goofballs

"Fucking Bill Clinton," said the boss man, who we will call G. The date was about a week after September 11, 2001. By then, everyone had returned, cautiously, back to work. On my walk from the Embarcadero to under Coit Tower, I would glance up at the skyscapers, wondering how they too could come down in a cloud of smoke, debris and pulverized human beings. Commercial aviation had just started back up, and my neck twisted with the strain of every turbo-jet above, as if flying were brand new again, and I gazed in wonder as heavy, fuel and passenger laden tin tubes blasted unbelievably through the sky. I explained to G that I felt that, although the CIA had been dismantled somewhat during the 8 years of Bill Clinton's presidency, the process had actually been going on for much longer -- since before Carter, to be precise. I said I felt that because the Cold War was ostensibly over, it was reasonable to start dismantling the apparatus of the Cold War. And I mentioned that Cli...

This movie is pretty great, so far. I'm about halfway through it, and I wish it were, believe it or not, longer. I think that the material would make for a terrific television series -- one that no one, not even HBO, especially not even HBO, post Albrecht, would produce. If George Clooney and Matt Damon (and the supporting cast, including Chris Cooper and Jeffrey Wright) wanted to serialize it, I would watch it. Me, and three other people. I am not sure there is a place for a nuanced look at the politics of petroleum, at the real, live human beings that inhabit places like Iran and Iraq and Pakistan, in a country which produces thinkers like this genius , the American version of the Taliban, but far, far scarier (we have infinitely more resources to wage rageful destruction on our supposed enemies). In Syriana, a group of foreign workers in, presumably Saudi Arabia, attend a Madrasa and are treated to a free feast of flatbreads, dates, lamb kebobs and pilafs. The cleric, an Arab, i...

Only Glenn Greenwald could elegantly combine a political critique of dick cheney and family guy in this post . Bra-vo, Greenwald, bravo..

I have become used to a certain degree of derision from Steve, the datacenter facilities manager. Here is a man in his mid-50s who has probably seen and done anything and everything I am likely to accomplish in my career 10 times over. But there was something different in his eyes when both he and I realized that my predecessor had foolishly plugged in a 15-amp remote power controller (RPC) into a vertical power strip plugged into a 20-amp power circuit. "That thing could catch fire," Steve told me, in the shrillest of tones. I looked back at him confused and a little hurt. "What amperage do we require you to use on a 20-amp circuit?" continued Steve. "15 amps, 80%" I repeated, from rote. "What's 80% of 15 amps?" "12 amps?" I replied using quick math. The circuit that 15-amp RPC was plugged into was drawing nearly 11 amps. It dawned on me that if I plugged anything else into that RPC there was a good chance that, at best, I would bl...

Haha: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0724,tucker,76913,2.html Is this real, or some surreal parody? You decide: After more speeches about white flight, white fear, and white power, the meeting adjourned for what Kelso described as "a white man's feast." Single file, the crowd moved down a doubtful flight of stairs into a dank basement. The perimeter of the room was crowded with discarded computers circa 1990, stacked upon a heap of unused old furniture. Two fold-out tables held the repast: hot dogs, hamburgers, slices of American cheese, tubs of pre-prepared macaroni and potato salads, iceberg lettuce, and Lay's potato chips. There was only one kind of bread available: white. Lindstrom stayed at the grill outside, flipping hamburger patties, while everyone else ate dinner inside, away from protesters' cameras. administrivia: new "datacenter confidential" soon. just let me get through this fucking week in one piece :(

The Weeds If you've read, and you should (even must), Kitchen Confidential , you know a little about being in "the weeds." If you haven't, shame on you. But being in "the weeds" is something everyone, regardless of their profession, will encounter from time to time. For Tony Bourdain, being In The Weeds may be a night where a line cook called off sick (or in jail, or God knows what else), a Salamander broiler is broken, the dish-washing machine is stuck, and the orders are backing up. Soon, you find yourself so mired in everything going wrong at once that you just can't get your head above water. This is "in the weeds." Today/yesterday, I was in the shit. Deep. 6am, Tuesday June 12, 2007. The alarm on my cell phone goes off for the first time. I'm still in a vodka and bad sleep induced fog. I hit snooze. 6:08am I'm still not ready to get up, but I know I have an inevitable appointment at 9am with a vendor and I can't reschedule with...

enjoy, bitches

What Seggos discovered—or rediscovered—wasn’t an oil spill, exactly. Rather, it was a mix of gasoline, solvents, and associated poisons bubbling up from the very ground: a thin dribble that betrays the presence of a supertanker’s worth of the stuff submerged in the age-old geology of Greenpoint. It’s actually more than a century’s worth of spills, leaks, and waste dumped by oil companies that has pooled into a vast underground lake, more than 55 acres wide and up to 25 feet thick. First discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1978, the Greenpoint spill has been estimated at anywhere between 17 million and 30 million gallons—three times more oil than the Exxon Valdez spill. That makes it the largest known oil spill in American history. What is noteworthy about this story, as well as this one [1] is that they are mostly ignored in the mainstream press or written off as leftist or alarmist. Modern "conservatism" (which only seeks to "conserve" power and wealth for those ...