Why we love Keith Olbermann

From what I suppose was the Monday evening (already Wednesday morning here in J-land) broadcast, naming W. the Worst Person in the World (and quoting Cromwell):

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, GO!"

Motivate yourself!

A colleague sent me this link. I have already pissed away time playing with it. Here is one result.

Fishwrap lead of the day

The Globe is so classy.

Naked couple die from S.C. rooftop fall
June 20, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. --Police on Wednesday were investigating how a naked couple fell 50 feet from the roof of a downtown office building to their deaths.

The bodies were found on the road by a passing cabdriver around 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Clothing was discovered on the roof, leading authorities to suspect the man and woman, in their early 20s, may have been having sex. Their identities were not released.

"It's too early to rule out anything," Columbia police Sgt. Florence McCants said, but McCants said a preliminary investigation didn't show any sign of foul play.

The GOP cares about families

The WaPo reports on Rob Portman's resignation as White House budget director.

Heh. Heh.

In an interview on CNN after Bush's announcement, Portman denied that he was leaving now to distance himself from an unpopular White House in preparation to run for governor of Ohio, where more than 60 percent of residents disapprove of Bush's job performance, according to a recent poll. Portman called that interpretation "false," adding, "The reason I'm going home is to spend time with my family.

Right.

Jon Stewart to Tony Snow: Liar, liar, pants on fire

No Contest: The Daily Show vs. Tony Snow.

Lurita Doan can't conjugate verbs

I love good grammar.

But The Economist has it right. The subjunctive is a mood, not a tense.

Can't recall - help for Republicans!

Here is a drug that we could use more of.

Interior Secretary Leavitt confuses dead senator and Dead Kennedys

The Sleuth reports in today's DC Fishwrap that Secretary of the Interior Mike Leavitt tried to make an appointment Thursday with Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY), who passed away Monday.

Posted at 7:01 PM ET, 06/ 7/2007
Cabinet Member Misses Senator's Obit

Maybe Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and his staff are just in denial. Or maybe they don't read the papers, thus missing the sad news that Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) died Monday, seven months after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Whatever the case, Leavitt's office called Thomas's office late Thursday afternoon to request a meeting with the late senator.

Needless to say, grief-stricken Thomas staffers were stunned. One aide to Thomas sent the following e-mail to a friend (both names have been redacted):

From: (Thomas staffer) <@thomas.senate.gov>
To: (Staffer's friend)
Sent: Thu Jun 07 16:49:36 2007
Subject: RE:

Oh yeah, note to Secretary Levitt's [sic] office: Senator Thomas passed on Monday, 4 June. You may want to pass that along to his staff especially after they called today to get a meeting with the late Senator.

Call me if you'd like, really unbelievable!

It just seems so characteristic of this administration that a cabinet member could turn what is legitimately a tragedy for the family and friends of the senator into a black comedy.

Is it possible for a male to not think about it?

This reminds me of an interview that I heard with Francis Crick shortly before his death in 2004. His interviewer asked him what the secret of his remarkable research productivity was. Crick replied that, wehn he was in graduate school, he thought about sex 90% of the time, but he found that his peers thought about sex 99% of the time, so he got ten times as much work done!


What Guys Really Think - The funniest videos clips are here

Wear the fox hat

Auchtermuchtie?

White and Nerdy

A colleague sent me this very funny video. The Schrödinger equation appears in the last minute or so. If you look carefully, you can see that they equation is incorrect - it uses Planck's constant h instead of h bar; that is h / 2 pi.

That reminds me of a story my thesis advisor - a Cal Tech alum - told me about his physics prof, the extraordinary Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, whom I had the pleasure to meet and hear speak several times.

Everyone knows what it is like to have a nitpicker in class.

• "Shouldn't that be log base 10?"
• "Is there an apostrophe in D'Alembertian?"
• "I think that should be a minus sign."
  

