Clinton and Bush Meet in Hell

GGeorge W. Bush dies and enters Hell.

There, the devil leaves him with three doors to open, either showing a different punishment for all eternity. Bush will have to choose one.

Bush opens the first door and sees Napoleon being slaughtered to death by several midgets and then sewed together again while still being 'alive'.

The devils says: "This is a neverending circle Mr Bush... "

Bush gulps and opens the second door and sees Hitler being plunged into burning lava, then pulled out again, and plunged into the lava again, also 'alive'.

The devil says: "This is a neverending circle as well Mr Bush..."

Bush opens the third door, terrifyed. Then, he sees how Bill Clinton gets a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky. Bush suddenly starts to laugh and tells the devil: "Well, if this is your sense of eternal punishment.. I'll take door three!

The devil says: "Allright, Monica. You can leave."

Ion_StormH commenting on the thread,
Clinton says No to Monica Lewinsky in 1995, AH.com

Union Bustiong Through Employee Communications

On a political blog I found this ad. It is leads to site that is not about "protecting employee rights" but is dedicated to preserving management privilege. The parts that aren't password locked are creepy enough.

Interview with Dali

(from Cold Hard Flash)

The Other Side of Occum's Razor

"No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated."

Crabtree's Bludgeon

Car Safety Then and Now

In the past day I have come across 2 radically different conceptions of auto safety and auto safety testing. Here is an attempt to use tires on bumpers. The test driver has no safety restraint and drives headlong into a brick wall. There is some sawdust for cushioning if he launched out of roofless the car. In another exercise Stephen Levitt of Feakonomics after looking at accidents reports suggests that car seats for are more dangerous than lap or shoulder seat belts for children 3+.

There are other approaches to car safety. The blog post before this suggests that you can avoid monsters, mobsters and ordinary psychos by driving a Smart car.

The Backseat Makes you Vulnerable

Theft Worse Than Murder - Concerned Parent

A suit is being settled against the makers Grand Theft Auto III, Hidden Sex Scenes Draw Ho-Hum, Except From Lawyers. The suit was over some hidden scenes that had more graphic sexual content then the graphic violent content of the rest of the game. Some lawyers got together and started a class action suit for the "aggrieved" buyers of GTA III. In a out of court settlement any buyer who was offended can get their money back. So far only exactly 2,676 filed claims. The plaintiffs are getting $30K and the lawyers $1.3 million. I have played some of the GTA games. Computer games franchises and sequels do very well and many who bought GTA III had played earlier versions and iterations and knew the sort of game they were getting, a violent game where you role play a criminal. However some copies of this game was mistakenly bought by clueless parents.

For example, Brenda Stanhouse, who bought the game for her son, 15 years old at the time, said in a deposition that she did not know that a player in the game could “stomp to death innocent pedestrians.”

She also did not know that the game included prostitutes, that players could kill policemen or that “a player in the game can kill innocent pedestrians and steal money from them.”

“I’m aware that there is killing in the game,” Ms. Stanhouse said in the deposition. “I wasn’t aware of the stealing.”

Let us remember the lesson of the GTA lawsuit that you can steal more with a law degree than with a gun.

mmm Toasted Cheese

(from Ads of the World)

Peace, Or Letting The Other Side Win

I am often suspicious of those in favour of peace. Too often what they really are just partisans for the other side. Copperheads were a group of Northerns in the US civil war who wanted an immediate peace because they were on the side of the South.

Copperhead Dem Candidate Summer 1864:

"Sherman got lucky with Atlanta, just wait until his logistics catches up with him and he's trapped out there in the middle of Georgia. Those valiant Southerners will chew him up.

This war is too expensive and nothing has been achieved. Lincoln needs to meet with Jefferson Davis and just accept the reality of southern secession. Wars never solve anything and those negroes aren't worth a drop of a white man's blood."

from Rick Ballard on the One Minute

Barak Maybe not Born in America

The yanks have some special rules for who they elect as king. The main requirements are 35 years old and a natural born American citizen, not naturalized, not born to American parents but born in the states. John McCain was born in Panama, in a US military base, which is one the exceptions along with embassies. A not disinterested blogger has posted some analysis of Bambi's birth certificate that suggests it is fake. Take a look and form your own opinion.

Feldspar from Bowman

After doing a little more Ego Blogging I came across this entry on mineralogical site, mindat.org, for "K Feldspar from Bowman Corundum Occurrence, Smiths Ferry Area, Valley Co., Idaho, USA". There isn't anything more in the database entry than the title. However another real world linking of Feldspar and Bowman is cooool.

Beware the Frustrated Artist

Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich.

Don Draper, Mad Men S01E04,
highlighting the risk that
angry scribblers and daubers pose to any society.

The Material Necessities of Life

We Take for granted the things we need the most: water, oil, electricity, steel.

