Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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I'll take 'Mental Images I Really Didn't Want' for a thousand, Alex.
A 53-year-old widower, originally charged with endangering the welfare of children by hanging around day care centers and pre-schools wearing a soiled diaper and pink tights, will be supervised on probation for five years and must receive counseling under a plea he entered Tuesday.
William Rhode III of Paterson pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, Morristown, to a single count of disrupting a public meeting at the Holy Spirit Catholic elementary school in Pequannock on Feb. 12. Under questioning by defense lawyer Michael Fletcher, Rhode acknowledged that he went to the school around 3 p.m. on Feb. 12 wearing pink tights that he had defecated in. He did not specifically admit to wearing a diaper on this day, though police have said he did.
It isn't at all my kink, so I don't have anything intelligent to add, but it's certainly a harrowing read.
An unfortunate choice for an opening sentence, but this is an interesting story nonetheless.
Tommy McHugh was sitting on the toilet when his life changed. He felt a sudden and extreme headache, but something far more serious was occurring: blood was leaking from an artery in his brain. McHugh was suffering from a cerebral haemorrhage — an event that hospitalized him, altered his personality and, he says confidently, was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Standing in the bright London sunshine three years later, McHugh describes his new life. If I wasn't there, he tells me, he would be manically painting, sculpting or writing poetry. It's a statement those who knew McHugh before his stroke would find hard to believe. A former builder and heroin addict who has had stints in jail for violent offences, McHugh had no former interest in art. Now he spends almost all his time compulsively creating.
More information about non-catastrophic brain damage (along with autism and Alzheimer's) causing explosions of previously untapped artistic ability can be found here.
As my dying body lay there on the linoleum, I felt my essence being pulled toward the ceiling, rising toward the warm and welcoming light. I could feel my father there, telling me not to worry, that everything was fine and I was coming to my real home. My eternal home. I filled with love and understanding and felt a deeper peace than I had ever known flowing through my soul.
Just then, the EMT swung through the room on a rope, ripped off his shirt, grabbed his crotch, and screamed, "PANAMA! PANAMA-AH-OH-OH-AH-AH! PANAMA!" Four and a half minutes of CPR later, my heart and lungs were once again working on their own, and I am still here to tell the tale.
The cold sores kinda suck, though.
Let's see... fish or cut bait? Fish or cut bait? Wait a minute, I'm still deciding...
A schoolteacher has been suspended in Zimbabwe for allegedly giving pupils the choice of being caned or suckling her breasts. The woman faces a disciplinary hearing after one of the pupils reported the 'punishment' to his parents, reports the Herald. The boy claimed he was asked to choose between suckling the teacher's breasts or receiving 100 strokes of the cane for being noisy. The boy chose to suckle the teacher's breasts, as did 14 others, according to the newspaper.
The headmaster of the Harare school summoned the teacher to respond to the allegations. The teacher allegedly admitted forcing the children to suckle her breasts but could not give reasons why she had done so.
Really, it made sense at the time, sir...
R. Buckminster Fuller gets a stamp.
"Any conceptual thought is a system and is structured tetrahedrally. This is because all conceptuality is polyhedral. The sums of all the angles around all the vertexes - even crocodile, or a 10,000-frequency geodesic (which is what the Earth really is) - will always be 720 degrees less than the number of vertexes time 360 degrees.
"The difference between nonconceptual, nonsimultaneous Universe and thinkability is always two tetrahedra: one as macro, to complete the convex localness outside the system, and one as micro, to complete the concave localness inside the system, to add up to finite but nonconceptual Universe. Thus the thinkable system takeout from Universe has a 'left-out' outside irrelevancy tetrahedron and a 'left-in' inside irrelevancy tetrahedron.
"You have to have the starkly nonvisible to provide the complementary tetrahedron to account for the visibility, since concave and convex are not the same. That stark invisible reality of the nonconceptual macro- and micro-tetrahedra also have to have this 720-degree elegance. But the invisible outside tetrahedron was equally stark. The finite but nonconceptual inness and outness: that is the Omnidirectional Halo."
Eight new GYWO strips up, including the three-strip mini-series, "What if I could get away with fucking up Get Your War On like Donald Rumsfeld gets away with fucking up wars?"
...if you'll upgrade my RAM, I'm Popeye the Laptop Man!
Are spinach-powered laptops on the horizon? Start saving for your PowerBook Florentine.
Who says the media only report bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan?
About 60 people, mostly nongovernment aid workers, gathered at a restaurant garden across town from the fortress-like American Embassy, declaring "Kabul for Kerry."
"It's important to show that there are Americans everywhere, even in Afghanistan, who want a change of leadership in the United States," said organizer Karen Hirschfeld, of Winchester, Mass., who is helping Afghans get ready for this year's national elections. "For the future of Afghanistan, Iraq and America, we need someone with a more rational foreign policy who will work with the international community. We think John Kerry will be a good leader."
The gathering [was] open only to Americans and not officially endorsed by the Kerry campaign [...] "Kabul for Kerry" organizers urged guests to contribute to his campaign and cast absentee ballots in the November presidential election. They pinned Kerry badges on the lapels of participants who paid $10 to cover the cost of the breakfast and hired "Franklin the Democratic Donkey" from its Afghan owner to serve as the party mascot.
None of the thousands of U.S. military personnel based in Afghanistan to hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban rebels turned up for Friday's event. Organizers said plenty of U.S. Embassy workers expressed an interest but were barred from coming for security reasons — although 11 Interior Ministry guards were deployed at the venue.
See? Good news right there on the AP wire. Thanks to my buddy Gene for the heads-up on this one.
...they wouldn't bump their butts so much.
Just a short time ago, Bill Schneider sent up the nearly subtle trial balloon that black voters weren't real voters, listing all the races the Democrats wouldn't have won without black support. It was an odd argument - true on its face about the electoral realities, but a little suspect in its implications. By the same token, the GOP wouldn't win nearly so often if they didn't have the white fundamentalist vote sewn up - but they do. What would our nation's capital look like if there were no black people (the crass answer: damn near unpopulated)? It's fair game for discussion, but I'm not sure it really tells us much of anything.
So what to make of this in yesterday's Wall Street Journal?
What's largely ignored is a factual analysis of the political consequences of 40 million abortions. Consider:
• There were 12,274,368 in the Voting Age Population of 205,815,000 missing from the 2000 presidential election, because of abortions from 1973-82.
• In this year's election, there will be 18,336,576 in the Voting Age Population missing because of abortions between 1972 and 1986.
• In the 2008 election, 24,408,960 in the Voting Age Population will be missing because of abortions between 1973-90.
These numbers will not change. They are based on individual choices made--aggregated nationally--as long as 30 years ago. Look inside these numbers at where the political impact is felt most. Do Democrats realize that millions of Missing Voters--due to the abortion policies they advocate--gave George W. Bush the margin of victory in 2000?
There follows an exhaustive stomp through a whole lot of numbers regarding the demographics of abortion. Best I can figure, Larry Eastland's argument is this: Stupid Democrats. They'd own the White House if they weren't so busy aborting all those potential voters. Again, fair game for discussion, I suppose, but that doesn't rescue the editorial from its essential inanity.
Canada is holding national elections today, with a minority government the most likely outcome. BruceR notes that the right-wing Progressive Canadian Party, on the ballot as the PC Party, is likely to cause some confusion in voters intending to cast their ballot for the mainstream Progressive Conservative Party, causing some new "Florida Jews for Buchanan" fun.
Update (6/29, 12:15 am): Jesse at Pandagon links to an even more entertaining Canadian election story.
Canadians have gone to the polls in a federal election with a firm warning from election officials: Please do not eat your ballots.
"Eating a ballot, not returning it or otherwise destroying or defacing it constitutes a serious breach of the Canada Elections Act," Elections Canada warns on its Internet site. The issue was of sufficient concern to warrant inclusion in the site's "Frequency asked Questions" section, above answers to such inquiries as "Why should I vote?" and "Am I registered?"
Three Alberta men were charged with eating their paper ballots during Canada's last federal election, in 2000. The members of the Edible Ballot Society were protesting against what they said was a lack of real choice among candidates.
Of course, the Edible Ballot Society has a website.
Just returned from an internet-free weekend at the beach to see my brother-in-law get hitched in front of the Atlantic. Drove through solid rain to get there, returned to the same, but had a perfect day for the ceremony itself. The nights are little fuzzy toward the end, but were preceded by copious amounts of scallops, shrimp, and crab. Mmmmm.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 the night before we left. If you spend your every spare moment obsessively reading blogs (as I do), there's nothing new there, aside from the fact that Paul Wolfowitz has at least once used large amounts of spit as hair gel. Still, it was nice to have somebody draw so much together into a narrative, if a not-quite-coherent one. Plus, sitting in a theater packed with people who are clearly determined to oust this administration is a heartening experience. Sure, it was all preaching to the choir, but sometimes it's nice to hang out with the choir all the same. They are a good-looking bunch.
A few posts down, a lengthy, circular argument about Nader and the Democrats took place in the comments. You may want to trudge through that to make full sense of this post, but be forewarned, it's mostly a dreary trudge. Stepping back from the heated rhetoric for a bit, let me flesh out this topic more than in the original post, since most of what was said were rebuttals to arguments I never made, especially that Democrats "own" progressive votes.
Of course Nader and the Greens and Jack Grimes and Lawrence Ray Topham and everybody else has the right to run for president. Nobody is proposing making that illegal. Similarly, I have the right to bend spoons with my mind. The probability of success is roughly the same. The choice as to whether either is a productive use of one's time and effort obviously belongs to each of us as well.
Clearly, Nader doesn't own the Green votes, either, since they opted to run David Cobb as their candidate instead, making it much more difficult for Nader to get on the ballot around the country. The common refrain from Nader supporters about Democratic presumption of ownership inevitably contains a corollary reference to "Democratic whining and blaming others," but:
After Cobb was officially nominated, many Nader supporters stormed out of the ballroom. Some sobbed. Others cursed and threw their Green Party posters to the ground. "This is a dark day," said Robert Nanninga, a delegate from Encinitas, Calif. "We've just nominated a white lawyer with a car salesman's smile. It might as well be a Republican. This is going to be remembered for years to come."
A day after not getting the Green Party's endorsement for president, Ralph Nader brushed off the rejection as an inconvenience, described the party as "strange," called the party's national nominating convention "a cabal" and predicted who the big loser in its decision not to endorse him would be [the Greens].
I'll let those stand without comment, except to say that nobody who has watched Nader's camp evolve from the last election to this one finds that behavior in the least surprising. Nader did pick up the endorsement from Ross Perot's former vehicle, the Reform Party, which will get him on in seven states: Florida, Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, and possibly an eighth in Wisconsin.
Folks, I simply do not believe that Nader cares about building a third party or enabling third parties in general or enacting progressive policies or pulling the Democrats to the left or any of the rest. Ralph Nader likes having Ralph Nader mentioned on television. You may believe that attacking Nader "only cements his support," but it isn't hard to see that it didn't cement his support within the Greens. Enough of that party saw through him and instead chose to nominate a man who is actually a member of the party. Imagine! And Nader's backers throw down the signs of the party and gnash their teeth and rend their garments and declare it a black day for democracy because clearly he "owned" that nomination and Nader labels the party strange and controlled by a cabal.
You see where this is headed. The Naderites are the thinnest-skinned partisans in American politics today. They lob rhetorical grenades willy-nilly at every target in sight, then express righteous indignation and cry foul when the fire is returned. Politics is a contact sport, guys. It isn't sparring and it isn't batting practice. You want to tackle somebody, you're going to get tackled. I was going to mix one more awkward sports metaphor in here, but that would probably be overshooting the green.
There aren't that many undecided voters out there this year, but they may be especially important. As a result, everybody, but everybody expected a rough campaign. Quit complaining about it. The Democrats and Republicans will take plenty of barbs for the perceived and actual shortcomings of their respective candidates. You will as well.
As for the oft-stated objection that my attitude is precisely what costs Democrats votes, I will state the obvious: I'm not a Democrat running for office. I'm not part of the DLC, the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC, the Kerry campaign, MoveOn.org, the Black Panthers, the Screen Actors Guild, the Harlem Globetrotters, the International Order of Oddfellows, the 700 Club, or the Saddam Fedayeen. I'm a guy with a laptop and free web-publishing software. Make your decisions accordingly, yo.
A little "Hello, Goodbye" post here; tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m. I depart for a week and a half in California. I've been traveling a lot recently and must apologize for the dearth of posts. Scarcely back from a trip to Washington, DC (where I visited two jewels: The National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History) I again need to leave those Froz Fanclub legions in the trusted hands of my worthy coblogger.
Although I haven't done a survey, I bet I pontificate more on the topic of energy consumption (and its economic, ecologic, and security consequences) than any single other. The reasoning is simple. I think energy consumption lies at the heart of more crucial decisions we face than any other issue.
While I (usually) don't think the current crowd calling the shots in Washington are so reprehensible as to wage war in order to conduct thievery of another country's energy wealth, I do concur with Kevin Drum that the Iraq conflict (and any other squabble in the middle east in which we take a keen interest) will historically be seen in the context of the emerging exacerbating struggle over access to energy sources.
There's plenty of good realpolitik reasons that instinctively dove-like creatures such as yours truly should accept the fact that middle eastern conflicts are different and warrant more American involvement than we'd be comfortable with elsewhere in the world. But securing more crude supplies is not the way out of this hole. The US needs an herculean undertaking, larger than putting a man on the Moon in the 60's and certainly more important than putting a man on Mars in the 10's: energy efficiency.
The rest of the world's energy demand (comparatively low to ours) is growing extremely rapidly. The supply of fossil fuels, while not dwindling as fast as many believe, is getting more and more expensive to access. Put those two together and competition isn't going to get any easier. Exerting military power and prostituting ourselves to untrustworthy regimes are expensive, unreliable, and pathetic, really, ways of bettering our hand in that game.
Relying on subjecting more ecologically sensitive areas to extraction domestically is mortgaging the farm to pay the drug habit. The climate issue is a no-brainer.
I guess my point here, surprise, surprise, is that because energy conservation measures - which offer such a boon to business here; investments in energy efficiency consistently outperform those of expanded production capacity, for example, on a company's bottom line - are so vital, the energy extraction industry needs to be removed from the control levers of government. Crikey, they won't even let the public know who's in the cockpit and what they're talking about.
So, for the Naderites, who are obviously stopping by (and no, I'm not "Nader bashing"), the prospects of an administration that employs science and sound economics to address this problem should tilt your vote, if solving problems is really what you want. If, however, you're more interested in making noise for noise's sake or if you think everything needs to go to hell before it can get better, then I'll ascribe your perspective to your philosophical kinfolk, apocalyptic fundamentalists.
