The incisive and brilliantly written Belmont Club boasts the most insightful analysis of the game the large media are currently playing in:

Replaying the Tet

The leftwing media has hit upon the possible winning strategy of describing every event in the world as a setback for the Bush Administration. Both the attack by Hamas on a Jerusalem bus and the Israeli retaliatory execution of the perpetrator are portrayed as setbacks. The American acceptance of a United Nations refusal to guard its headquarters is a setback. The American attempt to improve cooperation with the UN to prevent further attacks is a humiliating admission of its indispensable legitimacy. The Afghan arrest of dozens of Taliban only proves that the threat has grown larger. Ten thousand wholly avoidable deaths due to a French heat wave illustrate the American culpability for Global Warming. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the Jews are about to be sued by the Egyptians (hat tip Across the Atlantic) for escaping during the Exodus. Yet despite the apparent inventiveness of the 'setbacks', the concept is wholly derivative. The Big Lie is a tactic as old as the Left itself. One in which they repose much confidence. In 1968 the press portrayed the disastrous North Vietnamese Tet offensive as a Communist victory and bluffed the real victors into retreating from the battlefield. Surely they can do it again?

Two problems stand in the fabulist's path. The first is that while the North Vietnamese had no ability to chase a retreating US army back to California the jihadists will almost certainly follow a withdrawing America right back to the streets of New York -- and London and Sydney. The second is the existence of alternative sources of news that make it impossible to sustain a Walter Duranty-like lie for very long. A fiction cannot be maintained when reality can make an imminent appearance. Perhaps if the Internet had never been invented by Al Gore.

People often end such an except by advising their readers to "read the whole thing." You might instead consider reading the whole site.

Click for Larger View
"The Kuiper belt formed more than four billion years ago when the solar system was just taking shape. Slow-moving gravel-sized debris at the solar system's edge gradually coalesced through gravitational attraction, eventually forming objects with a land area equal to large American states (a, b and c). Early in its history the Kuiper belt was a flattened disk (d), but later something—perhaps a passing star—disrupted the disk, accelerated the KBOs and sent them into more highly inclined orbits. Today the Kuiper belt is relatively thick (e), and when the fast-moving KBOs collide they break into smaller pieces (f)."

An intriguing illustration and caption from:American Scientist Online - Discovering the Edge of the Solar System (Subscription Required)

Recent discoveries suggest that planets larger than Pluto may exist in the outer reaches of our solar system.

If you were to fly a spaceship to the outer edge of our solar system, just beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, you would eventually pass through a field of icy bodies called the Kuiper Belt. Some of these are fairly small, about the size of a house, but others are nearly half the size of Pluto, itself a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). The KBOs are interesting for a couple of reasons: They appear to be remnants from the formation of our solar system, and they're the source of the short-period comets, those that take less than 200 years to go around the Sun.

One of the most distressing things about our retired pundits is that they fail to retire. Just when you'd hope that somebody who made millions blathering into a camera would just finally fade away to a robe, slippers and a hot, steaming cup of STFU, here they come again telling you to "leave your delusions at the door, sit down, open up wide for a big ole' slice of truth, with a side of wisdom."

Today we have Walter Cronkite with his mind-numbing "Ten propositions for the Democrats." It would seem that Uncle Walter is yet another of those crazy aunts in the Democrats’ very crowded attic who just can't stop doling out the platitudes about what exactly is wrong with the Democratic Party these days -- other than about nine walking, talking, stump-speaking examples. Walter's got a ten-point plan.
Oh, do not ask what is it.
Let us go and make our visit:

Not the least of the Democratic Party's problems in the presidential election ahead is the electorate's confusion as to just what the party stands for.

You've just got to watch that darned electorate. Those little people. They are confused, you see, while the Democratic Party is only suffering from a "failure to communicate." It doesn't seem to dawn on Cronkite that the people may not be the least bit confused about the Democratic party and, indeed, see it for what it has become: a collection of looneys choking on the collective hairball of George W. Bush. Not a pretty sight.

If the Democratic Party is to have hope of recapturing the White House, it will be helpful if its candidates for the presidential nomination agree on some basic objectives that will clearly define the principal policies and goals of their party.

Translation: We will expect the achievement of ovine aviation soonest.

Those basic goals still would leave plenty of room for the candidates to debate how best to achieve them and to display what they have in charisma and leadership.

Certainly. Wouldn't want to cut back on that Gephardt charisma or the leadership abilities of Sharpton. Dean could keep repeating how much a man of the people he is while Keary could dazzle us with those sharp suits and the ever evolving resemblance to Abe Lincoln without the beard and with the JFK haircut.

Let me dare suggest 10 propositions to be put before the candidates.

Okay, proceed with the daringness, Walter. Let it rip. Let it all hang out. Get jiggy with it.

1. That the purpose of a powerful military and a huge defense budget is not to wage war but to preserve the peace -- on our own shores and abroad.

How an army that does not wage war preserves peace is beyond me. Perhaps they simply run military exercises in Antarctica that are televised on MTV's Real World.

However, our foreign policy and our military strength shall leave no doubt that we will answer promptly and decisively those who would challenge our democratic freedoms.

Answer promptly? How? A candygram? But it will be decisively, I guess.
Memo to Al Queda --
Hurts. Make it stop.
Thanks,
Your Pals, The US State Department.
P.S. Need any more mad money for those schools? Just ask.

2. That we would match defense dollars with peace dollars to promote democracy abroad, and that we would conduct our foreign affairs in such a manner that other nations would wish to emulate our example and need not be bludgeoned into accepting our leadership.

Seems to me he's calling for either an immense increase in foreign aid or a drastic reduction in defense spending -- either way he needs to focus more clearly on "deficit financing" as in ....

3. That deficit financing is bad business, and that taxes must be fairly imposed, with the heavier burden placed on those most able to contribute.

Well, you have to spend money to make money. More importantly, you have to keep yourself and your society alive and secure to make money. Wars and recessions seem to me to be the time that you need to spend more in order to get out of wars and recessions. Taxes fairly imposed? No question. Heavier burden placed on those most able? Seems to me that the top tax rate is already on those most able. I guess Cronkite's already got his estate in a trust and his heirs are covered. The rest of you need to open your wallets more.

4. That our Social Security and health services would be reformed so that no American need fear that mismanagement in Washington will bankrupt his or her pension funds, and equally that every American is guaranteed not just adequate health care but care worthy of this nation's medical profession.

No argument here. I note that stopping mismanagement in Washington has been an ongoing project for over two centuries. We're certainly due for a breakthrough. As for "care worthy of this nation's medical profession" that would be the care from Cronkite's personal doctor, I imagine. Very expensive and not easy to get an appointment.

5. That in all federal programs no excuses will be tolerated and all citizens will be treated equally as we know they were created.

I surrender! I have no idea what this means.

6. That we realize that the success, indeed the preservation, of a democracy depends on an educated citizenry, and that teachers, on education's front lines, must be paid commensurate with their responsibilities.

