extraordinary circumstances

The Therapist finds two other Senate sellou... er, compromises have been reached.

Clinton's Teflon Coating

Provided in part by the L.A. Times.

The 2nd commentor got it right: "The only problem is that there’s so much (Clinton dirty laundry) — the land deals, the politics, the business stuff - that it’s hard to keep it all straight."

LGF

Little Green Footballs is (are?) keeping track of "the religion of peace".

space image

Buzz Aldrin, one of the men who planted the U.S. flag on the moon, hopes to re-ignite children's interest in the space program:

Today's children don't have a realistic impression of space or space travel... (but) it's not the kids' fault. Those working in the fields of math, science and engineering — the people who were inspired by the accomplishments of Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and others during the space exploration boom of the 1960s and '70s — haven't reached out enough to capture the youngsters' interest.

It's a fine goal, but I don't think the first generation of space travelers started with a realistic picture of space travel either.

funny pic

I think the German translation of "Texas Limo" is "dachshorse".

EU-oui, that stinks!

Found via the Belmont Club's temporary HQ, TimesOnline's Tim Hames refers to the EU Constitution as "a cross between the Berlin telephone directory and the prophecies of Nostradamus" :) Read the rest.

science update:

Scientists mistaken about size of Andromeda galaxy by a factor of three, yet remain sure of global warming.

Prisoner Abuse

Why aren't we being shown this kind of torture photo as often as the Abu Ghraib photos? Could it be because they actually show prisoner abuse?

they've got to be kidding...

Via Emergent No, this story is good, but a few of my readers should be alarmed by the picture at the top.

red provence blue provence

Powerline has an interesting map of the EU voting results in France. Instapundit and No Oil For Pacifists have extended commentary and links.

randoms

Maybe this would be funnier if I had actually seen the show.

Joe Friday had it right.

Set the slaves free!

What was that about no connection between Saddam and terrorists? Hm?

No Oil For Pacifists takes on the dogmatic cult of secularism.

Can you pretend to be a blue-stater long enough to infiltrate the enemy?

These calculators are useful.

Go read PlaidBerry's Rules of Engagement in the Culture War, and the three previous posts.

Clientcopia has many amusing anecdotes of the technical- and/or design-challenged. Here are three of the latest.

"Please call back during normal business hours, unless you're already dead."

"What kind of idiot breaks a hole in the hull of his boat during a storm, just because he doesn't like the guy at the tiller and thinks the storm could have been avoided?"

Spoon's Filibuster Deal for Dummies.

Homepages for two American crop duster airplane manufacturers: Thrush and Air Tractor.

Photos of strange aircraft and toy planes.

Dustbury found this weird top ten list.

Paper starship models.

government, taxes, & theology

CrosSwords asks if anyone remembers the US Constitution.

Blasphemy Law?

If they pass this law...

condemning bigotry and religious intolerance, and recognizing that holy books of every religion should be treated with dignity and respect.

Whereas believers of all religions, including the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, should be treated with respect and dignity.

...the NEA and ACLU (and others of their ilk) will be illegal. Let's hope.

Also, this moral retard would be locked away because of his silly tantrums.

new words

According to ffwd, The Washington Post asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here is an edited version of this list;

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very, high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is, like, sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a totally serious bummer.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

this just in:

Scientists remain confused about water and sunlight, yet have no doubts about global warming.

bad gas

No, it's not the 99-cent special at Taco Quasar. ;)

Some Seattle gas stations were distributing bad gasoline. Could be a refinery problem, but given the environuts in western Washington state, I wouldn't be surprised if it was an act of eco-terrorism. Stay tuned.

my first political cartoon

Okay, so it's nowhere near Cox & Forkum level, and it could be cleaned up a lot, but here's my first ever political cartoon. Click on the thumbnail to see it full size.

new titlebar

i just made a new titlebar for the site. hope you like it!

if it displays wonky or you have trouble viewing it, let me know & tell me which browser and platform you're using.

random, etc.

If Newsweek had said that someone had burned a koran and beheaded its owner, would that have been okay?

Varifrank's indignation: foreign and domestic. (profanity)

Powerline wonders:

"Year after year, the American people vote for conservative candidates. But it just doesn't matter. You can vote for conservatism, but you can't have it. No matter who gets elected, government programs spiral ever farther out of control. And--especially tonight--one really wonders whether there is anything the voters can do about it."

Interesting synthetic materials.

