William Safire thinks Chief Investigator Henry Kissinger will be just swell, thank you. In a column that bears many a sign of dementia, Safire promises us the man has changed. Really. He’s a kitten.
For another take on Kissinger’s appointement to chair the investigation into pre-9/11 intelligence failures, take a speculative ride with Slate’s Chatterbox, who asks: “Will Kissinger Screw Rumsfeld?”.
Anyone think Bush will rue the day he listened to his handlers on this one? We can only hope.
Author: .
Smoke And Mirrors
Thanks For The Warning, Cokie!
On today’s Morning Edition, NPR called Cokie Roberts to get her take on John Kerry’s announcement that he is, um, like, really, really serious about running for President (“Hello, anyone listening?”). Her take?
“The last liberal Democrat from Massachusetts who ran for President was Michael Dukakis, and we know what happened to him.”
She also dredged up a comparison from even further back in the political past:
“The last Democrat who did that was George McGovern.”
Wow. Scary stuff. Thanks for the tips, Cokie!
(Not that Kerry has any chance whatsoever of being elected President.)
Early Radio Days
Back in the summer of 1988, I was living in Juneau, Alaska. I’d just finished working as a page in the Alaska Senate during the five-month legislative session, and had decided to stay in Juneau for the summer before returning to college in the fall.
I was working as a tour guide at the state capitol, but my heart was in the hours I spent at the local public radio station as a news intern. I was doing production work for the local bits of Morning Edition, and trying my hand at reporting. Here’s a story I did:
Juneau Salmon Derby (990kb MP3)
(Not quite sure what’s up with my voice. I think I was searching for a good radio voice. It sounds a little strange, slightly modulated.)
My favorite production task was choosing the short music clips that filled space between story blocks. The station had a huge collection of LPs, and I spent many a late night discovering new music and searching for that perfect clip.
Disturbing Virtual Reality
I’ve been waking up recently and turning on All Things Considered before falling back asleep for half an hour or so. I drift in and out of sleep during this time, catching some of the news when awake. And, it seems, while I’m asleep.
This morning I had a vivid dream that I was looking at a wide-format, wall-sized photograph of Kenya, with a bombed-out hotel on one side and a low-flying jetliner on the other side. Someone was pointing out to me the missiles that were captured in this photo, just missing the jetliner. I was very angry. And then, still in the dream, the room and the photograph dissolved into reality, and I was seeing the events in real time.
When I woke up, an NPR reporter in Mombasa was describing the current situation in Kenya, and the reaction to the terrorist attacks.
Music For Prison
I had iTunes on random last night; it was trolling the entire collection for tunes (with the exception of songs from my generously-defined trance genre—jumping from Billie Holiday to club music? I don’t think so).
I don’t normally listen to music this way in iTunes. If I had the newer, OSX version, with its Smart Playlists feature, I’d do random more often (although it wouldn’t really be truly random with the Smart Playlists, would it?).
I brought about 4,000 songs along with me to Japan—that’s where my 30GB hard drive max’d out. This allows for a fairly large library from which to pluck random songs. And it’s amazing the things I’ve forgotten I had. Barbra Streisand singing The Love Theme from “The Main Event”? That obviously came from those glory days of the Napster smorgasbord.
Ah… What a time. And what perfect timing—getting laid off from a dot-com, with a small severance package and unemployment benefits inflated from the ridiculous salary I’d been getting from said dot-com, and an endless library of songs to be downloaded. Free time, free music. Oink, oink.
I was obviously delirious when I decided I needed to build a Barbra library. Most of my time was spent looking for MP3 versions of the hundreds of cassette albums I was carrying around from the 80s. Am I really supposed to pay for the same music again just to upgrade hardware? Yes, I know… I am.
Anyway, laying in bed last night listening to random music from a large song library, I wondered which music I’d choose to take with me if I were carted off to jail for stealing so much of it. The RIAA, generous souls that they are, would allow me to take a handful of albums (good old fashioned CDs, of course—and I’d have to pay the $21.99 retail price for each) to help me spend those lonely hours in the clink.
My “handful” would include twenty albums, and this is the list I came up with last night. I did this in about ten minutes, so I’m sure this list is going to need revisions in the future. But these are some of the albums I’ve enjoyed over and over, and which stick out in my mind as “must have” if had to get rid of all the rest.
Chameleons UK – Strange Times
Blade Runner Soundtrack
Kid Loco – DJ Kicks
Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
DJ Phil B – Music For Clubs
Brian Eno – Music For Airports
Everything But The Girl – Walking Wounded
Dusty Springfield – Dusty In Memphis
The The – Mind Bomb
Dolly Parton – Little Sparrow
Massive Attack vs. The Mad Professor – No Protection
Peter Gabriel – Passion
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Talvin Singh – Soundz Of The Asian Underground
Personal ABBA mix
American Beauty Soundtrack
Beck – Sea Change
Roxy Music – Avalon
Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball
Ella Fitzgerald – The Intimate Ella
Note: I paid for every one of these albums except for the Nick Drake one.
Google Live Query
Interesting article in the New York Times on Google’s Live Query, which displays real-time search requests from around the world. The result is a worldwide stream of collective consciousness.
Postcards From Planet Google
Buried on the second page of the article is this mention of the darker side of Google—it knows who you are:
Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly – Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.
The Fox Is Back In The Henhouse
Bush has appointed Henry Kissenger to investigate alleged U.S. intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Appointing Kissenger to uncover “the facts” is a cruel, sick joke. The only facts Kissenger has respect for are the ones he manufactures or manipulates.
The Latest Kissinger Outrage
Kissinger’s Back
The Case Against Henry Kissinger
Such a clumsy, transparent attempt to rig the outcome of this investigation is a sign that the Bush administration is confident enough in its powers to disregard the need for subtlety. Notice, also, the timing of the appointment—the day before Thanksgiving, when interest in news is at a low point.
If the Democratic Party doesn’t forcefully challenge this, they aren’t merely asleep at the wheel, they’re dead.
Beck
On heavy rotation in my aural world these days is Beck‘s new album, Sea Change. Exceptional, and highly recommended.
Silent Running & Solaris
Images from the just-released film, Solaris remind me of Silent Running, one of the first sci-fi movies I ever saw. I must have been around 10 years old, and was enthralled despite the fact that it’s a fairly boring movie.
Judging from reviews for Solaris, the two movies sound similar in their spare aesthetic. Neither of these movies are from the Star Wars or Starship Troopers branch of science fiction.
Silent Running, for those who don’t remember this gem from the 70s, starred Bruce Dern as a botanist aboard an enormous spaceship filled with plants. The ship, one of series a botanical “Noah’s Arks,” contains remnants of the last surviving forest from Earth. Conflict among the small crew leaves Dern the only human aboard.
To say that not much happens during the movie is being generous. But something about it stuck in my head and has never left. As a child, being lost in space with robot friends and lush gardens seemed a lot more romantic than it does today. These days, I know I’d get lonely fairly quickly. I’d still want to go for the ride, but couldn’t I bring some friends? Ones that won’t go insane, preferably.
