December 31, 2005

A Spineless Welcome to 2006

The 4th edition of the Circus of the Spineless is up at Bootstrap Analysis.

Posted by Steve on December 31, 2005

Worse Than 9/11?

Yes, there are things worse than 9/11!

Posted by Steve on December 31, 2005

December 30, 2005

A New Years Wish....

...that this happens to all mayors and dea agents.

Posted by Steve on December 30, 2005

A Modest Health Care Proposal

Is a single payer national health care system inevitable? John Cole thinks so:

I think the fight over some form of nationalized health care is over, and that we will one day have a European-style system in place. The only question is when big business will successfully pressure the government to take over and how much of their current health care funding responsibilities they can manage to lay at the feet of government.

A couple of thoughts. First, it is not at all clear that business will really come out ahead if they push all health care costs onto the government. Government will expect businesses to contribute pay taxes in an amount similar to what they are already paying for employee health care. And, you can expect this amount to continue to rise.

Second, and this leads to the modest proposal, businesses do not really have any health care funding responsibilities today. Many, especially large, businesses do include the cost of some or all of a health insurance maintenance plan in their compensation packages. But what they include they can take out. It is simply a matter of providing a competitive compensation package that allows them to hire the quality of employees they need to be successful.

A better way to get out of the health care funding bind than inviting the government deeper into their revenue streams would be for businesses to eliminate health maintenance plans from their compensation packages. This will be easier in non-union businesses but should still be achievable for all that see these costs as a problem.

How does a business make this step. Take the total cost per employee that is going toward a health maintenance plan today and make that part of the employees cash compensation. The new total becomes the forward going salary. The employee then may purchase what ever type of maintenance or insurance plan they choose.

Posted by Steve on December 30, 2005 | Comments (1)

Friday Ark #67

HAPPY NEW YEAR

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (41 shouts as of 12/29)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 93rd edition will be hosted this week by Elms in the Yard. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. T13th edition edition is up and hosted by Wood Song.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters. The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

CatsInvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on December 30, 2005 | Comments (11)

December 29, 2005

Five Years of Restraint

Nothing clintonian in the bush white house.

Via The Agitator.

Posted by Steve on December 29, 2005 | Comments (1)

Do You Support Warrantless Searches?

Then you should also sign the Posner Waiver.

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Posted by Steve on December 29, 2005 | Comments (1)

Craig's List Gets Results

I posted the ads at about 4:30pm on Christmas Eve. I deleted my ads just before midnight Christmas Day. During that time, I got a total of 218 responses.
Read the results.

Via the apostropher.

Posted by Steve on December 29, 2005

Grand Rounds

The last Grand Rounds of the year features the best posts of 2005.

Posted by Steve on December 29, 2005

December 28, 2005

Wiretap Fiction

Here are the Rasmussen poll results:

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree.

Pretty straight forward and not particularly surprising. However, here is how one writer revised the results:

More Rasmussen: 64% Say Warrantless Eavesdropping OK

With only 23% disagreeing.

After the 2002 midterms -- sheesh, that seems like it was almost three years ago or something -- William Kristol offered his opinion that the Democrats had, basically, gone crazy. Hatred of Bush and frustration at being frozen out of power had simply driven them batty.

It's stuff like this -- sort of predictable, you know, that Americans aren't going to sweat eavesdropping on terrorists without warrant -- that really bears Kristol out.

Note that the poll results say nothing about warrantless eavesdropping. Apparently, though, Ace wants this result so badly that he must write into the results what is not there and present fiction to his readers.

It’s to bad Reynolds did not note Ace’s misreporting of the Rassmussen poll when he linked to it.

Some even suggest that 64% isn’t very good news for the police state bush. (via)

Well, I'm going to let this post stand as written even though Ace changed his title a few minutes ago:

Second-- I changed the title of the thread like fifteen minutes ago. I was just wondering how long you retards would keep on shrieking about such a ticky-tack point.
Ticky-tack point indeed.

