Some injuries; the guy is in custody.

A male passenger possibly linked to terrorist organization Al Qaeda ignited a powdery substance prior to landing on a Delta Airlines flight to Detroit Friday, Fox News confirmed. The man is believed to be Nigerian.

Several people were hurt and one person, possibly the suspect, was admitted to the University of Michigan Medical Center at Ann Arbor, hospital spokeswoman Tracy Justice said. An emergency was declared aboard the flight, operated as Northwest flight 253, according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson.

The suspect, who ABC reported suffered second-degree burns, told federal investigators he was connected to Al Qaeda, though authorities are questioning the veracity of that statement, Fox News confirmed. A federal situational awareness bulletin noted that the explosive was acquired in Yemen with instructions as to when it should be used, ABC said.

[...]

Early reports suggested the suspect ignited firecrackers on board the Airbus A330 wide-body jet, but a law enforcement official told Fox News the explosive has not yet been identified.

Though it hasn't appeared yet on the DHS website, news organizations are reporting that the terrorism threat level has been raised from yellow to orange, meaning there is a high risk of terrorist events.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:33 PM | Comments (179)
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Knives don't kill people, sexually-assaulted women kill people:

Several thugs tried to drag a woman off a Queens subway train Thursday night, but she fought back and fatally stabbed one of her tormenters before fleeing on another train, police said.

The large group of men - perhaps as many as eight - surrounded the woman outside a chicken restaurant above the 21st St.-Queensbridge station about 9 p.m., police and a witness said.

The harassment, which may have included unwanted sexual advances toward the woman and grabbing...

"May have."

... continued as she entered the subway station.

The woman broke free from the men and frantically ran down to the platform and hopped on an F train, with the thugs right behind.

"They tried to physically drag her off the train, but she fights back," one cop said.

The struggle continued as the group pulled her off the train and dragged her up the stairs to the mezzanine level.

At one point, the woman stabbed one of her attackers - identified by family as Thomas Winston, 29 - multiple times in the chest.

There's a special place in Hell for wannabe thugs killed by a girl.

The article doesn't say if she got the knife off one of her assailants or was carrying it. If she just stripped the weapon off these guys... Dudes.

Go find some kind of crime you're good at. Crimes against persons are obviously not your bag. Try assaulting some inanimate objects and then maybe you won't get your bitch-ass stabbed to death.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (112)
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Video:The best South Park Christmas Episode ever. If you have never seen the infamous South Park "Woodland Critter Christmas" episode, enjoy it here now. Offensive? Yes, Funny? definitely. Click the links and enjoy!

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:09 PM | Comments (24)
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And I am mightily hacked off about it. Watch with the sound on. There's a link somewhere on the page which'll show you (sorta) how to make your own.

more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 12:27 PM | Comments (16)
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When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”

Diana Krall Covers Peanuts: Her version of "Christmas Time is Here, recommended by Sassypants.

By the way, I'm guessing that's one of those sites that lets you listen to a song once or twice before requiring you to purchase it, so if you're going to play it, better get ready to really listen. You probably will only have one bite at the apple.

Honoring the Troops: Pictures of the troops to John Lennon's "So This is Christmas/War is Over." An anti-war song, of course, but I'd have to think that most soldiers would agree with the general sentiment that, all else being equal, it would be better if war really was over.

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (53)
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Slublog starting talking about this on Twitter a few days ago -- citing Die Hard as one of his favorite "Christmas" movies -- and I joined in. It's sort of interesting for reasons I can't really explain.

Because several of my favorite movies are "Christmas" movies having nothing to do with Christmas, I sort of give any movie that does this a few extra bonus nostalgia points.

I was going to do my own post, but I put it off, and lookie here, Big Hollywood beat me to the punch and now I don't have to do any work.

Procrastination is awesome like that. If you don't do your job in a timely fashion, there's a damn good chance someone else will. I heartily recommend it to everyone.

Or, okay, maybe not everyone: I heartily recommend it to 40% of the population, and heartily recommend picking up the slack to the other 60%.

