Not huge news, except that they think they've detected what they long thought gave rise to planets.

Astronomers went on to say that the rubble circling the pulsar has colorful feathers and eats rodents, vermin, and eggs.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (9)
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Two of them. Seriously, not safe for work.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (107)
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Cool commercial, again aimed at the Eric Cartman demographic, featuring the coolest scarecrow ever. Which hates hippies. (Click on the Scarecrow commercial.)

Thanks to SlimPickens, who sends me tips from Heaven.

Thanks to Glen for the link to the better-quality, longer version of the ad.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (6)
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Don't count your cowbells before they clang, but if Treasury Secretary John Snowe is raising expectations for Friday's job numbers, I'm inclined to think he might know something:

Treasury Secretary John Snow on Wednesday said he expects payroll data on Friday to reflect a strong economy that will increase federal tax revenues and help to shrink budget deficits.

Testifying before a House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee on the Treasury's proposed fiscal 2007 budget, Snow said he believed the U.S. economy would continue its growth path as long as Congress extends tax cuts.

"It's continuing to gain strength. I look forward to the jobs numbers that we'll be reporting on Friday. I think they'll be good numbers," Snow said.

The Labor Department is scheduled to issue non-farm payroll data for February at 8:30 a.m. EDT on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters forecast a March increase of 190,000 jobs versus a 243,000 gain in February, along with an unchanged unemployment rate of 4.8 percent.

Snow also said he is looking forward to strong figures for first quarter gross domestic product due later this month, noting that private sector economists forecast first quarter growth of 4 to 5 percent.

Based on his raising of expectations, I have hopes the numbers will exceed the economists' forecasts.

No cowbell for numbers that haven't actually been released yet. That would just cheapen the solemnity of the Golden Cowbell, held secretly in the Temple of Solomon for 1000 years until the Knights Templar brought it to England and then, in 1888, to America.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (8)
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Ted Kennedy's office stated the Senator had "no comment" on the discovery.

In unrelated news, a female slug-creature known to be a "party girl" on her homeworld of Alpha Centuri was found dead after an orbital shuttle piloted by an unknown person crashed into the Scarlet Ocean on Sirius IV.

The Green Lantern Corps is still seeking the orbiter's pilot for questioning.

Thanks Wkmen for the tip and the joke.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (16)
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But a more genteel, scholarly anti-Semitism, recalling the delicious anti-Semitism of a more enlightened age. Jew-hating is the new black:

Academic papers posted on a Harvard Web site don't normally attract enthusiastic praise from prominent white supremacists. But John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" has won David Duke's endorsement as "a modern Declaration of American Independence" and a vindication of the ex-Klansman's earlier work, presumably including his pathbreaking book, "Jewish Supremacism."

Walt and Mearsheimer contend that American national security dictates distancing ourselves from the state of Israel; that U.S. support for Israel has led to such disasters as America's status as the No. 1 target for Islamic terrorists; and that such an otherwise inexplicable departure from good sense can be accounted for only by the power of "The Lobby" (their capitalization), an overwhelmingly Jewish force abetted by some Christian evangelicals and a gentile neocon collaborator or two, who have hijacked American foreign policy and controlled it for decades.

...

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information -- why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

Mearsheimer and Walt conceive of The Lobby as a conspiracy between the Washington Times and the New York Times, the Democratic-leaning Brookings Institution and Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute, architects of the Oslo accords and their most vigorous opponents. In this world Douglas Feith manipulates Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney takes orders from Richard Perle. They dwell on public figures with Jewish names and take repeated shots at conservative Christians (acceptable subjects for prejudice in intellectual circles), but they never ask why a Sen. John McCain today or, in earlier years, a rough-hewn labor leader such as George Meany declared themselves friends of Israel.

The notion that Jews control Republican foreign policy -- remember Nixon railing against Jewish liberals? or James Baker saying "Fuck the Jews, they didn't vote for us"? -- is simply laughable. There are important Jewish thinkers associated with the conservative movement -- some of the most influential thinkers, in fact -- but this influence comes through persuasion and argument, not through some sort political control (we need those 12% of 2% of Jews who vote Republicans, right? Otherwise we couldn't win New York State) or through some conspiracy-haunted cabal.

The Democratic Party, which receives 88% of the Jewish vote, tends on the whole to be more hostile to Israel.

