Nessuno conosceva il mio
malato d'amore cuore, e
 
Nessuno conosceva il mio
numero uno vero amoroso
 
Io non sapevo, fino io
ho incontrato suo.

Tony Pierce makes some threats... I hope they are empty.#

if you dont sign me up to work for you im going to do the unthinkable.

im going to be a highschool english teacher and turn my back on the world.

im going to marry a cute little woman and get a minivan and sell out and harvest kids that look like me and go to soccer practices.

Alex Tabarrok explains a bit of how economics can save lives.#

Your spouse is dying of kidney disease. You want to give her one of your kidneys but tests show that it is incompatible with her immune system. Utter anguish and frustration. Is there anything that you can do? Today the answer is yes. Transplant centers are now helping to arrange kidney swaps. You give to the spouse of another donor who gives to your spouse. Pareto would be proud. Even a few three-way swaps have been conducted.

But why stop at three? What about an n-way swap?

Michael Feldman writes about being part of a media monster.#

Other than that, our main responsibility was manning the teletype machines, which in those days were actual clattering keyboardless typewriters, with long rolls of teletype paper which brought in the news stories from UPI, AP, Reuters, etc. Our job was to rip each story off the machine as it streamed in, and direct it to the correct editor by placing it in a color-coded plastic tube and shooting it through a pneumatic pipe system to the designated desk. Very 20th century.

The Dowbrigade remembers the thrill of being the first person in Rochester to read the news, even before the writers and editors who would pass it on to the general public. It's the same thrill we get calling our equally news-addicted father and telling him, thanks to my aggregator, what's going to be on the front page of his venerated New York Times the next day.

Chip Gibbons on gay marriage, free speech, and activist judges.#

If the use of the term marriage can only be legal between a man and a woman, then what is to stop the government or "the people" from saying that words like love, intelligence, committment humanity and freedom can only apply to heterosexuals. To reserve specific terms for certain groups of people is an assault on free speech.

It is only because of activist judges that religions and heterosexuals have so many special privileges and benefits.

Jane points her fans in the direction of her attraction.#

Regardless of race or ethnicity, I tend to pick extremely handsome men with great smiles and open personalities. Although I romanticize the brooding loner, I haven't hooked up very often with the mopey, introverted guy - maybe simply because the friendly happy guy talks to me first. I like pretty boys and I like party boys. Boys who like to dance and laugh and talk and play music and try almost anything, just for fun.

Tyler Cowen looks at CDs and music and comes to conclusion there's nothing to worry about.#

An increasing percentage of compact discs are sold in mega-chains, such as Best Buy or Wal-Mart, as loss leaders. Offer the CD at a very cheap price, and hope that the buyers also take home a television set. This practice is the central reason why Tower Records recently went bankrupt.

Loss leader CDs push music in a more mainstream direction. The impulse buy is for the TV, the musical purchase is planned, which favors established stars with new releases. Sudden impulse buys of unknown musical products, by definition, do not bring people into the store. In essence consumers have decided they would rather bundle hit musical releases with TV sets and computers (the Best Buy model), than with more obscure musical releases (the Tower model).

Chip Gibbons comments on watching an interview with Mel Gibson.#

Gibson came across as being cocky, arrogant and uncomfortable, his breathing was sometimes labored as if he was not getting enough air. He spoke of his addictions and how he is an addictive personality yet seemed blissfully unaware that religion is his latest addiction.

Gibson suggested his life was not quite as full of spirituality when he hit bottom about 13 years ago.

"I just didn't want to go on," he told Sawyer.

"Everyone's got something," he added. "I would get addicted to anything, anything at all. Okay? Doesn't matter what it is … drugs, booze, anything. You name it — coffee, cigarettes, anything. Alright? I'm just one of these guys who is like that. That's my flaw.

Adam Gessaman comments on Howard Dean "No longer actively pursuing the Presidency."#

For a career politician — which Dean arguably is — that's like saying that one is no longer actively pregnant. All politicians, to a greater or lesser degree, have their eyes on that little round room in D.C. Despite his non-firm withdrawl from the race, I still have some hope that once Dean has a chance to step back and evaluate what went wrong with his campaign he can use that information, and the suport base that he has constructed, to better the chances of the Democratic nominee.

Al3x posts perfection and I repeat.#

I have to tip my hat to the person, persons, or bot at 205.244.251.84, whose search for (I kid you not) "metroid fuck stories" has to be the best referrer this domain has ever received.

