Check out what these clowns built- Awesome!
"The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror platform. A wooden fork extends from the mirror base to the area near the focus and serves as a mounting point for Solar Death Ray targets. The mirror platform is mounted to the support frame on a pivot that allows the platform to be angled. The whole system is mounted on a set of wheels. "
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wow, Canadian DUI's must be really bad-
By IAN ROBERTSON, TORONTO SUN
An allegedly drunk driver with a taste for trickery failed to foil a police breathalyzer machine after stuffing his mouth full of feces. "I don't think alcohol alone would make you do something as disgusting as that," South Simcoe Police Insp. Tom McDonald said.
"I've never heard of anything like this before," the 28-year veteran said.
Arrested Sunday after his Ford pickup truck was pulled over on Hwy. 11 in Stroud, the 59-year-old driver was loaded into a cruiser and taken to a South Simcoe Police station for testing.
En route, Sgt. James Buchanan said, the prisoner vomited, urinated and defecated in the squad car.
At the station the man grabbed a handful of his own waste "and placed it in his mouth, attempting to trick the breathalyzer machine," he said.
It didn't work, Buchanan said.
The machine registered two readings of more than twice the legal blood alcohol limit. The man was charged with impaired driving and driving over the limit and was released on a promise to appear in a Bradford court on May 12.
An allegedly drunk driver with a taste for trickery failed to foil a police breathalyzer machine after stuffing his mouth full of feces. "I don't think alcohol alone would make you do something as disgusting as that," South Simcoe Police Insp. Tom McDonald said.
"I've never heard of anything like this before," the 28-year veteran said.
Arrested Sunday after his Ford pickup truck was pulled over on Hwy. 11 in Stroud, the 59-year-old driver was loaded into a cruiser and taken to a South Simcoe Police station for testing.
En route, Sgt. James Buchanan said, the prisoner vomited, urinated and defecated in the squad car.
At the station the man grabbed a handful of his own waste "and placed it in his mouth, attempting to trick the breathalyzer machine," he said.
It didn't work, Buchanan said.
The machine registered two readings of more than twice the legal blood alcohol limit. The man was charged with impaired driving and driving over the limit and was released on a promise to appear in a Bradford court on May 12.
Pat O'Brien Doesn't Want To Be The H'wood Insider; He Just Wants To Be Inside 'Her
We have accessed Hollywood Insider's Pat O'Brien's alleged voicemail messages to a coworker he is trying to coerce into a threesome with both he and an anonymous woman identified only as "Betsy."
Message after message the stunningly sleazy comments to his coworker get more and more graphic as Pat gets more and more into the idea of watching the voicemail recipient and "Betsy" or a "hire a hooker" do things to one another while doing "coke."
At one point, he seems to acknowledge his actions as being a little...well...off when he remarks "I dont know whats wrong with me...I dont do this" and then leaps right back into "...but I just want to make you *expletive* crazy...let's just *expletive* have sex and fun and drugs.....and go crazy."
Let us all just be thankful that this quasi-celebrity had the decency to make a series of sex voicemails and not the far more disturbing Pat O'Brien celeb sex video which surely would have resulted in hundreds or thousands of therapy hours.
By the by, Pats wife name is Linda, not Betsy...Linda. tsk tsk tsk
Message after message the stunningly sleazy comments to his coworker get more and more graphic as Pat gets more and more into the idea of watching the voicemail recipient and "Betsy" or a "hire a hooker" do things to one another while doing "coke."
At one point, he seems to acknowledge his actions as being a little...well...off when he remarks "I dont know whats wrong with me...I dont do this" and then leaps right back into "...but I just want to make you *expletive* crazy...let's just *expletive* have sex and fun and drugs.....and go crazy."
Let us all just be thankful that this quasi-celebrity had the decency to make a series of sex voicemails and not the far more disturbing Pat O'Brien celeb sex video which surely would have resulted in hundreds or thousands of therapy hours.
By the by, Pats wife name is Linda, not Betsy...Linda. tsk tsk tsk
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
A conversation with Paul Wolfowitz 3/02-
"As I was leaving, I did manage to ask whether Wolfowitz, who a year before taking office had written in Commentary that a new round of "great-power conflict" would be the main threat to future peace, thought this was still true. He said he did.
A century ago, he said, the international problem was the appearance of new great powers—mainly Germany and Japan—whose appetites and grievances the existing world order could not accommodate. Now another crop of new powers was appearing.
"China is the most obvious one," he said. "In East Asia in general you have this stunning growth in economic power, which means ultimately, potentially, military power. A unified Korea is itself the size of a major European power. Only in Asia does Vietnam look like a small country—its army is tough and big. And then you've got the Indians ... It's a question of how to achieve balance of power in East Asia, among these growing powers, without going through the experience Europe went through to get there, because that's a little too costly."
Russia, the familiar "great power," would not be part of the new problem—"not at all, no," he said. "During the Cold War we were trying, with the opening to China, to help a weak China deal with a threat from a very powerful Soviet Union. I think in the future we may be trying to figure out how to help a weak Russia deal with an increasingly powerful China. I think we really are in a new era in U.S.-Russian relations. It will go through bumps and starts, and it's not a new era in the sense that suddenly they love us and we love them. But our interests coincide in so many ways that they didn't before." With that he was back to the current war."
A century ago, he said, the international problem was the appearance of new great powers—mainly Germany and Japan—whose appetites and grievances the existing world order could not accommodate. Now another crop of new powers was appearing.
"China is the most obvious one," he said. "In East Asia in general you have this stunning growth in economic power, which means ultimately, potentially, military power. A unified Korea is itself the size of a major European power. Only in Asia does Vietnam look like a small country—its army is tough and big. And then you've got the Indians ... It's a question of how to achieve balance of power in East Asia, among these growing powers, without going through the experience Europe went through to get there, because that's a little too costly."
Russia, the familiar "great power," would not be part of the new problem—"not at all, no," he said. "During the Cold War we were trying, with the opening to China, to help a weak China deal with a threat from a very powerful Soviet Union. I think in the future we may be trying to figure out how to help a weak Russia deal with an increasingly powerful China. I think we really are in a new era in U.S.-Russian relations. It will go through bumps and starts, and it's not a new era in the sense that suddenly they love us and we love them. But our interests coincide in so many ways that they didn't before." With that he was back to the current war."
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Mark Van Doren
“Jesus was the most ruthless of men,” Van Doren said in a tone as hard as a struck bell, and I came to tingling attention. The modern image of Jesus, Van Doren said, was of a man almost unrelated to the one described in the New Testament as a strong and stern leader, ruthless in following his conception of truth and iron in his will. “He was not,” Van Doren said, “an easy man to follow. He was certainly not like our ministers now who try to be one of the crowd and take a drink at a cocktail party to prove it, or tell an off-color joke. That seems to be their approach today.” The professor paused for a moment, and then he said, “Maybe that’s why we hate them so much.”
NASA's gravity probe to prove or disprove Einstein
March 28, 2005: This year marks the 100th anniversary of a revolution in our notions of space and time.
"Before 1905, when Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, most people believed that space and time were as Sir Isaac Newton described them back in the 17th century: Space was the fixed, unchanging "stage" upon which the great cosmic drama unfolded, and time was the mysterious, universal "clock in the sky." Even today, people commonly assume that this intuitive sense of space and time is correct. It's not. Einstein's 1905 paper, along with another one he published in 1915, painted an entirely different and mind-bending picture. Space itself is constantly being warped and curved by the matter and energy moving within it, and time flows at different rates for different observers. Numerous real-world experiments over the last 100 years indicate that, amazingly, Einstein was right. But scientists today have reason to think that even Einstein's theory isn't the whole story; another revolution seems inevitable. The reason for doubt is that Einstein's theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics, another pillar of modern physics that describes the odd world of subatomic particles. When the theories are used together, sometimes, their combined equations produce nonsense. This leads scientists to believe that current theories will eventually be replaced by a single, elegant theory that explains all physical phenomena from the subatomic to the cosmic, the so-called "Theory of Everything." When will the first shots of this physics revolution ring out? Perhaps when Einstein, like Newton before him, is proven wrong--or at least not quite right. To hunt for flaws in Einstein's theories, scientists are crafting experiments that can measure the predictions of relativity with ever-greater precision. One such experiment is NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B)."
"Before 1905, when Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, most people believed that space and time were as Sir Isaac Newton described them back in the 17th century: Space was the fixed, unchanging "stage" upon which the great cosmic drama unfolded, and time was the mysterious, universal "clock in the sky." Even today, people commonly assume that this intuitive sense of space and time is correct. It's not. Einstein's 1905 paper, along with another one he published in 1915, painted an entirely different and mind-bending picture. Space itself is constantly being warped and curved by the matter and energy moving within it, and time flows at different rates for different observers. Numerous real-world experiments over the last 100 years indicate that, amazingly, Einstein was right. But scientists today have reason to think that even Einstein's theory isn't the whole story; another revolution seems inevitable. The reason for doubt is that Einstein's theory is incompatible with quantum mechanics, another pillar of modern physics that describes the odd world of subatomic particles. When the theories are used together, sometimes, their combined equations produce nonsense. This leads scientists to believe that current theories will eventually be replaced by a single, elegant theory that explains all physical phenomena from the subatomic to the cosmic, the so-called "Theory of Everything." When will the first shots of this physics revolution ring out? Perhaps when Einstein, like Newton before him, is proven wrong--or at least not quite right. To hunt for flaws in Einstein's theories, scientists are crafting experiments that can measure the predictions of relativity with ever-greater precision. One such experiment is NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B)."
"Contactless" Chips
Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not. The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years. Instead, the government will use "contactless chips." The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as "proximity chips," "contactless chips" or "contactless integrated circuits" -- anything but "RFID." The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags, which will eventually replace bar-code labels on consumer goods, said privacy rights advocates this week. An RFID tag is a microchip attached to an antenna, which transmits unique information to a reader device that can be anywhere from a few inches to several feet away. The technology, with its many names ("contactless chips" has been around for some time), is used in security access cards, E-ZPass automatic toll-paying devices and ski-lift tickets. Computer scientists and data-encryption experts, the editors of an RFID industry journal -- even the makers of the contactless chips themselves -- all agree that the Homeland Security Department is using RFID technology. But the Homeland Security Department is very carefully avoiding use of the term "RFID." The department, along with Philips, is also backing a trade group that is branding ID documents with RFID tags as "contactless smartcards." "We'd prefer," said Joseph Broghamer, Homeland Security's director of authentication technologies, "that the terms 'RFID,' or even 'RF,' not be used at all (when referring to the RFID-tagged smartcards). Let's get 'RF' out of it altogether." The Homeland Security Department this spring will begin issuing RFID-tagged employee ID cards (which include fingerprint records) to tens of thousands of its employees. Homeland Security's employee ID card has "contactless" technology to speed workers' access to secure areas, said Broghamer. He also wants to replace conventional reader devices, because their metal contacts break down after repeated use. The department is also evaluating technology pitches from several RFID tag manufacturers, including Philips, for an RFID-tagged passport containing biometric data. The government's plan will earn billions of dollars for the RFID suppliers while helping security officials track individuals more effectively by detecting their ID documents' radio signals in airport terminals, or wherever reader devices are present. The Homeland Security Department and Philips said they worry that the public will confuse the RFID tags in ID documents with those used by retailers, such as Wal-Mart, to track consumer goods. Contactless chips, said Broghamer, are more sophisticated than retail RFID tags, because they can carry more information and can better protect sensitive personal information. But there is another problem with the "RFID" name: Many people associate the term with radio chips "that blab personal information indiscriminately" to any reader device, said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Privacy rights groups such as the EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union and CASPIAN have for years argued that RFID tags on consumer goods could be used to spy on individuals. That is why Homeland Security is engaging in doublespeak, to dupe Americans into accepting RFID tags on their passports, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "It's a frightening, Orwellian use of the language," said Steinhardt, referring to the "contactless" branding effort. Steinhardt called the RFID tags the Homeland Security Department is using, which have faster processors and more storage capacity than retail tags, "RFID on steroids."
Monday, March 28, 2005
Coyotes!
Confused about how to cross from Mexico to America? Here is an english
copy of a Mexican government document full of helpful hints and neat
pictures.
http://www.amren.com/mexguide/mexguide.html
copy of a Mexican government document full of helpful hints and neat
pictures.
http://www.amren.com/mexguide/mexguide.html
Burger King to offer whopper of a breakfast sandwich
Burger King is about to thumb its nose at the food police — right at the breakfast table.
On Monday, the No. 2 fast-food chain launches its Enormous Omelet Sandwich. How enormous? For those counting: one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon. On a bun.
For those still counting, that's four layers of breakfast with 730 calories oozing 47 grams of fat. For about $2.99, depending on the market.
The move flies in the face of many of the industry's better-for-you new products in the past two years — from salads to fruit bowls to bunless burgers.
Sandwiches by the numbers
The nutritional contents of Burger King's Enormous and Western omelet sandwiches compared with the FDA's recommendations:
Enormous Omelet Western Omelet Daily Value*
Calories 730 320 2,000
Total fat 47 grams 17 grams 65 grams
Cholesterol 415 mg 200 mg 300 mg
Sodium 1,860 mg 1,130 mg 2,400 mg
* — recommended daily limit of a nutrient; fat, cholesterol and sodium amounts based on 2,000 calories per day.
Sources: Burger King, Food and Drug Administration
But few expect it to leave Burger King with egg on its face. The move plays right into an industry counter-trend that strongly appeals to the gut belief of fast-food's favorite, young male customers: Bigger is better.
"The critics will still label it food porn," says Sherri Daye Scott, editor at QSR, a fast-food industry trade magazine. "But the average male fast-food customer does not have a problem with this."
In fact, they love it. That's why the Monster Thickburger has been such a hit for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. It's why Pizza Hut introduced its Full House XL Pizza. And it's why more are certain to follow. This could also make Burger King more of a player in the breakfast market, where it seriously lags behind McDonald's.
Morgan Spurlock, who ridiculed McDonald's in Super Size Me, says Burger King's new item, "should come with a $5-off coupon for your first angioplasty."
Nutritional experts are aghast. "Eating like this is a step on the way to a heart attack," says Fred Pescatore, author of The Hamptons Diet. "It's irresponsible."
Burger King says it's not irresponsible — it's a choice.