Posted by Steve on December 28, 2005 | Comments (1)

Red Book Hoax

A couple weeks ago in regard to the story about a college student being visited by the FBI because he had checked out a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book Kip noted:

FULL DISCLOSURE: There are some who are insisting that this story is a hoax. But if it is then that means that an MSM reporter, or two university professors, are risking their jobs on a lark. Sounds unlikely to me. The reporter, Aaron Nicodemus, has publicly insisted that the story is genuine.

Well it turns out they were right:

The reporter writes about how the student's story eventually started to unravel under intense questioning (only after the initial story was written), and how the tale "came at a perfect storm in the news cycle" due to the recent New York Times story about government surveillance. It doesn't mention the paper's failure to speak with the student prior to publishing the piece, nor does it offer up any kind of admission or apology.

Here is the retraction article which was published on 12/24. It is 4 days later and until I ran across the article in Regret the Error linked above I still thought the original story was true. I wonder how many will continue to cite this as an example of bushian governmental badness (which it would be if true). For instance this entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 3:29 am UTC.

Posted by Steve on December 28, 2005 | Comments (1)

Iron Sponge Maiden

Does anyone know the answer to Patrick’s question? If so, post it at his place.


Posted by Steve on December 28, 2005

Not Nice

Some of you might think that this is really funny but I, for one, don’t even want to know what this will escalate to for next years Haasfest.

Via John Cole who comments that:

There is a special place in hell for ‘friends’ like this.

Posted by Steve on December 28, 2005

December 26, 2005

Chicken...

...blogging.

Via Tegan.

Posted by Steve on December 26, 2005

December 25, 2005

The Merry Kitties

The 92nd Carnival of the Cats is up at Watermark.

Posted by Steve on December 25, 2005

December 24, 2005

All I Want For Christmas

Vicki's story:

And here is what Santa said to me, speaking ever so softly and near enough to my ear that his beard tickled:

"And what would you like for Christmas, my little billionaire?"

I thought 'how strange', at least in the sense that a three year old can think 'how strange' but I answered, "Santa, a bride doll, please."

And Santa responded, "Well, little B, you would be wiser to want an Operating Manual for the Spaceship Earth. It will teach you that through ephemeralization and synergetics we can waste not and want not and the worldaround will be populated by 4 billion billionaires, each able to enjoy Susie Q's fish and chips whenever they wish. You will come to understand that less is more and cooperation is the optimal survival strategy. This manual explains how selfishness is unnecessary and irrational, and war is obsolete. It explains how we can recycle both our knowledge and our materials to live ever more fulfilling lives. Wouldn't you rather have that for Christmas instead?"

I considered a minute, as much as a three year old can consider, and said, "Ummm, no thank you, Santa. I think my brother wants a spaceship but I would like a bride doll."

Read the whole story.

And then go read the Operating Manual.

Posted by Steve on December 24, 2005 | Comments (1)

December 23, 2005

Friday Ark #66

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.(39 shouts as of 12/15)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 92nd edition will be hosted this week by Watermark. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 13th edition edition is up and hosted by Wood Song.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters.
The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

NB: Trackbacks to Typepad sites seem to be completely throttled today.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
Didn't Make ItExceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on December 23, 2005 | Comments (16)

December 22, 2005

Holiday Birds

Wood Song invites you over for some fine holiday bird cheer:

Oh the weather outside is frightful..
But reading bird-blogs is so delightful..
And since we’ve no place to go..
Let It Snow, let it snow, let it snow!
at I And The Bird #13:

Posted by Steve on December 22, 2005

Body Language

The doc was late as is the case more often than not. I worked through all the year old magazines on the side table and then started on the walls. Ahh, there's a sign I hadn't noticed before:

DEFIBRILATOR AVAILABLE
Ask for Help
I suppose falling to the floor unconscious would constitute asking for help.

Posted by Steve on December 22, 2005 | Comments (1)

December 21, 2005

Playing With Your...

