"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.

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.

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

Just watch the video.  Trust me.

Via always-fabulous BoingBoing.

Came across this somewhat obsolete sponsored ad near the bottom of a Yahoo News photo page, during a search under the word "Beirut":

Worst.  Ad.  Placement.  Ever.  And just so goddam sad.

I was actually searching (unsuccessfully so far) for the original source of this chilling photo, published here by the conservative Oslo tabloid Aftenposten, comparing satellite shots of Beirut before and after the bombing:

Dozens of Israeli civilians.  Hundreds of Lebanese civilians.  (This might seem inequitable, but then our UN Ambassador has explicitly stated that the Lebanese deaths don’t count the same way.)  Probably the greatest recruiting tool Hezbollah ever had.  No end in sight.  Iraq falling into chaos.  And our leaders refusing to acknowledge even obvious realities.

I wish I had something wise to say, or even something even mildly cheerful, but I don’t.

UPDATE: turns out the source of the aerial comparison seems to be an obscure little paper called the New York Times.  Well, duh.