Saturday, April 21, 2007
 

(3089/898) Stoppard

917) You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (play, 1967)

918) We're actors - we're the opposite of people!
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (play, 1967)

919) If rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans.
Tom Stoppard
Jumpers (play, 1972)

920) I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary. ... I forget the third thing.
Tom Stoppard
Travesties (play, 1975)

921) A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.
Tom Stoppard
Night and Day (play, 1978)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 639 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/21/2007 04:57:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Friday, April 20, 2007
 

Friday Photography: Lunch break


click to enlarge
Daryl Samuel

Location: Madison Square Park, New York City

Previous: Hands With Softball / On Alcatraz / Cameras / Lighthouse / Photographer At Work / Patio Chairs / Greek Church / Santa Fe Mailboxes / Rocking Horse / Sunset Sandpiper / Hands / Bird of Paradise / Feeding the Pelican / Sunset Silhouette / Staircase / Mallards / Masts / Greek Column / Paddlewheel / Olive Trees / Madison Square Park in the Snow / Pagoda / Ferry / Sand Tracks / General Store / Taverna Tables / Finger Piano / Bridge at Sunset / Snowfall in Cambridge / Boats / Grandma in Motion / Museum Silhouette / Brooklyn Bridge / Seascape / City Hall / Santa Fe Hotel

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/20/2007 01:26:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Thursday, April 19, 2007
 

(3089/898) On science


914) There is no such thing as a unique scientific vision, any more than there is a unique poetic vision. Science is a mosaic of partial and conflicting visions. But there is one common element in these visions. The common element is rebellion against the restrictions imposed by the locally prevailing culture, Western or Eastern as the case may be. It is no more Western than it is Arab or Indian or Japanese or Chinese. Arabs and Indians and Japanese and Chinese had a big share in the development of modern science. And two thousand years earlier, the beginnings of science were as much Babylonian and Egyptian as Greek. One of the central facts about science is that it pays no attention to East and West and North and South and black and yellow and white. It belongs to everybody who is willing to make the effort to learn it.
Freeman Dyson
"The Scientist as Rebel" in
New York Review of Books (5/25/1995)

915) The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science.
Freeman Dyson
"The Scientist as Rebel" in
New York Review of Books (5/25/1995)

916) The division between those who try to learn about the world by manipulating it and those who can only observe it had led, in natural science, to a struggle for legitimacy. The experimentalists look down on the observers as merely telling uncheckable just-so stories, while the observers scorn the experimentalists for their cheap victories over excessively simple phenomena. In biology the two camps are now generally segregated in separate academic departments where they can go about their business unhassled by their unbelievers. But the battle is unequal because the observers' consciousness of what it is to do "real" science has been formed in a world dominated by the manipulators of nature. The observers then pretend to an exactness that they cannot achieve and they attempt to objectify a part of nature that is completely accessible only with the air of subjective tools.
Richard C. Lewontin
"'Sex, Lies and Social Science': An Exchange" in
New York Review of Books (5/25/1995)
[reply to critical comments on his article
"Sex, Lies and Social Science" in
New York Review of Books (4/20/1995)]


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 641 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/19/2007 11:40:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Wednesday, April 18, 2007
 

Conformity

Watching CNN's coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, I've noticed some signs that conformity is a pretty strong impulse on that campus. Two of Cho Seung-hui's former roommates were interviewed on CNN wearing the exact same red T-shirts (emblazoned with "Maroon 20", whatever that mean), many of the students at the memorial convocation yesterday were wearing identical Virginia Tech sweatshirts, albeit in different colors, and quite a few of the shots of campus life have shown students in cadet uniforms -- Virgina Tech is one of the few public universities which maintains a corp of cadets taking full-time military training. I don't want to get into blaming society as the primary cause of Cho's apparent break with reality (if that's what it was), since there seems to be indications that he had emotional problems or perhaps even a full blown psychopathology, but I wonder if someone prone to feeling like an outsider and a victim of injustice might be pushed to the edge even faster by the pressure to conform?

(And since when are "late night bike rides" and "waking before dawn" examples of "bizarre behavior", CNN?)

