Tendency to Shade the Truth

NYT has a great headline for its article about Mitt Romney's habit of saying self-serving things that are not true: 

Romney Shows a Tendencey to Imprecision

The whole article reads like someone went through and replaced instances of "inaccurate" and "false" with "imprecise."

George Washington said, "I cannot tend to imprecision.  I chopped down the cherry tree."

 

In other news, I just got back from a lifetime of hunting with my good buddy, MLK.  We shot a fish this big.

Escape from New Jersey

These two sound like bad guys who belong in prison.

So why is it so cool that they escaped?

And aren't there any construction techniques that can keep someone from scraping a hole in a wall with a piece of wire?

Matadoritos!

Baby matadors killing baby bulls in Mexico!

Is there anything cuter?  If there is I don't wanna hear about it.

Unless it's baby gladiators.  Someone?  North Korea?

Superhell. It totally sucks there.

I love Goats.

Fee? Fie!

I love the headline:  Judge Reverses $457 Million Ruling Against Forestry Giant

 

Forestry Giant no like adverse judgment!!  Forestry Giant smash!!

Ecce Ahmadinejad

NYT reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University today.

 

I know exactly how this happened.  Columbia President Lee Bollinger had to weigh the pros and cons...

Cons:  Ahmadinejad's country has recently imprisoned and tortured Americans; has likely armed Shia militias in Iraq with armor-piercing bombs; Admadinejad denies that the Holocaust happened; he wants to destroy the state of Israel; Iran is developing nuclear weapons; and giving Ahmadinejad even a hostile reception at a prestigious American university appears to legitimize his wicked nonsense.

Pros: Bollinger vs. World Famous Villain will be TELEVISED.  The Fight's in Morningside Heights.  One ticket buys the whole seat ... BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!

Cons never had a chance.

 

Ahmadinejad got to complaint that Bollinger wasn't a very hospitable host.  If he'd really wanted to warm up the crowd he should've said, "I just flew in from Tehran.  Boy are my arms tired!"

Anyway. 

 

As the NYT noted, a flier at the event read: "Bollinger, too bad Bin Laden is not available. You could have presented him with some tough questions too."

In-deed.

 

Oh! Oh!  And he said there are no gays in Iran!! 

I had a friend in college who was born in Iran (although he was ethnically Armenian) and told us a fantastic story about his grandmother.  The grandmother told her grandsons (all then living in Los Angeles) that there were no gays in Armenia.

They said to her, "Oh, come on, grandma.  Of course there are gays in Armenia."

But she was adamant.  She said, "No!  There was one gay in Armenia once.  His name was [Armenian name I can't recall].  But they killed him!"

I think what I like about the story is that she claimed to know the name of the one guy who'd been gay and Armenian.  But died.  Presumably, leaving no offspring.

 

Ahmadinejad, you should totally have adapted that story for your speech!  Maybe next time, when you speak at NYU?

Germany: 1 Terrorists: 0

The Associated Press reports that German police arrested three guys who were planning to use 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives (sounds like a lot of TATP) for blowing up Americans there.

At the risk of offending the various terrorist sleeper cells, these guys generally don't seem very competent. 

 

Pb

Sorry about the light posting lately, loyal readers.

 

Newsflash!

Everything from China contains lead.  Or other poison.

No doubt we'll see more factory heads "committing suicide" soon.

What I Said

Today's Memailed NYT Editorial is so copying my post from yesterday about Bush commuting Scooter Libby's prison term:

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

I almost feel... <sniff> like my post was memailed!

Scooter Escapes Justice

So it looks like President Bush has finally fulfilled his promise to be a "compassionate conservative" by commuting the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, convicted of obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury.

 

According to the President's statement:

I respect the jury's verdict.  But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

What's less excessive than 30 months?  No months!

 

Honestly, I don't understand why Bush didn't just pardon Libby. 

This halfway measure will leave his supporters grumpy, knowing Bush "respect[s] the ... verdict" that says Libby lied to keep secret the President's wrongdoing. 

And it won't fool the people who know Libby should go to jail for his crimes.

 

More important, all the other people in the administration who are lying and breaking the law for the President are now thinking, "Is that all the support I can expect from the President?  I sacrifice my integrity and subvert the government to his whim and in return he reduces my sentence?  Where'd I put the number for my old classmate at the Times?"

The Scarlet Blog

Thomas Friedman has a column in today's NYT (sorry, it's Times Select -- fancy!) with more about how the young'uns and how the whole world is diff'rent now, man.

The world is flat!  This time, it's because of blogs and MySpace and Facebook and JDate.

Friedman's theory this time is that if you act stupid or nasty on the Internet as a wee nerdling, your stupidity or nastiness could make you famous for stupidity and nastiness.  Forevah! -- on account of the bits and bytes persist on the Internet for all time and are available as cached Google pages to any potential date, employer, in-law, landlord, friend, prosecutor, persecutor, or stalker.

According to the fad book he quotes today ("How," by Dov Seidman), "The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition." (emphasis Friedman's)

Ah, what a rare opportunity the Internet has given us.  I can hardly wait to see everyone competing to outbehave me on the Internet.

PWNED, n00b!  U call that b3h@vng?!

Now, to be fair, the Friedman article kinda mushes together the effect on businesses (who may in fact be shamed into behaving) with the effect on individuals, but...