Couple of points: Searching around the internet for these sorts of movies, I was surprised to learn another great 80s actioner -- First Blood -- is actually a Christmas movie having nothing to do with Christmas. (Why do I still find it so thrilling that Stallone stitches up his wound from falling off the cliff?) A blog cited the fact that the downtown of the Washington state town the film takes place in has Christmas lights on display, and that there's a Christmas tree at the police station.

Actually... Thinking about it, I'd guess that First Blood is really a post-Christmas movie. It has that sort of down feeling you get around the 27th or so.

...

Another point is that the Uber 80s Action Screenwriter Shane Black used Christmas as a backdrop for Lethal Weapon. And liked that so much he used it again for The Long Kiss Goodnight. And still liked it so much he did it yet again for the positively awesome Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And I never once got annoyed he was re-using the same element. It's an awesome element. If his next action movie is set at Christmas, I'll enjoy it yet again.

One more thing: The Star Wars trilogy (the real trilogy) is not set at Christmas, or even in the known galaxy, but by now it's oddly a Christmas series. The only time I see it now is at Christmas. It competes now with A Christmas Story for What Ace Watches Christmas-Week.

Correction: The author did say these films are in "no particular order," so my quibbling about where these movies should fall on the list is off-base.

...

Oh, and on this list: Die Hard at number ten?

Really?

Number ten?

And Gremlins ahead of it?

What madness is this?

Lethal Weapon edging it out at number 9? Now I love Lethal Weapon, but look here: Die Hard is plainly a superior movie in all aspects. Lethal Weapon is now dated and I'm a little less in love with it than I once was. ("They was painted.")

On the other hand, if Die Hard is on at any time, I will watch at least 20 minutes of it, if not for the whole rest of the remaining running time.

Maybe Die Hard 2 should be at number 10, and Die Hard at one, or at least no lower than 2.

That's the problem with my procrastination strategy. You just can't rely on the person picking up your slack to do a proper job of it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (92)
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Of course our "deficit hawk" president will veto this bill if it gets to his desk in this condition, right?

...To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the governmentÂ’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the governmentÂ’s fiscal position.

An even simpler two word translation: "they lie".

One of the posters over at FDL is riffing on the "Obama lies" theme too:

...and to bring down health care costs by $2,500 per year for a family. The Senate bill will do none of these things.

Obama did promise to not do two very important things with health care reform. He promised to not include an individual mandate and not tax employer-provided health insurance benefits. This Senate bill breaks both of those promises...

All that euphoria of a few years ago seems so naive now doesn't it? Doods, you got fooled again, only 10X worse this time. You got played by real pros. Cheney/Bush? Amateurs. Rank Amateurs.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:03 AM | Comments (97)
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Hi Morons!
Hope you get everything you want today, and best wishes for health and prosperity in the New Year.

I put this in the comments below, but my pal Sox at H2 suggested it has enough oomph to be a post.

Jim at the excellent CT blog, Radio Vice Online says "the money lines" are at 4:00 and 8:30, but definitely give a listen to the whole thing. Near the end is a nifty Christmas tie-in, and some words of inspiration.

If you go to Radio Vice Online, follow Jim's link to Dr. Helen's post on learned helplessness. Interesting stuff.

Posted by: LauraW at 07:18 AM | Comments (68)
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(Hello, mellow forons—I normally do movies but I thought I'd take this rare opportunity to flog a hobby horse of mine.]

The great visionary Alan Kay once compared the dot-Com goldrush (while it was still going on) to a cargo cult. This was one of those big "a-ha" moments in this moron's life. I'd heard of cargo cults but had just thought of it as an amusing story. If you follow that Wikipedia link, you can see a sort of apologetic tone about how "an isolated society's first contact with the outside world...can be a shock".

But what the dot-Com mania showed was that there's nothing about the mentality that's exclusive to primitive societies. The fundamental issue is a lack of understanding of relationship between cause and effect.

