I actually like them, but...

My mom (a Giants fan) sent a couple of pictures which I thought together would make a good photoshop.

Slublog put it together, but under duress.

PS: Apologies if this has been done before. I don't remember seeing it, though it does seem pretty obvious. A search on Google produced no similar images so maybe it's new... but it's probably not, I admit.

UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: Yeah, I've seen it before. It had Romo's face shopped. And no, I ain't lookin it up.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (18)
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Evidence he's a vampire/werewolf? He's got a convincing case.

A Pottsville man convinced a 15-year-old girl he was part werewolf and part vampire before sexually assaulting her, police say.

Kristian Allen Carl, 19, also believed he was a supernatural mixed breed, police say.

"He convinced himself he was a hybrid -- a combination werewolf and vampire," Pottsville police Sgt. James Joos said. "He had convinced the girl he was, too."

To prove to police he was indeed a genuine vampire/werewolf, Carl "showed me his canine teeth," Joos said. "I let him know that all mammals, including humans, have canine teeth."

Fair enough. But then it gets crazy:

Joos said Carl also told police he had a "guardian dragon that protected him from evildoers."

This story is also odd:

The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office is looking for a man with a mustache who is pulling in front of female drivers and then jumping out of his vehicle while wearing women's underwear, a garter belt and black high-heel boots.

...

Sheriff Mark Dion said that while the man's behavior may not be criminal in terms of dress, the fact that he's jumping out in roadways and apparently targeting women who are alone is cause for concern.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (27)
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In a bit of a shrug, as krakatoa calls it, the theory also seems to say "...and don't bother trying to confirm the existence of either of these around earth, because its very nature will prevent it from every showing itself."

I don't really understand it very well but it seems interesting as all hell. Possibly because the old idea of "ether" is being revived.

The two biggest mysteries in cosmology may be one. A new theory says that dark matter and dark energy could arise from a single dark fluid that permeates the whole universe. And this could mean Earth-based dark matter searches will come up empty.

Dark matter, as originally hypothesized, is extra hidden mass that astrophysicists calculate is necessary for holding together fast-turning galaxies. The most popular notion is that this matter is made of some yet-to-be-identified particle that has almost no interactions with light or ordinary matter. Yet it seems to be everywhere, acting as a scaffolding for galaxy clusters and the whole structure of the universe.

On the other hand, dark energy is needed to explain the more recently-discovered acceleration of the universe's expansion. It supposedly exists all throughout space, delivering a pressure that counteracts gravity.

It's counterintuitive that one substance could be both a gravitational anchor for galaxies and anti-gravity force for the universe. However, HongSheng Zhao of the University of St Andrews in Scotland claims that a fluid-like dark energy can act like dark matter when its density becomes high enough.

...

"[Our theory] involves positing a preferred time direction, in some sense a special time frame," Ferreira said. "It has the interesting effect of modifying Einstein's theory of general relativity."

The idea is similar to the "ether," an invisible medium that physicists once thought light waves travelled through. Einstein's relativity did away with the need for such a medium, but cosmologists have recently found that an ether-like substance can mimic dark matter.

The presence of such a substance changes the way gravity works. This is most noticeable in the distant outskirts of a galaxy, where the galaxy's gravitational pull would be expected to be small, but the ether makes it much stronger.

The ether "effectively softens space-time in regions of low [gravitational] acceleration making it more sensitive to the presence of mass than usual," Ferreira explained.

...

Christian Boehmer from University College London thinks it "compelling" that Zhao's model can reproduce so much galaxy data.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (69)
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Executing the Pelosi/Murtha plan of an "over the horizon redeployment."

Some leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other extremist groups are fleeing Iraq with cash to escape US forces and possibly to try to regroup outside the country, a senior US commander said Monday.

Major General Mark Hertling, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, said other Al-Qaeda fighters are dispersing from cities into the desert because of fear of capture.

"We have had many indications that many of them are leaving the country because of what they perceive as an increasing amount of pressure," Hertling told reporters here via video link from Iraq.

"We've also had several indications that several of their leaders are leaving the country, leaving the country with cash, the cash that they were sent to pay fighters with," he said.

Some were fleeing through Syria, while others were going back to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he said.

The dispersal of extremist fighters has also coincided with a spike in kidnapping for ransom, as fighters try to raise cash for themselves or their organizations.

...

However, Hertling said the groups leaving the country were not large, and there were indications that they were attempting to regroup outside Iraq and then come back in.

In case you missed this: Al Qaeda admits it's in a quagmire.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

...

In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda's brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”

He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.” The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill “not less than 20 or 30 infidels” grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Mansoor Dudallah (brother of Mullah Dudallah) was reported wounded and captured after a firefight.

More on that from Roggio's Long War Journal.

Mansoor was reported to have been wounded during a firefight as he attempted to enter Baluchistan province in Pakistan from Kandahar province, Afghanistan, according to Pakistan's Inter Service Public Relations. Mansoor and his party refused to stop when challenge and a firefight ensued. "Security personnel returned fire. As a result all of them sustained injuries and all of them were captured," Major General Athar Abbas, the military spokesman said. "Dadullah was arrested alive but he is critically wounded."

But unnamed intelligence sources told The Associated Press that Mansoor and his party were captured after police, Army, and anti-terrorism commandos of the Special Services Groups surrounded a religious seminary in the Zhob district of Baluchistan. Mansoor was captured along with associates Haji Lala, Khudai Dad, Khalid Dad, and Abdur Razzak, according to the intelligence source.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (15)
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Pundits and politicians have given no small attention to the Guantanamo Bay combatant-detainees during the election season. The New York Times editorial board wants the prisoners charged or freed. Senator Obama wants to give them habeas corpus access to federal courts or to close Guantanamo or both. McCain wants to close Guantanamo and bring them here (which would be another way of getting the detainees into federal courts).

