Science Update

Clearing Some Tabs

Hilarious News
A Creationist museum is going under financially, due in part to some legal dispute over acquiring a perfectly good dinosaur skeleton so they could claim it was on the Ark or some nonsense. Now they're being forced to auction off their stuff to avoid complete insolvency, and the prize of their collection, a gorgeous Mastodon skull, is on the block.

Huzzah.

Source: CNN.com

Seems Like Someone Should Organize These Archives
So the Library of Congress recently found 3 new photos of Lincoln's second Inaugural, which previously had something in the neighborhood of one photograph on record. I guess from the CNN labeling, the photographic glass plates were mislabeled and so lost to history until now.

They're not particularly interesting visually, but still, more history being discovered in the back room of a museum. First a giant rat, now some glass negatives. Will wonders never cease?

Source: CNN.com

Another Nidoking Story
So some researchers at Rice University have made the blackest substance yet, a material that absorbs 99.9 something percent of visible light. This beats the old record used as the 'official' black by the National Standards people by three times, apparently.

It is composed of carbon nano-tubes, tiny tubes of tightly rolled carbon that are 400 hundred times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair. The carbon helps absorb some of the light.

These tubes are standing on end, much like a patch of grass. This arrangement traps light in the tiny gaps between the "blades."

The researchers have also made the surface of this carbon nano-tube carpet irregular and rough to cut down on reflectivity.

"Such a nano-tube array not only reflects light weakly, but also absorbs light strongly," said Shawn-Yu Lin, a professor of physics at Rensselaer, who helped make the substance.

Source: Reuters
H/T to Nidoking

Nobel Prize Means Nothing to High School
So one of the climate scientists from the UN panel that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore last year was scheduled to speak at a Montana high school, when the idiot school board pressured the principal to bring in an opposing view, because they thought that Global Warming as a theory is 'anti-agriculture'.

Ahem. Fuck you, you fucking nitwit farmer fucks.

So the principal canceled the event of a nobel laureate rather than find some moron to debate him. Which is better than giving the flat earth crowd another dog and pony show I suppose.

Americans just want to be ignorant, that's the only conclusion I can reach.

Source: Raw Story

Sums It Up Nicely
Clicky

One More Time (News)

Make your decision you know that it's long overdue....


Who Needs Working Fire Systems In a Warzone Anyway?
So the continuing spiral of corruption in constructing our huge (bigger than the Vatican), fortified (yet still in range of Iraqi mortars) compound... err, embassy in Baghdad gets worse every time you look. This time?

It turns out the fire systems, aka sprinklers, detectors and the like... doesn't work. Or to be more precise, since it's not been tested, is likely to catastrophically fail in the event of a fire.

Specifically at issue here are the underground pipes that feed high pressure water into the sprinkler system.. pipes which don't seem up to code.

WASHINGTON — The fire-fighting system in the mammoth new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who said that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

What reason could one have for cutting corners on such a huge project on which so many lives will depend, I wonder?

Last month, 19 days before he retired, State Department buildings chief Charles E. Williams certified key elements of the embassy's fire-fighting system as ready for operation, according to the documents McClatchy obtained.

His own fire-safety specialists and an outside consultant, however, had warned Williams and his aides repeatedly about numerous fire safety violations.

Moreover, Williams' thumbs-up was based on tests run by another contractor that was hired, not by the State Department, but by the company building the embassy, First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading Co. State Department officials, members of Congress and others have accused First Kuwaiti of shoddy construction and questionable labor practices.

Mindboggling.

Anyone want to lay odds that he has a financial tie to the contractors? This IS the Bush administration after all.

Source: McClatchy

Reason Enough to Vote For Him, Right Here
Reuters Headline: Corporate elite fear candidate Edwards

Apparently, according to various corporate lobbyists (aka, scum), the big money world is scared to death that Edwards might end up President.

That right there should secure your vote, ladies and gentlemen.

Source: Reuters

WGA Strike Grinds On; Oscars in Doubt
So the Writer's strike is grinding on due to complete intransigence on the part of the owners, despite their ever-mounting losses (now at 1.4 BILLION dollars to the Los Angeles economy), and now it looks like they're going to lose their single biggest PR move of the year -- the Oscars.

No red carpet, no Keira or Angelina, no best-dressed/worst-dressed lists, no goody bags, no limo rides, no parties and no champagne. Tonight's lacklustre Golden Globe awards will sound an alarm across Los Angeles: the show does not go on.

Hollywood is on strike and it is beginning to hurt the city built around the entertainment industry. People are out of work, the local economy is suffering and the biggest blow to both revenue and prestige could be yet to come - the cancellation of the Oscars.

See, the strike already killed the Golden Globes, because the nominees, and good for them on this btw, would not cross a picket line.

Usually one of the most glamorous events in the showbusiness calendar, tonight's Globes at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be reduced to no more than a one-hour press conference in which the winners' names will be read out. The losses incurred by caterers, hairdressers, hotels, jewellers, limousine firms, party planners, stylists and other support workers are estimated at $70-80m.

I actually feel badly for the collateral damage the strike is causing, but we all know who to blame -- the same people who won't share a couple percent of their revenue with the people who write their products.

For shame.

Source: The Guardian

Blackwater Coverup
So immediately after the shooting spree that led to the Iraqi government demanding that the mercenary company be thrown out of the country, Blackwater repaired and painted over all the vehicles involved.

Conveniently destroying all the evidence.

Blackwater SAYS there were lots of bullet holes and damage and such, and can produce unverifiable photographs to prove it -- but the actual cars are now mint.

So, either they were riddled with the enemy fire that most observers believe never existed, in which case Blackwater destroyed their best legal defense, or, in an attempt to obsfuscate their role in a spree killing, they repaired basically intact vehicles, then lied about what repairs they had done.

You can tell which theory I buy into.

Source: Raw Story/AP

Student Rights
Ahh, the University. A place of learning, of reasoned discussion, of disagreement in a civilized atmosphere.

Or failing that, a place where the administration can screw you because they feel like it.

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

...

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.


...


As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.”

I'm not entirely sure where oil comes into it, mind you, but, yeah, not a huge threat here.

The letter also said that in order to return as a student, a non-university psychiatrist would have to certify that Barnes was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and that he would receive “on-going therapy.” After he appealed, with endorsements from a psychiatrist and a professor, the Georgia Board of Regents “didn’t do the right thing and reverse the expulsion,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that defends students’ free expression rights and helped Barnes secure legal counsel.

Oh-ho, the changing goalposts defense! My how I love that one.

So his grand total of offenses runs: he made a collage, he had a link on his page to a photography contest, and he was cleaning his room to relax.

WHAT A MONSTER.

Yeeeeesh.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Cold, Uncaring Universe News

It's a big empty void, but it's OURS

Not that it returns my affection.

A Very Questionable Headline

Tuorla Observatory News, 20th October 2006:

OJ continues to surprise

The binary black hole AGN, OJ287 continues to provide astronomers with surprises. Long term monitoring of OJ287's optical brightness now indicates that the system may be precessing very rapidly, setting a record for general relativistic precession of orbits.

