Goodbye, Cruel World... NOT!

I am not departing the world of blogging, but I am departing the land of Blogger.

Come check out my new digs!

::matthew has generously volunteered his time to get it up and running and generally awesome-looking, and I will be forever grateful.

Please update any bookmarks, blogrolls, blog readers, or RSS readers you might have.


And if you don't have Multi Medium on any of your bookmarks or blogrolls or blog readers, you should. The new URL is 23% shorter, so it's that much easier to add.

Fort Tilden Photoblogging

After having passed through Jacob Riis Park, I arrived at now-abandoned Fort Tilden, hoping to take pictures of abandoned, decrepit stuff, and maybe some bunkers. But I found more. A lot more.


Opposite directions.


Reflection in a puddle.


This probably qualifies as some kind of flag desecration, but oh well.


"...But why do you ask, Eighteen Seals Humping?" 

What's The Plan?

No, not our plan - I mean Osama's plan. Obviously it hinges on provoking the United States into increasingly irrational and violent actions, and has the ultimate goal of turning the Middle East, and ultimately the entire world, into one giant Islamic superstate.

But what's in between? Is it simply to use our desperate and clumsy flailing to attract new recruits and destabilize and radicalize the region, or does he expect to topple the United States to remove our military and economic power from the playing field? The Bush administration has certainly been playing into Osama's hands beautifully in terms of destabilization and radicalization, but is the second part realistic?

The reason I ask is, I think Osama is in for a disappointment if he believes the U.S. will implode like the Soviet Union did. I'm not saying that it's not impossible for our form of government to change, as the Soviet Union's did - but I don't believe it will happen in a way that is beneficial to al Qaeda. Yes, changes in government caused the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Iraq to collapse and break apart, but they started out totalitarian and moved towards, well, the general direction of democracy. These were countries were the absolute authority of the state was the only force holding them together.

Now consider the U.S. The 2006 midterm elections were a huge positive, but if the Bush Republicans are not permanently removed from power (whether through polls or criminal proceedings), there is always a chance that they could pick up where they left off, and gradually transform the country into a fascist dictatorship - or perhaps not so gradually, if they get another excuse to claim "emergency powers." The problem with this, from an al Qaeda perspective, is that the U.S. wouldn't actually collapse. There might be a slight possibility of revolt, but I think it would be more like Germany in the 30s, where a combination of complacency, xenophobic hysteria, and sheer disbelief allowed the Nazis to incrementally acquire absolute power.

But instead of the unifying boogeyman being Jewish, he would be Muslim. A totalitarian America would be a powerful, unhinged, and implacable enemy of Islam, unbound by any checks and balances or concern for international law. One possible scenario: All pretense of trying to turn Iraq into a democracy is abandoned, and the draft is reinstated to acquire enough troops to impose martial law there. I don't think even the neocons would be insane enough to declare war on the entire region at once, so they use bogus provocations to pick the Middle Eastern countries off one by one (possibly even using nukes), until/unless the rest of the world finally bands together to stop us, at great cost to themselves.

I scares me that I'm pretty sure I just described every neocon's most cherished secret wet dream, at least up until that last part. But to get back to my original question: Is that Osama's plan? To have the U.S. lay waste to huge swaths of the Middle East and elsewhere before getting taken down, and then swoop in to pick up the pieces and take advantage of the global power vacuum? Or does he think the U.S. will just collapse under its own weight like his last nemesis did? Or does he just not care what happens to the U.S., as long as it keeps pushing the Muslim world into his arms?

Sentences I Never Thought I'd Type

"I appear to be ranked 11th for panda milk frog."

NYC Birdblogging

Some bird photos from Jacob Riis Park.


The Council has spoken. There is no appeal.


Flying in black & white...


Flying in color...


Just back away veeerrrry slowly and don't make eye contact. 

Quote Of The Day

Kung Fu Monkey:

...Cheney and Gonzales have dropped the Constitution into a hole in the White House basement and are currently dancing naked around the pit, penises tucked between their legs, screaming "It rubs the lotions on its Amendments!" at the shuddering, terrified document, and there's nary a peep.

