Gunfight in Matamoros

I've recently began following a blog called Borderland Beat. It is covering the escalating violence in northern Mexico. It is depressing reading (and be forewarned if you follow the link -- it sometimes has rather graphic pictures). 


Today the Zetas (one of the criminal cartels fighting to control the drug trade) and the Mexican federal police backed by soldiers engaged in a large scale gun battle. So far 47 people have been reported killed, including Tony Tormento who was one of the cartel's leaders. The astonishing video above is gives a feel for the volume of gunfire. I don't speak Spanish so I don't know what the camera men and the people on the streets are saying to each other. Brave man, the fellow who filmed that.


Most sobering to a U.S. citizen is that Matamoros is just across the border from Brownsville Texas and the gunfight was so intense that the University of Texas at Brownsville and Southernmost Texas College had to cancel or move some events. With violence increasing in northern Mexico it seems only a matter of time before a serious and deadly border incident happens.

Sorry suckers, but the race goes to the swift

I'm in Atlanta this week. To the left is the TV news I can watch here. The local coverage is about Georgia races I know little about. It doesn't matter, I voted in Florida last week before I took my trip.

As for my vote, after observing Al Gore's life style I decided that if I aligned my self as a member of the Elite Class I could, with a clear conscience, have a huge house filled with many flat screened TVs, incandescent light bulbs, SUVs parked in the drive and what-not,  so I voted a straight Green ticket. 

'Course, there's a rather different fate in store for you. I'll now be exhorting you to live in a hovel, eat nothing but locally grown gruel, and in general keep your carbon footprint as small as possible. Sorry for tossing you all under the bus, but -- what can I say -- a weasels gotta do what a weasels gotta do.  Go Green and Hoo-rah!!!

Anyways, here's to a happy election day and bear in mind, whatever else may happen, at least we won't have to watch any of those damn campaign commercials for a while.

Oh darn, he's caught on to me.

John Kerry, speaking in the Boston Globe (emphasis mine): "We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics."


All I've got to say in reply is, "lighten up pal -- the bleachers are all I can afford. Not all of us can manage to land a prickly Ketchup Heiress who will buy us box seats."

Where the Luddites are...

I've noticed there has been a huge uptick in articles about biodiversity in the last few weeks. Much of this is driven by that fact that the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP10) is being held in Nagoya Japan. 


Biodiversity is a problem, particularly in the area of over fishing controversy and the difficulty in setting fishing polices between nations. Larger exotic mammals are also threatened, and of course there is the frightening problem of the resurgence of  wheat stem rust. All serious topics for conservationists.


Unfortunately, the biodiversity issue is also a powerful Luddite magnet In fact for a brief time, after the Great Hole in the Ozone Crisis and before the rise of AGW, it was the Luddite issue of choice. I suspect with Climate Change losing steam it will return to the front burner with that group.

On biodiversity we're already seeing things like the following:

Prentice argues that biodiversity protection is not just up to national governments.

"Municipalities have to share that responsibility," he said. "And, frankly, all of us as citizens have to be interested in protecting the biodiversity of the planet."

Heather Hamilton, executive co-ordinator of the Canadian Biodiversity Institute, agrees that most biodiversity issues are local issues.

She cited the plight of the Blanding's turtle in the South March Highlands of the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. The turtle is an threatened species and shares the Highlands with 18 other threatened species. That didn't stop the City of Ottawa from splitting its habitat in half with a road extension.

Back to the Biodiversity Drawing Board

and this:

The strategy says biodiversity should be ''mainstreamed'' - that all Australians must take responsibility for improving wildlife protection if threatened ecosystems are to have the best chance of surviving climate change.
It calls for a 25 per cent boost in the number of Australians and organisations taking part in biodiversity conservation.

''If we continue to live unsustainably, we risk the degeneration of the ecological systems that support our life and our nation's productivity,'' says the report, endorsed by state and federal environment ministers. The Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council strategy is likely to receive a mixed response from green groups, which have called for more ambitious targets to protect threatened species.

Biodiversity plan to lock up land 

and of course what Luddite could ignore genetic engineering in an issue like this:

The 12-day Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Nagoya is intended to head off the rapid loss of plant and animal species that is happening around the world. The belief is that a more diversified global ecosystem has a better chance of protecting life. 

To facilitate this, summit participants are looking at things like hard targets to prevent deforestation and implementing new rules and regulations that would see victims of biodiversity loss compensated. They are also examining potential rules on sharing genetic material to ensure corporations don't get a stranglehold over biodiversity.

But Canada has already been blamed for being obstructionist in several aspects of the biodiversity meetings. Chief among these is the fact that Canada objects to a reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in a protocol over sharing the proceeds from the sale of genetic material with sovereign populations.

For that, Canada has already won a "Dodo Award"—similar to the Fossil Awards handed out during climate change summits—by a network of NGOs following the bio-diversity summit. 

Government opposes biodiversity protocols

Let's see... turtles, check; sustainability, check; UN Declaration, check. Been there and done that, and  I'm also sure there is a shake down of money in there somewhere that I've missed.

The shame of it is that this is a serious issue. Conservation, like pollution reduction, is a worthy goal. However, already I'm seeing the usual buzzwords, wild 'goals' being demanded and tisk-tisking over humans daring to cast their shadow on the Earth.

14 Years later

The album which morphed into the Buena Vista Social Club was originally intended to be a collaboration between musicians from Cuba and Mali. Problems with passports, visa or scheduling caused the Malian musicians to miss the original recording date so the producer cobbled together the group that eventually recorded the well received album.

