She of Rathergate fame, of course.

Dear Lord, they are bugfuck insane.

Hmm... I'm thinking when you buy someone's book rights or life rights you usually have carte blanche to do pretty much whatever you want with the material -- otherwise you'd have producers being sued by authors for making changes to their books -- so I guess there's a 0.00001% chance they're buying the book to do a comedy-of-errors type movie.

I don't think that's what they're doing. Just saying it's possible.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (25)
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Exhibit A, Exhibit B

It's about time large-breasted women started enjoying some advantages in life.

N estate agent has won £30,000 after her boss told her: “You should either reduce the size of your breasts or get some new blouses.”

Julie-Ann Reed, 27, said sexist comments by Gerald Probert knocked her confidence and made her ill with depression.

He referred to her 36DD breasts “at least five times”.

She said: “He would point out my blouse was slightly gaping open between two fastened buttons, calling them 'sweater-yetis,' 'thunder-monkeys,' or 'rambunctious milk-zeppelins.' The comments were offensive and made me feel self-conscious and harassed.”

I may have added some to the quote in that last paragraph.

The jury only took a half hour to decide the boss was culpable on one count of harassment and two counts of of being a total fag with malice aforethought.

Below, a dramatic reenactment of the harassment and trial from a Japanese newsmagazine. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (71)
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Ugly people. Via Wolking's World. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (45)
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Not over the edge yet, but inching up to it, and one false step can drop us off the rocks.

We could weather this. But it seems to avoid a recession all of the world's policy makers will have to make all the right moves (itself highly unlikely) and then we'll have to catch a lucky break on top of that.

Or, you know, drop the price of oil by $50 per barrel simply by opening up the coasts (and ANWR) to exploration.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (56)
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In theory, matching 9 of 13 genetic markers is supposed to result in a nearly positive match -- the odds against another person matching the same 9 of 13 markers are supposed to be 1 in 113 billion.

But we have several instances of these virtually-mathematically-impossible false positives now.

The question is whether the statistical estimate of the unlikelihood of this is flawed, and that it's much easier to accidentally match another person's DNA markers than imagined, or if this is simply, well, expected. The "Law of Truly Large Numbers," as applied as "Littlewood's Law," suggests that, given enough trials, the phenomenally unlikely become downright likely to happen on occasion:

Littlewood defines a miracle is defined as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million; during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will experience one thing per second (for instance, seeing the computer screen, the keyboard, the mouse, the article, etc.); additionally, a human is alert for about eight hours per day; and as a result, a human will, in 35 days, have experienced, under these suppositions, 1,008,000 things. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can be expected to observe one miraculous occurrence within the passing of every 35 consecutive days -- and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.

His point is well taken, but I think he defines things in a goofy way to get to that "one miracle per month" thing: I don't think I've seen one miracle per month. Even bad "miracles." But that analysis certainly puts things into perspective.

A lot of us shorthand phenomenally unlikely events as "simply impossible." Even if we rationally know one in 113 billion is not, in fact, simply impossible, we (or at least I) tend to categorize it just that way. Oh, sure, I'll admit it's technically possible: But I don't really believe that where it counts, in the gut.

Last week I stumbled across The Black Swan theory, basically one guy's so-obvious-I-never-considered-it theory that almost all the big events in history -- those that shape society for generations -- are incredibly unlikely events ("Black Swans") that, while some here and there conceived as technically possible though ferociously unlikely, were usually considered by most as flatly impossible, the same as "one in 113 billion" gets rounded off to "0 in 113 billion, or impossible." And thus, when the "impossible" happens, it changes all of our mindsets.

Among the most recent of "Black Swans," of course, is 9/11. Looking back it seems so obvious now. In hindsight, it wasn't terribly unlikely at all. But who among us actually considered that a serious and real possibility before the towers came down?

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (32)
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Supposedly this is the Iranian army training. I have no idea if it is or not. It's certainly a crack unit.

Stay with it to 'till the end; it's short.

Thanks for the below video to Snapped Shot, who also notes that two British Muslims have confessed to "creating a public nuisance."

What public nuisance would that be? Oh, you know, the normal sort of mischief and weisenheimmmery: conspiring to blow up a plane.

But you know: They were only doing it as a goof. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (39)
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At TAPPED, Goldstein writes that property taxes should not be used to fund public schools because people might try and avoid the taxes...by moving.

Because some people, who don't have kids in public schools and who aren't particularly civic-minded, will inevitably resent paying them and do everything they can to avoid doing so. Case in point: Sun belt retirees living in "adult" communities that not only ban children, but also incorporate outside of existing cities and towns in order to achieve full tax revolt status.

