Johnny Depp

It’s almost impossible to consider myself a producer. I can barely produce an English muffin in the morning.

-- Johnny Depp

He is working the public relations rounds for "Dark Shadows". I wouldn't mind getting out of the house to see that movie myself. Depp does have an uncanny knack for the weird role.

Johnny Depp

It’s almost impossible to consider myself a producer. I can barely produce an English muffin in the morning.

-- Johnny Depp

He is working the public relations rounds for "Dark Shadows". I wouldn't mind getting out of the house to see that movie myself. Depp does have an uncanny knack for the weird role.

Naked on the Internet (not the fun way)

Legal and technology researchers estimate that it would take about a month for Internet users to read the privacy policies of all the Web sites they visit in a year. So in the interest of time, here is the deal: You know that dream where you suddenly realize you’re stark naked? You’re living it whenever you open your browser.

-- Kate Murphy, "How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet" at The New York Times

I would not mind surfing the Net with a little more e-savvy. I'll copy and paste some of the bigger tips.


_ _ _

Another shrouding tactic is to use the search engine DuckDuckGo, which distinguishes itself with a “We do not track or bubble you!” policy. Bubbling is the filtering of search results based on your search history. (Bubbling also means you are less likely to see opposing points of view or be exposed to something fresh and new.)

Regardless of which search engine you use, security experts recommend that you turn on your browser’s “private mode,” usually found under Preferences, Tools or Settings. When this mode is activated, tracking cookies are deleted once you close your browser, which “essentially wipes clean your history,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer with WhiteHat Security, an online security consulting firm in Santa Clara, Calif.

He warned, however, that private mode does nothing to conceal your I.P. address, a unique number that identifies your entry or access point to the Internet. So Web sites may not know your browsing history, but they will probably know who you are and where you are as well as when and how long you viewed their pages.

Shielding your I.P. address is possible by connecting to what is called a virtual private network, or V.P.N., such as those offered by WiTopia, PrivateVPN and StrongVPN. These services, whose prices price from $40 to $90 a year, route your data stream to what is called a proxy server, where it is stripped of your I.P. address before it is sent on to its destination. This obscures your identity not only from Web sites but also from your Internet service provider.

-- Kate Murphy, "How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet" at The New York Times

Naked on the Internet (not the fun way)

Legal and technology researchers estimate that it would take about a month for Internet users to read the privacy policies of all the Web sites they visit in a year. So in the interest of time, here is the deal: You know that dream where you suddenly realize you’re stark naked? You’re living it whenever you open your browser.

-- Kate Murphy, "How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet" at The New York Times

I would not mind surfing the Net with a little more e-savvy. I'll copy and paste some of the bigger tips.


_ _ _

Another shrouding tactic is to use the search engine DuckDuckGo, which distinguishes itself with a “We do not track or bubble you!” policy. Bubbling is the filtering of search results based on your search history. (Bubbling also means you are less likely to see opposing points of view or be exposed to something fresh and new.)

Regardless of which search engine you use, security experts recommend that you turn on your browser’s “private mode,” usually found under Preferences, Tools or Settings. When this mode is activated, tracking cookies are deleted once you close your browser, which “essentially wipes clean your history,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer with WhiteHat Security, an online security consulting firm in Santa Clara, Calif.

He warned, however, that private mode does nothing to conceal your I.P. address, a unique number that identifies your entry or access point to the Internet. So Web sites may not know your browsing history, but they will probably know who you are and where you are as well as when and how long you viewed their pages.

Shielding your I.P. address is possible by connecting to what is called a virtual private network, or V.P.N., such as those offered by WiTopia, PrivateVPN and StrongVPN. These services, whose prices price from $40 to $90 a year, route your data stream to what is called a proxy server, where it is stripped of your I.P. address before it is sent on to its destination. This obscures your identity not only from Web sites but also from your Internet service provider.

