Why does my belly-button always smell like feet?

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (4)
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Iowahawk's guest editorial.

The Protein Wisdom interview.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

What news value was there in this? Even conceding there is slight news value in the man's name and face, isn't that far outweighed by the tendency of this report to discourage future informants?

If ABC News can keep secret the name and face of the Duke rape accuser (which I'm told isn't so secret; it's all over the internet), why can't they afford this man the same anonymity? Don't similar questions of "news value" vs. "general public good" apply here?

Why all the indignation at "outing" Valerie Plame if they're going to out this guy themselves?

ABCNews

The de facto intelligence service and secret police of America's Islamofascist enemies.

Thanks to Jim, who encourages you to read the comments, most of which take ABC to task for this.

Nuance/Caveat Update: Okay. Thinking about this, past the initial anger:

ABC News does not have the primary responsibility for protecting this information. The military and intelligence guys who had it have the primary responsibility for protecting it. They are the first, and worst, offenders.

And it's possible this is disinformation fed to ABC News. Who knows-- maybe the tip came from an entirely different source, but the military/intelligence guys are claiming it came from this terrorist-connected jagoff, in order to either get him 1) killed by his own people or 2) talking to our boys in exchange for spiriting him out of the country and putting him in witness protection.

It's also possible that this information is so widely known already ABC News didn't help anyone at all by publicizing it. Sometimes a secret is an open secret.

But it doesn't seem that way. Although ABC does not claim an exclusive, they attribute it to "Jordanian intelligence officials." Just because Jordanian intelligence officials don't seem eager to guard American secrets shouldn't mean that ABC News is disburdened from having some care about protecting them.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (29)
Post contains 335 words, total size 2 kb.

We've all been there.

More than 50 signed a petition asking the Sikeston City Council to look into monkey attacks on their street. The petitioners claim the monkey is a danger to adults and children.

Phyllis Gates thinks otherwise.

" He is usually pretty calm. People make him nervous," Gates said. Gates says she bought the monkey in Kansas City five years ago for $5,000. The monkey's name is Alex.

"I wouldn't say he attacks people, but if he is provoked, he is like other exotic animals, they will attack," Gates said.

Her neighbors say it does not matter if the monkey is provoked, he will attack anyway.

Cindy Sheehan and Mike Berg issued a joint statement blaming the monkey's random attacks on "Bush's unilateral, illegal War on Iraq."

Thanks to DDG.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 142 words, total size 1 kb.

The Hardest Working Man in the Blogosphere, the Godfather of Open Threads, tops himself. He's put all of his previous uninterrupted open-thread postings to shame.

The man is simply incredible.

As usual, this is a completely unedited sequence of posts. No cherry picking, except that I do, of course, start with his amazing run and end as it ends.

Thanks to Ian Schwartz of News Busters.

My apologies to the rabid Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake for infringing on this human dynamo's "copyrights." But, as I've pointed out before, a "copyright" would seem to require the actual "writing" of genuine "copy."

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 458 words, total size 3 kb.

Or "parkour," as the French call it.

Great video. Wish I could do this.

It's amazing to me that Hollywood hasn't made a parkour movie yet. They do with every other youth fad, and this one is particularly spectacular. Maybe they're actually exhibiting a little responsibility and deciding this is sort of dangerous to sell to teenagers.

Then again, they do the Fast and the Furious movies, which seems more likely to induce teenagers to do dangerous stunts that will probably get them dead.

The James Bond trailer features a villain doing some parkour.

Still... as dumb as it is, I'd like to see a stupid parkour movie with the cliche of a hero whose got the greatest parkour skills ever, but no training or "control," and his evil nemesis, "Iceman," who's the king of the parkour circuit and plays dirty to keep his title. The hero would be instructed in "control" and "restraining his maverick passions" by a veteran of the parkour circuit, the one-time king of parkour, now in a wheelchair due to a disasterous jump. (There's your "responsibility" in the movie-- the warning that this could go badly. Giggle. As if that's enough to dissuade a dumb sixteen year old from doing this.)

