Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

Barry Bonds Does Paula Abdul

Barry Bonds dressed as Paula Abdul.

He looks obese in this picture, though that may be because of his musculature and the angle of the shot.

Anna Nicole, Tits Deflated

Anna Nicole's breasts have no power in the Supreme Court, writes Dahlia Lithwick:

It seems cruel to report that Anna Nicole then stood and exited the courtroom, leaving the building by a side door and again granting no interviews. I would love to tell you that she did something, anything, to distinguish herself from the thousands of appellants who have brought their cases into these marble walls. But the court has worked its magical spell of blandness, even upon Anna, and she is just another litigant with a probate dispute today. She has stepped into the only place in America where her breasts have no power.

Via Volokh.

Give me L.A. glitz and superficiality over D.C.'s pretentious ponderousness any day of the week. I'll take (inflated) breasts over inflated oratory, with a side of legs, thanks!

Kill Her

Andrea Yates rejects 35 years in prison for murdering her four children.

Execute her.

Execute

I make no bones about my support for the death penalty.

It should be applied far more frequently than it is.

In 2000, seven employees at a Wendy's restaurant were gunned down in cold blood; that the murderers have not been executed is an unconscionable travesty of justice.

Details here.

Contraception, Death, and the Philippines

The Philippines, a geologically and economically disadvantaged country, is very populous, poor, and Catholic. Its population is expected to double over the next 20 years.

In consideration of the recent landslides that killed at least a thousand villagers, one must wonder at the combination of poverty and Catholic-inspired fecundity:

There has been little mention of how a fast-growing population puts pressure on the environment and so adds to the risks [that the Philippines face]. At the present rate of growth, the population of the Philippines will double by 2034. Successive governments, deferring to the church in what remains a staunchly Catholic country, have done little to promote contraception.

Mantra: All that I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Livingstone and the Jewish Question

London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has been censured for making some offensive comments to a journalist. Livingstone compared a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard.

Some have called this an anti-Semitic remark.

But consider a different situation, in which a white student complains to his black teacher, "You're like a slavedriver, giving us so much homework!" Racist? Or just sophomoric? It is rather a stretch to assert that a judgment about a race is being made in such a comment. How is comparing a tenacious journalist to a prison guard anti-Semitic? If anything, Livingstone is inferring that he does not like the journalist's behavior; his comparison of the journalist to a Nazi prison guard is hardly a ringing endorsement of either, it would seem.

Others disagree.

Rant

"Obsolete" is not a verb. One cannot obsolete a horse and buggy, but a car can obsolesce a horse and buggy. Besides, obsolesce sounds so much more mellifluous than obsolete.

Obsolete, like interface, is a noun, and is properly not used as a verb. (Business consultants love to prattle on about interfacing with customers.)

Inspiration for this rant here.

Mantra

Astute readers will observe that I have put a new quote--of my own invention--atop this blog:

The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Please Hammer, Don't Blog 'Em

One hit eighties wonder MC Hammer has a blog.

Via Shanti's Dispatches.

To borrow a phrase from one of MC Hammer's songs, please Hammer, don't blog 'em. We already have too many voices in the blogosphere. What's next, a Flock of Seagulls blog?

Anthrax

Customs officials claim its the responsibility of passengers to inform them when there is a risk that goods being imported into the United States may be contaminated with anthrax:

Interviews and records show that the authorities had at least two chances to prevent the spread of the disease and that both, in the end, depended on Mr. Diomande's telling them the details about what he was bringing back from Africa. As of yesterday, it appeared he had not, officials said.

The first time that Mr. Diomande, who lives in Greenwich Village, was obligated to inform authorities about his purchases was when he packed the shipments of goatskins to send them out of Ivory Coast as cargo. A law enforcement official said that Mr. Diomande shipped the skins in a plane's cargo hold, not as part of his carry-on bags or checked personal luggage. It is unclear on what date he did this.

But United States Customs and Border Protection officials in New York and Washington say that if Mr. Diomande had followed regulations precisely, an entry form filed with a Customs broker would have spelled out what was being imported.

The assumption that passengers are going to be dutiful about filling out forms is a naive one. Customs shoudl rethink their strategy. Being a government agency, they will not.

Test post

This is a test post made by using an extension in Firefox called <a href="http://performancing.com/firefox">Performancing</a>.  It posts automatically to typepad blogs.


A much better interface than the one Typepad provides.

Now to click the

Culturally Tone Deaf

If a politician is invited to go on the Daily Show, don't you think his media handlers would have clued him into its comedic nature? Not so if you're a third-rate political hack from Illinois:

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wasn't in on the joke.

Blagojevich says he didn't realize "The Daily Show" was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-puzzled governor.

"It was going to be an interview on contraceptives ... that's all I knew about it," Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday's editions. "I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was 'the gay governor.' "

This guy is a certifiable idiot.

Blogging Notice

Blogging will be infrequent to nonexistent over the next several days.

Don't despair.

Go see a movie or have a drink. Surely there are better things to do with your time than read this blog.

Religion, Race, and Disbelief

Ann Althouse has a set of interesting posts up about religion, freedom of expression, and racism. I will get to those posts in a minute. But, first, let's turn our attention elsewhere.

Apparently, a number of people have called racist those who condemn a religion. Yours truly, in fact, was tarred and feathered as a racist when I made the following comment on Dr. Helen's blog:

Speaking of political correctness, can we all disabuse ourselves of the idea that Islam has any inherent worth?

Its adherents certainly have not shown it to have anything worthy about it. Unless by "worthy religion" one means a religion in which rape, murder, beheadings, and suicide bombings are its theology.

To which someone responded:

My, my. It is (not) nice to see that racism is alive and well in the world.

