Give the guy a break, the water's cold

Okay, I'm tired and giggly, so that's my excuse for this post about a New York Times article on duck phalluses. There were so many snippets to take out of context and make fun of, but this one may have been my favorite.

When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.

C'mon, I challenge you to read that article and not snicker.

"...the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."

Remember that snippet of a comment from Rosie O'Donnell, referencing her belief that fire from two planes could not have brung down the World Trade Center? It is absurd on its face, but just the same, I bring you this:

A section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire, authorities said.

The heat from the fire was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns.

I'll be damned. It must have been a Bush-Rove-Cheney-Halliburton conspiracy to punish the Bay Area for Nancy Pelosi, because we all know fire can't melt steel.

I'm not sure you and I are looking at the same thing...

The NY Times reported today on a letter from George Washington that was found in the scrap book of a girl from the early 19th century. One of Washington's lines in that letter is as follows:

“The happiness of this Country depend much upon the deliberations of the federal Convention which is now sitting. It, however, can only lay the foundation — the community at large must raise the edifice.”

About that line, Ann Althouse had the following to say:

Very nice. The words evoke the notion of a living Constitution.

Only if that's what you really, really want them to evoke, Ann. Foundations tend not to be very malleable, nor do edifices change much once built. It seems much more likely Washington was talking about the community building a nation of itself upon the firm foundation the constitution. But if I have a few more beers and tilt my glasses just so, I guess I can see it.

Wait...what?

Found by the lovely Mrs. Jib on the back of a turtle cheesecake box sold by a popular school fundraising organization:

Serving size: 1/6 cake
Servings per container: 8

Huh? This is a whole, round cheesecake.

Smith: Students, Faculty "did all they could to survive"

Thomas W. Smith echoes what I said last week about the response of Virginia Tech students and faculty to Cho's rampage, except I'd give his column more weight than my post because Smith is a former marine who was trained in how to react to an ambush. Go read it.

Hamas has 'wings'

I found the first paragraph of this Reuters story quite interesting.

Hamas's armed wing declared an end to a five-month-old Gaza ceasefire on Tuesday by firing rockets into Israel, but the Palestinian government led by the Islamist group called for the truce to be restored.

So is this official? Hamas has 'wings'? If so, it doesn't matter much. One wing will still know what the other is doing in most situations. It would add a very IRA/Sinn Fein touch to the Palestinians. My bigger concern is if Reuters unilaterally decided to make this split. If that is the case, it is just another example of biased, terrorist friendly reporting on the part of Reuters because it attempts to split the violence of Hamas from the politics of Hamas, and that's just not possible.

A picture, a thousand words

I love this picture. It makes me think of nights out with some of my best friends.

Ethanol from carbon monoxide?

A company in New Zealand says they can do it.

New Zealand company LanzaTech, has announced it has secured US$3.5M in Series A funding, led by Khosla Ventures and supported by two existing New Zealand based investors. This funding will support further technology development, establishing a pilot plant, engineering work to prepare for commercial-scale ethanol production and positions the company to raise significant capital in the near future.

This technology could produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol from the world's steel mills alone, turning the liability of carbon emissions into valuable fuels worth over $50 billion per year at very low costs and adding substantial value to the steel industry. The technology will also be a key contributor to the cellulosic biofuels business as it can convert syngas produced through gasification into ethanol.

There is so much experimentation being done out there right now that it is hard to say what will be physically possible and what will be economically possible. This is an approach to ethanol that I could support...if it is economical and if the process is not an energy hog. I like the idea of finding ways to utilize both waste materials and wasted energy.

I recently had the opportunity to listen to a speech on biofuels by Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. My opinion of using corn as the feedstock for ethanol production remained unchanged-I still don't like it. If the science can advance enough to make the processes economical, I could get on board with using crop residue and some other types of biomass to make cellulosic ethanol, however. One attractive feature of cellulosic ethanol is that the production would create a byproduct that could be used to partially fuel the plant. I am not completely opposed to ethanol, just mandates of ethanol useage, heavily subsidized ethanol production, and energy inefficient ethanol production. Smart, economical ethanol could make me a fan.

So long, Boris

Boris Yeltsin has passed away in Russia. It is going to take a long time for Yeltsin's legacy to be written, and when it is I hope it is more for the good that he did in Russia than for the difficulties the country had during the transition from communism to whatever it is Russia is moving towards now.

A foreshadow of Fred Thompson stumbling blocks

I've been watching the love fest with Fred Thompson with great interest. I'm not a Fred Thompson acolyte, but I am open to hearing what he's all about. I'm a realist, too, which means that I know that Thompson, like all presidential candidates, will not have a smooth run of things if he chooses to join the race. Right now, he has the benefit of not having to stump and not having to be a target for other candidates and the media. If he runs, the magnifying glass will be on him, and the spotlight will be hot. So if you are already heady for a Thompson run, it might be best to prepare yourself for some of the issues that might be problematic for him amongst conservatives. If he can handle them deftly, then he deserves to be a front runner. If not, then he'll just be another candidate that doesn't meet the high bar conservatives are setting for this race.

