"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life." -- Frank Zappa All links in orange open in tastefully small new windows. |
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Updated:9:35 a.m., 5-31-2003 At what point will Microsoft be stopped? Here's the CNN/Money magazine report on Microsoft settling with AOL Time Warner. The browser war is over and it cost the monopoly $750 million out of its $46 billion in cash. Crush a competitor for 1.6 percent of available cash. What a country. What's worse is that the deal solidiifies MSFT's drive to obliterate Real Networks (and by extension, Apple's iTunes music store). It's another step in media consolidation and it's another step against the consumer and the free flow of information. Think I'm just a disgruntled Mac user? Well, Dan Gillmor agrees with me. Once again, Microsoft will use its position to take an inferior technology (Windows Media) and make it a de facto standard. Here's my wish. Some zillionaire buys a convenience store in every major city, and instead of selling products, gives them away for free. Then let's see how people look at upgrading laws on monopoly practices. Sometimes, abstract economic concepts need to be translated into facts on the ground. In the you-heard-it-here-first department, the next player in the how-big-is-too-big dispute will be Wal-Mart. The clout of that company is nothing short of incredible. Seriously, check it out.
Updated: 11:20 a.m., 5-30-2003 • I know people don't care, or choose not to listen, but folks, the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war was bogus. Make no mistake -- this invasion was about power, oil and money, and being a patriot means more than swallowing whatever politicized crap is being thrown your way. Remember, if oil and money weren't at stake, the UN would be handling the rebuilding of that country. • Very rarely does the news business get a chance to see something so clearly. So it goes with the Bush tax cut, where the poorest single moms got cut out of getting a measly $400, but the investing class gets thousands in tax cuts. If you're going to stimulate the economy, here's a hint -- send the money to the people who need it to buy simple necessities. They'll spend it. From CNN, here are the details. To put it bluntly, according to Deloitte & Touche, families making between $10,500 and $26,000 get no tax credit cut for children; a married couple making $126,000 will get a $3,028 tax cut. The tax cut for the poor would have cost about $3 billion out of a $350 billion package. The priorities could not be more clear. • And while we're on money and government, check out this CNN pickup of a piece in the London Financial Times. Our politicians are cutting taxes when the budget, long-term, is a staggering $44 trillion, that's trillion with a T, out of whack. • Keeping up with the monopoly. the number of securiity patches for Microsoft IIS servers this year is now up to 19. • I don't care if she's pretty, she's an idiot and she's dangerous. Ann Coulter says go ahead and pollute the planet. Hey, Ann, do you know how many organisms are on the planet Earth? One. Just one. I'm sick of economics destroying our planet; we, and by we I include all of modern science, fool ourselves by thinking we understand all the connections in nature. We don't. Updated: 10:20 p.m., 5-25-2003Ten Framers Jonesing for some football, I tuned in for an NFL Europe game. Last time I checked in on the league, it was pretty disappointing. Scouts have a term– "ten framer"– that means in ten frames you can tell the player isn't fast enough or good enough for the NFL. And last time around, I saw a lot of ten framers in NFL Europe. But some good players have come out of the league recently, and one of the NFL commentators I trust most, Pat Kirwan of NFL.com, recently wrote about the league's up-and-comers. So I checked it out. And the quality of player is indeed better. As a general rule, when I'm scouting a specific player, I often find myself impressed with someone else; when Tony Mandarich was getting all kinds of ink, I fell in love with his teammate, wide receiver Andre Rison. When checking in on USC's Chris Claiborne, I wound up impressed with Daylon McCutcheon. Last college QB I saw that lived up to the hype was Drew Bledsoe. Most recently, the two players who have impressed me the most were Roy Williams (now a safety with Dallas) and Oklahoma running back Quentin Griffin. Griffin, knocked by NFL scouts for his small size, was a fourth-round pick of the Denver Broncos this year. Remember the name. He's going to be a star. Updated:9:30 p.m., 5-24-2003 • As a single taxpayer with no children, the Bush tax cut pretty much skips me (not enough money in a year to pay for a single Washington, D.C. power lunch). At least Dubya was nice enough to stick me with me with a huge federal deficit that will crimp my retirement. As the Wall Street Journal reported: "A household with income of $30,000 to $40,000 a year would have an average tax cut of $323. A household with income between $500,000 and $1 million a year would have an average tax cut of $17,307.” • Distributed wisdom. When buying champagne, remember extra dry is sweeter than brut. • Make a paper airplane shaped like a blimp.