...balls.

Posted by Steve on December 21, 2005

Confession Blogging

Maybe he was looking for a way to get caught:

An 18-year-old passenger who caused a fatal crash by pulling on the steering wheel pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter after prosecutors discovered a confession on his online blog.
Via Jane Galt.

Posted by Steve on December 21, 2005 | Comments (1)

Lessons on the Constitution

Tony Blankley provides this lesson in today's Washington Times:

I have appeared on several radio and television shows with prominent journalists who manifest a perfect ignorance of even the most basic principles of constitutional law — even as they pronounce with self-consciously weighty judgment the unconstitutionality of the president's actions.

However, the most basic constitutional principle is that in war time, the constitutionality of government intrusion into peace time civil liberties must be proportional to the magnitude, likelihood and exigency of the threat or danger to be prevented.

Until one has measured the threat, one cannot rationally judge the constitutionality of the intrusion into civil liberties of the executive action. The president's critics simply ignore — or are oblivious to — the threat.

I just reread the constitution, it does not take long, and find no such principle stated. There is no reference to the constitution applying differently in wartime than in peacetime so when Kevin Drum asks:
But does that make sense? Is anyone really comfortable with the idea that three decades from now the president of the United States will have had wartime executive powers for nearly a continuous century?

Somehow we need to come to grips with this. There's "wartime" and then there's "wartime," and not all armed conflicts vest the president with emergency powers.

I answer that not only does it not make sense that the president should have 30 nears of wartime executive powers there is no reason, certainly none called out in the constitution, that the president should ever have any power to abrogate any part of the constitution.

Can congress enact a law that allows the president to abrogate the constitution? Well, they can do it but, again, there does not appear to be anything in the constitution that gives congress this authority so when they do so they are violating their oath to uphold the constitution and should, rightly, be tossed out of office.

Via To the People.

Update: James Joyner notes that:

...bold wartime leaders have been flouting the Constitution since at least Lincoln, with the full support of the public.
Well, this certainly does not make them worthy of respect no matter how arrogant bold they are and there is nothing about "the full support of the public" that legitimizes abrogation of the constitution without going through the steps to amend the constitution.

Posted by Steve on December 21, 2005 | Comments (1)

Why My Google Referrels Are Down

It must be because Modulator only posted about 3 of Google's top 10 searches of 2005.

Via mister snitch!

Posted by Steve on December 21, 2005 | Comments (1)

December 20, 2005

Will abramoff rollover?

There appears to be a good chance that abramoff will rollover on his former associates:

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.

Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."

Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

It would be a good thing if this snares some dems as well. Perhaps people will begin understanding the kind of culture that evolves when you create a mob wealth transfer machine the size of the us federal government and that the smaller wealth transfer operations at the city, county and state level are simply breeding grounds for the scumsects at the federal level.

Via Raw Story.

Posted by Steve on December 20, 2005

December 19, 2005

The Shorter w

Channeled by Shakespeare's Sister.

And then precised by Jane Hamsher.

Posted by Steve on December 19, 2005

December 18, 2005

Cats In Season

The Christmas season that is. Carnival of the Cats #91 is up at Music and Cats.

Posted by Steve on December 18, 2005

My Elf Name Is....

Your Elf Name Is...
Happy Mince Meat
What's Your Elf Name?

Via afarensis who is named, chuckle, Candy Fluffernutter.

Posted by Steve on December 18, 2005 | Comments (3)

December 17, 2005

The Case Against Impeachment

it's pretty simple....

If you also get rid of him there is this...

This is pretty disheartening! It might make one think that it is time to get rid of the federal government in its entirety.

Update (12/20): I see some others are beginning to figure this out.

Posted by Steve on December 17, 2005 | Comments (2)

December 16, 2005

Friday Ark #65

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (36 shouts as of 12/15)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 91st edition will be hosted this week by Music and Cats. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 13th edition to Mike. The 12th edition is up and hosted by the Search and Serendipity.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters.
The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make ItExceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on December 16, 2005 | Comments (19)

December 15, 2005

TypePad Broken??!

