perfidy

A long time ago, I studied the monetary and cultural cost of certain aspects of the Imperial-era British penal system. I learned alot about how graft, social forces, governmental pressure, and random circumstance can shape not only the process of the justice system, but its punishment as well. And it didn't stop there. Oh, no. European legal thought and tradition are fundamental in many ways to our own, even as late as the development of our penitentiary system. And while I answered the questions I set out to adequately, I would have liked to take the work deeper. Perhaps, in the best tradition of scholars past, I ended my work feeling like I had posed still more questions, and opened doors on lines of inquiry I could pursue to make a lasting contribution to my wallet. Daah, my field. Lasting contribution to my field.

One topic that I wish I had thought of then but is on my mind lately is: what did cops do before there were drivers to ticket?

Seriously.

Because, over time, the police have become a guaranteed revenue stream into their city and state. An awful lot of them appear to be running radar; in certain regions of my domain, ensuring the safety of the larger commonweal one ticket at a time is the apparent raison detre of the State Police. Yes, they have other missions- they are the 911 for remote areas of the state; they have a kick-ass crime lab; they have really cool dogs- but really, they're primary mission seems to be to write tickets. I don't know the percentages of how many officers are out pulling people over, as opposed to the total number of officers on duty, but by casual observation it seems somewhere in the neighborhood of all of them.

So as a historically-minded cat, I have to ask myself how long that's been going on. Does the growth of the police force mirror the growth of the population, or more closely the growth of car ownership (if indeed the two are even distinguishable)? What was the pre-automobile analogue of police-generated revenue? Was pre-industrial society safer, since more police ought to have been available to fight crime? When did we decide it was ok for agents of the state to generate income for the government?

And no, I didn't recently get a ticket- I actually drive like an old lady. Well, an old lady who knows where she's going and how to drive. But in my daily travels I see folks bagged by the state cops hand over fist, and just have to ask whether that's really the best use of their time for the mission of maintaining peace and order for the citizenry, or the best use of their time for a rapacious state government?

Mapgirl is on a quest to become more frugal, save lots of money, learn about finance and take over the world. To help her (and any other frugal wannabes amongst our readership) become more frugal, I offer this tutorial on dumpster diving.

[wik] Added note for Mapgirl: knit sweaters are not appropriate for dumpster diving. Nor are open-toed sandals. Dive away!

Meanwhile, other scientists fear the asteroids. NASA is attempting to come up with some sort of scheme to defend us against rogue asteroids with unstable, likely Islamic orbits. The French, in a preemptive move, have already surrendered to asteroid 2004 XP14, which will make a close approach to the earth next monday. NASA insists that it is a global problem, and that other nations should really get off their asses and help out.

Seth Shostak, SETI researcher and man-about-town, has a nice bit explaining why a sphere is such a inadequate shape for a homeworld. It is not exactly a new idea that we really ought to move off the planet and into the great void, but recently Stephen Hawking's comments have made the news. Hawking recommends new space colonies on the basis of the eggs in a basket rationale - that with life sequestered on just one world, we are vulnerable to a single point of failure - one asteroid, comet, disaster or alien invasion would put paid to the entire species. Fair enough, but Shostak argues that if we look at the tonnage to terrans ratio, the numbers are rather startling. For each of us, there is a trillion tons of earth. That's a lot of mostly inaccessible mantle and red hot magma for each of us. Moving into a more frothy or fractal living space would bring the ration down significantly. The asteroids have about the mass of the earth, but nearly all of it is easily accessible mass (assuming, of course, you have the capability to get to the asteroid belt. That mass could be readily converted to a living space ten thousand times that of earth - just assuming that you built domes on the surface of the rocks. If you actually cut them all up and made habitats out of them, the habitable volume could be millions bigger. Getting the ttt ration down to the order of a thousand or a hundred tons per person would be vastly more efficient. And therefore, we'd be better prepared to fight the giant fighting robots when they inevitably make their bid for domination.

This just in, copied verbatim, other than the cheesy background graphic:

我有新的電郵地址！

你現可電郵給我：{encode="mosesrfracisssys@yahoo.com.hk" title="mosesrfracisssys@yahoo.com.hk"}

DEAR,

BUSINESS WORTH US$22M I NEEDED A PARTNER

MR MOSES FRANCIS

- Francis Moses

I'd be tempted to introduce him to one of the, I'm sure, millions of crapweasels who try to effect such scams on a daily basis, if I knew of any of them. His entreaty was so poorly done that (ahem) it made it through my trashfilter, where all the "good ones" are instantly rejected without my ever knowing of them.

I have a small personal interest in getting him more in line with the state of the art, the "best practices", if you will, in his "industry". (The SIC code for his "industry" is, coincidentally the same as the one for "Assknobs" - look it up if you don't believe me). Messages such as his have to be at least a little better done to even be recognizable as the crap they are. Hopefully, some trollbot will pick up his email address from this page (which I've helpfully enclosed in a "mailto:" tag for easy digestion by said scum-sucking bottom-dwellers) and nuke his tiny alleged Yahoo mailbox into oblivion.

[wik] I'm not saying that "419" scams are actually so-named because they all originated in Toledo, Lima, Findlay, Fostoria, or Mansfield. But I'm not saying that they're not, either.

[alsø wik] If that really were his email address, I'd be tempted to suggest he learn to spell his own last name. But since he's clearly a bastard, he has no last name, at least not in the "polite 1950s society" sense of the word.

[alsø alsø wik] What do I know of "polite 1950s society"? Not much, to be honest, but while reading up on my family's genealogy four or five years ago, I learned for the first time that my grandfather was married 5 times, the first, third, and fifth, to my grandmother, after very short intervals of being married to other women. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

The Centennial State has been renowned for many things, most recently high school massacres. But there is much more to The Rocky Mountain State. Like John Denver.

• Now 100% John Denver free!
• Squarer Than Wyoming
• Too wimpy to cross the mountains so we stopped here
• The vertical state
• Official home of the winter ski bunny
• If you're looking to visit South Park, please leave
• We hate Texans too
• See what John Denver meant by Rocky Mountain "high"
• The higher you go the happier you get state
• If You Don't Ski, Don't Bother

And on a personal note, I would like to suggest the following two mottoes:

• The Broncos Suck
• Die Elway Die

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Thank God We're Out of Oklahoma
• Colorado: A Million Illegal Mexicans Can't Be Wrong
• Home of the Pikes Peak Community Technical Vocational College's intramural ultimate frisbee team: the Fighting Lark Buntings
• We gave the world Tim Allen AND Zachery Ty Bryan. Suck on THAT, Utah!
• The Reference Ellipsoid State
• Perversely enjoying being upstream of California AND Texas.
• Clothing and turn signals optional.
• Ok, SOMEBODY had to have a Boulder.
• We're ALL members of the Mile High Club.
• Yeah, we know the airport looks weird.
• More wildfires mean prettier sunsets.
• Colorado: The Million Illegal Mexicans Who Couldn’t Find Houston
• Die Elway, Die Die Die! GRAAAAHHHGH!
• Crushing the hopes of generations of Ohioans

Murdoc is on vacation and people have hardly noticed. His substitute bloggers are doing such a bang up job, Murdoc might not even be invited back. One example of the newfound puissance of the Murdoc Online, or rather three, is the series on America's lesser known allies in the war on terror. Most conscious citizens are aware that Great Britain has been there with us in proportionally large numbers from the start. Those who are more conscious are aware that there are more nations with troops fighting along side, but are often hazy on the details, or only become aware of it when, say, a terrorist bombing causes a whole nation to chicken out. Like, say, Spain.