Teachers on the "front lines" of education. Seems that in Walter's World (tm), teachers fight and armies teach. I'd prefer to pay teachers commensurate with their work load, too. The last time I looked they got three months off in the summer, plus all legal holidays, plus two weeks at Christmas, plus another two or three weeks at winter and spring break. That would make their total time off about five months out of the year. Is an average salary of, say, $44,000 for seven months work really that terrible. Works out to a bit over 5K a month for time on the job. Plus benefits, plus a pension for life of about 80% of top money earned after 25 years. I know that even the kindergarten teachers "work ten house days," but who doesn't? I must confess I just don't get the impoverished teacher meme. Perhaps, like many of the students they teach, they could get a summer job.

7. That "no child must be left behind" is a commitment, not a campaign slogan.

Now that's a snappy slogan.

8. That our environment shall be fully protected, and that the fortunes of no industry or special interest shall interfere with that mission.

Okay, everybody out of their cars and onto bicycles. That includes you, grandma.

9. That in the pursuit of a cleaner environment and a more rational economy, the government will undertake the massive program required to develop substitute fuels that will relieve our dependence on foreign oil and diminish the environmental danger from the byproducts of fossil fuels.

Say what? So far you've got us a budget that includes a global peace funding equal to military spending, universal health care, full environmental protection of everthing, and a "massive program to develop substitute fuels. Plus we need to eliminate the deficit. Might as well tack on progams to colonize the inner planets while we're at it. We all know Walter's got a special place for space in his heart and in his head.

10. That Democrats will lock the door against the naysayers, pessimists and political cowards who will maintain that these Democratic goals are only the dreams of idealists.

Brilliant. I'm for #10 since it would ensure that the Democratic party would be reduced to about 20% of its present size and no longer be a threat to the free world.

There is nothing impractical about seeking the best for this nation's people, and the restoration of America as a beacon of freedom for the world.

I'm not clear on what the other beacon of freedom is, Walter, but then again neither are the millions elsewhere in the world who would just love to come here and bask in the light of this dim beacon. But I'm sure you'll let us know the name of that far-distant country in a future article which, I trust, will be datelined from there.

It's a great relief that the brilliant David Warren is back on the job at ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES - - Nation-building. Where else would we get a dose of common sense like this:

Should the Americans withdraw from Detroit? While they have been able to hold Detroit since General Harrison recaptured it after the Battle of Lake Erie (in 1813), hardly a day now goes by in which there is not an ambush or a killing. The rate has been rising through Detroit's notoriously long hot summer.

If the standard is one killing per day -- the current average in Iraq is a little less than that -- then the U.S. should also withdraw from Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. An analysis of the statistics, in proportional terms, suggests further quick withdrawals from Memphis, Dallas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and of course, Washington, DC.

Pay no attention to the sycophantic supporters of the President, who argue that anything resembling a U.S. retreat will leave the world in chaos. These are the people who got the U.S. into the quagmire in the first place, by stepping aboard the Mayflower. They said the occupation of America would be a cakewalk. They said the Indians would dance in the streets when they arrived. Opinion is already shifting, and in New England, where people are much more angry with President Madison than with America's foreign enemies, opposition to the War of 1812 is running very high.

Dave Winer continues his plot to destroy a Web that has turned its back on him. When neither tears nor stamping his foot have worked, he decides to destroy it with sheer numbing boredom: Scripting News

All the Lydon interviews through August, in one download. Behrl, Cone, Daily Kos, Dean, Fisk, Gleick, Kinzer, Powell, Preacher, Reynolds, Scarry, Searls, Sifry, Slugger, Toynbee, Volokh, Weinberger, and yours truly. Catch up in a single 203MB download; suitable for beach listening.

Suitable for beach listening if you happen to be buried in the sand up to your neck below the high waterline.

St. Paul Wants $60 in tribute

No license? No pop stand, St. Paul tells 2 youngsters

Mikaela Ziegler, 7, and her 4-year-old sister, Annika, were selling refreshments Wednesday afternoon near the State Fairgrounds when a woman approached them. But she wasn't there to buy."She said, 'You can't sell pop unless you have a license,' " Mikaela said.

That's how it came to be that an inspector with St. Paul's Office of License, Inspections and Environmental Protection shut down Mikaela and Annika's pop stand.

Their outraged father, Dr. Richard Ziegler, called City Hall for an explanation. He was told that St. Paul is cracking down on unauthorized merchants and that his daughters would be free to hawk their beverages once they obtained a $60 license.

From the New York Post:

NEW YORK — With the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks only three weeks away, TV networks have planned nearly no special programming to commemorate the horrible events of that day.

From A Small Victory: no ordinary day

I want to remember. I never want to lose that memory of the smoky sky above Manhattan that I viewed from my office window. I want to remember Pete Ganci's wake and the sharpshooters atop my neighbor's house during the memorial service for Claude Richards, I want to remember the haunted look in my firefighter cousin's eyes and the look of despair on my father's face. I want to remember the chilling feeling of looking at a sky free of jumbo jets for days on end and the quiet, the unnerving quiet, that made those days after so surreal and chilling. I need to remember these things because to forget would be to spit in the face of every single person who died that day.

A man with a cabbage for a head
will never want for nourishment.
-- Minims by Tom Weller

Something that will, no doubt, appeal to a certain subset of the California Electorate:

Robert Anton Wilson For Governor

Robert Anton Wilson is running for Governor of the Republic of California as the unofficial write-in candidate for the Guns and Dope Party.
After refusing many pleas to run for governor,I have reconsidered and now enter the raceas an unofficial write-in candidate. Afterall, why shd I remain the ONLY nut in California who ain't running?

My party, the Guns and Dope Party, invites extremistsof both right and left to unite behind the shared goals of:

--Get those pointy-headed Washinton bureaucrats off our backs and off our fronts too!
--guns for everybody who wants them; no guns for those who don't want them
--drugs for everybody who wants them; no drugs for those who don't want them
--freedom of choice, free love, free speech,free Internet and free beer
--California secession: Keep the anti--gun and anti-dope fanatics on the Eastern side of the Rockies
--Lotsa wild parties every night by gun-toting dopers

Fatal flaw: Being a write-in candidate assumes your supporters can write.

Hoping We Fail: Who loses and who wins in the high-stakes poker in Iraq?
"All this hysteria and unrest should come as no surprise given the ambition of our endeavor, which is no less than a war of civilization to end both terrorism and the culture and politics that foster it. Still, let us ignore the self-interest of contemporary parties and reflect on the very scope of American audacity. In little more than three weeks, and coming on the heels of an amazing victory in Afghanistan, the American military defeated the worst fascist in the Middle East. Surrounded by enemies, and forced simultaneously to conduct the war against terrorism in dozens of countries and restore calm on the West Bank, the United States nevertheless sought to create consensual government and order under legal auspices in weeks — rather than the decades that were necessary in Japan and Germany, where elections took years and soldiers remain posted still. The real story is not that the news from Iraq is sometimes discouraging and depressing, but that it so often not — and that after two major-theater wars we have lost fewer people than on that disastrous day in Beirut 20 years ago, and less than 10 percent of the number that perished on September 11.

