Nonsense still continuing

War Vet, 50, Stunned By New Deployment

"(I was) kind of shocked, not understanding what I was getting into," said Bandel, who lives in the Nashville, Tenn., area.

In 1993, Bandel took the option of leaving the Army without retirement and never thought he would be called back to action.

"Here he's 50 years old, getting his AARP card, and here he's being redeployed with all these 18-year-olds," said Paul's wife, Linda Bandel.

"I can understand, say, 'Here, we have this assignment for you stateside. Go do your training,'" said Paul Bandel. "But, 'Hey, here's a gun, go back to the desert.'"

Involuntary recall allows the military, regardless of age or how long someone has been out of service, to order vets back into active duty.

"Anger's not the word. I was more concerned about the financial impact it's going to do. My pay's probably cut in half," said Paul Bandel.

Short story

Taking a break from my novel in order to finish a short story I started in September.

My novel is at 58K words, which means that it will not be as short as I had originally hoped. Nonetheless, it is taking shape and hopefully will be completed either this month or next (well, the first draft).

BS

Can anyone explain why bullshit should not be in a dictionary?

Rhetorical question.

Elegant evolution

Wired presents 12 elegant examples of evolution. Nature is beautiful.

For your own sanity, ignore the idiocy in the comments below. Humans can be ugly.

A new progressive era

British PM Brown:

Gordon Brown today braces Britain for potentially its worst recession since the second world war by promising to work with Barack Obama to create a new progressive era across the world. He claims he can build "a global coalition for change" with the US president-elect.

The prime minister said 2008 would be remembered as the year in which "the old era of unbridled free market dogma was finally ushered out". In his traditional new year message, Brown struck a tone of tempered optimism, saying that Britain can this year build a better tomorrow through strategic investments while dealing with the dangerous challenges of today.

He said: "The failure of previous governments in previous global downturns was to succumb to political expediency and to cut back investment across the board, thereby stunting our ability to grow and strangling hope during the upturn. This will not happen on my watch.

One can only hope that time will not look back on this speech as an act of hubris, but given the current political trends in the UK...

Once in a lifetime

Once in a Lifetime, by the Talking Heads

Happy New Year!

Awesomeness

Racism in the beautiful game

Dashiell Hammett notes

Just finished watching The Maltese Falcon again after many many years.

I've read The Maltese Falcon three or four times over the past few years, partly because its a good book with a good yarn, but mostly to see what works and what doesn't work in a novel, even a genre novel like the Falcon.

The biggest flaw in Hammett's writing is that he doesn't understand women and doesn't pretend to either. His women are often hysterical, in the old sense of the term, and too clever by half: most of the women in his novels cannot make plans, follow plans, or know what a plan is. Exceptions include Nora, in The Thin Man, and perhaps Janet Henry in The Glass Key.

This flaw is exceptionally obvious in The Maltese Falcon. There are moments in the story when I just want to slap Brigid O’Shaughnessy silly. Oh well.

There are also scenes that are either extraneous or are put together in too haphazard a way.

The best Hammett novel, and apparently the one he appreciated the most, is The Glass Key.

At the halfway mark

At the halfway point in the Premier Season, and the entire bottom-half of the standings are in relegation trouble, and the only three teams looking to be in title contention are Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool. The top three have had a frustrating year.

Liverpool has been missing its star striker, Torres, due to mysterious hamstring troubles. Its other star, Robbie Keane, has been unable to find goal for most of the season (the last two games may mark a turn-around, only time will tell). Most commentators have been unimpressed with Liverpool's form and expect Liverpool to collapse in the second half of the season.

Chelsea have been without their number one striker, Drogba, for most of the season. While Anelka has been pounding in the goals, he does not seem to be able to make them when the club needs them the most: when they need one to tie or go ahead. Chelsea has the best midfield in the league, but the whole team is too easily thwarted by tenacious defense.

Manchester United has also had problems scoring when it counts. However, unlike Chelsea, ManU have no excuses, with the best strikers in the league (Rooney, Berbatov, Tevez, and Ronaldo) all willing and able and fit. Ronaldo seems to be off his form this year, although no one seems to be talking about it. Manchester United are ten points behind Liverpool, but have played three fewer games due to international commitments (the Supercup and the International Champions Cup).

Aston Villa is having a good year, but they have not convinced themselves that they can be champions -- they seem to have set their sights just on finishing the year at number 4, which will be good enough to qualify them for the big boys in the European Champion's Cup.

