perfidy

Cat shoots owner. If the cat had been a better shot, no doubt its intention was to eat the owner after shooting him.

It's not often that the oral arguments in the US Supreme Court rise to the level of noir fiction a la James M. Cain.

Clement starts to explain that in some cases this is terrifically complicated. He tries to hypothesize a messy fraud case, but Stevens cuts him off. "Keep it simple," he says. "There are usually not a host of enhancing factors—just the drug quantity and a gun." Clement tries to return to his fraud prosecution, but again Stevens stops him: "Use the example I've given you," he hisses. With the gun.

Terrific writing from Dahlia Lithwick.

I will always have a soft spot in my otherwise stony Yankee heart for utter cranks. The moonbats among us enrich all our lives in uncounted and under-appreciated ways. Nothing beats watching them at work, of course, but reading their publications is almost as good. Hell, sometimes it's even better, because you get the footnotes.

Michael Salla, a professor at American University's School of International Service, helps train diplomats and further the academic study of peace and conflict resolution.

He also has a side job developing his study of "exopolitics", or relations between Earth's shadow government and aliens, and has a website for it. 'Cuz, you see, "...many, if not all, international conflicts were related to the extraterrestrial presence."

One of his recent papers describes that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with oil, religion, 9-11, Osama, or anything else so obviously obvious. Instead, Dr. Salla writes that the war is actually about securing Stargates, ancient technologies that allow malevolent aliens to sidestep the existing planet-wide quarantine against malevolent aliens. See, that's why you don't see so many aliens running around, it's because of the quarantine.

Dr. Salla also warns that should Arabs be pissed off at us long enough, it will result in one of two scenarios: attract a certain alien species to pass through the Stargates to wreak vengeance upon the American armed forces in the region; or reach a critical mass, related to numbers and level of fervor, for their wishes of death and destruction upon us to physically appear by force of will. I think.

I'm digging this guy, and think it's great that nutters can find real work at our places of higher learning.

What the weeping hey has this country come to?

Yesterday [actually, March 23... as commenter Patrick Fleury wonders, 'God alone knows why it did not hit the news then.'] a bipartisan group of Congressmen-- US Congressmen-- attended a ceremony in which the Reverend Sum Yung Moon was crowned Emperor of America.

Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.

But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation.

Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman. . . ."

The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted.

"I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there."

And yet, they stayed. Goddamn great. For pix, including face-shots of sitting Senators participating in a ceremony crowning a right-wing moonbat Emperor of these here United States, go here.

I always say that Washington can't get any worse, or any weirder. I must be a man of faith because time and again I'm proven to be wrong, wrong, wrong and yet I persist.

[wik] And that's the problem with emperors. Almost two months he's been emperor, and... what? Nothing! No largesse, no continental royal progresses, not even any beheadings or indulgences granted. I demand a recount!

It was 4 AM and I was awake. I'd had one of my standard dreams, it woke me up, and I spent the next half hour thinking about it. And other stuff too.

Before I go any further, please cleanse yourself of any references to "Apocalypse Now", "Full Metal Jacket", "Platoon", "The Deer Hunter", "China Beach", "MASH", "Sgt. Rock", "Nick Fury", and each and every one of his Howlin' Commandos.
First and foremost, I'm awfully young to have served during either the Korean or Vietnam Wars. At the outside, I could have been conscripted to go to Vietnam when I was 2, the year conscription ended, but my martial skills were not yet recognized at that tender age. Second and midmost, an awful lot of boomer-generated media communicates the message that combat vets, particularly Vietnam-era vets, are fucked up and psycopathic, which is dreck. Third and aftmost, I'm not a combat vet and do not pretend that my experiences whilst in the armed services in any way mirrors what soldiers experience in combat. I was in during the Gulf War but the 3ID never left Germany. At least, not as an entire division it didn't.

