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Tuesday, Jul 02, 2002

greedy little devils

"The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment."

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honor society

i used to joke about running for mayor of providence back when i was mainlining caffe lattes and choking down cigarettes on the deck outside of The Coffee Exchange. had i just lasted another decade in Providence my time would have finally arrived.

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dyn-o-mite

k-tel's Music Express was the first album i ever bought. i think at the time i thought all albums were singles compilations. seeing this midi rendition of Run Joey Run reminded me of it.

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i was only suggesting

had a strange moment just now. got out of a disheartenly lukewarm shower after an odd dream with cameo appearences by andrew mccarthy and alan ruck (second fiddle in ferris buellers day off) wherein i was called a traitor for smoking Drum tobacco. meanwhile, im half trying to figure out a line from paul simons Slip Slidin' Away when i stumble entoweled to my computer only to read the page i had loaded earlier this morning that was still on my screen. the headline was Slip Slidin' Away. i would have to call that suggested reading.

and here are the songs lyrics.


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underclassmen

"RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The unexpectedly strong showing of radical Indian agitator Evo Morales in Bolivian elections promises to deal a serious blow to the Andean nation's successful U.S.-backed efforts to halt cocaine production."

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i hear footsteps

"But long before that ruling — though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble — Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the sale that has Martha Stewart in hot water. Oddly, though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, he neglected to inform the S.E.C. about this transaction until 34 weeks had passed. An internal S.E.C. memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president."

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our kind of guy

"Almost everyone who has encountered the F.B.I. anthrax investigation is aghast at the bureau's lethargy. Some in the biodefense community think they know a likely culprit, whom I'll call Mr. Z. Although the bureau has polygraphed Mr. Z, searched his home twice and interviewed him four times, it has not placed him under surveillance or asked its outside handwriting expert to compare his writing to that on the anthrax letters."

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best damn advertisement ever

"In the latest example of how television programming and advertising are becoming increasingly indistinguishable, Levi Strauss & Company paid for an actor featured in a commercial for its Dockers pants brand to appear on the show on Fox Sports Net, a cable TV channel owned by the News Corporation and Cablevision Systems."

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Monday, Jul 01, 2002

second citizen

"Vice-President Dick Cheney, having briefly assumed President Bush’s duties while the President underwent a routine colon procedure on Saturday, told reporters today that he “enjoyed the downtime immensely.”"

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striker

ronaldo to refinance brazilian debt. says better than sex and world cup referees.

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width knell

"Members of the Toledo police computer crimes task force and FBI agents served search warrants at 13 residences, including an apartment, a condominium, and single-family houses. Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorized access to excessive amounts of bandwidth."

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copywrongs

"Berman's proposed legislation calls for a myriad of measures including stronger digital rights management laws, lawsuits by copyright owners, and prosecutions against the most gregarious infringers. Additionally he calls for "technological self-help measures" including redirection, decoys, spoofing and file blocking."

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