Nicholas, who very occasionally blogs on his own blog, the Smell of Freedom, has done a bang-up job in gathering the details on these other troops. In three installments, he has illuminated the contributions of Romania, Italy, and Japan; Poland, South Korea, and Georgia; and Australia, Denmark, and El Salvador. Nicholas is himself an Australian, you can almost hear him choking up when he discusses the Aussies.

I think this is important. While some have been pleased to ridicule the comparatively small contributions that some nations have made - I remember that one island nation sent two soldiers (out of a population of a few thousand, probably) - these countries are actively helping. Which is certainly more than we can say for allies in name France, Germany, Spain (hey, weren't they all fascist within living memory?) or for China and Russia, our strategic partners. We have allies. Countries like Poland and Romania understand what we stand for - because they were oppressed for decades by what we stood against. Britain and Australia get it, but then, they are us, for reasonable values of "us." I'm glad these nations are our allies. I can't say I'm really sorry to see France on the outside.

Once more unto the breach, the Ministry attempts to inject a tiny dose of geo-social knowledge into its readership. This time, we assault the very big state of California.

• We sure got a lot of Queers
• As Seen On TV
• The Granola State
• The Biblical State; as in Fire, Floods, Quakes and Drought
• Next Disaster, Locusts!
• Nobody's actually from here
• Silicon Valley in the North, Silicone Hills in the South!
• By 30, Our Women Have More Plastic Than Your Honda
• Fast reloading lanes available
• The Cereal State: nothing but fruits, nuts and flakes
• Wish they all could be California Girls!
• With Satan, too, all things are possible -- and way more fun!
• More electoral votes than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick
• The Death Valley State
• Caution: Large Fake Breasts On Board!
• The really long state
• The Gold-Plated, Silicone-Implanted State
• We will invade Oregon. You just wait.
• Proud Home of Richard M. Nixon and the Colossus of Yorba Linda
• Fake Women, Pretentious Wine, Bad Song

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• The Birthplace of the Stretch Hummer
• Pretentious is an Understatement
• Our Food is Organic but Our Women Aren't Any More
• Visit West Hollywood - It isn't Just the Burger Grills that are Flaming
• Defines Pretentious Better Than Any Dictionary
• Putting Break Dancing Back on the Streets where It Oughtta Be.
• Got Porn?
• Where Everybody Knows Your Stage Name
• Sleep with the Producer, Become a Star!
• Dashing Young Actresses' Hopes Since 1936.
• Come Visit Before We Split Off from the Mainland and Drift Away
• If the Midwest is America's Heartland, then We're the Erogenous Zone
• Hot Like Florida, but Less Old People and 'Gators
• So Innovative, our Freeways Double as Parking Lots
• Come for 'Frisco, Stay for LA

What great leader do you most resemble? Take the great leader test and find out. I was pleased but not surprised that I am sympatico with Abraham Lincoln:

Clowns are creepy, as all thinking people agree. They wear bizarre makeup. They act strangely. They hang around retarded people and midgets. They bother sick people. Some are even fundamentalists. They represent all that is unholy - so much so that Stephen King used one in a horror story with virtually no exaggeration. I myself bought an "I Hate Clowns" tshirt to openly display my contempt and disdain for clowns. But now, on DefenseTech, we find that clowns are also anti-nuclear protestors. These clowns, in both common uses of the word, broke into and vandalized a nuclear facility.

The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9 Minuteman III facility, located just northwest of the White Shield, North Dakota. "Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead," the group said in a statement. "The activists painted 'It's a sin to build a nuclear weapon' on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid."

This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting overalls, and bright yellow wigs.

We dress as clowns to show that humor and laughter are key elements in the struggle to transform the structures of destruction and death. Saint Paul said that we are “fools for God's sake,” and we say that we are “fools for God and humanity.” Clowns as court jesters were sometimes the only ones able to survive after speaking truth to authorities in power.

Guards responded within minutes. And when they arrived, the protesters "ate a lot of gravel," I'm told.

The three nukewatch clowns were charged with Class A misdemeanors for criminal trespass and criminal mischief, though I have to agree with commenter Defiant Infidel that those charges seem a bit light, considering they were hammering on a nuclear missile silo hatch. With a fully loaded, nuclear armed Minuteman III missile inside.

Once more, the Ministry offers a dollop of education on top a fat steaming pile of poo. Today, more state mottoes for the poor, but misunderstood, state of Arkansas, the only state with its name on its flag, so the people won't forget.

• We're like a piratical Kansas
• Attention, K-Mart Shoppers!
• More Than Kansas
• It's Trailer-rific!!!
• Litterasy Ain't Everthing
• At least we're not Mississippi
• We now have electricity
• The nation's incest capital
• we put the K in ejukashun!
• Don't hold Clinton against us
• Honest, we were just try'n to get that sheep back over the fence
• That's Aar-Can-Saw, dumbass
• Only the last "s" is silent
• We aren't all Hatfields and McCoys
• The natural state, if by natural you mean unimproved and devoid of economic value

[wik] Bonus Slogans!

• The Delaware of the South
• If Florida's the Nation's Wang, We're Sort of the Colon
• Like Vermont, but Bigger and Less Faggy

Picked this up from Wizbang. I so very much want this to be true. If this actually happened, it retroactively gives meaning and purpose to the SCA.

Iowahawk is running a beauty pageant, of sorts. For a year, now, he has been running a regular feature - famous throughout the blogosphere - The Hoosegow Honeys. Now it is time, he believes, to pick Miss Hoosegow 2006. This is not merely a popularity contest - contestants will also be judged in a talent competition, where one point will be awarded for each $100 of bail demanded by the magistrate.

As of this moment, the two Jessicas are in the lead, but that must not be allowed to stand. I encourage all Ministry readers to go and vote for Hoosegow honey #15, Lacey, whose sorrowful Madonna expression cries out for comfort. Winning the Miss Hoosegow pageant might bring a smile to that morose, regretful, yet still beautiful face. Please help her.

