Author's posts
May 04 2011
Footballer asks: “What Kind Of Person Celebrates Death?”
And gets attacked for it of course.
Plenty of athletes tweeted their excitement at the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. Rashard Mendenhall, however, wasn’t convinced a celebration was in order.
“What kind of person celebrates death?” the Pittsburgh Steelers running back tweeted. “It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”
He also expressed his opinions on whether the planes that hit the World Trade Center on September 11 caused them to collapse.
“We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style,” Mendenhall said.
Steelers President Art Rooney II addressed Mendenhall’s comments in a statement posted on the team’s website.
“I have not spoken with Rashard so it is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments,” Rooney said. “The entire Steelers’ organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done and we can only hope this leads to our troops coming home soon.”
From America On Line (aka huffpo)
May 03 2011
Hi, I’m from the FBI, Can I Have Some Brain Tissue
Please?
I have a subpoena.
Really I do.
Also, I have a nice shiny drill.
But miss Bin Ladin, I have a subpoena.
No, scratch that, no need:
There is no Ms Bin Ladin, look wiki says he has all brothers.
But wait.
Look again.
It gets better.
Tissue samples taken from his corpse had provided virtually a “100 per cent” match with relations, including a sister who died from a brain tumour in a United States hospital, according to White House sources.
Now, all the papers says he has a sister, most report in Boston, whose name is ‘unknown,’ but that they retained her brain tissue, because you know, American hospitals have peoples brain tissue, even if they don’t know your name, and wiki says you don’t exist.
No worries there, though, a wiki edit is soon to happen.
Oh look:
Yahoo “Does Osama have a sister?
“this answer has been deleted”
5 minutes later:
Yes, he did. She had cancer and died. They took her DNA so if they caught Osama they could be sure that was him. He was the real Osama after they shot him in the head twice and tested his blood.
4 hours ago
Wait, wait, if this answer happened four hours ago, how come it changed 5 minutes ago?
In fact how come all the answers were posted ‘four hours ago’
Dec 21 2010
Modern Anti War Music
I’m firmly convinced that one of the differences between the hippy counter culture of 1960s, to some extent the punk counter culture of 1980s as well, is the cultural explosion that happened opposing the war, and by and large all wars. “DFH” has become an acronym & a cliche, but also it implies that the left is something of the past; a bit of a dinosaur. Which is somewhat true, I guess.
Today, those of us on the left, well, we still revere the music of those earlier times — for some of us we’re stuck on Creedence Clearwater and others from the 60’s, for others it’s the Clash, and for still others it’s Public Enemy (both 1980s) , and there’s some 90’s stuff as well, although that was a fairly tame era for war by the US standards . Since, I make left music right now today, I naturally went looking for other peoples stuff.
First thing I came across was this :
Anti-war songs fall flat
http://www.politico.com/news/s…
I won’t bore you with a quote from this article, but basically as the title says, the author claimed that modern anti war music was dead in the marketplace, and poked a lot of fun at Tori Amos who penned ‘Yo George,’ against Bush & war. And at first, I thought that might well be correct, I mean again…look how focused we are on much older stuff here.
But, looking a little more; at just the stuff from the Afghan/ Iraq wars to present, I found a lot of stuff I didn’t expect–including several anti war mega hits, that politico somehow didn’t bother to mention. Eminem penned a huge selling rap song, because he didn’t want his brother to go to war. Post punk icon Green Day has at least two recent huge anti war hits, maybe more. Old timers like Neil Young & the late Johnny Cash have recent anti war songs, and Bruce Springstein, has apparently gone far, far left from his 1970’s hayday. In fact, in genres from Afro Pop and Reggae to Alternative or Country, artists are writing left and anti war music. Maybe what’s happening now isn’t one counter culture movement, but a whole bunch of different anti war movements–diffused out into a more diverse cultural environment.
So here’s the 40 songs I came up with, screen-grabs taken off of itunes for those who don’t have it
(my own effort at #2 on the list, after the maligned by politico, Tori Amos) :
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Dec 01 2010
Interpol Most Wanted Julian Assange
Having forced Sweden and Interpol to issue arrest warrants, they are now calling him an ‘anarchist’.
If the US gets away with this they have proved that the rest of us are cowards.
Meanwhile Assange fired back:
In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, Assange called on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign because of the cables asking diplomats to gather intelligence. “She should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up,” he said.
