John Perry Barlow moves over to Kerry:
I won’t attempt to repeat the list of [Bush’s] catastrophes here. It’s far too long, and much of it has been enumerated on the Internet already. We all know it, and yet we continue to occupy ourselves with such airy trivialities as which candidate looks most “presidential.” And against this backdrop of Bush-driven national emergencies, I’ve been allowing John Kerry’s accent to diminish my sense of commitment to his election. |
I can’t do this any more. Neither can the rest of us who have any regard for the well-being of our descendents. |
Yeah, John Kerry makes a lousy candidate for Prom King. But that isn’t what he’s running for. |
John Robb has posted a devastating email from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad. Read it for its detail of what the “situation” in Iraq is really like.
“One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.”
I always love a good rant and Michael Beirut’s wail against one typeface — ITC Garamond — is a classic. A small taste:
There are lots of typefaces I dont like, but each of them usually has a saving grace. Ive always had a distaste for Herman Zapfs Optima, for instance, but I have to admit that there are occasions when its been used well. Maya Lins Vietnam Veterans Memorial is an example. But ungainly ITC Garamond repulses me in a visceral way that I have trouble explaining. |
ITC Garamond was designed in 1975 by Tony Stan for the International Typeface Corporation. Okay, let’s stop right there. Ill admit it: the single phrase designed in 1975 by Tony Stan conjures up a entire world for me, a world of leisure suits, harvest gold refrigerators, and Fly, Robin, Fly by Silver Convention on the eight-track. A world where font designers were called “Tony” instead of “Tobias” or “Zuzana.” Is that the trouble with ITC Garamond? That its dated? |
George Soros is the latest convert
George Soros has started his own weblog. As anyone who has encountered Soros would expect, his comments on the presidential election are considered and incisive. And, of course, he’s fighting the good fight.
That’s O for 1 on the prediction market
I wrote last week about the prediction market set up for this year’s Nobel prizes. Well, this morning Richard Axel and Linda Buck were awarded the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology, but their names hadn’t even been entered into the lists in the prediction market. Not yet a great advertisement for this wisdom of this particular crowd.