"Think Kafka", in reverse.

short vacation

new posts soon...

worth waiting for

Bill Whittle of Eject!Eject!Eject! has a new essay: Sanctuary - Part 1 and Part 2. Go read the whole thing.

Duuude, that's eeevil...

Go read "The Case for the Empire" and "Star Operation Freedom" (mild profanity, major weirdness).

pop culture revisionism, pt.1

Grease is not the word.
It has neither groove nor meaning.
Grease is not the time, nor the place, nor the motion.
It most certainly is not the way we are feeling,
except after eating the 99-cent special at Taco Quasar.

Ralphie coins a phrase

For those of you living in a cave (what are you doing with internet access?), there's the slang term "old school". Paralleling "back in the day", it means passe, obsolete, old-fashioned, as in "We knew about that years ago when I was in school".

In light of Rathergate, Eason Jordan, and Korangate, Hugh Hewitt coins a similar phrase "old media", which implies bogus, slanted, or poorly edited material. As in "No way could that be true, dude, that's so old media". Or "She didn't say that - you heard the old media version".

Use it early, use it often.

Liars Exposed II

IMAO observes that "Newsweek has blood on its hands, and directly caused more deaths with their single lie than any of the "torture" done by the photo-happy dopes at Abu Ghraib". Doesn't MSM have a wonderful set of checks and balances?

---

UPDATE: Reporting about the Newsweek scandal, our local news just said the magazine "is worried that the damage may be irreversible." Here's a scoop for those fact-challenged morons: DEATH IS IRREVERSIBLE, AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN. YOUR WORDS CAUSED SEVENTEEN DEATHS, AND NOTHING YOU SAY CAN REVERSE THAT.

That insipid line was followed by George Stephanoppulagus doing his well-practiced song-and-dance trying to shift focus away from the real issues. I've got another scoop for them: YOUR "APOLOGY" IS PATHETIC. BY YOUR EVASION TACTICS, IT IS OBVIOUS THAT YOU HAVE NO REGRETS, EXCEPT THAT YOU DIDN'T GET ANY PHOTOS OF THE CARNAGE.

---

UPDATE 2: Too little, too late.

---

UPDATE 3: We wish...

We also wish "more Americans would actually think about the harm these draft-dodging little Trotskyites have done to this country with their tireless campaign of hatred against conservatives."

---

UPDATE 4: "Even if (flushing the koran) did happen... what of it? Does that constitute some sort of Geneva Convention violation? In view of the hand-chopping and rape rooms of Saddam Hussein, maintaining that argument borders on the macabre."

---

UPDATE 5: Don't blame the Pentagon, Newsweek, we know what you did.

true colors

Molten Thoughts on 'Sheets' Byrd and the new KKK:

Perhaps Klansman Senator Byrd will have his last hurrah inveighing against another black American who won't sit down and shut up when told to do so by white Democrats. Perhaps black Americans will return to the Republican fold to some small extent, and thus force the Democrat leadership to do more than take their votes for granted. Either way, I enjoy seeing the Democrat facade on support for racial and ethnic minorities torn down whenever a hack politico smells fear.

so many mudslingers...

Notice the dig on blogs in this story about a Castro speech.

Speaking for up to four hours at a time, Castro thunders with indignation and laughs at the absurd as he reads the news before a live audience of Communist officials, occasionally pausing to flip through a scattering of papers in front of him hunting for a quotation.

The result is remarkably like a televised version of an Internet blog, references to outside news sources tightly wrapped in personal commentary.

The article is remarkably like a corporate version of an Internet blog, references to outside news sources tightly wrapped in personal commentary.

I'm not sticking up for Castro. Ambos lados son ridículos.

state of the nation

Confederate Yankee has two serious reads about the state of the nation.

and now for something completely different...

Marla Swoffer found this: Doubly Positive.

Speaking of...

desecration:

you people eat it for breakfast on your corn flakes. You use your mosques and holy sites as munitions dumps, you use then as sniper nests. So what’s a little water on a copy of your holy text?...

If the US wanted to desecrate a holy site, dontcha think they could just launch one of those nuclear missiles at Mecca? That would get your attention pretty quick now wouldn't it? So what's stopping the yanks? Oh, it's that common decency that those 'infidels' have in their religion... it's something you might want to check into...

Liars Exposed

(Newsweek commentary has been updated and moved to a new post.)

"In the name of multiculturalism, Europe will lose the culture that made such an idea possible."

How shady it is that our modern leftists and peaceniks can detect fascism absolutely everywhere except when it is actually staring them in the face?

