As the BP disaster continues to unfold I’m struck again by the emergence, probably odd to most people, of the universal but bizarrely general term, “mud,” blithely used to describe the many and various goops of the industrial world as though people have any concept of what the hell that means. No one bothers to [...]
(h/t RMP’s Daily News Blast) To anyone with a passing acquaintance with the bankrupt Tribune Company that came from reading its newspapers, it would seem counterintuitive that the charlatans responsible for the current crummy simulacra of those once-respectable, if not great, papers that now land with barely a sound on long-suffering porches from coast to [...]
I was pretty young when first I heard about Murphy’s Law, but a lifetime of experience has shown me that it is as inescapable as, say, gravity, and the only way one can ever manage complex tasks is to always plan for the worst case scenario; it’s one’s only hope that it might not occur. [...]
Lord, but have we been hearing a whole lot about “freedom” lately, and how “government” is its enemy. This message which would have been considered by our lately revered but strategically unremembered founders to be something of a slap in the face, but in today’s climate of unabashed corporate ownership of both our “free” press [...]
UPDATED BELOW: A few years ago, I noticed that actually selling something that could be quantified, like a shoe or a car wash, had become hopelessly anachronistic in the “new” economy; we were told to pay good money for something far less tangible, “solutions.” To what, pray tell? Everything, as it turned out. Any [...]
Not since he was angling for deferment number five has Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz turned out to be so handy, and like any canny, legally compromised parent would, he has sent her forth, this time in ambulatory form, to get Papa out of some trouble, once again. Since she can talk now, she was fully [...]
Boy oh boy, you can bet that John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Dick Cheney, et al are as jealous as can be right now, because a client of their favorite law firm, Baker Botts, just accidentally showed them how torture is really done, and these guys don’t need any stinking memos, either. It seems that over [...]