You can criticize individuals or small groups with narrowly defined beliefs all you want, but to tar and feather the second largest religion and all its adherents like this because of the actions of a comparitive minority is a rather blantant example of ignorance and projection. To do so is, after all, the definition of prejudice.

This prompted someone to respond, accurately:

I don't agree with Dave's view, having had close Muslim friends for over a quarter of a century,but his comment has nothing whatever to do with racism. It is about the adherents of a religion. A religion can be criticized just as any other idea can be.

To go back to Althouse, she writes:

But mocking a religion is very different from mocking a race. A religion is a set of ideas. The belief in religion may be deep and sensitive, and it may be arrived at through a path that is not reason and is therefore not amenable to ordinary argument and debate, but it is nevertheless a matter of ideas. You cannot immunize ideas from criticism and still have free speech. In fact, it is most important to be able to criticize the ideas people take most seriously and cling to most intransigently.

This is, of course, a critical distinction to make, and it is one that very few religious people seem willing to accept. Freedom of religion is directly dependent upon freedom of expression. The violence that religion foments in Europe is a direct function of those countries' failure to engage critically with religion. Those religious people here in the United States who cry "anti-Christian discrimination!" when "God is dead" is uttered would do well to remember that because we can say "God is dead" we can also say "Glory be to God."

Althouse has another interesting post, here, in which she responds to one Edward Rothstein, who argues that the religious engage in a futile attempt to understand the world:

If reason cannot work, is iconoclasm necessary? You could leave people to their lunacy, decide it's not lunacy, or persist with reason even where it is futile. Read how Rothstein tries to answer these questions and to connect them to the current cartoon craziness.

I commented:

Well, I'll admit up front that I'm no friend of religion.

But it seems foolish for those uninterested in religious belief to cast aserpsions on those who are religious.

Much as I admire Richard Dawkins, he involves himself in the same kinds of arguments. His documentary, The God Who Wasn't There is interesting to a non-religious person such as myself, but he is, to use an ironic phrase, preaching to the converted when he runs rhetorical circles around pious creationists. His attitude, like those described in this post, is rather arrogant and contemptuous.

That accomplishes nothing except to sow antipathy toward science among the religious.

Now, one may reasonably see a contradiction in my argument here: on the one hand, I comment at Althouse's blog that condemning religion is foolish, but on the other hand, I comment on Dr. Helen's blog that Islam has demonstrated no inherent worth. The inconsistency can be reconciled quite simply: Dawkins' stated aim is to explain why the religious are wrong in their understanding of the world and its corporeal phenomena. I am only expressing my opinion. I am exercising my right to free speech upon which your exercise of religious belief depends.

Preaching to the converted does nothing. Antagonizing those who you want to convince of the error of their epistemological ways fosters nothing but disagreement. I don't really think my opinions about religion will convince anyone other than those who agree with me.

Euclid

How many people reading this blog know who Euclid is?

I would hope all; I suspect few.

Euclid, as rendered by Kansas farmers.

Google link here if you want to learn who Euclid was.

Pillow Fight

In Texas, friends shoot each other with shotguns.

In New York we have...pillow fights.

I don't understand it. I especially don't understand the dude in the gas mask.

But it happened in my fair city.

Via A VC.

Jail

The New York Times has an article about poor, illegal Chinese immigrants working in New York City's Chinatown. They live in flophouses:

Don, who would give only his first name because he is an illegal immigrant, as are many of the hotel's residents, propped open his door. But he seemed surprised when the visitor popped his head inside. What was there to see?

It was a typical room for the hotel, six feet by six feet. Although it had front and back walls, the sides were formed by partitions about six feet high; above them was a ceiling made of metal grates that ensured that a tenant could not climb into another person's space. Don's hard, mustard-colored suitcase was tucked under his bed, a plank of wood covered by dirty quilts and sheets.

A resident of one of these flophouses recently murdered a fellow resident. The murderer is now at Rikers, awaiting trial:

For several weeks after his arrest, Mr. Lin sat in the detention center in Lower Manhattan known as the Tombs. Every day, he got three hot meals, a shower and time in the day room. His cell had a private bed, a sink, a toilet, a shelf for his personal effects, even a window. It measured more than 60 square feet, almost double the size of his room at the Sun Bright Hotel.

The New York Times Lies!

The New York Times reports that a black man won a medal at the Winter Olympics.

Clearly, this is not true, as Bryant Gumbel pointed out that the Winter Olympics, like the GOP, is devoid of blacks.
Damn MSM.

(Those who do not see the humor in this post are missing the point.)

Europe: Cradle of Civilization

If you want to sexually abuse women, there apparently are worse places to go than Italy.

See, if the woman (or girl) you are molesting is not a virgin, then it's a less serious offense:

Sexually abusing a teenager is less serious a crime if the girl is not a virgin, Italy's higher court said on Friday in a controversial ruling that immediately drew a barrage of criticism.

The court ruled in favor of a man in his forties, identified only as Marco T., who forced his 14-year old stepdaughter to have oral sex with him after she refused intercourse.

The man, who has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail, lodged an appeal arguing that the fact that his stepdaughter had had sex with men before should have been taken into consideration during his trial as a mitigating factor.

The supreme court agreed, saying that because of her previous sexual experiences, the victim's "personality, from a sexual point of view, is much more developed than what would be normally expected of a girl of her age".

What's the about fiddling while Rome burned?

Criminals Need Counseling Like I Need A Foot Up My Ass

Wow, I was in rare form earlier yesterday on Dr. Helen's blog. I commented:

What the hell does counseling have to do with imprisoning criminals?

