(Editorial) License to Ill

June 26, 2003

Chided by the New York Times’ nostra culpa in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, The Gay Blade has decided to make a clean breast of recent journalistic lapses in the virtual pages of MacEdition.

Justified or not, some readers have noted certain passages in the Blade’s recent work that could be interpreted as somehow hostile toward the Bush administration; as a firm believer in the Fourth Estate’s responsibilities to represent all sides of the political spectrum with fairness and respect, this utensil believes that only by a full accounting of his own missteps can he hope to win back these readers’ understandably shaken confidence.

1. In a recent column, the Blade mistakenly referred to the Commander-in-Chief as a “space chimp.” The Fox News-approved terminology is “war hero.”
2. In the same column, the Blade cited the administration’s “fast-suppurating foreign policy.” The word he was seeking, of course, was “superb.” (Curse these new-fangled spellcheckers!)
3. His assertion that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld enjoys crushing baby chicks with red patent-leather boots was wildly inaccurate. Secretary Rumsfeld has often stated his preference for sensible oxblood loafers.
4. There is no documentary evidence that Vice President Richard Cheney ever invited visiting Eagle Scouts to rub lotion either on his stomach or an “undisclosed location.”
5. Outgoing Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is not growing a beard. He is, however, contemplating a luxuriant set of handlebar moustaches.

The Blade apologizes profusely for any Sturm und Drang these misstatements may have caused; he now returns you to your regularly scheduled state of emergency!

Fuel for love

The Blade isn’t the only Mac player throwing fuel on the fire these days, at least according to certain highly placed officials in the Rubinstein administration who maintain that Apple is in hot pursuit of fuel-cell technology for a veritable tsunami of future PowerBooks.

According to the Blade’s beady-eyed moles, Apple is as aware as the next hardware manufacturer of the potential of fuel cells as a superior source of portable power to the charge-constrained batteries weighing down today’s laptops. They report that Apple has been feverishly seeking out fuel-cell companies that might accept their investment dollars – and afford it a competitive advantage in this up-and-coming market.

Apple hardly has the field to itself. Most notably, Intel has been approaching most of the same players – with the caveat that it won’t invest in any fuel-cell company that also deals with Apple. By contrast, IBM is reportedly more than happy to play nicely with La Pomme; besides looking to power its own Intel-based ThinkPads with fuel cells, Big Blue will gladly see the technology put at the service of future Apple laptops – especially if they’re to be based on IBM’s PowerPC 970 (a k a G5) processor.

So serious is Apple about the potential of fuel-cell technology, sources report, that the company is willing to adapt its next-generation PowerBooks to accommodate a fuel cell instead of insisting that the winning supplier provide a fuel cell that fits into the battery compartment of current PowerBook designs.

Quark of Fate

Its long siege against the federalizing forces of Mac OS X may be at an end, but Quark Inc.’s mountain redoubt continues to shrivel faster than Jenna Bush’s liver.

Indeed, the Blade’s BATF agents report, the messianic arrival of the long-awaited QuarkXPress 6 has precipitated a new round of casualties at the company, which has already exported the bulk of its development and support resources to India. Now that the company’s flagship DTP application has finally caught up with the 21st Century, Quark has demonstrated its appreciation to its beleaguered staff with a little surprise: six weeks notice for its entire QA and R&D staffs.

Shazam! Considering the company’s apparent commitment to future development, the Blade anticipates big, big things from XPress 6.5!

Quark may be looking for a quiet place to lie down, but the Blade never sleeps. Drop a Mac tip to the NMR Report, and a commemorative mole rat could be yours!

 

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