Gotham, I don't think you're really helping

New Age doofus, Deepak Chopra, was good friends with Michael Jackson. In a eulogy on the Huffington Post, he talks about Jackson and how his son, Gotham, spent lots of time with Jackson and Deepak never worried for a second about all those icky molestation claims. Good for him.

Gotham also writes a eulogy. The comments afterward are all "Oh, what a touching story!" and "I have tears in my eyes." and "Beautiful!" Bleh.

The story is actually deeply sad and disturbing not because of Jackson's death but because it shows what too much celebrity and wealth can do to a person. Gotham writes of times when he'd go down to Jackson's apartment to help the King of Pop write lyrics.

I'd wander downtown with a backpack full of dictionaries, and thesauri, and rhyming books. Michael would hum songs and talk about what he wanted to say with the song and we'd try and marry our skillsets and come up with something. We came up with great stuff. Michael swore me to secrecy those days. I happily complied. After we were done with those sessions - they'd usually go until about 2 AM or so - Michael would wander into the bathroom and come out with a sack he'd pulled out from under the toilet. In it, he kept several thousands of dollars. He'd ask me how much I wanted. I just sort of shrugged and he'd hand me a couple of thousand dollars.

Then there's this.

Michael was always envious when I told him about my adventures with my friends. More than a few times, he'd get dressed up - dawning some sort of quasi-disguise - preparing to go with me, only to back down at the last minute or be held back by his security who would shake their heads and plainly say no to his misguided ambitions. Instead, he'd pour himself a tall glass of orange juice and settle in for the night to watch an old movie on TV, telling me to spend a few extra bucks for him. I happily complied.

And this is just . . .

Back to those college days. One night he did call me in a panic. He had just gotten married to Lisa Marie Presley and needed advice - sex advice. He was incredibly nervous and said that he wanted to make sure that Lisa was impressed with his "moves." He asked me if I had any advice. I answered with one word: "foreplay."

"Really?" He answered. "Girls really like that?"

Ew.

Just on what planet is this "beautiful" and "touching"?

That was a hell of a thing.

Rachel wanted to watch a movie the other night. To my delight, she suggested one of my favorites, Galaxy Quest. She had seen it years ago but remembered very little. Since she's been exposed to some Star Trek over the past year, most notably the current summer Blockbuster, she wanted to watch it.

What a fantastically fun movie.

The film is about a group of actors who starred on a cheesy science fiction show nearly 20 years before (a la Star Trek) and they're basically living off their appearances at science fiction conventions. A group of aliens who have been watching the shows, thinking they're historical records, come to Earth to enlist the "crew" to save them from a very nasty bad guy who is destroying their people. And hilarity ensues!

First of all, the cast is amazing for what could have been a low budget Trek satire. Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Daryl Mitchell, Tim Allen at his best, Tony Shaloub, and the awesome Sam Rockwell. They work together well with a tight script that knows the conventions of Trek and its brethren and breathes satirical life into the cliches.

What's even more amazing is the group who play the odd, Pakledish, Thermian crew come off as much more sympathetic, sophisticated and heroic than they have any right to. Of course Missi Pyle, Rainn Wilson, Patrick Breen, Jed Rees and the great Enrico Colantoni, who invented the Thermian's odd speech patterns, as their leader, Mathesar, just knock this one out of the park.

The movie is so good, the biggest laugh line in the whole thing is the completely unexpected, "Let's get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!" It makes me laugh just thinking about it. And then there's Tony Shaloub's laid-back chief engineer, Fred Kwan, "Hey guys, I just wanted you to know that, the reactors won't take it; the ship is breaking apart and all that... Just FYI."

If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's great. I'm tempted to go watch it again right now.

For a great review that gets everything just right, check this out.

I'll leave you with this dialogue, as Tim Allen's character (Jason Nesmith) fights a giant rock monster while the rest of the crew advise him over the communicator.

Alexander Dane: You're just going to have to kill it.
Jason Nesmith: Kill it? Well, I'm open to any suggestions.
Tommy Webber: Go for the eyes, like in episode 22!
Jason Nesmith: He doesn't have any eyes, Tommy!
Tommy Webber: Go for the mouth, then, the throat, his vulnerable spots!
Jason Nesmith: It's a rock! It doesn't have any vulnerable spots!
Guy Fleegman: I know! You construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?

