Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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This makes no sense; none whatsoever. Police in Portsmouth, New Hampshire are offering... ahem... voluntary enrollment of pizza delivery drivers into their "Booze Bounty" program to bust owners or occupants of homes, hotel rooms, whatever, where underage drinking is occuring. Drivers who rat can get $50 and rumors will quickly get out as to whose pizzas NOT to order. And which drivers NOT to tip.
But this is the kicker: Sgt. Mike Schwartz, who is in charge of the Juvenile Division of the Portsmouth Police Department said teens as young as 17 who throw a party could be tried as adults.
OK, you're a kid, but we'll treat you as an adult because we want to punish you hard for doing adults-only things while you're only a kid. Holy crap, this stupidity is mind-boggling.
The Washingtonienne's #1 fan led me to the funniest, most savage demolition of a self-righteous right-winger you will read all week.
Our true purpose revealed.
Dance, feeble carbon units. Dance for your new robot overlords!
(via Pale Blue Dot)
Via Jesus' General, comes the story of one Missouri legislator's final solution to the Goth problem.
Almost half of a $273,000 grant awarded in 2002 to fight the Goth culture in Blue Springs has been returned because of a lack of interest — and the absence of a real problem. Blue Springs received the grant two years ago from the Youth Outreach Unit, money the city and U.S. Rep. Sam Graves trumpeted proudly as a way to fight a perceived Goth problem. But $132,000 of the grant was returned because officials never found much of a problem with the Goth culture, which some students called a fad that most people eventually outgrow. Slightly more than $118,000 of the money was earmarked for therapy, assessment and case management, and the plans also included a series of town meetings to discuss the issue.
The estimated growth in US GDP has been revised upward to an annual rate of 4.4% based on 1Q 2004 data released by the Commerce Department. The annual GDP now tallies in at $10.7 Trillion. 4.4% of $10.7T is roughly $471B. I'm no economist, but let's look at a few numbers here. If you see an error or something I've missed, you're wrong please inform me, include your home address, and notify your next of kin.
Health care costs are 15% of GDP and have been rising at about 15% per year, although some predictions say the 2004 increase will slow to 10%. Taking the optimistic number, that $150B is a 1.4% increase in GDP, or close to a third of the GDP growth.
Occupation Iraqi Freedom comes in conservatively at about $100B - public dollars spent. That's a .9% increase of GDP or just over one fifth of the increased US economic performance.
Almost half of the increase is already accounted for.
Americans buy over 8 million barrels of oil per day. A barrell is 42 gallons. That's 336 million gallons per day or 122 billion per year. Motor vehicles use about 43% of that, or 53 billion gallons. If gas prices are up 50 cents per gallon, that's another $26B - just from the pump - that will be included in the GDP, but isn't really what I would call helpful to our economic picture. Personally, I think we ought to be purchasing less gasoline, casting concerns about conservation's impact on GDP aside.
Using GDP as a measure of economic performance is akin to using weight as a measure of a person's health. Or perhaps, more accurately, as a measure of a person's strength.
These calculations are greatly oversimplified, I admit; but reading this article in Waste News this morning quoting Bob Slaughter of National Petrochemical and Refiners Association as saying 'Federal policymakers have often neglected the impact of environmental regulations on fuel supply' in written testimony. "This attitude must end," he said. "A healthy and growing U.S. economy requires a steady, secure, and predictable supply of petroleum products" got me thinking about broader questions of measuring economic health vs economic growth. Those environmental regulations require installation of scrubbers, extensive environmental monitoring, vital ecological safeguards; this is exactly the kind of stuff we need, largely because businesses fill the niches created by the regulations. Someone needs to design, build and install those scrubbers, study and develop those monitoring strategies, engineer those environmental safeguards.
It seems pretty hypocritical to complain that these transactions that actually do improve our economy are "expenses" while touting growth - including the examples above - as if they were somehow magically "income."
Shorter John Ashcroft: A vote for John Kerry is a vote for Osama bin Laden.
Is there anybody in the Bush administration who more richly deserves kidney stones the size of tennis balls than John Ashcroft? Well, there's Karen "pro-choicers are terrorists" Hughes. Oh, and Richard "investigative journalists are terrorists" Perle.
I tell you, once I get my voodoo powers fine-tuned, the lithotripsy machines are going to be running 24/7.
Update (12:25 pm): Okay, so he's just an honorary member of the administration (despite holding one of several inexplicable seats on the Advisory Board of the African American Republican Leadership Council), but Sean Hannity informs us that MoveOn = the Klan.
"It seems to me it is quite possible that there would be greater convergence'' between the United States and some European nations, Kyl said, "not because he could persuade them to an American view, but because he would be persuaded to their point of view."
Notice he's still stuck in that "My way or the highway" mentality, oblivious to (or in denial about; your call) the awareness that's finally starting to seep into the general consciousness about Iraq that perhaps rushing forward almost unilaterally with no plan other than for toppling the regime wasn't such a great idea after all. Can the international successes of the US and its European allies traditionally be characterized as the result of making European governments adopt the "American" way of thinking? No.
This is silly. For starters, it's a false dichotomy. And, on a more subjective level, relationships between governments (especially democratic ones with active opposition voices) would be dysfunctional if a common point of view were achieved by way of complete conversion of one side. Not to mention that it ain't.. gonna.. happen. European governments see the mistakes the Bush administration made - perhaps with a little more clarity and honesty than Senator Kyl - and if they wouldn't get on board when the US was politically strong on the international stage, they sure as hell won't now when it's standing in the ruins of Bush's recklessness AND their unheeded cautions prove dead on the money.
So if Senator Kyl wants the "everybody has to do it the American way and a US President shouldn't talk to allied foreign leaders unless they adopt his preconceived opinions and agenda" vote to go for Bush this November, fine. I think that group - formerly known as the "my Country, right or wrong" crowd - will be voting Republican this year anyway.
This isn't patriotism; it's xenophobia.
Geoffrey Pullum, a UC-Santa Cruz professor of linguistics who writes books like this one (which I covet badly) is proposing standard units and abbreviations for search engine hits. As you might expect from the co-author of an 1860-page book on grammar, the process is very, um, specific.
(tip: locus solus)
America has long ruled the roost as the home of the world's silliest office-holding right wingers. As with so much else, though, the rest of the world is catching up quickly. In fact, Great Britain may have just pulled right up beside us. Try to follow the logic here:
Tebbit, the former chair of the Tory party and its current Whip in the Lords, was debating the growing problem of obesity with a member of the governing Labor party on a British radio program. He suggested Labor's "promotion of buggery" was "intimately connected" to the increasing number of overweight people.
"Families now so seldom eat together. They don't prepare meals properly. Wives are pressurized into thinking they ought to go out to work instead of looking after their children. And it is the breakdown of family that is at the root of it." The government, he charged, was doing nothing about this but it was busy promoting gay marriage.
"We not only have an epidemic of obesity, we have a huge problem of AIDS and the Government's attitude is to do all it can to promote buggery."
Hmm. I never made the obesity-buttsex connection before, but now that you mention it, well, it still doesn't make any sense. Lord Tebbit wouldn't comment for this web post, as he was too busy sewing his non sequitur merit badge on his scout uniform. He's a ringer, no doubt, but despite the new high quality of British wingnuttery, we Yanks still have a probably insurmountable lead based on quantity.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq has had direct costs to US taxpayers ranging in estimate from $100B to $125B in the first year plus a little bit. Some estimates are higher. Extraneous and stateside costs are much, much more.
