bancroft-arnesen to seek evidence of global warming in minneapolis

The first thing to go were those little paper umbrellas that you put in Mai-Tai’s. There just wasn’t enough room on their sled, what with the beach gear and suntan lotion.

But they never got to don wetsuits and swim through tepid seas choked with polar bear carcasses. They never got to take pictures of the melting icecap, to post them on their blog, and broadcast the bad news into children’s classrooms like two astronauts high atop the world. They never got to do these things because it was too darned cold.

Instead of global warming, they reported 58 degrees below zero inside their tent. In an attempt to stave off frostbite, Bancroft had to keep hot water bottles on her feet. And in the middle of the night they’d wake up to find the hot water bottles frozen.

It all reminds me so much of The Penguin That Hated The Cold.

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jammin’ with clinton

Clinton called the kettle black on Thursday, claiming the Republican party has been “jammed into an ideological corner” by a sliver of the Republican Party; namely “its more right-wing and its most ideological element.”

Skuze me? Which party handed Howard “Yaarrrr” Dean the party chairmanship after his leftist tantrum meltdown in ‘04? Which party no longer resembles the party of JFK or Truman? Which party, despite a string of embarrassing defeats (which started in ‘94, on Clinton’s watch), continues to slew further and further left? Which party’s moderate candidates must walk a tightrope between supporting the troops and kow-towing to an angry, radical fringe? Which party is drumming out moderates like Zell Miller and Joe Leiberman because they support the American president in the war on terror?

Meanwhile Republicans run pell mell to pose in the middle at the slightest hint of a threat from Democrat witch hunters on the prowl for anybody who may have shaken Foley’s hand (the one that holds his Blackberry) at some point in the past.

This slick displacement is amazing, even downright…Clintonian. As he has done so many times in the past, Bubba declares the situation exactly opposite from reality. A heart is a spade, and he dares you to say otherwise. Pathological Bill has shown his colors again.

SOURCE: Clinton says right wing has hurt U.S., predicts win by Democrats

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oh please no, not backlash!

The Canadian Press reports: “Iran’s top leaders vow to continue nuclear program despite NKorea backlash.”

In a nearly subsequent response, and in the wake of North Korea’s “successful” nuclear bomb test, a clearly shaken Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran said, “Our policy is clear: Progress, offering transparent logic and insisting on the rights of the nation without retreat.” But you could tell he was really worried about the repercussions North Korea is experiencing.

Privately (I just know) he worried to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (may he languish forever without press coverage) that Iran could not withstand another round of stern finger wagging and condemnations such as Ahmadinejad doles out to Israel every day.

“Don’t you realize,” Khamenei said, his lower lip quivering, “that the UN may convene to discuss the slim possiblity of opening a dialogue on whether to allow the suggestion of contemplating a prolonged timetable for issuing a resolution which takes a decidedly ‘disappointed’ view of our nuclear program? Do you really want that?”

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one small gaffe for [a] man

Astronauts aren’t uncoordinated. They have to be able to moonwalk and chew gum at the same time. So it bothered Neil Armstrong to think that he had flubbed the famous first line from the floodlit stage of the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Why, oh why hadn’t he said “one small step for a man?

Fortunately for Neil, Peter Ford, a computer expert from Australia, has resolved Mr. Armstrong’s angst, providing acoustically filtered evidence of a twangy “a” drawled slowly over the course of 35 milliseconds (approximatly 1/10 of the least discernable length for a vowel sound).

While it may sound like an inconsequential, classic case of “I don’t know what you heard, but I know what I said,” this discovery has important implications for the study of low-gravity vowel sounds, which are often so light and unpredictable that they seem to float off before the listener hears them. And it represents a belated yet satisfying vindication for English teachers everywhere, who collectively swore that before that decade was out, we’d put an English speaker on the moon.

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abc: journalism is drudgery

“One dude, sitting in his apartment, marshalls the vangard of the militant right, and pretty much controls all media in the world,” said ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin. “And if he puts up that little blue and red siren? Forgeddaboudit. In today’s media, Drudge is like Walter Cronkite, except with x-ray vision. No, wait, he’s like Dan Rather. He’s like a young, literate Dan Rather that nobody knows what he looks like. The Rather comparison is apt because he can force anybody anywhere believe anything he says. The Cronkite comparison is apt because they would have believed him anyway.

“Basically,” Halperin continues, shaking his head, “by choosing often obscure stories about Democrats (honestly, who had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky?), he can set the talking points for everyone across the political spectrum. And once that happens, the rest of the mainstream media has to follow suit and cover the “story,” usually within three to four weeks or less.”

Drudge admits he’s wrong about 20% of the time, but who cares? His headlines are pure journalistic gold. “I haven’t done any investigative journalism since I started at the Times, back in 1968,” admits New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. “In fact, nobody at the Times has. Drudge makes it too danged easy: you can either write something that says the exact opposite of what Drudge said (e.g. “Clinton is not alleged to have had sex with that woman”) or if you’re in a hurry you can just copy what he wrote word for word.”

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane remembers, “There was this one time when Drudge thought it would be funny to say that Congressman Barney Frank was gay. Now practically everyone things Frank is gay. Nobody fact-checks this. Nobody asks Mr. Frank what he thinks. That’s the power of Drudge. Not there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying.”

SOURCE: abcnews.go.com

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mel’s bells

Mel Gibson, commenting at an early screening of his upcoming movie Apocalypto, drew a comparison between the morally horrific decline of the Mayans and present day American culture. “What’s human sacrifice,” he asked, “if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?”

