Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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If you watch the news at all, you know that three as-yet-unnamed lacrosse players at Duke have been accused of choking, beating, sodomizing, and raping a NC Central student they had hired as a stripper. If charges are brought, they'll be facing 16-20 years in prison, which sounds about right, given the details alleged. Don't have much to say about this that hasn't been said widely and forcefully already. It's horrific and makes me feel sick to my stomach. Having lived most of my life in Durham (we moved here when my father entered medical school at Duke; I went to UNC, eight miles down the road), I'll confirm what many others have said: relations between the university and the city have always been strained in a way that they really aren't with other schools in the area. Issues of region, class, and race are always simmering just below the surface, and the fact that the victim was a student at the local historically Black university brings all of those into sharp detail.
This is a seriously ugly situation that will linger well after anybody is sentenced. While it is completely unfair for the racist and predatory actions of those involved to reflect upon the campus as a whole (and understandably, most of the students are as angry and repulsed as everybody else), there is just no way this won't further damage an already shaky town-campus relationship. The school administration's initial slow and uncertain response certainly didn't help, and neither will rumors like these, which you can be sure will continue. Duke, NCCU, and Durham have a lot of very difficult work in front of them.
As an aside, in the course of looking through the NC felony classifications for the post below, I noticed something. Durham DA Mike Nifong has been all over the news, as you might expect now that this has turned into a national story. One quote I've heard from him several times is that only one crime in North Carolina is more serious than 1st degree sexual offense, one of the charges he intends to pursue, and that's 1st degree murder (Class B1 felony versus Class A). Indeed, 2nd degree murder is only a Class B2 felony. Actually, though, one other Class A felony is on the books in North Carolina: Unlawful use of a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon of mass destruction, injuring another. Passed in 2001, of course.
Apparently, my reputation precedes me. You can stop mailing me links to this story now, folks.
At least six men traveled from across the nation and South America to have their genitals mutilated in what Haywood County authorities described as a sadomasochistic dungeon. Three Haywood County men are now in jail on felony charges of castration without malice and practicing medicine without a license.
"Castration without malice" is a law on the books here? Oh, baby. Where can I find a transcript of that debate? I highly recommend reading my buddy Robust McManlyPants' ruminations on the story, what with his having grown up in the area and all. And I second his motion that the mugshots at the story are essential. Wow. But most of all, I feel it's important to note that it takes some real balls to get get yourself castrated.
HA HA HA HA! IT TAKES BALLS!
Update: The specific law is NC General Statute 14-29: Castration or other maiming without malice aforethought, first passed in 1754.
If any person shall, on purpose and unlawfully, but without malice aforethought, cut, or slit the nose, bite or cut off the nose, or a lip or an ear, or disable any limb or member of any other person, or castrate any other person, or cut off, maim or disfigure any of the privy members of any other person, with intent to kill, maim, disfigure, disable or render impotent such person, the person so offending shall be punished as a Class E felon.
Vengeance is mine, saith the youth minister.
A youth minister was charged with assault for allegedly knocking a 16-year-old boy down and kicking him in the groin after taking a head shot from the teen in a dodgeball game. David M. Boudreaux, 27, was charged Wednesday with one count of third-degree assault. According to court documents, the incident happened in February at Crescent Lake Christian Academy.
Authorities said the teen missed Boudreaux with one throw but then knocked the youth minister's glasses off with the next. The boy apologized, authorities said, but Boudreaux pushed him backward, and when the teen got up again, Boudreaux kicked him in the groin and left. The teen suffered whiplash and post-concussion syndrome and had blood in his urine after being kicked, according to court records.
Boudreaux later apologized, prosecutors said.
Yikes. Looks like someone needs to go re-read Luke 6:29.
But my point is this. It's adult time. It's time to stop complaining about the evil MSM, as if they are the reason ethnic cleansing is underway in Iraq. It's time to stop pretending your favorite right wing blogger, who thinks all is pretty hunky-dory in Iraq, has got a monopoly on truth (for instance, if someone has declared the war won, like some bloggers have, how can they be taken seriously anymore? They would be laughed out of any serious policy debate in Washington, but still the readers come and chime on in comments about how the left wing and MSM are losing this war for us). No, it's high time to wake up and smell the coffee. It's time to truly, seriously, sincerely ponder whether Donald Rumsfeld, after the colossal missteps he's made, deserves to keep his job. It's time to stop letting people get away with idiotic inferences that the Sunni insurgency has been defeated, and that's the main reason a new disingenuous 'theme' that civil war is nigh has arisen among swaths of the dastardly MSM (the insurgency remains rather robust, despite some improvements in parts of the Sunni Triangle). It's time to stop inflating the numbers of Iraqi Army that we say are really ready to wage battle, and stop inflating our claims about the amount of battlespace they truly control. It's time to recognize, instead, that our problems in Iraq are increasing, not decreasing, as U.S. relations with some Shi'a segments detiorate, as sectarian conflict intensifies, as the Sunni insurgents continue to remain a real threat, if somewhat diminished.
