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Okay, now they're just plain making shit up...the TSA is now claiming that terrorists are staging "dry runs" of airplane terror events based on finding totally random crap in the luggage of completely unrelated people. In one cited example, blocks of cheese are claimed to be "similar in size and shape to plastic explosives."
Aw, c'mon, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! How much more of this total nonsense is going to go on?!?!?! They've stretched so far beyond the realm of credibility now that they might as well just disband the lot of them, cancel all air traffic, and send everybody home. For a moment last week, I thought maybe these guys were finally going to pull their heads out of their collective asses when the head of the TSA admitted that taking away cigarette lighters was "security theater", but apparently not.
I would also like to spew a little venom at the Bush Administration, who very obviously leaked this story as part of their recent campaign to cry "Wolf!" as much as possible to distract people from their latest poll numbers and their Mexican standoff with Congress. First it was Chertoff's "gut feeling", then some other vague warnings about terrorists, and now this. What really steams me, though, is the way the national news media report these stories with the doe-eyed ingenuousness of a five-year-old who has just learned that babies GROW UNDER CABBAGES and feels the need to pass this along to every person he meets. I'm beginning to think that this French tax official isn't the only one with a giant hole in his brain.
I never thought 'd say something like this, but I, for one, was actually glad that the Lindsay Lohan story got more attention than this, because that's about how much actual news value this shit has.
Permalink | Comments (0)I read about this on Slashfood yesterday, but here's a more detailed item from a New York Times blog: Chef Grant Achatz, who owns the noted restaurant Alinea in Chicago and was chosen as one of Food & Wine's "Best New Chefs" in 2002, has been diagnosed with an advanced stage of squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth.
Some quick reading indicates that early stage cancers of this type have a very high success rate for treatment, but that trails off significantly as the cancer advances. The stories I've read don't give a lot of exact details except to say "advanced", so his prognosis may only be so-so. He is 33 years old. Tough news for anyone, but especially ironic for a chef, who relies on his palate as much as his hands to perfect his craft. I hope his outcome is a positive one.
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The consensus about last night's Democratic candidate debate seems to be that the gimmick of using YouTube videos didn't really have much impact -- the videos were carefully vetted beforehand, so even if they were clever in their presentation, the questions themselves were still pretty typical.
So if you're still trying to get a grip on who and what the candidates represent, you might find this interactive issues matrix interesting. It's alphabetical by name without separation by party affiliation, which I think actually does a better job of clarifying positions -- you can see where the Dems and Repubs line up pretty closely on some issues, and you might be surprised at the positions of a few of the major candidates.
Permalink | Comments (0)Yesterday I posted about "None Of The Above" being the leading choice among Republican candidates for President.
Today, the Boston Globe reports that the Massachusetts legislature is considering a bill that would make "None Of The Above" a valid ballot option in state elections.
I know Massachusetts Republicans are a pretty desperate crowd, but this is just frosting on the cake!
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Guess who's leading the pack among the several dozen Republican presidential candidates. Not Fred, not Newt, not Mitt, and certainly not John McCain (who may not make it to next Tuesday, let alone next February).
It's "None Of The Above"! "None Of The Above" is the choice of 23% of Republicans in a new poll. Rudy Giuliani comes in second at 21%. That's almost as bad as the English woman who came in second in a one-person pie contest.
(Meanwhile, Hillary still leads the Dems with 36%, with Obama and Edwards both significantly behind)
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This NY Times blog had a brief mention the other day about the end of the 300-year-old tradition of wearing wigs and robes in some kinds of court proceedings in Britain. (Ignore the other half of the NYT blog post, which tries to make some sort of tenuous link to Muslim hijab dress code)
As that ITV article notes, barrister wigs like the one shown above are premium items sold by high-end speciality "legal outfitters" like Stanley Ley. Like most of the pomp-and-ceremony that the British revel in, the traditions stem from the high styles of the late 17th and 18th centuries. The garb will no longer be required for civil and family court, though will still be used in criminal court.
Anyone else find that this makes them instantly flash on the "Poofy Judges" sketch from Monty Python, where the judges were wearing racy women's underwear underneath their robes?
Permalink | Comments (0)Yesterday I wondered what the Pope was going to do to annoy the (roughly) 1 billion Hindus on the planet. Well, looks like the fundies beat him to it: the United States Senate opened their daily session yesterday with a prayer from a Hindu priest, only to have it disrupted by a group of Christian fundamentalists. Here's a link to the C-SPAN video of the incident, courtesy of YouTube.
Of course, according to the Pope, those guys aren't really Christians anyway, they're just deluded sort-of Christians. I bet they didn't realize that they were filthy heretics themselves; maybe they would have joined in solidarity with the Hindu priest instead...NAAAAAH!
Next episode: hilarity ensues when a group of militant rabbis tackle the Dalai Lama and give him hell about shaving his head.
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Not satisfied with pissing off the Muslims, Pope Ratzy has declared that Protestant churches aren't "full churches of Jesus Christ". He's a bit more willing to say that the Eastern Orthodox church is kinda sorta okay, but not really because they don't acknowledge the Pope as the one true authority. Meanwhile. he's also okayed bringing back the Latin Tridentine Mass that prays for the Jews to "be delivered from darkness" by being converted to Catholicism. He hasn't found a way to insult the Hindus or the Buddhists yet, but I'm sure he's working on it.
Tell me again EXACTLY how this is encouraging understanding between religious groups? 'Cuz to me this sounds like the same old "our religion is better than your religion" crap. It's especially absurd when one Christian sect says this to another, but all the way around it just demonstrates the utter hypocrisy in suggesting that religions have anything to do with promoting compassion and understanding between people.
Permalink | Comments (2)Answer: 13
Question: What is
A) universally recognized as an unlucky number;
B) the title of a movie starring Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood
C) Vice President Dick Cheney's approval rating
D) all of the above.
(This post lifted verbatim from Crooks And Liars, who have the skinny on Uncle Dick's poll numbers)
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The Washington Post reports that long-time supporting actor Charles Lane has passed away at the age of 100. (via)
Charlie Lane was in EVERYTHING. He was in "It's A Wonderful Life", he was the other father in the waiting room when Little Ricky was born on "I Love Lucy", he was Homer Bedloe the evil railroad man on "Pettycoat Junction", "Green Acres" AND "Beverly Hillbillies", and a million other roles. He specialized in exasperated bureaucrats, nasty bank men, crotchety old men, and other petty bad guy roles. Like a lot of character actors, he never wanted for work, but never got a lot of notice. He's just one of those guys you instantly recognize on some late-night rerun.
When I saw the MetaFilter post, I was a little taken aback, because I was sure he was already dead. Hollywood doesn't have many people like Charlie Lane anymore, and the ones who are left are dropping like flies. You'll pardon me if I don't go for the cheap "It's A Wonderful Life" pun here...I'm sure you can work that out for yourself.
Permalink | Comments (0)I suppose that really isn't a startling revelation to people who live in the five other New England states, but here in Ye Olde Bay Colony itself, I think we tend to reserve the term for offensive drivers.
But, according to this Boston Globe article about a sharp increase in police calls to resolve disputes on the bike path in Arlington, it's apparent that a motorized vehicle is not necessary. Any wheeled conveyance will suffice.
From personal experience as a pedestrian and as someone who has actually ridden a bicycle on the path (Don't get too excited, I haven't ridden my bike in about 10 years), I agree with the person at the end of the story who takes the rollerblading crowd to task. They slalom back and forth along the path and create an extra-wide target when they have their arms waving about at their sides. The walkers, bicyclists, skateboarders and other users of the path all pretty much stay in their limited space, but not the rollerbladers.
