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The Grifters
I just finished The Grifters by Jim Thompson, one of the best hard-boiled crime dramas I’ve ever read. Told entirely in the first person, it’s the dark and evil story of crooks, marks and no innocence whatsoever. Notable in it’s absence is any objective description (well, there’s almost none). Almost no “it was raining”, “the night was cloudy”, etc. Lots of impressions, feelings and lies, but no independent reality.
Highly recommended.
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Michael Moore the inverted prophet
He did Bowling for Columbine, and the Democratic party changed positions on gun control, he did Fahrenheit 911 and Bush got re-elected, and now he has a new movie coming out on health care. Does that mean health care is going to be deregulated?
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A retort I didn’t say
While I was in Borders today I overheard someone say “I wish they’d just get what they have right instead of coming out with something new”. I think she was talking about Microsoft Vista. I thought, “That’s what they’re doing, they’re just adding a new skin and saying it’s new.” The the “fixed” features create other problems because that’s just the way technology works.
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Willful blindness in the media
I read the headline of this CNN.com article Ohio lethal injection takes 2 hours, 10 tries and was thinking how tough that guy must be, after all, 10 tries! Then I read
Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man’s arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.
The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.
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Officials said the delay was due to Newton’s size — he weighed 265 pounds. In May 2006, the execution of Joseph Lewis Clark was delayed about 90 minutes because the team could not find a suitable vein. He was a longtime intravenous drug user.
This is ridiculous. Not being able to find veins is quite common in any hospital, nursing home, or drug den. After a prolonged period of being jabbed with needles the veins (quite sensibly) appear to retreat and get much harder to find. A high percentage of body fat will makes it hard as well. It’s not like this guy withstood the lethal dose ten times or anything.
This is why everyone should read The Corner.
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The wheel turns full circle
Feminists arguing that adult women shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions on what to do with their bodies. In this case raising the age of consent to appear on Girls Gone Wild videos from 18 to 21. Oddly, the author supports her argument by pointing out the many lawsuits filed against GGW producers by people who did not consent to be photographed/videotaped. It’s a bit like saying Iraq is a horrible disaster, therefore we need to invade Iran.
I suppose the right of women to control their bodies only applies below the waist.
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Thursday link roundup
- Hitchens has a sharp pen – Jimmy Carter is his particular target today.
- The economics of The Wire – I suppose I need to write one about the economics of the Shield to fully flesh out the crime show econ world.
- Top 100 website run by one guy – hopefully someone will be writing that about me.
- How to photography silhouettes
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Local music legends mentioned in the mainstream media
Atlanta based garage rock duo The A-Sides are briefly mentioned in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution.
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Random Thursday links
- How to fix the Microsoft Home Page
- Robert Conquest’s 3 Laws of Politics
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. - More Stirling Engines how to guides – this one looks a bit better than the last one I posted. Here is another one.
- The top 100 web apps for freelancers – mine is not on it, yet.
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A needed innovation
Last night I spent about seven hours trying to get a particular Microsoft web product to work, only to discover at the end of a long search that you simply couldn’t make it work that way. I was trying to update the error message dynamically and have it appear in the VCE
It would be quite handy to have a list of things that a product CAN’T do, it would save so much time trying to prove negatives. Perhaps that should be a new site idea.
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Quote of the morning
From Marginal Revolution
If they were more like me, they wouldn’t be them in the first place.