Monday, May 31, 2004
"Taxes - Yaaa! Growth - Booo," sez Euros
Happy Tax Freedom Day, Brits! May 30 is the day you stop working just to support your government and can finally begin to pay for those silly luxuries like your food and shelter. Though, if you join the Euro Zone, their Tax Freedom Day won't be until June 28... Thanks to President Bush and his "awful tax cuts for the riiiich™, we Americans have already begun working for ourselves -- April 11 04. [earliest in 37 years] Now on to look at economic growth. America is forecasting a 4.5% growth this year, Briton, 3%, and the Euro Zone just 1.7%. Hmm Wonder if there is any correlation? Well, at least their mighty government will shade them from the heat this simmer ..uh, summer. ThanQ! Adam Smith Inst. BlogSunday, May 30, 2004
Bloggers' Burnout
It's been a tough Spring, kidz, what with all the Iraq brouhaha, presidential campaigns reaching a pinnacle of statesmanship worthy of WWF, weather disturbances followed by silly fear-flicks. Whew! I was doing some research on my own feelings of burnout and came across this St Mary's Hospital Psych Dept stress test. Ya gotta read the full description before looking at the picture in the extended entry. Be fair to yourself. The photo has two dolphins in it. Look carefully at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are visually identical but there are what are called "perceptual markers" imbedded in one of them. A double-blind, control study of several groups indicated that a person under dangerous levels of stress would perceive differences between the two dolphins. A direct ratio was found between the number of differences perceived and the amount of stress. Go ahead and look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you may want to take a short bloggers-break from the newz, eh.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Belief Shapes Zeitgeist Shapes Behavior
From Daniel Pipes comes this interesting insight into the Muslim world-view:Considering the Muslim reputation for archaic customs, it is ironic to note that Islamic civilization not only portrays women as sexually desirous, but it sees them as more passionate than men. Indeed, this understanding has determined the place of women in traditional Muslim life. ...Indeed, Muslims generally believe female desire to be so much greater than the male equivalent that the woman is viewed as the hunter and the man as her passive victim. If believers feel little distress about sex acts as such, they are obsessed with the dangers posed by women. So strong are her needs thought to be, she ends up representing the forces of unreason and disorder. A woman's rampant desires and irresistible attractiveness gives her a power over men that even rivals God's. She must be contained, for her unbridled sexuality poses a direct danger to the social order. (Symbolic of this, the Arabic word fitna means both civil disorder and beautiful woman.) The entire Muslim social structure can be understood as containing female sexuality. It goes to great lengths to separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. This explains such customs as the covering of women's faces and the separation of women's residential quarters, or the harem. Many other institutions serve to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a male's permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce. Revealingly, a traditional Muslim wedding took place between two men – the groom and the bride's guardian. ...Muslim family life restricts contact between the spouses by dividing their interests and duties, imbalancing their power relationship (she is more his servant than his companion), and encouraging the mother-son bond over the marital connection. ...the anxiety persisted that women would break loose of their restrictions and bring perdition to the community. Those anxieties multiplied in recent centuries as Western influence spread through the Muslim world, for Western ways nearly always collide with Islamic ones. ...s a result, each civilization looks upon the other as deeply flawed, if not barbaric. For many Muslims, the West poses not just an external threat as the infidel invader; it also erodes traditional mechanisms to cope with the internal threat, woman. This leads to widespread worries about adopting Western ways and a preference instead to cling to older customs. Differences in sexuality, in other words, contribute to an overall Muslim reluctance to accept modernity. Fear of Western erotic ways ends up constraining Muslim peoples in the political, economic, and cultural arenas. Sexual apprehensions constitute a key reason for Islam's trauma in the modern era. [emphasis mine -C]
That explains a lot. Now shine that light on this story:
But in Iraq, where rumors alone can destroy a woman's reputation, the consequences of US detention are much more severe for women than for men. In a way, it scarcely matters if Azzawi's mother was raped or not: If she denies being raped, nobody will believe her, because Iraqi women rarely admit to being raped, a charge that can ruin a woman's life. [or get her beaten to death by her male relatives -- for "honor's"sake... -C] Now that there are real pictures of US troops sexually humiliating Iraqi women, reality and rumors have tangled inseparably. "With the pictures and the CDs, it becomes almost irrelevant if they're raped or not," says Manal Omar, the Iraq coordinator of Women for Women, which helps women in former war zones. "Even before the torture, the rumor was out that they were raping women in the prison. With or without the pictures from the porn site, the real pictures made people believe that. It made that rumor fact."
