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I think one of the more frightening words I learned as a freshman in high school was one favored especially by a certain prominent and infamously amoral German American statesman: realpolitik. I’m nearly twice as old now, and equally horrified, equally afraid, though the men of power couldn’t be any more different. They act in the name of peace,…
posted at 12:52 AM | comments (2) | grrr, politics/history
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Guyana Punch Line are fucking cool. I feel energized and invigorated. At least, I did for the fifteen minutes that they played (including the 3-second encore). Looks like they’ll be in Denton on the 6th, and I’m damn tempted to skip work and see them again. Maybe they’ll have some new Texas jokes by then. Don’t google for the…
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Rumsfeld dismisses French
posted at 7:47 PM | comments (4) | grrr, politics/history
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The Austin Film Society’s new free film series, entitled “The Fifth Generation: Chinese Films of the Past Two Decades,” began today. Tonight we saw The Story of Qiu Ju, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. It tells the story of a peasant woman who stubbornly works her way up a chain of bureaucracy to seek an apology…
posted at 10:47 PM | comments (5) | art/music
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Nine people attended the 9:40 Dobie Theater screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s newish movie In Praise of Love (original title: Éloge de l’Amour) last Saturday night, and three of them couldn’t sit still, giggling and talking in some strange and unfamiliar language, dropping things under their seats and crawling around with lit cigarette lighters. The couple in front of us…
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Austin Public Library Lookup UT Austin Library Lookup Drag one of the links above to the link toolbar of your web browser (or bookmark it — the links won’t work if you simply click on them from this page, though). You may want to rename the link to something succinct and meaningful, like ‘APL Lookup.’ Look up a book…
posted at 3:20 PM | comments (2) | nerdy
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One of my favorite college electives was a classics class, “Caesar and Augustus.” Or as Dr. Gwyn Morgan, he of the peculiarly dynamic voice, would say, “CAESAR! …and Augustus.” Dr. Morgan, a swaggering, greasy-haired Welshman, blue-jeaned and smoky, held the title of coolest professor at UT, unlike another professor of mine, philosophy professor Robert Solomon, who, chest hair puffing…
posted at 2:36 AM | comments (4) | art/music
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I just spent a few minutes trying out Apple’s new web browser, Safari. It’s fast, the interface is clean and elegant, and it blocks pop-ups, but the rendering engine is distressingly buggy. I don’t care for it. A new browser with a (more or less) new rendering engine brings with it an entirely new and vexing set of quirks,…
posted at 4:30 PM | comments (9) | nerdy
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news://rss.cpl593h.net:1119/: browse RSS feeds with your newsreader. If you’ve never read Usenet news or used a newsreader before, this post may not interest you. Read on for more details. If you do try this out, please add a comment, because I’m interested in hearing your feedback. The software is at version 0.1, and is therefore likely to be buggy,…
posted at 2:12 PM | comments (7) | nerdy
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So I have an Aretha Franklin album with a song called “Dr. Feelgood.” I can’t tell you if the song’s good or bad, though, thanks to Motley Crüe….
posted at 5:19 PM | comments (2) | grrr
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One of these sites is not like the others: Pirated Sites UI Patterns Electronic Frontier Foundation Put another way: “Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it.” — Comte de Lautréamont, 1870 “Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it.” — Guy Debord, 1967…
posted at 3:42 AM | comments (1) | misc
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I seem to be regressing to the mental state of my 18-year old self. My brain won’t shut up. I can’t sleep. I bought a journal. I’m filling every 9×14cm gridded sheet with lists of things that drive me nuts. I want to blame New Year’s, which grips me yearly with a special, wintry dread; it’s a holiday that…
posted at 4:45 AM | comments (1) | dread/ennui, grrr
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