Yes, the time for sobriety and seriousness and the end to the spin and bullshit is now, before it's too late. Again, the hackery and triumphalist imbecility must cease, and the sooner the better, so we can move forward clear-eyed about the real situation at hand, rather than laboring under rosy-lensed misconceptions like blind, hyper-Panglossian cretins. Or maybe people aren't blind, but worse, talk radio like partisans who have gotten accustomed to their cheery little echo-chambers, to their jingo-on-the-go adoring commenters, and to the juicy partisan traffic that comes their way as a result. But it's a sad, deluded little party, and they're the real losers, because they are lying to their readers, and they are lying to themselves.
Also, this from John Cole.
Update: Oh, now they tell us that's a Berlusconi impersonator. Oh well.
From Healing Iraq:
Today it was all out war in Baghdad.
Please don’t ask me whether I believe Iraq is on the verge of civil war yet or not. I have never experienced a civil war before, only regular ones. All I see is that both sides are engaged in tit-for-tat lynchings and summary executions. I see governmental forces openly taking sides or stepping aside. I see an occupation force that is clueless about what is going on in the country. I see politicians that distrust each other and continue to flame the situation for their own personal interests. I see Islamic clerics delivering fiery sermons against each other, then smile and hug each other at the end of the day in staged PR stunts. I see the country breaking into pieces. The frontlines between different districts of Baghdad are already clearly demarked and ready for the battle. I was stopped in my own neighbourhood yesterday by a watch team and questioned where I live and what I was doing in that area. I see other people curiously staring in each other’s faces on the street. I see hundreds of people disappearing in the middle of the night and their corpses surfacing next day with electric drill holes in them. I see people blown up to smithereens because a brainwashed virgin seeker targeted a crowded market or café. I see all that and more.
Don’t you dare chastise me for writing about what I see in my country.
Healing Iraq is written by Zeyad, a dentist in Iraq who has been pro-occupation and can be found on blogrolls all over the right end of blogland. But they don't link to him as much as they used to.
Coca-Cola has agreed to adhere to the UN Global Pact in its operations around the globe. Since not many of us are familiar with what that entails, here's a thumbnail summary from its formation in 2000:
Executives of DaimlerChrysler, Nike and Royal Dutch Shell filled a chamber today where diplomats usually conduct business, as the United Nations recruited many well-known multinational companies to help protect workers and the environment in places where governments do not. [...] Some 50 multinationals joined 12 labor associations and watchdog groups to sign a "global compact" that commits them to support human rights, eliminate child labor, allow free trade unions and refrain from polluting the environment wherever they do business. [...] The effort seems highly unlikely to alter the global economic landscape immediately. The pact, which took 18 months to negotiate, binds the signers to a declaration of principles rather than a legal code of conduct.
All in all, pretty mild stuff (several social and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, refused to sign on, saying that it was too weak), but undeniably a good thing in principle, one you'd think even right-wing free marketeers could support. For example, "a company operating in a country that did not allow free unions should permit its workers to organize and bargain collectively, a position that could put companies at odds with the government of China, where almost all companies that signed the compact have investments." Hey! How 'bout that?
But not if you're "Look at My Boobs" Pamela from Atlas Shrugs. Because, you know, the United Nations is eeeevil.
UN: Coca-Cola Bends Over
Has everyone lost their senses? Coca Cola succumbs to UN bullshit [...] WTF are they up to? What form of blackmail did the international communi-tay resort to, I wonder? [...] These acts of capitulation are setbacks for the biggest minority of all, the individual.
Ummmm, okay. See, when multinational corporations agree in principle that child labor, pollution, and abusing employees is wrong, that's a mighty blow against, uh, individuals. Somewhere. Just goes to show that anybody who cites Ayn Rand unironically past the age of 17 is good for exactly one thing: unintentional humor.
I don't have much in the way of an opinion about the Israeli election, but I do marvel that while today's turnout of 62.3% was the lowest in Israel's history, Americans have to go back 46 years to find the last election in which we reached that level of participation.
