Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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I have a weakness for smart-assed Southern women and Molly Ivins was one of my favorites. Sigh.
I've plugged Indexed before, and it really is worth dropping in every day, but this is just inspired.
Lots more there, and they're fantastic, but this one...damn.
Update: Hmm. GaijinBiker was there first—here even!—and I missed it altogether. I have so lost my edge.
Holy moly, but that's impressive. No editing, all live. Reggie Watts' website is here. (via MeFi)
Robert Bohannon, a molecular scientist right here in Durham, NC, has invented the caffeinated doughnut, equivalent to two cups of coffee. Hooray for progress!
I'm no purist about rock artists licensing their songs for commercials. Nobody's going to pay their rent in exchange for keeping it real, or whatever the terminology is these days, and lord knows most of them got screwed by the record companies back in their heydays. More specifically, the Buzzcocks were the first punk band I really loved, still love the music today, and Singles Going Steady is perhaps the greatest compilation album ever released. They deserve whatever payday they can get.
But.
Of all the organizations in the world to license your music for a commercial, did it have to be the fricking AARP? I already feel old and creaky enough as it is.
Just had a visitor arriving here via a google search for 10000000000000000000000000000000000 word essay on chickens.
Also, I hope that the person who ended up at this post after searching for why I should not horseplay was a grade schooler who'd been assigned an essay as punishment.
While going back through old Iraq posts, I came across this one, written amidst all the right-wing clucking and condemnation of us freedom-haters who weren't cheering—indeed were mighty skeptical about—Iraq's purple finger election.
I'd stipulate that theoretically the victory hands power to the theocrats. We've yet to see whether this election results in the formation of a government and, further, whether that government has any sort of stability. Neither result is guaranteed.
Technically, of course, a government was formed. However, my skepticism about its ability to function, well, that looks pretty good in hindsight.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, read a roll call of the 275 elected members with a goal of shaming the no-shows. Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister? Absent, living in Amman and London. Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian statesman? Also gone, in Abu Dhabi. Others who failed to appear Monday included Saleh Mutlak, a senior Sunni legislator; several Shiites and Kurds; and Ayad al-Samaraei, chairman of the finance committee, whose absence led Mr. Mashhadani to ask: "When will he be back? After we approve the budget?"
It was a joke barbed with outrage. Parliament in recent months has been at a standstill. Nearly every session since November has been adjourned because as few as 65 members made it to work, even as they and the absentees earned salaries and benefits worth about $120,000. Part of the problem is security, but Iraqi officials also said they feared that members were losing confidence in the institution and in the country's fragile democracy. As chaos has deepened, Parliament's relevance has gradually receded.
Emphasis mine.
A Buenos Aires tattooist, who is also a River Plate fan, is being sued for etching a penis on the back of teenager who requested the Boca Juniors logo, according to UPI.
"I could not see what he was tattooing because he didn't have a mirror. I only saw it when I got home and showed it to my parents," said the victim.
A police spokesperson said, "The tattooist supports Boca Junior's rival, River Plate, so he got annoyed when the teenager asked him to tattoo Boca's symbol and decided to tattoo a penis instead."
Busting through the floor, Bush's approval rating hits 28%. Now only Nixon stands between George and the record.
Is it you? Is it you? Yes it is.
A behind the scenes slideshow at a Brooklyn Ron Mueck exhibit. (via)
Links to libraries of public domain images.
Has the Church of Scientology anointed Tom Cruise its messiah?
Police in Tijuana have had their guns confiscated and replaced with slingshots.
The State of the Union Drinking Game, 2007.
Dan Froomkin: "After six years of striding onto the House floor like a conqueror, President Bush will arrive for Tuesday night's State of the Union Speech deeply unpopular and politically crippled."
Would have been better two years ago, but I'll take what I can get.
His approval numbers are taking a nosedive as the country begins to realize that, against all odds, he's somehow even less principled and more invasion-happy than George W. Bush. However, McCain is still winning in one competition: the Buffalo Beast's 50 Most Loathesome People of 2006.
1. John McCain
Charges: The most consistently mischaracterized politician in the country, even McCain’s most nakedly self-serving machinations are universally hailed as the bold moves of an independent maverick who really, really, like, cares, man. By virtue of his five-year stay at the Hanoi Hilton and a completely ineffectual campaign finance reform bill (which was itself only PR damage control for his long-forgotten role in the Keating Five), McCain has so successfully snowed America the he could go around kicking puppies all day and he’d be applauded for his authenticity. In reality, McCain is as phony as slimeballs come, having reversed his positions on Roe v. Wade, Bush’s tax cuts, the gay marriage amendment and Jerry Falwell in the last year alone, while the mainstream press looked away and whistled nonchalantly. Keeps changing the number of additional troops he thinks should be sent to Iraq, in hopes of extending the disaster beyond the next presidential election, so his decorated veteran status will still be relevant.
