Fame Is Money Indeed.

Remember the song? “Fame, I’m gonna live forever, Baby remember my name…”

When I just went through the advertisement Salon.com requires my to read their articles, I was shocked looking at the top right corner of the sponsor’s website, a new Fox tv reality show, for I suddenly remembered a face, and a name.

The show is hosted by a woman whose fame is based on little more than 15 minutes of worldwide limelight as supporting act in another reality tv-show. One that took place in Washington, DC, back in the summer of 1998.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Monica Lewinsky, the woman who once delighted the world and a former US president with her oral skills is now using her mouth again. And this time, everyone is invited to have a look.

Just see for yourself.

Allgemein

Kalashnikov with built-in MP3 player.

Kalashnikov with built-in MP3 player. Ever wondered about *the one* occasion blast your brain by listening really loudly to ACDC’s \”Highway To Hell\”? Well, if this is not just a bad joke, you might have found the answer – \”AK-MP3 player built into the body of the ammunition magazine of Kalashnikov automatic rifle. Player could be used on its own or it could be attached to the Kalashnikov machinegun instead of the ordinary magazine. Stainless steel body makes this new player uniquely suitable for outdoors.\”

compulsory reading, media, US Politics

Paul Krugman Agrees With Me

that increased scrutiny of media control issues is one of the major policy lessons of the Iraq war [see my recent post]. In addition, his current NYTimes column, “The China Syndrome“, adds an interesting analysis of corporate regulative bargaining with governments. Whatever your opinion regarding the “biased BBC” – or for that matter, biased German tv – discussion, there is only one possible stand concerning the biased “Fox News” debate. And that alone is quite telling in my book.

The issue is of utmost general importance, but today’s Krugman column has been triggered by yesterday’s presentation by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission of a US bill to relax regulations on media ownership –

“… that will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people…”.

So if Krugman is indeed right in his assessment that

“[w]e don’t have censorship in [the USA]; it’s still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.”

Well, if Krugman is right here, and if it weren’t for the Internet, I guess Gleichschaltung could become a concept more and more people might not just identify with partisan news reporting in the Third Reich.

Seems like the “Land Of The Free” could need some more brave publicists these days when even a Larry Flynt is wasting his time chasing an obscure skin-flick allegedly featuring Barbara Bush (the daughter – not the mother…).

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Numbers you might need. Interesting

Numbers you might need. Interesting facts about the world we live in at the International Networks Archive. If you want to know how many countries contribute to a cup of Starbucks Grande Latte go and check out their map of the month. Thanks to Randgaenge for the link.

Iraq, oddly enough

Being Indexed.

So my post about the most disgusting porn spam ever has apparently been indexed by the search engines. How do I know? Well, when I just looked at my access statistics I was surprised to see a significant blip. So I checked for referring sites and realised that pretty much all the additional visitors came here to look for, well, “Iraqi whores”.

Of course, I don’t know why they are doing this. However, while I am holding up the individual “in dubio pro reo”, I assume a certain, not too small percentage of these people was actually looking for pictures or moving images of war crimes, whether real or not. I have to say I am not too unhappy to disappoint them.

But to those of my additional visitors with a different motive for their reseach effort and the ability to read German, I recommend the Swiss blog “Mono-Log” for some rather interesting insights into the role of temple prostitution in ancient Babylon and the biblical “whore Babylon” [in German].

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The Best Of The Best.

The Best Of The Best. Only in California, Nevada, and Arizona. Gentry Lane today reminds me of \”the most delicious, sloppy, yum-o-riffic fast food in the universe\” I ever had. It was in an Orange County Shopping Mall, and it was, of course, an \”in-N-out\”-Burger. I laughed when my native friend told me that even the Belgian \”Quick\”-chain’s burgers would pale in comparison – but what did I know… Seriously, if you like burgers and you don’t mind waiting a few hours to get a good one, \”in-N-out\” might well be worth a flight to California ;-).

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Robbespierre Day?Is it the official

Robbespierre Day?Is it the official Robbespierre remembrance day already? What’s up with people sawing off heads? First, Gentry Lane sent me this link about a German who severed off his sister-in-law’s head and then carried \”the head in one hand and a blood-stained knife in the other, [while] walking through the streets of Uebach-Palenberg, a small town near Aachen.\” (from
Reuters. Then I find this article about a guy in South Africa who \”sawed his head off in full view of staff and customers at a supermarket in Richards Bay, northern KwaZulu-Natal … [he] walked into the butchery section of Shoprite branch, switched on an electric meat saw, positioned his neck near the blade and sawed off his head.\”. (from iol) So please remember – when unhappy, stay out of supermarkets!

almost a diary, Sport

Still Alive.

Thanks for all your nice wishes! Well, so I did run. And I am still alive – well, I never actually questioned that ;-). Although some people did drop out and had to get treated by paramedics, which is not the most pleasant thing to see while running.

However, things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped for, which is why I had to call it a day after a half-marathon – and therefore did not get anywhere near a runner’s-high today… actually, it was more like a runner’s-low for two major reasons:

Firstly, after about two kilometers into the course, I suddenly felt sick for no apparent reason and had to force myself to empty my stomach in a movable loo. I already thought about giving up, but strangely enough, my stomach apparently had second thoughts and behaved like a good boy afterwards.

Secondly, when I was in Paris at the end of March, I apparently enjoyed running au bord de la Seine a little too much, for as a result I developed a
bone-skin infection in my left shin in recent weeks. This, in turn, significantly reduced the amount of training I had envisaged. But I thought it would be best to be really careful, given a previous knee-injury and the fact that I had been running a lot all throughout the winter and was thus not too concerned about my overall condition, even though I was sure to be slower than I had hoped I could be. So the big question was, would the shin hurt too much to go all the way?

Unfortunately, it did. So hopefully, I’ll be able to answer the runner’s high question after the Frankfurt Marathon in October…

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Don’t Mess With Texas. The

Don’t Mess With Texas. The real reasons for the recent war with Iraq will eventually be uncovered! Is that what the MIT’s Michael Schrage is telling his readers in the Washington Post today? Or is he trying to prove the point David Furm inadvertendly made in his Bush biography – that this war was an example of retrograde planning? You know the result, now find a way to get there, \”drum up some, any rationale\”, – as Jeffrey A. Tucker once wrote? Today Schrage writes – \”… even if Iraq proves utterly free of WMD – or if it merely possesses a paltry two or three bio-weapons vans – the coalition’s military action was the most rational response to Saddam’s long-term policy of strategic deception. Saddam Hussein bet that he could get away with playing a \”does he or doesn’t he?\” shell game with a skeptical superpower. He bet wrong.\” Did you read that? A \”sceptical\” superpower! Lovely. Entertainment is just what I need for the marathon! From theWashington Post.

almost a diary, oddly enough, Sport, USA

Gutenberg-Marathon Me.

In a few hours, I’ll be on the run.

If I’m still alive afterwards, I’ll let you know ;-)

By the way, reader AL had an interesting comment regarding the unintended consequences of the Wal*Mart-Taleban story below:

“Part of this has to do with when Wal-Mart got big enough to move into a rural area and put all of the local small businesses out. In some western states, local businesses went with all nude female sales staffs to stay in business. Wal-Mart was blamed for destroying the local economy and the morals of the areas they opened up in.”