As Will Hodgkinson in his article AfroCubism: Buena Vista take two relates, ""The conversations I  had with the Malian musicians after Buena Vista came out consisted of two subjects. They were: 'Oh shit', and 'When can we try doing it again?'" says Gold, who has finally made his planned Afro-Cuban collaboration happen, 14 years after the event."  

Above is a clip of the musicians finally playing together. 

Such a collaboration isn't at all surprising. West African music moved across the Atlantic with the slave trade and through the Caribbean where it split north to the States and south to Brazil. Since then the Caribbean, American and Brazilian have reflected their influences back to West African.  

Below is a clip featuring Toumani Diabate, from the AfroCubism clip above, playing with Ali Farke Toure who's music I linked to in my previous post Father & Son. In that earlier clip the blues influences were obvious, in this clip one can hear the subtle Latin influences.

Throwing cameras into the air

Ceth Studio has a post about Kinetic Photography. Above, and after the fold, are some examples of pictures taken using the technique. It is something a number of people are experimenting with. There are flikr streams with more examples of it and, if you want to risk your camera tossing it into the air to try it yourself, there is information on how to at  Camera Toss (The Blog).

Madness to their method

It may be my imagination, but the Democrats' national campaign sure appears to have gone off the rails.


Colbert's appearance before a Congressional Committee was baffling. First off, why would they think that anybody would believe that he had anything to offer to the immigration debate? Secondly, could they not anticipate how unserious they would look giving a comedian their hearing as a stage?


Since then Obama has spent an inordinate amount of time on college campuses. Yea, that's part of their base and he's polling bad, but at some point don't they feel they have to defend their record instead of making jokes about Republicans drinking slurpees after they drove that car off of the road? Do they think nobody notices their darting and weaving?


And the planned MTV appearance... do they really think hiding the President in the manufactured 'coolness' of MTV is not going to look silly? They would be better off releasing pictures of him playing golf then putting him in that venue at this point of the fall campaign.

Finally, the Colbert and Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" vs "March to Keep Fear Alive" stunts the weekend before the election. Ka-boing! Obama is spending his time trying to hector youth into voting and the last image they're going to get before the polls open is some sort of ironic mockery of rallies. Eh, what good is that supposed to do the Dems? 


What are they thinking?

Stratfor on terror alert and uranium in India

Below is another article from Stratfor. It concerns the current warning of possible terror operations like those that occurred in Bombay two years ago. The idea he discusses -- what is the correct level of response to such warnings -- is a difficult one to answer.

As an example, today we have news of a man arrested with 1kg (2.2lbs) or uranium in India. It is frightening to consider its intended customers and usage.

---------------

Terrorism, vigilance and the limits of the War on Terror
By George Friedman, October 5, 2010

The U.S. government issued a warning Oct. 3 advising Americans traveling to Europe to be "vigilant." U.S. intelligence apparently has acquired information indicating that al Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks in European cities similar to those carried out in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. In Mumbai, attackers armed with firearms, grenades and small, timed explosive devices targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists and other buildings in an attack that took three days to put down.

European security forces are far better trained and prepared than their Indian counterparts, and such an attack would be unlikely to last for hours, much less days, in a European country. Still, armed assaults conducted by suicide operatives could be expected to cause many casualties and certainly create a dramatic disruption to economic and social life.

The first question to ask about the Oct. 3 warning, which lacked specific and actionable intelligence, is how someone can be vigilant against such an attack. There are some specific steps that people can and should take to practice good situational awareness as well as some common-sense travel-security precautions. But if you find yourself sleeping in a hotel room as gunmen attack the building, rush to your floor and start entering rooms, a government warning simply to be vigilant would have very little meaning.

Dot, the world's smallest heroine

Nokia sells the N8 Smartphone which has a 12 MP camera with Karl Zeis optics. A company called Fletcher has added optics to it and created a unit called CellScope which can be used for mobile medical microscopy. This allows a microscope to be taken into the field, a photograph taken with it and then sent via the phone to be analyzed. Altogether a remarkable confluence of technologies.


To market it Nokia partnered with Sumo Science to create a number of films show casing it. Above is the world's smallest stop action heroine Dot as she flees across a miniature landscape from a fraying carpet. Below is a video that shows how they made the film. Both are well worth watching

Ouch

A Polish man living in Germany went to have a cyst removed from the back of his head. When the doctors did the operation they discovered a bullet embedded in the back of his skull instead. 


The 35 year old man remembers being extremely drunk at a New Years party five of six years ago and being clunked in the back of his head. Apparently that's when he got shot.

Police don't suspect foul play. They think it was probably a round shot in the air during the celebration.


The news report seems suspicious to me because the man is never named, but the story has been widely carried. Then again, if I was so drunk that I got shot in the head and didn't notice it for years I guess would try to keep my name out of the papers as well.

Don't worry, the UN is on the case

We can all sleep a little easier with the news that the UN has appointed Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, as Earth's official Walmart Greeter Space Alien Ambassador.

Presumably, she's the one who approaches the alien craft with a broad smile and promises of peace. Of course, as a connoisseur of B Movies I know this just means she is slated to be the first Earthling to be fried by a death ray or turned into a pod person. Ah well, better her than me.

Regardless, I certainly hope the US has bumped up its contribution to the UN to cover the salary of this most important UN official.

We'll vote for the Village Idiot before we'll vote for you lot.

Christine O'Donnell won the Republican primary in Delaware and in the process she created a firestorm of horror in political circles, both on the left and the right. 