During the entire seven years of the UN oil-for-food program, the corruption within which is such a red herring shock to war apologists - even the ones still defending Ahmed Chalabi - it generated only $46B.
"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal. "These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Inhofe is widely and justifiably considered one of the dimmest bulbs in the Senate. Unfortunately, he is also representative of a significant number of Americans in his attitude toward abusing prisoners. As to his statement above:
But civilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, now say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock that became the setting for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said. [...] In general, said a senior Army officer who served in Iraq, many of the prisoners held in the isolation wing at Abu Ghraib were kept there long beyond any period of usefulness because "no one wanted to be responsible for releasing the next Osama bin Laden."
Far be it from me to tar the citizens of any state based upon their elected representatives, since Jesse Helms was my senator for almost my entire life. But for crying out loud, Oklahoma, can't you do something about this guy?
What I don't remember is that time when criticizing Bill Clinton personally was equated with disloyalty to country. I don't remember that at all, and I think I would, being as that sort of criticism of Clinton was not exactly in short supply. I do remember Bill Clinton being called a traitor, maybe once or twice, or maybe for 8 years and then beyond without a single moment's respite, but I don't remember much going the other way. Memory's a funny thing, so maybe Google can prove me wrong here, but that's how I remember it. And while Tom DeLay may be "within his rights" to use his influence to denounce his political opponents as traitors, I believe there might be other useful standards one could use to assess such conduct. The phrase "blackest, rankest douchebaggery" seems apropos.
On the other hand, if you want to pray for God to protect Tom DeLay from "the deadly poison of his enemies," prayeralert.org has one all prepared for you. Just remember to pray for safety from sodomite anarchy, too.
Or, you know, for some sodomite anarchy to be inflicted on DeLay.
We've all seen the Abu Ghraib pictures by now (the ones that have been released, anyhow), including this one:
But somehow, one detail of this photo escaped my attention. Look at the military intelligence officer labelled as #4. Is it just me, or is that a big, burly guy in a black skirt, pink sweater, and heels? And if so, has everybody else already noticed this?
Update (4:45 pm): As long as we are on the subject, President Bush has nominated William Haynes for a (lifetime) seat on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers SC, NC, VA, WV, and MD. As General Counsel to the Department of Defense, Haynes' fingerprints are all over the widening prison abuse scandal and the attempted cover-up. People for the American Way has a page with links to said fingerprints and a petition opposing the nomination. While I agree with PFAW that Haynes is a terrible choice, I have serious doubts about the efficacy of online petitions, so I'd recommend writing your senators directly.
Lawyers who work specifically to undermine the Geneva Conventions have no business on any American bench.
Read Al Gore's speech posted today at MoveOn's website. I mean it: read it. And then bookmark it for easy reference the next time some Republican has the gall to put the words "moral clarity" and "Bush" in the same sentence. The tragedy of the 2000 election looks more tragic with each passing day.
Extra credit: try to imagine Bush delivering a speech anywhere near this cogent or eloquent.
I suppose there's no denying that this blog has arrived now that we have gotten a link from Danish nudists. A mini-flood of traffic has been directed this way from the search engines over the past few days, with the two most common search strings being variants of "Nick Berg beheading video" and "nude students rollercoaster."
Death and titties. Gets 'em every time.
CNN:Spanky the clown arrested on porn charges
The case is being prosecuted here in North Carolina, by the way.
Al Jazeera has a poll asking "Why has the US fallen out with Ahmad Chalabi?" It's obviously unscientific as can be, but interesting enough to pass along.
He misled them before the Iraq invasion : 24%
They do not need him any more : 48%
His alleged relationship with Iran : 16%
Unsure : 11%
Almost half with that cynical an attitude speaks volumes about the perception of US aims. There are just shy of 22,000 responses so far.
I might actually pay money to see this.
The Queen is an Abba fan - and even has a collection of records by the Swedish group. According to a Palace insider, her Majesty occasionally likes to dance to their music. "She moves to the music," the source told The Sun.
Her Majesty can dance, Her Majesty can jive, having the time of Her life.
The canine genome, mapped in the last few years, holds a lot of promise for improving human health. And that remains the primary focus for the parties conducting the most high profile subsequent research. The genes have been studied in enough detail to discover the predictable, if not obvious: One, yes, specific breeds are similar enough to imply a long history of inbreeding - with the associated prevalence of health problems long known to breeders; and two, clusters of breeds with similar physical characteristics and similar talents are plainly evident.
But this study sheds light on the evolutionary dance we've been having with the dog. There are two main branches of the dog lineage. One, more anciently divergent from (and genetically similar to) wolves, includes Huskies, Malamute, Chow and Basenji. This branch emerged from Asian wolf stock and these creatures would have been very familiar with those bipedial primates spreading across the old world from Africa who were apparently having a lot of success procuring everything they needed. They are well spread across the old world implying there was a thorough "first wave" of successful colonization of human civilization by these creatures after figuring out the trick of symbiosis with us.
The other branch diverged from this group and it contains three clusters, Herders (sheepdogs, collies), Hunters (hounds, retrievers, terriers), and "Mastiff-like" breeds (bulldogs, boxers). Purebreeding began in the 18th Century, at the earliest. The evidence is that these three clusters had separated themselves somewhat well before that, but in the short time we've been hyperspecializing the breeds, the DNA signature now clearly shows from which breed a sample comes.
Other findings: Dogs came with people across the bering straits; no new world wolves were 'domesticated.' The Chihuahua makes no sense and is not clustered with any other dog. And the Norwegian Elkhound, which looks very much like a wolf, is apparently a modern breed that has been selected over time to share many physical characteristics of wolves; "closing the loop" so-to-speak.
Fascinating stuff, but quite honestly... Mutts are the best
Last July, I wrote:
Granted, Chalabi can be convincing. He did, after all, manage to successfully embezzle millions fom the bank he once owned in Jordan, slipping away to London just as the Jordanians caught on. If he ever sets foot in Jordan again, he'll begin serving the 32-year prison sentence they handed down in absentia. And he did manage to get Dick Cheney to restart the federal dollars flowing to his Iraqi National Congress after the State Department discovered that 2 of the 4 million they'd already received had vanished into thin air.
But given that track record, and the wealth of inside info the president has at his fingertips, if Bush hadn't wised up to Chalabi by then, I might just feel safer knowing Dubya was simply insane, because otherwise he's the biggest, easiest mark in world politics today.
Chalabi, of course, was Rumsfeld and Cheney's man, the one who gave them so much intelligence that turned out to be just flatly wrong. The one to whom we have paid $40 million over the past four years. The one standing behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. The one who was going to run Iraq for them. Well, looky here.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.
The Information Collection Program also "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing" by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years. An administration official confirmed that "highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel."
It is amateur hour in our foreign policy ranks right now. This is just embarrassing. Oh, and Denny Hastert, you owe Nancy Pelosi an apology.
82 university students set the record today for the most people riding a rollercoaster in the nude. Braving chilly weather, the students took their spin on the Nemesis Inferno rollercoaster at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England. The ride occured before park hours, so as to spare impressionable young children the trauma of seeing naked college students. Also for their sakes, let's hope the cleaning crew was a little extra meticulous before the gates opened.
This story seems to be getting wide play, but any pictures of it are generally from a sufficient distance that it's pretty hard to tell anybody is missing clothes. Who is going to be brave enough to show you a few blurry nipples? The Washington Times won't. ITV won't. The Independent Online won't. MSNBC definitely won't. But apostropher will, baby, apostropher will.
