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In this article on ligers, the Daily Mail says:
There are hundreds of hybrids in the animal world, some common such as the mule - a cross between a female horse and a male donkey - and some more unusual, such as the labradoodle, a mix of labrador and poodle.
Oh dear lord, but I hope that that’s some dry British humor I’m not getting. ‘cause I’d greatly prefer that to thinking that the author doesn’t get the difference between a species and a breed.
Isambard Kingdom BrunelTop Ten Greatest Americans:
Winston Churchill
Oliver Cromwell
Charles Darwin
Diana, Princess of Wales
Queen Elizabeth I
John Lennon
Horatio Nelson
Isaac Newton
William Shakespeare
Ronald Reagan
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther King
George Washington
Benjamin Franklin
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
Elvis Presley
Oprah Winfrey
Franklin D Roosevelt
I think the UK wins (it’s pretty hard to beat Newton and Shakespeare.)
Thanks to my grandfather having been born an Irish citizen, I am now officially a citizen of Ireland, and will shortly apply for an Irish passport.
I’ve been reading up on dual citizenship and Ireland.Though I’m about 5/8 Irish by descent, my Irish cultural literacy is basically non-existent, and the closest I’ve gotten to there was switching planes at Gatwick. (I do sunburn easily, though. And I like potatoes)
For about the past three years, I’ve wanted the option of an escape route to Canada or the EU, and with the prospect of Bush appointing two Supreme Court justices, I’m pretty giddy about having it. Now I need to learn to fake a brogue for travelling under my Irish passport.
Heck, at least no one expected abortion to be legal in Ireland.1
My thanks to my family, who did the legwork to gather the documents for my application. And to Ireland, for having the loosest citizenship requirements in all the EU.
1 Its status seems to be far more ambiguous than I would have guessed.
A Londoner today quotes another:
To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: “I’ve been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!”
The cold blooded murder of Londoners is no more horrifying than the murder or New Yorkers or Madrilenos — or Baghdadis. But today’s target still has a special hold over my emotions. If your mother tongue is English, and you loved stories as much as I did as a child, then London is the city of your imagination, of Mary Poppins and David Copperfield, of London-bridge-is-falling-down and the prince and the pauper. And if you’ve been there, and visited the places you dreamed about as a boy, and ridden the tube to Picadilly Circus, and climbed the stairs of the Tower of London, and strolled through Hyde Park in the morning fog, then what happened today hurts more than maybe it should, logically.
We are all New Yorkers, we are all Madrilenos, we are all Baghdadis. But I was a Londoner from the time I learned how to read. I know it shouldn’t make any difference, but it does.
I couldn’t even begin to count how many times I’ve visited London in the imagination — Elizabethan, Victorian, modern, future. From Neverwhere to The Anubis Gates to From Hell to the Sherlock Holmes stories and on and on. I’ve never been on the Tube, but I know the automatic warnings say “Mind the gap.” For me, Billmon nailed it: it shouldn’t make any difference, but it does.
My condolences to the bereaved and the injured.
A lot of people find it really important to refute the story that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings, complete with creepy racist vibe, like Assault on a Founding Father:
I am a lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson, and as such I feel compelled to respond to the ongoing attempt to ruin his reputation and smear his memory in the public eye. A certain coalition of interests has made a concerted effort to foster the tale of a relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a woman who was a slave on his estate at Monticello. […]
Americans owe a huge debt to Mr. Jefferson’s genius, particularly in terms of our concepts of individual freedom. Those who seek to defile his memory also seek to undermine the concepts he taught us. Certainly the contributions of minorities to the founding and development of this country must be acknowledged and advanced, but not by deception and deliberate tampering with the facts. To accept the Sally Hemings myth as truth is to question the validity of everything Jefferson ever said or wrote. This accusation against him is contrary to everything we know about him, and we know much from his journals, his massive correspondence, and his professional writings.
After all, if anything’s a hallmark of Jefferson’s words and deeds about slavery, it’s the consistency.
