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Thursday, Jan 02, 2003

drug stories

"It is in this sense that Marcus Boon, in his theory-afflicted but nonetheless lively study "The Road of Excess" (Harvard; $29.95), says that Thomas De Quincey, with the 1821 publication of "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," "invented the concept of recreational drug use." More precisely, De Quincey invented the discourse of recreational drug use: the whole way of thinking about drug-taking as a hobby and an escape into what Baudelaire, writing about drugs in 1858, was to call our "artificial paradises."

Saturday, Dec 21, 2002

what he said

"But we shouldn't congratulate ourselves quite so fast. The Lott story didn't break this month � it broke four years ago. Where was the press then? Where were the Democrats? From December 1998 until the following spring, a black columnist at New York's Daily News, the politically nonpartisan Stanley Crouch, repeatedly laid out goods on Mr. Lott more damaging than the senator's latest transgression: his long and intimate association with the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization whose initials are not a phonic echo of K.K.K. for nothing. A few newspaper reporters and columnists recounted the same history, but Mr. Crouch, instead of winning a Pulitzer, was largely ignored by big guns in the media as well as by political leaders of both parties."

Friday, Dec 20, 2002

spitfire

"Pot in Canada may soon be a click away with the launch of a home-delivery service for medical marijuana over the Internet."

salted wounds

the pundits who said lott would not last out the week are feeling pretty good about themselves right now. i told him not to turn around but he didnt listen.

see through

media transparency: the money behind the media

no more trouble

united for peace

we retort, you deride

"We may never know the real reason Al Gore opted to bow out of the presidential race. In his interview announcing this decision on 60 Minutes, the former vice president said he wanted the 2004 race to be about the future, not the past. While he had the "energy and the drive and the ambition" to make another bid for the White House, he realized it was not "the right thing" for him to do."

"Left unsaid was how much Gore's decision was affected by his treatment from the press. In his 2000 campaign, Gore was dogged by his image as a "phony." Coverage of his recent re-emergence on the public scene continued that story line. "Are people going to say this is just another reinvention of Al Gore?" asked Karen Tumulty, the Time magazine reporter who profiled him recently. If by "people" she meant the Washington chattering class, the journalists and pundits who shape a candidate's image, the answer was clearly "yes."

Wednesday, Dec 18, 2002

psycho killer

"An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium."

"This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, and other developments designed to alter the ability of the human body to process stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way we commonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack."

euge

10 new countries invited to join european union.

Wednesday, Dec 11, 2002

mayberry madam

"Maybe it�s because the midterm elections went so very well. Maybe it�s because at the White House, politics is the best policy. Maybe it�s because it�s the reign of Karl Rove. An inside look at how the most powerful presidential adviser in a century does what does so well."

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