Once my eyes were opened to this parallel, I began seeing cargo cults everywhere. Because they are everywhere. And we're probably all guilty of cause-effect confusion to some degree, in some areas of our lives.

You can probably see where I'm headed with this.

We have before us this Christmas the most astounding example of a cargo cult I can recall in my lifetime: We have a government that doesn't even understand their own flawed philosophy, mimicking the destructive actions (which had observably bad ends) without even grasping the flawed logic behind them.

For example, the current administration has reduced Keynesian theory (which Keynes himself didn't fully accept) to "throw money all over the place (especially to our friends) and good things will happen."

Same with health care: "Pass some laws—any laws—and health care will be 'solved'." The very passage of the laws themselves seems to have been backwards "Let's talk about how we've won and celebrate the passing of these laws, then we'll work on getting them passed. " (Consider the number of times Harry Reid proclaimed he had reached a consensus.)

Even the compromises emerged not from the idea of giving-and-taking on substance so that ultimately everyone could vote for something that was good enough, but by cajoling the "yeas" through any means necessary, no matter how bad a bill was created.

There's no grasp of cause-and-effect.

The frosting on this Christmas cookie being the philosophies that are being aped were never very successful either. FDR's "stimulus" may have been relatively benign, but the regulatory atmosphere—the atmosphere of wild experimentation, was demonstrably harmful. And even as real job creators today say they're reluctant to hire in such an unpredictable environment, it's not enough for the administration to spread money around, it can't resist demonstrating a willingness to stick its fingers everywhere.

At some point, one has to wonder if the actual cause-and-effect of freedom and stability leading to prosperity isn't very well understood by a lot of those working to undermine it.

At least that's what I'm wondering as I sit under my Christmas tree, singing carols, waiting for presents to appear. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 10:44 PM | Comments (58)
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Here's the, um, Yule Log.

According to the description..

The Yule Log aired every Christmas Eve in the 70's and 80's in the New York metro area on WPIX channel 11.

Yep. Every Christmas Eve.

And more from Wikipedia:

The Yule Log was created in 1966 by Fred M. Thrower, President and CEO of WPIX, Inc. Inspired by an animated Coca-Cola commercial a year earlier that showed Santa Claus at a fireplace, he envisioned this television program as a televised Christmas gift to those residents of "The Big Apple" who lived in apartments and homes without fireplaces. This also provided time for employees of the TV station to stay home with their families, instead of working for the usual morning news program.

The original film was shot at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York City John Lindsay. An estimated $4,000 (US) of advertising (along with a roller derby telecast that night) was canceled on Christmas Eve for the show's inaugural airing. Thrower, and WPIX-FM programming director Charlie Whittaker selected the music, largely based on the easy listening format the radio station had at that time, with the likes of Percy Faith, Nat King Cole, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, Mantovani and The Ray Conniff Singers to name a few. During the shoot, the producers removed a protective fire grate so that the blaze could be seen to its best advantage. Unfortunately, a stray spark damaged a nearby antique rug valued at $4,000.

The program was both a critical and ratings success, and by popular demand, it was rebroadcast for 23 consecutive years, beginning in 1967. However, by 1969 it was already clear that the original 16 mm film was quickly deteriorating from wear and needed to be re-shot. (In addition, the original loop was only seventeen seconds long, resulting in a visibly jerky and artificial appearance.) Station producer William Cooper, a future recipient of a Peabody Award, again asked to shoot the loop at Gracie Mansion. However the mayor's office, remembering the mishap with the rug, refused permission. So in 1970, WPIX found a fireplace with similar andirons at a residence in California and filmed a burning log on 35 mm film there on a hot August day. This version's loop runs approximately six minutes and three seconds [1].

Sometimes they didn't play music. Sometimes they just played the log burning:

It was sort of crazy, but every Christmas Eve we'd have this Yule Log on tv, and usually we'd also have a real fire.

I don't know why the Yule Log was always on. It was just what was done. No one could really explain it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 PM | Comments (96)
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