Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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The international relations version of "Your momma!"
Iran's parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as "terrorist organizations," a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing of Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects.
Well, when you put it like that... We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Why so much of the rest of the Democratic Party doesn't seem to get it is a mystery to me. The proper response to these perennial fake hissy fits is, "Oh, go fuck yourselves already." Until they figure this out, they will keep right on playing the role of the Washington Generals. Idiots.
I take some small comfort that my Congressman was one of the few Democrats who didn't fall for this ridiculous fainting couch routine. David Price really is one of the good guys in the House.
Quiet, or everybody will want one.
A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first. Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.
The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found. The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery "for religious reasons" she doesn't know much about.
"The rest of the family was very much against it," Steele said. Steele said her son, John Wood, plans to drive to Maiden, about 35 miles northwest of Charlotte, to reclaim his amputated leg, police said.
I'm intrigued by the unspecified religious reasons. One time in high school, I bought an old jacket at Goodwill and found a joint in the lining of the breast pocket. I thought that was the luckiest thing ever, but man, a human leg? That would be awesome.
At the end of August, the National Republican Congressional Committee reported only $1.6 million cash on hand, with $4 million in debt. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, by comparison, had banked over $22 million, with only $3 million in debt.
Holy cow.
In addition to being a laughably inept, but still creepy, sexual harasser, Mr. Morality Bill O'Reilly is a laughably clueless racist.
"[W]e went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice. And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship."
On the same program, O'Reilly was describing his experience to NPR's Juan Williams. "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea,'" O'Reilly said, adding, "You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."
And, I mean, those colored people use silverware and everything! And! And! Nobody got stabbed! It's like they're almost white or something!
Good grief. The weirdest part of the entire episode is that he's talking to Juan Williams, who, y'know.
Say hello to the Coalition of Giant Pussies Who Are Getting Played by the GOP.
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Evan Bayh (D-IN)
Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
William Casey (D-PA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Pat Leahy (D-VT)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Ken Salazar (D-CO)
Jon Tester (D-MT)
Jim Webb (D-VA)
These are your Democratic senators (I didn't bother to include Lieberman, though he's likely to be elected chairman) who would eat a shit sandwich, smack their lips, and call it chocolate, just so long as it came wrapped in a military ribbon.
Look, General Petraeus got up before you and lied during his testimony. WHICH. IS. A. CRIME. YOU. SISSIES. He looked every one of you straight in the eye and fed you bullshit so transparent a special-ed sixth-grader could see through it. Now, I understand this resolution does exactly nothing legislatively. But it shows that you guys haven't yet figured out this game, despite having the football yanked away right before the kick over and over and over again. You just got rolled and, in unison, shouted, "Thank you, sir! May I have another?"
Disgraceful.
Update: Meanwhile, the pearl-clutching Republicans, hands on foreheads while they sit on the veranda trying to fan away their vapors, have a different take on what's appropriate to say about generals like Wesley Clark and John Abizaid, don't they? Don't worry, I'm sure the Coalition will be along any minute to bring them another mint julep and a tray of biscuits.
My nudist and extreme body play friend "Habakuk" lives in the rural Horn of Africa where he is probably the most famous "mzungu" (white guy) in his area for reasons I can't discuss here — unfortunately large parts of this interview have had to be redacted to protect his identity. But, as with many upstanding and successful individuals, he has many kinky interests that only those closest to him know about. Near his home where he hikes nude — "real old-fashioned African bush the way Livingstone found it... my paradise" — amid game game like bushbuck, blue monkeys, baboons, duikers, hyena, and leopards, all harmless to humans, he can exercise, think, and be himself. Among other things, this includes swinging from the trees, held up by nothing but his scrotum.
Yeah, there are pictures, and no, you probably don't want to see them. Especially not at work, of course.
Oh, hell yeah. The so-far dreary presidential campaign is about to get a who-o-o-ole lot funnier. I wonder if this means he won't be pursuing the Constitution Party's nomination?
Well, none of you ingrates ponied up to get a titi monkey named after me, but I'm willing to accept that coming so soon after the Christmas holidays, money was just tight. You can redeem yourself, though, by throwing down the ducats to name the Apostrofish.
Alternatively, you could just mail the money to me directly. I'm flexible like that.
In contrast to our own religious fundamentalists, who angrily deny their creation had anything to do with monkeys, I give you India's Southern Baptist Hindus.
India's culture minister has offered to resign in a row over whether Hindu gods are mythological figures. Officials had presented the argument in court to support construction plans for an area devotees believe has remnants of a bridge built by the Hindu god Ram. Minister Ambika Soni said she would quit if asked to by the prime minister. She also confirmed that two directors of the Archaeological Survey of India, which prepared the court affidavit, had been suspended.
Hindu devotees believe the area between India and Sri Lanka - now known as Adam's Bridge - was built millions of years ago by Lord Ram, supported by an army of monkeys. But scientists and archaeologists say Adam's Bridge, or Ram Setu, is a natural formation of sand and stones. On Wednesday the Archaeological Survey of India told the Supreme Court that the religious texts were not evidence that Lord Ram ever existed.
Hardline Hindu opponents of the government accused the administration of blasphemy and protesters carried out demonstrations in the area and in Delhi, Bhopal, and on a number of key highways. The next day the report was withdrawn.
Once again, secular humanists demonstrate that, despite their lip service, they don't actually support our brave monkey troops.
