How you get from Albert Einstein to Ray Bradbury

If you like science and science fiction, as I do, this makes perfect sense. Has to do with Google searches. Still makes sense, although I wonder about the conspicuous (to me) absence of Heinlein.

The Wonder Wheel

As you can see, Carl Sagan is quite a connector. People searching for Carl Sagan also searched for real scientists like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins -- some even were hoping to find Carl Sagan's books. It seems Carl Sagan has a fairly literary following: They also searched for science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who sparked searches for other authors -- Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury.

So that's the path: Albert Einstein to Carl Sagan to Isaac Asimov to Ray Bradbury.

If only the Wonder Wheel were rolled out for general use. Who comes after Ray Bradbury? What overlap do they have with those who come after Arthur C. Clarke? When do next-generation science fiction authors begin to surface? This is the kind of toy -- I mean tool! -- we could use for hours.

'Get a good lawyer,' lawyer tells former Bush official

Raw Story

Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense under President George W. Bush, is accused by Spanish human rights lawyers of providing legal cover to Bush policies under which detainees were tortured. The lawyers want to try a number of Bush officials -- among them former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- in Spanish court.

Feith fired back in an interview Sunday, saying, "the charges as related to me make no sense."

"They criticize me for promoting a controversial position that I never advocated," Feith added.

In response, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers filing the complaint, advised Feith to get a "very good lawyer."

Shit, Dougie, if you're so fuckin' innocent, just go with the Public Defender. We got one here I'd recommend - he's got a better conviction rate than the District Attorney. Heh.

The five others accused -- David Addington, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; Jay Bybee, one of the authors of a now-infamous Bush "torture memo;" William Haynes; John Yoo, one of the architects of Bush's 'enhanced interrogation' policy; and Alberto Gonzales, Bush's ex-Attorney General -- have all declined comment on the charges.

Better brush up on your Spanish, boys. Just the basics - you'll have plenty of time to refine it in a Spanish prison.

Update:

Think Progress

Feith often expresses amnesia about his central role in approving torture. “I strongly championed a policy of respect” for the Geneva Conventions, he told Congress last year. In reality, British international lawyer Philippe Sands reported that Feith “took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva.”

Feith, who was once described by Gen. Franks, no rocket scientist himself, as 'the dumbest fucking guy on the planet' and his ilk expressed great respect for Geneva. Except, of course, for those persons to whom they did not wish it to apply.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Spanish Court Begins Inquiry Into Former U.S. Officials' War Crimes
Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzales cancel golf trip to Madrid.

TARP Funds Already Being Paid Back to Government
In the sense that they’re going to reelection campaigns of leading members of Congress.

Texas Court: Schools Must Acknowledge Both Sides Of Evolution Debate
The Darwinian side and the Hanna-Barbera side.

Verified: 93-Year-Old Japanese Man Survived Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Tsutomu Yamaguchi named “World's Unluckiest Man” and “World's Luckiest Man” in dual ceremonies.

Hollywood: New Three Stooges Movie Announced
Latest version will be “dumbed down” for modern audiences.

Convictions ...

Seems there's a big hubbub on the Right about Barry speaking at Notre Dame. The god folks have a problem with his allowing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, don'tcha know. As ususal, something that comes out of a church or the Republican Party (hard to tell 'em apart nowadays) is noise bordering on hypocrisy. Attaturk:

...

Once again, I say, when Notre Dame decides it will not recruit that baptist/muslim/buddhist kid from Georgia that runs a 4.35 forty and whose girlfriend just had the abortion, I'll start to worry about their convictions.

...

Yes, we have to stand by our convictions, one of which is embryos that might be used to help people are a blasphemy, yet God is happy if they become medical waste (except if it's detrimental to the football program because, we all know, God loves him some Irish). I don't get it but that's why I gave up listening to anything coming from god's mouthpieces a long time ago.

Off to work ...

Dirty laundry ...

It'd be nice if we cleaned up our own mess instead of waiting for others to do it.

Sand Dance

Rare footage of me 'n Fixer entertaining the troops in Kuwait on a rare break from mexineering repairs on crapcan sand-worn Humvees. Maybe gettin' in a little practice for the operation described in the post below too.