To the right is the picture the German newspaper Spiegel  used to illustrate its article about her win. The single closed eye, crazed toothy grin and triple chins of the photo are obviously meant to caste her as a lunatic. 


Not being from Delaware, I don't know much about her. Apparently she was against masturbation at one time, dabbled in witchcraft in her youth, has struggled financially with her student loans and holding a job in general, as well as having some paranoid sounding worries about people hiding in her bushes and such. How much of this is true, and how much of it inflated, I have no idea.

Regardless, while I can see the Democrats piling it on, I'm puzzled as to why the Republicans would do the same. She may be a raving loon, but she's a raving loon who non-Progressives are sharing a foxhole with at the moment. I say hope for the best and if she turns out to be a liability, cut her loose after the election. 

At the end of the day she represents Delaware and nothing more and it is not wise to assist in the Progressive's attempts to paint her as the face of the Tea Party movement. She is not that significant -- she is just one more sign that a large portion of the electorate is trying the pull the political center to the right, and for that, regardless of how she fares in the general election, her primary victory was useful and welcomed.

The blogger Borepatch (via The Gormogons) has a fine post on the matter. Here's a sample of it:

This [Castle] is the sort of candidate that the Republican Establishment wants us to support? But more significantly, why then should we think that the Republican Party is less reckless in its spending than the Democrats? There's a very clear pattern that has emerged in the GOP's support for Castle, Murkowski, et al - support the Usual Suspects, protect their power and privilege, and pay lip service (if that) to actual fiscal reform.

Like I said, phooey. 

This November will see the breaking of the Democratic Party, which is half the battle. But everything will come to naught if the Republican Old Guard is not also broken. There is quite frankly no evidence that they will change their old ways unless we break them. Christine O'Donnell may be crazy like a Cat Lady, but she serves the purpose of breaking them. She is particularly useful in this, because it sends the following message:

We'll vote for the Village Idiot before we'll vote for you lot. 

An auspicious day

Due to the importance of this date, this post needs to be reflective, engaging and thought provoking. 

Alas I'm writing it, and me being me, it will veer off into silliness instead. Sorry about that.

To the left is a photo of a person dressed up like a pinata, who has given his girl friend a baseball bat. That strikes me as being an extraordinarily bad idea, what with the natural urge to whack pinatas. Better safe than sorry, if you ever feel the urge to dress in that costume -- don't.

At any rate, why am I claiming this date is so important? On this date five years ago MeaninglessHotAir posted the very first post to this blog. The blog was a group blog started by people who commented at Roger Simon's pre-Pajamas Media blog. Since then some people have joined it and others have moved on.

So to all our post authors over the years, Roger who inspired us, our commenters, lurkers and one time visitors -- heck even to the Chinese spambots who inflate our modest traffic --  I hope you'll join me in wishing a Happy Fifth Birthday to our little corner of the internet.   

Father & Son

No comments, just videos by the two great Mali blues musicians, Ali Farka Toure and his son Vieux Farka Toure. 

Never forget

The picture above was taken by Bill Baggert. Shortly after it was taken the North Tower collapsed. Four days later his body was found in the wreckage, his cameras destroyed, but with one undisturbed compact flash card containing his final photographs. Rest in Peace Mr. Baggert.

You can read a little about him, see more of his pictures and other projects at the website Bill Braggert Photographer.

Cry me a river...

A preacher with a minuscule congregation in north Florida threatens to burn a Koran and idiocy ensues. 

Would I burn a Koran? No. 
Do I care if a Koran gets burned? No. 
Do I want the Arab street to dictate the shape of tolerance and the limits of free speech? Hell no.

I'll end this brief post with a word to our political leaders who feel they have to preemptively apologize about this -- STFU already. Americans aren't ashamed of the First Amendment,  Terry Jones is an inconsequential lout, and walking on eggs won't keep the Cartoonophobes from blowing a gasket over some perceived slight or another.

Besides, it's not like they have a good track record when it comes to this sort of thing...

Hellooooo visitors from Don Surber. 

Prince Charles is bad enough, but now this?

I must confess my faith in the common sense of the English has been badly shaken. Newslite has an article which lists, according to a poll of 3,000 Brits, the 20 most useless gadgets of all time. 

Topping the list is the electric candle, which is hard to argue against. Also on it are such things as Laser guided scissors, egg boilers, fondue sets, electric carving knives and waffle irons; all which are admittedly useless things that end up cluttering the recesses of your kitchen cabinets.

So far so good. However, shockingly the Back Scratcher comes in number 7 on the list. Backer Scratchers useless? I think not! 

If you have an itch below your shoulder blades the only options you have us to become a contortionist, run into the back yard and rub your back against a tree like a cat in heat, or reach for your handy miniature wooden hand on a stick. I know the choice I prefer.   

This being the internet I'll point you to Back Scratcher World where you can buy one online. Who knew you could pay up to $30 for a Premium Back Scratcher? 

They also have pages on how to select, use and care for you back scratcher, as well as an informative Back Scratcher FAQ. What can I say -- unlike the silly English these people take their Back Scratchers seriously. 

New feature - Stratfor articles

I subscribe to Stratfor, a website that provides analysis of global affairs. As part of the subscription they email me frequent items. After a couple of years of getting them  I've recently noticed, observant devil that I am, that some of them come with a copyright that allows me to reproduce them on my website.

You may be interested in reading them, so as an experiment I'm going to start posting them. If you like the articles I'll continue to post them. Leave you comments for or against. Here is the first... 

