telescreen.org

By the way, don't forget about the MetaFilter meetup tonight at Veselka. Be there or be Portuguese. (thanks to Jonmc for the reminder.)

UPDATE: It was a good time. Links to pix (by me and others) are in the MeTa thread linked above.

Last night, as I was heading home, I was standing on the median of Park Avenue at 59th Street, waiting for the light to chane. Across the street, I could see two women trying to hail a cab. Two guys walked up and stood at the corner, about forty feet further down, and they stuck out their arms to hail a cab too.

A cab stopped for the guys on the corner, and one of them leaned forward and told the cabbie that the women down the block were there first, and pointed to them. Nice gesture, I thought. The light changed, and I started across the street. As I drew closer, I realized that the heavy-set guy, the one who had talked to the cabbie, looked incredibly familiar. I nodded at him, and as he nodded back, I realized that it was Michael Moore, the filmmaker/activist. "Like your work!" I said. He thanked me and seemed like a genuinely nice guy. I asked him what he thought of his profile in the current New Yorker. (I'd link, but they have a shitty website.) Coincindentally, I'd just finished reading the profile that morning, on the subway to work.

He replied that he hadn't read it because "I've been shooting all week, haven't had much time, and it's like twelve thousand words! Maybe I'll get to it this weekend." He then asked me to summarize it for him...so this was a bit weird for me, summarizing an article to its subject. I told him about both the positive and negative things it said about him (c'mon, like he hasn't heard it all before already.) He seemed to take it all with equanimity, and thanked me as a cab pulled up. He and the other guy sped away, and I walked to the N train reflecting on what an odd encounter it had been.

Someone at philly.com is having fun writing headlines. (via Romenesko's Letters.)

It's been almost ten years since Bill Hicks passed on. Here's a nice Gruniad tribute. (via MeFi.)

Calpundit has a nice roundup of exactly what we know and don't know about the Bush/National Guard story.

There are lots of unanswered questions still, and they haven't been solved by Friday's document dump. Hopefully some enterprising reporter has been digging for the past few days, and that the Bushies weren't able to make it all go away.

I've been hearing some really interesting rumors about why the records are the way they are (comprehensive pre-1972, sketchy and gap-ridden after) and that explain the reluctance of the White House to come clean. It'll be interesting to see if those pan out.

If you got here via Gawker, welcome. (See? Sending those quasi-anonymous mash notes to Choire does pay off after all!)

Thanks for stopping by.

"Stuttering John" Melendez will be the new "Tonight Show" announcer. (They're giving him a speech coach to work with.) I'm all for hiring folks with disabilities, but is this affirmative action gone horribly wrong? Will NBC be hiring blind cameramen next?

Mr. Bergeron, step right this way.

Dana has a great post about how real-estate developers, with the tacit cooperation of the Bloomberg administration, are wiping out affordable housing in New York City.

("Affordable housing?" you say. "In New York City???" you say. "Scoff scoff scoff!" you say. I know. Things are relative. Try to stay with me here.)

It's true. Developers can kill communities dead, and turn everyplace into the Upper East Side. (If you like the Upper East Side, fine, but do you really want everywhere in town to look like it?) They can also strangle communities and stifle their natural growth.

A coupla days ago Jonmc and I went to check out the mall at the new Time Warner Center. After traipsing through the Borders and Whole Foods there, we headed uptown to the M & G Diner in Harlem for some fine soul food.

This great little "old-fashion but good" hole-in-the-wall doesn't look like it's changed a bit since 1965. (For those of you wondering, that's a good thing.) When was the last time you saw a jukebox that had Ella, Sam Cooke, the Commodores, and B.B. King's "Live And Well" album?

I've heard the fried chicken is transcendent, but they were all out, so I got smothered pork chops with black-eyed peas and candied yams. Serious mega-yum here, folks, and the chops were so tender I didn't need to use my knife. I'm definitely going to return (I wanna try the chicken, and I bet the grits at breakfast time are good), but something tells me it's not the kind of place you want to visit too often. (Much like some other places Jon's introduced me to.)

Then after a brief visit to Bleecker Bob's (where I abstained, but you can read all about Jon's finds here), Jon turned in (his lumbago, oy!) and Chico and I met up for a quick drink at Angel's Share. On the way from Angel's Share to the subway, we declined an opportunity to purchase some fine snowballs, imported from Queens. Really. (Not my section of Queens, though; the snow's too filthy there.)

Did I mention that I love New York?

In other news, the New York Times is suspicious of this whole "newspaper" thing.

