From the Trebekistan page at Amazon.com:
So according to Amazon’s algorithm, more than half of the people who look at my book ultimately choose… The Stranger by Albert Camus.
How absurd.
Find whatever meaning in that you prefer.
Category Archives: Almost Seven Wonders
The Almost Seven Wonders files
Bush Administration Wants To Make Ordering Torture Retroactively Legal
Didn’t see this on the front pages, what with all the Red Alert! happening the very day after it becomes clear that incumbent war supporters will be in grave danger unless the public is re-convinced on the war.
But this fine nugget was squeezed into page A21 in today’s L.A. Times (about one-fifth the size of the adjacent story on teenagers’ cell phone video preferences — this just in!) following up on this story in the Washington Post:
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.
[snip]
"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That’s why it’s so dangerous," said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Fidell said the initiative was "not just protection of political appointees but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."
Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration," said a fourth attorney, Scott Horton. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."
Nice. You can just smell the democracy on these people.
Shorter Joe Lieberman
"I care too much about democracy to respect the outcome of a fair election, and I have too much regard for the people of Connecticut to pay attention to what they actually think."
My friend Val wished at lunch today that Lieberman would have put up one-tenth as much fuss as the VP candidate in the Florida mess of 2000.
"So now I will continue to run against a candidate who has already beaten me, against a party I expect to remain a member of."
Of course, that wasn’t the end of his career, but possibly the beginning, raising the possibility of a presidential run in 2004. This here, if handled gracefully, would probably be the end.
Ick.
My unseemly love for the new MacBook Pro continues
Had to burn a DVD today to get some promo stuff out. I’d never done that on a computer before. Pretty simple, or should be, but you know how these things can go. Everything’s download-a-new-this, update-the-driver-that, and two hours later you’re actually doing something. If you’re lucky. And I’d never even launched iDVD, even out of curiosity. So I wasn’t expecting perfection.
But that’s what I got. Totally self-explanatory. Everything worked. In twenty minutes, I had menus and graphics and music picked out. Like it’s supposed to be. Now there’s a DVD burning just beneath my right wrist while I’m typing this, with enough processing power that I can go about the rest of my work and not even notice a delay. So, wow. If you’re looking to get a new machine, well, there.
Disclosure: I own a few shares of Apple, so I could arguably be a member of the cult. Use your own judgment.
Africans know how to take their medicine
One of the excuses sometimes used to skimp on AIDS treatments in Africa is the prejudiced notion (once even vocalized explicitly by the head of the Agency for International Development under the Bush administration) that Africans won’t stick to complicated medical regimens the way, say, we First Worlders will.
Debunked. Scoreboard: Africans 77%, North Americans 55%.
Of course, if people everywhere are really pretty similar