Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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From tonight's Daily Show debate coverage.
Ed Helms, covering the Kerry campaign:
The Kerry campaign would like to remind America the Senator was raised in France by a pack of homosexual billionaires and going into this had little chance against a plain-speaking, hard-working man of the people like George Bush. So for Kerry to be even close in this debate, they say, is a huge victory.
Rob Corddry, covering the Bush campaign:
If I may, Jon, that's a bit of a stretch. The Bush people would like to remind everyone their man held his own against what they call the smartest man in the history of the world. An amazing accomplishment for a president who, as the Bush team points out, is, by some standardized test results, technically retarded. As RNC chairman Ed Gillespie told me before we came on the air, "This is a president who was nearly killed by a pretzel."
Helms:
John Kerry held his own against the man even he is going to vote for - George Bush! If that isn't a victory, I don't know what is.
Corddry:
Jon, a retarded man held his own against a sitting senator. Ya gotta re-elect him!
For all the mockery over the past few days about John Kerry's tan, does anybody else notice that Bush is way more orange?
Update (9:54 pm): Bush comes off like 1) a whiny bitch and 2) a stuck record. Kerry is killing him.
That rumbling underneath Mount St. Helens? That would be the arrival of our new insect overlords.
I sent the following email to UNC-Wilmington Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo. I've added the links for this post. I encourage any other UNC system alumni (particularly UNC-W ones) to send your own.
Chancellor DePaolo,
I'm sure you have received an enormous number of messages regarding the letter posted on the internet by Professor Kozloff, but I'd like to add another. I am a graduate of the UNC system and find it very hard to believe that such sentiments could come out of a system with as fine a tradition of scholarship and tolerance as ours. Of course, everybody has the right to unpopular opinions, and most especially so in a university setting, but that letter seems to skate perilously close to incitement of violence against American Muslims, alongside calls for internment camps and the removal of "anti-American" professors. The columns of another of your faculty members, Mike Adams, are consistently juvenile, poorly reasoned, and poorly written, but at least he's not advocating genocide. I hope the UNC-W administration is keeping an eye on Professor Kozloff. He seems awfully close to coming unhinged.
Respectfully,
Russ Barnes
UNC-CH '92
Durham, NC
I suppose it's a good thing that they may have found it, but it isn't really comforting that we're still looking.
The U.S. government is sending a team of 20 scientists to check out a report of unusual radiation readings that could be coming from a hydrogen bomb that was lost off the Georgia coast in 1958. A crippled B-47 bomber dumped the H-bomb into the Atlantic Ocean 46 years ago after the plane collided with a fighter jet during a training flight. Navy divers searched the shallow, murky waters near Tybee Island for nearly 10 weeks before declaring the bomb irretrievably lost.
[...]
The bomb, believed buried in 10 to 15 feet of mud at the bottom of the sea, became one of 11 "Broken Arrows'' -- nuclear bombs lost during air or sea accidents, according to U.S. military records. The Air Force has long insisted that there is no risk of a nuclear blast from the Georgia bomb because the plutonium capsule needed to trigger one was removed before the ill-fated flight.
"This bomb was not capable of causing a nuclear explosion in 1958 and it is not capable of an explosion today,'' said Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, an Air Force spokesman.
Duke, who lives in Statesboro, has disputed that point over the years, citing a Pentagon memo from 1966 that referred to the bomb as a "complete weapon.'' The Air Force has said that memo was wrong. Duke approached Air Force officials more than three years ago, but they decided at the time not to renew the search for the bomb. The Air Force argued that it was better left undisturbed, because it contains uranium and 400 pounds of conventional explosives.
Eleven lost nuclear bombs. That's encouraging.
Atrios spots one completely surprising quote.
"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."
A major political figure said it. Bill Clinton? Jocelyn Elders? Jack Ryan? Nope. Furry, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
I'll take mental images I really didn't want for a thousand, Alex.
Third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders at a DC-area private school - including the children of former US Congressman Bill Paxson - were mistakenly served margaritas at lunch.
Some youngsters didn't like the smell and declined; others took a sip and declared it "gross," according to parents and Harvey. An administrator who realized something was wrong started investigating, Harvey said, and quickly discovered that the limeade was really liquor -- although it is unclear why the kitchen staff didn't notice. It had been left over, he said, from a party two days earlier at the school for the staff, faculty and Board of Trustees.
What kind of goody-two-shoes grade schooler turns their nose up at free tequila?
(via objections)
Postal Labels Against Bush: the fine print version of the Freeway Blogger.
(via Horklog)
Psychedelic drugs are inching their way slowly but surely toward prescription status in the United States, thanks to a group of persistent scientists who believe drugs like ecstasy and psilocybin can help people with terminal cancer, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, to name just a few. The Heffter Research Institute, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and others have managed to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve a handful of clinical trials using psychedelics. The movement seems to be gaining ground in recent years. Since 2001, the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration have given the go-ahead to three clinical trials testing psychedelics on symptomatic patients, and several more are on deck.
One of the approved studies they cite is treating cluster headaches with psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. Seems like an odd remedy to me, but the main guy driving it (not a prior drug user, by the way) swears it's the only treatment that has given him relief. I've no basis to argue with that.
In the mid and late '90s, I was a paid volunteer in a fair number of federally-funded marijuana studies (and one ketamine study) run through Duke University. Oh sure, I answered the initial ad because getting paid to smoke Uncle Sam's weed just seemed too good to pass up. I can assure you, they aren't really fun and games. That first study used an intravenous infusion of liquid THC, which gave me bragging rights over my smoking buddies, since I became the only one who'd actually shot up pot. You'd pretty much need to get that experience in a clinical setting, since the stems and seeds keep clogging up your needles at home.
Like I said, the study wasn't fun and games, despite a pretty intense high. One of the measures being taken was arterial blood-gas levels, which meant placing a catheter into an artery in your wrist. As it turns out, you have to go pretty deep into your wrist before you hit an artery. A bit gruesome, but I'm not squeamish. Once that was in place, you had to lay perfectly still for about two hours in a Positron Emission Tomography scanner so they could watch which parts of your brain lit up in response. The unlucky half of the study population were controls, meaning they went through all the procedures but only got shot up with saline. They were a little pissed, I was told.
Anyhow, I proved a stellar guinea pig. Needles don't bother me, I showed up on time with a clean urine drug screen, I'm calm and have a high pain threshold, et cetera. So I kept getting called back for further, less invasive marijuana studies. Some were IV, some were smoking, some added alcohol to the mix. As to the latter, knocking back a screwdriver and honking a fatty at 9 am is harder than it sounds, especially once you're a few years removed from college where that schedule of events was known as Tuesday. The splitting headache set in about noon, the four-hour nap shortly thereafter, and I awoke fully aware that I was no longer a young man.
