sysrick.com

The 50 Best Magazines. i am somebody who really loves magazines, so i'm kind of amazed how much i agree with this list [anil dash's daily links]

Fireworks!. Larry Crump's Fireworks Pages. While searching for fireworks related sites, I came across this great site. I doubt you'll find a better resource for fireworks information. Mainly, I like looking at the pretty pictures. As Larry puts it, "Fireworks are an art form that use the night sky as the canvas." Sadly, Larry died exactly one year ago today. So, go check out his wonderful web site and maybe you can get some ideas for this weekend's July 4th celebration. [MetaFilter]

Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq. It was a systematic campaign to frighten the hell out of us about the threat of Hussein, and almost none of it was true. [AlterNet]

It must be hard to talk about revisionists when you own words come back to haunt you. At least for most people but misleading appears to be one of the real strengths of politicians today. Some day soon, statesmen and true leaders will replace the weak imitations we have today. That is one of America's strengths. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

The coming bankruptcy of aging Europe. NYT: the median age in the United States in 2050 will be 35.4, only a very slight increase from what it is now. In Europe, by contrast, it is expected to rise to 52.3 from 37.7. The likely meaning of this "stunning difference," as the British weekly The Economist called the growing demographic disparity between Europe and the United States, is that American power — economic and military — will continue to grow relative to Europe's, which will also decline in comparison with other parts of the world like China, India and Latin America. ... Across Europe, only 39 percent of men age 55 to 65 still work, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Life expectancy in the Western world has been increasing over several decades, and continues to do so, by about one year every four years. At the same time, the legal retirement age has barely changed. This is in effect a new type of inflation and control caused by the welfare state: a limited number of people allowed to work and required to subsidize an ever-increasing number of unproductive, older people. The inevitable result of price control and inflation is a complete disruption of demand and supply, leading to calls for rationing and further invasive price controls. The European Unproductive Aging Population crisis will lead to similar destruction of free markets and reversals of prosperity, unless state intervention in savings and retirement is abolished very soon. For instance, tomorrow July 1st, Switzerland is making it more difficult for people to leverage their pension fund when buying a house. That is price control under a veneer of crisis management (pension funds are running out of money). In the Welfare State, your savings, your pension fund, are not your property: you are told by the government how and when you may dispose of it, if at all (ultimately, increasing taxes will ensure that little is left to you).

My advice to fellow Europeans is to get out before it's too late. [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

Google + wireless = God?. From Thomas Friedman's New York Times op/ed today:

Says Alan Cohen, a V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider: "If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."

In other words, once Wi-Fi is in place, with one little Internet connection I can download anything from anywhere and I can spread anything from anywhere. That is good news for both scientists and terrorists, pro-Americans and anti-Americans. And that brings me to the point of this column: While we may be emotionally distancing ourselves from the world, the world is getting more integrated. That means that what people think of us, as Americans, will matter more, not less. Because people outside America will be able to build alliances more efficiently in the world we are entering and they will be able to reach out and touch us -- whether with computer viruses or anthrax recipes downloaded from the Internet -- more than ever.

Link to NYT column (registration required), Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Panoramic Photography by Brad Templeton. Cool!

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

E-mail driving directions with Mapquest and Yahoo Maps. I must be living under a rock.  I use MapQuest often to get driving directions.  And I know the directions one gets from MapQuest are sometimes flawed, but it is very convenient when it works, which is most of the time.

I knew that you could have the directions "synched" with your PDA, but I hated doing this because it takes too much time.  Well, last night when my wife and I needed directions to someone's house that we had never been to I logged on to MapQuest and started writing the directions down.  My wife, who is ostensibly less tech-savvy than me, cast a puzzled look and suggested the easier alternative of having the directions emailed to my phone.   Great idea.  (I had no idea you could do that.).

Apparently, Yahoo Maps has the same feature.  This will be saving me a bit of time in the future.  If you didn't know about it give it a try.  You obviously can have the directions emailed wherever you want.

