Sunday Scan

No Fireworks In Gualala

A couple weeks back, I wrote about a particularly worrisome matter of the Cal. Coastal Commission issuing a cease and desist order against a 4th of July fireworks show planned in the No. Cal town of Gualala. It is, I think, the foothold the Coastal Commission has been seeking in a larger effort to stop these patriotic displays all along the California Coast.

How crazy is that? This crazy: One of the Gualala Gaeans said in a comment on the post that the damage of a 15 minute fireworks show would be permanent and unmitigatable. My gosh, if the earth were really that fragile, if would have dissolved into dust long ago.

The Gualala Patriots Day Committee (the good guys) appealed the decision and lost, so there will be no fireworks show this year. But the fight goes on; the judge merely failed to overturn the cease and desist; he did not rule on the underlaying matter. Says the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Patriots Day group:

“The legal fight goes on against this abuse of power by the California Coastal Commission. Although the fireworks won’t happen this year, our lawsuit goes forward. We’ll be litigating to bring the fireworks back in future years – and to have the courts instruct the Coastal Commission on the proper limits of its power.”

For a PLF summary on the case, click here.

The Inevitable In Zimbabwe

The despotic leaders of the multitude of thug-ocracies of the world can breathe a sigh of relief -- the popular uprising against their role model hero, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, has been crushed.

This was a close one, with Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change actually winning a popular election. But Mugabe froze the election results and started a campaign of intimidation ... which may be too faint a word. Remember what Mugabe's supporters did to the wife of Patson Chipiro, a MDC regional leader?

They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window. (BBC)

Preceding the MDC announcement it was not going to participate in the new election was this, also from BBC:

On Sunday, the MDC was due to stage a rally in Harare - the highlight of the campaign.

But supporters of Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF occupied the stadium venue and roads leading up to it.

Witnesses reported seeing hundreds of youths around the venue wielding sticks, some chanting slogans, and others circling the stadium crammed onto the backs of trucks.

Some set upon opposition activists, leaving a number badly injured, the MDC said.

It said African election monitors were also chased away from the rally site.

Sounds like exactly the sort of election Jimmy Carter would deem to be fair.

Another Reason To Vote For McCain

Buried deep in a WaPo story on hate groups and rising racism that's very short on stats and figures and verrrry loooong on opinion, we find this:

"One person put it this way: Obama for president paves the way for David Duke as president," said Duke, who ran for president in 1988, received less than 1 percent of the vote and has since spent much of his time in Europe. "This is finally going to make whites begin to realize it's a necessity to stick up for their own heritage, and that's going to make them turn to people like me. We're the next logical step."

Keep Duke in Europe! Vote McCain!

Alternative Energy Dreamin'

There's another horse in the alternative energy race ... but this one seems unlikely to generate even one horsepower. But what the heck! Don't stop believin', hold on to that feelin':

Scientists from Europe’s Atomic Energy Commission, in Grenoble, France, have shown that vibrations from raindrops landing on a certain type of plastic can generate enough energy to operate some low-power wireless sensors, like battery-powered outdoor thermometers.

Leonardo diCaprio, take note!

Plenty Magazine offers an "In Depth" feature on the new technology, gushing about how it could be used to power climate sensing devices that now need batteries, so that we get a continuous flow of data to feed into the electricity sucking beasts we call computers.

Of course, rain drop power comes with that bane of all alternative energy: a dearth of economic viability. It takes Penty to the last paragraph to mention this tidbit: The material used to generate raindrop power costs $460 for 1 kilogram, and given the milliwatts produced, a bunch of kilograms will be required. Batteries, on the other hand, cost a buck.

Undaunted, the article ends:

Who knows, April showers may soon bring power.

Of course, not enough power to offset the solar power that's not being generated due to the rain.

Very nice art: Josh Cochran

Extreme Climate Change

NOAA (named, perhaps, for that ark chap, since the oceans are going to flood us all) has released its newest climate change report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. The resulting bad reporting can perhaps be best summarized by two quick cuts.

First, the pocket liner set got their first impression of the report from this Science Digest intro:

Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

While the mainstream tuned into this Digg summary ...

