Month: February 2005

Home 2005 February
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The ONE Campaign

New on the blogroll: « The ONE Campaign »: ‘The ONE Campaign is a new effort to rally Americans to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. Through The ONE Campaign, each ONE of us can make a difference. Together as ONE we can change the world.’ Go and sign the petition and help out...

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Compare/Contrast Time Again

Then: ‘They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.’ — Benjamin Franklin Now: ‘Protecting national security must take precedence over civil liberties because Britain faces the prospect of “terrorism without limit” that could result in “thousands” being killed.’ — Tony Blair

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Your Handy-Dandy Guide to the Higgledy-Piggledy-ness

Here’s how AirBeagle works: There are six domains in the AirBeagle family, AB.US, AB.org, AB.com, AB.biz, AB.net and AntiFascist.US, but only two are really used — .US and .biz. AntiFascist.US automatically forwards to AB.US, as does AB.net and AB.org. AB.com automatically forwards to AB.biz. « AirBeagle.US » contains the following ‘blogs: « Ask »: Here’s where you find out...

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Boeing Sells Three Plants

There’’s been a very curious transaction this week; « a Canadian company bought three Boeing plants in Kansas and Oklahoma » ‘Toronto-based conglomerate Onex Corp. is heading for the potentially turbulent skies of the aviation industry with a $1.2 billion (U.S.) purchase of three Boeing Co. commercial aircraft plants in Kansas and Oklahoma. “We have come together...

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Internet Explorer Not Supported

AirBeagle is best viewed in Mozilla’s Firefox or Apple’s Safari or even Omniweb. It works in Opera and Netscape, just not as well. You’re on your own there. And for you Internet Explorer users: Break the shackles of Microsoft and get a REAL browser! AirBeagle works in I.E., but not that well … because I.E....

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Disclaimer and Copyright

Except where noted by quotes and italics, all content is written, edited and issues forth from the feverish and fertile mind of AirBeagle. © 1999-2005, Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons licensing scheme.

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100 Things About AirBeagle

1. I was born in Roswell, NM, almost 20 years to the day after John Denver. Yes, THAT Roswell. No alien jokes necessary – I’ve heard ‘em all. 2. I am a Sagitarrius, but think it’s all mostly a buncha harmless hooey. 3. I was baptized in the Church of the Nazarene. 4. I spent...

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RFID Company Gets Boost While School, Community Get Shaft

News from California: « An experiment with RFID badges for attendance purposes fails for a community school »: ‘It started with a girl who went home from junior high saying she felt like an orange. Lauren Tatro, 13, told her parents the plain facts. Every student at Brittan Elementary School had to wear a badge the size...

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Eric Blair, Laughing His Ass Off in His Grave

Yeesh. I go away for awhile and come back just in time to read « the most hypocritical, outrageous lies ever spoken by the Boy Emperor » ‘Referring to Putin’s recent steps to consolidate power, roll back democratic reforms and curb press and political freedoms, Bush said: “We must always remind Russia that our alliance stands for...

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Blows Keep Falling

Sad news tonight: Following the deaths of « Arthur Miller », « Sandra Dee » and « John Raitt » comes the biggest blow: « Hunter S. Thompson » apparently shot himself: ‘Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, fatally shot himself Sunday night at his...

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Skewering the Right

    John Wooden of Chickenhead Productions scores big parody/satire points with two new websites, Sex is For Fags and Iron Hymen — abstinence-only sites for, respectively, boys and girls.

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Rugby Scru-yum

I don’t know much about rugby, but I know « these boys are wearing nothing but socks » and said socks are not on their feet!

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V-Day Was Here

« V-Day » came and went this year; next year, I hope we all pay more attention to it. ‘Because of your efforts V-Day, and the spirit, energy and movement to end violence against women and girls, has spread wildly around the world. Last year there were 2300 events, celebrations, in over 1100 cities, villages and towns....

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Secret Simon is No Pie Man

An excellent new blog, « Secret Simon », joins the fray; this one is about a ‘happily’ married man who decides he can’t suppress the truth about himself anymore and shares that truth with his wife. And then blogs about it: ‘We will be separating. No two ways around it. Reality has set in. Her two conflicting...

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Forced Hiatus

I’m taking a blogging/web break. It was forced on me, but I’m actually not quicking much about it. A bad software update on my Mac from Apple (Motto: ‘Love the Computer, Hate the Company’) has royally fouled things up on my beloved Ti-Book. It’s been dead for two days and my backup software restore disk...

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Arthur Miller Passes

Sad news today: Another passing from the 20th Century American intellectual landscape. « Playwright Arthur Miller, 89, is dead »: ‘Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died. He was 89. Miller, who had been hailed as...