A lung cancer patient who died after setting himself on fire in hospital was permitted cigarettes by staff despite a smoking ban, an inquiry has heard. George McGarry, 72, from Kilmarnock, was linked to an oxygen tank at Ayr Hospital in January 2004 when staff saw smoke coming from underneath his door.
A fatal accident inquiry heard it was "very likely" a cigarette had come into contact with Mr McGarry's oxygen. A staff nurse said allowing smoking was left to the discretion of each nurse. Mabel McLarty, an auxiliary nurse, said she ran towards Mr McGarry's room after she smelt smoke, as he had been previously caught with cigarettes.
I'd probably post this story just based on the irony alone, but what really caught my attention was the old guy's dedication to the cause.
Ms McLarty told the inquiry that Mr McGarry, who died four days later, asked for a cigarette immediately after the incident. She said that the staff nurse had felt a cigarette would calm him down.
Now that, my friends, is a smoker.
Don't call police to investigate your house being broken into when you've got 2500 pounds of marijuana in the basement.
Andy Card, the second longest-serving presidential chief of staff in history, has resigned and OMB director Josh Bolten is slated to take his place. ThinkProgress:
$6.592 trillion: Federal debt on June 26, 2003, the day Josh Bolten became director of the Office of Management and Budget.
$8.364 trillion: Federal debt today.
In the Bush administration, this is grounds for a promotion.
Indeed, that's impressive in its own right, but Bolten hasn't been there from the beginning. Let's start in October 2001, the beginning of the fiscal year of the first budget signed by Bush. The federal debt was 5.806 trillion dollars. It took us 225 years to run up that monstrous tab. Since Bush came to office, we've added 2.558 trillion dollars worth of federal debt. Think about that for a minute. In 4-1/2 years, Bush has added almost half again of what it took two and a quarter centuries to accumulate.
You almost have to be impressed with the sheer scale of economic mismanagement.
Cary police are looking for a man who they said tried to pass off Ivory soap as cocaine during a drug operation. According to investigators, Stephen Curtis Hoyle, 18, of Castalia Drive in Cary sold 2.3 ounces of Ivory soap to police officers for $1,500 during a drug operation.
Sounds to me like he successfully passed off Ivory soap as cocaine, not just "tried to," seeing as he's got your money, you've got his soap, and you don't know where he is. Oops.
Three tracks by Wally Pleasant, who I apparently missed the first time around, a decade ago. As noted, there's a little something for everybody, and appropriately lighthearted for [groan] a Monday.
Sometimes you just need a little bit of trucker-style folk music. So here are three songs from Wally Pleasant. If you're fed up with the right wing, try "I Was A Teenage Republican." If you're tired of self-righteous protest-junkie left-wingers, listen to "Hippies Lament." And if you just really hate your day job, then I recommend "Stupid Day Job."
(h/t: Becks)
Please, please, please, if any of you can find photos of this exhibit, send them to me. The museum's web page doesn't mention it.
Jan Fabre's Temples of Meat exhibition will only be on display for three days - until it goes off, reports De Morgen. The exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art in Ghent, includes a coat made of steaks and a tent of bacon with sleeping bags of steak.
Fabre said: "Meat is a very erotic material. A lot of my work is about the cult of decay and death. I also loved to create something that will be destroyed after three days. It's a lesson in modesty for every artist who confesses his love for eternity."
Fabre said he worked through the night with his assistants to turn 100kg of steak, 15kg of minced meat and a few kilometers of Parma bacon into art. It's not the first time he has worked with meat. In 2000, he covered the columns of the university aula in Ghent with pieces of bacon.
A few kilometers of Parma bacon. A bacon tent with steak sleeping bags. Had I known this was possible, I'd have opened a museum already. Fabre makes this guy look like a rank amateur.
The Brooklyn Bridge:
In a dank and dingy vault underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, a routine structural inspection last week unearthed a veritable Cold War time capsule, city officials announced this week. The New York City bunker is stockpiled with decades-old provisions that were meant to be used after a nuclear attack. City inspectors were astonished to find water containers, medical supplies, and hundreds of thousands of calorie-packed crackers.
Countless bomb shelters were built across the U.S. during the Cold War's tense nuclear showdowns. But most have long since been cleared out. This cache of survival supplies was simply forgotten. It is unclear whether the site was intended as a fallout shelter or simply as a storage place for emergency provisions.