[Ernie the Attorney]

Art for a Change. Art for a Change. An archive of such things as punk portraits, the German Expressionists, Spanish Civil War posters, Paris 1968 posters; art protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Alberto Korba and his famous photo of Che Guevara; and more politically oriented art.
Related :- anarchist posters from Europe, Australia and North America; John Heartfield versus Hitler (gallery of Heartfield's anti-Nazi photo-montages); Aum Shinrikyo: Japanese Wanted poster art ('The Japanese police made art to capture members of Aum Shinrikyo. We made art to capture the essence of a surreal modern Japan, governed by fear.'); the history and meaning of the CND logo (a.k.a. the 'peace symbol'); posters of pre-1945 Japanese labour movements. [MetaFilter]

The Complete Guide To Irony. Irony in a Nutshell. Not an O'Reilly publication, but you can use it to teach yourself Irony in 24 hours. For dummies. And a reference for the rest of us. [MetaFilter]

School of Mouse Catching?. They sold everything from Earthquake Pills (caution: not effective on Road Runners) to Trick Balls (warning: explode on contact!). They may be the world's most diverse goods & services company, with the possible exception of Wal Mart. I speak, of course, of the fine folks at ACME, whose full catalog is finally available online. Go, now, read! Don't make me use my Ultimatum Dispatcher! [MetaFilter]

So why are TV talks with authors so lame? Well, what with their demanding hair-care duties, TV interviewers seldom have time to read the books ... [Arts & Letters Daily]

Canadian Beer!!! Burrrrp!. Something to think about while you plan your weekend . . . Mmmmmm, Canadian beer: Sleeman - Annoying Flash site, great music. Labatt - annoying pop up ad with a fantastic idea. Molson - another annoying pop-up, but it's The Stone's! Click on Don Cherry for some fashion. And who can forget about The Rant? Then there's the mother of beer sites, Beer.com, featuring beer, sex, music, fun and free. Admit it, nothing compares to beer, especially Canadian beer. [MetaFilter]

Pot Head. Pot doesn't cause permanent brain damage? According to this University of California at San Diego study, no it doesn't even though other illegal drugs, even alcohol, can cause brain damage.

"...marijuana has only a marginally harmful long-term effect on learning and memory." [MetaFilter]

Albuquerque bosque fire. The Albuquerque Bosque is on fire. Bosque is spanish for woods that grow along a river bank and these woods are within feet of homes of Albuquerque, New Mexico residents. The bosque is along the Rio Grande river that runs through the state's largest city and includes a nature center and towering cottonwood trees that are over 100's of years old. Yesterday and tonight over 1000 acres are going up like a match. The Rio Grande bosque is a state treasure (with a national wild refuge ). We now have seven fires in New Mexico. Albuquerque is losing a natural treasure tonight... very sad to hear this may be arson. [MetaFilter]

Amazon mystery box! Oooooh! Ahhhh!. The "Goodie Box" at Amazon is $9.99. It has a $10.00 rebate. No word on what's in it or when to expect it. Order it find out I guess, then send in your rebate and get your money back. Any guesses? A Mystery box for $4 shipping cost is intriguing enough for me to try it. I have mine on order, anyone else? [MetaFilter]

Google Toolbar 2.0 Beta Blocks Popup Ads. A beta version of a new toolbar utility by search engine Google.com blocks popups, and includes a utility for bloggers. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

Save the Whole Earth Review Singularity!. The next Whole Earth Review issue is delayed due to lack of funding. It's a special issue on the Singularity, one that lots of people (including, me, Stross and Vinge) wrote pieces for. In classic WER style, they're appealing to their readers to come up with the printing costs to get the ish out the door and they've posted some of the articles that will come out with the issue as an enticement (including mine). Link Discuss (Thanks, Alex!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Scooterman: drunkard's chauffeur on a folding scooter. Scooterman is a London-based service, wherein drunk people call a number, and a guy on a folding scooter comes over to the bar, puts his scooter in the trunk of their car and drives it and them home. Brilliant. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Bill Gates in the WSJ (registration required): “I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”

 

Just the way I feel when I get those spams promising to make me a better lover…

[EdCone.com]