My other big peeve from my experience trying to ride a bike was always with the lunch-hour walkers who see fit to walk four, five, even six abreast down the path, forming a human wall that no one can get past and who seem totally oblivious to bike riders shouting "On your left!" at the top of their lungs because they're deeply engrossed in office gossip. That was VERY common out on the Lexington-Bedford portion of the path, which was my usual route in those days.
Permalink | Comments (2)The Atlanta Journal & Constitution reports that Atlanta TV station WTBS is going to give up being a "superstation" and return to its distant roots as a local "independent" station.
WTBS is owned and operated by Turner Broadcasting (which, in turn, is owned and operated by Time-Warner). It was, in fact, Ted Turner's major stepping stone on the way to becoming the media mogul we know and love/hate today. Turner bought the station in 1970, then bought the Atlanta Braves a couple of years later so he could have programming to run on the station. The Braves turned into winners along the way, and Turner's station became a big deal in the local market. With the advent of cable in the 1980s, he parlayed his station into being a cable network and invented the very concept of a "superstation" -- basically a local station with a national audience. Eventually, there would be several other well-known superstations: WGN from Chicago, WSBK here in Boston, and WPIX in New York are the best known, with KTLA (Los Angeles) and KWGN (Denver) filling out the West Coast block.
For some years now, WTBS's over-the-air broadcasts have merely been the TBS cable network programming. As the AJC reports, the station will now return to traditional "independent" over-the-air broadcasting entirely separate from TBS, and the station is even changing call letters to "WPCH", which will be branded locally as "Peachtree TV".
My own personal guess is that this is just all preparatory to Time-Warner selling off the station completely in order to pursue other broadcast opportunities in the Atlanta market.
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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an honest-to-goodness white humpback whale has been spotted off the eastern coast of Australia.
He's been dubbed "Migaloo", which means "white fella" in the Aboriginal language. I suppose the aborigine who first saw him must have thought he was a typical American tourist. Scientists aren't sure if the whale is an albino or if humpback whales just naturally have white pigmentation once in a while.
Our friend flerdle happens to be on the scene in Brisbane for a bit -- any chance of a first-hand report, flerdle?
In related news, New Bedford police report a tall, grim fellow with a wooden leg trying to convince passers-by to join him for "a little cruise to the South Pacific".
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The BBC reported yesterday that a group of Italian scientists are claiming that Lake Cheko in Siberia might be the impact crater of the meteoroid that struck the Earth in 1908, causing immense devastation in that part of Siberia and even global climatological effects.
According to the BBC story, many scientists are skeptical of the claims, since there are a number of other similar claims for various sites in the region. The Italian team says that the crater lake is about the right size and could have been made by a "soft impact" after the initial explosion.
(*The honor of first biggest, of course, goes to free-at-last Paris Hilton)
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I only travel by air occasionally, but just enough to have encountered a wide variety of security procedures at a number of airports in the U.S. and Europe, and by far the longest and slowest line I've experienced was at O'Hare Airport in Chicago (as seen above). Hundreds of people, shuffling along in their stocking feet, belts unbuckled and removed, holding their pants up with one hand while trying to manhandle their carry-on bags as they work their way up to a mere TWO checkpoints.
Meanwhile, WBBM-TV, the CBS station in Chicago, has been reporting on security problems at O'Hare and ran a report earlier this week that charges that some 3,800 security badges that permit airport employees to access all areas of the facility are missing. Their investigation also alleges that for all intents and purposes anyone can simply walk into restricted areas if they happen to look like an employee, no questions asked.
As long as they aren't carrying knitting needles or a big bottle of shampoo, I guess.
Permalink | Comments (1)In yesterday's Washington Post, columnist Sally Quinn clues us in on a plan being circulated among the few remaining sensible individuals in the Republican Party to give Dick Cheney a way out in the face on the onslaught on revelations about his myriad impeachable offenses. The plan would let Cheney step aside as he undergoes pacemaker replacement surgery later this summer and then would have Dubya appoint Fred Thompson to serve out the remainder of the term.
Not only would this let Cheney escape, it would give Thompson a serious leg up on the rest of the Republican presidential field. As Quinn notes, none of the current front-runners would want the job, nor would Bush want to give it to them (for a variety of reasons). But Thompson would be seen as a moderating influence in the waning days of the Worst Administration Ever, and it would be a great big "fuck you" to the likes of John McCain (and, as we all know, Dubya is all about petty revenge like that).
I'm a bit conflicted about this particular idea. Cheney really, seriously, has to go. He's done enormous damage to the government, to the Constitution, and to American prestige abroad. My personal opinion is that he richly deserves impeachment and a public humiliation of the worst sort, then imprisonment for the remainder of his mortal days. But it's obvious that the Democratic leadership in Congress has absolutely no interest in doing anything of the kind. So the question is whether letting him slink away just for the sake of getting rid of him is in any way acceptable.
Where my alarm goes off, though, is that the B-side of the plan, putting Fred Thompson in his place, is exactly what the Republicans need to wind up with a viable nominee next year. And what America needs least is a new Republican president completely beholden to all of the political interests which have been steering the Bush Administration for the last 7 years. Thompson on his own might not be completely awful, but if he owes his job to these people, there's no question about what to expect -- more of the same.
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Of note at several news/comment blogs today is the observation that recently the Bush Administration and other spokespeople for the military in Iraq have made a shift in their rhetoric: they've taken to describing ALL anti-coalition forces in Iraq as "Al Quaeda", where previously they distinguished between Sunni, Shi'a and other factions individually.
Given their past performance, I would expect to see this trend continue, expanding to replace the names of other groups opposed to the Bush Administration such as "liberals", "the Democratic Party", "Massachusetts", and so on.
Well, I suppose Dubya was right after all when he said he was a uniter, not a divider.
Permalink | Comments (0)Are you ready for a little cognitive dissonance?
The latest MSNBC/Newsweek poll tracking how well Americans know the facts about current news events is out, and the results confirm that we're getting stupider faster than ever!:
The number of people who think Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 has RISEN since the last time this poll asked the same question. 41% of Americans continue to believe that it was Saddam's evil-doing, up from 36% in October 2004.
A whopping 89% of respondents could not identify John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. EIGHTY-NINE percent, boys and girls!! The only upside to this is that 81% could not correctly identify who won this year's "American Idol", so at least there's that.
Meanwhile...this article in The Nation by Rick Perlstein uses some findings from a 20-year meta-analysis of opinion polls from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (which many of you will know from their frequent appearances on NPR) to make the assertion that Americans are getting more and more progressive, not less (as the media tend to report).
While Perlstein is making a pitch for the resurgence of the Democratic Party, it's worth stripping away the partisan element of the piece and thinking about the poll data a little. 69% of Americans agree with the statement that "government should help those in need" (even 58% of Republicans agree with this). The same percentage, 69%, believe that the government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep.
More tidbits: 54 percent, think "government should help the needy even if it means greater debt", up from 41% 13 years ago. 75 percent of the population SUPPORT Roe v. Wade. 62 percent support amnesty and eventual legal status for illegal immigrants.