Basically the article is a release about two supergiant black holes, including the largest on record, orbiting each other. Every twelve years, the one comes close enough to hit the disc of gas orbiting the bigger one, and blammo, huge explosion of radiation.

Interesting story.

Terrible headline.

Source: University of Turku

What the hell is the University of Turku, you ask?

Good question.

Source: Wikipedia

Giant Death Cloud of Antimatter
So there's a giant cloud of antimatter around our galactic core.

This I did not know.

It seems to be linked to certain giant star pairs, which may be somehow emitting it.

This is nifty. It runs into regular matter and gives off a lot of gamma rays.

This is, err, dangerous?

I love the universe. It has ten billion ways to kill you.

Source: NASA

This Hole Blows (Story Not Related to Courtney Love)
So there's a hole in the universe almost a billion light years wide devoid of matter. No stars, galaxies, even dark matter seems to be gone.

It's a mystery, but very cool.
Source: NASA

New Scientist from November has an extensive article about how the hole may in fact be the imprint of another universe entangled with our own, bleeding antigravity into ours, thus driving out the matter and making the hole.

Unfortunately, it's behind a pay-firewall on the web, so I can't link to the full article. Sorry.

I'll probably type up a bigger explanation along with some theories as to just when the Great Old Ones will eat us tomorrow.

Source: New Scientist

Mars Sucks and I Hate It
So Mars is going to miss that asteroid after all. It just had to go and ruin my fun.

Stupid red planet. We should show it what for. We have thousands of nukes and no place to dump them.

Source: Sky and Telescope

Getting It Out of the Way

Gee, one big assassination and all the regular news goes on the back burner...

Let's try to go on with our news. It's, err, what she would have wanted.

With a Name Like Huckabee..
See, cause it sounds like Huckster... oh forget it.

Basically, Mike Huckabee is continuing to collect big money speaking fees while he's campaigning for President. This is generally seen as a big no-no, as it's both crass and potentially shady. I mean, are you paying to hear the guy speak, or The Guy Who Might Be President speak? A bit dodgy, which is why nobody does it. Well, except for the Huckster.

Compounding the issue is the fact that he gives most of his speeches on his 'signature issue' of personal weight loss. First of all, that's what our wannabe Preznit thinks is a pressing issue to deal with on the national stage at the moment. Secondly, his recipe of 'pray, exercise, and await miracles' for better health has struck more than a few doctors as suspicious.

In fact, it seems quite likely that his entire weight loss platform is a complete and total sham. There is a body of anecdotal evidence and medical conjecture, along with a suspicious timeline, to suggest that in fact his much vaunted weight loss had nothing to do with prayer, and everything to do with a Gastic Bypass surgery.

He then wrote a bestselling book and made a career out of fleecing people on how to lose weight the good old Baptist way. In other words, a classic snake-oil salesman.

Ahh, Republicans. Find a low, and they'll stoop to it.

Sources: Politico.com
Firedoglake

Ohio Again Innovates In Vote-Fraud
So Ohio has decided to remove their shame-of-the-nation touch screen voting machines. Good on them. Unfortunately, they plan to replace them with a system that takes hand-scored ballots to a central location and then optically scans then. Your ballot can't be read? They *say* it can't be read?

Too bad.

The ACLU is on this one, fortunately. If it was another state I might be less suspicious, but this is Ohio we're talking about here.

Source: Raw Story

What the Holy Fuck is Wrong With You People?
Sweeney Todd is fifth at the box office for the weekend, despite starting on Friday when I'm pretty sure some of the others only started on Christmas.

Seriously. More people by far went to see GODDAMNED NATIONAL TREASURE TWO than Sweeney.

What was it that turned you people off? The quality acting? The gorgeous cinematography? The classic story and musical adaptation?

Are people just that in love with Nicolas Cage's hamfisted acting? Is Family Friendly all that matters anymore?

I Am Legend did three times Sweeney's business, despite being a week old AND having terrible word of mouth. In a sure sign of the Apocalypse, ALVIN AND THE GOAT RAPING CHIPMUNKS did huge gross.

Even a little known political movie, admittedly staring Tom Hanks, did better money.

Sweeney only showed on half as many screens as some of the others and did a very nice per theatre take, but still. This is just wrong.

Source: The Associated Press

Bush Is a Complete Moron, Part 8930 of an Endless Series
I stole that title joke from The Rude Pundit. I'm in a hurry here, so call it an homage.

So anyway, it turns out that our national stem cell 'policy', the non-research research position that will surely slow medical progress and condemn millions to horrible premature deaths, was concocted after a right wing idiot read Bush a passage from a 1932 science fiction novel.

First, our 'President' has to have story time and be read to like a goddamned child. I wonder if he has a sippy box of juice on the floor of the Oval Office before naptime too.

Second, he's basing his real world science policy on decades old sci-fi. Admittedly, in this case it's A Brave New World, but still. Take a gander.

In a new piece in Commentary magazine, Jay Lefkowitz — who advised Bush on stem cells — reveals how the President formulated his 2001 policy. While Bush heard from a variety of groups on both sides of the issue, the turning point appeared to come when Lefkowitz read from Aldous Huxley’s fictional novel, Brave New World, and scared Bush:

A few days later, I brought into the Oval Office my copy of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 anti-utopian novel, and as I read passages aloud imagining a future in which humans would be bred in hatcheries, a chill came over the room.

“We’re tinkering with the boundaries of life here,” Bush said when I finished. “We’re on the edge of a cliff. And if we take a step off the cliff, there’s no going back. Perhaps we should only take one step at a time.”

It’s unclear what passage Lefkowitz read, but Brave New World opens with a scene at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where embryos are turned into full human beings — often dozens of pairs of “identical twins” to ensure “social stability.”

Which of course has nothing to do with what we're actually doing in the field of stem cell research. Clone armies are strictly confined to the Star Wars universe, you right-wing pinheads.

This story made me want to vomit in my mouth.

Source: Think Progress

PS: For a truly delightful interpretation one need only look to the first comment on that page.

Apparently no one has taken a copy of “1984″ into the oval office.

-G

Comment by GSD — December 26, 2007 @ 8:27 pm

Well said.

At Least They Look Nifty
So apparently the NYPD is looking to phase out their fossil fuel scooters in favor of an electric model. Quiet, sneaky and cleaner. All well and good, I suppose, if they work.

It took forever, but I found a site with pictures of the vehicle in question. Shockingly, it doesn't have the usual POS electric vehicle aesthetic. The photos look a tad touched up for dramatic effect though. Either a blur filter or someone has need of a tripod.

Then when I went to find the original story I found a CNN.com article with a picture. Sigh.

It turns out, not shabby at all, though.

Sources: Greener Machine
CNN.com

Breaking News -- English Paper Declares London World's Greatest City

After an exhaustive search, The Independent, a Brit paper, has found that London is the world's greatest city.

This is the biggest surprise since Cheney picked himself to be Vice President!

I'll leave my slightly cynical retort to Mr. Sweeney Todd.
 