OK, on with the dream: This was standard dream A1, which over the last 2 years I have about 3-4 nights in 5. I used to get it before that, but not as often. In dream A1, I'm still in the Army, either having recently reenlisted or never having left. Typically in A-series dreams alot of folks I was close to then are still around. Usually we are in the same unit as we were then, and often hold the same rank, all of which is entirely inplausible. The dream, I think, is more about reconnecting than anything else, not having seen these men in so long and being happy to be in their company again. Usually when I wake up I'm sad they're not here.

Now, this morning's A1 dream got me up around 4. And I started thinking about how I felt during Gulf War 1. The pics of protestors in the paper ticked me off, but there was an uncertainty in the air that I wasn't comfortable with. It had nothing to do with whether we'd win the fight- believe me- it was how things were at home that could really get people off mission and into a funk. Funk like introspective and taciturn, not funk like supabad.

See, soldiers, including members of all service branches, want to know that what they do is valued by the people they are ostensibly serving. That the profound sacrifice they make is respected and understood by the wider population. And lemme tell you, when I came home on leave and saw how things were here, I'd give this country a B-. Tops.

It's not about yellow ribbons, although that's nice. I saw plenty of private displays like that, and am seeing them again since 9-11. Which I like. But what is absent are public representations, public displays of support and understanding that communicate what a broad section of the population feels, together, en masse, and not the onesies and twosies of "support our troops" bumper stickers. Displays like that were largely absent in 1990, and they're largely absent now.

But I'm not necessarily talking about billboards or advocating for continuous parades. I mean, particularly for the media, to treat this whole situation as a war, a bona-fide, thunderbolts from Zeus and sword of Ares war. Today, as then, it's just another story, no different on the page from the piece on welfare reform, grade inflation in the Ivy League, and the goddamn weather, bracketed by upswings in fighting. Of course increased violence is newsworthy, but why are ongoing operations within this conflict rarely reported, or relegated to to lesser sections of the paper if covered at all?

You know what would be nice to see? A paper treat soldiers with some goddamn respect, and not as fucking stories. Run some major articles on what they do, and who is doing them. You could do it without running afoul of OPSEC restrictions. And hey, it's even easier because the leads are already there: the command element runing the military side of things in Iraq puts out many press releases every single day discussing who's doing what and where. Why do I have to go to a Pentagon website, or freaky Free Republic, to read them, not the so-called "paper of record" or its minion agencies?

What a soldier in the field needs to know is that he or she is valued back on the block, CONUS, the Land of the Round Doorknob, the World, home. We can put up all the bumperstickers, yellow ribbons, and flags we want, but such singular gestures have little impact. The only way to communicate with them in great numbers is via journalistic media, but it shows no interest in the task. And that's a fucking shame.

But hey, the weekend weather looks promising...maybe I'll wash my truck and take in a movie. I think the movie listings are at the back of section D, just before that paragraph about Army Special Forces soldiers building schools in Afghanistan.

In light of our earlier post about scientologist's secret arrangement with the IRS, I thought I'd throw this one into the ring: A court ordered a prominent critic of the cult to pay $500,000 in damages in a breech of contract dispute.

Superior Court Judge Lynn Duryee issued that order in a breach-of- contract lawsuit against Scientology defector Gerald Armstrong.

The Church of Scientology had sought $10 million from Armstrong, who joined the church in 1969, left the fold in 1981 and later became one of the movement's harshest critics. He was sued by the church in 1984 for allegedly stealing thousands of pages of private papers that shed new light on the movement's mysterious founder, the late L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard, a prolific science-fiction writer and freelance philosopher, founded the Church of Scientology in the 1950s and died in 1986.

During his years in Scientology, Armstrong says he worked as an intelligence officer and communications officer and compiled documents for a church-sponsored biography of Hubbard. He says he has been in Scientology's sights since the church filed its 1984 lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court to get control of Hubbard's private papers.

Judge Paul Breckenridge Jr., who presided over that case, issued a ruling in which he called Hubbard "virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements." In settling that case in 1986, Armstrong agreed to return the documents. He says that the church paid him $515,000 ($800,000 including his lawyer's fee) and that his attorney at the time persuaded him to sign an agreement promising to "maintain strict confidentiality and silence with respect to his experiences with the Church of Scientology."