Oh, lovely. North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones, the same nimrod who co-sponsored the bill to change french fries into freedom fries, has some more renaming in mind.
Jones [...] wants to rename Falls Lake in honor of Helms, the former senator and conservative stalwart.
It's tough to say how far the bill he introduced Thursday will go. Jones apparently breached congressional etiquette and didn't discuss his idea with either of the Falls Lake-area representatives, Democrats David Price of Chapel Hill and Brad Miller of Raleigh, according to their staffs. Although Jones' district is Down East, he wanted to rename something near Helms' home in Raleigh. And Jones likes lakes.
"A lake is beautiful," said Jones, a Farmville Republican. "People go there to relax and meditate and enjoy their family. It's everything Jesse Helms stands for."
If what we are after is "everything Jesse Helms stands for," then somebody should propose an amendment to the bill stipulating that black people can no longer swim, boat, or fish in the lake. Color me partisan, but relaxation and meditation are not qualities I have ever associated with Jesse Helms. I'd be all for naming one of these lagoons after him, though. That, Walter, would be appropriate.
Instead of wasting the courts' time and money pursuing music swappers, I'd like to see many, many more like this, please.
An engineer working for America Online was arrested yesterday and charged with stealing 92 million e-mail addresses of AOL customers and selling them to spammers that were peddling penis enlargement pills and online gambling sites. The engineer, Jason Smathers, 24, was arrested at his home in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., yesterday. Sean Dunaway, 21, who was described by prosecutors as a broker of e-mail lists for spam, was arrested in Las Vegas. The United States attorney in Manhattan charged them both with violating the new federal antispam law. The case is among the first criminal prosecutions under the new law, which took effect Jan. 1. Each defendant faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from their activities.
If I was king, their prison sentences would then be followed by penis reduction surgery.
Last summer, I seconded Michael Tomasky's suggestion that the Democrats should "attack Nader right now, and with lupine ferocity." I still think that is good advice, with my half-hearted apologies to any supporters who may be reading. Eric Alterman unleashes the first volley.
Perhaps we need to re-assess Nader’s legacy in light of new evidence. Perhaps we need to get the word out to those remaining, idealistic misguided supporters of his that not only are you re-electing Bush, but you are supporting someone who is not the man you think he is.
Read it.
Look. I understand there is no unabashedly anti-war candidate being presented by the two major parties. But guess what? We're not electing an unabashedly anti-war president in 2004 no matter what. There is, however, only one unabashedly pro-war candidate in the race, and if opposition to imperial adventurism is your signal issue then approach it responsibly. If you think Bush has been bad so far, try to imagine him without any need to worry about re-election.
This year, it matters.
From the Department of Extremely Poor Judgment:
Oklahoma's attorney general wants a state judge removed on suspicion he frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, a spokesman for the office said Thursday. [...] In the petition, the attorney general charged Thompson used a penis pump, a device billed as providing sexual pleasure and promising better erections and larger penis size, during trials and exposed himself to a court reporter several times while masturbating on the bench.
"On one occasion, Ms. (Lisa) Foster (Thompson's court reporter for 15 years), saw Judge Thompson holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench," the petition reads.
Reminds me of a totally inappropriate joke that I'll not reproduce here, though the linked version is shortened considerably, ruining the delivery. So, if you retell it, be sure to stretch it out a little (ba dum bum). The full legal petition is up at The Smoking Gun, predictably. I can almost understand masturbating on the bench (like, for instance, if you were a thirteen-year-old judge), but what in the world would make you want to dry shave your johnson in court? That, my friends, is just inexplicable.
Interestingly, Judge Thompson is the same judge that blocked a ban on cockfighting in his district last year. I guess now-- nah, never mind. Some jokes are just too easy.
Judicial Pun Update (5:25 pm): The Modulator has posted on this story as well, having found it from - wait for it - Unlearned Hand.
An international scientific team is to record and list the species thought to live deep in the Arctic Ocean's chill. One very deep area they will search, undisturbed for millennia, is said to contain the Earth's oldest seawater. The team, based at the University of Alaska, US, believes it is likely to find species never recorded before, and some commoner lifeforms in abundance. It says its task is now urgent because the onset of climate change requires very good baseline data on marine life.
[...]
One area they will focus on is the Canada Basin, a huge and largely unknown submarine hole 3,800 metres (12,500 feet) deep. Covered by ice, it lies immediately north of the Yukon Territory and Alaska, and is linked to the Pacific through the Bering Strait, a mere 70 metres (230 feet) deep. The basin is shielded from the influence of the North Atlantic by the narrow Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard, and by the Lomonosov Ridge, which rises close to the surface. The ridge is to be the site later this year of an attempt to extract cores from sediments deep below the sea bed by the Arctic Coring Expedition (Acex).
Many species in the extremely cold depths of the Canada Basin never travel to shallower waters and are thought to have been isolated there for millions of years.
Wow. It's like an icebound Galapagos. This project is part of the 10-year Census of Marine Life that Froz wrote about last fall. So I'll recycle a very cool link from that post: The Ocean Biographic Information System is the database being constructed from that census and currently holds almost 3 million records on 30,543 different species.
If you absolutely must shoot surreptitious upskirt photographs of 12-year-old girls, try not to do it while you're on the security camera.
For the love of God, somebody stop them.
A naturally decaffeinated coffee plant has been discovered. Coffee from the new strain could be tastier than existing decaf brews, which can lose flavour compounds when caffeine is extracted with solvents. Other caffeine-free plants have been reported, but the latest comes from the same genetic stock as today’s elite commercial strains. This means the decaffeinated trait should be relatively easy to breed into popular types of coffee.
It's stories like these that turn law-abiding citizens like myself into international eco-terrorists. That plant needs to be quarantined, not deliberately cross-bred into existing strains. The horror, the horror...
Hanson, all grown up and pubescent.
Update (9:21 am): While we're on the subject of erstwhile MTV fodder, remember the song "Firestarter" by Prodigy? I found it perhaps the single most annoying video I'd ever watched - a high bar to clear - mostly because of Keith Flint's idiotic mugging for the camera throughout (I'm so punk! Look at me! I'm sticking out my tongue! I'm the dancer of the band!). But all in all, the song wasn't too bad. How to improve upon it? Give it to Gene Simmons, baby. The link is via All Night Surfing, a site I only just discovered and to which I am now in thrall.
And probably the last update on NC tobacco farmer Dwight Watson Jr. for a while. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, whose name you remember from the Microsoft anti-trust case, handed down a six-year prison sentence yesterday for the three-day standoff in a pond on the Washington DC Mall atop his purportedly bomb-laden tractor early last year. The judge told Watson, "I have concluded you are a nice guy and you had a legitimate grievance. The sentence I will hand down to you today is intended to deter the next nice guy who thinks he has a legitimate complaint."
Watson apologized, adding, "My actions were totally uncalled for, totally unacceptable and totally wrong. It was not my intention to hurt anyone, but it looks like I was trying to hurt people. It was foolish." Watson's "bombs" turned out to be a couple cans of Raid fogger bug spray.
If you're new to this story, I've written previously about it here and here.
Any day now, Ralph Nader will begin complaining about not being invited to the presidential debates (followed shortly, one would think, by Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian nominee). The complaints will, of course, fall on deaf ears outside their own choirs. 24 years ago, Ed Clark led the Libertarians to break the magic 1% bar in the Carter-Reagan race, and they haven't been back to such lofty heights since. The 2.75% of the vote that Nader took in 2000 will certainly seem like a lot compared to what he pulls this November. I suppose one could argue that being excluded from the debates contributes to such low showings, though I doubt that spotlight would flatter either.
Anyhow, if those low vote-getters should qualify, then where does one draw the bar? There are a boatload of candidates running for president each time out and giving them all a go at it would make the debates look like a high school marching band performance. But fair is fair, so I thought I'd give some shouts out to a few of our more, uh, colorful tickets in 2004 that won't be fielding any questions from Jim Lehrer.
The American Party
Diane Templin heads the ticket for the AP, which seem more or less to be libertarians that love the Old Testament, oppose abortion, and consider homosexuality "a plague sweeping the nation and creating a wave of disease and immorality." Oh, and they want to take back the Panama Canal.
The Constitution Party
Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and his Holy Boulder flirted with a run on the CP's ticket, so you know what to expect. Specifically, that would be the words "God" and "Biblical" appearing about every tenth word in any party document. Mike Peroutka, a lawyer and "Biblical-Constitutionalist" educator from Maryland heads the ticket. Oh, and they want to take back the Panama Canal, too.
The Peace and Freedom Party
Definitely not spending big bucks on web designers, the PFP has cause celebre convicted murderer Leonard Peltier as their standard-bearer this year, replacing cause celebre convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal, who declined the nomination. Peltier's running mate is his lead criminal defense attorney. 'Nuff said, I think.
The Personal Choice Party
After a foreshortened bid for the Libertarian's VP nomination, Charles Jay decided that was too mainstream or something and decided to form the PCP instead. The PCP is kinda like the Libertarian Party, but with a particular emphasis on gambling and boxing. Marilyn Chambers is his running mate. Yes, that Marilyn Chambers.
The Prohibition Party
The oldest third party still exists, barely, and with the most bare-bones party website you'll ever see. After winning a whopping 208 votes nationwide in 2000, the PP had a schism, so while temperance lecturer ("reenacts early-1900s evangelist Billy Sunday's 'Sermon Against Alcohol' ") Gene Amondson is the official nominee, longtime party head and campaign button manufacturer Earl Dodge is running on a renegade PP ticket, trying to gain ballot access in Colorado. The whole story is too weird to summarize, but it's worth a read. Also, they advocate a return to the gold standard, but don't mention Panama. I suspect they want it back too, though.
The Judean People's Front
Or is that the People's Front of Judea? Anyhow, the Socialist Party USA, the Socialist Equality Party, the Socialist Worker's Party, and the Workers World Party are splitting the windmill-tilting vote, but the SWP gets extra credit by nominating two people ineligible to hold the office, since Roger Calero isn't an American citizen and his VP choice is only in her 20's. Strategery.
But those are just the guys with fancy-schmancy, high-falutin' parties behind them. The real fun begins with the independent and write-in candidates. A few of my favorites from the long list:
AJ Albritton - "The American candidate who is also the Victorian Candidate. The Victorian Era to be the New Model Victorian Era -- from the male point of view."
Sterling D. Allen - His candidacy this year was foretold by Alphabetic Bible Code and is essential to averting WWIII.
Harry Braun - His vision revolves around constructing a fleet of oceanbound windship hydrogen production systems.
Jack Grimes - Head of the United Fascist Union, his website includes a transcript of a speech he delivered in 1998 to the Flying Saucer Society of Dover, DE.
Andrew Rotramel - Promises to offer Noam Chomsky the position of National Security Advisor. Poor speller.
Average Joe Schriner - "Joe Schriner is average height (5'10") and average weight (155). He went to an average college (Bowling Green State University in Ohio) where he got average grades. He has an average size family (two kids) and lived in an average Midwestern town (Ripley, Ohio). The last couple of years, however, he did a not-so-average thing. He ran for President..."
Lawrence Rey Topham - Perhaps the most genuinely nuts candidate in the list, Topham has refused to even touch the fake U.S. currency since 1981 and single-handedly declared martial law in Utah in 1997. He is now "Secretary of State of the State of Utah and Acting Governor during martial law." Also, his favorite food is wheat.
Da Vid - A $33 donation will get you a membership in his new Light Party, along with a New Age CD and music video.
Tom Wells - Can't tell what's on his head in the picture, but Wells' site contains a lot of words, many of them in ALL CAPS. He is running because God appeared to him in his bedroom a decade ago, starting the conversation thusly: ""TOM ----- TELL MY PEOPLE THAT THEY ARE TO TELL THEIR PUBLIC OFFICIALS THAT THEY ARE PREPARED NOT TO PAY THEIR TAXES UNTIL ABORTION IS NO LONGER PUBLICLY FUNDED."
AJ Wildman - The Hemp Candidate.
In this corner, we have Baby Huey Luka from Georgia. However, the Germans (who else?) have apparently produced his genetically superior nemesis.
Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat. DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth. The discovery, reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.
[...]
The boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff "mighty mice" by "turning off" the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.
[...]
Researchers would not disclose the German boy's identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand. In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people.
The pictures above are at 28 days and 7 months. So far as I can tell from looking through the news wires, the article didn't include any current pictures (anybody with a NEJM subscription that could confirm that for me?). This being the first documented case, the implications for this kid's future health are anybody's guess.
Myostatin blocking has occurred naturally in certain breeds of cattle bred for muscularity and has been used in laboratory settings to produce "mighty mice" previously. The obvious therapy targets are for diseases like muscular dystrophy and wasting diseases like cancer and AIDS, along with muscle mass losses from broken bones in casts or zero gravity. But you know that every trainer and sports doctor in the country just sat up and took notice, too.
The race between Erskine Bowles and Richard Burr for the NC Senate seat being vacated by John Edwards has been surprisingly quiet and low-key so far. Local coverage here has been scarce (and mostly focused on silliness); national attention has been almost non-existent. But Erskine's on Wonkette's radar.
Hotline's Last Call asked: "Erskine Bowles said this weekend: 'You are looking at one jacked-up candidate!' Is his campaign being run by Hans and Franz?" We wonder if Hotline is being run by Lorne Michaels. "Jacked-up" is really more of a "pimp my ride" term. Bowles is tricked out, not pumped up. We especially like the little neon runner that they've placed on his undercarriage.
In all seriousness: Could someone please pimp out our man Erskine? A little disco ball, maybe? A fuzzy steering wheel cover? At the moment, we fall asleep just looking at him. . .
The administration plan to hide an almost one billion dollar cost using play money federal dollars is coming apart at the seams.
A plan by Sen. Pete Domenici to tack a $446 million surcharge on utility customers to pay for a Nevada nuclear waste site drew the ire of nuclear power plant owners Monday. New Mexico Republican Domenici, a long-time nuclear industry ally, has drawn rare industry criticism for his plan to raise fees paid by utility customers by 60 percent in fiscal 2005, which starts Oct. 1.
I'm all for protecting consumers from industry gouging; but in this case the costs are real, and the fiscal black hole that is the nuclear power industry is in dire need of a spotlight.
Industry officials called the proposed fees excessive on top of the $22 billion utility customers have already paid into a construction fund. Domenici's staff was to brief (Froz: beg and plead with) the utility industry on the proposal later on Monday. "We definitely don't believe that imposing additional fees at this time ... can be justified," said a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm[...]
But
"Pete Domenici is acting on behalf of a desperate administration and the big nuclear and energy utilities to which they are beholden," (Nevada Democratic Senator Harry) Reid said in a statement.