We already pay enough in taxes. These people need counseling like I need a foot up my ass.

To which Dr. helen, a refreshingly blunt PhD psychologist responded:

Dave,

I have to agree that charging these men with such a serious crime does not warrant counseling for this woman, especially if she is a psychopath of some type who gets off on harming others. Counseling does no good with such people and frankly, using "counseling" sounds way to soft to me ((Unless she has a treatable illness that needs to be addressed in jail so that she will not do this to others.)

This woman is a thug and should be treated as such, as are those feminists who advocate that "women do not lie about rape, etc." Why we go to such lengths to understand these feminists and their posses who advocate for bizzare "ideals" over justice, I do not understand. Perhaps if we quit taking them seriously, their influence would wane.

The post in question regarded a woman who falsely accused a group of men of gang raping her--despite having recorded the entire event. The point being, to my mind, and, apparently Dr. Helen's, that this woman should be jailed, not counseled.

A Field of Idiots

Fieldston, a private school in the Bronx which attracts many wealthy families, and which has a history of sending its students to elite colleges and universities, has fired the latest salvo in the culture wars.

The school had arranged for two Palestinians to address the school, and some kids and parents became upset either because two Palestinians had been invited to speak, or that no Israelis had been invited, the assembly was canceled, and then came the Censorship Brigades:

Students said that news of the cancellation spread on Tuesday night, and that by Wednesday morning, someone had papered the school walls with fliers featuring the slogan "Progressive Education + Censorship = Oxymoron," and quotations from Aristotle. A profanity and the word "censor" was scrawled on a plaque in a hallway, they said.

Yesterday, at Salvatores of Soho, a pizzeria near the school, a group of hyper-articulate sophomores on their lunch break dissected the controversy over slices and soda.

"Every hallway, every corridor, this is the topic," said Jake Chaplin, 16.

Evan Krasner, 16, said that while he was a "great believer in the First Amendment," he thought the panel was poorly planned. "How can this be a diverse debate? It's two sides of one side."

Well, first, this is not an issue of the First Amendment. Fieldston is a private school, not a government entity, and therefore owes no fealty to the First Amendment. Second, this is not an issue of 'censorship' because an intelligent young kid born to wealthy parents has an (uncensored) internet connection at home, through which he can read all the Palestinian and Israeli propaganda he wants.

Finally, the notion that "progressive education" and "censorship" constitute an oxymoron is, well, moronic. Oxymorons, as any rhetorician knows, are verbal constructions which use words with opposing meanings. "Deafening silence" is the classic example of an oxymoron. In order for a phrase to be an oxymoron, one has to establish that the two things being compared are, indeed, opposed to each other. That which is deafening cannot be silent.

It is not clear that "progressive" is opposed to "censorship" because many self-described progressives do squelch debate: look at feminists, P.C. advocates, etc. The halls of academia are legion with "progressives" engaging in all manner of attempts to squelch those views that do not accord with their views.

Markets in Everything

Lofts have come to suburbia:

Next month, Martin Sickles is moving into a loft apartment with all the hallmarks of a converted urban warehouse, from wrought-iron railings to a spare brick exterior out of the Industrial Revolution.

But his loft isn't in a century-old factory building on a gritty inner-city block. It's in a new development in rural Palmetto, Ga., surrounded by meadows, stables and an organic farm that will grow things like asparagus and edible flowers. "It's my little piece of New York," says Mr. Sickles. "But New York is too urban for me."

Coming to a subdivision near you: the McLoft. Amid ranch houses and McMansions, developers are putting up buildings that look like they're out of downtown Manhattan or Chicago. Unlike urban lofts, which started out as last-resort housing for arty types, these condos can be some of the priciest housing in suburbia. Instead of stepping out into sidewalks where vendors peddle gyro sandwiches and counterfeit handbags, residents are just minutes from mountain-bike trails or the mall. And while city lofts are known for creaky freight elevators and exposed ventilation ducts, their country cousins come with floating faucets, bidets and designer kitchens.

There are dozens of McLofts already built across the country, and more are on the way. In Reston, Va., builders are finishing up Midtown Town Center, where apartments priced up to $1.4 million will come with old-style wide plank floors and just a few interior walls, but they'll also have Italian cabinets, quartz countertops and a Morton's of Chicago within strolling distance. In Scottsdale, Ariz., Third Avenue Lofts looks like a plain red-brick warehouse with narrow metal awnings and balconies that suggest fire escapes, while inside the building has a gym and pool, and units that come in one of 30 different floor plans. The Georgia development where Mr. Sickles will live -- it's called Serenbe, a combination of "serenity" and "be" -- also includes townhouses and cottages. One of its marketing pitches: "Like having a Manhattan loft in the middle of the woods."

This all sounds supremely stupid, but if this dude wants to spend his money on fakery, then more power to him.

Me, I'm furnishing the 6,000 square foot loft I just closed on in Tribeca from DWR and Desiron.

UPDATE: The reference to me having closed on 6,000 square foot loft in Tribeca is a joke.

Unhinged?

Wow.

Ted Barlow, of Crooked Timber fame, comments on Jane Galt's post about Ann Althouse's and Glenn Reynold's political moderationism* thusly:

it's hard for me to be impressed with Glenn Reynolds' moderation- even though he's pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-stem cells, with history of Democratic voting- because I can't read his site without feeling like I'm being kicked in the teeth for being a lying, anti-Semetic, Ward-Churchill-adoring, objectively pro-Saddam liberal plotting "on the other side". I don't take it personally when I read sharp criticism of Howard Dean, or Atrios, or Ted Kennedy, or whoever. But, probably foolishly, I do take it personally when I'm reading insults about "the left" or "liberals".