That agreement says Armstrong would pay $50,000 for every utterance about Scientology. The church maintains that Armstrong has violated the agreement at least 201 times and owes it just over $10 million.

...Armstrong still vows to never pay a penny to the church.

I'd just like to say that Scientology is weird. Battlefield Earth was a half decent space opera. But the over the top bios in Hubbard's books are a little, well, over the top. I remember reading in one of these that Hubbard was one of the greats of the field, and implied that he was right up there, and good friends with Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke. Which is manifest bullshit. Before Battlefield Earth, I had never heard of him, so he wasn't one of the greats. And I read a lot of sf. If he would lie about something as obviously false as that, in the author bio for a widely published book, well you can only imagine what he'd lie about to his followers. (Go to this site for an outline of the extent of those lies.)

According to the New York Times, an officially secret agreement exists between the Scientologists and the IRS which allows members of the "Church" of Scientology-- and only that "church"-- to deduct the costs of educating children at "C"of S schools from their taxes. No other religious-schooling costs may be claimed on tax returns.

This fact only came to light when a Jewish couple claimed tax deductions for the education of their five children at Jewish schools, only to recieve a letter from the IRS denying their claim because their reciepts did not come from the Scientologists. Oops! Secret's out!

So far, both the IRS and the Creeps of Scientology have quashed subpoena requests to see this agreement, but it's only a matter of time. This is going to get weird, and after that it's going to get ugly.

Just how corrupt is our government, and just how sinister are the Scientologists?

(thanks to Marginal Revolution for the original pointer.)

Give me a minute to delve into my secret library of conspiracies, but in the meantime, here's something to put you in the proper mood: Separated at birth?

Check out the OFFICIAL site for THE MESSIAH and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. 

hat tip: The Limey Brit

Loyal reader Mapgirl sends us this link about a man from the future, who until recently was posting on the internet. Apparently, he predicts a red v. blue civil war starting in the next year or so, culminating in a nuclear exchange initiated by Russian in 2015. Also, Bush is instituting a police state that will contribute to the civil war, and soon we will have a Waco-style incident almost every month.

He was sent into the past to get a IBM computer from 1975 to solve a Y2K type problem for when UNIX computers run out of numbers in 2038. He stopped off here because of his abiding interest in late period American cultural history.

We report, you decide.

From Norway comes a bizarre story about Stalin's crab army. That's right. Stalin's crab army.

See, in the 1930s, the Man of Steel caused some Pacific giant crabs (aka Kamchatka Crabs) to be brought to the waters of the Barents Sea, where they have been living ever since. In the 1990s, for reasons nobody can discern, their population exploded, and since then an army of millions of 25-pound, 3-food-wide crabs have been marching down the coast of Norway, eating anything in their path. In their wake is an underwater desert in which no multicelled living thing is to be found, and apparently the crabs can live off any food source under any conditions. And yes, the Stalin-crabs are red.

Creepy, weird, and troubling. Among other things, the article suggests that the crabs may be partially responsible for the continued low population of cod in the Atlantic, as the crabs seem to eat everything below cod in the food chain. As well as everything else. And at this point, ecologists see nothing standing between them and Gibraltar.

The worst (best?) part? The giant Commie crabs are delicious. Norwegians are caught between horror that their waters are the scene of a veritable piscene holocaust and delight that the perpetrators fetch top dollar and go so incredibly well with a lemon wedge and drawn butter.

Moral of the story: dont f**k with Mother Nature, but really don't f**k with Papa Joe, who seems to have macabre powers of crustaceous revenge from beyond the grave.

A long time ago in a universe far, far away, a man named Erwin Schroedinger gave us the story of a cat. Schroedinger's Cat is a haunting tale of death and loss and, in particular, the nature of uncertainty. It's so sad, really. You see, there's this cat, who's alive and well. He's happy and well-fed. Life isn't too bad. Then he changes owners. The new owner is a bad man, and the bad man thinks he doesn't really need food, or water, or anything of the things that regular cats need to live and love and do more than survive.