Nevada is a traditionally red state that has shown a blue tendency of late, with the influx of Latino and eastern immigrants into the Las Vegas metro area. The Bush line, and that of Republicans from anywhere other than Nevada, regarding Yucca Mountain does not resonate well there. And avoiding the issue doesn't go unnoticed, either.
A restaurant in Ukraine has unveiled what could be the unhealthiest snack in the world - chocolate-covered pork fat. BBC Online says salo, or small slices of pork fat, are already commonly eaten with black bread, raw garlic and vodka as a Ukrainian delicacy. But now one of Kiev's smartest restaurants has started serving the fat coated in chocolate.
Are you freaking kidding me? If you don't know me you might think I am joking, but the rest of you know I'm not: I would be so all over that. If I set up a booth at the NC State Fair selling chocolate-dipped pig fat, I'd make a mint. Laugh (or shudder) all you want; that combo would rock. The article notes that Ukraine already has one of the highest rates of heart disease in Europe, so what have they got to lose?
We should tell 'em about the deep-fried cow brain sandwich. I see synergy.
Update (4:35 pm): Via Steve Gilliard, I see that the story has made the BBC's website and they have a picture!
Barnes & Noble's recommended non-fiction, sorted in best-selling order, and Orwell's 1984 is #2.
(B&N link via dorkgirl52)
So I've used the word liar in reference to members of the current administration more than a few times, and while I realize that that's an inflammatory term, how else do you characterize people who look you straight in the eye and say things like this:
Transcript, CNBC’s "Capital Report," June 17, 2004
Gloria Borger: Well, let’s get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was quote, "pretty well confirmed."
Vice President Cheney: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that.
BORGER: I think that is...
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not.
Transcript, NBC’s "Meet the Press," December 9, 2001.
Vice-President Cheney: "It’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April."
Okay, we are well past the point now of saying that it is up for interpretation. Even when Bush and Cheney know we know they are lying, they keep right at it without batting an eye. Where are all the "journalists" who gleefully labelled Al Gore a liar on completely false grounds?
I've only watched one episode of The Surreal Life, and chancing upon that episode was the first I'd heard of it. I was flipping through the channels at normal machine-gun pace when my brain registered that some number of clicks back, I had just seen Ron Jeremy slow-dancing with Tammy Faye Bakker while Vanilla Ice looked on. Had to go back for that, you know?
However, the only show I make an effort to watch is The Daily Show, so like so much else, all thoughts of The Surreal Life receded into that misty, murky, unreliable part of my memory where reside such things as the location of my keys or mailing the cable bill. And there they remained . . . until now. The new season's line-up has been announced and let me just say: I am intrigued by the potential interactions between Charo and Flava Flav.
Cuchi-cuchi-coo, boyee.
...same as the old song.
If you spend any time listening to FM rock radio or watching MTV, you're familiar with cock-rockers Nickelback, famous mostly for lead singer Chad Kroeger's dreamy blonde locks and the song "How You Remind Me." But not for much since then. Maybe some creative wing-stretching would be in order but, you know, why f*ck with a winning formula?
Jim Henley links to an amazing mash-up of their first single and latest single, but the mash-up itself isn't so technically amazing. After all, it's just the one song on the left channel and the other on the right channel, playing simultaneously. What's amazing is that the two tracks are so functionally identical that not one dissonant note or rhythm emerges from the mix. Not one. Anywhere. In fact, the melange sounds better than either track separately (yes, yes, faint praise and all that, but still...).
Check it out. Works best with headphones.
This guy is a professor? In the UNC system? Holy crap.
But then I looked at Professor Adams' website and paged through some of his old columns and realized this was indeed about as good an article as he has penned yet. Give that "special" professor a gold star and a fruit roll-up!
A discovery by a University of California, San Diego biologist that some species of bees exploit chemical clues left by other bee species to guide their kin to food provides evidence that eavesdropping may be an evolutionary driving force behind some bees’ ability to conceal communication inside the hive, using a form of animal language to encode food location.
What is the sound of one synapse firing?
By determining the brain structures involved in meditation and whose activity is gradually changed in the course of long-term meditative practice, researchers hope this training could one day be used as a complementary treatment for neurological conditions, such as Parkinson's disease and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder
The trace metals come from the soil where the grapes were grown. Ana Maria Cameán and her colleagues analysed the concentrations of 16 metals in 18 samples of cava and 17 samples of champagne.
All comets were once thought to be little more than lumps of loosely packed icy rubble. Stardust has revealed that Wild 2 bucks the trend with a rigid core that is able to support near-vertical cliffs and spires of rock.
The latest research takes teleportation a step further than it's ever been, for this is the first time that teleportation has involved atoms and that there has not been a physical link in the transfer.
While only the relatively unsophisticated technology of my automobile will serve as my transporter device, I'm off to enjoy the Nation's capital for the weekend and doubt I'll have a chance to post until next Tuesday. Ciao!
In these days of terror threats you have to take everything seriously--the San Antonio Fire Department was called out today to investigate a report of exploding toilet paper[...] Firefighters at the station at Interstate 10 and Vance Jackson kept the suspicious t.p. outside while they called arson investigators and the bomb squad.
They determined it was a "manufacturers defect." Yeah, right. These guys aren't idiots. They know where we're vulnerable. Let's just unconditionally surrender to Islamofascistan right now and get it over with. It's not worth being terrorized in our own bathrooms, for God's sake.
The minor league Nashua (NH) Pride will celebrate the 32d anniversary of the Watergate break-in tonight with free Nixon bobblehead dolls for the first 1,000 fans.
The team will also recognize the two reporters who helped uncover the scandal, with anyone named Woodward or Bernstein receiving free admission into the ballpark. In addition, fans will be able to have their tickets shredded at the front gate, the game will be played without PA announcements or music for 18 and a half minutes in the third inning and selected seats will be "bugged" with prizes.
I can't wait for the Durham Bulls to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Lewinsky scandal.
Washington Times: 12-year-old downloads penis at school
I guess it's cheaper than buying one at the mall.
From Will Durst's FAQ about the recently concluded Reaganpalooza:
Q. Does Reagan get frequent flyer miles for all those cross-country coffin trips?
A. Probably not, but then the chances of him cashing them in are pretty slim anyway.
Q. Is this going to help Bush?
A. What a repugnant suggestion. To sully the death and mourning of a national legend by raising the ugly specter of partisan politics.
Q. Does that mean yes?
A. A 168-hour commercial on the ideals of conservatism? Yeah, you could say this is going to help Bush. You could also say wolverines make lousy crib toys.
Q. What long-term repercussions are expected?
A. Well, if this unfortunate demise and subsequent memorial buoys Bush, and Kerry falls behind in the polls, you know his people are going to have to consider taking out Clinton in October. If they don't need that big of a bounce, Carter.
He couldn't help it. It's all genetic.
Fellas, something tells me this excuse won't work too well. Don't try it.
The AP had it as "had temporarily forgotten"; the Washington Post had it as "had misspoken". But are those necessarily inconsistent with perjury?
When his resignation becomes effective July 11, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet will no longer be covered by Executive Privilege. He may then be compelled to testify about what he as a Director of Central Intelligence told the President regarding several matters about which both he and Bush have thus far displayed a startling lack of candor[...]
The "very important subject" (W's words -Froz) discussed for almost six hours by Bush with his core national security team would likely have been the CIA's action the day before placing four wanted Al-Qaeda terrorists on the "watchlist" of persons to be detained if located in the US. On August 23 the Agency sent "cables to the State Department, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, requesting that 'four bin Laden related individuals' including Almidhar and Alhazmi, be placed on the watchlist." (Washington Post, A8, September 21, 2002) Two of those - Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi - subsequently led the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon.
It's circumstantial and consider the source. But that'd be a hell of an earthquake, wouldn't it? Testify to whom, though?
Surprising, at least, if not exactly stunning.
In a stunning bipartisan effort, last night the House of Representatives voted to limit money to build logging roads in the Tongass National Forest. The amendment to the FY2005 Interior Appropriations bill, sponsored by Reps. Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Robert Andrews (D-NJ), won by a vote of 222 to 205. The amendment is supported by a broad coalition of taxpayer and budget watchdog groups, sportsmen and conservationists.
Subsidized logging in the Tongass National Forest has cost American taxpayers millions – in 2002 alone, the Forest Service spent $36 million on the Tongass logging program and received only $1 million in revenue. Over the past two decades, losses have reached over $750 million.
I've read elsewhere that the revenues were closer to $2M, but the point remains.
Bush is losing support from a once-solid core constituency: sportsmen. I think they're realizing there's less of a chance they'll lose their guns than they'll lose their hunting grounds.
I think I'd forfeit a toe, a small one but nonetheless.
After being wooed by John Kerry to consider joining the Democratic presidential ticket, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will join President Bush on Air Force One on Friday and introduce him at a campaign event in Reno, Nev., campaign officials said Wednesday[...]
McCain will join Bush on Friday morning in a hangar at Fort Lewis, Wash., where the president will discuss transformation of the military, then will introduce McCain at a rally in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center.
That's a sizeable chunk of an entire day, a few hours of it somewhat, um, inseparable. I can imagine Junior is getting a tongue lashing the likes of which he hasn't heard since Mama got wind of that first wagonfall. Now that I think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the Senator cleared the content of his "talk" with Mama last week. And got her sanction on just about everything he wanted to say.
Hell, no, John McCain doesn't want to be Kerry's VP. Right now thousands of influential GOP backers realize that John McCain may just end up the voice of the opposition next year; John McCain knows it and John McCain wouldn't mind the role. Nice work if you can get it.
Could very well be that John McCain thinks that might be in the best interests of the country. I don't know but I'd love to ask. Maybe one of our more aggressive mainstream media reporters ought to, no? Doubt many want to take that risk. Doubt any are apostropher readers, but hey.
Tell you what... I think it'd be worth backing off the partisanship if John McCain got the keys to the Republican Party Lexus back and gave shrub and his faithful the combination to the bike lock. I think there's air in the tires. No. Wait. They'd have to invite Jim Jeffords back and give him everything he asked for: Party operative positions, committee assignments, everything.
C'mon! Spirit of bipartisanship! The whole "uniter not a divider" thing. What do you think are the chances? Senate Minority Leader John McCain. Has a nice ring to it.
I'm just shocked. Shocked, I tell you!
The Bush administration's last remaining justification for the invasion of Iraq has been demolished by a private poll revealing that only 2 per cent of Iraqis regard the occupying forces as liberators.
The poll results are devastating for both President George Bush and Tony Blair, who are fond of saying that future generations of Iraqis will thank them for liberating their country. Tony Blair has consistently said that history will prove him right for engineering the downfall of a cruel tyrant, even if weapons of mass destruction were not found.
Or, um, even if there was no connection between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda.
One, two, three, What're we fighting for? Don't ask me I ...
Check out Johnny Swing's line of Obsessive Furniture. I particularly like the couch made of 6400 welded nickels. The craziest thing: they actually look comfortable.
(via Veer)
California is attempting an unorthodox way of increasing fuel efficiency in curbing emissions of CO2 from automobiles. States have traditionally had authority to regulate airborne emissions as a way to improve air quality. But CO2, a greenhouse gas more so than a traditionally defined pollutant, from automobiles has never been regulated, even by the federal government. So since California’s plan to require that CO2 emissions from new cars be reduced 30% by 2014 would logically be adapted to by increasing fuel efficiency, it can be seen as the State Air Resources Board capitalizing on a technicality: Fuel efficiency, the assumed province of the Federal government, isn’t being regulated directly; emissions are.
Now if states choose to weaken environmental regulations, the States’ rights songbook has plenty of applicable hymns in it. The chorus rises from Republican quarters in defense of polluting industries clamoring to locate where environmental protections are lax. But here, the tables are turned. Or rather, many typically pro-states' rights conservatives herniate discs in their spines moaning that California is outside its authority. Praise here for Republican Governor Schwarzenegger for supporting the plan and promising to fight industry or federal attempts to kill it.
The automakers, of course, are howling and considering filing suit, claiming that California is stepping on federal toes. They and the fossil fuel industry have invested a great deal in fighting higher CAFE standards in congress and would hate to have to wage that battle in 50 different state houses. California has a law (.pdf) that requires the Air Resources Board to limit greenhouse gases and the state’s legal arguments will stem from that directive.
I’m not a lawyer in the case (obviously) and don’t need to deflect the accusations of taking the technicality too far, so I’ll take the bait. I’ll assume California is trying to mandate higher fuel economy in automobiles. Why should the federal government require states to be more wasteful than they want to be?
Ogged spots the cognitive dissonance that even CNN can't obscure.
"You know that we know that you know that we're lying, but it still doesn't change a thing, you know?"
Robert Brigham has the blog round-up so far on this story.
When the fetching young woman showed up naked in the middle of Tuesday's morning Finance Committee, the Board of Supervisors members barely blinked an eye. The Sentinel's Pat Murphy snapped a photo. "Arrest me," she said, giggling. "Public comment is closed," said Aaron Peskin, who had been speaking on mundane bond details. "You could have a seat." She came back again a few minutes later with the same line, then left while Sheriff's deputies came to the halls to look for her. "Just another day at the Board of Supervisors," said Peskin later. "Reminds me of my days at UC Santa Cruz." Just a little more sad, maybe.
Some disagreement exists as to whether Peskin barely blinked an eye, not so much as batted an eye, was happily nonplussed, or was visibly rattled.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the date that [James Joyce's] Ulysses is set, this lauded book will be presented here page by page starting with page one today and ending with the last page on June 14, 2006.
Wonder if he's heard from Stephen Joyce yet?
I seemingly can't escape the Scott Peterson murder trial. Every time I turn on the news, if it isn't the current story, I can be assured that the ticker will give me the latest non-update within five minutes. Moreover, that murder trial is BORING. I can't for the life of me figure out what about it so fascinates the American public. It's not as though a different "random guy kills wife" story doesn't pop up every few days. So why have I only just now read about this story?
This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ. Helzer, a former stockbroker who has already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty, exerted a charismatic hold over an eclectic group of followers including his younger brother, a former girlfriend turned Playboy centrefold model, and a self-described "good witch" who once offered to raise money for Armageddon by appearing in porn films.
The first two victims were elderly former clients of Helzer's, who were forced to write cheques for $100,000 (Ł55,000) while being tortured and held under the influence of the date-rape drug rohypnol. The third victim was Selina Bishop, 22-year-old daughter of the blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, who was initially part of the gang but was then slaughtered to ensure that she did not testify against the others. Her mother, Jennifer Villarin, and her mother's boyfriend were the fourth and fifth victims.
[...]