The study of ketamine, a drug I had not previously encountered at the time, was amazing. The administration route was IV again and I haven't ever been higher in my life, despite my best efforts during my undergrad career. The next hour was an absolutely mystical experience that completely defied words. Again, I had to remain perfectly still for the duration because of the brain-scanning equipment but I was busy conceptualizing folds in N-dimensional space, so that wasn't really a problem. Until my bladder intruded upon my reverie.
As subjects weren't allowed to get up during the scan, they kept a handheld receptacle there for exactly these purposes. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of IV ketamine is some pretty serious spatial distortion, so even getting my zipper down on my own was a bridge too far at that particular moment. Luckily, I'm deficient on the inhibitions front and was unabashed and grateful to the poor female lab tech who got to assist me in removing Spanky Johnson so he could go about his business. Urinating while lying flat on one's back is much harder than you'd imagine. I didn't realize how much gravity was assisting in the process, nor how underdeveloped my abdominal muscles are.
They even called me for a mescaline study once - another drug I've never encountered in the wild - but I couldn't fit it into my schedule, much to my dismay. The opportunity to do the world's most powerful psychedelics in a safe, controlled, hospital environment doesn't come around too often and in fact, hasn't come around since. What with having a child and all now, I've put my drug study days behind me, although I still have my empty, labelled bottle of THC IV solution on the shelf among the bottles of really memorable wine.
In the end, I scored several good stories, some great free highs, and about a thousand dollars overall, but the point of all this is that these studies had to be run through the Department of Psychiatry's Alcoholism and Addictions Program. While the researchers I met were very open-minded about the potential therapeutic uses of psychoactive substances, the federal funding likely rested upon using them to test theories of deleterious effects rather than beneficial ones.
Some of the untested substances won't have any medically useful effects, but we won't know that until we quit treating them as undisputed agents of moral corruption. From (admittedly unscientific) stories from friends, I feel safe in averring that Paxil is far more physically unpleasant and dangerous than most psychedelic drugs, and certainly no less psychoactive - just less fun. Yet, it will be studied for every new psychological condition that enters the DSM. It's way past time to start looking at the potential benefits of the black market end of the pharmacopeia. Diseases don't give a whit about our misguided puritanism.
Update: More recent related post.
Construction workers in Cologne, Germany discovered the torso of a priceless 2000-year-old statue of Venus bricked into a sewer wall about sixteen feet underground while doing repairs on the Roman-era sewer system.
"Because there were neither thermal baths nor temples in this region, we assume that the Venus belonged to a wealthy estate," Prof. Hellenkemper said. He said the statue was likely produced in what is today Italy, packed in straw and shipped to Cologne, then part of the Roman empire, during the 1st century AD.
"The delicate breasts indicate this period. Later they tended to have a more robust form," he said. Prof. Hellenkemper guessed the Venus graced the home of a wealthy landowner until the destruction of Cologne by the Franks in 355. When the Romans recaptured the city the following year, the statue was probably used in constructing the foundation of a road.
The sculpture will go on display in Cologne on November 6th.
Sometimes the irony is too much to bear. Bush today, on why Kerry shouldn't be president: "You got to be able to speak clearly in order to make this world a more peaceful place."
Only two problems here:
1. Bush might be the least clear-speaking president in the history of the United States.
2. He ain't exactly making the world a more peaceful place.
All hail Joe Bravo's Tortilla Art!
How's your stomach feel, Dolly?
Eh, not ba-a-a-a-ad.
You cannot stop a sheep belching or farting, but you can make sure its eructations are less damaging to the environment. Belches and, to a far lesser degree, farts from sheep, cows and other farm animals account for around 20% of global methane emissions. The gas is a potent source of global warming because, volume for volume, it traps 23 times as much heat as the more plentiful carbon dioxide.
To protect the planet from such ruminant effusions, a team led by Andre-Denis Wright of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Perth, Western Australia, has developed a vaccine against the archaean microbes that produce methane in sheep rumens. After two injections of the vaccine, sheep burped 8% less methane in a 13-hour test.
Having an unfortunate name will not prevent you from becoming a published author.
I know it was just the other week that I linked to my very favorite completely insane columnist, Pastor Joseph Grant Swank, and let's be honest, there isn't much analyzing of his work to be done, beyond that of the psychological flavor. Still, sometimes a passage is just too amazing to leave unshared. This is from Saturday's BushCountry column, "George W. Bush: The Only Way: Get Tough On Iran." Before you ask, I have no idea what's up with all the colons. Maybe it's a ratio. Anyhow, first you start with a little random word generation:
With national elections taking up our adrenaline drive, we tend to sideline other issues pressing against our national security.
Taking up our adrenaline drive? After noting that Iran has received "enough warnings from thither and yon," Swank declares, "It is time for the United States once again to proclaim securing itself against Iranian murderers intent on doing us in." Uh, proclaim it what? He spends the next few sentences spinning his wheels with the standard denunciations of Islam, but those are a dime a dozen. Hey, I didn't come here for boilerplate, Pastor.
The truly devout give their lives in death in order to secure their eternities with playgirls in the eternities. Whether they see Allah in the hereafter is beside the point; the point is to make it to the playlands of eroticism. So those suicide bound strap the blow-aways to the flesh in order to obliterate the earthly.
That's more like it! On the surface it almost makes sense, but you turn it over in your head a few times aaaand... nope. I think he was trying to make a dirty joke there at the end, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Pleasingly surreal, sure, but where's the red meat, Swank? Where's the pop-eyed, spittle-flecked, finger-in-the-air stuff?
Iran is one of those pits from hell that keeps boiling up. Its leadership has no care for world peace. It mouths one sentence and acts out another. It says it fears the democracy planters on its borders; so it is going to do away with those freedom flags. That is devilment at its brashest brag. Therefore, those of us who value our liberties must press the Bush administration to see through a unified quest to squash every Iranian move to wipe us from the Earth. [...] On with the present administration's closing down the Iranian killer factories before we are held at arms' length from murderers international.
BOO-YAAAH! Rat-a-tat-tat, byatch.
Whew. I'm stuffed. Not another bite, really, I couldn't. Well, okay, just the one wafer-thin mint.
Of course, there are the wise owls in the Bush admiration who have had enough of the UN glory hounds and so tell the President not to care a twit about consulting the UN body.
<burp>
Much to do, little time to do it. I owe several people e-mails and hopefully should get to them this evening. Apologies for my tardiness. In the meantime, here's my latest post on The American Street.
Every so often, calls go out to abolish the Senate in favor of a unicameral legislature. The easy rebuttal: the Senate is the stodgy but generally responsible adult to the House of Representatives' petulant, tantrum-prone four-year-old. Without the Senate, we're back to the tyranny of the majority and the House is far too prone to passing truly awful legislation.