What we do with the detainees will profoundly impact the way we wage the War on Terror. Is it a war or a police action? And what do we do with alien unlawful combatants when we capture them? Today, the Pentagon has announced that it will seek the death penalty in military commissions to be held for six detainees who were involved in the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"The department has been working diligently to prepare cases and bring charges against a number of individuals who have been involved in some of the most grievous acts of violence and terror against the United States and our allies," Whitman said.

Prosecutors have been working for years to assemble the case against suspects in the attacks that prompted the Bush administration to launch its global war on terror.

"The prosecution team is close to moving forward on referring charges on a number of individuals," Whitman said, declining to name the defendants.

The New York Times reported in Monday's editions that the others are Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has been identified as Mohammed's lieutenant for the 2001 operation; al-Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi; and Walid bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers.

The military commissions, already a sore subject for some Democrats, are about to get a great deal of scrutiny because the death penalty is back on the table. Obama and Clinton will be stumping on this all week, emphasizing the unfairness of the abridged procedures of the tribunal process.

I'm more curious to see what McCain does. He's on the record as wanting to close Guantanamo Bay and he opposes the methods used to break Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. On the other hand, he voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Is he going to change his tune now that he's the Republican frontrunner? Or is he going to stand by his September 2006 vote and support the Pentagon's efforts to deal with detainees who cannot or should not be repatriated?

While we wait to see what McCain does, we shouldn't get too excited about the commissions. Although they have been authorized for over a year, only Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan have had hearings at the tribunals. Neither has actually reached the trial stage, despite being charged in May 2007. At this rate, we will have a new president and Congress before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others are tried.

UPDATE: Drew suggested that this post might be an appropriate one for a 9/11 picture. He described it as "critical context" for the potential trials of KSM and the other baddies. After politely declining, I realized that it's going to bug me now if I don't post something, because he's right. I can't take another picture of the burning buildings or the west face of the Pentagon, but this picture is okay. To me it says, "We are going to beat you now." more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:07 AM | Comments (28)
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Just go away!

Oh but he won't as long as he thinks he has a chance and he is not 100% bat shit to think he has one, 99% maybe but not 100%.

Here is the scenario he is counting on:
Since many view McCain's nomination as a for gone conclusion, many voters will stay home.

McCain stirs passion in the base, unfortunately for McCain this passion is hatred thus a sizable percentage of the vote that does bother to show will be there to vote against him. (Way to go talk radio!)

Huckabee voters feel a love for him that dares not speak its name and will hit the polls for him harder than they bang their bibles.

And finally as Huck would have it, a lot of the remaining states are packed full of unreconstructed Evangelicals.

That all being said Huck won't get the nomination and even if he did his lack of belief in dinosaurs makes him 100% unelectable. He should do the right thing for his country and his party and GTFO.

Update:
And Huck continues to beclown himself and indeed the entire Republican party.

Huck it is time to get in your tiny car and go home.

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:57 PM | Comments (75)
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RIP Chief Brody

You really only need to watch the first 30 seconds or so of this clip but it's all good.

Posted by: DrewM. at 07:50 PM | Comments (47)
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Sorry about the downtime there. My iPod crashed the server.

Well, the story is a little more complex than that, but basically, I plugged my iPod into my PC here in Sydney and that sparked a chain of events that led to the server in Dallas getting unceremoniously rebooted.

Time for a new iPod, I think.

Update: And now comments are working too.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:45 PM | Comments (25)
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ItÂ’s a clean sweep of the weekend for the Obamasiah.

Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington yesterday. Maine today.

Oh and he beat out Bill Clinton to win a Grammy as well.

Honestly, I thought the destruction of the Clintons would be more fun. However, given the content free appeal of Obama and the fact that McCain is going to be the Republican nominee, I am not enjoying it nearly as much as I had imagined I would.

Update [Slublog] - Hope DrewM doesn't mind me adding to this. Obama didn't just beat Clinton. He crushed her - with 91% reporting, it's Obama 59%, Clinton 41%.

This may be a small state, but it's a pretty big loss for Clinton, who did two campaign stops here. In addition, Bill and Chelsea did campaign appearances, she spent quite a bit on advertising and had the endorsement of the state's governor. For a campaign that's having trouble raising funds, that is some serious spending - and for nothing.

What makes this win somewhat significant is that Obama was able to stomp Clinton in a state without a high level of African-American support. Maine's African-American population is 1%. I don't think he expected to win here, so this is a good night for him because he's now winning the delegate race.

Posted by: DrewM. at 03:58 PM | Comments (34)
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You guys seem kinda glum. I'm about to step out for another hike, so here's an open thread. Make of it what you will.

Some topics to get you started:

Hunchbacks: Shaved, Trimmed, or For the LOVE OF GOD Not in Public!

Political Power: Can Dick Cheney create a rock too big for Dick Cheney to push?

Marriage: If you think an hour a day is the right total and your partner thinks an hour a week is the right total, how much does he need to do to avoid the charge that he hasn't done his share?

Tombstones: For me, "Whatever it is you're doing, pretty soon someone is going to tell you to stop it."

Inadvertently spoken in an inappropriate venue: “Damn you, I use my tongue prettier than a HUNNERT-dollar whore!” In class.

Okay, that should get you started.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:36 PM | Comments (25)
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