"It is no wonder that we have almost no explicit voices of support. Most nations and institutions will see themselves as losers should we succeed. And the array of politicians, opportunists, and hedging pundits find pessimism and demoralization the safer gambit than disinterested reporting or even optimism — given the sheer scope of the challenge of transforming Afghanistan and Iraq from terrorist enclaves and rogue regimes into liberal and humane states."
-- Victor Davis Hanson

The Utterly Admirable Goals of 2Blowhards:
"Two beyond-first-rate articles that Denis Dutton, the editor of Arts and Letters Daily, has written for the Oxford Handbook for Aesthetics are now online: "Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology" (here), and "Authenticity in Art" (here). One of our goals here at 2Blowhards is to help people who are eager to ditch the modernist/po-mo/decon straitjacket find threads that are more comfy, useful and sensible -- hence our championing of thinkers like Michael Oakeshott, Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros, Michael Polanyi, Ellen Dissanayake, Frederick Turner, Steven Pinker, V. S. Ramachandran and others. Dutton's at the top of this list, both with articles like these and with ALD itself."
-- 2 Blowhards

"Cruz Bustamante" sounds like a porn star name
-- Bitter Sanity

Jane Galt on Tom Friedman's linguistic anomalies:
[Begin Friedman]"Let's start with mentality. We are not "rebuilding" Iraq. We are "building" a new Iraq — from scratch. Not only has Saddam Hussein's army, party and bureaucracy collapsed, but so, too, has the internal balance between Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, which was held together by Saddam's iron fist. Also, the reporting on Iraq under Saddam rarely conveyed how poor and rundown Saddam had made it. Iraq today is the Arab Liberia. In short, Iraq is not a vase that we broke to remove the rancid water inside, and now we just need to glue it back together. We have to build a whole new vase. We have to dig the clay, mix it, shape it, harden it and paint it. (This is going to cost so much more than President Bush has told us.) [End Friedman]

Behind this metaphor, we suspect, is the ghost of some well-meaning but incoherent sixth grade composition teacher. "Be original!" she proclaimed, and when the children bombarded her with their original, if somewhat inapt metaphors, she beamed like the sun rising over the silver-white beaches of Honolulu on a verdant spring morn.

Original it certainly is, but what does it mean? It gives us uncomfortable visions of what happens in the Friedman household when the flowers have finally gone where the woodbine twineth: there is Thomas, preparing to smash yet another wedding present on the flagstone floor (which has just been installed at great expense); there is his wife, pleading. "Tom," she says, with a voice worn hoarse by years of steady sorrow, "Tom, we don't have to break the vase. We could just pour out the water through the hole in the top."
-- Asymmetrical Information

Roger Simon is getting hungry for the good old Demonstration Days:
"I've been living in California a long time and the recent dust up about Cruz Bustamente and MECHA takes me back to the days when we were all marching for La Raza on Brooklyn (now Cesar Chavez) Avenue with Corky Gonzales and the Brown Berets and Cheech Marin was smoking some "heavy shit, man." Good times and not particularly scary times. The Chicano community was on the side of the angels and the Brown Berets never seemed as extreme as the Panthers for some reason. Maybe it was those East LA tamales (you can get great ones now at Juanito's, although some prefer La Mascota on Whittier Blvd.)"
-- Roger Simon Private Eye Scribe

Every so often you see something so disturbing that you despair of the future of the human race. This pear-shaped youth's web page, the aptly named jwag's thingee is a case in point.

Setting out to prove, once and for all, that this country has entirely way too much food, the hapless master jwag decided to devour, at one sitting, a 20x20 Cheeseburger at "In-and-Out Burger." For the uninitiated, this means a cheese burger consisting of a bun and 20 beef patties glued together with 20 Slices of American Cheese.

The callow jwag's site states that he is 18 and, hence, the idea of parental supervision is out of the question. No, he is now of the age in which he is entirely responsible for his quest to become a human speed bump. God speed say I.

However, as he heads off on his quest of a coronary event the size of Manhattan, he leaves behind a photographic record (linked above) of one young man's unremitting love for his gullet. This is a service, possibly his last, to the rest of humanity since one look at his photojournal will be enough to turn the most dedicated carnivore into a raging vegetarian. Here are some "choice' excerpts:

Warning: Do not click for larger view on a full stomach.

Via Kottke

There's a lovely selection of skillfully rendered nudes by San Francisco artist and photographer David Newman at this web gallery:Works on Paper

As Newman states:

Although I shared some of the images with friends as the works were created, this is the first time these works have been seen together on the web.

Newman, who studied with west coast masters such as Wayne Theibaud and Dave Gilhooly, but fortunately missed out on Mel Ramos, has put together an impressive selection in a wide range of mediums, all distinguished by a sinuous line. Worth more than a passing glance.

From "Conversations with Trees" as published in the latest edition of "Gatherings: Seeking Ecopsychology."

Hey Folks: I think I just wanted to tell you about Tree. Does anyone else on the list talk to trees?
I do, I must admit.

I don't remember what first attracted me to Tree (as I imaginatively called her). I think I was just biking along, on my way home from somewhere, taking the scenic route through the park, when I saw Tree and felt like she was calling to me. So I went. I introduced myself, in the way an elf (or a "crazy" person) might.

I talked to Tree, and in response I felt the calm, rooted presence of one who silently observes much. From that day on, I would visit Tree every now and then. Sometimes I would just send a hello from the path as I whizzed by. Often I would stop, just to touch her trunk, to smell her treeness, even (I admit with some self-consciousness) to taste her bark with my tongue.

Photograph by Van der Leun

Fresh off the rack at The Ranger Quartermaster comes an item sure to be popular among our armed forces: 72 Virgins Dating Service T-Shirt

The Ranger explains:

Yes, we're scratching the surface of 'political incorrectness' here, but war is an ugly thing - and if you're an individual whose hellbent on martyrdom by attacking America or her deployed servicemen and women we'd like to see you hooked up with 72 Virgins as soon as possible.

Found via: Darren Kaplan

One of the finest online essayists, David Warren is back from vacation with a troubling but perceptive essay: One-A-Day.

He notes the mounting media campaign to reverse the gains in Iraq and to convince the American people to go back to sleep. The question at the end is:

The question on my mind is thus, will the Americans funk out? And the only thing I can say for sure, is that if they do, it will be an unparalleled disaster. For 9/11 itself was the payback for the last U.S. funk-out from its responsibilities as a superpower.

He's correct.

The Memo to Israel from Palestine published here on August 22 has just been picked up by the Arutz Sheva - Israel National News

Date: To Be Determined
To: The Palestinian People
From: The People of Israel

Re: Final Notice Before the Termination of Our Relationship
(To be filed in your "Permanent Conduct Record")

As you know from our repeated meetings over many years, we have repeatedly done our best to accommodate your incessant demands regarding employment, compensation, housing allowances, health benefits, and other items of mutual interest as we have endeavored to work together on "Project Peace in the Middle East."

