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Tuesday, Jan 22, 2002

chelsea girl

"Side by side they sat, a publicist's wildest fantasy. There was Gwyneth Paltrow, a pipe-cleaner in a halter neck. There was Madonna, betraying a touch of the Joan Crawfords in limousine-black shades and Dracula-white concealer - the look of a woman who refers to herself in the third person. But it was the final member of the improbable trinity who harnessed the most attention. No sooner had the shock of seeing Chelsea Clinton out of context subsided, than the impact of how she looked delivered another power surge."

web slinger

"Just a further note here. I gather from Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo that Andrew Sullivan (whose website is too mean-spirited to read) now thinks that I misled my readers by not saying that I was on a paid advisory board. As Marshall points out, it's hard to imagine that anyone really thought that a corporate advisory board carried no honorarium. Only someone completely out of touch with the real world thinks that people donate their time and expertise gratis to highly profitable corporations - which was what everyone at the time thought Enron was."

on daschle

"In the wake of Daschle's January 4 speech, pundits have initiated new attacks that personalize the issue of taxes and economic policy around Daschle and his opposition to the President, often in the form of catchphrases. This strategy - endorsed by pollster Frank Luntz in a December memo to Republicans - capitalizes on the increasing antipathy of the Republican base to Daschle. As with the phrase "Clintonization", the resulting jargon attempts to embed vague associations into a term to trigger hostile reactions."

Sunday, Jan 20, 2002

not it

"Millions of superstitious readers -- and many athletes -- believe that an appearance on Sports Illustrated�s cover is the kiss of death. But is there really such a thing as the SI Jinx?"

access bush

just saw bush nephew billy bush as a correspondent on access hollywood.

copychatter

"At the time, Lawrence Lessig was a law professor at Harvard, where he'd earned a reputation as the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era. Lessig was so outraged by the Bono Act that he helped orchestrate a lawsuit�ultimately unsuccessful�challenging its constitutionality. Now Lessig has published a book, "The Future of Ideas," which serves as a bleak summa of his thoughts on intellectual property. For Lessig (who's now at Stanford), the Bono Act was not just another instance of fat-cat favoritism but part of a disastrous trend toward what might be called property-rights fundamentalism. In his view, this trend is threatening to destroy the Internet and plunge us into a cultural dark age."

manga manga

"After a decade or two as an underground phenomenon in the United States � where legions of obsessive fans exchange fuzzy videotapes or, more commonly now, trade bootlegged movie files over the Internet � anime is slowly emerging into the light of day. Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" was released by Miramax in 1999 in a dubbed version, featuring the voices of Claire Danes, Gillian Anderson and Minnie Driver; Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 "Akira" opened theatrically last year in a digitally restored edition (and is now available on DVD); last summer Columbia Pictures released "The Spirits Within," an elaborate computer- animated episode of the long-running "Final Fantasy" series; and opening on Friday is "Metropolis," a fascinating blend of computer and traditional hand-drawn animation directed by Rintaro and based on a 1949 comic book written by Osamu Tezuka."

Saturday, Jan 19, 2002

hoarse and buggy

"The story behind the immobile Boeing jet offers a tantalizing glimpse of modern spycraft. A Chinese source, with close ties to China's military intelligence services, said members of the Third Department of the General Staff Department of the People's Liberation Army discovered the devices. The Third Department deals in signals intelligence."

survey says...

"Rove's remarks are the first time an administration official has said the GOP will use the war as a partisan issue. Until now, Bush has stressed that the fight against terrorism is a bipartisan and unifying issue for the country."

courage of your convictions

"The word "rollback" tested badly in focus groups and polls, she said, with 64 percent in one recent national survey she conducted opposing a "rollback" of tax cuts. In the same poll, however, 74 percent approved of "temporarily postponing" tax cuts, while the words "pause," "postpone" and "take another look at" also polled well."

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