Typepad sites seem to be down as of 2:40 AM EST.

ARK boarders from Typepad hosted sites may be delayed.

Update: Maintenance status here.

Posted by Steve on December 15, 2005 | Comments (6)

Disengaging From the Drug War

Earlier this month the King Count Bar Assocation (WA) held a drug policy conference titled Exit Strategy for the War on Drugs: Toward A New Legal Framework. In a followup opinion piece Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey wrote that although the conference attendees seemed to agree that the prohibition should end they had some problems with the next step:

Prohibition had failed. Drug laws had not stopped Americans from getting drugs; it simply made them get drugs from criminals. But if not from criminals, then from whom? On marijuana, they could not agree.
Some of the attendees wanted to make sure that the same government that has demonstrated such dramatic failure in the war on drugs was rewarded by having a monopoly on the distribution of marijuana:
The idea of any corporate control is troubling to me," said Deborah Small, a New York activist who proposed to give marijuana distribution to the government.
Might a government monoply reap monopolistic windfall profits? Well, sure:
Much of the crowd was tolerant of intoxication but not of profit. They would replace police and jailers with doctors and social workers. The Dutch scene, with private-branded marijuana in private-sector cafes, was too commercial for them. Too fun. They would give marijuana oversight to the Washington State Liquor Control Board.

Merrit Long, chairman of that august monopoly, told the conference the state's profit was $200 million on $600 million of sales.

Heck, even Microsoft doesn't make that kind of margin. Unless they propose to continue the prohibition on growing marijuana, which doesn't quite seem like an end of the drug war, then folks will just plant those seeds of BC bud in their gardens and bypass the government monopoly.

Initially the best way to keep corporations out of the business is this: only allow individuals or partnerships to produce, distribute and sell the goods. Over a longer period corporations can be kept out by eliminating the laws that facilitate the existience of the modern corporate structure.

Ramsey closes with this:

But I, too, fall into the trap of looking for a system that would align the rules with what Americans actually do. Americans don't want that. Drug prohibition reflects our ideal of a sober America, and it is politically impossible to abandon that.

Yet life continues. We legislate nationally and ignore locally. We have our own version of Holland, really, except that ours is harsher than theirs, and does not attract tourists.

Excuse me but whose idea of a sober America? All those folks with their 6-packs and liquor cabinets? Bruce, you'll have a better chance of convincing us that we have an ideal of sober America when no congress critter drinks, when liquor sales have dropped to nil. Nope, drug prohibition reflects a misuse of government power and the disproportionate power of those who make their livings off the drug war.

Let's retire all the drug terrorists warriors now!

NB: Well known blogger Mark Kleiman was a participant at the conference.

Posted by Steve on December 15, 2005

Want to Bring Together the Right and Left?

Just throw a pajama party. From Moxie:

WELCOME lefties...if nothing else Raj and Pajamas Media have done what politicians could not -- brought the right and the left together on an issue. I am in awe of how many Atrios readers are visiting. It makes an Instalanche look like a piss party on a midget farm. Whatever that means.
Via Outside the Beltway.

Posted by Steve on December 15, 2005

Police Beat Snowrection

The girl just wanted to have a little fun:

"We just did it because we were really bored, and we thought it'd be funny," she said. "It was huge."
Yes, indeedy!
...the 6-foot tall, anatomically correct, finely detailed penis raised some questions Monday.

Especially for police.

"We got some calls that people thought it was offensive," said New Windsor police Chief Michael Biasotti. "We assumed it was some kids who did it."

Officers found no one home. Assuming the snow sculpture was more prank than nod to Christmas' pagan roots, the police knocked it down. Beat it down with shovels, actually.

Apparently the police trespassed to commit this mischief.

Via Broadsheet.