"There are plenty of options on our menu for anyone who wants to make sensible choices," says Denny Marie Post, chief concept officer.
Burger King introduced several salads in the past year and offers kids meals that substitute applesauce for fries and milk for soft drinks. It's also introducing a Western Omelet Croissan'wich with about half the calories and one-third the fat of the Enormous Omelet.
"We're about having it your way," says Post. "The guy who is a Whopper-head will find this appealing."
That's a male 16 to 24 years old, says Bob Sandelman, a restaurant researcher. A core of young men eat fast food 20 times a month, he says. With the Enormous Omelet Sandwich, "Burger King is going 180 degrees away from politically correct food," he says. Many young males "like that attitude and couldn't care less about nutrition." They just want to fill up — cheap.
Ask Andy Puzder. He's CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., home of the 1,420-calorie Monster Thickburger. One year after the giant burger rolled out, same-store sales at the chain were up more than 7%, he says.
Why would anyone buy such a behemoth burger? That's easy, Puzder says: "Because they're good."
On Monday, the No. 2 fast-food chain launches its Enormous Omelet Sandwich. How enormous? For those counting: one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon. On a bun.
For those still counting, that's four layers of breakfast with 730 calories oozing 47 grams of fat. For about $2.99, depending on the market.
The move flies in the face of many of the industry's better-for-you new products in the past two years — from salads to fruit bowls to bunless burgers.
Sandwiches by the numbers
The nutritional contents of Burger King's Enormous and Western omelet sandwiches compared with the FDA's recommendations:
Enormous Omelet Western Omelet Daily Value*
Calories 730 320 2,000
Total fat 47 grams 17 grams 65 grams
Cholesterol 415 mg 200 mg 300 mg
Sodium 1,860 mg 1,130 mg 2,400 mg
* — recommended daily limit of a nutrient; fat, cholesterol and sodium amounts based on 2,000 calories per day.
Sources: Burger King, Food and Drug Administration
But few expect it to leave Burger King with egg on its face. The move plays right into an industry counter-trend that strongly appeals to the gut belief of fast-food's favorite, young male customers: Bigger is better.
"The critics will still label it food porn," says Sherri Daye Scott, editor at QSR, a fast-food industry trade magazine. "But the average male fast-food customer does not have a problem with this."
In fact, they love it. That's why the Monster Thickburger has been such a hit for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. It's why Pizza Hut introduced its Full House XL Pizza. And it's why more are certain to follow. This could also make Burger King more of a player in the breakfast market, where it seriously lags behind McDonald's.
Morgan Spurlock, who ridiculed McDonald's in Super Size Me, says Burger King's new item, "should come with a $5-off coupon for your first angioplasty."
Nutritional experts are aghast. "Eating like this is a step on the way to a heart attack," says Fred Pescatore, author of The Hamptons Diet. "It's irresponsible."
Burger King says it's not irresponsible — it's a choice.
"There are plenty of options on our menu for anyone who wants to make sensible choices," says Denny Marie Post, chief concept officer.
Burger King introduced several salads in the past year and offers kids meals that substitute applesauce for fries and milk for soft drinks. It's also introducing a Western Omelet Croissan'wich with about half the calories and one-third the fat of the Enormous Omelet.
"We're about having it your way," says Post. "The guy who is a Whopper-head will find this appealing."
That's a male 16 to 24 years old, says Bob Sandelman, a restaurant researcher. A core of young men eat fast food 20 times a month, he says. With the Enormous Omelet Sandwich, "Burger King is going 180 degrees away from politically correct food," he says. Many young males "like that attitude and couldn't care less about nutrition." They just want to fill up — cheap.
Ask Andy Puzder. He's CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., home of the 1,420-calorie Monster Thickburger. One year after the giant burger rolled out, same-store sales at the chain were up more than 7%, he says.
Why would anyone buy such a behemoth burger? That's easy, Puzder says: "Because they're good."
Friday, March 25, 2005
Roe Effect
The New York Times reports from Portland that Oregon's biggest city, as well as many other large American metropolises, are facing a shortage of children:
It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation's top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices.San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind. The problem is not just that American women are having fewer children, reflected in the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the country. Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city--dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary--are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families.
Surely this is all related to the Roe effect and the polarization of America's electorate. The flight of families with children--who tend to be politically conservative--renders cities even more liberal, and the liberals who remain behind don't reproduce, helping push the next generation to the right.
It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation's top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices.San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind. The problem is not just that American women are having fewer children, reflected in the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the country. Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city--dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary--are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families.
Surely this is all related to the Roe effect and the polarization of America's electorate. The flight of families with children--who tend to be politically conservative--renders cities even more liberal, and the liberals who remain behind don't reproduce, helping push the next generation to the right.
the name is "Warrior"
I have avoided commenting on the Terry Schiavo case, but one person who hasn't is ex-superstar wrestler "The Ultimate Warrior"- can anyone presume to top him? His website is hilarious-
"22/03/2005:
'There is ONE life and, then, there are the LIVES of all the others.'
Terry Schiavo.
As is the case each time you open your mouth, you truly can only speak for yourself. So it is that I do. On every issue there are so many angles and motives being worked, some upfront, most ulterior, that if you are a person who needs to find others in agreement with your opinion before you have the confidence to voice it, then your thoughts aren’t really worth much anyway. Mine are my own. And on this issue I am at odds with ass-kissing water-carriers.
Since each may truly only speak for oneself, as voices posture back and forth for “live” or “die,” I wonder: would it be too much to ask (of course it would) that a demand be obliged where every individual weighing-in should do exactly that? That is, speak truthfully about what one really thinks. Many are saying plenty supposedly on behalf of Mrs. Schiavo. What they aren’t offering up to tell us reveals much more, I think, about their overall motives. How about we ask them if they would want to be kept alive if in the same vegetative state? Better yet, why don’t they just offer to tell us without us having to ask? The reason is obvious. The answer is too. It would be no. No."
"22/03/2005:
'There is ONE life and, then, there are the LIVES of all the others.'
Terry Schiavo.
As is the case each time you open your mouth, you truly can only speak for yourself. So it is that I do. On every issue there are so many angles and motives being worked, some upfront, most ulterior, that if you are a person who needs to find others in agreement with your opinion before you have the confidence to voice it, then your thoughts aren’t really worth much anyway. Mine are my own. And on this issue I am at odds with ass-kissing water-carriers.
Since each may truly only speak for oneself, as voices posture back and forth for “live” or “die,” I wonder: would it be too much to ask (of course it would) that a demand be obliged where every individual weighing-in should do exactly that? That is, speak truthfully about what one really thinks. Many are saying plenty supposedly on behalf of Mrs. Schiavo. What they aren’t offering up to tell us reveals much more, I think, about their overall motives. How about we ask them if they would want to be kept alive if in the same vegetative state? Better yet, why don’t they just offer to tell us without us having to ask? The reason is obvious. The answer is too. It would be no. No."
BC/AD History
ALBANY, N.Y.
A growing number of schools across the country are changing B-C -- which stands for Before Christ -- to B-C-E, or Before the Common Era. A-D -- for anno Domini, Latin for year of the Lord -- is becoming C-E for Common Era.
Many historians and college instructors started using the new forms in the 1980s and now it's found in some school texts.
U-C-L-A professor Gary Nash -- director of the National Center for History in Schools -- says the usage of B-C-E and C-E is fairly common now. He says using the new terms makes sense in the global age.
But some critics say it's all P-C -- for political correctness.
A growing number of schools across the country are changing B-C -- which stands for Before Christ -- to B-C-E, or Before the Common Era. A-D -- for anno Domini, Latin for year of the Lord -- is becoming C-E for Common Era.
Many historians and college instructors started using the new forms in the 1980s and now it's found in some school texts.
U-C-L-A professor Gary Nash -- director of the National Center for History in Schools -- says the usage of B-C-E and C-E is fairly common now. He says using the new terms makes sense in the global age.
But some critics say it's all P-C -- for political correctness.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Mmmmm- Chili
Woman eating chili bites into human finger
By BRIAN SKOLOFFASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A woman bit into a partial finger served in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant, leading authorities to a fingerprint database Thursday to determine who lost the digit.
The incident occurred Tuesday night at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant and left the customer ill and distraught, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Health Department.
"She was so emotionally upset once she found out what it was," Alexiou said. "She was vomiting."
Employees at the Wendy's store were asked to show investigators their fingers after the Tuesday night incident. All employees' digits were accounted for, officials said, adding that the well-cooked finger may have come from a food processing plant that supplies the company.
"All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's International Inc., based in Dublin, Ohio. He said there have been no reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of injuries at any supplier of chili ingredients to Wendy's.
"By law, you can't hide that sort of stuff," Lynch said. "All of our chili suppliers report no accidents."
Investigators seized the remaining chili and closed the restaurant for a few hours late Tuesday.
Health officials said the fingertip was approximately 1 1/2 inches long. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured nail.
Alexiou said the woman, who asked officials not to identify her, is at minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger.
"It's an extremely low chance because the chili was cooked at a very high temperature that would have killed anything in the finger," Alexiou said. Still, she said health officials would ask the woman's doctor to test her blood "to make sure nothing got passed to her."
By BRIAN SKOLOFFASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A woman bit into a partial finger served in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant, leading authorities to a fingerprint database Thursday to determine who lost the digit.
The incident occurred Tuesday night at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant and left the customer ill and distraught, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Health Department.
"She was so emotionally upset once she found out what it was," Alexiou said. "She was vomiting."
Employees at the Wendy's store were asked to show investigators their fingers after the Tuesday night incident. All employees' digits were accounted for, officials said, adding that the well-cooked finger may have come from a food processing plant that supplies the company.
"All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's International Inc., based in Dublin, Ohio. He said there have been no reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of injuries at any supplier of chili ingredients to Wendy's.
"By law, you can't hide that sort of stuff," Lynch said. "All of our chili suppliers report no accidents."
Investigators seized the remaining chili and closed the restaurant for a few hours late Tuesday.
Health officials said the fingertip was approximately 1 1/2 inches long. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured nail.
Alexiou said the woman, who asked officials not to identify her, is at minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger.
"It's an extremely low chance because the chili was cooked at a very high temperature that would have killed anything in the finger," Alexiou said. Still, she said health officials would ask the woman's doctor to test her blood "to make sure nothing got passed to her."
Scalia
The New Yorker has a really interesting article on Justice Scalia this week- here are some excerpts from an interview with the author-
AMY DAVIDSON: You write that, for a Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia attracts an unusual number of people who despise him or idolize him. You compare his stature in certain circles to that of a rock star—but the kind who smashes his guitar onstage. Why is he such a polarizing figure?
MARGARET TALBOT: In part; he’s so polarizing because he is very clear and very adamant about the method of constitutional interpretation that he stands for—originalism—and he has a kind of polemical zeal about making the case for it. He’s really out there on the law-school speaking circuit, making his argument in a forceful way; I was impressed to see how willing he is to take hostile questions and engage with people. He’s also quite funny. The other Justices tend to give pretty anodyne speeches—talking about their upbringings, or telling inspirational or educational stories about the great justices and cases of the past. But Scalia is laying out his approach and telling you in no uncertain terms how dangerous it is for American democracy and the American Constitution if judges don’t follow it. Also, his dissents, which are frequent, are notoriously caustic. He’ll use words like “preposterous” and “irrational” to describe what he sees as the wrongheaded thinking of his colleagues.
Just how conservative is Scalia?
I think we can surmise that socially he’s pretty conservative—anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, anti-affirmative action, and so on. And that is how he votes on those issues on the Court. He would emphasize, though, that he does not reach these conclusions because they are the ones he’d prefer as a matter of policy—what he would prefer as a policy matter is, he would say, entirely irrelevant-but because, after reading the words of the Constitution or of a statute, that was the conclusion he had to reach. And it’s true that he sometimes comes to conclusions that don’t seem to comport with his own political or social beliefs. He likes to cite his vote in a flag-burning case, for instance, when he voted with liberals on the Court to protect flag desecration as symbolic political speech. “Scalia did not like to vote that way,” he said in a speech at the University of Michigan. “He does not like sandal-wearing, bearded weirdos who go around burning flags.”
You mentioned that Scalia is an “originalist” when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. What does that mean?
That means that he reads the plain text of the Constitution and sticks to what he believes its meaning to have been at the time it was written. He loathes the idea of the so-called “living Constitution,” the idea behind many of the Warren Court’s decisions, which essentially says that values evolve and change, and we have to interpret the great precepts of the Constitution in light of those changes. So, for example, the Court in recent years has interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment to mean that the death penalty for juveniles or for the mentally retarded is unconstitutional, taking into account this phrase that Scalia just hates: “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” But Scalia says, Look, or as he says, “Lookit”—that’s not what the Eighth Amendment says, and that’s all I care about. And, furthermore, the death penalty was allowed in the late eighteenth century—and it was allowed for juveniles and for mentally retarded people—so the framers couldn’t have had capital punishment in mind when they proscribed “cruel and unusual” punishment.
AMY DAVIDSON: You write that, for a Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia attracts an unusual number of people who despise him or idolize him. You compare his stature in certain circles to that of a rock star—but the kind who smashes his guitar onstage. Why is he such a polarizing figure?
MARGARET TALBOT: In part; he’s so polarizing because he is very clear and very adamant about the method of constitutional interpretation that he stands for—originalism—and he has a kind of polemical zeal about making the case for it. He’s really out there on the law-school speaking circuit, making his argument in a forceful way; I was impressed to see how willing he is to take hostile questions and engage with people. He’s also quite funny. The other Justices tend to give pretty anodyne speeches—talking about their upbringings, or telling inspirational or educational stories about the great justices and cases of the past. But Scalia is laying out his approach and telling you in no uncertain terms how dangerous it is for American democracy and the American Constitution if judges don’t follow it. Also, his dissents, which are frequent, are notoriously caustic. He’ll use words like “preposterous” and “irrational” to describe what he sees as the wrongheaded thinking of his colleagues.
Just how conservative is Scalia?