There's a hole in the world
Like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London...

At the top of the hole sit a privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed
I too
Have sailed the world and seen its wonders
For the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru

But there's
No Place
Like
London!

Business News of the Day

Like the Wall Street Journal, only not for complete tools.

Ruh-Roh, Tax-Fraud
No, I don't know why Scooby Doo is saying that. I just had it pop up in my head.

In the actual story, it seems Fed-Ex has been cheating on its taxes for the drivers it uses in its Ground service, while simultaneously cheating said drivers out of benefits they're supposed to get. The IRS has taken a dim view of this, and fined them 319 million dollars for 2002 alone, in back taxes and penalties. They're facing similar audits for 2004, 2005 and 2006; why not 2003, I have no idea.

They could be looking at a billion dollars in IRS penalties alone by the time this is over. The Teamsters have been trying to unionize the Ground drivers and see this as a major victory.

Source: Reuters

Circuit Shi... Nah, That Pun is Too Easy
So the executives who ran Circuit City into the ground and made it lose 75% of its share price in a year have gotten big fat 'retention' bonuses in time for Christmas. This is the end result of their disastrous plan to fire all their senior employees and hire cheaper salespeople to replace them.

Great job, guys. Not that the ruling class is ever held accountable for anything.

Source: The American Prospect

The Business of, Err, Supercars
Just a comparison of the former Knight Rider KITT and the new one from oh-so-serious journalists at Popular Mechanics. Kind of boring and stupid, except to note that the new KITT lacks grappling hooks, flamethrowers or oil slicks.

No grappling hook!? An outrage good sirs.

Also, the car is being designed by the idiot who did the Batmobile in Batman and Robin.

Designer Harald Belker, who has created the Batmobile for Batman and Robin and a next-gen space shuttle for Armageddon, came onboard to give the new KITT. a unique look. "The goal was to make it look more aggressive without being hokey or garish," Belker says. "Maintaining as much of the original beauty of the Shelby as possible was important—and not just because of the Ford connection. It had to be simple yet believable as a superhero."

Yeah, like he knows anything about avoiding garish designs.

Source: Popular Mechanics

Monday Clear Out the Tabs News

Opera, Opera, sing to me... sing of news...

Lost World, Giant Rat
Another expedition into Indonesia's virtually unexplored jungle, another series of bizarre and adorable animals.

In particular, in the picture slideshow, note the pygmy possum and the unnamed, but GIANT rat. It's the size of a cat. A pretty big cat. And completely docile, it seems.

Source: AOL News

Sovereignty is Another 'Quaint' Concept
The U.S. Border Patrol has been firing tear gas and pepper spray into Mexico in response to stone throwing mobs, or just because they feel like it.

Innocent people live in perfectly legal housing in the area. The border people just don't care. They're shelling a sovereign foreign power, and they just. don't. care.

Technically folks, that's a declaration of war on Mexico.

Source: Raw Story

Insert Witty Human Interest Title
A reporter/news anchor with vitiligo, the disease that kills off pigmentation cells in the skin but is otherwise harmless, is telling his story and writing a book. The contrast between the man with and without his work makeup is astonishing, I have to say. I can't even blend a halloween mask in decently.

Nice of him to go public. I can see how a disease like that would be humiliating, and in his line of work it's a real economic issue too. I hope they find out how the disease works, if for no other reason than that it'd be useful science. Kind of curious, an autoimmune, or seemingly so, disease that has such a mild effect.

Source: USA Today

Curses
So they've been making an effort to actually sift through all the archaeologically useful trash the Romans left in their wake in England, of late. In particular, it seems, the Romans had a custom of inscribing a person's name in lead and throwing it in the hot springs at Bath to curse them.

A recent rare find shows that someone did something like that to an Emperor by stamping his face, via a coin printed with his likeness, into some lead.

The Romans were kind of odd.

Source: The Guardian

Maybe This Means the Daily Show Will Return Soon
So various deals are being cut with the WGA to get late night shows back on the air without strikebreaking or scabs. Letterman in particular, as he owns his show, rather than CBS, seems ready to tell his parent network to shove it and agree to the new terms to get back on the air full steam. Leno and Conan are having to settle for skeleton crews.

Still, the networks are obviously starting to lose their bargaining strength.

Source: Firedoglake

Historical Irony Department
While the U.S. considers requiring an internal passport to fly from one American city to another, Eastern Europe moves into the travel paper free EU zone.

It's like bizarro-land when your former communist states are acting so much freer and more open than America, but there you go.

Source: Raw Story

Human Strain of the Endless War Against Eastasia
A story in the Army Times about the toll new tactics in particular are taking on already exhausted units in Iraq, and how one 'rebelled' by following mental health advice and medicating themselves out of a murderous frenzy.

The article is noteworthy to my mind for three things. One: The military continues to ignore its own mental health professionals, dealing with post-trauamtic stress as cowardice. Two: a unit that had lost, in rapid succession, something like a quarter of its men to attacks and suicide, is still expected to serve in active duty. Three: the insurgents in Iraq have already adapted to our new heavier personnel vehicles by using massive under-the-road bombs (500 lbs of explosives) that flip the vehicles on their backs like turtles, where they burn with everyone trapped inside.

Fourth-generational war, folks. There's no way known to win one. Welcome to the 21st century, where your billion dollar bombers and heavy armor don't mean jack.

Source: The Army Times

News of the Mourning

Radio, radio play my favorite news.......

Lieberman Should Be Drowned in a Gunney Sack Like the Rat He Is

So 'Independent-Democrat' Lieberman has, without even waiting to see who the Democratic nominee for President is, gone out and endorsed Republican McCain.

Boy, Hillary, I bet you feel great about helping to beat the drums on his pet grudge against videogames now, don't you?

Source: Huffington Post

PS: The title of this post comes from a conversation I had with an EB employee back in 2000, when he explained that he wouldn't vote for Gore for President because of Lieberman and his anti-videogame crusade. He concluded with the statement I've reused as a title.

It's Officially OK to Rape American Women in Iraq Now
Seriously. The Justice Department refuses to prosecute one of their employees, a translator, who raped an American working in Iraq. The State Department even lets him keep his security clearance and work at translation.

Meanwhile, gay translators can go beat feet.

Source: Shakespeare's Sister

It's Official: Worms are Happy Eating Poo
The inventor of a worm-based septic composting system was forced to evaluate not just the health impact of his invention on the worms, but the *mental* health impact.

Ok, ok, I want to know if the worm suffer too. It's not as outrageous as the story presents it, though I wouldn't have said 'mental health', but simply asked for a stress assessment.

At any rate, the results are in: the worms love eating human waste.

Good for them I guess.

Source: Raw Story

Prissy Little Man Sells Kid's Christmas Gift for Profit
So an angry father sold off his kid's Guitar Hero III after catching the kid smoking pot in the backyard.

The article says it was a Wii version... is there EVEN a Wii version or is this another ignorant reporter?

Additionally, some idiot paid 9 grand for this copy. Argh, the stupid, it burns!

