perfidy

Hopefully, Tigerhawk hasn't lived in Kansas, so we can make fun of it without fear of hurting someone's feelings.

• We bring "Euclidian" to life
• Bleeding Kansas
• We’re Fucking Flat!
• The Flat State
• Hayfever capital of the Midwest
• Gateway to more Rectangular States
• There's no place like home
• At least we're not New Jersey
• Dole slept here
• Where Science Don't Mean Crap
• When the middle of nowhere is too crowded
• Ya want flat, we got flat
• Birthplace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
• More hills than Nebraska!
• We aren't all that crazy about Newton and his "gravity", either.
• That's Jayhawk, not Jaybird, dipshit
• A couple of universities and a whole lot of nothin'
• To Boldly Go Where No Tourist has Gone Before
• Proud Home of the two greatest actors in world history: Kirstie Alley and Ed Asner
• We kicked Toto's ass, the ingrate

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Come see our gated community! No, the other kind...
• Home of the Ft Leavenworth Gravel Factory

This year's winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

In a related vein- a throbbing, purple vein- is the 2006 Goku-Lytton Award for the Worst First Line in Erotic Fan Fiction.

Next year the Ministry fully expects to be competitive in either contest.

There's a certain inescapable sense of destiny to being named Thor. Indeed, it's hard to imagine the man from Canada named Jon Mikl Thor doing anything else with his life besides bodybuilding and playing heavy metal music. Such a name is a fait accompli. I mean, really... "Hi, I'm Thor. Have you considered refinancing your mortgage lately?" Not so much.

Some bodybuilders, once their career is over, open gyms. Others go into politics or pro wrestling (same thing). Vancouver's Jon Mikl Thor, former Mr. Canada, Mr. USA, Mr. North America, and Mr. Universe, went into metal. It only made sense. Blessed with a flair for the dramatic, a taste for the faintly ridiculous, and one of the greatest heavy-metal names since Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, His live shows are minor legends of excess, featuring amazing props (winged helmets, chariots) and incredible stunts (bending steel bars with his teeth, breaking bricks across his chest), and he has amassed a nearly thirty-year legacy of B-movie-tinged heavy metal, leaving in his wake a vast wasteland of vanquished demon-foes, busted mic stands, and leopard-print clad groupies panting in wonder at his awesome might.

Thor's latest album is Devastation of Musculation (Smog Veil, 2006), and insofar as it's accurate to say that Thor is growing as a musician (within the confines of traditional metal, anyway), he is. His last album, 2005's Thor Against The World, drew mainly on the glammy sounds of KISS, Alice Cooper and Sweet. It was a damn good album, but there were times when the metallic content dropped lower than might optimally have been desired. It seemed that, for all his talk of epic space-battles and Norse gods, Thor was going soft here and there.

Not so on Devastation of Musculation. The new album is harder, faster, and darker than its predecessor, and is evidence that, after decades of half-jokey and often-forgettable entertainment, Thor is figuring out how to do it right (albeit without sacrificing what makes Thor, Thor). The very first track, "Lords of Steel," stomps along in a Black Sabbath mode and features some very nice extended guitar wailing the likes of which have rarely been sighted since acid-washed jeans went out of style. Maybe it's not the greatest thing ever put on tape, but it's a damned entertaining invitation to bang your head. The rest of the album continues in a similar British Heavy Metal vein, galloping along with an array of galloping Maiden/Priest grooves, while Thor grunts about the Devastation of Musculation, The Queen of The Damned, Odin's Son, and Lies of Eternity in a voice that, for what it lacks in technical accomplishment, more than makes up for in personality and commitment to the moment.

After all, isn't that what metal is about? If you strip the music away from, say, a Slayer album, you're left with what amount to a bunch of supremely silly words. There's nothing inherently scary about

Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquisition

The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone

I mean, come on! Every high school has some trenchcoated dork who writes doggerel like this in his notebook and thinks he's being deep! And yet, throw in some manic drumming and heavily distorted guitars and the very same silliness that would get a dark and serious high-school poet laughed at, shunned, and these days examined by a team of psychologists, police investigators and anti-terror "experts," somehow transmogrifies into a pounding, sinister all-time classic of thrash metal.

By the same token, lyrics like the following from Thor's "Queen of the Damned"...

The deadliest of hungers
She feasts on human blood
The rapid sound of thunder
Bringing evil from above
The vampires all surround her
For the final feast
But she still holds the power
Until a new queen is released

... kind of suck out of context. But as hundreds of overly serious college theses and misguided poetry seminars have inadvertently proven, rock lyrics are not meant to exist apart from the music they are sung to. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? Write "Louie, Louie, hey, hey, wa ne ga go" on a page, and you've got nothing. But put it over that classic riff, and you've got magic, son. In the same way, once Thor puts his lyrics over thrashing guitars, a double-bass-drum attack, and presents them in his own powerful and guttural voice, those same stanzas become exactly what they should be: the audio equivalent of the best B-grade horror movie ever made (which, by the way, is Evil Dead II. No debate allowed.)

Oh, in case you're wondering, the phrase "Devastation of Musculation" refers to two things: the poorly defined retribution that awaits the foes of THOR as he rides the universe on his steed; and a story that Thor heard about a guy who pumped up his biceps so far with steroids, oil in injections, and heavy reps that his arm actually exploded. According to Thor himself,

"Everyone is under pressure to achieve the impossible every day. People risk their lives to be more beautiful, more handsome, more skinny, more muscular and faster, stronger, richer, and deadlier. Trying to make sense out of these desperate measures is what this new album is about. It is easily the darkest and most powerful album I've ever written."

Coming from a guy who used to pose in poodle hair and tiger-stripe bikini briefs, this kind of statement might be easily dismissed. But, even considering that metal at its finest needs to stay stupid in order to stay metal, there's something to this. Thor seemed to wear a smirk through half the songs on Thor Against The World. On Devastation, there's not much smirking. There's more skulls, smoking corpses, demons, and smoky battlefields. And if the music doesn't necessarily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Number of the Beast, Reign In Blood, or British Steel, it's still the best B-Movie Metal you're gonna find.

If you're looking for subtlety, I suggest you pick up Tool's excellent latest album. But if you're looking for well-done classic metal sung by a former bodybuilder who had the sense to stay out of politics, you're in good shape with Devastation of Musculation. Somehow, now, in his third decade of recording stone-obvious muscle rock for a parade of indie labels, Thor seems to be figuring out how to balance camp and carnage. By any standard, Devastation of Musculation ain't half bad, and as long as you take it for what it is - the aural equivalent of movies like Escape from New York and, yes, the animated classic Heavy Metal, you can do much worse than to heed the mighty word of THOR.

[Crossposted at blogcritics.org]

A recent survey intended to discover Black Holes has come up short. No where near the expected number was detected, leaving astrophysicists scratching their collective head. It is widely believed that the black hole is difficult to find by its very nature. An object so massive that light cannot escape its gravitational pull is of course going to be difficult to find. Space is black. Black holes are black. You do the math.

The conventional means to search for evidence of the black hole in space is to look for indirect evidence – x rays released by matter falling into the black hole before it reaches the event horizon. Falling down a gravity well that steep is an energetic event, the scientists reason. Supermassive black holes are thought to dominate the central regions of galaxies, and the x-ray output of black holes has been considered a primary constituent of the background hum of x-rays we detect in the universe.

