Legend of the Corsair

when you think about what the words semiotic pirate would refer to if you really thought about it.

semiotic_pirate will have to write:

I will not be an inspiration to the Bush Administration

'What will you have to write on the chalk board?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I thought I was going to get something cute like skathic... Something about not being distracted by passing butterflies. Damn.

Not by me, over on Slate of course. Why would I use up my precious time (which should be spent studying) figuring out what Balls to the Wall refers to?

Balls in the Air
Where does the expression "balls to the wall" come from?
By Jesse Sheidlower
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 PM ET


Somewhat disappointingly, it has nothing to do with hammers, nails, and a particularly gruesome way of treating an enemy. The expression comes from the world of military aviation. In many planes, control sticks are topped with a ball-shaped grip. One such control is the throttle—to get maximum power you push it all the way forward, to the front of the cockpit, or firewall (so-called because it prevents an engine fire from reaching the rest of the plane). Another control is the joystick—pushing it forward sends a plane into a dive. So, literally pushing the balls to the (fire)wall would put a plane into a maximum-speed dive, and figuratively going balls to the wall is doing something all-out, with maximum effort. The phrase is essentially the aeronautical equivalent of the automotive "pedal to the metal."

The expression is first found in military-aviation sources that date from the Vietnam War, and it was recorded in the slang of U.S. Air Force Academy cadets in 1969. Although no evidence from the period has come to light, Korean War veterans have also reliably claimed to have used the expression in the 1950s. An earlier parallel is balls-out, in the same sense, which is found in military-aviation sources that date from World War II. (The phrase was also painted on the nose of at least one fighter plane.) In both cases it's likely that the possibility of an anatomical interpretation has helped the expressions gain wider use.

In other news:

Olympians are abstaining from sex to boost their performance( Read more... )

The face-transplant patient showed her face at a press conference.( Read more... )

Cops are busting minors for "internal possession" of alcohol.( Read more... )

Eating less fat won't reduce your risk of cancer or heart disease( Read more... )

Promiscuous French kissing nearly quadruples your risk of spinal meningitis( Read more... )

Polygamous inbreeders are pumping out children so retarded they need constant care.( Read more... )


FrankenFido
Our creepiest genetic invention, the dog.
By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2005, at 12:35 AM ET

Have you heard the latest news? We've decoded the DNA of dogs. Here's how the media-approved version of the story goes: We're showing our love for "man's best friend" by discovering and treating the genetic causes of his ailments. In return, we'll learn to treat the same ailments in ourselves.
( Read more... )

Right to Wife
Why does Judge Alito treat women like girls?
By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005, at 7:55 AM ET


Judge Alito, it's a pleasure to have you before our committee this morning. You're obviously an accomplished jurist, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle speak very highly of you. I really have only one question for you, and it's my hope that you'll be able to put my mind, and the public's mind, at ease about it. What I'd like to know is, why do you think it's constitutional to treat a pregnant woman like a child?

I'm referring, of course, to your dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey 14 years ago. As you know, that case involved a Pennsylvania statute that required women to notify their husbands before having abortions, on pain of criminal sanctions. You voted to uphold the statute.
( Read more... )

Can You Fear Me Now?
The cell phone goes from annoying to evil.
By Bryan Curtis
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006, at 3:45 PM ET

Note: At this point, slate decided to refer the reader to a downloadable mp3 audioversion as well as the link to the podcast - which of course can be listened to on most newer model cell phones - you will see the irony soon. Read on:

In your right hand, you hold the source of all the evil in the world. A few days ago, it was the source of some medium-sized evil—a stray ring in a movie theater or a mournful text message to an ex-girlfriend after midnight. But things have changed with your cell phone. It is no longer just a nuisance. It is death incarnate.

In the recent months, cell phones have become newly terrifying. Our once-mundane cellular-inspired fears—of brain cancer, of terrorists using them to detonate remote devices—have been replaced by more gruesome visions. Horror maestros from Stephen King to Takashi Miike have taken our ambivalent post-9/11 feelings about cell phones (they played a crucial role in nearly staving off a terrorist attack, but they were also the source of incredibly painful goodbyes) and reworked them into a vehicle for evil—ghosts, plagues, and rampaging psychos. The cell phone, in their hands, is not a tool of empowerment but another instrument of terror. Humanity's going to hell, and you don't dare call your mother.

Stephen King's Cell, which sits at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, is the bloodiest encapsulation of this worldview. ( Read more... )

I will admit to being 3/4 through The Cell and I have to say, the terror/horror is real, unbelievably tapped by Stephen King are all of our fears and annoyances with cell phones (from cancer due to signals near the brain to phone etiquette). Amazing.

OMG! This is soooo damned funny.

Just a preview:



DUBITHY!


And of course, this being the most amazing night of all - the return of Stargate(s) and Battlestar Galactica!

Oh! And check out my new link! http://www.dudehisattva.com/

*steps up onto the soap box*

First reported here
here and then here,

Now being dissected here,

and reported (officially) here.

Of course it is happening. Of course, in this digital age, soldiers are taking photographs of the carnage that previously we would never have seen and putting it out there for all to see. Proudly putting it out there is what it looks like. Detached from the reality of what they are showing, the horror of it. Desensitized by both training and circumstances... what are they becoming and how are we going to reintigrate their current mindset back into our society? Where is the humanity?

WTF?!

This is why, when I was in NYC and saw some of the original abuse photos on display I had such a visceral reaction. I was a soldier once. I was a Military Police Officer. My unit (while I was in training, I won't try and say I was there and knew what happened) went to Iraq the first time around in Desert Shield/Storm and they were running a POW camp for the many Iraqis who turned themselves in during the famous leaflet releases. It horrifies me still (what happened with England and all that's come since) because I would like to think that I would not have been doing the same thing, but how do I really know? How does anyone know how they will actually react until they are put in the situation themselves?