So what can we conclude from this, my friends? As a group, Americans are generally very liberal -- the "liberal" tag has simply come to mean "anything I don't like" because we've allowed the political right and the media to frame it that way. And that's part of the problem -- we're collectively, and dangerous, apathetic and uninformed to the point that a very small, very vocal, and very right-wing minority has been able to dictate the terms of public discourse. The disconnect between the core beliefs of the majority of the American people and the current political powers-that-be is significant to the point that people like Vice President Dick Cheney have been able to all-but-overthrow our representative government and replace it with a plutocratic authoritarian dictat.
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Apparently Uncle Dick has decided that the Office of the Vice President is a whole separate branch of government.
Except, of course, when he needs to invoke executive privilege to hide something he doesn't want the public to know about.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's blog has some of the particulars in this recent kerfuffle, including Congressman Henry Waxman's demands (in his role as chairman of the Oversight Committee) that Cheney cough up a variety of pieces of information regarding the Scooter Libby case.
And, as always, Our Hero Keith Olbermann has the requisite blast of righteous indignation.
I know this is being covered wall-to-wall on every newsy blog and mainstream news outlet, but I have come to the conclusion that every time shit like this is made public that it is the duty of every single American to shout from the rooftops about the unabashed abuse of power that has been the hallmark of these evil people. My friend Tony has recently discovered the following quote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena." - Theodore Roosevelt
And while I appreciate that he is using this to chide me for getting my rant on (and I do take his point), it really is nothing short of an obligation to muster some degree of outrage about all this. There is little practical redress to the situation -- it is a foregone conclusion that there will be no impeachment proceedings despite more than ample grounds for prosecuting Cheney, and we are compelled to wait out the remaining days until January 20, 2009. One can only hope that the hue and cry is loud and prolonged enough to reach the ears of the several dozen individuals presently hoping to succeed him and convince them that this is the wrong path.
Or, perhaps the time really has come to take up arms and, as the Declaration of Independence says, "...institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
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The CBC reports this morning that the European Space Agency is looking for qualified candidates for a simulated manned mission to Mars to be conducted sometime in 2008-2009.
The simulated mission is mostly about testing psychological and physical effects of prolonged spaceflight. The test will run for over 520 days, replicating the planned 250-day trip each way and a 20-day surface mission. Except for simulating zero-gravity and exposure to solar radiation, the ESA hopes to make the simulated mission as close to identical to the "real thing" as possible. They need six volunteers, all of whom have to meet the same basic qualification criteria as the ESA's own astronauts.
I'd sign up, but I plan to be busy playing Spore in 2009, and that will probably keep me busy for 520 days right there.
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Tony Blair's permanent summer vacation starts next week, and the British press are indulging in the obligatory "legacy" and "last days" stories.
The overwhelming consensus is that Blair's decision to support George Bush so closely on Iraq has nearly overwhelmed anything and everything else he accomplished as PM. Blair had already been PM for several years when the Bushies stole the 2000 election, and his initial splash on the world stage was very different than the lockstep lickspittle position he found himself in after 2001. "New Labour" and the "Third Way", which had hallmarked his relationship with Bill Clinton, took distant backseats. Still, the overall popular sentiment in Britain is that Blair did a good job on most things EXCEPT Iraq, and he leaves office with much higher public approval ratings than Dubya will.
Here's a piece from 3QuarksDaily contributor Matthias Matthijs that considers the successes and failures of Tony Blair as well as the prospects for his "heir apparent" Gordon Brown (link goes to an interview with Brown in this week's Time Magazine). Matthijs says don't expect much different from Brown.
This brief story from the BBC frames the legacy question in Blair's appearance before the House of Commons liaison committee last week, during which Blair himself was given the opportunity to present his spin on how his administration went and why he did the things he did. Blair said that he always did what he believed was the right thing. It's that very notion of falling back on his own inner sense of "right vs wrong", which, not surprisingly is shaped by his devout Christian faith, that failed him so badly.
This piece in The Guardian by author Martin Amis (one of my favorite writers, BTW), is a much closer look at Tony Blair. Amis was allowed to tag along with Blair recently and get substantial 1-on-1 time with him. Amis writes about the visible ebbing of power from Blair in these final days, and about the strange and rarified world the PM lives in (and, in one of my favorite parts of the article, how incredibly different that world is from the world of the President of the United States). In this article, Blair's own whip-smart mind and his self-awareness come through -- the comparisons to Bush's lack of curiosity and his need to be surrounded by fawning sycophants who keep up the illusion of his imperial throne are powerful.
If you read all three pieces, I think you'll be left with a very good and well-nuanced sense of Blair and his mostly unwanted legacy. Blair is still a young man in terms of political careers, much like Bill Clinton, so it's unlikely that he'll disappear entirely from the world stage. Blair has always had to endure comparisons to Clinton, but most of the time those comparisons are apt. Bill Clinton has done some very interesting tap dancing since 2000, but his circumstances are quite different than Blair's (I don't think anyone expects Cherie Blair to turn up as the next Labour PM), so Blair has the chance to chart a different post-power course. For his sake, I hope he puts as much distance between himself and George Bush as possible and recovers some of his promise.
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This is Massachusetts State Representative James R. Miceli. Yesterday, he was one of the 45 members of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (our fancy name for our state legislature) to vote in favor of a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
This man is my state representative. But let me state as publicly as possible that HE DOES NOT REPRESENT ME.
He represents prejudice and narrow-minded thinking. He represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the very notion of equal rights under the law. He represents hatred, bigotry and fear. He represents an appalling willingness to dehumanize others for the sake of moralistic pandering. He represents disrespect.
James R. Miceli has decided that he would like to take it to the next level: he has announced his candidacy for the Congressional seat vacated by Marty Meehan. Representative Meehan has supported gay rights in his role as Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and in general during his tenure in the House.
Through the oddities of district alignments, while I presently live in Miceli's state house district, I do not live in Meehan's Congressional district (my Congressman is John Tierney, who supports gay rights issues). Consequently, I won't get the opportunity to vote against him, should he somehow manage to get the Democratic nomination, but I look forward to supporting a candidate to replace him in the state house and urge Democrats who live in the Fifth Congressional District to actively oppose this man.
Massachusetts has now made it abundantly clear that intolerance and bigotry have no place in our laws, and those who champion such should not be allowed to claim to represent us on Beacon Hill or on Capitol Hill.
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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"-- "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, as inscribed on the Statue of Liberty
Lest you think that the current political brouhaha about immigration is a new-found issue with the right-wing, it's worth remembering that immigration policy has been an ongoing political issue since the mid-19th century. Whenever the United States has faced an onslaught of immgrants, whether they were the Potato Famine Irish, the Gold Rush Chinese, or the huge waves of Italian and Eastern European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there's always been a political backlash resulting in misguided and flat-out discriminatory immigration policy. When you approach the issue with a little context, it makes it clear that the current bunch of right-wing loonies are part of a very long tradition of conservative bigotry, hate-mongering, jingoism, and politics-of-fear.
The Statue of Liberty, erected in the 1890s at the height of anti-immigrant sentiment in this country, was intended as a direct challenge to those who would shut the door on immigration. Emma Lazarus' famous poem, inscribed on the pedestal of the monument, makes clear the difference between the notion of a country open to all comers, rather than closed to "outsiders".
Our sordid history with regard to immigration has other ways to haunt us as well. A new book that looks at Mexican immigration to the United States in the early 20th century unveils how the federal government processed immigrants in holding camps that Adolf Hitler would later use as models for designing his concentration camps (via Fogonazos, which has a wealth of photographs of these American camps). The U.S. would have another go at concentration camps when they interned the Japanese, but these particular camps were the ones Hitler liked. These camps even made use of the now-notorious "Zyklon B" chemical that the Nazis used to kill millions of Jews -- in the American camps the chemical was used as a fumigant.