Arsenal's biggest problem is itself. Wenger seems to have lost his way. And while the talent is there, the youth and inexperience of the team shows itself in frightening ways.

Everton is one point behind Arsenal, but no one mentions this team as a possible title challenger. Perhaps it would be poetry if they somehow managed to end the season in the top four.

At the beginning of the season I believed that Chelsea would be the team to beat: they know what it means to end up with the consolation prize. I still think that is true.

Song For Sally

Song For Sally, by Flight of the Conchords

And then some...

Atrios sez:

50 or so years from now the history dissertations about this time will start being churned out. And those poor students will have to wade through the contemporary press accounts from the 9/11-Iraq war era. I hope their advisers provide them with puke buckets, because they're going to need them.

The future is going to need many many many puke buckets.

Driving one's wife crazy

Even funnier than the wife is the smile on Riccardo Patrese's face.

Agbonlahor

A football story: Villa's gamble pays off as Agbonlahor adds grace to pace.

Happiness

Robert Solomon on Philosophy Talk from 2004.

Maybe my impression is wrong, but the hosts seem pretty dismissive of callers' comments, even though they beg for them (especially if the caller is a woman). Solomon is worth listening to.

WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last night for the first time -- I know, I know, always late to the show -- and I have to say that it is one of the best films that has ever been made, not necessarily the best, but definitely in the top ten. WALL-E manages to capture and present the magic that is cinema. Little touches, like Pong and the Macintosh boot sound, were humorous and endearing.

However what sold me on the movie, and what captivated me, was the movie's implicit dissection of what makes us human, as opposed to intelligent automatons -- it is an argument with two different prongs. On the one hand there is the romance between WALL-E and EVE. And on the other there is the effect that WALL-E has on the humans aboard the AXIOM space ship. It is a subtle and deft treatment of an ages old philosophical question, with an answer that is both illuminating and humanistic. It also lends the movie a greater heft than other Pixar fares, such as the incredibly entertaining Ratatouille or The Incredibles.

The Real Madrid strategy

In light of today's latest Cristiano Ronaldo rumors, this old-ish post on Real Madrid's strategy seems apt.

Another deep thought

The bigger the microphone, the less likely the speaker has any clue what they are talking about.

Just saying.

Deep Thought

Striking a note of reasonableness in a heated dispute between other parties is a sure way to be ignored.

It does not, however, mean you are wrong.

One bad apple for another

Real Madrid exchange one bad manager for another

Real Madrid have sacked their coach, Bernd Schuster, and the former Tottenham Hotspur manager Juande Ramos has taken over at the Santiago Bernabéu, forfeiting a pre-contract agreement with Atlético Madrid. Ramos has been appointed until the end of the season.

I believe Ramos is to blame for everything that went wrong with Tottenham at the beginning of this season -- even the Berbatov snafu.

I do not believe that he will be able to solve Madrid's many problems -- especially considering that one of its biggest problems is its chairman.

We need to look out for each other.

Chileans have a new hero: an apparently homeless dog who's gone missing. A surveillance camera on a Santiago freeway captured images of a dog trotting past speeding cars to pull the body of another dog, mortally struck by a vehicle, away from traffic, to the median strip.

The scene was broadcast by Chilean television stations and then posted on Web sites such as YouTube.com, and hundreds of thousands of people had viewed versions of it by Monday.

Highway crews removed both the dead and live dogs from the median strip of the Vespucio Norte Highway shortly after the Dec. 4 incident, and the rescuer dog ran away.

Authorities say images of the rescue prompted some people to call and offer to adopt the dog, but neither highway workers nor a television crew could find they animal when they went to hunt for it.

Not the news I want to read

Publishing houses slashing themselves.

"Black Wednesday" or "Overly-emo-slash-'I need attention' Wednesday"?

My first novel is two-thirds done. I'd actually welcome news that would encourage me to finish faster, not slower.

revelation

Sheldon Rampton discusses the LDS and homophobia, with context:

As a high school student in 1974, I felt privately uncomfortable with the "Negro doctrine," but like many members of the church, I didn't think about it very much. It didn't become a personal thing for me until one day in gym class, when a black kid came up to me and angrily said he had heard that Mormons didn't think blacks like him should go to heaven. What did I think of that? He wanted to know.