MILITANCY AND THE U.S. DRAWDOWN IN AFGHANISTAN

By Scott Stewart

The drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq has served to shift attention toward Afghanistan, where the United States has been increasing its troop strength in hopes of forming conditions conducive to a political settlement. This is similar to the way it used the 2007 surge in Iraq to help reach a negotiated settlement with the Sunni insurgents that eventually set the stage for withdrawal there. As we've discussed elsewhere, the Taliban at this point do not feel the pressure required for them to capitulate or negotiate and therefore continue to follow their strategy of surviving and waiting for the coalition forces to depart so that they can again make a move to assume control over Afghanistan.

Indeed, with the United States having set a deadline of July 2011 to begin the drawdown of combat forces in Afghanistan -- and with many of its NATO allies withdrawing sooner -- the Taliban can sense that the end is near. As they wait expectantly for the departure of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan, a look at the history of militancy in Afghanistan provides a bit of a preview of what could follow the U.S. withdrawal.

Disturbing the peace

A blog I read regularly is Kent Frost's Nanny Knows Best. He's an English fellow who posts about the small outrages perpetrated by the bureaucrats of the Nanny State. His posts are not generally about large scale abuses, rather they cover the small absurdities of local officials gone wild.

He recently posted an item about Dominic Payne of Colchester's problems over frogs croaking too loudly in his pond. It seems somebody filed a complaint to the Colchester Borough Council about noise coming from his property.

The Council dispatched environmental health officers who lurked around his property taking decibel readings of the mating frogs croaking in his pond. Some how or another they figured out that the frogs were Marsh frogs, which are native to the European mainland, but not Great Britain.

Yoiks! Not only a rowdy bunch, but an intrusive non-native species to boot!

This lead to two police officers showing up to investigate the matter. They spent their time trying to photograph the mating frogs. They then informed him, and his neighbor who also had a pond full of the amorous amphibians, that the police were going to have to remove the frogs, either by killing them or relocating them.

Presumably, although I can't say for sure, considering the British government's squeamishness in deporting terror suspects to their home countries where they might be tortured, the Marsh frogs would not have been relocated back to France where the locals have a taste for frog legs.

Anyways, the end result of all this tomfoolery was, after a barrage of mockery from the press over their idiocy, the police dropped the matter.  I was rather surprised by that. Usually in these depressingly silly matters the bureaucrats stick to their guns as best as possible to save face.

A puzzle

Via walyou.

Mad as hell, and not going to take it any more!

Actually I'm not mad, I just needed an excuse to post the above picture of a pissed-off dinner roll with a knife in its teeth. Although not as artfully done as the bread sculptures of Kittiwat Unarromhas, it serves it purpose as one of my pointless running blog themes. I call this theme -- Fun with Bread.

The above picture comes from BreadBlog. Although not a large blog, it has a good collection of odd things done with bread, including bread furniture, boxing gloves, toast with Hitler's face on it and a sandwich made from Legos. 

More pictures below the fold.

The Things You Never Knew

So Saturday I'm sitting on the patio with the Better Two-Thirds and a neighbor and we're having a beer or two and chatting. Out of the corner of my eye I see something in the Mrs. impatiens that I take for a big wasp, maybe one of those cicada killers.

I need to pay attention 'cause maybe it is and maybe it ain't, but some wasps or bee types can render me quite ill if they decide to zap me. But this thing is very odd - there it went again.

I finally went over and looked and here's what I found - a Hummingbird Hawk Moth. Never knew such a thing existed. Lovely little critter.

Just in case you've never seen a cicada killer wasp.

Have you no sense of decency, madam?

Obama stepped into a political mine field when he waded into the Ground Zero Mosque issue. 

He allowed the notion of tolerance, which by itself is a laudable goal, to trump any consideration of other issues surrounding the proposed mosque. In particular, he dismissed the skepticism much of the American public feels towards the motives and funding sources for the mosque.

His political miscalculation has inflamed the issue, and in fanning the flames he has forced many of his fellow Democrats to take a stand on an issue they would rather avoid. Perhaps the most bizarre and tone deaf of all is the reaction of Nancy Pelosi. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

Pelosi told San Francisco's KCBS radio that "there is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded," she said. "How is this being ginned up?"

Again, the American public who are opposed to the mosque being built so close to Ground Zero oppose it because they see it not as an act of outreach, but as an act of triumphalism. They also, since the backers of it are opaque, suspect that it is going to be funded by sources inimical to the U.S.

Pelosi blithely dismisses those concerns as nothing more than a smoke screen for political opportunism, and rubs salt into the wound by distastefully, and absurdly, questioning the funding sources of the people who are arguing against the mosque's location. Further, she calls for an investigation of opponents to the project.

However, we're still not done. It gets even more absurd. From the Washington Examiner we discover that at the same time she is working herself into a lather over the anti-mosque cabal her colleague  Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla, an addled-headed nitwit I'm sorry to say is from Florida, is sending out the following emails:

Fire Pelosi!

That’s the mindless mantra of Republicans and their wild-eyed Tea Party supporters as we begin the final sprint to Election Day. In fact, Republican Chairman Michael Steele just announced a “Fire Pelosi” national bus tour to distract voters and demonize Democrats.

Let’s show the Tea Party crowd that they’re no match for our grassroots strength. Stand with us against the Right’s despicable attacks and their fat cat fundraising by joining Team Pelosi — an elite group of grassroots Democrats who are leading the fight against radical Republican candidates in races nationwide.

We have set a goal of reaching 10,000 new members for Team Pelosi. House Republicans are claiming to have experienced a five-year high fundraising surge. We can’t let up now — we must keep pace. That means we need just 11 new members from Washington by our deadline this Thursday.