Updated: 5:25 p.m., 5-23-2003 If you're not familiar with Dr. Howard Dean, the long-time governor of Vermont, you can see him in action at HowardDean.tv, that is, if you have a PC running Internet Explorer. (Note to the Dean heads out there – Microsoft is a national security issue. Thanks for the QuickTime downloads, but once he gets elected, do something about that monopoly, will you?) Dean, who has raised $1 million in Internet contributions so far, even has an official Howard Dean blog. His Web site touts campaign features including email and wireless. It's definitely not your father's campaign. In a political world dominated by money and TV, a
plain-speaking populist mounting an Internet grassroots campaign
must be considered a longshot. But have you noticed how many other
Democrats are attacking him lately? In politics, that's a sign of
strength.
Updated: 3:00 p.m., 5-23-2003 Updated: 4:15 p.m., 5-22-2003 It's a legitimate question, but it's also a case of how you can't get the right answer by asking the wrong question. There are basic double standards in the world as we know it -- that an all-white school is wrong but predominately black colleges are okay, that all kinds of things can be limited to women-only, but anything male-only is discriminatory. These double standards are not new; Emerson wrote of "consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds" more than a century ago. As much as we want the world to be clear between right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, it is not now nor has it ever been. Thou shall not kill may have been a commandment for 2,000 years, but war and self-defense have been exceptions for 2,000 years. Freedom of speech has been an American standard for 200 years, but for nearly one hundred years you haven't had the right to cry "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Sorenstam's participation in the Bank of America Colonial Tournament is an illustration of subservient rights versus equal rights. If that sounds high-faluting and philosophical, here's a simple example -- subservient versus equal is at the heart of the abortion debate (the notion that the rights of the mother trump the rights of the fetus). In a country that pulls for the underdog, in a country that's built on being all that you can be, the societal norm said Annika Sorenstam deserved -- and got -- the right to try and compete at a higher level. Too bad it made for messy ethical questions; it made a great story. Once you cut through the clutter and the spin, what Sorenstam actually showed on her first day was just how damn good the PGA golfers are. She had 10 holes played while under par, and 15 pars total. She had one birdie, two bogeys, finished one-over on the day -- and she tied for 73rd. Here's another way to look at it. This week's PGA course is 1,018 yards longer than the one being played on the women's side (7,080 to 6,062). Even more damning is that the shorter LPGA course has a higher par (72 to 70). Sorenstam, in terms of driving length, is the Tiger Woods of the LPGA, consistently outblasting her rivals. And according to the AP, she averaged 248 yards per drive on Thursday. She hit 13 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens. Those are quality golf numbers, and it put her in a tie for 73rd. Sorenstam got to show she wouldn't be an embarrassment, and the men got to set the definition of quality golf. The biggest groan heard on the bogey 18th wasn't from Sorenstam fans but from network executives. This tournament will get ridiculously high ratings if she makes the cut and gets to play this weekend. Until that bogey, she was in good shape -- tied at 30-something. Now, tied for 73rd, making the cut is far more dicey. There are 113 players in the field. Tied for 73rd and praying to make the cut is the lament of most PGA newcomers. The fact that Sorenstam is a woman may drive the media attention, but numbers drive the golf leader boards, and the numbers put her in a big class of people -- folks who are damn good golfers, yet not good enough to be among the best in the world. Now I suspect few of these PGA pros would play her for money while letting her hit from the ladies' tee, and that's the ultimate moral of this story. She didn't ask for a special advantage, some affirmative action to make up for past imbalances. She lined up with the men and took a whack at it. And she tied for 73rd. Updated: 11:05 a.m., 5-22-2003 That preamble in mind, consider taking the photographer out of photography. On an zero-to-10 must-read scale, this story is an eight on a scale where few items rate higher than nine. And while on the subject of links rating an eight or better, from Richard Brosnahan of Broznews, consider a new Calvin sticker where he's peeing on copyright laws. Now consider that for this particular