Technically, he was wrong about the theological details. Mormons actually believed that blacks could go to heaven. They just couldn't have the priesthood. I tried to make that distinction the basis for a joke to defuse the situation. "No, we think you can go to heaven," I replied. "We just think you don't deserve to." The black kid glared at me for a minute, and that was the end of the conversation. Today, more than 30 years later, I don't remember his name, but I remember the moment very clearly. I imagine he walked away thinking he had wasted his breath by even talking to me. He certainly didn't get a satisfactory reply. But the conversation had an effect on me. It left me feeling profoundly shaken and uncomfortable about a church practice that until then had seemed like a theoretical abstraction of no particular relevance to my own life. Over time, that discomfort helped inform my thinking and changed my attitudes.

Self-knowledge

The Middleman, pilot episode:

WENDY: Is it true what you said? That if there’s one thing you hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it’s scientists who twist innocent primates with computer enhanced mind control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power?

THE MIDDLEMAN: Why would I lie about that?

WENDY: It’s a very specific thing to hate.

THE MIDDLEMAN: Self-knowledge is the gateway to freedom.

Snark about show business

Score!:

Look, I don’t know who the PR wizard is behind the rollout of Britney Spears‘ new album is but he or she is doing a masterful job. It’s like pre-meltdown Britney is back. But with the added benefit of knowing that any second she could pull out an Uzi and take out the entire crowd at the American Music Awards. Score!

Drama!

In the 83rd minute, with Hearts less than 10 minutes away from winning their first championship since 1960, Kidd scored the opening goal with a close-range finish from a corner kick. Six minutes later, Kidd effectively ended Hearts' chances by scoring a sublime second goal to make the final score a 2–0 win for Dundee. Remarkably, Kidd had not scored all season[2] before scoring two goals in the last 10 minutes of the season. Celtic won their game 5–0[5] to win the championship on goal difference by three goals.

No longer recognizing marriage?

An interesting take on the marriage wars...

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.

Turns out it’s fun.

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, "He’s my husband,"
"Oh," I say, "I no longer recognize marriage."

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

"How’s your longtime companion, Jill?"
"She’s my wife!"
"Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage."

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

Ordinary soap operas

The life and death of Suzanne Tamim.

Basic Civics

Some of the economics questions are biased, but whatever: I got 32 out of 33 correct. Woot to me.

Apparently our elected officials need to be schooled. US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Serie A

Amy Lawrence on the decline of Serie A

Sinfest

Sinfest keeps getting better and better. A moment of sublime goodness every morning.

Inter Win

Inter won against Juventus. It was a good game, and in reality Inter deserved the win, although they had trouble converting attacks into goals.

Now I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Barca game.

Liverpool and Chelsea

Two good results for Manchester United as both Liverpool and Chelsea draw today. Hopefully Manchester United will capitalize and come away today with a win.

The Chelsea game was good, with two controversial, but spot-on, refereeing decisions. Chelsea dominated the ball and generally looked like winners. But were stymied, I believe, on their reliance on their midfield to create opportunities. The Chelsea strikers were not good enough to break down a determined Newcastle defense -- a defense that was essentially a 'team bus' approach (parking the team in front of goal). Chelsea should have won today, but the opportunities they created were slight and would have depended on luck to make them come through. Really they should have worked harder to create better opportunities.

Update: Well boo. Man Utd held scoreless and fail to capitalize.

A sporting life

I suppose one of the great things about sports are stories like this one.

Beat him with a hammer, beat him with a stick

I agree, but there are many more reasons than this one:

all of which, having seen in person, you really, really wish you could use to beat the shit out of Tom Wolfe.

While the derisive comment about Tom Wolfe resonated (with me), the post is worth reading because its subject matter is not Tom Wolfe, but rather War Memorials (read the comments too).

Sports and the press

Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger discusses the relationship between Bayern Munchen and Bild. Fascinating.

Obama a West Ham fan

From the Dept. of Who Knew?, from January of this year.

Redknapp should start Alnwick

Just my 2p: Redknapp should start Alnwick, then in January alternate between Gomes and Alnwick to decide the top job. Gomes is rumored to be a great keeper; he needs a breather to reset his head.

I knew that offloading Robinson would be a wrong move.

Watching Tottenham since the end of last season has been like watching one of those Italian operas where everyone stabs everyone else. It has been dramatic, but not v. effective.

