February 18, 2006

News Flash: Dick Cheney Was Careless

I just don't get all the hub-bub about whether Dick Cheney shot Whittington at 30 yards or at 30 feet or whatever. What's the point of that argument? If he fired at some closer range does that mean he was extra-super careless instead of just careless? Where are the Cheney critics going with this argument?

Oh I know. The theory goes something like this:

If Cheney lied about the distance it means he lied about WMD. We can't have a Vice President who goes around shooting people. He's reckless. He's evil evil evil. Halliburton Halliburton Halliburton. AAAAAAAgh!!!

[head explodes]

You can only clutch at straws for so long until you run out of straws.

Like that? I just made that one up.

I love how people are saying Cheney was drunk. Like that disqualifies you from being a world leader. I think Churchill put that one to rest sixty years ago.

Look everybody. This was an unfortunate accident, but it's not going to get anybody impeached. Bush and Cheney are going to finish out their term. Get used to it.

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Coolest Thing On The Internets Of The Day

The Human Clock.

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February 15, 2006

Plane Crash In Roseville, 2.0

Sheesh, I'm taking unexpected criticism for my "fuel feed problems" statement in my post about the Glasair II crash in Roseville. The manufacturers' reps must be trolling the web. Here's some clarifying points to remember.

  1. I never said that the Roseville crash was due to a product defect. Obviously, I have no idea and if I had to guess, I'd blame pilot error first.

  2. Just as obvious, if the pilot was indeed doing aerobatics over a populated area, he would have been clearly negligent.

  3. One thing that should be investigated is how many hours that particular plane had been flying. There is a rule that you cannot have passengers in an experimental plane until a certain amount of flight time has been logged. I can't remember the requirement, maybe some of you know it.

  4. Perhaps I should have said fuel feed "challenges" instead of "problems." But, come on. There is a difference between low wing and high wing aircraft fuel systems. The difference is gravity. On a low wing plane, fuel has to be pumped to the engine. If air gets in the line the engine could die. The danger is magnified if the plane is doing stunts. I'm certainly no expert, but I did learn that to prevent cavitation in the fuel lines, tolerances have to be exact throughout the system. Also, some low wing planes do not allow a "both" setting on their fuel selector switch.

  5. It may be that kit planes are made with higher quality materials, as one commenter said. That's not my beef. I would much rather be in a plane that was mass produced, since there's a greater likelihood that any design problems will have been previously discovered by some other sucker, and not me. Also, I would expect quality control to be somewhat better at a factory than in Joe Blow's back yard.
That is all. Have at it.

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Gotta Love The Beeb

The BBC, no surprise, was one of the many media outlets that refused to show the twelve Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Their excuse was as lame and hypocritical as any other you've seen:

We recognised that among our users there is a wide range of different cultural sensitivities and that the images would cause genuine offence to some.
Tut, tut. Don't want to give offence you know. So sorry about that freedom of the press thing you Yanks are always on about.

Of course, they forgot to mention anything about that fear of gettin' blowed up thing. There's that too.

Interestingly, the Beeb has no problem with potentially offending Muslims when there is no chance that their offices will become targets for retaliation.

Exhibit A: the BBC didn't hesitate to plaster their website with the newest Abu Ghraib photos. Are they really taking the position that those photographs would not "cause genuine offence to some?" Or is the reason for their newfound boldness the fact that any retaliation would be directed at American troops, not journalists whose lives are, as everyone knows, worth more than the rest of ours.

I also love the disclaimer they added to the link in the main story.

Warning: You may find some pictures disturbing
The obvious rhetorical question seems to be: why wasn't such a disclaimer good enough to allow them to publish the cartoons?

Oh, yeah. It's that darn "gettin blowed up" problem.

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Poetry Wednesday: Sandburg

I stopped in Springfield Illinois a few years ago, just to pay my respects to President Lincoln. Here's an account of a visit by Carl Sandburg, from 1918.


Knucks

In Abraham LincolnÂ’s city,
Where they remember his lawyerÂ’s shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham LincolnÂ’s city Â… I saw knucks
In the window of Mister FischmanÂ’s second-hand store
On Second Street.

I went in and asked, “How much?”
“Thirty cents apiece,” answered Mister Fischman.
And taking a box of new ones off a shelf
He filled anew the box in the showcase
And said incidentally, most casually
And incidentally:
“I sell a carload a month of these.”

I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks,
Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern,
And there came to me a set of thoughts like these:
Mister Fischman is for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff,
And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers,
And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen,
Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers,
They are all for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff.

I started for the door.
“Maybe you want a lighter pair,”
Came Mister FischmanÂ’s voice.
I opened the door Â… and the voice again:
“You are a funny customer.”

Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories,
This is the place they brought him,
This is Abraham LincolnÂ’s home town.


I might wonder why Carl Sandburg would need knucks. But then I would be committing the error of assuming that all poetry is autobiography.

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February 13, 2006

Silver Medalists!

Apparently, there is no Mandarin translation for "why why why!" When they bang their knee in China, they finish the program.

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The First Rule Of 24

A hostile with key information is a hostile down.

