Links for 29 May 2009

Politics:
Dick Morris Thinks Convincing the Japanese to Develop Nuclear Weapons is the Solution to Dealing With North Korea (Oh, yeah, that's the ticket! Bring all of Northeast Asia into a nuclear arms race. No, thank you!)

Another Ralph Peters idea: Eventually, soldiers will need to start killing the media too (Yesterday, I linked to a post where Col. Ralph Peters suggested we should just kill all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some people have been looking into his previous statements, and found that he's also suggested that the military kill the media as well: "Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar. ... Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." Unthinkable now, unthinkable in the future, too, you nitwit!)

Fox News Embraces Right-Wing Theory That Obama Is Forcing GOP-Owned Car Dealerships To Close (Of course, no one seems to consider that "...all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.” But why let facts get in the way of a good hysteria? See also TBogg's Negro president locks Republican car dealers in the trunk and Yet another intrepid Malkin 'investigative scoop' goes pffffft.)

Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique? (The answer: YES! No wonder the Obama administration is trying to keep the new photos from Abu Ghraib secret.)

Rachel Maddow Responds to Tancredo's Racist Screed

Countdown: Jesse Ventura on Torture Prosecutions and Waterboarding (Ventura on "why he thinks we haven't had any prosecutions for torture in the United States, 'Mancow' Muller's waterboarding and Sean Hannity never agreeing to go through it himself.")

How to talk to a right winger ("What was ostensibly good for Israel for 40 years will also be good for another 400 years. For 40 years we were able to deceive ourselves, to mock the world, to occupy, to oppress, to trample and to kill. So why shouldn't we continue?")

The Potential Korea Escalation


Economics:
Yield Curve

"Fermi Problems" (Fermi Problems are interesting; I've run into a few, and I know that Microsoft has used them as part of their recruiting process. Thoma mentions that "Watching someone work out a Fermi problem in real time reveals a lot about their brainpower." More specifically, what it really does, IMO, is show how one works through a problem: the assumptions made and the logic necessary to solve the problem itself. Whether the solution itself is correct is mostly irrelevant. How one comes up with the solution is what's at stake.)

Are Durable Goods Orders Bottoming? (Another sign that might indicate the recession is beginning to fade.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
A quote to remember...


Miscellaneous:
Closer: The Cutout Of Delight (Always carry an extra hand in your purse, my dear?)

Russian police find feral girl in Siberia (Astaghfirullah! Poor girl. Russian police have taken into care a 5-year-old girl who has been shut up in a flat in the company of cats and dogs for her entire life, police said on Wednesday. ... The girl, who lived in the Eastern Siberian city of Chita, could not speak Russian and acted like an dog when police took her into care. ... "For five years, the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and had never been outside," a police statement said.)

Crater on Mars named for Isaac Asimov (An asteroid was already named after him, but this is still an overdue honor.)

Links for 20 May 2009

Thank God I did this over two sessions.

Politics:
Republican Strategist Tantaros Thinks Suggesting She Undergo Waterboarding Is "Lame" (Coward.)

Countdown's Worst Person: Bill O'Reilly...New Champion For Protecting Our Privacy

Ventura's smashdown tour continues, with Yellow Elephant Kilmeade the latest victim (Sooner or later, conservatives are going to realize that going mano a mano against Jesse Ventura is not a bright idea.)

Bet Accepted (Seven reasons why Republicans have an uphill battle to control even one branch of the federal government.)

Barton: We Shouldn’t Regulate CO2 Because ‘It’s In Your Coca-Cola’ And ‘You Can’t Regulate God’ (This sort of argument strikes me as similar to what I heard druggies argue several decades ago, that because marijuana, cocaine and other drugs were "natural" (as opposed to man-made drugs like LSD) that it wasn't "harmful." Yeah, right!)

Countdown: Worst Persons May 19, 2009 (The coward Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Barton.)


Economics:
In Search of ... Hyperinflationary Expectations (Short answer: not any time soon.)

FRBSF Economic Outlook ("To me the forecast seems optimistic, but in any case, employment is unlikely to turn around until many months after output recovers. ... Let's hope the forecast is correct, or even understates the speed of recovery, but policymakers must take seriously the possibility that this forecast - as has been generally true for all the forecasts from various sources that have come before it - will have to be revised downward later.")

Math and the City ("These numerical coincidences seem to be telling us something profound. It appears that Aristotle’s metaphor of a city as a living thing is more than merely poetic. There may be deep laws of collective organization at work here, the same laws for aggregates of people and cells. ..." See also Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities?.)

Geography of a Recession (The New York Times has created an interactive map of the United States that can show you, county-by-county, what the unemployment rate is and the one-year change in unemployment.)

Japan Shrinks 15.2%


Business:
The $5-million billboard. Was it worth it?


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Quran Read-A-Long: The Cow 284-286 Complete the Second Sura

Bibles Destroyed in Afghanistan... By U.S. Military (On May 6th, I linked to a story about US Army soldiers proselytizing (masquerading as "giving gifts") in Afghanistan, with the video showing a stack of Bibles in the Dari and Pashto languages. Now, supposedly, according to an Army spokeswoman, "the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed." Take of that what you will.)

The Uighurs: Compilation ("This is a post compiling the questionable and/or false claims that have been made about the Uighurs.")

If Chris Coleman Was a Muslim? (No kidding.)


Miscellaneous:
Sagittarius and the Central Milky Way

Rose is Rose

Hairdressers Journal: Linda Blair Special (Doesn't anyone review these sorts of images and realize just how badly they've been manipulated???)