Presently, the righties are very enamored of concentration camps and other brutalities. Mitt Romney says he would double the size of Guantanamo. 51% of Americans want to build a giant fence between the U.S. and Mexico. And we are all too well aware of the tolerance for torture.
The one thing you can say about conservatives, they've always got someone to get their hate on for. Maybe we need a new Statue of Liberty along the Rio Grande to remind a few people how we all got here in the first place.
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Just because every village HAS an idiot doesn't mean every village NEEDS an idiot -- overheard online
Something to keep in mind as the leaders of the G8 group of industrialized nations are meeting this week in Germany.
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The Boston Globe reported yesterday that a research group at MIT has developed a way to transmit electricity to electric-powered devices without wires.
Borrowing from the name "WiFi" that sometimes gets applied to wireless computer networking, they've created the appalling term "WiTricity" for their new technology. Right now all they have is a proof-of-concept experiment, but they were able to power a 60-watt light bulb from a distance of 7 feet.
Nicola Tesla, of course, did the same thing a hundred years ago with his eponymous Tesla coils. Tesla dreamed of and promised a world of free electricitiy available wirelessly from massive coils and towers. He attracted the attentions and money of many wealthy investors, but his bitter rival Thomas Edison eventually prevailed with the wired alternating current system that we use today.
Permalink | Comments (0)Not one, but two giants in the history of junk food have gone to their final reward:
Pamela Low, the food chemist who developed the sugar coating for Capn' Crunch cereal, passed away last Friday. According to the Boston Globe obit, she based the formula on a brown sugar syrup her grandmother used to pour over rice to serve as a dessert treat. Millions of American dentists owe their fortunes to this woman as several generations of children destroyed their teeth with the sweet crunchy goodness.
Meanwhile, on the salty side of the snack street, MSNBC reports that the inventor of CheezWhiz has died. But even though he deserves recognition for that invention, his legend only grows from there, as he also went on to develop the McDonalds french fry. This man, my friend, has had more impact on American culture than almost any other single individual of the last half-century.
(I think it's only fitting that he died of a heart attack, don't you? I'd hate to think he choked on a celery stick or something)
Permalink | Comments (0)Now that the Bush Administration doesn't have Tom Ridge to trot out, waving his arms and screaming "Orange Alert! Orange Alert!" like the robot from "Lost In Space", they've upped their game a little bit by periodically trying to spook everyone with some half-assed terrorist plot they've "foiled in the nick of time".
A few weeks ago it was the guys who were going to shoot their way into Fort Dix, and this week it was the crazed Jamaican Muslims who were going to blow up JFK Airport.
These stories play big for a day or two, and all the networks trot out their "anti-terrorism experts", and the right-wing bloggers get to thump their chests and fling some more poo, and we're all supposed to stay cowering in our bunkers. This time around, in fact, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party went on record saying he thought a few terror attacks would prove what a great job Bush is doing keeping America safe.
The spin cycle on this shit doesn't last as long as it used to, but it's still pretty depressing to see that anyone puts the slightest bit of credence into it. I almost punched out my TV when NBC's "anti-terrorism consultant", answering a softball lobbed at him by Ann Curry on the "Today" show, actually said he thought the reason these plots happen is because Muslims hate our American freedoms.
For starters, in each one of these plots that shows up, the ham-handed actions of the FBI turn up over and over and over and over. Some informant bankrolled by the FBI infiltrates the group and practically bludgeons them over the head "urging" them to buy guns and explosives, make plans, and so on. J. Edgar "Madge" Hoover would be so proud of the agents following in his footsteps.
Next, even while the Serious Law Enforcement Officials inevitably say that these foiled plots would cause "massive destruction on an unimaginable scale", once somebody who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about weighs in, the actual assault being planned turns out to be technically impossible, logistically unfeasible, or downright foolish.
Keith Olbermann had a good piece about this the other night (link goes to the always-informative Crooks & Liars, who usually have these video clips first). Even the current mayor of New York City publicly said people should "get over it" (Bloomberg is being touted as a possible 3rd party/independent candidate for President, BTW, and it would be very interesting to see him up against Rudy "I'm The Hero Of 9/11" Giuliani).
On the positive side, though, they didn't really achieve their objective of keeping Scooter Libby's jail sentence out of the media. I also notice that with each new Republican debate, the already-announced candidates look more and more desperate trying to keep on message with this stuff. So maybe even the die-hards are beginning to see that their jig is almost up.
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Start hanging on to those Loonies because they're finally worth something. The Canadian dollar is expected to reach parity with the United States dollar by the end of 2007, according to this Reuters article.
Plus, I'm sure this is going to translate into more fat, middle-aged Canuckistani men wearing their grape-smugglers up at Old Orchard Beach. ::shudder::
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Jesus Has Returned At Last!!
The bad news? This time, he's a shark.
Good luck with that, you guys.
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This Ananova story about a German zoo hiring a local clown to come in and cheer up their monkeys is getting a lot of play. And apparently so are the monkeys, who go ape (ahem) whenever they see her coming to visit their enclosure. I guess they must not have a Chuck E. Cheese nearby.
(Everybody seems to have the same wire story, so it would be cool if somebody actually IN Germany could follow up with a few more details, like which zoo it is, and maybe score some photos of the clown entertaining the animals. Ananova has a history of simply spreading around any old story without offering much in the way of details...just like FOX News.)
Permalink |I've said it before, and I 'll say it again: I do not believe that "Al Quaeda" (whatever that really is) will ever be able to stage another successful terrorist attack on American soil. however, I am firmly convinced that fundamentalist right-wing Christians WILL.
The events at Jerry Falwell's funeral yesterday do nothing to dissuade me.
And what is the likelihood that this fellow will go to Gitmo? Less than zero, I suspect.
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Previously on BKO, I posted about concerns among marine biologists that the coelacanth was finally extinct, but apparently there was at least ONE MORE lurking in the depths of the South Pacific.
Of course, now that one is dead, too. Sheesh.
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Former commandant of the United States Marine Corps Charles Krulak and former CENTCOM commander Joseph Hoar have written this editorial in today's Washington Post. It addresses the Bush Administration's policies on the use of torture, recognizing from personal experience with combat that torture is next to worthless as a method of intelligence gathering and serves only as a method of terrorism itself. While it might create a level of "security theater" designed to assuage a panicky public, it creates a whole new set of problems: not only does counterterrorism seem to embolden and strengthen the resolve of the insurgents, it all but guarantees that these same methods will be used against our troops now and forever.
Sadly, 43% of Americans approve of the use of torture (scroll for it; it's a long way down the page), and, as my post below discusses, collectively we are deliberately ignorant about the things we do, deliberately in denial about the reality of the situations that confront us, easily spooked into panic-drive over-response, and able to gin up our own fantasies and mythologies to justify that.
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Jerry Falwell dead of a heart attack at age 73.
RELATED: It was revealed today that Jerry Falwell HAD a heart.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Permalink |This story at Wired this morning says there's good news and bad news in store for the burgeoning hybrid car market. The EPA has revised the way it calculates mileage for hybrid cars and is about to issue new figures that will significantly downgrade the predicted mileage for all models.
The Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid still come out on top with mileage ratings that outperform any conventional automobile, but even they have been knocked down about 20% from the original estimates. For some of the other hybrids, like the Ford Escape and the Pontiac G6, it puts their estimated mileage in the mid-20s. At that point, there's no point in buying a hybrid at all because the added cost of the vehicle isn't convertible into fuel cost savings. While it only takes about 14 months to recoup the added cost of a Toyota Prius in money saved on gasoline, it would take 10 years to achieve the same break-even point for a Mercury Mariner hybrid.
I'm still considering buying a Prius next year to replace my aging Honda Accord, so I appreciate the more realistic expectation for the mileage, but even moreso the knowledge that the fuel cost savings will be real...probably even sooner than the 14 months currently predicted if the price of gas hits that magic $5.00 mark it seems headed for.
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It's the collective shriek of millions of gamers reacting to the story that Electronic Arts is pushing off the release of Wil Wright's new game, Spore, to late 2008.
I am one of the shriekers. We've been reading about this game and getting the occasional glimpse at it for several years now, and at the electronic games shows last year, Wright and EA were saying it would be released in time for Christmas 2007. But EA's latest financial report indicates that now they're not anticipating releasing the game for a full year beyond that.
These kind of deeply immersive games are few and far between. Civilization IV has been out for a couple of years now and there is another expansion pack for it coming soon, but adding a few new scenarios to a well-established game like Civ is usually not worth the asking price. And, honestly, I am tired of Civ IV and want to move on to something else. If Spore is only half the game Wil Wright has promised it will be, it will still be groundbreaking. But I guess we won't know that for sure until AFTER Hillary beats Rudy next year.
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Back In January, I posted this NYT graphic which demonstrates how George Bush has managed to squander away $1.2 TRILLION dollars with his unnecessary war.
Today at Dangerous Intersection, Erich Vieth posts about some of the other things that could have been done with all that money, such as giving every single man, woman and child in the United States $3,000.00 to reinvest in the economy, or, better still, giving EVERY HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET $150.00. While $150 might be thought of as chump change in this country, the average Bangladeshi only earns $380 a year, and the average annual income in Ethiopia is only $141.00.
In the comments of that post, "grumpypilgrim" (one of the other regular authors of that site) has a collection of factoids about trying to imagine the sheer amount of one trillion dollars. A one-trillion stack of dollars, he tell us, would weigh more than BOTH of the World Trade Center towers and would be 55,000 miles tall (about 20% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon). One trillion dollars would build more than 200 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (the U.S. Navy has 10).
Meanwhile, over at the Boston Globe, there's this photo essay that considers what you could do with $456 billion, which is what this group says the war has cost so far. Considering that it's only about a third of the amount John Allen Poulos is citing, the possibilities are still staggering: nearly 3000 first-class high schools, free gasoline for every car in the United States for fourteen months, 30 civil engineering projects of the scale of the Big Dig, feeding and educating the world's poor for FIVE years.
The mind boggles.
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While the first round of voting in the French presidential election had some element of suspense to it due to the better-than-expected showing of a third candidate, the final run-off this weekend looks to have a foregone conclusion.
Meanwhile, did any of you watch that collection of tired, pasty-faced, cancer-ridden, old, white men trying to pass themselves off as Republican presidential candidates? Cripes, other than Governor Blow-dry, it looked more like a waiting room at a proctologist's office than a group of potential presidents. Maybe Giuliani should put the dress back on.
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Yahoo News had this AP story (via) yesterday which reports that VeriSign is teaming up with at least one major bank to offer debit cards with single-use disposable passwords.
This particular security feature is long-overdue for debit cards. It has been possible to use single-use passwords for online credit card purchases for a number of years. In the AP story, VeriSign claims that the reason this hasn't been implemented sooner is that consumers would need to carry a password-generating device much like the SecurID token that is common in corporate offices. Their new product basically just shrinks the electronics required to the point where they can fit in the corner of a standard plastic debit card.
I hope this becomes standard issue very quickly. My wife and I have both had to replace our debit cards over and over again because of security breaches -- I think Bridget had to replace her card four times last year, and I had to replace mine two or three times. Single-use passwords would reduce the need to replace thousands of cards every time there's a breach, and would alleviate the bother on the consumer's end of having automated payments based on a debit card number break each time the cards are replaced.
I just wish it wasn't VeriSign. They're evil.
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Unless you were living under a rock or otherwise detached from the media universe yesterday, you undoubtedly heard the story about thousands of people in Japan being duped into buying sheep after being told they were poodles.
Well, guess what. It's bullshit. This Japanese blogger carefully dissects the entire story (via) to explain that whoever originally reported the story (apparently the Australian version of MSNBC) misunderstood some remarks made on a talk show made by an actress.
As the blogger explains, she didn't say she HAD a sheep, she said she'd heard a STORY about someone else who had one...in other words, the good old fashioned Urban Legend. The blogger then traces the story itself back to an earlier source -- another Japanese blogger with a post from February of 2006, who also basically tells the same story as a FOAF-style story.
She then points out that the place where the scam is supposed to have occurred is Japan's leading sheep-raising area, making it highly unlikely that people would not recognize sheep there. Also, she notes the total lack of coverage of the story in the Japanese media, indicating that they would be all over this story themselves with their own unique brand of "weird news" coverage had it actually occurred.
You gotta love the Internet -- less than 24 hours from "breaking news" to "urban legend"!
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MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has turned his Murrow-esque rants into a regular element of his program. Not surprisingly, this takes some of the effect out his words -- powerful rhetoric is only diminished by making it commonplace -- but he can still get a good stemwinder going when he wants to.
If you have not already seen the clip of his piece from earlier this week where he slices and dices Rudy Giuliani like just so much Kobe beef at a Japanese steak house, it is definitely worth watching. The political blog Crooks And Liars is good enough to post downloadable versions in both WMV and QuickTime formats.
I was almost out of my seat and cheering by the time he got to the end of this one. It would do my heart good if just one Democratic presidential candidate would get behind a talking point like this and shut up these bullshit artists once and for all.
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Most of the coverage of the death of Boris Yeltsin over the last day or so has been prefaced with lofty words of praise about being "the first democratically elected leader" and "leading Russians through tough times" and so on.
This Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi (the son of NBC correspondent Matt Taibbi) offers a somewhat less platitudinous memorial based on his own experience of living in Russia during the 1990s. Best article I have read anywhere lately about any topic, by the way. Go! Read!
Permalink | Comments (1)Why did we invade Iraq?
Saddam was responsible for 9/11!!!...no, wait, that wasn't it.
Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction and was going to nuke America!!!....oh, right, not that either.
Ooh, I've got it! We had to get rid of Saddam and his regime to make Iraq safe for Freedom And Democracy™!!
Hmmmmmmmm...okay, so how does that explain why we're so busy reinstalling all of Saddam's loyalists in high government positions and key military intelligence roles?
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The Guardian reports that a Polish fellow dining in a London restaurant ran into the kitchen, grabbed a chef's knife, and cut off his penis in the dining room.
I think 18% would have been totally sufficient, don't you?
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In a blow to Caribbean beach resorts everywhere, last week Pope Benedict abolished limbo. Not coincidentally, the Pope just celebrated his 80th birthday, and Vatican spokespeople say the Holy Father can't bend over backwards enough to get under the bar anymore. Henceforth the devout will simply have to settle for the Conga...although some more liberal parishes have already embraced the Hokey-Pokey, saying "that's what it's all about".
(Just one question: how can you abolish something that was just make-believe anyway? Okay, one more question: if you're a practicing Catholic, how can you justify such absurd ideas in the first place, and what does it say about the validity of your ascribed beliefs if they can be winked out of "existence" like that? Yeah, I know, that was two more questions.)
