Another mystery we'll just never be able to solve. We have no idea whatsoever of what sort of "youths" might have been responsible for this ambush, nor what motive drove them, nor what religious text they might have masturbated to while loading their guns with lead shot and nails.

Ah, well. It's best not to know some things anyway.

It was probably the Jews. They're always up to something.

Thanks to CJ.

Related: How The West Won, And Then Surrendered To Nihilistic Darkness: Ibn Warriq on the objective superiority of Western values.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (14)
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I know this is fucking stupid. I can't help it.

Adam sends a link to an eBay auction purporting to be by Rachel Marsden, selling off articles of clothing Jimmy "Wiki" Wales left at her place.

I know -- that sounds fake. The picture of her there is unflattering and it seems unlikely she would ever choose it herself.

But...

On the other hand, this article seems to establish this is quite real.

And the break-up emails somehow got into the hands of an Internet-biz gossip site, and from those emails, Marsden does seem just angry enough to do it.

Incidentally, she disputes Wales' claim that he never did insider Wiki-favors for her.

Old position on revealing delicate personal information about relationships online: It's creepy and violative

New position on revealing delicate personal information about relationships online: It's awefuckingsome*

* As long as it's not about me or my gay lover/DM ellis.

Flashback: The similarly amicable Marsden-Greg Gutfeld split.

steve_in_hb is fond of a quote from Nietzsche which he only paraphrases and then I completely garble, but it goes something like this, approximately:

If everything in life seems hateful and all around you seem arrayed against you, ponder perhaps it is not the world which is the problem, but simply that you are most likely an asshole.

That's the gist. I'm pretty sure Nietzsche didn't write "asshole."

Oh, JackM points out that gawker article is about the Reason party at this past CPAC, which I was actually at.

As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no security whatsoever. No one stopped anyone at the door. Including me. Which I was sort of worried about, since I gave Reason a hard time with the Ron Paul Neo-Nazi Newsletter apologism. (I was spared any hassle due to two factors: 1, I am unfailingly polite in person, and 2, no one has any idea who the fuck I am or what the hell it is I'm writing on this blog.)

So I was apparently at the situs of a little draaaama I didn't even know about.

Also, based on the dates... well, if Marsden was at CPAC (which she was), then she seems to be referring to Wales in that Gutfeld email as the "superior" man who's not "afraid of girls."

An. Y. Way.

The Sex Talk IMs: Eh, I didn't see these. Embarrassing only because... Well, that's what all of these IM's look like, don't they?

Between Marsden and Wales, who crazy enough, and narcissistic enough, and vindictive enough, to leak all this personal stuff to Valley Wag?

I guess it's just a mystery we will never quite be able to solve.

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (43)
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Brian's statement on the site. The matter seems resolved... mostly.

He credits Gabriel with providing him some good, if tough, legal advice.

Here's the dealio and my admission of some dishonesty, or, rather, lack of candor. I sorta thought AP had a legitimate gripe here. What I've said to Brian via email was not exactly what I posted here. Hey, it's family, sort of.

And you don't go against the family.

Anyway, I believe, though do not know for a fact, that courts have ruled that images can be hotlinked from a site without legal consequence; there is no copyright protection for a link, the idea goes. So I believe (but do not know) that Brian can simply use the img src command to display pictures on his site, so long as that image is being pulled from the owner's servers.

I believe the problem came from his copying the pictures and uploading them and displaying them with his own bandwidth, thus establishing, sort of, "constructive ownership" of the pictures. Sort of like squatting, where you do just enough to basically challenge ownership of someone else's property.

This is an odd rule, because one can essentially steal a picture and display it on one's own site so long as one does the picture's owner the courtesy of simultaneously stealing his bandwidth.

Make sense? No, not at all.

I almost always hotlink major media pictures this way. With smaller blogs, I take the pic, with credit, but not to steal the picture, just to spare them the dick move of also leaching their bandwidth (and for smaller blogs, that bandwidth may be pretty limited and they may get stuck with a big bill if bigger blogs begin hotlinking their pics).

An odd rule with strange implications, but it appears to be what the courts have ruled.

In any event, I hope Snapped Shot continues getting all up in AP's grill.

Hmm: I may be wrong about the hotlinking thing.

An advisor writes:

I know that you're no novice when it comes to this kind of thing,
but I'm not convinced that you're correct about hotlinking images. The display of an image on your webpage, even if it's loaded from a remote server, constitutes "reproducing" the image. In the case of copyrighted works, you would face the same concerns about infringement as if you had copied the photo to your server and then republished it.

I'm no IP expert, but I have had some experience with copyright issue... that lead me to believe that you are in gray area at best, leaning into "no, not really"
territory. You might want to stick another caveat lector in your post.

Consider it so stuck. Could have sworn I read that though.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (44)
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Eh, that's slightly misleading but close enough.

I don't know why people care so much about Wikipedia, but I guess with internets gossiping about their liason and claims that Marsden's Wiki entry was inappropriately edited by her paramour, I guess he sorta had to say something.

The strange thing I guess is that the nasty nature of some of the Internet's gossips makes this sort of thing necessary at all.

Two people you never heard of had saucy IM sessions and then had sex. News at 11.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (27)
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In related news, Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet was a "response" to John F. Kennedy's "provocative" and "threatening" brainwave activity.

Thanks to CJ.

And... I a bit less miffed by this Reuters article. I don't think one has to read it as Reuters calling Hamas soldiers of God themselves; rather the article seems to be describing how Hamas sees itself.