More at the link above.

What can I say other that I am very pleased and flattered.

A few days ago, in a moment of concern for James Lileks' mental stability, earlier this week I ever-so-gently chided him for his Soundtrack offerings.

"I've sampled his gift and all I can say is that, whatever other talents this man has, he won't be getting signed by DefJam records any time soon."

Today I read in The Bleat

Fire up Soundtrack and make another MP3? No, I’ve learned my lesson. You’ll get no more of those, you’ll be glad to hear.

The very first pop-cult reference that sprang into my mind upon reading those words was: "You may say to yourself, 'My God! What have I done?"

My next thought was, 'How can I make some fawning and obsequious apology in order to be forgiven, not only by Likeks, but by the untold legions of fans who were no doubt collecting his MP3s for a bootleg compilation titled "Gettin' Jiggy with BleatMaster?" I can see the plagiarized email now:

"You bastard! You vicious, heartless bastard! Look what you've done to him! He's moused his fingers to the bone to make his MP3s what they are, and you come in with your petty feeble quibbling and you grind his music into the dirt, this fine, honourable man, whose boots you are not worthy to kiss. Oh... it makes us mad... mad!"

Perhaps I could plead my long time devotion to his site, my wallowing in his Fargo pages since they reminded me of my long ago summers in Fargo with my grandparents and cousins. I could tell him that my Dad ran a filling station to and that my mother was raised in Fargo, that the McNairs are still there; that our shared roots go deep into the fine, rich mid-western loam. Pathetic. I might as well plead my belly.

Maybe I could pluck some art out of the deeper regions of his site and, by carefully cropping it, make it a kind of "homage." No. Been there, done that, have the T-shirt. He'd just sue me for compilation copyright infringement.

Knowing that Lileks views with deep suspicion anything with the word "American" in the title, I could let the site go belly up, donate the URL to Readers Digest and port everything over to LiveJournal. No, that wouldn't be enough. I'd still be hunted down by his fans and deathspammed.

No, there's no hope for me now. No way I can make amends. A promising musical career has been crushed and tossed aside by my thoughtless words. I must accept full responsibility. For my penance I have vowed to wear nothing but Dorcus Loungewear from now until the last ding-dong of doom, or until released by the better angels of Lileks' nature. Until then it is obvious I am under self-imposed house arrest. But I live in hope.

Author's Fate and a Cry for Mercy

This morning these two images were presented next to each other on the Yahoo News Photo Site:

The engraved granite plaque honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he gave his 'I have a Dream' speech nearly 40 years ago.

Workers move the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the State Judicial building in Montgomery, Alabama

“I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
-- Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream” -- Fortieth Anniversary on This Day

Buccaneers

Yes, it is that time again. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I've noted before that Michael Totten is "the Swiss Army Knife of Online Commentators," but he really stunned me today by bringing out a whole new blade; a short story. And a brilliant short story at that. Making a clear departure from the usual content of his page, Totten takes you to South America in The Argentine's Ice Box

A wag on his comments board suggested that this might be the first example of "pundit-fiction," but I disagree. This is simply fine fiction in a new format. I know that there are short stories scattered about the Web but they are rarely readable. This one is.

The Argentine's Ice Box
A short story by Michael J. Totten

If you walk into a restaurant named Henry’s and find a man sitting alone at a table who is from anywhere outside the Patagonian desert, you’ll spot him as an outsider even if you’re an outsider yourself. It’s in the eyes, the posture, and the set of the mouth.

So when I opened the door and saw Andre in the corner with his rumpled button-up shirt, scribbling in a notebook under a pair of reading glasses, I knew I had found my companion for the evening. The bartender and other patrons flicked their eyes at me, just long enough to peg me as a foreigner, but quickly enough to show indifference. A man throwing darts by himself sized me up as he threw a bulls eye. But Andre looked at me over his glasses and raised his eyebrows. It was almost like a plea.

Died with her boots on at the end of a big life

Connie Reeves, a Cowgirl Until the End, Dies at 101

Connie Reeves, who was very likely America's oldest cowgirl, died in San Antonio on Aug. 17, 12 days after she was thrown from her horse, Dr Pepper. She was 101.

She was riding her favorite horse, a 28-year-old paint, on the morning of Aug. 5 when Dr Pepper threw her over its head. Her neck was broken, but she was not paralyzed, The Kerrville (Tex.) Daily Times reported. The Associated Press said she died of cardiac arrest.

John Derbyshire's lucid on Christianity in America sums up in a few paragraphs exactly what is wrong with the current kerfuffle over the monument to the Ten Commandments dust-up. In the process he puts a lot more than Moore in perspective:

There is a war on: People who hate America are working day and night to destroy us. Just a few months ago they murdered 3,000 of us, and brought down two of our noblest buildings. Manufacturing jobs are long gone, and middle-class paper-shuffling jobs are following them fast. Public-sector unions are pillaging our state treasuries to fund their 50-90 programs (retire at 50 on 90 percent of your salary). Meanwhile, trial lawyers are chewing their way like termites through the private sector. We have 13 million illegal immigrants scoffing at our laws and helping themselves to the welfare provisions that citizens have spent their lifetimes funding through taxes. Two million of us are currently in jail, and the one-eighth of our population that is black supplies one-half of those inmates. Our education systems are collapsing under absurd demands that "no child be left behind" — everyone must be above average! — and hundreds of thousands of citizens have fled those systems in disgust to school their kids at home. Our universities are in the hands of nihilist ideologues who hate their own nation, culture and ancestors. The political system has seized up, impossible-to-cut spending programs crashing head on into impossible-to-raise tax rates. Drop a cigarette butt into some power generator in Cleveland and you can shut down the northeastern U.S.A. for a day. A North Korean nuke has been smuggled across the Mexican border and hidden in a filing cabinet on the 102nd floor of the Sears Tower. (I made that up, but if it hasn't actually happened yet, it won't be long.)

And action to deal with all these problems is massively hindered by the fact that we can't even talk about them in public for fear of being branded with one of the half-dozen modern equivalents of the scarlet letter — "racist," "nativist," "elitist," "profiler," and the rest of the idiot schoolmarmish cant we hear from the guardians of our public virtue.

In short, we are going to hell in a hand basket here, and all you liberals can think of is to jab your finger in the eyes of 46 percent of your fellow citizens over some footling dubious point of Constitutional law? Just ask yourselves — please, please, ask yourselves: Is Roy's Rock really a proper target for my zeal, my energy, my passion, my money? Is my reaction to it in any kind of proportion to any harm it might conceivably do?

'Most-wanted' posters of Saddam, dead sons released

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Coalition officials Wednesday released a new series of "most-wanted" posters for Saddam Hussein, announcing the $25 million reward for the former Iraqi leader whose image is shown next to photos of his sons, killed last month by U.S. forces.

Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers in Baghdad will distribute thousands of leaflets featuring the images, as well as other brochures offering rewards of up to $10,000 for information about anti-coalition activities, according to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The two most-wanted posters show a picture of Saddam's face, next to images of his sons with large X's over their faces, offering up to $25 million for "any information leading to the arrest or proof of death of Saddam Hussein."