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Blogger Cynical-C (not be confused with another cynical blogger we all know and love) has been keeping track of all the assorted pundits and panderers who have been all too willing to assign blame in last week's Virigina Tech shootings. So far the count is up to 56 different things to blame, ranging from perennial favorite Satan to liberalism to violent video games to the victims themselves.
Still missing from the list: fluoridated water, Elvis Presley, the Soviet mind-control program, and low-carb diets.
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Bad week to be a warmonger, eh?
Earlier in the week, British cabinet minister Hilary Benn told an American audience that it's time to stop using the moniker "Global War On Terror", because it makes "a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common" feel more powerful than they really are. While a spokesman for Tony Blair wouldn't endorse Benn's remarks, the mouthpiece offered some lame equivocation.
(It's not the first time a senior official has pooh-poohed the "GWOT" label, either, if you'll recall)
Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has publicly told the president that he thinks "the war is lost." While Reid deserves some credit for being willing to say this and let himself be quoted publicly, his late awakening to something that has been painfully obvious for years is not unlike being the guy who told Custer "there sure are a lot of Indians".
I actually think the rest of the Democrats should get on this bandwagon. Not simply because the war IS lost, but because it gives them some degree of plausible deniability for being gutless, spineless toads when they all voted to approve military action before the war began. "We gave you approval, and you've failed, now it's time to go," shifts the focus of attention back on the Bush Administration's incompetence and doesn't leave them looking quite so slippery...just stupid. In fact, it even gives Republicans the same out and lets them put some distance between themselves and Chimpy in advance of 2008.
Of course, you could also go the semantic route. The author of this post at Dangerous Intersection would like us all to stop calling the conflict in Iraq a "war" at all. The actual "war, the blogger contends, ended a long time ago, and is more realistically a "military occupation". This technical difference also gives the Democrats and anti-war Republicans a good way to redirect the focus and make some headway in extricating us: "We authorized the war, but not a prolonged occupation. Time to get out."
Permalink | Comments (1)The upcoming presidential elections in France only get the slightest of peripheral attention in the American press, even though the climate of political change in France is white-hot. Though I've loosely followed British national politics for a number of years, I have to admit to only having a jot more information about French politics than, say, the Stanley Cup playoffs (which is to say, not much). I know a little about the two major candidates and the race issue, which has galvanized French voters, and that's that.
So I was very glad this morning to read this first-hand analysis of the elections at 3Quarks Daily which looks at the sudden emergence of a center-right candidate who has sucked away support from both the far-right LePen faction and from the Socialists and their popular candidate, Segolene Royal. Another 3Quarks post also pointed me to yesterday's NYT Sunday Magazine piece about the driving issues behind French politics.
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Researchers at Harvard published an article in the journal Science yesterday that says they've found similarities in the proteins of Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils to those of modern-day chickens.
Sounds like they're gonna need a re-write for the ending of Jurassic Park IV...and a really big fryolator.
Permalink |The local news media in Boston are reporting today that the European discount airline RyanAir would like to extend its service to the U.S., using secondary airports on the East Coast and that Manchester, NH and Providence RI are seriously bidding to be the Boston-area site.
In that Boston Globe article, the CEO of RyanAir is reported as saying that he "envisions the new airline charging as little as 10 euros" (currently about $14) to fly from Dublin to the U.S., raising hopes that the fares from the U.S. to Ireland would also be significantly cheaper. I don't know if you'd really be able to fly to Dublin from Boston for under $20, but I'm sure it would drive the prices down dramatically.
Permalink |Our baby fell out of the window
You'd think that her head would be split
But good luck was with her that morning
She fell in a barrel of....
Shhhhhhaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you'll always look keen
(BONUS! Link to free download of the original Benny Bell song)
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It's amazing that more than two weeks into the liberation of Iraq---as residents in Basra are cheering British forces and Americans occupy Baghdad's airport and Saddam Hussein's main presidential palace---the antiwar crowd is still spinning a doomsday scenario. But it's getting harder and harder to take seriously the claim that freeing Iraq will make it harder to win the war on terrorism. [...] Who said war never solved anything? ---Brendan Miniter, Assistant Editor, Wall St. Journal's Opinion Journal.com, 4/8/03
[Liberals] can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly. ---Paul Mirengoff, Powerline, 4/26/03
"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals." ---Charles Krauthammer, 4/19/03
I guess I was too preoccupied with the victory parades, sweeping up all the rose petals the Iraqis keep throwing at our feet, and carving Chimpy's face into Mount Rushmore to remember to post about the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War (you know, the one that was "all wrapped up" three weeks in?), but luckily there's a fellow from Maine who posts at Daily Kos to help us remember all the good news as declared by the right-wing media back then.
(via tingilinde)
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(Nice artist's rendering of what Mars might have looked like with liquid water, don't you think?)
Space.com reports that NASA's Mars Express orbiter has measured the ice in the southern polar ice cap on Mars using a probe that does subsurface imaging. According to their findings, there's enough water in the southern ice cap to flood the entire planet to a depth of 30 feet.
Scientists have done previous estimates of the amount of water frozen in the northern polar ice cap, which is larger, but the team that performed these measurements will now probably direct their instrument to re-measure and re-estimate the water volume at the north pole.
Permalink |Okay, anyone who DOESN'T think that today's "news" about Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's "confession" is anything but spin from the Bush Administration to deflect attention from the Gonzales Scandal, please raise your hand.
Yeah, I thought so.
Let's try to turn that spotlight back on the actual fuck-ups. shall we? The latest issue of Rolling Stone (!) has this excellent piece featuring a round-table discussion with a group of national security and military experts who are looking a little further down the field in Iraq and coming up with a very, very bleak analysis.
Permalink | Comments (1)Today's Boston Globe reports that the popular local restaurant chain Legal Sea Foods is installing payment terminals at every table in every one of their locations.
There's a growing realization that a lot of credit card fraud comes from waiters who steal your card number when they take it away from the table to ring up the check (just ask my wife's brother-in-law, who was sent up the river for doing just that), and a growing acceptance of self-service payment.
Personally, I think this is a killer idea and you'll find card swipers at tables in just about every imaginable chain restaurant in short order (pun not intended). Easily one of the most aggravating parts of dining out anywhere is the silly business of attending to the check: it requires no fewer than 3 trips to your table by the server if you are paying with a credit/debit card. It slows down the servers and can keep you waiting long after you're done eating -- with a squirmy small child in tow that wait can be nearly unbearable.
I forget where we were, but I know I have dined somewhere where the server brought a wireless swiper to the table. I think that's a much better concept for high-end restaurants, where it would look incredibly tacky to have a swiper bolted to your table. The wireless device even had a printer that immediately gave out a receipt. But at your average Crapplebees or Chili's, this is perfect.
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The image above is a photograph of a recent solar eclipse taken from the vantage point of a satellite in non-geostationary Earth orbit. The smaller object is the Moon as it passes between us and the Sun. Here on Earth, of course, the disc of the Moon appears to block the Sun, but from a different vantage point the true size difference between them is obvious.
(The weird color is an artifact of the image processing -- the eclipse does not make the sun turn purple -- but it makes for a cool picture).
Hey, guess what!
If we hadn't gone over THERE in the first place, we wouldn't have quite so many to fight at all!
This Mother Jones article runs the numbers on acts of terrorism worldwide and finds that they have increased SEVENFOLD since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Mission Accomplished!