'Pretend You Live in America'. Jimmy Breslin: . I don't know what Faris looks like or sounds like or what he thinks and what he... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Here is a link to the Breslin article. If we were reading about the USSR arresting a citizen, holding him incommunicado for 3 months, then detailing how this citizen had pled guilty to crimes, all the time holding him in secret, providing no public charges, providing no lawyer, keeping everything secret, we would rightly say that this was a sham and just a sign that the commuists were the worst sorts of leaders. I am sure many of the Russion people also felt that the government was simply trying to provide national security. But what sort of America are we living in when a citizen can be treated thusly? Even if he is guilty as sin, the Constitution should not be so easily shredded. Our government can now 'disappear' ANY US citizen, not allow them ANY lawyer and do whatever the government wants to them for as long as it takes to get a confession, a plea or what have you. Simply say he is a terrorist. And our media cheers this on. We are rapidly becoming what we formerly hated. Star chambers are back. Power and intimidation by authority will not make us safer. Exactly the opposite. Simply look at Northern Ireland or the MIddle East. The administration is on the wrong side of history on this. Fifty years from now, assuming we still have some sort of real representational democracy, these decisions will be viewed the same way the Japanese internments are now. It is similar to the Pope holding Galileo under house arrest until they got him to recant. Simply saying we were afraid is not an acceptable answer. Democracy requires courage. Only dictators provide security. We should be leading the world with the right way to deal with national security, not showing that secret detentions and secret courts are the way to do it. I am certain that these sorts of things will not be allowed to continue. Simply because someone IS guilty does not mean we can do whatever we want to get a plea out of them. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Bums?.

We, Sir, are Public Intellectuals

John J. Emerson: If I were an academic scholar, my published writings would be read by a few dozen or a few hundred people, and I would be paid nothing. With the internet, I can achieve this goal entirely on my own. Welcome to the club. Tom Matrullo has made the formal introductions. John, I believe you know Invisible Adjunct.. Ray, please make room on the bench for Mr. Emerson, and pass the vino. Has it been your experience, John, that all the better schools have gates?

[Wealth Bondage]

 [The Daily Irrelevant]

Correction: Gadget Boy points me to this description of the 'gas injector' widgit inside Guinness and Beamish cans. It injects nitrogen not carbon dioxide. That makes sense, because CO₂ would ruin the taste of the beer with it's acidity. (The Guinness element symbol is from The Beeriodic Table.) [101-365]

Fool that I am

Still jazzed from a great week in Ireland, I've taken to writing a 3,000-word essay on my ideas for the ideal Irish driving tour.  The referers to this site show lots of Ireland hits and I think the Ireland stuff I have so far doesn't serve as a comprehensive guide.  The tour I have in mind will include the central west coast from the Dingle Peninsula up to Achill Island. 

I keep reminding myself that I don't get paid to write this stuff.  But that doesn't seem to be an impediment - I'll be filling in the links and adding images for the next few days.

[cloudtravel]

There are some great lunar eclipse pictures at Luminous Landscape.

[Outwardly Normal 2]

Your Brain May Have Amazing Powers [Slashdot]

Hubble Space Telescope takes amazing new picture showing thousands of galaxies (with pic) [FARK]

Ninety-six percent of cosmos puzzles astronomers. Other four percent understood perfectly, down to the tiniest detail, and getting rather boring no... [FARK]

Homeland security adornment. For sale: silver and plexiglas homeland security chokers, in every color of the terrornoia rainbow. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Frank hits the nail on the head
Looks like Bhutan has found out the hard way what I've been saying for years: America's biggest export is psychological problems, and the way it's shipped is in your television. I feel vaguely that this is the sort of thing I should find funny, but I don't. [The Daily Frank] [Outwardly Normal 2]

Orion Magazine online. Welcome to Orion!
Since 1982, Orion has worked to reconnect human culture with the natural world, blending scientific thinking with the arts, engaging the heart and mind, and striving to make clear what we all have in common.
There are rants from the Curmudgeon for those who enjoy the active venting of anger and Discourse and Dissent for those who prefer a more civil discussion of today's issues.
There's even a "quote of the week" that is impressively done. The magazine is also available by subscription and they accept no advertising. I'm thinking this will make a nice additon to my Harper's subscription! I hope you all enjoy this site as much as I have. [MetaFilter]

Guinness This!. Good to see that 50 years of basic research in fulid dynamics, numerical methods, and finite element analysis has finally found a practical application. [MetaFilter]

The Areopagus - Not Just the Market.

"H"

Here is the voice of British Empiricism filtered through Oxford-educated George Soros, channeling Karl Popper. A distinctly crisper style than that of the postmodern, and one that uses words like "false," without apology, a style that has no brief with vivid writing, or opaque patches. It flings the gauntlet in the adversary's face, and demands a debate on the merits. It is the style of British Parliamentary debate. It is the style of business at its best, and owes something to the style of science -- historically it comes down to us from the Royal Society, as well as from Dryden, Ben Johnson, Addison and Steele, and Dr. Johnson. It is the style of solid British commonsense, and sorts well with native American idioms. Pragmatism is a variant.

In an open society, people can decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy. But the Bush administration claims that we have discovered the ultimate truth. The very first sentence of our latest National Security Strategy reads as follows:

"The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom -- and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."

