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Crossover
So there was recently a crossover between Sally Forth and Pearls Before Swine, where Ted Forth sneaks away from his wife at a hotel to find a prostitute.

Apparently this was an out of the blue idea from the PBS guy and the Sally Forth guy was so amused he tied his comic into what was otherwise solely a gag strip making fun of it.

Nifty.

Sources: Francesco Explains It All
The Comics Curmudgeon

Art Show
A series of photos from an art show featuring reimagined Saturday Morning cartoon characters. I liked this Blip from Space Ghost a lot, but there are some awesome Herculoids in there too.

Source: Flickr

Annoy the Cops
Not the smartest game, but they do have it coming.

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) -- Cars lining the street. A house full of young people. A keg and drinking games inside. Police thought they had an underage boozing party on their hands.

But though they made dozens of teens take breath tests, none tested positive for alcohol. That's because the keg contained root beer.

The party was held by a high school student who wanted to show that teens don't always drink alcohol at their parties. It has gained fame on YouTube.com.

Dustin Zebro, 18, said he staged the party after friends at D.C. Everest High School got suspended from sports because of pictures showing them drinking from red cups.

The root-beer kegger was "to kind of make fun of the school," he said. "They assumed there was beer in the cups. We just wanted to have some root beer in red cups and just make it look like a party, but there actually wasn't any alcohol."

Zebro purchased a quarter-barrel of 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer, and by 10 p.m. Saturday, the scene outside his rural Wausau home had all the makings of a teen drinking party - cars, noise and kids.

Kronenwetter Police Chief Daniel Joling said an officer was dispatched to the home March 1 on a complaint of cars blocking the road.

Juveniles began coming out of the house after the officer used his squad car's loudspeaker to warn that cars would soon be towed, Officer Jason Rasmussen wrote in his report.

Nearly 90 breath tests were done, and officers even searched locked rooms for hiding teens.

"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it," Joling said. "If one kid had come there, even hadn't drank there, but had come there and had been drinking and had left and crashed and burned, then what would the sentiment be? Why didn't the police check everybody out?"

Dangerous, and I don't approve of the noisy party part, but still. Cops do have it coming. Ever since the Fourth Amendment went out the window and we lost our right to privacy, I think it's been an Us vs. Them thing. This is a good legal way to fight back against overzealous enforcement practices; flood the enforcers with false positives.

Source: Raw Story

Snicker
Right-wingers are just terrible at art of any sort. I can't reach any other conclusion.

Anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, whose controversial film Fitna finally hit the web yesterday, has made himself even more unpopular - it appears he forgot to secure copyright on footage used in the movie.

Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose depiction of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban sparked violent protests in 2006, complained on Dutch TV that Wilders used his work without permission, "so it is simply a case of violation of copyright rules".

Earlier this month Westergaard defended Wilders and argued that the Dutch MP should show his film despite government warnings. On behalf of Westergaard, the Danish Union of Journalists says it will now sue Wilders for copyright infringement.

Also, Dutch director Rob Muntz was also surprised to see a clip of an interview he conducted with Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was stabbed and shot dead in Amsterdam. Muntz says he never gave permission, and will seek legal advice too.

Wilders also mistakenly used a photo of Dutch-Moroccan rapper Salah Edin instead of Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo van Gogh’s murderer. Edin, perhaps unsurprisingly, is also suing.

Hilarious!

Seriously though, this is why you didn't need to ban the movie, Dutch authorities. In the marketplace of ideas, conservative thought always ends up in the bargain bin.

Source: The Register

Comcasticness
So Comcast has been, it turns out, scamming its viewers on HD broadcasts by secretly pruning the signals. You get the resolution, but it's all distorted and blocky and ugly.

This so they can add more HD channels at a lower cost. Sort of counterproductive, to my mind, if the ones you have suck ass.

This is the way Comcast operates though. And now, I don't say that just because our cable is out at the moment.

Source: AVS Forum

Speaking of Terrible Service
Best Buy!

A Best Buy store in New Jersey foiled one man's treasonous plot to subvert a troubled US economy by discouraging the purchase of an overpriced headset.

According to a report from The Consumerist, the prominent electronics merchant summoned police on a shopper identified as "Alex" because he shared an unfavorable impression of a Jawbone headset to customer considering the product.