Please contribute today to become our newest member of Team Pelosi right now.

As a member of Team Pelosi you will receive the inside scoop on what’s happening in our campaign to strengthen and secure our House Majority. You will be invited to attend members-only phone and web-based political briefings by top Democratic experts and receive special Red Alerts about breaking campaign news.

So, at the same time she is calling for an investigation of the funding of wide spread and genuinely grassroots anger over the mosque situation, she is sending out a mass emailing begging for money and feigning popularism. Have you no sense of decency, madam, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

By the way, if you so desire, you too can bolster your grassroots, street cred by owning your own Team Pelosi tote bag. You'll have to Google for it though, I can't quite bring myself to link to the thing. 

Gone fishing...

I'm on vacation at the moment so posting will be erratic. Then again, my posting is always erratic so likely nobody would have noticed.. The wife and I flew to Manuas in Brazil. Odd airport. The runway was, outside of a dirt strip in Masawa, the roughest I've ever landed on. The plane bounced and rattle during it's entire roll out. To reduce a traveller's confidence even more, pushed onto the grass were three or four completely filthy cargo jets.  The whole place had a slap-dash feel to it.

We stayed in Manaus for only one day, and then headed for a place called Juma Lodge in jungle. The a picture is of one of their cabins. I didn't take it, I swiped it off of the internet. perhaps when I get back I'll post a photo or two of my own.

I must say the rain forest was not at all what I expected. Many more people were living in it than I expected (the place I stayed is only about 4-5 hours south of Manaus -- I imagine human habitation thins out considerably the farther upriver one goes). I expected to be swatting bugs endlessly, but they really weren't a problem at all. The heat was oppressive during the day, but at night there were nice breezes that were refreshing.

The jungle was very peaceful. Above all, it is very nice to be out of the news loop for a bit and just laze in the hammock.At any rate, 'll be off the blog for a bit, so the Chinese spambots will have a field day.

It's not as bad as it looks...

“Of course, people were shocked and thought that I was mad when they saw the works. But once they knew the idea behind it, they understood and became interested in the work itself, instead of thinking that I am crazy.”

Thai artist Kittiwat Unarromhas has a Masters degree in Fine Arts and has experimented with painting and sculpture. When he returned home to run his family's bakery, he combined that training, along with a knowledge of anatomy and trips to forensic museums, and began to bake bread shaped like body parts.

He bakes loaves shaped like heads, hands, feet, and even internal organs. He also claims to take as much care with his bread recipe as with his art, continuously refining it to make the bread as delicious as possible. If you're in Ratchaburi Thailand you can visit his gallery/bakery (many more pictures at the link).

Quite grotesque to say the least. Still, while I think it would be rather creepy eating a bread head, I think I would prefer it to edible bread shoes that somebody may have worn.

What's with this younger generation of bakers?

more and more

A turning point

As if any of us can avoid posting about, as John Hinderaker at Powerline called it,  the Breitbart-NAACP-Vilsack-Sherrod affair...

It strikes me that nobody involved in the mess has exactly covered themselves with glory: Breitbart seems to have tarred her a bit unfairly to make his point about the NAACP, the NAACP fumbled about and looked like idiots as usual, Vislack acted precipitously in firing her, and Sherrod seems still enamored with the notion of dividing people into Us and Them as she babbles on and on.

Still, that out of the way, there is one part of the story that has caught my attention. This is the first story I can think of that broke with such speed and was driven by the new media.

As such, this story is a turning point. In the past, and for that matter with the current Journolist story, the MSM would have, in their role as gatekeepers, sat on the story until it died or was stale. Now, they can no longer rely on the fact that the control which stories get spiked or which get column inches.

Credit has to be given to Breitbart for how he has manipulated the legacy media's weakness against itself. The speed at which this story grew is a direct result of how he rolled out the ACORN story. The legacy media has lost its monopoly on what is news and what is not. I think that will prove to be the real significance of this kerfuffle.

An ancient riddle has been solved

"British scientists believe they have cracked the answer to the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

Researchers have found that a protein called ovocleidin (OC-17) is crucial in the formulation of eggshells, and it is produced in the pregnant hen's ovaries, the Daily Express reports."

 As the article 'Chicken or egg' question finally answered  points out, scientists have established that a chicken's body chemestry is necessary for the formation of eggs. Therefore it is clear that chickens had to have come first. Whew, finally I can scratch that off my list of mysteries to ponder.

Still, I expect there will many Egg-Firster zealots who refuse to admit the truth. Lord knows, they've always been a deluded lot. We can only hope they don't turn violent when they hear the news.

Well, now that you mention it...

Somebody called Squid314 posted a hilariously creative rant about the History Channel's TV show "WWII" being unbelievable and full of plot holes. Read the whole thing.

Probably the worst part was the ending. The British/German story arc gets boring, so they tie it up quickly, have the villain kill himself (on Walpurgisnacht of all days, not exactly subtle) and then totally switch gears to a battle between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific. Pretty much the same dichotomy - the Japanese kill, torture, perform medical experiments on prisoners, and frickin' play football with the heads of murdered children, and the Americans are led by a kindly old man in a wheelchair.

Anyway, they spend the whole season building up how the Japanese home islands are a fortress, and the Japanese will never surrender, and there's no way to take the Japanese home islands because they're invincible...and then they realize they totally can't have the Americans take the Japanese home islands so they have no way to wrap up the season.

So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they've never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was "classified". In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone's ever seen before - drawing from, of course, ancient mystical texts. Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn't it?