Exhibit A: "I hated the gooks, and I will hate them for as long as I live."
Sentence: Back to the bamboo cage.
Western nations fear China has fired the first shot in a post-Cold War arms race in space by destroying without warning one of its own satellites with a ballistic missile. US intelligence agencies have obtained evidence that a ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile knocked out the Feng Yun 1C weather satellite on January 11 through "kinetic impact", or by slamming into it.
Hmm. Is it easier to hit a satellite with a missile or a missile with a satellite?...
Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion created this reverse graffiti solely by removing soot and dirt from a traffic tunnel.
More at the link. Via Stay Free!
Oh man. Check out this video of a 600-pound octopus moving through a clear plastic maze containing tubes the size of a quarter.
You know nothing good is going to follow this: "Surgeon Naum Ciomu, who had been suffering from stress at the time, had been operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper."
As the regulars here know, my family is scheduled to grow by one somewhere around the end of May. For background, both my kids are boys, I had no sisters, and grew up with no extended family anywhere close, so little girls are a complete and total mystery to me. My wife, on the other hand, is one of five sisters, she and my mother want a girl so badly they can't stand it, and this is definitely the last chance. So, given that the universe has a funny sense of humor, the big question was whether they were headed for disappointment yet again or I was going to get to spend my forties taking a crash course in girlology.
The ultrasound was Friday and there was no question: it's a girl. So it begins.
Last week's two-headed cow can move on over, 'cause there's a new bovine sheriff in Weirdville.
'The calf has six legs, two vaginas and six nipples,' explained the animal's owner, Salvador Vanegas. Vanegas, who has been raising cattle for many years, said it was the first time he has seen a calf born with that many legs and vaginas.
Yeah, I'll bet. And there's video at the link, naturally. But the ante is always being upped so not even a six-legged, double-hoohoo'd cow can rest on its laurels.
The deer was accidentally run over by Rick Lisko as he drove his truck down his mile-long woodland driveway, near the town of Osceola, on November 22. It had both male and female genitalia, small nubs for antlers, and – crucially – seven legs.
Colorado moves to the front of the line of likely '08 Senate pickups for the Democrats, as Wayne Allard announces he will not run again.
Forty years later, and only the names have changed.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours. [...]
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Fast forward to the present, and John Edwards used Dr. King's birthday to restate the call to duty.
If you're in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel. Silence is betrayal. Speak out, and stop this escalation now. You have the power, Members of Congress, to prohibit this president from spending any money to escalate this war - use that power. Use it now. Do not allow this president to make another mistake and escalate this war in Iraq.
And to all of you here today - and the millions like us around the country who know this escalation is wrong - your job is to reject the easy way of apathy and choose instead the hard course of action. Silence is betrayal. Speak out. Tell your elected leaders to block this misguided plan that is destined to cost more lives and further damage America's ability to lead. And tell them also, that the reward of courage is trust. [...]
It is time. It is time, brothers and sisters, for the United States of America to be patriotic about something other than war. It is time. The world needs to see that we have a responsibility not just to ourselves, but to humanity. The world needs to see our better angels.
Word.
(Everything in this post was more or less lifted directly from The Stinging Nettle.)
The Astronomy Picture of the Day is a fantastic picture of Comet McNaught at sunrise over a cloud-cloaked Catalonia.
As if cancer weren't bad enough all by itself...
Men who receive combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation for local or locally advanced prostate cancer may experience a significant reduction in penile length, according to a report in the January issue of the Journal of Urology. There has been anecdotal evidence that radiation therapy can reduce penile length but, to the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first to determine if penile length changes following combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation.
Dr. Ahmet Haliloglu and colleagues at the University of Ankara in Turkey enrolled 47 men with local or locally advanced prostate cancer. The patients, who were followed from 2000 to 2005, received leuprolide or goserelin injections every 3 months, for a total of three doses. At month 7, radiotherapy, using a 70-Gy dose, was initiated and continued for 7 weeks. Just before treatment began, the average stretched penile length was 5.6 inches. Eighteen months later, the average penile length had shortened significantly to 3.4 inches.
Significantly, indeed. Yikes.
Looking to kill some time today? A lot of time? The Kircher Society has put up a retrospective of their 2006 posts. Something to fascinate everybody, I assure you.
Faded Youth: "'American Idol' judge Paula Abdul appeared via satellite on Q13 Fox in Seattle yesterday and...well...let's just say that those painkillers are definitely working."
Oh dear.
All indications are that the lunatics in charge of our government have decided to attack Iran, and sooner rather than later. Impeachment won't help, I suspect, since there aren't enough votes in the Senate to convict and not enough time to get it done anyhow, but at this point it's getting hard to argue that it isn't the right thing to do just on principle.