The "Coalition Provisional Authority" tag up the right side of the poster is a deft touch.

In his fawning review of a rock festival showcasing the The Mad Capsule Markets at the Fuji Rock fest, critic Craig Francis loses control of his writerly functions:

"The crowd, a slam-dancing, crowd-surfing mass, was definitely a factor in the absolute buzz of seeing this trio in action. They leapt and crashed into each other as if they had spicy hot wasabi smeared in their collective underpants."

At the always fascinating and persistently brilliant kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products, Jason Kottke is out to slash the space out of "Web Log" and make the world safe for the "Weblog."

When dealing with words generated by the Internet, where people stick bits of different words together with reckless abandon, I can understand the need for high-quality newspapers and magazines to use the proper grammatical approach in dealing with compound words, hyphens, etc. At first blush, "weblog" appears to be a shortened version of "web log" which is in turn a shortened version of "World Wide Web log", in which case the usage the media has adopted would be more or less correct ("Web log" would probably be more correct). But the evidence doesn't support this...

He's right. It doesn't. Check the links for a fascinating tour into the origins of this medium. That's your assignment for today. Will there be a quiz? Are you kidding? It's August.

Click for much larger image

Funny, this is NASA's most Highly Detailed World Map to date but you still can't see any borders or nations.

This image of the world was generated with data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The SRTM Project has recently released a new global data set called SRTM30, where the original one arcsecond of latitude and longitude resolution (about 30 meters, or 98 feet, at the equator) was reduced to 30 arcseconds (about 928 meters, or 3045 feet.) This image was created from that data set and shows the world between 60 degrees south and 60 degrees north latitude, covering 80% of the Earth's land mass. The image is in the Mercator Projection commonly used for maps of the world.

Two visualization methods were combined to produce the image: shading and color coding of topographic height. The shade image was derived by computing topographic slope in the northwest-southeast direction, so that northwest slopes appear bright and southeast slopes appear dark. Color coding is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lower elevations, rising through yellow and tan, to white at the highest elevations.

Howard Dean plays a harmonica
for a supporter and a group of friends l
istening by cell phone on a bus
in New Braunfels, Tex.

When this great white hope gets to my town, I'm going to meet him with a tuba, a baby and a web cam. Stay tuned.

Organized crime behind Sobig?

Peter Simpson, manager of ThreatLab at Clearswift, warned that antivirus companies and the media have become so obsessed with the unprecedented numbers surrounding the prolific Sobig.F variant that the real dangers are going almost unnoticed....

"Sobig smashed all the records in terms of pure numbers, but that's not nearly the whole story," said Simpson. "This is the sixth in a series of controlled experiments. This isn't about some kiddy writing viruses in his bedroom--this is really a very sophisticated example of organized crime."

And he believes there may be far worse to come.

James Lileks in a Very Bad State of Mind

The Sensitive and Compassionate Bloggers of the United States of America ("SenComBlogUSA's") will recognize in James Lileks' latest Bleat a desperate cry for help. And we must, because we are Sensitive and Compassionate people, give it to him.

Yes, it is clearly a time for massive web intervention in order to save this living web treasure from himself.

The cause of his current "condition" is obvious: He needs to "spend more time with his family."

"The family’s been gone since Thursday, and today was the first day it actually seemed like they were gone; this must be what it’s like when workaholics get fired and find out that the family they last remembered as a collection of vague faces around t he Christmas tree had actually moved away several years before. Explains why the laundry was piling up, I suppose."

Constant readers will know that Lileks is the uber-family man and any extended time spent away from the wife and the Gnat causes him to go slowly mental. I've been watching this process for several days and it is not a pretty sight. The degeneration is slow at first and then becomes increasingly frightening as the days drag on. The dishes pile up, the bed goes unmade, weeds sprout through the pavement at Jasperwood, the dog starves...

His condition is now peaking:

"Got to meet some charming people; spent the first part of the cruise hanging in the front with the popular kids. By the end of the ride I was tired and I had a jackhammer headache; shouting and standing in the sun and two vodka-tonics will do that to you."

Cruising aimlessly about. Seeking to hang with the popular. Sunstroke. Mysterious headaches. Alcohol. All the elements begin to add up, don't they?

"That night Hugh, Medved, [ .... ], the Giant Swede and the Crazy Uke came over for supper, and that was . . . well, it was just very cool. As the Uke said at one point, 'what happens in Minnesota stays in Minnesota.' "

Sigh. Strange companions such as radio talk show hosts, some dealer in strange meds, a bulky Swede, and another man so disturbed as to play the ukelele. All hunkering down at Jasperwood to, perhaps, indulge in alcohol and char slabs of meat over open flames before gnawing them down in large dripping gobbets. The mind shudders and the heart goes out to Lileks.

And then, in a single sentence, we see the collapse of a great mind:

"Yes, me an writer! And a gud one! The high point of the high point!

See what I mean? I’ve hit the wall."

If only he had "hit the wall," but no, no....

" That night I watched a movie, but halfway through I got the itch to sample the dialogue and make another MP3 out of it all. My sad gift to you."

I've sampled his gift and all I can say is that, whatever other talents this man has, he won't be getting signed by DefJam records any time soon.

I suppose, like other men afflicted with the temporary loss of their family, Lileks is blissfully unaware of his slide into dementia. Because of this it is up to the "SenComBlogUSA's" to leave their screens and small rooms across the United States, spread out, locate and return his family to him as quickly as possible.

Our choice is clear. We can either rescue James Lileks from his summer vacation or we can turn the page.

Remember: The Bleat you save could be your own.

Just a sample of the full page. Click on the "this" below for the full effect.

The must read comic of the day, week, month.Thanks to Cold Fury for lighting the way to The Lemon's brilliant depiction of the current news cycle.

Who needs the Onion - which is now mired to the wheel-wells in the Doonesbury fever swamp of tired old liberal orthodoxy feebly masked as satire - when you have stuff like this at the Lemon?

In case you didn't notice, he's right about The Onion as well. Too bad, they had such nice aspirations.

Found at the ever-so-sweet bitter sanity:

Wait, I thought "Chutzpah" was a Yiddish word...

I admit I'm really hoping that the Onion has hacked MEMRI, but if not, it seems a group of Arabs resident in Switzerland is suing all Jews because, they allege, during the Exodus they took not only themselves, but trillions of tons of gold, along with jewels, silver, and kitchen utensils (??).

Dr. Hilmi: [...] a group of Egyptians in Switzerland has opened the case of the so-called 'great exodus of the Jews from Pharaonic Egypt.' At that time, they stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless."

I believe the United States is currently shipping about $3 Billion a year to Egypt. No wonder these guys can live in Switzerland.

This one snuck by the censors at Amazon attached to Richard Pryor's Is It Something I Said?

"this is what happened. this is what happened. did u get it now???? we were always all walking around and learning from one another in search for a proponderance that made some kinda cents. then we discovered that there is no write or ron...."