Farce in reality

The record for most goals in a game, and most own-goals in a game:

The world record for goals scored in senior football, which has stood steadfast ever since Arbroath thumped Bon Accord 36-0 in 1885, has been smashed by a team from Madagascar.

Farcical scenes quicky led to a basketball score as league champions AS Adema won a match 149-0, more than quadrupling the existing record - and without gaining possession between the first goal and the 149th.

Their opponents, Stade Olymique L'Emyrne, took complete control of the national league game, reducing Adema to the role of onlookers, as they deliberately plonked the ball in the back of their own net 149 times, in protest over a refereeing decision.

The English Football Association believe that the 149-0 scoreline represents a new world record. "I certainly think it's a world record," said the FA's historian David Barber.

"I've heard of a local league game in Nottingham that finished 50-2 and there was a 43-0 in an Austrian regional game before the second world war - but nothing this big."

Radio Madagascar reported on Friday that SOE scored the own goals against Adema as a protest after their coach Ratsimandresy Ratsarazaka lost his temper with the referee.

Adema's players reportedly stood around looking bemused, doing nothing to stop the opposition from self-destructing.

Strangely, SOE were no part-timers either - they were last year's Malagasy champions who surprisingly won through to the second round of the African Champions League this season.

Adema clinched the Malagasy title last weekend.

Beautiful Girl

Ladies of the World

More from Flight of the Conchords.

Foux da fa fa

Still my favorite Flight of the Conchords song. Silly.

It's a new day

Awesome!

Spain and football

This strikes me as utterly crazy and illegitimate: The Spanish state prosecutor has recommended an eight-year jail term for a Marseille fan detained after the French side's Champions League match against Atletico Madrid last month.

Reading up accounts of what happened suggests that much of the problems were caused by Atletico fans, and that Spanish police were v. one-sided in their response.

A new era

Good crazy

Today was a good day

I had this thought too

In the end she came through.

No fireworks

intentional

Navigating the dynamic

One thing I am looking forward to is seeing how President(-elect) Obama navigates the political nuances of the fact that one of the greatest and strongest shared values of his followers is a belief in individual liberties and the right to one's self.

Basically, how will American society change, now that we are beginning to (re-)embrace the long forsaken notion that we are all in this together, while at the same time our commitment to personal freedom is, if anything (given the erosion of personal freedoms over the past eight years) stronger than ever before?

Now, as we stand on the threshold of a new political era, is a good time to reflect on the unfulfilled aspirations of the past, and to weigh these aspirations when calculating and reflecting on our own. I am thinking in particular of FDR's four freedoms which discussed frankly the tenuous position America found herself in at the beginning of 1941 with the rest of the world at war and concluded:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound!

Henry Louis Gates, Jr on the election.

We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose and to bear witness to the process by which this grand achievement occurs.

The first time was New Year's Day in 1863, when tens of thousands of black people huddled together all over the North waiting to see if Abraham Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The second was the night of June 22, 1938, the storied rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, when black families and friends crowded around radios to listen and cheer as the Brown Bomber knocked out Schmeling in the first round. The third, of course, was Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed to the world that he had a dream, in the shadow of a brooding Lincoln, peering down on the assembled throng, while those of us who couldn't be with him in Washington sat around our black-and-white television sets, bound together by King's melodious voice through our tears and with quickened-flesh.

But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama. From Harlem to Harvard, from Maine to Hawaii—and even Alaska—from "the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … [to] Stone Mountain of Georgia," as Dr. King put it, each of us will always remember this moment, as will our children, whom we woke up to watch history being made.

Reality Checks

John Scalzi offers a good one.

"I love this guy."

That was Chris Matthews' comment about the Mayor of Newark's comments on the election. Cory Booker is inspiring, and could represent part of the new generation of politicians that raise in prominence in Obama's wake.

Awesome.

364

Assuming Indiana and NC hold up: Obama's tally will be 364.

That is not counting Missouri, which is too close to call, or Montana, which will most likely go for McCain.

Wow.

Obama's Victory Speech

Coupled with McCain's gracious and American concession, will stand as a document, a declaration of principles which will guide the next twenty-forty years of America.

The Daily Kos Scoreboard

Is awesome. Kudos!

An African-American Family in the White House

A new Cosby Show.

I expect high ratings.

(Nat Cole, here's looking at you.)

McCain concedes

His concession speech is helluva classy.

If only his campaign had been.

/sigh

News items

Strange Portal Connects Earth to Sun. How can something be strange if it happens all the time?

