conservapedia

I stumbled across a project by right-wing nutters Eagle Forum called Conservapedia, which is billed by its creators as a more honest alternative to the inherent political correctness and liberal bias of Wikipedia. Most of the content consists of stubs featuring poor, if any, research and the type of deep, nuanced understanding of American history one can only glean from a steady diet of Mallard Fillmore cartoons. My favorite entry thus far has to be Judicial Activism:

There are two major types of judicial activism practiced in the United States' court system:
1. Liberal judges striking down laws that uphold core conservative American values
2. Liberal judges refusing to strike down laws that subvert core conservative American values

Let's move temporarily beyond the obvious "only 'liberal' judges are capable of activism" canard and take a look at one of the examples cited: Brown v. Board of Education. Following Conservapedia logic, Brown v. Board is guilty of the first type of judicial activism, striking down a law that upholds core conservative American values. In ruling that segregating public school students violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Brown struck down Plessy v. Ferguson, that trademark espousal of a core conservative American value: racism.

As for the "Liberal judges" part, Brown v. Board was one of the Warren Court's trademark cases. It was also a unanimous ruling. Not to single out the Superchief here, but Earl Warren served three terms as the Republican Governor of California, strongly supported Japanese internment during World War II, and was Dewey's Vice-Presidential candidate when he lost to Truman in 1948. The most liberal decision he oversaw gave us the Miranda warning.

Thus, according to Conservapedia, our newfound bastion of light and truth, Earl Warren was a liberal pansy and America was properly racist until he fucked it all up.

Conservapedia, why do you hate America?

thursday

Almost 25 years later, Delirious is still hilarious. Murphy refusing to work blue is one of the greatest tragedies of modern comedy.

Lookie:
I AM NOT SURPRISED
(AP) AUSTIN, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's chief of staff met with key aides about a new vaccine to prevent cervical cancer on the same day its manufacturer donated money to his campaign, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
I AM SCARED
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand fishermen may have caught the largest Colossal squid ever found -- weighing around 450kg (992 pounds) and with rings the size of tires.
I AM AMUSED
SANTA FE — The Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi was evacuated during noon Mass on Ash Wednesday when three CD players duct-taped to the bottom of pews began blaring sexually explicit language.
I AM PLEASED
The new issue of Rolling Stone, hitting newsstands today in NY & LA and Friday nationwide, includes a feature about Keith Olbermann written by Mark Binelli. There's a sidebar where Olbermann rates the media's biggest anchors, and he's particularly scathing in his comments about these competitors.
I AM STUNNED
That's right, that picture up there is a computer-generated version of Korean actress Song Hye Kyo (shown below). It was created by Indonesian CG artist Max Edwin Wahyudi using a combination of digital sculpting, design application Pixelogic Zbrush and animation modeling software Autodesk 3DS Max.

And then a big brown shark came...

mahalo

I was living in Michigan, of all places. The snow hadn't sunk below my window for months. Cody called and told me Hunter was dead and I set about cultivating a cult of disbelief and at some point I know I convinced myself that it was pure bullshit. He wasn't gone. This was just like him. Nothing in the Times (pick one) or the AP or Reuters or Google filters or the Denver Post or Poe or Fark or anything. I lost count of the number of times I smacked the F5 key while hovering over CNN.

After a couple of hours, verification started trickling in. I woke up everyone I knew. They were tired and angry and unsure, just like he always was.

Most of them made no noise. All I remember are deep breaths.

AWOKotaku

A Week of Kindness popped up on Kotaku today. Click HERE many times and give them hits.
Wee ba ba ba da bo...

res ipsa loquitur

Two years back, he was all over the news for his brains being all over the typewriter. Juan had found him, Anita had rushed home, the Sheriff had declared it a suicide. Case closed. Begin mourning. Six months until Depp gets the funeral together. As much as I understand why he did it, I can't help but dwell on how badly he's needed these days. Then again, in my opinion that'll always be true no matter the state of things.