Yes, it is indeed "foolish" to be upset when Reynolds castigates the "left" or "liberals." Why blog if you have such a thin skin?

*A neologism, to be sure

Book from which Crooked Timber takes its name, here.

It would also help to spell "anti-Semitic" correctly but now I'm quibbling.

No Smoking

At least one co-op in New York City has voted to ban smoking from its premises--in the common areas and individual apartments, as well:

“It’s absolutely enforceable,” confirms co-op attorney Adam Leitman Bailey. “By signing on to a co-op, you’re giving up some of your personal rights, and in this case, that would be smoking.” Co-ops, after all, have long dictated “house rules,” requiring owners to carpet floors, turn off music late at night, and forgo pets. “[They’re] small democracies, and if the appropriate majority of shareholders agree on a policy, as long as it doesn’t discriminate against protected categories—and smokers are not—then they can institute and enforce it,” says Mary Ann Rothman, from the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums. Sotheby’s International Realty’s Elizabeth LaGrua, who represents the seller at the West 15th building, says the board put the rule in place because people griped about wafting fumes. “They know from past residents that smoke does travel through the building,” she explains.

Personally, I think this is a rather asinine decision, but it's also a good one. Co-ops are a group of private individuals, and, as such, they should be permitted to prohibit what they want or exclude who they want.

I would be curious to know, though, how easy it would be to evict someone for lighting up in violation of the ban. As I understand it, it is rather hard to evict one from an apartment in New York City, under the mistake assumption that shelter is a civil right.

How to Make a Killing in Europe

It's quite clear to me that the E.U.'s major economies--France, Germany, Italy--are on the brink of systemic failure.

If I were a Frenchman, German, or Italian, I would invest my excess cash in dollar-denominated debt or equities, wait for asset prices to fall in my home country, and repatriate my cash to take advantage of the low prices. I would then sit back and wait for my country to implement badly needed economic and labor market reforms.

And reap a windfall.

Say what you will about the dangers the US deficit poses to the American economy: I think it will be stronger for a longer period of time than the economies of France, Germany and Italy. The Europeans are sitting on a potential gold mine when their economies tank; they need to be ready to pounce. The best way for them to do that is bide their time by investing in American debt and equity.

Scam

Recived the following email. Anyone who does not see through it right away is an idiot:

This is an e-mail sent to you in response to your request for a job on www.nytimes.com

Dear Candidate,

We have analyzed your resume and have found one job available for you to work at home right away with a guaranteed monthly income of $5,500 in the first year. No experience needed for this type of job other than the knowledge to access an e-mail and bank account. It does not matter what you do for a living, as long as you have a free hour or two every workday.

We are a company based in Europe. We receive orders from U.S.A. and we need a representative to process the payments due to the delays in clearing checks and money orders in Europe.

What we offer:
-Flexible program: two hours/day at your choice, daytime and evening time
-Work at home: checking e-mail and going to the bank
-Part time or full time
-Professional contact team with very good support and communication skills
-Other highlights: no selling involved, no kit to buy, we won't charge you anything
-Monthly salary: $450 every two weeks to a total of $900 per month
-Commission: 10% of every money order/check that clears, instantly cash in hand that you will deduct from the cashed amount. If you receive a check of $1,000.00 your net income is $100.00, our company supports any fees. You will process at least 2-3 orders per day and you will earn more than $200.00 cash in hand each day.

What we ask:
-Two free hours daily not including weekends
-Internet access for sending and receiving e-mails
-Means for you to cash money orders/checks at your bank using your existing bank account.

IMPORTANT:
-You must be over 21 years old.
-U.S. citizenship.

If you meet these conditions please contact us by replying at this e-mail address to receive a Representative Contract and detailed information about this job.

Idiots

Posted without comment:

A government Web site that aims to serve as a one-stop shopping point for scholars and others in search of federal grants is creating headaches for users of Macintosh computers.

The site's electronic forms for would-be applicants aren't Mac-compatible. "Frustration kind of goes through the roof," said Mark Tumeo, vice provost for research and dean of the college of graduate studies at Cleveland State University.

He said about 30 percent of the systems used by his university's scientists and others are Macintosh computers. Those with Macs are having to seek out Windows-based PCs in order to fill out the applications. Tumeo estimated several hundred grant applications are affected by the glitch, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

The idea behind the new government Web site, Grants.gov, is to streamline the process of applying for grants by reducing paper applications and replacing them with electronic ones. It also serves as a resource point for the 26 federal grant-making agencies that award over $400 billion in grants each year.

Calls to Grants.gov and the Health and Human Services Department, a managing partner for the program, were not immediately returned Monday.

The Post said HHS helped choose a small Canadian firm called PureEdge Solutions to create the electronic forms, which only work with Microsoft's Windows operating system. PureEdge is said to be working on a fix.

Religion Strikes Again

There are those, such as the "Islam is a religion of peace" contingent who aver that we should not criticize religious belief because religion is something that ought not be criticized.

That this doesn't make any sense--religious expression is dependent upon free speech--is irrelevant to the ignorant and apologetic.

In any event, in Texas we have an example of the depths to which religion can sink man, and, yes, it is an opportunity to engage critically with religion and consider the deleterious effects that it can bring upon a family. In this case, the deleterious effect is murder, via bloodletting:

Shultz said Schlosser did not receive adequate medical care in part because she and her husband could not afford it. Instead, they sought guidance from Doyle Davidson, a self-described prophet who leads the Water of Life Church in Plano.

Schultz told jurors that Schlosser was upset with Davidson's arrest in the fall of 2004 on public intoxication charges arising from an incident in which Davidson tried to choke "evil spirits" out of a married woman with whom he was smitten.

