I just finished Half Life 2. Yea for me!

Anybody else playing something interesting?

That is all.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 10:07 PM | Comments (44)
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Honestly, I have no idea why he gave up the Texas Governorship. He was doing such a splendidly evil job of running the world from that position.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 PM | Comments (59)
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Don't sweat it, though, they were terrorist cockroaches, exterminated by a force consisting largely of Iraqi soldiers:

A force of about 5,000 Iraqis and 3,800 Americans killed at least 157 terrorists, detained 440 suspects, and discovered 34 weapons caches, all while suffering minimal casualties. "The terrorists are losing their morale. They couldn't resist as they did in Fallujah," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told us in an interview last week in New York, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly.

The Tal Afar operation calls into question the contention of war critics like Senator Joe Biden that there are only a handful of Iraqi troops capable of meaningful operations. In fact, U.S. commanders classify about 40 battalions--roughly 750 soldiers in each--as "fully independent" or able to fight "in the lead."

George Galloway immediately decried the Tal Afar action, accusing Iraqis of "illegally occupying their own country" without permission from French Prime Minister/SPECTRE operative Dominique De Villepain, aka "Le Douche Royale."

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 PM | Comments (10)
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A Brief ReCap of Symbols Lately ‘Offensive to Islam.’ Div: Corporations and Charities.

Burger King

THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.
The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a "jihad".

The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: "The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone."
…He was not satisfied by the decision to withdraw the cones and has called on Muslims to boycott Burger King. He said: "This is my jihad. How can you say it is a spinning swirl? If you spin it one way to the right you are offending Muslims."

Red Cross

Red Cross officials have been meeting in Switzerland to decide upon a new logo — and presumably, by implication, name — for their fine organisation. The logo in question is the red cross. And the problem with the cross is that it enrages Muslims. In the theatre of war, when most combatants see the red cross, they put their weapons down. Muslim combatants, though, have a tendency to pick theirs up and start shooting with even greater avidity…
They want a secular, neutral symbol and have hit upon the idea of a red ‘crystal’, or diamond.

And in case you missed ‘em, a pair of favorites from the files: more...

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 05:45 PM | Comments (25)
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A Brief ReCap of Symbols Lately ‘Offensive to Islam.’ Div: Corporations and Charities.

Burger King

THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.
The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a "jihad".

The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: "The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone."
Â…He was not satisfied by the decision to withdraw the cones and has called on Muslims to boycott Burger King. He said: "This is my jihad. How can you say it is a spinning swirl? If you spin it one way to the right you are offending Muslims."

Red Cross

Red Cross officials have been meeting in Switzerland to decide upon a new logo — and presumably, by implication, name — for their fine organisation. The logo in question is the red cross. And the problem with the cross is that it enrages Muslims. In the theatre of war, when most combatants see the red cross, they put their weapons down. Muslim combatants, though, have a tendency to pick theirs up and start shooting with even greater avidity…
They want a secular, neutral symbol and have hit upon the idea of a red ‘crystal’, or diamond.

And in case you missed ‘em, a pair of favorites from the files: more...

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 05:45 PM | Comments (24)
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Gas economy is for de leetle people.

Yeah, she saves a lot of gas with that Prius of hers... especially because it sits idle in her driveway, I'd guess.

I'd sure like to snap a picture of her Prius' odometer.

Posted by: Ace at 01:02 PM | Comments (11)
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No, not a quiz, just a bestiary of the sorts of people you're likely to find online. Mostly funny... because it's true. I recognize most of the types listed (some of them gave me waking nightmares of forumwars past).

I think I was the Evil Clown, mostly, with some Enfant Provacteur for flavor.

Via Whitney Gaskell.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (30)
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Hooboy. This is kinda big. This jackass has been trafficking in blatant lies culled from left-wing blogs and the most rabidly conspiratorial British yellow journalism, and he's thusfar been held immune from actually correcting his myriad errors.

Now the Times' ombudsmen (or "public editor," as they term it) calls Gail Collins to task for allowing Paul Krugman to get away with serial deception:

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages "a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece."

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As a result, readers of nytimes.com who simply search for "Krugman" won't find any indication that there are uncorrected errors in the columns the query turns up. Nor will those who access Mr. Krugman's columns in an electronic database such as Nexis or Factiva. Corrections would have been appended in all those places if Mr. Krugman had complied with Ms. Collins' policy and corrected the errors in his column in the print version of The Times. (Essentially, to become part of the official archive of The Times, material has to have been published in the print paper.)

All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction. Each Op-Ed columnist has a page in nytimes.com that includes his or her past columns and biographical information. Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn't explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong. Since it hasn't been officially published, that posting doesn't cause the correction to be appended to any of the relevant columns.

...

A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times's credibility more than having no policy at all?

Ummm, I know the question is rhetorical, but let me answer it anyway: Yes, to the extent that the Times' credibility can be eroded any further at all.

Thanks to OregonMuse.

"I Thought It Was A Minor Detail" Update: Krugman seems to think all of his errors (no matter how central to his argument) are "minor" and he shouldn't be bothered correcting them.

Just One Minute has more background on Slippery Paul's casual relationship with accuracy.

Patterico has more, too.

It's the George Costanza school of journalism: It's not a lie if you believe it's true.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (6)
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It's one thing to avoid calling them evil... but to actually call them "heroes" and later-day Paul Reveres?

But it was his description of how the enemy occupied their safe haven that got the most attention. Col. McMaster told of beheadings, gunshot killings, a booby-trapped dead child and kidnappings. "This is the worst of the worst in terms of people in the world," he said. "To protect themselves here, what the enemy did is they waged the most brutal and murderous campaign against the people of Tal Afar. ... The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents."

The Nazis made one mistake: they were Caucasian in the First Degree. Had their skin been swarthy, they could have taken over Europe, Northern Africa, and a good chunk of the Middle East with the blessing of an awful lot of Americans.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (10)
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She's now screaming about a supposed "machine-gun nest" she claims to have seen (or read about on a left-wing blog, at least) and the dangerous patrols of soldiers in the city.

Wait-- I thought she was complaining just a week ago that Iraq was a bad war because it was keeping troops out of New Orleans. Now she's complaining that there are troops in New Orleans.

Which is it, Mother Peace? I really want to follow your "absolute moral authority" but I can't do so if you keep chaning your stories like a schizophrenic.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (17)
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