Alex told the man browsing Best Buy's mobile section about his personal dissatisfaction with the quality of the Bluetooth headset and noted the retailer marked up the price by $30 compared to his local Verizon store.

A savvy sales associate reportedly overheard Alex's attempted disruption of commerce and promptly informed the nearest authority figure, store's manager, Tom.

Alex was approached by the manager and asked to leave the store. He steadfastly refused — unaware or even perhaps unconcerned that his words wounded Lady Liberty and the national economy she depends upon.

According to Alex, the manager rebutted his insistence that he did nothing wrong by claiming his requested evacuation was "policy." Tom then walked away and instructed an associate to summon the police.

Startled by the rapidly intensifying predicament, Alex attempted to call Best Buy's customer support phone number. He was put on hold.

Two police officers arrived on the scene, accompanied by four Best Buy security clerks to send the subversive customer on his way. Alex was escorted out before he could reach a customer service rep on his phone.

Best Buy of course claims this isn't their policy. But hiring morons apparently is.

Source: The Register

Tower of Babel
A crazy Saudi billionaire is planning to make the world's tallest building.

Tallest by a LOT.

On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean - providing you've a head for heights.

Plans for a mile-high tower in the Saudi Arabian desert have been unveiled by the billionaire owner of London's Savoy Hotel.

At 5,250ft, the £5billion project, masterminded by two British engineering consultancies, will be twice as high as its nearest rivals, skyscrapers under construction in Dubai and Kuwait, and almost seven times as high as the Canary Wharf tower in London's Docklands.

...

It is being planned for a new city near the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Behind the scheme is 51-year-old Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who bought the Savoy for £1.25billion in 2005.

The plan gives the Middle East a clear lead over Asian countries and the U.S., who have vied in the past to construct the world's tallest buildings.

None of the other skyscrapers under construction, including New York's Freedom Tower on the World Trade Centre site, will exceed 2,296ft.

The whole scheme is insane. The plan is for it to be so tall that helicopters have to be used to take workers up and down for the day and haul supplies. The temperature extremes at the top will apparently be crazy.

Still, gutsy. Nice to see Saudi money being used for something constructive, no pun intended.

Source: The Daily Mail

St. John McCain and Letterman
So St. John McCain appeared on Letterman to counter the jokes about how old he is.

Some of his digs, no doubt written by Letterman's talented staff, were pretty funny, but this last one...

Then the Arizona Senator gets in the final zinger: "And you look like the guy who enjoys getting into a hot tub and watching his swim trunks inflate."

What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?

Source: Raw Story

Catalog of Unfit Toys
Hilarious.

Source: Catalog of Unfit Toys

Not a Joke
T-Mobile sent a nastygram to the tech website engadget demanding that they stop using the color magenta, as T-Mobile does in their own logo.

They think they can own a color now.

This has of course led to a number of websites going magenta in response.

Source: Engadget

Even More Political News

Political

Goooooooooooooooore
So there's chatter about Gore as a consensus candidate for the Dems.

That'd be amazing. But it will never happen. The world is not that kind to me.

Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president.

The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has left many Democrats convinced that neither can deliver a knockout blow to the other and that both have been so damaged that they risk losing November's election to the Republican nominee, John McCain.

...

Following a brief flurry of speculation that he might jump into the race last year, Mr Gore claimed he had "fallen out of love" with politics, but he has pointedly refused to rule out another tilt at the White House and said that the only job in public life that interests him is the presidency.

Source: The Telegraph

Tip 'Sharing'
This isn't about the standard 'wait staff share with kitchen staff' sort of thing.

This is where Starbucks stole tips from hourly workers for management.

Starbucks Corp. plans to appeal a San Diego Superior Court ruling last week that ordered the coffee chain to compensate California baristas for tips they shared with shift supervisors.

...

In a separate statement Thursday, Starbucks said there is no money to be "refunded or returned from Starbucks."

The California lawsuit was filed in 2004, and was granted class-action status in 2006. Last week, San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett ordered Starbucks to pay baristas more than $100 million in back tips and interest, saying state law prohibits managers and supervisors from taking a cut from the tip jar. A hearing is set for May 1 before Cowett on how the California tip money should be distributed.

Starbucks responded in the statement that "shift supervisors are not managers and have no managerial authority," and customers don't differentiate between the supervisors and baristas when they tip.

Cowett also issued an injunction preventing Starbucks' shift supervisors from sharing in future tips, but Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said it would not comply with that order while it appeals the court decision.

