Think of words ending in ‘gry’ .

Angry and hungry are two of them.

There are only three words in the English language.

What is the third word?

The word is something that everyone uses every day.

If you have listened carefully,

I have already told you what it is.

I guess whether you think the departing Clinton administration staffers’ actions at the White House were innocent pranks or heinous crimes of vandalism is a litmus test.

The goal of the Degree Confluence Project “is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world,
and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.” Courtesy of last year’s US government removal of restrictions on the accuracy of civilan GPS’s. So far, 432 “successful, official confluences” in 38 countries are posted.

Blogvoices discussion service closes. Here’s the author’s notice:

I have received word that several BlogVoices users have sent
harassing emails to Hostrocket.com. Please stop. I understand your
frustration, but harassment will not solve anything.

UPDATE

A “friendly face” has offered to host BlogVoices. I am currently
discussing the situation with them. Stay tuned.

NOTICE

At 10:53PM on Monday, January 22: I received an email from the
billing department of Hostrocket.com informing me that the
BlogVoices.com account was in violation of the Hostrocket Terms of
Service. Regardless of whether or not I agree with the reasoning, the
decision has been made.

Hostrocket was to be the third and final attempt to host the
BlogVoices service and I do not intend to deviate from my
resolution. BlogVoices.com will be closing indefinitely.

Unfortunately, the short and long-term demands of my job prevent
me from dealing with the situation in a more preferable manner. I
will, however, continue with the planned source code release and will
continue to work on the code-base as time permits. For further
up-to-date information relating to BlogVoices, please check:
http://www.chrish.org regularly. I will set up a permanent location for
downloads and documentation as soon as possible.

I will be saving the entire BlogVoices database and will make every
opportunity to provide each user (as requested) an exported version
of their BlogVoices data. For those who choose to install BlogVoices,
I can provide the data in a manner useful to the mysql
command-line utility.

I wish I could adequately express my feelings in the wake of this
decision, but given the electronic nature of this notice, that is just
not possible. I would like to thank everyone who supported the
service and hope that you will support those who launch their own
Blogger discussion systems.

It’d be nice to know the entire story; it seems to be the latest variant on the “tragedy of the commons”, in which selfish users of a community resource thoughtlessly ruin it for the rest of us. I’ll be removing the “discuss” facility from my template when I get a chance. Anyone out there who knows of an add-in to Blogger similar to Blogvoices — please point me to it. I loved providing discussion capability on the weblog! Please consider the mailing list (see sidebar) I set up several weeks ago.

What’s become of the papers? A friend sent me this:

The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

The Washington Post is read by people who think they ought to run the country.

USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t
understand the Washington Post.

The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country
if they could spare the time.

The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

The New York Daily News is read by people whho are not sure who is
running the country.

The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the
country as long as they do something scandalous.

The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren”t sure there is
a country or that anyone is running it.

The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country.

Trial Heat:
The American Prospect asks seven pundits — Wendy Kaminer, David L. Kirp, Michael Nelson, Peter Schrag, Cass Sunstein, Jon Margolis,
Russ Baker, Rick Perlstein, and Hans Riemer — who they’d like to see challenge George Bush in
2004. And a readers’ poll.

Francis Fukuyama gets his digs in about the Clinton legacy. Under the guise of profound social analysis, the piece is just an excuse to remind the reader about the ‘bobo’ (‘bomemian bourgeoisie’) concept, and then conclude: ‘(T)he Clintons were quintessential “bobos”: crudely materialistic, self-absorbed, and
power-hungry, but at the same time unable to admit any of this to themselves because they believed
their intelligence, education and sophistication entitled them to a higher level of respect. Like others in
his generation, the man presiding over America’s most recent decade of greed could look himself in the
mirror and pronounce himself satisfied with what he saw.’ Wall Street Journal

“It would have been `Wow,’ but the W was removed, so now it’s just `o.’ ” New White House Staff Faces a Few Mysteries, e.g. how can George W. ascend to the throne when the White House keyboards are all suddenly bereft of their W’s, and other pranks of the departing Clinton staff. One former Clinton aide commented on the pranks, “It was nothing serious. Nothing
like stealing an election.”

There are also suggestions that a few of the new denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have not yet figured the place out.

“Anybody got any burgers in there?” Mr. Bush said at one point today, suddenly and unexpectedly sticking his head into a briefing room where reporters were idling away the time. They were too stunned to answer, and not in possession of ground beef.

New York Times

Planet Suffers Big Hack Attack. ‘A group calling itself Pentaguard simultaneously cracked
government websites in the United States, England and
Australia

The group replaced the home pages of the sites over the
weekend with a statement reading “The largest .gov & .mil
mass defacement in the history of mankind.” It caused the
temporary disruption of at least two dozen sites….In the United States, the Republican Caucus for the California
Legislature was hit while the state is facing rolling blackouts. The
Alaskan Office of the Department of Interior was targeted because
Secretary of the Interior-designate Gale Norton favors drilling for oil in
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.’ Wired