A team of European and American researchers has spent two years probing the nether regions of the galaxies trying to find black holes. They investigated high energy xray emissions using the European Space Agency's orbiting International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral). Another high energy survey, and previous low energy surveys all reached the same conclusion – much fewer holes than expected.

This confuses the big domes. But the answer might not be that the black holes are further away, or more expertly hidden, or taking a long nap after consuming all the nearby gas and whatnot that might have created x-rays upon being eaten.

The answer might be that there are no black holes at all.

A different group of big domes was taking a gander at a quasar nine billion light years from earth. In laymans terms, nine billion light years is really goddamned far away. Happily, there was a galaxy in the way, which allowed the clever science monkeys to use the gravitational lens effect, in which the gravitational field of the intervening galaxy magnifies the light coming from the quasar. Further, as all the individual bits of the galaxy wander in front of the image of the quasar, it makes the light wobble. This wobbling allows the scientists to probe more deeply into the inner workings of the quasar.

Quasars are conventionally supposed to consist of a very large black hole consuming the matter around it and generating the extraordinary amounts of radiation that are the defining feature of the quasar. If these researchers are correct, that turns out not to be the case. Theory prohibits black holes from having magnetic fields. You wouldn’t be able to stick your refrigerator magnets to it. Even not counting the fact that they’d be immediately consumed by the gravitational field and converted instantly to x rays.

But this quasar, rejoicing in the name Q0957+561, shows evidence (detectable thanks to the wonderful gravitational lens effect) of some stupendous magnetic fields. Looking at the disc of material surrounding our friend Q0957+561, they noted a small hole in the middle, approximately four thousand times the distance from the earth to the sun, and evidence that that area had been swept clean by electromagnetic fields. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that there ain’t no black holes.

The reason this is obvious (at least to these researchers) is that there are two competing, and mutually exclusive theories about large massive objects. One is that they are black holes. The other, lesser known theory, is that they are MECOs. MECO is egghead shorthand for Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object. In brief, the theory holds that singularities can’t form, and when something really big starts collapsing, it gets very dense and very hot. At this point, subatomic particles start popping into and out of existence, pissing off everyone else and creating large amounts of energy. The radiation pressure from this craziness halts the collapse, and the object remains forever a ball of high energy plasma. Plasma, unlike black holes, is quite capable of maintaining magnetic fields.

While these objects are capable of creating large amounts of energy, they probably aren’t going to go about it in the same way. And that might account for the failure of the other astronomers to detect the job lots of black holes they expected. Perhaps the ones they think they are detecting are merely those MECOs that most closely resemble the profile of the theoretical black hole.

And remember kids, just say no to black holes.

Lock S-foils in attack position, and give Jerry hell!

Courtesy of Photoshop Friday at Something Awful.

Iowa. What to say about the Hawkeye state? This should get you going. Discuss.

• Future Birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk
• We hate Texas
• We Do Amazing Things With Corn. Amazing.
• Our Trees Bend North Because Minnesota Sucks
• Just Another Fucking Flat State
• World renowned center for philosophy, music, technology and the arts
• Where Underachievers Can Achieve
• It's easy to spell
• Just east of Omaha
• At Least We're Not New Jersey
• We're not the only state on the Mississippi, but we're one of the better ones
• The middle of nowhere state
• Bank Foreclosure Sales every Friday
• Home of the Duke
• Hell has four letters, too
• Des Moines does't rhyme with Less Coinses''

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Not as White as Idaho, but Getting There
• What Kennedys Call 'Iower'
• Home of the Radar O'Reilly Fictional Veterans of Foreign Wars Museum
• That place you drove through once, you think

The Ministry of late has not talked much of politics. This could be because the Ministry feels that politics is beneath us. Because we operate on a higher plane, and do not wish to sully our hands with the stinking, encrusted cesspool that is politics. Or, it could be because politics gets in the way of dick jokes.

Our recent reticence to discuss politics is not a hard and fast rule. Its more a guideline. And today, a political item caught my eye. It is perhaps passe to pile on Howard Dean; he of the scream, the pulsating cranial veins, and overheated rhetoric. Shooting ducks in a barrel, some might say. Nevertheless, today's performance before a group of business types in Florida is remarkable even for our Rove-controlled Deanomatic android.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

With a lead like that, one could expect to hear soothing, healing words follow. Something about how infighting and rhetoric distract us from sober and responsible discussion of the issues of the day. Maybe a nod toward respecting differences, knowing that human knowledge is forever imperfect, and however much we differ in our policy proscriptions, we all reconize that everyone has the best interests of the nation and its citizens at heart.

But wait, this is Dean:

"the most divisive president probably in our history."

Divisiveness is bad, you fucking divisivist!

"He's always talking about those people. It's always somebody else's fault. It's the gays' fault. It's the immigrants' fault. It's the liberals' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's Hollywood people,"

Ending divisiveness by accusing others of bigotry, zenophobia, partisanship, blinkered ideoloical fixation, hatred of the Lindsey Lohan, and, well, divisiveness, is probably not the most well thought out scheme. Maybe even risky. What it looks like is what the psychologists call projection.

The Republican agenda "is flag-burning and same-sex marriage and God knows what else,"

Is Deano suggesting that the Republicans are for flag-burning and same sex marriage? I mean, big tent and all, but I don't think that's what there about. Oh wait, they're against all that. Which, if Dean is against the evil Republicans who can do no right, does that mean that he supports flag-burning? Or is he suggesting that "flag-burning and same-sex marriage and God knows what else" is the sum of the Republican agenda? That God knows what else leaves a lot of room for fiscal, national security, and lots else. Regardless, casting your opponents' agenda in such terms is hardly conducive of unity.

Dean also attacked the president on national defense, health care, education and Social Security.

"He is bankrupting the middle-class," Dean said.

"Attacked." A key ingredient in any effort to end divisiveness. And a little class warfare fearmongering to liven up the mix.

"The president made a big deal about bringing the Iraqi prime minister to address Congress," said Dean, the former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate. "The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite."

Calling the only elected Arab leader in the whole fricking world an anti-semite is perhaps unwise. Especially when his next door neighbor is the real deal. Dean opposes the President. The President hates Ahmedijubabbul, who is an anti-semite and has called for the extinction of Israel. If Dean supports the right of Israel to defend itself, supporting the President might be a useful first step.

The AP article neglected to mention one thing, though. Dean also compared a Republican to Stalin. The irony here is delicious, a leftist calling... oh, never mind:

"Thank God for Bill Nelson, because we'd have another crook in the United States Senate if it weren't for him. He is going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris," Dean said during his 20-minute address. "She doesn't understand that it's…improper to be chairman of a campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia and she is not Stalin."

There isn't a Godwin's Law for comparisons to Stalin, but there should be. Dean loses the argument on style points alone, no matter Harris' actual character.

It really, truly amazes me. I am astounded that a public figure, the head of one of America's two major political parties, could have the unmitigated gall to call for an end to divisiveness, and then say all of... that. What kind of cognitive disconnect exists in his brain that allows the simultaneous presence of such mutually exclusive ideas? It becomes ever more plausible, at least to this observer, that Dean really is a covert Rovian operative, and possibly a more animated version of the original Gore-class andoid.

[wik] GeekLethal reminds us in the comments of a salient bit of movie-quotery; or rather, indulges in some creative movie-quote-paraphrasery:

"The Gore series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. The Deans look human - sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.”

