MaroonBlog

Joining conservatives who have rallied to the Schindlers' cause, the liberal Jackson said he would call state senators who opposed legislation that would have reinserted Schiavo's feeding tube and ask them to reconsider.

"I feel so passionate about this injustice being done, how unnecessary it is to deny her a feeding tube, water, not even ice to be used for her parched lips," Jackson said. "This is a moral issue and it transcends politics and family disputes."

Pretty smart move. If they sued a helpless individual, they would get the free speech/uproar factor. Sue another media company with deep pockets, and no one really cares. It becomes a technical fight by lawyers. Fight it out, and get a ruling on the side of copyright protection. Then use this ruling as a saber to rattle down the road.

In 2000, the MDC candidate was run out of town and his house torched. His supporters were allegedly tortured at ruling party headquarters.

The US calls Zimbabwe one of the world's least democratic nations...The globally isolated government may have encouraged a more open climate, observers say, because it seeks more international legitimacy.

I Don't Care If You're a Better Writer Than Me.

Because why should I? Yes, words drip from your pen like liquid gold skittering across the finest vellum ever pounded out of a lamb. Trees weep with gratitude that their deaths afford you the paper upon which you will cast your thoughts. That's very nice for you. Meanwhile, I've got my own books to write, projects to develop and clients to make happy. Your preternatural ability to weave filigreed musings into deathless prose impacts my life not at all.

I of course accept your superiority to me in the great hierarchy of writers -- clearly, confronted with your brilliance, how could I not? I just don't care. Unless you intend to spend all your time trying to thwart my career because you can't bear to contemplate my muddy work sullying the field of endeavor over which you float, carried by the angels, simply as a practical matter what you do and what I do will have very little to do with each other.

I suspect my feeling here will be echoed by other writers. Be as brilliant as you want to be, friend. Just don't expect the rest of us to look up from our toil to stare agape as you waft by.

Don't Be An Ass.

Did you know that writers, editors and publishers will forget their own names and the names of their children, spouses and pets before they forget the tiniest of slights that you as a fellow writer might inflict upon them? It's true. Verily, they could be in the throes of an advanced, prion-twisting affliction that wipes their memories clean like a Magna-Doodle in an MRI, and yet if your name is but whispered from across the room, their eyes will blaze and they will exclaim "that bastard!" before lapsing back into the blank darkness. That being the case, why would you go out of your way to antagonize these people unless it is absolutely necessary -- which it almost never, ever is?

In this life, and in this field, you're going to have enough problems as it is. Don't make any more enemies than you have to. Try to be nice. And if you can't be nice, then shut the hell up and go stand in the corner with your drink and leave all the rest of us alone. Yes, yes, you're right and everyone else is wrong. That -- like your immense talent -- is a given. But just because you're right doesn't mean you should be a dick about it.

The rally, organized by the armed Shiite Muslim party Hezbollah, filled a huge plaza in central Beirut ...Hundreds of chanting protesters held aloft pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and placards reading, in English, "All Our Disasters Come From America" and "No for the American Intervention." While providing stark evidence of the size of Syria's support in Lebanon, the rally also underscored Hezbollah's deep concerns over foreign demands that it give up a potent arsenal that is a legacy of civil war..."I say to the Syrians, 'We are the Lebanese who are loyal, decent people,' " Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary general, told the raucous crowd. "Syria is not only present as an army. It is present in the heart, the mind and the future of Lebanon."

Nothing is worse than war?
Dishonor is worse than war.
Slavery is worse than war.

I want to die peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming, terrified, like his passengers.

Time and again in the last two centuries, France has refused to come to grips with its diminished status as a country whose greatest general was a foreigner, whose greatest warrior was a teenage girl, and whose last great military victory came on the plains of Wagram in 1809.

