What a dumbass headline. I'd rather be married to Dirk Nowitzki than in prison. If you're married to Dirk you're free, rich, and as a bonus, there's probably less buttsecks.
Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.
A couple of things here:
First off, Fox's overuse of the word "terrorist" is nearly as egregious as NPR's underuse. A guy who kills uniformed military personnel (private contractors or otherwise) is not a terrorist, even if he does string them up afterward. He's probably an illegal insurgent and certainly a war criminal, if guilty.
Second, we're holding these guys to an awfully high standard. People don't even ask questions when a cop-killer gets dragged in by the cops with a bloody face; they barely ask questions if one has a fatal accident. I'm of two minds about that. One is that these are Navy SEALS and can stand to be held to a high standard, and that we're in the country to win hearts and minds, and behavior like what they're accused of is certainly counterproductive to that goal and needs to be punished as such. The other is that if you treat Navy SEALS like this, pretty soon you might find yourself short of SEALS when you need them.
In his book The Shadow Presidents, author Michael Medved relates the extreme disappointment of H.R. Haldeman over his failure to implement his plan to link up all the homes in America by coaxial cable. In Haldeman’s words, “There would be two-way communication. Through computer, you could use your television set to order up whatever you wanted. The morning paper, entertainment services, shopping services, coverage of sporting events and public events…. Just as Eisenhower linked up the nation’s cities by highways so that you could get there, the Nixon legacy would have linked them by cable communications so that you wouldn’t have to go there.” One can almost see the dreamy eyes of Nixon and Haldeman as they sat around discussing a plan that would eliminate the need for newspapers, seemingly oblivious to its Big Brother aspects. Fortunately, the Watergate scandal intervened, and Nixon was forced to resign before “the Wired Nation” could be hooked up.
That was written in 1980. I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I can't think of it because I can't get past the idea of the Tricky Dickweb.
Book banning is gay like Harley riders.
In retrospect, I don't regret even the hard slogs I had in high school English, specifically Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities, both of which I later reread along with much else by Dickens. Likewise I also read a lot of crap. I was a big fan of serial Dungeons and Dragons novels at one point, which, let's face it, are no less shitty than the Twilight saga.
So neither high quality nor low seems to have damaged me much. If kids are reading crap, at least they're reading.
I'd seriously consider banning James Joyce though. What a pain in the ass.
The refutation I'm now seeing of the concept that this is a bad idea is this, which has pictures of Dwight D. Eisenhower bowing to God and everybody, including, weirdly, Charles De Gaulle.
The trouble here is that this is a situational thing. Barack Obama would be entitled to use the N-word if he wanted 'cause he's Black but Ike wouldn't have been 'cause he isn't. Similarly, Ike could bow to whoever the fuck he wanted and still be cool, and Obama can't, because Obama didn't order D-Day and therefore has not sufficiently proved that he can kick the shit out of the people he's bowing to should the occasion arise.
Some presidents have things to prove, and some don't.
Minmetals has become a target because it is part of what is widely seen as an over-mighty, resurgent state sector. Media reports about abuses by state-controlled and mostly state-owned enterprises are common and often larded with a newly popular, negative-sounding term guojin mintui, meaning the state advances and the private (sector) retreats. The disproportionate largesse received by state firms as a result of China’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus package and a torrent of lending this year by state-owned banks has fuelled the resentment of liberal economists, whose views are widely and sympathetically quoted in the press.
If liberal (in the classical sense) economists are widely and sympathetically quoted criticizing the expansion of state ownership in the (state-owned) Chinese media then the Chinese have a leg up on us. Of course, the fact that state ownership is still expanding suggests that they may not.
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boffo had a post a few days ago to which I have given some thought.I don't have a problem with people who disagree with me politically when they express a political priority. "Helping the poor" is a political priority. Nothing wrong with that. "Enforcing the law" is a political priority. Fine so far.
I don't have a problem with them even when they prioritize said items incorrectly. Helping the poor is not more important than the smooth functioning of the free market economic machine that brings the highest possible level of prosperity to society as a whole, but if you think it is, cool. Enforcing the law is not more important than well, that same smooth functioning either, whether the person demanding the enforcement dislikes Mexicans or music pirates. But whatever; value judgment.
Where this all goes wrong for me is when a political opponent advocates policies that are either contrary to his own value judgments, ludicrous, disingenuous, or downright dangerous. Respective examples:
Pushing alternative energy as a means toward your stated environmental ends whilst working equally hard to prevent wind farms from spoiling the view from your pied a terre.
