Agora 27 Jun 2008 11:53 pm
When you’re caught between apoplexy and despair, your writing might get a little disjointed. You’re prone to ask too many rhetorical questions. Like this:
For hundreds of years, we have understood in this country that “keeping and bearing arms” is different from “having a loaded gun in the drawer of your nightstand.” Now we don’t. Devolution. [...]
Agora 1 May 2008 11:47 am
Happy Birthday, Miss Ion Accomplished! Five years old today. You’ve gotten so big I hardly recognize you.
Freedom is on the march everywhere. In my town, starting today you can look just about anywhere and smile into the camera. A friendly Homeland Security employee will take note. Feel free to give the “thumbs up” sign—they love [...]
Agora 20 May 2007 10:35 pm
Who said it?
I’m struggling with seeing the deployment of cameras in our local villages as being a benefit to policing. If it’s in our villages—are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner? I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in.
If it weren’t [...]
Agora 20 Feb 2007 1:31 pm
Captain Kirk to Chekov and Sulu: “Phasers on ‘stun’ …”
It’s not a handheld device … yet. Raytheon’s Silent Guardian™:
From Raytheon promotional video
Your tax dollars at work. William Saletan at Slate reports:
Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a [...]
Agora 2 Feb 2007 1:14 pm
Photos by Vanderlin
“Looks like a bomb t’me. Whaddya think, Mick?”
“Yuh, could be. Better blow id up just in case.”
Agora 16 Aug 2006 12:30 pm
Ever since the news of the foiled alleged liquid-explosive multiple-airliner plot in the UK, I’ve been racking my brain trying to recall where I’d read that the primary approach to terrorism should be internationally cooperative police work, not large-scale military operations, but that this notion had been discredited. Here we seemed to have an instance of such [...]
Agora 23 May 2006 11:47 pm
Molly Ivins writes:
Last week, Bush visited Yuma, Ariz., to tour a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border by Border Patrol buggy. Maybe Jorge was doing a little measuring for the $3.2-million-a-mile fence the Senate recently approved, which I guarantee will be really helpful.
Are they insane? As Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano observes, “Show me a 50-foot wall, [...]
Agora 16 May 2006 1:23 pm
Big headline today in Izvestia:
Буш отправляет войска охранять южную границу США
That is, “Bush sends troops to guard southern border of US.” Which is accurate (I even watched some of the address on “immigration reform” last night, out of morbid curiosity). Sounds as stupid in English as it does in Russian, doesn’t it?
Oh, I forgot. We’re [...]
Russia 11 May 2006 10:27 pm
Yesterday Vladimir Putin delivered his yearly address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation—the Russian equivalent of the American president’s “state of the union” address. His basic themes were (in order of delivery):
The need to eliminate corruption and ensure fairness;
The need to stimulate the economy and make it competitive on a global scale, to [...]
Agora 30 Apr 2006 11:34 pm
The University of Chicago Club of Washington, DC, is offering a guided tour of the Pentagon. According to the description:
English is the only language permitted inside the Pentagon. Please do not converse or otherwise communicate in any other language while on the tour or you will be escorted out of the building.
This after you’ve passed [...]
This site uses a modified version of the WordPress theme FastTrack