If you think that Murdoc skims FBI wound ballistics data for light bedtime reading, or takes his Jane's materials on vacation, you are correct.

But he is also abreast of current events, and particularly skilled at being where the present meets the past. Read his coverage and linkage regarding the recent discovery, by Polish divers, of the Nazi aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Originally designed in the '30s, construction began and halted (and began and halted and...) but never joined the fleet. Strictly speaking, then, I guess it could not rightly be called an "aircraft carrier" since it doesn't seem it ever carried any. Due to the vagaries of war and the inescapable fact that the Nazis were rather losing it, the Graf Zeppelin never put to sea and never saw action. Well, until the Commies sank it.

Born to be the lynchpin of a mighty Teutonic warfleet, the Graf Zeppelin wound up consigned to the briny deep by the very Untermenschen the Nazis made all the fuss about in the first place. In the immortal words of Nelson (from the Simpsons, not Trafalgar), "HA-ha!"

Anyway, read MO. As if you didn't already.

Today's forgotten punchline:

"What the fuck do you mean, 'the wrong hole'?!"

Stars and Stripes online edition has apprently been hacked.

That was thoughtful.

If you don't know who Frank Frazetta is, you're wrong. You most certainly do know his work; it's been in early comics, movie posters, and about a bazillion book covers. He is perhaps most widely recognized for his graphic rendering of Robert Howard's hero from the time "...between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas":

The Barbarian

Frank Frazetta's Conan is Conan. Every artist in the Marvel stable in the last 30-odd years who has worked on Conan titles takes his cue from Frazetta. And that's OK.

But the man's talent is much greater than as an illustrator; he started on a path to fine art as a very young boy, a path he could not finish through no fault of his own. He can work magic with oils, watercolors, pencil, or naked ink. He's a photographer and a sculptor. After a stroke damaged his right side, he learned how to make art with his left. Thrown to his own devices to make a living he wound up in comics, and we are all better people because of it.

If anyone gets the IFC on their cable, keep an eye out for "Frazetta: Painting with Fire", a documentary about his life, his achievements, and his struggles. The interviews with other artists and filmmakers are no less interviews with fans: Brom, John Buscema, Kevin Eastman, Ralph Bakshi, Dino DeLaurentis; the list is long and distinguished. The net effect is not at all a cloying love fest, but simple and heartfelt affection for the man. And the man himself defies stereotype; no scrawny artsy-fartsy, bespectacled fixture of the comic convention, he. Huh-uh. His powerful frame and personal strength he no doubt translated to canvas in his male figures. The guy had a stroke and is just this side of 80, but still could probably thump me. If you don't have IFC, rent "Painting with Fire".

If you can't rent it, buy it via the Frazetta Museum. Matter of fact, I think I'd like to go there in person. Anyone else up for a road trip to PA? My personal fave below the fold:

Snow Giants

Recently, I have been reading the delightful and sanguinary webcomic, "Schlock Mercenary." Amidst the many treasures to be found there, there is this, quotes from the self-help manual The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates:

1. Pillage, then burn.
6: If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
8. Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock.
9. Never turn your back on an enemy.
12. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.
13. Do unto others.
16. Your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth.
27. Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
30. A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.
31. Only cheaters prosper.
34. If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.
35. That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.
36. When the going gets tough, the tough call for close air support.
37. There is no "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload."
n. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.
n+1. Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it can't be hard on your clients.

If you are unfamiliar with the Schlock Mercenary universe, you can start here. And on your way out, ponder these last three nuggets of existential Schlock wisdom:

On a scale from 'that's not free checking' to 'heat death of the universe', I'd say we're looking at 'the enemy has a superweapon we can't track.'

Somebody sounds stressed, and I think it's a me!

'Minimal collateral damage' and 'Entire star system' do not belong in the same sentence

Our next state, Indiana, has something of an inferiority complex. Even the official state motto, "Crossroads of America," admits that Indiana's major purpose is to serve as a flat yet uninteresting obstacle to travel somewhere else. Let us pile on:

• Corn Corn Corn Corn Indianapolis 500 Corn Corn Corn
• Can you tell us just what the fuck is a Hoosier, anyway?
• 2 Billion Years Tidal Wave Free
• Bring Something to Do
• Dan Quayle's Favorite Country!
• OK, we admit it, we miss Bobby Knight
• Where EVERY year is 1957
• Come for the flat and uninteresting scenery, stay for the flat and uninteresting scenery
• Not just corn, we have meth labs, too
• Proud Home of David Letterman and John Hoosier Mellonhead
• Come See Our Corn!
• The New Jersey of the Midwest
• Proud home of Raper RVs (Where fun begins!)
• If we weren't surrounded by the rest of the US, someone would probably kick our ass
• That's Hoosier girls, not Hooter girls
• Do you think our obsession with basketball is unhealthy?
• We're not as flat as Kansas
• Gateway to the lower Ohio Valley
• Does this basketball make me look fat?

Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote a piece discussing the work of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro. From his lab outside Kyoto, the professor was working on lifelike replicants designed, among other things, to help his research into human behavior. In that piece I included this photo of the good professor and his latest creation; aware that he's not the most, um, charismatic of photographic subjects, I pointed out that "the dude with glasses is NOT the robot":

Ah, but that was then. Our man in Kyoto has cashed in some more nice grants, and recently demonstrated his latest project: himself! In other words, the dude with the glasses now could very well be the robot:

He has named his creation "Geminoid", a label both properly scientific-sounding and chillingly non-human, which will make it just that much easier for robot conquerors to use them to infiltrate society. I would've gone with homo sapiens simulacra, but Geminoid works too I guess.

Professor Ishiguro continues to explore the fundamentals of human interaction with his synthetic double:

But why bother to build robots that look like humans? Ishiguro views machines as good vehicles to learn more about human nature. He combines engineering with cognitive science with the aim of making very humanlike robots, which can be used as test beds for theories about human perception, communication and cognition. He calls his approach "android science."

"A robot is a kind of simulator for expressing human functions, especially the cerebellum or the muscles," says Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR lab that developed Geminoid. "It's a kind of ultimate human interface."

Ok, super. It's a test bed for exploring the interaction of the blah with the semiotics of which and the effect of huh and the wazzit. But Geminoid research also has more immediate, real-world applications more familiar to the rest of us: he uses it to go to meetings or class in his stead (which may explain why the thing looks irritated) and surely it is just a matter of time before it can make decisions and actually do your job for you. And I'm certain that baser applications will yet prevail, however advanced the design may be or lofty the goal.

Entrepreneurs, banking on the depravity of humankind, might have changed the above quotes thus: "Why bother to build robots that look like humans?" " To fuck 'em, of course!" Oh wait- they already do.

[wik] Minister GeekLethal inexplicably failed to point out the the confluence of these two stories leads to the inevitable conclusion that Professor Ishiguro can, in fact, go fuck himself. [- Minister B.]

[alsø wik] Minister GeekLethal inexplicably included the phrase "Entrepreneurs, banking on the depravity of humankind..." written in a tone indicating that he might have been expecting something else. [- Minister P.]

I've been doing some number crunching and the results are...discouraging.

I've looked at my current debt load and played it against potential earnings. I've used historic earnings data, leavened with broader industry trends, as the core of my prediction models. Then, not feeling quite down enough, I put all that against actuarial data: height and weight, lifestyle, hobbies, career, etc etc.