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Jeebus, that didn't take long. Deval Patrick hasn't even been governor for two months, and he's already a complete and utter joke. First it was the Cadillac SUV, then the drapes, then giving his wife a secretary on the state payroll and now he's in Dutch for making an ill-advised phone call trying to score a loan for a company he used to serve on the board of.
What a political embarrassment this guy is. Politicians are always a bit on the self-aggrandizing side, to be sure, and if you look around it's not hard to see plenty of pols who have secured themselves, their families, and their assorted followers all manner of personal perks and luxuries. It is part of the game we play with our elected officials -- we overlook some petty (and sometimes not-so-petty) self-enrichment as long as they give the appearance of working for some useful purpose and occasionally pass the spoils on down to us once in a while. In fact, people seem to prefer a degree of embellishing -- anyone old enough to remember when Mike Dukakis was governor will recall that he was ridiculed for riding the T to work and mowing his own lawn. But people cannot bear a politician who sets out to gild his own lily before he does anything to merit it.
What's all the more disappointing, though, is that this guy pulled off one of the most unlikely outsider campaigns in Massachusetts political history and carried the mantle of being "not like the rest of them" right through the election. That means quite a lot in a state like this, where the Democratic party is so thoroughly entrenched at every level of power in government that most of the regular politicians are simply content to wait for their "turn" for the top of the pyramid.
At least a machine pol would have learned a few lessons about public humility and discretion. Even non-stop self-promoters like Bill Galvin know when to shut up and keep quiet about certain things. And Galvin was smart enough to back out of the governor's race early in the face of the groundswell of support Patrick was able to muster, figuring that he would be better off not going up against such anti-incumbent sentiment.
What makes Patrick look especially greedy and stupid through all of this is that everybody has fairly fresh memories of Republican Jane Swift doing the exact same sort of bonehead things during her worthless occupation of "the corner office". Her desire to pluck the big shiny ring of executive privilege cost her entire political career in the end, left to be an asterisk in the history books. Luckily, as far as Jane Swift goes, she was only temporary. This guy is just starting a full term and has already turned himself into a complete laughingstock.
I really wanted this guy to be different. To be the one who gave the Democrats a new direction and the chance to reclaim some semblance of a legitimate platform from which they could restore the devastation that the Republicans have wreaked on American government and free society. Instead, he's managed to prove that the allure of the perks held greater appeal for him than any real agenda for governing, putting him squarely in the same league as generations of worthless political hacks.
Somebody give me a recall petition to sign.
Permalink | Comments (1)Not content to spend their time blowing up Mooninites, the BPD has moved on to a new enemy in the War On Terror: traffic counters.
Yes, traffic counters. You've seen them: a non-descript looking box sitting at some intersection, usually with a pair of cables stretched out across the street to tally all the cars that pass by at certain hours.
Well, yesterday the Bomb Squad was called in to blow one up, despite the fact that it was the City of Boston that put it there themselves. They were suspicious, later reports revealed, because the box was a different color than the other ones around the city.
You can't make up this kind of stupidity. No word on who Da Mayah is going to strong-arm for a million bucks this time.
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Canadian cell phone service provider Telus has ended their porn-on-demand download service for video-enabled cell phones after only six weeks, according to the Toronto Globe & Mail.
There had been much public outcry against providing such a service, particularly from a Roman Catholic archdiocese, which threatened to boycott the company.
My prediction -- at least one American provider will launch something similar in less than 5 years (indeed, probably much sooner). Telus's only real mistake was being ahead of the curve on public acceptance. If a "safe" porn brand like Playboy were behind it, there would be an American market for it almost overnight. And if some major player doesn't embrace it, I guarantee there will be somebody who develops a private network for it...provided such a thing doesn't already exist and just keeps a very low profile.
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This is going to get blogged to death over the next day or so, but you HAVE to go and have a look.
The ABC News website has a photo slideshow of correspondent Bob Woodruff's simply miraculous recovery from the massive head wound he suffered in Iraq. The picture above is a CT scan of what was left of his skull (the entire left side was blown away) when he arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Last summer he had a cranial implant to replace the missing bone, and now, scarcely more than a year after his injury, he is recovered and back to work.
The photos are a promo for a primetime special featuring Bob Woodruff that will air next Tuesday evening.
Permalink |For you religious types, it's Shrove Tuesday, but for the rest of us, it's just National Pancake Day. Hop on down to IHOP and get your free short stack RIGHT NOW!
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Former Boston Globe media columnist Mark Jurkowitz, writing for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, looks at last week's news coverage and notes that the story of Anna Nicole Smith's death ate up more than 20% of the "newshole" on the cable news networks for the entire week, and more than 50% of the time on Thursday and Friday (the story broke late in the afternoon on Wednesday).
Fifty percent. For two solid days. And they're not done yet, either.
(By contrast, the Anna Nicole story only took up about 5% of the newshole at online news sites, and about 8% of network news broadcasts.)
I think the only person who should be glad about this particular statistic is Lisa Nowak.
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So they're finally getting a Whole Foods supermarket up in Portland, Maine, but they're fighting over whether or not to sell live lobsters.
In Maine.
Live lobsters.
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone selling live lobsters in Maine, so frankly if the Whole Foods people are so against it, I think they could probably skip the whole thing and be none worse for it. Instead, as you've probably read, they're going to give each lobster its own cozy little room in the tank instead of the usual "pile 'em up in one big tank" approach.
Oooookay.
I guess it's okay to be concerned about the suffering of lobsters, though it seems to me we're investing a lot more in their suffering than the suffering of human beings (anyone who's taken a walk down Congress Street in Portland will know exactly what I'm talking about).
Once again the Whole Foods folks are being a bit hypocritical. They don't want to cause suffering for live lobsters and they don't promote boiling them live either -- they will gladly stun them for you using a "humane" device called (and I am not making this up) "The Crusta-Stun". But let's say you are too squeamish to buy a sea mudbug, living or stunned, and instead opt for the convenience of packaged lobster meat. Well, the Whole Foods folks are glad to sell you some of that, too, but this is the big-ass machine they use to get that meat -- a high pressure machine that literally forces all of the meat out of every last nook and cranny of a lobster shell, even the little tiny legs (as every REAL Mainer knows, you always suck the meat out of the legs). I'm not entirely clear on how this is more humane than boiling, or even the infamous ice-pick method of lobster murder. I suspect it's humane the same way we "humanely" slaughter cows, chickens and pigs -- i.e. mechanized to the point that it doesn't seem like slaughter.
Me, I am a traditionalist and firmly believe in tossing live lobsters directly into a big ol' pot of boiling water. It has been my own personal tradition for some time now to kiss each lobster on the carapace before I throw them in the water to let them know that they are loved for their tasty sacrifice. I think that's pretty humane. Maybe the Whole Foods store can hire a lobster kisser to bid each one adieu as they leave the store.
(links via The Secret Life Of Lobsters)
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On the left is the 2005 residential phone book for the city of New Orleans. On the right is the 2007 residential phone book.
This AP story from last week details the ongoing debacle of restoring the city. Of the 105,739 applications for assitance received by the agency overseeing the "reconstruction", to date only 532 have been processed. Only half of the $750 million in federal aid funds granted have been disbursed due to "paperwork problems" in Washington.
And yet all this is back-burner stuff while we obsess over a dead bimbo with a bad boob-job, a batshit-crazy astronaut, and LiteBrite "bombs". We deserve exactly what we've got coming to us, I'm afraid.
