I had a long sequence of very odd dreams last night, only one image of which I remember well at all. For some reason, Mrs Heathen and I were having dinner with LeBron James, who was unaccountably dressed in a vintage Kansas City Royals uniform that included snowshoes.
My subconscious is weird.
I’m completely flummoxed that people — cops, their apologists — are in any way offended by what the President said about the Gates arrest.
The quote, for reference:
Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.
Obama continued:
As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in the society. That doesn’t lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that’s been made. And yet the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause.
There is absolutely no room for offense on any of this.
Gates was in his home. Cops were jackasses. Gates got loud. Cops acted stupidly. End of story. If you’re trying to make hay with this in the press as though Obama hurt your feelings, you’re just as much of a jackass as the cop who cuffed an old man in his own home on trumped-up charges.
“He can speak French. In Russian.”
This Star Wars fan-remake hinges on a great idea: split it into 472 15-second bits, and have random folks sign up to make a segment. So far, 24 are finished.
BoingBoing has a few questions. I’m pretty sure the answers are d., b., d., d., and e.
How about some pictures of the top of Everest from a hot-air balloon?
Yesterday, Chris Matthews smacked around nutbird Congressman John Campbell on the “Birther” issue, and got him to admit that yes, Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the US.
This came up again today; I recall it circulating once before, years ago, and I’m sure it’s on the Heathen Archives somewhere, but anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a repost.
Consequently, we present, once again, The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The US Army.
Ottawa authorities just discovered what happens when you leave a blank square on a roadside attraction sign.
Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates discovered how evolved we’ve all become on Thursday when he was arrested for breaking and entering.
At his own house.
After proving to police that it was his house.
I don’t give a rat’s ass if he was yelling at the cops. If the police show up on a B&E tip and discover you live in the house in question, they should apologize profusely and go the fuck away. Arresting him should not have even been an option, regardless of what he said.
This never before seen pictures of Armstrong on the moon shows his face through the visor.
In 1977, the TRS-80 Model 1 was the shit. Gizmodo has more.
The LRO has taken pictures of the Apollo landing site; you can see the lander and even the astronauts’ footprints.
The Nobel laureate has left the Southern Baptist Church over its treatment of women.
After the publisher decided “you know, maybe electronic publication isn’t what we want to do after all,” Amazon deleted 1984 and Animal Farm (oh, the irony) from any Kindle that had purchased them. That they provided a refund as well is pretty much irrelevant to me.
More at Pogue @ NYT:
This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
If I buy a paper book, it’s mine. Amazon can’t come to my house and take it back, even if they want to pay me for it.
Honey, I think I’ve found our new house.
Add my right-winger cousin Chip to the parade of GOP types who can’t keep their dick in their pants. Odds are this affair, the divorce connected thereto, and the lawsuit his wife just dropped on him are the reason ol’ Chip’s not still in Congress. Good riddance.
Now it’s the turn of former Rep. Chip Pickering (R) or Mississippi, who appeared to be in line to grab Trent Lott’s Senate seat and was allegedly offered the gig by Gov. Haley Barbour (his office denied this to TPMmuckraker), but decided instead to leave Congress altogether.
Pickering and his wife divorced soon afterward and now she is suing the novelistically named Elizabeth Creekmore-Byrd for “alienation of affection,” i.e., for stealing her husband. What’s more, according to legal papers filed by Leisha Pickering, some of the “wrongful conduct” between Pickering and Creekmore-Byrd (I guess that’s what they call it down there?) took place at … you guessed, the C Street group home up on Capitol Hill.
The kicker? This “C-Street” location is notionally a Christian fellowship facility connected to the uber-right-wing Family organization.
(Chip’s grandfather and my great-grandfather were siblings.)
Hat tip: Mrs Heathen.
Yeah. This one’s just as cool, if much more wacky:
I end up using both — for a rich, formatted, in-house mail, Outlook is the winner — but what’s interesting is how much search SUCKS on Outlook compared to Mail.app. I can find mails in no time on the Mac side, but the Outlook search tools appear to be made of fail.
Four decades ago, human beings did the absolute coolest thing ever.
From the Jackson, MS Clarion-Ledger:
“I think it was a game changer; it was an election changer,” 3rd District Rep. Chip Pickering said. “The Republican ticket is the ticket of reform and change.”
