Wednesday - January 25, 2006

It’s Like Watching A Fire

....Fascinating and Horrific at the same time.

Whenever Greg Gutfeld posts at the Huff-and-Blow, it sets off a firestorm of protest that is unmatched anywhere I’ve read.  This one is no exception.  I think his brief, saterical posts are nothing more than a vehicle to set up the raving comments section.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/25/2006 at 06:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Liberals •  
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An Open Letter

I just discovered this site and will be visiting more often if there’s stuff like this (plus, her picture is outstanding!)

Free Spars with Osama

Hello free0352, you are very frightening… Peace be upon you…

Thanks Osama, you’re so polite.

You’re welcome free, Allah be praised. Anyway, I have written yet another letter to the American People. I was wondering if you’d let me read it to you?

Aw come-on Osama! You just drone on and on and on with the Peace-be-upon-him-allah-be-praised-shit. You know god damn good and well I hate that shit.

It is how we Moslems address each others, even our enemies’.

Well holy shit dude!? Fine, on with the letter.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/25/2006 at 02:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Terrorists •  
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I Want to be a Woman

(Apologies to the Python boys)

Michael Jackson Spotted in Robe and Veil

MANAMA, Bahrain
Pop star Michael Jackson took a shopping trip to a Bahrain mall Wednesday, covering himself in a black abaya robe traditionally worn by Bahraini women and a veil hiding his face, along with three children _ apparently his _ with their faces covered with dark scarves.

Jackson, who seems to be settling in the Persian Gulf, was seen leaving Marina Mall in the Bahrain capital, holding a child by the hand. On the way out through a back door, he shook hands with security guards

He was wearing an abaya, a robe with long sleeves, under which his pants, white shirt and men’s shoes could be seen, and his head and face were wrapped in a black veil. He had black gloves on his hands.

The veil, abaya and gloves were of a style typically worn by conservative Bahraini women, though Jackson appeared to be wearing them to hide his identity.

With him was woman _ also in an abaya and jeans and a scarf over her head that partially covered her face _ who had the two other children. All three children’s faces were wrapped in black scarves, and they wore yellow shirts and sweatpants or khakis without robes. The woman’s identity was not known.

The woman asked photographers to respect their privacy saying they are scaring the children, as the five left in a White Lexus Infinity with darkened glass.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/25/2006 at 01:55 PM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • Odd-Strange •  
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Cindy Screeches Again

Rob Port asks a very salient question: Can we question her patriotism yet?

CARACAS (AFP) - Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, joined more than 10,000 anti-globalization activists in Caracas, where she hailed Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez.

“I admire him for his resolve against my government and its meddling,” said Sheehan, who gained notoriety when she camped outside US President George W. Bush’s ranch last year to protest the Iraq war. She said she hoped to meet Chavez later in the week. [Emp mine -Ed.]

Denouncing your own government is one thing, but standing up in a hostile country and saying this is a horse of a different color. She talks about our “totalitarian” regime, but how long could she stand in Caracas and denounce Hugo Chavez without being “detained”?

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/25/2006 at 11:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats • Insanity • Politics • Stoopid-People •  
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In Case You Were Wondering

Chuck Norris Facts

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/25/2006 at 11:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Dress Code

Some days I wake up, drink my coffee, check the news and .... really want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Today is one of those days, thanks to this news story below. It’s bad enough that the kid in this story is acting like a jerk (as teenagers sometimes do) but when the ACLU steps in and assists in this Moonbattery™, I have no choice but to decline further membership in the human race. Please refund my dues immediately ...

Male Student Wins Fight to Wear Skirt
January 25, 2006, 5:07 AM EST
HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP)

A male high school student can wear a skirt to school after the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement with school officials. The ACLU announced the deal Tuesday. It will allow a Hasbrouck Heights School senior to wear a skirt to protest the school’s no-shorts policy. The district’s dress code bans shorts between Oct. 1 and April 15, but allows skirts, a policy 17-year-old Michael Coviello believes is discriminatory. “I’m happy to be able to wear skirts again to bring attention to the fact that the ban on shorts doesn’t make sense,” Coviello said in a statement.