[wik] While we're on the subject of Iowahawk, show your support for the troops by mailing your surplus-to-need refrigerator magnets to Operation Mag-Neato. Sgt. Darren "Doc" Lee is attempting to completely cover his humvee with refrigerator magnets. Help him in his quest by mailing those fridge magnets to:

Dr. Darren Lee
310th PSYOP Co.
COB Speicher
APO AE 09349

Cover the Dumb-Vee with your love.

[wik] Lacey has moved up, and is now tied for sixth. Vote early and vote often!

This is well worth reading.

Thought this was cool - a new observatory in Germany hopes its new apparatus will detect gravitational waves. The GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in Hanover is now in continuous observation mode, and scientists hope that their gizmo will in the near future detect the teeny, tiny ripples in the spacetime continuum caused by the passing of a gravitational wave. These gravitational waves are created when supermassive objects like black holes or large stars do something freaky like explode. Current theory holds that all mass can create gravitational waves, like when I shake my hips, but the gravitational force is so weak compared to the other forces that only the largest objects doing the most violent things will create gravitational waves that might be detected here on Earth. For an idea of the relative strengths of the primary forces, consider that you are held more or less firmly to the earth by gravity. The mass of the Earth is considerable - 5.9742 × 1024 kilograms. Yet despite all that mass pulling down, a moderately strong magnet on a crane will lift a multiton car easily. The chemical bonding forces of superglue will also easily support a midget from an I-beam, as we all remember from the commercials. If the force of gravity is taken to be 1, then the weak nuculer force is 10²⁵, the electromagnetic force is 10³⁶, and the strong nuculer force is 10³⁸. (This assumes that the universe follows the modern physics model. This interpretation would be tragically mistaken if it turned out that the theories of Intelligent Falling were in fact a better description of underlying reality.)

GEO 600 is working alongside a US project known as Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). It may also be joined in the hunt by an Italian lab within a year. A simultaneous gravity wave detection at these facilities would be a major milestone - both a confirmation of existing theory and the beginning of a whole new field of astronomy.

Laser interferometers are looking for disturbances in their experimental set-ups that are equivalent to mere fractions of the diameter of a proton, one of the particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. Getting GEO 600 to approach this level of sensitivity has been an immense challenge.

"There's more to come from GEO 600; I think we're still about a factor of three away from the design sensitivity over part of the frequency range. But the sensitivity we have makes it very worthwhile stopping improvement to run for an extended period," said Professor Jim Hough, from the Institute for Gravitational Research at Glasgow University, UK. Achieving the necessary sensitivity has been a huge challenge: "I think the most likely event for us to detect at the moment are coalescing black holes. I'm extremely confident," he told BBC News. A detection would be a final test of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Pretty cool stuff.

It took the Roman Empire centuries to build 50,000 miles of roads. We did it in a couple decades. We rock. And this week is the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System, brought into existence by my personal savior, President Eisenhower. Over here you will find an informative history of the highway system. You can also go here or to the ever-useful wikipedia if the first one didn't slake your thirst for highway knowledge.

[wik] This is interesting, too: a proposal for a Transglobal Highway.

Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize, has been awarded the Heinlein Prize for his contributions to the commercialization of space. A good choice, I think. Rutan may have built SpaceShipOne, but Diamandis got hundreds of companies working toward the goal of private space enterprise. We need more like him, and hopefully there will be cause for more Heinlein Prizes to be awarded soon.

Only 36 percent of common spiders are capable of laying eggs under human skin.

In a move long hoped for, NASA is taking a serious step towards supporting the growth of the commercial space industry. As I have often argued here, one of the best models for space development would be that of the early commercial aviation industry. In its infancy, commercial aviation was given a crucial boost from the Post Office, which gave contracts for airmail delivery. The Post Office in effect created the first networks of airports and air routes as proto-airlines set up networks to deliver the mail. Thanks to Post Office encouragement, passenger travel grew, following these smae routes. Money from Air Mail contracts also spurred developments in aircraft design, as these companies took advantage of the opportunities made available. The Post Office became a lever that boosted the aviation industry past the first hump of development. Once it was seen that the government believed that aviation was possible, other means of support (like bank loans and other investors) became possible as well.

The golden age of flight was created in part by two outside factors - Air Mail and the collection of prizes for achievements in aviation. We have already seen the positive effect of lever - the Ansari X-prize. There are other prizes already waiting and more being created, and I am convinced that these will prove to be a powerful stimulus as well. This move by NASA puts in place another lever. By offering the modern equivalent of the old Post Office Air Mail contracts, the govenment and NASA will be doing the most useful thing they could possibly do. By underwriting development, they can help private space industry get over the big first hurdle. More to the point, they will do it in a way that (for the first time in NASA history) that development will serve as a platform for further development. In almost fifty years of space travel, we have never made a serious effort to develop a space transportation infrastructure. But now, government money might actually do us some good.

"Traditionally, Uncle Sam has done this many times before," said van der Linden. "Prove it can be done, help business get involved and when business can make money, you step back and everybody benefits."

I am well pleased with NASA.

[wik] Bob van der Linden, the Smithsonian curator mentioned at the end of the article, works with my dad. He's a cool guy, buy his books.

[alsø wik] I was shocked, shocked, that Transterrestrial Musings hadn't already posted on this. I hope to see some commentary on this from him.

[alsø alsø wik] And my being well pleased with NASA is of course predicated on NASA actually following through and actually, you know, spending that money in the way described. However, this is the most concrete statement of this kind I've heard from them, so I actually have some hope. $500 mil is real money. Rutan did SpaceShipOne (I still think that name is seriously lame) for a fraction of that sum. This could do some real good.

In our continuing series examining the possibilities for alternative state mottoes, we turn the unthinking eye of our regard to the Grand Canyon State:

• The Pacific Coast State!
• It's Not the Heat, It's the Stupidity
• It's hot. Real hot. Damn Hot. Hot.
• Now with fewer illegal aliens!
• Home to the World's Largest Hole in the Ground
• The parbroiled lizard state.
• Yes, you can grow grass in the desert.
• The once and future northernmost state of Mexico
• It rarely ever gets above 115 degrees. Really.
• Not as hot as the inside of your oven!

[wik] Bonus Slogans!

• Where the Sole Source of Gun Control Is Your Trigger Finger
• Where All Those Old Mustangs and Camaros Wound Up
• Peccaries. Pecadilloes. Armadillos.
• Our Landscape Looks the Most Like a 'Roadrunner' Cartoon
• We Actually HAVE Roadrunners
• Just Protect Your Eyes, and the Vultures Can't Really Hurt You
• Like Alaska, but Hot Instead of Cold

Over the last almost five years, there have been many comparisons between the current War on Terror and the Second World War. (Along with many comparisons to other wars, to be sure.) One manifestation of this has been the recurrent - at least within the blog world - recasting of media coverage of WWII events in the style and with the biases of our current media. Most of these are rather blunt, though often amusing. Jay Tea of Wizbang has come up with, I think, a masterwork of this genre. Lest he get a big head, this is a very, very small genre. Read the whole thing.