We don't know about Ron, what we want to know is where is the Bozofilter when you really need it?

The waffling global mindset that caused the bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad last week is nicely framed by the brilliant Mark Steyn in: Iraq is battlefield for war vs. terror

Well, that's the luck of the draw at the UN, where so far this year Libya, Iraq and Syria have found themselves heading up the Human Rights Commission, the Disarmament Committee and the Security Council. The UN's subscription to this charade may be necessary in New York, but what's tragic is that they seem to have conducted their affairs in Baghdad much the same way. Offers of increased U.S. military protection were turned down. Their old Iraqi security guards, all agents of Saddam's Secret Service there to spy on the UN, were allowed by the organization to carry on working at the compound. And sitting in the middle of an unprotected complex staffed by ex-Saddamite spies was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the individual most directly credited with midwifing East Timor into an independent democratic state. Osama bin Laden (or rather whoever makes his audiocassettes) and the Bali bombers have both cited East Timor as high up on their long list of grievances: the carving out, as they see it, of part of the territory of the world's largest Islamic nation to create a mainly Christian state. Now they've managed to kill the fellow responsible. Any way you look at it, that's quite a feather in their turbans.

The atmosphere of recrimination, cowardice and appeasement that thickens daily is also listed by Steyn:

At the moment, there's only one hyperpower (the United States), one great power (the United Kingdom) and one regional power (Australia) that are serious about the threat of Islamist terrorism. There's also Israel, of course, but Israel's disinclination to have its bus passengers blown to smithereens is seen as evidence of its ''obstinacy'' and unwillingness to get the ''peace process'' back ''on track.'' What a difference it would make if one or two other G-7 nations were to get serious about the battle and be a reliable vote in international councils. But who? France? It's all business to them, unless al-Qaida are careless enough to blow up the Eiffel Tower. Canada? Canadians get blown up in Bali, murdered in Iran, tortured in Saudi Arabia, die in the rubble of the UN building in Baghdad--and their government shrugs. Belgium? They'd rather issue a warrant for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld than Chemical Ali.

This article is not just worth reading, it is worth thinking about as well. It is unclear what it will take for the nations of the civilized world to finally pull together to eliminate the people, forces, institutions and beliefs that threaten them, but it will obviously have to be something far more terrible than we have seen to date. And it will come.

"... still under the staircase, two CD storage units ... PlayStation games ... two shelving units with boxed NES games... most of the Sega Master System boxed games... Sega Saturn games ... stacked up to the right." ....Aieeeeeeeee!

A brilliant nine-year-old boy of my acquaintance would like nothing better than to spend the next ten years of his life in The ULTIMATE Game Room. Yes, there would be the need to resupply him with food and drink. Yes, he would have to, at widely scattered moments, dash to and from the bathroom. Yes, his studies and his opportunities for higher education and a comfortable life would vanish like the highland mist. None of this would matter. He'd grow to manhood within the confines of these walls happy as a cow in clover. Indeed, I don't think I'll show him this site for fear it will drive him to emulate "The Room of Doom." Even in this permissive day and age, you do have to protect children from some things.

Found via Muxway and just digging out from having been ruthlessly slashdotted a few days ago, The Ultimate Game Room (aka "The Room of Doom") is a shining example of what one man's unfettered obsession with video games can produce:

North wall: when you open the closet behind the hanging marquees, this is what you see. Game Gear, Arcadia, Vectrex, Game.com, books, and miscellaneous peripherals are kept in here. Note the "gun rack" on the door.

South Wall: packed in under the staircase are a PC-FX, Video Brain and some oddball peripherals. Also my Sega 32X and Atari 7800 games. under the Pac-man pillow is an Odyssey frisbee and a CD storage cabinet with PlayStation games.

West Wall: the rest of the Genesis collection is here. The monitor is dedicated to a MAME-dedicated PC with a HotRod SE arcade quality joystick. Behind the table is a complete TurboGrafx-16 HuCard collection and a portion of a complete Sega CD collection.

And so on... really something amazing to see and frightening to contemplate.

A subset of Digital Press whose purpose is summed up on the home page by:

Digital Press Online is dedicated to the "Pac-rats" among video gamers... short attention spans, library-sized collections, consoles precariously wired in spider-web fashion... Sound like you?

Well, no. But it certainly sounds like a lot of other people I know. Still, I have to confess that if I was teleported into the middle of "The Room of Doom" with a case of Jolt and a couple of roast chickens, it might be a week or two before I could find the door.

Click to enlarge

From Chris Muir's brilliant Day by Day. If you are not following this strip day by day you need to ask yourself why.

California Republican Bill Simon drops out of Davis recall race

LOS ANGELES – Republican Bill Simon dropped out of the gubernatorial recall race Saturday amid calls from party leaders to consolidate support behind fewer candidates, a campaign official said.

Falling Water: Nature Has Had It's Way
with Her from Day One

Michael at the erudite and too deprecatingly named 2Blowhards is busy committing his usual heresy. In no uncertain terms he declares: Frank Lloyd Wright Is Not God

Simple question: Would you want to live in one of his houses? I wouldn't, for two main reasons.

Most important is the way a Frank Lloyd Wright house never becomes your home; instead, you move in and become the curator of one branch of the Frank Lloyd Wright museum. You're just the custodian in a monument to his genius.

For the other, I wouldn't want to be in charge of (let alone pay for) the upkeep. Wright couldn't resist trying out innovative building techniques -- which has meant in practice that many of his houses are in semi-constant need of expensive repair.

As for the art and moral values his work is celebrated for -- openness, naturalness, a casual, flowing informality -- well, let's see. His ceilings are often very low -- uncomfortably low. Why? Because he was a vindictive short man who was resentful of taller people, and he liked ceiling heights that make tall people feel uneasy. Flowing and open? Sure: his use of space is often fascinating in an aesthetic sense. But in a human sense, it works only if you subscribe to the whole package -- if you don't mess with how and where he wants the furniture placed and the light to fall. It all works together or it doesn't work at all -- which is impressive but a pain. (There's nothing quite like being locked into someone else's concept, particularly when what you want to do is kick back in the comfort of your own home.)

As far as I can tell, and from what the owners of one house told me, his buildings are about as unadaptable as buildings can be. And those long horizontal lines which we're told are such eloquent reflections of the American landscape and psyche? Well, they collect water and leak, and the water drips down into the walls, and ....

All in all an estimable estimation of a man who has, like all men, been overrated since his death. From all accounts, dealing with Wright when alive was like dealing with a man who had mistaken himself for God. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Michael also goes on to note something that I caught my attention in the Wall Street Journal: the shabby state of that most iconic of Wright buildings, Falling Water. I realize that irony is dead, but for just a moment it sprang back to life when I learned that this house was broken from the day before it was finished. The price tag to bring it back to snuff? A cool $11 million.

Oh well, I suppose it is a mere bagatelle when you think of all the photos that the house has spawned, from the same angle, year after year and decade after decade.