The bad man puts the cat in a box. It's an iron box, heavy lid, no way to look inside. In fact, this box is never designed to be opened, ever...you can't see what's going on in there. Before the lid was shut, though, the bad man had a pang in his stomach. At first he thought it was a crappy egg, but it turned out to be his heart, maybe two sizes too small.

Still being a bad man, though, he gathered up another cat and threw it in the box with the first one, tightly shut the lid, and found the nasty pang departed. Then he welded the lid shut, put a padlock on it, wrapped the box in plastic, and bricked it into cubby hole behind a wall in his guest house, smoothing out the plaster in a pleasing manner. He centered a cross on the wall, and decided the cat's name was Fortunato. The other cat could be Fortunato 2.

After some time went by, Fortunato asked Fortunato 2 to marry him.

In a fit of macabre quantum pique, the immoral collapsing probability wavefront reached out into the universe and....

Did nothing, because nobody saw it; it never existed.

TL Hines has begun what is sure to become legend in the annals of political reporting. In a selfless quest to increase our knowledge of the issues; and more importantly the people who will never have any impact upon them, TL is interviewing the Dark Horse presidential candidates. No not those candidates - the real Dark Horses. Like Kenneth Oliver Miller, Jedi candidate for the most powerful office in the free world.

TL, one question I have, and maybe you can forward it on to Mr. Miller - his stat sheet on Project Vote Smart lists his date of birth as 1/3/65. He will turn forty after the election. Is he even eligible to run for President?

Friends, we are not defeated!

They can beat us, they can shoot us,
they can take our homes and land.
They can drive us out and destroy
everything we hold dear.

But friends, countrymen,
there is one thing they cannot do....
They can never take our cookies!

Apparently, there is a special unit of the Russian armed forces that specializes in extreme cold weather beer retrieval.

BBC reports that soldiers recently spent a week conducting beer retrieval operations in and around a frozen river near Omsk.

What's next, Mandrake? Beer? American beer? How's THAT tie in with your post-war commie conspiracies?

From the weird department...when there's nothing better to do...

The year: 1953. As millions "mourn" the death of Josef Stalin, the Man of Steel, a funeral procession with full military honors rolls through Moscow in a heavy snow. The procession of a thousand vehicles includes an open-topped hearse with one coffin, draped in hammer and sickle. Inside, a headless body.

Several hundred miles outside Moscow, a small caravan of trucks speeds through the night towards the distant foothills of the Ural Mountains. Their quest: deliver the frozen head of Josef Stalin to the mountain lair of Dr. Josef Mengele, evil genius and fugitive from world justice. Cut scene. The truck pulls up outside a dilapidated hut tucked in the angle between two sheer cliffs which rise like giant's hands toward the stormy sky. A light appears briefly in the night, then goes out.

In Doctor Mengele's underground lair, bright lights glare off a tangled forest of beakers, hoses, pipes, the hulking silhouettes of vacuum-tube computers, and other more exotic equipment. A low throbbing hum rises through the octaves into a high-pitched squeal, and then… ZARK! A brilliant flash of purple light. Several guards fly backwards from a plain steel table heaped with unidentifiable parts, their hair and clothing smoking.

For an excruciating moment, nothing happens. Assistants begin to fidget, envisioning the unthinkable punishments visited on those who fail. A groaning and creaking returns everyone’s eyes to the table in the center of the cavernous room. Involuntary gasps are heard as a giant metal figure rises slowly to a sitting posture. Everyone but the Doctor recoils in horror as a voice grates through a speaker recessed in the beast's chest - "Congratulations, Herr Doktor, for now I truly am the man of steel!" Joints whine and hydraulics hiss as the giant robot with the head of Stalin drives a titanium fist through the torso of a convenient guard. "And how goes the space vehicle?"