The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on whether the words "under God" should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance. In a politically and emotionally charged debate, Democrats said majority Republicans in the chamber were debasing the Constitution in order to force a vote that could hurt Democrats in the election. Supporters insisted that Congress has always had authority to limit federal court jurisdiction, and the legislation is needed to protect an affirmation of religion that is part of the national heritage.
The bill, which was passed 247-173, would prohibit federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases involving the pledge and its recitation and would prevent federal courts from striking the words "under God" from the pledge.
Good lord, we pay them for this? While the Democrats' protestations of wedge gimmickry are 100% correct, a second strategy is at play here, a strategy that also propels monstrosities like the Federal I Hate Faggots Marriage Amendment. While these guys avidly believe they are in the right (at least those few that aren't just self-loathing closet cases), they also know that legally, they are grasping at straws. They know they are soon to be on the losing end both demographically and legally on the gay issue, and so must hurry legislation to remove it from the courts' purview forthwith, before the issue reaches the Supreme Court and certainly before the composition of the SC changes.
Same with the pledge. They know the only legal defense they have is the shaky "tradition" arguments so fondly accepted by Scalia and Rehnquist. Except, this tradition only goes back to the '50s, so even that one is a pretty weak scaffolding on which to construct a constitutional argument. The pledge issue is yet another indicator of how the modern Republican Party prefers symbolic politics to trump substantive politics at every turn. It is also a colossal waste of time, but then that's the GOP's speciality.
I have to wonder, though: does the GOP really want to settle this issue? I mean, clearly they relish pulling this out to bludgeon Democrats every election cycle (and, of course, the old standby of flag-burning is up soon as well). If they permanently remove these issue from the courts' jurisdiction, what will they do with themselves next mid-term?
Cleveland Plain Dealer: "A crowd outside a Denison Avenue bar beat a Cleveland man to death early Sunday after the man apparently refused someone's request for a cigarette."
Ladies and gentlemen, President Fonzarelli.
"Don't come any closer or I swear I'll bite them off."
Senator Kerry gives Miss Lewinsky (obscured by crowd) two thumbs up.
I know, I know, they're weak. Terribly so. Help a brother out and drop more worthy ones in the comments.
"If I go there will be trouble
and if I stay it will be double..."
(via Atrios)
We have now saturated the oceans with man-made noise pollution to the point that it is killing whales and dolphins. The International Whaling Commission's scientific committee says that low frequency ambient marine noise levels have increased by two orders of magnitude in the northern hemisphere over the last sixty years. The main culprits: deep sea oil and gas exploration, shipping, and military submarines and sonar systems.
I've had an addiction to professional football (the American kind, natch) since as far back as I can remember. That jones has only been exacerbated by fantasy football, to the point that I can spout insane amounts of individual statistics and injury reports off the top of my head, much to the chagrin of every woman who has ever shared a roof with me. Aside: My FF team, The Mustard Truck!, has started the season 2-0, despite lackluster running back production. Roll, Mustard Truckers, roll!
One of the enduring mysteries of the sport to me is the relative lack of injuries. I mean, sure, guys are carted off the field every game and by the time they leave the sport, many guys walk like they're 80 years old. But in a sport where guys that big and that fast slam into each other and heap into enormous, awkward piles, you'd expect broken bones every other possession. I've chalked it up as testament to the toughness and superhuman conditioning of NFL athletes. But this just leaves me speechless.
Philly's equipment guy, John Hatfield, 59, has been outfitting football players for 25 years. Like me, he's at a loss. Fifteen years ago, he says, everyone wore them. Back then, they were made out of shards of scrap metal -- or something like that. Ten years ago, it was just the interior linemen. The last player on the Eagles to use a cup was center Steve Everitt in ... 1999. And what about today, in the very season that, by some accounts, is The Cup's 100-year anniversary?
"If I asked the players today if they wanted to wear a cup, the guys would look at me like I was crazy," says Hatfield. (Hey, I know the feeling.) "Let me tell you something. If I'm Brian Westbrook or some other player who might get leg-whipped in the groin -- I'm wearing one. In this sport, you can really do some damage down there. I mean, cleats, helmets, knees flying around everywhere ... you're talking about some real discomfort to the groin area."
Holy cojones, Batman. Nobody in the NFL wears a cup? In the most contact of all contact sports? Where 270-pounders in body armor lunge waist-high to try to tackle you? That, my friends, is ballsy. Or completely nuts. Take your pick. Hell, I considered wearing a cup full-time when my son was a toddler (head down...CHARGE!), and he wasn't even that fast.
It's a comfort thing and a macho thing, he says. The cups are too bulky and obtrusive for today's player. (As opposed to gonads swollen to the size of grapefruit, which must be a real treat to deal with.) According to Hatfield, no one wants to get teased by Hugh Douglas for, I guess, the outrageous concept of protecting their nards. The ironic jocularity behind that statement is almost unfathomable.
"If you want to get made fun of by your teammates," says one current NFL player, "wearing a cup would be the fastest way to do it. In all the games I've played -- on every level of the game -- I've only caught a knee down there once or twice. It's not the best feeling in the world. And no one wants to have millions of people watching you cupping your (cashews) in agony. But if someone came out wearing a cup, the rest of the team would be like, 'What's going on with this guy?'"
I'm not even mentioning the tragedy that befell Chicago DB Virgil Levers, though you can hit the link if you think you can stomach it. Eek. I guess I'll stick to editing clinical study reports.
Add another one to the pile of potential health benefits of the demon weed:
The compound in marijuana that produces a high, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, may block the spread of several forms of cancer causing herpes viruses, University of South Florida College of Medicine scientists report. The findings, published Sept. 15 in the online journal BMC Medicine, could lead to the creation of antiviral drugs based on nonpsychoactive derivatives of THC. The gamma herpes viruses include Kaposi's Sarcoma Associated Herpes virus, which is associated with an increased risk of cancer that is particularly prevalent in AIDS sufferers. Another is Epstein-Barr virus, which predisposes infected individuals to cancers such as Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease.
[...]
Furthermore, the researchers showed that THC acts specifically on gamma herpes viruses. The chemical had no effect on another related virus, herpes simplex-1, which causes cold sores and genital herpes. Small concentrations of THC were more potent and selective against gamma herpes viruses than the commonly used antiviral drugs acyclovir, gancicyclovir and foscamet, said Dr. Medveczky, a professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.
Heh heh. I've got a few friends who can attest that pot won't prevent genital herpes, no matter how much you smoke.
Reuters: "A Malaysian man shot and killed his wife after he mistook her for a monkey picking fruit in a tree behind their house, the New Straits Times said on Wednesday."
