Apparently — hold on to your hats, now — some conservatives think that Obama's Administration is too liberal.
Arab Protest In New York Marred By Gross Spelling Error
Whatever your politics (although it seems obvious in this case), spelling counts!
Actual photo of a real Arab protester.
British Guy Thinking About Putting Movie-Like Ratings On Websites
But just in case, I ran my website through a content-reading thingee, and now I've got my rating already here on the right sidebar.
Vietnam Was “The Television War”; Meet “The YouTube War”
I don't have anything to say about the outbreak of fighting in Israel/Gaza, other than you can put me down in the "Israel's-responsive-was-disproportionate-and-therefore-counterproductive" camp, that the Bush Administration's silence on the issue is (once again) negligent, and the only way this will end (and not escalate) is some serious efforts at diplomacy — and soon.
Okay, I guess I do have something to say.
Anyway, I find it interesting that the Israeli Defense Forces have opened up an account on Youtube, so that viewers can watch same-day IDF footage of rockets hitting their targets in the Gaza strip. Interesting propaganda — I'm not sure what purpose it serves ("We're badass"?)
YouTube has pulled some of them down — maybe it intends to do so with all of them. Odd that it should find itself in this internationally awkward editorial position.
“In Passing” 2008 Roll Call
2008 dead celebrities I really felt kinda bad about upon hearing that they had died:
Yes, yes. I know others died (Heath Ledger, Charlton Heston, etc.). But their deaths, while sad or surprising or whatever, didn't make me go, "Oh man!".
GMILF?
Sarah Palin has become a grandmother.
The First Draft Of The Bush Presidency
This Vanity Fair "oral history" is excellent. It goes through key moments of the Bush Administration, and the story is not told through narrative, but rather, through the comments of Bush insiders.
Here, for example, are some insider comments about the time when the Bush Administration confronted (well, failed to confront) Katrina:
Dan Bartlett, White House communications director and later counselor to the president: Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.
Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign: Katrina to me was the tipping point. The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter. I knew when Katrina—I was like, man, you know, this is it, man. We’re done.
Weblog Award Finalists Announced
Full list here.
It's a good place to go if you want to be exposed to various well-written blogs that you didn't know existed.
Yes, Virginia, there are well-written blogs out there. The blogosphere is much much more than political rants and pictures of peoples' kittens doing the gosh-darn cutest things.
Senator Franken — Finally?
TPM:
It's now official that Al Franken is ahead in the Minnesota recount by 50 votes, after the state canvassing board finally approved a spreadsheet of all the ballots that have been counted, recounted and examined again over this very long process. And while it now appears to be almost certain that Franken will defeat GOP Sen. Norm Coleman in the end, it's hardly over.
The board did some last-minute reviews and corrections this morning, sorting out complaints from both campaigns of clerical errors in the allocations of some of the challenged ballots. And so Al Franken, who entered the recount down by 215 votes, is currently ahead by a margin of 0.00171% out of over 2.9 million votes.
That's an astoundingly close election.
Of course, it's not the official final result yet, and there is still more haggling to be done about rejected absentee ballots, inevitably involving the courts again.
Real Love Is Fiction
Oprah called it ""the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air."
And she made the memoir of the story one of her books-of-the-month. It has been featured on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime Television, and CBS News.
And the story is this:
The author, Herman Rosenblat, who is a retired television repairman now living in Miami, recounts his experience as a teenage boy during the Holocaust at Schlieben, a sub-division of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. In the winter of 1945, Herman meets a nine-year-old girl–herself a Jew masquerading as a Christian at a nearby farm–when she shows up one day outside the camp and tosses him an apple over the barbed-wire fence. For the next seven months, the girl at the fence delivers Herman food each day, until he is suddenly transferred to another camp. Fast forward to Coney Island, 1957: Herman, now in his 20s and settled in New York, reluctantly agrees to a blind date with a young Polish immigrant named Roma Radzicki. They speak of their time during the war. Roma mentions a boy she had helped to survive in a camp. She said she fed him apples. A flash of recognition. Months later, Herman marries Roma, his angel at the fence.