Now that's speaking my language.

Please Tell Me I Did Not Just Read This...

From an op-ed in today's NYT about how Solomonic and groovy Dubya's stem cell "compromise" was:

...The human embryo is a human organism, but is this being — microscopically small, with no self-awareness and little resemblance to us — a person, with a right to life?

Many advocates of federal financing for embryo-destructive research begin from a negative answer to that question. They argue that the human embryo is just too small, too unlike us in appearance, or too lacking in consciousness or sensitivity to pain or other critical mental capacity to be granted a place in the human family. But surely America has learned the hard way not to assign human worth by appearances. And surely we would not deny those who have lost some mental faculties the right to be regarded with respect and protected from harm. Why should we deny it to those whose faculties are still developing?

Um. Did he just argue that being an embryo is akin to having a disability? That it's shallow to discriminate against embryos simply because they're about as big as rice and don't have functioning brains?

Who the hell is this jackass?

Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a former executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Oh. Right, then. Carry on, you're doing a heckuva job.

Friday Quote & Cat Blogging

This week's quote is from a movie called Girl, starring Dominique Swain, whose main claim to fame was starring in the Adrian Lyne remake of Lolita. She became unnecessary when Kirsten Dunst appeared.

Well, when you've had as much disappointment and humiliation as I have, you learn to accept it with a certain amount of grace.

And, of course, there'll be other people's cats...


The shadowy and mysterious Codename B. looking content and slightly belligerent.

B&W Beach Photoblogging

Yes, Jacob Riis Park has a beach, and, well, it's rather dismal. Hopefully it's a lot nicer in the summer...


Apparently I am not the last photographer on Earth.


I like drinking fountains, especially defunct ones.


I guess this is not exactly a surprise...


Um, seriously, I think something terrible has happened to the lifeguards... 

Narrative Shift Alert!

The good news is that everything that happens is no longer good for Republicans.

The bad news is that everything that happens is good for the DLC.

I don't mind bipartisanship up to a point; that point being "selling out to the Republicans to such a degree that you end up on the same side." So far, it looks like the reverse is happening: Dubya and his vanity war have generated so much ill will and mistrust for the Republicans and their policies that most Americans really want the Democrats to take the wheel for a while. Even if they can't steer us away from the cliff, they can at least kick the leaden Republican foot off of the accelerator.

Thanks to last November's anti-Bush referendum, many Congressional Republicans are now beginning to recognize this shift, and are jockeying for seats on the anti-Bush, anti-war bandwagon. "Bipartisanship" now means Republicans opposing an unpopular president to save their own skins. This is especially true of those Republicans up for re-election next year - the prospect of facing the voters tends to concentrate the mind.

Where Edsall and his DLC, establishment, "Money Party" cronies come in is to push the narrative that Democrats need to push a mushy, cautious, centrist agenda to lure on-the-fence Republicans over. While this would certainly get a lot of legislation passed, most of it wouldn't be worth the paper the lobbyists printed it on.

Edsall & Co's mistake is to underestimate the extent of the shift, and to misread what America voted for last year. I believe they voted for an agenda of change, integrity, accountability, and opposition (CIAO), and will not be satisfied with half-measures. Instead of tacking and triangulating and trying to figure out what Republicans will vote for, Democrats need to push for what their constituents (their citizen constituents) want and need. The Republicans can either get on board with them or try to explain their opposition in 2008 or 2010.

The Democrats haven't had an opportunity like this in 30 years - I don't want to see them squander it with needless capitulation.

Difficult

How sad is it that when I read something like this, I find myself trying to figure out what category I'm in, rather than the people around me? I think "Hostile-Aggressive" was the only one I could definitively rule out - I'm more "Hostile-Passive." I guess I don't really have to worry about being "Super-Agreeable" either...

There are people that annoy me, but what annoys me doesn't really fit into any of those categories.