Right. The 'supervisor' has no managerial authority.

I'm sorry, but this is absurd. Management stealing from the tip jars? Seriously?

Give me a break. When they want to break a union, companies call nurses 'managers'; when they want to steal from workers, they call managers 'shift supervisors'.

They don't just want to have their cake and eat it too; they want yours.

Source: Raw Story

End Game
So, how does a longtime insurgency, like the one we're facing in Iraq, actually end?

Simple. It ends when everyone gets exhausted.

The first time I visited Belfast, in 1977, it was a city under siege. Stores were closed. British bunkers protected by anti-rocket meshing sat on most intersections. Police and military patrols were the only sign of life on the street. The Europa, which had to be the most bombed hotel in the world, was a sandbagged fortress.

On paper at least, the 1998 agreement between the IRA and the British government was what started to put an end to the violent conflict. But at the bottom of it the IRA lost the will to fight.

This year's IRA parade on Easter morning was one of the most anodyne, sentimentalized events I've ever seen, made up mostly of little boys and old men not even bothering to pose as veterans. A half a dozen marchers carried wooden rifles, but the Republican banners were furled — on orders from the IRA's leadership. Armored police Land Rovers were parked inconspicuously on side streets, but they were there to protect the marchers from Protestants rather than keep a watch on them.

Any lingering doubt I had that the conflict was truly over disappeared when I saw the Europa. There wasn't even a car bomb barrier out front. The place was full of families, many of them American, coming home for Easter. Ex-IRA foot soldiers out front offered driving tours of the old IRA battlefields. Who would ever have thought Northern Ireland would be turned into a theme park?

...

But it wasn't just in Northern Ireland that there was an end to violence. I was in Palermo on Good Friday and met the city's police chief. It's been 15 years since the Sicilian Mafia has been blowing up judges and prosecutors. Is the violence over? "If I dare say it, it is," the police chief said. "The Mafia figured out it just wasn't worth it, the killing and bombing, drawing the fury of Rome."

To be sure, the Mafia still runs Sicily. But like the IRA it is an anodyne force. It is moving into white-collar crime — where the real money is and the sentences are lighter.

...

Before I left Beirut last week I sat down with a member of Hizballah's politburo. He didn't look anything like the old Hizballah I knew from the '80s. For a start he asked to meet in the posh Vendome Hotel, in the rooftop restaurant that has a commanding view over the Corniche and the Mediterranean. Clean shaven and carrying a new leather briefcase, he offered me a Cuban cigar as soon as he sat down. He had just come from a class teaching economics.

We started off talking about the Hizballah military commander Imad Mughniyah, who was assassinated in Damascus on February 12. "Yes, indeed," he said in fluent English, "Hizballah will absolutely have to respond. But not now. There is too much too lose."

He added that he thought that it was unfortunate the West focuses only on Hizballah's military wing. "Can't anyone see Hizballah is just as much about an economic revolution as it is fighting Israel?"

People complain about the Godfather Pt. III endlessly, but it turns out that the portrayal of the end of the Corleone family was fairly accurate. When people tire of violence, they end up moving on to something else, often something more lucrative.

Source: Time.com

Sign of the Times
The housing crisis has become so bad that looters are stealing the copper pipes from old houses, which are worth significantly more than the houses they're found inside.

Similar stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home foreclosures coincides with record highs in the price of copper and other metals.

Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by thieves. Much of it ends up with scrap metal traders who say nearly all copper gets shipped overseas, much of it to China and India.

In areas hit hardest by foreclosures, such as the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, copper and other metals used in plumbing, heating systems and telephone lines are now more valuable than some homes.

"We're in an incredibly unfortunate time where the nonferrous metals commodities market for scrap is at an all-time high. Houses are getting stripped pretty quickly once they go through the foreclosure process," Cleveland city councilor Tony Brancatelli said.

"We're seeing houses sold for $100 that are distressed houses that should not be recycled," he said. Some boarded-up homes in his Slavic Village community have "No copper, only PVC" painted on the boards to stop would-be thieves.

This isn't a joke; houses can go for less than the price of their telephone wiring.

Thanks a lot, El Presidente!

Source: Raw Story

A Picture Says 4 Thousand Names
Portrait of El Presidente and St. John McCain, made from the composite of pictures of the four thousand people we've lost in Iraq.