Update: In a somewhat related article Shakespeare's Sister takes the conversation at Kevin Drum's place into new territory and tells us whySuperman's super package should not be airbrushed away.

Posted by Steve on December 15, 2005

December 14, 2005

In Hock to the World

The US exported $107.5 billion in goods and services in November. Well, at least we are exporting something as we go into hock: imports were a tidy $176.4 billion. Brad DeLong comments:

Each month the trade deficit gets bigger makes it more and more likely that we will have serious macroeconomic trouble when America's savings and investment flows start to come back into balance
Kash has more details that show the China is not the only country carrying a large amount of US debt.

Are we watching the last wimper of a superpower?

Posted by Steve on December 14, 2005

December 13, 2005

NYC Subway Map

If you live there or are planning to visit New York City this online subway map hacked onto Google Maps might be useful. For the rest it is another interesting application that might come to your city soon.

Via Metafilter.


Update: From Kim in the comments:

www.hopstop.com is the absolute best subway tool I've found. Door to door directions in 3 cities, including buses, subways, and walking.
I gave it a quick look and Kim is right. If you are in New York City, Boston, or Washington, DC. this is a great tool! I found it easier to use than the onNYTurf site linked above and though HopStop doesn't give you a map of the subway system it quickly gives what appear to be excellent and detailed directions.

Posted by Steve on December 13, 2005 | Comments (2)

December 12, 2005

Aha!

Now we know:

Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.
The accompanying picture provides a nifty representation of busholation.

Via the talking dog.

Posted by Steve on December 12, 2005

Kitty Cats Have Their Own Priorities

Carnival of the Cats #90 is up at Quite Early One Morning.

Posted by Steve on December 12, 2005

December 9, 2005

Campaign Mudslinging Already Under Way

Jim Henley slams candidate jim henley.

Posted by Steve on December 9, 2005

Friday Ark #64

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map (32 shouts as of 12/8).

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 90th edition will be hosted this week by Quite Early One Morning. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 13th edition to Mike. The 12th edition is up and hosted by the Search and Serendipity.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters.
The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Alert: My trackbacks are having problems today. Some are showing up and others are not. Please doublecheck and if yours isn't there leave a comment. No time to work on the problem today.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
  • Fiat Lux: Friday Cat Blogging: Unhappy Anniversary - Tina
Didn't Make It
  • The Hairy Museum of Natural History: A Friday Diadectes
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on December 9, 2005 | Comments (22)

December 8, 2005

A New Motto...

...for Balko. Written by George Will:

...no matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting.
Even this may be a bit optimistic.

Posted by Steve on December 8, 2005 | Comments (1)

Stuff to Read

Carnival of the Feminists #4

Carnival of the Capiitalists

History Carnival #21

Carnival of the Liberals #1

Yes, right away!

Update: PZ notes a couple more I'd like to find time to check out:

Carnival of Education #44

Skeptic's Circle #23

Posted by Steve on December 8, 2005

December 7, 2005

Ye Canterbirdy Tales

I and the Bird #12: The Canterbirdy Tales is now online at Search and Serendipity.

Join nearly 30 bloggers from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia
as we celebrate some of our favorite birds in words and photographs.
Go enjoy the tales!

Posted by Steve on December 7, 2005 | Comments (1)

Superman Returns

Mmmm, perhaps they should have released this for Christmas.....

Via rox populi.

Posted by Steve on December 7, 2005

mcain may be breaking

It looks like mcain may be reaching an unacceptable compromise with bush regarding exemption language in his amemdment barring inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners:

Instead, he has offered to include some language, modeled after military standards, under which soldiers can provide a defense if a "reasonable" person could have concluded that he or she was following a lawful order about how to treat prisoners.
Hopefully this is not the case. pace got it right a few days ago:
"It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it," the general said.

Rumsfeld interjected: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."

But Pace meant what he said. "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," he said, firmly.

This damn well better apply to every human being no matter who they work for.