I have found that the likelihood of someone believing the Jefferson-Hemings story is directly proportionate to how little they know about him. I attribute ignorance of this and so many other subjects to the massive dumbing-down of Americans, which we can see all around us.
Like those Jefferson know-nothings over at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation who concluded:
The DNA study, combined with multiple strands of currently available documentary and statistical evidence, indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings’s children appearing in Jefferson’s records.
Research Report on the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: A Critical Analysis says of that report:
However, an examination of this report and the methodology used in preparing it, shows it to be an unprofessional, unscientific accumulation of bias and prejudice, and an offense to the memory of the great man that this foundation was chartered to memorialize. One would expect the Foundation at least to give Thomas Jefferson the benefit of the doubt in the face of the many scurrilous attacks that have been made on his character over the years, for which there is not one shred of direct evidence. […] There was a deliberate attempt to select and mold the evidence to fit a pre-selected theory and to avoid anything that might resemble genuine balance. […] The result is a fabricated tissue of hearsay and assumptions, in which gossip and self-serving, handed-down family stories are granted the equivalence of facts and direct testimony.
Their idea of genuine balance:
Shortly before her death, Martha [Randolph, one of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters — Zed] called her two sons, Thomas Jefferson Randolph and George Wythe Randolph, to her bedside and told them of Mr. Jefferson’s innocence of the charges of fathering children by a female slave, citing her reasons, and asking them always to defend the character of their illustrious grandfather. One of the important things to recognize here is that Martha THOUGHT that Thomas Jefferson was not the father of Sally’s children, and since she had lived at Monticello much of the time when Jefferson was there, and was on the closest terms with him, she was in a position to know from her own knowledge and observation whether there was likely a relationship going on or not. […]
There is one story included in the Foundation’s report that provides good behavioristic evidence that also contradicts the report’s findings. The report states, “There is only one known account of the subject [i.e., a connection to Sally Hemings] being raised in Jefferson’s presence. As Jefferson’s Randolph granddaughters told biographer Henry S. Randall, Jefferson’s daughter Martha Randolph, roused to indignation by Irish poet Thomas Moore’s couplet linking her father with a slave, thrust the offending poem in front of him one day at Monticello. Jefferson’s only response was a ‘hearty, clear laugh.’”
Proponents of an affair say that Martha knew what was going on, but she was “in denial.” But if she were really in denial, she would hardly have angrily presented the poem to Jefferson. Instead, reality would have clashed with her hidden refusal to accept it, and she would more likely have angrily thrown the poem in the trash and blotted it from her mind. But then, having presented the poem to Jefferson, if he were really guilty, he would surely not have laughed (unless he had the character of Al Capone, which he obviously did not), but would have blanched at having his private affairs publicly ridiculed and especially being faced with it directly by his own beloved daughter. But instead he laughed, and his laughing indicates to us that he thought the whole thing utterly absurd. Rather than indicating that there was an affair, and that Jefferson and his daughter both refused to face up to it, this incident clearly indicates to anyone with a sensitivity to human nature that neither Jefferson nor his daughter really believed with any part of their minds that this story was true.
Nope, there’s no selecting evidence to fit a pre-selected theory, or treating self-serving, handed-down family stories as evidence to be had there.
Less subtle is Giving Thomas Jefferson the Business: The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax
In today’s America, a race hoax industry manned by black activists and their white benefactors in the media, politics, and academia produces one outrage after another, with the aim of denigrating white heroes, elevating often obscure blacks, making black racists rich and powerful, and waging race war.
So it is with the smear invented in 1802, and in recent years conscripted anew to sully the name of arguably the most brilliant of all of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). The Jefferson-Hemings Hoax claims, without any evidence, that the third president, renaissance man, and author of the Declaration of Independence fathered the children of slave Sally Hemings (1773-1835). Hoaxers seek to drag Jefferson through the mud, expropriate his legacy on behalf of Hemings’ descendants, and supplant scholarship with Afrocentric propaganda. The perpetrators of the Jefferson-Hemings hoax seek, without firing a single shot, to rob the American people of their patrimony.
