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The Helsinki Virago
I would like to join Laura Ingraham in registering a complaint against Stephen Colbert. My great-grandma was part-Cherokee, and I too cannot believe that Colbert would demean Native American culture so terribly in calling Ingraham “Ichabod Crane’s banshee...They, Robot
I think the smartest move is to start working on weapons with which to destroy our impending robot overlords. I’m not sure if this is cool, excellent, or terrifying. ALSO: Check out this limited, if still fascinating, discussion of the word “fair”...All Your Tea Party Are Belong to Us
Today’s game of what’s weirder: a) The Fresh Prince or b) Maine tea party taken over via parking lot threat. Or hey, maybe the Fresh Prince did the threatening? He looks like a tea hater to me. I’d certainly drop my tea party and run if he approached...Hogging All the Terrorism
Josh Marshall, currently a New Yorker himself, nails the dynamic of conservatives trying to own 9/11: Last week John McCain announced that he too was opposed to the Community Center and Mosque to be built a couple blocks from Ground Zero. To his credit, unlike many...Bye-bye, Google
So Google and Verizon have decided that there are going to be two Internets. As one wag puts it, the Internet and the Schminternet. The Internet will be unregulated, as it now is, and include anything old. The Schminternet, where ISPs can do whatever they want, will...And bringing up the rear…
Perhaps it should be considered perfectly normal to pay unnaturally huge humans obscene amounts of money to bolster the image of a metropolis near you by competing with other unnaturally huge humans who take obscene amounts of money in other metropolises. The...And they say minimalism is too heady
An old friend of mine teaches Art History, and this is what happened when one of his students combined minimalism a la Donald Judd and Double Rainbow Guy. I almost hurt myself: Untitled from VJ Peter Rand on Vimeo.Chicken, meet Gator
I haven’t weighed in on the Ground Zero Muslim community center “controversy” because I find it painfully stupid. It’s the same thing that always happens in August: The Republican drool machine gins up, working the lower end of the GOP...When Giants Roamed the Earth
Like a kid’s imagination come to life–an award-winning, if unbuilt, design: AND: Every politician’s dream? Brazil bans political satire. And competition from Illinois: An attempt to ban eye-rolling. An idea which will probably induce some rolling of...Pythagoras would be proud
This is what happens when you do the Clinton triangle dance: On health care, the new law remains unpopular, partly because of the new mandate that all Americans must have health insurance (56 percent oppose the mandate). Other provisions in the new bill are popular,...Enjoying My Coffee
Here’s another reason to be angry with the amoral subhumans who are ginning up the “mosque” business to fire up the right wing bigot demographic. That “debate” is pointless unless you’re a Republican tapping into the directionless...What's That Sound?
Interestingly enough, it apparently isn’t Grover Norquist who’s ginning up “mosque” madness. Glenn Greenwald went digging and turned up Norquist sort-of nemesis Frank Gaffney. He’s the nutty nutball who TPM editor Josh Mashall says he...Martin Luther King and Glenn Beck–who's crying now?
Somehow I don’t think Martin Luther King would be into having his movement “reclaimed” by a maniac and a simpleton, one of whom called Obama a racist and the other who’s fueled anti-Islamic sentiment with her absurdist anti-Ground Zero...A Ground Zero Gaudi?
How about we put Hotel Attraction, designed by Antoni Gaudi, wonderfully strange sort-of Art Nouveau architect of Barcelona, at Ground Zero? That ought to please enough folks. It was in fact in contention as a replacement for the Twin Towers some years ago and,...Now we know: trolls eat raw Onion
Granted, every good recipe starts with The Onion: SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world....Is that a bomb in your trunk?
Nothing says comedy like fake bombs and threats of execution! Either something got lost in translation, or Iraqi humor is pretty strange. Although the end of this article says the new Iraqi reality show in which celebrities are stopped by “soldiers,” who...“Dude, you have no Koran”
So said a skateboarder who scuttled an Amarillo, Texas preacher’s plan to burn a Koran by boosting said Koran just before the match was struck and giving it to the local Muslim contingent. Not sure what’s more tawdry–that this guy wanted to burn a...Instant coffee explained at last!
Yep, the Grand Band Slam issue is out the door, so now things like blogs can be examined. And speaking of, my friend Ron Egatz just posted at his blog the only thing I’ve seen yet that made me consider that I might eventually want an iPad–he dubs it the...Fundies, no Undies
A whole new kind of fundamentalist terrorist emerges in “Naked City,” France: A long-simmering war between two tribes of the unclothed – “traditional” nudists and so-called “libertines” or exponents of free sex –...It's not the heat so much as the insanity
If I had a penny for every high school history textbook embracing Mohammed… My fellow Texans have gone loopy yet again: The Texas State Board of Education today passed a resolution warning textbook publishers to scrub their books of “gross pro-Islamic,...Sometimes proud to be an American?