Following orders is never an excuse for for inhumane behavior. Though it might be possible to consider a slightly less excruciating punishment for a perpetrator following orders than that given to one acting on their own or to the one who gave the orders.

Via Talkleft.

Posted by Steve on December 7, 2005

December 6, 2005

It's Getting Better...

....so much better in post saddam iraq.

Posted by Steve on December 6, 2005

Presents 2005 #1

For your cyclist: helmet covers. For example:

Ladybughelmetcover.jpg


Via BoingBoing.

Posted by Steve on December 6, 2005

Is It Time To Boycott Ford?

Well, the last Ford my family bought turned into a maintenance nightmare so this might be easy for me.

If this article is accurate then that will seal the deal and I suggest that everyone who is not a member of AFA show Ford what a real boycott is like:

Ford Motor Co. has averted a boycott scheduled for Dec. 1 by the American Family Assn. (AFA), Ward’s has learned.

The proposed boycott, which was halted in June, a few weeks after its start, was in protest of what the AFA calls an “enthusiastic” support of the gay rights agenda.

In averting the AFA boycott, Ford may have made some concessions in its policy of advertising and support of gay publications and community activities, but neither side will comment on the details of the truce.

In a Nov. 29 meeting at AFA headquarters in Tupelo, MS, David Leitch, general counsel and vice president for Ford, and Ziad Ojakli, group vice president-Corporate Affairs, along with Dallas-area Ford dealer Jerry Reynolds, hammered out a deal.

“We are ending the boycott of Ford,” said Donald E. Wildmon, Chairman of AFA. “While we still have a few differences with Ford, we feel that our concerns are being addressed in good faith and will continue to be addressed in the future.”

AmericaBlog is driving the train on this story. See the top of their left sidebar and for example here and here. Aslo see these articles.

On a related note: isn't time to remove the tax deductions for churches, religious organizations and, yes, even other non-profits at the local, state and federal level?

Via 10,000 Monkeys & a Camera.

Posted by Steve on December 6, 2005 | Comments (1)

Help Save A Life

Review the new CPR guidelines at KidneyNotes!!

If you haven't had CPR training sign up now.

Now, go spend a few hours reading this weeks Grand Rounds presented by The Examining Room of Dr. Charles who notes:

You will be inspired, discouraged, and enlightened by these unique pieces as contributed this week by doctors, nurses, patients, and healthcare professionals who've got something to say.

Posted by Steve on December 6, 2005

December 5, 2005

Defending the Indefensible

rice seems to be defending rendtion and secret prisons as she:

...chastised Europe leaders today, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."
Really, some specifics would be helpful here.
...Ms. Rice repeatedly emphasized that the United States does not countenance the torture of terrorism suspects, at the hands of either American or foreign captors.
What exactly does she mean by torture? We know the bushites think about it a bit differently than many of the rest of us.

Reaching for justification and admitting that it is happening she goes on to say:

"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said. "But there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option."
Why not? Please condi some details are in order here.
"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.

"Sometimes, these efforts are misunderstood," she said.

Echidne responds:
I want to hear a lot more about "the efforts being misunderstood", a lot more. Like in what way are we misunderstanding them, exactly? Is it that the European interrogation centers were just chosen because they had excellent food and beer?
So much for the transparency the bushies seem to demand from everyone else. For instance, on November 10th stephen hadley said the following:
In terms of intelligence, you know, one of the problems, in dealing with a closed society such as North Korea, is you don't know what you don't know, and what you do know tends to be fairly limited. And as you know, we don't know as much about their enrichment program as we would like. And that's one of the reasons why, as part of the six-party talks, it will be very interesting to have -- and very important to have a declaration, to have dismantlement procedures and verification measures so we can be sure that in a otherwise fairly non -- extremely non-transparent society, these commitments to give up nuclear weapons and nuclear programs are carried out.
This is all well and good and we can agree with hadley. However, let's revise his statement just a bit (italics):
In terms of intelligence, you know, one of the problems, in dealing with a closed administration such as bush's, is you don't know what you don't know, and what you do know tends to be fairly limited. And as you know, we don't know as much about their rendition program as we would like. And that's one of the reasons why, as part of the six-party talks, it will be very interesting to have -- and very important to have a declaration, to have disclosure procedures and verification measures so we can be sure that in a otherwise fairly non -- extremely non-transparent administraton, these commitments to give up torture, rendition and secret prisons are carried out.
Yep, they need to look into the mirror a little more often and we should remember that whenever the bushies decide to accuse an opponent of some foul behavior it is often, if not always, a behavior that one or more of the bushies is trying to hide.

