David Hasselhoff conducts peer review for Satan's scholarly papers!


This is the most abruptly funny concept I've come across in ages. Almost did a spit-take, and we all know how hard those are to conjure up. The actual comment out of context is funny, (scroll down to the end of the thread) but the rest of the article is also interesting (re: creationism and pseudoscience). I love watching creationists/intelligent design folks try to dress up their little ideas with scientific language and aromatic tobacco and suede elbow pads and trot them out as if we can't see it's just Farmer Brown's best sow smoking a pipe and wearing tweed. Silly.

posted by MT at 3:10 PM |

Pot? Kettle. Kettle? Pot.



Here's Colin Powell chastising the Russians for eroding their democratic ideals in the pursuit of terrorists:

"We understand the need to fight against terrorism ... but in an attempt to go after terrorists I think one has to strike a proper balance to make sure that you don't move in a direction that takes you away from the democratic reforms or the democratic process," Powell said, adding Washington would raise the issue with Moscow "in the days ahead."

Right, because you wouldn't want to, I don't know, begin to compromise freedoms of speech and assembly, or erode the right to privacy or the protections from unreasonable search and seizure. For example. That would be, you know, bad. If you were the Russian president.

Do they even listen to the words that come out of their mouths anymore? Or is it more like a low background noise similar to the computer fan that you only notice after it stops?

/now watch this drive.


Update...kind of

Okay, no it isn't, and I can't believe I'm putting this out there and flaunting my mad html skilzz like this (or lack of same) but Flaunt Away! say I. And I have learned quite by accident how to make the linkies go popup in a separate window rather than taking you away from me the way they used to. So I will certainly be adding more linky goodness in the future! But make sure your pop-up blocker allows pop-ups from this site (if you're using Netscape or Mozilla just click on the little *(!)* in the corner and it will do the rest forya).

Hooray for me.
I'm easily impressed with myself.

posted by MT at 1:50 PM |

Only one thing I did wrong -- stayed in Osaka a day too long
with apologies to Bob Dylan

I'm leaving Japan today, after a 10 day stint split between Osaka and Tokyo. This whole Associate Vice President thing is turning into much more than a token promotion, and my role as primary go-to consultant, master of hoo-ha and Japan expert for one client is going to mean many more trips in the next six months. I finally saw Lost In Translation before leaving, and it captures the experience exactly, although I can see why some people hated it. Parts of it were filmed near the home of one of my Japanese colleagues. So now I am three degrees of separation from Bill Murray.


"The Shrub, The"
Where the narrator gets all randomly aggravated and politically linky.
(and props to you if you get the reference)

It's been impossible to avoid the RNC in the news, and I had hoped that while abroad I'd get a more balanced view of things. But all English-language sources are similarly covering things, with the only difference being some of the op-ed pieces that have appeared in the International Herald Tribune.

Some linky and other things.

You may have missed this speech:


Garrison Keiler accurately (if flamboyantly in Tom Robbins fashion) captures the evil of the republican party. (Link via LaDiDa).
Here are my favorite bits:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.

-- snip --

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

[Note to Garrison: We love you, guy, but you need to find a new editor, or listen to the one you have]

I'd be willing to put this on my car:



Here's Tom Tomorrow's cartoon making the same observation.

A news clip via Tom Tomorrow: A compassionate conservative delegate kicking a female AIDS activist after she had been knocked to the ground at the RNC. Lovely, guy. Lemurs, note that blank stare as the reporter asks him about the incident. Remind you of any blank stares you've seen in, oh, a schoolroom somewhere? Remember that face. He'll be running for office in a few years. He clearly has the right stuff.

What's most aggravating to me is that Kerry has been so typically defensive about this whole thing. Frank Rich makes this point compellingly:

Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man. As we leave the scripted conventions behind us, that is the uber-scenario that has locked into place, brilliantly engineered by the president of the United States, with more than a little unwitting assistance from his opponent. It's a marvel, really. Even a $10,000 reward offered this year by the cartoonist Garry Trudeau couldn't smoke out a credible eyewitness to support George W. Bush's contention that he showed up to defend Alabama against the Viet Cong in 1972. Yet John Kerry, who without doubt shed his own blood and others' in the viscinity of the Mekong, not the Mississippi, is now the deserter and the wimp.

Kerry is finally wising up and fighting back, but I fear it may be too late. The sheep want decisive language, monosyllables, repeated endlessly, sir. Step to it.

"I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this country.

"Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this country."

Better. Keep it up. Keep it up. Keep it up. Try dangling shiny things in front of them, that will work to keep them focused on you.

Baby pictures, damn you!

If you are still with me, here is your reward. Baby pictures for everyone! I see my boy and my beautiful wife tomorrow! Mmmmmm...






posted by MT at 8:37 AM |