You know the little sponsored ads that show up on the right side of the page when you do a google search? They usually have some relation to items in your search string, which only makes sense. So why is it that when I search for "press releases" and "media contacts", I get one media contact database, one press release guide, and four meet-up sites for swingers? Is there some seamy underside to the world of corporate communications that I have been missing out on all these many years?
Operation successful. Unauthorized access thwarted. Subject trapped.
The USAF has successfully deployed a two-way radio garage door jamming system at its Eglin Air Force base in Florida, according to the state's news-journalonline. The $5.5m Motorola system is apparently keeping garage doors firmly shut in the surrounding Niceville, Valparaiso and Crestview communities. Although technicians have said they will try and address the issue by running the system at "slightly different frequencies from those used by garage door openers to try to eliminate or reduce the interference when another test is conducted Friday through Monday", the Air Force is unrepentant and insists it is in compliance with its licence.
So we just need to wait until Osama gets back from a day at the office.
To say something a little more sinister?
A German inventor who developed a gadget that berates men if they try to use the toilet standing up, has sold more than 1.6 million devices, his business manager says.
German women fed up with a man with a poor aim can turn to the ghost-shaped gadget which lurks under the toilet rim, and if the seat is lifted, declares in a stern female tone: "Hello, what are you up to then? Put the seat back down right away, you are definitely not to pee standing up... you will make a right mess".
Or just glue the seat down and keep your money.
This has got to violate some sort of international convention somewhere.
Rap legend Ice-T is risking his massive reputation on his latest recruit - middle-aged former beach bum David Hasselhoff. The original gangsta believes he can turn the ex-Baywatch star into hip hop's next big thing. Ice and Hasselhoff, 51, are neighbours in Los Angeles and have struck up a close friendship.
The rapper - real name Tracey Morrow - told The Sun: "The man is a legend, we are going to show a whole new side of him. He's gonna come out as Hassle the Hoff. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills and humour."
The Hoff meister is no stranger to the music industry having conquered Germany through his soft rock skills. And he notched up a no 35 hit in the UK with If I Could Only Say Goodbye in 1993.
God help us all.
I tried, but some stories are just beyond parody.
"Rick," a 20-year-old Krispy Kreme employee from Washington, says he has a serious problem: He masturbates.
He recently befriended several other Christian men who share his belief that masturbation is sinful, and together they've pledged not to "defile themselves" for 40 days -- the same amount of time the Bible says Satan tempted Jesus in the desert. They encourage each other to remain steadfast by e-mail and instant messages*.
"I'm only a few days into it, but I'm really seeing how used to it that my body really is, and how I am addicted to it," Rick writes in a blog chronicling his quest. "As difficult as it is, I'm contending not only for myself, but the men that are on this fast with me, to be strong, and beat this addiction. Let's do it guys! We can be holy."
The men were inspired by XXXchurch, whose mission is to help people overcome the twin temptations of pornography and onanism and bring them to God.
Ummm, okay. I went to the fellow's blog linked above, and the only real comment I have to make is that you would think a guy this concerned about masturbation would spell it correctly. You'd be wrong.
*You've got to be kidding me.
---
free_to_be_pure: hi
badtouch: hi! how r u?
free_to_be_pure: ok
free_to_be_pure: got both hands on the keyboard?
free_to_be_pure: ;)
free_to_be_pure: hello?
badtouch: hang on a second
---
Oh this is so typical. Turns out there's a universal predisposition to want to mate within our kind, so-to-speak. But there's a renegade gene (now present in the majority) that acts as a barrier to manifesting that behavior. It's called "self-incompatibility" in biological terms. Who'd a thunkit?
Look people, I'm sick to death of lying to try to cover up my deep personal love for Saddam Hussein and my unrelenting hatred of all things American. Henceforth I shall no longer hide behind nuance and obfuscation. Hell no. I intend to raise high my flags of tyranny, Islamofascism, and granny-hating. Luckily, zenarchery.com has just the ticket.
Several more whence those came. Wonkette suggests a few more bumpersticker possibilities:
• We're taking your guns away.
• I voted for one world government so that you don't have to.
• Proud parent of a guy who's married to another guy.
• I'm a citizen of the United Nations.
• Redistributing wealth since 1913.
• My other car is a black helicopter.
• Terrorists are people too.
• Free abortions for everyone.
• Don't mess with taxes.
• Ask me about the homosexual agenda.
• In the event of the Rapture, this car will be doing a 150 down the center lane.
• Honk if you love ass-fucking.
• Soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime.
• These colors run.
Connect...
The April survey from CNW also found that out of 56 characteristics considered by Americans buying new vehicles, fuel economy still ranks 44th, up from 46th in the previous survey. "It's still more important to have the right number of cup holders than high fuel economy," said Spinella.
The...
About 47 percent of respondents both this year and last said they worry "only a little" or "not at all" about global warming, according to the Gallup Tuesday Briefing, a branch of the famed national pollster.
Dots...
Summer temperatures in the Arctic have risen at an incredible rate over the past three years and large patches of what should be ice are now open water, a British polar explorer said on Monday.
Multiple tips to FP. And yes, FP, it is a Fantastic Planet, isn't it.
The url now redirects to moveon.org (!), but you can read the story here.
An entry-level staffer in Sen. Mike DeWine's Washington office titillated Capitol Hill this month with an explicit blog that detailed her performing sexual favors for money - until her blog was ended this week. [...] Asked if the employee had been fired, Dawson said, "Not yet."
Update (1:50 pm): Wonkette links to this reconstruction of the Washingtonienne direct from some helpful soul's browser cache.
Christopher Albritton has arrived in Baghdad for his third stint of reporting from Iraq. If this trip is anything like the last two, this means that you should move back-to-iraq.com near the top of your bookmarks.
Greenpeace cleared of "sailor mongering."
A U.S. judge acquitted environmental protection group Greenpeace Wednesday on charges it conspired to break the law by sending activists aboard a freighter carrying illegally felled mahogany (emphasis mine) two years ago.
The politically charged case dusted off a law not used since 1890 to bring the first criminal prosecution by U.S. authorities of an advocacy group for civil disobedience.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan granted a Greenpeace motion to dismiss the charges after the prosecution rested on the third day of trial, ruling that federal prosecutors had failed to prove their case, a Greenpeace lawyer said.
The individuals had already plead guilty to trespassing, as Greenpeace activists usually do. This case targeted the organization and was a blatant attempt to shut down vocal dissent.
When stopping the car to drop my kid off at school this morning, I thought I heard a blip on NPR about the renaming of Abu Ghraib before I turned the ignition off. I did.
The commanders faced a series of tough questions from the Senate panel on their role in overseeing interrogation techniques and on when they first learned of the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib, which Sanchez yesterday said has been renamed ''Camp Redemption."
Camp Redemption?!? Are these people nuts?!?
U.S. Rep. David Price is leading the charge among Democrats demanding an investigation into the use of private contractors in Iraq. Price, D-4th District, sent a letter Wednesday to the General Accounting Office, asking it to "perform a comprehensive review of the use of Private Military Firms in Iraq for security activities." The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress. Including three other lawmakers who teamed up with Price to sponsor the letter, 105 of the 535 members of Congress have signed it. None of them are Republicans.
Keep slinging that slingshot; don't give up.