...

So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel. Unlike most of the other networks, they don't even try to make their stuff believable.

When coffee in a bag just isn't good enough

Here's an interesting video showing how astronauts, inspired by rocket fuel tanks, have figured out how to create coffee cups usable in zero gravity. Naturally, I wondered how ice cubes and little paper umbrellas would work in them, but sadly they kept the demonstration booze free.

By the way, if you're a Moslem in need of some NASA self-esteem boosting, he mentions you could drink tea out of it too.


HT: Neatorama

For this, the Founders risked powder and ball?

There is a Washington Post Review, Norman Rockwell exhibit opens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, by Blake Gopnik that's making the blog rounds and receiving much well deserved mockery in the process. 

I'm not a huge fan of Rockwell, I think he is rather schmaltzy, but it is clear he is an excellent and influential illustrator.

Glopnik on the other hand goes well around the bend in his disdain for Rockwell. He uses the 4th of July as an excuse to opine on the courage of American artists: Emily Dickinson for experimenting with her poetry, Louis Armstrong for playing jazz, and finally Jackson Pollack for splattering paint on canvas.

You can probably imagine what somebody who is a big enough twit to spin panegyrics about the heroism of Pollack's painting style thinks of Norman Rockwell. To put it mildly, he comes across as an insufferable snob.

What captured my eye in his piece, particularily in light of my last post Lopsided Democracy, was the following:

Rockwell's vision of "Freedom of Speech," included in the Smithsonian's show, doesn't invoke a communist printing his pamphlets or an atheist on a soapbox. It gives us a town hall meeting of almost interchangeable New Englanders, no doubt agreeing to disagree about something as divisive as the rates for those new parking meters. For this, the Founders risked powder and ball? 

First off, to answer Glopnik's question, yes, that is why the Founders risked powder and ball. The picture shows a common working man standing to speak at a meeting. On either side he is flanked by men, who are dressed in suits and looking up and seriously listening to what he has to say. That is about as simple an image as one could paint of Jefferson's subversive and revolutionary notion that "all men are created equal".

That dignity, afforded to all men to both speak and to order their own affairs --the affairs of the nation as well as the town hall town meetings that Glopnik so cavalierly dismisses -- is precisely why they fought the Revolution. The idea that no man is above another in either station, caste or dignity is the axiom from which all else American flows.

By the way Mr. Glopnik, all the archetypes on your list that you get misty-eyed over: communists printing pamphlets, atheists on soapboxes, Latino socialists, disgruntled lesbian spinsters, foul-mouthed Jewish comics and metrosexual half-Canadian art critics are free to speak their mind in this country which you seem to think is full of vapid bumpkins.

Perhaps you should scrub the cliches from your writing, and your list was certainly a string of cliches if I ever saw one, before you presume to tell other people what a shallow, maudlin fools they are for liking an illustration.

Lopsided Democracy

Below is an old post of mine. In light of the election it seems relevant. Indeed, "People will come together and cry: enough! ". Only it wasn't in fond nostalgia of the wise old elite, instead it was a lot of people who resented being called simpletons for their opinions. Anyway, the election brought this song and post to mind...



Above is the song Dimonkransa sung by Myra Andrade of the Cape Verde Islands. Cape Verde received their independence from Portugal on July 5th, 1975. The liberation movement was led by the socialist African Party of Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Andrade's father was a member of it, and in fact she was born in Cuba.

Upon independence Cape Verde was a single party government, but in 1990 at a party congress the PAICV approved the introduction of multiparty democracy. In the election that followed the opposition fared well, and Cape Verde has evolved into a stable multi-party democracy.

However, this is not a post about her politics, nor the sort of third world socialism that bubbles through the undeveloped world. It seems to me there is a deeper strata, a bedrock so to speak, which lies under the languid melancholy of her lyrics.

It was said that democracy,
Lopsided democracy,
It was said that democracy
Was like a hidden treasure,
But now that it has been found.
We have all opened our eyes
And each one, relying on his judgment,
Confidently declared that what was round was in fact square,
And went to work, with a great many theories,
To prove that he was right.

(lyrics from the version she sung on her first album Navega)

Andrade is ill at ease with democracy, but for social rather than political reasons. Early in the song she calls it 'lopsided democracy' and as its lyrics unfold her complaint is that each person, not matter how foolish they are (and she clearly thinks many if not most of them are fools), now express a cacophony of opinions and arguments that bury the truth. 

She ends the song singing of English businessman and listing names from Cape Verde's past, some who have been elevated and some who she fears are being forgotten, and expresses distress at this reordering of authority. 

Stripped to its bone, the song is about a lost elite. Andrade is expressing nostalgia for a short-lived one party rule and for an escape from European domination. Of course it is her party that should rule and she now makes her home in Paris. Perhaps it is she that is lopsided, rather than all of the happy fools she mocks?

The time will come when old Náxu’s opinions
Will not be held in higher esteem than those of a babe in arms.
People will come together and cry: enough!    

Americans forget how revolutionary we are. Jefferson's "all men are created equal..." is both intoxicating and destructive. It is a hell of a thing not to have to step into the gutter to clear the side walk for a swaggering aristocrat. Andrade is intimidated by and dismissive of people who have opened their eyes, and each one, relied on their own judgment, but a free man knows better.

As for coming together and crying "enough"? That is exactly what our 4th of July celebrates and we'll have our Gadsden flags mingled with the Stars and Stripes. Happy 4th of July to you all.

