Remember these jackholes?

Those spoiled children have been camped up in the trees for almost a year now, trying to prevent oaks from being cleared to build an athletic facility. They should have been summarily hauled off the first day.

But this is Berkeley.

Now that the University of California has gotten the go-ahead to remove the protestors, they are unsure how to actually proceed. They don't want anyone to get hurt, after all.

But sitters have vowed not to descend as long as the oaks are in peril. The sound of laughter and guitar music wafted from the trees as sitters enjoyed mild temperatures on a golden afternoon this week.

The group was feeling "awesome," said a sitter who would give only her nickname of "Dumpster Muffin." Still, she said, they are concerned for their safety. "It's definitely coming to a head of some sort."

Indeed. Perspicacious lass, this Miss Muffin.
Clearly she hasn't drank a drop of bong water in days.

And who do you suppose will be responsible if Miss Muffin should be injured during the eviction?

One of the tree-sitting protesters in a grove of oaks next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium was in the hospital Monday after taking a bone-breaking fall.

Nathaniel Hill, who fell at least 30 feet on Sunday night, was in stable condition at Highland Hospital in Oakland, a nursing supervisor at the hospital said.

Hill said that if UC hadn't put fences around the site, then there would have been no need for the traverse line that he'd been trying to reach.

I really don't like these people.

Posted by: LauraW. at 12:17 PM | Comments (93)
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Sunday school now?

The Palo Alto Sunday family program uses music, art and discussion to encourage personal expression, intellectual curiosity and collaboration. One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like IÂ’m Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians, instead of traditional Sunday-school songs like Jesus Loves Me. Rather than listen to a Bible story, the class read Stone Soup, a secular parable of a traveler who feeds a village by making a stew using one ingredient from each home.

I for one am sick of having their lack of religion shoved down my throat.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (287)
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By "guest," I mean "kidnap victim." But after her release she converted to Islam and has been an apologist for Islam ever since.

Did I say Islam? I meant an apologist for the Taliban itself, whom she believes to be just a swell group of guys.

Some women just get all weak in the knees for Bad Boys, huh? With their motorcycle jackets, sullenly drooping Lucky in the corner of the mouth, beheading saws, etc.

It's not terribly surprising that the Taliban kidnapped a weak-willed lunatic at one point; they've kidnapped so many they were bound to get lucky. But what is disgusting is the crowd at UC Irvine chuckling knowingly as this mentally traumatized fucking maniac describes a kidnapping with the erotic tenderness of, say, a Harlequin pirate romance. At the end she describes being overcome by the nour, "the light that emanates from a particularly pious practicing Muslim's face." And bosoms heaved, and bodices strained, and manhoods got all puffy and insistent.

Via the OCBlog. Michelle Malkin has a bit of this idiot's history, including her defense of Al-Zarqawi (pork be upon him) and her calling the Koran a "Magna Carta for women."

Thanks to CJ.

Bonus: Noted anti-semite John Mearsheimer speaks at Oxford. Jews, Rag Merchants Hardest Hit.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (25)
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Kaus links, he claims, to a bit of non-news about a "singer/songwriter" picking up women when he's drunk. I think he may actually be drawing attention to this:

WHICH secret relationship between two editors at an online blog empire almost became public when the woman editor wrote unflatteringly about her hookup with an unnamed, but identifiable male editor on her own Web site? Her short-lived sex partner responded by posting a video of himself simulating sex with a dead fish - a commentary on her lack of animation in bed .

Well I'm stumped.

Uggh... Is this that thing about Alex Parene from Wonkette and that married woman again?

That's not gossip, it's just unpleasant.

Well, If This Is The Sort Of Person Blog Gossip Involves, Include Me Out: Ughh. I think pro bowling has more attractive people.

Thanks to joeindc44 for that guess.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (27)
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Despite some hope in the last few days of an electoral comeback, John Howard and his Liberal Party (think classical liberals, not the American kind) have gone down to defeat.

As a triumphant Kevin Rudd last night led Labor to an historic landslide victory with a national swing of 5.7% giving him a likely majority of 24 seats, ousted prime minister John Howard suffered an ignominious end to his 33-year political career with the apparent loss of his seat of Bennelong.

Labor's victory means that for the first time in Australian history Labor now holds government in every state, territory and at Commonwealth level.

Having stayed up until about 5am watching election returns (don’t ask, I have no idea why I did that), I can say it seems Iraq and terrorism seemed to play little role in the election. I don’t think it was mentioned once as an issue by the various candidates and reporters. It seemed a number of domestic issues (including interest rates) and the sense that after 12 years of Liberal Party control voters simply wanted ‘a change’.

Howard will never have the fame that Tony Blair does here in America but hopefully history will remember him well in Australia for all he has done for his country and the western alliance.

One interesting bit of fallout from this election for fans of 80Â’s and early 90Â’s musicÂ…it looks like Peter Garrett, the one time lead singer of Midnight Oil will become Minister for Climate Change, Environment & Heritage, Arts.

Posted by: DrewM. at 08:41 AM | Comments (19)
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Yeeouch.