This morning, the House Rules Committee announced that they would not allow the House to debate the Price/Shays Amendment to HR 4200, the National Defense Authorization Act for 2005.
The amendment, sponsored by US Reps. David Price (D-NC) and Chris Shays (R-CT), was designed to ensure that civilian contractors are not above the law. Specifically, it would have clarified that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) applies to all civilian contractors who commit crimes while supporting military missions overseas, even if they are subcontractors or foreign nationals.
It would have also delineated the enforcement responsibilities of the Departments of Justice and Defense. Since its enactment in 2000, MEJA has only been invoked once because of the many loopholes that has made it difficult to implement.
Price's reelection is a pretty sure thing. He fell victim to the Republican sweep in 1994 but was in that first group of seats taken back in 1996. I do, however, suggest that his campaign get a little more of a web presence. Here's his House site.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. There's plenty that Chalabi has on the neocons that I'd love to have been able to see him go public with, but hey, when looking for a funny story coming out of Iraq, I'll take what I can get.
U.S. troops and Iraqi police mounted a raid on Thursday on the headquarters of the party led by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite who has become increasingly estranged from Washington.
The soldiers raided the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house also used by Chalabi, and removed computers, files and equipment.
Need any more evidence that these guys have no clue what they're doing next?
Nick Kristof has a good column today about Iran that (1) meshes well with what I posted below and (2) makes me look with even more anticipation for cracks in the Mullahs' edifice.
Here's one article that to me looks like an example of a power structure that fears its own demise. But here's another that shows the strength that power structure can still employ.
There are disputing claims regarding this wedding party bloodbath about who shot first, if the group was civilians or foreign fighters, and whether the rules of engagement were followed. But guess what... They're meaningless arguments. The saying goes that truth is the first casualty of war. Our Iraq misadventure has given new meaning to that phrase: Truth here doesn't fall victim to smothering or censoring; it falls victim to irrelevancy.
Regardless of the "truth" as it happened in Makr al-Deeb, the truth that matters is that the images of bodybags coupled with the accounts of innocent revellers being gunned down is beaming into living rooms throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world. That far more than negates any strategic advantage in the conflict between secular openness and religious fanaticism that may have been gained by taking out a band of Iraqi insugents.
I can't even blame the pilots who unleashed the firepower. They are asked to do an impossible job. War is an ugly fucking business that kills lots of innocent people and the best soldiers in the world can't avoid that. What those soldiers deserve are leaders worth half their weight in pig shit. Ones who know better than to get suckered into a conflict that plays directly into our enemies' hands; ones that can understand that the world doesn't fit into tidy little black and white boxes; ones that respect the consequences of spilled blood.
So the effort to cultivate tolerance and 'spread democracy'™ in the middle east is again set back. Without a viable indigenous movement to appeal to and cultivate, and without the patience that the expediency demanded by fixation on election cycles precludes, that effort is doomed to failure. And that's the truth that matters.
I should mention in starting that I am delayed in posting this cool story (tips to Owlmother, who is familiar with my fascination with this most yin of yin subjects) about the energy potential of pig manure, although the prospects of North Carolina being another abundant energy producer heavily politically influenced by religious fundamentalists gives me caution.
But on to the main subject: The Apostrophic Two-step - Space and Poo.
On a two-year trip to Mars, according to one estimate, a crew of six humans will generate more than six tons of solid organic waste--much of it feces. So what do you do with all that?
Right now, astronaut waste gets shipped back to Earth. But for long-term exploration, you'd want to recycle it, because it holds resources that astronauts will need. It will provide pure drinking water. It will provide fertilizer. And, with the help of a recently discovered microbe, it will also provide electricity
Despite my curiosity in space exploration I have virtually no desire to strap myself inside a rocket and deliver my body into orbit or onto another world. The only thing that could possibly inspire me to extraterrestrial travel would be the prospects of planting a garden there, with of course one kick-ass compost pile.
You may remember back a couple of years ago when US aircraft dropped seven one-ton bombs on a wedding party in Afghanistan, killing over 40 and wounding over 100. Looks like we're at it again.
A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.
Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.
Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of those allegedly killed. About a dozen bodies, one without a head, could be clearly seen. but it appeared that bodies were piled on top of each other and a clear count was not possible.
I'd advise the couples coming down the courthouse steps in Boston to move quickly. Seriously, though, videos of headless children beaming through the Middle East likely damage us just as badly as the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. It's well past time to completely withdraw and leave Iraq to the Iraqis, along with a genuine apology for this entire debacle. Regardless of what the right wing continues to blather, being "better than Saddam" is not good enough. "It was an accident" is not good enough. Every additional day of our bull in a china shop routine earns us scores of new, committed-for-life enemies and we already have way too many of those.
While I was in Italy, Froz weighed in with his opinion that Wesley Clark would be Kerry's ideal running mate. I remain unconvinced, though I think it would be to Kerry's advantage to make clear that Clark has a prominent spot in a Kerry administration. Why not as Kerry's running mate? Simply put, General Clark was a terrible campaigner. Just awful. Of the ten candidates who ran for the nomination, I'd rank them (as campaigners, not as potential presidents):
Edwards
Dean
Sharpton
Gephardt
Lieberman/Kerry (tie)
Kucinich/Clark (tie)
Moseley-Braun
Graham
You see where Kerry falls, you see where Clark falls, you see my hesitation. Kerry simply HAS to get somebody with some rhetorical flair to offset his droning stentorian campaigning style. That still looks like John Edwards to me. But for me, the weightier evidence comes from this Mason-Dixon poll of North Carolina voters (MOE 4%):
Bush 48
Kerry 41
Nader 3
Undecided 8
With VP candidates added:
Bush/Cheney 46
Kerry/Edwards 45
Nader 2
Undecided 7
If the Democrats could take North Carolina, a state that is far more Democratic than is believed beyond its borders, Bush would be in extremely dire straits. The Bush administration has gone wobbly on the tobacco buyout, the same issue that is bedevilling Richard Burr in his race against Erskine Bowles for Edwards' Senate seat, and that beside a native son on the opposing ticket could be just enough to tip NC into the blue column for the first time since 1976.
The larger issue for me, though, is that Edwards would inject some needed youthfulness and energy into a what has been so far a grey and plodding Kerry campaign. I don't think Wesley Clark could really knock Cheney on his heels in a debate. At least, he showed no sign of it during his nomination campaign. Edwards, on the other hand, with all those years of trial experience under his belt, would knock Dick's dick in the dirt.
I think Clark would make a great National Security Advisor, Homeland Security chief, or even Secretary of State, though I suspect there are others in front of him in line for that job. Before anybody suggests Secretary of Defense (which would be the most logical), he's barred by the National Security Act of 1947 from holding that office until he's retired ten years from active duty, which would be 2010.
So, I'm holding fast. I still think Kerry/Edwards is the ticket to ride.
Because I think it's hilarious.
Opposition politicians accused the British government on Tuesday of insensitivity after it named a new online arts project for people with mental health issues "MadforArts."
"The naming of this project is shockingly insensitive," parliamentarian Don Foster of the opposition Liberal Democrats said in a statement.
Next they should do a comedy benefit called "Stand-Up for Cripples."
Or maybe not. I don't know and don't pretend to know. But way too many pieces in the Nick Berg murder puzzle don't fit. Here's the most comprehensive, but not necessarily coherent, rundown that I've seen of the inconsistencies. There's a story floating around that four people have been arrested in connection to the murder, but Mark Kimmit knows nothing about it, for what that's worth.