Well, Feynmann's intro physics class DID have a nitpicker, one who was prolific and vociferous. His corrections - delivered with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel and the tact of an IRS agent - clearly took their toll on the patience of both the instructor and the students, turning the class into a daily Inquisition.

And inevitably, one day late in the term, the bough broke. After spending some time discussing a calculated cross-section, Monsieur Ergoteur interrupted with "Didn't you miss a factor of 2 pi?", at which point Poor Richard lept onto his desk and yelled "Fuck the 2 pi!"

More Falwell

In honor of the guy who died in Lynchburg yesterday, I thought it would be fun to revisit Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988). Specifically, what prompted the Jerry Falwell's lawsuit in the first place? This ad, from a 1983 issue of Hustler:



If you can't make out the text, it reads:

Falwell: My first time was in an outhouse outside Lynchburg, Virginia.

Interviewer: Wasn’t it a little cramped?

Falwell: Not after I kicked the goat out.

Interviewer: I see. You must tell me all about it.

Falwell: I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I figured, "What the hell!"

Interviewer: But your Mom? Isn’t that a little odd?

Falwell: I don’t think so. Looks don’t mean that much to me in a woman.

Interviewer: Go on please go on before i have u!.

Falwell: Well, we were drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari, ginger ale and soda—that’s called a Fire and Brimstone—at the time. And Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation

Interviewer: Campari in the crapper with Mom. how interesting.. .Well how was it?

Falwell: The Campari was great but mom passed out before I could come.

Interviewer: Did you ever try it again?

Falwell: Sure. Lots of times. But not in the outhouse. Between Mom and the shit, the flies were too much to bear.

Interviewer: We meant the Campari.

Falwell: Oh, yeah, I always get sloshed before I go to the pulpit. You don’t think I could lay down all that bullshit sober do you?

(the last line in very small print at the end - Greg)

Interviewer: Just to let you know this whole interview is a lie, I just wanted to see what I could get out of you!

Wikipedia has an informative article on the entire case, including the arguements made before the Supreme Court in 1987.

Falwell

There have been a range of reactions to the demise of the vicious vicar from Lynchburg, VA. I personally would have paid a great deal of money to see Larry Flynt's face when he heard the news.

Needless to say, some reactions have been more amusing than others. Wonkette has this, from the "Dept. of Kids These Days Show No Respect."

My own research turned up a number of humorous Wikipedia vandalisms.

First, the man who blanked the page and replaced it with the words FUCK JESUS.

In our next entry, those who scroll down to the "Health" section will note that in addition to being found unconscious in his office on the 15th, many people thought Falwell had been "unconscious for many years".

The jokers in this next one erroneously reported the cause of death to be a "severe bowel obstruction."

Our fourth entry argues that "HE WAS A BIG TOOL, OH YES HE WAS DON'T DENY IT."

Rounding out the top five is a slightly more subtle vandal. Line 15 of this entry refers to Falwell as a "televangalism freak." Line 36 contains the latter portion of this sentence:

Thomas Road Baptist Church has grown to a membership in excess of 24,000, based in a 6,000 seat auditorium and an additional 1 million square feet of educational space for people with way too much time on thier hands (emphasis added).

There are more, but I don't really have the time.

On a final note, just to prove that Jerry Falwell really was an asshole who deserved every bit of this ill will, here's AmericaBlog with some statements Falwell made just last week. Asshole.

"Bubbles 'n' Babes"

As readers may be aware, Australia is currently suffering a severe drought. Residential water use has been limited to a drastic extent, and even agricultural irrigation may be cut off if things don't improve. With private citizens unable to wash their cars at home, car washes - nearly all of which use recycled water - are doing booming business.

Especially this car wash in Brisbane. Funny thing is, Sam and I know a girl from Brisbane, and for some reason she's never mentioned this establishment.

Mr. Butts Goes To Salem

Our Oregon hsa produced this hilarious video of Mr. Butts' visit to thestate legislature, lobbying against funding the Healthy Kids legislation through a cigarette tax hike .