Update: Here's something interesting - according to the Wikipedia article on Nikki Giovanni, the poet and professor at Virginia Tech:
She has a tattoo with the words "Thug Life" to honor the memory of Tupac Shakur, because she would "rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them."
(The article cites this Barnes & Noble audio file.) And, despite her preference for thugs over their victims, she found Cho Seung-hui so "menacing" that she had him removed from the class she taught. She also denied that Cho was "troubled", and described him as "mean."

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/18/2007 11:11:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Behaving, believing, knowing, saying

906) Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, small minds discuss personalities.
Eleanor Roosevelt (widely attributed)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (5/17/95)
[Note: Sometimes attributed to Hyman Rickover, who quoted it in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (11/28/1959), attributing it to “an unknown sage”. [WQ]]
907) That's why theater's like life, don't you think? No one really says what they mean, but they always mean what they mean.
David Mamet (attributed)
[Note: There is another unattributed Mamet quote which seems at first to be related to this one, but actually says something different.

People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want.]
908) One good thing about monomania - it helps to organize your life.
Ed Fitzgerald
(referring to following the O.J. Simpson trial)
personal e-mail to a friend (6/30/95)

909) Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Adams
"Argument in Defense of the [British] Soldiers
in the Boston Massacre" (12/1770) [B16]

910) When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
Popular Lectures and Addresses (1891-1894) [B16]

911) Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.
Henry Lewis Stimson
(explaining his 1929 decision as Herbert Hoover's
Secretary of State to close down Herbert O. Yardley's
"American Black Chamber" cryptanalytic service)
H.L. Stimson & McGeorge Bundy,
On Active Service in Peace and War (1948)
cited by David Kahn in
The Codebreakers (1967)

912) I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes.
Marchel Duchamp
quoted by Harriet & Sidney Janis in
"Marchel Duchamp: Anti-Artist" in
View (3/21/45)
reprinted in Robert Motherwell
Dada Painters and Poets (1951) [CQ]

913) Believing in things is embarrassing. People can see that you're different.
Search & Destroy (film, 1995)
screenplay by Michael Almereyda
based on the play by Howard Korder
spoken by the character "Marie"
[Note: From memory, possibly paraphrased. The line does not appear in the Korder play.]

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 642 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/18/2007 09:55:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) A taste of Heinlein (with a zinger for Ballard)

898) Happiness consists of getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

899) If it has to be done, a man - a real man - shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

900) While a judge should be benevolent in purpose; his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment - and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism?
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
spoken by the character "Col. Dubois"
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

901) Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called "natural human rights" that have ever been invented, liberty is the least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
spoken by the character "Col. Dubois"
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

902) "[J]uvenile delinquent" is a contradiction in terms. Delinquent" means "failing in duty." But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer that the selfhood he was born with.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
spoken by the character "Col. Dubois"
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

903) The basis of all morality is duty.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
spoken by the character "Col. Dubois"
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

904) When you come right to it, it is easier to die than it is use your head.
Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Trooper (1959)
spoken by the character "Col. Dubois"
posted by Matt Hickman [UAQ] (5/18/95)

905) A story by J. G. Ballard, as you know, calls for people who don't think. One begins with characters who regard the physical universe as a mysterious and arbitrary place, and who would not dream of trying to understand its actual law. Furthermore, in order to be the protagonist of a J.G. Ballard novel, or anything more than a very minor character therein, you must have cut yourself off from the entire body of scientific education. In this way, when the world disaster - be it wind or water - comes upon you, you are under absolutely no obligation to do anything about it but sit and worship it. Even more further, some force has acted to remove from the face of the world all people who might impose good sense or rational behavior on you, so that the disaster proceeds unchecked and unopposed except by the almost inevitable thumb-rule engineer type who for his individual comfort builds a huge pyramid (without huge footings) to resist high winds, or trains a herd of alligators and renegade divers to help him out in dealing with deep water.
Algis Budrys
Galaxy (12/66)
found in Internet Gopherspace, keyword "Ballard"
posted by Evelyn C. Leeper (10/10/8?)