But any excuse to see people doing really dangerous acrobatic stunts jumping from rooftop to rooftop, or rooftop to street.

On the other hand... we've got all the videos of the stunts. Who needs a dumb story to go along with it? And Hollywood would probably ruin it by using CGI to create impossible-looking dumb stunts instead of just filming real ones.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (24)
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.

"Someone" sent this to me a few days ago, and now T&A sends it.

As usual, I can't hear it, so I don't know if it's safe for work. (It seems slightly not safe for work.) I also don't know if it's funny, but everyone seems to think it is.

So: George Washington, American Badass.

Link fixed.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (23)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Evidence will tell, hopefully. Assuming the media hasn't already turned this into a political firestorm in which the Marines will be convicted, guilty or not, simply because the media has created so much baseless outrage that the military courts feel compelled to convict them or risk an uprising against the troops.

This American Thinker article notes the very, very biased nature of the claimed "witnesses" to the attack.

And the reporter's "lobbying" of his editors to permit him the use of the word "massacre."

And the Time reporter who first reported this to the world (while the military was already investigating it) seems to be, what's the word?, terrorist-friendly. He spent the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 where any American would spend it-- breaking bread with the Taliban.

Our missing colleagues finally arrive, and I leave thinking that maybe this evening wasnÂ’t very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that weÂ’re not so different after all.

We dream of a white picket fence and 2.4 children, they dream of sawing off the heads of those 2.4 children. But the important thing is that we both dream.

Thanks to Ogre Gunner.

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 218 words, total size 2 kb.

Please, people. Absolutely no glee. This man did more for the art of involuntary ad hoc head removal than anyone since Robspierre.

A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and mumbling after American airstrikes on his hideout and tried to get off a stretcher when he became aware of U.S. troops at the scene, a top military official said Friday.

...

Al-Zarqawi could barely speak when Iraqi police arrived at the scene of Wednesday's attack.

"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference.

Other witnesses believed he said, "Baltimore Sun-- Avenge Me!"

A lot of raids since then:

Also, U.S. troops conducted 39 raids late Thursday and early Friday based on information gleaned from searches in the hours after the al-Qaida leader's death. Fearing that insurgents will seek revenge, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki imposed driving bans in Baghdad and restive Diyala province, where the terrorist was killed.

Cool fact: the word "restive" was invented solely for the purpose of screwing kids up on the SAT. In the seventeenth century, an English baron first used the neologism "restive" to mean "totally, completely, not restful or resting."

That Baron's name? Lord Joseph Bloggs.

Meanwhile, Defense Tech has a slightly hype-y but still good piece on the new technology that allows aircraft to fly in wait and then attack suddenly discovered time-sensitive targets.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (25)
Post contains 246 words, total size 2 kb.

Guess they weren't watching CNN.

Then again, neither was I. But I hear they played Elton John's "Funeral For a Friend" throughout the morning.

The media's rooting interests aren't terribly well-disguised. It's amusing that the only time they can castigate themselves and their colleagues for "inappropriate" gleefulness is upon the death of a psychopathic butcher and sworn US enemy.

What headline would the Baltimore Sun suggest run upon the discovery of Hitler's suicide? Hitler, Mistress Found Dead In Bunker; World Mourns Loss of Dog Lover, Artist, Writer, and Dreamer.

It's astonishing that the liberal media has managed to convince itself that it's too conservative.

But then, how could anyone disagree with a deep thinker like Steven Colbert?

Nevermind, I Got It: The dialogue stuck in my head is from a Just Shoot Me, where Maya's high-school flame Kenny comes back to New York, and proudly announces he's landed an acting job on a soap opera, playing a "Racist Judge."

Kenny: He's a funny old bird. An idealist, a dreamer....

Maya: You said he was a racist.

Kenny: Yes, he dreams of an all-white society.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 200 words, total size 1 kb.