Source: Huffington Post

Cesar Chavez Day
Clinton and Obama are working to one-up each other, but for a change, in a good way.

Cesar Chavez Day.

That's what Barack Obama is endorsing: A national holiday in honor of the late, legendary activist for farmworker rights (pictured below).

Today is Chavez's birthday -- and Hillary Clinton's campaign was the first to draw attention to that this morning, issuing a statement celebrating the 81st anniversary of Chavez's birth (he died on April 23, 1993).


But Obama, who has struggled to overcome Clinton's significant advantage among Latino voters in state after state, sought to one-up his rival for the Democratic presidential nod by joining the call for creating a national holiday to commemorate the father of the United Farm Workers.

Now if we could only get them doing this on Iraq.

Source: The LA Times

Enough Already

Noah Shachtman at Danger Room finds a 2006 report written for U.S. Special Operations Command that suggests ways the military should deal with the blogosphere. One suggestion is for the military to hire bloggers to “pass the U.S. message“:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence…to pass the U.S. message. … On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog.

Yeah. This isn't the least bit unseemly.

Source: Think Progress

Primaries
I can't believe I agree with a Florida politician, but I've been saying the same basic thing for a while now.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) appeared on CNN to slam both the Democratic Party nominating process and the Electoral College.

Nelson said he would like to abolish the Electoral College entirely, because "people are increasingly dissatisfied when you can have the most votes for president and the other candidate ... ends up being elected, as last happened in the year 2000."

He is also proposing to do away with the current presidential nominating procedures in favor of six large regional primaries, which would be held between March and June of every presidential election year in an order to be determined by drawing lots.

CBS's John Roberts did not comment on the merits of Nelson's proposal, but merely noted that "Iowa and New Hampshire are going to scream bloody murder."

"Of course they're going to kick up and scream, "Nelson replied, "but those states are not representative of America as a whole and why should they have an outsized influence?"

The regional primary is a neat idea. It would curtail travel costs and provide a logical grouping, so that regional issues and focuses would be retained.

On the other hand, 'region' is a bit hard to define. California is big enough and powerful enough to count as its own country. It would easily qualify as two or three regions of its own. On the other hand, the South may be a series of states, but demographically and politically they comprise, with the exception of Florida, one big bloc of Stupid.

I'd suggest a rotation for primaries, with first year determined by lots, rather than lots each time. That could lead to a run of one area being first or last that would be unpleasant.

Other than that, not a shabby plan. As for Iowa and New Hamsphire? Fuck 'em. The current system is the height of anti-democratic behavior.

Source: Raw Story

Death of Death Benefit
So Chrysler is screwing over their middle rank white collar workers.

Chrysler LLC's white-collar retirees are losing free life insurance benefits but are eligible for a one-time pension boost of up to $4,000, according to a letter retirees should receive this week.

Previously retirees were covered by a life insurance policy at no charge, with a death benefit equal to their last year of pay, for those who retired before 2003, or $50,000 for those who retired after that.

Chrysler is allowing affected retirees a one-time opportunity to buy into a voluntary plan through MetLife at a reduced, group rate.

...

On one hand, retirees' families are less likely to need the life insurance payout to support a family or pay off a mortgage, Wise said. On the other, the cost of a 65-year old obtaining even a 20-year term plan is steep -- $1,600 a year or more, he said.

...

White-collar retirees will receive from $1,000 to $4,000, depending on their years of service and years since retirement. They may choose to take the payment as a one-time lump sum, roll it into an Individual Retirement Account, or have it paid as part of their monthly benefit.

So they get at most 4 grand in exchange for losing 20+ grand of insurance premiums.

Oh yeah, what a bargain!

Still think we don't need white collar unions?

Source: The Detroit News

King Corn
The Ethanol Lobby strikes again.

BB&T Capital Markets analyst said Monday corn rationing may be necessary this year, following a U.S. Department of Agriculture report predicting farmers would plant far fewer acres of corn in 2008.

According to the March Prospective Plantings Report, farmers intend to plant about 86 million acres of corn this year, down 8 percent from 2007, when the amount of corn planted was the highest since World War II.

Analyst Heather L. Jones said in a note to investors if the USDA estimate proves accurate, the year may produce just 200 million bushels of corn. That, she said, wouldn't be enough to meet demand, given current export and feed demand trends and higher ethanol demand. Both ethanol and animal feed are made with corn.