Empire State Building from West Third Street & Sixth Avenue, February 15, 2004

How did Honky get stolen? (via BoingBoing.)

"Ring of Fire" Unsuitable for Hemorrhoid Ad, Says Cash Family.

uh, you think?

Get your own FA/18 Hornet on eBay...some assembly required.

Isn't the common cold just the cutest microbe ever? Awwww.

Check out the others at GiantMicrobes.com. (via MeFi.)

Closed-caption censorship. Neil Gaiman reports that a shadowy five-member Department of Education panel has decided that many television shows shouldn't be closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired. Why? Is their judgment worse than that of the hearing?

Interestingly enough, the above Palm Beach Post link points out that one "panel member" didn't know he was on a panel; he was contacted and his views were solicited, and he was never told that his views would be used to make censorship decisions. What a bizarre story.

Here's the National Association of the Deaf's response.

Among the shows deemed unsuitable for deaf people to watch:

Josh Marshall on Bush's claim that a Democratic administration would endanger the country's financial health:

When the president came into office the budget surplus was over $200 billion. Now the deficit is over $500 billion.

Even my frail grasp of mathematics tells me that's a deterioration in the nation's fiscal health of roughly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in the three years he's been in office. And for almost all of that time the president's party controlled both houses of congress.

And he says the Democrats are a danger to the nation's fiscal health?

This is the arsonist in your house telling you that stranger outside with the hose can't be trusted.

(Read Marshall's entire post here.)

Jason weighs in on why we don't need Black History Month.

Designated deluded shrill right-wing harpy Ann Coulter wrote a hateful (as is her wont) column regarding former Senator Max Cleland. (Remember him? The man who lost three limbs in Vietnam...and then was compared to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden by his Republican opponent a couple years ago?)

Too bad Coulter's column is full of lies (as also is her wont) ...and fortunately The Progress Report gives it a good fisking. (via BoingBoing.)

The MetaFilter server is down. 17,135 users are going twitchy from withdrawal. (A broken man somewhere in Lisbon stares blankly at his monitor.) The monkeyhouse is getting more traffic than it has in months. (Sure, now you come and hang out with us. Slumming, eh?)

Mathowie (I'd link to his site, but it's fux0red too) blames it on a broken processor fan, but don't you think I buy that for a second. Here's Mr. Crash Davis's take on the real reason why.

ADDENDUM: It's baaaaaack!

Former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi has started a blog; so has former Dean director of Internet Communications Mathew Gross. Check 'em out. (via Talking Points Memo.)

ADDENDUM: Something just occurred to me. Dean's former aides' profiles are getting higher. (Might this point to a Dean withdrawal after tomorrow's Wisconsin primary? Dean's national chairman Steve Grossman (chair of Kerry's '96 Senate bid) told the New York Times that he'll "reach out" to Kerry if Dean doesn't win Wisconsin. Sounds like pretty damning talk to me. That last factoid was courtesy of CNN, which goes on to report that a concession speech is being drafted in Burlington. It should be noted that Dean himself is denying all of the above...but go read the CNN story. It has lots of useful info and analysis.

ANOTHER ADDENDUM: Agence France-Presse is running with the (possible) Dean-withdrawal story now.

YET ANOTHER ADDENDUM: Grossman is out after his comments to the NYT. This story has legs, is moving fast, and will undoubtedly be very interesting over the next 48 hours or so. (Unfortunately, I won't have the luxury of following it today.)

This is a really bad idea. (Thanks to Paula for the tip.)

Y'know, I'll stop thinking of Republicans as quasi-fascists only when they stop behaving like them.

ADDENDUM: Oddly enough, the article points out that College Republicans president Jason Mattera "is of Puerto Rican descent [and] is himself a recipient of a $5,000 scholarship open only to a minority group." You can't have it both ways, bucko. If you're against affirmative action and race-targeted scholarships, you look awfully hypocritical when you take their money.

ANOTHER ADDENDUM: I also see that NYT plaigiarist Jayson Blair wants to set up a journalism scholarship at his alma mater. Good thing the U-Md J-school dean is turning him down.

Scott McClellan's losing it, according to some of the White House press corps.

Electablog previews the first Bush-Kerry debate. An excerpt:

Bush: (pounding a fist) The Almighty, Faith-based, Mel Gibson, God Bless

Kerry: Ketchup fortune, good hair, tall, I can still drink

Bush: Fake Vietnam stories

Kerry: That was Bob Kerrey.

TKO Kerry!

Make your own candy hearts: