Pleonastic Ephemera

3.07.2009 posted by William 14:30 link	placed next to each other skillfully
8.20.2005 posted by William 22:17 link	Hmm.
12.30.2004 posted by William 18:27 link	Right, so obviously I haven't been updating. At some point it got be a chore. For the forseeable future I will post sporadically, as the mood strikes me. Here's my Audioscrobbler page. If you're missing me, you can check on what I've been listening to.
11.09.2004 posted by William 09:10 link	After you've had your laugh and felt the righteous indignation of fuckthesouth.com, read this and then this. "It starts with the fact that we as conservative Christians are taught to see America as our land. I mean, you guys in Europe and the loonies on the East and West Coasts think the Founding Fathers died to bring us religious freedom. They so did not. They died to give new Christianity a place where it could flourish. And if you think that Catholicism was flourishing perfectly fine before that, thank you, then you don't understand conservative Christianity. See, I grew up being taught that Catholicism was almost-sort-of-not-quite-but-we-won't-talk-about-it cult. Really. Lots of Southern Baptists believe Catholicism is a cult, despite the fact that it is the largest practiced religion in the world. If you understand that we can believe that about Catholicism then maybe you can understand that American Conservative Christian values don't necessarily fit into any kind of historical, cultural, or anthropological perspective. They never really have."
11.03.2004 posted by William 13:51 link	I'm not as crushed as some people because I've never thought Kerry would win, but I'm still very disappointed. I did think it would be closer than this, and that my age group would turn out in higher numbers (17% among 18-29 year-olds, not that they broke all that much for Kerry: only 56%). I agree with Kristof's editorial. It's all about "culturally powerful but content-free issues", with which Republicans can win and win and win until, hopefully, some genius Democrat can figure out how to neutralize this by reconnecting with the "average" voter.
11.02.2004 posted by William 16:53 link	I voted today. If you're a citizen of the US, I hope you voted, too. Slate's saying Kerry is ahead at this early hour. Good. Everyone should read the full transcript of bin Laden's recent video. If someone tells you he is pure evil and hates us because we are free, you are being lied to. He has specific goals in mind, namely the changing of American policy in the Middle East. Sooner or later we'll have to deal with these policies that are (rightly, I think, though it doesn't matter-- we'll still have to deal with them) seen by the rest of the world as exploitative and inhumane. How about before another catastrophic attack?
10.26.2004 posted by William 13:00 link	If you read the New Yorker article , you noticed it says The Note was started in January of 2002, which would contradict my memory of reading it in the summer of 2000. While the article also later says that "Toward the end of 2000...Halperin and his staff in the political unit began to collect their own reporting, together with information from other publications, into a single internal document. This became the model for The Note, and, inevitably, it was soon leaked throughout Washington", I am obviously not a Washington insider and certainly didn't receive this. So most likely I am remembering reading it at work in the summer of 2002, confusing their accounts of the midterm elections of that year with my summer reading about the election of 2000 when I worked at the same place. Let this be an example of how fallible the human memory is -- you think yours isn't, but let me assure you, it is.