I have not read all the details yet regarding the intelligence program that was revealed by the Times. But it strikes me that while freedom of the press is important - and there weren't, to my knowledge, any threats of censorship - discretion is also something that we used to admire. It seems that the program was legal. Disclosing the nature of the program could only help our enemies. What possible purpose could publishing this article have save doing exactly that? Why do they hate our freedom?

Ministry Crony NDR posts a lengthy (for blogs) excerpt from The Life and Times of Mexico, by Earl Shorris that I find very interesting. The three years mentioned in the title of this post are three decisive years in Spain, whose repercussions can be felt today. At least one of the events of 1492 should be obvious even to a fifth grade drop out. The other two are equally important - the end of the reconquista in Grenada, and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews. These last two set the Spanish monarchy on a course of intolerance and rigid dogmatism that would infect two other continents, and play a major role in the religious wars that bedeviled Europe over the next two centuries. The first, by way of American silver, provided the means to finance this.

1521 is not a date I was familiar with. Rather than rewrite, I will excerpt the excerpt:

"The events of 1521, the third date, were to establish New Spain and set the pattern for its government. In that year the urban center of the Mexican world, Tenochtitlan, fell to the Spaniards and their Tiaxcalan allies, but of almost equal importance, the comuneros (townspeople) of Castille rose up in revolt. Fifteen Castillian towns gathered to petition the king for democratic reforms, perhaps a constitutional monarchy.

But there was to be no Spanish Magna Carta. The nobles joined their king in putting down the rebellion. The comunero leaders were executed, and as they died, the idea of democracy in Spain and its colonies died with them. There were no more democratic uprisings during the three centuries of Spanish Empire. The effective democratic movements of 1776 in the American colonies and 1789 in France did not spread to New Spain. The separate political paths of Mexico and its neighbor were set 250 years before Jefferson's Declaration. The deaths of the comuneros had ended the democratic rebellion, and the tightening of the connection between the king and his nobles had begun an absolutist and centralist tradition in Spain, old and new.

Well, that seems to have great world-historical importance. Many in the United States have wondered why American political traditions and institutions often fare so poorly in the nations to the south. Well, it seems we have a concise answer right there.

The last date, 1588 is again a well known one, the year of the Armada. The year that everything went south for Spain. The weather was more to blame for Spain's defeat than the English, but it did mark the beginning of the end. Spain would remain a power in fact for a good while more - Spanish tercios played a major role in the Thirty Year's War, but their role grew ever smaller.

Fascinating. I think I shall have to buy the book.

Our US Navy and other Pacific forces have been on a tear lately.

That's "tear", like what our stuff does to our enemies' asses, and not "tear", which is what falls from hippies' eyes when we do it.

Following on the heels of recent Ministry coverage of exciting and dangerous Pacific developments here and here, not to mention massive training exercises covered here and here, comes news that the Navy is more determined than ever to show how deep a bench it brings to the game.

Sure the Navy already brings the great big warships and a muscular aviation branch. But it goes without saying that all those pilots and sailors are at least human. The Navy's so bad, it has other species working for it. Some might argue that the Navy already had another species working closely with it, the Marines. But for all their evident and obvious badassitude, Marines are mostly human. And while the Air Force sends in the big bombers and the nukes and the orbital death rays, those too are piloted or directed by people. (With the notable exception of previous experiments) .

Included in recent Pacific exercises were America's battle mammals, the Navy's Marine Mammal Program. Dolphins. Sea Lions. Perhaps, someday, even ambitious otters. They work in teams to find mines- dolphin locates the mine through its echolocation; sealion swims down to attach a marker or retrieval line. They are also trained at finding enemy swimmers, sitting on and drowning them, or stoving in their ribcages with their armored battlesnouts.

Not surprisingly, hippies had something to say to rain on everyone's parade:

"These animals are highly sensitive, deeply intelligent creatures, and to use them for warfare is to abuse them," said Wayne Johnson, who is on the board of Animal Rights Hawaii. "These animals need to swim free."

But they ARE swimming freely- they freely swim 100 fathoms into the briny deep to find mines, or freely swim as they patrol a harbor. And I'll tell you something else, just because a species is intelligent it doesn't follow that it then must be averse to war. Humans invented war, and prosecute it enthusiastically. And I'd love to know how he knows that our interspecies allies are "highly sensitive". Because I don't think he means sensitive by virtue of super-attenuated senses; I think he means in the sense of prefering Emily Dickinson to Too $hort. And that's just goofy, because he obviously has not spent much time with them.

All of the ministers have worked to some extent with our dolphin allies. Johno and Buckethead have written on cetacean history, and I was a minor functionary in the first Inter-Species Defense Council so many years ago. Between meetings and plenty of fresh mackerel, I found dolphins to have not only a compelling sense of duty, but a very grim sense of humor. Sure they seem to laugh and enjoy themselves at Sea World, but that's only because they know that a quick flip of their tail could break any human neck, or a short burst of speed can turn their whole body into a torpedo. They laugh at us, not with us, and think that drowning an enemy combat swimmer is really quite hilarious. As a matter of fact, dolphins are probably among the least sensitive of the swimming species, at least regarding the fate of homo sapiens. They assist us out of their own self interest.

Nevertheless, they still train with our forces as we continue to refine inter-species doctrine and planning.

The Ministry is engaged in a never-ending and ultimately fruitless effort to improve the knowledge, understanding, education and sang froid of its readership. To that end, we continue our series of alternate state mottoes to deepen your understanding of American politics and culture. In today's installment, we deal with the largest state, Alaska. Officially, the Alaskans say, "North To The Future." Some think otherwise:

• The Fucking Huge State
• It's Cold. Damn Cold. Real Cold. Cold.
• Alaska, Gateway to Siberia
• 11,623 Eskimos Can't Be Wrong!
• Come 'Cause It's Pretty. Stay 'Cause You're Lost
• Oil-slick-free for 15 years
• We're cold and lonely: LET US HAVE OUR POT BACK!
• We Get to Kill Whales and You Don't!
• Nobody Exciting Lives Here
• God It's Cold Up Here
• Come freeze your Alaska off!
• We'll let you club a seal
• Remember Attu, Agattu and Kiska!

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Because Daylight's for Sissies
• Not Penguins, Polar Bears and Orcas
• The Only Things Harder Than Our Rocky Coast Are Our Nipples
• A Suicide Rate not Nearly as Bad as Norway's
• Our Most Dangerous Animal's a Rutting Moose
• Imperial Russian Firesale!