...

Shares of Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest meat companies, fell 12 cents to $16.01 in afternoon trading, while shares of pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc. dropped 39 cents to $25.57.

Chicken producer Pilgrim's Pride Corp. shares dipped 19 cents to $20.28. Earlier in the day, the stock reached a new four-year low of $20.08.

Thanks a lot, Flexfuel Fuckers.

Thanks a lot.

Source: Raw Story

Hagee Video
This is still in my browser window from quite a while ago.


Man it's been in there forever.

Source: Attytood

Random and Disturbing News

Disturbing and Disgusting

Dolphin Raid
Here's a story that's so grotesque and seemingly far-fetched that it's hard to believe.

For the first time ever, graphic feature-length footage of the annual slaughter of some 2,500 dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, has been captured during a unique yearlong covert operation.

The secret filming by members of the U.S. conservation group Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) — equipped with state-of-the-art technology and financed to the tune of $5 million by Netscape founder Jim Clark — is being turned into a major documentary feature film destined for worldwide release this summer (although distribution in Japan is at present not certain).

The story of how this film of the barbaric killing and subsequent butchering of dolphins was made — together with the resulting sale of their meat that massively exceeds Japanese and international limits for mercury content — is told here, exclusively, for the first time anywhere in print.

That's right; an eco-group with big money backing staged what can only be described as a Black Op to get extensive documentary evidence of a secretive dolphin slaughter in Japan.

Just the still photographs are horrifying. But quite frankly, to me, the sheer scale of this operation is more interesting than the abject cruelty.

I mean, we live in a world chock full of abject cruelty.

The footage of the annual seven-month dolphin "drive fisheries" (as they are known in Japan), and of the brutal practices involved in them — as well as the complicity in the killings by various dolphin trainers and officials from Taiji Whale Museum — is sure to shock the world. But whether Japanese people themselves will be able to see the film and arrive at their own conclusions is still by no means certain.

The annual dolphin slaughter at Taiji, a town with a population of some 3,500 in the beautiful Yoshino Kumano Kokuritsu Koen national park, follows a regular pattern.

First, hunter boats from the Taiji Isana Union (numbering at most 13 skiffs, with two crewmen each) head out to sea and surround pods of dolphins or pilot whales (which are actually large dolphins). Then they drive them into a "capture cove" by banging on long metal bell-ended poles placed in the water to disrupt the dolphins' sonar, causing them to become completely disorientated and panic.

After these animals have spent a night supposedly relaxing in the netted-off capture cove (in an attempt by the whalers to make their meat more tender), they are driven to the neighboring "killing cove." There, behind huge blue tarps strung across the cove to keep prying eyes away — in much the same way that Japanese police cordon off crime scenes — the dolphins meet their gruesome predawn end.

Terry Pratchett says something about the nature of evil in Carpe Jugulum, I forget the exact quote, but the sentiment was that the worst sort of evil isn't the kind that goes on in the dead of night, but the sort that plods methodically, dispassionately forward in grey, daylight monotony. In the book he's referencing, amongst other things, the Nazis, but the analogy holds here too. Truly nasty, inhuman behavior reaches its apex not with the lunatic carving up prostitutes, but with the commandant running the camps, or here, the whalers mutilating semi-sentient creatures to make toxic food.

From their base in Boulder, Colorado, the OPS group made six trips to Wakayama Prefecture, where they were constantly followed by local police and stalked and harassed by Taiji "whalers." Despite this, their mission was successful. Their high-tech film gear was covertly inserted in the "killing cove" and extracted 16 times thanks to the efforts of the film's assistant director, Charles Hambleton, and three members of the OPS team. Their hidden, high-definition (HD) cameras successfully recorded the horror that unfolded behind Taiji's blue tarps. And what they saw was beyond their belief.

Captured dolphins were filmed writhing in pain as Taiji whalers speared them repeatedly or cracked their spines with spiked weapons. Stricken dolphins are also shown thrashing about wildly, blood pouring from their wounds until they finally succumbed. Meanwhile, a number of dolphin trainers and officials from the Taiji Whale Museum are shown cooperating in the slaughter — some even laughing — as the killing cove's bloodied, ruby-red water swept round into the adjacent capture cove.

But perhaps the most iconic scene is one in which a baby dolphin leaps to its death on the rocks after its mother is killed. This really was a surreal and incredibly sad sight to see.