Flight of Passage

"Our original plan called for skirting the north edge of the Allegheny Mountains, where the peaks are lower and there would be less turbulence, following the gently rolling valleys of central Pennsylvania into Youngstown, Ohio. But that course was now obstructed by clouds and the weather had formed a narrow, irregular chute forcing us to divert south through Harrisburg and the lower Susquehanna Valley. That would mean facing the Alleghenies head-on in rough air, but we would have to worry about that when we got there.

On the map I found a rail line just south of Pottstown that meandered west to the Susquehanna, up through Reading and Hershey. If clouds blocked our way there were several intersecting power lines that we could pick up. Wiggling the stick to signal Kern, I ruddered over for the tracks and pointed them out on the map. Throwing open the side windows, I kept my head out of the slipstream to look for landmarks. The ceiling was dropping again and we didn't have a lot of airports in front of us. I didn't have the luxury of guessing at our position and I focused like a gnome on the land and then back to the map.

That's how we flew the first leg, like a pair of old airmailers. While Kern manned the plane and kept us straight and level from the front seat, I hung out the side from the rear, battered by the rain and slipstream as I concentrated on the terrain."

The plight of Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old sailor who was attempting a solo circumnavigation of the globe, has been a compelling news story. She ran into heavy weather in the Indian Ocean, lost radio contact and had to activate her emergencies two hours later. Fortunately she's been found, her boat de-masted but still afloat and help is steaming towards her and less than a day away.

Her age, coupled with the thought of her trying to sail solo around the World, has drawn considerable criticism. Many people have argued that her parents were irresponsible for allowing her to attempt such voyage.

In following the story I've been reminded of a book I read, Rinker Buck's Flight of Passage.

The book is a memoir of Rinker (age 15) and his brother Kern's (age 17) flight across the continental U.S. At the time they were the youngest pilots to cross the country. They had bought an old Piper Cub for $300 and carefully rebuilt it for the flight.

Aside from being a good travel yarn, the book is a look back by the adult Rinker on his relationship with his brother, and beyond that his relationship with his father. It is an altogether touching book and in the end it reminds one of what it is like to be a teenager with the horizon before you and a nest to leave.

Thinking of the story told in the book, and having watched one too many helicopter moms in amazement, I think I come down on the side of Abby's parents who left her try her luck in that boat. There are certainly worse things a young girl could aspire to achieve. I wish her fair winds and trailing seas in her future.

Anyways, those were simpler days. In digging around for material for this post I bumped across a couple of videos of young Kern and Rinker Buck on the old TV show To Tell the Truth. They're after the jump. Click "read more" to watch and enjoy. 

I have been remiss for multiple days

Gah! It has been a lot longer than I thought since I've last posted.

In the past I have posted pictures of people blending themselves with record album covers and money. Recently I discovered another small internet photo fad -- multiplicity. People take multiple pictures of themselves and then photoshop them together to get an image with themselves appearing numerous times in it.

Most just turn out to be people making funny faces and what-not, but I like the three shown here because each told a little story.

In the top one we view a string of hims trying to suppress giggles as they are about to execute a prank on their sleeping self.

Next we have the young girl looking on in horror as she sneaks up on herself with a knife in her hand

Finally, the man fights himself, grabbing his face and arm in the process. Technically, it is probably the best of the lot.

For more view 35 Surreal Examples of Multiplicity Photography.

Mohammed Descending a Staicase

Whoops, I forgot Draw Mohamed Day. I never drew a picture of Mohammed which naturally makes posting one a bit of a problem. 

Facing that quandary I consider myself lucky to have remembered Marcel Duchamp and his readymades. A readymade is an "ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist."

So, to solve my lack of a Mohammed drawing on this most solemn of Draw Mohamed Days, I found a copy of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase and have readymaded it into a new piece of art which I call Mohammed Descending a Staircase. That's it to the left.


If you happen to be a jihadist, rest assured -- even though the details are a bit obscured -- it is a very, very offensive picture of Mohammed and you should be deeply outraged by it.

For the rest of us that are sane, well yes... I suppose I am torturing the definition of readymade a bit. It is a stretch to call me an artist, and I'm not sure that elevating a piece of art into another piece of art is quite within the rules of readymades. Still, Draw Mohamed Day is upon us, and so an artist has to do what an artist has to do.

 

I'm outraged a Moslem won the Miss USA Contest!

Well, ok... actually I'm not. In fact, I don't even know if she's Moslem.

I'll admit, since I've goofed off for a couple of weeks and not posted anything, that this post's headline and the picture to the right are just a cheesy attempt to lure some traffic back.

Beauty pageants are pretty vapid affairs. After all, they are just an excuse to parade a bunch of good looking young women around and pick which is the prettiest. Not that I object to that mind you.

The effort to make them seem more serious than they are leads straight to talent competitions, goofy simple-minded questions and political correctness run amok.

I hate to sound cynical, but because of that political correct imperative to be taken seriously, I have a passing suspicion that her name was far from an obstacle to winning.

Anyways, congratulations to Rima Fakih for her victory.

The Mongolian Death Worm goes Hollywood

If you're a monster, you know you've hit the big time when the SyFy Channel makes a movie about you.

Thirty Seconds of Fury

 

The above video is of the first 30 seconds, from the ignition of the engines to the rocket clearing the tower, of the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.  Slowed down it takes 8 minutes to watch (the video is narrated).

was the mission that landed men on the moon for the first time. The film was shot at 500 frames per second and focuses on the base of the launch pad. As such, it is not so much a film of the launch as film of the tremendous punishment the launch pad took when the rocket's engines were lit.