Our own Minister Johno has achieved undying fame as the winner of an honorable mention in the most recent OTB Caption contest, for this smooth bit of wit:

No hands?!? What kind of cockamamie rule…?

Picked up from Matt Yglesias, this Post op-ed from two former Clinton officials recommending that we don't just shoot down the missile, but that we shoot down the launch site. Before we get into the meat of the story, I find it amusing that Matt had this qualifier for the raging warmongering suggested by mssrs. Carter and Perry:

And, of course, Carter and Perry are veterans of the Clinton administration so one shouldn't dismiss them out of hand as know-nothings.

I am much less partisan in my warmongering. I take it as a given that warmongerging is a viable solution, and work backwards from there.

But on to the op-ed. They suggest that waiting would be bad. First, even if we shoot it down successfully, the North Korean engineers will have already obtained much of the flight test data they need to make more of these. Second, and as we discussed in the previous post, the downside of a failed intercept is really, uh, down. A cruise missile strike on the launch facility would destroy the missile, and little else. It would guarantee that the missile launch doesn't happen - as our precision strike capability is not in the least an unknown quantity. And, it would send a message. A good one, I think.

The South Koreans would oppose any strike on the North, however limited in scope. Given their vulnerability, that is understandable. To do nothing would be imprudent, though, as we have been trying a carrot approach to the North, and that is only half a viable strategy. Hitting the missile after launch avoids the problem of striking the actual territory of a hostile nation, but at some risk to our future credibility of our deterrence. All in all, I think that hitting the launch site seems the most reasonable, in terms of probability of success, and lack of serious downside. Unless the North freaks out and invades. But that, I think, is unlikely no matter what the provocation. The Chinese won't allow it if for no other reason than that they aren't ready for a confrontation with the US.

The US Navy scored another direct hit in a missile defense test.

The mock warhead was launched over the Pacific atop a medium range missile and destroyed in a direct hit six minutes later with an SM-3 missile fired by the Aegis cruiser USS Shiloh, the agency said.

"The missile successfully intercepted the target warhead outside the earths atmosphere more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and 250 miles northwest of Kauai," the agency said in a statement.

"We are continuing to see great success with the very challenging technology of hit-to-kill, a technology that is used for all of our missile defense ground- and sea-based interceptor missiles," Lieutenant General Trey Obering, the agency chief, said in the statement.

That was the seventh successful test out of eight. Call me optimistic, but a .875 batting average is pretty damn good. Twice as good as Ted Williams. And that's good. Looks like we have something like an operational missile defense system. 'Cause remember, we don't have to launch just one.

Also of note, for the first time, allied military forces participated in the test. The Imperial Japanese Navy sent the Kongo Class Aegis Destroyer Kirishima to help with tracking and stuff. Japan is noticeably spooked by the most recent wackiness of the North Koreans, and has signed on for a bigger role in the larger US missile defense effort. There has been some talk about us shooting down, or at least trying to shoot down, the planned NK launch of a long range missile. The new missile, the Taepodong-2, has a suspected range of 9300 miles, which puts a goodly chunk of the United States in range. I'm of mixed mind about the idea.

If it worked, and we shot down their test, we'd have the warm happy feeling you get after administering an effective bitchslap. On the other hand, it would increase, rather than decrease tensions. On the gripping hand, that might be a good thing because the North Koreans seem to respond well to force, and not so much to the smooth insinuations of qualified diplomats. So, that's a wash, maybe, but leaning toward good. The downside of course is that if we miss, we look like jackasses. Pathetic, incompetant jackasses. "Hey look at all the technology and money spent, and they can't even hit one missile fired by perpetual loser North Korea." And that's the last thing we need. Still, if we have a 99% chance of hitting the damn thing, on balance I say go for it.

[wik] I wonder what the Brangelina thinks of a naval vessel sharing their spawn's name. But hey, its disarmament, one missile at a time.

[alsø wik] Here's a nifty page with tons of info on the North Korean launch site, and other goodies.

[alsø alsø wik] Looking at the map, it seems that with another 1000 miles or so on the range, they'd be able to hit just about anywhere in the world except for South America. All the important places, anyway.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] While looking at some stuff for this post, I ran across this wikipedia article about Batting Averages. Interesting.

[see the løveli lakes...] Geeklethal point out in the comments that I was not entirely clear about which naval vessel Brangelina's offspring was named for. The child is named Shiloh, after the USN ship that fired the missile that hit the other missile, and after the bloodiest battle in the Civil War. A rather decisive battle, as it led indirectly both to the Union successes in the Western theater, and to Sherman and Grant achieving high command in the Union Army.

There are currently 163 petabytes of collective iPod hard drive space available in the world, of which only 53 petabytes are being used. Of those, 4.7 Petabytes are used to store the song, "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band.

For your amusement, this photograph from my personal blackmail files:

This would be really cool if combined with this. The good people who invented the BumpTop prototype are really on to something here. We've got these nifty machines. They've got dedicated graphics cards capable of rendering vast combats in realtime blooderific three-d. Hell, graphics cards are themselves more powerful than whole computers of times past. But there they sit, idly running zeros and ones through their bored metaphorical fingers, waiting for you, the user, to fire up Halo again. Why not get some real value from your Radeon, and have it run your desktop?

Now, I dig new technological gimcrackery as much as the next guy. I dig it whether it has any actual utility, or if like a butterfly it makes the world a more beautiful place just by being in it. But this, I think, has real use. The basic idea of the desktop gui has changed not at all really since the eggheads at Xerox PARC first dreamed it up over a quarter century ago. You've got a desk. And icons. And a mouse pointer. Oh, sure, we can add wallpaper. And we can change the icons. But no real change. BumpTop would really improve the utility of the desktop. I want one, and I want one badly. And as I mentioned right at the beginning, this interface would be perfectly suited to the multi-touch display - combine the two, and you'd have a nearly ideal visual interface for your 'puter.

On this day in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, thus ensuring the survival of western civilization in a bloodbath of red-on-red totalitarian fratricide.

For more details on this happy day, visit your friendly neighborhood wikipedia.

But here's the basic idea:

Alabama, where stars fall if you believe their license plates, is known to some as the Yellowhammer State. There have been, however, some suggestions for alternative state mottoes:

• The Redneck State
• Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement
• Like the Third World, but Closer.
• Because SC is a Little Too Progressive for Some of Us
• Now, with electricity!
• At Least We're Not Mississippi
• Not as Racist as we used to be
• First, alphabetically if in no other sense
• You may have heard that song by Leonyrd Skynard

[wik] Bonus slogans

• Not Jew Free - Yet!
• Two Beers Short of a Sixpack - A Million Fags Short of Massachusetts
• Stars and Bars: Not Just a Flag, But What You See When We Beat You
• Home of the Bar-B-Q Possum
• Ya gotta go through us to get to Tennessee

A major naval battle was occasioned when allied commanders misinterpreted the remains of a rolled up centipede in a relief map of the Pacific theater.