I have determined that, barring some sort of ridiculous and unforeseeable windfall (and knowing that there's no real-life equivalent of a "Community Chest" card coming my way), I will not live to see the day I'm out of debt. From now until the day I die, I will be servicing debt. Sure everyone has their own financial woe and worry to contend with. I get that. But I never put things in quite this perspective before, that I'll be dead before I'm free.

It's sobering. It's heavy. It's Tuesday.

And it's Tuesday's Heavy Thought.

After a brief hiatus and respite, the Ministry returns with its seemingly endless series of alternate state mottoes posts. Today, we ridicule, poke fun at, needle, and harass the moderately fine state of Illinois. Behold, the Prairie State:

• A wholly-owned subsidiary of Richard M. Daly Industries, Inc.
• Gateway to Iowa
• Home of da Bears
• Please, Please Don't Pronounce the S
• Land of the voting dead
• At least we're not New Jersey
• I See Dead Voters
• We're in the Middle Somewhere
• Proud home of the two greatest statesmen in American History: Abraham Lincoln and Richard M. Daly
• We keep our nastiest suburbs in Indiana
• Construction ahead, Be prepared to stop
• Hicks, and Chicago
• Remember Us?
• Meatpackers, if you know what I mean
• If we only knew what the Illini were, or where they are now, we'd make more progress in the fight against them.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. So are you.

As in "What the hell we supposed to do, ya mo-ron..."

I have friends in Beirut, and after the first runway at Rafic Hariri International Airport was bombed, I dropped a note to them to ask how they were doing. Since they're residents of the hills northeast of Beirut, the response last Saturday was somewhat reassuring:

First, let me start off by saying that we are all fine.
{...} Though Lebanon is tiny, it has very distinct areas that are variably affected. We live in the mountains in the Christian area of Lebanon and are less likely to be in danger than the Moslem areas in the South, especially those areas with Hizballah presence, which have been mainly affected.

We hope this cluster fuck started by Hizballah resolves soon so that we can get back normal life.

Mazen

By this past Friday, as the effects of this latest war had ground northward, he'd been reduced to wondering whether CNN, NYT, or anyone else was covering the action, and just in case they weren't, quoting Robert Fisk articles in the Independent. Among the snippets of the two articles he sent ("Paradise Lost: Robert Fisk's Elegy for Beirut", July 19, and "The Child Lies Like a Rag Doll: A symbol of the latest Lebanon war", July 20), Fisk complains:

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

and then (in the latter article), "reports":

How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

...(includes details of a gut-wrenching set of circumstances leading to the girl's death, along with others, after Israel had warned citizens to leave)

The Israelis constantly boast of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.

True, the Hizbollah are killing civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West, which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe as "terrorists".

A couple of things occur to me here - because Hizb'allah are less-well-armed, we should just pass on the fact that they're killing Israeli citizens? Because any such killings are just lucky, given the presumed shittiness of the Hizb'allah arms? And not only that, we're supposed to reserve all ire for Israel, instead?

I don't know who this "we" is that Fisk refers to, but those tut-tutting about proportionality are either ignorant or, worse, wilfully ignorant of how it is that wars actually end. Lebanon is taking it in the ass, again, and that's truly something to regret. The loss of life, livelihood, and living quarters is both sad and intensely depressing.

But Lebanon has a problem that's a precursor to the present tragedy, namely the Hizb'allah "state within a state" that felt free to take action of its own, presumably without the consent of the elected government of the country. Lebanon claims not to have a militia capable of challenging the Party of God's militia, and after this latest provocation, someone had to. Israel was the only candidate - the UN sure couldn't be counted upon, and think of the howls of indignation should the US have offered to do the job, gratis, in response to the 1983 Beirut bombing which killed 241 Marines.

The sixty rockets that have rained down on northern Israel today (so far, at least, at the time I'm typing this) can't simply be ignored, and the fact that Israel has been able to effectively blockade Lebanon is an example of how proportionality must be ignored if the fighting with Hizb'allah is ever expected to end. It sucks that there's no valid way to blockade just the Shiite south of Lebanon, and in any event, that wouldn't achieve the desired effect. It sucks that such blockades include the need to damage infrastructure, such as the largest milk-producing facility in the country, in order to grind down the ability, if not the will, of the Hizb'allah aggressors. It also sucks that anyone outside the Hizb'allah militia has died, is dying, or will die.

And that suckage includes the damage to the lives of the Shiites in the south - they can't go against Hizb'allah, for several reasons. First and least important, they're all Shia. Of more importance is the fact that Hizb'allah takes good care (in a "Chicago ombudsman" sort of way) of it's civilians. Hizb'allah isn't just a terrorist organization and, in fact, may not now even be best classified as one, though they certainly were in the 1980s and 1990s, and they have terrorist adherents, still, today. They make up roughly 25% of the elected Parliament of Lebanon, and during the Cedar Revolution Mazen's brother Ziad referred to Nasrallah, the head of Hizb'allah, as among the least corrupt and most admired politicians in all of the body politic. Which says a lot, given the strict sectarianism of Lebanon, and the fact that Z & M are from a Christian family.

But, back to Fisk's "we": What are "we" supposed to do here? If "we" is the United States, are "we" supposed to shrug off their "Jew rays" and reign in "our" oft-claimed Zionist overlords from Israel? If "we" is Europe, are "we" supposed to increase the volume of "our" tut-tutting, attempting to shame Israel into accepting constant bombardment from a non-state actor? If "we" is the UN, are "we" supposed to suddenly become much less corrupt and vastly more competent, or would it be OK for "us" to just reduce the volume of piddle running down "our" legs at the thought of having to, for once, justify "our" continued existence?

Damn, I don't know the answer, but I, along with an apparent majority of my countrymen, think that, for now, it's just fine to state the obvious: Israel has a right to defend itself, and I wish there were a way to do so without such grievous damage to the Lebanese infrastructure. Short of a full-blown occupation, I don't see what alternative exists. Oh, wait - I guess Nasrallah could stop bombing Haifa and return the two kidnapped soldiers. But that seems unlikely, at least for now. Vaunted Arab ego, and all that.

Oh, and the latest dispatch from Mazen, this afternoon?

Dear Friends,

I am leaving Lebanon this Monday morning by road to Syria and then on to Jordan. From there I will fly to Egypt where I will be based for a while on a new project.

{His employer} is taking care of all travel arrangements, etc. My parents and brother are still in Lebanon and awaiting being contacted by the Canadian embassy for evacuation.

I appreciate all of your concern and if you do say a prayer or two, throw a little something my way for a safe journey and for the safety of my family in Lebanon through these difficult times.

Much love to you all.

Mazen

No tut-tutting here. Just a sense of resignation that, again, good people from a country that deserves much better have been horribly affected by forces seemingly beyond their control.

[wik]: Oops. Looks like there's a chance, according to Allah @ Hot Air, that some of Lebanon's leaders at least tacitly approved Nasrallah's adventurism. Bummer, that.

Frodo

You scored 59% Aggressive, 58% Brains, 64% GoodEvil, and 77% Trivia!

You have little care of the outside world. You think "Adventures make you late for dinner." On the other hand you have spent your time reading, and writing.

Not too far off the mark, although Frodo smokes way, WAY more weed than I do. Judging by the stats, not many people have taken this particular quiz:

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender

• You scored higher than 99% on Aggressive
• You scored higher than 99% on Brains
• You scored higher than 99% on Good/Evil
• You scored higher than 99% on Trivia

Today's forgotten punchline:

"Terrific! But where'd you learn to screw like a Jap?"