Students Heckle Gonzo at Harvard Law

Associated Pravda (as John Aravosis at AmericaBlog calls the Associated Press) reports in the Huffington Post (image from Hispanic Magazine).

Gonzales Heckled at Harvard Reunion
AP | April 28, 2007 11:27 PM EST

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A small group of student protesters, including one wearing a black hood and an orange jumpsuit, heckled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as he posed with old classmates Saturday during their 25-year Harvard Law School reunion.

"When the photographer was getting everybody set up and having people say 'cheese,' the protesters yelled: 'say torture, instead,' 'resign' and 'I don't recall,'" said Nate Ela, a protester and third-year student.

Law school spokesman Mike Armini said the impromptu protest was so small that some of those attending the photo shoot did not notice it.

Ela said the protesters followed Gonzales into the law school's library, chanting "shame" and "resign," before the attorney general's security detail took him to his motorcade.

Gonzales was at the university to deliver a lunchtime speech, a visit that was unannounced to students. But word spread quickly after his motorcade and security detail were spotted.

Gonzales is resisting pressure to resign as lawmakers question whether he could effectively run the Justice Department amid the controversy over the firings of eight prosecutors.

Cal Thomas, Prescient Sage of the Ages

Tom Tomorrow nails Cal Thomas in the Huffington Post:

There's one other quote that I just didn't have room for, which I'd like to include here. In his column of April 15, 2003, Cal Thomas wrote:

When the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe escaped from the shackles of communism, I wrote that we must not forget the enablers, apologists and other "fellow travelers" who helped sustain communism's grip on a sizable portion of humanity for much of the 20th century. I suggested that a "cultural war crimes tribunal" be convened, at which people from academia, the media, government and the clergy who were wrong in their assessment of communism would be forced to confront their mistakes. While not wishing to deprive anyone of his or her right to be wrong, it wouldn't hurt for these people to be held accountable.

That advice was not taken - but today we are presented with another opportunity in the form of scores of false media prophets who predicted disaster should the U.S. military confront and seek to oust the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. The purpose of a cultural war crimes tribunal would be to remind the public of journalism's many mistakes, as well as the errors of certain politicians and retired generals, and allow it to properly judge their words the next time they feel the urge to prophesy...

All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent.

On that last paragraph, at least, Cal and I are in agreement.

An archive of Cal Thomas's columns can be found here at Townhall. The April 15, 2003 column is here. The charming picture came from Faux News.

An appropriate political appelation

I heard a caller on KPOJ refer to the ultra-religious supporters of der Führer as "burning Bushies". This phrase has had very little circulation ( a measly 6 hits in The Google) , but it has been around for at least a year.

A reference I particularly enjoyed reading was an essay by Gidon Remba, Why Jews Can't Be Conservative, at Chicago Peace Now. His essay concludes:

Jews can’t be conservative Republicans. Not if they take seriously the best values of their own moral tradition, reflect thoughtfully on the imperatives of justice and on their enlightened self-interest as Jews and Americans.

The entire essay is interesting but I would argue that this applies not only to Jews, but to any person, educated or not.

There is also a very funny blog written by Antonia Zerbisias at the Toronto Star. Her blog has a category called burning Bushies; it is well worth a detour, but it is a shame that it is not more current. Ms. Zerbisias is a sharp wit.

ANOTHER New Holiday

I don't know how I missed this. There are over 10,000 hits for "cake and cunnilingus day". This is getting very competitive with "Steak and blowjob day" (27,000+ hits). Let's just review the calendar:
February 14 - Valentine's Day
Roses and chocolates for your loved one.
March 14 - Steak and Blowjob Day
Steak and duh for your loved one.
April 14 - Cake and Cunnilingus Day
Cake and more duh for your loved one.

Sure beats the pants off of Ember Days or Rogation Days.

Alberto's Preparation

Mike Malloy had a very funny line about Alberto's testimony today. He said the only preparation that Gonzales got was PreparationH.

(Alberto's image is from SparklePony.)