No, seriously, they really did that.

But it's a mixed review, really. Her labia minora are credited with offering a "spirited, winsome performance evoking a young Audrey Hepburn's vagina."

Basic Instinct 2 gets hammered with nominations in just about every major category.

If these nominations are fair-- and they seem to have nominated really awful movies in the past -- I guess I have my answer to whether or not I should take a chance on the Nick Cage remake of The Wicker Man.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (31)
Post contains 106 words, total size 1 kb.

A dirty little secret the media doesn't like to talk about.

And I don't think we can say that Bush isn't pushing this story enough. He is. But if the media won't report the White House message on it, or grudgingly give him a soundbite while featuring a "nonpartisan" "expert" from PFAW to offer the Vinny Gambizi demurrer ("Everything that guy just said is bullshit"), then people just aren't going to know.

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (5)
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

2.4 million units in 24 hours.

Industry watchers called the sales a "l33t PWNage."

I don't know how much of an impact the South Park episode had, nor the free sign-up campaign using Peter from Office Space, but talk about perfectly tailoring your advertising to your target demographic.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (25)
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

As it did, this article suggests, in the Betamax/VHS war.

Sony, which had created the (I'm told) superior Betamax format, refused to allow its product to be sullied by porn. So VHS led the way there, and ultimately triumphed.

And yesterday's story on porn and HD also mentioned that Sony was refusing to allow porn to defile its Blu-Ray format. Which is a particular shame, because "Blu-Ray" sounds like it wants to be the porn format of choice.

History repeats.

Exit Question: Why should a fairly complex decision about the superiority of two formats nearly equal in all ways be decided by people so stupid they're still paying for porn?

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (26)
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

Hi! I'm a walking stereotype. I wanted to add
a Cheret (Che beret) to my ensemble but it just seemed,
oh, a little too "on the nose," if you know what I mean.

Butch haircut? Check.

Faux-intellectual attitude specs? Check.

Multi-culti muumuu: Double-check.

I think the Bob Denver beat character on Dobey Gillis was less contrivedly "counter."

It's Phinn's monicker.

I stand with Provost Lange in condemning all hateful, disrespectful, and personal attacks on all people.*

* Except, of course, for calling three innocent men racist, sexist, preppy-privilege gang-raping Huns, and branding an entire team as the same, and of course claiming that just about every white male student at Duke is three snifters of congac away from throwing up a lynch-rope and going on a full-tilt pinball-rape spree, as seen in The Accused.

But this nasty stuff about professors perhaps not being terribly well qualified or even of average intelligence and discernment? That is an evil which must stop.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (51)
Post contains 168 words, total size 1 kb.

One imagines they'll be held in those revolving-door "prisons" that the Palestinians made famous, though.

But the article, from the BBC, is more optimistic than I am, strangely enough.

About 600 fighters and 16 leaders of the radical Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, have been captured by security forces in Iraq, the US military says.

The statement said 52 operations had been conducted in 45 days targeting the militia, which is loyal to Najaf-based cleric Moqtada Sadr.

Sunni extremists were also the focus of the crackdown, the US military said.

US and Iraqi forces are currently preparing for a broad offensive in the strife-torn Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Now, all these killings and captures of Sadrists and Al Qaeda -- bear in mind, this is in preparation for the actual "broad offensive."

The military said five of the Mehdi Army leaders were detained in the pro-Sadr bastion, Sadr City. One senior figure was killed in a raid.

...

"Criminal activities by these individuals propagated instability within Iraq and their removal from the social structure is a critical start to providing the Iraqi populace with a safe and stable environment."

In addition, 33 Sunni extremist cell leaders were detained in Baghdad, the statement said.

...

The BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says it is still not clear how significant the senior Mehdi Army figures now in custody are.

But this appears to be the beginnings of a harder line on this widely feared Shia militia, he says.

In the past, the Iraqi government has been criticised for turning a blind eye to Mehdi Army activities for political reasons.

A spokesman for the movement would not confirm the numbers detained, but he said they were now seeing Iraqi and US raids almost every day.

I think that's a sweet teaser-trailer. Can't wait for the actual movie.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (23)
Post contains 313 words, total size 2 kb.