One of the biggest frustrations I've had in discussing the War on Iraq with others is the depressing tendency of Americans to shrug their shoulders and say, "Look, it's a war. People die. Things happen." I find that attitude maddening, but I guess it's easy to take the ignorant sanguine view, since the last time Americans experienced war first hand within our own borders was long before any of us was born. Most Americans don't seem capable of imagining the full horror of what we are wreaking. Juan Cole does his level best to help spur our imaginations.
The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number. Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.
That is just the beginning. You really must read the whole post to get the full effect. So do that, and then try to figure out at what point a) you would join the resistance, and b) you would be willing to forgive the power that did it to us.
The Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were designed for 90-day missions. Spirit is now at 263 days, with Opportunity just three weeks behind it. Impressive enough on its own, but NASA just extended their tours of duty by a further six months each. They made it through the Martian winter in apparently fine health and will be on a reduced schedule through December while the Sun rises higher and recharges their photovoltaic battery cells. After the (Earth) New Year, they will again begin exploring full speed ahead.
Satellite images detailing the paths of each rover so far are here and here. The respective teams at NASA must be incredibly proud. They should be.
Don't settle for poseur anti-Popes. Go to Kansas for the real deal.
On July 16, 1990 the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church elected David Bawden as Pope Michael, ending an almost 32 year long interregnum.
Who knew? Having been raised Baptist and evolved into a militant agnostic, I suppose I get a pass on being ignorant of this situation. As the design-challenged site explains:
The Gospels and Scriptures foretold the arrival in time of the Great Apostacy when the ultimate heretic would appear, the Anti-Christ. This time of Anti-Christ and the system he would establish was ushered in when Roncalli, who called himself John XXIII, was "elected." He was not Pope but an anti-pope. He called the Vatican II Council and under him and Montini, anti-pope Paul VI, they proclaimed heresy as truth. No true Pope can proclaim heresy as Jesus promised. (Luke 22:32, the Vatican Council) This heresy continues under anti-popes John Paul I and John Paul II.
Also, Pope Michael is having many computer problems and can't receive email right now. If you can help, Pope Michael says he will "be living in the basement of his parents' home in nearby St. Mary's, Kan."
(via metafilter)
Analyses of data returned from the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter show a significant overlap in atmospheric levels of water vapor and methane. The overlap falls short of proof, but is a potential clue of the presence of microbial life. The water vapor and methane are not evenly distributed throughout the Martian atmosphere, but are concentrated in three main areas: Arabia Terra, Elysium Planum and Arcadia-Memnonia. These three areas are also the ones suspected to have significant water ice just below the surface.
What does it mean? Well, it means that the same or related processes are responsible for releasing the water vapor and the methane. The tantalizing possibility is microbial life living at the bottom of the ice layer (where thermal processes would melt it) and releasing methane as waste. Of course, it could also be some geological process we don't yet understand, but that's far less exciting, isn't it?
Update (1:50 pm): The Register weighs in (under the indelicately titled "Methane on Mars: aliens - or farts in a jacuzzi?"):
The methane could be formed by geothermal processes oxidising iron in basaltic rocks, for example. Another explanation could be that there are quantities of methyl hydrate (molecules of methane trapped in an ice lattice) below the Martian ice layer.
New Scientist also has an interesting look at some of the controversy surrounding the methane.
However, the BBC has the best quote on the matter: "On Earth, places where methane is released in copious amounts are permafrost regions where you get peat bogs that are frozen for long periods of time. When the thaw sets in, the little microbes that live there say 'yipee' and off they jolly well go."
As should be apparent from the timestamp on this post, I have succeeded at getting my nights and days reversed. Wasn't trying, it just sorta worked out that way. Monday morning will completely suck 'til I get enough espresso in me to raise the dead. Anyhow, the lineup and schedule over at The American Street have gotten rearranged as well. I'll now be posting there on Sundays instead of Tuesdays. Sunday morning is an altogether better slot, as it doesn't follow Monday Night Football, which here on the East Coast never ends before midnight and is on a work night. Given my pre-existing insomniac tendencies, you see the problem there.
Anyhow, the new one is up ("That Other War") and I've put permanent links to it and the others down at the bottom of the blogroll on the left. Buenas noches, amigos.
Five University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students accused of attacking a classmate late Saturday night on campus were taken into custody Tuesday. All five of them were film students at UW-Milwaukee. They told police they wanted to see people's reactions.
A 19-year-old girl was attacked late Saturday night as she was leaving Sandburg Hall. She told police a group of men wearing black clothing and white face makeup threw her into some bushes and fondled her. She fought back and was able to get away.
[...]
The district attorney is expected to file formal charges sometime Wednesday. The charges could be sexual assault. If convicted on those charges, the suspects could face up to 10 years in prison.
Hey, I have an idea. Let's equip their cells with cameras. I'm interested to see their reactions when they are sexually assaulted.
Somebody ought to have their parenting license revoked.
[link updated after picture disappeared from Reuters]
The Dark Window spots a couple of columns by Pastor Joseph Grant Swank, who may just have become my very favorite completely insane columnist ever. And not just insane, but insane and prolific, the very best combination. First up: Kerry And Team: Do You Want The Nation To Slide Into Hell's Pocket?
But to elect Kerry is to elect an individual who has informed the country ahead of time that he has no spiritual respect for the Blessed Sacrament. He has no holy sensitivity regarding the divine revelation set forth in Scripture. His wife appears to be in his same league. [...] Those of like ilk will move into every power play throughout the country. They will dance in the streets in celebration of evil sitting in positions of authority locally, statewide and nationally. They will lord it over everyone adhering to a biblical ethic. They will slide the country into maximum immorality — a cascading that will be utterly unrighteous.
Now that, my friends, is Grade A loonranting. Olympic level. It's so good I want to go dance in the streets in celebration of evil. But wait, it gets better. The very next day comes more: Kerry Crucifies Christ Afresh, Being Capable Of Any Evil. I think I'm in love.
How can US Senator John F. Kerry feel the sacramental wafer touch his tongue, knowing that by receiving that sacred element, he is crucifying Christ afresh? The same must be stated regarding his wife.
Yeah, really. How dare he let his wife touch his tongue? He's defiling her sacred element.
However, Kerrys let it be known to the world that they don’t care about womb babies, particularly if they are a nuisance to some female’s whatever.
For the record, the whatever is my all-time favorite part of a female.
Can there then be any deed too evil for John F. Kerry to champion if elected to the chief office of the land? Kerry would stoop to any low to see through his own opportunistic evils. That is not far fetched when realizing that for months the world has witnessed his total disregard for the Christ sacrifice upon the dreaded tree. Anyone who can so slay the Savior repeatedly can rationalize any sin as being proper.
Swank, indeed. What was that about irrational Bush hatred?