Someone please remind them again what century this is

There are just a few things wrong with what this church is doing.

The boy writhes uncontrollably on the floor, but the church members remain calm, if increasingly loud. They're trying to drive a "demon" out of him.

"You homosexual demon, get up on outta here!" they say. "You demon, loose yourself!" "You sex demon ... you snake!"

The shouts, the convulsions, the references to homosexual spirits -- they are all captured on a video posted on YouTube by the Manifested Glory Ministries. The video has sparked anger among gay youth advocacy groups and put the small church from Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the middle of an ongoing national debate on gay issues.
...
McHaelen said she doesn't think the church acted maliciously -- but that's part of her problem with the video.

"None of the people in this video were intending to hurt this kid," she said. "They performed this ritual in an attempt to rid him of feelings that he didn't want to have."

So, let's go down the list and count the stupidity.

1. A person can be both a Christian and gay.
2. This kid doesn't want to have these feelings because of judgmental dipwads like the Manifested Glory Ministries.
3. You can't make someone "Not Gay" by primitive superstitious rituals.
   
4. Causing a child to writhe on the floor in shame and humiliation is malicious and abusive.
   
5. Demons don't cause "Teh Gay".
6. Demons, homosexual or otherwise, wouldn't be driven out of a kid by someone else using the phrase, "get up on outta here!"
7. There are no such things as Demons, dumbasses.

"He's 16 and having the feelings that he's having, the relationships he's having, and then [he's] being tormented by 'What if I'm going to go to hell because of what I feel and who I am?'" she said.

Well done. Your scare tactics and prejudices are making this kid's life a living hell. Kudos. You should be proud of yourselves, asshats.

Yet another episode of "God, we're stupid"

Some Americans are so lacking in common sense and decency that we had to litigate a matter all the way up to the Supreme Court to determine that, yes, it is frakking wrong to strip-search a 13 year old girl in school. And almost as bad, it was over concerns that she was hiding ibuprofen.

Seriously, what kind of stupid policy results in anyone thinking they have the right or responsibility to strip-search a middle schooler?

Of course, one Justice thought it was perfectly okay because apparently the school was one Advil away from anarchy.

But Justice Clarence Thomas took the opposite view: that administrators deserved immunity and that the search was permissible.

"Preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution," he said. "And, common sense is not a judicial monopoly or a constitutional imperative."

Seems like common sense has nothing to do with Justice Thomas.

One last desperate bid for attention

Nice going, Michael. You just had to steal Farrah's limelight, didn't you?

Okay Metro. Now I hate you.

Lest we adapt to the now typical delay from the Fort Totten end of the Red Line, tonight we had an extra special surprise!  While inspecting the tracks, they found a crack in a rail outside Medical Center on the other end of the Red Line and we're single-tracking around it.
Trains are now running approximately 25 minutes apart.
Yippee!

Metro Woes

Two days after the tragic accident and the Metro is still running like the accident just happened. Trains are spaced way too far apart, wait times are long and huge crowds are piling up at the stations.

Get it together, Metro!

Quarterly Blood Analysis

Here are the results of my quarterly blood test.

85 Glucose (Excellent)
120 Total Cholesterol (less than 200 is desirable)
165 Triglycerides (less than 150 is normal)
43 LDL (bad) Cholesterol (less than 100 is optimal)
44 HDL (good) Cholesterol (normal is 40-50)
5.6 A1C (4-5.9 is normal)

Great in some areas, marginal in a couple. My HDL is up and my LDL is down so that’s all good. My Triglycerides are up somewhat which is troubling. They did a couple of new tests, or at least ones I haven’t reported before.

White Count 7.4 (normal range is 4.3 to 10)
Thyroid 2.94 (normal range is .3 to 3)

They put me on a low dose of a blood pressure medicine to protect my kidneys. And life goes on.

Ode to XBOX 360 by Ben (10 years old) (01/05/09)

Oh, Xbox 360 you make me happy
with a bang with a gun
you tell me Im great
Im even great with a P.S.P.
Xbox 360 you make me go whoo every time I see you
Your better than a crack in a pie
you bring me happiness
for an Xbox 360, I would rather sign
with your bang bang bang in games
you make me think your so cool.
You are the most wonderful technology I ever had.
Now it's Christmas eve
and I wonder what my gift will be
this year. Oh what a huge surprize, I got a new wii!
But Xbox 360 your still the best.