I think we can surmise that socially he’s pretty conservative—anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, anti-affirmative action, and so on. And that is how he votes on those issues on the Court. He would emphasize, though, that he does not reach these conclusions because they are the ones he’d prefer as a matter of policy—what he would prefer as a policy matter is, he would say, entirely irrelevant-but because, after reading the words of the Constitution or of a statute, that was the conclusion he had to reach. And it’s true that he sometimes comes to conclusions that don’t seem to comport with his own political or social beliefs. He likes to cite his vote in a flag-burning case, for instance, when he voted with liberals on the Court to protect flag desecration as symbolic political speech. “Scalia did not like to vote that way,” he said in a speech at the University of Michigan. “He does not like sandal-wearing, bearded weirdos who go around burning flags.”
You mentioned that Scalia is an “originalist” when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. What does that mean?
That means that he reads the plain text of the Constitution and sticks to what he believes its meaning to have been at the time it was written. He loathes the idea of the so-called “living Constitution,” the idea behind many of the Warren Court’s decisions, which essentially says that values evolve and change, and we have to interpret the great precepts of the Constitution in light of those changes. So, for example, the Court in recent years has interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment to mean that the death penalty for juveniles or for the mentally retarded is unconstitutional, taking into account this phrase that Scalia just hates: “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” But Scalia says, Look, or as he says, “Lookit”—that’s not what the Eighth Amendment says, and that’s all I care about. And, furthermore, the death penalty was allowed in the late eighteenth century—and it was allowed for juveniles and for mentally retarded people—so the framers couldn’t have had capital punishment in mind when they proscribed “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Book Review
Winslow in Love by Kevin Canty
A Review by Noah Oppenheim
Kevin Canty writes about battered souls on the stick's short end. His latest novel, Winslow in Love, is a sad and sodden romance, shorn of any gloss. It's what Leaving Las Vegas might have been if Elisabeth Shue weren't still kind of hot and Nicolas Cage still kind of charming.
Richard Winslow is a broke, lonely poet stranded in a frigid wasteland. When he meets Erika, half his age and bent on starving herself to death, he finds a kindred spirit. Little in this novel is idealized. Nobody joins AA, gets a decent job, or buys a condo. There's no cathartic romp in the sheets, only the most awkward, bittersweet act of fellatio ever described in print. Canty is Jane Goodall, observing his hero as if he were a primate -- albeit one with a taste for Johnnie Walker: "Take a picture of Winslow that night, sitting whiskey-drunk in front of the television....He's watching himself watch a cooking show."
You won't be surprised how all this ends. You will be surprised to find that this fat, failed poet is one drunk you wouldn't mind buying a round. Even through a liquored haze, he's still got enough savvy to step back and marvel at the fiasco his life has become. You have to love a guy who's wrecked the train but can still appreciate the mangled beauty of the twisted metal. Canty knows we all visit the murky depths from time to time. And he understands the secret: In the end, it's almost always a girl who pulls us out. And often a blend, neat, that gets us through.
A Review by Noah Oppenheim
Kevin Canty writes about battered souls on the stick's short end. His latest novel, Winslow in Love, is a sad and sodden romance, shorn of any gloss. It's what Leaving Las Vegas might have been if Elisabeth Shue weren't still kind of hot and Nicolas Cage still kind of charming.
Richard Winslow is a broke, lonely poet stranded in a frigid wasteland. When he meets Erika, half his age and bent on starving herself to death, he finds a kindred spirit. Little in this novel is idealized. Nobody joins AA, gets a decent job, or buys a condo. There's no cathartic romp in the sheets, only the most awkward, bittersweet act of fellatio ever described in print. Canty is Jane Goodall, observing his hero as if he were a primate -- albeit one with a taste for Johnnie Walker: "Take a picture of Winslow that night, sitting whiskey-drunk in front of the television....He's watching himself watch a cooking show."
You won't be surprised how all this ends. You will be surprised to find that this fat, failed poet is one drunk you wouldn't mind buying a round. Even through a liquored haze, he's still got enough savvy to step back and marvel at the fiasco his life has become. You have to love a guy who's wrecked the train but can still appreciate the mangled beauty of the twisted metal. Canty knows we all visit the murky depths from time to time. And he understands the secret: In the end, it's almost always a girl who pulls us out. And often a blend, neat, that gets us through.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
"UNechs"
The Darfur conflict is an ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes, and the non-Arab peoples of the region. The conflict has been widely described as "ethnic cleansing", and frequently as "genocide". In September 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the conflict's beginning, mostly by starvation; in October, its head gave an estimate of 71,000 deaths by starvation and disease alone between March and October 2004. A recent study in Parliamentary Brief (http://www.thepolitician.org) estimates that between 200,000 and 300,000 people have already died.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3748732.stm)
More than 1.8 million people had been displaced from their homes. 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad. The refugees include non-Arab victims of non-Arabs, Arab victims of non-Arabs, and Arab victims of Arabs; however, the large majority are non-Arab black Africans fleeing Janjaweed attacks. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3737566.stm)
The UN, prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, called the Darfur conflict the world's worst current humanitarian crisis.
But the UN won't call it Genocide- that kind of loaded language would demand action.
More than 1.8 million people had been displaced from their homes. 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad. The refugees include non-Arab victims of non-Arabs, Arab victims of non-Arabs, and Arab victims of Arabs; however, the large majority are non-Arab black Africans fleeing Janjaweed attacks. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3737566.stm)
The UN, prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, called the Darfur conflict the world's worst current humanitarian crisis.
But the UN won't call it Genocide- that kind of loaded language would demand action.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Japanese Navy!
The deep-diving scientists of the University of Hawaii have discovered another monster lurking in the waters off Oahu.
During test dives Thursday, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines found the remains of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine, a gigantic underwater aircraft carrier built to bomb the Panama Canal.
"We thought it was rocks at first, it was so huge," said Pisces pilot Terry Kerby. "But the sides of it kept going up and up and up, three and four stories tall. It's a leviathan down there, a monster."
It is not the first World War II-era "monster" that the HURL scientists have found. Last year, off Pearl Harbor, they located the wreck of the gigantic seaplane Marshall Mars, one of the largest aircraft built and used as a transport plane by the U.S. Navy. Two years earlier in the same area, the HURL crew also found the wreckage of a Japanese midget sub that was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941.
The latest HURL discovery is from the I-400 "Sensuikan Toku" class of submarines, the largest built prior to the nuclear ballistic missile submarines of the 1960s. They were 400 feet long and 39.3 feet high, could reach a maximum depth of 330 feet, and carry a crew of 144.
During test dives Thursday, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines found the remains of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine, a gigantic underwater aircraft carrier built to bomb the Panama Canal.
"We thought it was rocks at first, it was so huge," said Pisces pilot Terry Kerby. "But the sides of it kept going up and up and up, three and four stories tall. It's a leviathan down there, a monster."
It is not the first World War II-era "monster" that the HURL scientists have found. Last year, off Pearl Harbor, they located the wreck of the gigantic seaplane Marshall Mars, one of the largest aircraft built and used as a transport plane by the U.S. Navy. Two years earlier in the same area, the HURL crew also found the wreckage of a Japanese midget sub that was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941.
The latest HURL discovery is from the I-400 "Sensuikan Toku" class of submarines, the largest built prior to the nuclear ballistic missile submarines of the 1960s. They were 400 feet long and 39.3 feet high, could reach a maximum depth of 330 feet, and carry a crew of 144.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Winfrey To Live a Poverty-Stricken Lifestyle
American TV chat show queen Oprah Winfrey is ditching the high life to star in a poverty-stricken reality TV series. The 51-year-old media mogul, who is one of the world's richest women with an annual income of over $300 million, has agreed to live a life of poverty in the hard-hitting documentary. Winfrey will reside in a high-rise apartment on a notoriously tough Chicago, Illinois, estate for a month. The series plans to highlight America's inner-city housing crisis. A spokesperson for her Harpo Productions company says, "She has interviewed just about every major celebrity and done shows on almost every subject imaginable. But now she intends to tackle really tough, serious issues, putting herself right in the front line." However, to ensure Winfrey's safety she will shadowed by security guards during her stay. But the spokesperson adds, "In every other respect she will have to fend for herself, just like the many people who have to live in these sub-standard conditions."
Friday, March 18, 2005
Van Halen never had an exchange of gunfire.
NEW YORK - Grammy-winning hip-hop star Lil' Kim could face years in prison when she is sentenced in June for lying about a shootout outside a radio station.
Her convictions Thursday on three counts of perjury and one of conspiracy each carry terms of up to five years in prison, but as a first-time offender she was expected to receive far less than 20 years. Any term would make her the first major female rapper to do time.
The 29-year-old performer, known for her raunchy raps and revealing outfits, was acquitted of obstruction of justice.
She and her assistant, who also was convicted, shook their heads as the verdicts were delivered, and supporters broke out in sobs.
Lil' Kim declined to comment outside court, but in a statement issued later, she said she was "disappointed" by the verdict.
"Throughout my life, I have always lived with adversity and will continue to have faith and do good for my family, friends and fans," she said.
Both women remained free on bond and will be sentenced June 24.
The former sidekick and girlfriend of the late Notorious B.I.G. had testified that she didn't notice two close friends at the scene of the 2001 gun battle - her manager, Damion Butler, and Suif "Gutta" Jackson. Both men have since pleaded guilty to gun charges.
The shootout occurred outside WQHT, known as Hot 97, when Lil' Kim's entourage crossed paths with a rival rap group, Capone-N-Noreaga. Kim's entourage confronted them about the song "Bang, Bang" from a Capone-N-Noreaga album, which contained a scathing insult to Kim from her longtime rival, Foxy Brown. A shootout erupted, leaving one man injured and more than two dozen rounds fired.
Hot 97 is the same station where the posses of 50 Cent and The Game traded bullets last month. No arrests have been made in that shooting, which left one of Game's henchmen wounded in the leg.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Cathy Seibel told jurors that the 4-foot-11 Lil' Kim, born Kimberly Jones, had repeatedly lied to them, just as she did to the grand jury. The prosecutor belittled the defense claim that the sunglasses-wearing Lil' Kim didn't notice her two close friends at the scene of the crime.
"You would have to believe they were magic sunglasses that only block out your friends who were shooting people," Seibel told the jury.
Defense lawyer Mel Sachs argued that Lil' Kim had no reason to protect Butler and Jackson because she had already eliminated them from her life.
Lil' Kim testified that after the shooting she had a falling out with Butler, Banger and Cease because they were freeloading at her New Jersey town house.
"I was just fed up," she said on the stand. "They were taking advantage of me."
Lil' Kim's assistant, Monique Dopwell, was convicted of perjury and conspiracy. She faces up to 15 years in prison.
The rapper also testified at length about her modest background and mercurial career, which began with an impromptu performance for B.I.G. on the street in their Brooklyn neighborhood.
As B.I.G. became a superstar, Lil' Kim became "Queen Bee," the oversexed gangsta girl in his otherwise all-male clique. Her first album, 1996's "Hard Core," lived up to its title with its sexually explicit lyrics - and became a big hit, thanks to songs like "Crush On You" and others with unmentionable titles.
Lil' Kim developed into one of the few female rappers with a commercially viable career. As plastic surgery slowly transformed her from cute around-the-way girl to glam, top-heavy pinup, she morphed into a sexy fashionista who, for some, exemplified female empowerment.
Her bigger-than-rap status was cemented in 1999 when, while presenting an MTV award wearing a pasty over one exposed breast, co-presenter Diana Ross jiggled Kim's bare flesh.
She won a Grammy in 2001 for her part in the hit remake of "Lady Marmalade." Now she's probably headed to prison, adding a chapter to a remarkable life that already has produced an accredited Syracuse University course titled "The Life and Times of Lil' Kim."
Her convictions Thursday on three counts of perjury and one of conspiracy each carry terms of up to five years in prison, but as a first-time offender she was expected to receive far less than 20 years. Any term would make her the first major female rapper to do time.
The 29-year-old performer, known for her raunchy raps and revealing outfits, was acquitted of obstruction of justice.
She and her assistant, who also was convicted, shook their heads as the verdicts were delivered, and supporters broke out in sobs.
Lil' Kim declined to comment outside court, but in a statement issued later, she said she was "disappointed" by the verdict.
"Throughout my life, I have always lived with adversity and will continue to have faith and do good for my family, friends and fans," she said.
Both women remained free on bond and will be sentenced June 24.
The former sidekick and girlfriend of the late Notorious B.I.G. had testified that she didn't notice two close friends at the scene of the 2001 gun battle - her manager, Damion Butler, and Suif "Gutta" Jackson. Both men have since pleaded guilty to gun charges.
The shootout occurred outside WQHT, known as Hot 97, when Lil' Kim's entourage crossed paths with a rival rap group, Capone-N-Noreaga. Kim's entourage confronted them about the song "Bang, Bang" from a Capone-N-Noreaga album, which contained a scathing insult to Kim from her longtime rival, Foxy Brown. A shootout erupted, leaving one man injured and more than two dozen rounds fired.
Hot 97 is the same station where the posses of 50 Cent and The Game traded bullets last month. No arrests have been made in that shooting, which left one of Game's henchmen wounded in the leg.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Cathy Seibel told jurors that the 4-foot-11 Lil' Kim, born Kimberly Jones, had repeatedly lied to them, just as she did to the grand jury. The prosecutor belittled the defense claim that the sunglasses-wearing Lil' Kim didn't notice her two close friends at the scene of the crime.
"You would have to believe they were magic sunglasses that only block out your friends who were shooting people," Seibel told the jury.
Defense lawyer Mel Sachs argued that Lil' Kim had no reason to protect Butler and Jackson because she had already eliminated them from her life.
Lil' Kim testified that after the shooting she had a falling out with Butler, Banger and Cease because they were freeloading at her New Jersey town house.
"I was just fed up," she said on the stand. "They were taking advantage of me."
Lil' Kim's assistant, Monique Dopwell, was convicted of perjury and conspiracy. She faces up to 15 years in prison.
The rapper also testified at length about her modest background and mercurial career, which began with an impromptu performance for B.I.G. on the street in their Brooklyn neighborhood.
As B.I.G. became a superstar, Lil' Kim became "Queen Bee," the oversexed gangsta girl in his otherwise all-male clique. Her first album, 1996's "Hard Core," lived up to its title with its sexually explicit lyrics - and became a big hit, thanks to songs like "Crush On You" and others with unmentionable titles.