You should go read Sidney Blumenthal's latest column, Far Graver than Vietnam. It contains several quotes from interviews with the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, who agree that Bush's war is already lost. A few of the key quotes:
Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
[...]
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."
[...]
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."
General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
[...]
General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."
[...]
General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida."
Don't say we didn't warn you. I hear again and again, "Now that we are there, we have to figure out how to win it." Sorry, but that's a fantasy. There is no winning this. If Russia can't even subjugate tiny Chechnya with entirely better intelligence and immensely more brutal methods, if Israel can't achieve it with Palestine, then we don't stand a chance in hell of doing it to Iraq. We never did. Figuring out how to win in Iraq is not an exercise in reality. We need to figure out how to lose and get the hell out of there as fast as we can.
Does that leave a dangerous situation? You're damn skippy it does. A horrific one that will be a threat to us for years to come. But again, we told you this would be the result. We told you Bush was signing on for years of frontless, bloody guerrilla warfare. We told you it would end up running into the hundreds of billions of dollars we didn't have. We told you we would be seen as occupiers. We told you this would create a vacuum to be filled by the worst criminal elements in the region. We told you it would increase, not decrease, terrorism and provide the best recruitment poster al Qaeda could ever have. We told you it would speed the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. We told you the initial invasion would be the easiest part of the whole operation and that Bush had no plan for what followed.
We. Told. You. And for that, we were called (at best) unpatriotic and defeatist but more often just strings of obscenities. Well, here's what I'm telling you now: fuck you, bomb-happy flag-wavers. You wanted your splendid little war? Now you have it. This isn't gloating, it's anger. I would much rather have been proven wrong. And quit with the ridiculous "the media isn't reporting the good news" crap. The news is far worse than you think. Meanwhile, the media is spending all its time on freaking Vietnam service.
History will record this as America's biggest foreign policy blunder in the modern era, and maybe ever. So please, feel free to explain to me again how opposing this debacle made me "objectively pro-Saddam" and an appeaser of terrorists and unwilling to defend our country and a weak-willed, liberal, pacifist naïf. Just don't be surprised when you're picking yourself up off the floor after you say it.
Hope that yours aren't achieved like this.
A Norfolk man spent four hours holding a rusty piece of metal he feared was an unexploded World War Two bomb that would detonate if he let go. [...] As police, fire and ambulance crews rushed to the workyard where David Page had dug up the device, the terrified 40-year-old spoke to an emergency operator on his mobile phone, newspapers said on Wednesday.
"The woman police operator kept saying it would be OK but I kept saying to her, 'You're not the one holding the bomb'," he said in the Daily Mail. Page, a father of five, sobbed to the woman operator: "I told her to tell my parents and the children that I loved them if anything went wrong."
The drama ended when army bomb disposal experts turned up and told him the "bomb" was actually part of the hydraulic suspension system from a Citroën.
Oh. Uhhh, sorry 'bout that. Something tells me it's going to be a long time before his drinking buddies let him live this one down.
What does Hurricane Ivan look like from the International Space Station? Prettier than it does from the ground. Take a peek.
Given the trajectory of Elvis Costello's career, his collaboration with Burt Bacharach wasn't really all that surprising. But I surely never saw this one coming.
Bacharach, who is 76 years old, said that working with Dr. Dre on the untitled project was comparable to his relationship with his famous songwriting partner, Hal David.
"Three of the four things I've already cut have Dr. Dre drum loops that he gave me," Bacharach told the Denver Post. "It's a challenging, freeing feeling, to take an existing format - like these rigid, four-bar loops - and to see what you can write on top of it. It's hard and challenging too because it does have some restrictions. It's kinda like Hal giving me the whole lyric on 'Alfie' and then having to set that up around it."
Dr. Dre and Burt Bacharach. Intriguing, but I'd be even more interested if they were collaborating on the lyrics.
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
With big money, big nuts, and a big fat chronic sack
Y'all niggaz be wack
Those raindrops are fallin' on my head
They keep fallin'
So I just did me some talkin' to the sun
Real Gs who drop keys, protect these N - U - Ts, nigga please
I'm talkin' about deeez
Nuts. Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
They keep fallin'...
I wasn't going to say anything else about CBS' documents because, as I stated earlier, I think the whole thing is completely irrelevant and a waste of time. However, the story just got completely weird. Lt. Col. Killian's secretary has surfaced and says they are fakes, but accurate.
The former secretary to a Texas Air National Guard officer who purportedly wrote memos critical of President Bush's pilot service said Tuesday that the documents are forgeries but they appear to reflect memos her boss wrote and kept in a locked desk drawer. Marian Carr Knox told the Dallas Morning News after viewing copies of the disputed memos, "These are not real," and that "the information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones."
[...]
Another former Texas National Guard officer, Richard Via, also said that the documents were fakes but that their content reflected questions about Bush that were discussed at the time in the hangar at Ellington Air Force Base, where he had a desk next to Killian's. Via said he and others he worked with "remember the physical, and him going to Alabama was an issue." He said Killian "made notes and put them in his files about things like that." Killian kept the files because "he was trying to cover his ass," Via said. "He was always worried something would come back on him."
Interestingly, this is pretty much exactly what Stirling Newberry said was likely the case in his article to which I linked in my only other post on this matter. And Charles Johnson is still full of shit: these didn't come out of Microsoft Word, either. The baselines are off from letter to letter and I challenge anybody to reproduce that behavior in Word. I think the most likely scenario is that these were created on a more modern typewriter. By whom? Well, that's the big question, isn't it?
Here's hoping it gets answered soon, so that this dust-up can be put away. It was never anything more than a ridiculous distraction. We are approaching what is probably the most important election in my life and have now spent almost the entire campaign on issues of obscure documentation from a war that ended three-and-a-half decades ago. Could the national political discourse sink any lower?
The backstory: Woman in Alabama works for a company that makes insulation. She comes to work with a Kerry sticker on her car and her Bush-backing boss tells her to remove it from her car. She refuses, he fires her. Here come the blogs.
The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn't return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn't turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. "He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told me. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."
Gobbell accepted Kerry's job offer, "so I reckon I'll be working for John Kerry." Kerry left it that someone from his campaign would call Gobbell to work out the details. Let's hope there's quick follow-through (I'll be checking!), because Gobbell told me she couldn't wait to tell Geddes that she had a better offer.
Well, would you look at that. We haven't even made it to the first debate and already Kerry has a better job creation record than Bush.
In this light piece at Scientific American purporting to be a transcript of a comedy routine from Einstein's parrot, there is quite a volley of groan-inducing physics jokes. Just the sort of thing I love. It's pretty short, but the winners:
Hey, Parrot, what's the difference between a wild boar and Niels Bohr? When I say that God doesn't play dice, a wild boar doesn't tell me to stop telling God what to do. I hate that.