New report highlights the likely changes in extreme weather and climate conditions under ongoing climate change.

... which in turn generated comments like:

Report: Turning on lamp will light up room.
Report: Pissing into wind will get you wet.
Report: Falling linked to failure to stand upright.

How many of these stories do we need to read before people start seeing this as completely obvious?!

Well, of course, it's just not that obvious. ICECAP gives us this summary by Roger Pielke Jr., who just happens to believe in anthropogenic global warming:

The report contains several remarkable conclusions, that somehow did not seem to make it into the official press release. They include: over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining, nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought, despite increases in some measures of precipitation, there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows, there have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms, there have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters, there are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

Pshaw. What's the fun in reporting boring ol' stuff like that?

Seismic Mitigation As Art

This amazing piece of industrial art is actually the tuned mass damper at the top of Taipei 101, for now the planet's tallest completed skyscraper.

The 728-ton steel ball is so massive it couldn't be lifted into location; rather, it had to be assembled in a cavern carved out of four stories at the top of the tower. Why, you might well ask, put a 728-ton ball at the top of the building?

The simple answer is that Taipei 101 stands just 800 feet from an earthquake fault. More specific: The ball swings counter to motion caused by wind or earth movement, dampening sway.

Deputy Dog, an architecture blog, has a short story on the mass damper, but what really attracts is the video that was shot on May 12, when shocks from China's massive earthquake hit the tower. Tourists in the building actually flocked up to the viewing area for the damper to see it in action.



Don't you just love human ingenuity?

Can You Say "Semper Cheese?"


If you don't understand this, says Blackfive, you've never met a Marine.

Step On It Or Shoot It?

"Do I step on it or shoot it?" That was my first response to seeing a gargantuan Hawaiian cockroach. I had a similar response to day when reading the latest from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene.

"Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started." (source)

"Do I step on him or shoot him?" The thought crossed your mind, too, didn't it? Or did you think, as Obama does, "Do I talk to him in Washington or do I talk to him in Tehran?"

What is there to say to someone like this, especially when he also used the occasion -- the 19th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's welcome in Hell -- to once again share his apocalyptic vision that tyranny in the world (that would be "us") will be abolished by the return to earth of the Mahdi, the 12th imam. Maybe it would go something like this:

Obama: Would you promise, please, that your nuclear program will be peaceful, sir?

Mah- I'm in the -moud for Jew-icide Ahmadinejad (rhymes with "McCain got beat by this young rad?!"): The Mahdi is coming! The Mahdi is coming! Death to America! Death to Israel!

Obama: Well, that sounds just awful. Do you think you could put it off at least until I'm out of office?

Oh boy. McCain 2008, eh?

Two More Votes For Obama!

This just in from the Providence RI Journal:

PROVIDENCE –– The state Board of Elections voted unanimously yesterday to preserve the voting rights of two men found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity some 20 years ago.

The panel overturned a nine-month-old decision by Cranston elections officials, who found that William Sarmento and John A. Sarro were too mentally ill to cast a ballot.

The Death Of Unions (Well, Union Art)

The decline of art is as broad as it is lamentable, hitting all aspects of artistic media ... including union activist art. Here's an International Workers of the World poster from way back when, long before post-modernism came along and ruined it all:


Pretty magnificent, eh? And, yes, flawed ... like there are no up or down ladders anywhere to be seen.

But that's not the subject of this post; the decline of art is. And here you have it, direct from the IWW on-line store, the swill the IWW artists turn out today: a "Capitalism cannot be reformed" button

Did the new IWW artists ever look in the archives and study the works of those who went before? Do they even feel a challenge to create something ... uh ... creative? Art is all around us, from the museums to the buttons on the IWW site, and nearly all of it is a mere shadow of what art used to be.

Oh, and here's a crack-up: Every single button in the IWW store is temporarily out of stock! Bad management? (Heh!) Or maybe the freighter from China, with its load of political prisoner-produced buttons, got waylaid.