Watch as a writer wrestles with his harshest critic, his inner Gary Busey. Happily, I chose as my inner critic Chris Farley. While he's large and loud, he is also essentially a fat dope, and can be ignored when necessary. Not like Gary Busey. That guy's creepy. Just watch his show. He is right about the clowns though.

[wik] And really, I want to go to the Japanese Baseball and Samurai University.

NASA's site commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Apollo landing read, "On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body."

But the NASA text, and other sources, typically ignore one important and obvious detail: We CONQUERED it!

The British created a world spanning empire through the simple expedient of planting the Union Jack on soil inhabited by wogs who didn't know that flags meant ownership. Benighted natives woke to British officers telling them that they now lived in the British Empire. When they disputed this, the officers merely pointed at the flag and said, "See, there's the flag. England." And when they continued to disagree, there was always the Maxim gun. In keeping with this grand tradition of symbolic declaration strecthing back millenia (but without getting too into the semiotics of possession) our guy put our flag up there- so it's ours! Happily for the granola crunchy set, there were no Lunar aborigines that needed to be convinced more... strenuously.

Today is the 37th anniversary of that glorious event, when not just homo sap in general, but specifically God-fearing Amurricans left the cradle of Earth to begin the conquest of heaven. We sent men into space on a tower of fire, backed with nothing more than whiz-wheels, slide-rulers, and less computing power than my car's fuel injector. A relatively modest start, some might say - the Moon being low-hanging fruit, solar system wise - but it was a start nonetheless on the long road to interstellar domination. And someday, when Old Glory waves on 10,000 worlds and our mighty fleets cruise the galaxy, our fair descendants will look back at the Moon and Apollo as the start of it all. The only question is how they'll fit all those stars on the flag.

Huzzah! Huzzah! For the bonnie striped flag borne by a single moon!

And you will know my name is the lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. Samual L. Jackson is the voice of the Lord. Apparently I am not the only one who digs on his voice, as an audio bible will now feature Jackson as God. I can only hope that they also release the outtakes, so we can here God saying "Motherfucker" as only Jackson can. Maybe we could convince Jackson to do a Shaft version of the bible. Jackson would make a great Jesus. Just imagine Jackson/Shaft/Jesus casting the moneychangers from the temple. Jesus on doubting Thomas' case for doubting. Jesus smacking Judas around. The risen Jesus ridiculing Peter for denying him. The wedding in Canaa. The possibilities are endless.

This may be a bit of troubling news. Seems that an element of Orcan Searangers went after a Dolphinic Force Recon unit. According to Ministry sources, which at this time are sketchy and quite preliminary, they were supposed to be conducting joint training operations within the FinWarrior exercise. Something seems to have gone awry, and the dolphins had to dash into fresh water and up a river to escape being eaten.

As usual, trust a hippy conservationist for comic relief:

Conservation staff unsuccessfully attempted Thursday to herd the dolphins out of Oruaiti River and into Mangonui Harbor...

You think it might be because the dolphins are not interested in being food?

Levity aside, this may be troubling news. We are counting on the Cetacean Alliance in the looming fight with the robots, and without air-breathing allied mammals to take the fight to the briny deep...

Well, let's take it one step at a time. I'm still waiting to hear from Atlantis Command for an update, which should have more details. For the time being, let's just treat this as a rogue action. I've recommended postponing the balance of the FinWarrior '06 exercise until we get a handle on things.

Bah, just read it here. They draw some pretty far-reaching and, by their estimation, conclusive results based on whether I like blue more than brown. At first blush it seems slightly more accurate than, say, a horoscope or a fortune cookie, but upon subsequent readings I'm not so sure. I mean, "able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity"? Durrr!

GeekLethal's Existing Situation Pursues his objectives and his own-self-interest with stubborn determination; refuses to compromise or make concessions. GeekLethal's Stress Sources Suppresses his innate enthusiasm and imaginative nature, for fear that he might be carried away by it only to find himself pursuing some will-o'-the-wisp. Feels he has been misled and abused and has withdrawn to hold himself cautiously aloof from others. Keeps a careful and critical watch to see whether motives towards him are sincere--a watchfulness which easily develops into suspicion and distrust. GeekLethal's Restrained Characteristics Egocentric and therefore quick to take offense. Distressed by the obstacles with which he is faced and is no mood for any form of activity or for further demands on him. Needs peace and quiet, and the avoidance of anything which might distress him further. Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity. GeekLethal's Desired Objective Needs a peaceful environment. Wants release from stress, and freedom from conflicts or disagreement. Takes pains to control the situation and its problems by proceeding cautiously. Has sensitivity of feeling and a fine eye for detail. GeekLethal's Actual Problem Disappointment at the non-fulfillment of his hopes and the fear that to formulate fresh goals will only lead to further setbacks have resulted in considerable anxiety. He is trying to escape from this into a peaceful and harmonious relationship, protecting him from dissatisfaction and lack of appreciation. GeekLethal's Actual Problem #2 Needs to protect himself against his tendency to be too trusting, as he finds it is liable to be misunderstood or exploited by others. Is therefore seeking a relationship providing peaceful and understanding intimacy, and in which each knows exactly where the other stands.

Most folks, even those utterly disinterested in soccer, have seen the incessant replays of the head-butt that Zinedine Zidane laid on Marco Materazzi during the second overtime period of last week's World Cup final.

It's a story that won't die.

Aside from endless regurgitations (like this one) about the right and wrong of the matter, it's become an apparent staple that every smart-ass wants to get into an article, even those ostensibly unrelated to soccer, let alone sport. An example, from a July 12 Wall Street Journal about Nissan, Renault, and the potential for a partnership of some sort with General Motors, with a focus on whether it's too much to put on the plate of Carlos Ghosn, the much admired savior of Nissan:

Can he do that and run two other companies? This time at Renault, he has yet to work his magic. True, he has been there only for a year or so. But that is precisely why Renault shareholders want his attention focused on the French firm. They feel like their superstar has delivered a head butt to the chest.

That's not the sort of tiresome cuteness I normally associate with the WSJ. ...

But the excessive blather about the butt-head's head-butt itself has gotten tiresome. Zidane acquitted himself admirably, on most points, during his multiple televised descriptions of what happened, each of which was combined with an apology to the French people for his lapse.

The point that he's failed on (from another WSJ story of July 13) is encapsulated in this excerpt:

"These were words that touched the deepest part of me," said the 34-year-old Frenchman, seeking to explain why he had head-butted the Italian and got himself thrown out of the game, the last of his long and brilliant career. "I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that."

France ended up finishing the overtime with only 10 players, and then lost in the subsequent penalty shootout. Mr. Zidane is France's star penalty kicker and had scored from the penalty spot early in the match.

"I reacted badly, and I would like to apologize for it," added Mr. Zidane, who has occasionally erupted in the past. But he said he didn't regret the head butt. "The guilty one is the one who provokes," he said.

I mean no offense to Mr. Zidane, who seems to have truly deserved the Golden Ball as the best player in the World Cup. He's had an amazing career and served his country well. But jeez, what a thin-skinned pantywaist. He really needs to butch-up, I think.

