by Dietsch on December 30, 2004
The New York Times | Arts | Frank Rich: Washington’s New Year War Cry: Party On!
Washington’s next celebration will be the inauguration. Roosevelt decreed that the usual gaiety be set aside at his wartime inaugural in January 1945. There will be no such restraint in the $40 million, four-day extravaganza planned this time, with its top ticket package priced at $250,000. The official theme of the show is “Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service.” That’s no guarantee that the troops in Iraq will get armor, but Washington will, at least, give home-front military personnel free admission to one of the nine inaugural balls and let them eat cake.
[emphasis added]
New York Times | Editorial | Are We Stingy? Yes
The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush’s turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.
[emphasis added]
by Dietsch on December 28, 2004
by Dietsch on December 28, 2004
Note to Gothamist, rest of world: Electrocution does not mean injury by electrical shock. It means death by electrical shock. If you don’t die, you haven’t been electrocuted.
This may seem like pedantry, but if bloggers want to claim to be journalists, they need to be able to distinguish clearly between death and non-death. Allowing readers to believe that dogs have been killed when they’ve merely been injured is inaccurate reporting.
by Dietsch on December 28, 2004
Busy busy busy. Flew to Alabama on the 17th; Jen’s bro Jeff was graduating from college, so we went to Birmingham to surprise him. Spent a couple days with her family and flew back on the 19th. Was plied with good food, gift cards, a bottle of cologne, cookies, and sundries. Jen’s family is very generous and hospitable.
Spent Christmas Eve volunteering at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, probably the first time…
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by Dietsch on December 27, 2004
2 oz. (¼ cup) vodka
4 oz. (½ cup) tomato juice
dash Tobasco
1½ tsp. horseradish
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
dash lemon juice
½ tsp. salt
4 twists pepper
Shake together. Pour over olives and ice. Sprinkle a pinch of ground celery seed on the surface.
by Dietsch on December 22, 2004
by Dietsch on December 21, 2004
I Am A Conservative Christian, And The Religious Right Scares Me, Too
“[N]o longer does the Religious Right represent conservative, Christian values….Are we heading for a modern day religious inquisition, this one led not by the Catholic Church but by the Religious Right? Are we witnessing the type of marriage between Church and State that America’s founders originally feared?”
by Dietsch on December 21, 2004
You are light-tasting
Open up your ribcage
I was born in Dixie in a boomer shack
Her head is in a bitter way
Past three o’clock
Standing on the corner with the low-down blues
Oceans lay between us and the things we think we need
The ragman draws circles up and down the block
The worms crawl in
Well my time went so quickly
The island it is silent now
His heart organ was where it should be
Waiting for the big fall
Don’t you worry about me
There’s a man going ’round taking names
by Dietsch on December 14, 2004
Bloggers Ben Hammersley and Reid Stott discuss another side to the comment-spam problem: that of the web providers that host blogs.
It seems many web-hosting companies are facing such a server load, as spammers bomb weblogs with comment spam, that they are opting to stop supporting and hosting MT sites altogether.
Reid Stott makes another observation that echoes many of my complaints, but let me back up for a minute before I address Stott’s observation.
One potential solution to the comment-spam problem is to set up TypeKey authentication for commenting. This basically forces a potential commenter to register on your site before they can comment there.
Stott points out how hard it is to find Six Apart’s TypeKey documentation. You’ve heard me blag on about how frustrating it is to install or fix MT problems when the documentation is so hard to find and understand, and I’m happy to see someone echo this frustration.
It is encouraging to hear from Anil Dash that 6A is working on the problem, but I suspect that whatever fix 6A implements will just get “broken” again by spammers as the war escalates.
Sigh. I can’t decide who’s worse–the jackass spammers or the dumbasses who buy from them, thus encouraging them to spam all the more.
by Dietsch on December 13, 2004
Jen and I saw the Pixies last night, at Hammerstein Ballroom, and I don’t know what to say that won’t sound like a cliché, but I will say this: There’s still no band like the Pixies. The Datsuns opened for them, and despite how much the hipster kids love that band, they sounded anemic and dead in comparison.
I also thought the Pixies just looked funny when they came out. Kim Deal in her blue sweater, looking just like the cutest mom in the neighborhood. David Lovering and Charles Thompson like your weird uncles. Most surprising, though, was Joey Santiago–slim, handsome, and rocking that shaved head. He was hotter than all the string-haired Datsuns combined.
I don’t go to many shows, and I’ve only been to shows in small clubs lately, so I’d forgotten the power of a huge sound system blasting your body so hard you can feel the sonic. The Pixies were in my body as much as they were my head.
If you want a more coherent review, you might try this morning’s New York Times.