Enough incompotence to go around...

...for Democrats and Republicans. If this story gets enough coverage, the American public is going to want to throw everyone out of office in 2008 and start over from scratch.

Back in the USSR

They keep getting closer.

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.

How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

Russia has always been a stubborn and slightly backwards nation, as compared to most of Europe, the United States, and Asia. To believe that it would easily slip into Western world after the fall of communism may have been a little naive. For Russia, there is probably a happy hybrid of Westernism and "Russianism," to coin a word. Unfortunately, things like this are a good indicator that Russia is swinging further away from even a hybrid and towards, if not communism, at least a hard authoritarianism again.

Caution with the crazies

In the days following the Virginia Tech massacre, as we learned more and more about Cho Seung-Hui's very sick mental state, a lot of people started talking about how how we handle the psychopathic amongst us. Actually, how we don't handle them may be a better way of putting it. On the surface, I agree that we should be a little more willing and able to commit those who are so mentally ill that they are dangers to themselves and others. The topic really makes me cringe, though, because while they are cases out there that are obvious, this is still a very subjective area, the analysis of someone's mental stability. It is something that could easily be abused or handled irresponsibly. Let me give you an experience from my own college experience that may illustrate this. Caution, the story is a little long.

When I was in college, there was a business course that was a requirement for my major. Only one professor taught it the semester that I took it, and he struck fear into his students from the moment his first class started. He was originally from communist Eastern Europe, so he had a solid accent. He acted like he was pissed off every single day, and he was always serious. On the first day of class, he made us read the course syllabus and sign it, saying it was a contract between us and him. He'd teach us the material in the syllabus, and if we did the work, he'd give us a grade in return. He was also an absolute stickler for following directions. One day early in the course, he gave us a quiz. It was impossibly difficult for everyone. At the top of the quiz, the directions said "Sign your name and hand in." We all finished out quizes and turned them in. Next class, he handed them back and we all got zeros...except the guy who would normally have been the class wise ass. He signed his name and handed it in without doing anything else. He got a 100.

He pulled little games like that on us all the damn time, and frankly, it irritated the living hell out of me. Here I am, paying for my own schooling, and this guy is wasting my money by pulling games that are getting me grades from zero to 60 on a 100 point scale. One Friday he gave us two articles to read at the end of class. By this time, I'd figured him out enough to know that he was going to be doing something on these articles first thing Monday morning. Sure enough, there was another quiz. At the top of the quiz, there was a statement that said that we had read the articles and that we were only allowed to continue with the quiz if we had. There were two places for signatures...but no direction to sign it. So I didn't, even though I had read the articles. I took the quiz and handed it in. When I got the quiz back on Wednesday, I got another zero because I had not signed it. There was much discussion between he and the class over this quiz, so he told us that if we felt that we deserved a better grade, write why on the back of the quiz and hand it in.

So I thought I had this guy dead to rights. I had done the work and I had followed the instructions to a T. I wrote that on the back of the quiz, and I also wrote that he was in breach of his own contract with me per the syllabus. I had done the work, and he had given me a zero, an absence of a grade. I also said that if we were unable to rectify the situation, I was going to "go over his head to get my grade." To me, that was a clear statement that I was going to go to a Dean at the business college to address this if he wouldn't. I was terrified for the next class, but I was also anxious to see what was going to happen. I'd played his game, or so I thought.

I got the quiz back again. The grade had not changed, but there was a note on it that said, "See me in my office after class." I really did not like that, but I was also firmly of the position that we were going to hash this out and get it taken care of...and I still thought I had him cornered with his own logic. After class I headed up to his office, and he told me to close the door, which I did. I sat down, and he became quite angry, telling that he did not know my exact mental state, but that he was taking "go over his head" as a physical threat. He told me that he feared starting his car at night because he was afraid that I was going to "drop a ping pong ball filled with gasoline in my engine, causing it to explode." He told me that he was probably going to alert the business school, school security, and the city police of my "threat." I was very alarmed. If a long time professor, and Doctor, of a university makes a claim like that against a 21 year old college student, the college student probably isn't going to get the benefit of the doubt, even though evidence of any threat was non-existant except in this man's mind.

I ended up jousting and dancing with him rhetorically in that conversation well enough that when I left, he no longer was going to take my note to the authorities, but he still did consider it a threat. I don't know if it was life in Eastern Europe that had made him that paranoid and slightly deranged, if he was playing another game with me, or if he was just plain nuts. I do (and did) know this, though. If we were too loose about locking up the crazies in this country, he would have been able to play the system to get my ass locked up, even though I was the sane one in that situation. And that's why I cringe just a little bit whenever the public discourse gets into the subject of committing people. Yes, in cases like Cho, it is painfully obvious and there must be tools for getting those people off the streets. But when nerves and emotions are raw after a tragedy like this, we are always at risk of giving too much power to the government, and that's what I fear right now. I don't like giving government at any level subjective power without having it severely reigned in, even if that means that I'm a little less safe in public. I'd rather take my chances against a lone nut than the full weight of a government using its power irresponsibly. So while I'm sure we will look for ways to prevent the next Virginia Tech, I hope everyone out there is very cautious of what powers over us government may try to take for itself.