Political Fundraising

This guy is so entrepreneurial that there's no reason he should be a bum:

The Danish Perspective

This email is making the rounds, perportedly from a very American-thinking Danish friend:

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an
election.

On one side, you have a b!tch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a
lawyer who is married to a b!tch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge
chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?

Unfortunately, there is.

I'm A Wuss -- A Chick Beat Me!

18

So how many five year olds do you think you can beat up? I mean really smash up the little boogers; use them as weapons; show them no mercy.

(This must be good for something, right? But I have to admit I'm having a little problem getting the applicability of this test. Maybe because I'm not a grandfather yet ....)

Anyway, I got here via The Nose On Your Face -- who whupped me pretty bad and who, in turn got to the site from Rachel Lucas -- who topped my score by one bratty five year old.

But look at her! She's 22 years my junior, obviously has a serious nasty streak, and appears to have just a wee bit less body fat on her ... and besides, she's wearing a helmet!

Six Word Memoir

Talk about a funny go-around. I had a hoot a month or two back with my "Six-Word Slogans for America" post which generated a couple hundred fun responses and these two winners:

For serious slogan, from Patrick: Free markets, free speech, free society.

And for fun slogan, from Joe Y.: Twenty million Mexicans can’t be wrong.

The post came roundabout from a book on six-word memoirs, and now Greg at Rhymes With Right has tagged me to come up with my own six-word memoir. A teacher, he played with his alma mater's Latin motto and came up with "Gladly would he learn and teach," which is pretty darn splendid. Love the "gladly."

My alma mater, Indiana, has the motto "Lux et veritas," truth and light, which is fine (I wish it were still true on the campus, though). But it's only three words.

The grammarian in me makes me lean towards something like ...

"My kingdom for a proper semicolon."

... but that's not a whole lot to dedicate my life to. Besides, last time I checked, I have no kingdom.

So I thought, what do I live my life for? My faith, my family and my freedom. Alliterate a bit, and:

Forever for family, faith and freedom.

I'm supposed to pass this thing on, so here goes, to:

Book at Bookworm Room
Dale at Okie on the Lam
Ymarsakar at Sake White
John at Blogotional

The State Of The Dem Disunion

Not exactly sure what my friend Jim is doing reading Kos, but happily he found something really funny while perusing the hard left:

"I've been thinking."
"Really? What about?"
"I've decided your candidate's better than mine."
"What???"
"Yeah. I've been reading diaries and stuff. Your candidate's better than mine."
"That's weird, because lately I've been leaning toward your candidate."
"Really? How can you say that? Yours is clearly better."
"Not after the stuff I've read. You'd have to be crazy to support that keg of dynamite."
"But yours can beat McCain in November."
"No, yours has a much better chance."
"That's bullcrap. Yours isn't imploding."
"Well, yours isn’t getting hammered by the press."
"What??? Have you been living in a hole in the ground?"
"No, but I'd say you have."
"Look, I don’t want to fight about this. We're both Democrats and we both want to beat the Republicans, right?"
"Right. But if you're supporting the candidate that I'm running away from, we're gonna get clobbered in November."
"You really are f***ed up, you know that?"
"I'm not the one flushing our chances down the crapper, douchebag!"
"A**hole!"
"Party wrecker!"
"I'm writing a diary!"
"Me too!"

[ker-SLAM!]

Meanwhile, McCain gets to campaign with his former opponent, making happy-face and raising bucks.

Go Hillary, fight Obama!

Go Obama, fight Hillary!

Photo courtesy of the goofy but fun McCainBloggette blog.

Fools Who Trust Big Government

In this week's Watcher's Council readings, there's a bright post, Have a Clear Identity, from Hillbilly White Trash on Dems and the GOP that includes this:

With all that division within their ranks why are Democrats so good at keeping their little fleet of ships all sailing in the same direction? It is precisely because the Democrat party is so fractured and fractious that it is so good at keeping order within its own ranks. It is a matter of survival. If they couldn't keep everyone more or less in line the party would fly apart and they would never win an election.

What unites Democrats is a desire for continued increase in the size, scope and power of government at the expense of the individual.

