So six cows wandered into a backcountry cabin and froze to death. So what's the U.S. Forest Service's answer to the problem? Blow up the cows with explosives, of course. Because explosives will somehow make a couple tons of beef just disappear, rather than spray it all over the countryside in a nasty rain.
I have a video of this bright idea in action:
Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the "It's raining cow!" Penguin
Okay, so let's say you're young military men, or sorta-military men, in an exotic foreign locale. Now I'll tell you right now that patriotic young men in an exotic foreign locale, it's just sorta expected that they're gonna do some flag wavin', if ya know what I mean. Nobody ought to be surprised about that. Ya got young horny guys who got a pistol and a gun, at some point in time they're gonna put down that pistol and perk up that gun, if ya get my drift.
But man, there's some rules about that sorta thing, rules that aren't written down, but that have been around since George Washington's troops were tramping around Pennsylvania and New Jersey tryin' to keep away from the British. First of all, you do it sorta discrete. You don't do the flag-wavin' at your own motel, for cryin' out loud! Next, don't stiff the local talent. That's bad form ugly American territory and always trouble, especially when the local talent has the cops on the payroll. And finally, they know rule #2 too, meaning they're gonna charge you out the yazoo for their services. If you can't deal with that, Kleenex are a man's best friend. Just sayin'.
Youngsters today. Just no respect for time-honored rules and tradition. Harumph!
-- Badtux the Patriotic Penguin
Vladimir Putin won election as President of Russia again in elections blasted by the opposition as "corrupt" and "unfair". Thing is, opinion polls and exit polling by independent organizations seem to say that Putin has the support of around 55% of Russians, so in a fair election he'd win anyhow. Pumping up the total to 65% is just habit or arrogance on his part, apparently. You know how it goes, you're a secret policeman, there's some things you do just because that's how you've always done it, even if you don't need to do them anymore...
In other news, thanks to recent tuition hikes at the University of California system, it is now cheaper for the average middle-class student to attend Harvard or Princeton than to attend UC-Berkeley. WTF?! This is just fucked up. But what can you expect from a state that spends more on prisons than on higher ed? Of course that's not why the state is bankrupt -- the state is bankrupt because of Medicaid costs combined with a tax code that is one loophole after another for the Ciscos and Intels of the world so that corporate taxes flowing to the Franchise Tax Board today have plummeted to almost nothing -- but still, it just goes to show California's priorities. If I didn't have to live here to work... SIGH!
And finally, Comcast is being Comcraptastic again. Sigh! They had it fixed for a couple days, then it went right back to crap again. Thus why no links to the stories above, I just don't have reliable enough Internet to do the web searches for the right links (those stories came out of the dead trees).
-- Badtux the News Flash Penguin
Let's see, first we had Sheriff Joke Arpaio of the Maricopa County Sheriff Department call a re-election rally err press conference to declare that Mitt Romney's VIN number and bar-coded Factory of Origin certification were questionable err, no, that was Obama's birth certificate, my bad. Then there were the dead people. There was that Andrew Breitbart fellow who was famous for being a lying asshole, of course, but really, the less said there the better. I liked Ken Houghton's long obituary for David Thomas "Davey" Jones best of those I've read today. Davey Jones added something to the world, however little some people think of what he added to the world, fact remains that there was more in this world when he left than when he got started. That other guy... well, he was a destroyer, not a maker. Let's leave it at that.
Oh wait, forgot one last piece of news. Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Birgitta Jonsdottir have generously signed up to be detained indefinitely without trial as terrorist sympathizers for having the audacity to sue the U.S. government to stop enforcement of a new law allowing any American to be detained indefinitely on nothing more than the say-so of the President that the person being detained is a "terrorist". Remember, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. By fighting for freedom, these three have proven they're terrorist, right? Right?