This statement is false on two counts. First, there is no single, sustainable model for national success. And second, our model, which has been successful, is not available to others because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and that position is not attainable by others.

What Soros is saying is that Bush has betrayed the founding principals of the nation he serves. No stronger indictment could be made. Yet, Soros is not saying that he himself has Truth with a capital T. What he holds for is open debate, the constant testing of ideas against standards of accuracy, logic, clarity, and ultimately ethics. You could "deconstruct" the Bush doctrine. But Soros does something even stronger: He gives it the lie direct. We should be grateful for Habermas, Derrida, and other European intellectuals who stand against the Bush doctrine, but it is our responsibility to test it against our traditions, and to defeat it within our American grain. Because it is not only the Enlightenment in general that is betrayed, and the planet generally, but our country and in our name. Liberalism is more than free trade, more than Candidia's free marketplace, and more than the temple, it is also the Areopagus, as Milton reminded us, the forum where all citizens can openly debate, and arrive at a course of action based on one another's best thoughts, rather than having truth or a brand of truth handed to them by the Guardians of right or left. It is time that we recalled, with Foucault, actually, our ancient right and obligation of parrhesia, of outspokenness, even in the face of those who would call us terrorists, for having the temerity to demand an accounting from those who consider themselves our superiors. George is not my superior. I don't work for him either. I work for "Candidia Cruikshanks" and hers is the only boot I kiss. George is my servant; yours too if you are a citizen; he is a Public Servant who -- insanely enough --  imagines himself our Master.

Parhessia takes many forms - Cordelia's silence, Christ's witnessing unto death, the jokes of the fool, the satirist's lash, the British Empiricist's refutation, or the postmodern's deconstruction. Well, there are puffed up Fools enough to serve as targets. Let's all take it in turns, from whatever tradition we have mastered, be it philosophy or vaudeville. The market may not sort it all out, but open debate will.

(Let me add that over the last 24 hours I have received a stream of emails and comments, thanking me for prior posts on democracy and postmodernism, but correcting my errors. If you notice that this post is better than the prior ones it is because of all the well-considered criticism of the earlier ones. Postmodernism would have appalled Popper, and does undermine Empiricism, and can be used to evade present responsibilities, but the heck with that. Let's help one another do the best we can in the name of decency, an open society, and justice of the most basic sort -- as both Derrida and Soros do, however much they might itch to refute or deconstruct one another.)

[Wealth Bondage]

Nestle sued over bad water. Nestle, the makers of Poland Spring water are being sued for selling their bottled water as "naturally purified" or "spring water" when in fact it does not meet the scientific criteria for spring water, is worse than some area tap water, and is sourced near "asphalt parking lots or other areas of dangerous contamination". [MetaFilter]

Thursday, June 19, 2003 1:51 PM. GEORGE ORWELL'S SIX RULES

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

"If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of
the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own
habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless
phrase...into the dustbin where it belongs."

[William Gibson]

Leslie Neilsen's Lt. Drebbin is, uh, ... funny, right. I think so. His latest adventure, The Naked WMD is especially hilarious, since it's 100% true. Well, 98 anyway. [101-365]

Beer break! Stouts from Ireland are creamy and rich. I think they named them 'stout', because they make you that way - I don't even want to know the carb-count! But these two beers sure are good, they both come with the high tech gizmo that injects carbon dioxide into the brew upon opening. This gives the glass a read head of foam. The experience is very much like pouring a fresh one right out of the tap. So how do these two differ? The Guiness has a lot more exposure - you can get it anywhere, and it is the smoother and sweeter of the two. Beamish is every bit as good, and then some. It posesses a texture that gives the beer more character, and lacks a bit of the sweetness that has "Made for America" stamped on it. I feel closer to the Blarney, if you know what I mean. Ok, last call, then back to work! [101-365]

Redbook puts Julia Roberts' head on another woman's body on the cover of its July issue, titles it 'The Real Julia' [FARK]

The Degree Confluence Project.

In "These Guys Just Look for a Point," the Los Angeles Times (free registration) says that 3,000 adventurers around the globe, equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, are visiting the exact confluences of latitude and longitude, taking pictures and writing stories about these places.

The Degree Confluence Project site shows the results of their efforts: 2,500 confluences are illustrated by more than 20,000 photographs taken in 121 countries.

As an example, here is a photograph of a tree growing at the 49°N and 2°E confluence, the closest from Paris, France, where I live. This picture was shot in September 2001 and details are here.