Sources

[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 642 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/18/2007 12:30:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Monday, April 16, 2007
 

(3089/898) Reinventing Darwin

895) The "Just So Story" evolved as a statement of principle - of rote application of the black box of natural selection in order to explain the origin of a particular function, structure, or item of behavior. The stories were probably on the money, more often than not. But there is no way of knowing for sure, and the entire exercise of adaptive storytelling began to strike many evolutionary biologists as inherently unsatisfying.

Thus, there was a great outcry against "just so stories" heard in many different quarters of evolutionary biology from the 1960s right on through the present day. Rudyard Kipling's famous fables recounting how the elephant got his trunk, the rhino his wrinkly skin, and the leopard his spots had the advantage of great style and manifest whimsy. But no one would mistake his yarns for historical proof, the more so that they universally relied upon the long-discredited mode of inheritance of acquired characteristics that had been expunged from biology since [...] the end of the nineteenth century. Even so, the Darwinian adaptive story of how giraffes got their long necks were often little better (and considerably less elegant) than Kipling's narratives. They were only stories about how natural selection may have acted to produce longer necks so that giraffes might take advantage of the leafy greens in tree canopies which were unavailable to antelopes and other African herbivores.

Plausibility and consistency with the basic tenets of population genetics provide the sole criteria for evaluating these historical reconstructions. In the typical just-so evolutionary tale, there was little of the "rigor" justly so revered by scientists. There was no way, in other words, to "test the hypothesis." Small wonder so many evolutionary biologists yearned to see the study of adaptations sharpened and brought up to academic snuff.
Niles Eldredge
Reinventing Darwin (1995)

896) Demographers showed long ago that most people alive at any one time do not have any living descendants, say, 500 years later. Put another way, all of us are descended from only a fraction of all those people alive 500 years ago. The same holds for species. The vast majority of species that have ever lived have not only become extinct, they also have left no descendants.
Niles Eldredge
Reinventing Darwin (1995)

897) I do passionately believe that there is a physical reality, a material universe. I do think that it is the job of "science" to describe that universe as accurately as possible. There is, in other words, a correct solution, a right answer. On the road to those answers (which, it seems, we will never fully recognize when and if we get them), all we have is successive approximations - competing claims to truth, always based on different "takes" on the nature of things. If science is always trying to obtain clearer snapshots of the physical reality, scientists are more like painters (or, for that matter, art photographers) whose tastes and objectives are bound to differ. No two painters render the same subject in precisely the same way. And so it inevitably is in science.
Niles Eldredge
Reinventing Darwin (1995)



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 644 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/16/2007 09:50:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

In the land of the one-celled...

Bob Parks' What's New:
PRESIDENT BUSH VOWS TO PROTECT ONE-CELLED PEOPLE.

The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act passed the Senate 63-34, but President Bush promises a veto. He said the use of embryonic stem cells in research "crosses a moral line." In case you're wondering where this "moral line" is drawn, WN has looked into it. George W. Bush and other conservative theologians believe a "soul" is assigned to the fertilized egg at the instant of conception. That makes it a person, even though it's not counted in the census. In-vitro fertilization makes a lot more of these one-celled people than it needs; leftovers are stacked in the freezer until it starts filling up. President Bush cares deeply about these helpless one-celled people and wants to ensure they are properly flushed down the disposal rather than exploited by godless scientists interested only the reduction of suffering.
I couldn't have said it better. Geez, those scientists have a lot of damn gall trying to save human lives at the expense of non-sentient cells! Oughta round 'em all up under some obscure sub-paragraph of the Patriot Act.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/16/2007 09:30:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