And I'm a bit spacey, I forgot to wish Froz a happy birthday last week. Hope it was a pleasant one, you geezer.
There's a LiveJournal feed for this site, so that all those LJ-centric folks can read this site through their friends page. That much I knew, what with setting it up lo those many years ago. What I didn't know is that people can comment on the posts there and it's an entirely different set of comments than the ones getting left by people who come in through the front door here.
So if I've never responded to your clever comments or probing questions left on the LiveJournal feed (which I certainly never have), it's not because I don't care. I just never knew they were there.
James Lileks is like a film historian, aside from the knowing what he's talking about part.
Regular readers know I have a thing for the two-headed animals, but this is an, um, interesting variation on the theme.
In 1954 Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world by unveiling a surgically created monstrosity: A two-headed dog. He created the creature in a lab on the outskirts of Moscow by grafting the head, shoulders, and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a mature German shepherd.
Demikhov paraded the dog before reporters from around the world. Journalists gasped as both heads simultaneously lapped at bowls of milk, and then cringed as the milk from the puppy's head dribbled out the unconnected stump of its esophageal tube. The Soviet Union proudly boasted that the dog was proof of their nation's medical preeminence.
Video at the link? Of course there is. Whether it established the Soviet Union's medical preeminence is questionable, but there's no denying it was a pretty heady advance over Experiment #5.
Alex, the world's most famous talking bird, is now an ex-parrot. From the Alex Foundation:
Alex, the world renowned African Grey parrot made famous by the ground-breaking cognition and communication research conducted by Irene Pepperberg, Ph.D., died at the age of 31 on September 6, 2007. Dr. Pepperberg’s pioneering research resulted in Alex learning elements of English speech to identify 50 different objects, 7 colors, 5 shapes, quantities up to and including 6 and a zero-like concept. He used phrases such as “I want X” and “Wanna go Y”, where X and Y were appropriate object and location labels. He acquired concepts of categories, bigger and smaller, same-different, and absence. Alex combined his labels to identify, request, refuse, and categorize more than 100 different items demonstrating a level and scope of cognitive abilities never expected in an avian species. Pepperberg says that Alex showed the emotional equivalent of a 2 year-old child and intellectual equivalent of a 5 year-old. Her research with Alex shattered the generally held notion that parrots are only capable of mindless vocal mimicry.
Another shitty conceptual art piece.
Yesterday was the presentation of the prize Winners in the brand new "Hybrid Art" category of Ars Electronica. A superbly deadpan Wim Delvoye presented Cloaca (the name comes from the Latin word for sewer), a body of works that duplicate human digestion. The machine is fed and after a long process --involving wires, tubes but also acids, bacteria and enzyme liquids-- produces feces. Since he started working on the project in 2000, Delvoye developed several models of Cloaca machines. The one on show is a domestic one, a Cloaca you could have at home.
Then it gets weird.
Some records aren't worth holding.
"When I ask him why Vaseline recurs so much in his work, he thinks for nearly a minute-and-a-half before answering: 'I remember that I applied petroleum jelly to some things I had made as a student, and the impulse then seemed to me to be about making things moist, and also making those objects feel like they had just been removed from me, or could be inserted inside me somehow.'"
Don't say I never gave you anything.
Further down the thread, Sifu Tweety throws a more modern mix your way.
Update: And more! "Mostly a big contrast with tweety and apo's stuff. Chilly and cerebral is more the mood."
And even more! "Here is a mix I made a few years ago called 'Let's Dance with Irregular Rhythms'."
If you're opposed to the Iraq War, please remember: Hillary Clinton is not on your side.
Via Yglesias, who also notes that Hillary Clinton's advisors are mostly drawn from the Democrats who supported invading Iraq. This matters. While she gives lip service to ending the war, her advisors talk about keeping tens of thousands of troops there until at least 2012. Among her other policy highlights:
And I could go on, but you get the picture. She is the corporate candidate, the one who receives more insurance industry money than anybody else, who defends accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists, who compromises with rather than fighting the right wing. If you're at all progressive, she is not on your side, no matter what irrational venom she inspires from the right wing. The Democrats are probably going to take the presidency and widen their lead in both houses of Congress. Is this really who you want heading up the agenda?
Today, America is a slightly better place than it was yesterday. Far worse than it was before he started, but still.
This little guy looks like something out of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Scientists found the squid and other species while mapping more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) of an undersea mountain range in the North Atlantic. Until now the region had scarcely been explored because of its remoteness and depth. But the new survey shows that the ridge is teeming with life, said Monty Priede, expedition leader and director of the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab research center.
"The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is roughly equivalent in size to the European Alps and is one of the largest areas of habitat available in the ocean," Priede said. [...] Another exciting find was a "spiral poo worm," an animal first identified in 2005 that deposits spiral-shaped feces, some of which have been found in the fossil record dating back hundreds of millions of years.
Also, moray eels have an extendable second set of jaws in their throats, like the creature in Alien.
I have posted pretty infrequently here recently, and that's likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I'd direct your attention to two posts of mine over at Unfogged: one on the death of America's constitutional republic and another on Hillary Clinton's crazy-ass religious associations. Not because I have anything particularly insightful to say in either one, but because the linked articles therein are important. Supremely depressing, granted, but important reads.
Frankly, politics are just leaving me dispirited and disgusted these days. I'll see if I can't find some two-headed babies or genital mutilation stories to lighten the mood.
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