Lil' Kim developed into one of the few female rappers with a commercially viable career. As plastic surgery slowly transformed her from cute around-the-way girl to glam, top-heavy pinup, she morphed into a sexy fashionista who, for some, exemplified female empowerment.
Her bigger-than-rap status was cemented in 1999 when, while presenting an MTV award wearing a pasty over one exposed breast, co-presenter Diana Ross jiggled Kim's bare flesh.
She won a Grammy in 2001 for her part in the hit remake of "Lady Marmalade." Now she's probably headed to prison, adding a chapter to a remarkable life that already has produced an accredited Syracuse University course titled "The Life and Times of Lil' Kim."
OC meets Jaws
"spring break shark attack"? I know, what the fuck? But dudes, check this out, we get to see Lindsey from "the OC" get eaten by a shark. It should be in 3-d.
spring break shark attack!
spring break shark attack!
George Kennan
George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101.
A Foreign Service officer from 1926 to 1953, Mr. Kennan also was a student of Russian history, a keen and intuitive observer of people and events and a gifted writer. In his years in the State Department, he was recognized as the government's leading authority on the Soviet Union, and his views resonated in the corridors of authority with rare power and clarity.
George F. Kennan, right foreground, is shown in 1952 with Soviet President Nikolai Shvernik, center, and A.F. Gorkin. Kennan loved Russian culture.
His great moment as a policymaker came in 1946. While serving in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he wrote a cable outlining positions that guided Washington's dealings with the Kremlin until the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a half-century later.
Known as the Long Telegram, it said that Soviet expansion must be halted and spelled out how that could be done. Moscow is "impervious to the logic of reason," Mr. Kennan said, but "it is highly sensitive to the logic of force." He did not state, however, that war was inevitable. The policy should have a military element, Mr. Kennan maintained, but it should consist primarily of economic and political pressure.
"My reputation was made," he rejoiced in his memoirs. "My voice now carried."
In 1947, he restated the principles in an article in Foreign Affairs that was signed "X" -- the identity of the author soon was disclosed -- and gave the policy the name by which it has been known ever since: containment.
A Foreign Service officer from 1926 to 1953, Mr. Kennan also was a student of Russian history, a keen and intuitive observer of people and events and a gifted writer. In his years in the State Department, he was recognized as the government's leading authority on the Soviet Union, and his views resonated in the corridors of authority with rare power and clarity.
George F. Kennan, right foreground, is shown in 1952 with Soviet President Nikolai Shvernik, center, and A.F. Gorkin. Kennan loved Russian culture.
His great moment as a policymaker came in 1946. While serving in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he wrote a cable outlining positions that guided Washington's dealings with the Kremlin until the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a half-century later.
Known as the Long Telegram, it said that Soviet expansion must be halted and spelled out how that could be done. Moscow is "impervious to the logic of reason," Mr. Kennan said, but "it is highly sensitive to the logic of force." He did not state, however, that war was inevitable. The policy should have a military element, Mr. Kennan maintained, but it should consist primarily of economic and political pressure.
"My reputation was made," he rejoiced in his memoirs. "My voice now carried."
In 1947, he restated the principles in an article in Foreign Affairs that was signed "X" -- the identity of the author soon was disclosed -- and gave the policy the name by which it has been known ever since: containment.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Happy St. Pats all you Dog Irish!
May you...Work like you don't need the money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
Dance like no-one is watching,
Screw like it's being filmed,
And drink like a true Irishman.
Here's to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one.
A pretty girl and an honest one.
A cold beer—and another one!
When we drink, we get drunk.
When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
So, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven!
Here's to our wives and girlfriends:
May they never meet!
Love like you've never been hurt,
Dance like no-one is watching,
Screw like it's being filmed,
And drink like a true Irishman.
Here's to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one.
A pretty girl and an honest one.
A cold beer—and another one!
When we drink, we get drunk.
When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
So, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven!
Here's to our wives and girlfriends:
May they never meet!
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Hitchens
Here’s Christopher Hitchens on the virtually ignored but utterly astounding New York Times revelation that Saddam had WMD capabilities that were systematically “looted” after the fall of Baghdad in a highly organized operation: This Was Not Looting.
"My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn’t stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam’s propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq’s physicists as “our nuclear mujahideen.” My second question is: What’s all this about “looting”? The word is used throughout the long report, but here’s what it’s used to describe. “In four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 ... teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. ... ‘The first wave came for the machines,’ Dr Araji said. ‘The second wave, cables and cranes.’ ” Perhaps hedging the bet, the Times authors at this point refer to “organized looting.” But obviously, what we are reading about is a carefully planned military operation. The participants were not panicked or greedy civilians helping themselves—which is the customary definition of a “looter,” especially in wartime. They were mechanized and mobile and under orders, and acting in a concerted fashion. Thus, if the story is factually correct—which we have no reason at all to doubt—then Saddam’s Iraq was a fairly highly-evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery."
"My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn’t stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam’s propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq’s physicists as “our nuclear mujahideen.” My second question is: What’s all this about “looting”? The word is used throughout the long report, but here’s what it’s used to describe. “In four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 ... teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. ... ‘The first wave came for the machines,’ Dr Araji said. ‘The second wave, cables and cranes.’ ” Perhaps hedging the bet, the Times authors at this point refer to “organized looting.” But obviously, what we are reading about is a carefully planned military operation. The participants were not panicked or greedy civilians helping themselves—which is the customary definition of a “looter,” especially in wartime. They were mechanized and mobile and under orders, and acting in a concerted fashion. Thus, if the story is factually correct—which we have no reason at all to doubt—then Saddam’s Iraq was a fairly highly-evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery."
Coalition Crumbs
The Nonexistent Coalition Is Crumbling!
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050315/D88RL27G0.html
"Italy said Tuesday it will start drawing down its 3,000-strong contingent in Iraq in September, putting a fresh crack in President Bush's crumbling coalition," the Associated Press "reports." That "crumbling coalition" is a typical bit of liberal-media editorializing--but it's at odds with the usual editorializing that the liberation of Iraq is "unilateral."
How can the coalition be crumbling if there were never any allies to begin with?
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050315/D88RL27G0.html
"Italy said Tuesday it will start drawing down its 3,000-strong contingent in Iraq in September, putting a fresh crack in President Bush's crumbling coalition," the Associated Press "reports." That "crumbling coalition" is a typical bit of liberal-media editorializing--but it's at odds with the usual editorializing that the liberation of Iraq is "unilateral."
How can the coalition be crumbling if there were never any allies to begin with?
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Bones Baby
Anyone need some bones?
Human?
http://www.boneroom.com/bone/humanbones.html
Dinosaur?
http://www.twoguysfossils.com/dino_jurassicbones.htm
Human?
http://www.boneroom.com/bone/humanbones.html
Dinosaur?
http://www.twoguysfossils.com/dino_jurassicbones.htm
Crisis 1960-2005!
Sick of the latest "Schools in Crisis" bullshit? Some links.
1) Oregon has been ranked between 25th and 32th in affluence for the last 15 years. (Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Per Capita Personal Income", July 2003). Several similar studies and statistics support. http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/drill.cfm
2) From an American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) study,"Average Teachers Salary Compared to Per-Capita Personal Income", there are only four states ranked higher than Oregon. This illustrates the lofty compensation compared to what is possible for Oregonians to afford. www.aft.org/salary/2002/download/SalarySurvey02.pdf , Table I-6.
3) From AFT study, "State Rankings Average Teacher Salary Adjusted by AFT Interstate Cost-of-Living Index. Only nine states are ranked higher than Oregon. www.aft.org/salary/2002/download/SalarySurvey02.pdf , Table I-7.
4) From NEA and AFT statistics, Oregon teachers are the 13th highest state in K-12 average salaries. NEA(2004) has Oregon at 12th highest ($49,169). www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf , page 67.
5) The OSBA study, Comprehensive analysis of K-12 Education Finance in Oregon, by ECONorthwest, stated that there were only 5 states with higher total compensation for all Oregon K-12 education employees. This data is three years old, but contracts since that time have not changed the ranking. Also, "Benefit expenditures total $17,684 per full-time staff member, which ranked 1st nationally and is 11 percent higher than second-place Wisconsin." >From the CHALKBOARD PROJECT (April 2004). www.osba.org/hotopics/funding/2002/analysis/final.pdf
6) Oregon could freeze teacher salaries for five consecutive years and their compensation would still be greater than the 25th ranking state in compensation (from NEA 2004). This illustrates how far ahead the compensation has gotten in Oregon.
7) Only eight states have a "higher public union workforce", 57%.
www.trinity.edu/bhirsch/unionstats/State%20U_2003.htm . This in a state where the private sector work force is less than 9.4% unionized.
8) The percentage of "Education Employee (K-12) Benefits to Salaries" in all U.S. states is 24%. In Oregon that percentage is 38%. (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (Aug. 2003)www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt165.asp
9) Oregon has the 4th highest student/teacher ratio (NEA, 2004). This is a direct result of the high teacher total compensation. www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf , page 18.
10) There are approx. 29,150 K-12 Oregon teachers (OSBA). www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/0203smap.pdf
1) Oregon has been ranked between 25th and 32th in affluence for the last 15 years. (Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Per Capita Personal Income", July 2003). Several similar studies and statistics support. http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/drill.cfm
2) From an American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) study,"Average Teachers Salary Compared to Per-Capita Personal Income", there are only four states ranked higher than Oregon. This illustrates the lofty compensation compared to what is possible for Oregonians to afford. www.aft.org/salary/2002/download/SalarySurvey02.pdf , Table I-6.
3) From AFT study, "State Rankings Average Teacher Salary Adjusted by AFT Interstate Cost-of-Living Index. Only nine states are ranked higher than Oregon. www.aft.org/salary/2002/download/SalarySurvey02.pdf , Table I-7.
4) From NEA and AFT statistics, Oregon teachers are the 13th highest state in K-12 average salaries. NEA(2004) has Oregon at 12th highest ($49,169). www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf , page 67.
5) The OSBA study, Comprehensive analysis of K-12 Education Finance in Oregon, by ECONorthwest, stated that there were only 5 states with higher total compensation for all Oregon K-12 education employees. This data is three years old, but contracts since that time have not changed the ranking. Also, "Benefit expenditures total $17,684 per full-time staff member, which ranked 1st nationally and is 11 percent higher than second-place Wisconsin." >From the CHALKBOARD PROJECT (April 2004). www.osba.org/hotopics/funding/2002/analysis/final.pdf
6) Oregon could freeze teacher salaries for five consecutive years and their compensation would still be greater than the 25th ranking state in compensation (from NEA 2004). This illustrates how far ahead the compensation has gotten in Oregon.
7) Only eight states have a "higher public union workforce", 57%.
www.trinity.edu/bhirsch/unionstats/State%20U_2003.htm . This in a state where the private sector work force is less than 9.4% unionized.
8) The percentage of "Education Employee (K-12) Benefits to Salaries" in all U.S. states is 24%. In Oregon that percentage is 38%. (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (Aug. 2003)www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt165.asp
9) Oregon has the 4th highest student/teacher ratio (NEA, 2004). This is a direct result of the high teacher total compensation. www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf , page 18.
10) There are approx. 29,150 K-12 Oregon teachers (OSBA). www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/0203smap.pdf
In the Navy
The Status of the Navy
The fleet is at sea, and it’s probably making a certain chinless ophthalmologist very nervous.
"The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is on the move in Atlantic Ocean and is possibly headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. The convergence of three carrier groups in the corridor of the Middle East will send very strong message to the Syrians and Iranians. There are indications that soon US is moving two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. This will spell a formidable strike force for Iran and Syria who are in defiance on issues of Lebanon and Nuclear weapons development.Outbound from Singapore, the USS Carl Vinson is currently crossing the Indian Ocean headed towards Middle-East. This will be the first time since February 2004 that US will have three major carrier groups stationed on and around Middle East."
The fleet is at sea, and it’s probably making a certain chinless ophthalmologist very nervous.
"The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is on the move in Atlantic Ocean and is possibly headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. The convergence of three carrier groups in the corridor of the Middle East will send very strong message to the Syrians and Iranians. There are indications that soon US is moving two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. This will spell a formidable strike force for Iran and Syria who are in defiance on issues of Lebanon and Nuclear weapons development.Outbound from Singapore, the USS Carl Vinson is currently crossing the Indian Ocean headed towards Middle-East. This will be the first time since February 2004 that US will have three major carrier groups stationed on and around Middle East."
Monday, March 14, 2005
Rugby is a tough game-
Controversial Wests Tigers winger John Hopoate has been suspended for 12 weeks after being found guilty by the NRL Judiciary of poking his fingers up the anuses of three North Queensland players. Accused of one of the most bizarre charges in the history of rugby league, or sport in general for that matter of fact, Hopoate was officially found guilty of 'unsportsmanlike interference'. On the evidence of video footage and the damning testimony from the three Cowboys players, Hopoate was always likely to be found guilty. The length of his sentence seen as the only contentious matter. In the end the NRL Judiciary had little trouble differentiating between a "wedgie", a "finger up the arse" and the area between the "arse and the nuts" before finding Hopoate guilty.
Where Have All the Martyrs Gone?
Time magazine reports that Iraq-based Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been fantasizing about undertaking terrorist attacks inside the U.S., according to a captured "top aide" who's been singing. The most interesting detail:
Al-Zarqawi's aide also revealed that his boss, after pondering the absence of attacks in the U.S. in recent years, concluded that a lack of "willing martyrs" was to blame.
So much for the old saw that the liberation of Iraq is a boon to al Qaeda recruitment.
Al-Zarqawi's aide also revealed that his boss, after pondering the absence of attacks in the U.S. in recent years, concluded that a lack of "willing martyrs" was to blame.
So much for the old saw that the liberation of Iraq is a boon to al Qaeda recruitment.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Revenge of the Sith
Did you miss the Star Wars trailer last night during "the O.C."?
Download it here- it looks awesome.
http://www.wakur.net/media/
(The file is in Quicktime- I had to get the player from apple.com - it's worth it!)
Download it here- it looks awesome.
http://www.wakur.net/media/
(The file is in Quicktime- I had to get the player from apple.com - it's worth it!)