NYC Day 2 Photoblogging

I know I've been photoblogging for more than two days, but now I'm photoblogging pictures from my second day in NYC.


Utility pole! I live for this stuff.


I took a whole bunch of pictures of planes, not-exactly-trains, boats, and helicopters. This was one of the few that wasn't total crap.


I think the trees are powering up for their attack.


Welcome to sunny, scenic Jacob Riis Park! I think this is, like, the only tree.

Thanks, Arlen!

Republican Congress votes to give President Gore/Clinton/Obama/Edwards/Clark the power to replace U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval.

They could make it awfully uncomfortable for Dubya and his cronies. Unless the Republican plan is to have their tame U.S. Attorneys prosecute corrupt Republicans really ineptly (but comprehensively) so they'll be immunized by the principle of double jeopardy.

Probably not a great re-election strategy, but neither is going to prison.

(h/t Atrios)

Juxtaposition Of The Week

Right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds in yesterday's NYT:

...Kennesaw, Ga... in 1982 passed a mandatory gun ownership law in response to a handgun ban passed in Morton Grove, Ill. Kennesaw’s crime dropped sharply, while Morton Grove’s did not.

To some degree, this is rational. Criminals, unsurprisingly, would rather break into a house where they aren’t at risk of being shot. As David Kopel noted in a 2001 article in The Arizona Law Review, burglars report that they try to avoid homes where armed residents are likely to be present. We see this phenomenon internationally, too, with the United States having a lower proportion of “hot” burglaries — break-ins where the burglars know the home to be occupied — than countries with restrictive gun laws.

Likewise, in the event of disasters that leave law enforcement overwhelmed, armed citizens can play an important role in stanching crime. Armed neighborhood watches deterred looting in parts of Houston and New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Precisely because an armed populace can serve as an effective backup for law enforcement, the ownership of firearms was widely mandated during Colonial times, and the second Congress passed a statute in 1792 requiring adult male citizens to own guns.

Daniel Pearl's mother in today's NYT:

IN late 2001, three months before my son, the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped, he interviewed the influential Qatari cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and asked him about suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. The sheik replied with a novel twist of logic. “Israeli society in general is armed,” he said, implying that Israeli civilians — including women and children, doctors and journalists — are legitimate targets.

If???

Money quote from today's NYT lead editorial:

If General Qanbar and Mr. Maliki plan to continue shielding militias like the Mahdi Army, this new drive will be doomed before it begins.

This is not an if, it's a certainty. Maliki is only in power because Sadr allows him to be, and the Bushies either don't notice or don't care. Any move to take on Sadr is doomed to failure, especially if it depends on one of his clients for success.

The three most plausible explanations I can think of for this doomed approach are:

1) Stupidity and incompetence. This can never be ruled out.

2) Looking busy. The administration wants to look like they're taking bold decisive action while they run out the clock so Iraq becomes President Gore's problem ("How's that for an inconvenient truth? In your face, Captain Nerdboy! Heheheh.").

3) Provocation. Create a military disaster that you can blame on Iran, so you have an excuse to bomb some democracy and gratitude into them.

A few thousand troops is a small price to pay for Dubya to finally achieve his lifelong goal of nuking the shit out of somebody. I'm sure the troops will be happy to make the ultimate sacrifice so that their president can experience a momentary erection. We could call it Operation Die-agra.

Wednesday Why-I-Love-The-Weekly-World-News Blogging

As an environmentalist, I find this story rather disconcerting:

MANHATTAN, N.Y.--The mermaid Azura surprised the Clean Seas Institute by announcing her people's extreme displeasure with the anti-pollution group's activities.

"Pollution provides the basis of many Mer-technologies," she said. "You know, we still haven't discovered fire down there."

She explained that the sea-people rely on "reverse-archaeology," wherein advanced societies' artifacts rain from above for use in mer-civilization.

"Your license plates accelerated our development of literacy, and your soda-can rings provided our first currency," she said.

"Abandoned cans and fishing lines have given us telecommunications," she went on.

Weakened by her sojourn on dry land, Azura accepted no questions before leaving the bewildered activists.