Don Draper, Mad Men S01E04

Nerd Test

Discover your level of nerdness.

Rome and The US

I was reading Barbara Ehrenreich blog. She is the author of Nickel and Dimed, about an attempt to live on minimum wage. In the comments of one blog entry there is this reference this website, Roman Empire - America Now, devoted to exploring the connection between the past and present.

How to Deal with Executives

They act like they need a secretary but most of the time they are looking for something between a mother and a waitress and the rest of the time well...

Joan Holloway, Mad Men S01E01

Ego Googling

I spent some time googling for my Alias this morning. Besides things that I habe posted I also came across 3 odd stories.

Here is one from a comment in supposedly from Vice-Admiral Sir Lamington "Fruity" Stokes-Sodbury, KCVO, DSC* (Ret) that suggest that Baron von Feldspar is some sort of Kurtz like figure.

Solomon, you say?

Puts me mind, Olly old stick, of a tour of duty to the German Solomon Islands in the old days before the lights went out.

It couldn’t have been much after Kaiser Bill had sent out his Pacific Squadron to the take possession of the place from a doubtless rather bemused native populace. Called it “New Pomerania” or some such blithering nonsense. Just after the Australians had sailed into Papua I think. So there we all were invited to celebrate the Kaiser’s birthday in Rubaul.

Ye Gods what a floor-show that was! Eagle standards! Acres of Prussian grey and cavalry boots all in the steamy tropics of the government station. Fritzes and Rudies dropping like flies or sinking into the soft clay of the makeshift parade ground. Fuzzy-wuzzies peering from the undergrowth in delight and wonderment. They didn’t mind a bit, of course. Truth to tell, I think they were rather impressed in their own endearing way. The colour of thing I expect. Colour and movement quite often stuns your slack-jawed islander folk.

That, and the sight of Herr Leutnant Baron von Feldspar. How could I forget him. Great,,strapping golden-haired, aristocratic Hun of blighter - straight from ruddy Valhalla. Handsome devil, too, I’m not afraid to say, but I fear young Feldspar was a bit of a deviant in ways romantic.

Well the fuzzy-wuzzies had never seen the like. Soon a band of the younger savages took to laying little offerings at his feet whenever he took the parade. Coconuts and shark’s teeth and the like, which Feldspar would accept graciously and then he’d visit them in their primaeval huts on the Sepic and they’d bring more, and of course, he started to give them trinkets in return - like cigar-cutters and spirit measures and cotton-reels. These items they would disport on they persons rather like love tokens - on their heads at first and, with increasing frequency, around their private parts.

Great big shiny smiles on the fellows whenever they arrived to take Baron Feldy away with them. And Feldspar too became rather uncommonly pleased with himself. Then one day, he just never came back. They say he ended up ruling them all - a breakaway tribe of young savages - who had no women folk, no food stores, no villages but lived on a form of schnapps distilled from mountain berries and raided for their provisions always very successfully because they carried spears tipped with silver cigar-cutters and wore nothing but bloody great bismarck-boots which scared the daylights out of the ordinary sort.

So there you are, Olly old chap, the most vicious nancies ever - a most fearsome professionally-trained band of German native spear-stickers. The New Pomeranian Lancers, the used to call them. None of ‘em left now I fear. But their old caves are still there up in the highlands of the Sepic valley.

And they say they’re just gorgeous.

Here is a Baron von Feldspar in the Flintstone world.

I have already noted here the future history of Baron von Feldspar and the Bowman Salvage & Trading corporation in a previous post. However I know the person who wrote the future bio but not the ones who wrote Feldspar as some 19th century imperialist or stone age inventor.

Everybody Somebody Nobody

Everybody's a nobody except those people who are somebody and that excludes almost everybody.

Ron Wheatcroft, Goodnight Sweetheart S05E06

Tax Free Hell Holes

If you don't like taxes, move to Somalia.

Andrew D. Blechman, author of Leisureville,
on the desire of many to avoid taxes.
Heard on Here and Now 2008/6/19.

Anthropology and the Prime Directive

The Brazilian government department FUNAI is charged with Indian relations. Mention Brazilian government policies and normally you get a shudder. They have had military government. There are subsidies to deforesting the Amazon. They had a dirty war like Argentina. They have huge wealth and income disparity, shacks next to mansions. The police have run their own death squads. It is nice to have a political-economic story coming out of Brazil that isn't a horror story.

FUNAI used to hunt down and locate "lost tribes" in the Amazon, it was how they promoted their staff. One of their woods runners, Sydney Possuelo, developed a different policy to locate but not contact isolated groups. As described in this NPR program, Uncontacted Amazonian Tribes, it sounds a lot like the Prime Directive from Star Trek.

