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Thursday, Mar 14, 2002

tub of goo

google news adds a search option.

fried love

"He has Scotty Reston's sweeping wall map in his office in the Times' Washington bureau -- with the Soviet Union as still the most prominent piece of the map -- but he goes out of his way to disavow any similarities in their roles. Reston, whose column ran in the Times at the height of the Cold War, facilitated a conversation at the grandest levels; Reston was a Washington aristocrat. Whereas Tom Friedman, in his columnist job for seven years now, is, as he tells it, just your basic Everyman."

profusion cuisine

"It was Adam Smith who identified what turned out to be the central ethical fault line in Enron. The corporation, he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, was an inherently corrupting business form. The problem was the separation of ownership from control. In partnerships and sole proprietorships, the forms he preferred, the owners ran the business. In contrast, managers hired by the owner-stockholders ran the corporation. And the owners were too busy to monitor how their money was spent by the managers. So managers were institutionally liable to what Smith called "negligence" and "profusion." Negligence, because the business was not the consuming dedication of their lives, as it is for partners and sole proprietors; it was merely a job. Profusion, because they could reward themselves by lavishing other people's money, which spends so much easier than our own, on fine dinners, handsome equipages, and all manner of other frippery�and disguise their profusion as business expenses. Smith's distrust of the corporation had empirical backing in the disgraceful behavior of the East India Company, the Enron of his day, a monument to negligence and profusion."

the chronically aggrieved

"If you've ever given money to an environmental organization, if you support the movement's agenda, then you're probably part of a grand conspiracy that's degrading life in America. Worse yet, you might even be a terrorist, or at least an accomplice. At least that's what Nick Nichols seems to think."

photoshoppers

"Our focus at MSNBC.com is now on playing to the strengths unique to our medium by adding value to still images with in-depth captions and tightly edited audio/video components. Our goal is to use new technology so effectively that it fades into the background as the story is the reader focus."

copy that

"Copyright-holding corporations are pushing new laws and computer-crippling technologies in their war on piracy. But can anything keep geeks from copying the music and movies they crave?"

Wednesday, Mar 13, 2002

dead or alive

"Equally embarrassing to the government have been reports over the past five months that were recently confirmed by a December 23, 2001 Baltimore Sun article by reporter Scott Shane. The article revealed that Fort Detrick scientists had harvested bacteria from the dead bodies of persons "accidentally infected" with anthrax. Several former Army researchers who are now retired and live in Florida, including Bill Walter who to reporter Shane, have reported that at least three people affiliated with Fort Detrick who died from anthrax had their cadavers harvested so as to assist in the development of a new virulent anthrax strain. Army officials dispute these reports and say that harvesting was never performed at Fort Detrick. However, the same officials admit that accidental anthrax deaths did occur at the facility."

slate chalkboard

"At this point, the mystery of "Who Is Robert Klingler?" swells to include "Who Is Robert Klingler-Desai?" and "Who Is RDesai3109@aol.com?" not to mention, "Are They the Same Person?"

play for today

famous natl geo afghan girl is found 16 yrs later.

boarding passes

"Washington --- Six months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service mailed out notices that two of the hijackers had been approved for student visas."

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