This old time record shop's contents will be sold off at the next few Austin shows. The shop, Kondoff's Records was located in Miamisburg, Ohio and was recently bought by myself, John Anderson and Craig Moerer. The store was open from the early 1950's and closed in 1970. As the photos show the contents were frozen in time as no one had been able to buy anything from the store over the past 35 years.
The photos are indeed the main attraction on the second one there, which comes courtesy of Waxy.
I haven't written much recently because, well, it's basketball time. Before this year's NCAA tournament began, I said to a friend that this seemed like a year where trying to fill out a bracket would be pointless (and indeed it's the first year since I was a teenager that I haven't) since there were no real dominant teams out there. I figured UConn would probably take the title, since they appeared to have the most future NBA players on the squad, but they were certainly not shoo-ins.
Well. For the first time in 26 years, not a single #1 seed made it to the Final Four. But the story, of course, is George Mason. Eleventh-seeded GMU is only the second double-digit seed ever to make it to the Final Four (the other was LSU twenty years ago), and the first team not from a major conference since Larry Bird's Indiana State in 1979. In reaching it, they beat the past two national champs (UConn and UNC), and half of last year's Final Four (UNC and Michigan State). They had to play the first round game against Michigan State without their star player, who had been suspended one game for punching another player during their conference tournament.
This is a school that had never in its history won a game in the NCAA tournament and had never been ranked in the AP Top 25. Ever. Their one-week stay in the USAToday/ESPN Top 25 this season was the school's first. They didn't win the CAA's tournament, and are the first team from that conference to receive an at-large bid, a decision that was heavily criticized by commentator Billy Packer, who is having to eat some serious crow now.
And aside from the partisans of the other three schools, there isn't a basketball fan in the country that isn't pulling for them now. What a story.
Also, whoo-hoo Lady Tarheels! But you'd best play better than that when you meet Tennessee on Tuesday.
My name is Rudolph Claude Smith and I can't stop thinking about ninjas.
Police in Charleston County say a naked man exposed himself to his 66-year-old neighbor, then later attacked officers with nunchucks. Police say 49-year-old Rudolph Claude Smith went next door to his neighbor's apartment to borrow some oil for a workout. While he was in the woman's home, police say Smith took off his clothes and asked the woman to "oil him up."
According to a police report, Smith attacked two officers with nunchucks when they came to his home to make an arrest. They also say the oil made it difficult for them to get a good grip on him. [...] During a bond hearing on Wednesday, Smith's family members said he is mentally ill. Smith told the judge that he didn't need to burglarize anyone because he "owns a multi-million dollar corporation unbeknownst to the people of Charleston."
That might explain their incessant whining as adults.
In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.
(via Balloon Juice)
In an excellent post that you should read in full on the death of shame in our political pundit class, Glenn Greenwald begins with this.
With virtually all of the predictions made by proponents of the Iraq invasion having been proven false, with a true strategic disaster on our hands, and with most of the country having concluded that the war was a mistake, war supporters have been desperately searching around for some way to salvage their reputations. On Thursday, John Hinderaker unleashed this self-justifying plea:
In truth, we likely won't know whether the Iraq war was a success or a failure, a good idea or a bad idea, for another twenty or thirty years, when the consequences of the effort not only in Iraq, but throughout the region, become clear. For now, we can only guess.
So even though it looks like everything war supporters said before the invasion was false and the war looks like a huge mistake, we can't actually know for sure until 2 or 3 decades from now, so we should check back with them in around 2026 or so.
Right.
But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing, disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.
In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis' accounts of the Marines' actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military's initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians. [...]
A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with Time. The tape makes for grisly viewing. It shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses, which may cast doubt on the Marines' contention that after the ied exploded, the Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.
Important to note that the investigation is ongoing and the details remain murky. But read the rest, because it really doesn't look good and instead looks very much like a failed cover-up.
Just showed up in the inbox:
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $63.80. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.
A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
To access the form for your tax refund, please click here.
Regards,
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2006, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.
Interestingly, the link given to click to receive my refund goes to a server in Poland. Man, they're outsourcing everything these days.