I'm not happy to say this, but we're steadily moving into "if you could go back in time and shoot Hitler" territory, because if you think Iraq has been a charnel house so far, just you wait. Oh, and let me extend a hearty, sarcastic "thank you" to all the Bush voters out there for saddling us with eight years of an administration run by murderous sociopaths. Don't say we didn't warn you. Good luck washing all that blood off your hands, guys.
Jessica Hagy's blog of index card graphs, is great fun.
College economy.
Boys who think it's funny bathe alone.
Lots more at the link, of course, chock full of clever.
Interesting. Yesterday's House vote on raising the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 26 months passed by a veto-proof 315-116 margin. All 233 Democrats voted for it, and the GOP breakdown was 116 against, 82 for (!), and 4 not voting. The other passed legislation was implementing the 9/11 commission's recommendations, which also had a veto-proof majority of 299-128 with 6 Republicans and 2 Democrats not voting. The GOP breakdown on this one was 68 for, 128 against. Remember when the GOP was the lockstep caucus?
(via)
Salix Pharmaceuticals has a new product on the market called MoviPrep, to be taken for colon cleansing in advance of a colonoscopy. Okay, so I think it's a poorly chosen name, but that's not so uncommon, really. What gets me is this sentence from the product website: "MoviPrep is the only PEG lavage with ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate to increase stool volume and enhance taste."
Thank God somebody is addressing stool taste. Mine tastes shitty. (thanks, Brooke)
All is right in the universe again. UNC returns to #1. Also, UNC's women's team is 18-0 and ranked #2 in the country.
Good omen: Over the last 19 seasons, four Carolina teams have also started the year 14-1. All four (1993, 1995, 1998, and 2005) ended the year in the Final Four; two of the four won the national title.
Kevin Hayden calls it quits and is looking for somebody to take over The American Street. I first read Kevin way back when he was still Cowboy Khalil, and I wrote for TAS for several months before the 2nd child arrived and I had to cut down on the blogging. He's one of the nicest folks on the interwebs, and many thanks to him for fighting the good fight lo these many years. Good luck to you in your real-life pursuits, old friend.
Update: Damn, and Michael Bérubé, too.
Astronomers have created a 3D map of the unseeable dark matter in the universe, using Hubble Telescope data. What would a visual map of invisible matter look like, you may be wondering. Something like this (click the image for the full-size picture).
The three-dimensional map spans not only space, but also time, and stretches back to when the universe was only about half its present age. [...] Dark matter is distributed across the universe in thick clumps and fat filaments within which galaxies are anchored like set jewels. The map relied on data collected from more than half a million galaxies and spans a swath of the night sky that is nearly nine times the diameter of the full Moon. [...]
The new map reveals that as time passed, from the early universe to the more recent universe, dark matter became clumpier and less filamentary. This agrees with some current theories which state that the universe transitioned from a state in which matter—regular and dark—was relatively smoothly distributed to its current state, in which matter is more concentrated in some places than others. It is in these areas of high matter concentration that stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters reside. According to those same theories, dark matter began to coalesce into larger structures a little before normal matter did.
"It collapsed first into these filaments and clusters and provided the gravitational scaffolding into which normal matter—galaxies, planets, us—flowed," Massey said. "It's only because there's a lot of dark matter and it collapsed first that we can exist at all."
Moo.
One of the newest arrivals at Kirk Heldreth's dairy farm is drawing crowds. A calf with two faces was born Dec. 27 at Heldreth Dairy Farm, and word has spread in southwest Virginia as residents flock to his farm. The animal is normal from its tail until its unusually large head. The calf breathes out of two noses and has two tongues, which move independently, according to Heldreth. There appears to be a single socket containing two eyes where the heads split.
"It's the craziest thing I've ever seen," the dairyman said.
During the calf's birth, Heldreth said he first thought there were two calves. The calf has two lower jaws, but only one mouth. Heldreth feeds her through a tube, and acknowledges he probably can't maintain that feeding schedule for long.
The calf was the product of artificial insemination, which was supposed to create a genetically superior specimen. "Genetically, this is one of my better calves," he said.
(via A Welsh View)
Update: The things you learn. The Fruitcake Lady died in November and was Truman Capote's aunt.
The 2006 Darwin Awards have been announced, though I must admit that this year's crop seems a bit lackluster.
I mean really looked at it? Dude!
You're probably familiar with the study of the effects of various psychoactive drugs on spiders' web spinning. Now watch this vastly more entertaining video of the experiment.
(h/t: GaijinBiker)
Space.com's Top 20 space photographs of 2006.
Also, Spirit begins its fourth year working on the surface of Mars today. Opportunity marks its anniversary on the 24th. Not too shabby for a couple of rovers whose expected mission length was 90 Martian days. Together, they have driven about ten and a half miles, beamed back nearly 170,000 images, and are still learning new tricks. It may lack the instant drama of human feet walking on the moon, but this program has to be considered one of NASA's gold standard missions.