How do they explain this?

Well-- Jews are crafty, and they're so diabolically conspiratorial it's hard to figure out what the hell they're up to.

Look, if it's true that such a small number of people control the world in such great disproportion to their numbers, then I say-- let them run the world. For crying out loud, if they're that freaking cunning and gifted by genius, then I for one welcome our New Zionist Jewish Caballist Overlords.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (42)
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Craig says:

DeLay just said on Rush that he's going to file an ethics charge against McKinney. He also flat out said that she's a racist. I understand he said that on Fox this morning, also.

Drudge of course quotes the racist charge prominently:

"Cynthia McKinney is a racist. She has a long history of racism. Everything is racism with her. This is incredible arrogance, and -- that sometimes hits these members of congress, but especially Cynthia McKinney... " -- Tom DeLay

Of course she's a racist. Is there really any question? She's also an anti-Semite. Her father doesn't like J - E - W - S, and has said so, and McKinney has not to my knowlege repudiated her father's anti-Semitism. Further, she was more than happy to take that Sheik's $10 million check with his "stick-it-to-the-damn-Jews" message written in the memo part of the check.

She's not anti-racism; she's anti-White. She hates white people as much as a Klansman hates her. Just as no ill can befall a Klansman without a black, Jew, Mexican, or gay being behind it, nothing bad can ever happen to Cynthia McKinney without a white being responsible. Or a Jew. (Yeah, I know they're white. You know what I mean.)

Racism consists of racial-scapegoating, intense racial solidarity that trumps non-racial considerations such as virtue or sin, and a feeling of racial superiority-- racial moral superiority, in McKinney's case, a moral superiority based only upon the color of her skin (and the color of her enemies' skins).

How on earth is the point even debatable?

If there is a majority of people in this country that stand against racism and for racial good-will -- and sometimes I doubt that -- then it's about time the loudest self-proclaimed anti-racists condemned a virulent racist in their own midst.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (59)
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Interesting, but...

What I find most amusing is the widespread belief among Muslims that this Sharia law is essential in order to preserve Islam.

Don't they see that it is exactly this law that destroys Islam wherever it is enforced?

To the degree that the law demanding the death of anyone who converts away from Islam is actually enforced, to exactly that degree the nation that enforces it is not a Muslim nation. Indeed, there are no Muslims at all, wherever that law is enforced.

Because religion is absolutely not about mere outward compliance with the law. It is about belief -- it is about what a person believes in his heart. But in a nation where conversion away from Islam means death, then no believer can be sure that his own obedience is purely a matter of conscience . . .

There is no faith under compulsion. Any nation where Sharia is enforced is not a Muslim nation, and none of its people are Muslims. If they cannot choose not to be Muslim, then they have not chosen to be Muslim. Without freedom not to believe, faith is a sham even if you think you are sincere.

It makes sense, but he's guilty of the grave sin (as Islamists would have it) of "orientalism," that is, viewing Islam through the prism of Western traditions. Christianity is an evangelical tradition, relying on persuasion for converts; Judaism is less evangelical, but converts still do so willingly. (And yes, Christians coercively "converted" pagans to Christianity, some 500 or more years ago. But they have reformed in that respect.)

The trouble is that Islam, according to the literal words of the Koran, is not a tradition that places great emphasis on voluntary, free conversion to the religion. It is a religion, according to the text of the Koran, to be imposed by the sword, and there is no distinction made between those who accept willingly and freely and those who are coerced into accepting Islam. Christianity and Judaism rely on actual belief; Islam seems to not distinguish between true belief and mere coerced compliance.

If someone outwardly pays homage to Allah and his teachings, it seems to matter little if he believes it in his heart or not. Allah must be respected and acknowleged as supreme in the public square; whether or not that respect and acknowlegement is genuine seems not to matter too much at all.

Christianity and Judaism grow by gaining converts, by gaining souls; fundamentalist Islam grows by gaining territory. So long as Allah's law is imposed on a region, it is in the House of Peace. It matters not very much at all what people in that region might think about it.

This is a fundamental difference between Islam and other religions, and, as this difference is pretty central to the religion, I'm not sure it can easily be reformed out of the religion. Card's entire thesis would be branded by a literalist Muslim as unislamic and blasphemous.

