Pyeongchang, not Pyongyang. Doh!
Month: July 2003
Vancouver won the 2010 Winter Olympics. While the main competitor was thought to be Salzburg, in Austria, that bid was eliminated on the first ballot. The final vote was between Vancouver and Pyongyang, and the Canadians won by a mere 3 votes. Fortunately for Canada, all but two of the Salzburg voters switched to Vancouver on the second ballot.
Apparently, all the Europeans voted for Vancouver, because if the Olympics is in North America in 2010 it’s unlikely to be in North America again in 2012. That pushes New York further out of the running. London’s going to have to be the coalition of the willing representative, with Paris flying the standard of the opposition. (Madrid and Moscow are less likely candidates.)
I was just browsing around the Apple iTunes Music Store, contemplating the new Liz Phair album. Despite the warnings of friends, yeah. I was all geared up for the experience of buying the thing and being hugely disappointed by a sellout.
Then I noticed a Clean Lyrics badge on the album. Clicked it, and discovered that the album was an expurgated version. (Didja hear about the expurgated Liz Phair concert? “Hi, thanks for coming out! It’s gonna be a great night! I hope you enjoyed my show, and have a safe drive home!”)
After another few clicks it turns out it’s available in the dirty version as well. Gave me a little scare, though. Still… there’s something vaguely wrong about Liz Phair doing an expurgated version of her album, particularly since the cover is unabashedly hetcentric. So much for accepting her on her own terms.
I tossed this off in a friend’s comment section, but now I want to save it. Excelsior.
It’s Las Vegas. 1960. The Rat Pack is headlining the Sands. And the Angel Pack is patrolling the skies…
Jack Diamond: he’s a hard man, the hardest, skin like diamond and quips like knives. You couldn’t scratch him with a .45. (Note: parallel evolution.)
Angie “Angel” Spencer: team leader, irreverent British heiress, with immense white overarching wings. She flies, and she knows when you’ve been naughty.
The Man of the Hour: master of time, and servant to eternity. He’s living the best hour of his life over and over again.
“Bang Bang” Benny: he’s short, he cracks wise at the wrong time, and he’s from Brooklyn — but he can shoot a guy at three hundred yards, without a gun.
Silent Nasrudin, Master of Magicks: you mistake him for a simple stage magician at your peril, for his illusions reach far deeper than you might expect.
Between this post and this post, Howard Dean raised over a million dollars from Internet contributions. That’s 45 hours. His total fundraising income for the quarter is over seven million.
It’s significant because Dean almost certainly outdid every other Democratic candidate this quarter, and he’s solidly in the top tier because of that. This is a major difference from insurgency candidacies such as McCain’s, Tsongas’, and Bradley’s.
It’s interesting because the average contribution was $66.85. By my count that’s around 15,000 contributors. That’s both a lot of eyeballs looking at a political website and not very many eyeballs at all when compared to the number of votes Dean needs. Sort of the first trickle of a dam breaking, I suspect. I don’t see the Internet having an immense effect on this election cycle, but 2008 should be interesting.