ThanQ! LGF
EWW EU Pulls a Boner
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday confirmed the bone ban for Britain's 10,000 butchers. A spokesman said: 'Under new regulations, bones and all waste from a butcher's shop is being seen as a by-product. 'Customers can take bones away with them when they buy the deboned meat if it is for human consumption. 'But if the bone is waste or for pet food then it's a by-product and cannot be passed to the public. 'It must be properly disposed of, in line with animal by-products regulations.' [to the tune of about $2,000/ year. each.]
And we worry about these people's opinions, why???
The Council Has Spoken ! ! !
This week's winners are: Religion and Politics by Four Right Wing Wackos, and Strength [Part 1] by Eject! Eject! Eject! [and ferhevinsake - read Part II while you're at it...] Full results of the vote are over at The Watcher's, along with week's entries! Lots of good reading: Go See . . . Spambots: byte hot bits and die!! [Thanx, Watcher!]Thursday, May 27, 2004
Today, The Day After Tomorrow Is Tomorrow
on Saturday, The Day After Tomorrow Will Be Yesterday. [sooo yesterday]I recommend reading the article, but for those in a hurry, and to fix it in my mind[meeee, it's all about meeeeee], I 'll make an executive summary. Plot point: Global warming causes the Gulf Stream to shut down Actual Science: Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the science journal Nature that the scenario depicted in the movie requires one to "turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth's rotation, or both." Plot point: The frigid stratosphere trades places with our habitable troposphere Actual Science: yes, when all three laws of thermodynamics are repealed. [probably by a Democratic Congress] Plot point: Folks in Japan are clobbered by bowling-ball-size hailstones. Actual Science: Hailstones can't reach bowling-ball size because their growth is limited by gravity. [which I really hope the Dems don't repeal -- it's hard enough as it is to vacuum the kids' footprints off the ceiling...] Plot point: Hurricanes ravage Belfast Actual Science: The island of Ireland is in the way. Final nail in the coffin of this [...what's a better word for "giant steaming pile of outright bullshit that will, because of the abysmal state of state education and utter inability of most people to even recognize a scientific fact, be with us for years and years despite all evidence demonstrating its utter lack of foundation in anything even resembling fact?"] It is based on a book, Coming Global Superstorm, by [wait for it...] Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. For those of you who are non-insomniacs, Art Bell is a guy who lives out in the desert, in the traditionally undisclosed location [somewhere near Area 51 I b'elive,] and has a late night syndicated radio show where he discussed his visits with aliens, abductions [complete with lovingly described ...probes][not quite Wonkette, but...], vapor trails/chem trails, black helicopters, LGMs, conversations with ghosts, ..... well, you get the point. I even think I heard a discussion about unicorns, once, before I pushed the radio out the window. [I lose more radios that way...] "Whitley Strieber's previous work, Communion... explained that he was told of the Earth's upcoming apocalypse by aliens. And how this knowledge was communicated is much more the purview of an adult Web site than a family newspaper." [ok, just eww] ...and from the "You'll Know Them by the Company They Keep" department: The "film's" biggest promoter? MoveOn.org, billionaire George Soros' policy toy. Al Gore front and center, pimping the film. The website using the movie to drum up support for legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. which mimic the United Nations' infamous Kyoto Protocol -- you know, the one designed to send the US Back to the Caves in Droves™ clearing the way for other industrializing nations to take our place? [think Rand's whatthehell was the name of that story -- the one with the weighted dancers -- brainfreeze] NB: The Interrocitor has more on the KP. [is McCain losing a wee bit o' credibility lately, or is it just me?] [and Joe! think, man, think!] Remember the'Day After Tomorrow': A lot of hot air By Patrick J. Michaels As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as "science" are used to influence political discourse. The latest example is the global-warming disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow.
We're meeting at 9pm on IVAR AVE between SUNSET and DE LONGPRE.
If you possibly can, join him!
"Sorry - we're full up. Try Idaho..."