Card is not suggesting some minor tenet of Islam be discarded; he's critiquing the heart of the religion. It would be as if someone argued that Christianity should not necessarily call Christ a redeemer through his sacrifice.

Which, by the way, a lot of people do; there are a lot of secular Christians and non-Christians who argue just that. We heard a lot of that when The Passion came out, the odd suggestion that Christianity was a nice enough philosophy, as long as one didn't believe in that silliness about the divinity of Christ, or that "I am the Way" nonsense.

I expect that Card's critique will be as well received as that suggestion was among true Christians.

Islam doesn't mean peace. It means submission. It does not necessarily mean "volunatry submission;" coercive submission, through violence or the threat thereof, does Allah just fine.

In addition, there are other things in play here. Islam is not just a religion--it is cultural identity and source of ethnic/racial/tribal pride. Asking angry, ego-bruised fundamentalist Islamists to change the one thing they feel makes them superior to Westerners is probably asking too much of them. It would be like asking the KKK to abandon that whole "White Supremacy" bugaboo.

I think a lot of radical Islamism is driven by a cultural chip on the shoulder, and the belief that they are chosen by God Himself to spread his word by the sword is the only thing they have to amelioriate their feelings of insecurity and inferiority.

Thanks to Adolfo.

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (53)
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Turbo-charged freakin' Turkeysaurus Rex!

SALT LAKE CITY - Fossils discovered in southern Utah are from a new species of birdlike dinosaur that resembled a 7-foot-tall brightly colored turkey and could run up to 25 mph, scientists said Tuesday.

Fossils of the meat-eater's hand-like claw and foot were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near the Arizona border, giving paleontologists reason to believe some dinosaurs known as raptors roamed from Canada to northern New Mexico about 75 million years ago.

Much smaller variations of the dinosaur had been found previously in Montana, South Dakota and the Canadian province of Alberta.

...

The dinosaur had a strong toothless beak, powerful arms and formidable claws that made it capable of eating animals and plants. Large feathers grew on its hind end, giving it a resemblance to a turkey, Zanno said.

Scientists are not sure what purpose the feathers served, but it was not for flying. "It's quite different from modern birds," she said.

...

"This is the last great, unexplored dinosaur bone yard in the lower 48 states," said Scott Sampson, the museum's chief curator who wrote the journal article with Zanno.

Three other dinosaurs discovered at the monument are expected to be named soon, Sampson said, including a meat-eating tyrannosaur, a horned dinosaur and a duckbilled dinosaur with a 7-foot-long head.

Turbo-charged. Freakin'. Turkeysaurus Rex.

Scientists speculate the species died out due to overhunting by a primative species of mammals resembling John Madden.

I always like it when guys studying bones report that their find was "brightly-colored." Like, ummm, okay. You know that. Because, uhhh, the bones are brightly colored or something, right?

Paleontologists are scientists, but they sure do feel comfortable doing a lot of speculating, don't they?

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (77)
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Drudge screamer: Red, white, and blue banned in some schools. To prevent "taunting" of other kids who are offended or provoked by this country's colors.

SAN DIEGO -- In the wake of last week's immigration-reform protests, one school district is taking drastic measures, banning all symbols of patriotism, both U.S. and Mexican.

Beginning Monday, the Oceanside Unified School District is banning all flags and patriotic clothing. According to school officials, some students are using the garments and flags to taunt classmates.

...

School officials in Oceanside now say that flags -- whether they are U.S. or Mexican or any other country's -- have now become a divider on campuses, saying that some students are using them to taunt other students

Keith Brentlinger displays the U.S. flag outside Hatter, Williams and Purdy, his Oceanside business.

"To me, it's everything," said Brentlinger "I mean, like I said -- we truly live in the greatest country in the world."

Brentlinger said he was shocked on Tuesday when marching immigration-reform protesters tore down the flag outside his business.

"Some of them just grabbed the flag, and pulled it off its aluminum pole, and it got ripped," said Brentlinger.

Immigration "reformers" always claim that Mexican and Central/South American immigrants are just hard-working people.

That may be true. But many of them also seem to be pretty hostile to the US. Loose immigration allows in more and more people actively hostile to the US every day. We're creating our next generation of racial-grievance strife.

Posted by: Ace at 07:41 AM | Comments (33)
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