If the "guilty one" truly was he who provoked, then Materazzi would have been thrown out, instead of Zidane. While the officiating at this World Cup was uniformly awful, the red card Zidane got was the only red card I saw in the entire tournament which was justified. And once it was clear that Zidane hadn't stopped Materazzi's heart from functioning, I hope Marco laughed his soccer-goon ass off. Because he played fair (within limits - grabbing clothes is bush-league, but so is all the melodramatic faked-injury acting that goes on in European soccer) and he did his job.

The reason Materazzi didn't punch him in the jaw is that, well, then Materazzi would have been the one trotting his ass off the pitch, not Zidane. Punching someone in the jaw is against the rules. Ghetto-talking that same someone is completely legitimate.

Zidane remains loved in France, which is as it should be. He should shut up about who's guilty, and so should all the lip readers and journalists who're trying to find some way to lionize Zidane and demonize Materazzi. Materazzi won that particular engagement, simply by drawing a red card for Zidane. But the worst offender would be this unnamed twit (from the same story):

A French lawyer announced yesterday that he will go to court to try to get the World Cup final invalidated on the grounds that Mr. Zidane's expulsion was illegal. He wants the match with Italy replayed.

Dream on, Pierre.

On a side note, the WSJ article points out that one of YouTube's most-viewed videos (500,000+ views) is that of Zidane laying the wood to Materazzi. Have a look, if you like, at another version (en Italiano) that seems to remove all doubt as to who the dumb-ass is, in this case, if not necessarily who the bad guy was.

But personally, I'd say that of the Zidane head-butt genre, this might be my favorite:

Today is, of course, the French Equivalent of Independence Day. Of course, French Independence day should properly be celebrated on June 6th. Casual sniping aside, the French are a race of smelly perfidious backstabbers. Happy Bastille Day!

The other day, I posted a couple Letterman Top Ten Lists. If that got your interest wound up but unsatisfied, well, here's where to go to get more. This page has all the early, pre-CBS top ten lists, and lists from CBS up to 2001. Note that the earlier lists are the intellectual property of NBC or its parent corporation, and used without permission. For your more recent lists, you can go to the Top Ten archive on Letterman's CBS page, which has the most recent ones back to August of 93. So there's a little overlap there. The search function on the CBS page works pretty well, but for the older ones, use google.

For your enjoyment, a couple random top ten lists:

Top 10 Children's Books NOT Recommended by the National Library Association

10. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
9. The Boy Who Died from Eating All His Vegetables
8. Legends of Scab Football
7. Teddy: The Elf with a Detached Retina
6. Tommy Tune: Boy Choreographer
5. Joe Garagoila Retells Favorite Fairy Tales but Can't Remember the Endings to All of Them
4. Ed Beckley's Start a Real Estate Empire with Change from Mom's Purse
3. Things Rich Kids Have That You Never Will
2. Let's Draw Betty and Veronica with Their Clothes Off
1. The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and Are Shot Dead

Top Ten Greatest Books of All Time About Guys Named Steve

10. "War and Peace and Steve"
9. "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Steves"
8. "The Grapes of Steve"
7. "The Steves of Wrath"
6. "Steve Grapes Steve Wrath Steve Steve"
5. "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, Steve is From Cleveland"
4. "Where's Waldo? Is He With Steve?"
3. "Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown, Volume VIII: 'Mysterious Guys Named Steve'"
2. "The Joy of Sex with Steve"
1. "The Bible" (King Steve Version)

The Ministry's continuing series of educational posts, uh, continues with our nation's 43rd State, Idaho. Today we focus on Idaho's two most significant exports, militias and potatoes:

• More Than Just Potatoes. Well, Okay, Just Potatoes
• No, U-da-ho!
• The Potato State
• Get Your Whites Their Whitest!
• Potatoes and Neonazis ... Two great tastes that taste great together
• You say potato, I say ... potato
• Cogito ergo spud: I think, therefore I yam
• We don't care if you spell potato with an "e"
• The White Potato Supremacist State
• Don't let the sun set on you in our state, Yam
• That's Bwawz, not Boy-zee
• The reason there's only 49 contestants in the Ms. Ebonics pageant
• Home of Mr. Potato Head
• Imagine your compound here!
• Like the Connecticut of the West
• Our state flower is the Syringe, but don't confuse us with New Jersey
• Birthplace of TV
• Proud home of Ezra Pound and Ruby Ridge

The local incarnation of my regional ultramegasupermarket makes dinner fare for the young stud on the go: pizza; chicken in various cooked states and configurations; pot-pies; uncountable pounds of mashed potatoes and mac-n-cheese.

The other day I chose an exceptional meatloaf, my favorite example of all the loafed foods. This place makes a decent meatloaf- a tad salty, a touch greasy, but otherwise about as pleasant a gustatory experience as any right-thinking person might expect from a meatloaf. Today's lunch is a cold slab of that 2 (3?)-day-old meatloaf. It started as a slab, anyway; I had to cut it down to fit into my container, and subsequent travel broke things up a little further.

Anyway it's lunchtime and I'm about halfway through it, just, you know, eating and diggin' on my meatloaf, when it suddenly occurred to me that in color, shape, and size I might appear to be eating bits of a turd. And not like the tootsie rolls the cat leaves for you. A dense all-American turd that destroys plumbing, fouls the air, and makes communists afraid. Something that only the bowel of a flesh-eating man's man- like, say, Ted Nugent- might produce.

So that's what's on my mind right now.

Um, what are you having...?

There are numerous examples of distorted language I, and I expect you, hear every day. Mangled pronunciation. The dearth of subject-verb agreement, and the new tyranny of the pronoun "they". Weird pluralization too, like the time in Atlanta when an airport announcer implored passengers, at least three times, to retrieve their "luggages"; I about had a hot, frothy fit on the spot.

But nothing in spoken English gets up my ass so thoroughly as vacuous business-speak, and one simple word in particular makes me want to climb up the tower and either ring the bells madly or snuggle into a cozy sniper perch: "solution".

I'm not completely unaware of the use of the word as a noun largely devoid of meaning. Every technology company since 1994 either provides solutions, builds solutions, or can help you find your solution. I often wonder, in fact, what companies were doing before they all devoted themselves to making solutions. What I didn't appreciate though was that the word had filtered down into everyday simple ad copy.

Last Sunday I was going through some prices on laptops by a certain electronics distributor. It was there I read not one, not twice, but several times, text describing a model as a "solution". The ad would read something like, "This is IBM's most rugged solution"; or, "Look no further for a solution under $1200"; or, "ACER's new frammis chip is the solution that drives their portable solution". A what? For what?! I thought I was after a computer...

Solutions answer problems. And wanting a new computer is not neccessarily a fucking puzzle.

Let me put it another way. Say you and I are working on my non-green, hippy-hating SUV. Let's keep the example simple, and we're doing something routine...say we're, I dunno, replacing the razing wire strung around the roof. And let's say that at one point I tell you I need a 3/4" wrench, you hand me a 3/4" wrench, and say, "there's your Craftsman bolt solution." I would take it, rap the top of your mushy head with it, and ask you whether that felt like a solution or a wrench. Because it's a fucking wrench.

Your car is not your "transportation solution". It's a fucking car. Your steak is not your "nutrition solution". It's a fucking steak. My scroty bag is not my "reproductive portability solution". It's my nutsack. Um, and so forth and so on.

So. If you use this word regularly yet you are not a scientist or mathematician, fucking cut it out already.