Some conservatives enjoy branding the leftward the “blame America first” crowd. Of course, there’s kneejerk nationalism, then there’s a mature love of country that requires looking at faults and remedying them–in short, taking...Somebody call Tuva
In writing about local musician extraordinaire Matt Lorenz, I checked out this video of his one-man band setup. Actual throat singing! Hard to believe even when you see it:Flying By
I never know quite what to make of the emails I regularly receive from FlyBy News, a Valley-based site with, let’s say, a fin de siecle aesthetic, which embraces many a conspiratorial notion. It says, “Please consider reading all on this page. Otherwise...Michelangelo: God is love. And, like, a big brain.
Some neurosurgeon art fans say Michelangelo’s image of God in the Sistine Chapel is actually a diagram of the human brain. Can’t say why, exactly, but I think that’s a higher order of cool. If you will. Here’s the image–what do you think?...Maybe he ate the suet?
A birdwatcher in Ontario has claimed he saw a unicorn. I’m not sure what’s better–the video, or this, from the story (which is either itself a hoax or is very well-written by someone with tongue in cheek): In the meantime, the Science Centre is...The One Ring?
Hobbit fans unite: a possible real-life source for Lord of the Rings? I always feel bad for people who didn’t read Tolkien at the right age. Read it too early, it’s too complicated. Read it too late, it’s so full of dwarves and wizards and...Had there been no Colonel John Blashford-Snell, plus a liberal invasion?
Just as Edward Gorey isn’t what he appears to be–an Edwardian Brit–Colonel John Blashford-Snell is a man in the wrong time. In a story from the last few days, the UK’s Telegraph examines Blashford-Snell’s tale of exploration and...Chaos as evolution
New Scientist elaborates on the notion of a far more complex vision of evolution. Fascinating stuff: IN 1856, geologist Charles Lyell wrote to Charles Darwin with a question about fossils. Puzzled by types of mollusc that abruptly disappeared from the British fossil...Seven to Ten Days
We’ve always been plagued by notions that, say, Hitler’s name somehow translates to the number of the beast. Others have “calculated” the date of the apocalypse via a combination of selective wishful thinking and baroque schemes of number to...Rove sweat, Joe Tea
It’s always good to see Karl Rove sweat. Well, sweat in a metaphorical way. Always happy to miss the literal sort. Which reminds me–I once again saw that now-popular mangling of said term over the weekend. I believe it was a bottle of Joe Tea, which said...Hungry Hungry Hippos
I think the only truly useful long-term measure in politics is progress or regression in the fundamental principles we supposedly stand for. For me, that primarily means civil liberties, which Bush decimated and Obama has shown the merest twitch toward protecting. The...On the Down Side of Tuesday
First, please take just a few seconds and have a quick gander at this site. Terribly designed, but geez, what a load of Democratic challengers standing for net neutrality. 95 of them! The site, to its discredit, doesn’t say what net nuetrality is, and it’s...Jihadihoma!
I missed being born in Oklahoma by, give or take, a mile. Thank heavens. Because what would I do now that the turbaned jihadis are a heartbeat from imposing Sharia law on the fair hills of OK? It may seem fairly absurd that Oklahomans have passed a law banning judges...Give my stagecoach right of way, you blackguards
The music industry continues to believe that taking out windmills is the best way for Don Quixote to prevail. Me, I’m not in favor of music piracy either. I just think this is the most unimaginative way possible for the music industry to approach the issue....Tina Fey gets her political content trimmed
Why did PBS edit out the most contentious part of Tina Fey’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain prize? They say they edited for time. Check it out, via the Washington Post: “And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is...My New Favorite Nutter!
