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The life and times of the world’s
most self-deluded online superstar
News & Commentary
Trusting strangers
In short, go ahead--as long as you picked them and they didn't pick you. Bruce Schneier on The Kindness of Strangers: When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: "don't talk to strangers." Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it's prudent to steer clear of them. And yet most people are honest, kind, and generous, especially when someone asks...
AIG
AIG's clearly excessive bonuses have, I'm afraid, thrown into stark relief the cluelessness of the Obama administration's economic endeavors. I say this as an Obama supporter and with the understanding that the bailout process began under the previous, totally incompetent administration. Two wrongs rarely make a right, however, and shoveling even more...
Catch the falling knife
The conventional wisdom on investing is that dips in the market provide excellent buying opportunities. This is, then, a particularly unconventional time. My list of "winners" right now consists of Piedmont Natural Gas (PNY-NYSE) and Fidelity Low-Priced Stock (FLPSX-NYSE). My list of losers includes, well, everything else. Not to be overly pessimstic, but...
Contempt of court and more
News that the CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes should hardly prove surprising to anyone who's paid even an iota of attention to what the Bush-Cheney administration did. While we're left to ponder why the tapes were destroyed if, as the Bush Administration claimed, no torture was engaged in, let us at least now follow the path of justice wherever it...
40
I turned 40 today. I don't know what to make of it especially. Looking back at the last 10 years I can hardly complain. I've either accomplished everything I intended or I will in the next few months. (Here I'm thinking of my forthcoming album.) I am so blessed when it comes to family and friends. Jonah, Elisha and Jillian have changed my life in...
Let’s see if I’ve got this right
Today's Oregonian, reporting from the Coffee is Hot Dept.: Isabella was 2 1/2 years old when she fell. Her mother, Melisa Yerdon, had opened a second-story window to air out a mess their dog made inside the duplex in the 5900 block of Southeast 15th Loop. Yerdon said that she hadn't planned on leaving Isabella alone, but dashed out when she heard her...
Defending the perverted, just in time for Christmas
Dwight Whorley of Richard, Virginia is a sick guy. He's into child porn, and he needs all kinds of mental health counseling. What I'm not convinced he needs is 20 years in prison. Were he the child pornographer I would have no qualms with the sentence. Indeed, those who exploit children might deserve even harsher punishment, and I'm squarely in the "let's...
War crimes
It goes against the grain of the holiday season, but the President and the whole neocon cabal sprinkled throughout his administration should be tried as war criminals. The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody makes this abundantly clear. The only good news of this report is that, as Andrew...
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Nintendo suffers the Japanese-English translation blues. Again. Hysterical.
Finally, something worth catching
Your happiness could be contagious: On average, every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of cheer by 9 percent — and the effects of catching someone else’s happiness lasts up to one year. The study, which looked at nearly 5,000 individuals over 20 years, was published online Thursday in the British Medical Journal....
Essays
Galaxians: Arcade Game for the Ages
Nothing like an arcade emulator and the re-discovery of a favorite video game to make one feel young again. Cheaper than plastic surgery, too. I know that many of you—though not that many perhaps (which must say something about who my friends are)—will think me a touch mad for rediscovering in recent days an old arcade game called "Galaxians" and seeing this as a kind of right of passage into adulthood. (Of course at age 29 it's about time for adulthood, isn't it?) In...
Be Impeached Like a Man!
His domestic agenda in tatters, President Bill sounds the happy drumbeat of war in an attempt to distract restless natives. Slips another notch on the "morality-o-meter." (Who knew negative numbers were possible?) Monica Lewinsky and why "loose lips sink ships." President Clinton holed up this weekend (or is that a poor choice of words?) at Camp David to salvage what he can from the ruins of his second term. Huddling close by were scores of advisors—military officers,...
Correspondence ’97
Letters from adoring fans. Edited for brevity. My witty responses. Prolonged for your annoyance. Name that author. Another way to kill five minutes. This page features letters and e-mail received by me, the Grand Poohbah of Davison Lodge. To assure the instantly concerned, all writers (excepting yours truly) are anonymous unless prior permission for use of their name has been granted. "Ya know, DS had a very good idea. I am going to set up your page as my default home, too....
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
A little background on encryption and why it's necessary to keep Big Brother from watching you. Or me, for that matter. My Public Key and the Web of Trust. Encouragement not to make me a solitary, quixotic figure on a singular journey to encryption loneliness. Pathos overdose. Be my Sancho Panza. Why Encrypt? It's probably not going to be easy to convince some of you to use an encryption program for your electronic mail. You're not the typical drug runners or Mafia-types....