Ordinary heroes

Philip Zimbardo is the psychologist who designed the infamous (no other word seems as appropriate) Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. In an interview on the Edge website, he has some thoughts on heroism, and how we can inculcate the proper kind of "heroic imagination" in children:
Heroes come in two varieties. There are life-long heroes: people who dedicate their whole life to a mission, to a cause, to sacrificing themselves – Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Gandhi, to mention a few. These are extraordinary individuals. Most people in the world who engage in heroic acts are [...] individuals who find themselves in a particular situation – one in which other people are looking the other way or continuing to perpetrate an evil behavior – and who, for some reason we don’t know, take heroic action. They do something to stop it – blow the whistle or otherwise challenge it in a direct way. That action is "heroic," even if the people are "ordinary." My sense is that the typical notion we have of heroes as super-stars, as super heroes, as Superman, and Batman, and Wonder Woman, gives us a false impression that being a hero means being able to do thing that none of us can actually accomplish. I want to argue just the opposite: that what we have to be doing more and more is cultivating the "heroic imagination" – especially in our children. The models of behavior that we want to give them are not rock stars, are not hip-hop artists, are not media celebrities or sports celebrities, – or even comic book heroes. Rather, it is the ordinary New York subway hero, Wesley Autrey, the 50-year old African-American construction worker who saved the life of a young man who had fallen on the train tracks from a seizure. While 75 others passively watched, he handed his two daughters over to a stranger and jumped down to save someone he did not know from death or dismemberment from and on coming subway. "I did what anyone would do, I did what everyone ought to do," were Autrey’s classic ordinary hero lines.
I have mixed thoughts about this. In general, I think Zimbardo is correct that heroes are ordinary people who step out of line to do what's necessary in extraordinary situations, but his example of Wesley Autrey is, I think, flawed, since what Autrey did was tremendously foolish, and was just as likely to get both he and the person he was saving killed as it was to save the man's life. Autrey's gamble paid off, and it's right that we should thank him for that, but while being a hero does imply taking some risk, it's not necessarily right that heroism should be linked to extraordinary or irrational risk.

Zimbardo also seems to buy into the Kitty Genovese fallacy as well. He says that "75 other passively watched", which implies that each of them was as capable of saving the man as Autry was, but if you eliminate the eldery, the frail, the obese, young children, people burdened with backpacks or confining clothes, and, perhaps most importantly, people not in as good a position as Autrey to render assistance, the odds are that very few of those 75 people had any chance of helping the man, and every chance of getting themselves injured or killed in the process. Autrey was the right man at the right time, and deserves his accolades, but we don't need to artificially inflate them by off-handedly denigrating the actions not taken by others, some for very acceptable reasons. The firefighters who lost their lives climbing the stairs of the World Trade Center Towers to rescue people inside were heroes, but I imagine they would not have looked kindly on a bunch of civilians who ran in and decided to join them and clogged up the stairwells when they ran out of breath. Those people would have been fools, not heroes.

What that tells us that heroism is not only about ordinary people taking steps to help out or stop an evil from happening, it's also to some extent about ability and circumstance. Zimbardo cites the reaction of his then-girlfriend (now wife) to the Stanford Prison Experiment as being the factor that caused him to close down the experiment, but would the very same remark coming from a bum who had wandered in have had the same effect on him? I rather doubt it. The girlfriend was enabled to be a hero by her status in the circumstances, while the bum, presumably, would have been an annoyance to be gotten rid of.

[via Eliot Gelwan's Follow Me Here]

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/16/2007 03:44:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Beyond the Valley of Observations




885) Documentation [for computer software] is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; when it is bad, it is still better than nothing."
Gerald Weinberg
The Psychology of Computer Programming (1976)
posted by Jim Hargrove [UAQ] (5/2/95)

886) Tenses, Gender and Number: For the purpose of the rules and regulations contained in this chapter, the present tense includes the past and future tenses, and the future, the present; the masculine gender includes the feminine, and the feminine, the masculine and the singular includes the plural, and the plural the singular.
California Dept. of Consumer Affairs Revised 1973 Code
posted by Deborah Ann Pisarek [UAQ] (5/17/95)

887) I have never let schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
(widely attributed)
not listed in [QMT]
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (5/6/95)

888) Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.
Sir Claus Moser
London Daily Telegraph (8/21/90) [CQ]

889) Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson (4/18/1775)
quoted by James Boswell in
A Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) [B16]
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (5/6/95)