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

It is barely six weeks since the US President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of "ending tyranny in our world". Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of "regime changes" imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President's opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Whichever perspective on the current account one favors, the United States cannot escape a growing external debt. The "hegemony skeptics" fear such debt will lead to a collapse of the U.S. dollar triggered by a precipitous unloading of U.S. assets. Such a selloff could result -- as in emerging-market crises -- if investors suddenly conclude that U.S. foreign debt has become unsustainably large. A panicky "capital flight" would ensue, as investors raced for the exits to avoid the falling dollar and plunging stock and bond prices.

But even if such a sharp break occurs -- which is less likely than a gradual adjustment of exchange rates and interest rates -- market-based adjustments will mitigate the consequences. Responding to a relative price decline in U.S. assets and likely Federal Reserve action to raise interest rates, U.S. investors (arguably accompanied by bargain-hunting foreign investors) would repatriate some of their $4 trillion in foreign holdings in order to buy (now undervalued) assets, tempering the price decline for domestic stocks and bonds. A significant repatriation of funds would thus slow the pace of the dollar decline and the rise in rates. The ensuing recession, combined with the cheaper dollar, would eventually combine to improve the trade balance. Although the period of global rebalancing would be painful for U.S. consumers and workers, it would be even harder on the European and Japanese economies, with their propensity for deflation and stagnation. Such a transitory adjustment would be unpleasant, but it would not undermine the economic foundations of U.S. hegemony.

Only one development could upset this optimistic prognosis: an end to the technological dynamism, openness to trade, and flexibility that have powered the U.S. economy. The biggest threat to U.S. hegemony, accordingly, stems not from the sentiments of foreign investors, but from protectionism and isolationism at home.

Some thinkers (like the physicist Roger Penrose) have taken this theme further, maintaining that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the nature of the human mind. Our mental powers, it is argued, must outstrip those of any computer, since a computer is just a logical system running on hardware, and our minds can arrive at truths that are beyond the reach of a logical system.

“There it was, inconceivably, K. Goedel, listed just like any other name in the bright orange Princeton community phonebook,” writes Goldstein, who came to Princeton University as a graduate student of philosophy in the early nineteen-seventies. (It’s the setting of her novel “The Mind-Body Problem.”) “It was like opening up the local phonebook and finding B. Spinoza or I. Newton.” Although Gödel was still little known in the world at large, he had a godlike status among the cognoscenti. “I once found the philosopher Richard Rorty standing in a bit of a daze in Davidson’s food market,” Goldstein writes. “He told me in hushed tones that he’d just seen Gödel in the frozen food aisle.”

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Twenty-three briefs were filed Tuesday in support of StreamCast and Grokster. Among them was a group of computer scientists that includes David Clark, one of the original designers of the Internet. Also signing on is the National Venture Capital Association, a trade group representing 450 firms that account for about 85 percent of all new business funding. (emphasis added)

"Existing copyright laws provide severe penalties for such direct infringement," wrote Michael K. Kellogg, in a brief for the venture capitalists. "But the entertainment industry has never been satisfied with attacking direct instances of infringement."

If the Royal Family is no longer protected by mystique, but rather is a group of hereditary celebrities competing with other celebrities for space on the front page, what can protect it from the kind of carping criticism that must ultimately destroy it? Can it claim to incarnate the nation, and thus act as a focus for patriotism? But British patriotism is dead — although a nasty form of nationalism remains a minority interest — while Welsh and Scottish patriotism consists mainly of self-pitying hatred of the English. There is no quicker way of emptying a room in Britain than to play the national anthem, which causes the acutest embarrassment. How can a God in whom no one believes be invoked to spare the life of a woman to whom all now believe themselves equal or even superior?

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

This could be unbelievable! ... [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He's got, you know, here's-- ... He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there."

Diplomats, meanwhile, said Egypt and Saudi Arabia are trying to win Syrian acceptance of a timetable for a complete withdrawal by April. The Arab mediation calls for Damascus to announce a withdrawal timetable "as soon as possible," another diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

President Bush on Wednesday demanded in blunt terms that Syria get out of Lebanon, saying the free world is in agreement that Damascus’ authority over the political affairs of its neighbor must end now.

The LORD hates ... a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!