-- Kate Murphy, "How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet" at The New York Times

The Story of My Life

“How hard it is to grow old, when we have missed our life… How sad it is to feel the mind declining before it has done its work… The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force, on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words too late ringing in our ears! Too late, the sand is turned, the hour is past! Thy harvest is unreaped—too late! Thou hast been dreaming, forgetting, sleeping…”

-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime (1821-1881)

The Story of My Life

“How hard it is to grow old, when we have missed our life… How sad it is to feel the mind declining before it has done its work… The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force, on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words too late ringing in our ears! Too late, the sand is turned, the hour is past! Thy harvest is unreaped—too late! Thou hast been dreaming, forgetting, sleeping…”

-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime (1821-1881)

Been a while since we've done food porn

Been a while since we've done food porn

Atlas (1,1) Ellis Wyatt

Eddie Willers has come to James Taggart to try to light a fire under him about the failing Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, which runs from Cheyenne, Wyoming through El Paso, Texas. The rail line needs to be heavily rebuilt, but James’s supplier and friend, Orren Boyle, has not been able to deliver the goods in over a year. When Eddie presses James, James insists that he will not deal with Rearden Steel, a name that will figure big in the story a little later. The point is that other considerations easily surpass economics with James.

The Rio Norte line was especially important because it served Wyatt Oil. Ellis Wyatt had invented a way to revive seemingly exhausted oil wells, which created a big economic boom. Taggart Transcontinental has long since lost Wyatt’s business to the Phoenix-Durango railroad company, precisely because of the unreliability of the Rio Norte line.

In the course of this discussion, Eddie Willers reflects on the accomplishment of Wyatt Oil. This is the first of many paeans that Miss Rand will sing to industry and business, all that is wonderful about capitalism.


_ _ _

He thought of the oil wells spouting a black stream that ran over a continent almost faster than the trains of the Phoenix-Durango could carry it. That oil well had been only a rocky patch in the mountains of Colorado, given up as exhausted long ago. Ellis Wyatt’s father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells. Now it was as if someone had given a shot of adrenalin to the heart of the mountain, the heart had started pumping, the black blood had burst through the rocks - of course it’s blood, thought Eddie Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give life, and that is what Wyatt Oil had done. It had shocked empty slopes of ground into sudden existence, it had brought new towns, new power plants, new factories to a region nobody had ever noticed on any map. New factories, thought Eddie Willers, at a time when the freight revenues from all the great old industries were dropping slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time when the pumps were stopping in one famous field after another; a new industrial state where nobody expected anything but cattle and beets. One man had done it, and he had done it in eight years; this, thought Eddie Willers, was like the stories he had read in school books and never quite believed, the stories of men who had lived in the days of the country’s youth. He wished he could meet Ellis Wyatt.

-- “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

Atlas (1,1) Ellis Wyatt

Eddie Willers has come to James Taggart to try to light a fire under him about the failing Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, which runs from Cheyenne, Wyoming through El Paso, Texas. The rail line needs to be heavily rebuilt, but James’s supplier and friend, Orren Boyle, has not been able to deliver the goods in over a year. When Eddie presses James, James insists that he will not deal with Rearden Steel, a name that will figure big in the story a little later. The point is that other considerations easily surpass economics with James.

The Rio Norte line was especially important because it served Wyatt Oil. Ellis Wyatt had invented a way to revive seemingly exhausted oil wells, which created a big economic boom. Taggart Transcontinental has long since lost Wyatt’s business to the Phoenix-Durango railroad company, precisely because of the unreliability of the Rio Norte line.

In the course of this discussion, Eddie Willers reflects on the accomplishment of Wyatt Oil. This is the first of many paeans that Miss Rand will sing to industry and business, all that is wonderful about capitalism.


_ _ _

He thought of the oil wells spouting a black stream that ran over a continent almost faster than the trains of the Phoenix-Durango could carry it. That oil well had been only a rocky patch in the mountains of Colorado, given up as exhausted long ago. Ellis Wyatt’s father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells. Now it was as if someone had given a shot of adrenalin to the heart of the mountain, the heart had started pumping, the black blood had burst through the rocks - of course it’s blood, thought Eddie Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give life, and that is what Wyatt Oil had done. It had shocked empty slopes of ground into sudden existence, it had brought new towns, new power plants, new factories to a region nobody had ever noticed on any map. New factories, thought Eddie Willers, at a time when the freight revenues from all the great old industries were dropping slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time when the pumps were stopping in one famous field after another; a new industrial state where nobody expected anything but cattle and beets. One man had done it, and he had done it in eight years; this, thought Eddie Willers, was like the stories he had read in school books and never quite believed, the stories of men who had lived in the days of the country’s youth. He wished he could meet Ellis Wyatt.