Sci-Fi’s Top 5 Toughest Gals (#s 1, 2 and 3 I completely agree with. Four, I'm OK with; Five??? How was Scully "tough?")

Links for 19 May 2009

Better late than never.

Politics:
Matthew Yglesias: Republican Efforts to Make Hay of Pelosi May Backfire (Classic quote: "You know, Newt Gingrich knows a lot about saying stupid things and being forced out of the job as Speaker.")

Jesse Ventura slams Sean Hannity, who actually says America is 'better off' after George Bush!

Ann Coulter attacks faith of Notre Dame officials, but gets rattled when called on the carpet (I'm amazed any news program bothers with this woman.)

Alan Keyes denounces President Obama as "the focal point of evil" (The stupid never stops, does it?)

Peter King says getting to the truth about torture is anti-American (How about "A Republican is, by defintion, anti-American?")

Where Art Thou, Howard Dean?

Obama/Netanyahu Meet Produces Few Results

Kuwait Elections: 4 Women in Parliament, Shiite Reps nearly Double

Montana town requests that U.S. government send 100 Gitmo detainees to its prison. ("Thar's gold in them there detainees!")

Obama: Israeli settlements ‘have to be stopped.’ (I'll believe it when I see it.)

Steele invokes Ronald Reagan to argue that the GOP should never look ‘backward.’ (Does this guy even think before speaking?)


Economics:
"Banks Just Don’t Go Under" (Angry Bear briefly looks at the possibility (more likely probability) that bank directors could be found personally liable for their bank's demise. This type of lawsuit has already been filed locally, here in Singapore, where a prominent investor, Oei Hong Leong is suing Citigroup because he lost $1 billion last year.)

Just How Serious is the Credit Contraction? (Not as bad as you might think.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Oh man, white muslims again

Sites in 3D: 360 x 180° Panoramic Photographs

Don’t Be Ig’nit (An Izzy Mo rant, which most likely will generate tons of comments. Sometimes I feel jealous of not getting this type of attention. ;) )

Specter cancels appearance at ‘anti-Islamist’ conference. (Good news for once.)

Fear of the Muslim Mother (Umar Lee on the Muslim Demographics video.)


Miscellaneous:
Dilbert (As a matter of fact I do have an MBA. Why do you ask? ;) )

Discount Dance: Dance Dance Revulsion (Some Photoshoppers should leave well enough alone.)

Holy Season One, Batman! (In the "someone has too much time on their hands" department, a compendium of all the "Holy..." uttered by "Robin" in the first season (alone) of the 60s TV series Batman. A total of 111 of them, all in 3:19.)

Jesse Ventura on The View about Waterboarding

"If waterboarding's OK, then why don't we let our police do it to suspects so they can learn what they know? ... If waterboarding's OK, why didn't we waterboard McVeigh and Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers, to find out if there were more people involved? ... We only seem to waterboard Muslims. ... Have we waterboarded anyone else? Name me someone else we've waterboarded!

Note to Elisabeth Hasselbeck (the dumb blond in the video), to (the coward) Sean Hannity, and any other moron who thinks waterboarding isn't torture: If you really believe that, if you have the courage of your convictions, then, man or woman, you should undergo waterboarding yourself. No if's, and's, or but's. Until you've undergone the experience, as Ventura has, you have no reason to claim that waterboarding isn't torture. Prove that it isn't torture. Until then, shut up!

Links for 16 May 2009

Politics:
Countdown: WTF!! Texas Still Wants to Leave the Union (Countdown on Texas's Governor Perry still thinking about seceding from the US)

Rachel Maddow Show: Tracing Torture's Trail (A time line for how torture was used in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and to justify the invasion after the U.S. had already gone in.)

Dennis Kucinich: We're Moving From Industrial Capitalism To Financial Capitalism To Crony Capitalism!

Australian Press Releases Abu Ghraib Photos

Gore: Cheney is in no position to talk ‘about making the country less safe.’

Steele: We Need Guns To Defend Ourselves Against ‘Terrorists’ Coming To ‘Our Communities’ More stupid from the GOP; no doubt lacking any real terrorists, redneck gun owners will kill indiscriminately local innocent Muslims instead.)

Yes, it’s that bad for the GOP (Includes The Colbert Report video, "Stephen's Sound Advice - How to Re-Brand the GOP.")


Economics:
Industrial Production Drop Worse Since WW II

CPI Report (See also Bonddad's post.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
The Boys' First Portraits (Abu Sinan's two younger boys had formal portraits taken; those two kids are sooo good looking!)

White privilege and the white convert (An excellent essay by Indigo Jo; on the longish side, but "must read" material.)

Islamic Calligraphy Art of Four Qul (The "Four Qul" being Surahs 109, 112, 113 and 114.)


Miscellaneous:
M97 - The Owl Nebula

C&L's Late Night Music Club with Wayman Tisdale, 1964-2009 (Sadly, Tisdale died the other day, most likely from bone cancer. It was a pleasure to watch him play with the Phoenix Suns for three seasons, from 1995-98. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.)

Rochester Institute of Technology's Domino Madness! (If you like watching large sets of dominoes fall, this video will satisfy.)

New Look: Show A Little Leg ("Evidently the New Look is similar to the I Have Polio Look.")

Saturday Morning Matinee: Reach (Cute animation. Check it out!)

Star Trek Movie Quick Recognition Chart (Can't decide which Star Trek film to watch tonight? /film ("Slashfilm") has an interesting flow chart to help you make the right decision!)