The religious flock from whence I sprung sometimes produces such a numbskull the rest of us smack our foreheads in dismay that this is the kind of rot people take as representative of Christianity. And this fellow is a high-ranking fundamentalist nutball. I give you...Completely teafuddled
The tea bag contingent has declared war on the corporations that, they say, have backed Obama’s policies. It’s not a bad idea for them, but one wonders when they will notice that nearly all corporations donate money to both parties, and traditionally favor...Facelifts and other diplomatic secrets we're not supposed to know…
The NYT’s decision to publish most of the Wikileaks diplomatic cables and their explanation of it offer an interesting look at some of the thorniest issues in media, regardless of what one thinks of Wikileaks. Perhaps it’s out there already, but what...I'd like a pile of speech, please, and make it unmarked 20s
David Bossie is head of Citizens United, the folks involved in the Supreme Court decision that’s allowing corporations to spend money on elections in an unfettered fashion. In an interview with TPM, Bossie offered a statement that succinctly sums up the state of...Hail the shining Blackbird
So yes, more of your civil liberties have been trundled off to the dead letter office as you slumbered, which is the usual synapse-crushing course of events these days. Enjoy your shopping. But on the positive side, there’s a mighty uptick in the number of...Chutes and Ladders
If you need some terrorism to prove that your anti-terrorism is working, sometimes you can use a little hot glue and some egg cartons and try to create some: The undercover FBI informant—a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh— …says he spied on...Dark Arts
Here in the future, artists conspire underground: “Stepping into the station was like stepping into a space outside of time. Utterly devoid of light, there was no way to mark the passage of time except for the occasional dull roar of a train in the distance. I...An ancient computer; Mona Lisa gets cryptic
And I thought it was pretty cool to build a Lego rocket. Someone has replicated the Antikythera mechanism with Legos. Said mechanism is an ancient artifact found on a sunken Greek ship that appears to have been a machine to calculate planetary motion. Here it is in...Land of the Free (TM)
The Washington Post explores the map of domestic spying in the U.S. with a remarkable gathering of information (two years in the making). It’s enough to make you say, “Well, if you haven’t done anything wrong…” Here’s the opening:...On the Horms of a dilemna
We inhabit one of those “many worlds” Hugh Everett talked about. I know this because, when I was a kid, “dilemma” was spelled “dilemna.” I swear it’s true. A surprising percentage of people who attended school between the...The Future, Where We Will All Spend the Rest of Our Lives
What did the great minds of 1931 predict for the far future year of 2011? An interesting find from a blog called Abnormal Use via a 1931 New York Times story. Nothing about flying cars or jetpacks–those obsessions seem to have arrived later. I know they were...From the Annals of Recapturing Lost Testosterone
The merits/demerits of aerial surveillance (which, I’m sure, is entirely non-representative of the kind of capabilities turned upon American citizens within our own borders) notwithstanding, you have to wonder who names this military stuff. The new system by...The Sublime, The Decider-in-Chief
Ever heard of Barbara Follett? Her story, first of remarkable literary prowess at a very young age, then of a disconsolate adulthood with a tragic and mysterious end, is the sort of thing that sounds like a myth. Just read a fascinating story about her here. From her...What now?
David Stockman is a former Reagan administration official who had a road-to-Damascus experience in which he realized supply-side and “trickle down” economics are in fact a massive cart of porcine effluvium (not to mention impossible to implement...Feelings, Nothing More Than
The little girl shot at Gabrielle Giffords’ event was in a book about children born on Sept. 11, 2001. Which makes her life one begun and ended in acts of political violence. Horrific. Now the fine folks of the Westboro Baptist Church plan to protest her...So were the birds gay?
America, we’re told, is “great.” That extraordinary piece of vagueness seems mostly to serve as a palliative. Still, from time to time, I think it’s possible to get glimpses of what people may mean by that. Today’s entrant, especially in...Not in the Club; A Sweet Disaster
92 years ago yesterday, molasses invaded Boston when a holding tank exploded: To this day on hot summer days in an old Boston neighborhood, residents swear that they can smell a vague odor of molasses. It’s a sweet-smelling reminder of a day when some 150 people...DIY CIA
It’s hard to say what’s the most terrifying thing about this NYT story on a private contractor sort of mini-CIA. Could be that it stands to foul up more-official efforts in foreign policy. Could be that private contractors shouldn’t be paid to do...Things Not to Do
Number 1: Urinate on Jorge Luis Borges’ grave. It may be necessary to read that brilliant, blind librarian’s works without considering his rather wholehearted embrace of Augusto Pinochet (and what he knew initially of the Operation Condor fascists’...The unreal Danger Zone
I don’t know who has the time to catch stuff like this (well, in this case, it may be a particularly zealous fan of certain cheesy movies), but today’s comedy award goes to whoever dug up this silly bit of dirt on the Chinese government. It seems that the...More Faux Patriotism; Death by Dairy
The stench of the Bush years is hard to wash out. Especially when the new man, the one you’d hoped might at least provide a pause in the destruction of civil liberties, isn’t precisely getting out the detergent to help you. Granted, this latest bit of...Non-Violence Still Works
Back when the largest protest marches in history failed to stop the Iraq War, it seemed like the power of non-violent protest had perhaps seen its sunset, giving way to the era of media and perception trumping direct action. How marvelous to witness a grand refutation...Public Broadcasting: the Right's Moby Dick?
Why, when all else fails, do the right wingers always return to this?: NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller spoke out on Saturday against a proposal by House Republicans to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The plan to get rid of federal money for the...Jim the Robot
One-upsmanship in “improving” Huckleberry Finn:E-Edition
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