Surreal doesn't begin to describe it.

The lengths they had to go to in order to produce the documentary are equally surreal, to my mind.

With funding from billionaire conservationist Clark, the team was able to use the most sophisticated equipment money could buy. Among their weapons of choice were a battery of HD cameras. Some of those cameras were encased in fake rocks sculpted out of high-density foam by movie-model makers with Kerner Optical (formerly George "Star Wars" Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic Shop). These disguised cameras were strat- egically positioned inside the killing cove.

Also included in the formidable lineup of high-tech gear for this covert operation were standard-size HD cameras, $50,000 military-grade HD forward-looking infrared (FLIR) P-645 thermal cameras (to detect anyone the whalers had on lookout); hydrophones and HD underwater cameras (to record the dolphins' underwater throes); unmanned gyro-stabilized helicopters; a number of "shotgun" microphones disguised as tree branches; walkie-talkies; and a host of ancillary equipment.

The mission objective was to produce a well-balanced, full-length documentary feature for general worldwide release encompassing all facets of the Taiji dolphin cull and its health risks.

"We succeeded," Psihoyos said, "but we also came back with an epic horror film resembling a Steven King novel more than a documentary."

...

To make this possible, OPS called on Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, a seven-time world free-diving champion, and her famed coach and husband, Kirk Krack, to plant the devices. (Cruikshank recently broke her own world record by free-diving down to 88 meters and back in 2 min. 48 sec.) Both eagerly accepted the risky challenge.

"Good to go Mandy," crackled through the two-way. It was 3 a.m. The OPS support group on land had just completed a thermal-imaging sweep of the capture and killing coves. No security was detected. As the OPS van dropped the two off above the holding cove's small beach, and sped away, the free-diving pair, clad in wet suits, entered the water. The moon was full, helping them to see obstacles.

"Tensions were high . . . we had to get around a barbed-wire fence and hike down over some boulders to get into the water," Mandy said. "Then we swam around to the killing cove. It was about 40 feet (12 meters) deep. We had an underwater camera and hydrophone, and we used a flashlight to get a reference point so we knew where to retrieve them from after we made a reconnaissance, but we had to turn it on and off quickly to escape detection. Then Kirk and I put down the devices fairly easily."

...

Meanwhile, Psihoyos' team was embedded in their camera blinds on overlooking hillsides, sometimes for as long as 17 hours a day. Dressed in full camouflage gear and wearing face paint, they looked like military sniper teams. Black masking tape covered reflective surfaces on their cameras to avoid detection. For over 3 1/2 weeks, the OPS team survived on a daily ration of 3 hours' sleep. When filming from the camera blinds, they subsisted on energy bars and water. Whaler security men, always wary of outsiders monitoring their hunts, constantly scanned the high terrain, the bushes and undergrowth surrounding the two coves, their flashlights searching for intruders.

Psihoyos recounted his attempt in setting up the initial camera blind in a spot overlooking the killing cove.

"It was a moonless night and I had a full-size def (HD) camera in tow with a large tripod. I scaled a cliff and descended on a rope and perched on a shelf as big as an average office desk — but at a slope of about 30 degrees.

"I braced my feet against a small tree and didn't move them for the next 15 1/2 hours," he said, adding, "the lagoon was filled with pilot whales — they made a protective circle around their young. I shot frantic clips from my unstable perch as I saw whales killed and dragged away."

The whole thing is worth a read. These people put our National Intelligence to shame, that's for sure.

Source: The Japan Times

White Stickers
This is a combination of truly sad/pathetic and hilarious.

Two narcotics officers were demoted from an elite strike force and suspended without pay because of racially offensive stickers found inside a police department locker.


Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey this week punished officers Scott Schweizer and Eric Dial, transferring the pair out of the Narcotics Strike Force to routine patrol in districts where they started as rookies. The officers were also each suspended for 20 days without pay and prohibited from using vacation days toward the unpaid leave.

Two racist stickers were found inside Schweizer's locker. One sticker read: "White Power." The other depicted a cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman, with the words "Blue By Day — White By Night."

...

An Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded that Dial created the stickers and put them on Schweizer's locker in the narcotics strike force headquarters in the city's Bridesburg section, Ramsey said.

White Power... stickers?

Excuse me?

Is this what the white supremacist movement is reduced to? STICKERS?

That's progress.