The Hasbrouck Heights superintendent, Joseph C. Luongo, did not return telephone messages left Tuesday seeking comment. Coviello first wore a costume-style dress but high school officials told him to go home and change. The district’s superintendent then advised the Coviello to purchase everyday dresses and skirts at a retail store, which Coviello did, the ACLU said. But after a few days, he was sent home with a note from his principal saying if he wore a dress, kilt or skirt, he could no longer attend school.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/25/2006 at 06:30 AM   
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Of Dogs And Men

Ancient Chinese Proverb: “If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas.” Start scratching, Google ...

Google Agrees to Censor Results in China
January 25, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)

Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country’s free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet’s fastest growing market. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China’s Web suffix “.cn,” on Wednesday. A Chinese-language version of Google’s search engine has previously been available through the company’s dot-com address in the United States.

By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world’s most populous country. Because of government barriers set up to suppress information, Google’s China users previously have been blocked from using the search engine or encountered lengthy delays in response time.

The service troubles have frustrated many Chinese users, hobbling Google’s efforts to expand its market share in a country that expected to emerge as an Internet gold mine over the next decade. China already has more than 100 million Web surfers and the audience is expected to swell substantially _ an alluring prospect for Google as it tries to boost its already rapidly rising profits.

Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing-based company in which Google owns a 2.6 percent stake, currently runs China’s most popular search engine. But a recent Keynote Systems survey of China’s Internet preferences concluded that Baidu remains vulnerable to challenges from Google and Yahoo Inc. To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country’s government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.

Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, some topics, such as Taiwan’s independence and 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects. Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted “don’t be evil” as a motto. But management believes it’s a worthwhile sacrifice. “We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China,” said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s senior policy counsel.

- More ChiCom Sucking-Up By Google Here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/25/2006 at 06:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Greed • Oppression •  
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Barking Moonbat Of The Week

By unanimous decision, Mr. Stein is hereby inducted into the Barking Moonbat Hall Of Fame. This asshat has been getting on my nerves for five years now, ever since the 2000 elections. Joel is the poster child for the Angry Left. He continues to annoy me. None the less for writing crap like this ...

Warriors and Wusses
by JOEL STEIN
(LA TIMES)

I DON’T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on. I’m sure I’d like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you’re wandering into a recruiter’s office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I’ve got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of. But I’m not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they’re wussy by definition. It’s as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn’t to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn’t going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He’s going to be looking for funnel cake. Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren’t really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of “Laguna Beach.”

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that. I understand the guilt. We know we’re sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful. After we’ve decided that we made a mistake, we don’t want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they’re following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff’s pet name for the House of Representatives. I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I’m tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it’s Vietnam. And sometimes, for reasons I don’t understand, you get to just hang out in Germany. I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn’t so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it’s really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I’m listed in the phone book.

I’m not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea. All I’m asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades. Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

*Update* Radio Blogger has the transcript (and the audio) of an interview Hugh Hewitt did with this assclown.  Go read it.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/25/2006 at 05:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Liberals • Media-Bias • Outrageous •  
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The First Time

_{Cameron Cardow—The Ottawa Citizen}

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/25/2006 at 05:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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   Tuesday - January 24, 2006

Man Attacks Urinal

I confess that I am not a connoisseur of fine art, but a urinal?

Frenchman fined for attacking urinal artwork

PARIS (Reuters) - A Frenchman who attacked and damaged “Fountain,” a urinal declared a work of art by Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp, was ordered Tuesday to pay a fine of 214,000 euros ($262,700).

A Paris court also gave Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, a three-month suspended sentence for taking a hammer to the absurdist artwork, the second time he has attacked it since 1993. The attack last month left the ceramic urinal slightly cracked.

Duchamp was a leader of the Dada movement, an avant garde “anti-art” school of the early 20th century that mocked conventional standards, and “Fountain,” made in 1917—is considered one of the most influential artworks of its kind.

“This was a wink at Dadaism,” Pinoncelli told the court in his defense. “I wanted to pay homage to the Dada spirit.”

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/24/2006 at 03:52 PM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • Odd-Strange •  
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Bring Out Your Dead - II

Dead man rides subway for hours

NEW YORK, Jan. 23 (UPI)—It took more than six hours for anyone to realize that a 64-year-old Brooklyn man had died on a New York City subway train.