...anyone who looks at the Internet, which basically enables numberless opportunities for anonymously acting like a complete jerk, and sees it as an opportunity for outbehaving... hasn't really looked at the Internet.

New Digs

So, my work is now in the fancy new New York Times Building.

Closer to White Castle .

  Closer to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

     Closer to enough adult DVD shops to summon a revenant Andrea Dworkin (spoo-oooky!).

And, of course, closer to the fount of all things memailed!

Five Boroughs for Fifty States

In light of hints from current New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg that he'll run for president as an independent, and polls showing former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani is in the lead among the GOP crowd and current New York senator Hillary ahead among the Dems, isn't it time?

Time to move the capital out of that boring, hazy, institutional burg on the Potomac and back to the Big Apple where it belongs?

 

On second thought, the Pentagon might not be ready.  As Rick said to Major Strasser, "Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

Philosopher's Stone

From today's NYT (memailed!):

IN a commercial for Trojan condoms that has its premiere tonight, women in
a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles
to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine,
he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar,
a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly.

Okay, now we have the method for turning pork into human. If only Og had known that when the Evil Genius turned him all piggy.

But the real Philosopher's Stone is turning pork into something kosher-- maybe goat?

Sore Thumb

One of these terr'rists is not like the others,
One of these terr'rist does not belong!


Um, maybe that tall blond guy dressed like a lumberjack?

Soldier (whispering): Ted -- Hey, Ted! How's the infiltration op going?
Ted (whispering): Shhh!!! You're going to blow my cover! I'm this close to taking down Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia!
Al Qaeda Suspect #1 (in Arabic): One of us is speaking to the American soldier in English!
Al Qaeda Suspect #2 (in Arabic): An infiltrator among us!
Al Qaeda Suspect #3 (in Arabic): A betrayer!
Al Qaeda Suspect #1 (in Arabic): Were it not for these blindfolds we could identify him!
Al Qaeda Suspect #2 (in Arabic): Fiddlesticks!
Al Qaeda Suspect #1 (in Arabic): Abu Elvis, can you tell who it is?
Ted (in Arabic): Alack, no. Sorry, y'all.
Al Qaeda Suspect #2 (in Arabic): Tarnation!

Civil Wars Getting a Bad Rap?

The NYT reports that:

The first aerial survey of southern Sudan in 25 years has revealed vast migrating herds, rivaling those of the Serengeti plains, that have managed to survive 25 years of civil war, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Southern Sudan will announce today at a news conference in New York.

So . . . civil war . . . is . . . good for endangered species?

No, don't try to talk me out of it.  Too late.  Deducto, Master of Inference, is way ahead of you. 

Now, let's watch the Caspian tiger population rebound in Iraq!

Goat in Himmel

I've written before (here and here) on how noble is the humble goat (also check out webcomic Goats, which I've been reading for a while and whose excellence was recently recognized in PC Magazine).

In another memailed article, the NYT is reporting that, in addition to

• tasting delicious
• substiting for the human sacrifice of Isaac
• protecting tenants from Plagues in Egypt (with their, um, blood on the lintel)
• carrying off people's sins (scapegoats)
• weaning farmers off tobacco production
• easing the transition of Somali refugees
• removing weeds in place of pesticides
• preventing forest fires by grazing on brush
• fighting trolls
• giving us goat cheese, and
• making fancy sweaters

...goats also help free the South from the invasive kudzu vine .

 

Time to step up, other forms of livestock!

Remedial Lessons in Terrorist Tradecraft

I lived in Fort Dix when I was tiny, and one of my younger sisters was born there.  My Dad was a doctor in the Army for a short stretch.  I called the place "Four Ducks," apparently influenced more by the presence of ducks than by veneration for a Civil War general.  I remember my sister in a high chair and Tonka trucks and, lessee ... a lamp I had shaped like a clown.  Yes, Fort Dix rocks.

 

Now some would-be terr'rists wanna attack it? 

 

The New York Times reports that Yugoslavian brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, along with another Yugoslavian guy, a Jordanian guy and a Turkish guy decided to form a little terror cell in New Jersey and attack an Army base. 

 

Based on a map one of them obtained while visiting the base in his job as a pizza deliveryman.

 

So they trained with deadliest guns and ran in deadlist woods and plotted deadliest plots and thought deadliest thoughts. 

Plus, one was named "Dritan," which already sounds like the name of a villain.  Or like the name of a nasal spray.

 

Their Achilles' heel?  They made a DVD of themselves shooting guns in the air while "calling for jihad and shouting Allah Akbar."  And then went to a store to have copies made.  A store employee found it "disturbing" and called the Law, who agreed.

 

Jack Bauer, we hardly need ye. 

#$%^ A Duck!

In a Memailed article, the NYT reports that male ducks grow enormous spiral phalluses.

 

Why? 

 

Turns out male ducks rape female ducks a lot, and it's better for a female duck if she can reproduce with the mate she chooses (think of all the loser male ducks you know and it makes sense).

So female ducks evolved to have long, labyrinthine oviducts, and the males had to evolve matching phalluses just to keep up and compete with other males.

 

And I thought being oviparous was all mating-for-life and "March of the Penguins."  Yecch.

I'm Not Worthy!

Today at BJJ, Georges St. Pierre came to train.

A really nice guy, but I'm happy not to have sparred with him today!