I don't understand this man. His son was clearly practicing! How can you get the full rock star experience if you're not occasionally performing bombed or stoned or smashed or what not? It makes no sense.

Just listen to this whiny little bitch of a father:

The naughty son, however, will not go without a present on Christmas.

"I am still considering getting him a game for his Nintendo. Maybe something like Barbie as the Island Princess or Dancing with the Stars ... I know he will just love them," the father said, tongue-in-cheek.

Ahahahaha... I'll run some more salt in my son's wounds and attempt to emasculate him in the eyes of society!

So funny. Or you could skip making the asinine point and donate some of that cash you pocketed to Child's Play, where poor suffering kids might actually want to play a Barbie game.

Source: Raw Story

A Word from the Pontiff
Pope decries seeking pleasure from drugs and other 'selfish' behavior.

Then he walked to his private car on his shiny Prada shoes and immaculate robes to hang out with his suspiciously close male secretary while, still, refusing to apologize for being a death camp guard during WWII.

Moral authority is a wonderful thing.

Source: The Washington Post

I've Got Those Sunday Morning News Blues

My baby left me... something about a train..... 

Let's make this rapid-fire so I can clear out my Opera tabs, shall we?

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way To Do Almost Anything
El Presidente sends out Christmas cards with a staunch religious message and an extensive bible quote.

Asks Walters: "Does this also go to agnostics, and atheists, and Muslims?"

"Don't you think it's a little interesting," Walters also asks, "that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card?"

I think it's a little offensive that the President sends out Christmas cards through the White House, actually. I don't care if he wants to do it as a private individual, but since when is it the place of government to tell us about Jesus?

There are, of course, alternatives, if you want to do something more fun and less preachy.

Sources: Raw Story
Slashfilm.com

Al Sharpton, Legal Eagle
So it turns out there's an FBI tape from 2003 where Al Sharpton asks for $50,000 to be donated to his political campaign with the promise that he'll land the donor a cushy contract if he does so.

Sharpton claims that this is not illegal, because he was only a candidate for office, not an elected official. If he's right and that loophole exists, then... just wow. Amazing.

Source: Philly.com

Mackris v. O'Reilly
Turns out that an enterprising soul has made an opera out of the sexual harassment case against Bill O'Reilly, he of War on Christmas fame. A sample has been posted to Youtube, and it is astonishingly funny.

Source: Jesus' General

Department of I Can't Help But Gawk
I really don't want to be the guy who slows down at a car accident to see the carnage, here (leave that for the esteemed Mr. Carlin), but you really have to see some things to believe them. You might have read or seen an article about the little girl in India born with four extra limbs, thought by some to be an incarnation of an eight-limbed Hindu goddess of wealth. Well, they performed a successful surgery to remove the extra appendages and she's apparently doing well. The reason I link this particular article is most of the way down the page, they include an x-ray of the girl pre-surgery.

Wowsa.

Apparently she didn't so much have extra limbs as a headless, torso-less conjoined twin growing out of her pelvis. Those were its arms and legs, not hers, that they cut out.

Ewww.

Here's hoping she does well in the future.

Source: BBC News

Department of Another Bad Idea
So it seems there's not actually any law governing how much money a charity has to spend out of what it collects on, you know, charity.

Seriously.

This has led, in turn, to a raft of less than scrupulous 'charity' organizations that take in money, supposedly for Iraq war veterans, and then siphon huge amounts off the top. Things like half-million a year salaries, for instance.

Lovely.

On the other hand, you have charities like Fisher House, which spend 90% of what they take in directly on charitable work. They don't do much in the way of advertising, so they rely on word of mouth and so forth to get the dollars. Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating and Wigu had a shirt on sale to benefit them for a while but unfortunately that option is no longer available. The roommate has one and I shall have to post a picture sometime. At any rate, if you're going to give money, make sure you check out who it's going to.

And if you want to give to vets, the Fisher House people are apparently a good place to send the checks.

Sources: Fisher House
The Washington Post

RIP, Julia Carson
Finally on a sad note, Julia Carson, long-time public servant and Indiana congresswoman, just died from complications of a long fight with lung cancer. Carson was a remarkable figure in Indiana politics, a black woman hated with visceral fury by the Republicans and the right wing, who used people power as a political machine and created a small Democratic empire out of the city of Indianapolis. By all accounts honest, hard working, ingenious and dedicated, she spent her life helping other people and fighting the sort of entitled idiots who have driven this country to the brink of self-destruction. She will be missed.

My own most vivid memory about Carson was the vicious campaign against her one election year when I was still a kid growing up half-time on the south side. The Republicans thought that doctoring up a photograph of Carson, using the old Nazi propaganda techniques (lighting from below, high contrasts, etc) so that she looked like a crack addict would play well in their advertising. It was one of the most baldly racist, ugly things I've ever seen in a political campaign, and a real harbinger of events to come, where in future elections Republicans would insinuate that black candidates were out to get your white women, or that Max Cleland, who lost 3 limbs serving his country, was in league with Osama Bin Laden.

Carson won the election, handily as usual. It takes guts to stand up to abuse like that. I always admired her for it.

Source: IndyStar.com

News News Who's Got the News

Around the world and almost up to date.

Department of Lenient Sentencing
An English creationist on vacation stabbed a Scotsman who believed in evolution rather than the bible after getting drunk. For some inexplicable reason he was only convicted of manslaughter, and then judge gave him a light sentence.

It's being billed as 'Creationist stabs Evolutionist'. As if being a rational human being, dealing with the world using facts and logic, makes you a special sub-class.

Geez.

Source: The Australian


No More Farm Tilapia From the Grocery For Me
It turns out China produces 70% of the world's aquaculture, and they apply the same, ahem, lofty standards to their fish safety as they do their toys.

In other words, loaded with poison and heavy metal.

Oh well. It's better to pay a little more than end up with a toxin-fried brain.

Source: The New York Times

Which leads us nicely into..

Department of Monstrous Evil
It seems that twenty years ago in England, a tanker truck poured a water treatment chemical into the wrong tank at a small town's treatment plant. Instead of going into a reservoir to purify water, the highly caustic aluminum substance went right into the tap water. 30,000 people were exposed. Immediate symptoms included, and I swear I am not making this up, skin peeling off, hair bleaching, ulceration of the mouth and lips sealing shut. Residents were told the water, filled with caustic crap, was safe, and that the bad taste could be diluted with a little orange juice.

The result, concludes the hitherto unpublished police account, was "a massive and instant contamination of the water supply."

Worse was to follow. For days, the water authority insisted the water was safe.

Officials took nearly a week to identify the cause of the poisoned water and ten more to reveal it in a tiny advertisement in the local paper.

It wasn't just aluminum, however, and the incompetence of the government compounded itself with further stupidity.

The water was, indeed, deadly. It contained not only aluminium sulphate but other noxious substances, too. As the acidic liquid travelled from the plant into people's homes, it corroded the copper pipes and their soldered joints, made of zinc and lead.

"We were drinking a cocktail of metals and god knows what else," adds Mr Cross angrily.

"We were also advised to boil the water.