Eugene Reilly, who died of a heart attack, likely got onto a Brooklyn-bound Q train just before 1 a.m. Thursday. He wasn’t found until 7:15 a.m. when a curious commuter touched his shoulder, trying to wake him, the New York Daily News reported.

Reilly, a mail handler, worked the 4 p.m.-to-12:30 a.m. shift and was headed home, his wife said. He was sitting up in his seat, which transit officials said was likely the reason their workers left him alone for so long, the newspaper said.

“The policy is that if someone is sitting up, employees are not allowed to touch them,” said Deirdre Parker, a city transit spokeswoman.

A different transit official said employees probably saw Reilly, who was in the last car of the train, but thought he was sleeping.

“People sleep on the train all the time,” an official said. “No one thought anything of it.”

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/24/2006 at 11:39 AM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • Odd-Strange •  
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Global Warming Strikes Again

Snowstorm Closes Hawaii Volcano To Tourists

MAUNA KEA, Hawaii -- Officials closed the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano to the public after a snowstorm shut down access for the first time this winter season.

Clouds blanketed Hawaii’s tallest peak this weekend. A blanket of snow forced everyone to evacuate, including park rangers”

We’ve got to make sure and keep everybody healthy and safe on the summit. So, I’m closing it,” Mauna Kea ranger Kimo Pihana said.

The heavy snowfall was a rare sight, even for those who are up there almost every day.

“The snow began to accumulate very quickly and we had to evacuate to prevent being trapped on the summit,” telescope operator Paul Sears said.

A California family was at the summit when the snow started falling, before the road was shut down.

“Did you ever think you’d see snow in Hawaii?” a reporter asked.

“Wasn’t really expecting to see snow in Hawaii,” said Bob Nyman.

“So it’s a nice treat on your vacation?” the reporter asked.

“Oh absolutely. It was great,” Nyman said.

For visitors who didn’t have timing on their side, the trek ended at the 9,000-foot mark where the road was closed.

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 01/24/2006 at 11:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Environment • Odd-Strange •  
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Oh No! Not Again!

Yes, dear friends. It is 1994 all over again. Deja vu once more. Or should I say “Deja Voodoo”. No matter how many pins I stick in my Hildabeast doll she just won’t go away. And now she’s gearing up for a run at the Presidency in 2008. Even worse, she’s started singing that old “universal healthcare” song again like a damned broken record. Perhaps if I burn some chicken feathers over my voodoo doll. Maybe that’ll help. Regardless, the beast just won’t keep her mouth shut (see below). Must I be taxed with another Clintoon in the White House? Please, somebody help me ....

Sen. Clinton Re-enters Health Care Fray
Former first lady blasts Medicare plan; alleges ‘deliberate neglect’
ROCHESTER, New York (CNN)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton put her pet issue, health care, at the center of her Senate re-election effort Monday, accusing the Bush administration of “deliberate neglect” of the issue. “I’m ready to get back into the fray, knowing how difficult and controversial it is,” Clinton told an audience of about 100 health care and business professionals at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

“The status quo is not sustainable.” In a campaign swing that touched down in the three most populous cities in upstate New York, the junior senator described the introduction of the Bush administration’s prescription drug plan under the Medicare program as a “confusing and complex transition.”

Earlier, while visiting a pharmacy, Clinton said many elderly residents were paying far more for drugs than they used to and have found themselves hamstrung by paperwork. “A lot of pharmacists are giving the drugs to their customers because they know how much their customers need it,” she said. “One of the bills I’ve introduced is to make sure the pharmacists get reimbursed.” Rochester has a population of about 200,000, and about 2 in 5 jobs in the area are in the health care industry.

Clinton also visited pharmacies in Buffalo and Syracuse to call for improvements to the Medicare drug plan, which took effect January 1. Since then, at least 26 states have had to step in to make sure some of the poorest seniors receive needed prescriptions, an association of state health care officials said last week.  “We have people that are coming up that should have $1 and $3 co-pays that have $40 co-pays on their medications,” said Dawne Rizio, a pharmacy technician at Rochester’s Saratoga Pharmacy. “They’re not getting their meds, or we’re spending hours on the phone fighting with insurance companies.”