Source: Raw Story

Wowser
This was sort of inevitable.

North Dakota State University is investigating the NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta after a racially charged performance at the Mr. NDSU Pageant. The performance featured a student in black face depicting presidential candidate Barack Obama receiving a lap dance while two students dressed as cowboys mimicked anal sex in the background. The Saddle and Sirloin Club, a club for students at the Fargo campus interested in animal agriculture, performed the lip-synching number in front of an audience of 500 people.

...

A pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as the woman from the popular Internet video "I Got a Crush on Obama" and performed for another student who was wearing dark makeup and an afro wig.

In the background, two male students dressed as cowboys simulated anal sex while holding an Obama sign that one student ripped at the conclusion of the 30-second performance.

Wow. Blackface, Obama with strippers... this is some classy school they've got in North Dakota, huh?

Source: Minnesota Monitor

Bowling for Morons
This is just surreal.

Summary: On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly mocked Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance -- which Scarborough called "dainty" -- at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. Deriding Obama's score, Scarborough said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." He added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least." After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."

It's also what you'd expect when you hire a former Republican congressman as a TV host. The stupid, it burns!

Seriously, what possible relevance does the bowling performance of a Presidential candidate have? Obama is apparently not much of a bowler, let alone a regular one. But even if he was, and sucked, who cares?

Is bowling a major component of Presidential work these days?

Give me a break. Yet again, Republicans try to feminize the Democratic candidate (or hyper-masculinize Clinton), playing the gender bashing card in a sad, outmoded attempt to sway the white male bigot vote.

Are we really supposed to believe St. John McCain, 72, is a star athlete? Even ignoring the damage to his arms from the POW camp, I mean, he's a decrepit mummy.

Source: Media Matters

Basketball?
Fresh from bashing Obama because he's bad at bowling (and thus a woman), MSNBC had another host, Chris Matthews, go on the air to state that Obama was bound to be good at basketball because he's black.

Summary: On Hardball, discussing Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance at a campaign stop, Chris Matthews said to MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard, "You know, Michelle -- and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder." While showing the video of Obama's bowling, Matthews asserted, "[I]t isn't the most macho form there."

Wow.

Just... wow.

Source: Media Matters

Lou Dobbs!
So Lou Dobbs got sick of, err, being told not to be a racist by uppity blacks.

Racial healer Lou Dobbs explains how he's sick of "cotton pickin'" black leaders telling him how he can and can't talk about race (he catches himself at the last minute -- sorta) ...

What is WRONG with Cable News these days?

Source: Talking Points Memo

Third Graders?!
Third Graders!

WAYCROSS, GA -- It's the type of news you don't expect to hear coming out of an elementary school. Nine third grade students suspended at Center Elementary in Waycross for an alleged plot to attack their teacher.

"This plot was uncovered at the point that something dangerous was brought to the school," says Lt. Dwayne Caswell with Waycross Police.

Police say the students were hatching a plan to harm their teacher Friday morning. They even brought items from home to carry out the plan.

"They had a broken steak knife, a crystal paper weight, toy handcuffs, several items and tape and stuff," says Lt. Caswell.

THIRD GRADERS?!

Also, before people get all upset about the 'degeneration of modern culture', it's worth noting that child soldiers and killers and what not are hardly an uncommon phenomenon or confined to the West. It's also worth noting that the kids had a mix of weapons and, err, toys.

Yeah.

Source: First Coast News

Circus Slaves
Now this is just bizarre stuff.

ROME (Reuters) - Police rescued two teenage Bulgarian sisters from a circus in southern Italy which forced one of them to swim with flesh-eating piranhas for the amusement of guests, police said.

While the 19-year-old sister swam in a transparent tank, the younger, 16-year-old was forced into a container where the circus staff tossed snakes at her. She was injured by one of the snakes, police said.

Police arrested three Italians who ran the circus south of Naples, in Salerno province, accusing them of forcing the sisters to live in virtual slavery.

The women were paid 100 euros ($155.8) per week and lived in a trailer that had previously been used to transport animals, they said.

I would ask how people could watch that, but honestly, circus performers often do some pretty bizarre or dangerous things. At the Dark Carnival we saw a guy (a highly paid professional there of his own free will, of course) put his face in a pile of broken glass and have an audience woman stand on the back of his head. Well, step on it at least.

Still, you'd at least worry about the poor snakes, right?

Source: Reuters