"We will weather this storm," a Romney aide said, and then slinked away apprehensively.

Great. Who's going to lose the Trent Lott primary, I wonder?

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (15)
Post contains 47 words, total size 1 kb.

A call for "respect" from bloggers towards their professorial betters, who, as it turns out, are not really better than a lynch mob:

[quoting Provost Lange:] "As we all are aware blogs and email have "democratized" communication; anyone with access to a computer can get in the game as writer or spectator. In many ways this is a very good thing, for it reduces the elitism of "publication" and the control of opinion by opinion "sellers". Nonetheless, this "democracy" is also permissive of saying almost anything, about almost anyone or anything, using any language, no matter how distasteful, disrespectful or dismissive. We can spread our ideas faster, and without the mediation of others, but we can also control neither their dispersion nor the nature and distribution of reactions to them. In fact, if those reactions distort the account of what we have said, there is likely no way to correct the record for the large number of people who may have secondarily received those distorted interpretations.

"This is a condition of our era. No one can provide relief and these conditions do not change the basic fact that one must take care to say what one intends and be prepared to be accountable for and to defend the substance of oneÂ’s ideas, and correct or incorrect interpretations of them. Free speech must continue to be vigorously defended, but speaking freely has become potentially more consequential."

[the blogger's commentary:] The statement goes on for pages, but you can read it from beginning to end and not find out that this whole obscene incident is about how some folks were attempting to frame a group of Duke students for a felony that they did not commit. Lange makes it sound like the real victims are the notorious Group of 88 Duke faculty members who issued a statement back in April saying "thank you" to the group of protestors who had branded the students rapists and clamored for their hides. There's not a trace of embarrassment over their behavior. Instead, Lange argues that the attention the matter has now been getting is not "productive of the best virtues for free speech." He criticizes the "merciless attention that the emailers and bloggers have been paying" to the Group of 88.

I guess I have to disagree. It seems to me that the best virtues of free speech have indeed been served. These poor kids might be rotting in prison without it.

I respect Karla Holloway's right to eat my balls.

It's all about the "meta-narrative" anyhow, right? So what does specific harm to specific people matter anyway?

K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor sum up the facts of the case:

It has been clear for many months that the rape claim is almost surely a lie. But not until the DA's dramatic dismissal last Friday of the rape (but not the sexual assault and kidnapping) charges did Mr. Nifong enablers such as the New York Times and Duke President Richard Brodhead begin distancing themselves from his oppression of three innocent young men.

How can we be confident that the charges are false? Let us count the ways: The police who interviewed the accuser after she left the March 13-14 lacrosse team party where she and another woman had performed as strippers found her rape charge incredible, and for good reason. She said nothing about rape to three cops and two others during the first 90 minutes after the party. Only when being involuntarily confined in a mental health facility did she mention rape. This predictably got her released to the Duke emergency room for a rape workup, whereupon she recanted the rape charge.

Then she re-recanted, offering a ludicrous parade of wildly implausible and mutually contradictory stories of being gang-raped by 20, five, four, three or two lacrosse players, with the other stripper assisting the rapists in some versions. After settling on three rapists, the accuser gave police vague descriptions and could not identify as a rapist any of the 36 lacrosse players whose photos she viewed on March 16 and 21. These included two eventual defendants: Dave Evans, whom she did not recognize at all, and Reade Seligmann, whom she was "70%" sure she had seen at the party, but not as a rapist.

All of the 40-odd other people at the party have contradicted every important part of the accuser's various accounts. The second stripper called the rape claim a "crock" and said they had been apart less than five minutes. The accuser told doctors she was drunk and on the muscle relaxant Flexeril, whose side effects include badly impaired judgment when taken with alcohol. She has a history of narcotic abuse and bipolar disorder, a mental illness marked by wild mood swings from mania to depression, and spent a week in a mental hospital in 2005.