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February 12, 2006

V-Day Advice

Purses and bags: NO. Our tastes are way too specific and there's too many variables involved. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can figure them all out. Same goes for shoes.

Pajamagrams, Vermont Teddy Bears or anything else advertised on late night cable tv: NO. Don't announce to your honey that you put no thought into the gift and selected it while watching re-runs of the A-Team.

Jewelry: Depends on the counter. Generally, if you can find it under glass, it's a YES. If it's hanging on a rack, give at your own risk.

Chocolate: Godiva, Sees, Dove? YES. Whitman's, Hershey's, Nestle? There better be another gift behind that one.

Flowers: Always a YES, unless they're the sole gift.

Gift Certificates: Book, record or department store certificates, NO. Everything else a MAYBE, but extra points for something out-of-the-ordinary, like an extravagant spa, a helicopter flight, horseback riding or something like that.

Useful housewares: Like a toaster or a blender? These might get you HURT. But anybody who doesn't know that probably doesn't date much anyway.

Fancy housewares: Like a set of delicate wineglasses? I'll give that a NOD.

Sex toys: I have nothing against sex toys, per se. But they're so overdone as a V-day gift, so I'm gonna say it's a NO. Valentines sex should be spontaneous, so don't announce that it's expected. As a surprise gift for no special occasion at all, there's a fun idea.

Lingerie: A possible YES. Here's the tip. Buy what she likes, not what looks good on Adriana. How do you know what she likes? Take a look in her drawer. If you don't see anything stringy, don't buy that three-pack of thongs. When in doubt, try boy-shorts. I don't know anyone who doesn't like boy-shorts.

Wine, beer or other intoxicants: If you have a nice evening planned, YES, by all means work this in. If you're thinking bubbly, I'd go with champagne over beer though.

Select wisely, and have a great Valentine's Day!

P.S. Remember to take the price tags off.

; )

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Dick Cheney's Hunting Foul

From AP:

. . . Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington 'came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself,' Armstrong said.

'The vice president didn't see him,' she continued. 'The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good.'

Allow me to be the first blogger to make the "another case of faulty intelligence gone awry" joke.

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Plane Crash In Roseville

A plane crashed into a house in Roseville, northeast of Sacramento today. From the video, it looks like a missile strike. The house is toast. Four people are feared dead, including possibly two inside the house.

The aircraft was a Glasair II, low-wing experimental kit plane. As a law clerk, I worked peripherally on a case involving the crash of a kit plane very similar to the Glasair II. Due to client confidentiality, I can't get into the specifics of the case. But suffice to say, you'd never catch me getting into one of them kit planes.

I don't know what possesses pilots to build their own plane when there are plenty of reliable manufacturers out there. Especially a low-wing plane with it's inherent fuel feed problems. Today's crash occurred after witnesses say the pilot was doing some aerobatics. Not smart over a populated area like Roseville.

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February 11, 2006

If St. Cindy Can Do It, Why Shouldn't I?

You heard that Cindy Sheehan was selling herself over the internet? The ad got pulled by eBay, possibly because the product may produce involuntary stomach spasms.

However, with this auction, no such problems are likely:

auction.jpg

As to any other disclaimers, I disclaim them.

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A Critique Of The Pragmatic Approach To Bullies

Kevin Kim, an energetic advocate of free speech, provides a well reasoned argument against those pragmatists who say we should not provoke muslim outrage.

The pragmatic approach, which seems to have gained adherents even in our own State Department, can be summarized thusly:

[F]or the 'pragmatist,' it is abundantly clear that certain Muslims are prone to overreaction. Knowing this as we do, we Westerners would be at fault for provoking such people, because provocation in the awareness of Muslim oversensitivity is malicious. You know the angry dog will bite you if you keep prodding it with your foot, so it's your fault if you get bitten. What's more, provocation is impractical: how can we expect to change Muslim hearts and minds when we adopt a confrontational stance?
Kevin responds:
The West and its allies occasionally shoot themselves in the foot: Kim Jong-il, for example, relies on Seoul's and Washington's indecision to get what he wants, like a child adept at 'playing' his parents. North Korea, in the role of the spoiled brat, knows it can sit back and make demands of its far more powerful interlocutors. In the end, Seoul and Washington gain nothing while Pyongyang continues its illegal nuclear program, its counterfeiting, its drug trafficking, and its systematic oppression of the North Korean people-- all while spewing outrageously self-righteous rhetoric whose crazed tone I often wish we matched, just for fun's sake.

. . .

The pragmatic appeasers want to cut Western action off at the root: they would prefer that we stop openly acting outraged about Muslim outrage. Some . . . seem to feel that we should feel outrage but then do nothing-- that we should, in fact, compromise with oppression by reducing our own range of movement to accommodate the violent Other. This is a comfortable, lazy position that allows us to pretend we have the moral high ground even as that ground is rapidly eroding beneath us.