Nice story, except for the fact that the only place where the apples could have been tossed from the women's camp to the men's camp was right beside the SS guard bunker.
Also, the man told the woman he could no longer see her because he was being gassed the next day (because that's what he thought; he was transferred instead).
Nice story, except for the fact that Jews typically weren't informed in advance that they were to be gassed.
And, oh yeah, Schliebem didn't have a gas chamber.
So, yeah. The hoax got exposed.
The Final Verdict On Abstinence-Only Sex Education
It doesn't work; in fact, it backfires:
The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.
"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."
Got that? The difference between teens who make abstinence "pledges" and teens who don't isn't the amount of sexual conduct, it's that those who make the "pledges" engage in more dangerous sexual conduct.
Is this news?
Not really. The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that abstinence programs do not affect teenager sexual behavior. A congressionally-mandated study, which was not only comprehensive but also included long-term follow-up, found the exact same thing. Researchers keep conducting studies, and the results are always the same.
Yet the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs — $176 million annually.
Kevin Drum comments:
Simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn't affect behavior, doesn't prevent unwanted pregnancies, and doesn't stop the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. Teens who receive comprehensive lessons of sexual health, with reliable, accurate information, are more likely to engage in safer, more responsible behavior.
And yet, GOP policy makers in Washington have invested billions over the last eight years in this failed social experiment, and conservatives want taxpayers to throw even more money at programs that don't work.
The Washington Post noted that Congress and the new Obama administration "are about to reconsider the more than $176 million in annual funding for such programs." It should be a no-brainer.
Maybe with some brains in Washington now, a more rationale policy will finally see the light of day.
The U.S. Will End In 2010
I guess that prediction would be laughable if it came from Nostadamus or some modern-day equivalent soothsayer.
But the guy who is saying is a respected analyst. Then again, he's Russian:
Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.
He's been making this prediction for more than a decade, and now, with the economic collapse, people outside of Russia are listening to him.
Okay, so what's this guy actually saying?
He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.
California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.
And the WSJ article even provides a handy-dandy picture of what a post-U.S. U.S. would look like:
It looks like North Carolina, where I live, is going to get all french-i-fied, since it is part of "Atlantic America".
We'll have to start wearing berets and eating baguettes.
Although Panarin thinks this has a 55-45% chance of happening, I'd say that there is a 99.999-0.001% chance that Panarin doesn't have a clue about American culture.
And Texas falling under Mexican influence? I'm no expert on the Lone Star State, but I just don't see that happening.
And Alaska becoming Russian? Oh, I don't think so. Not with Sarah at the helm. She knows how to kill a moose from a helicopter, and she can see Russia from the coastline. Did Panarin factor that in?!?
Top 10 Lists
Popular Mechanics’ Top 10 Gadgets of 2008
Salon’s Top 10 Books of 2008
and of course, Time created dozens of top ten lists for 2008:
- Albums
- Animal Stories
- Awkward Moments
- Best Biz Deals
- Best Performances
- Breakups
- Buzzwords
- Campaign Gaffes
- Campaign Video Moments
- Children's Books
- Crime Stories
- Editorial Cartoons
- Election Photos
- Fashion Moments
- Fashion Faux Pas
- Fiction Books
- Financial Collapses
- Fleeting Celebrities
- Food Trends
- Gadgets
- Green Ideas
- iPhone Apps
- Late Night Jokes
- Magazine Covers
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Museum Exhibits
- News Stories
- Non-fiction Books
- Oddball News Stories
- Olympic Moments
- Open Mike Moments
- Outrageous Earmarks
- Photos
- Plays and Musicals
- Political Lines
- Quotes
- Religion Stories
- Scandals
- Scientific Discoveries
- Songs
- Sports Moments
- T-shirt Worthy Slogans
- TV Ads
- TV Episodes
- TV Series
- Underreported Stories
- Video Games
- Viral Videos
- Worst Biz Deals