micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Honest George "What we don't know yet is what we thought and what the Iraqi Survey Group has found, and we want to look at that," Bush said on Monday. Bush should just say, as I urged him to say on April 9, "You realize we're making this shit up as we go along, right?" *** Michigan State 84 The good: This was a road win against a decent Ohio State team that had won its previous two games, against Purdue and Northwestern. MSU pulled down 26 boards compared to 20 for Ohio State, and the Spartans made nearly three out of every four shots. The bad: The defense was soft and Michigan State was unable to put away Ohio State early in the second half. On Tuesday my beloved Spartans play against Illinois in Champaign. *** Northwestern beat Wisconsin, 69-51!, today so MSU (7-2) and Wisconsin (6-2) are virtually tied for first in the Big Ten. *** When I was in grade school I used to dream of a weekly publication that would have all the usual statistics and box scores for Major League Baseball teams. It exists for baseball and many more sports, and it is better than weekly, on the net. *** My latest contribution to HorowitzWatch. *** I actively dislike campaign politics because nobody who could win ever represents anything close to my outlook on life and I dislike the idea that discussions of ideas should be first and foremost based on whether the idea can gain "popular support," a term that does not have a consistent definition. I know there is a very good reason why nobody comes out says, "Idea X is the best possible option but it will never be popular," but that doesn't mean I have to like it. That said, the reason for these words is to say that sometimes campaign politics have a positive effect. *** A "federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists," Ryan J. Foley of the AP writes. "In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said." *** WE MUST NOT APPEASE CUBAN MUSICIANS! *** "Tony Blair was sent three intelligence reports in the six months during the run up to the Iraq war, including one that warned him that information on whether Saddam Hussein still held any chemical or biological weapons was 'inconsistent' and 'sparse'," Andy McSmith writes in tomorrow's Independent. "The revelation adds to the mystery of how the Prime Minister could tell Parliament last week that, when war began, he still believed that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed in just 45 minutes." Well you see Blair is quite gullible. He even believes the terrorists can be defeated. " The 'reliable source' who provided MI6 with the information that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes was an Iraqi exile who had left the country several years previously, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. That fact alone should have prevented the intelligence being used in the Government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," Raymond Whitaker and Kim Sengupta write in tomorrow's Independent. Andy McSmith, Andrew Buncombe and Raymond Whitaker have more. *** Civilain deaths as part of liberation. *** These Iraqi scumfucks need to learn who is in charge. *** Sean Hannity with brilliant people *** "Norm Miller, chairman of Dallas-based Interstate Batteries, replaced his own company's hood-sized logo with an ad for 'The Passion' on NASCAR driver Bobby Labonte's No. 18 Chevrolet. The car will carry the ad during the Daytona 500 race Feb. 15," Bo Emerson writes in a February 5 story for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm sure this will please God on his day of rest. I hear he is a big fan of American motor sports. *** "Tratorous Maggots want to harm the United States and we have to stop them" *** *** Don't be like Andrew Sullivan and use a term like "preventing genocide" without defining the terms. *** Did I mention this? *** "Alaskan's assault on the Mackinac Recalled" by Danny K. Shepherd. *** David Edelstein asserts in a piece published by Slate yesterday that the denunciation of Maoist China by one of the characters in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers is the result of "60ish filmmakers talking with 20/20 hindsight, not the anti-Vietnam-War American trying to sort it all out in the middle of this tumultuous moment." Seems to me that Edelstein should read up on the "New Left" as well as the "hippie" sub-culture. *** Students for an Orwellian Society *** From the file labeled "Proof that Journalism Should Not be Taken All That Seriously," Neil Steinberg uses a January 23 Chicago Sun-Times column to argue that people should get married around age 30 or so. Steinberg says they will be happier as a result of being married and accepting imperfection and that anybody who doesn't is not "normal." (I'm still a few years from turning 30 but I think it is pretty safe to say I won't be married when I turn 30 and, by the way, I've long realized and, more or less, accepted that I am not "normal." The fact that an adult thinks this would be an insult to another adult is quite odd.) Steinberg says those (happily married) people who urge marriage "are trying to help our single friends salvage what's left of their lives before the years pass, irretrievable." Funny, I was under the impression, which I have formed through both experience and thought, that any choice in life means blocking off some possibilities, including those which are not known. Steinberg writes: How do single people know they wouldn't like marriage? It's as if I lived my entire life completely within the limits of Cook County and refused to leave. Yes, Cook County's great, and yes, I could be happy. But if I start claiming there is nothing good beyond the border, nobody would buy that.I'm not sure who the people who say there's "nothing good" about marriage are. Most of the people who don't want to get married, or at least don't make it a priority in their life, that I've talked to see plenty "good" in marriage but feel that it wouldn't work for them and/or that the bad outweighs the good. Steinberg brushes this aside by saying that marriage is about accepting imperfection. This sounds good but Steinberg doesn't back it up and the theory is hardly universal. "The Serenity Prayer," for instance, asks a "higher power" to "grant me the serenity/to accept the things I cannot change/courage to change the things I can/and wisdom to know the difference." Whether or not one is married is certainly something that is in the control of a person who is presently single. So, according to adherents to this prayer, refusing to get married for the sake of getting married requires "courage" and people who do so are not, as Steinberg would have you believe, "cowards." Perhaps wrongly, I suspect a column such as this could only come from someone who has never felt out of line with the rest of society, which is fine if that's the life you want to live. *** Now it is time to laugh at Zell Miller. *** "We wake up every morning thinking, like, what more can we do in this world to make it a better, happier, more peaceful and beautiful place?" Drew Barrymore reportedly said yesterday. Too bad she did it as the U.N. |