You should see what's in Harry Reid's file...

A dem-witted and misleading billboard.

C-BS just never learns.

When they're not lying outright, they're just perpetually wrong.

the randoms, again

Support Cuban Liberty.

Check out these before-and-after maps of gay "marriage" state referendums.

He's back. He's on his way back. Unfortunately, Meathead's back too.

Makes me almost miss Clippy (especially the language) . . . And, heads up Gates, Windoze won't last either.

Can we PLEASE get serious about border security?

History is written by the winners, but it's rewritten by losers.

Al-QaBoom!

The left is not entirely a death-cult.

Jeopardy - Special Edition: CNN

Correction: Liberal journalists are extremely annoying, LaShawn.

Insurgents? Insurgents?!? We don't need no steenking insurgents!!

Downtown Fort Worth

I miss Leonard's Subway.

Leonard's Department Store used to have a subway line to shuttle customers to their downtown Fort Worth store from a free parking lot by the Trinity River. Here's a picture of one of the original cars. Those cars were replaced by these tres-70's cars when the Tandy Center was built. The subway line was closed three years ago, in part due to low ridership, and in part to build the new Radio Shack headquarters.

UPDATE: Here's four more pages of Leonard's/Tandy's subway images, and more about Leonards Brothers history. I also made a correction - the subway closed in 2002, not last year.

The downtown courthouse is magnificent. Its addition is wretchedly, monstrously, and hideously abominable.

Don't get me started on the Firestone Apartments, though. The fat-cat developers (which were likely in cahoots with the city administration) booted my great-aunt out and bulldozed the house that the family had owned since the mid 30's. Grrr. Eminent domain, my pinkytoe.

(p.s. Here is the home page for the architecture links.)

good points

Varifrank measures up the UN, and finds it lacking. (mild profanity) Also read this chilling tale of crushing of dissent in old LA.

Dustbury finds value in rural people.

Educational Materials For Sale

"Learning Multiplication" textbooks. $10 each. Two for $25.

short week

Due to some minor eyestrain, I need to take a bit of a break from all non-essential CRT radiation. So there will be little or no blogging for the rest of the week. Here's a few links before I go:

Newspapers in decline, women and minorities hit hardest.

That 90's show is in reruns.

Huff Mommy & the Too Dim Crew made "a great new laundry detergent to replace Windex."

The Church of Gaia is a hall of mirrors.

Compare and contrast.

It's a good idea, so it won't be considered.

It's a bad idea, so it's a shoo-in. Next step: barcode-on-the-hand-and-forehead. Count me out.

Two from vodkapundit: fisking robertson and bogus bailouts.

Warning: Do not take this drug internally. Do not operate heavy machinery, kitchen utensils, dice, or pencils while under the influence of this drug. Halitosis may reach toxic levels while using this drug. Prehensile tail growth and pancreatic spasms are usually mild to moderate. Do not use if you are pregnant, dormant, flippant, or adamant. Capsules may escape the body supersonically from between fingers, toes, and ribs. This drug may cause dizziness, insomnia, narcolepsy, bulimia, inflammation of the knees, swelling of the earlobes, uncontrollable sweating, triskadekaphobia, and spontaneous limb loss. Take one capsule six times daily. Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you.

Snuff Films

Practical Penumbra shows us that Million Dollar Baby is actually a remake of an earlier film. Since the Academy rewards death-cult propaganda, look out for more movies, a TV adaptation, or more video releases soon.

Sick.

News From The Future!

10:37 PM, Saturday May 7, 2005

A disaster, unprecedented in the annals of human history, has occured at MIT. An event which planned to bring together time travelers from all eras, has ended abruptly with the utter destruction of the Institute and the surrounding state of Massachusetts.

Due to fantastic publicity which, as it seems now, reverberated throughout the galaxy in millenia to come, turnout was dramatically larger than expected. Preliminary estimates show that approxmately 732 octillion visitors showed up simultaneously at 10PM EDT at the precise advertised coordinates of 42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west. The mass of partygoers, along with their time-traveling vehicles, spontaneously collapsed under their own weight, and created a thermonuclear explosion which was heard as far away as the Bikini Atoll.

It is hoped that the writing of this news report will serve as a warning to the future, and prevent the necessity of the writing of this news report. If the events described herein did not occur in your timeline, this reporter has succeeded.

UPDATE: Disaster averted! No confirmed time-travelers appeared!

yeah, random

News you won't hear on TV.

