BuzzWhack: The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary. “dedicated to demystifying buzzwords.” One of the features on this site I particularly enjoy is the Whack of the Week, in which they highlight a press release or web site that’s incomprehensible. Here‘s one:

PictureTel Corporation is focused on reinventing the rules for intuitive, content-rich remote communication, including the

launch of evolutionary PC-based integrated collaboration systems. We are harnessing the power of the broadband

revolution to deliver a range of IP-based, interactive communication solutions and will continue to accelerate solution

development and innovation to enable new models for communication and productivity.

(buzz.whack.er: n. A person who receives some degree of pleasure in bursting the bubbles of the pompous.)

What did Aum Shinrikyo have in mind? Excerpt from Ian Hacking’s thoughtful essay in a recent London Review of Books about Underground, Haruki Murakami’s new book on the sect’s 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo Underground. Thinking about this “terrorist act” is fascinating and important, and thinking about Murakami writing about it is a concept in itself!

Battle Plans: a friend of mine sent me this — a call to action from J.J.Johnson, a spokesperson for the radical right, who feels he’s watching a coup d’etat by Clinton forces determined to steal the election from its rightful winner and stay in power unjustly. He lays out the plans for “freedom fighters” to oppose it. Scary stuff; read on and wonder, with me, how many people will feel similarly, and how many will listen to them. My friend said: ” If Gore wins

through a recount, the militia movement will grow radically, but mostly

they will gripe. If Gore wins through a court decision, then God help us

all – these guys will make McVeigh’s hit look like a practice run.”

The Sage of Fortune Cookies. “A quest to discover why the ubiquitous little messages so rarely predict the future anymore leads through a

byzantine world of secrecy and suspicion to an unlikely oracle.” LATimes (requires free registration)

13 Myths About the Results of the 2000 Election “Propaganda is flying left and right.

To combat this barrage, we present a point by point analysis of

some key myths in the media today, substantiated with footnotes.

Please read, copy, and forward to friends, relatives and colleagues!” Red Rock Eater Digest

Who Should Concede? “Politicians and pundits are eager for Vice President Gore to quickly

concede the presidential election to Gov. Bush and bring closure to

Election 2000.

A key argument is that Republican candidates who came close in the past —

especially Richard Nixon in 1960 and Gerald Ford in 1976 — gracefully

accepted defeat for the “good of the country” and Gore, a Democrat, now

should do the same.

Though this argument is gaining momentum, it is based on bogus history.

The real history is that Republicans since Nixon have played extraordinary

hardball and have only conceded when they were faced with clear defeat in

the popular vote. Ford was behind by 1.7 million ballots in 1976.

Indeed, it has been the Democrats who have routinely turned the other

cheek and kept quiet when they discovered evidence of GOP dirty tricks

aimed at rigging the outcome of presidential elections. These cases go

back to Nixon’s runs in 1960 and 1968 and are as recent as the 1992

match-up between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.” Consortiumnews