In court filings last week, even Mr. Nifong conceded that, contrary to his claims since March, medical records show no physical evidence of rape--let alone injuries consistent with the accuser's April claim of being beaten, kicked, strangled and raped anally, orally and vaginally by three men in a small bathroom for 30 minutes. Above all, DNA tests by state and private labs, which Mr. Nifong's office had said would "immediately rule out any innocent persons," did just that. They found no lacrosse player's DNA anywhere on or in the accuser and none of her DNA in the bathroom.

Yet two weeks ago we learned--only because dogged defense lawyers cracked a prosecutorial conspiracy to hide evidence of innocence--that the private lab did find the DNA of "multiple males" in swabs of the accuser's pubic hair, panties, and rear after the supposed rape. None of this DNA matched any lacrosse player.

I'll say one thing for the "victim:" She made it as clear as possible that she was just using the rape charge to get out of the mental health/criminal system. She really, really could not have made it more clear to anyone that she was concocting the most transparent of lies to buy herself a little leeway.

Having "danced," or stumbled, for the Duke lacrosse players, certainly she could have given ballpark-accurate descriptions of "her rapists" which matched them. Instead she offered up descriptions of 270 pound redheads with moustaches (of the handlebar variety, I'd guess).

I'm only mildly surprised she didn't claim all three "rapists" wore eye-patches.

I've called her a shakedown artist before. I don't think that's correct, now that I think more about it. After all, if she had really pre-planned a false-rape shakedown, she could have, um, done a better job of it, no?

A stripper who can't manage to coax some DNA from a single one of 40 beer-chugging college athletes really isn't trying terribly hard, is she? Good Lord, I probably could have managed to get some DNA at that party, at least if I were wearing my cutest shoes.

So her heart plainly wasn't in this lie.

So whose heart was in the lie? And why?

This is an avenue of inquiry that Provost Peter Lange -- academic defender of one's right to seek the truth at all costs -- seems to think is unworthy for discussion.

If Only A Moron Would Go On TV To Defend Nifong, Who Can You Get For Your Shouting-Head Shows? Why, a moron, of course. Who else?

K.C. Johnson notes that one of Nifong's more ubiquitous, and stupid, defenders is someone claiming to have been a former federal prosecutor, now a lawyer in a single-woman firm who is also (I'm not kidding) a fitness trainer. The world's only Pilades & Personal Injury practitioner, I guess.

Anyway, this observation of hers is a real gem:

There was evidence of DNA of Seligmann [sic] who lived in that house [sic].*

Really? The guy's DNA was found in his own home?

Well. Case closed, I guess. The smoking gun.

Meanwhile, in Ace of Spades HQ, some of my wayward DNA has actually accumulated into IKEA-style "casual furniture."

Be careful -- that only looks like an ottoman.

* PS, it turns out this wasn't even true. But how stupid do you have to be to even allege it as "evidence"?

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (18)
Post contains 1381 words, total size 9 kb.

So it does work!

“He was actually bitten by the head down — the shark swallowed his head,” Luobikis said.

The shark, believed to be a great white, came back for a second bite, clenching its jaws around NerhusÂ’ torso and leaving deep lacerations in his side, said Luobikis.

Nerhus wrestled free of the sharkÂ’s jaws, and later told rescue workers he had poked the shark in the eye, an unidentified worker from the Snowy Hydro Rescue Helicopter service told local media.

The shark is planning a $40 million dollar suit for intentional infliction of optical distress.

I don't know if this is funny enough to post, but it's pretty funny. Photoshops of Eagles corner safety Brian Dawkins. The pictures suggest a Dick Cheneyesque, Chuck Norris-like mastery over time and space.

Posted by: Ace at 08:34 AM | Comments (24)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

The big surprise revelation in last night's 24 is revealed in the Hot Air open thread.

Good Lord, this is becoming less plausible and more convoluted than the Spider-Clone saga.

Meanwhile, I didn't even bother to watch Prison Break yet, though I have it recorded. The show has managed to answer the question I've asked since its premeire, i.e., "Okay, good show, but how in the hell do you keep it going once they actually get out of prison?" (A: "You can't.")

Sorry: I suggested what the plot-twist was in the headline, forgetting that some people may have taped it but not yet watched it. Sorry for the spoiler.

Posted by: Ace at 07:47 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 115 words, total size 1 kb.