Varifrank's profanity is entirely warranted against comments by Putin and Schroeder. See also this related Scrappeface post.

Oh no! It looks like this guy is causing problems again...

If you think potholes are bad in your city, take a look at this. Ouch!

It's an odd 'science' that will not endure investigation, criticism and scrutiny. It's also odd when scientists rely on consensus instead of facts.

Again, I have no affiliation with the city of Hattiesburg MS, and know nothing about its politics. But it still would have been cool to see a politician named Darth "Scooter" Borgman elected.

Sig Heillary.

It takes a while, but Varifrank makes some interesting points about Mexico.

ACLU hypocrisy, part 435987.

I'm stewed, dude!

George will miss the point.

Sympathy for the Green Bean, v.2

Vegetable-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that vegetables -- contrary to stereotype -- are intelligent, sensitive entities no more deserving of being eaten than fish. Called the 'Think Vegetatively' Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.

"No one would ever pull a fish out of the ground and eat it." said PETV's Fred Fennel. "Once people start to understand that vegetables are just as intelligent as we are, they'll stop eating them."

The grass roots campaign is still in the germination stage and will likely face a hailstorm of skepticism. Most established health organizations recommend vegetables as part of a healthy diet, and many academics say it is wrong to portray the intelligence and pain sensitivity of vegetables as comparable to fish. University of Seattle scientist Rose Jimson contends that "while vegetables are very complex organisms that do all sorts of amazing things, to suggest they are aware and concerned about what's happening to them, that's simply not the case."

For years, the PETV, headquartered in Greenleaf, CA., has campaigned against farming and gardening, challenging claims by Jimson and others that harvested vegetables do not feel pain. PETV is also concerned about the high levels of manure in the environment of many vegetables.

The 'Think Vegetatively' Project has two goals: to depict the common practices of farming as cruel, and to convince consumers that there are ethical reasons for not eating vegetables. The project was inspired by several recent scientific studies, which discovered that certain vegetables' intelligence actually exceeded that of the researchers.

"Vegetables are so misunderstood because they grow in such distant foreign lands, like Nebraska," said Robin Carrotson. "They're such interesting, fascinating individuals, yet they're so incredibly abused." University of Edinburgh biologist Kale Green agrees, "Most people dismiss vegetables as dimwits, but in many ways, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of 'higher' vertebrates, including activists and protestors."

"There's no doubt that vegetables of all kinds are capable of learning fairly complex tasks," Green said. "They can learn from their environment and experience." Sao Paolo University researcher Rudy Baga de Treesa, for example, reported that the Chilean cave beet is able to draw detailed mental maps of its surroundings in Photoshop and post them on the internet.

To press their argument, PETV activists plan demonstrations starting next month at selected vegan restaurants and salad bars nationwide. PETV also will propose changes to standard farming practices, such as requiring that farmers perform Broadway musical numbers for the crop before the harvest.

National Farm Institute president Larry Redcorn says "It's irresponsible to discourage people from eating vegetables at a time when doctors and dietitians advise eating them twice a day. If anything, we should be eating more vegetables." He also questioned the high level of support for sparing cute vegetables such as tomatoes and carrots yet minimal concern for species like bok choi and jicama, suspecting a root of ethnic bias in those preferences.

The PETV, ignoring such criticisms, remains undeterred. Her voice quivering with emotion, Robin Carrotson exclaimed, "Won't someone please think of the cabbage!"

---

Inspiration for this came from this article, which was so bizarre it required little editing to produce a 'Scrapplefaced' version. For a somewhat more violent take on the topic, see also the lyrics to "Carrot Juice Is Murder".

Update: Welcome Carnival of Comedy #3 visitors.

Point of View

I'd rather hang out with these people than snobs who make fun of people in wheelchairs.

random again

Molten Thought: "Speed doesn't kill. Speed differentials kill."

(pg) 15 Reasons NOT To Like Star Wars.

Lileks has blog dreams too.

Ol' Daniels went down to Baghdad,
he was lookin for an Army camp.
He'uz in Irawq,
in a big Blackhawq,
and the weather was far from damp.

Two angles on one idea.

Good quote from Charleton Heston from Echo Zoe's collection.

This should tell us something about the EU.

Molten Thought has the best solution for PBS.

The sky is not falling.

(PG13-rated) Heyyy, nice laaadieees! :)

Houston Astro Craig Biggio is on track to break the all-time record for getting hit by pitches.