That's a good working definition, although I might simplify it to "faith in government's superiority." As a Christian, I'm used to challenges to prove my faith, and I can dish as well as receive, so what is the Dems' justification of their faith in government in light of stories like this:

SACRAMENTO (Sac Bee) -- California prison administrators and clerks reviewed the file of Sara Jane Olson multiple times since December, failing to catch the miscalculation that led to the premature release of the former 1970s radical, officials confirmed Thursday.

Olson, 61, was paroled March 17, a year before her sentence was to end. She was re-arrested five days later after the error was caught.

We've often heard people jibe the Dems, saying, "Would you trust your health care to the Department of Motor Vehicles?" Let's add to that, "Would you trust your security to the Department of Corrections?"

Sunday Scan

Bringing Honor Back To "Monica"

Here's a story out of Afghanistan that would be completely wonderful, were it not for the five wounded US soldiers that are central to it:

CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan (AP) - A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.

After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.

"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost. ...

Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.

"So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit," she said. "I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of."

For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away and treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.

"I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous (since) I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."

The military said Brown's "bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat."

Can you imagine having that maturity, esprit de corps and selflessness at the age of 19? I just asked that of Incredible Daughter #2, who happens to be 19, and she just shook her head and said, "That's crazy."

It does take a little crazy to be a good soldier, and five guys in her unit and all of America have a very good, and a little crazy, soldier to thank this morning for her valor.

Name The Fanatical Motivation

What motivated these fanatics? I had the answer five words into this story ... but had to read 18 paragraphs before BBC provided just a hint:

Suspected militants arrested in western China earlier this year were planning attacks on the Beijing Olympics, a Chinese official says.

Two people were reported to have been killed and 15 arrested in a raid on 27 January in Urumqi, Xinjiang province.

Officials now say their aim was to attack the August Olympics.

The alleged plot was disclosed as officials also revealed that a plane crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a jet on an internal flight.

The incident occurred on Friday.

Put "militants" and "Western China" together and what do you have? Islamists! BBC can't bring itself to say that, though. Way down at paragraph 18 and beyond we find:

China has been struggling for years to contain separatist sentiment among the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

Some Uighurs have campaigned for the mainly Muslim province to become an independent republic.

There it is: "mainly Muslim." And then you can read "separatist" to mean "wanting to set up a Shari'a theocracy."

Not that the media would ever make it that clear.

Gagging On Universal Health Care

A lot of us smell a rat on hearing the Dem-patter on the need for a system of universal health care. "Smell a rat" is just a figure of speech, of course ... [cue the sinister voice] ... or is it?

LONDON (Reuters) - A patient was told there was no reason why he couldn't have surgery in a hospital, despite the smell caused by a dead rodent trapped in the building's ceiling.

Andrew Cowper was due to have an operation at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Hertfordshire when staff "were made aware of a dead rodent in the single storey unit's roof space," the hospital said in a statement.

The hospital said its experts concluded that the dead animal was outside the operating theater and posed no risk.

Cowper, 19, who had been waiting 11 months for the unspecified operation, opted out, despite the experts opinion that it was perfectly safe under the rule of England's national health care system to be cut open within feet of a decomposing rodent.

Why I'm Not As Famous As Lileks

You remember Benny Sharon, the drugged-up Hebrew University prof and latter-day Timothy Leary, who recently postulated that Moses (I think that's Moses on the right and Jethro on the left) was stoned when he had a vision of God giving him tablets, and that the real hand-off never occurred. I thought my post on Sharon was pretty clever ... then I read what James Lileks had to say in his Bleat on the subject (with a hat-tip to Jim).

Talk about an effective rebuttal!

I just remembered that I called the Bob Davis show this morning to talk about the new theory re: Moses and the Ten Commandments: dude was high. Apparently a professor somewhere has suggested that the entire experience was the result of a mushroom or some such ceremonial intoxicant. I called to say I didn’t believe it, because if Moses was tripping we wouldn’t have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they’re freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish. Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain – anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.