As a writer/director who has tackled the subject of declining cultures, Mel Gibson shows surprisingly little insight on the matter. First off, the Mayans’ form of human sacrifice is chiefly horrible because they sacrificed the imprisoned, the helpless, the innocent. Our military is all-volunteer, and they aren’t standing in line to be slaughtered, they are highly-trained, active participants in the most effective fighting force in the history of the world. The Mayans’ sacrifices were inspired by fear of the supernatural; they sought to appease their angry gods. Our soldiers are exemplars of courage daily engaged in fighting a lethal but human foe. Mayan leaders consolidated their power through a reign of terror. We have ended a reign of terror and now struggle to replace it with government elected by those it governs.

But most disappointing is the fact that Gibson, as a conservative Catholic, missed a more apt comparison which he should not have. If there is anything like human sacrifice of innocents happening in American culture today, it is the sacrifice of the unborn in the commonplace practice of abortion. If he is a Catholic, and believes what Catholics believe, then how can he, in a discussion of human sacrifice, raise the anti-war banner and keep silent about abortion? Perhaps if we knew everything about the Mayans, we’d find that their movie directors too, were sounding alarms about the wrong issues when their world ended.

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say “shibboleth”

What do you call the gooey or dry matter that collects in the corners of your eyes, especially while you are sleeping? What do you say when you want to lay claim to the front seat of a car? What do you call paper that has already been used for something or is otherwise imperfect?

Are you in the dialectic mainstream? Who says root (rhymes with put) and who says root (rhymes with shoot)? What part of the country says “chill bugs” instead of “chilly bumps?”

All this and a lot more: Dialect Survey Maps and Results

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he said, sharia said

I am just flabbergasted at the childish melodrama coming from prominent middle-eastern Muslim voices over this Benedict thing. for example, Ahmad Khatami, a prominent cleric in the city of Qom told his students:

[The] Pope should fall on his knees in front of a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam.

This is a childish fantasy. Anjem Choudary, a London lawyer and demonstration organizer goes further:

The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and that must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet.

Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.

How pompous. How can the West take Choudary seriously, except as an inciter of murder and instigator of mass hatred?

I suppose most of the things being said are engineered to get a rise out of us. They are spoiling for a fight which spills out of the lecture halls and onto the streets of the great cities of the West. Enough of this talking, talking, talking. Let’s just convert the Pope by the sword.

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the malediction of benedict xvi

Hey, father, what’s the good word?

Pope Benedict XVI showed his stripes today in comments which stung and grievously wounded the hearts and souls of Muslims worldwide to the point that, with great reluctance, they whipped out their prepared effigies of the Pope and burned them.

Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of Turkey’s ruling party, said, “[Benedict] has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world. It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades. Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words. He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

Oh, the humanity. So unfortunate it is for Benedict to have quoted someone who said Islam was spread by the sword. What’s especially painful is the fact that it just isn’t true, it’s never, ever happened that way. Islam’s converts invariably do so of their own free will. Why, just ask Steve Centanni And Olaf Wiig if it ain’t so.

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southern discomfort

Here is a reprint of an article I wrote in May of 2002.

THEY’RE GOOD KIDS. They’ll get it sorted out. That’s what the parents of those of us in hab-rehab are saying now. It’s touching that they continue to believe in us, even as the group sessions fail to provide the level of intervention we really need. There is a downward slide here, and nobody wants to talk about it.

Take last night for instance. Good company, good weather, some darned good gualsa* and, inevitably, that little baggie of dried habañeros which nobody seems to know anything about. It was high-grade stuff, and no one objected to the “help yourself” atmosphere which comfortingly tucked us into easygoing conversations about things we never otherwise discuss. Like the social addicts we are, however, we never strayed very far from the topic of these butt-ugly wrinkled brown treasures we were passing around.

Maybe I’m still in denial about my level of involvement, but I still don’t own a lot of the paraphernalia. So someone improvised a pestle using a saucer and a ball jar. As the peppers were broken down into something between chunks and powder, any remaining ice between the conversationalists gathered there in my apartment was broken down into congenial chunks of good natured deference. Everybody took a hit, even those who hadn’t experimented with habañeros before.

We were all adults there, and yet I felt a poignant fatherly impulse toward my guests which was wrenched into true remorse when I saw the face of one friend of mine after she took a serious hit of the stuff. She was weeping, eyes nearly swollen shut, and her face was a twisted mask of exhilaration and just-been-stung-by-40-bees pain.

Then my own endorphin rush came in a fiery chariot and gathered me up into a stolen athletic bliss, but it was too late. The angry white seed of doubt had lodged between between my teeth, and it was burning a hole in my proverbial lip. Were we out of control?

Of course, there is nothing controlled about the morning after. The last remnant of my hot-sauce bravado evaporated amid the smoke and thunder of my first bout with the White-Hot Squirts. I have never seriously considered getting a bidet, but if one could be equipped to dispense super-cooled novacaine, while simultaneously administering a morphine injection, I would go into hock to buy one right now.

Scatalogical evidence notwithstanding, I now realize that my body has failed to metabolize or even chemically alter the hellspawned oil of the habañero. The worst part is that I know it is far from over. Now there is a distinct preference for standing over sitting. Later there will be cursing, oaths, and finally, promises made. Now is the time for a caring loved one to extract a covenant from me to never, never, never do this again. Now, should a persuasive friend argue down my stubborn resistances and help me on to the conclusion which my anatomy is already screaming from the housetops: friends don’t let friends do habañeros.

*A cocktail of salsa and guacamole.

See also “Grok My Heed: Weapons-grade Peppers.

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