This project is the brainchild of Alex Jarrett, a programmer who lived near one of these confluences in Massachusetts, and started when he got a brand new GPS seven years ago. Soon, he told his family and friends about the first confluence he found and started the web site.

"We once made someone's list of the hundred stupidest Web sites," Jarrett said ruefully in an interview. "But now I don't think that would happen. Now you can see that the project has some merit; I call it a sampling of the world."

The interest rapidly grew, and now, several thousands people have participated to the project. And some are avid enthusiasts.

With 86 visits in 30 countries under his belt, the undisputed king of confluencing is Peter Mosselberger, captain of a refrigerated cargo ship called the Nova Scotia.

Of course, all the 16,000 possible confluences will never been displayed on this site. Some land owners and governments do not allow pictures to be taken.

So, check the site for the closest confluence point from where you live. And if it is not documented, take your GPS and your digital camera and head to the place.

Source: Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2003

[Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]

Kurzweil on Self. Here's Ray Kurzweil on the nature of the self, in his generous and excellent article on Wolfram's A New Kind of Science: If I ask the question, 'Who am I?' I could conclude that, perhaps I am this stuff here, i.e., the ordered and chaotic collection of molecules that comprise my body and brain. However, the specific set of particles that comprise my body and brain are completely different from the atoms and molecules than comprised me only a short while (on the order of weeks) ago. We know that most of our cells are turned over in a... [Joho the Blog]

Saddam Hussein: Mr. (Reasonably) Nice Guy?.

Afghanistan and Iraq are in the U.S. news these days, partly because the locals are killing each other and partly because the locals are killing occupation forces (see "G.I.'s in Iraqi City Are Stalked by Faceless Enemies at Night" from today's New York Times).  The problems in both countries seem to center around the inability of a central government to control the population.  In Afghanistan the Kabul government governs Kabul and the rest of the country is essentially independent (my summer 2002 trip report advocates splitting the place up into regions where everyone has something in common).  In Iraq there are so many problems that, in Europe at least, people were openly saying that the average Iraqi was better off under Saddam's government.

If you flip on European TV you find that the post-invasion Iraqis have joined the Palestinians as the officially designated "most miserable people on the planet" in the media and their plight is an ever-present top story.  The British are donating money and sending care packages to help out Iraqis who are without reliable clean water and electricity.  .

Iraqis complain on TV: their neighbors are breaking into water mains, thus wrecking the water system; their neighbors are looting; Iraqis with guns who don't like certain other Iraqis are shooting them; Iraqis love Allah and want an Islamic state; Iraqis love Allah but in a slightly different way and want a slightly different kind of Islamic state, which will necessitate the death and/or suppression of anyone who doesn't love Allah their way; Iraqis hate Americans and Jews and want U.S. troops out of Iraq and the Jews out of Israel; etc., etc.

The executive summary seems to be the following: (1) Iraqis hate each other, they have lots of guns, and aren't afraid to use them; (2) the U.S. and its allies deposed Saddam because he was unsuccessful in creating a quiet Swiss or Belgian-style bourgeois democracy; (3) the U.S. and its allies so far have failed to make any headway in getting Iraqis to adopt a Western bourgeois lifestyle and political outlook; (4) Saddam was able to restrict looting and killing to a handful of friends and family; (5) under U.S. occupation every Iraqi is free to get in touch with his Inner Looter and Inner Murderer.

By the standards of wealthy Western countries Saddam's regime was harsh.  They tortured and/or killed political opponents.  They controlled the press, the mosques, and the schools.  If a town were restive they might kill its entire population or at least many hundreds of people from that town.  This would seem like gratuitous cruelty if done by the governments of Vermont, Dijon, or Bavaria.  But in the Arab world more or less every government employs the same tactics as Saddam's Iraq.

In fairness to the defeated dare we ask whether Saddam's regime wasn't employing the minimum amount of violence necessary to maintain public order in Iraq?  It seems quite possible that Saddam did not enjoy terrorizing his subjects but did it because he understood the divisions within his arbitrarily drawn borders and thought keeping his subjects in fear was necessary.

