Archive for February, 2008

Plagiarism

The recent news coverage of Barack Obama’s supposed “plagiarism” stirred up once again the confused pot of ideas I have or seem to have about originality and the overselling of same in the form of “intellectual property rights.”
Due to the unprecedented way my cortical convolutions took shape in the latter stages of my embryonic life, [...]

Terser

Okay, I’ve got a thing about verbal economy, but maybe this is too damn parsimonious.
A while back the online magazine Smith presented a six-word “story” by Ernest Hemingway:
For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
A remarkably concise tale indeed—pathos concretized pithily. Smith invited its readers to go mano-a-mano with Papa, and six-word memoirs from its readers came [...]

Hillary

I voted for Hillary Clinton today in the DC Democratic primary.
Why? Let me put it this way. The Homer Simpsons and Montgomery Burnses and Mayor Quimbys and Kent Brockmans have been in charge forever and have managed to make a pretty good mess of things. It’s long past time for Lisa Simpson to have a [...]

Newsbits

A day in the life …
Today it was announced that the legendary British band Deep Purple will perform in the Kremlin this month as part of the 25th anniversary celebration for Gazprom, the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. Attendance will be by invitation only. Possible attendees include Russian President Vladimir Putin and [...]