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Alexandre Kojeve
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Alexandre Kojève (Alexandre Vladimirovitch Kojevnikov) (1902 - 1968) was Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial impact on intellectual life in France in the 1930s. The then-dominant idealistic tradition in France was of a Kantian type with little influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idealism, which had been popular in Germany, England and Italy. Kojève changed this in France. (In the countries where Hegelian idealism had been strong, it was being challenged by rationalism, partly as a consequence of G.E. Moore and his Refutation of Idealism.) He was born in Russia, and educated in Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany. Kojève would spend most of his life in France where in Paris from 1933-1939 he taught a series of lectures on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work, Phenomenology of Spirit. After World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one of the chief planners for the European Common Market. A Marxist, Kojève came to postulate as early as the 1950s that while Karl Marx's philosophy of history was correct, and that history was progessing towards the emergence of a universal and homogenous state, it would be liberal capitalist in character, rather than socialist or communist. Liberal capitalism had proven to be more efficient in garnering the technological requirements necessary to master nature, banish scarcity and meet the needs of humanity. This view created much controversy when it was restated by Francis Fukuyama in his work The End of History (1992), which drew heavily on Hegel as seen by Kojève. Kojève's views on this were reprinted in the Spring 1980 (Vol. 9) edition of the French journal Commentaire in an article entitled 'Capitalisme et socialisme: Marx est Dieu; Ford est son prophète.' Many of Kojève's lectures on Hegel have been published in English in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on Phenomenology of Spirit. Kojève's interpretation of Hegel has been one of the most influential of the past century, if not the most respectable academically. His lectures were attended by intellectuals including Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andre Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan and Raymond Aron. Other French thinkers have acknowledged his influence on their thought, including the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. His most influential work was Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (1947). Kojève also had a lifelong friendship and correspondence with the US conservative thinker Leo Strauss; their correspondence has been published along with a critique Kojève wrote of Strauss's commentary on Xenophon in Strauss, Leo On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence(edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth). Several of Strauss's students went to Paris to study under Kojève in the 1950s and 1960s. Included in those was Allan Bloom, who endeavored during his lifetime to make Kojève's works available in English language translations. Prior to going to France, Kojève studied under the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev's views on the mystical union of God and man in Christ. Kojève's uncle was the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.
Kojève died in Brussels in 1968.
Alexandre Kojève (Alexandre Vladimirovitch Kojevnikov) (1902 - 1968) was Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial impact on intellectual life in France in the 1930s. The then-dominant idealistic tradition in France was of a Kantian type with little influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idealism, which had been popular in Germany, England and Italy. Kojève changed this in France. (In the countries where Hegelian idealism had been strong, it was being challenged by rationalism, partly as a consequence of G.E. Moore and his Refutation of Idealism.) He was born in Russia, and educated in Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany. Kojève would spend most of his life in France where in Paris from 1933-1939 he taught a series of lectures on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work, Phenomenology of Spirit. After World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one of the chief planners for the European Common Market. A Marxist, Kojève came to postulate as early as the 1950s that while Karl Marx's philosophy of history was correct, and that history was progessing towards the emergence of a universal and homogenous state, it would be liberal capitalist in character, rather than socialist or communist. Liberal capitalism had proven to be more efficient in garnering the technological requirements necessary to master nature, banish scarcity and meet the needs of humanity. This view created much controversy when it was restated by Francis Fukuyama in his work The End of History (1992), which drew heavily on Hegel as seen by Kojève. Kojève's views on this were reprinted in the Spring 1980 (Vol. 9) edition of the French journal Commentaire in an article entitled 'Capitalisme et socialisme: Marx est Dieu; Ford est son prophète.' Many of Kojève's lectures on Hegel have been published in English in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on Phenomenology of Spirit. Kojève's interpretation of Hegel has been one of the most influential of the past century, if not the most respectable academically. His lectures were attended by intellectuals including Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andre Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan and Raymond Aron. Other French thinkers have acknowledged his influence on their thought, including the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. His most influential work was Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (1947). Kojève also had a lifelong friendship and correspondence with the US conservative thinker Leo Strauss; their correspondence has been published along with a critique Kojève wrote of Strauss's commentary on Xenophon in Strauss, Leo On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence(edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth). Several of Strauss's students went to Paris to study under Kojève in the 1950s and 1960s. Included in those was Allan Bloom, who endeavored during his lifetime to make Kojève's works available in English language translations. Prior to going to France, Kojève studied under the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev's views on the mystical union of God and man in Christ. Kojève's uncle was the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.
Kojève died in Brussels in 1968.
Coughy Annan
It might be time for another strongly-worded resolution from Kofi Annan, possibly even a condemnation, because according to the UN’s own envoy the situation in Sudan is totally out of control.
>>
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A senior U.N. envoy said on Wednesday that far more people had died in Sudan’s Darfur region than the 70,000 previously estimated and chastised African nations for not sending enough peacekeepers.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, who just visited Darfur and other parts of Sudan, said it was impossible to estimate the number of deaths from killings or disease because “it is where we are not that there are attacks.”
Egeland said the old figure of 70,000 dead from last March to the late summer was unhelpful. “Is it three times that? Is it five times that? I don’t know but it is several times the number of the 70,000 that have died altogether,” he said.
Darfur in Sudan’s west has been in conflict for more than two years with rebel groups fighting the government for more power and resources. In response Khartoum armed militia, some of whom have conducted a scorched earth campaign against African villagers, raping and killing them.
“If you move beyond the camps, the killing continues,” Egeland said. “Women are systematically abused and raped.
”I told the government at the highest levels that there was a situation totally out of control and is not being stopped," he said.
>>
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A senior U.N. envoy said on Wednesday that far more people had died in Sudan’s Darfur region than the 70,000 previously estimated and chastised African nations for not sending enough peacekeepers.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, who just visited Darfur and other parts of Sudan, said it was impossible to estimate the number of deaths from killings or disease because “it is where we are not that there are attacks.”
Egeland said the old figure of 70,000 dead from last March to the late summer was unhelpful. “Is it three times that? Is it five times that? I don’t know but it is several times the number of the 70,000 that have died altogether,” he said.
Darfur in Sudan’s west has been in conflict for more than two years with rebel groups fighting the government for more power and resources. In response Khartoum armed militia, some of whom have conducted a scorched earth campaign against African villagers, raping and killing them.
“If you move beyond the camps, the killing continues,” Egeland said. “Women are systematically abused and raped.
”I told the government at the highest levels that there was a situation totally out of control and is not being stopped," he said.
XM-8
Army opens competition for replacement of M-16, M-4Future of the XM-8 program now depends on the outcome
By Matthew CoxTimes staff writer
The Army will hold an open competition among arms makers to select a replacement for its M-16 rifles and M-4 carbines. The March 4 pre-solicitation notice, posted on the Internet, means the Army’s XM-8 program will have to prove it can outperform the rest of the small-arms industry before soldiers carry it into battle. Army weapons experts have been working on the Heckler & Koch-made XM-8 prototype as an unopposed replacement since late 2003. It was part of a longer-range effort to perfect an over-and-under style weapon, known as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon or XM-29, developed by Alliant Techsystems and Heckler & Koch.
The XM-29 fires special air-bursting projectiles and standard 5.56mm ammunition. But at 18 pounds, it’s still too heavy to meet requirements, so Army planners decided to perfect each of XM-29’s components separately, allowing soldiers to take advantage of new technology sooner.
The XM-8 is one of those components. It features a compact model for close quarters, a standard carbine and a designated marksman/squad automatic rifle model with a longer, heavier barrel and bipod legs for stability. The March 4 “Pre-solicitation Notice for the Objective Individual Combat Weapon Increment I family of weapons,” invites small-arms makers to try and meet an Army requirement for a “non developmental family of weapons that are capable of firing U.S. standard M855 and M856” 5.56mm ammunition.
The family would consist of carbine, compact, designated marksman and light machinegun models. A formal Request for Proposal is slated to be issued “on or about” March 23, the notice states. The OICW Increment I is intended to replace current weapon systems, including the M-4, M-16, M-249 squad automatic weapon and selected M-9 pistols for the active Army, the notice states. Interested companies will be required to submit four of each type of the four different variants by late spring. Submissions will be put through a series of tests, including live-fire exercises, to see if they meet the requirement. The winning company will be awarded a low-rate initial production contract to produce up to 4,900 weapons systems and could receive a full-rate production contract to make more than 134,000 weapons systems, the notice states.
Read more about the XM-8, and see videos of it in action.
By Matthew CoxTimes staff writer
The Army will hold an open competition among arms makers to select a replacement for its M-16 rifles and M-4 carbines. The March 4 pre-solicitation notice, posted on the Internet, means the Army’s XM-8 program will have to prove it can outperform the rest of the small-arms industry before soldiers carry it into battle. Army weapons experts have been working on the Heckler & Koch-made XM-8 prototype as an unopposed replacement since late 2003. It was part of a longer-range effort to perfect an over-and-under style weapon, known as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon or XM-29, developed by Alliant Techsystems and Heckler & Koch.
The XM-29 fires special air-bursting projectiles and standard 5.56mm ammunition. But at 18 pounds, it’s still too heavy to meet requirements, so Army planners decided to perfect each of XM-29’s components separately, allowing soldiers to take advantage of new technology sooner.
The XM-8 is one of those components. It features a compact model for close quarters, a standard carbine and a designated marksman/squad automatic rifle model with a longer, heavier barrel and bipod legs for stability. The March 4 “Pre-solicitation Notice for the Objective Individual Combat Weapon Increment I family of weapons,” invites small-arms makers to try and meet an Army requirement for a “non developmental family of weapons that are capable of firing U.S. standard M855 and M856” 5.56mm ammunition.
The family would consist of carbine, compact, designated marksman and light machinegun models. A formal Request for Proposal is slated to be issued “on or about” March 23, the notice states. The OICW Increment I is intended to replace current weapon systems, including the M-4, M-16, M-249 squad automatic weapon and selected M-9 pistols for the active Army, the notice states. Interested companies will be required to submit four of each type of the four different variants by late spring. Submissions will be put through a series of tests, including live-fire exercises, to see if they meet the requirement. The winning company will be awarded a low-rate initial production contract to produce up to 4,900 weapons systems and could receive a full-rate production contract to make more than 134,000 weapons systems, the notice states.
Read more about the XM-8, and see videos of it in action.
I Love Brownies
Teen Sends Student Semen-Frosted Brownies
Wed Mar 9, 9:08 PM ET
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - A teenager has agreed to admit to three counts of disturbing the peace after anonymously sending semen-frosted brownies to a fellow student. The recipient shared the treat with two other teens, police said.
They said the 17-year-old Coeur d'Alene High School student was upset after a prank in which the other student put peanut butter in his cheese sandwich days before. He told a school resource officer that "he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain," according to the police report.
The teen later told School Resource Officer Jeff Walther that he got the idea of putting his semen on the brownies from the movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," in which characters send pastries filled with dog semen to a fraternity house.
The student was arrested and booked into a juvenile detention center. He has since been released on a judge's order that he has no contact with the students who ate the brownies.
The youth is to be sentenced on April 4 on the three misdemeanor counts, which are each punishable by up to 90 days in detention, prosecutors said.
The victims' parents were notified and the children were tested for anything that could have been transmitted through the body fluid, although Panhandle Health spokeswoman Susan Cuff said the chance of the students' health being affected would be "extremely remote."
School Superintendent Harry Amend declined comment on any school discipline against the teenager.
Wed Mar 9, 9:08 PM ET
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - A teenager has agreed to admit to three counts of disturbing the peace after anonymously sending semen-frosted brownies to a fellow student. The recipient shared the treat with two other teens, police said.
They said the 17-year-old Coeur d'Alene High School student was upset after a prank in which the other student put peanut butter in his cheese sandwich days before. He told a school resource officer that "he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain," according to the police report.
The teen later told School Resource Officer Jeff Walther that he got the idea of putting his semen on the brownies from the movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," in which characters send pastries filled with dog semen to a fraternity house.
The student was arrested and booked into a juvenile detention center. He has since been released on a judge's order that he has no contact with the students who ate the brownies.
The youth is to be sentenced on April 4 on the three misdemeanor counts, which are each punishable by up to 90 days in detention, prosecutors said.
The victims' parents were notified and the children were tested for anything that could have been transmitted through the body fluid, although Panhandle Health spokeswoman Susan Cuff said the chance of the students' health being affected would be "extremely remote."
School Superintendent Harry Amend declined comment on any school discipline against the teenager.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Hard Day's Rockin
Important Karaoke Update
I have been told by trusted sources that Chopsticks now has Tenacious D for your karaoke pleasure.
You have been warned.
I have been told by trusted sources that Chopsticks now has Tenacious D for your karaoke pleasure.
You have been warned.
the Accidental Autocrat
From an article in the Atlantic on Vladimir Putin-
"I recently came across an intriguing hypothesis about Putin's survival skills. Brenda L. Connors, a senior fellow in the strategic-research department of the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, is both a former State Department protocol and political-affairs officer and a onetime soloist with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Her field of study is a distinctive one: she is a certified "movement analyst." Because of her experience greeting Mikhail Gorbachev and other global figures and her study of modern dance, Connors became intrigued by how body movement—everything from a particular way of walking to hand gestures and facial expressions—constitutes a language for conveying not only emotion but also leadership styles and behavioral patterns. From close analysis of physical traits, captured on tape and examined with the help of experts in medicine, psychology, anthropology, and other fields, she has developed character profiles of a number of world leaders. Her work may sound esoteric, but it is endorsed by, among others, Andrew Marshall, the legendary director of "net assessment" in the Pentagon, and Leon Aron, a leading Russia specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, and the author of an acclaimed biography of Yeltsin.
I paid a visit to Connors at her Newport office not long ago. We had chatted on the phone about her work on Putin—in particular about her detection of a striking irregularity in his gait—and I was eager to see her tapes and to hear more. After a tour of her lab we watched a tape she had made of Putin, compiled mostly from Russian television footage. The tape rolled to a shot of Putin at his first inauguration, in the spring of 2000, at the Andrei Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace. "Here's the picture," she said, as we watched Putin enter the hall and stride down a long red carpet. I saw what she meant only when she slowed the tape—and when she did, I was taken aback. Putin's left arm and leg were moving in an easy, natural rhythm. But his right arm, bent at the elbow, moved in a stiff way, as if jerked by the shoulder, and the right leg dragged, without absorbing his full weight. When she replayed the segment at normal speed, it was easy to pick up on the impediment, and then I had no trouble spotting it in other segments. All the momentum and energy in Putin's gait comes from the left side; it is as if the right side is just along for the ride. Even the right side of his torso seems frozen. When he is holding a pen, his right hand appears to have only an awkward, tenuous grasp on it.