I recently finished reading Thud! by Terry Pratchett where Commander Vimes defeats the demon of the Summoning Dark that was lurking within him because he had a self-created policeman in his head, to keep him from doing the things that would make him (in his own eyes) into an animal (someone who mistreats prisoners, who uses his/her power for their own good and not for the good of the people, etc...). In the final pages, there is an internal confrontation between the two inside Vimes' head as the Summoning Dark tries to encourage him to kill those who had not only caused the deaths of his city's citizens but threatened to harm his own family during a deliberate attack on them:

( cut )

It was because of this inner policeman (which earlier in the book he had thought was present in each person's mind to one degree or another) that whenever he was tempted throughout the book to do something horrible, tempted to do something that would be the quick and dirty way of getting something done by breaking his own laws (internal or external) in order to get either satisfaction or his job done, he was able to pull back and do it in a different way, one that agreed with the internal policeman's way of thinking, and still get the job done. With his sense of humanity intact. And he did this for his own personal ethical code, he did it for family, honor, and duty. Because somebody has to do it, and damn it if they don't do it right.

Do we become no better than the enemy in order to defeat the enemy? Would it have worked in LOTR if those in the Fellowship of the Ring, and all those who supported them were to have used Sauron's own tactics against him?

*steps down off of the soap box*

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. [...] The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans.


Reported by Brian Williams and brought to you by me through Hoffmania.

*sick to my stomach*

Hopefully I'm not repeating myself here:

In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and several other nations. Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other materials for the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were quickly refused by the White House. America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a most deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for another punch in the nose?

Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would start thinking that George W. Bush was really nothing more than a fulltime agent of Corporate America.

via Michael Parenti's ZNet Commentary
(mentioned in my previous post)

Why the hell can't we accept help from people that we've helped? Isn't that part of friendship? That you are able to both provide, and ask for help? WTF? How could Bush just wave their offers of help away? The entire world has had to watch with the rest of us, as over a hundred thousand people were left helpless and hopeless for days...

I want a nice sound-proofed room in which I can scream myself hoarse! Now I'm off to bed to toss and turn until I fall asleep and have nightmares. We all float down here.

Michael Parenti writing at ZMag:

The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just as the free market dictates, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third World countries.

It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an optimal outcome for the entire society. This is the way the invisible hand works its wonders.

There would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island last year, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.3 million people, more than 10 percent of the country's population, with not a single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in the U.S. press.

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had been lost in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain "stubborn."

It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well for them.

BONUS: straight from http://www.davidcorn.com

Hurricane Katrina: Business Week Indicts Bush; FEMA and Pat Robertson; Where's the Evacuation?

Hurricane Katrina shows that the Bush administration screwed up bigtime and that it must adopt an energy policy that is serious about energy-efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming--one that would force automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of its vehicles. Who says so? Bush-haters and tree-hugging enviros looking to exploit this tragedy for political gain? No, the radical folks at Business Week. In its just-out issue, BW demonstrates that the Katrina disaster is a harsh indictment of this administration's current policies. Here are some excerpts from its article headlined "Let Katrina Be a Warning":

( Read more... )

Bonus #2
via twisty:

First Lady Explains American Caste System

9/3/05

Did you hear Laura Bush yesterday? I did, but I was so freaked out that it wasn't until this morning that the horror of the remarks she made from the glistening town of Lafayette--where apparently all the refugees had just had steaming hot bubble baths and were currently enjoying tea and scones and croquet on the lawn--began to congeal in my mind.

( Read more... )

I'd like to end with the words of Tim Grieve at Salon:

"They're watching their city explode around them -- they're watching conditions get worse -- and many of them are feeling, rightly or wrongly, that their government isn't doing much to help them. President Bush speaks, but he doesn't speak to or for people like them. He never has."

I believe I made reference long ago of the similarities between Bush and the neoconservative Christians... This is an eye opener for any who might've missed that:


Warning From a Student of Democracy's Collapse
By CHRIS HEDGES

PRINCETON, N.J.

FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity."

"Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," he said of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."
( Read more... )


EDIT: And for even more good news... Just because your enemy does not act honourably does not mean you should not act honourably. There was a reason the Geneva Convention was enacted - to prevent the inhumane treatment of prisoners. How are enemy combatants defined? Is it a new term thought up by the current administration to excuse their actions? If we don't intend to treat them honourably, shouldn't we just "take no prisoners" and execute them upon capture? (sarcasm) Yeah, that's humane. But you don't get any information out of them that way... (/sarcasm)

January 8, 2005
CAPTURED INSURGENTS

U.S. Said to Hold More Foreigners in Iraq Fighting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - After raids in recent months that captured hundreds of insurgents in Iraq, the United States has significantly increased the number of prisoners it says are foreign fighters, a group the Bush administration contends are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, American officials said.
( Read more... )

the horse and rides off into the sunset with the election...

sorry folks, I'm on an overdose of "I can't believe any of this is happening" whirlwind and am posting like mad. Leave angry comments about taking up a majority of your friends page. Heh.

Berkeley Daily Planet
Edition Date: Friday, November 19, 2004

( Read more... )

Now why didn't I think of this one?? Oh, wait... we covered idiocy.

Voting Without the Facts
By BOB HERBERT

Published: November 8, 2004
New York Times


The so-called values issue, at least as it's being popularly tossed around, is overrated.

Last week's election was extremely close and a modest shift in any number of factors might have changed the outcome. If the weather had been better in Ohio. ...If the wait to get into the voting booth hadn't been so ungodly long in certain Democratic precincts. ... Or maybe if those younger voters had actually voted. ...

( Read more... )

TEACH-INS.. hahahahahaha!