"This was even more dangerous advice because it concentrates the contaminants.

"They kept flushing the pipes out for months after the incident.

"This will have stirred up debris in the bends and only have lengthened the amount of time the water was coming through the taps with all sorts of metals in it."

Flash forward to today. Cancer rates are now terribly high, neurological problems abound, and the facts are just coming to light.

Why the coverup? Why the deception when it would only cause further harm?

Because the government, then run by the Conservatives (the Brit equivalent of our own Republican party) was looking to sell off the city water company. Privatization strikes again.

We have also been handed an explosive letter which reveals how officialdom set out to downplay the Camelford disaster and any wrong-doing by the water authority, which was about to be privatised by the Conservative government of the day.

The letter from a water official to Michael Howard, then Minister of State for Water and Planning, states that a police investigation into the poisoning incident was viewed as "very distracting".

It goes on to say that any subsequent prosecution of South West Water would also "be totally unhelpful to privatisation . . . and render the whole of the water industry unattractive to the City".

Stories like these can make a person long to believe in hell. There's no punishment on earth to fit a crime like that.

Source: The Daily Mail

News of the Day

Because I know at least that my mother will snoop into this post. Have to keep up the supply of subversive material.

Department of Greedy Southern Baptists
It's been reported previously that Mike Huckabee, emerging Republican frontrunner, had continued the tradition of graft and living off your constituents that is a hallmark of the Southern bible-thump preacher. Now the Guardian has an article out detailing just how entitled this 'humble' individual feels he is.

A review of state records by the Guardian indicates that during his more than 10 years as governor, Huckabee received thousands of dollars in presents almost every year: gift certificates to sporting goods stores, clothing boutiques and Wal-Mart, a $3,695 pair of cowboy boots, a $500 belt and more.

But of course, he wasn't for sale or anything, was he.. oh.

Huckabee's chief source of largesse was Jennings Osborne, a Little Rock businessman who made his money in the medical testing business. In 1996, Huckabee's first year as governor, Osborne bought furniture for the governor's office and a fountain pen for the governor's use, and regularly sent flower arrangements. In subsequent years Osborne bought Huckabee gift certificates to department stores and clothing boutiques, 200 copies of a book Huckabee wrote, ties, flowers and air travel.

In 1999, he sent $200 flower arrangements to the governor's mansion every week, and bought pastries for the office staff, and $250 flower arrangements for Janet Huckabee on Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and her birthday. He bought Huckabee more than $20,000 of clothing and spent $7,500 on a party for the governor's staff and security detail, Huckabee's statements of financial interest show.

In February of that year, Huckabee appointed Osborne to the War Memorial Stadium Commission, which oversees the football arena where the University of Arkansas Razorbacks play in Little Rock

I bet he lifted money from the collection plate too, the sleaze.

Yeesh.

Source: The Guardian

Ye shall know them by their fruits
Another story has emerged of a second woman raped by a male co-worker at a KBR camp overseas, this time in Ramadi. She can't tell her story publicly because they've managed to force it into private arbitration.  At least someone is finally asking why the Army helped cover up these crimes.

In particular, Nelson expressed concern that in the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the U.S. Army doctor who examined her turned over the rape examination kit, thought to contain useful evidence, to KBR officials. In the letter, Nelson also asked for an investigation to determine how many rape examinations were performed by U.S. military doctors in Iraq, and what was being done to ensure the cases were prosecuted.

It's truly sick, in this country, that you can muzzle a rape victim with a clause in their employment contract. But it seems you can.

Source: ABC News (The Blotter)

It's a rape scandal in America though, which means it's now time for a game of Blame the Victim! Our contestant today is of course KBR, who are looking to avoid the bad PR for the whole imprisonment and illegal confinement thing.

Even they admit that they worked with the Army to cover up this heinous crime, though.

On one key point, Halliburton/KBR and Jones agree: the Army doctor who administered a rape evidence kit to Jamie after her alleged assault handed the kit to Halliburton/KBR security personnel. Halliburton/KBR's account did not mention the fate of the rape kit. It noted the company "did not interfere with the State Department's criminal investigation."

Oh, but they say they gave her toiletries! That makes it all better.

The Department of Truth will Rectify This Story Shortly
So the infamous, ludicrously trumped up 'terror' trial of a handful of lunatics in Miami who thought it'd be fun to pretend to be Al-Queda members, and were subsequently entrapped by an FBI agent to make a pro-Bush headline, has fallen completely into ruin.

Of the seven men, one was acquitted and the rest got a mistrial. Yet another dog and pony show of the Bush administration has collapsed under its own weight.

Source: The Guardian

Peace on Earth, Or a Small Section Thereof
New Jersey has decided to join the rest of the civilized world and ban the death penalty.

No cheap shot New Jersey jokes here. The Washington Post states that economics may have played into this decision as much as ethics, because it's cheaper to incarcerate than kill a prisoner.

I don't care, at the moment. Finally something decent has happened in this country. It's time to take notice.

Source: The Washington Post

To paraphrase Keith Olbermann, and Edward R. Murrow before him, Good Morning, and Good Luck.

News of the Day

Because life goes on, no matter how much it sucks.


Department of Dana Peroxide
From the woman who had never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

The White House on Thursday slapped back at Nobel laureate Al Gore saying he was wrong to call the United States the obstable to success at the Bali climate change conference.

"I think he is incorrect," spokeswoman Dana Perino said of Gore's remarks in Bali when he said the United States was the main obstacle to a climate change deal.

No, Dana, you don't think. You never think.  That's the whole problem. Honestly, you should try it sometime.

Source: Raw Story

Fresh from the Ministry of Love
The people who brought you the Taser torture device have been working on a version that fires more like a shotgun, with no pesky wires and a longer range. Oh, and four times the duration of the agony.

With the new "extended range electronic projectile," or XREP, the Taser has been turned into a kind of self-contained shotgun shell and can be fired, wire-free, from a standard shotgun, which police typically have in their arsenal already.

The first electrode hooks on to the target, the second electrode falls and makes contact elsewhere on the body, completing the circuit and activating the shock. It can blast someone as far as 30 metres away, and, unlike the current stun guns, whose shock lasts five seconds, the XREP lasts 20 seconds...

Isn't that lovely. Now they can fire round after round of debilitating torture into crowds of people.

But what if you want to hit an entire group of people with your lightning weapon? Have no fear, the mad scientists have a solution!

Besides the XREP, the company has developed a device meant to keep someone from approaching a certain area – a tactic called "area denial." "What if you could drop everyone in a given area to the ground with the simple push of a button?" asks a dramatic promotional video for the "Shockwave."

Taser has turned its weapon into a connected series of six darts arranged in an arc. The company says the device can be extended in a chain or stacked "like Lego," depending on the needs of the user.

Won't it be nice when they can just floor the entire flag waving, banner holding bunch of peaceniks from a distance?

Source: The Star

The Department of Unbelievable Gluttony
My friend split this with his girlfriend. Amazingly enough, they're both still in stable condition. Though I'd put my name on the wait-list for a pancreas if I was him. (do they transplant pancreases?)