Falling Water seems to be eternally spared from the wrecking ball, but, if I recall the Journal’s article correctly, the same cannot be said for a number of the other 100 odd Wright homes in existence. The reason? They sit on some fine sites, but nobody wants to live in their tiny rooms any longer.

I'd score the whole thing six, six and one even for Wright. I mean, Falling Water's a nice house, but I wouldn't want to live there.

"Whoa, gotta cut back on the spicy krill."

Some scientists are willing to take great risks in pursuit of their calling, but there is such a thing as going too far: Whale flatulence stuns scientists [14aug03]

IT'S one of the unfortunate consequences of being a mammal - flatulence.

And, more unfortunately for a group of whale researchers, nature took its course right under their noses - literally.

The researchers claim this is the first photograph of a minke whale letting one go in the icy waters of Antarctica. It was taken from the bow of a research vessel. "We got away from the bow of the ship very quickly ... "

From the terse but always interesting Muxway "Very Big Machine"

Fair warning: the image is about 1.6 megs in size and, broadband or not, will eat your browser.

(Click for larger image)

FLOWERS by Katinka Matson

"For the past several years I have experimented with non-photographic techniques for creating images by utilizing input through a flatbed CCD scanner. No photographs are employed in the process."

When smoking is banned smokers don't get angry, they just get drunk-- Enter the nicotini: Smoking ban leads to tobacco-infused drink

Forget the cosmopolitan. Set aside the mojito. A new drink has emerged on trendy Las Olas Boulevard since restaurants were forced to ban smoking -- the nicotini.Call it a liquid cigarette because this drink comes complete with the nicotine rush and tobacco aftertaste found in a pack of Camels. These tobacco-spiked martinis are being served up for die-hard smokers who don't want to leave their barstools and go outside to light up.Larry Wald, the owner of the Cathode Ray Club, came up with the homemade brew as he searched for ways to help smokers cope with the new smoke-free atmosphere Florida voters ordered last fall. Soak tobacco leaves in vodka overnight, deaden the juice's harshness by adding a couple other liquors, and voilﾈ, the nicotini of Las Olas.

In Unorthodox Thoughts about Asymmetric Warfare, published in the current edition of PARAMETERS, the US Army War College Quarterly, Montgomery Meigs writes this eerily prescient passage:

Technology plays a critical role in this new equation. Strategically, from financial markets to transportation systems to electric power grids, standards of living worldwide depend fundamentally on integrated technical systems that are susceptible to idiosyncratic threats. The operational structures upon which campaigns depend have similar attributes. These systems may have internal safeguards against failure in normal operations, but they do not have an ability to avoid catastrophic failure when they are interrupted or attacked in an unexpected, unanticipated, and peculiar way that generates cascading or accelerating effects.

The Northeast blackout of 9 November 1965 provides a useful example. At 5:16 p.m. on that day, an overcurrent relay on a transmission line from the Beck power plant outside of Toronto tripped and shut down one of six lines carrying power from that plant into the Canadian power grid that served Ontario. In 2.5 seconds -- to protect Beck’s generators from overload -- shutdowns rippled through the Canadian system, closing off the five other lines from the plant. The transmission systems in Ontario were linked to systems in New York. When the demand from Ontario went off-line, Beck’s output surged into the power grid in New York, almost doubling throughput. The overload began to surge through the US grid, threatening generation plants all over the Northeast. To protect their own generators, private utilities took their systems off-line, forcing the large public utilities to follow suit. In a total of four seconds, the Northeast went completely dark.4 The blackout represents the potential for catastrophic failure of technologically intensive systems with high degrees of interdependence. If one can find a weakness through which safety factors can be overloaded or bypassed, then manipulate the system in a self-destructive, eccentric manner, he can cause imploding, catastrophic failure.

The principle also applies in military operations. If one can attack the center of gravity of an operational system in an idiosyncratic manner with weapons or a combination of weapon systems that the opponent does not possess—or, even better, does not even understand or perceive—then the perpetrator can achieve catastrophic failure of that system, whether the target is a transportation network or an integrated command and control grid. The potential effect increases to the degree that the system is technologically intensive and functionally or geographically integrated.

And now we have a second example.

The intifada was unleashed during negotiations and concessions. The World Trade Center and Pentagon were bombed in a time of peace after a decade of forbearance in the face of continual affronts. The killing in Afghanistan focuses on aid workers and restorers. And the U.N. complex in Baghdad was not a casualty of war, but rather targeted during the postbellum efforts to feed, clothe, and rebuild civil society. There is a pattern here.

From:Victor Davis Hanson : Phase Three?
The enemy is growing desperate.

In the Opinion section of Salon's home page today:

"Tina Brown is on vacation "

Now if only they could get her to stay there and join her.

You make over $250,000 a year and still can't afford a house.

You work 10 miles away, and it takes you an hour to drive there.

Your child's third grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Breeze.

It's sprinkling outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

You can't remember ... is pot legal?

You've been to a baby shower for an infant who has two mothers and a sperm donor.

You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

You know which restaurant serves the freshest arugula.

You can't remember ... is pot legal?

A really great parking space can move you to tears.

The guy in line at Starbucks, wearing the baseball cap, sunglasses, and looks like George Clooney, IS George Clooney.

Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, and your Mary Kay rep is in drag.

It's sprinkling out, and there's a report on every news channel about "THE STORM!"

Hey ... is pot legal?

Over 85% of the cities, towns, and streets start with San, Los, El, La, Santa, De La, or De Los.

Two overcast days in a row drive you mad.

A family of four owns six vehicles, 5 cell phones, 4 tv sets and 5 computers.

Everyone who lives here knows that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and snowstorms are way worse than earthquakes, which are, after all, over almost as soon as you realize what's happening.

Even if the store is across the street, you drive there.

Yeah, you're sure...? pot is legal.

And finally, a question:

Q. How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. Californians cannot afford to turn on the lights.

Source: The Braden Files

“Come On Down to Crazy Kofi’s! Our Security is INSANE!”

The US just can't catch a break from the towering pile of greed and ineptitude that goes by the name of the United Nations. Following the deadly 1,000 pound car bomb attack that reduced its headquarters to rubble, one of the first orders of business from Annan was to blame the US for not stopping it. Of course, a bit later, we learn that it was the UN's own lassitude and vision of itself as a benevolent entity that doomed over 20 UN workers in the Attack on the UN in Iraq

It emerged Wednesday that amid the rubble are the remains of what would have been a concrete barrier that the UN had begun to build to prevent vehicles packed with explosives from being parked near the compound -- as happened Tuesday with devastating results. At least 20 people were killed, including two Canadians.

Building the planned 12-foot barrier earlier might have made a difference, UN officials conceded.

Oh, yes, it "might have made a difference." We thought this little lesson was learned long ago in Lebanon by the US Marines: "First you dig in and then you hand out the candy bars." Must have slipped the UN's mindset. It would seem that the UN has such a high opinion of itself as the world's primo humanitarian relief agency that it feels nobody in their right mind would harm it.

Alas, the truth is that Iraq is now home to the world's major surplus of people who are not in their right mind; people who, indeed, have no right mind at all; people whose idea of a having a good day is to kill others in massive quantities whenever possible.