Update: Also see the heretik.

Posted by Steve on December 5, 2005

Lists! Year-end Lists!

Rex expects over 600 lists to populate Lists: 2005:

2001 had 350 list, and it has grown steadily to last year's high of 550. So I'd expect 600+ this year. Some of it depends on which lists I allow in -- if I included every single music blogger's list, that would be a couple thousand alone. (Music is always the biggest category. I apologize every year that I can't possibly add every single music blogger's list.)
If you crave lists head on over and satisfy your hunger and if you know of a list that is not included let him know.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Posted by Steve on December 5, 2005

Korean Restaurants to Experience Increased Business

I'm certainly going to add one or two to my list of stops and will be ordering extra sides of kimchi:

Korea's traditional side dish has begun attracting worldwide attention again as a potential remedy for avian influenza. It is a golden opportunity to restore pride in kimchi as a healthy food relished by people the world over.
Does anyone track and report sales at Korean restaurants or kimchi sales in particular? Either might be a pretty good index for how concerned people are about avian flu.

Via 7610.


Posted by Steve on December 5, 2005

December 4, 2005

Sunday Cats

Carnival of the Cats #89 is up at When Cats Attack. Go pet them.

Posted by Steve on December 4, 2005 | Comments (1)

December 3, 2005

Moving The Dog's Water Bowl

If you are Michael Savage you tell the manager to have the busboy move the bowl.

But, really, why the hell doesn't he move it himself? Perhaps, like Monk, he has some OCD variant. Does that give him leave to inflict his behavior on others?

Via Pharangula.

Posted by Steve on December 3, 2005

Defend Your Home

With these USB powered missiles.


Via ..You Are A Tree.

Posted by Steve on December 3, 2005

Peremptory or For Cause

Here's one guy that will never sit on a jury for me.

Via It's Morning Somewhere

Posted by Steve on December 3, 2005 | Comments (2)

December 2, 2005

It's Only Kinky,,,

...the first time

Posted by Steve on December 2, 2005

Friday Ark #63

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map (24 as of 12/1).

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 89th edition will be hosted this week by When Cats Attack. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 12th edition to Mike. The 11th edition is up and hosted by the The House & other Arctic Musings.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters.
The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
Didn't Make ItExceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on December 2, 2005 | Comments (22)

December 1, 2005

Magazine Begins Morph to Blog

Or was it one already?

Even though I don't get all that many comments here I consider comments to be a valuable feature of the blogging community. Now, Business Week has added user comments to its online articles. For instance, at the moment, you can be the first to leave a comment on this article.

So is BW now a multi-author blog with deep pockets? What about other MSM online sites?

Via Dan Gilmour.

Posted by Steve on December 1, 2005

Can Cities Be Literate?

Naw, I didn't think so. But, within cities there are sets of resources available that can enhance the literacy of the residents. Some folks at Central Connecticut University evaluated US cities based on a set of these resources:

This study attempts to capture one critical index of our nation’s social health—the literacy of its major cities (population of 250,000 and above). Previous versions of this study focused on five important indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, and educational attainment. The 2005 study introduces a new factor—Internet resources—to better gauge the expansion of literacy to online media.
Seattle and Minneapolis are 1 & 2. The overall rankings are here.

Via beSpacific.

Posted by Steve on December 1, 2005 | Comments (1)