The culmination of Helzer's plan was to have been an operation codenamed "Brazil", in which he would send South American orphans to Salt Lake City to kill the 15 elders who run the Mormon church. According to Godman's testimony, Helzer imagined he could blame the murders on the "government behind government" and take over the leadership of the world's 12 million Mormons himself.
I mean, really: Elvin Bishop, Miss September 2000, "good witch" porn aspirants, Armageddon, rohypnol, South American orphans wiping out the Mormon leadership... How is this getting beaten by Scott Peterson? What the hell has happened to our sensationalist media? I weep for our country, I tell you. I weep.
The first virus that attacks cellular phones has been identified, affecting certain brands of phones using Bluetooth technology. By exploiting the wireless networking protocol, it raises the specter of crowded areas such as public transport or malls acting as vortices of mass infection. As a "proof of concept" virus, this one carries no malicious payload, but merely drains the phones' batteries.
I have a long-standing dislike of cellular phones and have steadfastly refused to own one. Every time one goes off in my office cubefarm (approximately every 20-30 minutes), I have to struggle mightily against the urge to go smash the offending unit with a hammer. I don't claim that it's a rational hatred, just a persistent one. The evil apostropher buried deep under my smiling exterior will find no small amount of humor when the Surgeon General announces the infernal devices cause brain tumors.
Accordingly, kudos to 29a, the underground group of Czech and Slovak virus authors that crafted this worm. Now, comrades, how about one that infects cellphone users?
Mark Morford says it in 1325 words.
Kirk Anderson says it in nine panels.
I don't have anything to say about bonobo rage, it just looked so forlorn with no Google hits that I thought I'd give it one. Same with drive my mustard truck.
Update (6/16, 9:13 pm): Success!
Formal House ethics complaint filed against DeLay.
A Texas Democrat who is losing his House seat because of redistricting engineered by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is filing ethics complaints against the Republican leader[...]
Bell's complaint would be the first filed against a House leader since the ethics committee took up a case against former Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997 that contributed to his decision to leave office. Since then there has been an unspoken truce between the two parties on filing ethics complaints.
At issue are: (1) A $56K campaign contribution from Westar Energy that allegedly was linked to crafting friendly legislation, (2) Campaign money laundering, and (3) Using his influence to get the FAA to track down the Texas Democrats fleeing the state in their fight against redistricting.
My gut says this goes nowhere; the House Democratic leadership is not on board (although they're not getting in the way). But he's had it coming.
Sometimes a relatively unimportant story is just too sweet to let pass without mention. Former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, one of the ringleaders in the ridiculous impeachment of Bill Clinton, has been trying to sue Clinton, James Carville, and Larry Flynt for defamation to the tune of $30 million. Why? Barr alleged "that the three conspired to smear him by publishing information about his private life as retaliation for his outspoken role in the impeachment proceedings against Clinton."
Wow. What kind of lowlife jackasses would delve into somebody's personal life for political purposes? Oh right! Ones like Bob Barr. Cry me a river, you hypocritical douchebag. The accusations which so chafed his tender, powdered ass included an affair in the mid-80's and paying for an abortion despite his vociferous opposition to abortion rights. Just yesterday, a judge tossed his defamation case for the most beautiful of reasons: the allegations are true, and so by definition, not defamatory.
The suit against Clinton and Carville was dismissed for being filed outside the statute of limitations, the charges against Flynt on the grounds that they weren't defamatory. Flynt denies that Carville and Clinton had anything to do with his information, claiming it came from a private investigator and the divorce trial testimony of Barr's former spouse. One can only hope that Barr spent a truckload of money pursuing this case already. Something about living by swords...
Really early this morning (scroll down) I posted about the recently retrieved ice core from Antarctica and provided a timeframe metaphor: "Take the 5 billion year experience of planet Earth as a 12 month calendar and this ice core goes back to about 11:20 pm or so on New Year's Eve."
Relying on the same metaphor, if you move backwards to a few days either side of Christmas, you're talking about the Cretaceous era 130mya to 65mya, the last age of dinosaurs. UC-San Diego geologists have retrieved sediment cores from the ocean that give clues to climatic cycles in that era.
The evidence is that change happened quickly (although rock samples don't provide the resolution that ice cores do.) Specifically, twice during that 65 million year span, the amount of a sulfer isotope associated with volcanic activity and a decrease in oxygen available to lifeforms - thus less carbon (organic material) laid down in the rock by organisms - dropped precipitously.
The fact that climate changes rapidly isn't so surprising any more; but what is getting clearer with every discovery is that lifeforms have a big impact on the makeup of the atmosphere, and in turn, even the rock. Life on Earth (the vast majority of it, at least) is carbon-based and organisms play a pivotal role in regulating the carbon cycle in the atmosphere and oceans on which those very organisms depend. So it's a biology-geology feedback system inherently capable of collapse.
There's not a whole hell of a lot we can do about climate swings in the Cretaceous. But acknowledging that life isn't exactly 'on' Earth; rather it is 'of' Earth provides a much needed perspective for issues such as farming practices and the imperative role good soil management must play in stabilizing the climate now.
Scientists estimate that, since the mechanization of agriculture began a few hundred years ago, some 78 billion metric tons – more than 171 trillion pounds – of carbon once trapped in the soil have been lost to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2). Converting natural ecosystems to fields for crop production and pastures depletes a soil's carbon content by as much as 75 percent" (Dr. Rattan) Lal said. "And the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere each year from industrial activity is on the rise."
With too little carbon in the soil, crop production is inefficient. Right now, the world's agricultural soils are alarmingly depleted of carbon, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, south and central Asia and the Caribbean and Andean regions, Lal said.
He calls for adopting "recommended management practices" for increasing and keeping carbon in farmed soils. These practices include no-till farming – leaving residue from the previous year's crops on the field; agroforestry – planting trees or shrubs on or around cropland to enhance the quality of the soil; planting cover crops, which protect the soil from erosion during normal growing seasons; and using nutrients such as manure, compost or biosolids to fertilize crops.
Evidence shows that following such practices greatly increases and sustains crop yields. Lal cited an 18-year experiment in Kenya: Farm fields managed by regular farming practices – tilling the land, using no fertilizer, leaving fields bare in the non-growing season – produced about 1 ton of maize and beans per hectare (a hectare is about the size of two football fields). But fields treated with manure, planted with cover crops and covered with mulch yielded six times that amount.
At least not yet.
Ever since the story about the deepest ice core ever drilled and brought to the surface broke last week I've wanted to sit down and find the original press release. Various interferences from that annoying "real" world prevented me from doing so until now. The tantalizing headlines I saw ranged from "We're doomed" to "Climate change is a crock."
Science TKOs Journalism in the first round.
If you're into self-flagellation of the cerebral variety, the British Antarctic Survey links off this page to a pdf of their full report. Basically, they drilled an ice core that is astonishingly intact (showing no electrical conductivity evidence of "folding" and consistent with seafloor evidence timing glaciation termination - cue music: 'everybody's dooo-in' a brand new dance, now') down 2 miles into the antarctic "Dome C" ice. It represents 740,000 years (740kyr) of icepack history; the previous record ice core analyzed represented 420kyr and was drilled 350 miles away.
That 420 kyr limit on available data from ice cores (which offer much more bountiful and clearer information) was frustrating because there were strong suspicions from other, less informative, methods that the story pre-430,000 years ago was likely different. But how exactly was not evident. The Dome C ice core sheds light on that suspicion and the verdict is that yes, the climate cyclical pattern was different.
For one thing, the dominance of the 41,000 year cycle (Earth's orbit's obliquity) was waning and at 430kyr ago, the 100,000 year cycle (Earth's orbit's eccentricity) overtook it with a vengeance. Just remember, eccentricity is in; obliquity is soooo Pleistocene.
The transition is known as "Termination V" or "MIS 11" or the "mid-Brunhes event". Before it, roughly speaking, interglacials were longer compared to the glaciations than now, but cooler. Since MIS 11 the interglacials are warmer but shorter. The whole "Mild for 15,000 more years" hoopla you've been seeing refers to the fact that Termination V looks a lot like Termination I (19 to 15,000 years ago)... and to Terminations II, III, and IV, for that matter.
The interglacial following Termination V lasted for about 30,000 years, so you do the math and write a headline. Additionally, preliminary analysis is that the atmosphere then was very similarly composed, sans the changes (CO2 way up) of the last few hundred years, as it has been very recently. As a side note: you can get lost in these numbers. We are talking about very recent geologic history. Take the 5 billion year experience of planet Earth as a 12 month calendar and this ice core goes back to about 11:20 pm or so on New Year's Eve.
As for impact on global climate policy discussions, this drill offers very little. The excitements associated with it are scientific,
According to our preliminary timescale, extending the record to 3,190m (ice already drilled but not analysed) will take the record back to 807kyr... (R)ecords already obtained... suggest another glacial cycle will be found. This ice should also include the Brunhes-Matuyama magnetic reversal... and therefore give us indication of how a reversal is recorded in cosmogenic isotopes.
and technical.
The ice cores are cylinders of ice 10 cm in diameter that are brought to the surface in lengths of about 3 metres at a time. Snowflakes collect particles from the atmosphere, and pockets of air become trapped between snow crystals as ice is formed. The Antarctic fieldwork is challenging both scientifically and environmentally. Dome C (75° 06'S, 123° 21'E) is one of the most hostile places on the planet, and average annual temperatures are below –54 degrees Celsius.
The wildcard is the unprecedented increase in greenhouse gas composition in the atmosphere over the last few hundred years, supposedly associated with human industry.
From the report's conclusion: "Although the results from MIS 11 indicate that without human intervention a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future, the predicted increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations make this unlikely."
Whatever. Let's spray paint his face on the moon. Fafnir and Giblets tried to suss the issue out, but as per normal just ended up fighting about jazz and temporalist structures. You know how it is. So while they iron out their differences, we turn to The Daily Show for commentary.
A pair of female scientists who are also stand-up comedians (comprising the entire population of that demographic cohort) have announced the mathematical formula for the perfect joke. And no, this isn't a joke. So remember: c=(m+nO)/p.
In the formula, c is the funniness of the joke; m is the "comic moment" (arrived at by multiplying the punchline's funniness rating by the length of the joke's buildup); nO is the number of times the subject undergoes a pratfall, multiplied by the "ouch factor" - the social and physical pain of the indignity involved. The total is divided by the number of puns, p.
However, plugging in what I have determined through my own rigorous field testing to be in the 98th percentile of the world's funniest jokes*, I'm coming up with a pretty low c-rating, so some serious and scathing peer review is likely on the way. I'm no mathematician, so take my lay criticisms as exactly that, but there are two variables missing from the formula: blasphemy and penises, the presence of which always kill and thereby act as multipliers on the entire formula.
*Q: Why did the blonde go to church?
A: [stretch arms out from sides] She heard there was a guy in there hung like THIS.
LA Times: Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November. The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.
"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers. Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father.
Really, it's hard to overstate just how unusual this is. Click the 'Continue reading' link below for the whole list of dignitaries.
Avis T. Bohlen — assistant secretary of State for arms control, 1999-2002; deputy assistant secretary of State for European affairs 1989-1991.
Retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. — chairman, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Committee, 1993-94; ambassador to Britain, 1993-97; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89.
Jeffrey S. Davidow — ambassador to Mexico, 1998-2002; assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1996.
William A. DePree — ambassador to Bangladesh, 1987-1990.
Donald B. Easum — ambassador to Nigeria, 1975-79.
Charles W. Freeman Jr. — assistant secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs, 1993-94; ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992.
William C. Harrop — ambassador to Israel, 1991-93; ambassador to Zaire, 1987-1991.
Arthur A. Hartman — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1981-87; ambassador to France, 1977-1981.
Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar — commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, overseeing forces in the Middle East, 1991-94; deputy chief of staff, Marine Corps, 1990-94.
H. Allen Holmes — assistant secretary of Defense for special operations, 1993-99; assistant secretary of State for politico-military affairs, 1986-89.
Robert V. Keeley — ambassador to Greece, 1985-89; ambassador to Zimbabwe, 1980-84.
Samuel W. Lewis — director of State Department policy and planning, 1993-94; ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985.
Princeton N. Lyman — assistant secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1995-98; ambassador to South Africa, 1992-95.
Jack F. Matlock Jr. — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-1991; director for European and Soviet Affairs, National Security Council, 1983-86; ambassador to Czechoslovakia, 1981-83.
Donald F. McHenry — ambassador to the United Nations, 1979-1981.
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak — chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, 1990-94.
George E. Moose — assistant secretary of State for African affairs, 1993-97; ambassador to Senegal, 1988-91.
David D. Newsom — acting secretary of State, 1980; undersecretary of State for political affairs, 1978-1981; ambassador to Indonesia, 1973-77
Phyllis E. Oakley — assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, 1997-99.
James Daniel Phillips — ambassador to the Republic of Congo, 1990-93; ambassador to Burundi, 1986-1990.
John E. Reinhardt — professor of political science, University of Vermont, 1987-91; ambassador to Nigeria, 1971-75.
Retired Air Force Gen. William Y. Smith — deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command, 1981-83.
Ronald I. Spiers — undersecretary-general of the United Nations for Political Affairs, 1989-1992; ambassador to Pakistan, 1981-83.
Michael Sterner — deputy assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, 1977-1981; ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, 1974-76.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner — director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1977-1981.
Alexander F. Watson — assistant secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, 1993-96; deputy permanent representative to the U.N., 1989-1993. Source: Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change
The Big Bang wasn't a bang at all. However, the astronomy community will be sticking with that terminology because the Big Low Moan sounds too much like a Chinese dish.
The Universe began not with a bang but with a low moan, building into a roar that gave way to a deafening hiss. And those sounds gave birth to the first stars. Cosmologists do not usually think in terms of sound, but this aural picture is a good way to think about the Universe's beginnings, says astronomer Mark Whittle of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Whittle has reconstructed the cosmic cacophony from data teased out over the past couple of years from the high-resolution mapping by NASA's WMAP spacecraft of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the hot early Universe.
[...]
As for volume, the intensity of the variations corresponds to about 110 decibels, as loud as a rock concert. Whittle has also used the best available cosmological models to map the way the vibrations evolved over time, showing how the chords of the big bang changed over the Universe's first million years or so. [...] Whittle played the soundtrack at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Denver last week. Contrary to its name, the big bang began in absolute silence. But the sound soon built up into a roar whose broad-peaked notes corresponded, in musical terms, to a "majestic" major third chord, evolving slowly into a "sadder" minor third, Whittle explained.
For those worried that you cannot have sounds in space, that is true today, but it was not so in the Universe's infancy. For perhaps its first million years, the Universe was small and dense enough that sound waves could indeed travel through it - so efficiently, in fact, that they moved at about half the speed of light.