And they seemed so rational . . .

Rats. Sometimes, just when you think someone's going to turn out okay, they do something you can't get over.

The St. Petersburg Times is running a fascinating three-part series on the Church of Scientology based largely on interviews with four top church executives who have defected.

Among the paper's findings:

**Physical violence permeated the church's international management team. It alleges that David Miscavige, the movement's leader, routinely attacked his lieutenants, even kicking and beating some in front of their colleagues.

One of the defectors, Mike Rinder, says he was attacked some 50 times. "It had become the accepted way of doing things," Rinder tells the Times. "If COB (Miscavige) did it, it was okay for everybody else to do it, too."

**Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multi-layered system of "ecclesiastical justice.'' It includes publicly confessing sins and crimes to a group of peers, being ordered to jump into a pool fully clothed, facing embarrassing "security checks'' or, worse, being isolated as a "suppressive person.''

**Church staffers allegedly covered up how they botched the care of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after they held her 17 days in isolation at a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., the church's world spiritual headquarters.

The newspaper quotes a church spokesman as saying the defectors are "lying."

I mean, I could overlook the whole "Xenu, Galactic Warlord, imprisoning billions of his people into volcanoes on Earth trillions of years ago and blowing them up with hydrogen bombs" story because come on, on some level that story just makes sense. Ya know? At worst it's just the embellishment of a proud religious tradition.

But hitting people? I am shocked, I tell you! Shocked!

Okay, not that shocked. Scientology is a thuggish cult so it's no surprise they use violence to intimidate and control. The world would be much better off without this stupid nonsense.

Here's the St. Petersburg Times article. It is just stunning.

And check out this interesting story about someone who accidentally interviewed for a job with them.

Metro Crash

I'm signed up to get e-mail alerts when there's a delay on my Metro line. Today I got this:

(ID 55699) Disruption at Fort Totten. Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Ave & Silver Spring due to a train experiencing mechanical difficulties outside of Ft. Totten. Shuttle service has been established.

That's a bit of an understatement.


Given Metro's controls, I didn't think this kind of collision was even possible.

Iran and the US Reaction

Lots of Republicans have been criticizing the President for not coming out more strongly in support of the protestors in Iran. In fact, he has been supportive of the protestors but is taking a measured approach.

CNN has an interview with Middle East expert and good guy, Fareed Zakaria and he has something to say about it. I think he’s exactly right.

CNN: What should the United States do?

Zakaria: I would say continue what we have been doing. By reaching out to Iran, publicly and repeatedly, President Obama has made it extremely difficult for the Iranian regime to claim that they are battling an aggressive America bent on attacking Iran. In his inaugural address, his New Year greetings, and his Cairo speech, there is a consistent effort to convey respect and friendship for Iranians. That is why Khamenei reacted so angrily to the New Year greeting. It undermined the image of the Great Satan that he routinely paints in his sermons. In his Friday sermon, Khamenei said that the United States, Israel, and especially the United Kingdom were behind the street protests, an accusation that will surely sound ridiculous to most Iranians. The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag.

CNN: But shouldn't the U.S. be more vocal in support for the Iranian protesters?

Zakaria: I think a good historic analogy is President George H.W. Bush's cautious response to the cracks in the Soviet empire in 1989. Then, many neo-conservatives were livid with Bush for not loudly supporting those trying to topple the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But Bush's concern was that the situation was fragile. Those regimes could easily crack down on the protestors and the Soviet Union could send in tanks. Handing the communists reasons to react forcefully would help no one, least of all the protesters. Bush's basic approach was correct and has been vindicated by history.

A Tale of Two Movies: The Hangover & S.Darko

The Hangover

Very funny movie. The humor comes out of rich, odd characters dealing with the outrageous situations they find themselves in after a blowout of a bachelor party. If you want to see a good adult comedy, go see it. Really very funny. (I will admit that seeing it with Rachel and her friend was slightly uncomfortable.)

S. Darko

Rachel and I watched Donnie Darko last year. It was odd, but beautifully filmed and we really enjoyed it. When we saw S. Darko, the straight-to-video sequel, at Blockbuster, we rented it.