890) Anglo-American culture seems to be governed by the perverse belief that portrayals of the body's abuse or destruction are harmless, even fortifying, while those that show the body in pleasure act like poison.
Walter Kendrick (attributed)
posted by Tom Parsons [UAQ] (5/5/95)

891) Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.
Johann Christoph Friederich von Schiller
Wallenstein's Camp (1798) [B16]

892) In Germany, under the law everything is prohibited except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union, under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted, especially that which is prohibited.
Newton N. Minow
speech to Assoc. of American Law Schools
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (5/13/95)

893) The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Allen Kay
quoted in The Wit's Thesaurus (1994)
Lance Davidson (ed.)
posted by Bill Thomas [UAQ] (5/12/95)

894) But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we're all dead.
John Maynard Keynes
Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) [ODQ]
posted by Alfred M. Kriman [UAQ] (5/28/95)

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[ODQ] - Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[QMT] - The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), R. Kent Rasmussen, ed.
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 644 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 4/16/2007 12:48:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







by

Ed Fitzgerald

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am...
site feed
2008 rules of thumb
Progressive populism!
Economic insecurity is key
Restore the balance
Cast the candidate
Persona is important
Calm,calming,assured,reassuring
Iraq, not "national security"
Prefer governors over senators
recent posts
bush countdown
oblique strategies
recent comments
some links
baseball
storm watch
(click for larger image,
refresh page to update)


topics
a progressive slogan
Fairness, progress and prosperity, because we're all in this together.

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
(Alex Gregory - The New Yorker)
new york city
another progressive slogan
The greatest good for the greatest number, with dignity for all.
reference & fact check
iraq
write me
reciprocity
evolution v. creationism
humanism, skepticism
& progressive religiosity
more links
election prediction
HOUSE
Democrats 230 (+27) - Republicans 205

Actual:
Democrats 233 (+30) - Republicans 201 - TBD 1 [FL-13]

SENATE
Democrats 50 (+5) - Republicans 50

Actual:
Democrats 51 (+6) - Republicans 49

ELECTION PROJECTIONS SURVEY
netroots candidates
unfutz
awards and nominations
Never a bridesmaid...

...and never a bride, either!!

what I've been reading
Martin van Creveld - The Transformation of War

Jay Feldman - When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Martin van Creveld - The Rise and Decline of the State

Alfred W. Crosby - America's Forgotten Pandemic (1989)
bush & company are...
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed

Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
Island in the Sky (1952)

Robot Chicken

The Family Guy

House M.D. (2004-7)
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz


"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)


Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:




Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
Smash Mouth - Summer Girl

Poulenc - Piano Music

Pop Ambient 2007
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
archives
08/31/2003 - 09/07/2003
09/07/2003 - 09/14/2003
09/14/2003 - 09/21/2003
09/21/2003 - 09/28/2003
09/28/2003 - 10/05/2003
10/05/2003 - 10/12/2003
10/12/2003 - 10/19/2003
10/19/2003 - 10/26/2003
11/02/2003 - 11/09/2003
11/09/2003 - 11/16/2003
11/16/2003 - 11/23/2003
11/23/2003 - 11/30/2003
12/07/2003 - 12/14/2003
12/14/2003 - 12/21/2003
12/21/2003 - 12/28/2003
01/11/2004 - 01/18/2004
01/18/2004 - 01/25/2004
01/25/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 02/08/2004
02/08/2004 - 02/15/2004
02/15/2004 - 02/22/2004
02/22/2004 - 02/29/2004
02/29/2004 - 03/07/2004
03/07/2004 - 03/14/2004
03/14/2004 - 03/21/2004
03/21/2004 - 03/28/2004
03/28/2004 - 04/04/2004
04/04/2004 - 04/11/2004
04/11/2004 - 04/18/2004
04/18/2004 - 04/25/2004
04/25/2004 - 05/02/2004
05/02/2004 - 05/09/2004
05/09/2004 - 05/16/2004
05/16/2004 - 05/23/2004
05/23/2004 - 05/30/2004
05/30/2004 - 06/06/2004
06/06/2004 - 06/13/2004
06/13/2004 - 06/20/2004
06/20/2004 - 06/27/2004
06/27/2004 - 07/04/2004
07/04/2004 - 07/11/2004
07/18/2004 - 07/25/2004
07/25/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/08/2004
08/08/2004 - 08/15/2004
08/15/2004 - 08/22/2004
08/22/2004 - 08/29/2004
08/29/2004 - 09/05/2004
09/05/2004 - 09/12/2004
09/12/2004 - 09/19/2004
09/19/2004 - 09/26/2004
09/26/2004 - 10/03/2004
10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004
10/10/2004 - 10/17/2004
10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004
10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004
10/31/2004 - 11/07/2004
11/07/2004 - 11/14/2004
11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004
11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004
11/28/2004 - 12/05/2004
12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004
12/12/2004 - 12/19/2004
12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004
12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005
01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005
01/09/2005 - 01/16/2005
01/16/2005 - 01/23/2005
01/23/2005 - 01/30/2005
01/30/2005 - 02/06/2005
02/06/2005 - 02/13/2005
02/13/2005 - 02/20/2005
02/20/2005 - 02/27/2005
02/27/2005 - 03/06/2005
03/06/2005 - 03/13/2005
03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005
03/20/2005 - 03/27/2005
03/27/2005 - 04/03/2005
04/03/2005 - 04/10/2005
04/10/2005 - 04/17/2005
04/17/2005 - 04/24/2005
04/24/2005 - 05/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 05/08/2005
05/08/2005 - 05/15/2005
05/15/2005 - 05/22/2005
05/22/2005 - 05/29/2005
05/29/2005 - 06/05/2005
06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005
06/12/2005 - 06/19/2005
06/19/2005 - 06/26/2005
06/26/2005 - 07/03/2005
07/10/2005 - 07/17/2005
07/17/2005 - 07/24/2005
07/24/2005 - 07/31/2005
07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005
08/07/2005 - 08/14/2005
08/14/2005 - 08/21/2005
08/21/2005 - 08/28/2005
08/28/2005 - 09/04/2005
09/04/2005 - 09/11/2005
09/11/2005 - 09/18/2005
09/18/2005 - 09/25/2005
09/25/2005 - 10/02/2005
10/02/2005 - 10/09/2005
10/09/2005 - 10/16/2005
10/16/2005 - 10/23/2005
10/23/2005 - 10/30/2005
10/30/2005 - 11/06/2005
11/06/2005 - 11/13/2005
11/13/2005 - 11/20/2005
11/20/2005 - 11/27/2005
11/27/2005 - 12/04/2005
12/04/2005 - 12/11/2005
12/11/2005 - 12/18/2005
12/18/2005 - 12/25/2005
12/25/2005 - 01/01/2006
01/01/2006 - 01/08/2006
01/08/2006 - 01/15/2006
01/15/2006 - 01/22/2006
01/22/2006 - 01/29/2006
01/29/2006 - 02/05/2006
02/05/2006 - 02/12/2006
02/12/2006 - 02/19/2006
02/19/2006 - 02/26/2006
02/26/2006 - 03/05/2006
03/05/2006 - 03/12/2006