For months the world of cloak-and-dagger trembles as the finest men on earth battle the new enemy from the Urals. The heroes of the War are called back from their plows. The mettle of the free world is tested. Good men and women die, and evil rises triumphant. But slowly, slowly, the tide turns in the clandestine war. As the US Army battles the Communist menace in Korea -—a mere sideshow to the main battle raging furiously across the steppes, Premier Kruschev, advised by a cabal of the greatest minds ever assembled, brings Stalin, the Doctor, and their minions to ground in the very place of his birth: Doctor Mengele's underground lair. One ten-megaton blast, and the world is safe once again.

The year: 2002. The oldest of the cold warriors have long since retired, and the great minds of the Twentieth century have given way to younger, eager, yet callow figures. Few remain who were privy to the most horrible secrets of fifty years before.

January 2003. Several nuclear warheads go missing in Kazakhstan. A week later, Pakistan can't find some of theirs. Thousands of pounds of anthrax disappear "just disappear!" from stocks hidden deep in the Iraqi desert. Gradually, like a nearly cold fire catching once again in the ashes of the past, old contacts are restored, long-dormant ciphers carry cryptic messages, and a steady stream of refugees show the Urals have become a perilous place once again.

September 2003. A force of Russian army regulars guarding a mobile orbital launch platform fail to check in. Investigations go nowhere and reveal nothing but that the platform is gone without a trace. The Putin government can say nothing to the world. North Korea, growing ever more belligerent, announces it has nuclear weapons. Disturbing chatter is heard between terrorist groups in the Middle East long thought to hate each other.

Cut scene: An underground bunker cut from solid rock. A long black table in the center of a murkily lit room. Pairs of figures filter in from the four corners, guards leading bound "guests." The guests are seated and their bonds removed. Some can be immediately recognized as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin, Kim Jong Il, and Idi Amin (looking much the worse for wear). Others are nondescript: a cluster of unshaven men in orange hunting camo, a few round-faced men in green fatigues, and a well-groomed man who may or may not be a member of Ace of Base.

A giant metal figure enters the room, trailed by a smaller, wheeled cart topped by a glass dome containing what appears to be a human head. A voice grates from a speaker. "Gentlemen, I imagine you are wondering why I called you all here. Please make yourselves comfortable as the good Doctor explains all....

What horrible menace awaits the world as the combined forces of evil plot their secret deeds? And what force of men, living or dead, could hope to stop such stupendous perfidy from coming to pass? What force indeed? Well, the A-list wasn't available so we had to go with these: 

• Paul Muad-dib, (Dune): strategic commander
• John Rambo (First Blood, Rambo II): arms master, righteous anger, and implausible immunity to bullets
• John MacGuyver (the television show of the same name): technical advisor
• Indiana Jones: intelligence coordinator, bullwhip, and Middle East specialist.
• Philip Marlowe (from the novels of Raymond Chandler): narration, surveillance, shakedowns, and mordant humor.
• Molly Millions (from William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy): Wetwork.
• The Escapist (Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay): languages, disguise, daring rescues, and Eastern Europe/Russian specialist.
• Captain Benjamin Willard (Apocalypse Now): infiltration and Asian specialist. 

As this mission will involve countering multiple, shifting threats in uncertain territory, I chose to favor individual prowess, scrappiness, and ability to adapt over brute force or sheer intellect.

Paul Muad-dib is the most brilliant military commander I have ever encountered, and several factors work in his favor here: his Islamic roots; his unparalleled ability to raise partisan guerrilla forces; and his ability to contain egos.

Rambo apparently can't be killed by bullets; that's a plus. He will serve as the moral center of the mission, and also as military equipment specialist. He will be an independent operator in the Russia, Asian, and Latin American theatres. He will also serve as tactical commander, jointly with Captain Willard. 

MacGuyver will be a roaming independent operative without portfolio, and will serve as technical advisor to the rest (duct tape! rocketry! fluid dynamics!). He and The Escapist should be unstoppable in tandem.

Indiana Jones will be an independent operator in the North African and Middle Eastern theatres, and coordinate intelligence efforts gathered by the others. After a massive crash course, he will be the resident Middle East expert.