Suggesting that the means of reaching your stated health care ends is to emulate the Cubans. Really? Come on.
Advocating keeping Mexicans out because you value respect for the law when what you really value is not having to look at Mexicans. Mind you, I am cognizant of the fact that some people really do advocate keeping Mexicans out out of respect for the law. If you are one of them and we are arguing about this issue, I will generally recognize your sincerity. I'm at least that good a judge of people. But if you're a lying bigoted douche, I'll certainly know that too.
The fourth category isn't just for fascists and Communists: their ideas are shitty enough, to be sure, but countries have survived them. For this category you need one of the really big bad ideas. Concentration camps. The Great Leap Forward. Banning foreign trade or the genetic modification of crops. The kind of policies that kill a lot of people and leave the rest shooting at one another.
People who fall into one of these categories should be heard out. Ideas shouldn't be suppressed. But they should be heavily filtered and the people advancing them should not be treated as good people arguing in good faith. Exercise some information hygiene: kick a dipshit in the nuts today.
jonfmorse feel like he's in good company, and the other should make ikilled007 feel nervous:
No, you did not read my resume and think your $10 an hour desktop support job would be a perfect fit for me. What I'm pretty sure you did was hoover Career Builder or somesuch for resumes with the word "desktop" anywhere in them and then hit every single one of them. I could have been a desktop carpenter for all you know. Eat me.
Love,
Whip_Lash
The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.
Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.
When eco-freaks fight animal rights nutbags, we all win (no offense
evilegg).To be true to form he should promise liberals to negotiate an end to the War on Swine Flu immediately, promise everyone else he'll send massive reinforcements, and then break both promises.
ikilled007 isn't around to suffer through it (maybe he can't afford his internet connection, as he used to suggest would happen to me), but here we go:Nouriel Roubini on Gold:
IU.com: When you say “stay away from risky assets,” many people hear that and think, “Aha, gold!”
Roubini: I don’t believe in gold. Gold can go up for only two reasons. [One is] inflation, and we are in a world where there are massive amounts of deflation because of a glut of capacity, and demand is weak, and there’s slack in the labor markets with unemployment peeking above 10 percent in all the advanced economies. So there’s no inflation, and there’s not going to be for the time being.
The only other case in which gold can go higher with deflation is if you have Armageddon, if you have another depression. But we’ve avoided that tail risk as well. So all the gold bugs who say gold is going to go to $1,500, $2,000, they’re just speaking nonsense. Without inflation, or without a depression, there’s nowhere for gold to go. Yeah, it can go above $1,000, but it can’t move up 20-30 percent unless we end up in a world of inflation or another depression. I don’t see either of those being likely for the time being. Maybe three or four years from now, yes. But not anytime soon.
Who was it who predicted $2,000 gold by the end of the year? Ah, yes. Well, it could double over the next three months. Ahahahaha.
Dollar Hegemony For Another Century:
Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research says Washington must be chuckling as the weak dollar gives it time to rebuild America’s industrial core. The “inflationistas” — ie, those convinced that the dollar is being debauched despite the fact that core inflation in the US is falling and that the M3 money supply is contracting — are playing straight into the hands of the United States.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker told me a few weeks ago that America’ spectacular gains in productivity – growing at a trend rate of 2.25pc to 2.5pc — is laying the foundation for a much stronger US recovery in the long-term than most people seem to realize. Compare that with 0pc to 1pc for the eurozone. In Italy it is negative.
The UN expects America to add roughly 100m people by 2050, keeping its age balance in relatively good shape through a mix of immigration and a healthy fertility rate — now 2.12 live births per woman, still above replacement level. This compares to: Taiwan (1.13), Korea (1.2), Japan (1.22), Ukraine (1.25), Poland (1.27), Spain (1.3), Italy (1.3), Russia (1.4), Germany (1.41), China (1.77), Britain (1.96), and France (1.98). Some of this data may be slightly out of date, but the picture remains valid.
Professor Becker said a collapsing birth rate is extremely hard to reverse, and the cultural effects are insidious. Old societies are status quo. They are slow to embrace new technologies. Young minds are the source of hi-tech invention.
The EU is fully aware of the danger. “What is at risk in the medium to long run is nothing less than the sustainability of the society Europe has built and the viability of its civilisation,” said an EU report (initially suppressed) by former Dutch premier Wim Kok as long ago as 2004. Nothing has been done since despite endless warnings from the Commission.