peeing Calvin, this story is the definitive biography. Includes comprehensive photographic coverage handled in tasteful popup windows. • By way of Obscure Store, the latest in Jayson Blair limericks. This one came from a contributor identified as Jeff Borden: For needlessly causing this woe, High school basketball phenom LeBron James just signed a $90 million shoe contract with Nike. Assuming he plays 10 years in the NBA, that works out to $24,657 per day. The national median salary for a year is roughly $27,000. Now considering his team contract will be a similar amount, this high schooler will make more money per day than 90 percent of the country makes per year. Now imagine making $20,000 a year in your career of choice. Now imagine that your bosses decide you don't deserve any more money. Now imagine getting fired for trying to do something about it. A union-bashing tale from a newspaper chain in Vermont. I start with these two examples because sometimes in politics the need for one last vote can lead to one person having a tremendous amount of power. And so it goes with Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, who has managed to stick to his principles and trim back the latest money grab by Republicans fed by contributions from the investor class. Yes, Dubya got his $350 billion tax cut, but the tax on dividends was cut to 15 percent instead of eliminated entirely. This will surely be revisited in the future, but for now, the damage to the working class has been contained, at least slightly. And here's why I probably should have stayed in journalism, my knack for asking questions that most reporters don't ask. Can anyone tell me what the elimination of the tax on dividends would do to the tax-free municipal bond market? Not being an MBA, I have to think it would wipe it out. Why invest in a four percent tax free bond when Altria is paying a seven percent tax-free dividend? I bring this up because while Congress is hell-bent on rewarding its rich benefactors with tax cuts, states and localities all across the country are in a tremendous fiscal crunch. And I can't help but think that the cost of states and localities to borrow money will go way up whenever the tax on dividends is eliminated. Considering Virginia's state budget cuts lead to layoffs, I cannot see how this tax-cut frenzy is going to create jobs, as Dubya claims, but lead to more job losses. Someday I'll do a piece explaining deflation, as opposed to inflation, because it is on our national horizon. It doesn't matter how low interest rates drop because if you don't have a job, you're not buying a house. I can have a tax rate of zero but it would mean nothing if I have no income to tax. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The American political system is money versus votes, and money is winning. Attack ads aren't designed to rally people to vote; they are designed to turn people off to the entire process. It's really no surprise that when half of the people making $27,000 or less a year don't bother to vote that the rich elites will have their way with things. *** • Thanks to the tax-free glory of Amazon, I just purchased a magnificent album that I cannot believe is now 25 years old. I'm going to play it at Wednesday night poker and tell everybody it's a brand new CD. It'll serve two purposes. First, I'll know if the poker buddies read the blog, and secondly, I can focus-group my contention that "Tonic For The Troops" by the Boomtown Rats is one of the ten most important albums of the '70s. PS: I also still have this on vinyl. • Seventy spams today. Not a record, but close. Once again folks, I don't need ink cartridges, business opportunities, porno or a bigger penis. What I need is no more spam. I know spam is so cheap, you need only one fool out of a million to make the mass mailing profitable, but email marketers take note -- I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM JUNK MAIL. • In keeping up with the monopoly, here's today's database marketshare: 37 percent IBM, 27 percent Oracle, 18.8 percent MSFT. According to Gartner, Microsoft is showing the most growth. Is there any market the Redmond giant does not try to dominate? And why do IT managers continue to put up with a company that has to issue 50 security patches a year? Man, do I ever want to read the fine print and related clauses to Mr. Gates' contract with the Devil. Updated:
11:05 a.m., 5-20-2003 Forget for a moment the hype that this is the largest penalty ever levied on a non-Wall Street firm. It's a smaller penalty than the one laid upon Michael Millken (the inside trader) who did far less damage. Millken, by the way, paid his $600 million penalty and had hundreds of millions of dollars left over. I don't claim to be a math whiz, MBA or corporate financier, but it seems to me a 4.5 percent penalty means that when you get right down to it, crime pays. Handsomely. I suspect Dan Gillmor will have plenty to say about this. He's ostensibly a tech columnist (and the best one in the business) but he has a way of extending his pointed form of coverage to other forms of economic malfeasance as well. God, I wish I had his job. In case you're wondering, when it comes to financial