In today's OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today, James Taranto makes a point well worth repeating, about the two soldiers tortured and mutilated by the brave freedom fighters disaffected dead-enders in Iraq.

To most of us, this is a reminder of the depravity of our enemies. But blogress Jeralyn Merritt sees it as a reminder of America's sins:

"Violence begets violence. Inhumanity and cruelty bring more of the same. The whole world is watching and we don't have the right to claim the moral high ground so long as those responsible for the abuses at Guantanamo and detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan go unpunished, the policies stand uncorrected and the Pentagon continues to prevent the media from learning the facts first-hand."

The always excitable Andrew Sullivan similarly laments "the cycle of depravity and defeat."

This rhetoric about "cycles" appears to reflect a theory of moral equivalence, but in fact it is something else. After all, if the two sides were morally equivalent, one could apply this reasoning in reverse--excusing, for example, the alleged massacre at Haditha on the ground that it was "provoked" by a bombing that killed a U.S. serviceman--and hey, violence begets violence.

But America's critics never make this argument, and its defenders seldom do. That is because it is understood that America knows better. If it is true that U.S. Marines murdered civilians in cold blood at Haditha, the other side's brutality does not excuse it. Only the enemy's evil acts are thought to be explained away by ours.

Implicit in the "cycle" theory, then, is the premise that the enemy is innocent--not in the sense of having done nothing wrong, but in the sense of not knowing any better. The enemy lacks the knowledge of good and evil--or, to put it in theological terms, he is free of original sin.

America ought to hold itself to a high moral standard, of course, but blaming the other side's depraved acts on our own (real and imagined) moral imperfections is a dangerous form of vanity.

{emphasis mine}

I find myself barely able to muster anything but contempt for those, such as Merritt and Sullivan, who can't seem to get their heads around the fact that these two fine soldiers' deaths are the fault of Islamic misfits, rather than due to the failings of the United States. And while Sullivan and Merritt will decry it when it occurs, I think it will be quite appropriate when the US Military effects justice on the perpetrators.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled penis blogging, already in progress.

I think a conversation between the national intelligence leadership and the President over this article might be fun to overhear.

I think it would boil down to something like:

"Mr. President, Pennsylvania officials have intercepted an attempt to smuggle graphite."

"Graphite? How do you smuggle graphite? I mean, wha...wha...you got your spray paint, you got your wall, you paint your name or whatever..."

"That's graffiti, Mr. President. g-r-a-f-f-i-t-i. This plot revolves around graphite, g-r-a-p-h-i-t-e. It's a material with broad uses in industry, including the atomic industry."

"Ah huh, atomic industry. G-r-a-p-h-i-t-e. I see...."

"Ahh, yes, sir...well. To get to the point, some in the intelligence community believe this plot involved smuggling graphite in order to further nuclear programs in developing cou...ahhh...in evil countries, sir."

"Ah huh, evil. Graphite. Nukular. I see..."

"Intelligence estimates are inconclusive at this time, Mr. President, but ..."

"Ah huh, but. Wait. But? But what?"

"Other national agencies sir are unwilling to commit, at this time, to my analysis. They, ah, are leaning toward another interpretation."

"Ah huh, terpuhtations."

"Yes sir, they feel that graphite, on its own, does not indicate imminent nuclear attack by a rogue madman."

"Ah huh..."

"They feel it could be...pencils."

"Pencils?"

"At this point, Mr President, the intelligence community is divided. Could indicate a desire to jumpstart a villainous nuclear program. Could indicate a desire to manufacture pencils. Tough to call at this point, sir."

Since the Maximum Leader is making posts out of chat conversations, I figure there's no harm in me doing the same. The other day - not that day, but the other one, I had a conversation with a friend of mine. She is having relationship difficulties. I referred her to ASI, but that wasn't what she needed. The discussion turned to the problems with the traditional method of breaking up. Face to face confrontation is so pre-industrial era. So, I gave her advice. As only I can. We join the action in media res:

9:13 PM me: Alternate means of breaking up with an insignificant other:
Carrier Pigeon.
Voicemail
Smoke Signals

9:14 PM me: Heliograph (not effective at night)
Shortwave Radio
CB (Must use lingo from movie Convoy)
Email
IM
String connecting two paper cups
9:15 PM me: Tell a friend or two, and hope it gets back to him before he sees you with new, improved insignificant other.
9:16 PM me: Lay out forty-foot high letters in a park, and encourage him to take a helicopter ride over the park. (dangerous, as that is often lead up to proposals of marriage.)
Hire a skywriter. (Nothing says get lost like millions of people seeing "Dave, you suck! Get out of my life.")
9:17 PM me: Classified ad (Tricky, but devastating)
Cable access talk show
Singing telegram (Gorillas work best.)
Hire a hit man
9:18 PM me: Hire a stunt double to break up for you.
Graffiti
9:19 PM me: More alternatives:
Date his relatives
Date his friends
Crucify and boil his pets, a la that weird movie with Glenn Close
9:20 PM me: Hire a prostitute to seduce him. Then, burst in and say, you philandering fuck! We're though!
I always wanted to write that sentence.
Troubled Girl: well good ... something good should come of all this
9:21 PM me: Telegraph. (Difficult, now that Western Union stopped the telegram business.)
Put a message up on the jumbotron.
Goodyear blimp
9:22 PM me: Paint it on his car
Or his dog
Or both
Troubled Girl: I don't have a key.
me: The outside of the car
Troubled Girl: makes the dog an unlikely target
me: Wait. Lurk. You'll get your chance.
9:23 PM me: Spell the message with gasoline on his yard. In a couple weeks, he'll know.
Troubled Girl: he already knows ...
me: Hire a process server. They can find anyone.
Hire a telemarketer to call him fifty times a day.
9:24 PM me: Forward him this chat.
9:25 PM Troubled Girl: what I would write right now is dramatic and self-centered
me: And that is holding you up why?
Troubled Girl: and pathetic
me: Okay.
9:26 PM me: Write "I break up with you" on the side of a 500lb. bomb like the ordnance techs do on the carriers.
Troubled Girl: does the world really want to read about the emotional mish-mash in my head that goes back and forth between crying and screaming about every hour?
me: Or, on a brick, and throw it through his window.
Does the world really want to read this chat? I think they do.
9:27 PM Troubled Girl: so they can call and check if I'm ok?
me: They don't know you. And I'll use some other depressed chick's name.
That'll put a spoke in their wheel.
9:28 PM me: Have a sign painted, and put it on his way to work.
Or a billboard.
There is no try, only do.
9:29 PM me: Or something equally pithy and oriental.
Lucas really has a thing for that.
Star Wars Lucas.
The trade federation, the little annoying kid in the second Indiana Jones. Yoda.
9:30 PM me: I bet there was an obnoxious asian character in American Graffiti. I just can't remember.
Don't make me say, "Buck up, little camper" again.
Oh shit, I said it.