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Expense Roundup

Since I’m a total A-type (a for anal, that is), I created a spreadsheet with statistics on what the Jeep has cost us in gas. Just over the two-month mark and we’ve gone 1,061 miles, used 99.418 gallons of gas at a cost of $143.50 and paid an average of $1.81 per gallon. That’s an...

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Yet More Hate Attacks on Gay Michigan Families

Caution: If you don’t like vitriolic, angry political rants, skip this entry. Consider yourself forewarned. Thank you. The Ann Arbor News (Motto: ‘We Have the World’s Worst Website’) is reporting today that the « Thomas More ‘Law’ Center (For the Promotion of the Fascist FunDumbMentalist Authoritarian Vision for the Empire) launched a direct, personal and vicious...

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How Stands the Union?

25 Short Stories   Stephen Vincent Benet     The Sun Dial Press, Garden City, NY, ©1943     University of Michigan Libraries     Dewey 828 B465     572pp. I’m reading 25 Short Stories, a collection of seminal American works by « Stephen Vincent Benet », one of my favorite authors. Two of the works are Doc Mellhorn and the Pearly Gates and By...

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Our Imperial Corporate Flag

Adbusters.org has the true American Imperial Corporate flag. The government might as well go ahead and adopt it; it’s more true than anything else flying. Let’s let Adbusters say it: ‘Corporate America is revelling in a Golden Age. A shrinking number of the planet’s biggest businesses—AOL Time Warner, Shell, Nike, Microsoft, McDonald’s—are the money behind...

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A Very Gay Experiment

Tired of living in loser countries that want to round you up in concentration camps and stone you to death based on fictional 5,000-year-old Jewish scrolls? Well then! « The Gay Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands » just might be for you! ‘Alone, unaided, neither seeking nor requiring help the Gay & Lesbian Kingdom rose in...

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I Helped Goering Cheat Hangman

Fascinating stories about ‘33-’45 still crop up even today. This time, it’s from a « former Nuremberg trial guard who says he helped Goering escape hangman » ‘A former guard at the Nuremberg trials has come forward to say he believes he provided the poison that Nazi Hermann Goering used to commit suicide hours before his scheduled...

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Cafe Duran Squared

Cafe Ambrosia was Cafe Hungry Like the Wolf this afternoon. The guys behind the counter were apparently (from what I could gather) striking back at the pretense of a « rockist » critic from earlier in the day by playing what sounded like « Decade » (nothing after 1988 was on the disc, which was just as well) from...

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Jesus Geek Superstar

The audacity, ignorance and outrageousness of « men like this » never cease to amaze me: ‘Marcavage never uses slurs to describe homosexuals; rather, he turns the word homosexual itself into a slur, using it as a sort of branding. He is a deliberate speaker, careful as any politician. But if he is diplomatic with his words,...

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Another Michigan Driver is Inaugurated

On the AP wire this afternoon we see a charming story about a « Four-year-old Michigan boy who drove to the video store » (and back) in the middle of the night: ‘A boy drove his mother’s car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said — and he’s all of 4 years...

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The Hands-On Campaign to Fight Testicular Cancer

Early detection of testicular cancer is vital and being ‘body aware’ is an important part of that. Thanks to early detection, testicular cancer has a 95% cure rate, if caught early enough. So some UK athletic lads got together and took a lovely little picture in order to boost the « Tackle Testicular Cancer Campaign* ». Very...

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Color-Coded Confusion

I’ve seen a few of those colored bracelets promoting causes around; I’ve even confiscated one from a fourth grader who was using it to highly annoy the girl in front of him. But there’s so many of them that it can get confusing as to who is promoting what cause. Thank god I stumbled across...

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About to be Shocked Off the Bandwagon

The Grand Iraqi Election Which Proves the Emperor is Always Right has passed in a putrid fog of press adulation and fawning-ness, plus some ‘Ohmigod, what if he was right?!’ spineless sniveling among some liberals we won’t link to here. But, as is usual with anything the Boy Emperor does, reality is about to rudely...

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Gee, You Think?

Some woman from the committee for Super Bowl XL (here in Detroit in February 2006) was just on the news saying she knew Detroit “has some image problems.” I guess she meant the cold weather, because she went on to insist that everyone from out of town will be fine in Michigan February weather “if...

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Biking to Work

So, yes, it was 16 degrees when I left at 11 a.m., but I rode my bike to work today anyway. It’s only a mile-and-a-half, one-way, and I’m a big fat cow who needs to get in shape. I made it just fine, there and back, thank-you-very-much. But just had to note: Despite Ann Arbor’s...

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One Last Time

Okay, so this layout is the last one I’ll do. I’m really happier with it. Like it? [By the way, just a pissy note from a crotchety ol’ toot: I’m fed up with Internet Explorer and it’s ignorant inability to properly handle web standards, particularly the way it fails to add up the numbers properly...