news, I go to the capitalist sources themselves, the Wall Street
Journal or Forbes. The Forbes story on the WorldCom details is here. Updated: 5:40 p.m., 5-19-2003 • Beach or blog? The length and frequency of posts will tell the tale. • Notable quote from a dot comrade buddy: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." Perhaps the fellow behind this flameout page should have remembered that. • Unfortunate acronym, the Phillipine terrorist group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Note to newspaper researchers: don't look for MILF on Google if you want to keep your job. • Great story from CounterSpin. Seems that a bunch of recent terrorism arrests have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. If you're looking for a reason to dump Dubya in 2004, two words – John Ashcroft. And pity the poor individuals who wind up over-charged for the benefit of DOJ spin doctors. • More proof that if you want to find good reporters nowadays, start by looking outside of the U.S. press. The Toronto Star's Mitch Potter looks at the final days on the job of the Iraqi information minister. For those who loved the comedy, the story hints he's still alive and trying to make his way to Egypt. He'll land on Letterman eventually. • In geek news, Microsoft has announced it will license Unix code from a company called SCO. The surface level story is here. Something closer to the truth is here. When it comes to the monopoly, always remember that very little can be taken at face value. And while I'm citing stories from www.news.com, check out this comment from PeopleSoft -- Dot Net is like asbestos. • Remember when the U.S. military used Van Halen tunes to smoke out Manuel Noriega? CNN is reporting Iraqi prisoners are being broken down by Barney's "I Love You, You Love Me." I'd link to it, but I haven't been able to hit CNN.com without a network connection failure in weeks. • Did y'all know the world is going to end this month? Apparently a planet is going to zoom by and shift the poles of the Earth. Max out those credit cards, folks. • Onanism. You can look up this big word or you can just check out Squeal News Pig. It's a news parody site that's kind of funny in spots. • Unintentionally funny. This is a lexicon of youth slang designed to help youth ministers stay hip. If you're halfway hip to begin with, some of the entries are hilarious. • And finally, my junk mail filter caught a 77K attachment allegedly from Microsoft support. It was a .pif file, something I hadn't seen in years (it stands for Process Interchange Format). By the time I had decided to post and ask folks if they knew anything about it, the tech press was already warning it was an Internet worm. Once again, folks, get a Mac, and leave that virus crap behind. *** Updated: 3:30 p.m., 5-15-2003 • My candidate for the saddest story of the year -- mankind has strip-mined the oceans. I have this feeling that capitalism worked better when resources were limitless, and that just as religions need to adapt to changing environments, our monetary systems need to change as well. When the system promotes our own long-term destruction for short-term profit, trouble is inevitable. • Once again, somebody is beating me to my book. I've been thinking about writing about my secrets for sex foods and picnics for a couple years now; seems VodkaPundit has a book proposal going in on "The Bachelor's Guide to Getting Laid Through Cooking." Grrrrrrrr. • Arcane interface stuff from Eric Raymond. I'm a sucker for anything that has computers and Piaget in the same paragraph. And I love his slogan:" Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life's simple pleasures..." • I thought about sending my resume to the New York Times, considering they have a well-publicized opening now, but I suspect that's one tense newsroom at the Grey Lady right now. For the record, I spent 16 years in journalism and never made up anything. It's not that hard, you know. • The original Heloise has -30- on her tombstone. That's what I wanted to put on mine; it's already what I put on whiteboards whenever I leave various IT assignments. For those who don't recognize it, -30- is an old journalism mark meaning "end of the story." *** Updated: 5:30 p.m., 5-10-2003 • Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, has a new will. Upon her demise, she'll donate her body to the PR-addicted group for use in future protests. Among other things, she wants her feet cut off and made into umbrella stands. She also wants to be barbequed and to have her skin made into leather. (Reuters) • From Jon Stewart, the tanking of the movie "Real Cancun" shows the price people will pay for reality programmiing. Zero. • Late-night joke archive. "What's the difference between Bill Bennett and Bill Clinton? When Bennett hits on 17, it's not your daughter."