Connors has shown footage of Putin's walk to a range of experts, including A. Thomas Pezzella, a cardiac-thoracic surgeon based in St. Louis; two orthopedic surgeons and a physical therapist at the naval hospital in Newport; and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of the School for Body-Mind Centering, in Amherst, Massachusetts, who is certified as something called a neurodevelopmental therapist. They offer a variety of conjectures: Putin could have had a stroke, perhaps suffered in utero; he may be afflicted with, as Pezzella speculates, an Erb's palsy, caused by a forceps tugging on his right shoulder at birth; he could have had polio as a child (polio was epidemic in Europe and western Russia after World War II). The stroke theory is consistent with what appears to be the loss of neural sensation in the fingers of his right hand. (Videotape of Putin at judo matches shows him using his fist, rather than a splayed hand, to push himself up off the mat.) Based on what she has seen and on her consultation with other experts, Connors doubts that Putin ever crawled as an infant; he seems to lack what is called contra-lateral movement and instead tends to move in a head-to-tail pattern, like a fish or a reptile.
Connors believes that Putin's infirmities "created a strong will that he survive and an impetus to balance and strengthen the body." She continues, "When we are unable to do something, really hard work becomes the way." His prowess at judo astonishes her: "He is like that ice skater who had a club foot and became an Olympic skater." Although her research sounds clinical, Connors empathizes with her subject. "It is really poignant to watch him on tape," she says of Putin. "This is a deep, old, profound loss that he has learned to cope with, magnificently." When I heard this, it was impossible for me not to think of another frail child possessed of a fierce will who turned to rigorous physical exercise and pugilism and grew up to be a head of state: Theodore Roosevelt.
"I recently came across an intriguing hypothesis about Putin's survival skills. Brenda L. Connors, a senior fellow in the strategic-research department of the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, is both a former State Department protocol and political-affairs officer and a onetime soloist with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Her field of study is a distinctive one: she is a certified "movement analyst." Because of her experience greeting Mikhail Gorbachev and other global figures and her study of modern dance, Connors became intrigued by how body movement—everything from a particular way of walking to hand gestures and facial expressions—constitutes a language for conveying not only emotion but also leadership styles and behavioral patterns. From close analysis of physical traits, captured on tape and examined with the help of experts in medicine, psychology, anthropology, and other fields, she has developed character profiles of a number of world leaders. Her work may sound esoteric, but it is endorsed by, among others, Andrew Marshall, the legendary director of "net assessment" in the Pentagon, and Leon Aron, a leading Russia specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, and the author of an acclaimed biography of Yeltsin.
I paid a visit to Connors at her Newport office not long ago. We had chatted on the phone about her work on Putin—in particular about her detection of a striking irregularity in his gait—and I was eager to see her tapes and to hear more. After a tour of her lab we watched a tape she had made of Putin, compiled mostly from Russian television footage. The tape rolled to a shot of Putin at his first inauguration, in the spring of 2000, at the Andrei Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace. "Here's the picture," she said, as we watched Putin enter the hall and stride down a long red carpet. I saw what she meant only when she slowed the tape—and when she did, I was taken aback. Putin's left arm and leg were moving in an easy, natural rhythm. But his right arm, bent at the elbow, moved in a stiff way, as if jerked by the shoulder, and the right leg dragged, without absorbing his full weight. When she replayed the segment at normal speed, it was easy to pick up on the impediment, and then I had no trouble spotting it in other segments. All the momentum and energy in Putin's gait comes from the left side; it is as if the right side is just along for the ride. Even the right side of his torso seems frozen. When he is holding a pen, his right hand appears to have only an awkward, tenuous grasp on it.
Connors has shown footage of Putin's walk to a range of experts, including A. Thomas Pezzella, a cardiac-thoracic surgeon based in St. Louis; two orthopedic surgeons and a physical therapist at the naval hospital in Newport; and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of the School for Body-Mind Centering, in Amherst, Massachusetts, who is certified as something called a neurodevelopmental therapist. They offer a variety of conjectures: Putin could have had a stroke, perhaps suffered in utero; he may be afflicted with, as Pezzella speculates, an Erb's palsy, caused by a forceps tugging on his right shoulder at birth; he could have had polio as a child (polio was epidemic in Europe and western Russia after World War II). The stroke theory is consistent with what appears to be the loss of neural sensation in the fingers of his right hand. (Videotape of Putin at judo matches shows him using his fist, rather than a splayed hand, to push himself up off the mat.) Based on what she has seen and on her consultation with other experts, Connors doubts that Putin ever crawled as an infant; he seems to lack what is called contra-lateral movement and instead tends to move in a head-to-tail pattern, like a fish or a reptile.
Connors believes that Putin's infirmities "created a strong will that he survive and an impetus to balance and strengthen the body." She continues, "When we are unable to do something, really hard work becomes the way." His prowess at judo astonishes her: "He is like that ice skater who had a club foot and became an Olympic skater." Although her research sounds clinical, Connors empathizes with her subject. "It is really poignant to watch him on tape," she says of Putin. "This is a deep, old, profound loss that he has learned to cope with, magnificently." When I heard this, it was impossible for me not to think of another frail child possessed of a fierce will who turned to rigorous physical exercise and pugilism and grew up to be a head of state: Theodore Roosevelt.
I see shoes in his future.
A man-eating crocodile has been captured by wildlife authorities in Uganda and taken to a crocodile farm.
The rangers assisted by dozens of fishermen tracked the five-metre animal for three nights before catching it using ropes and nets.
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) says the crocodile is thought to be 60 years old and weighs about 1,000kg.
The villagers of Lugaga on Lake Victoria say they think it has killed 80 people since 1986 and wanted to kill it.
UWA's Moses Mapesa, who was in charge of the capture, told AFP news agency they had to move the crocodile quickly to stop local residents from avenging the deaths, which local media say have occurred over the past two decades.
"Much as the residents of Lugaga wanted to kill the reptile after our rangers had captured it, it is our responsibility to protect it," UWA spokeswoman Lillian Nsubuga told Reuters news agency.
People living on the shores of Lake Victoria depend on the lake for food and water and can be easy prey for crocodiles.
Peter Ogwang, an expert who helped with the capture on Monday, told the state-owned New Vision newspaper the crocodile was known to take its victims to a special spot, where it allowed the bodies to decompose.
He said a crocodile can develop a habit of hunting humans down, once it tastes human flesh.
Ugandan authorities blame the attacks on an increase in the human population, which encroaches on crocodiles' habitat.
The rangers assisted by dozens of fishermen tracked the five-metre animal for three nights before catching it using ropes and nets.
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) says the crocodile is thought to be 60 years old and weighs about 1,000kg.
The villagers of Lugaga on Lake Victoria say they think it has killed 80 people since 1986 and wanted to kill it.
UWA's Moses Mapesa, who was in charge of the capture, told AFP news agency they had to move the crocodile quickly to stop local residents from avenging the deaths, which local media say have occurred over the past two decades.
"Much as the residents of Lugaga wanted to kill the reptile after our rangers had captured it, it is our responsibility to protect it," UWA spokeswoman Lillian Nsubuga told Reuters news agency.
People living on the shores of Lake Victoria depend on the lake for food and water and can be easy prey for crocodiles.
Peter Ogwang, an expert who helped with the capture on Monday, told the state-owned New Vision newspaper the crocodile was known to take its victims to a special spot, where it allowed the bodies to decompose.
He said a crocodile can develop a habit of hunting humans down, once it tastes human flesh.
Ugandan authorities blame the attacks on an increase in the human population, which encroaches on crocodiles' habitat.
Hot Tickets
Vikings' Tice target of Super Bowl scalping probe
By Don Banks and George Dohrmann, SI.com
Minnesota head coach Mike Tice is being investigated by the NFL for allegedly heading up and profiting from a Super Bowl ticket-scalping operation within the Vikings organization, a violation of NFL rules that league sources say has been going on for years. The league requires all players, coaches, and club personnel who buy Super Bowl tickets to sign a release stating they will not re-sell them at a profit. Still, the practice of scalping Super Bowl tickets is widespread within the league and is an open secret in many NFL locker rooms. Yet the practice in Minnesota is unique, league sources say, because it has been orchestrated by the head coach. And, according to people familiar with the scalping operation, Tice began facilitating the reselling of Super Bowl tickets long before becoming the Vikings' head coach in January 2002. Tice coached Minnesota's tight ends and then offensive line beginning in 1996.
"This started when [Tice] wasn't the figure he is now," said one team source. "I can't believe how rampant it's been. Stuff like this has gone on a long time. There's a pretty good amount of people involved. There could be a lot of people affected by this, not just in the NFL's view, but with the IRS as well."...However, in mid-January, after the Vikings were eliminated by the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC divisional playoffs, a team source said Tice organized the re-selling of Super Bowl tickets for players and club employees. (Each NFL player has the right to buy two Super Bowl tickets at face value, which this year was $500 and $600 depending on the location of the seat). Those who gave their tickets to Tice received $1,900, a mark-up of at least $1,300 per ticket, sources said. Last season, individuals brokering tickets through Tice received $1,100 per ticket, a former Vikings player said. "Tice has been turning around tickets for years and years," said one player who was with the Vikings in 2003. "He's been selling them to the same guy. He commits to a certain amount every year." Late in the 2003 season, Tice berated one Vikings veteran for asking teammates if he could buy their tickets, which he had hoped to procure for family members. Tice, one source said, accused the player of trying to "backdoor the head coach." Tice then successfully pressured some players to renege on their commitment and sell their tickets through him, the player said, even though Tice was offering slightly less money per ticket. Sources around the league, including several coaches, said it is common practice within the NFL for players and assistants to scalp their Super Bowl tickets. On some teams, the income from the re-sale of those tickets is counted on by assistant coaches to supplement their salaries. "A lot of teams do it," said an NFL assistant who once worked for the Vikings. "Everybody can do it. Every team has a guy who takes care of moving the tickets. I'd hate to see it end because coaches have always used that as extra money. Coaches do count on that as a little extra deal. [Team] owners will probably stop doing it now, because they don't have to give us those tickets."
By Don Banks and George Dohrmann, SI.com
Minnesota head coach Mike Tice is being investigated by the NFL for allegedly heading up and profiting from a Super Bowl ticket-scalping operation within the Vikings organization, a violation of NFL rules that league sources say has been going on for years. The league requires all players, coaches, and club personnel who buy Super Bowl tickets to sign a release stating they will not re-sell them at a profit. Still, the practice of scalping Super Bowl tickets is widespread within the league and is an open secret in many NFL locker rooms. Yet the practice in Minnesota is unique, league sources say, because it has been orchestrated by the head coach. And, according to people familiar with the scalping operation, Tice began facilitating the reselling of Super Bowl tickets long before becoming the Vikings' head coach in January 2002. Tice coached Minnesota's tight ends and then offensive line beginning in 1996.
"This started when [Tice] wasn't the figure he is now," said one team source. "I can't believe how rampant it's been. Stuff like this has gone on a long time. There's a pretty good amount of people involved. There could be a lot of people affected by this, not just in the NFL's view, but with the IRS as well."...However, in mid-January, after the Vikings were eliminated by the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC divisional playoffs, a team source said Tice organized the re-selling of Super Bowl tickets for players and club employees. (Each NFL player has the right to buy two Super Bowl tickets at face value, which this year was $500 and $600 depending on the location of the seat). Those who gave their tickets to Tice received $1,900, a mark-up of at least $1,300 per ticket, sources said. Last season, individuals brokering tickets through Tice received $1,100 per ticket, a former Vikings player said. "Tice has been turning around tickets for years and years," said one player who was with the Vikings in 2003. "He's been selling them to the same guy. He commits to a certain amount every year." Late in the 2003 season, Tice berated one Vikings veteran for asking teammates if he could buy their tickets, which he had hoped to procure for family members. Tice, one source said, accused the player of trying to "backdoor the head coach." Tice then successfully pressured some players to renege on their commitment and sell their tickets through him, the player said, even though Tice was offering slightly less money per ticket. Sources around the league, including several coaches, said it is common practice within the NFL for players and assistants to scalp their Super Bowl tickets. On some teams, the income from the re-sale of those tickets is counted on by assistant coaches to supplement their salaries. "A lot of teams do it," said an NFL assistant who once worked for the Vikings. "Everybody can do it. Every team has a guy who takes care of moving the tickets. I'd hate to see it end because coaches have always used that as extra money. Coaches do count on that as a little extra deal. [Team] owners will probably stop doing it now, because they don't have to give us those tickets."
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
US/UN Analysis
An interesting article from Stratfor on the US/UN:
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Geopolitical Diary: Monday, March 7, 2005 March 08, 2005 0615 GMT
http://www.stratfor.com/GeopoliticalDiary.php
U.S. President George W. Bush has appointed John Bolton, who has been serving as the undersecretary of state for arms control, as the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton is among the most hawkish of Washington's "neoconservatives," and his appointment immediately triggered a chorus of groans and exasperated forehead-slapping from Democrats and foreign governments alike. The immediate conclusion is that the Bush administration is out to destroy the United Nations -- but if for no other reason than that we're talking about someone Pyongyang has felt necessary to label "human scum," the appointment deserves a closer look.
In fact, there is some extremely deep diplomacy going on here. Bolton belongs to the "put-up-or-shut-up" branch of American neocons, believing that the United Nation's original charter prescribed a much more activist organization -- where resolutions would be strengthened by possible consequences if violated, often including the use of force. In Bolton's mind, the Korean War is precisely the type of military action the United Nations was designed to authorize and carry out.
This is, needless to say, very different from the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war of 2003 -- in which the Bush administration, we believe, hoped that the United Nations would not go along with U.S. requests. The whole point of the war was not to oust Saddam Hussein but to intimidate Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia into acting against al Qaeda on Washington's behalf. Bush wanted to scare regimes that supported or enabled al Qaeda by placing uninvited, unsanctioned American armored divisions -- not a sea of polite blue helmets -- in the sands of Iraq.