The first legally married same-sex couple in the United States.
[...] the state's befuddled Republican governor, who resorted to an arcane 1913 law to bar out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. Romney had new forms drawn up that ask couples to swear, under penalty of perjury, that if they do not live in Massachusetts they intend to move here. A handful of communities have vowed to defy Romney, and at least three of the state's district attorneys have balked at prosecuting local officials who do not enforce the residency requirement.
Befuddled indeed. Congratulations, Massachusetts. You won.
Chelsea Clinton was disappointing, as Bill and Hillary insisted on the whole "we're gonna be responsible parents" thing and kept her from the media's harsh spotlight. The Bush twins, on the other hand, raised the excitement bar considerably, particularly Jenna, what with published photos of her smoking and falling down drunk in bars. Now that's a little closer to the class of women I prefer to have in my company. It also raises the question: "Hey Kerry daughters, how can you possibly top that?"
To which Alexandra Kerry answers, "Try these on for size." Take that, Jenna and Barbara Bush! You have been called out. But I must join with Ogged in wondering: what's the deal with them undies?
Media Matters for America has produced a television ad featuring Rush Limbaugh in his own words, and Limbaugh is none too happy about it. The ad is running in the DC area on major cable networks including CNBC, CNN, ESPN, FOX News and MSNBC. Check it out.
The ESPN placement is especially delicious, after their kamikaze debacle with him. Now if MMfA would run an ad on MSNBC featuring some of Michael Savage's latest psychotic ravings, because I don't think MSNBC ever did sufficient penance for hiring that lunatic.
Yes, I watched the video. If you feel you must, you can find it at ogrish.com or at Salon, though if you feel you must then you probably already have. There seems to be a growing chorus around the nuttier end of the right wing web that oscillates between two odd arguments:
For the moment, let's just leave aside the qualitative difference that exists between documentary evidence of prisoner abuses committed by troops acting on our behalf and a snuff film by a criminal band. After much declaration of how outraged they are at the animalistic evil blah blah blah, they tend to follow it up with intimations of a nuclear response or a campaign of levelling entire cities. No, I'm not kidding. As with the burned bodies in Fallujah, having the death publicly documented seems to send some people into inchoate rage.
At FafBlog, Giblets pretty much sums up my feelings:
Well, Giblets doesn't know exactly what to say here on the subject of the terrorists who chopped off an American civilian's head in Iraq in front of a video camera. I mean how many times in this war can you talk about how "atrocities are horrible" or "atrocities are nightmarishly horrible" or "dear god please please stop these atrocities" before words like "atrocities" begin to have about as much rhetorical weight as words like "toaster pastries"?
What are we supposed to say at this point? Let's really, REALLY try to kill the terrorists now? That this latest death-maiming is really the last straw on the death-maiming camel's back? Giblets has become desensitized to reality at this point. Maybe the worst part about this is that reality is starting to desensitize me to fiction. Giblets is more likely to commit fictional violence now that he has seen so much real horror on television.
Of course it's horrible, and it takes a special breed of sociopath to slaughter a defenseless person... but it happens all the time. That special breed is easier to find than any of us like to contemplate; they can be found in every city and every army. As painful and terrifying as Nick Berg's death must have been, it's still a much quicker demise than being shot in the stomach or systemic infection from a blast wound or dying from burns or any of the myriad ways in which people are dying in Iraq every day - both theirs and ours. Iraq has hosted thousands of agonizing deaths of blameless people over the past year, many in circumstances just as or more hellish than what is caught on that grainy video.
When the rest of the world contemplates how many horrific deaths have been wrought by this war, and then watches the bubbling over of rage produced by these five contractors' deaths, how can they come to any conclusion but that we are a nation of hypocritical pussies, willing to pound our chests and war whoop, but unwilling to realistically confront the consequences? This is the face of war, especially when you move past the remote control bombing phase with which we are all so familiar of late. Murders of civilians happen in war. Rapes happen in war. War crimes happen in war. I say this not as a dismissive c'est la guerre, but to pound the point that war must always be the final option, rather than the great American spectator sport. War is the grand instrument of dehumanization, and that's as true for our "noble wars" as all the rest. This one was as elective as they come.
Look, the only thing shocking about the Abu Ghraib pictures was that they were pictures. We all know that this abuse goes on in stateside prisons, it just isn't usually photographed. The only thing shocking about the Berg decapitation video was that it was a video. In the America I've grown up in, brutal and grisly murders are anything but a rare occurrence, they just aren't usually filmed. This is simply the way some people treat other people when given the opportunity. Put them in a position of absolute power over somebody more easily labelled a "them" and the results are predictable.
I feel horrible for the Berg family. Bad enough to have your son slaughtered, but entirely worse to have a film of it become essentially public property. Pray to your gods that none of us ever have the experience and a large part of me regrets having taken part in it. But please, spare me any stupid fucking sermons about this illustrating how different we are from our "enemies" (a list that for some has apparently grown from Hussein to Ba'athists to Iraqis at large and is quickly evolving toward all Muslims). It does nothing of the sort; it only illustrates what happens when people make war and the darkest corners of human nature rise to the surface. You think you are filled with rage about this? For 99.9% of those foaming at the mouth, these five dead contractors were complete and utter strangers. For the past year, Iraqis have witnessed many, many times that number of agonizing deaths, and they were their neighbors or their spouses or their friends. Or their children.
Yes, the murder was beastly. Yes, the murder was evil. However, it does not change a thing. There is no magic level of military force to be brought to bear that will put an end to such horrors in Iraq. If you believe Nick Berg's murder somehow grants us the right or duty to go eliminate even more innocent people because they are from roughly the same part of the world, then you are quite nearly as disturbed as the hooded thugs in the film. So those of you advocating upping the violence ante in response to this, do yourself and us all a favor: take Neal Pollack's advice and shut the hell up.
The end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic, about 250 mya, is marked by a disappearance from the fossil record of about 90% of the species on planet Earth. It's known as "the Great Dying" and was a more cataclysmic mass extinction than the one that ended the age of dinosaurs 185 million years later. Two UC - Santa Barbara geologists claim to have found the site where a Mt. Everest-sized meteor smashed into southeastern Pangaea (a site now west of Australia) at just that time. A lot of previously puzzling bits of geologic evidence have fallen into place.
I have returned safe, sound, and jetlagged from two weeks tooling around Italy, which may well be the most beautiful country on this green earth. And aside from the land, perhaps the only thing more beautiful than the young Italian women are the young Italian men. A certain amount of circumspection seemed appropriate at first, this being a honeymoon trip and all, but after a day of eyestrain from trying to ogle via peripheral vision, we both gave up and just went ahead and stared.
I didn't make it online the entire trip and was fairly shielded from the news, so I'll need a couple or three days to get back into the swing of things before I can put up any topical posts. The prison abuse pictures, of course, were another matter entirely, as they were flatly unavoidable no matter where you went or what language you spoke. And the Europeans with whom I spoke hate, hate, hate Bush with a passion you rarely see even from the most partisan folks here. If he somehow manages to win again in November, believe me when I say that such feeling will extend past him to the American electorate generally. But back to the matter at hand.
We spent three days in Rome staying beside the Spanish Steps, then a week in a farmhouse atop a mountain in Umbria (from which we drove all over Umbria and eastern Tuscany), then another three days in Rome, staying beside the Vatican. In a country so completely steeped in history, you get the first inkling of what an infant country the United States remains when you step inside the National Museum of Modern Art in Rome, and the works begin in 1800. "Modern" takes on a rather different meaning in a land where the art goes back 3000 years.