Now, I've known this movie was coming out for some time but I didn't expect a straight-to-video version (which is not a good sign). And of course there's the problem of even trying to do a sequel to a unique and unusual cult movie. As a rule, it's almost never a good idea. Turns out, in this case . . . that's still the rule.

This movie was pointless. Really, really pointless. I mean, it's as if they were trying to make this movie as pointless as possible but got sidetracked by all the pointlessness and accidentally made it even more pointless. If this movie was in the Olympics in the Pointless Movie event, they'd have to invent a new medal way better than Gold for them to win. The medal would have to be made out of some new metal (hey, a homonym!) which is the epitome of pointless (maybe pointlessite), and electro-plate it with a covering of pure pointlessness.

Anyway, we thought it was pointless. And also it had Elizabeth Berkley from Saved by the Bell and Showgirls.

Wegmans

We were in Virginia today and so had our first opportunity to visit a Wegmans supermarket this evening.

Holy crap was that store cool. Huge floorplan, all kinds of exotic goods, and an excellent food court where we dined on comfortable seating on the second floor balconies.

And what's more, the prices were not way off the chart as I expected. On many items we buy, the Wegmans price was cheaper.

If we had one in our area, we'd definitely shop there.

I did snap one picture of prices that were a bit high.

I guess we'll buy our truffles elsewhere.

Note to 20th Century Fox

Dear Creators of ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS,

Please note the timeline below. (click to embiggen)


The wooly mammoth, the "star" of your series of family-friendly animated movies, did exist during the last major ice age on earth about 20,000 years ago. One presumes that's the ice age referenced in the title of your film and the association of ice age to mammoth is correct. Well done. (By the way, I am especially fond of the sabertoothed squirrel, Scrat. He's awesome.)

If you reference the timeline, however, you may notice a problem with the title of your current offering. The last of the dinosaurs became extinct approximately 65 million years ago.

This means that dinosaurs pre-dated mammoths by about 65 million years. This makes it highly improbable that your title MAKES ANY FRAKKING SENSE WHATSOEVER!

Just wanted to get that off my chest. Thank you for your attention.

Ipecac

We should be embarassed

The United States of America has been a world leader in technology, innovation, human rights, and medicine for over a century. Yet over 40 million people don't have health insurance, and they cost taxpayers far more than any program to provide them health care could cost.

There is NO reason why we shouldn't be able to figure out how to give every American easy access to quality health care while preserving good quality health care for those who already have it.

What's more, overhauling the health care system, specifically with the provision of a government insurance plan, enjoys huge support.

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.

But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats.

Congress, just get it done!

Now you're finally taking a stance I can agree with

They live only a few weeks and there are probably a trillion of them on this planet. They are about the least likely species to become extinct and their brains are so small they have no real consciousness and feel no pain. They're basically little instinct machines.

And the President took one out yesterday.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

Really, PETA, this is where you want to make your stand? Flies? As if people don't think you're radical enough already? You're going to dis the President's awesome swatting skills? And this will just bring in the donations?

Good thinking, there.

Wicked Video Game

Rachel showed me this. WOW.


Today's Big Thing

We are SO living in the future.

Anyone who likes flowers this much can't be all bad, can he?

The flowers really play down his dishonest, unlawful, despotic tendencies.

Here's wishing the forces of democracy and freedom in Iran all the best in this violent, horrible situation.

Scary Times

I think this op-ed by Frank Rich is dead on. It's getting scary around here.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

We don’t know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — . . . — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

This was evident during the campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama’s name with “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” at G.O.P. rallies. At first the McCain-Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” But later John McCain thought better of it and defended his opponent’s honor to a town-hall participant who vented her fears of the Democrats’ “Arab” candidate. Although two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested in an assassination plot against Obama two weeks before Election Day, the fever broke after McCain exercised leadership.

...

Obama’s Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of “Treason!” It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging “in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — “may still be” a Muslim and is aligned with “the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic “charities” that “have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.”

Read the whole thing. It's worth reading.

As if!

Come on, Iran! Would this guy steal an election?!?

Busted

Sarah Palin's bizarre war with David Letterman seems to have other motives behind it than are at first apparent.

