Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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Richard Perle, 2003: "A year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."
Well, that year came and went without a George Bush Plaza. However! It's been five and a half years, and it's in Tikrit rather than Baghdad, but war criminals beggars can't be choosers.
(via)
Following liquid wood, here's elastic smoke.
The discovery in the 1990s of "nanotubes" (a cylindrical version of carbon) meant that for the first time a material strong and light enough was possible. However, these nanotubes proved too brittle to be formed into long strands. The Cambridge team has found a way of combining separate nanotubes into web-like structures that bind to form longer strands.
"The key thing is that the process essentially makes carbon into smoke, but because the smoke particles are long thin nanotubes, they entangle and hold hands. We are actually making elastic smoke, which we can then wind up into a fibre," says Windle.
He also suggests the technique has enormous possibilities — many of them more mundane — for everything from bulletproof vests to car manufacture. However, it is the possibility that it could be used for a space elevator that excites him. "It is an eye-catching idea, and you have to aim high," he says, adding that the creation of material strong enough for such an idea is about five to 10 years away.
Is there some federal rule mandating that inaugural poems have to be awful? Elizabeth Alexander's piece was better than the clunky monstrosity Maya Angelou unleashed in '92, but not by much.
"Today belongs to Barack Obama. But it also belongs to Thomas Paine." [wikipedia]
Also, watching Joseph Lowery delivering the benediction today, it occurred to me that everybody should go listen to what he said two years ago. Seriously.
I know it's very early in the year, but I'm not sure how anybody's going to top Elizabeth Wurtzel's bizarre whine that practically the entire world outside the United States is practicing "the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era."
The condensed version of Wurtzel's argument: Jews who condemn Israel's Gaza policies do so out of an even-handed thoughtfulness that is innately Jewish. Non-Jews who condemn Israel's Gaza policies cannot be explained except by innate hatred of Jews.
I can't tell you what a relief it's going to be just to have a president who has mastered basic subject-verb agreement. God, it's been like eight solid years of fingernails on a blackboard. So what better way to celebrate than with some vintage, stoned-out funk and soul? Even the staunchest Republican booty might start wigglin' before it's through, and we've still got a weekend or two to get wasted and dance before the second Great Depression hits and we're all selling kidneys.
Unfunkked 9: Inaugural Balls
(135.2 MB zip file)
01 Parliament - Chocolate City
02 D.J. Rogers - Bail Out
03 Mighty Joe Hicks - The Team
04 Lim Taylor - Pretty Thang, Gimme Your Love
05 Big Barney - The Whole Thang
06 Midnight Movers, Unltd. - Mystery Woman
07 Crusaders - River Rat
08 Fugi - Jo-Jo
09 Black Nasty - Nasty Soul
10 Candi Staton - Best Thing You Ever Had
11 Sylvia Smith - Original Midnight Mama
12 Ike White - Love and Affection
13 Willie Hutch - Party Down
14 Newban - Fatback Sally
15 Arthur Adams - Home Brew
16 Heatwave - Beat Your Booty
17 Roy Porter - Party Time
18 King Britt - Jimmy Leans Back
19 Camille "Lil" Bob - Stop
20 Carolyn Franklin - Deal With It
21 Crackin' - Get Crackin'
22 Stargard - Theme from Which Way Is Up
Like always, set the gaps between tracks to 0 seconds and if you're burning from iTunes, use Sound Check to equalize volumes. Past ones are under the fold in one handy location. Also, Dick Smith's "Tobacco Road" didn't make the cut only because it's nine and a half minutes long and it was already hard enough getting this down to CD size, but it's pretty swank, too. Consider it the bonus track or something.
Columbus police have arrested a man they say was responsible for a Web site where customers could post reviews of prostitutes. Robert Eric McFadden is accused of trading information about online escorts and prostitutes who worked the streets, including a 17-year-old girl. Police say he also helped organize a $10-a-ticket raffle that offered an evening with a prostitute. [...]
McFadden formerly served as director of the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office under Gov. Ted Strickland.
The great northern coast of Russia is inside the Arctic Circle, and the shoreline is hundreds of miles from civilisation almost the whole way along. Lighthouses were required for the coast, because it's a handy passage but it spends a hundred days of the year in near-permanent night. The problems were that they'd be miles from anywhere, and couldn't realistically be supplied or crewed.
So the Russians erected autonomous nuclear-powered lighthouses. Which worked great, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, they probably would have been fine after that, if people hadn't looted them for copper and anything else that looked like it wasn't nailed down too hard. Including, apparently, reactor shielding.
So many of these great polar nuclear lighthouses are now radioactive deadzones.
With a fantastic photo gallery here.
Talk turned to Jesus birthday cake and from there, well, you should just start at this comment and work your way down.
"Okay bitch, you can have the house, but..."
Socially responsible reasons to punch someone in the face.
(first two links via Chaon, last one via jvance)
This vine defies explanation. Perhaps, shortly after it was planted 109 years ago, it tapped directly into a spring. No matter why, it has dwarfed the other vines. Especially since its siblings nearby long ago fell. They're all still very much alive but are untrained bushes sprouting canes from the ground. Not Goliath.
Just figured this guy deserved a spot in the internet somewhere.
Yeah, I know, there was nothing here for a long time. And I've got a post in the works about the future of this site now that I'm outnumbered by my children, and expected to work at work, and increasingly unable to get by on little to no sleep. In the meantime, though, there's this from Sweden:
A decision to allow transsexual men in Sweden to get prosthetic penises free of charge from local health authorities has drawn criticism because the prostheses on offer don't get erect. Starting on January 1st, 2009 transsexual men (i.e. men who were born as females but have undergone sex-change operations) will, with a note from a doctor, be able to receive a prosthetic penis from a plastic surgeon at no cost, according to Ottar, a magazine published by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU).
The move is meant to correct what has long been considered a glaring case of gender bias against transsexual men when it comes to the support they receive to help them fit into society following sex change surgery. While transsexual women have long been eligible for publicly funded wigs, breast implants, and hair removal operations, transsexual men have previously been without any corresponding cosmetic adjustment assistance.
While Cecilia Dhejne, a sexologist and specialist in psychiatry at Karolinska Hospital in the Stockholm suburb of Huddinge, agrees that the measure is an important step forward, she remains critical of the decision because the prosthetic penises cannot be used to urinate and cannot become erect.
"It's easy to think that it's pretty strange to approve prosthetics that can't get erect, because that is after all what penises do—get erections. It would be appropriate to pay for those as well," she told Ottar.
Swedish health authorities justify their decision to only fund fake penises for cosmetic rather than functional purposes because of regulations which prohibit the use of taxpayer money to pay for products or procedures considered to be sexual aids. Because, like Viagra, functioning fake penises help sexual performance, they do not qualify for public funds.
Okay, I can see the logic on both sides there but mostly I see that Sweden is not the United States at all. Anyhow, that's all just a set-up for the next couple paragraphs in the article where, in apparent earnestness, the author reports that a lobbyist for "a group which advocates for issues related to gender, identity and diversity" feels that "transsexual men are getting the short end of the stick".
Dude, seriously. You got that past an editor?