Was 40 Years Wandering in the Desert Just Bad Navigation

Bush = Obama

I see Obama as a mirror image of George Bush. Both have father issues that led to poor decisions/associations. Bush ran on being a uniter not a divider saying the problem was with the Washington insiders. Obama says the same thing. Bush was naive in invading Iraq and Obama is naive in his willingness to meet with the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bush attracted the far right of his party. Obama attracts the far left of his party. Just as the Bush presidency has been a disaster so would an Obama presidency at best.Obama is passive-aggressive; he uses misdirection and is duplicitous on an Orwellian level. Obama would be dangerous as president.

metimi5 comment on
'Danger Signs' as Clinton Supporters Resist Obama,
making a connection between
one Ivy League coke head and another

Leaders and Followers

(from The Pain 06/27/01)

How to Solicit Money in New York

(from Aarghh)

Counterinsurgency as Practiced by William the Bastard

Here is a primer/history on counterinsurgency comparing occupation tactics in Iraq with the practices of William the Bastard (bastard by name, bastard by nature).

3 Reasons not to Strangle Someone

1. It Is illegal.
2. It is a lot harder than it looks on TV.
3. It takes longer (then on TV).
   

Ron Wheatcroft, Goodnight Sweetheart S04E07

Overly Complicated Sneaker Lacings

On a random blog wander I come accross this brand new blog, ZONA BEBAS, in Dutch?/Indonesian?/some unknown to me language? The first post of this blog is directions to a number of complicated lacing patterns. Try them out, be the first in your class to have the zipper, the ladder or checkerboard (see above).

Dyslexic Rabble Rousing Slogan

Bad Spellers of the World, UNTIE!!!

spelling error by coefficient
picked up on by Falconier111 on AH.com.

Cell Phones are Evil

Bambi and the Ordinary Voter

Personally, I just don't see key Democratic states that routed Obama to disastrous losses to Hillary voting for Obama. Us dumb, whitey, Jesus fanatical, gun luvin, hicks thinks he be too smart for us.

Silence Dogood2 discussing Barak's appeal on
RealClearPolitcs.com, The McCain Miracle.

Mad Bombers and Bureaucratic Thugs

Running a insurgent campaign is expensive because you have to pay salaries. Running a terrorist organization is very inexpensive because people volunteer.

Peter Bergen, Al Qaida Expert on NPR

However this expert distinguishes between terrorist groups like AlQaida and insurgent groups like Hamas or The Party of Dog or those political Irish murderers the IRA. I would consider all these groups terrorists. However I do admit the distinction between the mad bombers and the more bureaucratic terror groups that also steal, rape, kneecap, shakedown, assassinate or simply murder. It the religious or political justification of the crimes confirms the terrorists as evil not their organization structure.

Only You Can Prevent Dinosaurs

Car Ad as Video Game Out Take

This ad from Lamborghini feels like an out take from Midnight Club or one the Grand Theft Auto, indeed here is a long (10 minutes) video of the same car in GTA IV. This was posted on a blog German Car Scene. If want to see more car Ads from Germany you check their youtube channel.

Carrier Manga

I recently saw the PBS documentary Carrier. It was about the USS Nimitz on a deployment. The US would also like better press and public relations in Japan. To that end they have produced and distributed a 200 page manga about another carrier, this time USS George Washington.

I got this link from a blog Japan Probe which had a photo of a sailor handing this comic book/manga with this comment from Brandon.

Oh boy. Fat guys dressed like cosplayers handing out comics to scared children. That’s not gonna help our image.

Don't Go There

Dan Neil an critic from the LA times has suggested in a recent piece that true ecotourists don't travel at all. They don't travel to the ends of earth in energy intensive ways to see fragile environments. However lightly you step you can still leave a footprint. In the past it was progress to move from safaris to photo safaris. Now Dan Neil suggests that they is a quantum problem with visiting unspoiled places, once you go there you you spoil it.

Here is a discussion about this anti-travel screed/philosophy.
Here is the original article.

Vice and Period TV

I saw the first episode of Swingtown tonight. The series is set in the seventies and is supposed to depict the casual sex, drugs and rock and roll of the era. However in a discussion on one the TV nerd sites I visit, Television Without Pity, A Little Edgy commented on a glaring puritanism of this show.

My only nitpick besides the overuse of period music was the lack of smoking. At a party like that in the seventies, the air would have been blue with tobacco smoke. It's an interesting comment on our own times that the producers feel free to portray drug use and various permutations of sexuality, but they refrain from showing people doing something that was ubiquitous and morally neutral: smoking.

This is in contrast to another period TV series Madmen where the air, circa 1960 Madison Avenue, is blue with cigarette smoke. This has some basis in reality in that (tobacco) smoking has declined over the last 30 years at the same time that pot smoking has equaled it in numbers if not legality.

French Amnesty International Ad