Unqualified Offerings

Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001

Archive for July 31st, 2002

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Back and Forth

Brendan O’Neill says the problem with Iraq is not just the drive to war but the assumption that the West should intervene at all. Steve Chapman asks if Brendan really means it. Brendan says, Yeah, I really do.
Unqualified Offerings is with Brendan O’Neill on this one. It has been on record as favoring deterrence against [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

The Poindexter Beat

Reader Munham Yam wonders if Unqualified Offerings had it quite right in its item below about John Poindexter returning to save us all! (See “Annals of Upward Failure” below.) Poindexter has been appointed the head of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office, which has both a mission and a vision. Mission:

imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Department of Corrections

Michael Croft of Ones and Zeros fact-checks the ass of Unqualified Offerings about just what he does during recording sessions, and concludes his e-mail with a popular army joke. Unqualified Offerings reproduces the entire text below. (Cliffs Notes: “I’m an engineer, not a producer.”)

There are two important people in the control room of any recording [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Another Day, Another Pot-Kettle Item

In a column debunking some internet legends, professionally-folksy Washington Post columnist Bob Levey informs us that

Young people think that anything on the Internet must be true. Oldsters know better. The Internet is a veritable bog of fish stories, larger than life — and very often devoid of truth.

Levey offers no evidence that all or even [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Icthyoterror: The Latest

Reader/Gaming Buddy Bill Dowling and Gamer/Reading Buddy Mike “Epoch” Sullivan brought the latest northern snakehead analysis to UO’s attention yesterday.
Mike has a gaming-oriented blog, which he’ll let you read.

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

A Fangirl’s Notes

Meryl Yourish plays Would-You-Rather with her favorite superheroes. Batman, Wolverine, Elongated Man, Wolverine and Mr. Fantastic um, come up big.

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Matt Welch: Labor-Saving Device

Andrew Sullivan wrote some really dumbass stuff this morning about “determined and organized” opposition to war with Iraq. (UO only wishes. The extent of any “organization” it can claim is exchanging a couple of e-mails a month with Justin Raimondo, with about half the correspondence consisting of one of us explaining how wrong the other [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Last Ditch Defense

Adjunct fellow Kevin Maroney e-mails about this morning’s item on Clash songs in commercials:

Before you neener too neenerly, you should ask yourself if Strummer and Jones control their songs enough to have any say in whether they get sold to commercials. They probably do, but it’s far from a certain thing.

This is at least possible. [...]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Your Official Unfortunate Headline of the Day

Your Official Unfortunate Headline of the Day: “Celine Dion Developing Fragrance.”
(From AP via the Washington Post.)

Wednesday, July 31st, 2002

Death or Glory

“I believe in this and it’s been tested by research,” the Clash once sang, “he who fucks nuns will later join the church.”
In my youth, the Clash were uncompromising radicals, who made propulsive leftist punk rock, and their biggest fans loved them as much for their politics as for their backbeat and reggae rhythms. A [...]