Let's see, two guys walk into an h-bar. An H-BAR. If you knew any physics you'd be on the floor, I swear.
So Schrödinger and Heisenberg are driving down the road, and Heisenberg says, 'Hey, I think you just ran over a cat.' And Schrödinger, he says, 'Is it dead?' And Heisenberg says, heh heh, get this: 'I can't be certain.'
Ha.
If you're a regular reader here, you know I have a special affinity for the macabre genital amputation stories that pop up as regularly as mushrooms after hard rains. Yes, they're satisfyingly voyeuristic and who doesn't enjoy poking fun at another's obviously traumatic mental illness? But, you know, after a few dozen slight variations on the theme they had started to seem, I don't know, a little banal. I'd been slowly reaching the bittersweet conclusion that perhaps they were no longer meriting a link here absent a truly bizarre twist.
Hey look - a truly bizarre twist!
A former church minister and Boy Scout leader who cut off another man's genitals in a makeshift gender reassignment surgery in a hotel room pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license. Jack Wayne Rogers, 59, of Fulton, Mo., admitted on Friday he performed the grisly operation about two years ago. [...] [The seventeen-year sentence] is to run concurrently with a 30-year sentence handed to Rogers in April after he pleaded guilty to child pornography and obscenity charges.
Rogers promised Michael Abercrombie he'd remove his genitals in a four-hour operation. That time passed, complications developed and bleeding refused to stop. Abercrombie, now known as Madison, says she didn't feel like a victim at first, but changed her mind after prosecutors presented her Rogers' checkered criminal history, peppered with allegations of cannibalism and a pornography collection that included photographs of severed genitals. [...] Rogers was sent to prison for four months in 1992 on federal child pornography charges. He is still being investigated in the torture and killing of a Skidmore man.
Sounds like a charmer.
Salon has an article up about the US Senate campaign of Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, an obstetrician and one of the true fire-breathers of the right. If you're at all familiar with Coburn from his three-term House tenure, you know that he's a bit prone to the batty statement here and there. And there and there and there and there and there. Here's the first one from the article:
The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda.
I'll leave it up to you to figure out exactly how abortion is part of the gay agenda. In fact, I'll pay 10:1 that homosexuals get far fewer abortions that heterosexuals. Far fewer. And multiple sexual partners? Yes, that is certainly the exclusive domain of the gay community. But let's move on.
"I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life. [...] Do you realize that if all those children had not been aborted, we wouldn't have any trouble with Medicare and Social Security today? That's another 41 million people."
At a House subcommittee meeting on the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996, which heard testimony on the danger of the parasite cryptosporidium, which had killed 104 and sickened 400,000 in Milwaukee in 1993 and killed 19 in Las Vegas in 1994, Coburn displayed his expertise as a doctor. The lethal spores, he held forth, "can sometimes ... be very helpful -- for doctors -- because it helps us identify those people who in fact are immuno-compromised."
A year later, Coburn gained a moment of national attention when he condemned NBC for televising the Academy Award-winning movie on the Holocaust "Schindler's List." According to Coburn, the film encouraged "irresponsible sexual behavior," and he called for outrage against the network from "parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere." He added, "I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program." Even conservative avatar William Bennett felt compelled to rebuke him: "These are very unfortunate and foolish comments."
In 1999, after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Coburn opposed President Clinton's proposal for making adults liable if they allow their children to buy guns and harm others. "If I wanted to buy a bazooka to use in a very restricted way, to do something, I ought to be able to do that," said Coburn.
Medical fraud has been one of Coburn's signature issues. In his freshman term, he introduced the Health Care Anti-Fraud Act of 1995, which focused mainly on Medicare fraud but also touched on Medicaid. Speaking on the House floor on behalf of a Republican Medicare bill that year, [...] Coburn was careful not to raise his own case involving Medicaid fraud.
His case, by the way, involved sterilizing a 20-year-old woman without her written consent and billing it to Medicaid, which does not cover that procedure for women under 21. Also take note that the guy labelling homosexuals as "the greatest threat to our freedom" and opposing government action against deadly water-borne parasites because they help "identify those people who in fact are immuno-compromised" (by killing them, one presumes) was appointed by George W. Bush to co-chair the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Compassionate conservativism at its very finest.
And then there's my personal favorite:
Last week, he declared Oklahoma lagging in economic development because "you have a bunch of crapheads in Oklahoma City that have killed the vision of anybody wanting to invest in Oklahoma." His spokesperson could not explain who or what Coburn was talking about.
"...Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plains
And the lunatics want Senate seats
Once the desert sun done baked their brains..."
Watch your freedoms disappear. Now you can't screw corpses in California.
Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia, a spokeswoman said on Friday. The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts.
"Nobody knows the full extent of the problem. ... But a handful of instances over the past decade is frequent enough to have a bill concerning it," said Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who has studied California cases involving allegations of necrophilia. "Prosecutors didn't have anything to charge these people with other than breaking and entering."
Now there's a double entendre even I won't touch. The irony of Schwarzenegger signing this bill is duly noted. Nonetheless, I'd think a bill banning the sexual violation of dead bodies would be the very least controversial bill ever. However, it appears that I'd have thought wrong.
The state's first attempt to outlaw necrophilia, in response to a case of a man charged with having sex with the corpse of a 4-year-old girl in Southern California, stalled last year in a legislative committee.
You've got to be kidding me.
The biggest blot on Bush's record may be his failure to take his required annual physical in 1972. As a result, he was suspended from flying — an embarrassment for serious pilots. In years past, the Bush campaign claimed he missed the physical because his personal physician was in Houston. Now the White House says Bush did not need to take the physical, since he did not intend to fly during his stint in Alabama.
Unfortunately, I'm having trouble coming up with a "happily ever after" ending to this fairy tale, but you should read it all the same.
So, did a nuclear bomb explode in North Korea on Thursday?
A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday. [...] he Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, said the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The blast in Kim Hyong Jik county left a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said. "We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," the source said.
A large cloud that appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago was not the result of a nuclear explosion, according to a U.S. official. [...] The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.
Apparently, it isn't that Bush doesn't have a heart. He just doesn't know where it is.
The list's newest entry comes from untoward.
I invented a drink. It's called The Exorcist. You go into a bar, and you say "I would like The Exorcist." And the bartender says "I don't know what that is" (because I made it up, and she probably doesn't read my livejournal) and you say "Well, I'll show you!"
You get five shots of whiskey, and five shots of water. You set them up, five whiskeys and then five waters, a straight line, and you start with the whiskey. You shoot them as quickly as you can, one after the other until you get to the first water. When you lift the water up, instead of drinking it you splash it on the bartender and you scream "IT IS THE POWER OF CHRIST THAT COMPELS YOU!" And you pick up the second water and "IT IS THE HOLY GHOST THAT COMPELS YOU!" And "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!" "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"
Until you are asked to leave.