Annan rejected, however, Washington's reasoning that UN officials in Baghdad had refused offers by U.S. forces in Iraq to protect the compound.

"Nobody (asks) you if you want the police to patrol your neighborhood," he said as he returned to UN headquarters after cutting short his holiday in Europe. "They make the assessment that patrol and protection is needed, and then they start, and that's what should be done in Iraq."

Let’s get this straight. According to Annan the US is at fault because it didn’t act like the cop on the block without being asked? According to other sources, the US offered security -- as referenced above -- but the UN declined because it didn’t want to be seen as abetting the victors in a war it failed to support. The UN wanted, in short, to enjoy the fruits of victory, to insert itself as a player in Iraq, but to shirk the responsibility that comes with it. By trying to have it both ways, it got neither. All it got was body bags going home to many different countries.

UN officials say the United States, as an "occupying power," is responsible under international law for providing security. But they also admit they did not want to frighten ordinary Iraqis by having their compound heavily fortified.

Yes, no sense in scaring “ordinary Iraqis” by fortifying your position in a war-zone. Those Iraqis have probably missed the decades of murder, insanity and death that have been the hallmark of their society. They’d naturally be loathe to come and get their UN handouts if they saw a truck-bomb barrier and guard posts around the building. Not for ordinary Iraquis to brave a checkpoint in search of food, water and money. Nope. Never happen. The United Nations is known to them to be a vast machine for throwing them into paper shredders and gassing their village. Best to stay far away unless the UN drapes the headquarters in balloons, colorful streamers, and bright banners declaring, in Pharsee, “Come On Down to Crazy Kofi’s! Our Security is INSANE!”

Or as spokesman Fred Eckhard so coyly put it:

"Security around our location was not as secure as you might find at the U.S. compound, and that was a decision we made so the offices were available to the people. We did not think at the time we were taking an unnecessary risk."

Another item for the vast UN filing cabinet marked “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.”

We choose door number two:

"It is jihad until victory or martyrdom," Hamas said in a statement officially announcing its abandonment of the cease-fire.

Islamic Militant Groups Say Truce Dead After Israeli Strike

The blackout as seen from mid-heaven.
Click for larger image.

Via Junkyard Blog

Shmuel Tabenfeld, 5 months, of New Square, New York
was killed along with his mother Goldie Tabenfeld in a
suicide bombing of a bus returning from the Western Wall
in Jerusalem on Tuesday August 19, 2003. (Photo via LGF )

Of the 18 known dead from the bomb set off by a Palestinian killer, five were Americans. Found within this story: Palestinians Hold Meeting on Bus Bombing

Five of those killed were American citizens, a U.S. Embassy official said Wednesday.

They included Mordechai Reinitz, 47, and his son, Yitzhak, 9, who lived in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya and had dual Israeli-American citizenship, embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. Their U.S. hometown was not immediately known.

Goldie Taubenfeld, 43, and her 5-month-old son Shmuel, who were visiting from New Square, N.Y., also were killed Patin said. Taubenfeld was the mother of 13, said New York State Assemblyman Ryan Karben, whose district includes New Square.

The fifth American victim was identified as Tehilla Nathanson, 3, from Monsey, N.Y.

....Yitzhak Reinitz, 9 years old, hometown unknown .... Shmuel Taubenfeld, 5-months old, from New Square, New York .... Tehilla Nathanson, 3 years old, from Monsey, New York.

We are told that there is a difference between extremist Islam and peaceloving normal Islam.

Judging by their behavior, Muslims are anti-West, anti-Democracy, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Buddhist, and anti-Hindu. Muslims are involved in 20 of the 22 conflicts going on in the world: in Afghanistan, Bosnia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Kashmir, Macedonia, the Middle East, Pakistan, Philippines, Kurdistan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda.

Doesn't this mean that extremist Islam is the norm and normal Islam is extremely rare?

As posed on Think Israel

Right to left: Koran, Insect Mind, Automatic Weapon

Try to imagine, if for only a moment, the insect mindset that gibbers and crawls behind the smiling and proud face above. He's getting ready to "live the dream," to 'Just Do It,' to launch himself on "a mission from God." His calling? To strap on a belt of explosives, kiss his two children on the forehead, bid his wife goodbye, and head downtown to kill Jews. Men, women, children, infants, babes in the womb .. it is all grist to the chittering insect soul of this man and his supporters and compatriots. Who is he? Why he is a "a man of God", an exponent of the religion of submission and peace. He is the father of two children, but that doesn't stop him from viewing other chidren as just so many vermin to be exterminated.

Mask, a 29-year-old imam from the West Bank city of Hebron, blew himself up aboard a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday, killing 18 people, including five children, in an attack claimed by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

He left a wife and two children, as well as an unfinished doctorate in Islamic law.

His wife, news reports say, was pleased he had at last fulfilled his dream of martyrdom. Ah,the Occupied Mind of the Good Islamic Wife.

Belsen, Dachau, the Gulag, the Killing Fields, the Towers, Jerusalem -- they all attracted and employed men like this; men happy in their work and proud, damned proud, to be killing. They and their masters have always been the same and the only answer to their ambitions has always, in the end, been the same. These are people with whom negotiations are futile; who live only for the death of Israel and the Jews. This is their only goal. All their protestations and excuses are merely ploys to gain time and arms in order to make their ultimate extermination of their enemies complete.

And people like this are said to be "owed" a state of their own?. Really? Where? Is there a Hell deep enough for those whose conception of God's work is this?

Perhaps, on some near or distant day, when "the Road Map for Peace" has been chucked into the dumpster of history, Israel can feel free at last to seek out every individual who harbors the "dream of martyrdom" and make their dream come true.

Kansas Flatter Than a Pancake?

In this report, we apply basic scientific techniques to answer the question "Is Kansas as flat as a pancake?

While driving across the American Midwest, it is common to hear travelers remark, "This state is as flat as a pancake." To the authors, this adage seems to qualitatively capture some characteristic of a topographic geodetic survey

This obvious question "how flat is a pancake" spurned our analytical interest, and we set out to find the "flatness" of both a pancake and one particular state: Kansas.

For the startling answer and the methodology used to arrive at it, please refer to the house scientists at The Annals of Improbable Research.

Figure 1. (a)A well-cooked pancake; and (b)Kansas.

Coney Island Crowd
by Weegee

Always looking to keep his place as first witht the hot and steaming publishing dish, Matt DRUDGE has been fed this tasty item about the new and debased "Gentlemen's Quarterly" -- or "GQ," as the monthly is known in the rag trade. Item:

GQ MAG DEPICTS PRESIDENT BUSH AS 'JESUS' IN CONTROVERSIAL PHOTO SPREAD
A coming edition of GQ magazine turns President Bush in to Jesus Christ -- in a full-page photo illustration!

The controversial photo is set to run with an accompanied essay titled "George W's Personal Jesus," publishing sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. "In the beginning, there was the call...," writer Guy Lawson opens in his essay on the pre