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell — rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks..."
--Ralph Steadman

7.18.37 - 2.20.05

just enjoying the view

Anyone else smell another Gulf of Tonkin coming on?

In semi-related news, Democracy Now! has posted the translation of a new Oil Law currently under consideration by the U.S.-backed government. Raed Jarrar, the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange who blogs at In The Middle, summarizes the main points of the law as such:

It said so many things. I don’t think we can summarize it this short, because it’s a very long document, around thirty pages. But majorly, there are three major points that I think we should talk about. Financially, it legalizes very unfair types of contracts that will put Iraq in very long-term contracts that can go up to thirty-five years and cause the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars from Iraqis for no cause.

And the second point is concerning Iraq's sovereignty. Iraq will not be capable of controlling the levels -- the limits of production, which means that Iraq cannot be a part of OPEC anymore. And Iraq will have this very complicated institution called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, that will have representatives from the foreign oil companies on the board of it, so representatives from, let’s say, ExxonMobil and Shell and British Petroleum will be on the federal board of Iraq approving their own contracts.

And the third point is the point about keeping Iraq’s unity. The law is seen by many Iraqi analysts as a separation for Iraq fund. The law will authorize all of the regional and small provinces’ authorities. It will give them the final say to deal with the oil, instead of giving this final say to central federal government, so it will open the doors for splitting Iraq into three regions or even maybe three states in the very near future.

The full article can be found here.

the earth is hard, the treasure fine

My friend's young cousin has given up the internet for Lent. Makes sense. The internet is the greatest vehicle of information dissemination ever conjured and there's nothing organized religion hates more than an informed individual. When she rightly called him on it, he explained that it was his parents' logic, that he really didn't get it either, that he would have rather done Thirty-hour famine to raise money for people who are hungry in a way none of us could possibly comprehend. But they said, and I quote, it wasn't worth it.

Friend suggested that her cousin's parents were in for a surprise once he got to college. Perhaps college has their tacit approval to crack and color the shell they'll have sealed and polished by the time he leaves the pen. In just four easy installments, they can be assured that all those years of shuttling him from school to tutoring to music lessons to karate class to helmet rehearsal to hospice volunteering to masturbation practice were not in vain. He can grow up later. Right now, he does what's best for his development. First rule of parenting: Never encourage, let alone entertain a notion you haven't spent a great deal of time and energy implanting in your child.

Thirty-hour famine was fucking fun. My high school Theatre Company used to do it each year around Easter. Three dozen horny, confused, horny, awkward, pimpled, horny teenagers all stumbling through more than a day of unrelenting physical and spiritual misery together -- usually while the musical was going up and the lead wore a fucking scarf to protect his or her fragile throat -- just to be reassured that the money their relatives and neighbors had deducted from that month's gin fund would make its way to an emaciated child with more pigmentation in his middle finger than in their collective bodies. Talk about instilling awareness and empathy, two immeasurably crucial values, in an otherwise soft and insulated group of humans. Consider it evidence supporting my theory that people gain more through acute distress than supervised routine.

I'm suddenly defending some version of a suburban upbringing. Goodnight.

ears and noses are the trophies of the day

truth or consolidation

David Polonitza is reaching. He's really reaching. But for how long?

Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund that successfully forced Wendy's into their restructuring plan that saw the spin-off of Tim Horton's, recently revealed in their 13F filing with the SEC on February 14th that they currently hold a stake in both Borders (11.5% of shares outstanding) and Barnes and Noble (9.2% of shares outstanding).

As an employee of the book industry, WitSL firmly believes that the day will come when every title is purchased from Borders & Noble, published by one of approximately eight million Bertelsmann imprints, distributed by whomever buys PGW, and printed and bound in southeast Asia. We're seriously not that far off. And while Polonitza couldn't possibly exaggerate the efficiencies to be gained from a merger of the #1 and #2 retailers in the industry, he predictably doesn't even hint at the disastrous consequences for independent presses, booksellers, and readers who prefer to decide for themselves what's worth buying.

posthumous breasts, "that fat bastard," and the benefits of clown college

From the shameless merchandising division, we have Playboy.com, which in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith's death opened a special Anna Tribute Section in its online store.