Bizarre espionage case in Miami. Two suitcases full of money, weeks of flim-flam.

A reminder...

Vote!

297

My bet: Obama with 297 electoral votes.

Hopefully more.

Go vote tomorrow.

Humor is humor

McCain was hilarious on SNL. Well worth a watch.

Going to be a good day.

This touches the heart.

The Messenger

Not a 'real' video. Shame, this song deserves one.

History in economics.

Did people who knew about secret, CIA-led coups use that information to game the stock market?

Yes they did.

The birth of a meme

Where "Tire Swinging" comes from:

There are worse ways to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon than swinging lazily back and forth on a tire swing strung up under a massive sycamore tree in a quiet Arizona canyon, the sound of a gushing stream nearby. Almost grazing the ground and hung on rope that looked to have been tied and retied again over the years, the swing belonged to John McCain, who stood several dozen yards away, carefully monitoring giant slabs of pork ribs on a smoking grill.

Those halcyon days when the press loved McCain and McCain loved the press.

A defining moment

Colombian hostage dragged to freedom

I expect that in a future history of the FARC, this particular event will crystallize its descent into insignificance.

My hero

Callie Shell's photos of Obama

Intimate, telling, moving. Well worth a look. (Warning: many large images.)

Wassup 2008

Perspective

I needed to know: can Obama pick a fantasy team? So I asked him.

Howard Zinn

Understanding the other

Peter Sagal on understanding the Obama Conspiracy Theorists.

In the real world, Barack Obama seems like he’s going to be elected President. This, as unlikely as it might have seemed as little as two years ago, is easily explained: the Republicans have done a poor job running the country, have a very unpopular incumbent President, and our nation likes to switch parties about every 8 to 12 years. Plus, Obama is a charismatic politician who’s run a very competent campaign.

Nonetheless, this reality is intolerable to some, and they have created an alternative narrative. In this narrative, Obama is “a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters.” Once elected, presumably, will reveal himself to be the monster that he is, in the manner of Kang and Kodos in that classic 1996 Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons.

A cultural moment

Meteor Blades talks about the Weather Underground and terror.

Cuba to become a petro-power

20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league

Oil drilling starting soon. Three-five years before Cuba sees significant returns.

Good Beat

Good Beat, by DeeLite. More retro to start the weekend.

Surprised it lasted this long

Madonna divorcing Guy.

Not the sort of thing I normally blog about, but I remember thinking when they were married that it wouldn't last more than four years. Madonna doesn't seem to be a "happily ever after" type of person.

Economic racism?

So... there really are people who believe (i.e.: Bryon York) that giving "mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them" was a prime cause of the nation's economic crisis.

It is a bit like arguing that the reason the I-35W Mississippi Bridge collapsed is because poor people were allowed to have cars.

Somersault

Somersault, one of my favorites from Zero 7.

FM

FM, by Steely Dan.

Needy Girl

Needy Girl, by Chromeo.

Anxiety Attack

Anxiety Attack by Jeffrey Lewis.

Aja

Aja, by Steely Dan.

Jack your body

Jack your body, by Steve 'Silk' Hurley. Happy weekend!

Obsidian

Obsidian, by Banco de Gaia.

This is my best video find. Amazing song.

Non m'annoio

Non m'annoio, by Jovanotti.

Some guy makes an observation

Some guy:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has talked to more American news reporters than Sarah Palin. Not just in his lifetime. I mean, in this year.

Doomsday

In 1983, a computer glitch nearly killed the world.

Ubik

Ubik, by Timo Maas.

A new taste sensation

Woman drinks coffee à la bat.

Blues Power

Blues Power, by Albert King.

Journey of Time

Journey of Time, by DJ Krush.

Crazy Talk

I thought McCain's 'League of Democracies' was crazy talk. Apparently it is a conservative plan to kill the UN.

Babylon Sisters

Babylon Sisters, by Steely Dan.

Power of Love

Power of Love, by DeeLite. Have a groovy weekend!

Lovestory

Lovestory, by Layo and Bushwacka! Freaky video.

Tal Zamaan

Tal Zamaan, by Transglobal Underground. A bit glitchy in the middle, but worth it.

A-Punk

A-Punk, by Vampire Weekend.

Born Under a Bad Sign

Born Under a Bad Sign, by Albert King.

You Have God

You Have God, by Banco de Gaia.