After the chuckles (or "grass-giggles" if you will) die down, Lileks gets to The Big Point:

Sure: you cannot call them Commandments without someone doing the Commanding, and once they’re not commandments they lose the moral authority that supercedes the individual precepts. It doesn’t mean they’re not good ideas still; it just means they are one set of ideas in competition with other ideas that found their origin in the rude clay of history.

That, my friends, is why people who so enjoy sinning spend so much time and energy attacking the foundations of religion.

Whaling War Escalates

Paul Watson, a founder of GreenPeace who now has moved on to forcefully impose his anti-human view on others as captain of the anti-whaling ship Sea Shepard, is facing some stiff opposition this time around as Japanese whaling boat captains are standing up to his grandstanding:

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd group's protest ship Steve Irwin, said on Friday he was shot, but survived because he was wearing a Kevlar vest.

Japan's fisheries agency said coastguard officials had only thrown "flash grenades," which are used for crowd control and are not regarded as weapons, after activists threw stink bombs on to the Japanese factory ship the Nisshin Maru. (source)

Tit for tat, I'd say.

Previously, the Japanese seized two whale-lovers who boarded a whaler and held them for quite some time, keeping them handcuffed to an outside railing to enjoy the Antarctic weather until an Australian fisheries patrol vessel intervened.

C-SM readers know I grew up in Japan, but you probably don't know that one day when I opened my bag lunch at school, I found that our housekeeper had made me a pineapple and canned whale meat sandwich. Yum ... not.

In my eleven years in Japan, my encounters with whale meat were slim to almost none. The Japanese whaling industry says whaling is cultural to the Japanese -- but whale meat is rarely served and hardly popular.

Still, anyone who stands up to holier-than-thou Watson -- a certifiable jerk-off who, when just 10, shot a kid in the butt to stop him from shooting a bird, and who once said "earthworms are far more valuable than people” -- is a hero in my eyes.

For more on the chief thug of eco-terrorism, read the bio on Activist Cash or this one on Target of Opportunity (a bit of a scary site in its own right). Skip Wikipedia; it's a bunch of bullsh ... propaganda.

Muff Diving?!

Yes, there is a town in Ireland called "Muff," and yes, there is a SCUBA diving shop there named after the town.

That's just one of the bizarre bits of info on European towns I learned on Spiegel's quiz based on the odd nature of European town names. (You're going into the quiz with a one-question advantage, thanks to me!)

If you thought "muff diving" is a bit obscene, just you wait ... it gets much more X-rated than that!

Making Jerry Brown Look Good

It's common knowledge that Cal. AG Jerry Brown is using global warming grandstanding as a stage for a run for the governorship -- Moonbeam II, if you will.

Frightening as that thought is, Brown just became a minor irritant in the scheme of things, as reported by the SF Wrongicle:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is considering a 2010 run for governor - a campaign that would embrace many of the same divisive causes he has championed as mayor, including same-sex marriage, universal health care and protections for illegal immigrants, The Chronicle has learned.

Newsom has long been rumored to be a potential contender in what is likely to be a crowded field of Democrats looking to succeed Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a list that includes Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, former state Controller Steve Westly and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio ["Grease-Zipper"] Villaraigosa.

In recent months, Newsom has quietly been meeting with Democratic campaign strategists and other supporters to discuss a gubernatorial run, and he is now "certain to at least consider the possibility," said Eric Jaye, a Newsom confidant and political consultant.

When asked whether he was planning to run, Newsom said, "A number of people in the last few months have reached out and talked to me about it."

Could there be better proof of the premise that big fish in small ponds tend to think they can be big fish in big ponds? Can you imagine how Newsome's honoring of a gay porn studio would play in Fresno? How his city's sanctuary city status will play in Orange County and San Diego? And shall we consider the stinking $229 million black pit that is the city's finances?

(If you want a good rundown of the bizarreness of life under Newsome, here's a list of SF-watcher Bookworm's posts on Baghdad by the Bay.)

Bring it on. Let the Dems strut their stuff in the Cal primaries, turning off sane Californians by the multitudes.

But I Ramble ...