This concludes this installment of The English Bitch. We now return to The Buckethead Show, already in progress.

I pose a purely rhetorical question, apropos Minister Geeklethal's earlier comment which includes a reference to "the all-consuming white and black ball".

Ignore for a moment the fact that, at least in the final, the ball wasn't white & black:

I'm a guy, so I don't know if that not-black, not-white color is taupe, mauve, or some other made-up name.

But, on to my rhetorical question: When did FIFA decide to allow brand advertising on the ball? Have a closer look, at this picture:

Is it just me, or does it look like a sneaky product placement by Kotex? At least Nike, when doing product placements related to soccer balls, makes them both transparent and interesting, with goofy, snaggle-toothed football wunderkinds like Ronaldinho.

Ministry Crony EDog alerts us to the happenings in Japan, wherein one may see an interesting festival:

It's not at all like our Independence Day. But perhaps a little more colorful. If by colorful, you mean phallic. You can see more pics and commentary at EDog's heterosexual life partner's blog, The Daily Disappointment. The Ministry would like to extend its deep and sincere thanks to the both of them, our lives are richer for having seen all of this.

Uber-blogger Murdoc, whose scrotal heft is such that the airlines try and make him check his nuts whenever he flies, discusses Army and USMC helmet technologies and fielding programs here.

This is an interesting snippet, from the '03 article he cites:

"...replacing the old “Kevlar” as it’s commonly called, which has been around since the early 1980s."

Which is factual, inasmuch as they existed and were fielded to certain units in time for Grenada (camo BDUs too, for that matter). But I tell you that I went to basic training in 1989 and finished AIT in Jun 1990, and was issued a steel pot at both, as were all trainees. Training cadre and other permanent-party folks all had k-pots though. I didn't get a Kevlar brainbucket til I got to my first unit.

I'm not sharp-shooting here, honest. Just pointing out that there's a difference between a piece of equipment "existing" and having it issued across the force that I think alot of folks might overlook.

Thankfully absent from Murdoc's discussion was his analysis of the Army's Purple-Helmet Warrior Concept.

Among the myriad World Cup tales of soaring victory and crushing defeat; of passions, hatreds, life, love, death; of suffering and pride locked in the orbit of the all-consuming white and black ball, comes another story. A story of practicality, fulfilling urgent needs, and micro-economics.

Leave it to the Germans, arguably the most industrious people in the civilized world, Europe's own tireless ants, to put tailfins and new, uh,
rubber, on the oldest profession.

I give you the drive-through whorehouse.

The Ministry's favoritest Oldsmoblogger, Ken, considers some finer points of constitutional interpretation and originalism. In so doing, he takes the LA Times' Mark Kurlansky apart for being not simply naive, but outright stupid. Ken's far too diplomatic to use that phrasing, but I'm not. So I did.

Ken is alot smarter than me and I'm glad he uses his powers for good.

Most people wouldn't think to make fun of Hawaii. It seems like a nice place. The Japs bombed it. It is the home of hula girls, surfing and Charles A. Lindbergh's grave. Who could possibly make fun of the Pineapple State? Well, us:

• Aloha means "get lost, punk!"
• We're the furthest from New Jersey!
• Sure, we've got Interstates... drive right on over
• Book 'em Danno
• We define middle of nowhere
• Hula girls are easy
• Weather is here, wish you were beautiful
• Why Does Everybody Think Putting Ham and Pineapple on Something Makes it "Hawaiian"?
• You can't get here from there
• Gateway to a shitload of water
• Tom Selleck, Jack Lord, Don Ho - Paradise!
• Eat Lava, Jerks!
• Halfway to Guam
• A whole language with only three sounds
• The Last State, until Puerto Rico makes up its fucking mind
• We're not fat, we're Samoan

While sorting through old files in the Ministry Bunker, Catastraphorium, Grill House and Archive, I ran across this gem:

On a transatlantic flight, a plane passes through a severe storm. The turbulence is awful, and things go from bad to worse when one wing is struck by lightning. One woman in particular loses it. Screaming, she stands up in the front of the plane. "I'm too young to die!" she wails. Then she yells, "Well, if I'm going to die, I want my last minutes on Earth to be memorable! I've had plenty of sex in my life, but no one has ever made me really feel like a woman! Well, I've had it! Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN??"

For a moment there is silence. Everyone has forgotten their own peril, and they all stare, riveted at the desperate woman in the front of the plane. Then, a man stands up in the rear of the plane. "I can make you feel like a woman," he says. He's gorgeous. Tall, built, with curly black hair and jet black eyes. He starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time.

No one moves. The woman is breathing heavily in anticipation as the stranger approaches. He removes his shirt. Muscles ripple across his chest. When he reaches her, he extends the arm holding his shirt to the trembling woman, and whispers......

"Iron this."

I think this is my all time favorite Letterman Top Ten list: Orville Redenbacher's Top 10 Most Horrifying Secrets

10. That's not his grandson; that's his "longtime companion."
9. Has 50 pounds of plastic explosives taped to his body at all times.
8. He was raised by white mice.
7. Is the real voice of Milli Vanilli.
6. Came home one night to find wife in bed with Keebler elves.
5. Was responsible for that fire at the Jiffy-Pop factory.
4. Two words: Asian escorts.
3. Has small vestigial wings.
2. Likes to wear pants 3 sizes too large, go to malls, and then say, "Oops!" whenever they fall down.
1. That ain't butter.

[wik] My other favorite top ten list is from the Onion:

Top 10 Signs You're Not God

10. You've got combination skin.
9. Tuna melt isn't your favorite sandwich (see Matthew 3:24).
8. You work in totally non-mysterious ways.
7. While hurling lightning bolts down from the sky at some guy, you miss and foul up his automatic sprinkler system.
6. Everything you bless starts smelling like cabbage.
5. God doesn't have a hair weave.
4. No matter how hard you try, you can't get the lid off the Skippy.
3. Every time you try to prove you're invisible, you end up getting arrested.
2. You can't even create a bird feeder in seven days.
1. You wouldn't be living in Waco.

I could still be God.

[wik] Top Ten List from David Letterman, sometime in the early nineties.

This series of maps from the Atlas of the Universe will do nothing if not give you a little perspective on things. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and I'd start wrtiting my address, and just adding to it:

Me
315 Longview Rd.
Medina, Oh
United States
North America
Earth
Solar System
Orion Spur
Perseus Arm
Milky Way Galaxy
Local Supergroup
Universe

Here, for your convenience, is a map of the the local terrain:

[wik] Thanks to Geeklethal for pointing this out.

[alsø wik] You'll really want to click on the picture for a bigger, clearer version.

A fascinating look at the inner workings of Google.

[wik] I have no clear understanding of why I titled this post as I did.

Scientists have recently (this millennia) come to the conclusion that large rogue waves do, in fact exist.

Over the centuries, many accounts have told of monster waves that battered and sank ships. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the Navy oiler Ramapo encountered a huge wave. The crew, calm enough to triangulate from the ship’s superstructure, estimated its height at 112 feet.

In 1966, the Italian cruise ship Michelangelo was steaming toward New York when a giant wave tore a hole in its superstructure, smashed heavy glass 80 feet above the waterline, and killed a crewman and two passengers. In 1978, the München, a German barge carrier, sank in the Atlantic. Surviving bits of twisted wreckage suggested that it surrendered to a wave of great force.

Despite such accounts, many oceanographers were skeptical. The human imagination tended to embellish, they said.