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
On one side of this dispute between the talking heads of Fox News and the Muppets, you have a bunch of puppets with words put into their mouths by their handlers. On the other side is Muppets.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Laura Dekker finished her 'round the world trip last week at the age of 16 years and 123 days, meaning she's probably the youngest person to ever do so. You might remember that she was the young lady who Dutch authorities seized from her parents when she announced her plans to circumnavigate the globe, and who allowed her to sail only after over two years of legal wrangling and widespread criticism. Dutch authorities are unrepentant, saying that it was for the best interests of the child that they wanted to crush her dreams like a cockroach.
Of course, whenever a young person does something extraordinary at an early age, the question then becomes "What now?" I mean, if you're a sailor, which this young lady is, what do you do to top sailing around the world? Granted, she didn't sail non-stop, she was never at sea for more than two weeks at a time and had a huge support network of fellow boaters helping her every step of the way, but still. Sailing around the world *again* would be pretty dull.
Some folks go all Glory Days, spending the rest of their life reliving the one time they were something special. Others are like one young local woman who holds one of these records, where she doesn't even mention it unless you directly ask her about it because she's moved on to other things. So I guess it all depends on her, in the end. Huh, who woulda thunk?
-- Badtux the "My glory days are now" Penguin
Pakistan is trying the doctor who helped catch Osama bin Laden for treason. Which doesn't surprise me, given that Osama bin Laden was killed basically in the Pakistani equivalent of West Point and there's no way that the Army didn't know he was there on their doorstep.
These are our "allies". Yeah, right. If Pakistan didn't have dozens of nukes I'd say just get the hell out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and cut'em off and let'em rot. Unfortunately, having dozens of nukes they can give to terrorists or lob via missiles at our call centers across the border in India sorta makes it difficult to ignore Pakistan...
Shorter: WASF.
-- Badtux the Gruntled Penguin
One of the notions that those squishy Yurpeens and Canucks have decided upon is that freedom of speech stops at the point that a) it's false, and/or b) it incites hatred against groups of people. Truth is always a defense, but once truth has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, denying the truth is not a free speech right.
So France has passed a law now stating that publically denying a particular historical fact is illegal in France, and in response, Turkey has thrown a hissy fit. Wait, Turkey? Yes. Because the historical fact in question is the Armenian Genocide, and despite the fact that this is established historical fact, with well-established research showing it happened, Turkey continues to act like a Nazi sympathizer that says "the Holocaust never happened!".
What is baffling to me is why Turkey even cares. This happened years before the modern state of Turkey was created. I can see why they wouldn't want to dwell on it -- just as U.S. history books don't dwell on the genocide of the Native Americans that happened as us white people stole their land -- but this is ridiculous. The Armenian Genocide happened. Denying this is ridiculous and makes you look like an idiot to the rest of the world. If Turkey is trying to impress the EU in order to get entry into the EU, this isn't how to do it -- it just makes them look like a bunch of hot-headed neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust, and makes most Europeans wince and quietly make jokes behind Turkish diplomats' backs unfavorably comparing them to skinheads and other right-wing Holocaust deniers.
-- Badtux the News Penguin
I haven't said much about the Costa Concordia shipwreck. The Italian driver jokes pretty much tell themselves, as do the jokes about the unlucky captain's excuse for abandoning ship before everybody was off (he "slipped" and fell into a lifeboat, how lucky!). But this satellite photo of the Costa Concordia from orbit gives you an idea of just how friggin' big that ship really *is* -- and shows you exactly how close it was to land when it ran aground. That ship had no business being anywhere near that island...
-- Badtux the Orbital Penguin
Tiny Kim apparently has the support of the security services, which has now sent a number of senior Party officials tiptoeing through the tulips. Seems Tiny Kim ain't as dim as he might have seemed from his early appearances and isn't going to be tiptoeing through the tulips himself anytime soon -- or turnips either, given the abysmal yield of North Korean agriculture over the past couple of decades.
