net.casting

revivification

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:46:00 -1000

Hmm… perhaps it’s time to use this space again. It’s been slightly over a year since its moribundification. ;p

Let’s Play “WALLSTREET BAILOUT” The Rules...

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:01:00 -1000

Let’s Play “WALLSTREET BAILOUT” The Rules Are… Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH (via CSPANJUNKIEdotORG)

Hmmm… let’s hope Rep. Kaptur helps swing OH for Obama.

"What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is..."

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:49:55 -1000

“What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn’t funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.”

- Garrison Keillor, Where is the outrage? | Salon

A book-burner?

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:39:26 -1000

Whatever else she is, the thing that really disturbs me about Sarah Palin is that she reportedly wanted her city librarian to ban books from the library, when she was mayor of Wasilla.

A Rough Record, fr. TIME magazine.

"We’re at that moment in the campaign that reminds me of a horror movie. There’s a kind..."

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:18:17 -1000

“We’re at that moment in the campaign that reminds me of a horror movie. There’s a kind of relief that the worst cannot happen, that the Clintons are politically dead, that our long national nightmare is over. The screen falls silent. We look at pleasant images: green grass, or a kitchen table scene, or a calm lovers’ embrace. But you know they have something left. They could come suddenly screaming back, like that hand out of the grave in Carrie or Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction. An Edwards endorsement? A March surprise?
Like Freddy or Jason, they still lurk, ready to pounce again. And the credits are yet to roll. Gulp.”

- The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

"For the generations that came of age as Radiohead got huge, patterns of life seem to have emerged..."

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:32:33 -1000

“For the generations that came of age as Radiohead got huge, patterns of life seem to have emerged that mutually reinforce and confirm a downward revision of expectations. The band’s catalog tracks the increasing acceptance of a newly fundamental degree of contingency, incompleteness, and transience. It extends across careers and love lives, shaping attitudes reaching from domestic politics to cosmic fate. Many now seem happy just to find or help create the passages of experience that permit momentary and communal escapes. Immanent and transcendent, such fugitive moments of therapeutic authenticity ameliorate the painful costs of being comprehensively compromised.”

- James Poulos :: Fugitive Hopes:The Radiohead Decade

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the Norwegian Arctic....

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:01:00 -1000

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in the Norwegian Arctic. “After several years of planning and digging, the world has its first secure, deep-frozen repository for backup supplies of seeds from hundreds of thousands of plant varieties that underpin agriculture.”

"Raising enough money from a million people to swamp the bundler-driven campaigns of your opponents..."

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:07:46 -1000

“Raising enough money from a million people to swamp the bundler-driven campaigns of your opponents is the motherf*cking campaign finance reform! How do you like that, motherf*ucker?”

- The Reality-Based Community: 985,360

"Even Iran’s arch-conservatives have realized that Iran’s chronic economic problems as..."

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:54:45 -1000

“Even Iran’s arch-conservatives have realized that Iran’s chronic economic problems as well as its long-term growth, political stability and national security will be better addressed by a thaw and gradual normalization of relations with the world’s leading superpower. With Obama as president, the “Great Satan” would surely have to be renamed anyway; Satan, after all, could not have the middle name of Hussein.”

- Barack Obama, a new face for American diplomacy | Salon

"It’s sad, really. As I’ve said before, I have no animus against Hillary Clinton, and I don’t believe..."

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:32:29 -1000

“It’s sad, really. As I’ve said before, I have no animus against Hillary Clinton, and I don’t believe that Barack Obama is the chosen one who can bring balance to the Force, end the war with the machines, and destroy all of Voldemort’s horcruxes. But Hillary really is surrounded by the gang that can’t shoot straight, and for some reason I’ve grown leery of politicians who don’t fire incompetents.”

- TPM Cafe | Michael Bérubé at Talking Points Memo | A Clinton Attack Plan?

"She won the losing side of a debate she framed herself."

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:26:36 -1000

“She won the losing side of a debate she framed herself.”