"We're used to resistance from big business," said Walter Hargen, a spokesman for Clean Seas. "But to be reprimanded by the fish themselves--that's taken the wind out of our sails."

Clearly, we all have some hard thinking to do.


In political news, the WWN is reporting that Hillary has named Bigfoot as her running mate, but I'm very skeptical - she hasn't even been nominated yet.

Don't Feed The Damn Trolls!

I'm not entirely sure why this resurfaced six months later on NYT, but I've actually been conditioned to do this since childhood, when my parents counseled me that the best way to deal with teasing was to completely ignore it. I became (and largely remain) Mr. Non-Responsive, and that actually worked pretty damn well.

Does that mean it's good science? Probably not...

Stinky Flower Mystery Solved! Also, The Moths Are STEALING YOUR TEARS!!!

Courtesy of Jeremy Holden

Fun from the NYT's Tuesday Science section:

A spurge that smells like death

Rafflesia arnoldii is no shrinking violet. At up to three feet in diameter, it’s the world’s largest flower. It’s also possibly the most repulsive — it looks and smells like rotting flesh (the better to attract flies, which act as pollinators).

But while Rafflesia may be easy to describe, it has been much harder to classify. It’s a parasite, embedding itself in vines in the understory of pristine rainforests in Indonesia, and it lacks the roots, stems, leaves and photosynthesizing machinery that would give scientists a clue as to its evolutionary background.

(...)

...Dr. [Charles C.] Davis and colleagues have done more genetic research to solve the puzzle. Their conclusion, published online by the journal Science, is that the Rafflesiaceae, as this family of species is known, are nestled within the spurge family, which includes rubber plants, castor, cassava and poinsettia. “They are smack dab in the middle,” Dr. Davis said.

In some ways this is a surprise, because spurges are so well known. On the other hand, Dr. Davis said, the Rafflesiaceae “are so off on their own trip that their position within any group would require some explaining.”

(...)

“These plants flower in understory rainforest environments, which are dimly lit, so they are not easily seen by pollinators,” Dr. Davis said. “They would have had incredible incentive to increase their surface area, to maximize odor production and bring in these pollinators.”

Beware the moths, especially if you're a sad clown

Moths and butterflies obtain moisture wherever they can find it — in Africa, Asia and South America, even from the tears of mammals and reptiles. But until now, no moth or butterfly has been seen drinking tears from a bird.

Roland Hilgartner of the University of Ulm in Germany and colleagues observed a species of moth in Madagascar, Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica, that alights on the neck of a sleeping magpie or Newtonia bird and sticks its long proboscis between the bird’s closed eyelids. Moths were observed in this position for 30 minutes or longer, presumably drinking the bird’s tears. The finding was reported in Biology Letters.

The moth’s proboscis is about half an inch long (about half the moth’s length), with a sharp point and many tiny spines and barbs. The researchers suggest that it functions somewhat like a harpoon, because it has to go not only between upper and lower eyelids, but also through the bird’s nictitating membrane, which further protects the eyes.

Beaks? Moths with beaks?

Three's Company + Islam = Profit!

I'm probably overly simple-minded, but I think this sounds like a good thing:

When it comes to producing a funny television show or movie in Canada, producers here have a reliable stable of topics: French-English relations, urban-rural dynamics and anything that involves a bumbling politician or the United States.

But Islam — something of a third rail of comedy throughout the Western world — did not make the list, which is one reason the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s new situation comedy, “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” is attracting such attention here. “It is a risk doing a sitcom about what can be considered a very touchy subject,” said Kirstine Layfield, executive director of network programming at CBC.

But last Tuesday’s series premiere attracted 2.09 million viewers, impressive in a country where an audience of one million is a runaway hit. The CBC had not had a show draw that size audience in a decade, according to the network.

The show follows a small group of Muslims in, of all places, a prairie town in Saskatchewan where, in the first episode, the group was trying to establish a mosque in the parish hall of a church. A passer-by, seeing the group praying, rushes to call a “terrorist hot line” to report Muslims praying “just like on CNN,” which touches off a local firestorm.