Others feel that dialogue with the wild-eyed Muslims is the best answer. While I'm a staunch advocate of dialogue (interreligious, intercultural, diplomatic, etc.), I'm under no illusions that the people out there destroying embassies and threatening infidels with death are going to sit down calmly and listen to rational discussion. As far as I'm concerned, most of those people are already beyond redemption. Dialogue is reserved, then, for moderates (in the Western sense of the word, not the Muslim sense). What's more, we need to be focusing on the next generation of Muslims-- the children, the ones who are impressionable. If we don't move to communicate with them directly, they'll grow up just as indoctrinated as the current generation of willful idiots.

. . .

I proudly advocate the right to offend [If you've seen Kevin's blog, you know he ain't kidding], and demand that offended parties unpucker their sphincters and relax. If you want to protest, fine. If you're planning to get violent, don't be surprised if someone shoots your stupid ass.

The whole thing is here.

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Humor!

This Brokeback To The Future trailer is genius!

Hat tip: Crash & Byrne.

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February 10, 2006

Worlds Apart

contrast.jpg

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So I'm In Law School Because... Why?

Oh yeah, the money Arthur, the money.

Guest blogger Drobbski, at Clareified:

There are basically three types of partners: the successful, the hungry, and the failing. Although their motivations differ, they are all mean in one way, shape, or form.
The successful partner has a book of busines that is way too large to manage, so she is stretched so thin she doesn't have time for family or work.
So she is mean.
The hungry partner doesn't yet have his book of business, and strives to get it. He is more concerned with self-promotion and client development then billable work. He needs associates willing to put in the non-billable time that does the associate no good. He can't get the support he needs.
So he is mean.
The failing partner does not have enough business and efforts to find more fail. He is hoping to hold on a while longer working on other partners' matters, and he is bitter about it. So he is mean.
See? I told you.
Partners are mean.
It's a rule.
P.S. Shelly, I know you're the exception.

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February 09, 2006

Most Weirdest iTunes Purchase Ever

I bought Jerry Reed's "Eastbound And Down" yesterday. Hey, it was only .99 cents. Well, it was running through my head all day for some unknown reason and and it's actually a pretty catchy tune.

My brother used to drive a truck and he went through this whole Smokey And The Bandit obsession a few years back. One of the stupidest movies ever, but somehow entertaining in a campy sort of way.

On the same automotive theme, does anyone know about car batteries? I needed a jump start yesterday for about the third time in the last few months. I always seem to leave the lights on more often when I'm super busy and stressed out like I have been. I suppose I could just not be super busy, but then I would end up homeless and destitute, so that's not a good option.

Anyways, I remember hearing about some kind of special battery for people like me, which is like two batteries in one: a normal battery and a smaller emergency battery so you can jump start yourself if needed. Has anyone else heard of this? I checked Sears' site, but it seems they don't offer this kind of thing in their Diehard selection. If this kind of battery exists, it would really help me out, since it doesn't look like I'm ever going to rid myself of the habit of leaving the lights on.

Oh and by the way, my car does have an automatic light turner-offer. The problem is you have to actually open the door and get out of the car for it to work. The trouble is, I run the batteries down while I'm actually sitting in the car; I don't get out. This happens because I sometimes sit in there drinking my coffee and studying before class. Embarrassing.

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February 08, 2006

Memo To Sound Board Operator At The Grammys

You suck.

(One of many examples: Sly's first public appearance in 13 years and you'd think they might have shown the man more respect. Or didn't you think people would want to hear the vocals?)

Update: See pictures of Sly's sweet hairdo at Tony's.

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Poetry Wednesday: Verne

Today is Jules Verne's birthday. Here is a translation of one of his poems. Warning: it's a sad one.


Greenland Song

Dark Is the sky,
The sun sinks wearily;
My trembling heart, with sorrow filled,
Aches drearily !
My sweet child at my songs is smiling still,
While at his tender heart the icicles lie chill.
Child of my dreams I
Thy love doth cheer me;
The cruel biting frost I brave
But to be near thee!
Ah me, Ah me, could these hot tears of mine
But melt the icicles around that heart of thine!
Could we once more
Meet heart to heart,
Thy little hands close clasped in mine,
No more to part.
Then on thy chill heart rays from heaven above
Should fall, and softly melt it with the warmth of love!

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February 05, 2006

Dannebrog Again

dannebrog.GIF

With all the flag burning going on, I think it's appropriate to refer once again to my old old Dannebrog post. Click here.

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What? Was Hugh G. Rection Unavalable?

boehner.jpg

I looked all over my favorite humorous blogger sites and I couldn't find anyone who took a shot at the obvious joke. I guess everybody's too busy blogging about the cartoon rioting I blogged about ages ago, although I didn't get any awards for having done so. Do I have to do everything? Well here goes.

siren.gif

HOUSE GOP GETS BOEHNER

Despite stiff opposition, House Republicans selected Ohio Representative John Boehner as Majority Leader on Friday.

"This appointment might be hard-on his family, but Boehner's a real stand-up guy," said one observer. "He always seems to rise to the occasion."

Others were more skeptical. "Woody make a good leader? It's hard to say," said one deflated opponent.

Boehner was visibly excited about his new job. "I'm so pumped up right now, i can barely contain myself," he said. "I look forward to coming to work and plugging away until I'm exhausted."

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