There were assemblies called Hold Down Arms that held the rocket in place until its engines had fully fired up. The Hold Down Arms had to unlatch and retract to allow the rocket to leave the pad. Needless to say, the heat the engines put out punished the launch pad and those assemblies. They had to pour huge amounts of water on the pad to try to cool it down and minimize damage. 

It is an interesting view of a small piece of the engineering that went into putting men on the moon.   

From PetaPixel.

Will the insults ever cease?

As soon as I read the title of the article, The World's Ugliest Statues, I knew it was coming. Sure enough, weighing in at Number III was Saparmurat Niyazov, a.k.a. The Turkmenbashi (apparently now also known as Turkmenbashy the Great), who's golden visage is forever twirling about in search of the sun.

To add insult to injury, his beloved vassals seem to have moved the monstrosity to the suburbs as soon as he was six feet under.  Geez, next thing you know they'll unplug the electric motor that spins him around.
 

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Twenty strokes of the bamboo

Once again Obama bows.

"So it is you!" said Xi-feng with a chilling smile. "I suppose you thought that because you have a somewhat more lady-like job than the rest, that you could afford to disobey my orders!"

"Oh no, madam, indeed not!" said the woman. "I've been coming extra early every day. It's only today, because I overslept, that I'm a bit late. Please let me off this once, madam! It really is the first time."

(Xi-feng is interrupted by other business for a minute, and then returns her attention to the woman)

"Tomorrow another one will be late and the day after that it will be somebody else," said Xi-feng turning to the still waiting offender, "and before we know where we are we shall have no one turning up at all. I should have liked to have left you off, but if I'm lenient with you the first time, it will be that much harder for me to deal with somebody else the second time; so I am obliged to make an example of you." Her face hardened as she pronounced sentence: "Take her out and give her twenty strokes of the bamboo!"

Seeing X-feng was really angry, the servants dared not show themselves slack in executing her command. The wretched woman was half-dragged from the room and the flogging administered in full view of the waiting throng, after which they came in again, the executioners to report that they had discharged their duty and their victim to thank Xi-feng for her punishment.

From that day onwards the staff of the Ning-guo mansion realized just how formidable Xi-feng could be and went about their duties in fear and trembling, not daring to idle or delay.

That scene is from the Chinese literary masterpiece, The Story of the Stone. The novel covers the affairs of two entwined high caste families, living in adjoining mansions, and their numerous servants (who are actually slaves of the families). 

One of the young wives of one of the families has died. Her mother-in-law is too ill to attend to the pomp and ceremony of her funeral, so Xi-feng, a cousin from the other household, is assigned the task of managing her household during the funeral. Xi-feng considers the household she's been tasked to manage as being lax in their discipline. She thinks the servants are allowed too much latitude and she is determined to enforce order. This leads to the caning of the old servant woman who overslept. 

Xi-feng's rationalization of what she has to do, the caning, and the requirement that the beaten woman 'thank' Xi-feng for her punishment is the ugly face of aristocracy, the ruling class, and status bought through bloodline. Through out history it was the condition of the common man. Even today it is still the condition of the common man in many places. There are betters and there are underlings, and that is just the way it is and will always be. Forget that and there is a bamboo staff, or worse, to remind one of the proper order of things.

We forget at our peril how revolutionary and subversive to the old order the United States is by simply being.

"All men are created equal" is a direct slap in the face of Divine Right and the attitude of To the Manor Born. It is beyond all else what we as Americans are all about. We are not a bloodline, or a clan, or an ethnicity; we are believers in the idea that all people are sacred. All people are born equal. We are all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the fear of our betters caning us on a whim and expecting our gratitude for the act.

It is that which makes Obama's bow and scraping so teeth gritting. He may consider it politeness, or civility, or whatever; but free men do not bow and scrape to potentates and dictators. If only he had a bit of Alice Frazier in him. She understood what seems to be a mystery to him -- she understood her and a Queen's place in the order of things. 

This man is vapid and an embarrassment to the office. 

Linkage

A real Turing machine.

All by themselves, words can cause pain.

iPad lockin.

Chinese quality strikes again.

The newest Gulf war.

Are we living inside a black hole?

Why we hold onto things.

A tale of two health cares.

The art of the steal.

Neither a bull nor a bear be.

Cigarettes and coffee

At first I thought that was a can of beer bundled with the two packs of cigarettes, but it turns out to be a can of coffee. Regardless, forty cigarettes to go along with a single can of coffee seems a bit much to me. Are Japanese really such dedicated chain smokers? 

Anyways... as long as they're pushing retail tobacco product partnerships, why not go all the way? A pack of cigarettes, a six pack of beer and a package of Trojans is another combination that springs to mind.

As an aside, of course Marlboro is an American brand and it turns out that Georgia Black Emblem Coffee is a leading brand of Coca-Cola Japan. Can you imagine the ruckus such a promotion would cause in the United States? I wonder if they have a Hollywood celebrity pushing this in Japanese TV ads?

From the post Taboo Product Partnerships at Trendhunter Magazine.

Hellooooo visitors from Maggie's Farm.

Ghana Movie Posters

In the 1980s the appearance of VCRs lead to the growth of Mobile Cinemas. These were small operations which would travel from one small village to the next and set up temporary cinemas. They would set up televisions, often powering them with mobile generators, and screen films.

To advertise their show they hired artists to paint posters for their films. You can see more of them, as well as buy one if you want to, at ghanamovieposter.com. The book Extreme Canvas: Movie Poster Paintings from Ghana is also available which has many more examples.