While I consider it of historical interest, I’m not really moved or shocked by either of the premises that a Virginian widower c. 1800 had a long-term affair with a mixed-race slave, or that he didn’t. I am offended by the suggestion that its truth would disgrace Jefferson’s memory. It’s very clear that some proponents of each side really, really want one or the other to be true.
Before having examined it, I thought it was a done deal, that the evidence was conclusive, that it was only creepy racism inspiring the denialists. It turns out, though, that the evidence is very ambiguous.
The controversy began in 1802, with an accusation from James Callender, who had an axe to grind with Jefferson.
The Richmond Recorder published an article that contained the following: “It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the president himself…. By this wench Sally, our president has had several children.”
Also from that article…
In 1784 Thomas Jefferson was sent as a diplomat to France by the American colonial government. James Hemings went with him. Jefferson’s eldest daughter Martha joined him in Paris a short time later, and was enrolled in a convent school for a formal education. In 1787 Jefferson sent for his other daughter, Maria, who made the voyage from Virginia escorted by Sally Hemings, who was either fourteen or fifteen at the time. […] In the fall of 1789, Jefferson and his two daughters, as well as Sally and James Hemings, returned to America. By all accounts, Sally Hemings was visibly pregnant at the time of their homecoming to Monticello.
Except the “by all accounts” part is apparently far from true. Allegedly, the product of that pregnancy was Thomas Woodson, but from the Thomas Jefferson Society’s brief account:
Madison Hemings, Sally’s second-youngest son, said in 1873 that his mother had been pregnant with Jefferson’s child (who, he said, lived “but a short time”) when she returned from France in 1789. But there is no indication in Jefferson’s records of a child born to Hemings before 1795, and there are no known documents to support that Thomas Woodson was Hemings’ first child.
The DNA testing in 1988 compared Y-chromosomes, so it’s conclusive of patrilineage. It compared descendants of Hemings’ last child, Eston Hemings, of Jefferson’s paternal uncle, Field Jefferson (Jefferson had no surviving male children,) and of Thomas Woodson’s descendants. It established pretty conclusive proof that Eston Hemings’ father was a Jefferson. Of Hemings’ other children, two died in infancy, and two were female, and thus their descendants are not candidates for this test. Another, Madison Hemings doesn’t have a surviving male lineage, from what I can see on the Internets, but he had a son, William Hemings, who died in 1910. There are people eager to exhume the grave to seek DNA evidence, but the Hemings family is declining. And, finally, it proved as conclusively that Thomas Woodson was not descended from a Jefferson. (This pesky detail has not swayed the faith of at least some of the Woodson family.)
Also from the TJS’ brief account:
In the few scattered references to Sally Hemings in Thomas Jefferson’s records and correspondence, there is nothing to distinguish her from other members of her family.
Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello at the likely conception times of Sally Hemings’ six known children. There are no records suggesting that she was elsewhere at these times, or records of any births at times that would exclude Jefferson paternity. […]
Sally Hemings’ children were light-skinned, and three of them (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eston) lived as members of white society as adults.
According to contemporary accounts, some of Sally Hemings’ children strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings’ children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson’s 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear slave family.
Thomas Jefferson did not free Sally Hemings. She was permitted to leave Monticello by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph not long after Jefferson’s death in 1826, and went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville.
Several people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community believed that he was the father of Sally Hemings’ children.
But Jefferson’s time in Monticello occasioned visits by other Jeffersons. Some close to Jefferson or the Monticello community believed he was not the father of Hemings’ children. And there’s no real documentation of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. In the Straight Dope, Cecil Adams summarizes:
It might not have been Jefferson. It could have been his brother Randolph, one of Randolph’s five sons, etc. Looking at the bigger picture: it was a plantation, lots of sexual mixing went on—who knows how the bloodlines might have gotten crossed? On the other hand: (1) it’s been documented that Hemings and Jefferson were in the same place eight or nine months prior to each known birth; (2) there’s the DNA evidence, (3) there’s the Woodson oral history, (4) there’s the Madison Hemings account; (5) Jefferson freed all the Hemings children at age 21, something he did for none of his other slaves; and (6) the Carr theory has been largely ruled out. So the simplest explanation is that TJ was the pop.