One of the first realizations I had during the ride from the airport is that there must be a clandestine international monitoring agency tasked with identifying the craziest, most aggressive, least concerned-for-their-own-safety drivers worldwide and forcibly relocating them to Rome. The ones who really top the curve are apparently given motorbikes instead of cars. I'd honestly never seen anything like it. Taxi rides were white knuckle affairs, no matter how much vino you had in you. Lanes are an extremely fluid concept in Italy, the only operative speed limit is "as fast as you can possibly move without hitting the car in front of you," and the accepted safe following distance is the span between your thumb and your forefinger.
Amazingly, I only saw one collision the entire time, and that was well up in the countryside (and probably both tourists). I am firmly convinced that it is only by virtue of the amassed power of all the divine relics in the Vatican Museum and direct intervention of the Pope himself that anybody lives past thirty in that city. Italians who come here and drive must think we are utter wusses behind the wheel. I sure felt like one.
We crammed so much into two weeks (and even that barely scratched the surface) that it's difficult to even name highlights, but as fascinating as Rome was, for sheer breathtaking beauty Umbria and Tuscany were untouchable - particularly Montefalco, Montepulciano, Montalcino, and Gubbio. Endless medieval, walled cities perched high on hills, filled to bursting with art, culture, food, and wine. And oh my god, the wine. Between world-beating vino at every stop and the fact that Italians smoke constantly, it's hard to imagine a country more custom made to appeal directly to me.
We returned with a case of high profilers, including three Brunellos, three Barolos, three Vino Nobiles, and a trio of Sagrantinos, most of the case from the 1997 vintage of the century. Our mini-cellar just got much more impressive. I'll try to get some pictures of the trip up as a separate web page this weekend, though none of the pictures quite do justice to the scenes. Thanks to Froz for keeping the apostrophic quality here first-rate in my absence. As lovely as it all was, it's still a joy to be home again, too. Until I get my stateside life caught up over the next few days, let me just say: ciao, y'all.
Boom. Big, continent-shaking utterly stunning boom.
India's Gandhi dynasty has swept back to power on a stunning wave of anger among millions of rural poor, who feel left behind by the country's economic boom and have voted out the Hindu nationalist government. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee conceded defeat on Thursday and would resign later in the day, Defence Minister George Fernandes told reporters after the opposition Congress party and its allies swept the polls in the world's largest democracy.
"We have decided to sit in the opposition," he said.
Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi and her children, Rahul and Priyanka, the new faces of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, could take power by next week. "A... secular coalition led by Congress should take the oath in the next few days," party spokeswoman Ambika Soni said. However, a Congress coalition is likely to have to depend on the support of leftist parties, who registered their best performance yet.
More of the world's nuclear weapons will be under the control of secular leaders; that can't be bad.
Come on over here, Baby. Don't tell me you're tired.
Australian scaly cricket males can copulate 50 to 58 times within three to four hours with the same female, which sets the world record for the most copulations per unit time of any creature within the animal and insect kingdom, according to a report in the current Royal Society Biology Letters.
And how 'bout this for your summer research assistant job: Insect Sperm Counter and Cricket Tickler, pay grade 63.
Researchers measured sperm counts per copulation, and then compared final sperm counts in both the test subject crickets and in females caught in the wild that mated under natural conditions. At times, scientists stroked female crickets in the lab with the tip of a soft paintbrush to distract them from eating sperm... (Froz: The females will eat sperm; that's presumably why the males have to be so damn persistent) Sperm counts from a single copulation were measured at between 5-225, far below the tens of thousands of sperm usually transferred in a single copulation by crickets of other species.
Thank god that kind of stamina isn't expected by the fairer half of our species; human males are just selected for their good looks.
Ogged provides context, which he does incisively. Regularly. Froz provides commentary, which he is inclined to do. Often.
1. Gruesomely.
2. But people beyond honor...
3. In a quicker fashion, if possible.
4. Revenge leads down a dark, dark road.
5. They're everywhere, in every culture.
6. The very worst in humanity is being coaxed forth around the globe and I am very saddened by it all.
The transit or passage of a planet across the face of the Sun is a relatively rare occurrence. As seen from Earth, only transits of Mercury and Venus are possible. On average, there are 13 transits of Mercury each century. In contrast, transits of Venus occur in pairs with more than a century separating each pair.
No living person has seen a transit of Venus because the most recent one occurred in 1882. This situation is about to change since Venus will transit the Sun on Tuesday, 2004 June 08. The entire event will be widely visible from the Europe, Africa and Asia(.)
Venus is the Goddess of love and money (odd pairing) so undoubtedly June 8 is a good night for an expensive gift and some nookie. Or at least just some nookie.
Ben & Jerry's announces the development of a working thermoacoustic refrigeration prototype - an environmentally friendly, alternative refrigeration technology that chills out to sound waves. Conventional refrigeration relies on vapor compression technology, a resource-intensive process involving complex mechanical equipment and gases such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are key contributors to ozone depletion and global warming. Thermoacoustic refrigeration uses sound waves at 173 decibels - many times louder than an average rock concert - instead of chemicals like HCFCs and HFCs to generate cooling.
Cool.
Update: Very informative technical article in American Scientist.
Marianne Horinko, EPA Solid Waste Director and interim EPA Chief between Whitman and Leavitt, resigns.
The assistant administrator´s resignation is the latest in a string of resignations involving high-level EPA officials within the past year. Horinko resigned to spend more time with her family, according to EPA spokeswoman Marjorie Buckholtz. "She´s got two young children, ages 5 and 6, and she was finding she wasn´t spending enough time with them," Buckholtz said.
Maybe so, but the last 3 years have been extremely tough on Horinko professionally. As Emergency Response Director she was at the center of the WTC Air Quality fiasco. As waste chief she also caved in to admindustry demands to repeal the Superfund tax and hand the bill to the taxpayer. New Source Review changes took place in her interim term.
She was "visibly flustered and stepping on her words", according to anonymous source for this Grist Magazine / Tom Paine article, testifying to congress that the Defense Department should be exempt from a whole slew of environmental regulations.
Environmental backsteps in the last 3 years have relatively not included a lot of solid waste issues; the science seems to have been more resilient in this area. Not to say there haven't been plans drawn up to roll back the regulations, but they haven't been as successful.
My cynicism doesn't permeate my bone marrow, so - to give the benefit of the doubt - maybe she is just trying to spend more time with her kids.
"A lot of people had to be in the know for this to happen. The very fact people felt confident enough to take pictures suggests that this was not something which was a secret," says Ian Robbins, a consultant clinical psychologist at the traumatic stress service at St George's Hospital in London, UK, who has treated both victims of torture and torturers...
"In all organisations, all teams, troops and people will replicate in some way the personality of the number one person in charge - whether it's the President, down to the general, down to the head of the jail," says Simon Meyerson, director of the Institute of Psychology in London. "If you know there's going to be trouble, you won't do it."...
Robbins told New Scientist: "It looks to me that it was a well thought through process." He says acts of ill-treatment by rogue operatives acting alone are more likely to be routine low-grade violence - "the odd slapping" - and neglect, such as withholding food or access to toilets. He also points out that the methods of humiliation depicted in the images would be particularly offensive to Arab men. "If you really wanted to humiliate an Arab man, you would strip him, have a woman present, and then have a woman degrade him."