“They can’t define us as the same old Republicans, or Bush Republicans,” Pickering said. “If you look at history, the populist ticket always beats the elitist ticket. (After Palin’s speech) we became the populist ticket.”
(Yes, cousin; if I’m doing the math right, he’s my second cousin once removed. Chip’s grandfather and my great-grandmother were siblings, and his great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather are the same guy.)
Hat tip to Frank.
Remember this? Turns out, we’re not the only ones to notice that the color-coded warning system — five levels, but really only 3 since we’ve never been below yellow — is a complete waste of time.
…you’ll be very sad if you don’t see the joy that is Star Trek II as an opera with action figures. Really. Click. Seriously.
Here.
(SFW)
Apparently, only 10% of respondents can answer these twelve questions correctly. They are not hard questions.
(Via Stina.)
Y’all please wish Chief Heathen Health & Legal Correspondents Triple-F and Boogielips a happy seventh anniversary!
Citicorp Center in New York is a striking building for lots of reasons, but the most obvious is that it sits on four huge “stilts” that allow one corner to hover over a church. Less obvious is its massive motion dampening system, developed to reduce wind-induced motion sickness in tenents.
Its most interesting aspect, though, is what happened when its structural engineer realized, several years after its completion, that his structure might not be as safe as it should be under significant wind loads, and what he did about it. Let’s be clear: when I say “not as safe as it should be,” I mean he realized the 59-story skyscraper might fall down.
Seventeen years later, Joe Morgenstern wrote a long piece in the New Yorker about what happened next; it’s online here and is well worth your time.
They’re talking about not releasing detainees even if they’re acquitted. Goddammit, people, is it so hard to do the right thing?
The Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory System — you know, that bullshit chart of Green-Blue-Yellow-Orange-Red we’ve all been laughing at since 9/11 — will soon enter its fifth consecutive year at precisely the same level of national alert. It should surprise no one that said level is “yellow” — the one in the middle — and that is has been unchanged since August 12, 2005.
Some makework Bushite drone came up with this goofball idea in the Great National Freakout of late 2001, and nobody has yet had the stones to do away with it. We Heathen wonder how many thousands of dollars have been wasted down this particular rathole.
Update: Mrs Heathen points out that it’s Orange at airports. This is true. It’s been Orange for . . . three years.
Actually, no, really. Jackson will be buried sans nogginfruit for forensic reasons.
Make up your own joke.
So, I got a new iPhone, and it’s big enough to also be a reasonable iPod (32 gigabytes). This requires the acquisition of some new Serious Headphones, since the Serious Headphones I already own have no mic or switch; while they work with the iPhone, I have to take them off to take calls, and I can’t pause the music without touching the phone.
I’ve been very pleased with my existing Etymotics, but had heard good things about Ultimate Ears, so I thought I’d give them a go. MISTAKE. for one thing, even the smallest of their silicon earbud tips made my ear canals ache, and — odder — listening for more than a few minutes produced a vague sense of nausea, which is just plain weird. All symptoms went away when I switched back to my ER-6i set.
Fortunately, Amazon has a liberal return policy, so my UEs will go back tomorrow for a full refund (minus a $5 shipping charge) in favor of a new set of Ety HF2s.
Lesson learned? Stick with what works. Heathen faithful — or, at least, those of you interested in fancy headphones — take note.
It had to happen, and of course it’s Top Gear who’ve done it.
Cheap Trick are releasing their new record on 8-track.
Installing recommended updates and patches on our Exchange server resulted in (a) Windows Firewall being automatically enabled, preventing any access to Exchange and (b) the webmail client being completely hosed.
Several sets new on Flickr:
CompuServe is finally dead.
Brit sketch comedy on homeopaths:
(More here.)
On this Fourth of July, imagine for a moment what Hunter Thompson would’ve done with this Palin situation — and with always-wrong Bill Kristol’s prediction that she resigned to prep for a 2012 run for the White House. The country’s less interesting without you, Dr Thompson.
The Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport has 1,001 horsepower and a 2.5 second 0-60 time — and will ding you a cool $2.1 million, or an order of magnitude more than the Aston-Martin DB9.
Did we mention a 2.5 second 0-60? Yeah. It’s like that.
It is apparently impossible to log out of Outlook Web Access in a browser and then log back in as a different user without first quitting the browser. WTF?
Apparently, under the right circumstances, you can flush an entire role of toilet paper down an airplane toilet.