the Iraqi landscape. “Of course we were amazed all the time about the orders for statues,” said Farid Hussein, a supervisor at the factory and no relation of the deposed leader,…