Damning. And somebody please shut Joe Lieberman up. This is not justifiable under any circumstances. No matter what happened before. You want to use this kind of "context" then you might as well flush the Geneva Convention and every other document like it down the goddamned toilet.
LIEBERMAN: Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.
I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.
And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.
Not the point, Joe. Not the point at all.
I know from conversations that I'm not the only person who thinks contrails from aircraft - those long, skinny, artificial cirrus clouds that can occupy an otherwise perfectly blue sky - look creepily like scars. The exponential growth in aircraft mileage flown in the last few decades makes me think that that much metal streaking through the stratosphere, burning that much jet fuel, might not be so good for our atmosphere.
Well, somebody's done some measurements.
Climate data shows there has been a 1 percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, which the NASA paper says is likely due to commercial air traffic. Cirrus clouds, whether natural or artificial, play an important climatological role because they trap heat in the atmosphere by reflecting infrared radiation emitted from the Earth's surface.
The study, which appeared in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Climate, estimates that cirrus clouds from jet engine condensation trails, or contrails, increased the temperature of the lower atmosphere by anywhere from 0.36 to 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. These findings tend to agree with National Weather Service data that shows temperatures at the surface and lower atmosphere rising by almost 0.5 degrees per decade between 1975 and 1994.
Now we just have to wait for the obligatory "You can't prove beyond a doubt that all the problems - including James Inhofe's athlete's foot - can be completely pinned on a causal relationship here so everything you're arguing is irrelevant" dismissal.
But as much as I like getting to California in 5 hours, recognition that quantitatively different behavior can cause qualitatively different outcomes makes me think we ought to fly less.
I also love the space program (see about half my entries on this blog). But punching holes in the atmosphere probably isn't too good for it, either.
In the last 10 years, we've discovered lots of indirect evidence of planets outside our solar system. Direct evidence - a picture of one - is a bit of a holy grail to astronomers. So it's no wonder there's a lot of excitment about what the Hubble has turned up - maybe.
In my own kind of psychotic way, I'm what you might call an environmental professional. My work involves a plentiful supply of uphill battles; a few won, more lost, and all compromised in one way or another. And much complaining. Such is life.
But occassionally I find reminders of the relative ease of my campaigns in the accounts of others who embark on ambitious plans beginning with far less than I have. This guy, at least five years my younger, is certainly one.
Thank you, Vincent Ogutu.
Iran's hardline Guardian Council has approved a law banning police from using torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects.
I'm a bit less than confident. But as an American, I don't have a lot of moral high ground to stand on anymore, now do I?
This case unearths (pun completely intended) an array of rather complicated questions.
Spanish police raided a winery in Aguilar de la Frontera near Cordoba in southern Spain on 21 March and seized over 5,000 archaeological artefacts which were on display in a clandestine museum in the cellars of the building. Initial police suspicions that the antiquities collection in the Bodegas Toro Albalá was unauthorised were confirmed by the Culture Ministry of the Regional Government of Andalusia, and the raid followed a three-month investigation dubbed “Operación Toro.” The objects, which filled several rooms, were carefully arranged in glass cabinets and bookcases, and organised into chronological order with labels and other documentation. Details of where the objects were found were not provided...
The police arrested the owner, Antonio Sanchez, nephew of José Maria Toro Albalá who founded the bodega in 1922. Mr Sanchez is charged with breaking the law of Historical Patrimony which states that all newly excavated artefacts be handed to the authorities. The raid came as a surprise to many locals as the bodega’s antiquities museum had been in existence for over 20 years and was even listed in a number of guide books to the region and mentioned on the winery’s own website.
Obviously you want to deter graverobbers or other pirates who over the years have destroyed or otherwise rendered useless much of our archaeological record. One of the most depressing legacies of colonialism was the state-sanctioned obliteration of the history of so many people. Retroactive ethnocide, I suppose.
But on the other hand, this 100+ year old collection in particular (as well as can be determined by the account) seemed fairly well put together, open to scrutiny, well documented... Why does the "Culture Ministry" have a monopoly on the history of the people of the region?
My Spanish is lousy, so somebody please tell me if this site is that of the offending vintner / collector.
Link via Archaeologica, via the Mighty Hunter, who has a very nice collection of links on his site.
A couple of nights before the Apostropher departed on his Honeymoon, we briefly discussed Kerry's prospects for running mate. His assertion that "Edwards creates the strongest ticket" is something I think I'll take to task since he's obliviously living it up in Italy. Before I get started, I'll note that he made this assertion quite in (drunken) passing between conversations regarding completely unrelated issues - mostly the edibility of certain plants in his yard and our childrens' favorite passtimes - and it should by no means be taken as a formal endorsement. He can deny / defend it once he returns. Nonetheless, I disagree with the assertion; many others have made it.
General Clark made the Democrats' weekly radio address this week and took Bush to task quite directly for "mismanaging" the mission and all his duties as commander-in-chief. This election campaign will be waged on national security issues moreso than anything else. General Clark augments a ticket and provides the kind of leadership we will need to meet the national security challenges we face. I know it's a reading of tea leaves to confer a whole lot of hidden meaning to his role as Democratic spokesperson for one address in May, but I do think these decisions are strategic and pained over.
Edwards is logically the top choice for Attorney General and may very well run for President another year. I even endorsed him for the nomination one week before he fell fatally behind. But I think, even just politically, Clark is the better choice regardless of his uninspiring stump-presence. He brings a credibility in which lots of swing voters will find reassurance.
Poll after poll has found that domestic issues are considered more important to voters as they make up their minds. Democrats have a slight edge on each issue independently - health care, protecting jobs, strengthening education - and for good reason. But that's when voters are polled and asked to thoughtfully consider what is a national priority. When November comes, voters will be faced with a "change horses in midstream" decision regarding security - the issue I think carries more weight when they cast their voice about Presidential leadership.
Every dip in Bush's level of support has not been met by a surge in Kerry's. He's been relatively effectively profiled by the administration (although not nearly as much so as Dukakis was). Clark hasn't been. He is the best choice not only for delivering the White House electorally, but for uniting and leading the country in extracting the military from the diversion in Iraq and getting back to task creating a climate of international stability and security in the face of fanaticism.
For what it's worth, I recommend that Kerry select him as running mate.
Four appendages, control center towards the front, reinforced neural mainline for sense and manipulation of body, consume oxygen and circulate through tissue, consume matter up front and extract material and energy, dispose of refuse at end, protective sheathing around collection of mutually dependent organs with specific duties, no wonder we're so much alike genetically. Link here. Blockquoting won't do it justice. Read, I order you, Earthlings. Know yourselves.
Does this strike anybody else as odd? Ever since Occupation "Iraqi Freedom" began, there's been a concerted, and highly successful, campaign to drive wedges between the US and... well... everybody else. Osama and al Qaeda have notably undertaken this strategy, but others have as well. So why now put a bounty on US, CPA, and UN heads - in a lumped statement - that's likely to draw those parties together? Assassination threats do not have the same quality of intimidating effect as actual attacks.
A poor strategic move? I hope so, because lord knows the myopic neocons have been consistently outsmarted.
Latin for "unexpected European version of a hummingbird."
Excavations in a clay pit in southwestern Germany have yielded two tiny treasures. They're the first fossils of hummingbirds from the Old World and, by far, the oldest ones unearthed anywhere.
