All basketball comments must be in the form of a question.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:34 PM | Comments (267)
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Here are the rules: Anyone can add to the story. But you can only add three words at a time. Any meta comment or any other comment that is not part of the story must be set apart in square brackets. [Like this.]

Let's have this one be a mystery. In space. With phasers and big boobs. And a princess. A gold ring. A wolf. And a shrubbery. I'll start it off:

Once upon a...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 12:48 PM | Comments (2683)
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Being that it was such a slow news day, I asked Candace Kita to join me at the AoSHQ Whale Suite high atop the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. After Jameson (the weekend butler) served us a shaker of tequila martinis, Ms Kita proceeded to explain her latest project. "I filmed a very funny reenactment of the car wash scene from the film Cool Hand Luke. It was for a great entertainment media site called Crackle.com and no, I did not play a prisoner..."
Check it out below. Probably NSFW. Enjoy. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:45 AM | Comments (43)
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Ed Morrissey notes it's not his fault, and James Joyner says so too.

But Joyner says something I disagree with:

Should Jones have burned the Koran? No. But not because doing so might incite some evil people halfway around the world to commit atrocities against innocents. Rather, he shouldnÂ’t have done it was needlessly hurtful without adding any value to the debate. Indeed, aside from generating publicity for himself, heÂ’s likely generated sympathy for Islam and disdain for churches of his ilk.

That's exactly backwards. He shouldn't have burned it only because it would inflame lunatics to kill people, and we don't want to make things more difficult on our troops.

But as for "the debate"? What debate? The debate over whether or not I have to bow down to a primitive, alien religion and honor its symbols?

The proper thing is to burn ten Korans for each casualty inflicted by Muslim murderers. Now, I wouldn't do that, because I am, in fact, deferring to the "murderers' veto" and I don't want to cause my fellow Americans any more difficulty than needed in Afghanistan.

But minus that? Minus that, I'd have a Koran on my barbecue this weekend.

The principle of politeness goes out the window when those who seek "respect" and "tolerance" are murdering people to get it. They're not seeking respect; they're seeking obedience through terror.

I don't wish to offend moderate Muslims (and, contra some commenters claims -- of course they exist; but unfortunately there aren't enough of them to make a dominant, social-rules-establishing-and-enforcing majority), but I also need to establish that there is no alien religion's claim of blasphemy over me.

I think Joyner is trying to set up a paradigm where he doesn't encourage such rude (and yet useful) displays but claims it's for reasons other than terroristic cowing.

I guess that's an attempt to not incentivize the killers, even while also attempting to mollify them.

Trouble is, it's false, and everyone knows it. The only reason this isn't done more frequently is precisely because of the excitable murder-cultists. They know it, we know it.

Of course, if they stopped butchering people, I'd also have no reason to burn the Koran, because why would I wish to upset nice people? I wouldn't, of course.

But given they live and breathe terror and mayhem -- philosophically, their fetishes should be destroyed, to demonstrate their lack of power.

But we don't do that precisely because they're killers and animals.

By the Way: I do think Terry Jones is a self-aggrandizing jerk. I think he did this for attention/approval. He dismissed that his approval would come at someone else's expense.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (838)
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The Bayeux Tapestry from an Information Technology Point of View.

Good Morning.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:58 AM | Comments (40)
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Could I borrow your wallet? more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:09 PM | Comments (206)
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Well, well. I'm back! Happy April Fools Day y'all! Yeah, yeah, I know most of you are hoping this is a trick but nope, you are stuck with me tonight. As usual, go get that preferred liquid beverage of your choice or comfort food and enjoy!

Now that is a picture of that rare creature known as the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer. Never heard of it? Me neither until today.

These bizarre creatures were each about half a foot long, very light, and had a bony plate attached to their head that could become burning hot, allowing them to bore tunnels through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins. Packs of them would melt the ice beneath a penguin causing it to sink into the slush, at which point the borers would surround the hapless creature and consume it.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:05 PM | Comments (998)
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It's not that I didn't notice this story. It's that I want to take some time before writing about it.

So it goes.

I only see two options I can support:

1. We keep doing what we're doing. We fight the Bush way.

2. We recognize that the proper response to savagery and terror is savagery and terror, and we drop our illusions about being able to effect a good solution to this problem, and we begin revising our policy about bombing population centers. And we define a major terrorist attack as being a nuclear-level attack, inviting a nuclear response.

After 9/11 I was pretty sure what I wanted to see was Option 2. When Bush took nukes off the table, I was disappointed.

I did then, and still do, criticize Bush for being a Born-Again Christian. By which I mean: informed by the Christian ethics of mercy and regard for human life.

Which I thought were nice and everything but... too constraining.

After 9/11, I had a much less Christian sort of thought about how to deal with a murder cult.

Bush sort of changed my mind, and pursued, I thought, what seemed to be a less savage, more noble course. I gave him credit for that. Maybe I (and people who thought like me) were in fact giving license to genocidal hatred. Maybe Bush's decision to keep things civilized was a good one.

I was proud of what Bush, and the troops fighting for America, did for me, and for all of us. It wasn't just that they delivered justice -- justice could be more cheaply delivered via massive bombs dropped on cities and towns. They also delivered something finer than justice. Compassion, mercy.

I wouldn't have chosen that course -- but I was glad that cooler (or, warmer) heads chose it for me.

But as this goes on I am going back to thinking those are expensive luxuries and I no longer wish to pay for such things.

Posted by: Ace at 01:24 PM | Comments (524)
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The Spanish are good at many things, George Orwell wrote, but war wasn't among them.

So too the Libyans. Qadaffy apparently was smart enough to be on the look-out for a coup and so didn't train many of his people in military skills.

They're just not soldiers. That's understandable -- most of them weren't fighters until a few weeks ago.

But with no military discipline at all, how can they possibly win?

For many rebel fighters, the absence of competent military leadership and a tendency to flee at the first shot have contributed to sagging morale....

"Kadafi is too strong for us, with too many heavy weapons. What can we do except fall back to protect ourselves?" said Salah Chaiky, 41, a businessman, who said he fired his assault rifle while fleeing Port Brega even though he was too far away to possibly hit the enemy.

...

They say orders are never issued, except by fellow fighters, and that those are routinely ignored. Kadafi family members who control Libya's cellphone network have cut most cell communications in the rebel-held east, leaving each gun truck to fight on its own.

...

Several fighters said they were now being charged one Libyan dinar (about 80 cents) per bullet because rebels had wasted thousands of precious rounds firing wildly into the air. During the panicked retreat from the desert hamlet of Bin Jawwad on Tuesday, many fighters fired randomly as they fled, sometimes just over the heads of fellow rebels.

A lot of kids (15 years old, around) have come to the front, thinking it's some kind of Rambo movie. They don't bring weapons with them, though.

So, do what? Train them? That could take a year (and a year would be rush job, at that). And who's going to pay for all that? Are US personnel going to be doing that?

And what happens in the meantime? And does anyone think Obama has the resolve for a year long mission in Libya?

Are we really going to fly interdiction missions in Libya for that whole year?

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (158)
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Any progress realized in language function only optimizes leftbrain stimulation. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (157)
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