The White House has told Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress - a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions.
Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was "murky" on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress.
Miss Collins said that doesn't make sense when some of those czars are actually making policy or negotiating on behalf of Mr. Obama.
"I think Congress should be able to call the president's climate czar, Carol Browner, the energy and environment czar, to ask her about the negotiations she conducted with the automobile industry that led to very significant policy changes with regard to emissions standards," Miss Collins said at a hearing Thursday that examined the proliferation of czars.
The debate goes to the heart of weighty constitutional issues about separation of powers. The president argues that he should be allowed to have advisers who are free to give him confidential advice without having to fear being called to testify about it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, though, argue that those in office who actually craft policy should be able to be summoned to testify because they do more than just give the president advice.
I wonder if there is anything that Bush did to piss people off that Obama will not have done by the end of his term? Anything? Bueller?
You can imagine that, as a libertarian, I am basically a chick by now.
I listen to a lot of podcasts on the way to and from work. I use iTunes to put these podcasts on the iPod, even though it blows. I forgive it for two reasons: iTunes U, and smart playlists.
I would like to organize these podcasts into smart playlists by genre so that if I am in the mood to listen to the latest episodes of economics podcasts, say, I can do that; and if I would like tech podcasts I can do that, or news, or sports (Baseball Prospectus and Big 12 Football Weekly), or car stuff (Car Talk and Car Tech respectively), or whatever.
Can I do this? No. The genre metadata of podcasts is "podcast" and the category metadata of podcasts is most often nothing, but when it isn't nothing is usually wrong; for example, the category of This Week in Tech is "news".
Weak.
I'm quite sure Jessica is a bot, but if not, she's out of luck. My copy of 7 is the release version, which I got through one of those House Party deals (the ones with the infamous video).
I suppose this is not technically spam since I mentioned their product? I'm gonna need to get a ruling on that. I appreciate free stuff as much as the next guy but I'll still throw spammers under the bus.
Movie: A Serious Man. Limited release,
raphaela and I saw it at the Angelika in Dallas which is one of our hippie indie theaters. Like Lost In Translation but moreso, in the sense that there is essentially no plot. artisdead tried to convince me that modern art was worthwhile one time by suggesting that it was highly skilled art with just one element - form - removed. This is modern cinema: every element but plot.It's really funny, though, and an obvious metaphor for the Jewish condition: a lot of bad shit happens for no apparent reason, and there is no prospect it will stop happening.
Kim Basinger was at the showing. I didn't recognize her, but
raphaela did. I guess this is now the biggest Hollywood celebrity I've ever seen in person. Yay.Software: Windows 7. I've been running this on my main home desktop workstation for two days. I don't have a lot of coherent feeling about the new features, but the overall impression is: sucks less than Vista, prettier than XP.
Book: Anathem: A lot of people seem to have hated this Neal Stephenson tome because of the length and made-up words, but I liked it. Not loved it, but liked it. Not what I expect from Stephenson though. It wasn't funny.
--Sidekick Outage Causes Data Loss and Outrage
(October 10 & 12, 2009)
A server failure appears to be responsible for a massive data loss
affecting T-Mobile Sidekick customers. The outage occurred at Danger,
a Microsoft subsidiary, which is the Sidekick data service provider.
Users lost contacts, pictures, and saved email messages. While it is
possible that some data could be restored from a backup system, most is
likely gone forever. T-Mobile has suspended sales of Sidekicks for the
time being. The company is offering customers a one-month credit to
their accounts to compensate for the data loss. The data loss affects
customers who conducted a hard reset - removing their phones' batteries
or pressing a reset button. The customers attempted the hard reset
because of outages affecting the devices all last week.
This caused a lot of people to laugh at the idea of trusting your data to Microsoft... in the Cloud! Instead of keeping it yourself on your trusty Mac!
Laughing is bad karma.
--Apple Acknowledges Bug in Snow Leopard Causes Data Loss
(October 12, 2009)
Apple has acknowledged a problem with its Mac OS X 10.6 operating
system, known as Snow Leopard, that can cause users to lose their
personal data and says a fix is in the works. The problem, according
to Apple, "occurs only in extremely rare cases." Users have been
reporting that after they log in as guest users, their personal data are
gone when they return to their personal accounts.
As a person who does not trust my data to either of these shit companies (even when I have to be logged into Windows, the data goes on a NAS. Linux-based. With RAID) I can... um, sympathize. Yes. That's it.