W & K were a popular British music hall act who capitalised on the trend for Egyptian imagery following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Their stage act, called the "sanddance". was a ludicrous parody of "egyptian" postures, combined with references to Arabic costume. The lithe Wilson and Kepple would demonstrate their impressive suppleness in adopting wild angular gestures, while Betty watched their antics.

The people of South Shields are popularly referred to as "Sand-dancers" with reference to this act.

Thanks to josefsterkens, Belgium.

Heidi Revisited, or How Fixer Can Get Us Out Of The Recession

First, go read HEIDI, A Modern rendition of the classic Tale.... to get a metaphorical view of how we got into this mess.

Heidi made me "work off" my tab. Heh ... - Fixer

Oh, the stunning visual! The muscular, well-oiled Hun thrusting his mighty ger (spear, lance, root of German, get it?) into the supple, zaftig young milkmaid in a joyous romp in the edelweiss high in the Alps, the thundering oompah-oompah of their sweaty, fleshy congress (this word may pop up again later), the yodelling reverberating off the canyon walls, etc., etc., you get the idea, and Bingo!, his debt is paid! At considerable expense to his manly juices, to be sure, but a matter of little import to a young warrior with a superbly functioning charging system if memory serves.

Just as an aside, me 'n Mrs. G used to play a game remarkably similar to the above which we called 'Heidi meets Attila' or 'the milkmaid and the Hun'. Sadly, we had to quit when we got to quarrelling over who got to wear which outfit. But I digress...

The solution came to me after I dreamt of the scenario previously described. Three times I had to dream it, and then I fell asleep, but it finally dawned on me: Fixer can fix the recession in the very same way!

Well, maybe not exactly the same way. More of a 'back door' approach. And skip the yodelling.

First, we have to convince him to take one for the team, actually to give a bunch of 'em, and realize that, as distasteful as it may first appear, that it's our only way out and he must do his duty. He's a sucker for that 'duty' shit.

Next, we drop him off at the southern end of the Beltway, suitably armed with various appliances, such as condoms (wouldn't want him gettin' sick. He's about to go in some horrible! places. A big rig load oughta do it fer starters), some playful toys (XXXXL strap-on, Jolly Green Giant model personal massage unit w/extra batteries, telephone poles w & w/o climbing spikes, bridge pilings, etc,), and since this is a BIG job, some chemical augmentation (see your e-mail).

Then tell him to head for home, one cause of the recession at a time (two, if we can find him a big enough double-ended strap-on or a Y-shaped bridge piling). Some names to start with would be Greenspan, Gramm, Leach, Bliley, Paulson, as many members of Congress (I knew I could finagle that in again!) as had a hand in it, and as many CEOs of corrupt financial institutions who haven't skipped the country as he can find.

I have purposely left Reagan and Dubya off this list, even though they were major players. Moldering geriatric necrophilia might be tremendously symbolic, but it's just wrong. Bush would enjoy it too much as he's not gettin' it reg'lar from Cheney any more.

I've also left off the people who were lent money that shouldn't have been. Whatever their intentions for good or evil or greed or desperation, they've already had the above treatment from the same people that Fixer will be giving it to. Once is cool, twice is queer.

Fixer arrives at home tired but happy and collapses on the couch. Job well done, old chap. The recession is almost over.

Fixer may also singlehandedly restore honor to the Medal Of Freedom that he will surely be awarded by President Obama for his selfless devotion to his country.

But wait, you say and rightly so, sure, yer dirty old man fantasy is remarkable, if disturbing, for a man your age, and it's been fun watchin' Fixer butt-slam his way from D.C. to Wall Street, satisfying to see those bastards get what's comin' to 'em, but how does this get folks to start spending and reduce the deficit and debt and get our country on the road to financial stability and renewed prosperity?

Why, worldwide DVD, iTunes, cable TV, and coffee-table book sales of his odyssey, of course!

Update:

Bill Clinton just called and said he had a hand in the whole deal mostly by omission and wanted to know why he had been left off the recipient list. I told him that I knew he would want his turn at bat, so to speak, and there are some things even an American hero must not be asked to do. He accepted the rejection gracefully, but did ask for a set of pictures.

Nuked twice ...

And lived for 60-odd years to tell about it. Amazing. Bet he doesn't have to turn on the light when he goes to the can at night. Heh ...

Do not try this at home! But if you do, FILM IT!

I think this is course material from Fixer & Gordon's School Of Happy Motoring! Smoke 'em if ya got 'em! Tires, that is...

