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Monday, Jan 28, 2002

casting call

"Our special issue is dedicated to trying to make sense of modern celebrity, of its oddities and pleasures. Whether we like it or not (and we often do), nothing much now happens without celebrity's imprint."

end run

"Enron is not a political scandal in the sense of gotcha-gotcha-now-resign. But it has exposed the administration's sleazy corporatism and underlined its relative indifference to the market principles that form the Republican Party's more attractive side. The folks at the White House tolerate the free-trade efforts of the trade czar, Bob Zoellick, but they don't really like him. They hired a free marketeer to run the office overseeing regulation, but they won't necessarily back him up. Their agriculture secretary says the right things on market-distorting farm subsidies, but they don't have the stomach to fight Congress on this issue. They won't even stand up for school vouchers, despite Bush's emphasis on education. What the White House team really cares about is cutting taxes, which has less to do with market principle than with rewarding backers."

captain cursory

i guess this is whitman as zeldman

inaccurate claims syndicate

"The current debate over economic policy has provided rich opportunities for one of the most disingenuous and confusing aspects of spin: abusing statistics. From misstating facts to spinning half-truths into an allegedly complete story, politicians and pundits of all ideological stripes are making deceptive and inaccurate claims based on numerical data."

nevermind the bollards

"Architects in Washington, D.C., are trying to find ways to make the buildings and monuments safer for visitors while also protecting their aesthetic beauty. Alex Van Oss reports on Weekend All Things Considered. Jan. 27, 2002."

woodward's history

"10 DAYS IN SEPTEMBER: Inside the War Cabinet" (part 2 in a series)

justice blind, not naked

"W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 25 � About three weeks ago, I received a tip. The attorney general was fed up with having his picture taken during events in the Great Hall in front of semi-nude statues."

Saturday, Jan 26, 2002

station breaks

"Using a process called "microediting," the length of movies, programs, or anything on television can be cut down without chopping entire scenes. It works by eliminating duplicate frames of video, actually creating time where it did not exist before. The process lets TV stations use the time saved to run more ads."

box din

"It was a mistake--and a beaut--in Matt Bivens's piece "The Enron Box" where he confused the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers. It is hereby duly acknowledged and regretted. But what really astonished us..." (sidebar to rewritten article)

hammett time

"Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in rural Maryland in 1894. As a boy he wanted to read all the books in the Baltimore public library, but he had to quit high school at the age of fourteen to help out with the shaky family finances. (His father, whom he didn't like, was a spendthrift, drinker, sharp dresser, and womanizer; but unlike Hammett, who resembled him in all these respects, he was mean and stingy.) At twenty-one, Hammett got a job as a Pinkerton's detective agency operative, which he left in 1918 to join the army. He suffered the first of many severe respiratory illnesses then. During one recuperation he married a nurse he met at the infirmary; then he signed on at Pinkerton's once more, but his health broke down. It was then that he began writing crime stories for the pulps."

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