• I'm trying to visualize the geek behind this pathetically obsessive site dedicated to the question of which newsbabe has the best legs. For the record, I find Heidi Collins so pretty that she's distracting. • The latest in wedding planning -- an inflatable church. And while thinking about weddings, be sure to check in at Ugly Dress. • Kinky kitsch. By way of Sharpeworld, Apartment House Wrestling. • On a serious note, here's another example of the power of the Web. Seems that famous photo op of the Saddam Hussein statue being pulled down in Baghdad wasn't exactly a massive uprising after all. • Albinos for a Palestinian State and other wacky protesters. • Ken Layne made $139 in a month off his blog ads in April. And to think Iraqi oil wells will generate $63 million a day. • From the NY Post via Country Store, these five names: Lt. Hans Mumm, Sgt. Andrei Salter, Staff Sgt. Shawn Mahoney, Sgt. Scott Boehmler and Spc. Joseph Barrios. Those Army reservists were the ones who came up with the idea of putting Iraqi leaders on playing cards. "The idea is to get these pictures out there to the troops without forcing them to read another training manual," said Mumm. • You knew it would happen. No Replacement For Displacement has a deck of weasels. So does News Max. Check out the Queen of Clubs. • Interesting trivia at Gut Rumbles. And what a classic slogan: "Humorous observations, vitriolic rants and a ceaseless quest for adoration from people who don't know me." Go ahead and click; learn what an octothorpe is. • From Grouchy Old Cripple: "If you think I have a foul mouth, just remember that profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." He has a great statistic on the number of Americans who have died defending France (65,000) and a hilarious picture considering the criticism of the Pilot In Chief Photo Op. And in terms of that French thing, I'm certified. • Headline of the year. From Media Whores. PHOTO FLOP TOP GUN SHOOTS BLANKS CRASS AIRCRAFT CARRIER PHOTO OP FAILS TO • Dennis Miller takes on Norman Mailer in the Wall
Street Journal. • And some Photoshop fun: Airbrush magazine looks at the Dixie Chicks, Elmer Fudd goes hunting, and Comrade Hillary exposed. For the record, I'm no fan of Mrs. Clinton, but I wish the right-wing would get off her back and spend more time skewering Democratic frauds like Dick Gephardt and John Edwards. • As for me, I'm off to Virginia Beach for a bit. Click away, folks. ***
Updated:
7:47 p.m., 5-8-2003 Stepped out one morning and all the trees suddenly had leaves. Turned on a TV and saw the greatest photo op since Ron Ziegler invented the term. The Pilot in Chief made a magnificent speech with truly profound declarations on the evolution of war, and the words were overwhelmed with the visuals. Heard that double taxation of dividends is now the greatest evil facing our country and that more tax cuts for rich people is what's needed to make up for the 2.6 million lost jobs since Dubya took office. Apparently the double taxation of Social Security is okay. Watched the second Internet bubble – spam – top new heights. Forty-five percent of all email is now spam, compared to 16 percent a year or so ago. After getting a record 91 spams one day last week. I cut and pasted all the subject lines to write a short story; a man with a newly enlarged penis wins an Internet jackpot contest and meets beautiful singles in his area while shopping for ink cartridges, low mortgage rates and lust-crazed teens. Picked up a Sunday paper to read that Bill Bennett, Mr. Virtue himself, is a big-time gambler. No personal judgments here – I have long enjoyed the fun of the low-stakes wager – but nothing is more sweet to an ex-reporter than the exposure of a hypocrite regardless of race, party, gender or creed. It's worth remembering however, that Washington is a town that destroys people for sport. I'd also like to say – as a libertarian, tree-hugging, freethinker type – that Mr. Bennett's work in advocating a common core of cultural values and virtues is not only commendable but a correct public policy. And finally, as I was missing all these things from overwork, I found some factoids of note from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm not alone. The average American worker gets 8.1 days vacation
in their first year on the job and 10.2 vacation days after three
years. This is three to six weeks less than many European workers.