Join the Club Department
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to hold two top aides to President Bush in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in its probe of fired federal prosecutors.

I've been holding them in contempt for years.

Of course, nothing will come of it.

As with many of Bush's battles with the Democratic-led Senate, the president may ultimately prevail since his fellow Republicans may be able to block the citations with a procedural hurdle.

Source: Raw Story

News of the Day (Monday Commute Edition)

Driving down the highway, try not to read this news.

A motley collection today.

The State Security Apparatus Thanks You for Giving Up Your Sense of Humor

I haven't actually seen Superbad, but I know an element of the plot is that a character gets a fake id with the obviously fraudulent name 'McLovin' in order to purchase booze, what with being underage and all. The DVD release of Superbad includes a replica of this ID as one of those 'bonus' freebies that usually are pretty lame. Lamer than this at least.

The license is an obvious forgery, much as it was in the movie itself. It doesn't look anything like an actual Hawaii license, it has a lenticular picture for the driver's photo (showing the movie character and his erstwhile disguise when you tilt the id to different angles, etc). You would have to be blind to confuse it with ANY Hawaii ID, let alone one that applies to whoever would be using it, who would look like neither one of the two separate photos on the card.

Some people, however, think that if it happens in the movies, it can happen here.

We're very pleased that Wal-Mart has taken prompt, corrective measures to comply with the City's request to protect the integrity of our driver's license. It was foolish of the movie studio to include this prop in the DVD, particularly because it could be used by unscrupulous people to deceive others who are unfamiliar with our driver's license. For example, those who saw 'Superbad' know the underage teenager used his fake Hawaii license to buy liquor," Mayor Hannemann said in a statement.

Wow. Being mayor of Honolulu must require you to live with your head permanently up your ass. Amazing.

Source: The Consumerist (make sure to check out the photos of the fake ID and a real sample ID for educational purposes)

Drink Away the Pain Edition
Some lucky bastard with a lot of money bought a very, very old bottle of Macallan scotch for $54,000 dollars, or about 13 and a half euros at the going rate. (A joke, folks. It has to be at least 25).

That would be just the thing to kill off the lingering sense of Kafka-esque horror upon learning that the Democratic leadership did nothing to stop torture for five long years under the Bush administration. Alas, beyond my price range. I shall settle, perhaps, for videogame violence, my standard, and far cheaper, catharsis.

Department of Nidoking Might Want to Start Eating At Home

So a guy had a hard time getting an order properly made at a Burger King, and it seems they slipped an unwrapped, possibly used, condom into his burger because he was deemed too demanding by the surly wait staff. The manager laughed off his complaint about, you know, getting a condom in his burger.

Uggh. Yeah.

Source: The Rutland Herald

Mike Huckabee is the Craziest Motherfucker Alive
I mean, it's bad enough he pressured a pardon board to release a convicted rapist over the pleas of his victims, who warned him that the man would kill and rape again, because the woman he had raped and been convicted of raping was related to Bill Clinton, distantly, and so the whole trial just HAD to be a conspiracy.

Really, that's bad enough.

But it turns out that he also supported....... camps of some sort.... for people with HIV.

Highlighting the new scrutiny of Mr. Huckabee’s record, The Associated Press revealed yesterday that as a candidate for the United States Senate in 1992, Mr. Huckabee said in a response in a 229-question survey that he believed that AIDS patients should be isolated from the public and that homosexuality was an “aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that posed a “dangerous public risk.”

Fears of AIDS spreading widely in the United States were common in the mid-1980s, as doctors struggled to learn about how the virus that causes the disease was transmitted. But by the time Mr. Huckabee answered the A.P. survey, it was well established that the virus could not be spread through casual contact.

Right up there with Margaret Thatcher, he is. Can't someone PLEASE, PLEASE find the inevitable stash of photos he's taken with little boys (he was a conservative minister after all) before the primaries are over? I'm already sick to death of this chump's smarmy voice.

Source: FireDogLake
Source: Jesus' General

Mitt Romney Hates America

Also, he's a member of a lunatic cult. But that applies to most Americans, so it's hardly a specific criticism.

Facing the continued 'ick' factor that so many in his party feel about Mormons, Mitt Romney felt a need to make a JFK-style speech on religion.

In case you weren't clear that this was his intent, he gave the speech in Texas, not far from where JFK assured the nation that he was not, in fact, a papist spy.

Which was a good thing to know, I suppose.

Romney, on the other hand, wants to assure you that he'll be a double agent for ANY religious cause. So long as it's a Christian one.. well, at least if you consider Mormons Christian. Which many don't, which is, in fact, the crux of his problem with the 'Values Voters'.

Some highlights:

America is a Christian Nation, The Constitution is Quaint

"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'

This is true, in the same way that our prisons are made for immoral and dangerous people; to CONTROL them. Remember, students of history, the Founders feared and to some degree despised the common American of that period, who was, admittedly, prone to anarchy, rabble rousing and militant insurrection. After all, that was how *they* got into power in the first place, exploiting those traits.

But I digress.

You Can't Be Free Without Church. Also, Freedom is Slavery

Try not to drink anything when you read this lest it come out your nose:

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

See, this assumes that the only purpose of Freedom is to go churchin'. Me, I think freedom is great for reading books, seeing movies, and hating jackasses like Mitt Romney. So we clearly have a difference of opinion here.

Also, since when has religion perished in the absence of freedom? Anyone remember the Dark Ages? How about the Wahabbists today? I don't recall a lot of civil rights amongst the Aztec either, but they did all right for centuries, human sacrifice and all notwithstanding.

Everything Good in History Ever Came from God

Another choice Romney quote:
"It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

Because all churches were in favor of abolition. Or civil rights. And none of them support the death penalty.

Firedoglake calls bullshit on this:

For all Romney says about history in this speech, this paragraph is proof that his knowledge is shallow indeed. Abolition of slavery, for instance, divided families, congregations, and entire denominations. The Presbyterians split in 1861, and didn't reunite until 1983, for crying out loud.

It's also proof of a subtle religious bigotry. Despite his claim of a "common course" based on "great moral principles," there continues to be great division among religious people over all kinds of issues. Committed Roman Catholics, for instance, interpret "right to life" to mean opposition to the death penalty; evangelical fundamentalists see the death penalty as a completely separate issue. Some religious groups embrace GLBTs, while others do not. Yet Romney, trying to reach the evangelicals who are moving toward Huckabee, blithely says in essence, "all religious folks have the same moral beliefs." Sorry, Governor, but your moral beliefs are much different than mine, and also much different from a lot of evangelicals.

Shove It, Unbelieving Scum

Romney the Conspiracy Nut:

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

That is most easily countered with a quote from Atrios:

This kind of intolerant horseshit is basically gibberish, but since words mean things let's try to figure out the implications of what Mitt's saying.


It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.



Really it would just be crazy if anyone tried to start a new religion in America... oh, wait.

Heh... teh funny.

But what about individual secularists?

Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.

The rest of you pagans can go fornicate with an iron stick.

Europe Looks So Good When He Describes It

I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away.