Actually it's the spiny genitals of the male seed beetle. Apparently the design is intended to improve "anchoring" ability, which as we all know can be so important to that certain special someone.

It seems there's some sort of genital evolutionary contest that is escalating way out of control.

A number of these species have more than 100 spikes on male genitals, while others have none.

Arnqvist and his colleagues found that as male genitals became spikier and more harmful, females evolved tougher genitals to defend themselves.

Of course, the photo is very much enlarged (see what I did there?). Still, I'm gonna have a bad dream about this later, I just know it.

h/t Barry

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 07:15 AM | Comments (22)
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Michelle Malkin turned these Huffpo posters into a photoshop challenge.

She has captures of them on her site so you don't have to click through to Huffpo.
Frankly, the originals are so lame they're self-satirizing. You have to already be sick with BDS in order to think they're somehow profound.

A professional advertising guy came up with those? Really?

The top one is merely a list of names of people in the Bush Administration.

Stunning indictment. Wow.
Those names...are people we've heard of. ZING. OUCHIES.

The other two are similarly useless.

I hope those were freebies, Arianna. If you paid five bucks you got hosed.

Thanks to SeeDubya, who is trying his hand at the photoshop thing on his site:

Apparently the advertising wizards who came up with that one just depended upon the pure talismanic evil power of the Republican nomenclature--I know Dick Cheney's name is a killing word, but, well, Tom Ridge?

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:37 AM | Comments (34)
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Some ummmm....."interesting allegations" being made by a band member here. Not your usual "you suck"/"no I don't" or "you're a drunken sod"/"no I'm not" kinda stuff. This is the GOOD SHIT - human skeletons, human skin masks, stuffed baboons,...well you get the picture. Juicy, real juicy. I don't even care if the allegations are completely bogus -- there was some great creativity that went into them even if they were. Manson sounds like he'd fit right into congress in the democrat California caucus.

...accused of squandering his band's profit on a child's skeleton and masks made of human skin. Keyboardist Stephen "Pogo" Bier filed a breach of contract lawsuit in August in which he accused Manson of taking cash belonging to the rest of the band to pay for the "sick and disturbing" purchases.

His lawyer Keith Fink has now filed additional papers adding to a list of artefacts bought by the goth singer- many of which are illegal in the US.

As well as the skeleton and masks, Manson is said to have bought a range of stuffed animals, including a grizzly bear and two baboons.

He is also accused of using band funds to pay for a collection of Nazi memorabilia....

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:56 AM | Comments (17)
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An interview with Craig Venter. The left will of course squeal about "Franken-fuel" built by legions of "slave" bugs.

...What is this new field of synthetic biology that you're working on now?

We're designing genomes to do what we want. I've described these as the design components of the future. If you liken that to the electronics industry in the 1950s, there were a handful of components -- resistors, transistors, capacitors. We will have tens of millions of design components for biology.

What sort of things do you imagine could be built?

We're trying to design cells that produce unique renewable fuels. We have one of those in extensive testing now that could be one of the first green jet fuels. Hopefully there'll be hundreds of these. With this breadth of biology, we have the capability of probably making any chemical out there. It's not hard even to imagine gasoline or octane that we put into our tanks. Bacteria can make that.

Would this be produced on farms?

I'm thinking a country of this size could have 100,000 to 1 million mini-refineries. Just bacterial vats, hopefully not as big as barn silos. The notion I have is: You get rid of the distribution system and produce it where you need it.

So you're hopeful designer bacteria can help fight global warming?

I'm counting on it. What other choices are there? We're going to go back and live in caves and not drive cars? We either find a technological fix or we go out of existence. If you don't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet. This is the planet of the bacteria.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:36 AM | Comments (17)
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I spotted this article in the Washington Post yesterday about the SEC investigation into InfoUSA, a data company with strong ties to the Clintons. There's not much news on why InfoUSA is being investigated, but the article does remind us that the company hired President Clinton after he left office. Here's what caught my attention:

For the past four years, both Clintons have used [InfoUSA founder] Gupta's corporate plane, flying to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica and Mexico -- about $900,000 worth of travel, The Post reported in May.

That struck me as surprising since just this Monday I blogged about the presidential candidates' use of corporate jets. The article that spawned that post seemed delighted to contrast Democratic candidates Clinton and Obama's use of jets with that of Rudy Giuliani:

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama accept no corporate aircraft, choosing instead to rent planes at full market cost to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

The NY Daily News and Lefty blogs bought that hook, line, and sinker (For example, Jeralyn Merritt of Talkleft wrote "Hillary and Obama never did it."). I sorry to say I didn't dig deeper when I first read the story. Clinton has been using her vast campaign funds to rent jets for her her campaign; but she's also been accepting corporate travel for vacations. That seems like a fine "appearance of a conflict" to me.

In any case, the FEC rule which allowed candidates to fly on private corporate jets, so long as they reimbursed the owner for the cost of first-class tickets, was rescinded in September. Clinton can get off her high horse already.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:47 PM | Comments (13)
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