As Bush continues his downward spiral toward Nixonian approval ratings, the inevitable disclaimer has begun to ring out. Namely, that he is really a liberal, and therefore the accelerating disaster of his presidency can in no way be held up as an intrinsic failure of conservatism. This, as others have noted, resembles nothing so much as the far-left pamphleteers on college campuses protesting that communism wasn't a failure because it had never been tried. However, there is quite a bit more in this frantic argument to be picked apart. For starters, we should probably dispense with the word "liberal" altogether, as it no longer has any meaning, having been used by the right wing since the '80s as a catch-all term to represent everything eeeevil, including things that practically nobody in America of any political stripe supports. NAMBLA? Liberals. Islamic fundamentalism? Liberals. Mothers who go insane and kill their children? Liberals. Khmer Rouge style re-education camps? Liberals. It's utter bullshit, of course, but as Joseph Goebbels famously stated, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Oh yeah - Nazis? Liberals.
Now, the idea that ineffective, unrestrained spending is somehow near and dear to the hearts of liberals everywhere is parried easily enough that I'm not even going to bother. Reagan, the great addled saint of movement conservatism, increased government spending, you might recall, and we certainly don't claim his half-assed, inflated legacy. No, spending as a percentage of GDP has remained in a fairly consistent band for several decades now. The big difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats raise the revenue to pay for their spending, while Republicans are content to put a huge chunk of it on the national MasterCard, assuming (correctly) that somebody else will pay for it later. Judging a movement by its actions, an annual cycle of maxing out the credit card then raising the credit limit is the only consistent characteristic of conservatism. Fiscal conservatism, as it is traditionally defined, is now wholly the province of the Democratic Party.
Turning back to the point at hand, though, the Bush-isn't-one-of-us crowd do have a point, if only (as usual) accidentally. Bush indeed is not a conservative, but then neither is he a liberal. Nor a moderate nor anything else, except a typical Bush. As I've stated time and again, he doesn't have any coherent, identifiable philosophy beyond getting elected.** I have no doubt he would collectivize agriculture if he thought it would ensure a Congressional majority through the midterms, but that still wouldn't make him a Communist. Nonetheless, the newly wavering Bushites' protestations would have a lot more resonance if they hadn't spent the past five years with their heads bobbing up and down in his lap, pausing only long enough to catch their breath, praise his moral clarity (note the date on that post), and proclaim him the next Churchill. The modern Republican Party isn't a conservative organization; it's a cult of personality. It is, indeed, the logical outcome of allowing religious zealots to control the levers of a political party. Now that Dubya is a lame duck with a broken wing, the casting calls for a new Jim Jones will begin. Watch as John McCain auditions for the role over the next two years, and remember: his bipartisan schtick is exactly as genuine as Bush's conservative one.
So, my Republican friends, having spent the past five years defining "liberalism" as "opposing Bush in any way, shape, or form," you don't now get to turn around and say that Bush is a liberal. He's your avatar, guys. Your albatross. No detergent in the world can wash that stain out of your collective blue dress. I mean, really, he simply can't be a liberal—he doesn't even support NAMBLA.
**There's an interesting parallel here. Bush's foreign policy is ostensibly based on "spreading democracy." This, again, is utter bullshit, since if his real goal was expansion of democratic franchise, he'd have lauded the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Hamas in the Palestinian territories. The United States has a horrible record of supporting democracy. What we have very consistently supported, on the other hand, are governments that are friendly to American corporate interests, regardless of their constitutional makeup. Start with the Monroe Doctrine, and continue right on through to today. Strangely, Bush and I almost have a tenuous agreement here, except I'm at liberty to be honest about it. Democracy isn't an end in itself, but a means to an end: namely, a peaceful, free, and fair society. Democracy may be the best way to achieve that or it may not, depending on the individual situation. But democracy (which, by the way, is not actually practiced anywhere on a national level, including the US, but I'm using the word in the euphemistic sense) is simply an elective mechanism, which can produce good results or horrific ones.
Duke Cunningham is in jail. John Doolittle (R-CA) and his wife should be next.
Josh Marshall and TPM Muckraker have the sordid details.
This is your Republican Party, folks. And there's plenty more where this came from, you can rest assured.
Terrible time to have your offense disappear, Carolina. Still, congratulations are due on a better season than anybody could have expected. Hell of a recruiting class coming in next year, so look out everybody.
Go Lady Tarheels. Bring that trophy on home.
I guess you have to award points for cleverness.