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Geopolitical Diary: Monday, March 7, 2005 March 08, 2005 0615 GMT
http://www.stratfor.com/GeopoliticalDiary.php
U.S. President George W. Bush has appointed John Bolton, who has been serving as the undersecretary of state for arms control, as the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton is among the most hawkish of Washington's "neoconservatives," and his appointment immediately triggered a chorus of groans and exasperated forehead-slapping from Democrats and foreign governments alike. The immediate conclusion is that the Bush administration is out to destroy the United Nations -- but if for no other reason than that we're talking about someone Pyongyang has felt necessary to label "human scum," the appointment deserves a closer look.
In fact, there is some extremely deep diplomacy going on here. Bolton belongs to the "put-up-or-shut-up" branch of American neocons, believing that the United Nation's original charter prescribed a much more activist organization -- where resolutions would be strengthened by possible consequences if violated, often including the use of force. In Bolton's mind, the Korean War is precisely the type of military action the United Nations was designed to authorize and carry out.
This is, needless to say, very different from the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war of 2003 -- in which the Bush administration, we believe, hoped that the United Nations would not go along with U.S. requests. The whole point of the war was not to oust Saddam Hussein but to intimidate Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia into acting against al Qaeda on Washington's behalf. Bush wanted to scare regimes that supported or enabled al Qaeda by placing uninvited, unsanctioned American armored divisions -- not a sea of polite blue helmets -- in the sands of Iraq.
Why didn't Hitler drink Tequila?*
Tequila contest turns deadly
March 08 2005 at 09:20AM
Santo Domingo - The 21-year-old winner of a competition to drink the most tequila died on Monday and three other contestants were gravely ill in the hospital, officials said. Ricardo Ivan Garcia drank more than 50 shots of tequila on Sunday night at Santo Domingo's Blanc, Dance and Lounge discotheque to win the prize of 10 000 pesos (about R2 000) at a Mexican night celebration.But he had taken ill, and rushed to hospital where he died within hours, apparently from heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning, said public prosecutor Jose Hernandez Peguero. Three other contestants remained in serious condition in the hospital, family members said.
*it made him mean
March 08 2005 at 09:20AM
Santo Domingo - The 21-year-old winner of a competition to drink the most tequila died on Monday and three other contestants were gravely ill in the hospital, officials said. Ricardo Ivan Garcia drank more than 50 shots of tequila on Sunday night at Santo Domingo's Blanc, Dance and Lounge discotheque to win the prize of 10 000 pesos (about R2 000) at a Mexican night celebration.But he had taken ill, and rushed to hospital where he died within hours, apparently from heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning, said public prosecutor Jose Hernandez Peguero. Three other contestants remained in serious condition in the hospital, family members said.
*it made him mean
Ahhh- True Diversity!
"WE WELCOME DIVERSITY" proclaims the Web site of Ocean Haven, an Oregon inn. "Respecting the interdependence & diversity of all life."
Well, maybe not all life. The homepage offers some qualifications:
FOR REASONS OF HEALTH & SAFETY OCEAN HAVEN CANNOT ACCOMMODATE SMOKERS, PETS, FOLKS TRAVELING IN A HUMMER, OR FOLKS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH & HIS NATURE DESTRUCTIVE POLICIES
Wow, this place sounds almost as diverse as a college campus!
Well, maybe not all life. The homepage offers some qualifications:
FOR REASONS OF HEALTH & SAFETY OCEAN HAVEN CANNOT ACCOMMODATE SMOKERS, PETS, FOLKS TRAVELING IN A HUMMER, OR FOLKS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH & HIS NATURE DESTRUCTIVE POLICIES
Wow, this place sounds almost as diverse as a college campus!
Piece in the Middle East
In an op-ed for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, author Frida Ghitis makes an excellent point:
"Pay close attention to what is taking place just below the major headlines in the Middle East, because something extraordinary has just happened--or, more precisely, not happened.
For possibly the first time since 1948, since the creation of the state of Israel, an Arab government's principal--indispensable--method for manipulating and controlling its people has stopped working. The well-known political sleight of hand consists of deflecting popular anger against the regime by shifting attention and blame onto an outside enemy: Israel.
The trick always worked--until now. This is no small development."
Ghitis is referring to Syria's attempt to blame Israel for the assassination of Lebanese political Rafiq Hariri, a charge that also found voice in London's left-wing Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1423210,00.html
But look around the Middle East and you see example after example of people turning against their own repressive governments rather than directing their anger at Israel.
In Kuwait, hundreds of women and men "marched on parliament Monday in the conservative Gulf state's largest female suffrage rally," reports the Associated Press from Kuwait City. Meanwhile, the French-based Web site Iran va Jahan reports on the latest Persian protests:
"Iranian presidential candidate, Dr. Moein, faced a barrage of protests by students in Isfahan university yesterday. At the beginning of the proceedings, the Islamic Republic anthem was played, but the students instead of singing the official state anthem, stood up and sang the alternative nationalist "Ey Iran" anthem.
Many of the students held placards saying "Referendum Yes, Elections No" which referred to the futility of pre-selected elections in Islamic Republic and what the people of Iran really want, a referendum for the drafting of a new constitution that is compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all its associated covenants."
The faster the Arab and Iranian dictatorships fall, the sooner we will see a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is chiefly a proxy war between those dictatorships and their own people.
"Pay close attention to what is taking place just below the major headlines in the Middle East, because something extraordinary has just happened--or, more precisely, not happened.
For possibly the first time since 1948, since the creation of the state of Israel, an Arab government's principal--indispensable--method for manipulating and controlling its people has stopped working. The well-known political sleight of hand consists of deflecting popular anger against the regime by shifting attention and blame onto an outside enemy: Israel.
The trick always worked--until now. This is no small development."
Ghitis is referring to Syria's attempt to blame Israel for the assassination of Lebanese political Rafiq Hariri, a charge that also found voice in London's left-wing Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1423210,00.html
But look around the Middle East and you see example after example of people turning against their own repressive governments rather than directing their anger at Israel.
In Kuwait, hundreds of women and men "marched on parliament Monday in the conservative Gulf state's largest female suffrage rally," reports the Associated Press from Kuwait City. Meanwhile, the French-based Web site Iran va Jahan reports on the latest Persian protests:
"Iranian presidential candidate, Dr. Moein, faced a barrage of protests by students in Isfahan university yesterday. At the beginning of the proceedings, the Islamic Republic anthem was played, but the students instead of singing the official state anthem, stood up and sang the alternative nationalist "Ey Iran" anthem.
Many of the students held placards saying "Referendum Yes, Elections No" which referred to the futility of pre-selected elections in Islamic Republic and what the people of Iran really want, a referendum for the drafting of a new constitution that is compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all its associated covenants."
The faster the Arab and Iranian dictatorships fall, the sooner we will see a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is chiefly a proxy war between those dictatorships and their own people.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Laughter and the 20 million
Russians embrace their old Uncle
JoeMark Franchetti, Moscow March 08, 2005
SMARTLY dressed in suit and tie, the young lawyer cut an incongruous figure as he was borne through the streets of Moscow alongside crowds of impoverished pensioners in a red sea of hammer-and-sickle flags.Although several decades younger than most of those around him, Yuri Vassilyev, 33, was happy to admit to their common cause: a fondness for Joseph Stalin, the dictator whose purges are blamed by Western historians for the deaths of up to 20 million Soviet citizens. "Look, everyone makes mistakes," Mr Vassilyev said. "Stalin wasn't a saint, but he was a great man who built up a strong state. "After years of lies about him, the truth is coming out. We owe a lot to him. He turned the Soviet Union into a superpower that was feared and respected. A man like Stalin is what Russia needs now." Increasing numbers of Mr Vassilyev's countrymen are taking a similarly sepia-tinged view of the dictator in the run-up to May's 60th anniversary of his finest moment, the defeat of Nazi Germany. Once dismissed as the rabid opinions of a few eccentrics and elderly nostalgics, statements glorifying Stalin can now be heard among those born long after his death in 1953. At least three Russian cities have announced plans to erect monuments marking his war record – almost half a century since they were torn down in a program of de-Stalinisation initiated by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev.
A recent poll found that 50 per cent of Russians consider Stalin a "wise leader", while one in four say they would vote for him if he were standing for office today.
JoeMark Franchetti, Moscow March 08, 2005
SMARTLY dressed in suit and tie, the young lawyer cut an incongruous figure as he was borne through the streets of Moscow alongside crowds of impoverished pensioners in a red sea of hammer-and-sickle flags.Although several decades younger than most of those around him, Yuri Vassilyev, 33, was happy to admit to their common cause: a fondness for Joseph Stalin, the dictator whose purges are blamed by Western historians for the deaths of up to 20 million Soviet citizens. "Look, everyone makes mistakes," Mr Vassilyev said. "Stalin wasn't a saint, but he was a great man who built up a strong state. "After years of lies about him, the truth is coming out. We owe a lot to him. He turned the Soviet Union into a superpower that was feared and respected. A man like Stalin is what Russia needs now." Increasing numbers of Mr Vassilyev's countrymen are taking a similarly sepia-tinged view of the dictator in the run-up to May's 60th anniversary of his finest moment, the defeat of Nazi Germany. Once dismissed as the rabid opinions of a few eccentrics and elderly nostalgics, statements glorifying Stalin can now be heard among those born long after his death in 1953. At least three Russian cities have announced plans to erect monuments marking his war record – almost half a century since they were torn down in a program of de-Stalinisation initiated by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev.
A recent poll found that 50 per cent of Russians consider Stalin a "wise leader", while one in four say they would vote for him if he were standing for office today.
Richardson praises Mideast Policy
Mar 7, 8:05 AM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Support for President Bush's mission of spreading democracy throughout the world, especially the Mideast, is winning accolades from an unlikely source - New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson, a prominent Democrat often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary under President Clinton, on Monday cited Syria's promise to lower the profile of its 14,000 troops in Lebanon as a "very significant" result of U.S. pressure.
The presidents of Syria and Lebanon announced Monday that the Syrian troops would be pulled back to eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley by March 31.
"I believe the Bush administration deserves credit for putting pressure and saying that authoritarian regimes have to go," Richardson said on NBC's "Today" show. Bush's stated mission of spreading democracy around the world "is working, whether it's by design or by accident," he said.
In the past, "U.S. policy has winked at Saudi Arabia and Egypt" because of America's stakes in the region, such as energy interests and military bases, Richardson said. "We kind of said 'OK, it's all right not to be democratic.'"
"The president, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region and also some of the hatred for our policy of invading Iraq," he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Support for President Bush's mission of spreading democracy throughout the world, especially the Mideast, is winning accolades from an unlikely source - New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson, a prominent Democrat often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary under President Clinton, on Monday cited Syria's promise to lower the profile of its 14,000 troops in Lebanon as a "very significant" result of U.S. pressure.
The presidents of Syria and Lebanon announced Monday that the Syrian troops would be pulled back to eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley by March 31.
"I believe the Bush administration deserves credit for putting pressure and saying that authoritarian regimes have to go," Richardson said on NBC's "Today" show. Bush's stated mission of spreading democracy around the world "is working, whether it's by design or by accident," he said.
In the past, "U.S. policy has winked at Saudi Arabia and Egypt" because of America's stakes in the region, such as energy interests and military bases, Richardson said. "We kind of said 'OK, it's all right not to be democratic.'"
"The president, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region and also some of the hatred for our policy of invading Iraq," he said.
Friday, March 04, 2005
David Cross
IT'S OFFICIAL!
Hey everybody, Well, it’s official. I’m healthyish! I turned 40 the other month (I’m not telling which month! I don’t need the whole world to know how old I am!!) and from what I can tell from the late night ads, when you turn 40 you’re supposed to have your shit checked (literally). So I made an appointment to see a reputable doctor (i.e. no Mexicans!). He seemed Jewish enough so off I went. I told him I wanted the whole shebang, blood test, e.k.g., urine, poo – the works. I’ve had friends who’ve done the finger up the asshole test* before and told me about it, and some who’ve done it several times (Mr. Odenkirk!) and they have all enthusiastically recommended it. Okay, I can honestly report that it is no big deal. I didn’t “get off” at all. It was not done in a very sensitive way. A brief warning and a couple seconds of “wiggle” time might have been nice as opposed to some half-assed homophobic joke that’s meant to disarm me, not enough lube, and a violent thrust that made me feel as if I was going to shit his finger out instantly. It felt okay once I got used to it but the first ten minutes were NOT erotic at all. Ladies, I must say that I have learned from this experience profoundly. I will never hurry my cock into your asshole ever. No matter how into it either one of us is. It will be a gentle movement with a slight rocking motion and a pleasant easing in. No more hurried “whoops…sorry”. I know now. I understand. I’ve been there and back. Unfortunately this means no strap-ons for you either.
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This Bob and David website is killing me. It is also robbing my employer of any potential productivity I may have mustered this afternoon.
Hey everybody, Well, it’s official. I’m healthyish! I turned 40 the other month (I’m not telling which month! I don’t need the whole world to know how old I am!!) and from what I can tell from the late night ads, when you turn 40 you’re supposed to have your shit checked (literally). So I made an appointment to see a reputable doctor (i.e. no Mexicans!). He seemed Jewish enough so off I went. I told him I wanted the whole shebang, blood test, e.k.g., urine, poo – the works. I’ve had friends who’ve done the finger up the asshole test* before and told me about it, and some who’ve done it several times (Mr. Odenkirk!) and they have all enthusiastically recommended it. Okay, I can honestly report that it is no big deal. I didn’t “get off” at all. It was not done in a very sensitive way. A brief warning and a couple seconds of “wiggle” time might have been nice as opposed to some half-assed homophobic joke that’s meant to disarm me, not enough lube, and a violent thrust that made me feel as if I was going to shit his finger out instantly. It felt okay once I got used to it but the first ten minutes were NOT erotic at all. Ladies, I must say that I have learned from this experience profoundly. I will never hurry my cock into your asshole ever. No matter how into it either one of us is. It will be a gentle movement with a slight rocking motion and a pleasant easing in. No more hurried “whoops…sorry”. I know now. I understand. I’ve been there and back. Unfortunately this means no strap-ons for you either.
>>
This Bob and David website is killing me. It is also robbing my employer of any potential productivity I may have mustered this afternoon.