It really seems to be tough to coerce people into doing following something other than their inclinations.  Death from AIDS is pretty terrifying and yet people still have sex.  Despite massive fines, automated ticket-issuing cameras, and license revocations, I didn't see anyone in Britain obeying the 70 mph speed limit on the Motorway (I was so happy to get my Ford Mondeo out of Wales, whose principal highways bear an uncanny resemblance to a North Carolina plastic surgeon's driveway (narrow and lined with stone walls), that I zipped along at 77 mph and was passed every minute by someone doing 90 in the fast lane).  If you're caught with a small amount of drugs the U.S. government can take your house and your car, and put you in jail for the rest of your life, yet people still sell, buy, and use drugs (just ask George W. Bush, former coke-head).

We haven't figured out what level of governmental coercion will result in an Iraqi society that is both orderly and submissive to a U.S. occupation or whatever American-friendly government follows. Saddam may yet go down in history as the kindest and gentlest 21st century leader of a unified and stable Iraq.

[Given the depths of poverty and lack of industry in Wales and the Northern UK it seemed odd at first that these folks would want to help out their defeated enemies before assisting unfortunates closer to home.  Or that they wouldn't instead prefer to help the hundreds of millions of Indians who have never in their lives had clean water or electricity.  Berlin, The Downfall 1945 describes a similar phenomenon: "[German civilians] queued at Red Army field kitchens, which began to feed them on Berzarin's orders.  The fact that there was a famine in Soviet Central Asia at that time, with families reduced to cannibalism, did not influence the new policy of attempting to win over the German people."]

[Philip Greenspun Weblog]

Restaurant Critics. Why Are The Six Best Restaurants in New York All French? Because William Grimes from the New York Times is a massive, provincial, toadying snob, that's why says so. [NYT reg. req.] With his haughty tone, architectural blatherings and whiney voice [Real Video link] he's undoubtedly my pet hate among restaurant critics, even though he obviously knows his stuff, not to mention a thing or two about cocktails [here is his take on the Martini]. My favourite critics are GQ's Alan Richman and the Anti-Grimes himself, a man who truly knows his food, Robert Sietsema of The Village Voice. What critics get your goat or vote? Which ones are worth reading and following? More importantly, which ones - or anonymous restaurant guides, like Zagat's, can you trust, if any? [MetaFilter]

Moyers: This is Your Story - The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On... [CommonDreams NewsWire]

The Moyers' speech is now at Common Dreams with a nice link to the Campaign For America site. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

The Online Beat: Bill Moyers' Presidential Address. He's not a candidate, but Bill Moyers has set the standard for 2004 campaign speeches. [The Nation Weblogs]

William Jennings Bryan does not have the best reputation today, nor do progressives, but he could sure give a hell of a speech. Well, so can Bill Moyers. He gave a very rabble rousing speech at the Take Back America conference. I have been waiting to read the speech and it now available. Read it at Alternet. Will it be equivalent to the "Cross of Gold" speech by Bryan? Who knows about any speech that starts with a George Burns joke, moves into the 1950 Housewives Rebellion in Marshall, TX before segueing into politics. He is respectful of those that disagree with him and a realist with regard to politics. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs.

Let me make it clear that I don't harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy; I worked for Lyndon Johnson, remember? Nor do I romanticize 'the people.' You should read my mail ? or listen to the vitriol virtually spat at my answering machine. I understand what the politician meant who said of the Texas House of Representatives, 'If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents.'

Moyers knows how to write and how to speak. He has a sense of history and gravity lacking in so many politicians today. He realizes that the big ideas do not get promulgated in a single election but percolate for years. If he wanted to, he could really shake up American politics. What he talks about cuts across political boundaries. He is respectful of other's views, even if he thinks they are misguided. I want him to do so much more but it will have to be his decision. One final quote, while discussing the views of early leaders such as Jefferson or Jackson:

All these leaders were on record in favor of small government--but their opposition wasn't simply to government as such. It was to government's power to confer privilege on insiders; on the rich who were democracy's equivalent of the royal favorites of monarchist days. (It's what the FCC does today.)

[A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Google Search Engine Tips. Getting More From Google: 'Searching the Web can be a frustrating exercise. Here are some tips and tricks to help... [beSpacific]

Putting a face on time. Of all the endearingly silly ways to watch yourself waste time, Daniel Craig Giffen's Human Clock is by far the most of both - endearing and silly, which explains why it is a recipient of the coveted Major FUN Award.Everything on Giffen's site shows an almost maniacal dedication to human-scale whimsy. [Major FUN's Daily Briefing]

The Internet, as spam shows, is like a garden. Leave it alone and you don’t get luxuriant flowers. No, it’s simply choked by noxious weeds... [Arts & Letters Daily]