Tony Pierce posts a haught picture of a girl biting her lip. Strangely one of the most attractive poses.#

Maria Farrell makes some delicious points about outsourcing.#

But the benefits of outsourcing to the US economy are not the big issue here (bearing in mind that 'here' isn't in the US). I wonder; what did we all think was going to happen with those aid programmes and World Bank mantras? Did we forget that the 'developing' in developing countries is a verb, not just a description, and that one day it might actually happen? Did we really think they'd play nice and be content to be merely another export market for the West? Wasn't it clear that forcing open others' markets for FDI in manufacturing and services while keeping our own markets closed in agriculture would make it rational to develop the former? And wasn't it inevitable that forward-looking people in those countries would think to leap frog up the value chain with their technology parks and their Information Super Corridors? Because all that guff about bridging the digital divide isn't just guff in developing countries. It is gospel. And, in small but important ways, it is starting to work.

Betsy Devine is in northern Florida... weird.#

The highways south were speckled with little churches. Some typical signs on roadside businesses: "God bless our soldiers." "God bless the USA." "God bless you."

I don't understand this public concept of God, though I do understand that it doesn't seem strange to somebody who grew up with it. And I might once have had a cynical sense that the signs' secret message was "Agnostic Yankee, go home!" But the Waffle House waitresses were so darn nice, I'm rethinking that.

ScrappleFace defines Howard Dean as "You Got Punk'd."#

"To all those who have followed me for the past year, pouring out your hearts and your money for something you believed in, I have this to say: You got punk'd!

Did you really believe that a career politician like me was some sort of idealist who was going to change the system? Psyche!

The Christian Science Monitor reports on when Islamic clerics meet 'The Great Satan.'#

But most important, Mouzzam says he was surprised that Americans were so friendly to a bearded Muslim cleric wearing traditional kurta pajamas. "I used to think that all Americans were against Islam, but they weren't," he says. But while Americans were friendly, by and large, he feels that Americans still need a better understanding about Islam, and about why certain people turn to violence or terrorism to solve their problems.

"You have to go to the source, to the roots of terrorism," says Mouzzam. "You say you are against people picking up arms, and yet you allow Ariel Sharon to pick up arms and kill the Palestinian people. When you are attacked during 9/11 you retaliated against the terrorists." But when India's parliament was attacked by terrorists on Dec. 13, 2001, "we were told not to react. It is not a level playing field."

Ben Adida writes about one thing that's particularly great about Creative Commons.#

Take a step back, though, and remember the way things were 18 short months ago. Unless you were willing to invest significant time and money into understanding copyright law and having a lawyer draft you a rock-solid license, you had no options except default copyright or relinquishing your work to the public domain. It was ALL or NOTHING. Today, Creative Commons offers you additional options and takes away none. Creative Commons offers an in-between, a compromise, a balance. It's a testament to how poorly our modern society has explored this middle-ground between ALL and NOTHING that people continue to strive for more options in the "Some Rights Reserved" world. Creative Commons has grown so quickly because people are thirsty for better ways to share their creative works.

Cynthia Rockwell remarks on the grand house she lives in.#

I like to put a comic spin on the horror to make it bearable, but it has become pretty unbearable lately, thus the lack of updates. The apes don't really even get along with each other, much less with me. They talk about each other behind their backs, with great rancor, before then heading out to golf together or watch sports competitions together or thump their chests together. (As in, each thumping their own chests in unison, not thumping each other's chests together...though I suppose that might actually be appropriate too.) There's also a beta-male ape in the house who is the whipping boy of the other apes, and it is very sad to see a beta-male attacked by the alphas.

John M. Scalzi articulates some of my thoughts on abstinence, which I am happy to practice.#

I'm of two minds about this. I am frankly all for teenage sexual abstinence -- I abstained when I was a teen, and not merely because it wasn't like I had a choice (I did. Really), but because as a teen I had what I feel was an entirely appopriate appreciation of the biological fact that sex is designed to make babies, and I didn't want to make any of those just yet. Honestly, nothing hoses down your hormones faster -- even as a teen -- then looking at the object of your intended grabbiness and asking yourself "Am I actually willing to have a baby with that person?" If the answer is no, then you know what you do, or shouldn't do, as the case may be (gay and lesbian teens, I imagine, are exempt from this line of reasoning, but it's not like they don't have other issues to deal with). So yes: Teen abstinence. It makes damn fine sense.

On the other hand, I think this "sexual purity" thing fetishizes sex just as surely -- albeit in an entirely separate direction -- as any six smutty music videos one would care to mention.