February 2005 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28           Jan   Mar ABOUT EA ABOUT ROB   TOPICS WE DISCUSS HERE: HOME RANTS BOOKS NOISE COMIX LINKS AND BUDDIES ARTWORK THE RAVEN INTERLUDE   SALON BLOG RANKINGS BLOG UPDATES EA REFERERS TECHNORATI         < £ Salon Bloggers & > Rate Me on BlogHop.com! help? Is my Blog HOT or NOT? Click here to visit Blogster.Net - Top Blogs! Blogroll Me!	Friday, February 25, 2005 Friday’s Random Bits Still on deadline here, so nothing major.   Earlier this week, a gallery/weird music store whose mailing list I’m on sent me an invitation to a performance by a group called “The Master Musicians of Bukkake.” Truly, the mind boggles (and if you don’t get it, no, I’m not going to explain it).   How many folks here think the good Lord will call Pope John Paul II home on Good Friday? I’ve heard this theory several times in the past few days.   Just finished Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the American Comic Book by Gerard Jones, which I strongly recommend. I will get around to a full post on it as soon as I get a nostril above water. In the meantime, Mark Evanier has a great review on his blog.   Finally, in some Borg-related research I’m doing, I came across the results of a Boston University study released last week, claiming that 50% of the $1.9 trillion that America will spend on health care in 2005 will be lost to waste, excessive prices and fraud. That’s a non-trivial percentage of total GDP – enough money to, say, keep Social Security solvent for 40 more years, or keep American troops in Iraq for another 15 years. And it’s how much the “world’s best medical system” (by who’s measure exactly?) flushes down the toilet in a single year, in part because they can’t move forward together on a standard strategy for computerization.   Have a great weekend! 8:05:50 AM    Emphasize This! [] © Copyright 2005 Rob Salkowitz. Last update: 3/3/2005; 8:58:51 AM. Emphasis Added Theme designed by Andrew Lueck and Rob Salkowitz.	GUILT BY ASSOCIATION Those with the excellent taste to link to Emphasis Added. Orcinus Mark A.R. Kleinman South Knox Bubba Busy Busy Busy Scott Rosenberg Rayne Today Pesky the Rat Dave Pollard Two Glasses Filchyboy FIONA Marijo's Nashvlog Real Art (and politics and culture) Real Live Preacher Fried Green Al-Qaedas Dr. Omed Perils of Caffeine in the Evening Love During Wartime Ojo Caliente Rush Limbaughtomy Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex... Clever Title Goes Here Different Strings Paulapalooza Avuncular Spectator Suburban Guerilla Codex Religion-Related Injuries Little Hippocrat Live from the Nuke Free Zone Modulator Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart No Code Catnmus I Protest Shouting at the Rain Idiot Wind Brent's Polemics Le Pretre Noir Yet Another Damn Blog Dick Jones' Patteran Pages Andrew Bayer Seablogs Bread Crumbs Kitsap Pundit     Gone but not forgotten: The Raven Patriotically Incorrect Barbaric Yawp Wall of Paul   If you would like to be on this honored list, add a link to Emphasis Added in your blogroll and drop me a line.   RELIABLE SOURCES Big Media, Bloglords, Media Watchdogs, news and opinion cites I frequent, comment on and recommend. ADVOCATES Daily Kos Atrios/Eschaton Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo Kevin Drum/Political Animal Matt Yglesias MyDD Left Coaster Hulabaloo (Digby's Blog) Corrente Brad Delong Sadly, No Altercation Steve Gilliard Oliver Willis No More Mr. Nice Blog The Shrill Blog Rude Pundit Dave Sirota Michael Berube The Blogging of the President Max Speak! Liberal Oasis Open Source Politics Crooked Timber   AUTHORITIES: Juan Cole Taegan Goddard Donkey Rising/Ruy Teixera Ernie the Attorney Media Matters Factcheck.org   AGGREGATORS: Tapped The American Street Cursor Arts and Letters Daily New Republic Online BuzzFlash Slate The Gadflyer   INDISPENSABLE: The Daily Howler Paul Krugman Nathan Newman   CONTRARIAN PERSPECTIVES Reasonable conservatives, libertarians, and wingers I like, or stuff I read to find out what the Dark Side is up to. Secular Blasphemy Jacqueline Passey Happy Carpenter Tacitus Reason American Conservative Weekly Standard National Review Online Opinion Journal (WSJ) Red State Christopher Hitchens USS Clueless (Den Beste) The Economist   AVOCATIONS & OBSESSIONS Various amusements in areas that interest me. COMICS-RELATED: Neil Gaiman Peter David Mark Evanier The Beat Grant Morrison Warren Ellis Will Eisner Denis Kitchen Agency Comicartville Ellen Forney San Diego Comic-Con Exhibit A Press Z-CULT FM   BASEBALL: The USS Mariner Baseball Prospectus   MUSIC: Dragnet Records/A-Frames John Wesley Harding Laura Cantrell   FRIENDS & MISC. Scala House Press SuperSonicSoul