As a result of the searches law enforcement seized four sophisticated indoor marijuana grows, thousands of marijuana plants, a large amount of U.S. Currency, two semi-automatic weapons, one revolver, and hundreds of pot laced candy and soft drinks. [...] This investigation began in October 2005, when the DEA Oakland Resident Office obtained information that AFFOLTER was operating Beyond Bomb, a manufacturer of marijuana candy in Oakland, CA. The marijuana laced candy and other edibles manufactured by the company mimic the name and appearance of well known name brand candies and products. Some of the product labels seized by investigators include Stoney Ranchers, Munchy Way, Rasta Reece’s, Buddafingers, Pot Tarts, Double Puff Oeo, Tri-Chrome Crunch, Keef Kat, Twixed, Budtella, Puff-A-Mint Pattie, Puffsi, Bong’s Root Beer, and Toka-Cola.
Hi-res pictures of these and a couple more at the DEA link above.
Before listening to a single word the All War All The Time Party has to offer on how we should deal with Iran, please read this. Then read it again.
The reason Jesus hasn't come back yet.
Digby on the Democratic cowards or what I have come to call the Battered Wife Syndrome Party.
And finally, the money quote from this Las Vegas Sun article:
"They were getting ready to arrest me if I didn't take the chicken off the grill," Waithe said. "I played the race card. There were four marshals and two white women. I said, 'You gonna take a black man's chicken off his grill? This is a travesty.'
"Only in America, in Las Vegas, in Sin City, can a black man be made to take his chicken off the grill while it's cooking. It's all part of my demonstration. I will barbecue next First Friday. I'll be the Rodney King of chicken."
Travis from Prolix emails with this year's candidate for worst named product.
It's being reprinted all over the place now (including at my other gig), but I believe it's appropriate to spread it as far and as wide as possible. On the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, let's look back at the wisdom of Professor Heh-Indeedy at the time.
Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen's cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn't rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a "quagmire" were wrong -- again! -- how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong -- again! -- how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error -- again -- and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about "civilian casualties" now seem almost disappointed that there weren't more -- again -- and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American "liberators" were proven wrong -- again -- as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn't stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It's probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.
Nah.
The father of the WingNet, folks. Give him a hand. Hard. In the back of his pointy head.
Update: Because there is no stupidity rank enough that Reynolds will refuse to embrace it, here's his take today now that the above argument has abandoned him: "Yes, the more damaging critique of Bush is that he hasn't pressed the war hard enough -- against Iran, Syria, and the terrorist supporters in Saudi Arabia -- not that he should have done less."
Sure. That makes lots of sense. Invade everybody! Draft every able-bodied man! The sun will never set on the American empire!
For the past year, the Rocky Mountain News has followed Maj. Steve Beck as he takes on the most difficult duty of his career: casualty notification. As Beck and his comrades at Buckley Air Force Base keep constant watch over the caskets of the men they never knew, the Marines also comfort the families of the fallen, and choke back tears of their own.
It's all part of a tradition that started in 1775: Never leave a Marine behind.
After the knock on the door, the story has only begun.
It's a long piece, with an accompanying photo gallery that deserves awards (this one strikes me as particularly poignant), but one that deserves wider attention than it is likely to receive. I don't recommend you read it at work—not because there is anything remotely inappropriate, but because it's so absolutely heartbreaking. I couldn't do Major Beck's job.
(via conscientious)
I guess that makes me apostrotagged. Mmm. Kinda makes me feel all tingly. Let's take a trip...
I tried really hard limiting myself to one sentence per state but I had to make it two in a couple of instances because the semicolons were a stretch grammatically and then Louisiana got completely out of control and boxing it in like that made it lose the whole effect and so I threw out those silly restraints and just used periods all over the frippin' place on that entry and I don't care what Russ says about me and that monkey and that spark plug 'cause it's not true and never will be, phooey.
Tellin' me I don't post enough. Harrumph. When you're off gettin' inducted into the bloviation hall of fame for all yer BIG gigs out there in blogostan, Mr. 200+ comment threads at unfogged fancy-pants, I'll still be here doing my one entry per month (or so... maybe) keepin' this baby alive. I don't wanna hear yer yappin'.
Now where were we going? Oh, yeah:
Alabama - I went to the Rocket museum near Huntsville as a kid.
Arizona - Froz-the-smaller-but-not-necessarily-lesser (kid #1) broke his arm at age almost-4 while chasing down a jackrabbit at 9 am, but this was not enough to keep him from his appointment to see meteor crater after lunch and that indicates a good sense of priorities.
Arkansas - I miss Bill Clinton.
California - My new home; details at 11.
Colorado - Here's to late-night rooftop hot tub adventures and batter-fried squash blossoms for breakfast.
Connecticut - Meat is certainly dead, isn't it.
DC - Yes, in an ideal world all US citizens would be represented in the Senate, but, come on, you're weighing that against Republican congressional advantage; priorities, please.
