Flit

I'M SEEING HER EVERYWHERE THESE

I'M SEEING HER EVERYWHERE THESE DAYS

I must have someone who looks like Emily Watson on my mind. Her third movie of 2002, despite Penny Arcade's raving about it, isn't due to be released in Canada until April for some inexplicable reason (it opened in the States last weekend). But I still haven't seen Punch-Drunk Love or Red Dragon yet, so I still had some catching up to do, anyway. What I really need to do is see Breaking the Waves or Hilary and Jackie on video again, I think. Fortunately, to my addled mind Miranda Otto's beginning to look a bit like the object of my obsession as she gets older, too, so I hope I shall be able to watch The Two Towers without regret...

YEP, I'VE WONDERED ABOUT THIS

YEP, I'VE WONDERED ABOUT THIS TOO

Since, about, oh, the age of 12 playing D&D, to be precise.

THIS IS GETTING INTERESTING A

THIS IS GETTING INTERESTING

A very interesting thing is happening at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A single blogger is raising a fair bit of attention about her college's seeming indifference to a string of sexual assaults against Asian women on campus by an armed man. The chancellor and the chief of police have acknowledged enough that we can be confident the blogger in question is not making stuff up out of whole cloth, and that we could be looking at dozens of violent crimes in a close-knit community.

Since I spend a fair bit of time helping universities and other large institutions communicate online, I'd have to say we have the makings of a good test case that will tell us a lot about how seriously institutional PR needs to take blogs, as opposed to the campus, staff and local newspapers we focus on. Two questions:

1) How long before the University of Illinois PR website says anything of value?

2) How long before the student newspaper, the Daily Illini, says anything on the subject?

It should be noted the local paper is on the case already. If you're around the U of I... please stay safe.

WELL FOLKS, THAT'S YEAR ONE

WELL FOLKS, THAT'S YEAR ONE HERE AT FLIT

Cheers to all who've dropped by to say hi in the last 12 months. Here's my list of hopes for year two:

*Bill Sampson will be freed;
*The Canadian government will fund the military properly, and implement its eminently sensible plans for Land Force Reserve Restructure;
*The army will give me a better paying, more challenging job;
*Our two American pilot friends will be on trial;
*Our friends Mr. Hussein and Mr. Arafat will be enjoying a peacable exile somewhere where they can't make any more trouble;
*Hamid Karzai is still alive.

There are other things I'd like to see, or get a chance to do again, too, but those people close enough to my heart to know what they are, well, they already do, don't they? For everybody else (including the endearingly macho Mr. Steyn... what can I say, beards must do it for me)... I'll just hope I get to know you better over the next 12 months. Don't be strangers...

THE MASK OF SAURON LIFTS

THE MASK OF SAURON LIFTS

That shows you where I've done wrong," he said. "I mean, obviously I had a blind spot. I was insensitive in the words I chose.

--Trent Lott, the Globe and Mail.

Submitted for your perusal: that no person who honestly believed in the equality of American blacks could say that sentence. A blind spot? Jeez. Even his apology was a racist's apology.

This guy can't be an aberration: he rose to the position of Senate Majority Leader through the tacit consent of his Republican colleagues. Make no mistake: they knew, too. (Mind you, Will Saletan has an opposing explanation that I could also find convincing.)

PS: The answer to Josh Marshall's challenging teaser today is, of course, Attorney General John Ashcroft. Meanwhile, Senator Lott, showing his impeccable judgment, has replaced a pioneering African-American U.S. army general with a low-level white staffer from his own office. The job? Senior security officer for the Senate, says TNR.