Philip Marlowe will be an independent operator, as well as the narrator of the ongoing struggle. He will be responsible for US operations as well as diplomatic operations to Europe and the UN.

Molly Millions will kill lots of people quietly.

The Escapist will do advance undercover recon and undertake the most intricate search-and-rescue missions. As he has experience in Russia and Eastern Europe, that will be his theatre, and he will assist Capt. Willard and John Rambo in Asian affairs as necessary.

Finally, Captain Willard will penetrate the forces of Stalin, and engage him in morbid conversation. He will then kill Stalin in slow motion with a machete while music plays. Failing that, he will serve as an independent operator in the Asian sphere.

The team will be supported by three small cadres: one, a stable of MIT and ex-CIA pointy-heads, working to neutralize the threat of robot Stalin. The second, an elite cadre of the best elite forces from around the world: Special Forces, SAS, Israel. They will provide muscle, expert military advice, and tactical support for larger-scale operations. The third, for comic relief, will be a ragtag bunch of legitimate diplomats, working feverishly to cover up, explain, or justify any sudden shifts in global power, nuclear blasts, or local outbreaks of horrible disease.

The fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Can our heroes stop the nuclear and biological threat in time, and make the world safe for democracy, whisky, and sexy?

Tune in next week, when you will hear John Rambo say, "gueahhh, gremm bagabble. Adrian!"

Johno insisted that this be done by today, so here it is:

The governments of the United States and Britain have discovered that the Earth is in peril. A team of British SAS captured a mysterious man in the mountains of Afghanistan, a man who spoke no known languages. After bringing in some linguists and therapeutic semanticians, the Brits discovered that the man believed he came from another dimension, a parallel earth whose history had diverged far in the past. While his story was remarkably detailed and consistent, it was too farfetched for anyone to believe.

Later, an American army unit based in Kazakhstan was engaged in training maneuvers when they discovered a mystery man of their own. After a similar period of confusion and language difficulties, they extracted from their captive a story remarkably similar to the one told to the Brits.

The stories were ominous. The two men were representatives, or scouts for a cross dimensional empire that was planning on invading our Earth. It appeared that this empire was ruled by a descendent of the Great Khan, Ghengis, and that the Mongol propensity for pyramids of human skulls had not atrophied over the centuries. These 21st Century Mongols had already conquered their own and a dozen other worlds. Their technology is unknown, but feared to be equal or greater to our own. And of course, they have some means of traveling between the parallel worlds.

Obviously, no word of this threat could be released, at least not until more knowledge was acquired. Shifting around the kind of prominent people that would of necessity make up recon team for a mission of this importance would clue people in to the fact that something was going on. Happily, both the British and American governments (in the interests of posterity) had been freezing the heads of accomplished citizens since the the development of refrigeration technology in the mid nineteenth century.

In the last several months, an American research team had successfully revived the first of the frozen heads, that of Sid Vicious. Despite the advanced genetic technology that put the mind of the deceased into a brand new youthful body, the revived Mr. Vicious immediately committed suicide. Faced with the greatest threat ever, the decision was made to assemble a team from the deceased, so that the mission could have the greatest chance of success while still remaining utterly secret.
The Team:

Sir William Samuel Stephenson: “The man called Intrepid” Canadian born inventor, ace fighter pilot, businessman, and finally spymaster for the British in WWII. Team Leader

Dr. Richard P. Feynman:Brilliant Physicist, head of theoretical division in the Manhattan Project, with a brain “second only to Einstein” – but more in touch with reality. Science Officer

Nicola Tesla: Serbian-American inventor, arguably the most creative and capable technologist in human history. Technologist

Bruce Lee: The most skilled and fearsome martial artist in human history. Human Weapon

Sir Richard Francis Burton: Spy, soldier, linguist (25 languages!), writer, anthropologist, swordsman, explorer. Intelligence Officer

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe: Spy, babe. Femme Fatale

Thomas Edward Lawrence: “Lawrence of Arabia” scholar, soldier, gifted strategist, writer. Military Advisor