The article contains a link to a 500k .wav file that compresses the first million years of the music of the spheres down to a 5 second clip. With the age of the universe estimated at 13.7 billion years, that means the whole hum-and-hiss song would be over 19 hours long so far. Of course, Lou Reed already recorded the short version.
In 1961, aspiring rock bassist John F. Kerry and six friends formed a garage surf band called the Electras that played high school dances. They cut a self-titled album and had 500 copies pressed. Amazingly, the masters still exist and have been dug up and re-released. KerryRocks.com has ordering information, the liner notes, and an mp3 of clips from the album. The band also now has a website that warns, "There have been rumors of a reunion performance between now and November 2004."
The rumors persist, but the apostropher research staff has learned from a reliable campaign source that this is not John Kerry. Neither is this. Nor this, despite the uncanny resemblance. The rumor that is true, however: after a successful career as a municipal bond trader, the maracas player now does real estate management. Just thought you'd want to know.
(linktunnel: Boing Boing to Luke Francl)
It's official. Now everybody has one.
Via The Smoking Gun, here comes the link you have all been waiting for: David Berkowitz's blog. Yes, the Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz. And he has special messages for teens!
This is great. I always wondered what the Son of Sam thought about Saddam Hussein's capture.
If a Bush falls in the forest, does it make a sound?
In celebration of his 80th birthday, President Bush has decided to perform an accelerated free fall from a plane traveling more than 120 mph and approximately 13,000 feet above the earth this Sunday. Although this is the second time the former president has jumped from a plane for his birthday, he must still undergo a thorough training session for his accelerated fall. [...] In an accelerated free fall, students (and former presidents) are accompanied by two certified skydivers -- one on either side. During the course of the 45- to 60-second free fall, the instructors are there to help keep the jumper stable and in position, said Spillers. Once the parachute is deployed, instructors guide the students through the landing process through use of hand-held radios.
Replacement hips will be stored and ready at the anticipated landing site. This has the ring of those situations where a chemotherapy patient's family all shave their heads in solidarity. "Don't worry, son; I'm there for you. Those approval ratings won't be the only things plummeting."
But understanding a great deal; and even using some basic logic.
Rico (a German Border Collie) is hardly the first non-human animal to show skills at language comprehension; his vocabulary size is comparable to that of language-trained apes, dolphins, sea lions and parrots. But researchers... say the German canine shows a process of learning called "fast-mapping" not seen to this extent in animals other than humans.
Like a young human child, Rico can quickly form rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word after a single exposure by inferring that the new word is connected to an object he is seeing for the first time. That suggests to scientists that the ability to understand sounds is not necessarily related to the ability to speak, and that some aspects of speech comprehension evolved earlier than, and independent from, of human speech.
The fast mapping is pretty revolutionary to be seen in another species. Not particularly surprising to me, but I own a very smart dog and tend to have very few hangups regarding humans just being another animal species. If we've got it, we developed it form ancestors' "building block" traits and other descendants of those ancestors will have had those building blocks to play with all this time as well. It's also worthy of note that while the finding is new, remember it's been almost heretic to even hypothesize about language ability in other animals for the vast majority of the history of science. I'll place a wager that linguists and ethologists will have more and more to talk about at cocktail parties over the next few years.
Here's specifically their experiment:
In a series of controlled experiments, he correctly retrieved, by name, 37 out of 40 items randomly chosen from his toy collection.
He then correctly retrieved a new toy, among seven familiar toys in a separate room using a name he had never heard before, in seven of 10 tries. This (and the way he went about doing it) is the evidence of fast-mapping.
The researchers infer that Rico employs "a process of elimination, much as young children do, to surmise that new words tend to refer to objects that do not already have names. After a month without access to these target toys, Rico retrieved them, upon request, from groups of four familiar and four completely novel toys in three out of six sessions. His retrieval rate is comparable to the performance of three-year-old toddlers."
So the big shakeup is that the comprehension element within the language-development feedback loop can operate much more independently from the speech element than previously thought. That's big. We'll probably find more building blocks with the studies of other highly sophisticated mammals. It's also consistent with the fact that while the structures in our throat and mouth have undergone dramatic evolutionary changes in the past few hundred thousand years, our ears are relatively unchanged and quite inferior, really, to many other species'.
There are a couple of cautions I'd throw in here, though:
One is that dogs are an extremely special case. They have had an incredibly close symbiotic relationship with humans for a long time and it is no doubt that our language and our communication with them has had an influence on their comprehension skills. The dogs that couldn't understand humans very well would not have been the ones to survive. The relationship with us would have, in effect, been providing a selective pressure to hone the comprehension ability; giving it something to replace for speech development in that feedback loop.
Second is that Rico is a show dog. Not to belittle the findings - which are quite astounding - Rico has undergone intensive training to identify and retrieve items. He's even been intensively trained to identify the one object he's never seen before and associate it with a new word. It's somewhat akin to little Spider Monkey scientists making a remarkable discovery that humans are more advanced at brachiation than previously thought becuase they studied the behavior of a trapeze artist with Barnum and Bailey's.
All in all, though, after watching the video, I'm convinced that Rico is a very, very good boy. And what else really matters?
CNN: "A television cameraman filming a story about a dangerous intersection was struck and killed by a vehicle, police said."
Democratic National Convention
Democratic National Convention
Democratic National Convention
The website is actually quite boring, but I'm just doing my part in the GoogleBomb War.
That damn liberal media, always trying to minimize Reagan's accomplishments. Wait, did I say minimize? I meant to say invent. Here's Tim Russert on Larry King last night.
One other political point: The Republicans achieved control of the United States Congress for the first time in 70 years, of both houses, under Ronald Reagan.
Okay, quick: what's wrong with this claim? The GOP took control of the House in 1994. Not only was Reagan not president, Bush I had already come and gone as well and Clinton was halfway through his first term. Just for fun, here are the House election results during Reagan's term. We'll start with '81, the class that entered with Reagan, and end with '89, the class elected during Reagan's last months in office.
'81-'83: 242 Dem, 192 Rep, 1 Ind
'83-'85: 269 Dem, 166 Rep
'85-'87: 253 Dem, 182 Rep
'87-'89: 258 Dem, 177 Rep
'89-'91: 260 Dem, 175 Rep
So over the course of Reagan's term, the Democrats widened their House margin by 35 seats. Now let's look at the Senate.
'81-'83: 53 Rep, 46 Dem, 1 Ind
'83-'85: 54 Rep, 46 Dem
'85-'87: 53 Rep, 47 Dem
'87-'89: 55 Dem, 45 Rep
'89-'91: 55 Dem, 45 Rep
Over the course of Reagan's term, Republicans LOST the majority they assumed in the same election that brought Reagan to office, going from a seven seat lead to a ten seat deficit. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that Tim Russert is seen as one of, if not the, leading political journalist in America. With his no-nonsense, stick-to-the-facts style, I can see why.
You have nothing to lose but your pants.
A (mostly work-safe) gallery of pin-up photos puts the "party" back in the Bolshevik Party.
I will be interested to see how this strategy works out.
Portuguese police are letting England soccer fans smoke dope in the hope it will keep them out of trouble. The authorities don't want supporters to get fighting drunk on booze and are turning a blind-eye to joint-puffing, hoping it will prevent brawling, reports the Daily Star (so a grain of salt is recommended -apos). Lisbon is said to be flooded with dealers selling "soft drugs" to supporters but police are deliberately keeping a low profile, saying their priority is to make sure fans don't get too drunk.
I'll bet the food concessions are carrying out euros by the wheelbarrowful at the end of the day.
Today, Cassini will make its closest (and only) approach to Saturn's outer moon, Phoebe. The two shots above were taken 13 hours apart yesterday.
There is a dramatic increase in detail between these two views. Phoebe completes one rotation about its spin axis in nine hours and 16 minutes. We are looking at opposite hemispheres in these two views. A large crater, roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) across, is visible in the image on the left. The image on the right shows a body heavily pitted with craters of varying sizes, including very large ones, and displaying a substantial amount of variation in surface brightness. Features that appear to be cliffs may be the boundaries between large craters. Despite its exaggerated topography, Phoebe is more round than irregular in shape.
Left to right, the two views were obtained at a phase, or Sun-Phoebe spacecraft angle, of 87 degrees, and from distances of 956,000 kilometers (594,000 miles) and 658,000 kilometers (409,000 miles), respectively. The image resolutions are 5.7 and 3.9 kilometers (3.5 to 2.4 miles) per pixel, respectively.
This will be the only swing by Phoebe because the little moon is nearly four times as far from Saturn as the next furthest major satellite. Among its other oddities:
Our last (relatively) upclose encounter with Phoebe was in 1981, when Voyager II flew by at a distance of 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km). This time, carrying equipment with 24 extra years of sophistication, Cassini will pass only 1240 miles (2000 km) away from the moon. Those should be some fantastic pictures we get back in a couple of days.
Ya mean we can't use that one, either? Shit. Karl, get in here.
The State Department acknowledged yesterday it was wrong to report that terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding that was used to boost one of President Bush's top foreign policy claims, success in countering terror.
Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials asserting success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time; the facts that we had were wrong," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
This jab is all just having some fun, really, because I'll be the first to say that this measure isn't exactly the best indicator of how well an administration is doing to protect the country. I'd also be interested in seeing how the rather liberal interpretation of the word "terrorism" that Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, primarily, have been tending towards desperately reaching for in the last three years may have influenced the numbers. That'd be a little ironic, wouldn't it.
But geopolitically our security has been compromised by three years of ineptitude. And I expect whatever numbers and plausible-to-the-uncurious arguments that can conceivably counter that will be dragged out and repeated ad nauseum during the campaign; that's electoral politics. But I'm relieved in that the numbers aren't so easily distorted on this one. It's a gross oversimplification, but a big number of voters happen to like those.
Hawaiian worms sober up more quickly than English worms.
The father of nanotechnology says don't worry about grey goo.
More fertile = more panky.
Take an interactive tour of the teenage body. Then call your lawyer.
How did those sneaky Italians beat me to registering the url powergenitalia.com? Now I'm going to have to go back and completely rename my entire product line. Grumble grumble grumble.
(via The Poor Man)
If you've watched cable news at all during the past week, you have heard again and again that Ronald Reagan "left office with the highest approval rating of any modern president." This is flatly contradicted by the facts; Clinton edges Reagan at 65-63, and if you average the final three polls of each presidency Clinton's lead stretches to 65.7-57.3 (final six polls makes it 63.0-55.5). Now, a new bit of historical revisionism is circulating. Namely, that Reagan presided over the longest economic expansion in history. Um, no.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the longest economic expansions in U.S. history are:
- March 1991 - March 2001: 120 months
- February 1961 -- December 1969: 106 months
- November 1982 -- July 1990: 92 months
The expansion Reagan presided over is therefore the third-longest in history. Even at the time of the expansion Reagan presided over -- before the expansion that began in 1991 -- it wasn't the longest in history; it was the second-longest.
This is not to say that Reagan didn't preside over a long economic expansion or exit to a high approval rating. He did both. However, the line between factual reporting and mythmaking has apparently gotten very blurry indeed.
No, wait, screw you. It's just for me to know.
I haven't mentioned the torture memo because, well, you can hit any random blog, scroll down, and get your commentary already. Michael Froomkin has what is probably the definitive take. A policy to employ torture was clearly in the works at the highest levels of the administration from the get-go. John Ashcroft's jaw-dropping performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, takes the entire matter to a new level of absurdity. While refusing to release the memo to Congress, he claimed that he was not invoking executive privilege, he just wasn't handing over the memo. As Jon Stewart put it on last night's Daily Show: "Dude, I'm no lawyer, but you gotta invoke something: the fifth amendment, executive privilege, writ of douchebaggery - something..." The whole clip is here, and by god, you should watch all of it.
However (to carry on in the Comedy Central metaphorical universe), Ashcroft's reasoning for withholding the memo essentially boiled down to: [DaveChapelleVoice] "I'm John Ashcroft, bitch!" [/DaveChapelleVoice]. Further, despite a growing mountain of evidence that torturing prisoners was not a "bad apples" aberration, but a carefully considered policy with extensive discussion on how to avoid having it result in war crimes charges, Ashcroft has the gall to state, "This administration rejects torture," insisting the White House did nothing to contravene the Geneva Conventions or US law.
Mm-hmm. Now, I understand that all this complicated legalese and tortured logic can sometimes render a nuanced argument opaque. So, to illustrate it all with situations to which we can easily relate, we turn to (who else?) Fafnir, Giblets, and Chris-Who-Eats-Chicken.
How many does it take before we just brand this administration pathological?
Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left. The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky. The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.
For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.
(via TPM)
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi impressed U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with his knowledge of Elvis Presley songs at a dinner Tuesday. "The prime minister is more familiar with American culture than I am," G-8 sources quoted Rice as telling Koizumi when he said that one of the a cappella gospel songs they heard over the dinner had been covered by the U.S. rock 'n' roll icon.
Not much to add there, but does Koizumi have the best hair in international politics, or what? I mean, really.
Yesterday I wrote about the ingenuity revving up, and resourcefulness sprouting up, in Cuba under the conditions created - or more accurately, exacerbated - by the US embargo.
While I only noted in my post that a resurgence in organic methods was happening, what's more striking about the food production revolution occuring on the island is that urban agriculture is developing. From the same article I linked then:
Havana, a city of about 2.5 million people, was hit the hardest (by the Soviet collapse and subsequent dearth of chemicals, fuels, and machinery). Located on the island's north coast and relatively isolated from farming belts, the capital found itself in the midst of a major food shortage. Fuel needed to transport and refrigerate food from rural farmlands was in short supply, and state rations meant to provide for a month only lasted a week. Frustrated by the deepening shortages, many Cubans took matters into their own hands. Literally. They started growing their own food, even in urban Havana[...]
The most prolific gardens are the self-provision plots that have sprung up in Cuban cities across the island. These are small parcels of land maintained by individuals and only modestly regulated by the central government. Many of the estimated 30,000 private gardens - huertos populares - in Havana's 15 municipalities are small tracts that produce traditional crops like yucca, taro, cilantro and onions, and can provide 30 per cent of people's food (emphasis mine). Businesses, schools, and hospitals have also carved out gardens to supply their kitchens and cafeterias[...]
The Ministry of Agriculture even transformed the lawn around its headquarters, a 20-story building in Havana, into an employee-run garden. Getting a city of 2.5 million to meet that much of its food need from within its limits is absolutely revolutionary. Pun completely intended.
