Death tax

For the love of God!!! get that evil thing repealed so that Leona Helmsely's dog can inherit her full $12 million.

Joshua Crust.

Who would have thought that it would have been bad housing loans that started the collapse of the world economy?

I note with little further comment that we're about to have to surrender some of our sovereignty in the name of capitalism.

I stayed away from Larry Craig's story for a while

I don't think a person's sex life is anybody else's business. Unless that person has tried to make hay out of a "family values" position. Or if the sex life involves homosexual activity and the homosexualist opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians, as is the case with Senator Larry Craig. This guy has enough money to hire sex partners. Whyowhyo would he be so stupid as to solicit sex from a cop in an airport men's room? Oh, wait! He says that the Idaho Statesman has been clouding his judgment. I believe that should excuse anything he's done, right? Right?

We used to be the good guys

Read this story about the treatment an American citizen received at the hands of the American military in Iraq for whistle-blowing about illegal arms sales and then tell me something good about the US.

From Hell

No, this is not a message about the triple digit temperature that the parts of the US that aren't flooded are experiencing. This is about that most amazing of historical graphic novels.

I just indexed Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's Jack the Ripper opus, From Hell. This necessitated re-reading it and that reminded me of how absolutely wonderful it is.

Worthy of the name "novel," it is so rich and intricate as to almost defy description as a comic book. Most who are at all familiar with his work will accept that Moore is a brilliant writer but the depth of research and the...vividness of his characterizations here is simply stupendous. The mental illness of Dr. William Gull, royal physician, Moore's candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper, is, while monstrous, at the same time almost delicate. Gull is never a slavering lunatic, but always, even in his brutalization of his victims, a man of deep belief in the powers of mystic philosophy. It may seem silly to call Jack the Ripper a man capable of great subtlety, but Gull's dialog requires multiple readings for a full grasp of the complex portrait Moore crafts of the man whom he credits with bringing about the 20th century.

And Eddie Campbell. Sigh. Campbell is one of my personal favorite cartoonists. His work here is just as deeply researched as Moore's and his evocation of the poverty and squalor of Victorian slums is perfect. There is never a mis-step. The personality of Inspector Fred Abberline, the lead investigator, comes through in his body language as though Campbell had drawn him from life. I own a page of original art from the sequence of the police drowning of Montague Druitt and I treasure it.

I understand that there is a new Top Shelf edition of this remarkable work. Obviously, I highly recommend it. No, that's not right -- I practically demand that you get it and. Get it and read it regardless of your interest in Jack the Ripper. And if you have an interest in the Ripper murders, read it as a compendium of facts (you don't have to believe that Gull was the Ripper). Get it and read it if you have the slightest interest in comics as important medium. Or as sublime entertainment.

A little bit of xenobiology for Mars

What about life that uses hydrogen peroxide to avoid that crystalline water problem and to draw more water to itself? That would be pretty useful on a cold, very dry planet, now wouldn't it? And, apparently, it could explain some of those results from the Viking missions that nobody has been able to explain by purely chemical processes.

Crime and hysteria

I received the following e-mail this morning from a University of Arkansas at Little Rock e-mail list. It came, ostensibly, to another University employee from someone at Dillard's corporate office and the UALR person thought they needed to share it:

Just wanted to let you know about the update that was provided to Brandon from the Little Rock Detectives. Please share this with everyone you know. This came straight from the Detective working Brandon’s case:

Come to find out, this is the fourth time this has happened in the River Market Area in the last 4 weeks. One of the previous three involved a young woman who was abducted, taken to ATM’s, then brutally beaten, raped, and killed. Her body was found in the SAME EXACT LOCATION as where the two suspects dropped Brandon off on Thursday night. The local media is cooperating with the Police at the request of the Mayor and is not publicizing any of these crimes as it would give “the wrong image” about Little Rock and the River Market. So instead, it continues to happen. Brandon was parked, as were the previous three, under the bridges between the Marriott and Axiom. The assailants were waiting in the shadows.

Here’s what actually took place: Brandon Harris (who sits right next to me) left a River Market restaurant Thursday night at about 9:00 pm. He was parked under the Markham/Cantrell Bridges between the Marriott and Axiom. Two men came from nowhere, stuck a gun to him and forced him into the backseat of his car. They then drove to an ATM, holding Brandon at gunpoint. They demanded his pin number, retrieved the daily limit, and drove out to the swampy area on I-530. During this drive, they continued to pistol whip him in the head. They took a road underneath one of the 530 bridges, stopped the car, shot him once while he was in the floorboard. They then pulled him out, fired twice more (both shots luckily missed) then picked up his cell phone and called someone stating “It’s done, we just threw him out at the drop off”. Brandon was smart enough to play dead until they left. He then spent the night crawling through the woods and swamp until he was found the next morning.

A group of people here at work have decided to make up flyers and start distributing them at night to people in the River Market describing the details of the four attacks. And this will continue until the city and the media has done something about it. This would be the reason why Channel 7 had some of the details botched in their report on Friday night. Please send this to everyone you know.

I read it and thought how strange to be in on the seminal moment of an urban legend. And, of course, that turned out to be the case. There have been two robberies by a pair of juveniles. No rapes. No murders. Just incipient hysteria.

But consider how something like this can impact a restaurant-entertainment area like Little Rock's River Market (think Beale in Memphis or Deep Ellum in Dallas). Something like this gets some buzz and pretty soon people are afraid to go down under the overpass to smoke dope or get blow jobs or whatever the fuck these people were doing under an interstate overpass. Sheesh.