Isaac Asimov: Fantastically prolific and inventive writer of science fiction and just about everything else. Walking Encyclopedia

The team's mission is to enter the alternate worlds controlled by the Mongol Hordes, assess their strength's and capabilities, and above all steal or figure out the technology behind their crosstime gates. The scientific and technological emphasis influenced the choice of Feynman and Tesla, as well as Stephenson. Burton and Lawrence's experience in the middle and far east were thought to increase their chances, especially Burton's linguistic skills. All of the team speaks at least two languages. Thorpe was the most accomplished of the women spies who survived the war (the goverment couldn't freeze the brains when they were in the hands of the Nazis.) Bruce Lee was added to the team because, well, he's frickin' Bruce Lee. 'Nuff said.

The team is supported by two groups: 1) a team of extraordinarily geeky MIT grad students from a variety of disciplines. Their job is to bring the team up to snuff on modern technology and science. Of course, Tesla and Feynman will likely be teaching them within minutes. They will also equip the team with a variety of high tech gizmos that will undoubtedly come in handy. And 2) a team of highly trained SAS and Delta Force commandos who will refresh the weapons training of the team, and train them in the use of an array of lethal devices. (In addition, Stephenson's flight training will be brought up to date, and he will qualify on several types of modern aircraft.)

The team will spend some time getting familiar with each other, and bringing the older members up to date on current events. Burton and Lawrence will be the most out of date, but most of the others died no earlier than the sixties. Then, they will wait for a new gate to open - somewhere in central asia if the intelligence community's guesses are correct - and go through. The special forces group will provide covering fire, if necessary, on the way in but will not accompany the team into the parallel worlds.

[side note] I thought for a bit about superheroes and fictional characters, but superheroes don't interest me as much as they once did. So I decided to go with actual humans. Limiting the time frame and nationality made filling out the last couple slots rather difficult.

If I were going with fictional characters facing a random all-encompassing evil threat, I might choose:

• Aragorn
• Batman
• Jacob Demwa from Brin's Sundiver
• The Gunslinger
• Friday from Heinlein's book
• Kimball Kinnison from the Lensman series
• Obiwan Kenobi - and,
• A motie engineer (with birth control!!)

Thanks for blowing a day for me, Johno!

Behold. Then go over there and read the comments. I expect your lists by Tuesday.

As many here know, I'm a longtime fan of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," and have been involved in the online fandom of the show fairly heavily for about four and a half years now. One of the things that always interested me once I started interacting with Buffy fans online is that the fandom cuts across all ages and political affiliations, and that their perception of what made the show good was different in many ways. Since this is a forum where we also have a fairly wide representation of political viewpoints, I'd like to try an experiment, based on a meme I saw on Live Journal, and which I've tweaked a little bit for the purpose. It is loosely based on the plotline of the recent movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and involves the following scenario:

You have just been made aware that a villian of considerable power is involved in an enterprise that threatens the very existence of the Earth. You have been granted the power and authority by The Powers That Be (whoever they are) to retain the services of a force of extraordinary beings to face that threat and defeat it. The rules are as follows:

1) You may go anywhere in time or space, in real life or fiction, to find these beings. The only restriction is that beings considered to be actual "gods" or who are otherwise godlike in power and toughness (Galactus, Angels of God, etc) are not going to participate. Superheroes are OK, as are supervillians (but see below as to potential problems there).

2) You can use anywhere from six to eight beings as part of your force. Beings with multiple personalities count as one person, unless the personalities can simultaneously manifest in physical form.

3) With the exception of real life persons, only one being per reality (a fictional "universe" set on planet Earth is one reality) can be recruited. The exception to this would be a pair of beings who were more or less "joined at the hip" as a matter of course (Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Batman and Robin, etc.). In such a case, you may select both, but they count as two picks.