Woo! Party time in Europe! I'll bring the beads, you bring the sinning!

Seriously, what a horrible world, a place where people spend their lives outside the imposing, ossified edifice of ancient, organized religion. Oh, the calamity!

Don't Worry, Mitt Hasn't Forgotten the Scary Brown People

"Infinitely worse is the other extreme, the creed of conversion by conquest: violent Jihad, murder as martyrdom... killing Christians, Jews, and Muslims with equal indifference. These radical Islamists do their preaching not by reason or example, but in the coercion of minds and the shedding of blood. We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance.

INFINITELY worse. BOUNDLESS suffering. Mathematicians in the audience have probably felt their heads explode at this abuse of quantification.

Also, note: theocratic tyranny only comes in one flavor: Muslim. Nice to know that the Mormons don't, you know, oppress and control people or anything.

Argh. Stuff like this makes me want to drink. Drink a lot.

Afterword/Go Ahead and Try Us, Mitt

Just a bit of a positive note from Digby to help wash down this swill.

Update II: Here are some very interesting takes on Mitt's speech at BeliefNet.

Steve Waldman:


About three percent of the population are atheists or agnostics, according to a study by the Pew Religious Forum. Another 7.5% are “secularists” who have no religious affiliation and few or no religious beliefs or practices.

That means there are four or five times as many non-believers as there are Mormons.

Yeah. Bring it, God-boy.

Sources:
Eschaton
Firedoglake
The New York Times
Wikipedia (Wahabbism)
Hullabaloo

Thursday News

News news news


Department of Fatherland^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hHomeland Insecurity

So it turns out that the Bush Administration's biggest and most lasting contribution to National Security, the formation of the DHS, has...... well, not so much worked out, as catastrophically failed. If this was a photo blog, you'd now be seeing a picture of a bus, comically submerged, and the words 'Epic Fail!' pasted over it.

Where, oh where lord, to begin.

Failure By Design

First, a study done by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has concluded that the DHS is full of massive, catastrophic waste.

Shocking, I know.

In its report, CREW documents billions of dollars in taxpayer money that was lost on poorly conceived or never-implemented DHS programs, including $1.3 billion on an immigration program aimed at tracking people coming to and leaving the US. The program "has never worked as Congress intended," CREW alleges, naming US-VISIT the top "Failed Program" in its report.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was widely charged with failing New Orleans' residents after Hurricane Katrina, was awarded the dubious distinction as "most troubled DHS component." And the US Customs and Border Protection agency was "most criminal," according to CREW, because of the number of officials charged with protecting the border who have subsequently be charged with aiding illegal immigrants.

“The Department of Homeland Security is an embarrassment that would be comical if only our national security were not at stake," Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said in a news release. "The agency and its leadership must be held accountable for its failures and pushed to do better.”

Source: Raw Story

Republican Graft Sinks Ships

My personal favorite aspect of the failure of the DHS has to be the complete and spectacular blowout of the Coast Guard's Five Year Plan to upgrade its aging, creaky and overtaxed fleet.

It was a grand plan too. An entirely new set of ships, a massive upgrade to existing vessels, a state of the art, custom made intelligence gathering and surveillance system... the works.

But of course, being the Bush Administration, it had to flame out, and take your precious tax dollars down the drain with it.

First, being Bushies, they outsourced the entirety of design to private defense contractors and left it, unsupervised, in their 'capable' hands. Predictably, this was a very, very bad idea. The new flagship vessels turned out to have serious security flaws and be built out of components that, well, can't take the cold, despite being specced to withstand -40 below. Oops.

Then they started retrofitting the old vessels, according to plan. Only out of the first batch, 8 of them were so unseaworthy they had to be thrown away. They wouldn't actually, you know, float. At least, not for long, since they immediately started cracking apart. Another ship design is so heavy it's useless, and has been described as a 'brick'.

You know you want to have bricks instead of ships. Lolz.

The Coast Guard has since had to beg the Navy for ships to make up for these losses, and the program is SEVEN BILLION over-budget. The Coast Guard is now actually less effective than it was before.

Lovely, huh?

Source: The Economist
Source: CREW (Note: PDF)

Gutsy Move Department

I was impressed with Morales when I saw him on The Daily Show, and I'm even more impressed now.

Morales has apparently been in something of a power struggle with his political opposition, and he has a simple solution: Let the people decide. Right here, right now. The opposition holds the provincial governments, he holds the national one. So Morales has quite literally dared his opponents to hold a referendum, right now, to retain their offices, alongside himself, naturally.

That's just unheard of. It's like Russian Roulette with a vote.

Source: The Associated Press

Department of "Duhhh"

Results are in on the Bush Administration's anti-science, anti-reason, anti-education approach to sex and social policy.

Teen pregnancy is up! For the first time in 14 years!

The birth rate had been dropping since 1991. The decline had slowed in recent years, but government statisticians said Wednesday it jumped 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Wow. Lovely.

Source: Raw Story

Artistic Anarchy

So a world-famous graffiti artist has plastered a security wall designed to divide up, well, let's face it, Palestinian land from the pesky natives with some subversive art. It's hilarious stuff too. Not to mention, err, some security you have there. It probably takes less time to punch a small hole in a concrete wall than to paint an entire series of graffiti pictures.

Source: Raw Story

News Update

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Pineapple Conspiracy but were afraid to ask.

Ok, so nothing on the PC; it's too dangerous. Instead, have some news.

Scientology is Bad for You, Mmmkay?

A German official is pushing to have Scientology, which is already considered a for-profit enterprise and swindle machine in the country, banned. Presumably from the country. Initially that strikes me as being a bit much, but then again, we ban the Mafia and other criminal organizations that have killed innocent people for money.

Source: The Associated Press

Brains, the Other White Meat

So a mysterious neurological illness is sweeping the employees at a meat processing plant who, until recently, were charged with removing the brains of pigs with compressed air guns. A lovely task I'm sure. Doctors are baffled, but the symptoms match a more or less incurable autoimmune disorder; the patients seem to recover, which leads them to conclude it isn't likely a prion disease like Mad Cow (though I think it's a bit soon, really; the proper incubation period on some of those prion diseases is several years, so these people might all drop dead half a decade from now).

Of course, the plant is still operating and selling to the public. Because, you know, we can't take any proactive health measures whatsoever. Mystery plague in a meat packing plant? No positive ID on cause? Could be a contagion wending its way through the food supply? NO PROBLEMS!

God.

Source: AP Features/Raw Story

Golden Compass Movie Removes Troublesome Atheism

So the author of the Golden Compass and its two sequels is a public Atheist. His books are full of bitter religious critique, against Christianity in particular. Hollywood wants to make them into a Narnia style blockbuster. The solution: remove all his ideas on religion!

Yeah. Ok. That doesn't smack of crass conformism at all. Meanwhile we have Dominionist whackos who scream bloody murder if they can't put their nativity scene on the courthouse lawn, and who fret endlessly about there being enough Christ in Christmas.

Gag me. Not the way Pullman's being gagged, but gag me nonetheless.