Over the past several days, I have received some atypical emails in my spambox. Typical in that it was unsolicited, unwanted and bothersome. But unusual in that it was actually... interesting. For years, it has been the unending drudgery of clearing out my email of exhortations to enlarge my penis (unnecessary), refinance my mortgage (irrelevant), buy dubious pharmaceuticals (unwise) or act as an agent for rich but not exactly liquid Nigerian widows. (Did you know that there is now a peins enlargement patch? Remarkable these new technologies.) We are seemingly entering a new era of spam. Take a look, if you dare.
Item One: The first of several unsolicited bulk emails from Congressional representatives came from obscure midwestern democrats urging me to support or not support various measures I found myself completely apathetic towards. So apathetic that I can not now remember the name of the congresscritters or the issues they espoused. For them, there is only this open letter from James at OTB:

Rather than simply acquiring the e-mail addresses of all bloggers that you perceive to be on your side of the political spectrum and sending them your every thought, however undeveloped it might be, you should consider carefully targeting your messages to those who your staff knows through careful research are actually interested in the topic you are communicating, as evidenced by having written about it recently.

Further, if you are a House Member that few people outside your District have heard of–which is to say, about 420 of you–you should be especially diligent about this. If, hypothetically, you often give radio updates in Dallas on pressing issues facing our nation, it is highly unlikely that any blogger not from Texas gives a rat’s would be interested in having transcripts of same mailed to them.

Item Two: I am informed by reliable sources that God does not eat meat. How reliable? Well, the guy that wrote a book called, “God Does Not Eat Meat” told me. In an unsolicited bulk email, no less. So it must be true. This title was odd enough that it ducked into my head, and proceeded to crouch in a corner of my mind hissing and spitting at me. I couldn't help but ponder the philosophical issues underlying such a bold claim.

I made a point of not actually reading the email, but just letting the thoughts roll over and through me. “Well, sure, God doesn't eat meat,” I thought. Of course, he – being an ineffable and omnipotent being – doesn't eat anything at all. So one could hardly make a case for vegetarianism by example to a being that doesn't eat meat only because it eats nothing at all.

Then I thought, “Hey, there is a long tradition of offering meat sacrifices to God. And not just mangy, fornicating pagan Gods, but our own uh, really big God.” So clearly, in historical times God dug the meat, so to speak. And remember, one of the very first stories in the bible was that of Cain getting his sacrifice of wheat and granola rejected (for no clear reason) by God. This of course led to the first murder, and shortly thereafter, the first appearance by Cain on antediluvian COPS. Scripturally, we can make a strong argument against eating vegetables. God, like my three year old son, doesn't like them.

But still the thoughts kept coming. Where is this dude's head at? Making fundamentalist arguments for left-loony lifestyle choices? Is this Rod Dreher's crunchy-con movement gone mad? Or is it a more particular kind of madness. Where the voices in Arthur Poletti's head just sounded like God. And told him not to eat meat, after they said kill your neighbors and bury them under the 711.

I may have to buy the book.

Item Three: All State Investigations sent me an email. Curious, I thought. What do they investigate? Well, in a word, Infidelity. With fifty years of experience in the field, they know infidelity. And they were sending a message to me. Did they know something I didn't? I did a little research, and discovered that All State Investigations Group, LLP located at 501 Stillwells Corner Road A-2 · Freehold, NJ 07728, is also registered as All State Investigations, Inc. Strange, they say they can find out anything, but they can't figure out whether they're incorporated or a partnership.

Over at their website, I did find some useful information. For instance, the top ten signs that your spouse or significant other is being less than perfectly faithful:

• Working a lot of overtime
• Excessive use of the interweb
• Unaccountable hours
• Hiding the phone bill
• Saying, “It's your imagination”
• Getting hang-up phone calls
• No longer interested in sex
• Not wearing a wedding ring
• New sexual techniques
• Saying, “I need my space”

Of course, the number one sign that your spouse is cheating on you is seeing your wife wearing a tshirt that says, "Adulterer."

I breathed a sigh of relief. My wife only displays eight of those symptoms, so things must be okay. But as I continued to peruse their website, I became more and more fascinated. ASI has for sale an infidelity test. It looks for semen in your wife's underwear. They offer computer forensics, GPS tracking, and debugging services. They have support for people in pain – chat rooms, online therapy, and links to local support groups.

And most interestingly, for only $36,500, you can start your own franchise. Become a private investigator! Live a life of danger, intrigue and stultifying boredom as you wait in the rain outside some slut's window waiting for a chance to videotape her indiscretions. Sign me up! I wanna be the new Philip Marlowe, and this sounds like just the ticket.

Item Four: Finally, I received what at first glance looked like another promotion for junk bonds. An INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY! But this one mentioned oil shale. That peaked my interest, since a while back I read a fascinating book on abiogenic oil, The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. I read with some interest, skimming through the INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES. The author of this Oil Report brought to my attention that there is a vast deposit of oil shale right here in these United States. And it is truly enormous. Trillions of barrels of oil, more than pretty much the proven reserves of the rest of the world. Wow, thought I, that's a shitload of oil. I thought to myself, “Hey, why haven't I heard of this?” But Matt Badiali, Editor of The Oil Report, has an answer. You just haven't heard about it yet.

Matt kindly mentioned some people who have been talking about it. Like the World Energy Council, which had this to say:

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world�s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The shale oil can be extracted by surface and in-situ methods of retorting: depending upon the methods of mining and processing used, as much as one-third or more of this resource might be recoverable. There are also the Devonian-Mississippian black shales in the eastern United States.

And like the RAND Corporation. RAND is the big leagues when it comes to science and government. And a little googling revealed that they do indeed have a report out about the Green River Oil Shale And right there in the second paragraph of the report, we find that Matt Badiali is essentially right:

The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

Then I thought to myself, “Hey, oil shale is hard to process. It's not like pumping oil out of a hole in the ground like towel heads do in Arabia.” Matt was there for me. With oil so damn expensive, more expensive recovery techniques are profitable. And the oil shale in the Green River formation is especially, uh, oily. Compared to the oil sands in Alberta (which are much smaller) the rock at Green River is twice as oil rich. And almost all of this stuff is under government property. And now the government is letting people in.

Matt is tracking some companies that are well poised to profit from all this. Some people have some new techniques for cheaply processing oil shale for crude. Investing in them would no doubt be wise. Greed aside, though, it is a happy thought that when the Arabs, Iranians, Venezuelans and whatever whackjob ends up in charge of Nigeria all decide to screw us at the behest of Red Imperial China, well, we've got more oil than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick. And, we've got the bomb. So back the fuck up.

