Curated knowlege, trenchant insights & witty bon mots
Here were three of the four Google text ads that came up when I went to read Chantal Hebert's Toronto Star column online just now: I can only presume the Google Adsense system thinks unemployed, gay-conservative-but-still-gay-marriage-supporting Christians looking for new blogs or a quick buck are the target demographic of the column.
Fri, November 11 2005 » Main Page, Minutiae » 6 Comments
I found this to be an interesting juxtaposition of stories on the NYT home page:
Fri, November 11 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
The U.S. Senate wants U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to give secret testimony to two Congressional panels on the so-called “black sites” used to hold some terror suspects. An excerpt from the BBC story: The Senate also voted to bar terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay camp from taking legal action in the US courts. [...]
Fri, November 11 2005 » Main Page » Comments Off
Two female academics and authors take aim at a central point in NYT columnist Mo Dowd's new book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide. An excerpt from the article on the Common Dreams website by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett (originally published at Women's eNews): What a waste of such a powerful platform. If [...]
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At Queen and Bathurst, a bunch of young rockers are loading equipment out of The Reverb/Holy Joe's into U-Haul trucks. Across the street, a frazzled-looking street man, approximately in his mid-50s, balding with a fringe of ginger-coloured hair, is standing and projecting like Pavarotti trying to hit a high C. Except what's coming out is a [...]
Fri, November 11 2005 » Main Page, Minutiae » Comments Off
The host of Democracy Now!, which I think is the best U.S. (although imperfect) alternative news source out there, is lauded at Common Dreams. Some excerpts from the piece by Vermont journalist Joyce Marcel: First, you are the anti-Judith Miller, the discredited New York Times reporter who beat the drums for Bush and Cheney's illegal war, who [...]
Fri, November 11 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
I stopped in for a slice at Pizza Gigi recently, which has been named as one of the city's best pizza purveyors by Now Magazine. “I guess you guys must be getting pretty conceited, now that you're one of the city's best pizza joints,” I said with a smile. “That's what they call us!” said the counter guy, [...]
Fri, November 11 2005 » Main Page, Minutiae » Comments Off
Salon's Rebecca Traistler reviews NYT columnist Maureen Dowd's new book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide, and finds much to both slag and recommend in it. An excerpt: (free with a day pass) … Dowd's 338-page cultural analysis and memoir of sexual politics is a blistering critique of modern gender relations, dressed up in a pulpy [...]
Fri, November 11 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
The Village Voice's Sydney Schanberg makes an argument for greater transparency in the practice of journalism. An excerpt: Journalism's most serious failure, probably, is its reluctance to explain how reporters go about putting together a news story. A large percentage of news stories, for example, begin with a public relations announcement from a government agency, [...]