If there's one saving grace to the regrettable pattern we've laid across North America - that we will be living with for generations - called 'urban sprawl,' it's that we can mimic this food production strategy in times of horrible economic dowturn immensely more easily than other civilizations. Vast stretches of cul-de-sacs with a half-acre each could meaningfully contribute to the food supply. Sprawl has already fractured the society into individual units; and transportation energy needs will suck a squanderingly if not debilitatingly high percentage of our economic productivity for generations, but we could grow some serious food in the 'burbs.
I still think suburbs are generally ugly. And urban revitalization is critical. But perhaps the internet can counter the isolation, hopefully fuel cells can be fed by a sustainable hydrogen-generating industry, and probably those cookie cutter atrocities with double garage doors and no sidewalks will look a hell of a lot better - to my eyes at least - if they're someday engulfed by beans, squash and corn.
Too bad Americans love their lawns so damn much. To protect and perfect them we will go to the ends of the Earth, figuratively speaking, of... course... I...
One of my favorite party tricks is walking gracious hosts through their yard offering bite-size samples of all the food that's growing unbeknownst to them as anything other than "weeds." It's a good way to find out who really trusts you, too. Now, the word 'irony' falls way short of capturing the essence of this situation: Here's Ortho, Inc.'s "Weed Finder" to help you identify the painstakingly tested, perfect poison to eliminate just the very vegetative invader that had the gall to assume a spot in your perfect green outdoor carpet. With handy-dandy police sketches adorning the Wanted:Dead posters.
Of the 31 "broadleaf weeds" (dicots, basically), no less than 21 are edible, one is medicinal (and I'm not an herbalist - it's probably more) and one is, well, um, recreational.
While the 12 "grassy weeds" (monocots) don't calculate as well, 7 of the 12 "woody plants" needing herbicidal elimination have at least one edible part. Two others are trees, for Chrissakes. You don't need poison to kill them. Small or large. Ever. I'll admit that 2 of those 12 are exotic invasives: Kudzu and Honeysuckle. I've resorted to chemical warfare on each species. They are worthy opponents.
But one of the "woody" weeds is Blackberry. Holy crap, man, Blackberries! They're three bucks a frippin' pint at the grocery store. And those aren't even close to as good as the ones fresh out of your yard. Crazy.
We stayed for the vomit experiments. From right here in North Carolina:
Chemistry teacher Jeff Ferguson is out of a job because of an experiment that made some of his students sick. Tuesday, the school board voted 4-1 not to renew Jeff Ferguson's contract. The school's principal made the request earlier in the day. In November, Ferguson asked students to drink milk until they got sick.
I read this and thought, "The guys from Jackass are teaching high school now?" I couldn't see any other explanation. Okay class, pop quiz; books closed.
1. How much 1.00 M NaOH is needed to titrate 50.0 ml of 500.0 mM glycine to its basic endpoint?
2. In the above problem, how much NaOH would be needed to titrate the glycine to its basic pK?
3. What is the pH of the glycine solution from problem 1 after 10.0 mL of 1.00 M NaOH has been added?
4. How much 2% lowfat can you chug before you blow chunks?
As with the Miami Beach HS "betcha can't jump out a second-story window without getting hurt" experiment from back in March, this story just made so little sense. I had to know. So, from an earlier report:
Ferguson's explanation that stomach acid makes it humanly impossible to drink a gallon of milk in an hour turned into a challenge some kids could not pass up. Thirty-eight students took part in the experiment, of which 13 got sick.
I can't imagine a public school teacher here in NC springing for 38 gallons of milk and I'm sure Johnston County Schools doesn't have much slack in its lab equipment budgets for a pallet of dairy. However, this article says parents were angry at not being informed ahead of time, so I don't think 38 kids each hauled in their own milk jug. Maybe they all went to the cafeteria and bought sixteen of those half-pint cartons each? Oh, and the whole thing was videotaped, too.
I don't know about firing the guy, though. Sounds to me like the kids were dumb enough to deserve what they got. I don't have to know the first thing about chemistry to know downing a gallon of milk in one sitting would make a stomach rise up in revolt, and I'm quite certain I'd take a chemist at his word on the matter. Then again, I'm a graduate of North Carolina public schools, so...
The fourth installment of Tangled Bank, a carnival of the vanities for biology blogging, is up at De Rarum Natura.
Uh-oh.
NYTimes: Kurds threaten to walk away from Iraqi state. Juan Cole sees it as part of a brewing Kurd-Sistani struggle. This is going to be one sticky wicket.
Dammit, what did I tell you about playing with your food?
An artist best known for his work with cheese has broadened his palette, or palate, to ham and covered a four-poster bed with the meat. Cosimo Cavallaro, who once repainted a New York hotel room in melted mozzarella, used 140kg of ham in his latest work.
[...]
The work, which took three and a half hours, will be kept in the air-conditioned room for two days. According to the artist, no concern about cockroaches had been raised. "They are welcome," he said. "Imagine what this looks like from the point of view of an insect." He added that his cheese exhibits had never attracted a mouse.
[...]
Sliced ham, Mr Cavallaro said, was "a pure form of America: all kinds of parts, boiled and pressed together." Despite his training in an Italian art school, he said he had rejected Prosciutto: "It would have been pompous." He also shelved an idea to do ham and eggs as "too pretentious, too thought out."
[...]
Mr. Cavallaro said his cheese period ended two years ago, after he had sprayed five tonnes of pepper jack over a vacant house in Powell, Wyoming. "I was cloaking myself in cheese. I had started getting comfortable," he said. "I always need new boundaries."
What I wouldn't give to have those sorts of work problems...
The front page of the Bush campaign's website is currently nothing but a tribute to Ronald Reagan with links to his important speeches and a wee, lonely link to the rest of the website that deals with Bush. Except it seems to deal more with Kerry by about a five-to-one ratio. I guess when you've got squat to run on, you have to find something. However, I expect we'll be seeing plenty of Bush invoking Reagan from here until November, with the GOP convention in September likely approaching these levels, despite some scatalogical irony.
It has since been lost, but in college I owned a big, rubber Reagan mask that I could have loaned Dubya to wear for his acceptance speech at the convention. Sigh. Another chance to serve my country missed. I wore that mask on two separate occasions as part of a co-ed group of students running naked through the undergrad library at UNC. Though, as a natural redhead, it really didn't much render me incognito. (shrug) Whatcha gonna do?
But I digress.
If anybody has set an over/under on the number of times "Win one for the Gipper" will be used at a campaign event between now and November, I'll take the over. No matter what it is. And in the process of Bush wrapping the Shroud of TuReagan around himself, our longest-living president - a record Gerald Ford will break in two years, by the way - will begin his metamorphosis into an abstraction, "a symbol of everything we desire or loathe in America, so that Ronald Reagan the man is utterly erased and replaced with Ronald Reagan the Icon, a convenient projection of our most feverish motivations in animatronic Hall-of-Presidents form."
However, this display may well be a rattling last gasp. During those long-ago years when I was streaking Reaganesque, we had a plum tree behind our fraternity house that put out a pretty decent harvest each year. One night, some random party guest thought it would be great sport to have at the tree with an axe. Before anyone could get in to subdue an axe-wielding drunk, he tore a pretty good ways into the trunk. That fall, the tree put out so many plums that you could hardly discern branches. Then it died. I believe there is a valid analogy here.
To me, the tremendous conservative nostalgia for Ronald Reagan is a sign of a movement that is, if not in decline, then poised on the cusp of it. It's an implicit admission that the golden age, when a conservative ideologue like Reagan could win the support of an overwhelming majority of Americans (and not just the instinctual cultural loyalty of red state America) has passed away.
The contrast with Bush the younger - desperately scrambling to avoid defeat in a bitterly polarized electorate - is painfully clear. In its obsessive desire to glorify Ronald Reagan, the conservative movement is retreating psychologically into its own past. It's a sign that the political era that opened the night Reagan was elected may also be nearing its end.
Could be. Could be. In the meantime, get your Reagan busts, figurines, jelly beans, bedroom slippers, and patriotic tea sets before the prices skyrocket.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court refused to allow the Colorado GOP to re-district in order to eliminate Democratic House seats. The gerrymandering had been struck down by the Colorado Supreme Court, who found the Colorado constitution was clear that districts could only be re-drawn once a decade. When the legislature had been unable to settle on a plan in 2000 after the census awarded the state an extra representative, a court-drawn set of districts was imposed in 2002. This was the plan the GOP was trying to circumvent.
The three justices coming down on the Dark Side? Not that you hadn't already guessed, but they were Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist. The Texas case is also on appeal, but is unlikely to be handled before the current SC term ends this month.
Meet the Riquimbili
Take a Chinese bicycle, attach a stolen chain-saw motor, a plastic bottle for fuel tank, a bent pipe from a bed frame for the exhaust and what have you got? A riquimbili, Cuba's home-made motorbike that's noisy but effective.
On the upside to the embargo? Organic agriculture has flourished because of the lack of fertilizer and pesticide.
Here I was having a busy but enjoyable day and then I stumble across this bit of news that will just devastate me today: A study coordinated from Cal State - Fullerton's Department of Anthropology has concluded that Chimpanzees will likely be extinct in 50 years.
That's abominable. Hunting, habitat loss / deforestation, and disease are the primary culprits. These are all problems that we as Chimp's cousins can do something about. They are all consequences of ecological stress; some direct (habitat loss), some indirect (disease). And the smaller the population gets, the more difficult the problems become.
We need to recognize that people in Africa who hunt bushmeat, who I don't absolve of blame, do not do so out of greed, glee or malice. There are pressures on them to feed themselves, obviously, though. And the best cropland in Africa is used to provide cocoa, sugar, coffee and palm oil to European, American, and Chinese markets, often through IMF - funded "development projects," a large portion of which are controlled by international agro-industrial corporations. You want to get at the root of the problem, therein it lies.
But heaven forbid anyone step in the way of free trade or advance the cause of land reform; they must be communists. They'll also be cynically accused of blocking "development assistance" to the third world.
One of the most moving experiences I had growing up was having the good fortune to hear Jane Goodall speak at the Carolina Theater in Durham, NC when I was about 16. I knew she was on to something that it has taken me the next 20 years to synthesize: We are but one of a few apes - perhaps the oddest of the bunch - that emerged from the heart of Africa with tools, manifested in civilization, that allowed us to conquer this world, but that conquering it might not be such a good idea since it will undermine the entire ecological system on which that civilization depends.
If we insist on destroying ourselves through consumption and violence, well then I don't know if this humble half-wit can stop us. But we have no right, no right whatso goddamned ever, to take other species - especially one as sophisticated as our closest, closest cousins, Pan troglodytes - out with us because our convenience and comfort are too precious to sacrifice in solving problems we are completely within our ability to solve.
Damnit. Go give as much to Jane Goodall as you spend on chocolate and espresso.
Fucking villagers vote to remain Fucking villagers.
Residents of an Austrian village called Fucking, have voted against changing the name. The 150 or so people who live in the village debated the issue after roadsigns kept being stolen - many by British tourists.
Spokesman Siegfried Hoeppl, said: "Everyone here knows what it means in English, but for us Fucking is Fucking - and it's going to stay Fucking - even though the signs keep getting stolen." He said the name came from Mr Fuck and his family who settled in the area 100 years ago, and added "ing", meaning village or settlement.
[...]
Similar votes on a name change have taken place recently in neighbouring Austrian towns Wank am see and Petting, as well as in Vomitville and Windpassing.
On the anti-speeding sign above, "Bitte — nicht so schnell!" is German for "Please — not so fast!" Now I kinda feel disappointed that the best we can do here in North Carolina is Booger Mountain.
It was mostly lost in the media blizzard surrounding Ronald Reagan's death, but this weekend we also lost Robert Quine, one of the most innovative guitar players of his generation.
Like a steam locomotive rolling down the track, he's gone, gone, and nothing's gonna bring him back. He's gone.
But boy, howdy, they're gonna try.
To which I say: Get in line, choirboys. FDR goes up first. We can have an honest debate between the Mt. Rushmore-worthiness of Reagan and Clinton after both are long dead and history has a chance to digest each one's accomplishments with a teaspoon of objectivity. I think a few decades from now the comparison will seem quite silly, honestly. But before that, stick it back in the can.
"Oh!! But he single-handedly defeated the communist menace, ending the cold war!" Crikey McFucking Frikey. All (sorts of) conveniently selective filtering of the historical record considered, I'll play: Where the fuck were Republicans when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was defeating Fascism in World War II? What's that? I can't hear you.
Stick that in your self-righteous little pipe and smoke it tonight.
How's about a piece of currency? Since Reagan did everything he could to extoll the virtues of unrelenting capitalism and advance the rights of downtrodden millionaires everywhere, fine. Take the ten. Nobody uses it anyway. Even giving him the twenty would be OK. I don't even notice Andrew Jackson's obnoxious face on it anymore. Maybe the sooner we relegate Reagan's bryllcream-encrusted mug to the "Dead White Guys" club, the better.
But stay off the South Dakota hills. Crazy Horse first; FDR, if anybody, next.
Update: apostropher asks in the comments if there's room for anybody else in them thar hills. Stability of the rock is obviously important; other than that, it looks spacious enough to me.
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is nearing the end of its seven year, 3.4 billion km commute to Saturn. On Friday, it will fly past Phoebe, the outermost moon of the Saturnian system, beginning its four-year mission examining Saturn and her 30 (known) satellites. On July 1, it will perform a 96-minute rocket burn to slow it down and hopefully enter Saturn's orbit. Should the maneuver fail, the craft will careen off into deep space and the mission will be over. Assuming all goes well, the Huygens probe will plunge through the dense atmosphere of the nearly Mars-sized moon, Titan, next January in what will be the most distant controlled descent and landing yet.
Meanwhile, closer to home, the Mars rovers are ready to begin making news again. Opportunity is poised on the edge of stadium-sized Endurance Crater and preparing to enter, despite the fact that its ability to climb back out is an open question. The exposed rocks there are deeper and older than the ones at Eagle Crater that held so many surprises.
"Answering the question of what came before the evaporites is the most significant scientific issue we can address with Opportunity at this time," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on both rovers. "We've read the last chapter, the record of the final gasps of an evaporating body of water. What came before? It could have been a deep-water environment. It could have been sand dunes. It could have been a volcano. Whatever we learn about that earlier period will help us interpret the upper layer's evidence for a wet environment and understand how the environment changed."
Great pictures here, courtesy of SpaceTramp
Meanwhile, Spirit has traveled about 3 km from its landing spot toward Columbia Hills, and should reach the feet of the hills in about a week.
"This is the first time we've ever had a close look at hills on Mars," said Dr. James Rice of Arizona State University, Tempe, a member of the rovers' science team. In 1997, hills called "Twin Peaks" tantalized scientists from only about one kilometer (1,100 yards) away from the Mars Pathfinder landing site. "We could only observe Twin Peaks from a distance and wonder about them, but now with a more capable rover we can get to Columbia Hills," Rice said. He spoke at a press briefing today at JPL.
