No baseball strike. Good. But let’s not forget why it came to pass, and whose ineptitude got it to this point in the first place. The owners apparently survived with their greed intact: “However, there is no requirement that the teams spend their shared revenue on payroll.” That is a recipe for contraction, and I’m …
If you’re creating documents (or downloading them) that you or your grandchildren may want to read in 30 years, here’s an idea for a universal computer language which might allow it. The issue is huge for librarians and archivists, but also for those of us who’ve been around for a while (tried to open a …
Today the Nigerian scam got a little original. First sentences: “Pardon me for contacting you through this medium and in this manner without any prior introduction. This is due to circumstances beyond my control. I had to bribe the prison attendants to secretly allow me open an email address from the computer in their office.” …
“The Bush administration has sought, the panel said, to place its actions “beyond public scrutiny.” That’s yesterday’s 6th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on the Bush Administration’s attempts to close deportation hearings. The Administration gets credit for perseverance, however: now it’s asserting executive privilege for “officials in any part of the government who are asked …
I gotta say, anyone worried about blogging overtaking journalism can rest easy; everyone attending BlogCon was obviously way too busy enjoying the experience to bother writing contemporaneous feature articles about it. The rest of us will just have to wait and hope memory doesn’t get selective on the part of the participants. If anyone is …
If political satire offends you, or if bending Shakespeare to one’s own ends offends you, do NOT, I beg of you, go here or here. If you do, you were warned. Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of stories: on the one hand, the FBI raids a firm for “unauthorized intrusion” into military computers; on the other …
I want the Fed to raise interest rates. A lot. If it does, perhaps I’ll stop getting 10-15 pieces of spam a day about refinancing my home. I think I’m more fed up with those than with the offers for feelthy pictures. Got contact lenses? Want to wear them for up to two years? I …
For those of you keeping score at home, you can sorta get play-by-play through blogrolling if you add https://surreally.com/bc2002/ to your blogroll. kd assures me that that copy of MT pings weblogs, so it will appear as newly updated.
“The problem with the Bush administration is that its bully pulpit is all bully and no pulpit.” Once more into the breach, dear Congress: John Ashcroft and the Temple of Confidentiality, playing now at a Capitol near you. And Happy Birthday, PC (that box you type on, not the phrase); it was 21 years ago …
I’m sure the Canadian letter has been read by many; here’s a riposte I wish I’d written. Why stop at banning books? Just de-fund the libraries altogether. Jarvis-Gann anti-tax revolutionaries run amok, this time in Washington state. The county system cited “makes do in metal-roofed sheds, converted cabins and abandoned buildings.” The selfishness of library …