Hoping to avoid making a stir in the town, the group hires a Canadian-born imam from Toronto who quits his father’s law firm to take the job — career suicide, his father thinks. On the way, he is detained in the airport after being overheard on his cellphone saying, “If Dad thinks that’s suicide, so be it,” adding, “This is Allah’s plan for me.”

Later, a leader of the Muslim group is seen defending to a local person the plan to turn the parish hall into a mosque. “It’s a pilot project,” he says, leading the man to exclaim wide-eyed, “You’re training pilots?!”

(...)

The show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz, said that she was not trying to bridge all of the cultural gaps, but that she hoped the program could elicit laughs on all sides and perhaps foster a better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

“I want the broader society to look at us as normal, with the same issues and concerns as anyone else,” said Ms. Nawaz, who based the series loosely on her own experiences as a Muslim woman who moved from Toronto to the prairie. “We’re just as much a part of the Canadian fabric as anyone else.”

(...)

The show has generally been well received by Muslim leaders, who welcome the light touch it brings to issues that are normally debated in numbing seriousness.

“Muslims are a bit late in laughing at themselves, but we have to use humor to remedy these divisions, just like any community,” said Mohamed Elmasry, an imam and president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

The show has been criticized for treating too lightly the threat posed by radical Islam and the imams who preach it. The newly hired imam in “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” Amaar Rashid, is clean-shaven, wears tight jeans and has the “ravishing looks of a soap-opera star,” as the columnist Margaret Wente wrote in the Toronto daily newspaper The Globe and Mail.

“If there’s an imam on Earth who resembles this one, I will convert to Islam, don the veil and catch the next plane to Mecca,” she added.

Niiice. I see the Canadian right-wing is every bit as classy as our own.

But what some see as a weakness, others see as a strength. Syed Asad Dean, chairman of the Meadowvale Islamic Center in Mississauga, a western suburb of Toronto, said portraying Muslims as moderate members of the mainstream could have a beneficial effect on young Muslims.

“More extreme Muslims are telling our youth that Canada is not interested in our community, so something like this works dead against that type of mentality,” he said. “The youth see it on television and say, hey, they recognize us and they actually made an investment to talk about us and our life in Canada.”

(...)

In the United States, only cable stations have responded so far, but CBC officials say they are hoping to pitch the show to the larger networks.

I really hope this show gets picked up in the U.S. What I like most about it (admittedly, based on a handful of gags quoted in a news story) is that it pokes much-deserved fun at anti-Muslim paranoia. Because people who see all Arabs as potential terrorists, and who feel threatened every time they hear someone speaking Arabic are silly at best, and bigoted at worst. It sounds like this show is trying to counter that mentality by showing Muslims as just folks, who happen to dress differently and worship a different God (or the same God under a different name). I'll go out on a limb here and say that most Muslims do not hate Christians, are not plotting jihad, and are not serving some sort of sinister hidden agenda.

I'm not advocating a total lack of vigilance, just pointing out that if you think there's a terrorist plot unfolding before your eyes every time you see a couple of Muslims talking, then you might as well cower indoors every time it rains so that the lightning won't get you. Just use some common sense. For example, if you see a scruffy, disreputable figure furtively skulking around a skyscraper or industrial installation taking pictures... well, okay, it's probably me. But if it isn't, then use your own best judgment (no gunplay!). If you're not sure, try to distract them with chocolate or techno-gadgets.

B&W UNISPHERE Photoblogging

I don't think there's actually any convention that requires "UNISPHERE" to be spelled with all caps - I just feel like it should be pronounced in the most portentous way possible.

Unfortunately, my battery ran out before I could get all the shots I wanted, and my backup battery appears to have a serious leak. I tried to get the shots with my wee backup camera, but the results were mixed. Those shots might appear in a separate post sometime, who knows.


Behold, the power of the UNISPHERE!


The metal Horn Of Africa.


Excelsior!