But the really cool part:
Despite the previous absence of evidence and the lack of current hummingbird inhabitants, some scientists had suggested that hummingbirds once populated the Old World. Several species of plants there, especially in parts of eastern Africa and the Himalayas, sport flowers that appear to be adapted to hovering avian pollinators.
Mayr's find has "fascinating implications," says Ethan J. Temeles, an evolutionary ecologist at Amherst (Mass.) College. For instance, he notes, the shape of those enigmatic Old World blossoms—which are now pollinated by appropriately equipped insects, such as long-tongued bees—may originally have evolved to match the bill shape of ancient hummingbirds.
And a not-forgotten and fortunately still-traceable related story from a few months ago. Easily found because how can you forget the name "Monkeyflower?"
At the bottom of the food chain.
Phytoplankton are tiny, single-celled floating plants. They inhabit the upper layers of any natural body of water where there is enough light to support photosynthetic growth. They are the base of the ocean's food web, and their production helps to regulate the global carbon cycle. They also contribute to the global cycling of many other compounds with climate implications.
One of these compounds is a volatile organic sulfur gas called dimethyl sulfide or DMS. Scientists had previously theorized that DMS is part of a climate feedback mechanism, but until now there had been no observational evidence illustrating how reduced sunlight actually leads to the decreased ocean production of DMS. This is the breakthrough in Toole and Siegel's research...
"The significance of this work is that it provides, for the first time, observational evidence showing that the DMS-anti-oxidant mechanism closes the DMS-climate feedback loop," said Siegel. "The implications are huge. Now we know that phytoplankton respond dramatically to UV radiation stresses, and that this response is incredibly rapid, literally just days."...
As the Earth's ozone shield thins and greenhouse gases increase, higher ultraviolet radiation will reach the surface layer of the oceans. The findings indicate that phytoplankton will then produce more DMS in response to this increased ultraviolet radiation, causing increasing cloudiness and mitigating the effects of global warming. However, Siegel is careful to note that while the process may mitigate global warming it will not reverse the trend.
The 20% of the atmosphere that is oxygen is actually a family of microorganisms' waste product from early in life's history on Earth. That created the possibility of animal life as consumers (breathers, in our more complicated forms) of that waste. Anybody still doubt that the Earth is one big self-regulating system?
I guess the reckoning is that Florida is in play and that they need all the help they can get. Glad to see this get bumped to the top of the President's agenda.
The Bush administration said yesterday that it would tighten the 40-year-old U.S. financial squeeze on Cuba and work to prevent President Fidel Castro from passing power to Communist Party successors...
Hundreds of millions of dollars that Cuban Americans send to relatives in Cuba could not go to Communist Party members or officials connected to what the State Department's senior Latin American diplomat called a repressive Cuban government apparatus.
Too bad this approach isn't quite as effective as it was 20 years ago.
When it comes to voting intentions, only 47.7 percent were "definitely" going to vote for Bush, according to the poll conducted in March. Before the 2000 ballot, 64 percent said they were definitely voting for Bush. Discontent has been growing since Bush's administration sent back last year several would-be refugees who had hijacked a boat to get to the United States...
Cubans who have arrived in South Florida since 1985 are generally relaxed about permitting return trips to Cuba to visit relatives, and most send money to families back home. But less than a quarter are U.S. citizens. Those who arrived earlier, and who are predominantly U.S. citizens with the power to vote, tend to be much more strongly opposed to open travel and fewer send money home, the survey found.
I wonder when we'll see a US president give a joint press conference with a Cuban president telling disposessed Islanders that "The realities on the ground" make the "right of return" of their property impossible.
To Earthling accounts payable manager,
Citing the successful completion of the terms of our contract dated April 30, 2004, I am submitting invoice number 427 in the amount of $4,788,541,610,284.42 for services, expenses, and travel. Please be reminded that page 413 of our contract documents clearly states that “upon completion of contracted … services, payment in full … is due upon receipt of … a(n) … ite … mized … invo… (i)ce …”
You may have noticed certain disruptions to media cycles and sleep habits during the last week. These were unfortunate side-effects of the necessary dislocations of the time-space continuum without which successful rendering of these services would have been impossible. I realize many members of your Board of Directors would have preferred not to have these disruptions, but after careful review of the contract documents (which was particularly difficult in the near lightless conditions of Earth’s mantle), a prohibition of such strategies could not be found.
After seven (7) trips into the – for lack of a better word in your limited language – “future” and (3) trips into the “past” – the third of which unfortunately resulted in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 - I was finally able to make the calibrations to the stasis generator that apparently minimized the problems; you should have noticed improvement by Tuesday afternoon. As for why the inhabitants of the Kamchatka Peninsula will seem unable to pronounce the letter “S” for as far into the future as I was willing to trust my available technology, I am uncertain. However, the problem will be largely irrelevant within a few decades.
I must note in conclusion that the keys to the filing cabinet that you left under the doormat were NOT the correct ones, nay; they were not even the right SIZE. This caused significant delay and only by my fortunate expertise in handling large reptiles and my ability to bend a paperclip using only my tongue and teeth was catastrophe avoided.
Respectfully submitted
Froz Gobo
Postscript – Concerning your ferrets, I assure you they met their regrettable demise as a result of natural, if not rather unlikely, causes.
The following is the summary of charges for services:
Eradication of disease
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Worldwide enlightenment and sense of meaning *
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Pet-sitting dates 5/3 – 5/5
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Harmonious relationship with non-human species
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Limitless supply of food and medicine
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Invention of self-replenishing ballpoint pen
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Understanding between races and creeds
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Global climatic and hydrologic stabilization
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Elimination of root causes of strife **
$ 100,000,000,000.00
Attractive yet comfortable footwear
$ 100,000,000,000.00
TOTAL for services: $ 1,000,000,000,000.00
* Mileage may vary.
** Offer void in Eritrea, Guam, and Carlsbad County, New Mexico.
The following is the summary of charges for expenses:
Time machine and extended warranty package
$ 2,437,818,791,404.75
Miscellaneous laboratory equipment
$ 783,455,126,909.41
Massage services
$ 566,250,000,000.00
1 Magic baseball bat
$ 450,000,053.21
1 Soyuz Spacecraft and associated parts and maintenance
$ 405,250,000.00
Fusion powered eggbeater
$ 150,000,000.00
Dry-cleaning
$ 12,415,627.82
831 Cases Miller Genuine Draft Beer
$ 10,678.11
403 Oscillating fans
$ 8,251.90
Landfill Tipfees
$ 1,045.22
1 Box Johnson & Johnson brand band-aids (small)
$ 2.07
TOTAL for expenses: $ 3,788,541,603,972.49
The following is the summary of charges for travel:
5 round trip tickets, Qantas Airlines, to Sydney, New South Wales
$ 4,809.44
112 Vegemite sandwiches
$ 784.00
6 Nights at Princess Snowbird's Little Indian Village, Yokum’s Vacationland, Seneca Rocks, West Virginia.
$ 636.00
30-minute rental of 1974 Chevy Nova
$50.00
1 Skateboard
$32.49
TOTAL for travel:
$ 6,311.93
GRAND TOTAL:
$ 4,788,541,610,284.42
You may notice a few glitches in the system at first. Be mindful that the system has only recently been installed and a few bugs will obviously have to work themselves out. Nonetheless, payment in full is still due upon receipt.
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Oh yeah – Remind everybody not to go outside Thursday, October 14, 2028.