4) You can choose any point in a being's existence to recruit them from, as long as they were alive at the time. However, his or her personality and memories will be as they were at that time (if you snatch King Fingolfin away during his fatal duel with Morgoth, he's going to be *really* mad at you, and not inclined to help). Furthermore, the being will have all of the weaknesses as well as the strengths that he or she had at that time, and any circumstantial vulnerabilities that they have will become part of your reality (if you recruit the Silver Age Superman who is strong enough to move planets, kryptonite is going to become as common as beach sand, and magic-using criminals will be setting up shop on every street corner). Any major enemies still alive at that point in their existence also exist, and might well show up in the adventure and be a hinderance to your mission.

5. Select at least one male and one female being (more of either are OK). Beings with no gender (or more than one gender) are OK, but not required.

6. If you select beings who have a natural reaction to each other (good, bad, or carnal), you're going to have to deal with it.

Supplementary Rules:

7. You can first obtain the services of a recruiter to help in locating and getting these people to work for you--the same rules apply as above for the limitations and possible drawbacks involved in selecting that recruiter.

8. Who would you think the villian is? What would the nature of the threat they posed be? Assume for these purposes that you are living in the world as it is today, that you are given this task on October 7th, 2003 at noon GMT, and that you have precisely one week to gather your team and brief them.

9. You have an unlimited budget for one single vehicle to transport the team (including capacity to carry smaller vehicles for short range travel), which may use any technology or other power that exists in any of the worlds from which you recruit your team--what is the vehicle, and what are its properties? Again, if there is a known counterforce to whatever you choose, it will exist and you should assume that the villian knows it does and how to use it.

I await your responses with interest (including whatever mockery comes to mind). ;-

Wis ze bang, and the boom, and the boom boom boom boom bang?!

A Texas high school has apologized after the school band waved a Nazi flag during a performance on Friday, the start of the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashana. "We had an error in judgment," band director Charles Grissom told the Dallas Morning News. . . . 

During a half-time show, a student from Paris High School went running across the field waving a Nazi flag. At the time, the Blue Blazes band was playing the composition by Franz Joseph Haydn that eventually became known as Deutschland Uber Alles . . . .

Let's hear it for the Paris, Texas Marching Band, winner of the September 2003 Perfidy Prize in Inadvertent or Vertent Asshattery. Congratulations, Asshats!

This was the bright idear, which must have looked great on paper: "[Grissom] said it was part of a show entitled "Visions of World War Two," in which the flags and music were intended to represent the warring nations." During Rosh Hashanah. Terrible, terrible timing. 

This over here made me spurt Diet Dr. Pepper (pH 3) out my nose:

Took Mosquito to the Savannah Mall so we could mock the Windows losers obviously out of their league in the Apple Store. Showed her how to get free porn on the game sites. This was my old routine, even though the BC got her ass fired, and that sweet salary went south, along with my easy living. I know the bitch did it on purpose because she's about to leave me for that Phoenician shithead at her office and wants to glom onto MY salary at the divorce. I told Mosquito not to grow up into a twat like that.

Which reminds me that I haven't seen SeaLab 2001 or Aqua Teen Hunger Force for months. Months! My second favorite SeaLab episode was the one where the Bizarro crew took over. And a weird creature with the voice of Shake from ATHF kept saying, "Bizarro, bizarro, bizarro, bizarro" for fifteen minutes. Exquisitely painful and hilarious even though I wasn't high.

(My favorite episode is where the captain and Erik Estrada get locked in the closet, and the Captain punches everyone. Humor pared down its basics. A formula that can't help but win. I laughed, I cried.)

While I'm babbling, (58 oz of Diet DP and a cup a joe so far today, in case you want to know. Actually, regardless of whether you want to know.) My favorite episode of ATHF was the one where Shake sells meatball to the circus for a buck-two-ninetyfive. The leader of the circus is actually the son of the King of Jupiter, of course, and in a moment of weekness, tells meatball of his original plan to invade the Earth and steal all our women. Meatball's response after this long soliloquy:

Meatball: "Did you do it?"

Prince of Jupiter: "What?"

Meatball: "You know, invade the Earth."

Classic. You may now return to more productive activities.