Aww yeah. Gotta happen.
Jesus: Wrong on social services. Wrong on crime. Wrong on defense. Wrong for America.
I've not said anything about the CBS memos because really, who the hell cares? Exactly as much question remains as does to whether Bush skipped out on his National Guard duty as to whether Slick Willie got his willie slickened courtesy of that woman, Miss Lewinsky. It's bleeding obvious Bush was AWOL, and it was bleeding obvious long before the CBS report this week. The Poor Man, as per normal, has the perfectly calibrated snark-response:
Let me save everyone a whole lot of time. They are genuine. How do I know? Because the internet is currently awash in wingnuts claiming the memos are fakes. Ergo, they are for real. Q.E.D.
Some people may feel that I'm just being flip here. Is that so, some people? Tell me: how rich would you be right now if, every time something was posted on a right-wing message board, or everytime Drudge had an exclusive, or any time Rush Limbaugh revealed a secret truth that the liberal media won't tell you, you called up your bookie and put down $20 even money on "bullshit"? The correct answer is: "pretty fucking rich". The correct answer is: "I would never, never lose." So, if anyone doubts my methodology, I have a crisp new $20 bill that just told me that I'm 100% right and you're just too dumb to see it. If any of you champs out there think me and Andrew Jackson are both wrong, well then, today's your lucky day, because we're paying 2:1. If you need us, we'll be on the couch playing ESPN NHL 2K5. Peace.
True 'nuff. If LGF proprietor Charles Johnson says anything, you can always say the exact opposite and feel safe in the assumption that you have just landed on the side of God, country, and veracity. If Charles Johnson AND Matt Drudge say something, you needn't even bother saying the opposite. You can just go about your business knowing that the unpleasant smell filling the internet is 100% sun-brewed manure. But as I say, that is the proper snark-reponse.
CBS News hit back tonight and hit back hard. Stirling Newberry is probably on the right path here, and these three diaries at dKos demonstrate exactly how seriously you should take the "expert" advice being tossed about at LGF and Powerline.
So, have the documents been proven to be genuine? No. Have they been proven to be forgeries? No. But when an organization like CBS News stands by their story as forcefully as they have and especially when the White House doesn't make any disputation of their veracity, well, you don't start taking the word of quarter-witted, mouth-foaming cretins like Charles Johnson seriously instead. I doubt we are anywhere close to the end of the revelations about these specific memos, but if you have actually taken the time to pore through the minutiae of Paul Lukasiak's exhaustively researched AWOL Project examining the pre-existing records, you know full well that Bush blew off his duty.
Having said all that, none of it matters to me. If Bush had parachuted into Vietnam and single-handedly driven the Viet Cong back across the 17th parallel, he still wouldn't get my vote. He panders to religious fundamentalists and appoints them to high office. I don't trust those lunatics with power no matter to what anachronistic, reality-denying religion they pledge allegiance. Whether he believes that ridiculous crap or not (and I have my doubts), he enables it. I could list a hundred reasons why I couldn't vote for him, but that one alone is more than enough. Not him and not anybody from his party. It's that simple.
Now, if we could quit refighting this 35-year-old war that anybody with two brain cells to rub together can see was a horrifically stupid lost cause from day one, we've got some actual serious issues to address. The fine points of typographical history aren't among them.
I'm on record supporting torture, maiming, and execution for spammers. Make me your king and I'll hold public stonings, drawing and quarterings, even Roman-style fights against lions for the folks that continually attack my inbox and comments section. I will scour the internet looking for the very most painful methods of punishment known to man. I'll make Qusay Hussein look like Gandhi and Idi Amin like a Teletubbie. The worst I can find will be reserved for the people who send me spam about spam-blocking software. Oh yes, night and day will their screams echo down the tower stairs.
However, once I begin my Jacobin purges of the mass-mailers, I will probably show some grudging leniency toward the ones who inadvertently lead me to beauty. One such spam just plopped down into my inbox, having managed to avoid the Bayesian filter. Even so, they are easy to spot and the only thing that kept me from just instantly deleting it was the subject line: "whenever pilewort." Pilewort, a word that makes me chuckle for no apparent reason, is an herb/weed that grows wild here in North Carolina, recognizable by its distinctive flowers that stay closed while in full bloom.
But the pilewort reference isn't what would save this spammer from the acid vats in the future People's Republic of Apostrophia, that fair land of proper grammar and free cable TV. Following a string of nonsense words and a link for yet another online pharmacy came a 4-5 sentence passage that made no particular sense, but was put together just beautifully all the same. Figuring there was no way this wasn't ripped from a literary source somewhere, I googled a five-word snatch of it. Lo and behold, it was the middle of a paragraph from Robert Louis Stevenson's Across the Plains.
I've never read anything by Stevenson previously, but I probably will now. Most (and likely all) of his oeuvre is online, having long ago passed into the public domain. Here's the full paragraph with asterisks marking off the section from the email:
There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life: the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognise him. It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though *perhaps he is native there. He sings in the most doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are moments. With no more apparatus than an ill-smelling lantern I have evoked him on the naked links. All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird* and hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable. And just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us, that fills us with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist. There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget; but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news.
Damn. Now that is just gorgeous.
A two-legged dog that walks like a human. Sort of. The link goes to video.
A man with the world's stretchiest skin. The picture at the link is of the man using his neck skin to make his head appear uncircumcised.
Don't mess with the pistol-packing puppy.
Bush and Blair in S&M lingerie video (safe for work).
Woman's skin grows over wedding ring. Link goes to medical journal article with horrifying pictures and x-ray.
And when I say underground, I mean it.
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.
"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said. "There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access. Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs". There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said. "The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
The miles of tunnels date from Roman times, and include a section known as Les Catacombes, where the bones of several million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the 1700s. That section is open for guided tours, but accessing the rest of the tunnel system has been illegal since the 1950s. Nonetheless, a good-natured game of cat-and-mouse has gone on between police and secretive groups of "cataphiles"
ever since.
(hat tip: fiend)
A few months ago, the Financial Times ran a story bearing the title "Anti-Bush Tide Rises on Capitol Hill." At the time, I really didn't give it much thought. But ever since the dignified and understated Republican National Convention, I've been troubled by it. Could Tide really be anti-Bush? FafBlog says no.
"All™ will make your colors run insteada boldly standin out in the face of enemy fabrics!" says Giblets.
"There is no real evidence to support that Giblets," says me. "Besides Tide™ does not break up dirt an tough grass stains. It chases em for a while before leavin to attack other loads."
