etc.

This day, being election day, I bid you go over to the CBC Radio Web site and listen to Naomi Klein deliver a lecture called “War and Fleece: How Economic ‘Shock Therapy’ Backfired in Iraq.” I listened to it broadcast on Ideas last night as I drove home from work, and it is, indeed, a fine piece of journalistic exposition.

If you can’t get the file to work (as I could not), perhaps you should read the Harper’s article Klein wrote in September 2004, called “Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neo-con utopia”, which touches on much of the same?

And, is it just me, or is this CNN pulse-of-the-blogosphere entirely vacuous?

You might remember that a few days ago, I sought refuge from comment-spammers in the safe and comfortable arms of WordPress’ comment moderation function. While all looked well enough on the surface, the admin end of this site ground to a halt with hundreds of spam waiting to be deleted, each one, one at a time. Ho-hum. After 338 spams in 48 hours, I made the boldfaced decision to no longer meekly seek refuge, but, instead, to declare all-out war on the slithy likes of free-online-poker and his nefarious cohorts. I’ve installed an Auto Shut-off plugin that will “mature” a post at 21 days, at which point, comments will no longer be accepted for that post.

This will help me. I hope it will not inconvenience you.

More gifty goodness from my uber-secret pal, Nancy. 10 skeins of EcoKnit organic cotton, in sage green (you already know how much I love this stuff), Zen and the Art of Knitting, halloween chocolate, chibi darning needles, and a quirky little zip clip that will make an excellent stitch marker. Sebastian, the cat, was particularly interested in the yarn and swiftly made off with one of the skeins dangling from mouth right after this picture was taken. Thank you, Nancy!