- Loewe Political Report

"As much as he was a hard-nosed scientist, he was also an unreformed romantic, and it made sense that..."

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:28:17 -1000

“As much as he was a hard-nosed scientist, he was also an unreformed romantic, and it made sense that truffles would attract such a man. Only the most hopeful of people could spend years growing a thing that cannot be seen, and that might never consent to appear.”

- The truffles are coming | Salon Life

"Behind every revolting and pathetic little sex goblin is a derelict dad."

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:49:00 -1000

“Behind every revolting and pathetic little sex goblin is a derelict dad.”

- James Poulos, on Brittney Spears

"A nation that sits silently and allows this to transpire demonstrates complicity. The oversight..."

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:58:00 -1000

“A nation that sits silently and allows this to transpire demonstrates complicity. The oversight committees need to start doing their job. And we need a Department of Justice that enforces the law rather than suborning serious official criminality. As John McCain very aptly said in the last presidential debate, this is the defining issue for our country–whether the country continues on the path that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln set for it, or whether it adopts the mentality and practices, the unbridled authoritarianism and official cruelty, of Kaiser Wilhelm and similar autocrats. The choice couldn’t be clearer, nor the moral implications of the decision.
”

- Scott Horton in Harpers.org: “Obstruction of Justice at the CIA”

Every first of December is world AIDS awareness day. The scourge...

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:08:00 -1000

Every first of December is world AIDS awareness day. The scourge affects developing and poor nations disproportionately. This photo by Paolo Pellegrini of Magnum Photos shows a young man dying of AIDS in a Zimbabwean slum. In that country, 2000 people die of AIDS or an AIDS-related illness… each week. That’s about 2 9/11s every single month.

EO Newsroom: New Images - Two Decades of Temperature Change in...

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:10:55 -1000

EO Newsroom: New Images - Two Decades of Temperature Change in Antarctica

"Is America a nation that tortures? The question is being asked all around the world. It’s not a..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:06:27 -1000

“Is America a nation that tortures? The question is being asked all around the world. It’s not a matter of idle speculation.
…
Here’s the short version: “We do not torture?” That claim has been formally reviewed by a court and found to be a lie.”

- Scott Horton in Harpers.org: “A Nation That Tortures:”

This is a test, to see what the UI looks like. Will be removed...

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:44:40 -1000

This is a test, to see what the UI looks like. Will be removed soon.

fr. NASA’s Earth Observatory newsroom: 2007 Ozone...

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:35:10 -1000

fr. NASA’s Earth Observatory newsroom: 2007 Ozone Hole.

Each year, the ozone hole over the Southern Hemisphere reaches its largest size during September. Data from NASA’s Aura satellite show that the annual ozone hole peaked in size on September 13, reaching 9.7 million square miles, slightly larger than North America. That’s “pretty average,” says Paul Newman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA Goddard Space Fight Center, when compared to the area of ozone holes measured over the last 15 years. Still, the extent this year was “very big,” he says, compared to the state of the ozone layer in the 1970s, when the hole did not yet exist.

"…torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed..."

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:24:43 -1000

“…torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed up—many of them completely innocent, remember—may well have come to fuel US national security policy.

And of course they also fueled more torture. Because once you hear of the existential plots confessed by one tortured prisoner, you need to torture more prisoners to get at the real truth. We do not know what actual intelligence they were getting, and Cheney has ensured that we will never know. But it is perfectly conceivable that the torture regime—combined with panic and paranoia—created an imaginationland of untruth and half-truth that has guided US policy for this entire war. It may well have led to the president being informed of any number of plots that never existed, and any number of threats that are pure imagination.

And once torture has entered the system, you can never find out the real truth. You are lost in a vortex of lies and fears. In this vortex, the actual threats that we face may well be overlooked or ignored, as we chase false leads and pursue non-existent WMDs.
”

- Andrew Sullivan, in his post Imaginationland. A MUST-READ.