In her speech, Clinton said the administration was not doing enough to help the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance or to lower health care costs, which now consume 15 percent of the nation’s gross national product. “The response in Washington to our health care crisis has been to cut Medicaid, erode patent protections and to promote strategies that increase costs and reduce access to care,” she said.

Clinton said Bush’s State of the Union speech January 31 was likely to include new proposals, which she characterized “in three words: on your own.” She said the failed effort to provide universal insurance coverage that she led as first lady early in her husband’s first term as president may have been “too much, too fast.” But she added, “Today, we’re making things worse with deliberate neglect and flawed policies that are diminishing the coverage that Americans have. That is shifting costs to others and leaving consumers, businesses and local governments with the bill.”

Clinton is seeking a second Senate term in November without a well-funded opponent, and she has not ruled out a run for the presidency in 2008. “I’m just running for re-election now—that’s my most important job is to get re-elected,” she told a supporter at the pharmacy. “But I need your help for that, too. I don’t want to take anything for granted.”

Clinton’s comments on health care were the latest in a series of sharp criticisms of the White House. Last week, she took aim at the administration’s handling of the nuclear standoff in Iran, just two days after saying it would go down as “one of the worst” presidencies in U.S. history.

- More babbling from the Hildabeast here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/24/2006 at 07:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Hildabeast •  
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Nuts!

Hidden deep in this scientific breakthrough is the reason why Conservatives are so much smarter than Liberals. And why jocks are such jerks. I present this scientific knowledge to you for your education ... and also because I couldn’t resist the chance to paraphrase the esteemed Dr. Pitnick below for letting me know that when it comes to testicles “there are no free lunches” ....

Size Does Matter in Bats’ Evolution
January 24, 2006, 4:27 AM EST
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP)

For some male bats, sexual prowess comes with a price—smaller brains. A research team led by Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick found that in bat species where the females are promiscuous, the males boasting the largest testicles also had the smallest brains. Conversely, where the females were faithful, the males had smaller testes and larger brains.

“It turns out size does matter,” said Pitnick, whose findings were published in December in “Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Science,” an online journal. The study offers evidence that males—at least in some species—make an evolutionary trade-off between intelligence and sexual prowess, said David Hoskens, a biologist at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in England and a leading authority on bats’ mating behavior.

“Bats invest an enormous amount in testis, and the investment has to come from somewhere. There are no free lunches,” said Hoskens, who did not participate in the study. The relationship between the breeding system and relative brain size has received little investigation, said Pitnick, who teaches evolution and population biology and researches topics such as sexual selection and sexual conflict.

Bats are the second largest group of mammals (behind rodents) with about 1,000 known species. Because of their exceptional navigational and flying abilities, bats have been the subject of countless studies, providing Pitnick and his colleagues—Kate Jones of Columbia University and Gerald Wilkinson of the University of Maryland—with a bounty of data without having to slink off into caves.

Pitnick’s team looked at 334 species of bats and found a convincing contrast in testes size. In species with monogamous females, males had testes starting at 0.11 percent of their body weight and ranging up to 1.4 percent. But in species where the females had a large number of mates, Pitnick found testes ranged from 0.6 percent to 8.5 percent of the males’ mass (in the Rafinesque’s big-eared bat).

“If female bats mate with more than one male, a sperm competition begins,” Pitnick said. “The male who ejaculates the greatest number of sperm wins the game, and hence many bats have evolved outrageously big testes.” Promiscuity is known to make a difference in testicle size in some other mammals. For example, chimpanzees are promiscuous and have testicles that are many times larger than those of gorillas, in which a single dominant male has exclusive access to a harem of females.

Large brains, meanwhile, are metabolically costly to develop and maintain. Pitnick’s research suggested that in those bat species with promiscuous females, the male’s body used more of its energy to enhance the testes—giving it the greater adaptive advantage—and lacked the energy it needed to further develop the brain. The study found that in more monogamous species, the average male brain size was about 2.6 percent of body weight, while in promiscuous species, the average size dipped to 1.9 percent.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/24/2006 at 06:28 AM   
Filed Under: • Satire • Science-Technology •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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