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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Michael Birk
Published Letters: 13
Whispers said ...
It is important to note that people like nabalzbbfr usually speak only in metaphors. "There's a cancer growing in the mideast!" "If Vietnam falls, the rest of Southeast Asia will fall like dominos!" This reliance on metaphorical speaking is a sign that the person in question doesn't really know a lot of facts, and needs to resort to fantastical explanations for their thinking. The truth is that the threats exist more in the minds of the person in question than in reality.
I wanted to say the same thing, but you beat me to it. And you said it better than I could have! Thanks. These fools act as if real, fact-based analysis is a sign of weakness.
Congratulations, Glenn, as your move to Salon.com appears to be a big success!
Most of your regular commenters who I admire greatly (even if I don't always agree with them) have of course followed you here. And, judging by the number of comments stating that they hadn't read you before you arrived here, your audience continues to grow.
Hopefully Salon.com sees it as a success as well. Thanks to your amazing work, I decided to become a Premium Member. I've also discovered that I enjoy reading some of the other authors here.
Count me in the group of readers willing -- nay, eager -- to support you!
But I guess this type of lazy, phone-it-in blogging is what I've come to expect from Salon.
Ahh, so Glenn is "phoning it in," is he? Gee, where have I heard that before? Hmmm, how about every week for the past year (at least) in the comment section of Tom Tommorrow's "This Modern World," here at Salon.com:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aletters.salon.com%2Fcomics%2Ftomo+phone
Pathetic.
Arne wrote:
echo "<CTL-V>" | wc -w
Sorry to pick nits, but this will almost certainly fail due to quotation marks (and other "special" characters that musts be "escaped") contained in the article. Might I suggest an alternative:
wc -w<ENTER><CTRL-V><CTRL-D>
(Note: This is for Unix/Linux systems, or Windows/Mac systems with a Unix compatibility layer such as Cygwin.)
No worries, escaping bugs are one of the most common errors out there. For example, both Salon.com and Blogger.com have a bug which will screw up your comment, by unescaping HTML entitities such as & when you preview your post! (The solution is to copy, preview, paste, and then post.)
And they are the underlying source of the so-called "Cross-Site Scripting" security holes. Even languages like C and C++ are vulnerable (through the printf family of routines).
mjfgates wrote:
I was just trolling on Redstate.com... the stupid, it burns!... anyway, in the midst of a thread on how awful it is that people are demanding the e-mails of White House staffers!, a commenter links back to this blog post, and is immediately called to task for linking to a "hate site."Somebody more verbally agile than I am, please make whatever joke is appropriate here. I can't manage anything better than Fishie Mouth.
I admit I don't "get" the impulse to troll any site, be it Glenn's fine blog or the garbage-spewing Redstate.com. (I see trolling as the online equivalent of vandalism.) But I think the fact that they would label Glenn's as a "hate site" demonstrates that they are the authoritarian double-highs -- dead-enders in the 25% who will support Bush regardless.
They think they are "normal," and thus attribute their own motivations to others. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with them (regardless of the merits of any given argument) must be driven by "hate," just as they are.
*sigh* Shooter is a common troll, whose primary purpose (like all trolls) is to disrupt the normal flow of conversation. I could understand, perhaps, why a newcomer who doesn't typically read the comments section would address him.
But I don't get why the regulars do that. You're just giving him exactly what he wants.
What's so frustratingly ironic is how tenaciously the Administration clings to its claims of privacy for the Executive Branch. Of course they frequently make "national security" arguments -- some bogus, some less so. But they also do this out of "principle" -- separation of powers and Executive Privilege.
Once again the Bush Administration and their enablers have it backwards. Citizens' private lives should remain private, and the machinations driving public policy should be public.
jojo++:
The difference that started in the 20th century was the recognition (nay, proof) that no logical systems are complete.
L.W.M.:
Jojo should be invoking Kurt Gödel about now...
jojo++:
I have resisted today. Thank you for doing it for me.
Umm, I'm not so sure you resisted ...
Judy last night I watched The Cats of Mirikitani a moving documentary on PBS's Independent Lens. It's about Jimmy Mirikitani, a Japanese-American artist (born in Sacramento and raised in Japan) whose life was torn asunder when his family was interned during World War II. In 2001 he is homeless and bitter, living on the streets of New York City doing nothing but creating art -- much of it "internment art" about his three-and-half years in the wretched internment camps. After the 9/11 attacks, a stranger takes him into his home and a new journey begins ...
Highly recommended! Besides being a wonderful personal tale, it shows how the mentality behind the MCA has destroyed people, families, and lives.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/catsofmirikitani/
While I'm handing out links, check out the "Habeas Schmabeas" episode of NPR's This American Life. This one has been mentioned before (by others), but it's worth repeating. The first-hand accounts of experiences in Guantanamo Bay are so horrific and gut-wrenching that I was filled with a deep feeling of shame and sadness.
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/special/310_bonus.mp3
Note: There's a more recent "updated" version that isn't freely downloadable: http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=331
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