"Tide™ will get those other loads clean eventually!" says Giblets. "An when those loads are clean it will set off a cleanliness domino effect! Cleanliness will start spreadin to neighborin washin machines an then through the entire laundromat until it scrubs your stubborn grass stains away!"
"I dunno Giblets," says me. "I have put a couple hundred billion dollars a quarters into this load an it's still a mess."
"Tide™'s commercials are strong an resolute!" says Giblets. "All™'s commercials are flimsy an flip-flop on critical issues! One day they say All™ brightens colors, the next day they say it whitens whites! Well which is it All™?"
"All™ has changed its formula since the early seventies," says me. "It is New an Improved. Why doesn't Tide™ ever improve?"
"Tide™ needs no improvement!" says Giblets. "Tide™'s wife is smiley an warm an looks like the human personification of the bakin of oatmeal cookies! All™'s wife is a cranky out-of-touch ketchup heiress! Tide™ is sturdy an earthy just like Giblets wants to be! All™'s Vietnam service may be questionable!"
"Those are just smear campaigns Giblets," says me. "All™ served its country while Tide™ was sittin on a shelf in the laundry room of the Texas Air National Guard."
"The leadin brand will not remove caked-on mud and grime!" says Giblets. "The leadin brand will capitulate to the Islamofascists!"
Well that settles it, I suppose. Just like Dick Cheney says: if you vote for Kerry, you're setting the country up for another devastating case of ring around the collar.
Mimi Smartypants: "I never thought I would have to tell someone not to put Cheerios in her vagina. Whole-grain oat goodness, perhaps, but it still is not the best idea. I turn away for one second during a clothing change and when I look back Nora is frowning earnestly and trying to insert a stray Cheerio up in her business. Kids are natural scientists."
Mr. Bush then turned to another point he has been making lately to appeal to women - that among those doctors being driven from the business are many obstetricians and gynecologists. But Mr. Bush seemed to get derailed on the way to his point.
"Too many good OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their" - he paused a split second, as if searching for a word, then continued - "their love, with women all across this country," he said.
Women all across the country might actually be relieved by such a shortage.
"Okay Miss Jones, just put your feet in the stirrups, slide down for me, and I'm going to practice my love."
And then the blog fell silent. I could blame the lack of recent posts on a Labor Day weekend vacation and it would be totally believable, but it would be a lie. The truth is I had the house to myself all weekend and got trapped by Civilization III. Let me just say that treacherous Babylonians suck. Jerks. Anyhow, between that and work and life*, I just haven't gotten around to much writing of late. Moreover, I talked to Froz last night, and getting satellite internet set up at his new place out in the sticks in California (The Kindling State) has been more challenging than expected, so no picking up of my slack from the West Coast office just yet.
I do however, have this week's column, "Heart of Darkness", up at The American Street, if you're so inclined. And since you're already here, you should be.
*Speaking of life, Froz's wife is due to drop a baby any day now and I should probably mention that the missus here is set to do the same in January. Had the ultrasound on Thursday and it's another boy. Quoth the ultrasound tech about two seconds after placing it on her belly: "Oh my! Well, that was easy."
Broadcast news outlets are reporting that Former President Bill Clinton, 58, has been rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. CNN said that a former senior clinton administration official said that Clinton went to the hospital reporting that he was tired and had chest discomfort, but then he was told he needed bypass surgery. CNN reported that he will have surgery soon, but not today. ABC News reported that Clinton is going to have quadruple bypass surgery.
In fact, I think the legal term is "barking mad." If you watched Zell Miller go all pop-eyed and mouthfoaming at the Republican convention Wednesday night, you know what I'm talking about here. It ain't easy making Pat Buchanan look laid back and reasonable, but nobody ever said Miller doesn't have skills. Hey GOP, you can have him. We got sick of him years ago. All sales are final, though. No returns, no refunds.
Zell, last night: "Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator. And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators."
Bush, in April: "They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."
And now poor Zell has to shill for the guy who says the things that make him so angry. That must totally suck.
FoxNews signs Gollum and Smeagol. "Silence! The fat liberal has a new movie that says lies about the Bush, our preciousss..."
Staged voter riots in Miami. The "Mission Accomplished" flightsuit landing. The for-show-only turkey. Faked news releases with actors for journalists. Do you detect a theme developing? Batter up!
Watching George W. introduce Laura Bush last night, I was watching the softball game behind him more than him, because, well, it was more interesting. And not just interesting because it's a version of the American pastime, but because of the way the game worked. First, there were only bleachers set up on one side of the "field", which seemed to only be grass - no dirt. If bleachers had been set up on the other side, we wouldn't have been able to see the players.
And why did we have to see the players? Well, if you'll notice, they were all wearing "43" jerseys. The first guy who batted (left-handed, of course) had on a 43 jersey - Bush is the 43rd president. The next batter? A "43" jersey. The batter after that? Facing the opposite direction (I guess they burned through the other two too fast), but with a "43" jersey. The pitches were wild, and weren't going anywhere - and if you'll notice, Bush made no reference to the game behind him, who was playing, or why he was there.
Suh-WING!
The inevitable GOP 9/11 pimping got underway at Madison Square Garden last night. If Republican delegates are puzzled at the hostility emanating from the city, try to imagine the Democrats holding their convention in Houston (if Houston had 11x as many people) under similar circumstances. Right. From tonight's Daily Show:
Jon Stewart: What did you make of last night's focus on September 11th?
Steven Colbert: Well, remember, John, 9/11 and its aftermath bring to mind a time of unprecedented national unity, when from the crucible of an unthinkable tragedy there arose a steely patriotism transcending ideology and partisanship. That stuff kills in the swing states. Those NASCAR dads suck it down in a feeding tube.
JS: So you had no problem with it?
SC: Jon, I found it crass-tastic. The message was delivered by Republicans' most popular figures, John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, two men of bravery and leadership, qualities the president would very much like associated with him.
JS: Well, Steven, let me ask you this: what is tonight's theme?
SC: Tonight, Jon, they took last night's theme, A Bush Victory Would Bring Closure to the 9/11 Families, and built on it with a theme of Compassion. We heard from widows, orphans, the enfeebled, the limbless, all raising their voice in support of the president whose compassion, like the Olympics, triumphantly springs forth every four years. You see, it all goes with the overall theme of this convention: A Time for Unmitigated Gall.
JS: But Steven, to be perfectly fair, aren't all political conventions manipulative?
SC: No, Jon. To call this convention manipulative is to call Marcel Marceau a little quiet. These people are artists operating at the peak of their abilities. For example, take Thursday night's theme: Fuck You, What Are You Going to Do About It?
JS: That can't be right. Steven, that sounds absolutely awful.
SC: Yeah but, you know, fuck us. What are we gonna do about it?
