Wonkette Defends Dick Cheney

Wonkette is amusingly snide on Dick Cheney's malfunctioning wardrobe: "We don't know why everyone is making such a big deal about Cheney's attire at the holocaust memorial. He is an old man with a bad heart. Wearing whatever's comfortable is one of the benefits of still being alive. There are many: early bird buffets, discount theater tickets, and, of course, invading the country of your choice, as long you show your AARP card." Ooh, ooh, I'm eligible for AARP now.

Oklahoma considers cockfights with tiny gloves

Comment would be superfluous; from a Reuters story on the Houston Chronicle web site: "An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors."

It's not easy, being green

Andrew Sullivan wonders why conservatives aren't very green:

I've never understood why conservatives in principle oppose tougher fuel standards or conservation measures. Conserving energy is conservative, no? And increasing energy independence is a useful foreign policy tool, no? Where's the catch?

Two thoughts leap to mind: First, conservation keeps money out of the hands of various large businesses. Can't have that happen. Second, ideology is getting in the way. God forbid conservatives should intentionally associate themselves with positions commonly held by non-conservatives.

Religious figure calls for peace in holiday sermon--is this news?

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

The chief Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdulrahman Al-Sudais, gives an annual sermon decrying extremism and terror. Money quote:
'Islam is the religion of moderation. There is no room for extremism in Islam,' he said. He called on Muslims to 'protect non-Muslims in the Kingdom and not to attack them in the country or anywhere. Islam is a religion of peace that abhors attack on innocents.' Militants were using misguided interpretations of Islam to justify violence, he added. 'Because Muslims have strayed from moderation, we are now suffering from this dangerous phenomenon of branding people infidels and inciting Muslims to rise against their leaders to cause instability,' Al-Sudais said. 'The reason for this is a delinquent and void interpretation of Islam based on ignorance ... faith does not mean killing Muslims or non-Muslims who live among us, it does not mean shedding blood, terrorizing or sending body parts flying.'
Is there some reason this didn't get more play? It strikes me as important.

Damn right it's important. And it should sure as heck get more play, especially when lightweights like James Dobson get a whole weekend's worth of play out of SpongeBob SquarePants.

But should we be surprised that the media don't give it much play? On some level, we should naturally expect that the chief imam of the Grand Mosque is a good and reasonable man, and that he'll make this sort of pronouncement from time to time, just as we expect that prominent figures in other religions will make comparable statements on comparable occasions.

The door into summer

Hilzoy, in the moderate blog Obsidian Wings, on cat behavior:

My cat Nils is not very smart. (Although he wishes me to add that he is a mighty hunter and slayer of mice. Among the phrases he recognizes is: Nils! viscera!) In the past few days he has developed a new and charming addition to his repertoire of not-very-smartnesses. Namely:


My house has two doors: the front door, which leads onto a porch, and the side door, which leads onto steps. I use the side door most of the time, and so does Nils, which is why it's the side door before which he can often be found, staring intently at the handle, trying to move it by sheer force of will. But when it's snowy or rainy, I let him out the front door, so that he will have some shelter while he comes to the conclusion that it would, after all, be better to stay inside.


Until a few days ago, this was easy: Nils would be by the side door, I would open the front door and say 'Nils!', and he would run out. But for the past few days he has refused to go out the front door. It's not that he doesn't want to go out: he will stay beside the side door, staring at it and meowing. But when I open the front door, he will just look at it in a sort of hostile way and then return to wailing to be let out the side door. And the only sense I can make of this is: he won't go out the front door because if he does, then it will be cold and rainy, whereas if he goes out the side door, it will be sunny and warm.

I don't agree with Hilzoy's conclusion that Nils is dumb; in fact, the consensus among my three cats is that this is perfectly sensible and that it's people's damn fault that we can't control the weather anyway.

There's a very similar passage, by the way, in Heinlein's entertaining (though now, sadly, rather dated) "The Door into Summer."

Pentagon nixed use of homosexual aphrodisiac

A Reuters story in HoustonChronicle.com: "The U.S. military rejected a 1994 proposal to develop an 'aphrodisiac' to spur homosexual activity among enemy troops but is hard at work on other less-than-lethal weapons, defense officials said Sunday."

That's the attention-getter. Needless to say, the full story's more prosaic. Key quote: "Lt. Col. Barry Venable of the Army, a Defense Department spokesman, said: 'This suggestion arose essentially from a brainstorming session, and it was rejected out of hand.'"

So the real story is that the Pentagon floated a whole bunch of cockamamie ideas for nonlethal weapons (the one about a halitosis-inducing chemical is a real winner, too).

Interesting that no one seems at all concerned about the use of chemical weapons, nor is there any suggestion that human testing of such weapons might pose ethical problems.

That's quite a chunk of change...

An AP report on CNN.com: Trucker missing; so is cargo of 3.6 million nickels: "MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A truck driver has disappeared with the 3.6 million nickels he was hauling to the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans, police said Friday."

Anyone for poker?

Dan Goodman depicts a respondent to an inquiry on the net getting hung up in what he thinks a question means:

-"In the Old West days, where in London near Cambridge University would a student find bars and salons [sic] with poker games?"-

The inquirer was politely given good information. Told where Cambridge University is, and how far in travel time from London it probably was in the 19th century. That whist would be far more likely as a gambling game than poker. That England wasn't part of the Old West.

I think the respondent is missing the point a bit—I took the question to mean something like "Where in the general area of Cambridge University might a student who preferred poker to other gambling games have found such a game, around the time of Victoria's reign?" I'll grant that the reference to the Old West is weirdly out-of-context, but I didn't take it to mean that the inquirer thinks London was in the Old West, either. (Maybe the student was at some time, though.)

Eavesdropping report

Ron and I are confirmed restaurant eavesdroppers. So last night we were out with my mom (Dad's back is bothering him) and we overheard a couple behind us talking to their college-age children about the state of the world.

I swear I'm not making this up: the father was holding forth about how the whole rest of the world had gone metric and that even the English had abandoned feet and pounds; and this in turn relates to world government and the European Union and the erosion of national sovereignty and how the aim of the evil foreigners is for the US to abandon the dollar.

Then the mother chimed in that 99% of college professors are liberals and it's best just to not listen to them, kids. Also that since in this country liberals are actually allowed to vote, sooner or later there will be a liberal president and that's going to be the beginning of the end.

Then, thank goodness, their conversation turned to more mundane things, and we finished our dinner. I did notice that the kids had their own views and weren't taking their parents entirely seriously, which I thought was a good thing.

I've heard of platform agnosticism, but...

A nice lady on TV was saying it's best to prepare grilled cheese sandwiches in a nonstick pan.

Listening from the next room, Ron misheard her. "What's a gnostic pan?" he asked.