Well, we can't have people making choices which lead to paying fewer taxes, now can we. Her unwritten, but presumed solution would be to institute a more broadly applicable tax, one that cannot be avoided simply by moving out of the burdened area.

She goes on to join Andrew Blechman in sneering at people who have the shocking selfishness to stand up for their own interests:

Life in the Villages is similarly premised: Seniors have taken control of their county's political machinery and have already begun closing parks for young families who live outside the gated community. As one Villager proudly told me without a trace of irony, "In the Villages we spend our tax dollars on ourselves."

If the Villages and Sun City cannot be accountable to their neighbors, then why should their neighbors be accountable to them, even when it comes to funding Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

After years of leisure, many Sun City residents have little interest in making the world, let alone their own community, a better place. They'd rather glide to the finish, which is why the community is already getting ratty around the edges

Well that's not very civic-minded of the Villagers. How natural it is for the leftist to suggest that we can impose a new social order by withholding government benefits. Why not premise all government programs on the participant's fervor for neighborly values?

The Other McCain has related thoughts.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:12 AM | Comments (45)
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This isn't ironic "shock," because here I really am shocked the New York Times would be this brazen.

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper's decision to refuse McCain's direct rebuttal to Obama's 'My Plan for Iraq' has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain's staff. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.'

MORE

In McCain's submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: 'I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it... if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.'

NYT's Shipley advised McCain to try again: 'I'd be pleased, though, to look at another draft.'

[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]

MORE

A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator's Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not "re-work the draft."

It's simply extraordinary that they're denying McCain a forum offered to Obama, and of course denying their readers an essay by a presidential candidate on the issue of war and peace.

Why would they go this far? I have no idea. But I'm guessing this section was embarrassing for the paper...

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

... given that the paper has made a top-down decision to not report that the surge has succeeded at all.

Heaven knows why 49% of the public think the media will try to help Obama win.

Looking at the cross-tabs, 12% answered "I don't know" regarding the media's desire to help Obama; 29% answered "I can't answer due to being distracted by small shiny objects." Another 10% answered "I'm tripping my face off on acid and there's no way I can answer your questions while sinister locusts are eating all of the color red out of my mind-ship."

Related:

The New York Times will be running each and every
editorial El Jefe Maximo pens for the next
eight to ten years of his presidency.

Photo credit: Slublog Newswire.

More on Media Bias Poll: Instapundit notes that 50% believe the media are reporting the economy worse than it actual is, and a plurality believes the same about Iraq.

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (70)
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Striking a crucial blow against the anti-free-speech censors who for some unenlightened reason things that showing a nipple in a sub-dom sexual context during a general-interest program watched by millions of kids is somehow wrong.

A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring ``wardrobe malfunction.''

The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission ``acted arbitrarily and capriciously'' in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity.

The 90 million people watching the Super Bowl, many of them children, heard Justin Timberlake sing, ``Gonna have you naked by the end of this song,'' as he reached for Jackson's bustier.

The court found that the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ``pervasive as to amount to 'shock treatment' for the audience.''

``Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing,'' the court said. ``But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure.''

The 3rd Circuit judges - Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell and Judge Julio M. Fuentes - also ruled that the FCC deviated from its long-held approach of applying identical standards to words and images when reviewing complaints of indecency.

``The Commission's determination that CBS' broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency's departure from its prior policy,'' the court found. ``Its orders constituted the announcement of a policy change - that fleeting images would no longer be excluded from the scope of actionable indecency.''

Well, I think it did constitute "shock treatment." The only question is whether or not it matters that CBS was (as I assume) ignorant of Janet Jackson's stunt, or if strict liability applies (that is, they're strictly liable for what they broadcast, whether they have a blameworthy mental state like negligence of intent or not). I don't think that matters -- the court does not seem to rely on that, which would be an easy enough way to dispose of the case -- so they are forced to argue this was harmless to vindicate their far-left politics.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (28)
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Suggestion Box Time

Spartan fan came up with this idea in the comments to the prior post.

Alright! Rip-the-Blog Monday! Where do we start?

How 'bout the 90% of the bloggers in arms links that don't work or list defunct sites?

You guys really have been unbelievably patient and saint-like while all this transition and technical suckage has been going on.

I wish I could say that Pixy, Ace and my fellow co-bloggers appreciate your restraint and understanding, but the truth is that we only learn from beatings.

Say what you got to say.

Posted by: LauraW at 07:07 AM | Comments (97)
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