The defense attorney said the preacher and Schlosser's husband — who routinely consulted with Davidson on how to handle his wife — were an inadequate safety net.

"Normally, Dena is a sweet woman," he said. "She cares. She has compassion."

They tell us that Christ, too, had "compassion." That some of those who purport to follow Christ are so devoid of compassion as to chop off the arms of their baby is to call into question the very assumptions under which the religious operate.

Story via Alarming News.

RELATED: Mel Gibson has put money into one of his father's church projects. Mel Gibson's father is a Holocaust denier. Mel Gibson and his father are both very religious.

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars.

Jews who patronize Gibson's movies implicitly support a Holocaust denier.

Blog which aspires to satirize Gibson, but which succeeds only in being juvenile and obvious, here.

Dingell is a Dingbat

John Dingell, democratic Representative from the late, great lamented state of Michigan is sucking at the teat of Ford and GM. Says he of the White House's recent admonition that automakers ought to focus on making products customers want to buy:

In my 50 years of public service, I've never seen an administration of either party that has actively and publicly put down American products, companies and workers the way this administration has done with our auto manufacturers. How can they hope to sell more cars when the number one spokesman for their competitors is the White House?

There are a number of problems with this statement, the most obvious being that this fool has been in public "service" for 50 years. That public "service" can be extended into a lifetime of wasting taxpayers' money is travesty enough; that Dingell is so ignorant as to claim that the White House's obligation is to prop up a failing industry is dangerous, collectivist-style thinking. This is the same type of thinking that killed untold tens of millions of people suffering under the Soviet regime.

Dingell is an old-style liberal who earnestly believes that the solution to Ford and GM's problem is government intervention. That his worldview has been repudiated thousands of times over the course of the past century is irrelevant to him because ignorant blue collar auto workers continue to re-elect him. Consider the source, they say: this man's opinions are as unbiased as those of a Red Sox fan in Ipswich, MA. Which is to say there is no substance to his words: he says what he believes because, as with a religious fundamentalist, his understanding of the world is too ignroant and myopic to consider that there are other, more accurate ways to understand the world.

History will judge this fool as a mere footnote in American history.

Bush to automakers: drop dead. Nothing is more simple, more true, and more beautiful than that. The automakers have fucked themselves over; there is no reason for the American taxpayer to bail them out. Fuck them.

Spin

From Jon Stewart:

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask."

On How Government Programs are a Waste

Odds are, if you are an successful entrepreneur, government is something to be avoided, not embraced. And a recent study supports that claim:

Many small-business owners might not know what they're missing.

More than nine out of 10 owners of small businesses haven't worked with any federal agency to receive support of any kind, according to a survey conducted last month by Suffolk University in Boston and American Management Services, a consulting firm based in Orlando, Fla.

The majority of owners said they didn't contact federal agencies for assistance because they didn't know which ones could help, what they could offer, or, if their businesses would qualify for help.

Less than a fifth of those polled said they had no need for help, and that was the reason they hadn't sought assistance.

Others thought it would be too much trouble, with 18% saying they didn't have the time or resources to apply, 14% that there would be too much paperwork, while 6% said they wouldn't trust the federal government with their business information.

There are numerous services provided by the agencies that small businesses are simply unaware of, says George Cloutier, chief executive of American Management. Everything from finding overseas partners and loans to training for everyday tasks can be found, says Mr. Cloutier, and much more should be done to make owners aware of what is available.

My bet is that entreprenurs have too many other things going on their lives for them to focus on navigating the labyrinthine halls of bureaucracy. Aside from some minority-owned businesses that suck from the teat of the federal register, most entrepreneurs are more interested in building their business, not filling out paperwork.

President Frist

Bill Frist is running for President.

We know this because the moron is pushing for an amendment to ban gay marriage:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday he plans a vote in early June on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, a move likely to fail but sure to spark a fiery election-year debate.

Frist, a Tennessee Republican, told CNN he's planning the vote for the week of June 5 because he wants to deal with the issue "as early as possible" before the Senate calendar fills up in a busy election year.

Frist said he doesn't know how many votes the ban will receive, but Republican and Democratic aides privately acknowledged the vote will probably fall far short of the 67-vote supermajority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.

When the Senate last voted on the issue in July 2004, a procedural motion to consider the ban received 48 votes -- well short of the number needed to send it on to the House of Representatives and then to all 50 states for ratification.

He and his conservative ilk are preening their hateful selves for their apologists.

Not that the alternative is much better.

An election to wait out, biding one's time until someone worthwhile comes along.

Of course, someone worthwhile likely will not come along because politics is not a profession into which talented men enter. It is a cesspool of degenerates, bigots, and idiots. Amazing this country has not crashed and burned.

Air Marshals

Oliver Stone is somewhere kicking himself because he didn't get to this concept first: some Air Marshals have been arrested for smuggling coke:

Shawn Ray Nguyen, 38, and Burlie Sholar, 32, were arrested Thursday after allegedly receiving 15 kilograms of cocaine and $15,000 cash delivered to Nguyen's home and agreeing to take the drugs on a plane, prosecutors said in court papers.

The U.S. attorney's office accused the two men of agreeing to use their official positions as federal air marshals to bypass airport security and smuggle the cocaine on board a flight from Houston to Las Vegas, Nevada, in exchange for the money.

Cuomo: Hillary is a Methodist and Bill is Theatrical

Opines former New York Governor and historical footnote Mario Cuomo, about Hillary's public speaking skills as compared to her husband's:

She is more a Methodist, and he is more theatrical.

The New York Times notes, ostenatiously, that Cuomo "is himself considered one of the more gifted speakers of his generation."