Gratuitous video of new North Korean dictator:
In other news, Newt the Gingrinch appears to think he's running for President of North Korea, what with basically proposing to take judges who rule in ways he don't like out behind the barn and shoot'em in the head or somethin'. The sad part is that there's a large contingent of Americans who break out in giant shit-eatin' grins at the very thought, who have no problem with the notion of living under a North Korean style dictatorship, as long as it's *their* dictator.
Who are the 1% and what do they do for a living? Hint: It ain't work in the way you and I think of work.
Regulations are not a huge jobs killer. Like, duh. If there's demand for my product I don't give a shit about what regulations I have to comply with, I'm gonna hire folks to produce more product.
50% of Americans are too poor to pay Federal income taxes, but they still pay plenty of other taxes, starting with the 15% payroll tax that the 1% (who don't work for a living, they "invest" for a living and don't earn income, they earn "capital gains") don't pay.
The wealth gap, graphically. It ain't a pretty picture.
Why haven't any of these Wall Street fraudsters gone to prison yet, again? Oh wait, because they're "job creators" in some alternate universe where unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees. Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
71-year-old man drives 225 miles with dead wife in passenger seat beside him. He didn't know what to do without his wife to tell him what to do.
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Apparently you just order him to go out on patrol, and he follows orders. So now John Kerry knows the answer to his question.
Over the past four years, the monetary base has been tripled. According to Austrian economists, this means we should be going Weimar, and should have been going Weimar for at least a couple of years. According to Keynesian economists, tripling the monetary base when you're in a liquidity trap will have no (zero) effect. So, uhm... who's right? (Hint: Krugman is right. Of course.)
Soldiers are having trouble feeding their families, and can't find jobs after they're mustered out of service, having a harder time than non-veterans even. America supports our troops, woot!
Yet more evidence of the shrinking middle class. Soon there will be only the filthy rich and the abjectly poor. Serfin' USA, dude!
- Badtux the Hits Penguin
I spent most of today getting my ham radio installed in my new Jeep, which involved pulling the antenna wire from the back of the Jeep to the front of the Jeep, finding a place to mount the amp unit, then getting power to it. Then I spent most of the evening rearranging my garage because doing the electrical work showed that my electrical tool/supply box was completely out of control (as in, it ended up all over my garage because I had the stuff to do the work but it was buried in this box full of *stuff*), only to come in and find that Dear Leader has died. Not to be confused with Hopey Changey.
One wonders what the new leader of North Korea is going to do. The only long term hope for North Korea is reunification with South Korea, but the South Koreans are scared to death of such a thing... it took a decade for Germany's economy to recover from the reunification with East Germany, and East Germany was in far better shape than North Korea, which is a complete and utter basket case.
-- Badtux the Busy Penguin
Russia apparently obeys Chicago Rules. Why should being dead deprive one of the right to vote early and often? ;).
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
-- Badtux the Snarky Newsflash Penguin
Now, once upon a time, running a web site could get you sued, or get you fired from your job, or could cause your ISP to blacklist you, but that was pretty much it. I mean, look at the Nuremberg Files case. Neal "I Love Mule Sex" Horsley put up a web site advocating killing abortion doctors and got sued by Planned Parenthood, but because he was foresighted enough to form a dummy group "ACLA" to own the web site, "ACLA" is the group that got the $100M judgement against it -- and note that the 9th Circuit said PP could *not* force Horsley to take the web site down. The web site is still up, hosted in Outer Slobbonia somewhere because no American web host will host such a vile site. And Horsley is still alive and kickin'.
But see, that was in the old days, when Americans believed in courts and stuff when folks advocated killing Americans. Nowadays, well. not so much. If you're running a web site that says Americans are fair game 'cause they're killing little children in Iraq and Afghanistan, well. Death from the sky, dude!
The funny thing is that Anwar al-Awlaqi, an American, had actually filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government demanding a trial. The government killed the lawsuit by saying al-Awlaqi had to show up in NYC personally to file the lawsuit -- despite not being able to fly to NYC because he was on the no fly list (duh!). Then they killed al-Awlaqi, a dude who had never fired a shot at any other American, never personally done anything except run a web site. A nasty web site, certainly, just like the Nuremberg Files web site that Horsley runs. But just a web site, in the end.