This omits that the DNA evidence clearly undermines the Woodson oral history, and this calls into question Madison Hemings’ account, which assigns Woodson’s paternity to Jefferson.
The only thing we can state with (nearly) total confidence that Eston was fathered by a Jefferson, who might have been Thomas, or Randolph, or another. Woodson’s father was not a Jefferson, and it’s highly debatable whether his mother was Hemings. We don’t know squat for certain about Hemings’ five other children.
Did Thomas Jefferson sire all of Hemings’ children? Maybe. Did he never touch her? Maybe.
But we sure know that a lot of people have a major axe to grind over this issue.
Everyone knows that Barbie’s proportions, if scaled to life-size, are unrealistic. When I tried to look them up, I found it’s also the case that everyone has different figures on her figure. Here’s one typical set, 38-18-34 (97-46-86 for my friends in MetricLand.) But it seems Mattel changed the proportions in ‘98, increasing the waist, and I couldn’t find any info on the new ones.
Well, here’s what 40-15-39 looks like, life-sized (102-38-99.) Check the Galleries section for more pictures (the site’s funky session system leaves me unsure of whether I could provide a persistent link.)
A new national survey shows that almost two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) agree with the basic tenet of creationism, that “human beings were created directly by God.”
At the same time, approximately one-fifth (22%) of adults believe “human beings evolved from earlier species” (evolution) and 10 percent subscribe to the theory that “human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them” (intelligent design). Moreover, a majority (55%) believe that all three of these theories should be taught in public schools, while 23 percent support teaching creationism only, 12 percent evolution only, and four percent intelligent design only.
This is sure to join the D-Day Crossword Puzzle, and the Titan/Titanic on the short list of history’s spookiest synchronicities.
Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
Bet they were really nervous about kicking off the next simulation.
On a recurring basis, I’ll be frustrated by a news story about something novel, whose whole purpose would seem to be to provide a picture, but which doesn’t. Not so at Barcroft Media.
They do more than animal stories; the above selection represents my own biases.
Rhetoraoke had me going for a minute there.
Ah, to hear an American president make this speech.
We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members. […]
Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.
It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better.
— Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
(Via Scratchings)
Buddha, Christian Saint.
The ancient tale of Gautama Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism, spread from his homeland to Europe, where he became a Christian saint with the name of “Iosaphat.” […]
While the Buddha’s tale spread westbound, his name “Buddha” or “Bodhisatta” in Sanskrit, changed gradually in accordance with various linguistic backgrounds with similar accounts of the tale.
For example, it changed to “Bodisav” in Persian texts in the sixth or seventh century, “Budhasaf” or “Yudasaf” in an eighth-century Arabic document and “Iodasaph” in Georgia in the 10th century.
The name in turn was adapted to “Ioasaph” in Greece in the 11th century, and “Iosaphat” or “Josaphat” in Latin since then.
Many inhabitants of India had been converted by the Apostle St. Thomas and were leading Christian lives. In the third or fourth century King Abenner (Avenier) persecuted the Church. The astrologers had foretold that his son Josaphat would one day become a Christian. To prevent this the prince was kept in close confinement. But, in spite of all precautions, Barlaam, a hermit of Senaar, met him and brought him to the true Faith. Abenner tried his best to pervert Josaphat, but, not succeeding, he shared the government with him. Later Abenner himself became a Christian, and, abdicating the throne, became a hermit. Josaphat governed alone for a time, then resigned, went into the desert, found his former teacher Barlaam, and with him spent his remaining years in holiness.
(Via Corpus Mmothra via Discordian Research Technology News)
Defective Yeti recaps the Plame scandal for latecomers.