In the interest of full disclosure, this blog's writer deserves to stand right next to Hef on the firing line, as he is spending his production hours working on the rush reprint of Barricade Books' GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL DOLL, the only Smith biography currently in print. Ironically enough, on a hunch Barricade decided to update and reissue the book not long before Smith gave up the ghost. But that is beside the point. I am, in fact, profiting from Anna Nicole Smith's death. Judge me. Please.

Brother Cody has been reading a great deal of Raymond Chandler lately. I pulled up Chandler's Wikipedia page to settle a bet and discovered that apparently he loathed Alfred Hitchcock. Now, as with anything on Wikipedia, a discerning reader should take this bit of trivia with a grain of salt. But one has to admit that there is something beautiful and perfect and true about picturing Chandler, as he emptied his pipe, declaring Hitchcock a "fat bastard" to whatever room they were sharing.

WitSL comrades A Week of Kindness shot milky warm comedy all over everyone's face at the People's Improv Theater this past weekend. If you haven't made it to their current show, "Dan's Labyrinth," you have but one chance -- one chance -- to see them before they're gone forever. Or until April. This time, AWOK is sharing the stage with Drop Six, a hilarious quintet featuring at least one graduate of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. Winners of Second City's Best of the Fest, Drop Six has surprisingly few shows booked for so talented a group so do your best to see them this weekend.

If I were Lou Reed, I would be pissed. But I'm not Lou Reed.

Jesu

John passed along Jesu's latest record, Conqueror. Near as I can tell, Sun Kil Moon and Ocean locked themselves in a windowless room, got into a bottle of absinthe and some pills and had a baby. The resulting record can be streamed here. "Old Year" is getting a lot of spins in these parts.

Justin K. Broadrick, the guy responsible for the noise, can be found here.

making point five, past lightspeed

These toys are mine. I have too many open tabs and a mysterious phobia of bookmarks so I post the following links in the service of having access to them whenever necessary. I won't feel violated if you use them but, like I said, these toys are mine.

Key commands for accent marks and diacriticals

UT-Austin graduate writing program

Searchable database of King Dipshit's States of the Union

Made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs

Amanda Marcotte's Children of Men review

Stay out of Malibu, Kenobi

Parlement of Foules

finally

Arundhati Roy to write second novel

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ten years after winning the Booker Prize for her first novel, and a decade as one of India's leading social and environmental activists, Arundhati Roy is planning a return to fiction.

Roy won the 1997 Booker Prize for her first novel "The God of Small Things" but has since confined herself to non-fiction, championing campaigns at home against large dams and international issues ranging from globalisation to the Iraq war.

at least it's official

For those of you who haven't been paying attention these last four years, Defense Department inspector general Thomas Gimble will bring you up to speed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading figure in the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq helped justify the 2003 invasion by undercutting the CIA with questionable intelligence about Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda, a Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report on Friday.

Former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith presented the White House with claims of a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda as if they were facts, while ignoring contradictory views from the intelligence community, the report by the Pentagon inspector general said.

print is dead

In an interview yesterday, New York Times owner, chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger told Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

While this is probably an exaggeration, I can't say I'm surprised at Sulzberger's comment. The Times Select paywall bullshit initiated last year was a clear indication of the company's direction before the Boston Globe fiasco. And apparently, the Times Reader is going to be a pay service once it gets out of beta.

Ah well, at least I work in books, which have another 20 years at least before they revert to the scarcity from which they originally sprung. I'm guessing the real decline won't start until 2009, when the last whispers of Harry Potter fade from memory. As the surprisingly encouraging 2006 numbers show, there's just no way to replace 15.6 million books.

a note to kings

Listen, guys, you're never going to be able to subsidize the industries of campaign donors, outlaw basic human dignity, homogenize culture, and conduct any number of ill-conceived overseas military campaigns if you can't fix the fucking potholes.