The Token Dem stopped by to lobby for a post about Hillary's whining in last night's debate ...

SEN. CLINTON: Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don't mind. I -- you know, I'll be happy to field them [Any husband knows to duck and immediately start backpedaling upon hearing "I don't mind" or "I'd be happy to ...."], but I do find it curious, and if anybody saw "Saturday Night Live," you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow. (Laughter, boos.) I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all of these issues. But I'm happy [ditto] to answer it. (RCP)

... and I could say that because this campaign is about words, she shouldn't be using the words of Lorne Michaels and his writers. But I won't, because I'm fanatically pro-Hillary, at least until after the GOP and independent voters finish voting for her in Texas and Ohio,hopefully prolonging the Dem's excruciating pain and anguish.

I was more inclined to write about how Obamarama wiggled out of hard questions on what he'd do if we have to stay in Iraq should a deteriorating situation following the start of withdrawal demand it, but the guy is so polished that his wife probably doesn't even know when he's withdrawing and when he's not.

Which brings up Steven Colbert's limerick. After a lengthy pseudo-rant against the NYT for practicing "bad, bad journalism" as opposed to "good bad journalism" in its smear of McCain, he said the entire nine-page article could have been summed up "in a sonnet ... or better yet a limerick."

There once was a man named McCain
Who had the whole White House to gain
But he was quite a hobbyist
Of boning his lobbyist
So much for his oh-eight campaign

I believe the Senator issued a pretty darn firm denial regarding boning ... and for that matter, poking, plowing, porking, riding, jazzing, rocking, rolling, zig-zagging, nugging, rogering, balling, banging, humping, pillowing or scoring his lobbyist acquaintance.

And people wonder why conservatives are mad at Mike Huckabee for offering Colbert a podium for GOP-bashing.

Winners! Six-Word Slogans For America

I'll keep taking votes, but it's evident that we've identified our winning entries into the Cheat-Seeking Missiles Six-Word Slogans for America. Here! They! Are!

Runner-up for best serious slogan, entered by Dave Hardy:

People climb walls to come here.

And the best serious slogan, entered by Patrick:

Free markets, free speech, free society.

Now the runner-up for best humorous slogan -- A three way tie!

• Someone has to be the grownup, entered by BA.
• Because everywhere else pretty much sucks, entered by Jimmy Walnuts.
• Knowing we don't live elsewhere? Priceless. Entered by Alan.

And the runaway winner for best humorous slogan, entered by Joe Y.:

Twenty million Mexicans can’t be wrong.

Thanks, everyone, for your entries and votes.

Join Hillary's Final Push!

The Token Dem, a big Obama supporter, forwarded this email to me, and as a public service I'm passing it along, just in case any Hillary supporters are reading this. If you are, here's a chance to re-vitalize her campaign and give her a chance to add a feminine touch to the Oval Office.

I usually don't pass along these 'add your name' lists , but this one seemed too important.

To show your support for Hillary and encourage her on her run for President in 2008, please add your name to the list below and send it on.

This list has been circulating for months and months, all around the country. Please do not delete ..

If you don't want to sign, at least keep it going!






1. Bill
2. Chelsea
3.

Six-Word Slogans For America: Results!

Updated: Now with up-to-date results!

Thank you all for the 221 entries you submitted to my little Six-Word Slogans for America contest. They were overwhelming! Creative! Funny! Patriotic! (And unpatriotic, which I didn't even include in the count of entries.)

Before getting to the poll in which you'll select the winners, a few honorable mentions are in order:

First, a celebrity honorable mention for this entry:

I did this years ago.
"A shining city on a hill..."
-- Ronald Reagan

Next, for packing the longest entry into six words, to Phileosophos:

Championing individual freedom since seventeen seventy-six.

And best entry that blew the six-word rule, to Bill Whittle of Eject! Eject! Eject!:

Great Country! (Needs more math education though.)

Finally, to Alan, a very honorable mention for submitting single-handedly 47 entries. They were great and I had a tough time limiting myself to putting just three of his entries into the finals.