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Oh, I just don't even know where to begin. This whole debacle is beyond stupid, it's George W. Bush-stupid.
Somehow, nine other cities across the country managed to have these little LED signs all over the place and no one thought they were bombs, but Boston's Finest came out and publicly decreed that a circuit board, some wires and a battery "were consistent with improvised explosive devices". I guess the light-up monster giving the one-fingered salute must be some kind of Islamo-fascist code, eh? (That's what seven generations of police in-breeding will do to people, I guess)
Somehow, nobody at the "guerilla marketing company" or Turner Broadcasting managed to take a moment to consider just what sort of reptile-brain thinking goes on in your major metropolitan police department. Then, when the shit hit the fan, Turner's own people at CNN were among the first to start banging the panic gongs for a "terror alert" and balls-to-the-wall live coverage. The paranoid among us have already jumped on this to say that the whole thing was a cleverly-designed maneuver a la "War Of The Worlds", but to me it only goes to show that the so-called "television journalists" are completely unable to do anything but parrot back what they are told. Frankly, that explains pretty much everything that has happened in this country for the last seven years, but it sure is getting old.
Then, "da Mayah" and our sparkly-new governor jumped the gun a bit with their public statements, only to have egg on their faces an hour later when every blogger on the planet except me broke the real story about the cartoon characters. Instead of ponying up to being mike-grabbing attention-hounds, the pols have spent every moment since issuing various stern pronouncements about what they're going to do to Turner Broadcasting. What they're going to do is jack-shit, and we all know it, so they might as well just have said "Oh, sorry, never mind" and admitted they and the Boston Police overreacted. Apparently they've been watching tapes of George W. Bush in action.
But, the stupidity doesn't stop there. The "struggling artist" who put up all the signs for the marketing company managed to videotape himself and a friend hanging the signs all over the city late at night and POSTED IT ON THE INTERNET. They arrested him last night on some bogus charges that I'm sure will get dropped once the politicians have covered their asses, but he deserves to be arrested again for being so fundamentally stupid as to post his self-incriminating video (complete with rockin' techno music that features a robot chanting "BOOM-chaka-laka"). Americans don't have to spy on each other, I guess, because they're obviously willing to implicate themselves in the dumbest possible stunts.
Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is cackling with glee. Who knew he was such an Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan?
Permalink |Back in November, I briefly noted a Washington Post article about the announcement that Clear Channel, the largest radio conglomerate in the country, was going to be split up and sold off in chunks, with all of its television holdings and almost 500 small-market radio stations being let go, while the new owners would get to keep the big-market properties.
Yesterday, I stumbled upon this radio industry news website that picked up a Wall Street Journal report indicating that Fidelity Management and several other institutional shareholders of Clear Channel are strongly opposed to the deal. If the deal does not go through, Clear Channel would still be on the hook for a huge payout to the buyers (possibly as much as $500 million) and the stock price of Clear Channel could go through the floor.
Shareholders will meet in March to make a decision on the buyout. Stay tuned.
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Remember the story in the news a week or so ago about the guy who shot a duck and put it in his fridge, only to discover a couple of days later that the duck was still alive?
Well this has got to be the luckiest damn duck in the history of duckdom, because she has now survived her THIRD brush with death in as many weeks. The duck, who is now known as Perky, had to undergo some surgery to put a pin in her damaged wing and almost died from the anesthesia.
Vice President Cheney's office had no comment on rumors thar Mr. Cheney has requested to have his gun cleaned and his lawyers moved out of range.
UPDATED: Looks like Barbaro the Horse needed a little bit of Perky's luck. How sad.
Permalink |I am late to the party on linking you to this story, but it also didn't seem to get a huge amount of attention from the "MSM" when it was fresh: Sir Ken Macdonald, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK (sort of a national version of what we call "District Attorneys") recently spoke to the British Criminal Bar Association and publicly repudiated the notion of a "war on terror".
In the course of his remarks, Macdonald said that overzealous and "fear-driven" efforts to curtail civil rights represented a threat to the rule of law:
"It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes."
"London is not a battlefield...On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'. The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement."
Substitute American place names as appropriate, please. This message really needs to be heard widely and understood thoroughly. The only war is the one we started in Iraq for no valid reason whatsoever. How long can Americans propel themselves to undo the fundamentals of their own society based solely on the fear-driven response to a single incident?
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CNet News reports this morning that the Maine legislature overwhelmingly voted to reject the federal REAL ID Act that mandates a standard national identity card system to be implemented by 2008.
The Portland Press Herald reports that the vote was unanimous in the Maine State Senate, and 137-4 in the House. Opposition to the law comes from both conservatives and liberals. Both sides are concerned about the profound impact on civil liberties, as well as identity theft and the overall cost of an unfunded federal mandate.
Unfortunately, the Maine resolution is not binding on the federal legislation. However, as CNet reports, Maine is not the only state legislature expressing dissatisfaction with this new law. Washington, Montana and Georgia are also considering similar resolutions, and the National Conference of State Legislatures also opposes it (mostly on the grounds of cost).
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I've been following the remarkable story of the last year of Art Buchwald's life (see here and here), so it only seems appropriate that I should include mention of his passing.
The Washington Posts' obituary mentions that the Post's Ben Bradlee was one of the last people to talk with Buchwald before he slipped into unconsciousness earlier this week. Bradlee says that Buchwald knew the time had finally come, but he hoped he wouldn't die on the same day as Fidel Castro.
No problem, there, Art. Goodbye.
UPDATED: Here is Buchwald's "final column" in the Jan 19. Washington Post. He wrote this as he was headed into hospice (which he subsequently left) to be printed after his death.
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Any fucking questions?
Meanwhile, speaking of zombies, have you seen the clip of the digital "reanimation" of Orville Redenbacher that they're going to start using in commercials? Apparently the first one aired the other night on the Golden Globes award show. It won't fool anybody into thinking Orville is back from the dead, but it is mighty creepy.
Permalink |The NYT Technology section reports today that AT&T, the new owner of SBC Communications, which in turn is the owner of Cingular, will be "de-branding" Cingular just in time to coincide with the rollout of those super cool Apple iPhones in June.
In the story, a talking suit for AT&T says that they don't see any issue with losing customers due to de-branding. "If you give them what they want, the brand is secondary," the mouthpiece said. There's more than a little irony there, you have to admit. I mean we're talking about a cell phone service provider. But in the larger perspective, she's made an interesting observation: the "wireless service" business has gone through so many mergers, changes in ownerships, identity swaps, and so on that the branding has become nearly meaningless. It's "brand of the week", and all you can hope for is to remember which name you're supposed to write on the check when you pay your bill.
Wireless service providers are not the only ones who are driving the very concept of branding to its inevitable doom. If you're like me, you've been the victim of at least one bank merger and subsequent name change. Ditto for cable companies (not surprising, since they're often the same people as the cell phone companies). It seems to be mostly service-oriented brands that suffer from "brand of the week", but because the engine of commodity-driven capitalism has devolved into a never-ending stream of M&A, it trickles into every aspect of our consumer culture.
I'm still trying to decide what the larger impact of the failure of branding means. Does it imply that service businesses will, in fact, have to return to paying attention to the quality of their actual service offerings in order to keep anyone as a customer for more than a month at a time? Or does it mean that the spiral of shitty service and customer churn will only increase as no one feels any need to pay anything more than lip service to the interaction? I mean, I think most people would accept the proposition that most wireless service providers, cable companies, banks, credit cards, and so on already suck