So anyhow, remember, boys and girls. Running web sites no longer is just fun and games. If you start blogging something that says America needs to be overthrown because it's full of cruel people who want to kill Americans, a visit from guys in black suits is the least of your worries. Hey, what's that sound outside my window, is it
Park51 community center opens to the public with an exhibition of photographs of New York City children -- 160 NYC children, each child born in a different country on the planet. You might better know the Park51 Community Center as the "Ground Zero Mosque", though it's not a mosque -- but that hasn't stopped the right-wing haters from hating on it.
In other news, the sun came up this morning as usual, and no terrorists were spotted looking at the exhibition of children's pictures.
- Badtux the Take-that-haters Penguin
Michele Bachmann, her campaign on the skids, goes for that ever-huge vaccine conspiracy vote as she pines for the days when the majority of graves in the cemetery were less than four feet long:
In cat news, a cat actually used a cat bed for its intended purpose, and another cat reminds us there's a nap for that.
And that is all for tonight. G'nite :).
-- Badtux the Random Penguin
The current unrest in Syria reminds me of the last time there was unrest in Syria. The result was the Hama massacre, which basically razed the city of Hama and exterminated most of its population.
The difference this time is that the current uprising is more broad-based rather than being a revolt of religious zealots in one city. Whether that is enough against a regime that has proclaimed it has no problem with imposing Hama rules (a.k.a. genocide) on any area which gets restive enough that the security forces have problems, is an open question, as is the question of whether Syria's military will follow through on that order when it is given, or will instead do like the Iranian military did in 1978 when the Shah of Iran ordered them to fire on protesters (i.e., largely melted away in the chaotic aftermath).
- Badtux the History Penguin
American Dream Declared Dead As Final Believer Gives Up
Well that's that, then. When America's most reliable news source weighs in, that's all she wrote.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Before and after photos of the earthquake and tsunami disaster area. It's like an atomic bomb went off.
They're talking about tens of thousands of dead now. Thousands of bodies have already washed ashore. At least 200,000 people are homeless, their homes too damaged to return to, or simply not existing anymore.
Meanwhile, some nuclear reactors are threatening to melt down. Indeed, probably already have partially melted, thanks to incompetence on the part of its operators, Curly-san, Larry-san, and Moe-san, who, for example, let the diesel engines on their fire suppression system (what they were using to cool the reactors down) run out of fuel because, apparently, it didn't occur to them that the engines needed fuel (doh!). Just one example of the incompetence of the plant operators (letting hydrogen build up in the containment buildings so that they could explode was another one). The good news there is that these reactors have killed no (zero) people, and are unlikely to do so -- every passing hour they're that much cooler, as the more intense radioisotopes decay leaving less intense ones behind. The reactors are scrammed -- their control rods are in place, stopping the U-235 from actively fissioning -- what you're seeing now is residual heat that will eventually all be dissipated.
Which makes me wonder why there's such a focus on these reactors -- which have killed nobody, remember. I guess it's because of that word "nuclear" scares the crap out of people, because they think of explosions, mushroom clouds, that kind of thing. But in this case there's not going to be any explosion -- the uranium inside these reactors is not capable of exploding. It's only 5% enriched at most, which won't even fizzle. What you could get out of these reactors *if* they completely melted down would be radioactive steam (with short-lived isotopes from the radiation interacting with H20) as the melted control rods fell down onto the concrete floor of the containment building... because they were light-water reactors rather than graphite-moderated reactors like Chernobyl, you won't get the plume of heavier longer-lived radioactive carbon compounds that Chernobyl generated.
Back in the real world, on the other hand, some people in the far north of Japan are still cut off and rescuers haven't gotten there yet and are in *real* danger. Let's hope for their safety. This is winter in Japan, and Japan is pretty far north, in case you haven't noticed...
-- Badtux the Disaster Penguin