If Cuomo is such an excellent speaker perhaps he can enlighten me as to why a "theatrical" speaker is more interesting than a religious speaker? WTF is he prattling on about? Neither Slick Willie nor the Wife seem particularly interesting to me. But how is one theatrical and another "Methodist"? Maybe I'm a "Jewish" speaker!

Have the Democrats gone mad?

Schumpeter Triumphs

Hold Everything, the storage store owned by Williams-Sonoma, is due to close. Apartment Therapy reports, harshly:

Hold Everything, the long limp storage arm of the Williams Sonoma empire, is soon to close. We sort of thought this might happen. Hold Everything has always been thin on ideas, poor on service and high on price. Having The Container Store whallop the storage niche probably didn't help them either.

This, of course, is a perfect demonstration of Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction, wherein some business are destroyed as others innovate.

An interesting side note to add to this discussion: Apartment Therapy is an interior design blog read, in large part, by urban lefties who prattle on about economic irrelevancies such as "sustainable development" and "eco-friendly" trade policies, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. It is therefore interesting that one of their blog posts so elegantly and concisely captures the beauty and efficiency of pure capitalism.

The Container Store, of course, is the apotheosis of the retail experience. If you have not had the pleasure of going to one of their stores, go post haste. Then come back to me and explain to me what the BFD is about Wal-Mart.

UPDATE: Apparently, my reference to Apartment Therapy's readers as "urban lefties" has upset some of its readers. No offense is intended; there are far worse things to be than an "urban lefty." Hell, most of the country would consider me an urban lefty. Those who think that I'm attacking Apartment Therapy's readers are missing the point.

Hacktivists and Censorship

Lost in all the hand-wringing over Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google's capitulation to Chinese demands, it seems inevitable that the great censorship debates will fall by the wayside. The internet's distributed architecture, combined with the ingenuity of expatriate Chinese and their sympathizers, will allow so-called "hacktivists" to devise ways to circumvent China's censorship efforts.

The Wall St. Journal reports:

Roughly a dozen Chinese government agencies employ thousands of Web censors, Internet cafe police and computers that constantly screen traffic for forbidden content and sources -- a barrier often called the Great Firewall of China. Type, say, "media censorship by China" into emails, chats or Web logs, and the messages never arrive.

Even with this extensive censorship, Chinese are getting vast amounts of information electronically that they never would have found a decade ago. The growth of the Internet in China -- to an estimated 111 million users -- was one reason the authorities, after a week's silence, ultimately had to acknowledge a disastrous toxic spill in a river late last year. But the government recently has redoubled its efforts to narrow the Net's reach on sensitive matters.

It has required all bloggers, or writers of Web logs, to register. At the end of last year 15 Internet writers were in jail in China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York group. China also has gotten some U.S. Internet companies to limit the search results they provide or the discussions they host on their Chinese services. A tiny firm Mr. Xia set up to provide and maintain Freegate had to lobby computer-security companies such as Symantec Corp., of Cupertino, Calif., not to treat it as a virus.

In response to China's crackdown, and to restrictions in many Middle Eastern countries as well, a small army has been mustered to defeat them. "Hacktivists," they call themselves.

Bennett Haselton, a security consultant and former Microsoft programmer, has developed a system called the Circumventor. It connects volunteers around the world with Web users in China and the Middle East so they can use their hosts' personal computers to read forbidden sites.

Cross-posted at Blogger News Network.

Purple

The New York Times has completely lost it. Trying to wax poetic about today's blizzard, it turns to trite shit:

For many indoors, it was a day to relax by a window, perhaps with a glass of wine and soft jazz on the radio, and take in the unreal loveliness of winter — the panes frosted like glass from Murano, the sills drifted with flourishes of lacework, and, out in the storm, dreamscapes of snow blowing down a street, curtains of snow falling in great sweeps, snow settling like peace in the parks and skeletal woodlands.

Huh?

Don't understand this:

In a sane universe, Coutler would be the third-string backup for the guy who warms up the audience for the guy who warms up the audience for Leno.

Ineffective Law

Proving yet again that politicians love nothing more than cosmetic fixes to intractable problems, Georgia proposes that the solution to drunk driving is signs. Signs of drunk driving victims are due to appear on roadways, as an inducement to not drink and drive:

Donny Ray Harris Jr. died on a rural stretch of Interstate 16 while riding shotgun with an intoxicated friend who lost control and flipped his car.

Now the 17-year-old is the first drunken-driving victim in Georgia to be remembered with an official highway marker, erected under a state law the governor signed just 13 days before the fatal crash.

Putting signs up, of course, will accomplish nothing but waste taxpayer money. The correct solution to drunk driving is to kill off suburban and rural America, compel everyone to live in cities, and use public transportation. Of course, that solution is worse than the problem, but think of the cultural opportunities afforded people if they lived in cities!

Calling 1999

Google bulls are partying like it's 1999:

Mark Stahlman, the technology strategist at broker Caris & Co., figures Google will ultimately garner 1% of the global digital-services economy, which will include everything from buying books to paying a fee to store your medical and financial information. As a result, Stahlman says, Google's revenues could grow to a cool $100 billion, which would justify a long-term target of $2,000 on the shares.

Many bulls are focused simply on the company's ability to expand search into the world of audio and video content and tap into the $20 billion radio advertising market or the $64 billion market for television advertising. To that end, Google has purchased dMarc Broadcasting, which runs an online system for advertisers to buy radio advertising, for $102 million of cash and more than $1.1 billion more over three years if the company hits certain targets. It has also launched Google Video, which allows you to search for and download TV shows and music videos.

In a word, no.