There were so many great entries, I decided to give you an opportunity to vote for the best serious six-word slogan and the best humorous six-word slogan.

You can jump to the survey right now be clicking here.

Here are the current results for the nominees for best serious six-word slogan (as of 8:45 p.m. on Feb. 22):

• People climb walls to come here. (Dave Hardy) -- 22%
  
• The last best hope of man. (orotund wallaby) -- 6%
  
• After 230 years, history’s friendliest hegemon (Patrick) -- 13%
  
• Free markets, free speech, free society. (Patrick) -- 31%
  
• New and improved! Kills. Terrorists. Dead. (CW) -- 6%
  
• God shed his grace. It shows. (James)* -- 19%
  
• Remember Communism and Fascism? Thank America. (Alan) -- 6%
  

* In the survey, there's a typo -- "Good shed his grace." Unfortunately, once it's posted, the survey responses can't be edited. Sorry, James.

And here are the current results for the nominees for the best funny six-word slogan:

• We have the most expensive stuff (KHS) -- 3%
  
• Someone has to be the grownup. (BA) -- 19%
  
• Twenty million Mexicans can’t be wrong. (Joe Y) -- 38%
  
• Because everywhere else pretty much sucks. (Jimmy Walnuts) -- 19%
  
• Feel free to handle it yourself. (Andy Freeman)
• Knowing we don’t live elsewhere? Priceless. (Alan) -- 19%
  
• Why’s our oil under your sand? (Alan) -- 9%
  

I know there's something funny with the "funny" results. The math all checks out, but it adds up to 107%. The survey software must have the wrong number of survey-takers or something.

Again, go here to vote.

Marines Will Be Marines

Just a camo helicopter, right? Look a little more carefully ...

hat-tip: Pirates! Man Your Women!

Chop-Sticking It To The Greens

The grand chopstick protest is raging throughout China ... well, cropping up here and there in big cities like Beijing, where this protest apparently forced the fast-food noodle chain Noodles Loves Noodles (catchy, eh?) to switch to plastic chopsticks.

According to the WSJ, the Chinese use 63 billion pairs of snap-apart, throw-away wooden chopsticks a year. They're not made from virgin forest trees, but from birch, poplar and bamboo, which grow fast and are not endangered.

The enviros would have them replaced with plastic? Plastic? Made from oil, processed in effluent-leaking, fume-belching factories?

Well, yes. Or, of course, you could follow the approach used by China's BYOC (bring your own chopsticks) activists. Again, WSJ:

B.Y.O.C. is becoming a way of life for young Chinese activists like Margaret Yang, a 28-year-old market researcher for Intel in Beijing. On a recent lunchtime visit to a Beijing branch of the Chinese hot-pot chain Little Sheep, Ms. Yang put her ideals into action. When the waitress approached with a fistful of disposable chopsticks, Ms. Yang flashed her personal chopsticks, sending her scurrying away.

After a lunch of lamb strips, mushrooms and bok choy, Ms. Yang illustrated the cleanup protocol, requesting a cup of hot water from the waitress to rinse her chopsticks in, before slipping them into the organic cotton sack she uses to carry them.

Hat-tipper Jim notes with proper tone:

OK, let's see if I get this straight.

Instead of using some "...roughly 63 billion pairs each year" of disposable chopsticks that are "...typically made from fast-growing woods like birch, poplar and bamboo that are not endangered"..."and often uses leftover wood that is not suitable for other industries", we are going to request 63 billion cups (that's nearly four billion GALLONS, BTW) of HEATED water, instead.

And people wonder why I think that most environmentalists are just plain nuts! HA!

Jim, Jim, Jim. It's green image that matters. Please don't bother Greenies and Warmies with troublesome things like facts and logic.

Those Stealthy Iranians

Watch out! The global arms balance is about to change:

TEHRAN (Tehran Times) -- Air Force Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani said here on Monday that Iran has launched the project to manufacture stealth aircrafts.

“We have finished the design of stealth aircraft which cannot to be detected even by advanced radar systems, and the primary stages of its manufacture have started,” Miqani told reporters in a news conference. ...