Alan Colmes (former co-host of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes) makes a great a catch regarding the current feud between David Letterman and Governor Sarah Palin. While Palin has been blasting Letterman all over the airwaves for joking about Yankees star Alex Rodriguez "knocking up" her daughter, Jay Leno told an extremely similar joke during the presidential campaign that resulted in no such uproar:

Gov. Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it. -- "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," 9/2/08

Hopefully this "controversy" will all go away now.

Go Dave!

Certainly not maybe?

Sarah Palin on the Today Show with Matt Lauer:

“Moving on to Republican Party politics, Lauer told Palin that "your name has been on a list with people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney," and that she was considered a fund-raising superstar. "Does that translate to you being the future of the GOP?" he asked.

Her answer: "Absolutely not necessarily."

Right.

Racists are racists, I guess

You know, once a person has been in the public spotlight for saying stupid, outrageous things, you would think they'd know better than to do it again. But of course if they did know better, they wouldn't have spoken up in the first place.

In a racially charged interview, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that President Obama hasn't spoken to him since they parted ways last year, because "them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."

...

"Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office," Wright said, according to Virginia's Daily Press. "They will not let him ... talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is."

Oy. The irony of him using a term that has been used to disparage blacks is just too much. Let's hope that none of us hear from this guy again for at least 5-8 years.

There is some hope for humanity

Futurama is back, Baby!

Six years after getting axed by Fox, Futurama is being resurrected on Comedy Central.

A spokesperson for 20th Century Fox Television confirms that the cable net has ordered 26 new episodes of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's late, great animated series to air beginning in 2010. The studio cites Futurama's "blockbuster" performance on DVD and in reruns on Comedy Central as the reason for its rebirth.

The Stupid defending the Idiotic

I read a variety of news sources throughout the day and one of them is the Huffington Post. Their biggest problem from my perspective is their ridiculous peddling of bad medical advice through their woo woo bloggers. Number one on the idiot patrol is Deepak Chopra who weighs in over the Newsweek article slamming Oprah.

In his post, the standard alt medicine spin-control is in full spin-mode. Of course, Deepak says, the article didn't credit Oprah for all the real medical people she's had on the show, as if this excuses her showcasing dangerous anti-vax and alt-medicine nutjobs.

He opines about how the medical establishment has lost all their credibility with the public but doesn't show any evidence that that's the case or how it occurred. Frankly, curing polio, eradicating smallpox, mapping the human genome, creating artificial limbs, heart transplants, and new medicines to control diabetes, high cholesterol and AIDS gives them a hell of a lot of credibility in my eyes, but that's just me, I guess.

Then there's this nugget of wisdom.

The medical profession is burdened with a host of problems that Oprah addresses with more candor and force than the AMA. She promotes wellness and prevention, two areas that drastically need improvement. She brings up creative solutions to problems that medical science is baffled by, such as the healing response itself and the role of subjectivity in patient response. These are issues that few M.D.s are willing to explore, yet she has done so for decades.

WTF is he talking about? This is almost literally gibberish. But don't worry, because Deepak understands all.

Instead, we got a response from an oncologist in Canada repeating the establishment position: alternative treatments of cancer are bogus, subjectivity has no place in science, "soul talk" about illness is rubbish. This is exactly the kind of dismissive arrogance that drives millions of people away from conventional doctors. Every illness has a subjective component -- after all, to be sick is to change your moods and emotions, and severe illness causes one to examine primal issues like life and death and the meaning of existence. Do these subjective changes affect healing? Obviously they do, or we wouldn't have the placebo effect, which comes into play at least 30% of the time in illness.

Scientific medicine by and large ignores wellness, prevention, and alternative medicine in general. On a daily basis doctors don't deal in these things; few take courses in medical school centered on them.

Yep, there they go again. Big Pharma and Big Medicine with their "empirical data" nonsense. Don't they know that we are all mystical beings? Only by promoting "wellness" and treating all illness and injury with hugging will we ever be healthy. Why don't those mean doctors get it? They're seriously harshing our buzz!

There's more if you want to read it. It gives me a sour stomach, trying to swallow all that stupidity. Maybe I'll try a homeopathic remedy. Then I'll try something that actually works.

When Bill O'Reilly interviews you and he comes off as the rational one, you know you're a nutjob

Apparently Jon Voight thinks he's his right wing character from 24. Here he is talking to O'Reilly this week.