Rocks in Columbia Hills may provide insight both into both how hills form on Mars and whether the ancient environment at this part of Mars was wet. Images Spirit has taken as it nears the hills already show boulders and potential rock outcrops. "These rocks are much older than what we've been driving across," Rice said. "We could find a lot of geological history locked in them. They may be some of the oldest material ever seen on Mars."
Finally, on a much larger scale, one of the Milky Way's enduring mysteries has been solved.
New observations of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy have revealed the origin of radio-emitting filaments that puzzled astronomers for two decades. The filaments range from 10 to 100 light-years in length and 1 to 3 light-years across. They occur only in a very narrow area, within about 900 light-years of the galactic center, a region crowded with old and new stars. [...] The filaments emerge from pockets of intense star formation, the new study found.
That biscuit sounds like crap.
German biscuit-maker Bahlsen has hired a team of scientists to create a biscuit that sounds, as well as tastes, the best. The move comes after research on sausages found sound was more important than any of the other senses in enjoying good food. Sound expert Heinz-Dieter Lechte has been commissioned to head the team experimenting to create the ultimate "master biscuit". He said: "It's the way the cookie sounds when it crumbles that counts."
A Bahlsen spokesman said: "It's true, we are hoping to create a biscuit that sounds irresistible. It's a tough market. German biscuit sales alone are worth 1.2 billion euros, and we want to make sure that our biscuits - which already taste and smell the best - also sound the best."
Bahlsen is believed to be the first major food manufacture to follow up commercially on research published this year that found people responded better to the sound of sausages rather than to their smell or taste.
The sound of sausages? I can't even figure out what this means.
And the sign said, "The crux of the biscuit
is written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper'd in the sounds of sausage.
The only story on the news right now is the death of Ronald Reagan. With any luck, Reagan's agonizingly long descent will help swing the momentum away from Bush's shameful reinstatement of restrictions on stem cell research. Nobody should miss the irony that one of Reagan's first executive orders halted embryo research, stalling for 12 years the very research that shows the only real promise in treating Alzheimer's. The irony is his, but the tragedy belonged and belongs to millions of others with the disease.
Ms. Postropher makes her living doing Alzheimer's research and says patients tend to follow one of two paths upon diagnosis: either a swift decline and death, or years of slowly degenerating, with not much middle ground. You'd rather get the former, both for yourself and for your family. The past decade has undoubtedly been long, exhausting, and painful for the Reagan family. For me, however, Reagan's death has an oddly unemotional air to it, because to everybody except his family, Reagan already died a few years ago, when he left the public eye completely.
I'm no fan of Reagan, and I come neither to praise nor bury him. I think he was a roundly awful president, although I agree with Digby's epitaph: "You were better than George W. Bush." He does deserve some credit for the detente that occurred during the Gorbachev era, but no more than Gorbachev himself deserves. And there's a certain "only Nixon could go to China" asterisk to it: that's true only because anybody who tried previously would have been denounced as soft on communism and untrustworthy by people like . . . Reagan and Nixon.
Most of my disagreements with Reagan's policies (which would include a wide majority of them) were subjects on which reasonable people could disagree. Two broad areas, though, I can't forgive. The first was inviting folks like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson into positions of real power and influence within American politics. However, that is a matter of my own prejudices. The larger issue - and if there is a god to which we must answer, this is the question being put to him now - is Central America (and Angola).
As with our current misadventure in Iraq, realpolitik pissing matches took precedence over real people's lives, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead bodies. In the name of confronting leftism, we funded bloody wars and installed and propped up rightist regimes that were as bad and often much, much worse. As often as not, what was being confronted was not even Soviet expansionism, but simply threats to corporate profits. What little moral standing we had left following Vietnam, we lost in our own hemisphere's killing fields.
The 80's were a deeply immoral and shameful chapter in American foreign policy and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the Reagan administration. No matter how much ideological dressing you place upon it, what we inflicted on the people in those lands was wrong. Not just wrong, but evil, and many of the very men responsible for it have found employment in the current administration. No matter his accomplishments (and despite what you will now hear ad nauseum, Ronald Reagan did not bring down the Soviet Union), this blot on the record will always, for me, outweigh them.
So, I don't gloat, but I don't feel any grief either. Alzheimer's is a terrible way to die, no matter who it befalls, and that's often more true for the family than for the sufferer. I understand that glowing, misty-eyed eulogies are the standard protocol in these situations and I don't begrudge him those now. Whether or not I liked him or his actions, he certainly looms large as a historical figure. However, once the news cycle moves on in a few days, let's not allow his actual record to be supplanted by his mythical one. History is too important for that.
Update (11:59 am): I wrote last September about this as well, if you care. But the summation you should read, unsurprisingly, comes from Billmon.
Update II (12:50 pm): See also Steve Gilliard.
Management Rule #1: Always be aware of who you are dicking over.
Porn-surfing bank supremo Michael Soden was caught with his browser down last week by the very same staff he outsourced to HP at the start of his reign at the Bank of Ireland. Soden hit the headlines last year in Ireland when staff took industrial action in protest of the department's shift to Hewlett Packard. Staff were unhappy about the prospect of becoming HP employees, as they had enjoyed considerable perks at the Bank of Ireland: favourable mortgage and loan deals for instance. Now it seems that he has been forced to resign thanks to the very department which he sent merrily on its way.
Staff informed the bank that they had discovered pornography on Soden's machine on Wednesday last week, during routine maintenance. Soden resigned his post on Saturday, after the internal investigation into the discovery was leaked to the local press. It would be disingenuous to suggest that the "routine maintenance" was anything other than that, but it's clear that Soden's machine was thoroughly attended to.
The outsourcing move was Soden's second high-profile decision after his appointment as chief executive. His first was to update the acceptable use policy that prohibits staff from accessing porn using company equipment.
I'll bet there were a bunch of drunk, happy IT workers in Ireland Saturday.
(via Pale Blue Dot)
Microsoft awarded patent on double-clicking.
Update (9:50 pm): I was too flabbergasted by the double-clicking patent to notice the even more absurd element of this patent. Luckily, the Modulator's on top of it.
Microsoft has successfully patented using short, long or double clicks to launch different applications on "limited resource computing devices." How long did it take you to think of a code that used short, long or multiple iterations of some symbol or activity to represent something or initiate an action?
-All I can say is -... ..- .-.. .-.. ... .... .. - (go here to translate).
And Fontana Labs notes this story proves that eventually all parody becomes obsolete.
A "panel of experts" has assembled a list of the 100 most naturally beautiful women of all time. The sponsor, Evian, stated the women were ranked by their "embodiment of natural beauty, healthy living, beautiful on the inside and out, with great skin and a natural glow to their personality, as well as their complexion." Audrey Hepburn topped the list, and I'm pretty inclined to agree with that assessment, but then the list descends into utter nonsense, as such lists always do.
The roster is unduly weighted toward current celebrities (Liv Tyler at #2? Angelina Jolie at #4? Of all time?), but then there are some that are just completely baffling. Take, for instance, Princess Diana at #12. Sure, she wasn't hoodworthy or anything, but remove the whole marrying-into-royalty thing and she wouldn't have been the best-looking woman in my freshman dorm, or even in the top 10. Then there's Madonna at #19. Nineteen? Madonna? Cracka, please. On the other hand, Isabella Rossellini made the Top 20, as is only right (though I'm at a loss to explain how Catherine Deneuve falls all the way to 76).
However, the one that really caught the eye of this beholder was Cleopatra at #86. Uhh, yeah. I guess you could make that call due to the extensive photographic record left over from the first century BC. So how did Cleopatra make the list but not Helen of Troy? I guess Helen's agent should have gotten Liz Taylor to play her 2000 years later; apparently ship launching just ain't what it used to be.
This image taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows in unprecedented detail the galaxy Centaurus A's last big meal: a spiral galaxy seemingly twisted into a parallelogram-shaped structure of dust. An elliptical galaxy located 10 million light-years from Earth, Centaurus A is one of the brightest sources of radio waves in the sky. These radio waves indicate the presence of a supermassive black hole, which may be "feeding" off the leftover galactic meal.
This spectacular image combines 5.8 micron and 8.0 micron data obtained by an infrared array camera aboard Spitzer. These wavelengths emphasize the emission from dust rather than the light produced by stars in the galaxy. The resulting image shows with greater clarity the strange parallelogram-shaped feature embedded near the center of the galaxy.
Scientists have created a model that explains how such a strangely geometric structure could arise. In this model, a spiral galaxy falls into an elliptical galaxy, becoming warped and twisted in the process. The folds in the warped disc create the parallelogram-shaped illusion.
Caption time, amigos. Slap 'em in the comments, 'cause I'm at a loss for words, myself.
Unlike most folks, I still enjoy the NBA playoffs. Now that we're down to the Finals, I'm pulling for the Pistons for five reasons:
1. The UNC alumni count - Detroit 2 (Rasheed Wallace, Larry Brown), L.A. 1 (Rick Fox).
2. The dues-paying comparison - Yes, Karl Malone and Gary Payton have been at it for a long time with nary a ring between them, but nothing like Larry Brown. And does Phil Jackson really need a tenth (see #3)?
3. The underdog paradigm - Pulling for the Lakers is like pulling for Microsoft.
4. The throwback factor - The Pistons, unlike most modern NBA squads, actually play defense.
5. Ben Wallace's afro - okay, so he's no Moochie Norris, but still...
I don't own any stocks*, so I don't care about this last one, but you might.
The Dow Jones industrial average posted its only three losses in the past 15 years in the years that the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship, 2000, 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile the Dow had its best year during that period -- a 33.5 percent gain -- in 1995, when the Orlando Magic, led by current Lakers star center Shaquille O'Neal, lost the finals to the Houston Rockets.
[...]
This is not the only stock curse tied to the performance of sports teams. The most famous is the Super Bowl Stock indicator, which suggests that stocks will be down this year due to the National Football League championship won by the New England Patriots, originally an American Football League team. There are also curses involving the company that sponsors the winning driver in the Daytona 500 and the companies that pay to have their names on stadiums and arenas.
So if the Pistons win, we'll see whether Shaq or the Super Bowl has more efficacious supernatural powers. My prediction: Detroit in 7 and the stock market, off 1.8% so far this year, finishes slightly down.
*Clarification, in response to Dugrless' comment: Yes, I own stock via a 401(k), but those are there for the next 30 years or so, not for current income. Ergo, I don't care about this year's bull/bear battle.
Any means to escalate the war on a plant.
Whether it is dried and baled or just snipped from its root, the weight of marijuana at the time it's seized is the weight that drug dealers have to answer for, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday[...]
[...]They cut the plants at the base, leaving behind the root, and measured their total weight at 25.5 pounds[...]
The State Bureau of Investigation later determined the weight of the dried marijuana to be 6.9 pounds, well below the 10-pound legal threshold for trafficking charges in North Carolina.
Now, the guy was growing 731 plants. Let's be honest. That's about an ounce each, so they probably weren't fully mature. And unless he really, really tokes it up, it wasn't for personal consumption. But 6.9 pounds still carries some pretty heavy consequences.
Miramax bosses and Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the producers behind such hits as Pulp Fiction, then stepped in and bought the rights to the film from Disney for $6m. The film will now be handled by a joint venture involving the established independent distributor Lion's Gate, IFC Films, which was behind the 2001 hit Y Tu Mamá Tambičn, and the Fellowship Adventure Group, a company set up by the Weinstein brothers to distribute the film.
The trailer is available here.
And those are just today's. Let's not forget:
But at least it's opened up a new campaign theme for him.
From the always entertaining PRBop comes the day's most quease-inducing press release.
Fast food icon Krystal announced today that it will host the first-ever World Hamburger-Eating Championship. Billed as the Krystal Square Off® and expected to draw the world's top competitive eaters, the 11-event hamburger-eating circuit will run throughout the Southeast this fall, culminating with a final world championship event in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Nov. 13, 2004. Sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), the Krystal Square Off® World Hamburger-Eating Championship will be the first time the IFOCE has crowned a hamburger-eating champion of the world.
The championship series will feature "The Krystal," the famous 2.5-inch square Krystal hamburger that has been the restaurant chain's signature offering since its founding in 1932. While people generally eat Krystal burgers in multiples of three and four, Krystal Square Off® organizers anticipate top gustatory athletes to consume upwards of around 40 to 50 Krystal burgers within the allotted 8-minute eating period. The Krystal Square Off® World Hamburger-Eating Championship will award a $5,000 first prize and is poised to instantly become a major event on the international competitive eating circuit.
That's right. Competitive eating has a circuit. And an international sanctioning body. And a newsletter called the Gurgitator. And "more than 3,000 veteran and rookie athletes."
Competitive eating's top athletes currently include: Sonya Thomas, a 100-pound woman from Alexandria, Va., who holds no less than 12 world records, including 432 oysters in 15 minutes and 43 tacos in 11 minutes; Cookie Jarvis, a world champion in disciplines including Ribs, Ice Cream and Corn-on-the-Cob; and Eric 'Badlands' Booker, a man-mountain who has eaten 48 donuts in eight minutes.
Sonya's pretty cute, but any 100-pound woman that can eat 23 pulled pork sandwiches in ten minutes should be approached with extreme caution. Some of the more eye-opening among the list of
Drop a frog in boiling water and he'll march right out. Turn up the heat slowly over the course of several months and...
President Bush has sought a lawyer to represent him in the criminal probe into who was responsible for a leak that was seen as retaliation against a critic of the Iraq war, CBS Evening News reported on Wednesday. "President Bush has sought legal representation in the grand jury investigation into who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media last year," the network said.
(via The Poor Man, who smells obstruction of justice charges)
After a month's hiatus, Paul Ford is back at Ftrain, and "poignant" doesn't begin to do it justice.
CNN: Bush compares Iraq, terror wars to World War II
Yes, of course, because to the Republicans, every military conflict is a replay of WWII, every world leader that falls out of our favor is Adolph Hitler, and every opponent to any military action is Neville Chamberlain. Unless they are Julius Rosenberg. That's hardly news, and neither is my coming nitpick, but it's my weblog and I'll cry if I want to.
Quoth Bush, "Like the murderous ideologies of the 20th century, the ideology of terrorism reaches across borders and seeks recruits in every country." Sigh. Terrorism is not an ideology, it is a tactic. You want to declare war on al Qaeda? Fine. But declaring a war on terror is like declaring a war on blitzkriegs or pincer maneuvers or human wave attacks. There is no way to win it.