I think we've made it abundantly clear that we are willing to cede the power of numbers in exchange for certain creature comforts. We don't ask for much beyond cheap gas, cheaper alcohol, uninspired media, attractive humans to idolize, and the simple reassurance that if we work hard enough, keep our noses clean, and pay virtually no attention to what you pricks are actually doing, we'll be right as church on Monday.

But you have to fix the fucking potholes.

i'll take a gross.

honest, straightforward business communication

Much in the way that a biological warfare specialist or a whore or a janitor (custodian, dick) hates their conscience, my girlfriend hates it when I make fun of what she does for a living. Were the enterprise more difficult, I'd probably lose interest.

IN:
BrandAsset Valuator research has demonstrated that consumer perceptions of 'Energy' offer new insight into shifts in market value - adding to the case that brand building is best viewed as a strategic corporate investment. This unified metric links marketing performance with financial performance to prepare financial managers and brand managers to make more informed decisions on how to fund and guide marketing efforts to most effectively generate sales, equity and value. Further, the Energy metric can serve as an organising principle for the creative forces found throughout an entire organisation: motivating business units to work collaboratively to bring innovation forward for the benefit of the customer, the brand and the bottom line.

OUT:
BrandAsset Valuator research has demonstrated that consumer perception is best viewed as a strategic corporate investment. This unified metric prepare[s] financial managers to most effectively generate sales, equity and value. Further, the Energy metric can serve as an organising principle for an entire organisation: motivating business to benefit the brand and the bottom line.

saturday news hole - 2.3.07

WitSL hasn't had one of these in a while. If only Saturday morning would stop occurring after Friday night.

THE NYPD WANTS YOU. TO STOP, MOTHERFUCKER!

The New York Police Department released new information yesterday showing that police officers stopped 508,540 individuals on New York City streets last year — an average of 1,393 stops per day — often searching them for illegal weapons. The number was up from 97,296 in 2002, the last time the department divulged 12 months’ worth of data.

Yes, that's 1/16th of the city's population. And yes, 1/2 of those stopped were black. And yes, only 1/4 of city residents are black. Be sure to wear fresh underwear, New York. Wash your genitals. Be clean so that they may be gentle.

THEY'RE GETTING BETTER.

Washington - Two crew were killed when a United States army helicopter crashed and burnt north of Baghdad on Friday, apparently brought down by enemy fire, said the US department of defence... It was the fourth US helicopter to be downed in less than two weeks.

This all continues to sound vaguely familiar.

ALL SMILES
A Thursday WSJ article since picked up by Raw Story, explains how WalMart avoided almost $100 million in taxes over a four-year period by paying rent to itself. But it's okay because they passed the savings along to you, the consumer, who really needed that extra case of Pringles.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Little known outside law enforcement circles, the Shadow Wolves have hunted drug and human traffickers on a lonely stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border southwest of Tucson since the 1970s.

GORETOISE
In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson argues that Al Gore is not nearly the outside shot the MSM has taken him for amidst the Obama/Clinton/Edwards/(Biden) lovefest.
Dickinson isn't necessarily wrong. As the unrivaled face of the new American Environmental Movement, Gore's relevance has only increased in the wake of yesterday's announcement by the UN Panel on Climate Change that global warming is both very real and very much humankind's fault. I, for one, am all for a Gore candidacy, if for no other reason than the likely staggering number of defectors from, yes, Hillary to Big Al were he to enter the fray.

IN FURTHER AL NEWS
It looks as though Franken is going to make good on the last ten minutes of "God Spoke" and challenge Norm Coleman in 2008. This pleases me to the tune of a donation.

THIS JUST IN: MORE OF THE SAME

A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 102 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months.

RESURRECT THE CHEWBACCA DEFENSE

The LAPD says a person dressed as Chewbacca was arrested for head butting a tour guide, who told the character he shouldn't be asking a tourist for money.

That'll do for now. Head over to Murder by Baltimore, where Rob has finally wrapped up his Top 25 of 2006 list.