Mountain ~ Mississippi Queen

Thanks to TipTucker01. Sounds like a guy who enjoys lap dances, huh?

Saturday Woody Guthrie Skiffle Music Blogging

Skiffle King Lonnie Donegan and his group play the Woody Guthrie song Grand Coulee Dam in 1957. Who said that folk-rock began in the late-1960s? (With Jimmy Currie, lead guitar; Mickey Ashman, bass...

I think Mr. Donegan is mostly remembered in the U.S. by us olde phartes for 'Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?'.

Thanks to lupine22(UK).

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, & Sheryl Crow, with Marty Stuart ~ Flesh and Blood

Thanks to hansenlucia, Netherlands

A romp through the Republican ... budget?

P.M. Carpenter

They took the bait. Assorted commentators, Democratic pols of varying convictions and no less than the faux-appalled president himself kept taunting the GOP to commit the exceptionally stupid, and they -- the now-hapless remnants of the once-powerfully propagandistic House Republicans, anyway -- stepped right up and did it.

Yeah, man! They bent over to pick up that shiny nickel and BOO-YAH! Up their own wazoo...

What difference would numbers have made? I mean, just how does one quantify, "We haven't a bloody clue"? How does one numerically characterize, "Jesus, this just dawned on us -- We can't believe we fell for this trick"? Just how, in heaven's name, can one slap a cold, impersonal figure on the red-faced human realization, "Oops, we're more stunningly hapless than we -- even you -- thought"?

I'll also offer Republicans a little sincere advice: Go away. Just go away for a long, long while. Grab whatever cash you have in the RNC account and hasten thee to a faraway exotic spa, or go on a year-long drunk, or simply hide yourselves at home, shutter the blinds, and shut the f*ck up.

It's not your critics doing you harm. It's you and your non-budgeting budgets which advocate spending freezes during a deep freeze. It's Dick Cheney running around defending torture and denouncing social progress. It's Sarah Palin babbling about deficiently prayerful McCainites. It's your Cantors and Pences and Boehners looking and sounding so insufferably goofy. It's Michael Steele strategizing with God but genuflecting before Rush. For those fond of reifying brevity, it can even be just two words: Michele Bachmann.

Come on, boys. Give it a merciful rest.

I like to read Carpenter, but this time I must disagree with him.

You Repugs must not 'give it a rest'! Please, oh please keep dope-slappin' yerselves stupid, bitchez! I haven't had this much fun in years and I deserve every last laugh I can get outta you irrelevant clowns.

HEIDI, A Modern rendition of the classic Tale....

I got this from my old school pal Steve:

[Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar.

Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern because he has the promissory notes of Heidi's customers as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then sold and traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager of the bank, (subsequently fired due his negativity), decided that the time has come to start demanding payment from Heidi for the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.

Unfortunately Heidi's customers cannot pay back any of their debts to Heidi.

Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations to the bank and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by only 80%.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment terms and also having invested in the securities are faced with a new and desperate situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy and her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties. They came up with a miraculous rescue plan that saved the bank.

The funds required for this massive rescue are obtained by levying a new tax on all the non-drinkers.

We all all soo happy that this is just a Fairy Tale...]

Aren't we though...

Historic water. And I was there...grrrr

The Yew-nited States Marine Corps did something yesterday that they haven't done for over forty years: they pissed me off. Not the frustrated, disappointed, goddammit-who's-runnin'-this-chickenshit-outfit kind of pissed off that ya couldn't do nothin' about back then anyway because they owned your young ass, but the smoldering, fuming kind ya can't do nothin' about either.

I was reading my dead tree copy of Time magazine and ran across an ad with a Marine Corps emblem. I'm still brainwashed, so I read it. It was colorful, but I couldn't find it to reproduce it for you. Here's the money shot:

Live or work at Camp Lejeune before 1987?

Well, hell yeah I did! Way before 1987. 1965-'66, when men were men and rifles had wood in 'em!

You may have been exposed to contaminated drinking water.

Register with the Marine Corps by calling (877) 261-9782 Mon-Fri 8:30 am to 5:00 or by going online to www.marines.mil/clsurvey.

Well, I'm a little leery about 'registering with the Marine Corps'. Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it, but I figured what could possibly go wrong? Hell, I was probably there before water contamination was invented. So I went and 'registered'. Hit the link and go see.