Rapacity

Memo to Bill "War on Christmas" O'Reilly and his populist sympathizers on the New York Times' editorial board: ExxonMobil's profits are not evidence of rapacity.

Consider this table:

This table was copied from Forbes Magazine, dated 2/27/06.

Says Forbes' Michael Ozanian in text accompanying the table:

Big oil companies have huge bull's-eyes on their backs. Record profits (like ExxonMobil's $36 billion) and $65 oil have made the industry the targets of politicians, newscasters and editorial writers who claim the oil comapnies have rigged the market and gouged customers. The cry is up for a windfall-profits tax. But wait. What if "windfall profits" were defined to include any fat margin? Media companies would be much more exposed than oil companies. Herewith, a sampling of newspapers and broadcasters with handsome operating margins. Recognizing their rich earning power, Wall Street accords media outfits much nice price/earnings multiples than it does mere oil producers.

Contradiction

Wikipedia's entry on Queen Latifah explains her unusual surname:

Her stage name, Latifah, means "delicate" and "sensitive" in Arabic. It was given to her when she was eight by her cousin. While in high school, she was a power forward on her basketball team. Her father also gave her lessons in karate and firearms use.

Right. Power forwards are "delicate" and "sensitive".

Someone forgot to tell that to Dennis Rodman.

Evangelicals and Environmentalists Sitting in a Tree...

I'm not sure what category this blog post should go under, but I've put it under "Religion" because it seems to me this story is an example of the muddied thinking that comes out of some corners of the religious community.

Some evangelicals have found common cause with the global warming environmentalists, averring, Paul Ehrlich-style, that millions will die in the coming century due to global warming. Of particular concern for these evangelicals is the poor and disenfranchised.

Never mind that the best way for the poor to become rich is to embrace free markets and industrialization; a nation's wealth is highly correlated to the amount of pollution-causing chemicals spewed from its factories.

Skeptical Environmentalist.

What I'll Be Buying Soon

Vanity Fair.

Not the Thackeray novel.

The magazine.

Why?

Cause Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley will be naked. On the cover.

If ever there was a reason to buy Vanity Fair, that would be it.

Unrelated trivia question: How do we know that Thackeray is not Muslim? Because his middle name is Makepeace.

Investment Bankers With a Penchant for the Dramatic

Lazard has been retined by Carl Ichan and others to argue for Time Warner's breakup. Lazard's bankers explain:

TWX is at the center of the storm that has and will continue to jolt American industry. Technology, regulation and competition are changing at an accelerate pace. The markets are increasingly rewarding companies--across all industries--with a well-defined vision, as shareholder expectations on transparency, capital returns, appreciation and corporate governance increase. Against this backdrop, anticipating and harnessing change is critical for success.

This is the TWX story. It is a difficult story to tell because the history and performance of the Company has been skillfully enshrouded in the fog of one of the largest public relations efforts in American industry. The spin is generated by scores of divisional people, over 30 corproate image executives and a series of outside public relations firms. Success is heralded as triumph; failures are trumpted as success. A corporate mythology is spun and is largely accepted, unchallenged by the media. Some facts are simply obscured.

What I want to know is what the hell is a corporate image executive?

In not so many words: the emperor has no clothes.

Report available here.

I Don't Understand Arsonists

What's with burning all these churches in Alabama?

Have they somehow harmed the arsonist?

I Get Smacked Around by Ann Althouse

So Althouse blogs about the French lady with the new face who's addicted to cigarettes. The salient part of her post:

She's entitled to her pleasures as she defines them. This is a person who, on awakening from a deep unconscious state with her face chewed off, did not notice that something had gone horribly wrong but that she needed a smoke. That is some serious devotion to smoking.

I commented:

And a devotion to lung cancer as well.

Or is that too judgmental a thing to say?

To which Althouse responds:

Dave: You should consider whether I was being judgmental in saying leave her alone. Perhaps I'm saying that in her case, trying to live a long time and avoid cancer is a small matter. But here you are, trying to entice us into being judgmental about you being judgmental. I'm not going to fall down that rat hole.

Sounds like she already fell down the rat hole.

Correlation, Part II

Since I've never broken any law other than jaywalking and speeding, I must be quite the catch for the ladies.

Explanation here.

Correlation

Overheard in the elevator in my apartment building.

Well-dressed thirtysomething MILF to her ten year old son: So what are you doing in school today?

Her son: I think we're doing somethiing called homonyms.

MILF: Do you know what those are?

Son: No.

MILF: Do you want to know?

Son: OK.

MILF: Well, they're words that sound the same, but which are spelled differently.

Son, thinking for a second: Oh, you mean like two and too?

MILF: Exactly. It's important you learn this stuff so you can get a good education and have a good job like Mom and Dad.

I suspect there is something to the idea that a ten year old's ability to understand linguistic abstraction correlates highly to high earnings potential in the future. Of course, this does not mean that a ten year old who does not understand such abstractions will not earn a decent living in the future. It just is an example of the notion that income is highly correlated with intelligence.

Of course, there are some very stupid people who nonetheless earn large incomes: we call these people celebrities and politicians.

Finally: it is a sure bet that this ten year old kid doesn't attend public school.

Skepticism Required

Dispatches From the Culture Wars was contacted by a recruiter for the New York City Public Schools and asked to put up a blog post letting readers know that the city is accepting applications for its NYC Teaching Fellows program, in which the City will pay for a lot of the costs associated with going to grad school and getting certified.

Teaching tends to attract the idealistic, and the prospect of teaching for New York City's public schools is something that ought to be approached with a healthy degree of skepticism.

I commented:

I would advise anyone considering this route: understand what you're getting yourself into.

Teaching in NYC public schools is not for thin-skinned idealists.