And Billmon provides some useful quotes on the subject.
In a sane world, it would look pretty bad for Rove. But in this world, the Republicans made a deserter from the Texas Air National Guard look like the hero and a decorated war veteran look like the coward, so I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for Rove’s conviction. Or even for the press to keep asking hard questions when Bushco dangles a bright, shiny controversial Supreme Court nominee in front of them.
Extra-special member of the unreality-based community award to the right-winger arguing that Rove couldn’t have outed Plame as a covert CIA operative because it was public record that Wilson had a wife named Valerie Plame. (If you had trouble following that, don’t worry: that’s normal.)
Just one ‘e’ can make a big difference.
Anybody who received a diploma from the University of Berkley might want to think twice about including that fact in their resumes. It turns out the school is an internet diploma mill. The school has been shut down by a restraining order from a local judge in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The court order was issued as the result of a probe by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office into the school and its president Dr. Dennis Globosky. […] An animation on Berkley’s web site advises viewers, “you may already have your degree and not know it.” The school offers degrees in a wide number of majors for prices ranging from US$2,795 for a bachelor’s degree up to $4,995 for a doctorate.
The school claims its diplomas are accepted by a wide range of institutions of higher learning. Of course, if colleges will accept a Berkley diploma, it’s likely employers will accept them — especially when the name can be so easily confused with the University of California, Berkeley.
Gary McKinnon is in big trouble for cracking dozens of NASA and U.S. military systems seeking classified info on UFOs. An interview:
“What was the most exciting thing you saw?” I ask.
“I found a list of officers’ names,” he claims, “under the heading ‘Non-Terrestrial Officers’.”
“Non-Terrestrial Officers?” I say.
“Yeah, I looked it up,” says Gary, “and it’s nowhere. It doesn’t mean little green men. What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’, and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren’t US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet.”
“The Americans have a secret spaceship?” I ask.
“That’s what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe.”
“Some kind of other Mir that nobody knows about?”
“I guess so,” says Gary.
“What were the ship names?”
“I can’t remember,” says Gary. “I was smoking a lot of dope at the time. Not good for the intellect.”
(Thanks, Geoff!)
Like most guys, I knew the seductive dangers of solitude all too well — how hard and important it is to resist the siren call of the unalphabetized collection of rare Steve Miller Band bootlegs. At some point in adolescence we all realize that building radio transmitters and memorizing Monty Python routines will not, despite the infuriating unfairness of it all, be rewarded with the love of a good woman. And so we learn to moderate our den-ish tendencies, to poke our heads out of our caves and into the soft and scary light of restaurants. And then, when good love goes bad, we know that we have to be on guard against the urge to devote our lives to Civil War-era stamps or First Edition D.C. Comics.
All my life, it says, I have been told by my superego that dressing like a Marvel superhero will not get me laid. And, here, here and now in this temporary saturnalia, surrounded by other males who are - at best - my equals in the ugly league division table: here is my perfect woman. But the world knows that this mad girl’s flickering eyes craves just one thing. A man dressed as Galactus, Eater of Worlds. And not only have I left my Galactus costume at home. I never made it. Worse, I threw those biro drawings of me in the Galactus helmet away the moment I’d drawn them, ashamed to show them even to (say) Dave. And now I know: I’m not a virgin because I’m a geek. I’m a virgin because I have pursued geekdom with a less than pure, directed gaze. I have faltered, and now I’m just another guy at Baycon. And some other guy in front of me will be Galahad with the Holy Grail because he spent two weeks measuring out huge papier-mache clamps to fit on the side of his head. And I did nothing but stare at my Lara Croft pull-out poster, in the belief that she was not real and that I could not ever meet her.
One of ‘em must be wrong.
(I previously posted about the latter here.)
As part of my Irish passport application, I need to have my signature “witnessed by one of the following persons who is not a relative: Police Officer, Member of Clergy, Medical Doctor, Lawyer, Bank Manager/Assistant Manager, Public Representative, Notary Public/Commissioner for Oaths, Peace Commissioner, School Principal/Vice Principal or Accountant.”