Then again, that's the point, isn't it? Our government has always needed a scary enemy to keep the dollars flowing to our mammoth military-industrial complex. The Soviets played the role nicely for decades, but then those sneaky bastards just up and disappeared. Can't just transfer our war to their Chinese comrades since, well, they pretty much keep our economy afloat. We auditioned drug users for the role but that hits a little close to home, doesn't it? People get a little uneasy when their kids are suddenly the enemy and, honestly, who's afraid of hippies?
We went through a dizzying succession of tinpot third world dictators, but let's face it: they all fold pretty quickly when faced with the mightiest military in human history. Not good for keeping the folks back home in a state of fear-driven militarism. Besides, it's a lot of work finding a new Hitler every 18 months and if there's one thing Americans want, it's a cushy job. But hey, a war on terror! There's one that never has to end because you could no more wipe out terrorism than you could wipe out arguing. Yes, the eternal war completely rocks; there are always more terrorists to pursue, especially once you start expanding the definition to include Muslims, liberals, journalists, and pro-choicers.
See the logic here?
Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.
"He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."
"Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.
"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.
And much more, including references to the 'value' of the schemes to Lay and Skilling and the 'whack' a Bush win in 2000 could provide to the growing demands for price caps as a way to stop the hemmorhaging. My favorite is the Enron employee stating "I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy."
Tips to Fontana Labs
But I can't quite figure them out.
Jordan says she fancies a six-in-a-bed romp with five other celebrities - but not the Beckhams. The model tells Loaded magazine she would like to go to bed with Leonardo DiCaprio, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, Madonna, and Peter Andre. But the Sun says the model, who had claimed to have ditched her raunchy image, would refuse a threesome with David Beckham and his wife. Asked why, she says: "I don't know where he's been."
Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, and Madonna, on the other hand...
There's a zen koan in this story somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
New York police are searching for the owner of a severed human hand that dropped from the sky on to the deck of a boat. The incident happened near the Lawrence Village Marina, on Long Island, where parties were taking place on a number of craft. Police said the human hand mysteriously dropped out of the sky and hit the deck of one of the boats.
I suppose dusting it for prints would be pointless. It would be handy if the police could finger a suspect, but so far they are stumped. They are grasping for clues, but nothing in the police manual remotely applies to the matter at hand. Wait, wait, I have more...
This is a very positive development that shows the country moving inexorably toward greater equality and tolerance, but really, the jokes just write themselves, don't they?
In December, the City of Brotherly Love began promoting the city to gay travelers using the slogan "Get your history straight and your nightlife gay." The campaign used print ads that cleverly doctored images from American history, including Ben Franklin flying a rainbow-colored kite and Betsy Ross sewing a rainbow flag.
"Philadelphia is here to officially come out as a gay-friendly destination," tourism agency president Meryl Levitz said in announcing the ad campaign. The latest campaign will feature a new gay-themed television commercial, which will begin airing this month.
"The gay traveler has been to San Francisco. They've been to Provincetown. They are interested in going to more than the gay Meccas," said John Cochie, co-founder of the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus. The Caucus, in existence for just over a year, is in partnership with 40 gay and mainstream companies who believe in the viability of Philadelphia's unique drawing power. Some of the companies involved in the campaign include: Southwest Airlines, USAirways, Amtrak and the Philadelphia Phillies.
Philadelphia means "brotherly love" in Greek, by the way.
Vernon Robinson is an African-American Republican (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing) running for Congress here in NC. He's aiming for the seat being vacated by Richard Burr, who is running for John Edwards' vacated Senate seat. You can see his stands on the issues at his campaign website, including his disgust with Hollywood elitists and the feminization of the military (for the latter he quotes "conservative heroine" Phyllis Schlafley, so you know just where he's coming from). He also has a fixation on illegal immigration, the subject of a diatribe in a recent radio ad of his.
As you're aware, candidates are required to identify themselves at the end of any ads that they produce. However, following Vernon's anti-immigrant rant (in English, naturally) too-clever-by-half Vernon decided to put the disclaimer in Spanish.
In the ad, an announcer says in Spanish, "Yo, gringo! This episode of The Twilight Zone was paid for by Robinson for Congress." [...] Robinson said that nothing in the regulations of the Federal Election Commission or the Federal Communications Commission says that the disclaimer has to be in English. [...]
Nothing specifies what language must be used in either case, said George Smaragdis, a spokesman for the FEC. But he did say that candidates should request an advisory opinion if they are unclear about the law. Robinson said he did not ask for an advisory opinion. The primary, which is July 20, would be over by the time the FEC made any decision, he said.
WSJS, a powerful Winston-Salem radio station that runs The Rush Limbaugh Show, decided that was a violation of FEC requirements and pulled the ad until Robinson put an English disclaimer at the end. I suppose he'll claim next that it's delivered in American Sign Language during a five-second silence. Robinson's campaign was also behind scurrilous smear e-mails signed "Pastor Randy" that targeted one of his Republican primary opponents. As of February, Robinson had raised more money than any non-incumbent House candidate in the country, and all but a dozen or so incumbents.
That's right, Republicans - these are your rising stars. A bunch of little Lee Atwaters in training, just as eager to slime Republicans as Democrats in their attempts to slither to the top. Vernon richly deserves to get kicked to the curb, and in the end, I suspect he will. I hope he spends a ton of those donors' dollars on the way to defeat. It would serve them right.
If there is ever a live-action South Park movie, I think I've found Cartman.
At 55 pounds, this Georgian (as in Tbilisi, not Atlanta) 15-month-old outweighs my 7-year-old. According to the slide show, the toddler's unusual weight gain began just three months ago and he's still putting on four pounds a month. I'm not sure how this wouldn't be a glandular issue, but doctors have examined Luka, pronounced him normal, and added "he should outgrow the weight as he grows older."
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."
[...] Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. [...]
The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids.
Caught in a blatant, willful lie and sadly, that is so utterly unsurprising coming from this crew that nobody even cares. Same old story. How can you tell when Dick Cheney is lying? His lips are moving.
Largest mersenne prime number ever found. It's 7 million digits long. Marsenne primes are numbers than can be represented as 2 to the P power minus 1 where P is also a prime number. They're rare. This one, found by Josh Findley of Seattle, WA can be expressed as:
2 to the 24,036,583rd power minus 1.
Update: It's only six digits, but Mr. Findley's prize is six digits that matter.
The dissident history professor, Hashem Aghajari, whose death sentence sparked student riots in Iran last year has had his death sentence revoked.
Aghajari was convicted of blasphemy for a speech in which he said Muslims were not "monkeys" to follow blindly the teachings of senior clerics...
Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said the Supreme Court had scrapped the sentence because it was not satisfied with a review of the case conducted by a court in the western Hamadan province.
He's still behind bars, but won't be executed. The sentence was for 8 years in jail, 10 years of a teaching ban, banishment to a desert village, and hanging. Whether the plan was to punish him for 18 years and then kill him or forbid his corpse from holding classes is unclear to me, but the hanging part was the only part of his sentence revoked. There's much speculation that Khameini ultimately made this decision.
Who's Who.
Interim President -- Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, Sunni Shamar Tribe Sheikh, last rotating president of the IGC. I can see him rotating now, can't you?
Deputy President -- Ibrahim Jafari al-Eshaiker, al-Dawa party, Shiite, member of IGC, first rotating president.
Deputy President -- Rowsch Shaways, Barzani's lieutenant in the KDP.
Interim Prime Minister -- Iyad Allawi, Iraqi National Accord founder, IGC member. "Has the advantage of being mistrusted equally by all" according to this BBC profile.
Foreign Minister -- Hoshyar Zebari, stays at this post.
Oil -- Thamir Ghadbhan, American appointed, stays at this post.
Defense -- Hazem Shalan al-Khuzaei, replaces Ali Allawi.
Interior -- Falah Hassan al-Naqib, former Governor of Tikrit (Mayor?)
Justice -- Malik Dohan al-Hassan, Head of the Iraqi Bar Association.
Human Rights -- Bakhityar Amin, former Executive Director of the International Alliance for Justice.
Electricity -- Ayham al-Samarie, continues in thsi post; house attacked twice in the last year.
Finance -- Adil Abdel-Mahdi, former spokesman for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI leader.
Health -- Alaa Alwan, Director of Non-communicable disease programs at the WHO.
Communication -- Mohammed Ali Hakim, I dunno.
Housing -- Omar Farouk, I dunno.
Public Works -- Nesreen Mustafa Berwari, continues in this post.
Science and Technology -- Rashad Mandan Omar
Planning -- Mahdi al-Hafidh
Trade -- Mohammed al-Joubri
Sport and Youth -- Ali Faik Alghaban
Transportation -- Louei Hatim Sultan al-Aris
Provincial Affairs -- Waeil Abdel-Latif, IGC member, will set up court to try Saddam Hussein
Women's Affairs -- Nermin Othman
Immigration and Refugees-- Bascal Essue
Irrigation -- Abdul-Latif Rasheed
Labor -- Leila Abdul-Latif
Education -- Sami Mudahfar
Higher Education -- Tahir al-Bakaa
Agriculture -- Sawsan Sherif
Culture -- Mufeed al-Jazaeri
Industry -- Hajim al-Hassani
Minister of State -- Qassim Dawoud
Minister of State -- Mahmoud Farhad Othman, IGC member, KDP Socialist
Minister of State -- Adnan al-Janabi
Tips to CNN and Google. I'll try to flesh this out more later.
Negotiations opened yesterday in Kampala, Uganda to create a new framework for divvying up the waters of the Nile.
Ten African countries began negotiating how best to replace the 75-year-old Nile Basin Treaty last December because of tensions among the nations over the use of the river. The Nile Basin supplies water to about 300 million people.
The treaty was signed in 1929 by Egypt and Britain on behalf of its colonies, and it bars nine African nations from using the river in a way that would reduce the volume of water reaching Egypt. At the time the treaty was signed, Egypt was Britain's key source of cotton, which depends on irrigation from the Nile, the world's longest river.
Tanzania doesn't recognize the treaty. And Kenya, whose government has protested for years, has threatened to pull out. And while I get the impression Ethiopia's clout doesn't loom too large in the region comparatively, I doubt they're too happy with the status quo, either.
According to water researchers, Ethiopia contributes about 86 per cent of the waters of the Nile but utilises less than one percent of it - 0.65 billion cubic meters of water annually. The total irrigated land in the Ethiopian portion of the Nile basin now stands only at 8,000 hectares -- which is 0.4 per cent of the basin`s potential, presently estimated at 2.3 million hectares.
The colonial-era treeaty requires upstream countries to get Egypt's permission before approving or initiating large development projects that would affect water quantity. Rivers couldn't care less about international boundaries, so a collaborative strategy rooted in modern realities has to be hoped and worked for.
And in more news on the "Middle East conlicts that don't get much airtime" front, Iran and the United Arab Emirites are trading rhetorical barbs, but engaging in negotiations through the GCC, over three small yet petro-strategically important islands near the Straits of Hormuz, collectively known as Abu Musa: Abu Musa proper and the Lesser and Greater Tunbs. Here's the Teheran Times on it while Gulf News from the UAE (no permalinks) headlines: "Occupied islands 'will return to UAE'" and follows:
Ras Al Khaimah will soon organise events to mark the occupation of Abu Mousa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands, said Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Ras Al Khaimah Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler. He said activities organised by the schools would highlight the Iranian occupation of the islands.
Sheikh Khaled was optimistic that the three islands will very soon return to the UAE, adding that this will come about because of the extensive efforts by the UAE officials and high-level contact between the Abu Dhabi and Tehran. He said it is duty of all people in the UAE to annually mark the occupation of the islands so that present and future generations will not forget their national right to these islands.
A lot more going on over there than I think most folks realize.
Every time I go a few weeks without stopping in at mcsweeneys.net, I regret it.
Pros and Cons of Kerry's Top 20 VP Candidates
The Making of the Autobiography of George W. Bush (an Excerpt)
US Antarctic Program Researchers - funded and managed by the National Science Foundation - while investigating the breakup of the Larsen B ice sheet in Antarctica were looking for rock debris on the nearby seafloor (dropped by the icebergs) to find geologic clues to icesheet formation. But they found something much bigger: an under water volcano.
Eugene Domack, a researcher at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York and the expedition's chief scientist, said the volcano stands 700 meters (2300 feet) above the seafloor and extends to within roughly 275 meters (900 feet) of the ocean surface. He estimated that the volcanic cone contains at least 1.5 cubic kilometers (.36 cubic miles) of volcanic rock. By comparison, Mount Erebus, a known active volcano on Ross Island near McMurdo Station, NSF's main Antarctic research center, is approximately 3,800 meters (12,400 feet) above sea level. Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, rises approximately 4,100 meters (13,600 feet) above sea level. Mexico's Cuexcomate volcano is considered to be the world's smallest, standing 13 meters (43 feet) tall.
And speaking of oddities icy and magmous - how's that for a segue - The 2002 Earthquake in Denali in Alaska apparently screwed with the timing, temperature, and volume of several geysers in Yellowstone.
Bremer told the Ghazi al-Yawar, sitting president of the IGC, "not to meet" yesterday to select a President. The CPA wanted Adnan Pachachi, who is particularly less critical of the Americans.
The Presidency is largely ceremonial. But its importance shouldn't be understated. A good selection can be a calming, if not exactly unifying, figure. Over the last week it has come down to a choice between al-Yawar and Pachachi. Last night Pachachi apparently declined and one "aid to an IGC member" stated that he and Brahimi have congratulated al-Yawar on his selection. al-Yawar has previously laid heaps of blame on the Americans for the security situation. How much of this is posturing is anybody's guess.
If Bremer et al can get the hell out of the way on this appointment the political prospects can improve. Slightly. al-Yawar can represent an slightly 'opposition-like' voice to the CPA. Anti-Americanism automatically lends some legitimacy in Arab politics.
Unfortunately, there's an inherent double-bind in the situation. Double-bind, you say? In Middle Eastern politics? Wow! Who'd have imagined that? Yawar now has a huge bullseye on his back. Probably even moreso than Iyad Allawi in the more powerful post of Prime Minister. If he isn't adequately protected, a whole host of moderate and apolitical Iraqis will give up completely on the American soldiers ever being able to provide security. But the closer and longer we circle the wagons around him, the less legitimate he becomes.
This whole birthing process could've gone worse. Or, to admit the metaphor, Iraq has gotten to the midwife's house and there's still a heartbeat. Contrary to what many experts say, I think an IGC - which looks to change from the "Interim Governing Council" to the "Interim Government's Cabinet", surprise, surprise - that tells the US to go jump in a lake is a good thing. And I think the situation could improve additionally if Brahimi would behave a little more independently as well; he increased his image as a puppet by closing ranks with Bremer against the IGC when they appointed Allawi last week.