Oct 23 2010
Massive Stretches of Oil Found by Fisherman
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-…
Yes, by god it looks all gone to me.
Thank you for your help, Mr Obama.
Sep 13 2010
Pools of Oil Found on Gulf Seafloor
What A Surprise.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Researchers say they’ve found patches of oil believed to be from the BP leak on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor. Some of these are two inches thick.
University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye (JOY) says she and her colleagues have found oil as much as 80 miles from the Deepwater Horizons well. She says the latest sample was taken early Monday and the oil covered newly dead creatures, such as shrimp and deep-sea worms.
The scientists have collected at least 10 samples from the sea floor, about a mile down. Testing is needed to confirm it is BP oil. But Joye says it has the appearance of recent oil from the busted well, not old oil.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…
Hmm. Now one of the most ridiculed statements by Matt Simmons (recently dead in a ‘hot tub accident’) was:
….enormous pool of crude is accumulating below the sea floor…
wiki
Which prompted responses from both left and right like this comment from a poster on truthout:
A pool of oil at the bottom of the Gulf? Oil floats, sorry
I guess those people have never heard of dispersants, never saw the video of BP and the US government directly injecting dispersant into the leak, and spraying it from boats and planes on the surface.
Here is is again:
Aug 21 2010
Dalian China
I had a personal connection to the GOM, as I’ve posted here, but none to China. Today, though, my SO came and said that there’s this great job she could apply for in this beautiful part of China, one of the only places where the air and water is still more or less clean, where you can windsurf or play in the ocean, where there are still horse drawn carriages in the city, and some hint of traditional China– and so I looked it up– not long ago that was all very true:
Dalian it turns out is a leader in alternative energy and windfarms.
And:
Dalian has won several awards from the United Nations for its environmental progress. The Chinese government has chosen to focus here as a starting place for instituting environmental regulations in China. The air quality is the best in all of China, and because of this and the multitude of parks and beaches, Dalian has become a popular vacation destination.
from- http://web2.clarkson.edu/proje…
On June 21st of course, that all changed:
http://www.boston.com/bigpictu…
This is heartbreaking.
And if you look at the caption you’ll see at least one of the workers in the photos died.
Aug 19 2010
Matt Simmons Dies In ‘Hot Tub Accident’
Matt Simmons, who consistently claimed the oil spill was larger than was stated, and that there were leaks in the sea floor of the Gulf died at age 67 a couple of weeks ago in his hot tub:
An autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office concluded Monday that he died from accidental drowning with heart disease as a contributing factor.
Aug 12 2010
Greenpeace Will Investigate Oil Spill
MIAMI – Environmental watchdog Greenpeace on Wednesday announced the launch of a three-month expedition on which researchers will analyze the impact of the massive BP oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
A Greenpeace ship sets sail Thursday from Saint Petersburg, Florida, and will tour the southern tip of Florida and its Keys before heading northward to the area of the failed oil well.“From the very start, the full scope of the Gulf oil disaster has been obscured by BP and even our own government,” said John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director.
“The largest accidental oil spill in history and the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants will impact Gulf marine life for years to come, and independent research is critical to ensure that BP is not allowed to hide what they have done or walk away from their responsibilities,” he argued.
The ship MY Arctic Sunrise will “host independent scientists who will be researching the impacts of oil and chemical dispersants on Gulf ecosystems and marine life,” Hocevar said.
Scientists will look at the ecosystem as a whole from plankton on the surface to coral reefs and other life as well as the gulf floor.
BP is setting up a 20 billion-dollar fund to compensate those hurt by the disaster, in which 4.1 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico before BP last week fully capped the ruptured underground well.
AFP
http://www.google.com/hostedne…
This will be worth keeping a sharp eye on over the next 6 months. I’ve seen the Greenpeace toxics/ research teams at work–they know what they’re doing, and put a real effort into finding out the truth of a situation.
Aug 11 2010
Mexico Supreme Court Recognizes Same Sex Marriage
Or, more exactly, they have ordered the states to recognize same sex marriages performed in Mexico City.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Mexico City’s same-sex marriage law, enacted in March, extends to wedded gay couples the right to adopt children, to jointly apply for bank loans, to inherit wealth and to be covered by their spouses’ insurance policies. Some of those may end up applying only in the capital.
It’s simply a more tolerant place, than todays US.