I wonder how getting one of my Universal Life Minister friends to do it would go over (ya gotta love a web form with an “Ordain Me” button.)
I saw a bumper sticker here in Berkeley yesterday that said “I love my country, but I think we should see other people.” If I’d seen the phrase in time, I’d’ve used it as the title for the entry announcing my Irish citizenship.
Google, having dominated the Earth, has extended their dominion to its closest neighbor. Be sure to try zooming all the way in.
(Via Boing Boing)
I recently read the late, great Will Eisner’s last work, The Plot: The Secret Story of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a history of the Protocols in sequential art (comic book) form. (Despite having read the afterword, until looking at that Boston Globe article, I’d missed that it was by Stephen Bronner — I once took a class of his at Rutgers.)
Much of the material I was familiar with, but The Plot also went into how thoroughly and how often the Protocols had been debunked — starting in the London Times in 1921, through a Swiss Court ruling in 1935, through a US Senate Judiciary Committee report in 1964, to a Russian court ruling in 1993, and beyond… and how the Protocols keep coming back, no matter how many times you kill them.
I was upset to find that Google’s first result for protocols elders zion is a site called Bible Believers presenting the Protocols as authentic (no link — I don’t want to give them any more Google juice.)
Of the Protocols themselves little need be said in the way of introduction. The book in which they are embodied was first published in the year 1897 by Philip Stepanov for private circulation among his intimate friends. The first time Nilus published them was in 1901 in a book called The Great Within the Small and reprinted in 1905. A copy of this is in the British Museum bearing the date of its reception, August 10, 1906. All copies that were known to exist in Russia were destroyed in the Kerensky regime, and under his successors the possession of a copy by anyone in Soviet land was a crime sufficient to ensure the owner’s of being shot on sight. The fact is in itself sufficient proof of the genuineness of the Protocols. [emphasis added — Zed] The Jewish journals, of course, say that they are a forgery, leaving it to be understood that Professor Nilus, who embodied them in a work of his own, had concocted them for his own purposes.
Hillary Clinton is thinking about the children.
Sen. Hillary Clinton pressed Thursday for a government investigation into how simulated sex cropped up in a modified version of the blockbuster criminal adventure video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” […]
“We should all be deeply disturbed that a game which now permits the simulation of lewd sexual acts in an interactive format with highly realistic graphics has fallen into the hands of young people across the country,” Clinton wrote in a letter to the head of the Federal Trade Commission.
Saying the problem of explicit video games was “spiraling out of control,” Clinton also said she was introducing legislation that would crack down on the sale of violent and sex-laden games to minors. […]
Clinton asked the FTC to look into whether Grand Theft Auto’s rating of “M” (Mature 17+) should be changed to the rare “AO” (Adult Only), which would threaten to crimp sales at large retail outlets.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has changed the rating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on all platforms from “Mature 17+” (M) to “Adults Only 18+” (AO) because of the so-called “hot coffee mod,” an unauthorized third party modification that alters the retail version of the game.
Most major retailers won’t stock AO games, so this is going to hurt.
One Plastic poster notes:
From my observation, GTA:SA and its predecessors allow you, the player, to:
- Beat to death anyone you encounter on the street with a baseball bat (you get to see animated pools of blood, hear them cry, and watch their body twist)
- Throw a molotov cocktail at a crowded group of pedestrians and watch as they burn to a black skeletal crisp
- Go to the beach, encounter a woman in her bikini, point a gun at her head, watch her put up her hands and beg for her life, and then blow her head off
- Stand on a second story of a building, and toss grenades at crowds of people below while you watch their limbs bounce around
- Torch someone with a flamethrower, then watch as they run into other people and set them on fire
- Dismember people with a chainsaw, or carving knife
- Shoot a cop, then shoot the next cop that comes after you, then blow up the police cars they send at you, then steal the FBI car that comes for you, then blow the police helicopter out of the sky with your bazooka, and then, after a few tries, steal the Army tank they send after you
But, thank god you can’t get the character to engage in sexual acts outside of his car. If kids saw that, they might get the wrong ideas about what is socially acceptable.
