The Thanksgiving games snuck up on me. If they snuck up on you, no problem, you only missed picking the Lions-Miami game.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (10)
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Clockwise from bottom right: a Fucking Jew; a Filthy Jewess;
a Christ-Killing Hebe; and beloved comic Michael Richards.

Hmmm...

I don't know. Isn't Michael Richards Jewish?

Either he's

a) crazier than we thought

b) more broadly racist than we thought

or

c) actually doing some kind of Andy Kaufmann-ish edgy schtick that he thought people would get.

You'd think if he really were an anti-semite, some of that would have come out during Seinfeld. I mean -- come on. How much can one man take? It's like Mel Gibson spending nine straight years at Woody Allen's Seder.

I think maybe it's a little of a, b, and c.

Yes, He's Jewish: Last paragraph of this article confirms it.

As that article is about his hiring of a crisis counsellor, I wonder if the first step in fixing the crisis was deliberately leaking the "fucking Jew" quote from Richards' own camp. It does suggest that he sometimes bursts into "racist ravings" in some kind of Andy Kauffman thing.

He was obviously angry during the outburst that started all of this, so it seems hard to believe he was doing schtick during his moment of rage. But it might be that he says things like that in order to do a schtick sometimes, and in his anger, he reverted to old material which might sound funny when it's obvious the comedian is joking, but sounds pretty nasty when he's trying to deliberately denigrate a black man.

I think he's kind of crazy anyway. He's always come across very odd in interviews. So who knows what he actually thinks.

In Related News... Mel Gibson announced he wished to distance himself from "some" of Richards' remarks.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (37)
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Look, we don't know what the hell "global warming" is going to do -- we don't even know if it will "warm" us, necessarily -- but whatever the science, Jesus wants you to drive a Prius.

The authors "analyzed 1.2 x 108 European remote sensing satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003." This survey, in their words, "covers 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet," which together comprise "72% of the grounded ice sheet.""

Wingham et al. report that "overall, the data, corrected for isostatic rebound, show the ice sheet growing at 5 ± 1 mm year-1." To calculate the ice sheet's change in mass, however, "requires knowledge of the density at which the volume changes have occurred," and when the researchers' best estimates of regional differences in this parameter are used, they find that "72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27 ± 29 Gt year-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm year-1." This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."

Al Gore issued a press release stating that the "catastrophic fall" in sea levels would "effectively destroy all beachfront homes," because the new waterline would be extended "perhaps thirty meters or more" -- thus allowing new construction which would block the views of current beachfront home owners and deny them free access to the ocean.

In related news, Barbara Streisand just had a stroke.

Thanks to cutaway.

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (156)
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Cool stuff.

A dolphin at 29 weeks. The pic on the front page of the elephant article is even cooler, but I figure everyone's going to see that one. The dog ones are cool too.

Gloria Steinem just wrote to assert that this is "not a dolphin life."*

Thanks to Blacksheep.

* I'm just always amused by this absurd semantic claim from the pro-choicers -- that what is obviously both "alive" and "human" is somehow not a "human life." I don't think the question turns on this, but it's just screamingly ludicrous to claim that which is both human and a life is not a "human life." Like it's a platypus or something.

Thanks to Blacksheep.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (175)
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Sounds like Clinton's present-tense statement about Lewinsky: "There is no inapppropriate relationship... Not that that helps us any.

After Spears filed for divorce from the fledgling rapper this month, reports surfaced in the tabloid press that Federline had in his possession a videotape of the couple having sex and was considering making it public.

"There is not a sex video of Kevin and Britney in existence," said Federline's divorce lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan. Representatives for Spears had no immediate comment.

"It goes without saying that the stories of Kevin attempting to sell such a video are patently false and anyone who reports that they have information of such attempts is either lying or reporting the lie of someone else," Kaplan said in a statement.

So K-Fed either never made one or erased it, just because Britney told him to.

He's even more useless than I ever imagined.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (19)
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Charlie Rangel wants to bring back the draft in order to stop the military from ever taking, you know, military action. His dream is to have a military drawn from "all elements of society" (ps, it already does) and then just sits home.

Lawrence O'Donnell goes nuts spraying the chickenhawk slur around.

A couple of points. A true equal-opportunity draft would fill the military with people like Lawrence O'Donnell, pussies who despise the military and hate the idea of any use of American force. Is this what we want? They make such an issue that the children of the media class -- the Anderson Coopers and, well, Lawrence O'Donnells of the world -- aren't in the military.

As if the military would want such pussies.

On the other hand, there is a good reason to contemplate a draft. This war may ultimately require more manpower than an all-volunteer military can ever provide. Not now, perhaps, but there just may come a point when we have to fight a true two-front, or even three-front, war. If Iran nukes Tel Aviv and soon after crazed Islamists take over nuclear-armed Pakistan-- what then?

But watching Rangel and O'Donnell... it's disgusting. They are so deranged by hatred they look for any way possible to repudiate or embarrass Bush, and they don't much care that they're compromising national security by doing so.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (148)
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Saw a variety of license plates from far-flung places on the highway this morning, and remembered that this is always the biggest bar night of the year.

I won't be seeing any old pals that came home for the holidays tonight, unfortunately.
I'll be home making cakes far into the night.
How about you?

Open thread.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:07 AM | Comments (112)
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Keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

UPDATE from Lauraw: Geezer forwards a story with video here.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 PM | Comments (19)
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I was trying to find Quark. This is the best I could do.

On the other hand...

Still bad. But less bad

Another bad vehicle:

Posted by: Ace at 07:16 PM | Comments (54)
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Yeah, it's old. I didn't post it because I don't care, although I suppose this does mean I won't have to worry about Ready To Wear II: A Stitch In Time.

Maybe some people care, though.

Apart from Gosford Park, I'm not getting the whole "genius" thing.

Posted by: Ace at 04:07 PM | Comments (96)
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