An outfit called Work To Live says 175 million days of vacation
went unused last year. That figure is probably just an educated
guess, but it sure sounds about right to me. Updated: 7:17 p.m., 5-8-2003 • Curious factoid of the month. Diet Coke kills sperm within 60 seconds. • Traffic tickets and corruption. A fabulous story suggested by Richard Brosnahan on New Rome, Ohio. A must-read, and I don't use that term lightly or often. • Isabella claims to be on the run to avoid an arranged marriage, So why blog if you're hiding? Here's the link for Flight Risk, but pardon me for thinking it's a viral ad campaign for a book or movie deal. And pardon me for thinking that despite this site's buzz in blog circles, it's pretty boring. • Insanely slow to load, but imagine if Fox News had been around for various historical events. Someday I'm going to enter one of those Photoshop contests. • I devoted a great deal of attention to a Russian intelligence site during the war. Progressive Review looked deeper into the site in an article linked here. And like all bloggers everywhere, it's nice to know Salam Pax is safe and the Baghdad Blog is back on the air. Interesting story: the blogger applied for a job with the New York Times as a translator. He got turned down. • Looking forward to hearing the Limp Bizkit version of "Behind Blue Eyes." Next on my shopping list will be Death in Vegas, "Scorpio Rising," and Chris Whitley's "Hotel Vast Horizon." • Since I touted the EMode intelligence test that found me to be a visionary philosopher, I should also tout the Un-Telligence Test. For the record, I landed in the 86th percentile: "the subject displayed a great (and somewhat perverted!) sense of humor, a fair and productive sense of morality, and a barbaric self-confidence." Updated: 9:17 p.m., 5-6-2003 Just curious, but why do women wear shoes that make noise? Does all the clop, clop clopping just get tuned out, and if so, what else just gets tuned out everyday? Just curious, but does the news seem empty and trivial with the war over? Does it seem like weather is the top story on local TV news more and more, and does it mean there is more bad weather or does it mean there are more lazy reporters? Just curious, but why is Playboy now trying to be Maxim? It's long been harder to get your byline in Playboy than your beaver. The words in Playboy have always been very good, and I sure hope high standards continue in our increasingly post-literate age. Just curious, but ever wonder about what we left on
The Moon? Footprints, half a house, a broken down car and a satellite
dish. An untouched land and we left it West Virginia. Updated: 7:17 p.m., 5-6-2003 People don't talk much about Internet time any more, the idea that one year equals seven. Considering what I've been up to, it's a good thing. I'd be ready for a gold watch and a good-bye party for a 50-year career. For my IT readers out there, here's one for you. Imagine a hypothetical project where the business requirements, system requirements and information architecture were handled at the exact same time. Could it be done? Could it be done without a development environment in place? Took me five days of the First Dumpling and some seriously tequila-fueled R & R to even begin getting over this last 51-day work binge. Four weeks worth of OT in a seven-week project. Do your own math. And accept my apologies for going off the air for a month. For what it's worth, NewsFactor just had a story on
IT burnout.
See these stories pretty routinely nowadays. For most of the IT
world, the insane hours were more fun when you could wear shorts
to work and get rich on stock options. In my world, the insane hours
were more fun when I was out chasing news. The link too good to delete
Updated: 3-16-2003 A mystery disease with no cure. It used to be called life. As of right now, researchers don't know if SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is caused by a virus or a bacteria. But they do know that neither antibiotics nor antivirals are doing any good, and worse, that the disease has a wicked way of infecting health care workers. Medical experts have long worried about super strains of diseases that are beyond antibiotics. Perhaps people should remember that the conquering of infection (a medical miracle) is a fairly recent event in human history. (Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929.) Assuming, for a moment, that this disease is not the beginning of the end of life on Earth, it might be a useful lesson to those alleged educators who want to deny evolution and teach that wack-ass creation science. Remember the case of the Kansas State Board of Education? Folks, evolution is not a theory in need of further fossil proof. Evolution is a fact. Everything evolves and adapts, and you don't need fossils to prove it. Tiny things, simple organisms, mutate at amazing rates. One of the best places to observe natural selection and evolution is in medicine. Yes, everything evolves -- even viruses and bacteria. If I'm facing death in a raging epidemic, and I've been deciphering server logs, if I'm putting in free overtime while a new plague approaches, I will be seriously bummed. Perhaps we should indeed live every day like our days could end suddenly. It certainly makes a better slogan than a financial plan. I found the whole concept of a worldwide alert on a rapidly spreading fatal disease quite unsettling. On a rational level, you play it down; on a cellular level, it connects. Makes me want to smell my girlfriend's hair. *** Stephen Crane, the guy who wrote "The Red Badge of Courage" from his imagination and wrote" The Open Boat" after experiencing life as a war correspondent, would have made a great blogger. He wrote books and articles and even poetry. Like most Americans, I can recite very few poems from memory, and unlike most everyone on the planet, most of the poems I can recite are Crane's. So with sweeping death looming and The First Dumpling 102 miles away, this Crane poem came to mind. It's from The Black Riders and Other Lines. As with most Crane works, the first line is also the title.
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Mr. Marshall is a reporter turned web developer turned information architect and interface designer. If he ever won a McArthur genius grant, he'd study Earth-friendly building techniques. If he won a Niemann Fellowship, he'd study the myth-making aspects of American capitalism. If he ever won the lotto, he would, over his lifetime, give away more money than he actually won. Mr. Marshall spends weekdays in Richmond, VA. and weekends with The First Dumpling in Virginia Beach. |