Post script
I ended up figuring out my professor well enough that on our end of year group project report for a role play that we had done, he wrote "Your leader (me) did a good job of keeping you out of trouble. He's going to make a fine CEO one day." I also got an A in the class despite the fact that most of my grades were below 60. But I still have a photocopy of what I wrote on that quiz, just in case I ever need to defend myself with it.

Barbaric

I know that in this post-modern, touchy feely Western world we aren't supposed to use that word. Tough. It is the only word that describes this:

The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.

A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.

An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi's identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.

The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.

The fury over NBC's broadcast of Cho video, pictures

I am sitting back reading and listening to all of the backlash against NBC for showing the video and pictures that Cho sent them, and a couple of thoughts sprung to mind. My first was, "what if Cho had mailed that material off to a blogger?" I have little doubt that most bloggers would have posted the material, even many of those who are criticizing NBC now. Because of that, I have a lot trouble taking the harping by my fellow bloggers seriously. As for the media critics, that's there pay check, to find something to complain about. My second thought was this: "What if NBC had held onto the material and not broadcast it?" I think a number of blogs and critics would have lauded NBC for its decision, but I think an even larger number of blogs and critics would be calling on NBC to release the material in the interest of allowing the public to better understand what was going on with this guy. And of course, that would have merely been a veneer of respectability on top of the significant voyeurism we have in this country. If NBC had waited, say, a week to air that material, the response to it would have been completely different.

Alec Baldwin, a real class act

A couple of weeks ago I was tempted to give Alec Baldwin his due when I read that he decided to cover the college expenses of a young woman who was going off to war in Iraq. I'm glad that I didn't, because he just keeps proving that he doesn't have much class:

The festering bad blood between movie-star exes Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger erupted Thursday when an angry phone message from Baldwin to his daughter was made public. On the recording, Baldwin can be heard berating his 11-year-old, Ireland, "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig."

"You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being," he says, apparently upset that she did not answer her phone for a planned call.

"I don't give a damn that you're 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you're a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn't care about what you do as far as I'm concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone."

I don't care how difficult his divorce and custody battle has been, and I don't care about the sides of the story. Parents get angry at children, but calling them names like "pig" is inexcusable.

Now that's not to say that Kim Bassinger does have class. She doesn't either. I entertain no doubts about what her intentions were in releasing this voice mail. Her intentions were to humiliate Baldwin, nothing else.

Miscellaneous drive time thoughts.

*I've heard just a little bit of talk this week wondering as to why no one tried to jump Cho Seung-Hui. Frankly, I think everyone did their best against him. Every strategic advantage was his-he had surprise on his side, in the hallways he had two long and narrow fields of fire that limited approachability, and inside the classrooms he had the advantage once he made it though the doorway. The only defense the students and faculty had was at the doors, and faculty and students were killed or wounded defending those doorways. There wasn't much more they could do.

*Americans spend countless hours stuck in traffic every year, yet none of us has used that time to figure out how to end gridlock.

*If I had to deal with gridlock every day, I'd eventually have to wire my car for blogging. I have too many good thoughts while stuck in traffic that seem to disappear by the time I get to a computer.

*Detroit actually has some very interesting architecture. It is a shame the city is stuck in a downward slide.

*I'm not a Ford guy by any means, but Ford Mustangs are fun to drive, none the less.

*Nissan Sentras, not so much.

*Western Michigan is nice area that I'd gladly visit on a long weekend. I'd like to hit some of the wineries, chocolate stores, and farm markets with the lovely Mrs. Jib sometime.

Hello Wisconsin

Ahhh, it is wonderful to be home. It was nice to miss the final snowstorm of the year last week, but it doesn't take long to miss home. The blogging shall now return to normal.

Canada: A waste of perfectly good tundra

Ugh. I had Canadian talk radio on this morning. They were talking aboot the Virginia Tech murders. What a nation of pompous asses (at least those in the east). And that's all I have to say aboot that.

What a terrible day

I spent a lot of time staring at a highway today, and it was very difficult to listen to reports of the massacre at Virginia Tech. I'm not even going to pretend to have the words for this. Just pray for the dead, the injured, and all of their loved ones. And hug your own loved ones. I'm a long way from home right now and I wish I could hug my own loved ones. And for me personally, I'm glad that WTMJ radio's signal carries well across Lake Michigan and well into western Michigan. It was better to be far from home and at least be able to hear the coverage from familiar voices like Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner, and the news team.

Incidentally, as Jeff Wagner's show progressed and after I lost the WTMJ signal and had to tune into other talk radio, I started to hear a lot of people talking about the political points of guns. Folks, there will be a time for that. Today and tomorrow are not it. We don't even know the details of this tragedy yet. Give it a few days, and then you will have all the time in the world to indulge in the political. But have some respect for the deceased and their mourning loved ones for now.