Delaware - Perhaps the only state I've been in repeatedly but never actually set foot in.
Florida - There is no fruit experience like a mango picked fresh from a tree and eaten immediately.
Georgia - I learned to crab off an old bridge near the mouth of the Savannah river as a child; later I learned that bottom-feeding crustaceans concentrate pollutants in their bodies and I have expected to die suddenly ever since.
Idaho - We did a brief camping and hiking stopover near Kootenai; panhandle is beautiful country.
Illinois - It's between the land between the lakes before the lands beyond the arch.
Iowa - Perhaps the only state I've been in once but never actually set foot in; Iowa, Louisiana was much more interesting
Kansas - Got an Aunt Bernadine in New Haven, 5 miles outsida Oklahoma, and not too damn many people can say that.
Kentucky - Caves struck me as very much like cathedrals when my folks took me to several in Kayne-tuckie in my youth; little did they know that would lay the foundation for my rejection of Catholicism and adoption of pseudo-pagan, earth-worshipping ways.
Louisiana - Sitting, waiting in a run-down greasy spoon in Iowa (Eye-oh-way), LA. Black man with a toothless smile and a cooler enters. Chef comes out, smock stained red, converses in Creole. Crabs crawl out and all over the restaurant floor. Nonchalantly they fling them back in and keep bargaining. Wad of bills passes. Chef disappears. Lunch arrives. Brow beads. Breath is heavy. We walk out on 3 inches of air.
Maine - It's listed because of a brief and unmemorable trip as a youngster that, to my recollection or at least successsful repression, had nothing to do with lobsters.
Maryland is a suburban wasteland from what I've seen.
Massachusetts - Boston is one of only 6 cities and the only one on the east coast that I really found to be pleasant.
Mississippi - How far is it to New Orleans? We're low on gas, but I think we'll make it.
Missouri - I'm sure most people there are nice enough and I'm assuming it's industry and not their bathing habits but each time through the smell makes me want to keep rolling.
Montana - Few places will take your breath away like Glacier NP and there are many quality microbreweries in the towns of western MT
Nebraska - I have technically never been in Nebraska but I have seen it and, well, in kinda looks like Iowa and I mean the state, not the town in Louisiana.
Nevada - Say Winnemucca, Nevada 10 times really fast. Now do it covering your ears. See what I mean?
New Hampshire - Vacationed on Mirror Lake for 2 weeks as a kid and while I don't have too many outstanding memories of the time there, I recall knowing afterwards that I liked road trips. Oh, and they say syrup really funny.
New Jersey - The part of Jersey I've seen is very pretty, clean and full of gardens; I don't know what all the controversy is about.
New Mexico - They don't want you to even know about that.
New York - Even though I'm not a big apple fan, who can't be awed by New York?
North Carolina - Dark and silent, late last night, I think I might have heard the highway calling...
Ohio - Drank at least 3 gallons of water that day and never peed, Russ' knees got really sunburned, and it was a miracle we pulled those keys out of the trunk - in the blanket, no less - through that little tiny hole in the back dash.
Oklahoma - I got an Aunt Bernadine in New Haven, 5 miles outsida Oklahoma, and not too damn many people can say that.
Oregon - PCH near Coos Bay is amazing and Portland is one of those "6 cities," perhaps the coolest one.
Pennsylvania - I've not experienced much outside Philly and one thing I regret not having done while on the east coast is checking out Amish country.
Rhode Island - Potuguese?
South Carolina - South of the Border is positioned roughly halfway along a very regular (3+ times per year) road trip we used to take from NC to Hilton Head; I mention this because there are more billboards near South of the Border than in Hilton Head - go figure.
South Dakota - Badlands is the most underrated NP in the US.
Tennessee - Always felt like Tennessee was closer kin to NC than SC was, I don't precisely know why.
Texas - It's barely in Texas, but if you're doing the southern tier, check out Hueco Tanks State Park near El Paso for some very cool geologic formations and petroglyphs.
Utah - Wasatch, Canyonland, Dinosaur, etc.: it's all too much to mention.
Vermont - At a Ben and Jerry's convention here in late January it was 20 below and the skiing was fabulous so the next year I brough my fiancee up for a vacation the same calendar week and it was 65 degrees, making the whole state, and all the skislopes therein, one big mud puddle.
Virginia to me is the next door neighbor you never really get to know, or maybe get to know very well but don't appreciate.