VOIGHT: Well, it is essentially this, Bill, if I had to break it down. We were warned by Hillary Clinton that he had no experience, that he had no qualifications. We were warned by his now vice president, Joe Biden, he had no experience. So he was a novice. And now we're getting what we could have expected, if we had listened. We have a fellow who's bringing us to chaos and socialism.

O'REILLY: I don't see any chaos. In Iraq he's pretty much doing what Bush did. He's keeping the soldiers there. There may be chaos when we start to withdraw, but right now it's...

VOIGHT: The chaos I'm speaking of is economic chaos.

O'REILLY: OK. But let's stay -- let's stay with foreign policy and we'll get into...

...

VOIGHT: Well, I feel he's weak.

O'REILLY: You feel he's weak?

VOIGHT: Just exactly why we have this muscle-flexing from Korea. Nothing's happening. They...

O'REILLY: What would you do, though? I mean, you know, we've talked this over. It's a very tough situation in Korea.

VOIGHT: Well, this is -- there must be a response.

O'REILLY: What kind of a response?

VOIGHT: Well...

O'REILLY: See, now we're getting into a really tough area.

I'm sure Jon Voight would just pummel Kim Jong Il and everything would be cool. Or he'd find some secret code on the back of the Mayflower Compact that would make Korea back down. Either way, he'd handle it, not like that pussy Obama.

How do they handle the awful, awful heartburn?

Last week was the annual Republican fundraising dinner! Huzzah! Let's listen in, shall we?

First up, the interview between Sean Hannity and invited/disinvited, keynote speaker/not keynote speaker, Sarah Palin!

"Is this even more than you thought was going to be in terms of where the president would take the economy?" Hannity asked.

"A lot of this is wrapped in good rhetoric," she said, "but we're not seeing those actions, and this many months into the new administration, quite disappointed, quite frustrated with not seeing those actions to rein in spending, slow down the growth of government. Instead, China's the complete opposite. It's expanding at such a large degree that if Americans are paying attention, unfortunately, our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize, certainly that is so far from what the founders of our countries had in mind for us."

Of course, this begs the question of whether she is unable to articulate her thoughts or she has no thoughts to articulate. What the heck is she trying to say here?

She seems to think that the President ran on a "shrink government" platform which certainly isn't the case. And she seems to think that the growth of government is the root of our economic problems which isn't even close to being true. We're in trouble because of 20 years of deregulation and the financial strain of throwing billions of dollars a week into Iraq and Afghanistan.

As far as our country evolving into something the founders wouldn't recognize, they certainly wouldn't understand how such a ditz became the governor of an entire state, even if it is Alaska.

Newt Gingrich, obviously jealous of Palin's spotlight decide he'd better get into the act.

He attacked Obama for a line from Obama's speech in Berlin in July 2008, when Obama told the audience he spoke to them as "a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

"Let me be clear. I am not a citizen of the world!" Gingrich said. "I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous."

Wow, xenophobic and stupid in three short sentences! Somehow considering ourselves citizens of this tiny planet filled with worldwide problems that need cooperation to be solved is "stunningly dangerous". If more of these knuckleheads considered themselves citizens of the world perhaps we'd be in much better stead with the rest of the world.

And finally, we need a gratuitous film reference incorrectly applied to really end this segment. Ari?

"Newt is a wonderful, fabulous dinner speaker, full of ideas and entertainment, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "But Newt is not going to be the next nominee of the Republican Party.... The Republican future cannot be back to the future. It needs to be a new future."

Nice.

Homeopathy Kills

Here's yet another answer to the question "What's the harm?" in people believing in "alternative" medicine like acupuncture, reiki, and homeopathy. This is the heartbreaking story of an innocent, nine-month old girl who died unnecessarily because her parents believed in unscientific, ineffective homeopathic treatments.

By the time she died, she was the weight of an average three-month-old, her body was covered with angry blotches and her once black hair had turned completely white.

Gloria had developed eczema when she was four months old, a condition she probably inherited from her mother, which flared and subsided throughout the rest of her short life.

But the couple, who were raised and educated in India where homeopathy is accepted as equivalent to conventional medicine, were steadfast to their homeopathic remedies and ignored completely or quickly discarded other treatment.

Eczema. She died a horrific, painful death from an easily treatable skin condition. Of course, the father still believes in the non-medicine.

