patchmonkey.net

I can’t wait to get a copy of Lee Iacocca’s new book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone?

It looks AMAZING. Borders Books has an excerpt here.

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

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patchmonkey on April 21st, 2007 | File Under General, Law and Lawyers, News Opinion | No Comments -

From New York Magazine:

“In just one more sign of the stripperization of the Everywoman, Benefit’s Benetint, conceived in the seventies for an exotic dancer to color lips and cheeks, is now also being sold at Sephora and elsewhere as a ‘kiss-proof and water-resistant’ nipple tint. ‘Women want nipples to be pert and fresh-looking, and this shade makes them appear that way,’ Benefit spokeswoman Alison Haljun says. ‘For a long time, the idea of a ripe, rosy nipple has been considered appealing and alluring.’ But aren’t the nipples usually undisplayed? ‘Even if you don’t show it off, you know they’re rosier and more perky,’ she says. Sonia Ossorio, president of NOW in New York, says, ‘I can barely keep up with keeping my nails manicured, much less this nauseating onslaught of new beauty standards. While women are spending their energy, time, and money getting their areolas just the right shade of pink, the Supreme Court is getting more conservative and closer to taking away our long-fought right to reproductive choice’.”

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. I am all about protecting reproductive choice…but seriously, NOW-lady, that was the wrong place to make your point. Although I suppose people are now making a point about it, and it’s definitely a way to convince Justice Thomas to agree with your point.

Reconcilable Differences on National Review Online

I’m disgruntled, too, and I’m going to get it all of my chest this morning: I’ve never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don’t expect to anytime soon, but it’s been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party. I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don’t consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don’t want to hear it, but deep down they know it’s true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century.

See, Republicans? Your party sucks. There’s no way around it - this administration is the blind leading the stupid.

Recording Industry vs The People

The lawyers representing Patricia Santangelo, who is the first RIAA defendant to refuse to settle, have set up a blog detailing the events of the case:

We are lawyers in New York City. We practice law at Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP.

Through the Electronic Frontier Foundation we and our firm have undertaken to represent people in our area who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for having computers whose internet accounts were used to open up peer-to-peer file sharing accounts.

We find these cases to be oppressive and unfair, as large law firms financed by the recording industry sue ordinary working people for thousands of dollars.

We have set up this blog in order to collect evidence and input about these oppressive lawsuits.

However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’

— Sen. Barry Goldwater (R)

CNET News.com: Why Can’t You Pay Attention Anymore?

This is pretty interesting. It’s something I’ve been noticing with myself lately, and it’s called Attention Deficit Trait. Basically, ADT is kind of like normal ADD (to the extent that ADD is normal), only it is created by the modern world.

Dr. Edward Hallowell says that we’re so busy attending to so many inputs and outputs that we become increasingly distracted, irritable, impulsive, restless, and underachieving. “When people find that they’re not working to their full potential; when they know that they could be producing more but in fact they’re producing less; when they know they’re smarter than their output shows; when they start answering questions in ways that are more superficial, more hurried than they usually would; when their reservoir of new ideas starts to run dry; when they find themselves working ever-longer hours and sleeping less, exercising less, spending free time with friends less and in general putting in more hours but getting less production overall.”

I know that when I’m working, I get so innundated - IMs, phone calls, music, websites, e-mail, etc…this is somewhat valid. I might go meditate in Fairmont Park at the Japanese House sometime soon.

Go read it.