A sad thing is going up to the bar to pour your last glass of Macallan 12, then discovering your first glass killed the bottle.

Comments Off

Steven Den Beste gets the last, best word on the sniper:

There is no deep moral lesson here. There was nothing we as a society could have done to prevent this, nor is there anything we must do to prevent something like it happening again. All potential cures are worse than the disease. There are no perfect solutions, and this kind of thing is part of the price we pay for being in a free society. I would rather have this kind of thing happen than to live in a police state. It’s sad; it’s tragic; and it’s also unavoidable.

What else need be said?

Comments Off

If these are the guys, then it looks like they’re our guys. Good.

Comments Off

The Washington Sniper reminds me of the IRA

Comments Off

Moe Freedman, remembering my Websurfer’s Credo, forwarded this interview with internet advertising guru Jason McCabe Calacanis. Read it and weep:

Advertising must be disruptive to be truly valuable to advertisers. The key word in that sentence is “truly”. Sure, the banner has some value, but it has nowhere near the value or power of an interstitial, a popup, a Television ad, a Radio ad, or a Magazine ad. [Emphasis added]

Think that’s bad? It gets worse.

The truth is we should have gone with full-screen, Flash-based interstitials three years ago. Flash is light, fast, and entertaining. It has all the power of TV, combined with the power of online targeting and tracking. If the New York Times made you watch a 20 second Flash commercial every time you visited the site they would have a line of advertisers at their door. I think Martin [Niesenholtz, CEO, New York Times Digital] will do this in the next six months, I mean, they have already been doing pop-unders for X10 – that is sad!

I use Norton to block cookies, kill pop-ups and pop-unders, and hide referrals. Once a day — a day! — I run LavaSoft’s AdAware to remove snooper programs that slip past Norton. And now they want to take over my entire goddamn work screen, just so I have the privilege of seeing that stupid sock pocket in high resolution?

I gladly pay for worthwhile content, when asked to do so. But I will not pay ransom, just to keep ads off the computer I’ve already paid for. I’m not entertained enough by silly kitty vikings to keep Flash installed on this computer, if that’s what I have to do to retain control of my own desktop.

I’m uninstalling Flash — I suggest you do the same.

Comments Off

Yes, I’m working on new stuff for Thursday, to be posted after midnight (Mountain), as usual.

I told ya — I’m trying to post less and write more, and this time, I mean it.

Anyway, good stuff coming soon on the sniper and other news. Stay tuned.

Comments Off

Baby Bitch thinks The Simpsons is the funniest show ever. I can only assume her youth and inexperience caused her to neglect The Kids In The Hall.

Comments Off

Next time you

Comments Off

Just because I haven

Comments Off

My first-ever movie review is up at Blogcritics. It involves drinking.

Comments Off

We’re waiting for war. We’re waiting for an election. We’re waiting for the sniper to screw up and get caught. Mostly I feel like we’re waiting for Godot, which is why I’ve written so little the last couple of days.

No, I haven’t joined the camp that thinks Bush is waffling on Iraq. I

Comments Off

I caught up too late with my email to give you a timely link to this thoughtful, touching post by Arthur Silber on the politics of HIV.

If you’ve read that already — and I hope you have — then please read his reply to the many comments and emails he received.

NOTE: You get that the headline is silly and ironic, right?

Comments Off

At least until next week, I’m going to do more of the column-type material that pleases me, and a lot less of the linking (and smart ass) material that seems to please you.

Why? Flip answer: My blog, my rules.

Real answer? That’s a combination of the flip answer, and just where we are in the news cycle right now. When hell breaks lose — and it will, sometime between now and March — I’m going to need all the reserves I can muster. All of us news junkies will be pushing it 24/7 for who knows how long, and I’d hate to burn out in the clutch.

Besides, this is probably the finest damn thing I’ve written since starting this hobby last January, and part of me would like to train you to expect more things like it, and less things like, well, the rest of the (amusing) crap I publish here. The more static I post, the less likely you are to ooh and ahh when you see something here worthy of a little more consideration.

So a little less content for now, and, hopefully, a little more quality.

Comments Off

We’re gearing up for war, there’s an election just two weeks away, North Korea has nukes — and I have little of interest to say.

More in the morning.

Comments Off

Is a French guy the sniper?

I doubt it — (insert your own surrender joke here).

Comments Off

A year later, damn near, and I still can

Comments Off

Hendrix looks just like I always pictured him. And I ain

Comments Off

It

Comments Off

If I weren’t already married, you just know I’d be hitting on at least two of them.

Comments Off

From Bill Safire, talking to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon:

“The Six-Day War in 1967 really started in 1964 when Arabs started to divert the sources of the Jordan. We accepted the U.S. proposal to negotiate, but if the diplomatic process does not produce results, Israel will be forced to act.”

The good news

Comments Off

Lileks is back. But if you read today

Comments Off

My favorite bit of dialogue in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (other than Phoebe Cates’ pool scene, which, strictly speaking, had no dialogue), was this exchange during history class, where Sean Penn’s character had a pizza delivered:

Mr. Hand: Mr Spicolli, what are you doing?

Jeff Spicolli: Just learning about Cuba and having some food.

So it should come as no surprise that Penn didn’t learn much about history.

Comments Off

Iron Blog!

I’m game. Bring’em on, Jim.

Comments Off

Hanging is too good for him.

Comments Off

More left wing “tolerance,” spotted this time by Jane Galt.

Comments Off

(*But were afraid to ask.)

Found on Will Wilkinson’s Fly Bottle.

UPDATE: My original headline for this post was going to be “Back Door Imam,” but then thought that was in needlessly bad taste. Just now I remembered exactly what sort of site I run here.

Comments Off

Still no word on the fate of those two F/A-18F pilots and their backseaters, who crashed into the Pacific while training this morning.

Comments Off