Kucinich gets another supporter

There's still time for American to come to its senses and give the presidency to the man whose views most closely represent their own.

Afro-centrism

There are some things that I simply cannot understand. The current King Tut exhibition that is touring the US is catching flak from African-American groups because the portrayal of Tut is too white. Jesus jumped up in a sidecar Christ. Listen to the NPR story. You will hear a "scholar" of some sort saying that when school kids coming out of the exhibition were asked where Tut was from, they didn't say Africa. Imagine that.

Have you ever looked at reproductions of the tomb paintings in Egypt? Did you ever see the black servants and slaves? Notice that they are portrayed as having different skins tones from the Egyptians? Apparently there are Afrocentric "scholars" who have not and still think they are qualified to make arguments. These are the same "scholars" who a few years ago began to agitate for the position that Hannibal and the Carthaginians were black. Somehow, they are equating all of Africa with a black race. I'm stunned at the -- the -- sheer -- stupidity of it.

And why does NPR not rat these people out instead of giving them air time?

I sound like a 1960 reactionary in Mississippi, don't I? I just want people to stop using false scholarship to support a weak (or ludicrous) position.

Sigh.

Find out which presidential candidate agrees with you

If you are in the majority (53% of American voters), then you'll find that you should vote for Dennis Kucinich. Kinda makes you sick, doesn't it, that the candidate whose views most closely reflect those of the majority of Americans can't catch a break?

Anyway, the quiz is here.

We live in *very* science fiction-y universe

This the sort of thing that Robert Heinlein said defined science fiction.

We live in a science fiction universe #2,784,922

My pal, Charles, brings to my attention the idea of non-organic life, postulated by some Russians, some Germans, and some Aussies.

My sentiments are best expressed by quoting Katherine Hepburn from "Philadelphia Story": Golly.

Among the many things I don't understand

These "virtual life" games. Do not mis-understand me. I have played kitchen-table role playing games for many, many years. And I played with dolls way to long for a boy. And I still have a pretty strong day-dreaming streak. But come on.

It's the sex, isn't it?

Masturbation is illgeal in Florida prisons

I'm not even sure I know what to say about this story. Of course, there is a subtext is that only hinted at: the complaints are from a female guard.

Why do we have female guards in men's prisons? Does that make sense? I realize that it is the feminist position that women can perform any job that a man can but do we want them to?

Ethanol is bad

At least I'm not the only one who knows it. Jeff Goodell, writing for Rolling Stone, knows it, too. Greed will destroy us -- IS destroying us.

Asperger syndrome

I do not want to make light of people who may (or may not) have a serious mental illness but Asperger syndrome is one of those conditions whose existence is controversial. The autism continuum is, well, suspect on the high functioning end.

Anyway. Here's a self-administered test. I scored a 26. 'Bout where I would have figured. I expect my pals Greg and Daniel to score higher.

Parenting

I don't have much to say about this article on how American parents play with their children. I'm cogitating.

I've long noted that my generation (I'm 45) seems to have stretched childhood out a helluva lot further than our parents did. That can't be ignored in decyphering the secrets of good parenting.

Also, while the article makes a backhanded attempt at saying the children of low-income families aren't necessarily getting bad parenting, again, an important point is missed: the hunter/gatherer cultures that are referenced have waaaaaay more leisure time than the working poor. In fact, hunter/gatherers have lots and lots of leisure time. They invented art and writing and cities and animal husbandry and farming and all that stuff that we think of as civilization.

Anyway. Cogitating.

Today's wallpaper

The picture is nice, of course, but the astronomy is pretty damned interesting.

As always, I find images of galaxies to be relaxing and prone to induce a meditative mood.

Something I forgot to do a couple of days ago

My pal, Greg, has an amusing (and sad and shameful) tee-shirt design available for purchase through CafePress. I bought one and wore it yesterday and had forgotten that I had it on by dinner time and got some looks I couldn't understand for several seconds at the place where we had pizza.

I wore it with pride and/or shame depending on how you look at it.

The right-wing radio hosts are insane

Oh, I know that they don't believe the bullshit they sling. They say it because it makes them money but how in the name of all that's decent can people like Savage stay on the air when he accuses a United States Senator of poisoning the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? No motive. No evidence. No nothing. Just batshit insane spewing of hatred and his 8 million listeners lapping it up.

The sorry lying bastards

The occupation is going to cost a trillion dollars, even if we immediately do a troop draw down. While this Boston Globe article is ostensibly criticizing the administration, they are either purposefully or foolishly using the administrations nomenclature, which makes it easy for the administration to insist that they are bearing any cost in the defense of liberty.

This is not a war. The war is over. Rumsfeld and Company were right: the war last days, not weeks. The war is over. Let's all say it together: THE WAR IS OVER. What we are in now is the occupation. The long, long, long occupation. How long? How long will the oil last? Because unless we begin a wholesale recall of the Congress in '08 and replace them with people who are willing to take their oaths seriously and defend the Constitution, the oil companies will see to it that we stay in Iraq until the last drop comes out of the Middle East. And then, if the Chinese haven't already used it up, we'll have a real war with them over the oil in Indonesia.




ITMFA

Murdered gorillas

Some ignorant third-world barbarians murdered a group of gorillas Sunday. We make too many excuses sometimes for violence in the support of economics. The killers wanted to make a statement about the park's opposition to the charcoal trade so they engaged in murder. The Telegraph reports the story as murder. Everybody should think of it that way.

The hell of it is that most people won't call it murder and, under the law, it isn't. I hate mankind today.