Turns out the time period involved is from 1957-1987, so I was there. I'm not too worried - I didn't drink much water in those days. Beer was cheap and legal for 18-year-olds. I drank the bug juice in the mess hall, but GI koolaid would kill anything, drank water in the field but if the iodine pills didn't kill the bad stuff, the godawful water buffaloes and plastic canteens sure would have, to judge by the taste of the stuff.

So, the Marine Corps is trying to keep me apprised of something that may or may not have happened over forty years ago. That's nice of them. So why am I pissed off to the spring-loaded position?

The effort is called the "Camp Lejeune Historic Drinking Water" project.

Now, around the Brain here, Fixer kids me all the time about my age, calls me 'old man' and stuff like that. While I must admit that when God said 'let there be light!' I was the Duty NCO who threw the switch, I can kid him back with stuff like him not being old enough to have had any nookie with his pants all the way off yet. It goes back and forth, tit for tat. We're both smartass smokers 'n jokers who like one another, and it's all very good-natured. Builds unit cohesion and hopefully entertains people. I like it. It's fun.

But whaddya do when an outfit you revere and gave some of your best years to and came of age in lumps ya in with Old Ironsides (pretty good duty station, btw) by calling the water they gave you to drink 'historic'?

I got this chair I'm sittin' in rockin' so fast in frustration it's startin' ta clank and smoke a little...

Please consider this geezer rant a PSA for those similarly afflicted affected by duty at Lejeune.

In a nutshell ...

Evolution vs. Creation, our buddy 'Nucks makes it real simple. It all comes down to two trees.

Off to work ...

Don't come here ...

Or I'll run you off personally. The reason I give this warning is Fred "The Rotting Cryptkeeper" Phelps and his band of fucked up zombies now seem to have a problem with Walt Whitman:

A church based in Topeka, Kansas, is scheduled to demonstrate next month outside Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda because the school, which opened in 1962, is named for a man who may have been homosexual.

Westboro Baptist Church has been drawing national attention for staging anti-homosexuality demonstrations at military funerals, on the theory that fallen troops are God's punishment for a country tolerant of homosexuals.

...

I hope Marylanders give them a proper 'welcome'.

Now, Walt Whitman's home is about 3 miles from mine. Whitman is a Long Island icon in league with Teddy Roosevelt and we treat his home with the same deference we show at Sagamore Hill.

If Fred wants to show up here to take up an issue with a man dead over a century, I can assure you his reception will not be friendly. His shit might play in Kansas, but Long Island is a long way from home.

Great thanks to Oliver Willis for the WaPo link.

Thought ...

If MSNBC dim bulb Contessa Brewer owns your ass, you know you got nothin':

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When Contessa Brewer is [mad] at you for not being sufficiently serious, you really have a problem. This got so comical that John Boehner had to admit that he'd get back to everyone with an actual budget sometime later on.

...

As Dday says:

...

Maybe there's a real opportunity for the Green Party once the Republicans truly sink into utter irrelevance?

...

Quote of the Day

Comrade Misfit:

If we are so stupid as a species that we are going to start making terminator robots, then we will richly deserve the consequences.

For Bourdainophiles

I dig the shit outta Tony Bourdain (site). The quintessential Noo Yawk/Joisey smartass, and he knows his shit. I never miss No Reservations.

Q&A: Anthony Bourdain
The bad boy of cooking serves up some straight talk

What is the biggest mistake people make going into the restaurant business?

When you rely entirely on market research, you end up with a three-headed, fur-bearing trout. [...]

No recipes for those, dammit...

What's special about L.A.'s cuisine to you?

I generally love the funky strip mall joints. I love Koreatown. I don't even know the names of the places because I was so drunk when I went. What L.A. does so well, better than anyone else, is the low end.

THAT is no shit! I don't know jack shit about Korean food other than kim chee stinks, but I do know Mexican and L.A.'s got plenty of great out-of-the-way and unpretentious Mexican eatin' places. Anyone who's been to the walk-up window joints Tito's Tacos or El Mexicano, or many, if not most, of the thousands of mama y papa taquerias, will attest to that as well. Not much to look at or write home about, but awfully good food for not havin' wheels under 'em!

Enjoy.

Repug karma has run over their dogma

Gleefully gleeped from YubaNet.