-- “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

"I want to be like Jesus"

Cornel West is leaving Princeton. He wants to be a new prophet of the gospel and of egalitarianism. I think he might do better if he kept the Princeton credential tightly associated with his name, and take advantage of that affirmative action for all it is worth. It can only give his voice greater reach. But maybe he is too tired of being deeply ensconced in that white-bread world.

_ _ _

In November 2007, Cornel West got onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and before a hollering crowd of more than a thousand people, with much arm-­waving and wrist-flapping, along with a certain amount of ass-wagging, introduced his candidate for president of the United States—“my brother, my companion, and my comrade”—Barack Obama. “He’s an eloquent brother,” preached West. “He’s a good brother, he’s a decent brother.” Obama returned the sloppy kiss and pronounced West “an oracle.”

That compliment could not have been more apt, for West regards himself as a prophet more than a professor. He believes that he is called to teach God’s justice to a heedless nation. “There is a price to pay for speaking the truth,” reads the signature on e-mails coming from West’s office. “There is a bigger price for living a lie.” So when his view of the commander-in-chief changed from adoration to disappointment, West was moved to proclaim it out loud. He had already been lobbing rhetorical grenades in the direction of the Oval Office, calling the president “spineless” for his failure to make poor and working people a policy priority and “milquetoast” for kowtowing to corporate interests during the economic crisis. But in an interview with Truthdig, ­published last May, West went nuclear. He called Obama “the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” And then he said he wanted to “slap him,” as the article put it, “on the side of his head.”

-- Lisa Miller at New York Magazine

"I want to be like Jesus"

Cornel West is leaving Princeton. He wants to be a new prophet of the gospel and of egalitarianism. I think he might do better if he kept the Princeton credential tightly associated with his name, and take advantage of that affirmative action for all it is worth. It can only give his voice greater reach. But maybe he is too tired of being deeply ensconced in that white-bread world.

_ _ _

In November 2007, Cornel West got onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and before a hollering crowd of more than a thousand people, with much arm-­waving and wrist-flapping, along with a certain amount of ass-wagging, introduced his candidate for president of the United States—“my brother, my companion, and my comrade”—Barack Obama. “He’s an eloquent brother,” preached West. “He’s a good brother, he’s a decent brother.” Obama returned the sloppy kiss and pronounced West “an oracle.”

That compliment could not have been more apt, for West regards himself as a prophet more than a professor. He believes that he is called to teach God’s justice to a heedless nation. “There is a price to pay for speaking the truth,” reads the signature on e-mails coming from West’s office. “There is a bigger price for living a lie.” So when his view of the commander-in-chief changed from adoration to disappointment, West was moved to proclaim it out loud. He had already been lobbing rhetorical grenades in the direction of the Oval Office, calling the president “spineless” for his failure to make poor and working people a policy priority and “milquetoast” for kowtowing to corporate interests during the economic crisis. But in an interview with Truthdig, ­published last May, West went nuclear. He called Obama “the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” And then he said he wanted to “slap him,” as the article put it, “on the side of his head.”

-- Lisa Miller at New York Magazine

Obama Endorses Gay Marriage

"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president."

-- President Barack H. Obama

Though, I take it that he also endorses the federalist approach, by which states can determine the issue of gay marriage for themselves as a matter of right and law. I doubt that this hedge buys him any grace from those who were against him before and who are now more firmly against him on account of this endorsement, but he is still overwhelmingly drawing kudos for his statement from the social liberals. Andrew Sullivan writes of being in tears.

Obama Endorses Gay Marriage

"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president."

-- President Barack H. Obama

Though, I take it that he also endorses the federalist approach, by which states can determine the issue of gay marriage for themselves as a matter of right and law. I doubt that this hedge buys him any grace from those who were against him before and who are now more firmly against him on account of this endorsement, but he is still overwhelmingly drawing kudos for his statement from the social liberals. Andrew Sullivan writes of being in tears.