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Tech columnist Steve Gillmor was never known for his clarity of phrase, but this metaphor is just too mixed for one man to parse. Can anyone explain the image Steve builds here as he describes controversial columnist Nick Carr?

Nick's genius...is to keep the bile churning in the throat by timing the release of the next dart at the moment the previous one begins its trip out of orbit into the Pacific Ocean near some irradiated atoll which proves too expensive to send a mopup crew to debunk.

What exactly is the mopup crew mopping here? Is it the bile? The...dart? The irradiated dart...in the...islands? Is there a Valleyspeak Rosetta Stone somewhere?

Back in the USSR [Gillmor on ZDNet]