Moreover, bobbing ships were terrible reference points for trying to determine the size of onrushing objects with any kind of accuracy. Their mathematical models predicted that giant waves were statistical improbabilities that should arise once every 10,000 years or so.

That began to change on New Year’s Day in 1995, when a rock-steady oil platform in the North Sea produced what was considered the first hard evidence of a rogue wave. The platform bore a laser designed to measure wave height. During a furious storm, it registered an 84-foot giant.

Then, in February 2000, a British oceanographic research vessel fighting its way through a gale west of Scotland measured titans of up to 95 feet, “the largest waves ever recorded by scientific instruments,” seven researchers wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

It's an interesting article in its own right, but I was struck by the similarity to the scientific establishment's resistance to the idea that rocks might fall from the skies. The words meteorology and meteorite describe the study of weather and extraplanetary debris falling to earth. The reason the names are so similar is that scientists refused to believe, for decades and despite the evidence, that the rocks that fell were anything but atmospheric phenomena.

How will we get to the singularity with such stubborn researchers? And indeed, one might ask, "Why do they hate the rogue waves' freedom? Sailors have been reporting these waves for centuries. But oceanographers told them, "Silly seamen, our models say that a wave like you describe could only happen once in ten thousand years. And you already reported one. So you must be lying. Your ship must have sank due to pilot error." The power of what you know you know is for most people inescapable. Like an overactive spam filter, we reject those parts of reality that fail to match our model of reality. Truly, acceptance of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Hey, maybe we don't know everything about oceans. What if - just sayin, now, what if there really were big honking waves? Five years later, you've got the beginnings of a warning system and a deeper understanding.

Take a look inside the world of spyware. Those fuckers cost me at least thirty hours of my life over the last month.

You'd have to be at least a little crazy to invent this. It is however, strangely entrancing.

Georgia.

• Putting The Mental In Fundamentalism
• Gateway to Florida
• Not quite the same since Sherman
• At least we're not New Jersey
• Where Ned Beatty squealed like a pig
• Confederate money welcome
• We're like the New York of the South
• Eat a Peach
• Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation, my ass
• Mostly Rednecks 'round These Parts
• Land of the unfree, Home of the Braves
• We Put the "Fun" in Fundamentalist Extremism
• Proud home of outstanding human beings James Earl Carter, Jim Brown, Ty Cobb and Doc Holliday
• We hate Ted Turner, too
• Come for the humidity, stay for the intolerance and traffic jams

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Giving infantrymen heatstroke since 1918
• Like summer in Maine, but with fewer gnats
• Well, Savannah's nice...
• 1/5 of COPs episodes filmed here!
• If you're here for Freaknik, take a right and head for Galveston
• To paraphrase Thomas Sowell: no A/C, no Atlanta
• On the banks of the mighty Chattahoochee
• Home of Jimmy Carter - Our practical joke on the country

I never would have thunk it, but the other day, someone successfully flew an ornithopter. Dr. James DeLaurier, an aeronautical engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies, has been pursuing this dream since the early seventies. Encouraged by the success of a remote controlled model ornithopter in the nineties, he started gunning for the big time, a manned, self-powered ornithopter. And on July 8th, it flew for 14 seconds. Which, lest you giggle, is two full seconds longer than the Wright brother's first flight. People have been trying to get this one since Leonardo, and now we have it.

We're once step closer to the world of Frank Herbert's Dune. Now all we need are sandworms and sardaukar.

Traveling to the moon is so last century. Mars is small dusty ball with little of interest. The rest of the Solar System is either very, very hot or very, very cold. Where is an enterprising space traveler to set his sights? The stars, of course. Interstellar travel is widely considered to be impossible, or at the very least prohibitively difficult. That hasn't stopped a group of scientists, engineers and dreamers from forming the Tau Zero Foundation, whose purpose is to lay the groundwork for practical starflight.

I'm all for that. The group is in its infancy, as yet. Yet having someone out there, pushing for the development of the technologies that could get us out of this rural backwater and into the big cities of the galaxy, is a good thing. Unless, of course, Greg Benford and Charles Pellegrino and not Carl Sagan are right about how dangerous the rest of the galaxy might be. And that really is the big thing. I am not saying that we shouldn't head out into the big galaxy - we should. Earth is the cradle of mankind, and we can't stay in the cradle forever. And if Earth is the cradle, the Solar System is the nursery. We don't know, yet, whether the universe outside the nursery is a barren desert, a civilised utopia, or a particularly savage part of the Bronx after sundown. Given the fecundity of life on earth, and the size of the galaxy, I think the barren desert is unlikely. There will be life, somewhere. Probably manywheres. If some of that life is sentient, the chances of a enlightened utopia is vanishingly small. Perhaps we, or some other race, might unify and be nice. All of them? At the same time? It only takes one to ruin the party, and someone is going to be nasty. When the outcome of an interstellar war could be species extinction, how many races will take a chance on being nice?

I don't think we will draw much attention to ourselves expanding into the solar system. Whatever technology we end up using to travel starward, we will likely need the resources of the solar system to accomplish the journey - massive solar power stations harvesting the energy of the sun to create antimatter, or perhaps something even more odd. When we head out, though - that's different. We will not only draw attention to ourselves, we will have proved that we have the capability of wreaking havoc on anyone in our neighborhood. A relativistic spaceship is indistinguishable from a relativistic bomber.

We're not there yet. But technology isn't just increasing. It isn't even accelerating. The rate of acceleration is increasing. We might be there quicker than even the most optimistic appraisals allow for, even not counting the singularity. It seems funny to talk of interstellar travel when we can barely get into orbit, but we went from not even being able to fly to walking on the moon in 66 years. Once we're in space, the expansion could be quite quick indeed.

Since this project began, I have been looking forward to this moment. The Phallic Symbol State, Florida, is perhaps my least favorite state. So it pleases me no end to present to you, the gentle reader, a couple suggestions for new and improved mottoes for the soi disant Sunshine State:

• God's Waiting Room
• More Lizards than People
• Hey you kids, get off of my state!
• Now With 25% More Cubans!
• Ask Us About Our Grandkids
• You're dying to get here
• Senior citizen discounts available
• More than just a great place to die
• Half a Million Cubans Can't Be Wrong
• The Gunshine State
• Come, enjoy the humidity
• We're America's Penis
• So close, you can smell Fidel
• The state with a hint of Ben Gay
• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... and we'll send 'em back to you free of charge!
• America's Dangling Chad
• We make the US look like it's pissing on Cuba
• Where the 3 R's are for Rednecks, Retirees and Raft Arrivals
• The snow capital of the US
• Come See Your Grandparents Before They Die
• Yes, that is a cabbage on our flag
• Come Retire With Us
• Bugs as big as your head
• We hate Jimmy Buffet
• At least we're not New Jersey
• Nascar, lizards, and drunk sorority chicks. What's not to love?
• But it's a wet heat. Oh, wait a minute...
• More than just old people waiting for hurricanes
• Proud home of Janet Reno and Stepin Fetchit
• Everyone Hates Us

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• America's Wang
• 3 in 5 episodes of COPS filmed right here!
• A swimming pool with every home; a meth lab in every Motel 6
• Mosquitos outnumber oxygen atoms 2:1
• Sea-cows? Hardly - manatee milk is vile
• Now with drive-through hip replacement
• The 'it's like breathing through a wet towel' state