A Better Control

Posted by Richard on Saturday, 6 September 2003
  • Clive James: “personal attacks rarely work.” I'd have a grin on my face if someone said that I “used someone else's mediocrity as an opportunity to be outstanding.” Christopher Hitchens, specifically in his review of Bush at War by Bob Woodward, is the first man that comes to mind when reading the following quote: “When you say a man writes badly, you are trying to hurt him. When you say it in words better than his, you have succeeded.”
  • Anil Dash: “Justin Timberlake has a fantastic amount of talent, a credible understanding of his abilities and place in the music industry, the resources to get the best producers and band for helping create his music, and the only thing he lacks is an audience that can appreciate it.”
  • Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads more than makes up for the lousy voting system proposal (see below).
  • Tim Bray discusses today's rain here in Vancouver. It's not a complaint, which is unusual for Vancouverites. I love the sounds associated with rain: the falling of raindrops on both concrete and soil and the swooshing sounds cars make. I also love the smells associated. It just smells fresher outside after a good downpour. I don't like the cold and wet aspects of rain, but then again, who does? As if complaining about the rain will make it go away.
  • Michael Kinsley, on the the gang-bang at Gold's Gym, which Arnold Schwarzenegger—by his own account—allegedly participated in: “if there is any dishonesty here, it may be in the anecdote itself. Did this parody of a testosterone fantasy really happen? [...] But if it did happen, exactly as Arnold described it in 1977, it's pretty disgusting. It's disgusting even if it was consensual all around. It's disgusting even though Arnold wasn't married at the time. It's disgusting even if this amounts to applying the standards of the 21st century to events of the mid-1970s. Schwarzenegger isn't running for governor of California in 1975.”
  • Note to self for later, coughing won't prevent a heart attack.
  • 70-year-old lawmaker returns to college: after reading about this, as a 25-year-old taking first-year classes with sea of 18-year-olds, I feel lot less "old" now.
  • Charles Miller: Fight Club is a satire.
  • Don Park thinks the Republicans have a stronghold on California's future. In a two-party system, neither party has a stronghold on the future, for the simple reason that both parties follow (and create) the opinions of the voters. The further the Republican Party lurches to the right with electoral success, the further the Democratic Party will turn rightward to steal some Republican votes. The reverse is true: if the Republicans go too far right, they will need to turn leftward, otherwise the Democrats will get their votes. Besides, Schwarzenegger is Republican in name only.
  • from K5, a totally unacceptable voting system proposal. In the comments of the proposal, the way Canada does it, except that each party is allowed scrutineers, which are volunteers that watch the vote-counters to make sure each and every ballot is counted accurately by election officials. Faith in humans, not technology.