Granted, the terrorist propaganda arm/intelligence service Reuters has a lot of baggage on this issue that makes one question their intentions here.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (8)
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BUMP AND UPDATE: I didn't realize that this was going to be a big issue this time around, but Obama had some pretty provocative comments about it on Sunday:

"I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state," said Obama. "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." ((Hear audio from WTAP-TV)) St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful.

[...]

The Sermon, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, includes the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments ("anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

Ohio overwhelmingly passed a marriage amendment in 2004, with strong support for defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman even among Democrats.

Original Post:

The California Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments in a same-sex marriage case on Tuesday. The question: "Is a state law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman constitutional under California's Constitution?" State constitutions often provide more protections than the federal constitution, especially a monster-sized document like California's (110 pages!). I normally wouldn't send anyone to read the San Fransisco Chronicle, but there is a careful and thorough write-up in today's paper that covers all sides of the case.

The State of California has been struggling with these issues for a while. We already have domestic partnerships. The legislature has passed two bills legalizing same-sex marriage, but Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed them. Another same-sex marriage bill is in the works, as are two initiative drives to amend the constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. One of those initiatives, if enacted, will also repeal same-sex domestic partnerships.

Some folks are concerned that a ruling--due in 90 days--which favors gays and lesbians will reignite the issue of gay marriage for the general election. It's also possible that a victory for gays and lesbians will result in the kind of backlash laws and amendments we saw in the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision in 2003.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:50 AM | Comments (53)
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I wish this were a clearer violation than the headline misleads. It's not clear that AP took the video without compensating LiveLeak, or that LiveLeak itself had rights to the video. (Someone presumably does, even if LiveLeak put it up without authorization, and AP didn't get the original source's video -- "AP's" video still has the LiveLeak logo on it.)

So it's not clear that there's any malfeasance here. Still, I'd like to know a little bit more.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (5)
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Pardon me for not posting this earlier, but I really have nothing to add that isn't perfectly hack, obvious, platitudinous, or all of the above.

Nevertheless this is big and whether I have anything to say about it is irrelevant.

Short version: Marxist narco-terrorist organization FARC has been kidnapping Americans and other Western foreigners for some time for money. They also moonlight as drug-traffickers and essentially an organized crime family with a leftist political agenda. Once in a while they indulge in some light political assassination of anti-drug or anti-terrorist political leaders or judges.

Colombia killed a bunch of these bastards hiding out in Ecuaador. Ecuador is making the typical noises about this and moving troops to its border, which is aggressive, but understandable, sort of, under the circumstances.

But it's Hugo Chavez, Sucker of Terrorist Cock, who is similarly moving troops to the border to threaten Colombia not out of any territorial-sovereignty rationale but out of simple solidarity with kidnappers, drug-thugs, murderers and assassins.

What can be said? We all know war is bad, but we also know some things are worse than war and we all, I think, are of a fairly like mind on the best possible fate for one Hugo Chavez.

Anyway:

Venezuela and Ecuador have ordered troops to their borders with Colombia, raising concerns of a broader conflict after Colombia killed a top rebel leader on Ecuadorean soil.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday promised Venezuela would respond militarily if Colombia violates its border, where he ordered tanks as well as thousands of troops. He also ordered closed VenezuelaÂ’s embassy in Bogota.

EcuadorÂ’s president, Rafael Correa, called for the troop deployment while also withdrawing his governmentÂ’s ambassador from Bogota and expelling ColombiaÂ’s top diplomat.

“There is no justification,” Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the incursion by its military.

Chavez called the killing of rebel leader and spokesman Raul Reyes and 16 other rebels on Saturday an attack by a “terrorist state.”

“Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately — tank battalions. Deploy the air force,” Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. “We don’t want war, but we aren’t going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) ... to come divide us.”

...

Colombian officials have long complained that EcuadorÂ’s military does not control its sparsely populated border, allowing rebels to take refuge.

The same holds true for Venezuela, where rebel deserters say the guerrillas routinely rest, train, obtain medical care and smuggle drugs. Chavez denies that his country provides refuge to the FARC.

In a statement, Colombia said FARC “terrorists” including Reyes “have had the custom of killing in Colombia and taking refuge in the territory of neighboring countries.”

Chavez is somewhat clever for so long alleging the US plans to strike at him... thus giving the US pause in doing so, even when he threatens an ally and general stability in the reason, for fair of turning him into a prophet and martyr.

But as long as we turn him into a corpse I think we can take the hit.

That's premature at this point, and it's that knee-jerk sentiment I was loathe to express.

But I think we're beginning to see that Chavez is not merely a tinpot blowhard buffoon but rather a dangerous leftist tyrant who wishes not just to enslave his own country but neighboring countries as well.

And at some point that trajectory must be intercepted.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (49)
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Again, don't go here if you're not "that way." If you're not a "swinger" (of a longsword or Staff of the Magi), this is going to be repulsive.

Someone linked this funny Steven Lynch song about D&D; I guess this is okay for above the fold.

Oh: Also via AICN (linked below), a prop from The Thing auctioned on eBay, yours for somewhere between $3500 and $4000 currently.

I don't know -- I know this movie very well and I'm not sure I recognize this particular iteration of The Thing. I had hoped it was the Head Spider but it doesn't seem to be.

Not sure if I'd want an obscure prop like this... I think I'd rather have MacReady's gun or maybe Child's fireman's axe.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (8)
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But this is really pushing that theory to the limits.

It's often unwise to second guess pilots without all the facts but it seems that perhaps a quicker decision to abort, a request to use another runway or a diversion to an alternate airport may have been in order here. Yes, the pilot used great skill in getting the plane down safely but there's an old aviation saying about using superior judgment so you don't have to use your superior skill.

Either way, welcome to Hamburg!

Posted by: DrewM at 08:34 AM | Comments (43)
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