Archive for April, 2003
Tuesday, April 29th, 2003
Book Magazine is running one of those lists that intrigues and delights and annoys all at once. They picked the “50 greatest adventure books of all time.” They only list the top 10 on their page, though. You’ll have to buy the magazine to see the rest.
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Tuesday, April 29th, 2003
Jen Weiner still hasn’t had her baby. Know of any tricks?
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Tuesday, April 29th, 2003
His Attorney-General has conducted a veritable witchhunt against their people and co-religionists, but George W. Bush still wants Arab-Americans votes: Bush courting Michigan Arab community. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he did get their votes, just as he did in 2000.
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Tuesday, April 29th, 2003
How to freak me out:
Stop working and drive me mad because I’ve spilled a tiny bit of water on your up-and-down arrow key area.
How to calm me down:
Email me or post sage advice on how I can handle the problem.
On a more serious note, yes, the laptop is back online, though not before it gave me an anxiety attack. It’s brand new, for crying out loud! Didn’t know half a teaspoon worth of water could do so much damage. Let’s hope it continues working now.
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Saturday, April 26th, 2003
starts today! Don’t miss it.
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Friday, April 25th, 2003
has been announced. No surprises: Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Carol Shields, Anne Donovan, Shena MacKay, and Valerie Martin.
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Friday, April 25th, 2003
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may know that I don’t hold Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations” in very high regard. A Google search will yield plenty of critiques of the theory, both in support and in rejection of its contentions.
But in this Foreign Policy article, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris propose a new take on the theory. They correctly point out that there has been little empirical evidence to support Huntington’s thesis. Citing the cumulative results of the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), conducted in 1995
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Thursday, April 24th, 2003
“In 1857 a young Chinese man named Chen Pan decides to leave his country and immigrate to Cuba. He’d been promised that the drinking water there “was so rich with minerals that a man had twice his ordinary strength (and could stay erect for days) … that the Cuban women were eager and plentiful … that even the river fish jumped, unbidden, into frying pans.” He was also promised plenty of work. So he boards a ship, and after a three-month voyage that he barely survives, finally arrives at his new home, halfway around the world.”
The Atlantic’s Jessica Murphy interviews Cristina Garcia, the author of Monkey Hunting which, like her previous novels, explores issues of Cuban identity.
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Thursday, April 24th, 2003
ABC News finally caught on to what the literary world has been talking about for weeks: that librarians are almost single-handedly challenging restrictions on the right to read stemming from the PATRIOT act.
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Thursday, April 24th, 2003
Out of the rubble of the Iraq War a major media star emerged: Mohamed Saeed El Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, whose “fans” have created a website, even an action figure.
But that was so five minutes ago…
The newest star is Omar Al-Issawi:

A Lebanese citizen, born in Kuwait, educated in Virginia and Iowa, he worked for the BBC before joining Al-Jazeera. The
New Yorker’s Hampton Sides
profiles him in this week’s
Talk of the Town.
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