This program aims to get certified teachers to teach in the city's struggling schools: you will not be teaching calculus to future Nobel laureates at Stuyvesant. Add to that the very, very poor pay and the very high cost of living in New York City.

I have nothing but admiration for people willing to teach in New York City's public schools, but, though it is a service to the community, it is a very tough job. Assess this program very critically. Make sure you do a complete assessment of your current financial position, as well as a cost of living assessment for New York City.

Make sure you understand the ways in which both the teachers' union and the city bureaucracy can and will work against you and your efforts.

Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical and make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. This is not suburban idyll.

(Disclosure: I am not a current or former teacher in New York City. I am, however, the former spouse of a New York City public school teacher, and I saw daily the demoralizing effects of the New York City public school system.)

Disturbing Search Query

An Iranian did a search for torture +shock +vulva on Yahoo and landed on my January 5, 2005 blog posts.

At least the Iranians don't seem to be censoring blogs written by American Jews!

Click on the picture below to see the disturbing details:

Stupid Bowl Ads

So Google has a link to all the Stupid Bowl ads I was smart enough not to see last night.

I clicked on the link curious to see what kinds of stuff they advertise for...and it's all rather dull and boring.

Budweiser tastes like piss--its blue collar appeal has never made any sense to me. Give me a Belgian or German lager.

There are some things I understand...and then there is the Stupid Bowl.

Watch Out For Burning Water

The next time you boil water for pasta, you better make sure that the pot doesn't boil over. Because water is combustible.

See, water contains oxygen, and oxygen is combustible, therefore water is combustible.

Some explanation is in order. Instapundit links to this article about China's plans for nuclear power plants, and the article contains the following explanation of why their design is safer than Chernobyl's:

What makes the pebblebed technology so important is its fail-safe design—it would not be possible for the reactor to melt down or explode like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. The uranium in each sphere can't get hot enough to melt the casing and escape. Also, the main coolant for the system is inert helium, not water, as is used in other types of reactors (water, of course, contains oxygen, which is combustible). As global warming and politics render the world's reliance on fossil fuels problematic, China may in a few short years hold the key to a renaissance in nuclear power.

(Emphasis mine.)

Never mind that the other component of water, hydrogen, is more combustible and dangerous than oxygen. If the assertion here--helium is safer because water is composed of a combustible element--were true, then it should also be true that boiling water poses a fire risk because an unwatched pot always boils over. Any two year old can tell you that what happens when water touches a sufficiently hot surface is that it turns into steam. Steam is dangerous in its own right, and it can be explosive, but fire does not result from water being in the presence of something very hot. If fire did result from water being near something hot, we would never boil water, let alone use it as coolant in nuclear towers or car radiators.

The prospect of China developing a nuclear power industry may be very real. But a huge dose of skepticism is in order, on the basis of this Newsweek article's singular failure to get its (basic) science right.

UPDATE: A reader comments that oxygen is not combustible, but rather fosters the combustion of other materials. The way I wrote the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph in the original blog post is a little confusing: I say hydrogren is "more combustible" than oxygen, when oxygen is not combustible at all. There probably is a more clear way of writing this; the point remains, however, that Newsweek's article is shot through with scientific error. It is not a reliable source from which to conlude anything about China's nuclear ambitions. I still don't understand why Instapundit would use the article as a reference piece, given its errors.

Stupid Bowl

Football is an uncouth, stupid sport.

There are those who would disagree with that statement; I say it's unfortunate they can't see the light.

This idiot should put to rest the idea that football has any redeeming qualities.

Surely man can aspire to greater heights than this.

Betty Friedan Has Died

Betty Friedan has died.

Will conservatives rejoice?

Jodi Rell Is An Idiot

Why in the world would a state government give a company a loan to build a small auto manufacturing plant for a car company no one has ever heard of?

Car manufacturing is a hugely capital and labor intensive business, which is profitable only at scale. It is not an easy business to run profitably, especially in a high-cost state such as Connecticut, which state has recently decided to lend $1.5 million of taxpayer money to an outfit called AC Motors. The impetus for this loan is that it is being couched as a politically palatable urban redevelopment scheme. The urban area in this case is Bridgeport, a coastal town set between the economic success of Stamford and the academic sucess of New Haven.

There's not much going for Bridgeport, just as there is not much going for other areas of urban blight in Connecticut, such as Hartford, inner city New Haven, and downtown Stamford. Downtown Stamford has seen some resurgence as of late, but it is not because of government involvement. It is due to its proximity to New York City: many financial services firms have set up back office operations in Stamford because, although operations in Connecticut are more expensive than they are elsewhere, they are certainly cheaper than in New York City, and, as well, there is a large body of well educated workers proximate to Stamford.

Bridgeport has none of these advantages, and the proposed loan is being billed as a way to create manufacturing jobs:

A Nov. 15 news release from the office of Gov. M. Jodi Rell said that, by the summer of 2006, AC Cars was expected to begin production on three models in a historic 40,000-square-foot brick warehouse beside the Pequonnock River. The company would spend $4.5 million and create 141 "top-quality, well-paying manufacturing jobs," Mrs. Rell said in the release. The deal would be supported by a proposed $1.5 million secured loan from the State Department of Economic and Community Development.

Never mind that the proprietor of this car company, Alan Lunbinsky has a questionable background:

Yet for all the cheering for an alluring economic development project, as well as a clean deposit of political capital for Mrs. Rell heading into an election year, not everyone views the proposed move as a wise one — or even a plausible one.

The skepticism is multilayered, but the greatest concern centers on the company's chairman, Alan Lubinsky. In interviews with more than a dozen former investors, partners, employees, customers and in