03/26/2006 - 04/02/2006
04/02/2006 - 04/09/2006
04/09/2006 - 04/16/2006
04/16/2006 - 04/23/2006
04/23/2006 - 04/30/2006
04/30/2006 - 05/07/2006
05/07/2006 - 05/14/2006
05/14/2006 - 05/21/2006
05/21/2006 - 05/28/2006
05/28/2006 - 06/04/2006
06/04/2006 - 06/11/2006
06/11/2006 - 06/18/2006
06/18/2006 - 06/25/2006
06/25/2006 - 07/02/2006
07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006
07/09/2006 - 07/16/2006
07/16/2006 - 07/23/2006
07/23/2006 - 07/30/2006
08/06/2006 - 08/13/2006
08/13/2006 - 08/20/2006
08/20/2006 - 08/27/2006
08/27/2006 - 09/03/2006
09/03/2006 - 09/10/2006
09/10/2006 - 09/17/2006
09/17/2006 - 09/24/2006
09/24/2006 - 10/01/2006
10/01/2006 - 10/08/2006
10/08/2006 - 10/15/2006
10/15/2006 - 10/22/2006
10/22/2006 - 10/29/2006
10/29/2006 - 11/05/2006
11/05/2006 - 11/12/2006
11/12/2006 - 11/19/2006
11/19/2006 - 11/26/2006
11/26/2006 - 12/03/2006
12/03/2006 - 12/10/2006
12/10/2006 - 12/17/2006
12/17/2006 - 12/24/2006
12/24/2006 - 12/31/2006
12/31/2006 - 01/07/2007
01/07/2007 - 01/14/2007
01/14/2007 - 01/21/2007
01/21/2007 - 01/28/2007
01/28/2007 - 02/04/2007
02/04/2007 - 02/11/2007
02/11/2007 - 02/18/2007
02/18/2007 - 02/25/2007
02/25/2007 - 03/04/2007
03/04/2007 - 03/11/2007
03/11/2007 - 03/18/2007
03/18/2007 - 03/25/2007
03/25/2007 - 04/01/2007
04/01/2007 - 04/08/2007
04/08/2007 - 04/15/2007
04/15/2007 - 04/22/2007
04/22/2007 - 04/29/2007
04/29/2007 - 05/06/2007
05/13/2007 - 05/20/2007
05/20/2007 - 05/27/2007
05/27/2007 - 06/03/2007
06/03/2007 - 06/10/2007
06/10/2007 - 06/17/2007
06/17/2007 - 06/24/2007
06/24/2007 - 07/01/2007
07/01/2007 - 07/08/2007
07/08/2007 - 07/15/2007
07/29/2007 - 08/05/2007
08/05/2007 - 08/12/2007
08/12/2007 - 08/19/2007
08/19/2007 - 08/26/2007
08/26/2007 - 09/02/2007
09/02/2007 - 09/09/2007
09/09/2007 - 09/16/2007
09/16/2007 - 09/23/2007
09/23/2007 - 09/30/2007
09/30/2007 - 10/07/2007
10/07/2007 - 10/14/2007
10/14/2007 - 10/21/2007
10/21/2007 - 10/28/2007
10/28/2007 - 11/04/2007
11/04/2007 - 11/11/2007
11/11/2007 - 11/18/2007
11/18/2007 - 11/25/2007
11/25/2007 - 12/02/2007
12/02/2007 - 12/09/2007
12/09/2007 - 12/16/2007
12/16/2007 - 12/23/2007
12/23/2007 - 12/30/2007
12/30/2007 - 01/06/2008
01/06/2008 - 01/13/2008
01/13/2008 - 01/20/2008
01/20/2008 - 01/27/2008
01/27/2008 - 02/03/2008
02/03/2008 - 02/10/2008
02/10/2008 - 02/17/2008
02/17/2008 - 02/24/2008
02/24/2008 - 03/02/2008
03/09/2008 - 03/16/2008
03/16/2008 - 03/23/2008
03/23/2008 - 03/30/2008
03/30/2008 - 04/06/2008
06/01/2008 - 06/08/2008
09/21/2008 - 09/28/2008
search

search websearch unfutz

policies
Comments
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.

Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.

I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.


E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.

Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.

Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.

Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
2005 koufax awards

BEST BLOG (NON-PRO)

Bradblog
Carpetbagger Report
*Crooks and Liars*
Eschaton
Firedoglake
Hullabaloo
Majikthise
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Progressive Blog Digest

BEST BLOG (PRO)

AmericaBlog
Daou Report
Media Matters
Orcinus
Political Animal
Sirotablog
*Talking Points Memo*
Think Progress
James Wolcott

*Winners*
2004 koufax winners
2003 koufax award
"best blog" nominees
r.i.p.
the proud unfutz guarantee
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.

original content
© 2003-2008
Ed Fitzgerald

=o=

take all you want
but credit all you take.



Creative Commons License



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Buzzflash Bushisms Democratic Underground Impeach Bush Coalition