Unqualified Offerings

Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001

Archive for August 28th, 2007

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

A Tombstone Hand and a Graveyard Mind

Bo Diddley has suffered a heart attack. This seems pointless given that Bo Diddley will never die. There’s a great moment early in the PBS history of rock&roll series that starts with an aged Diddley playing the violin in church. During the course of the interview, he gropes for ways to describe the “Bo Diddley [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

The Road Not Taken

Newsweek’s interview with National Counter-Terrorism Center head John Scott Redd is . . . refreshing. Redd comes off as straightforward and relatively spin-free. There’s not a lot of rah-rah or alarmism, nor any effort to score cheap political or bureaucratic points. And for just a second, I caught myself thinking, “Imagine if the government as [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Isn’t That Special?

From the Financial Times:
At the weekend Frederick Kagan, an adviser to President George W. Bush and the architect of the US surge strategy in Iraq, said the special relationship between London and Washington was under threat because UK defence cuts had left Britain’s military unable to sustain simultaneous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Britain has a [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

A Mess of Cottage

After all that Mike Vick chin-pulling, it’s a relief to be able to take the straight, er, doctrinaire libertarian position on the Larry Craig case.
Look, I figure I’ve been using public restrooms for close to 47 years. In all that time I’ve been aware of one sorta proposition. Ironically, it happened on my honeymoon, in [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

More Tolkien Comparisons

By Thoreau
I’m procrastinating from preparing for the movers.  Yesterday I talked about putting Cheney’s Ring on the Metro tracks under the Pentagon.  Just having a bit of fun.  But since some of the bedwetters have been remarkably earnest about comparison our current situation to Tolkien’s stories, I thought that perhaps we should explore that issue [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

History Repeating as Force

They’re really going to bomb Iran. The magnitude of the idiocy and unjustness boggles. After the last five years it’s stupefying. It will be, for all practical purposes, a bipartisan act. It will constitute a massive war crime. Chances are the war is already essentially underway. It’s deeply depressing to watch the whole thing happening [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Green and Brown

Wired shows off “The 10 Fastest Green Cars on the Planet.” About three of them are biofuel-driven and another couple use similarly suspect power sources, but there are also some cool designs.
Via Brett.

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

What a shitty way to flirt

By Thoreau
Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has pleaded guilty to trying to pick up a guy in an airport bathroom stall.  Apparently he was sitting in a stall next to an undercover cop when he reached into the next stall with his foot and then his hand.
I don’t care if Republican members of Congress are attracted [...]

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Jim broke the internet

By Thoreau
Julian Sanchez is taking a break from blogging. Apparently all these animal rights discussions are wearing him out. And one of the main instigators was Jim! How could you, Jim?
I should send Julian a sympathy gift. Maybe foie gras, or a gift card for this restaurant I know that has [...]