While driving to a lunch meeting today, I heard a commercial that could have, under different circumstances, caused me to drive off into a ditch.

Luckily, in Houston, there aren't a lot of ditches next to major 6 lane divided urban surface roads, so I was safe.

I can't (yet) find an MP3 of the ad, and I don't know if it's playing in any markets outside of Texas, but I do know, from my search for it, that a lot of other people are searching for that MP3, too. As a side note, I also find that there's apparently a subculture of (I'm sure fine and upstanding) folks who trade the audio files for Bud Light commercials, but never mind that.

Located at the Houstonist, the words, at least, for the latest installment in Bud Light's "Real Men of Genius" series:

Bud Light Presents Real Men of Genius.

Real Men of Genius

Today we salute you Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy.

Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy!

Men from lesser states might know their state's capital, but you? You know you're state's bird, tree and even reptile.

Love that horny toad.

You display your pride with your Lone Star tattoo, "Native Texan" bumper sticker, and contempt for any state that doesn't start with "Tex" and end with "as."

That spells Texas.

Sure, there are 49 other states in the Union, but they are smaller, wussier, and the people talk funny.

Yankee wussies.

So crack open a nice cold Bud Light, oh lover of the Lone Star state. Because all that flag waving must have made you thirsty.

No, not a perverse children's game, but an actual musical. Z-Spot: The Zombie Musical is playing this June 25th at the Wonderland Ballroom in DC. Check your local theatres, and then run screaming in the other direction. Everyone knows Zombies can't sing.

[wik] The Wonderland has an exceptionally poorly executed website.

Ministry Crony Mapgirl alerts us to some idiocy on the Washington Post website. For once, the craziness does not begin with the headline, but rather at the comments. In this well reasoned opinion piece, Post columnist Jefferson Morley wonders just what the hell South Korea is thinking. Given the existence, just to the north, of a madcap and goofy - yet nuclear armed - police state, Morley makes the point that we can reasonably accuse the South Korean government of hiding its collective head in the sand. All well and good.

But commenter Gene is oblivious to the reasoning Morley deploys, or the links to actual South Korean websites and other evidence of responsible journalistic practice. Gene sees the headline "What, me worry?" and only one thing pops into his sad, strange little head. God dammit, that man's a racist for saying "What, me worry?"

While I believe that journalists have the editorial freedom to write what they want, I believe that using a title written in racist tone like "What me worry" is overstepping the boundary.
Surely, a good jounalist can write good articles without resorting to stereotypical remarks.
If the jouralist is bitter about the Korean government's lackadasical reaction to this issue, he can state so in his article.
Such immaturity only speaks on his character.

Racist you say? Well, geez, Gene, I always thought that that was an Alfred E. Newman quote. You know, from Mad Magazine. But notice the careful tactics of the modern race card player. He begins every ridiculous claim of racist intent with a statement of principle. Then the smooth segue into "while wholeheartedly approving of the principle of freedom assembly, three people is just over the line!" And then, the rote condemnation of stereotype. And then, missing the point by saying that, "if the author wanted to say that, why didn't he do it where no one would hear?" And finally, the closer, a personal attack.

All to typical. I feel like I'm missing the boat here. There are players out there, and they're monopolizing the game. I want to be a player. So from now on, if anyone says something I even mildly disagree with, I'm going to accuse them of racism. No matter what they say. I only hope that I can do it with the panache of master player Gene. Genius!

Typical newspapers can withstand 136 individual class 2 raindrops before becoming unreadable.

Yeah...yeah, I get this alot. You don't even know how many total strangers stop me on the street and comment on how I remind them of a Mazda. I'm not sure where it got that I'm "sporty", as I loathe most sports. Of the non-blood variety, anyway.

I'm a Mazda RX-8!

You're sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you're willing to do your part.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

The Old World's last great raging conflagration is extinguished at last. After 100 years the deep mistrust, racism, and martial animosity are at an end.

The war is over.

Japan and Montenegro are finally at peace.

Amazon's selling groceries now. Unlike the doomed dot.com grocery services, this one seems a little more sensible. Amazon already has an infrastructure - warehouses and fedex and whatnot, and they've decided to stick with non-perishable items in bulk quantities. So really, it's more like CostCo online, very sensible. From a quick glance, prices seem to be in line with CostCo's, too. I could see this service being very useful for the items you use regularly - for me, that would be diapers, Club crackers (my son's favorite food), and pet stuff like food and cat litter. Sadly, they don't carry dog food or kitty litter. But, give it time and this might actually be useful. With free shipping, it just might work.

[wik] Kudos to whomever recognizes the title quote.

The common notion that most people only use one quarter of their brains was proven true in 1958 by Soviet scientists, in a series of grisly experiments on petty criminals.

I am disapointed with the lack of gore, though.

This brings to mind an idea I had a long time ago, to make a short film that would use some Star Wars footage. It would be called the "Sithlord Management Training Video." I even had a script. Alas, I'd need to actually film the half I didn't steal. Unless I found some actual management training videos. Then, I could just edit them together. Hmmm...

[wik] Oh, and I lifted this from Murdoc, who is going on vacation. Something about a brother's wedding. How irresponsible can you get? Where will we argue about battleships? Instapinch and Nicholas will be guest blogging, so hopefully they'll take up the slack. I guess Murdoc didn't want a thousand posts about UAVs, else he would have invited me.

Iran has banned Patton's favorite magazine, The Economist, for lese majeste, in that the august publication dared to publish a map that referred to the body of water to south of Iran as "Gulf" rather than "Persian Gulf." The National Geographic was banned a while back for subtitling Persian Gulf with "Arabian Gulf." While I think that the mullahs have gone too far, I find myself in stunned agreement. It is the Persian Gulf, that's what it's been called for quite a while now, and renaming it willy-nilly is not the perogative of jackass cartographers no matter who they're working for. Nevertheless, it is widely known that the Mullahs hate our freedom, so everyone go out and subscribe to the Economist so that the terrorists don't win.

I rock.
And my silhouette looks suspiciously mouse-like. And some of those sentences cry out to be edited. Cool music though. Brazenly stolen from Rocket Jones.

Dale Franks over QandO notes that media perception of the importance of Zarqawi seems to have evolved a bit since his fortunate demise. I noticed a bit of this myself, as CNN concluded that his death would have little effect on the insurgency. I heard things like, "The insurgency is a hydra, cut off one head and two grow back" and more of the same. I can't but believe, though, that the loss of Zarqawi is a major blow to them, not us. Go team.

Scholars have concluded that the cruelest decision in the history of the English language was to put an "s" in the word "lisp."