Arrested in London, one Abu Hamza al Masri, on an 11-count endictment of hostage taking, conspiracy, providing support to terrorists and so on and on and on. Among the entries on his resumé attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. Oregon?? For those of you who haven't been there, Oregon is often likened to Maine, only western. The people there are ...unique and, because of the often overcast and rainy skies, verra verra pale. There are also lots of cowboys, ranchers and loggers there. Like that place would've gone un-noticed. Good thinking, al Masri! Take on a bunch of cowboys and loggers. The very few "campers" who might manage not to be turned into small, greasy spots would be the baddest, most-est dangerous mofos on the planet. NB: al Masri lived in the Shepherds Bush district, which proves that [all together, now] it's all Bush's fault!Perusing Gore's Rant Fugue Moment Speech...
...this is where I had to stop:
[Specialist Charles] Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."
What? [cheese 'n' rice...] I know -- I'm such a lightweight, but . . . cheeze!
Please Don't Disturb the Ostriches
The para below comes as the second in the above quoted article -- Opinion Journal WSJ. I thought it so remarkable that it deserved mention in and of itself.We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect.
And that is, of course, the first and most fundamental priority of a national news organ dissemination instrument -- never to disturb the prejudices of its readers.
It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix.
Unless, maybe, one looks at the history of the fundamentalist Islamist movement after the fall of the Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, the Pan-Arab movement after WWI and the origins of the Ba'athist Party [Resistance Party]...
But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, ...
You had forgotten ... I see.
...and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence.
"Especially Irresponsible" Boy, that oughta be carved over the door of every journalism school -- "it is especially irresponsible not to be open to new evidence when your country's people are under threat of death -- otherwise, ah whatever..."
If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?
Well, ok. It's a shift. As someone recently said, ya gotta take people as you find them. My Pollyanna-mind wants very much to believe that the press, conscious of the growing weight of evidence, is about to pull a Jerry Brown and run out in front of the trend, pretending it was their idea all along. My Reality-mind says, "come off it, dear, and go scrub the bathroom." ThanQ! Jud Spangler [West Chester PA] for the title -- it was just too good not to nick!
Seems that little attack warning yesterday shook some things loose...
From the WSJ [5.27]:Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen ...with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. ...[Ahmed Hikmat] Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. ...at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded. The Iraqi [Ahmed Hikmat Shakir] next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, four days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific. After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad. ...The reason to care [sic] goes beyond the prewar justification for toppling Saddam and relates directly to our current security. U.S. officials believe that American civilian Nicholas Berg was beheaded in Iraq recently by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who is closely linked to al Qaeda and was given high-level medical treatment and sanctuary by Saddam's government. The Baathists killing U.S. soldiers are clearly working with al Qaeda now; Saddam's files might show us how they linked up in the first place.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
What did you say Mr Jennings? Speak up, Brokaw -- we can't heeeear you! Rather? Rather not?
[Muqtada al-Sadr] has agreed to pull his fighters out of the city, except for those who live there. [He] is also calling for "broad discussions" within the Shiite community over the future of his militia. In the meantime, he wants legal proceedings against him deferred. He's charged with murder. Al-Sadr demands that U.S. and other coalition troops return to their bases so Iraqi police can regain control of Najaf.
Off to Abu Ghraib with his ass! No, wait. That was just a reaction... The best bet, I b'lieve, is to make him pitch in on the Najaf clean-up. Real work, not just sitting around ordering attacks and killings. Maybe he'll sweat off a coupla those extras pounds that make him look like a kid who lives off DongDongs and Doritos in his momma's basement...
Spoons! We hardly knew ye .