But even after Gloria died, Thomas Sam adhered to his belief that homeopathy was equally valid to conventional medicine for the treatment of eczema.

He told police: "Conventional medicine would have prolonged her life ... with more misery. It's not going to cure her and that's what I strongly believe."

Reality smacked this family upside the head in the worst possible way and yet they still believe.

So the next time someone asks "what's the harm" in these woo-woo beliefs, point them to Gloria's story.

Amazing Discovery

A stray thought . . .

If some enterprising Jedi Knight had just taken the time to invent the wrist strap for lightsabers, no Jedi Knight would ever have been killed again.

 

 

Instead, we got Jar Jar

Man, it is a shame when the trailer for a VIDEO GAME pretty much kicks the crap out of all three Star Wars prequels. Geez, this is how it should have been.

Check it out here.

Bravery

20 years ago today. Tank Man.


An amazing symbol of human dignity and courage. And a new angle, released today. Look in the distance between the two trees to the left.


His fate is unknown but his actions inspire millions and make me proud to be a human being.

RIP Bill

Bill aka actor David Carradine, 73, was found dead today in his hotel room in Thailand where he was shooting a movie.

Boringly, he wasn’t killed by the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique but apparently died of natural causes.

EDITED TO ADD:

By now we all know that his death looks like an accidental asphyxiation during an autoerotic asphyxiation session. This puts his wife in the unenviable position of exposing the truth that he did not commit suicide, but was killed during kinky extra-marital sex.

That's a dealbreaker, ladies!

(Okay, I admit it. I'm trying to get this purposely ultra-lame catchphrase into common use. Why? Because I know Jenna and Liz would want me to.)

Explain this to me

Here's your chance to be helpful.

Many conservatives, including some in my own family, have been griping about the bailout of the the Big 3 automakers. They say brilliantly observant things like "If my business went bankrupt, the government wouldn't bail me out," and "If I wanted to own a car company, I would have bought their stock." They seem extremely unhappy that the Obama Administration is doing everything it can to keep the Big 3 in business.

It seems pretty clear that if the government hadn't intervened, Chrysler and General Motors would be gone. Kaput. Out of business. They may still be, but for now at least, they survive.

Failure, of course, means that around 300,000 Americans instantly lose their jobs. That's huge. It also means that if Ford fell, America would be out of the automotive business. No one could possibly start any of these concerns back up. We would be completely dependent on foreign companies like Toyota, Honda, Volvo, etc. for our cars. (This doesn't bother me that much because we've never actually bought an American car.)

So here's what I don't understand. I thought Conservatives were supposed to love Big Business. When in power, they go out of their way to pass tax breaks and to deregulate industry. So what did the automakers do to earn this stick in the eye from their usually loyal protectors? And if the Administration had just let the car companies die, wouldn't the conservatives be going nuts about how the Democrats killed the all-American industry? It seems to me that doing anything or nothing was a lose-lose prospect for the Administration.

So, if you understand, please explain it to me. I suspect the answer will be that "they're just a bunch of asshats," but I'm hoping to be surprised.

Incredible breakthrough

This is amazing and almost unbelievable.

THREE Australians have had their sight restored thanks to their own stem cells and ordinary contact lenses.
...
To obtain the stem cells, Dr Watson took less than a millimeter of tissue from the side of each patients' cornea. Working with colleagues at POWH and UNSW, he cultured stem cells from the tissue in extended wear contact lenses.

Dr Watson then cleaned the surface of the patients' corneas and inserted the lenses. Within 10 to 14 days the stem cells began to attach to the cornea, replenishing damaged cells. Satisfied that the stem cells were doing their job, Dr Watson removed the lenses and the patients have been seeing with new eyes for the last 18 months.

We are living in an age of what seem to be scientific miracles. And yet some people still prefer to wallow in the dark ages and believe in nonsense like homeopathy, chiropractic and alternative medicine.

Times are Changing

When I started work around 19 years ago (man, I’m old), I kept hot chocolate mix in my office and would often have a mug in the morning.  On occasion, I would take my mug to the kitchen and pour a bit of coffee into the hot chocolate.  Mmmmm.

These days I have a cup of coffee every morning and occasionally stir in a bit of hot chocolate mix.

I don’t know what that means or if it warrants such a momentous title to this blog post.  Then again, coffee and chocolate are important subjects.