PS: Note the way CNN sells this story. Golden Compass Selling Atheism to Kids? GASP. SOMEONE MIGHT SELL AN INTANGIBLE BELIEF TO YOUR CHILDREN. IT IS AKIN TO AMPHETAMINES. ATHEISM IS THE METH OF THE MASSES
Source: CNN.com

Middle East Roundup

Let's see. Helen Thomas took Dana Peroxide to task a few days ago, and the video has been making the blog rounds. Basically Thomas had the gall to ask our Press Secretary if we'll ever be out of IraqIranWherever, and it led to a nasty spat. Thomas got off the best line by far of course, a simple statement about the Administration's supposed regret over civilian casualties:

'Your regret doesn't bring back a life'

That should go on bumper stickers.

Source: RawStory

In other news, a reporter covering Lebanon for The National Review Online, a right wing lunatic site attached to a right wing lunatic magazine, has been outed as a fabulist and hoaxer after a series of his wild stories were debunked or came into question. Amongst the questionable items? That Hezbollah had developed a 'delayed-acid' bomb that when detonated would make a car's chassis melt in half and the back fall off, Loony Tunes style.

Seriously. They published this.

Sources:

The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post (Specifics on the Acid Bomb)
Jesus' General

Finally, Harry Reid is supposedly considering yet another vote on Iraq, presumably to force El Presidente yet again to dash the hopes of everyone in uniform right before Christmas. This is the right track; I'd say, in fact, don't hold votes on anything else. Just Iraq, every day, all through December and January. People are sick of this insanity, and if they're reminded of it often enough, they just might do something about it. Now's the ideal time, the pro-GOP media conglomerates are running out of TV shows to dull the collective wit.

Source: The Hill

Double Length Superspecial Interblag News of the Day

Not all politics, something for everybody this time.

So many interesting bits of weirdness around today, it's hard to get started, so I might as well hop into it.

Fuckwit College Editorials
Boy do we ever get a lot of these around here at IU, in our own paper, the Indiana Daily Student (or as it was always called in my undergraduate days, the Indiana Daily Stupid. Not the cleverest riposte, but incredibly accurate)

In this case, at the Daily Texan, we have a college age male actually trying to make the case that women wearing pants are evil, and that it would be best for all concerned for them to submit to his 'benevolent' domination.

Yeah...

Source: Feministe

Guitar Hero(ine)

While I can't agree with everything said in this article (like the claim that a guitar shaped like a woman's leg in fishnets is somehow an assault on the senses, a visceral attack), I have to admit, the skimpy outfits, heavy promotion of Axe bodyspray and its assorted floozies within the game, to the point that it interferes with gameplay.. that's not a good sign. Activision appears to think that, you know, they should toss away a good portion of the next-gen gaming market share, which includes women, families, and what you might term 'soft-core' or 'casual' games (I prefer soft-core myself just because a: it'll rile some oversensitive types up, and b: all consumer gaming is casual. Game testers and programmers do the non-casual gaming, and that's called WORK, boys and girls), in order to court the drunken frat boy market. It's worked before; look at the sports heavy initial lineup for the original Xbox.

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea in this day and age, when the Wii stalks the earth.

Source: TheCurvature.com

Apparently Rock Band, by the original creators of Guitar Hero, takes a much more balanced, and less commercially crass approach. You might want to stick with that one.

Source: Feministe

Crazy But (Mostly) Harmless Cult Alert:

So in Italy, it seems, for decades, a sort of loose cult of artisans crafted an incredibly elaborate series of cave/vault like churches underground, without permission from local authorities. They did this competently enough that the structures are sound, and due to their neglecting to pay taxes on it or inform the authorities or what not, they're now in possession of the government.

It really is amazing what nuts with time to spare can accomplish. The work they did is amazing. Yet the art itself is uninspired and tacky. It's like a children's playground for hackneyed neo-paganism.

Still worth a look-see.

Source: The Daily Mail

Torture in Lieu of Ticket:

As picked up by the excellent Digby, there is now a video floating around on Youtube of a cop torturing a man for refusing to sign a confession on a traffic ticket. You read that correctly.

I sort of expect that sort of behavior, really, but the idiot cop forgot he was on his dashboard camera the whole time. Needless to say, there's a major lawsuit forthcoming, and good on the taser victim for that. We now live in a country where if you fail to lick the boots of your traffic cop, they can torture you with high voltage. Bravo.

Source: Hullabaloo

Random Wikipedia Coolness of the Day
Birds that vocalize don't have a larynx, like we mammals, they have a syrinx. This structure lacks vocal cords but otherwise serves the same function, with a twist -- it's located farther down the throat, where the lungs branch off in the bronchial tubes. As a result, some birds can sing two sounds at once.

This is wicked cool.

Source: Wikipedia (duh)

Also, here's a Gobi fish that lives symbiotically with a shrimp. The shrimp is mostly blind, so it digs a burrow for both, and the fish acts as a lookout when they're above ground level. neat.

Source: Wikipedia

Finally, did you know that the Poinsettias you get at holiday time are produced using a deliberate infection by a little known category of bacteria called Phytoplasmas? See, without the infection, they produce a single stem, not the cute bushy arrangement full of flowers that people love. So they dose the plants with a disease to alter that. This is somewhat similar to the striped tulip thing the Dutch get mocked for. Apparently, striped tulips are now produced without the disease that originally caused so much adoration.

Sources: Wikipedia (Poinsettia: Cultivation), (Phytoplasma), (Tulip [Introduction to Western Europe])

Marilyn Manson, Perhaps Crazy After All:

Having most recently made the news for bottling his own brand of the highly overrated absinthe, Manson is now getting deeper embroiled in a lawsuit brought by his former bandmate (who operated under the equally cheerful name Madonna Wayne Gacy), for basically embezzling band funds.

To buy human remains. Lots of them.

Included in the list of alleged props: masks made from skin and the skeleton of a little Chinese girl.

Seriously.

Source: The Daily Mail

Science and Morality Watch:

A tragic story about a new baby that has a horrific degenerative disease that causes Alzheimer's like symptoms as young as five, and death before adulthood. It's your standard autosomal recessive genetic disorder, so both parents have to give you a faulty gene. There is a test to determine if you have the gene, it seems, and you're supposed to have the test done if your family has a history.

This woman didn't do what might be argued is due diligence and was unaware of a family member who had a child die of the same illness months before. Now she has a kid that will know nothing but a life of increasing suffering as his own cells die from a glut of cholesterol piling up like toilet paper in a clogged sewage line.

Why is it that people rush into breeding? Why can't they get a comprehensive DNA battery done before they do so? Why for that matter don't we test all fetuses in the womb, to see if we could spare them from, you know, this ghastly and unspeakable, untreatable hell? I know I'll get called a Eugenicist for saying that, but fuck. I'm not the one who is putting a child through five years of torture.

Source: The Daily Mail

Well, that's about it for the news today. Very little in the way of mainstream politics that caught my eye; the whole cell phone tracking scandal I already posted about, and the grind on the FISA bill and Congressional oversight continues apace.

Peace out, word to your mother.