:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, October 09, 2004 ::

French philosopher Derrida dies
: "French philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose work is credited with originating the school of deconstruction, has died of cancer at the age of 74, France Info radio has said."
and here is Brian Leiters take on Derrida

Alas, he is being referred to as a philosopher.

I am, needless to say, with the vast majority of philosophers in thinking Derrida's work of a philosophical nature was badly confused and pernicious in its influence, and in the substantial minority within that group who formed that opinion after actually reading his work. His preposterously stupid writings on Nietzsche were, of course, a particular source of annoyance. And even his more apparently scholarly work on, e.g., Husserl turns out to be rather poor, as J. Claude Evans showed more than a dozen years ago. Like the Straussians, Derrida and his followers tend to be willfully bad readers of texts. Fortunately, their influence has already faded from the scene in both North America and Europe.

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 06:49:00 PM [+] ::
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United Press International: Outside View: Not the candidates you thought:

"John Kerry wants seniors to be able to buy Canadian drugs now. Bush says that they aren't safe. Huh? Talk about denigrating an ally -- which Bush said Kerry shouldn't do when speaking about our unilateral efforts in Iraq and not referencing our British, Polish, Italian and Spanish partners in Iraq. (Bush forgot the Japanese tonight. Don't forget the Japanese.) Bush probably set U.S.-Canada relations back a couple of years by questioning their medical-safety standards -- which are actually among the highest in the world."

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 06:45:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Was Bush Wired? Ridiculous, Campaign Says:

"Campaign aides to President Bush on Saturday laughed off rampant Internet speculation about whether the president was wired to get help from advisers during his first debate with Sen. John Kerry"

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 06:39:00 PM [+] ::
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Moms going to hate it
To try to extract the very reason of my being out of the pointless meandering of day to day life I got another tattoo today. Something to remind me every day of the futile and hopeless nature of human existence. It makes me smile while others frown

"I am just an atom in an ectoplasmic sea,
without direction or a reason to exist,
the anechoic nebula rotating in my brain
is persuading me, contritely, to persist." -Bad Religion

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 05:58:00 PM [+] ::
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"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior." --Henry David Thoreau

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 03:50:00 PM [+] ::
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The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Last Job Count Before Election: Always a Political Number:

"It's official. President Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to face re-election with fewer people working than when he started.

No president may have more than an indirect influence on unemployment, and Mr. Bush had the bad luck to take office in January 2001, just before the economy was about to slide into a recession.

Still, despite the stimulus from three rounds of tax cuts, a spectacular expansion of the federal budget deficit and enormous assistance from the Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates 13 times, the nation has at least 585,000 fewer jobs now than when Mr. Bush took office."

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 03:13:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Experts: Good Hygiene Can Ward Off Flu:

"Doctors and nutritionists say careful hygiene, a balanced diet and plenty of rest and fluids can go a long way toward keeping people healthy during the influenza season, especially considering this year's vaccine shortage. "

:: Jim Nichols 10/09/2004 02:01:00 PM [+] ::
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Got to give it up for marketing genius

So I was wondering why anyone would buy the Marilyn Manson greatest hits album if they already had all his other albums until I found out he was releasing it with a DVD of all his videos. The only video not on the disk is Tainted Love, probably due to copyright laws. So technically I bought a Marilyn Manson DVD and got a free cd of his music to go along with it

:: Jim Nichols 10/08/2004 10:09:00 PM [+] ::
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"Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal. For explanations of a universe that confuses him, he seizes onto numerology, astrology, hysterical religions, and other fancy ways to go crazy. Having accepted such glorified nonsense, facts make no impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life."
-- Robert Heinlein

:: Jim Nichols 10/08/2004 09:57:00 PM [+] ::
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The best line of the debate

The militarys job is to win the war, the presidents job is to win the peace.

:: Jim Nichols 10/08/2004 09:10:00 PM [+] ::
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The Harvard Crimson Online :: News:

"More than 50 tenured and emeritus professors from Harvard Business School told President Bush to roll back his administration's massive tax cuts and stem the growth of the federal budget deficit in a harshly worded letter released late Monday night."

:: Jim Nichols 10/08/2004 08:47:00 PM [+] ::
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Oh my god. I just realized I have a paper due tomorrow on Max Weber. I totally forgot about it. This is going to be a long night.

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 11:41:00 PM [+] ::
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Interesting.... Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis - The Region - Interview with Claudia Goldin (September 2004):

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 11:23:00 PM [+] ::
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Misleading Assertions Cover Iraq War and Voting Records (washingtonpost.com):

"Sen. John Edwards and Vice President Cheney clashed repeatedly in their debate last night, making impressive-sounding but misleading statements on issues including the war in Iraq, tax cuts and each other's records, often omitting key facts along the way. "

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 11:12:00 PM [+] ::
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Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:

"Kerry has retaken the lead in all-important Ohio by 49% to 48%, New Mexico by 46% to 43%, and Iowa by 48% to 47%"

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 11:11:00 PM [+] ::
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The Washington Note Archives:

"Edwards got a lot of good blows in, but not enough to win the debate, which in my view was not a memorable debate to begin with.

The biggest reason why I think that George Bush won tonight is that Cheney made him disappear."

Bush was mentioned only 9 times tonight -- 4 times by Cheney, twice by Edwards and 3 times by Gwen Ifill.

In contrast, Kerry was mentioned 64 times overall -- 34 times by Edwards, and an additional 30 times by Ifill and Cheney. Two of the times Edwards invoked Kerry's name he was breaking Gwen Ifill's rules in the debate.

This night became about what Kerry was for or against, but Bush as a target simply vanished.

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 11:03:00 PM [+] ::
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Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/06/2004 | Partisan bias in newspapers? A study of headlines says yes:

"Economists have been puzzled this year by the persistence with which perceptions about the economy have lagged the economic data. For the most recent 12-month period for which we have data, for example, the economy grew almost exactly as fast as it did during the best 12-month period during President Clinton's two terms. But the economic mood of the country has been much different."

An interesting op-ed. I wonder how somebody like FAIR would respond.

:: Jim Nichols 10/06/2004 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Republicans Accuse Moore of Vote Bribery:

"Republicans say filmmaker Michael Moore should be prosecuted for offering underwear, potato chips and Ramen noodles to college students in exchange for their promise to vote. "

:: Jim Nichols 10/05/2004 09:50:00 PM [+] ::
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