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Thursday, Apr 25, 2002

history chunnel

"Research Guide to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (via booknotes)

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time piece

""Four-twenty"--once an obscure Bay Area term for pot--is showing up nationally in the advertisements and business names of concert promoters, travel agencies, even high-tech companies."

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give me a call

i think we might be able to build a coalition around this op-ed piece. who needs tom friedman when we can build up trust from our mutual hatred of cell phone excess.

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smile for the camera

"Media training one of great delicious experiences of life," wrote Ms. Fielding in a 1998 account published in England’s The Daily Telegraph. "Word ‘scarf’ came up within three minutes …. Suddenly understand why Americans so fluent and sound-bite-esque on TV. Am trained to ‘scope out’ my ‘bullet points’ …. Must, however, not try to be funny but simply decide what going to say; tell them am going to say it, say it, then tell them have said it whilst ignoring interviewer, apart from using interviewer’s name as often as possible and remembering to ‘stay in the moment’ and clenching the buttocks to avoid tense-looking mouth."

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phuket, yo

some abc gum for ya.

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lapdawg

"Lapham once considered himself a centrist, but said the center has moved so far to the right that he's now seen as liberal. Still, he believes the notion of a liberal media is "a canard . . . utterly a straw man as far as I'm concerned."

The right wing wants to "blame the wreckage of the culture on a few university professors," Lapham said. "The people that have (wrecked the culture) -- it's the (Rupert) Murdochs of the world. Those are the people who say, 'Whatever the market will bear.' The market doesn't think. The market isn't a cultivated person. It's a ball bearing. It will go immediately to what sells. That's what wrecks the culture."

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midas well

ny observer columnist michael thomas "retires" to life of golfing gardening and blogging.

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Wednesday, Apr 24, 2002

yellow ruse

nobodys got any dirt on the karen hughes announcement that she would be leaving the administration because her family was homesick. seems highly implausible but stranger things have happened. meanwhile, talking points starts the ari fleischer deathwatch. may it be more successful than those of rumsfeld, o'neill and white.

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bad oman

"MUSCAT, April 22 (PNS): The US has decided to spend £90m to build a new airbase in Oman with runways long enough to handle B52 strategic bombers and heavy-lift transport aircraft."

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taking a break

"WASHINGTON, April 23 — The Supreme Court ruled today that a government-imposed moratorium on property development, even one that lasts for years, does not automatically amount to a "taking" of private property for which taxpayers must compensate the landowners."

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