I’VE HAD IT! -by BOB ODENKIRK
(Bob Odenkirk began his career as half of the quibbling editorial team of “Stossel and Odenkirk”at the Andy Rooney Institute For Disembodied Crabbery.)
I’ve had it with Death! What’s the deal? Does everything I love have to die? Including me? Puh-lease!! A few weeks ago I was talking to a good friend at one of these chain restaurants that has suddenly decided to serve “healthy” food. We were having a genial conversation about many things; the ingredients of canned tuna, the extensive legal documents you sign when you rent a carpet cleaner, the lines at the airport and movie theatre. Two months later I got a call from this same friend’s wife. He had died! Kaput! No more! What gives?!I wouldn’t mind if my friend’s wife had called to tell me he was on vacation. He certainly deserved one (although he would have had to put up with those tiny pillows on airplanes!). After all, if he was on vacation he would eventually return, right? Then we could have talked, and continued our relationship. But he died! So now, no more talking, no more phone calls, no more nothing! My friend’s wife started yammering about how he died. Some swiftly moving disease. She started telling me the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and finally the big down--into the ground (although he was cremated and his ashes tossed from a boat…why does the ocean have to be so big?!?!). This long tale wasted more of my life-time, bringing me nearer to my own expiration date.It’s not that I want to live forever. It’s just that I don’t want other people living after I am dead! It diminishes the value of my life! It mocks and trivializes everything I care about for other people to carry on without me!I think people should all be allowed to live to 100. That’s a nice round number. It’s more than 80, but less than 120. Who wants to live to be 120, anyways? It’s too long! In fact, the number 120 is a bit too big anyways. Would you like to eat 120 marshmallows? I bet even the person who loves marshmallows most would agree that 120 marshmallows is too many marshmallows. I think 10 is about the top number for enjoying marshmallows in one sitting.We should all live to be 100 then the world should end. Then, it’s not like you died, it’s like you lived forever! Because if the world ends, then there’s no more people left living and mocking you by their non-absence! But of course, that’s impossible to arrange because we all weren’t born on the same day! And whose fault is that? Our mothers!I’m fed up! Who’s with me?!
*The “I’ve Had It!” column has previously been published under the following titles: “I’m fed up!”, “Who’s with me?!”, “What gives?!”, “Puh-lease!”, “What’s the deal?!”, “Shit!”, and “Would you like to eat 120 marshmallows?!”
I’ve had it with Death! What’s the deal? Does everything I love have to die? Including me? Puh-lease!! A few weeks ago I was talking to a good friend at one of these chain restaurants that has suddenly decided to serve “healthy” food. We were having a genial conversation about many things; the ingredients of canned tuna, the extensive legal documents you sign when you rent a carpet cleaner, the lines at the airport and movie theatre. Two months later I got a call from this same friend’s wife. He had died! Kaput! No more! What gives?!I wouldn’t mind if my friend’s wife had called to tell me he was on vacation. He certainly deserved one (although he would have had to put up with those tiny pillows on airplanes!). After all, if he was on vacation he would eventually return, right? Then we could have talked, and continued our relationship. But he died! So now, no more talking, no more phone calls, no more nothing! My friend’s wife started yammering about how he died. Some swiftly moving disease. She started telling me the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and finally the big down--into the ground (although he was cremated and his ashes tossed from a boat…why does the ocean have to be so big?!?!). This long tale wasted more of my life-time, bringing me nearer to my own expiration date.It’s not that I want to live forever. It’s just that I don’t want other people living after I am dead! It diminishes the value of my life! It mocks and trivializes everything I care about for other people to carry on without me!I think people should all be allowed to live to 100. That’s a nice round number. It’s more than 80, but less than 120. Who wants to live to be 120, anyways? It’s too long! In fact, the number 120 is a bit too big anyways. Would you like to eat 120 marshmallows? I bet even the person who loves marshmallows most would agree that 120 marshmallows is too many marshmallows. I think 10 is about the top number for enjoying marshmallows in one sitting.We should all live to be 100 then the world should end. Then, it’s not like you died, it’s like you lived forever! Because if the world ends, then there’s no more people left living and mocking you by their non-absence! But of course, that’s impossible to arrange because we all weren’t born on the same day! And whose fault is that? Our mothers!I’m fed up! Who’s with me?!
*The “I’ve Had It!” column has previously been published under the following titles: “I’m fed up!”, “Who’s with me?!”, “What gives?!”, “Puh-lease!”, “What’s the deal?!”, “Shit!”, and “Would you like to eat 120 marshmallows?!”
Bob and David Book Blurbs
Monday, February 28, 2005
BLURBS 4 SALE!!!Get ‘em while they’re HOT!
*I took a night-time class at the Adult Education Center for Early and Late Adult Education. I learned how to write blurbs for people’s books. You know - "blurbs", the little comments on the back cover that give you an excuse to buy it. I was told those are always in demand. I think I did a damn fine job. My teacher was a Mr. Mark Twain himself. I’ve gotta be honest, he looked a lot like Deepak Chopra in a wig and white suit.I thought I would put these up for sale right here on the ol’ website. If you’ve written a book, spend the money for a good blurb! Don’t shortchange your work - it deserves nothing less than a rave! From me!Here are my blurbs for sale followed by their pricings.
Like no porn ever – $125.00
Finally, a 'Catcher in the Rye' without the indeterminable longing for lost innocence. - $3,500.00
Tells you about horses and how they get taken care of. - $0.23
The writing in this book is so darn sexy it masturbates you. - $0.08
A magical book that will haunt you like a ghost being sawed in half. - $2.50
I loved this story! It’s got everything; murder, retribution, justice, family humor, a hot-rod that talks, the key to black-holes, a shoe-horn that talks, loss of innocence, innocence regained, a map to the louvre, camping descriptions, erotic passages, an infant Hitler you’ll grow to love, a dancing surgeon, a talking whale, a talking button, a talking Pope, a franco-philes tour of Paris in the 20’s, a list of ingredients, clichéd metaphors strung together like nobody’s business, an indictment of the military-industrial complex, an old woman with a secret (she’s really a man), and 5 more things I’ve forgotten. Okay, so it doesn’t have it all. But it has 27 things and that’s a lot! - $0.10
A comic novel about the horrors of female circumcision in Sub-saharan Africa like no other! – $2,000.00
Makes other bibles look like fucking horseshit. - $2.50
BLURBS 4 SALE!!!Get ‘em while they’re HOT!
*I took a night-time class at the Adult Education Center for Early and Late Adult Education. I learned how to write blurbs for people’s books. You know - "blurbs", the little comments on the back cover that give you an excuse to buy it. I was told those are always in demand. I think I did a damn fine job. My teacher was a Mr. Mark Twain himself. I’ve gotta be honest, he looked a lot like Deepak Chopra in a wig and white suit.I thought I would put these up for sale right here on the ol’ website. If you’ve written a book, spend the money for a good blurb! Don’t shortchange your work - it deserves nothing less than a rave! From me!Here are my blurbs for sale followed by their pricings.
Like no porn ever – $125.00
Finally, a 'Catcher in the Rye' without the indeterminable longing for lost innocence. - $3,500.00
Tells you about horses and how they get taken care of. - $0.23
The writing in this book is so darn sexy it masturbates you. - $0.08
A magical book that will haunt you like a ghost being sawed in half. - $2.50
I loved this story! It’s got everything; murder, retribution, justice, family humor, a hot-rod that talks, the key to black-holes, a shoe-horn that talks, loss of innocence, innocence regained, a map to the louvre, camping descriptions, erotic passages, an infant Hitler you’ll grow to love, a dancing surgeon, a talking whale, a talking button, a talking Pope, a franco-philes tour of Paris in the 20’s, a list of ingredients, clichéd metaphors strung together like nobody’s business, an indictment of the military-industrial complex, an old woman with a secret (she’s really a man), and 5 more things I’ve forgotten. Okay, so it doesn’t have it all. But it has 27 things and that’s a lot! - $0.10
A comic novel about the horrors of female circumcision in Sub-saharan Africa like no other! – $2,000.00
Makes other bibles look like fucking horseshit. - $2.50
Montage-a-google
Try out this link- you can make a 20 picture collage of any image on Google!
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage%2Da%2Dgoogle/
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage%2Da%2Dgoogle/
BS: Process not Product
A philosophy professor says it's a process, not a product.
By Timothy Noah
"We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production," observes Laura Penny, author of the forthcoming (and wittily titled) Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit. But what is bullshit, exactly? By which I mean: What are its defining characteristics? What is its Platonic essence? How does bullshit differ from such precursors as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash, claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or "bunk"), hokum, drivel, flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other pejoratives* favored by H.L. Mencken and his many imitators? The scholar who answers the question, "What is bullshit?" bids boldly to define the spirit of the present age.
Enter Harry G. Frankfurt. In the fall 1986 issue of Raritan, Frankfurt, a retired professor of philosophy at Princeton, took a whack at it in an essay titled "On Bullshit." Frankfurt reprinted the essay two years later in his book The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Last month he republished it a second time as a very small book. Frankfurt's conclusion, which I caught up with in its latest repackaging, is that bullshit is defined not so much by the end product as by the process by which it is created.
Eureka! Frankfurt's definition is one of those not-at-all-obvious insights that become blindingly obvious the moment they are expressed. Although Frankfurt doesn't point this out, it immediately occurred to me upon closing his book that the word "bullshit" is both noun and verb, and that this duality distinguishes bullshit not only from the aforementioned Menckenesque antecedents, but also from its contemporary near-relative, horseshit. It is possible to bullshit somebody, but it is not possible to poppycock, or to twaddle, or to horseshit anyone. When we speak of bullshit, then, we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the bullshit into being: Somebody bullshitted. In this respect the word "bullshit" is identical to the word "lie," for when we speak of a lie we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the lie into being: Somebody lied.
Is "bullshit," then, a synonym for "lie"? Not exactly. Frankfurt asks us to consider an anecdote told about Ludwig Wittgenstein wherein the great philosopher phones a friend named Fania Pascal who's just had her tonsils removed. How are you, Wittgenstein asks. Like a dog that's been run over, Pascal answers. Wittgenstein then replies testily, "You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like." In effect, Frankfurt argues, Wittgenstein is suggesting that Pascal is spouting bullshit. (A more reasonable person, Frankfurt concedes, would reach the charitable conclusion that Wittgenstein's friend is merely expressing herself through the use of allusive or at worst hyperbolic language.) Wittgenstein's grumpy outburst seems so absurd that very possibly the real bullshit here is the anecdote itself. But Frankfurt asks us to assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that the anecdote is true and that Wittgenstein's objection is rational and sincere.
So: Wittgenstein thinks Pascal is bullshitting him. But why, Frankfurt asks, does it strike [Wittgenstein] that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives what Pascal says as being—roughly speaking, for now—unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. She does not even think she knows, except in the vaguest way, how a run-over dog feels. Her description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is merely making up.
Is Pascal lying? No. She isn't trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how she really feels, and she isn't trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how a dog would feel if run over. Her error, Frankfurt concludes, isn't that she conducted a faulty inquiry into how a dog would feel if run over, but that she conducted no inquiry at all (in this case, because none is possible)."It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit."
Frankfurt's definition is provocative because it allows for the little-recognized possibility that bullshit can be substantively true, and still be bullshit.
By Timothy Noah
"We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production," observes Laura Penny, author of the forthcoming (and wittily titled) Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit. But what is bullshit, exactly? By which I mean: What are its defining characteristics? What is its Platonic essence? How does bullshit differ from such precursors as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash, claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or "bunk"), hokum, drivel, flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other pejoratives* favored by H.L. Mencken and his many imitators? The scholar who answers the question, "What is bullshit?" bids boldly to define the spirit of the present age.
Enter Harry G. Frankfurt. In the fall 1986 issue of Raritan, Frankfurt, a retired professor of philosophy at Princeton, took a whack at it in an essay titled "On Bullshit." Frankfurt reprinted the essay two years later in his book The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Last month he republished it a second time as a very small book. Frankfurt's conclusion, which I caught up with in its latest repackaging, is that bullshit is defined not so much by the end product as by the process by which it is created.
Eureka! Frankfurt's definition is one of those not-at-all-obvious insights that become blindingly obvious the moment they are expressed. Although Frankfurt doesn't point this out, it immediately occurred to me upon closing his book that the word "bullshit" is both noun and verb, and that this duality distinguishes bullshit not only from the aforementioned Menckenesque antecedents, but also from its contemporary near-relative, horseshit. It is possible to bullshit somebody, but it is not possible to poppycock, or to twaddle, or to horseshit anyone. When we speak of bullshit, then, we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the bullshit into being: Somebody bullshitted. In this respect the word "bullshit" is identical to the word "lie," for when we speak of a lie we speak, implicitly, of the action that brought the lie into being: Somebody lied.
Is "bullshit," then, a synonym for "lie"? Not exactly. Frankfurt asks us to consider an anecdote told about Ludwig Wittgenstein wherein the great philosopher phones a friend named Fania Pascal who's just had her tonsils removed. How are you, Wittgenstein asks. Like a dog that's been run over, Pascal answers. Wittgenstein then replies testily, "You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like." In effect, Frankfurt argues, Wittgenstein is suggesting that Pascal is spouting bullshit. (A more reasonable person, Frankfurt concedes, would reach the charitable conclusion that Wittgenstein's friend is merely expressing herself through the use of allusive or at worst hyperbolic language.) Wittgenstein's grumpy outburst seems so absurd that very possibly the real bullshit here is the anecdote itself. But Frankfurt asks us to assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that the anecdote is true and that Wittgenstein's objection is rational and sincere.
So: Wittgenstein thinks Pascal is bullshitting him. But why, Frankfurt asks, does it strike [Wittgenstein] that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives what Pascal says as being—roughly speaking, for now—unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. She does not even think she knows, except in the vaguest way, how a run-over dog feels. Her description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is merely making up.
Is Pascal lying? No. She isn't trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how she really feels, and she isn't trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how a dog would feel if run over. Her error, Frankfurt concludes, isn't that she conducted a faulty inquiry into how a dog would feel if run over, but that she conducted no inquiry at all (in this case, because none is possible)."It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit."
Frankfurt's definition is provocative because it allows for the little-recognized possibility that bullshit can be substantively true, and still be bullshit.
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