The shrimp are shaking in their shoes.

Hatless in Hattiesburg (more specifically this page) is the top Google result for "cool random stuff" - out of about 4,120,000!

The continuing saga of victory.

Like I need another reason to remain a landlubber...

No bias here! Liberals love America!

Research

Power Line shows excerpts from a conference called "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right". By an amazing coincidence, it closely parallels a conference I recently attended called "Examining the Real Agenda of the Anti-religious Far Left". Here are some of the more notably similar passages:

Most Americans outside the Bible Belt have little idea of the beliefs held by millions of fundamentalist churchgoers.

Most Americans inside the Bible Belt know all too well the beliefs held by millions of atheistic activists.

We have an almost total lack of awareness of the rise of Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism, forms of theology that advocate a biblical vision of God’s kingdom on earth.

We have been exposed for decades to the rise of Atheism, Socialism, Totalitarianism and Secular Humanism, belief systems designed to eliminate God's influence on earth.

Some fundamentalists also foresee events such as The Rapture, the Times of Tribulation, Armageddon, and the Second Coming of Christ as we enter The End Days.

Some atheists also view euthanasia, abortion-on-demand, and abolition of religion as utopian ideals.

This conference will give rigorous attention to the worldview of Dominionism, its influence in contemporary political culture and its agenda for America. While not all Christian fundamentalists are Dominionists, Dominionism’s influence is powerful and growing. Its adherents play a significant role in secretive organizations such as The Council on National Policy, which exerts a strong influence on the strategy of the religious right.

This conference will give rigorous attention to the worldview of Atheism, its influence in contemporary political culture and its agenda for America. While not all humanists are atheists, Atheism's influence is powerful and growing. Its adherents play a significant role in noxious organizations such as the ACLU, MoveOn, NEA, NOW, NAMBLA, and many more.

Dominionism is the theory that the account in Genesis in which God gave man dominion over the earth has become a political teaching advocating that Christians gain and hold power. Christian reconstructionism is the theory that Christian conservatives intend to impose Old Testament law in America.

Humanism is the theory that mankind claims dominion over the earth on his own merits. This has become a political teaching advocating that other religions must be removed from power. Atheistic totalitarianism is the plan that atheists have been implementing to destroy America.

Tax cuts combined with increased funding for faith-based social programs and decreases in welfare spending, Ms. Bokaer said, were examples of "the theological right ... zealously setting up to establish their beliefs in all aspects of our society."

Tax increases, combined with increased funding for numerous social engineering bureaucracies and decreases in defense spending, were examples of atheists zealously setting up to establish their beliefs in all aspects of our society.

Striking similarities, don't you think?

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie Review

(minor spoiler alert)

If you're hoping that this movie will faithfully re-create any one of the previous versions (radio, book, or tv) of the Hitchhiker's Guide, you probably won't like this movie. It is as different to them as the radio version and the book version are to each other. It seems that Mr. Adams liked to re-invent the story in each of its incarnations.

I had read all five of the books before I even knew that the earlier (BBC?) radio broadcasts existed. When I finally heard them, it seemed to me like he had cut the scenes of the book into jigsaw pieces, thrown away half of them, scrambled the rest in with a smaller puzzle, hammered all the pieces together, and traced over that to make a new picture which was wildly different yet familiar. I got the exact same sensation when I saw the movie, and again, I enjoyed the results.

In making those kinds of drastic changes, he and the filmmakers have succeeded in keeping the wacky spirit of the story alive. They have made it accessible to modern audiences who have no knowledge of the strange universe(s) that Mr. Adams created, and added fresh and funny surprises for the diehard fans. There are plentiful "inside jokes" that only we could pick up (example: the statue in the church entryway), and numerous new ideas (whack!) that only Mr. Adams could dream up.

The movie did seem to start a little slowly and unevenly, but part of that feeling could have been me noticing the many changes and fearing two hours of major disappointment. As it turned out, my only real disappointment was that Zaphod didn't get to keep his second head and third arm. Although not 'Oscar quality', all of the actors did quite well in their characters, and seemed to fit in with the other elements of the movie. Together they made a wonderfully campy and absurd whole, which I suspect would please the late Mr. Adams.

April Fools!

Oops! I forgot to set my calendar ahead for Daylight Savings Month... :P :)

Anyway, Here's a link to the one of the more famous April Fools hoaxes, the BBC's Spaghetti Crop hoax. The link has the story, plus an actual video clip of the segment.