Washington - In the Olympic forest - which is one of my favorite places - the rain is meted out by the trees and by that I mean that it will rain for 2 days yet the towering trees will slow down the application of water to the ground around the trees, limiting erosion in a very mountainous topography otherwise very prone to soil loss, so that during the following 2 clear days water will drip from the canopy at approximately the same rate as the previous 2 rainy days, stimulating an almost incomprehensibly diverse understory ecosystem of ferns and fungus, and experiencing this first-hand really reinforces the understanding that homo sapiens are not the only creatures managing things on this planet.
West Virginia - We honeymooned at Princess Snowbird's Little Indian Village at Yokum's Vacationland in Seneca Rocks, WV and it was a bettter honeymoon than you had.
Wyoming - Near the tail end of a months-long circuitous North American adventure almost exactly ten years ago we descended from the Tetons, crossed Wind River at night in a blinding October snowstorm and rolled towards Casper where, in addition to seeing an Interstate highway for the first time in several weeks, we rented a hotel room for the first time since the trip's onset over 10 weeks earlier (we had either camped or crashed with friends or family the entirety of the trip up to that point), signaling our return to civilization and while we adventured briefly in the badlands and black hills of South Dakota we would shortly be back in our home state of North Carolina because of a hasty, almost non-stop 34 hour tag-team drive that was almost as tiring as this sentence which is, if I'm not mistaken, while potentially optimized by parting into several sentences, technically grammatically correct when looked at as a whole. Please advise.
Eric Asimov, the New York Times' chief wine critic, has started a blog about wine drinking (not,as he pointedly states, wine tasting) called The Pour.
What is the result of tasting? Tasting notes. These are the quick descriptions of wines in the language that we all find so comical, unless we take it too seriously. You know, hints of blackberry with overtones of Kona coffee grounds, that sort of thing. Somewhere along the line, these notes, used as shorthand by professionals and serious collectors, have come to be understood as the common parlance for wine. I know a hard core of wine fans care about "aromas of apricot jam, guava and jackfruit" and other comically specific descriptions, but these people are like audio gearheads who think of music in terms of wattage, intermodulation and output impedance. It's a turnoff for much of the world, which really only cares if the music sounds good.
This is not to say that I'm turning my back on critical or analytical drinking. I'd be out of a job, and besides, most wine lovers can’t stop themselves, and I'm no different. The point is to talk about wine outside the clinical context. In The Pour, I'm going to avoid tasting notes like the avian flu. Instead, I will talk about the pleasures of drinking, about wines I have tried at home with family and friends or with people in the wine business. I will also take the opportunity to expand on issues that appear in the newspaper, either with the Times' tasting panel or with The Pour column.
Should be fun.
Astronomers report an unprecedented elongated double helix nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, using observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The part of the nebula the astronomers observed stretches 80 light years in length. The research is published March 16 in the journal Nature.
"We see two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as in a DNA molecule," said Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, and lead author. "Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm. Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas -- space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order."
The double helix nebula is approximately 300 light years from the enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way. (The Earth is more than 25,000 light years from the black hole at the galactic center.) [...]
"We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. "If you take these magnetic field lines and twist them at their base, that sends what is called a torsional wave up the magnetic field lines. You can regard these magnetic field lines as akin to a taut rubber band," Morris added. "If you twist one end, the twist will travel up the rubber band."
Offering another analogy, he said the wave is like what you see if you take a long loose rope attached at its far end, throw a loop, and watch the loop travel down the rope.
"That's what is being sent down the magnetic field lines of our galaxy," Morris said. "We see this twisting torsional wave propagating out. We don't see it move because it takes 100,000 years to move from where we think it was launched to where we now see it, but it's moving fast -- about 1,000 kilometers per second -- because the magnetic field is so strong at the galactic center -- about 1,000 times stronger than where we are in the galaxy's suburbs."
Always something new to find in an infinite universe.
The Department of Defense wants your help building robot insect swarms.
DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, and biologists are expected to work together to develop new technologies utilizing insect biology, while developing foundations for the new field of insect cyborg engineering. [...]
Although flying insects are of great interest (e.g. moths and dragonflies), hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals. In conjunction with delivery, the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed. The insect-cyborg must also be able to transmit data from DOD relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc.
Pretty interesting and I can see all kinds of potential uses, but isn't this how the Matrix started? (via BoingBoing)
We've come a long way from peanuts and cracker jacks.
The Gateway Grizzlies are proud to announce that they will be adding a new concession item to GMC Stadi