And, Wonkette sez:
We’ve been hearing about this, ahem, plug-in for GTA for quite a bit now. It apparently interrupts the action in this brutally violent first person shooter by allowing the protagonist to do some hard core fucking. If the argument is that player see, player do, we would think this is a good thing. Let’s face it, if the Trench Coat Mafia had gotten laid more, there’d be one less Michael Moore movie to suffer through.
(Did Senator Clinton spend too much time hanging out with Tipper Gore?)
Citing “something vaguely effeminate” about his eight-month-old son Michael, first-time father Joe Oebrick, 32, reported Tuesday that he suspects the infant may be a homosexual. […] According to Oebrick, Michael is fussy during meals and picky about his clothes. When he hurts himself, he “cries like a baby.” Additionally, the toddler has a “very strong attraction” to a stuffed lion with a rainbow-striped mane, an apparent preference for bottle-feeding over breastfeeding, and an evident love for bouncing up and down in his jumper device “like some guy at a club.”
Not even slightly funny reality:
A Florida man stands convicted of second-degree murder after killing his 3-year-old son because he thought the boy might grow up to be gay. A Tampa jury on Thursday found Ronnie Paris Jr. guilty of second-degree manslaughter and aggravated child abuse in the death of his son, Ronnie Antonio Paris. According to The Tampa Tribune, the boy was beaten so badly that he became lethargic, stopped eating, and began wetting himself. On January 22 the boy went into a coma and died six days later. Experts testified that his death was caused by blunt trauma to the head.
The child’s mother, Nysherra Paris, testified that her husband was trying to “toughen up” their son because he was worried he might grow up to be gay.
Checking Google News, the story looks to have been little reported outside of Florida newspapers and the gay press.
If a gay man had beaten to death a baby he feared might be straight, do you think we’d be hearing about anything else?
(via MeFi)
First they came to chip the dogs.
Over the objections of dog lovers, the City Council gave initial approval Wednesday to an ordinance that limits to three the number of pooches in most households. In addition, the ordinance […] requires that all licensed dogs in Oakland have a microchip inserted under their skin in an effort to speed the identification of lost or stray animals.
That laughter isn’t just canned, it sleeps with the fishes.
Much of the “canned laughter” used on the soundtracks of sitcoms is
said to have come from tapes that were originally recorded during
broadcasts of “The Red Skelton Show” in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
It is eerie to realize that when we encounter a laugh track (or
“sweetening”) in a recent show, some of the people we hear laughing
may have been dead for decades. Yet their guffaws go on forever.
I knew about this years ago from an Ellison story about a TV writer and the ghost of his aunt, whose laugh was being used on laughtracks. Anyone remember the title?
The Geek Prom is like one of those movies where the nerd gets to do high school over (without the “this sucks” part.)
Ben Fisher-Merritt is not only the 2003 Geek Prom King, he was also runner-up for king in 2002. He’s so geeky that as soon as his spotlight dance with the queen geek was over, he announced he had to leave the prom early to get to a Dungeons & Dragons game. That’s just typical behavior for this lifelong dorkwad, whose achievements include: building every computer he has ever owned (except his Commodore PET, which ran off a cassette tape drive), being the first person in Wrenshall High School history to earn a trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair (his project was a remote-controlled model-rocket launcher), learning to sew specifically for the purpose of making his own stunt kites, and co-founding a swing-dancing club at the University of Minnesota-Morris (before swing dancing became mildly popular), then, after moving to Duluth, mistakenly answering a newspaper ad for a “Swinger’s Club” that had nothing to do with dancing.
So you know they got the right guy.
Speaking of geek proms, Yeah, I made my prom tux out of coke cans… because I’m just that cool.