Spoons has taken his leave of the Watcher's Council. And we welcome Bill of INDC Journal! Many hits to ya, Bill, and plenty of linky-love! [seriously - don't know how I missed him. Go check this guy out: tears, I tell ya. It's a terrible thing to hear a woman with laryngitis laugh *out loud*... Scared the ducks!]Yes, it is "my issue." [which is mine *ahem*]
[This
rantpost began as a response to a comment from Xrlq on my post about this news story. The executive summary: Pastor Dollinger, a self appointed Bible study leader for the CA legislature, made a statement that the women in that august body who had "small children" were, by ...er, virtue of being legislators,sinnerssinful, [ie; not home in the kitchen] and cited as justification various Bible verses. Many legislators, both male and female, predictably took umbrage at the pastor's remark and appeared on the floor barefoot and wearing aprons. [in the case of John Burton, I hear it had bright pink flowers...] Xrlq and I were conducting a pleasant little disagreement in comments about the real issue/question at hand. When Xrlq said, "Your issue, maybe. But the protesting legislators are clearly objecting to his interpretation of the Bible, not to the fact that he is preaching from the Bible, per se," I realized I had not stated my point with sufficient clarity. Hence the rant below:
"My issue," which is what the post is about, is the increasingly common unconscious tendency, almost PC-ish in its seeming reflexiveness, to grant credibility to an argument based, as is this one, on the Bible. My point, [which is mine *ahem*] is that this is inappropriate: both the attempt to coerce everyone and anyone into behaving as the coercer believes the Bible says is the way; and the unthinking way in which the rest of us who are not committed to the Bible go along with it. As though it would be rude to say, "Hey. That's your standard, pal -- kindly do not plop it on my head." I will defend to the death the right of another to believe anything he deems right or useful. Same's I will defend his right to say any damfool thing he wants. [not comparing the two, necessarily.] I stop short of supporting his right to cry fire in a crowded theater, and I cannot and will not support any belief system that tries to throw its weight around. It's like sex; I support people in being attracted to and having sex with any consenting adult they like -- so long as they don't hurt anyone. ...who doesn't consent to it. [odd area, that] Just don't try to tell me all the gory details -- even if you're attracted to the same people and sex that I am. It's just TMI about a very personal area. I fell the same way about religious convictions: unless I ask, kindly do not offer. And fer cryin out loud do not go about the world plopping judgments on people's heads and pointing to your religious convictions as "proof" of your statement's validity. It holds no water for anyone who doesn't already share your beliefs / convictions. If you can offer reasons, arguments, thoughts, concerns, hell, even statistics -- I'll likely be willing to talk it over. But as it is with teaching a pig to sing; don't point to your religious convictions for validation. You're wasting your time and it just annoys the pig. .
Parenthetically: The funny thing in this particular instance? I agree with the point the pastor was attempting so poorly to make. Children do best when their mothers and/or fathers are with them all day. They do amazingly much better with a parent in attendance the majority of the time up until they go to school. And if one can possibly manage to school their own children, the kid will be a whiz, a much better citizen and a happier human being all 'round.
Somebody Stop Meee!!!
I planted some birdseed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it. I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart. eww. Last week I forgot how to ride a bicycle. Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic. They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them. What if there were no hypothetical questions? What was the greatest thing before sliced bread? My weight is perfect for my height - which varies. I used to be indecisive. Now, I'm not so sure. How can there be self-help groups? What's another word for synonym? Is Marx's tomb a communist plot? Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a guy who can't get his pants off. It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one. Is it my imagination, or do buffalo wings taste like chicken?
I know this is someone's material -- but I just got it in one of *those* emails and -- there it is...
"... this guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head ..." • (0) Trackbacks • Link This
I Can't Resist a Well-Turned Phrase
Today's sensation wraps tomorrow's fish. But not if there's a little sex. Sex has legs. ...sex, though capable of endlessly complicating everything else, is uncomplicated in a way that continuing stories — what kind of government we will leave in Iraq, a presidential race with two flawed candidates, ...[aren't] ...Looking at photographs of naked men on a leash held by a bumpkinette in tight jeans, ... or writhing pyramids of naked men, doesn't require an inquiring mind. This is the stuff of National Enquirer, or as John O'Sullivan describes it in National Review Online, "Jerry Springer meets Saddam Hussein." ...There's considerable evidence, and evidence growing by the day, that the readers and viewers of flyover land understand what we do not. The public-opinion polls have quieted the fever to cashier Donald Rumsfeld; indeed, The Washington Post, which commissioned one of the early ones, no doubt wants its money back. The result it got was news fit only for Page 12, revealing that 7 of 10 Americans thought the idea of the president's firing Mr. Rumsfeld, the man in charge of prosecuting the war on terror, as something so wrongheaded as to be nutty. Sane, mature Americans regard civilization in peril as more worrisome than an Iraqi terrorist forced to wear a pair of ladies' step-ins on his head, unsavory as that could be.
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{/if}