The commander said Iranian “Air Force is prepared to confront any military strike”, warning that “any act of aggression against the country’s borders will face a crushing response.”

Cheat-Seeking Missiles is nothing if not a global investigative powerhouse. Our tentacles reach even to the inner workings of the Iranian defense industry, where we found this transcript:

MIQANI: Have you got the stealth technology worked out, praise be to Allah?

HAQIQI: Yes, General, praise be to Allah!

MIQANI: How, praise be to Allah? Were we able to steal technology from America, praise be to Allah?

HAQIQI: No, General, praise be to Allah!

MIQANI: Did the French or the Chinese or the Russians come through, praise be to Allah?

HAQIQI: No, General, praise be to Allah! The Mullahs came through, praise be to Allah!

MIQANI: The Mullahs, praise be to Allah?

HAQIQI: Yes, General, praise be to Allah! The Mullahs have provided us with a copious supply of the talismans they gave the boy-soldiers of the Basij in '82, the same talismans that protected them when they were sent forth in human waves to clear the minefields on the Iraq border, praise be to Allah!

MIQANI: The talismans have stealth technology, praise be to Allah?

HAQIQI: Yes, General, praise be to Allah! The Mullahs assure us that all we have to do is give the pilots a talisman, and their jets will be invisible to the Great Satan's radar, praise be to Allah!

MIQANI: Praise be to Allah!

HAQIQI: Praise [unintelligible].

There you go. I'm forwarding this vital intelligence to the Joint Chiefs right now, so they can begin preparing for this major new military threat.

Hat-tip: Jim

Another Global Warming Update

Warmies have some more 'splainin' to do:

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. -- Brace yourself for more wintry weather. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow after he was awakened Saturday, leading the legendary groundhog to forecast six more weeks of winter. (source)

Creationism Bragging Rights

Did you know a "giant step" has been made in scientific efforts to create human life?

Yes, indeed! We are truly on the doorstep of designer life from scratch ... at least that's true if you're not paying careful attention to the bombastic claims of some scientists. Unlike the SF Chronicle, which bought the story hook, line and genome:

American scientists have built from scratch a synthetic chromosome containing all the genetic material needed to produce a primitive bacterium - a giant step toward the creation of artificial life. ...

Now, a team led by Dr. Hamilton Smith, director of the Venter Institute's Synthetic Biology Group, has manufactured from laboratory chemicals a ring of DNA containing all the genes of Mycoplasma genitalium - the tiniest bacteria ever found.

That means the team is tantalizingly close to creating an artificial form of life that could replicate itself using these machine-made genes.

The article mentions curing disease and all the usual promises of mad scientists, then cuts to the chase:

And there is the matter of bragging rights of mythological proportions. Mere mortals have yet to lay claim to creating life.

Yeah, and that's a good thing, if you ask me or nine out of ten science fiction writers. Why exactly would we want to produce artificial life? Is there something wrong with God-created life? Do we really think we can do any better?

Never mind with the metaphysical questions, though, because it turns out that Dr. Smith is hardly creating artificial life:

The plan is to slip the synthetic chromosome inside the microscopic skin of one of the Mycoplasma bacterium, replacing its natural genome with the machine-made one and sparking the creature into a life form that can reproduce itself.

He may be hijacking actual life, but he's not creating anything sustainable from scratch if it takes having a Mycoplasa bacterium handy to pull of the trick.

It all reminds me of what is, perhaps, the greatest of all creationist jokes (not that there is exactly a primordial sea-full of creationist jokes, mind you).

A scientist waves his arm at his massive lab of sophisticated equipment and says to God, "Human intelligence is now so great and our understanding of science so comprehensive that I, too, can create life."

Unimpressed, God reaches down, takes a lump of dirt, breathes on it, and transforms it into a butterfly that flutters from his hand.

"That's nothing!" brags the scientist. "I too can make a butterfly!" He reaches down to get a piece of dirt.

"Hold it right there," God says. "Make your own dirt."

Make your own host bacterium, Dr. Smith. The chromosome was a nice trick, but let's not lose our perspective, eh?