Almost to the week's end - 8 January 2009

Oh, hi, people. How are you? Life treating you well in this year? Today is the day to venerate His Imperial Majesty Joshua A. Norton I, first Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Fittingly, a gentleman died when his network of tunnels created from the rubbish in his house collapsed on him. That’s got to have some Norton influence, or perhaps it’s striaght Erisian. Anyway, it is only with Norton’s blessing that we can be creative enough to use a donkey-pulled cart as a library for good, or demand back a donated kidney when divorcing one's wife, for sheer lunacy.

A picture worth a thousand "Bad dog". And a picture that makes me understand why we love archaeology, beyond the dinosaur bones.

If you think that witchcraft has managed to sidestep its negative stereotypes and the very dangerous consequences of it, think again. No, this isn’t Sarah Palin, this is a Papua New Guinea woman burned at the stake, on a pile of tires as a witch. Papua New Guinea has a bit of a problem with this sequence, although I suspect there are a lot of people in this country that would enjoy and participate in witch-hunts and burnings of their own. Further matters that will pick up the ire of the Unabashed Feminism department include Josh Tyler declaring definitively that we don't need more female superheroes, because women aren't interested in them. It’s an all-male audience in the comics world, apparently, and women just aren’t interested in any of it, so movies and comics should cater to the men only, and if there are some women who like it, well, that’s nice. So, hard hats on? Jezebel fires the opening salvo, pointing out the obvious sexism in the original. tiredfairy follows with a carpet-bombing on how much women really do like super heroes, there hasn’t really been a good super hero movie with a female character, and that there are a lot more women who fall into this category, not some minority. (Apparently, the original poster compounds the idiocy in the comments of the original post. I decided not to dive in. The article was enough.) So, yeah. Um, hit me with a bakahammer if I’m ever like that. Please. Repeatedly.

Okay, here’s something that should set your rage on fire - BART police drag young men off train, shoot one in the back while he's restrained and on the ground, killing him, and then start demanding the video recording devices of all the people who witnessed it and were filming. That’s the beginning - police abuse of people who were not resisting, resulting in someone dying, following the trend that many police officers react to anything that’s not complete submission by escalating the situation and using force. That by itself is enough to rage. Then the rage built into a riot. And the riot basically did everything wrong toward making a statement that the police will listen to, and giving the police even more justification to treat everyone around them as a hostile entity. FAIL all around.

And now, the rest of the news, and opinions. Internationally, taps off for Ukraine, says Gazprom, which means Europe is now scrambling to find some way of getting their gas.

While there’s a generally tinfoil hat attitude in the page, it does ask a very good question: If the United States has been the authority of Iraq for the last few years, have they been seated at OPEC? Not that one dissenting voice would do much on the decisions being made, but it is an interesting question.

In the ongoing saga that is the Israel-Gaza offensive, the United Nations and the Red Cross have said they're pulling out, due to being targeted and shot at by Israeli forces, apparently only a little while after agreeing to a halt to let them in. There were apparently also rockets shot from Lebanon into the area, which can only annoy everyone looking for peace even more. Plus, al-Sadr thinks it's a swell idea to start trying to hurt American troops in Iraq because Israel is hurting Gaza.

Transcripts of the Mumbai attacks indicate that there were handlers or superiors of th egunmen directing them by mobile phone during the carnage. The government of India says those on the other end are Pakistani militants.

Speaking of terror, but elsewhere, The UK's MI5 chief says that there's been less terror attempts over the last 18 months, but it means nothing, because the threat of terror in the abstract is still high.

Domestically, the General continues writing letters to the Faithful Word Baptists, this time about wrestling.

An ITIF report suggests that investing stimulus money in IT infrastructure will generate nearly one million jobs. Pretty impressive if you count the 3 million figure that people are using as the President-elect’s promise. One third for that kind of cash... sounds good.

Speculation, based on the President-elect's website, that the era of "don't ask, don't tell" may be coming to an end, to be replaced with a nondiscrimination law, which would open the door for the openly homosexual to serve and stay serving in the armed forces. One more thing to put up on the big board and watch.

Speaking of the military, the Army has apologized for a letter that referred to the survivors of military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan as "John Doe". A proofing error, as John Doe was supposed to be replaced with the names of the people. One would think that somebody would have noticed before they were sent off, but this is not the case.

Salmonella, again, and in Michigan. One would think with as much experience as the country has with salmonella, they’d figure out a way of killing it ded. But then again, we’ve been trying to do that to the cold virus for years.

Welcome to opinions. Michael Medved ruminates on the special attention given Palestinian victims, when there are plenty of other dictators and wars going on in which people are slaughtered. His conclusion is that it’s because the Jews are always a fascinating people, and that everyone focuses on Israel because they hate the United States and take it out on Israel. Marvien Hier complains that Israel gets special negative treatment because most of the world doesn't want it to exist, while James Carafano uses it as an opportunity to suggest building and using energy weapons. Giving his take on the matter, bradhicks says that Hamas promised this war in campaigning for elections, is executing it, believing they're winning, and will continue until firmly and soundly proven otherwise, which will happen once they force Israel into a bad situation, get slaughtered, and then find out that their neighbors won’t do a damn thing to help them out. Well, there’s the (remote) possibility that the dead civilians will spark those neighbors into either invading or supply Hamas with great arms and soldiers, but that doesn’t seem very Occam.

Scott Gottlieb says that throwing more money at Medicaid isn't going to fix the structural problems, which often result in poorer care than others, and that if they want more money, there should be better care. What’s the difference between Medicare, which apparently does okay, even if people are like “will destroy budget!” about it, and Medicaid, which sounds like the last bastion between you and no insurance at all, so that I can visualize this right? John Stossel declares both Social Security and Medicare to be Ponzi schemes, and that with a large part of the populace retiring, soon there won’t be enough money in the coffers to pay out either. The government doesn’t actually have to do anything about it so that there is enough money, so working people are paying for something that has no guarantee of being there when they hit retirement. Because this scheme is government mandated, with taxes paying for it, we have no option of getting out of it, either. Walter E. Williams abstracts further, contending that just about every government official and lobbyist in the country is soliciting or engaging in illegal corruption (he also mentions Social Security as a Poonzi scheme, so I think I’ve hit a new buzzword or talking point...). The WSJ warns against letting American Steel companies write protectionism into the stimulus. And to round this out nicely, Turd Blossom says the outgoing administrator was trying to stop the housing crisis by reining in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that the GSE, with help from the Democrats, lobbied to have necessary regulations put off, regulations they would pass after the crash.

Joseph Curl hisses at President-elect Obama for saying anything at all during the meeting of Presidents in the White House, accusing him of upstaging the outgoing administrator, who put it all together. He’s kinder than Ms. Malkin, who considers stimulus spending to be an impediment to getting out of the recession, because of the inevitable pork, the fiction of “green jobs”, the unions that will benefit from infrastrcuture contracts, and the widely held “fact” that government spending prolongs recessions. She hates it so much that she’ll call it The Generational Theft Act of 2009, because the spending now will steal opportunities and dollars away from private enterprise and the generations that will have to pay for it somehow. The WSJ agrees that the spending is looking to get out of hand.

Bill Roggio gives his rundown of the state of The World versus Islam, stating as certainty that Pakistan’s government forces helped carry out the Mumbai attacks, for example. It mixes well with James Carafano's checklist for Homeland Security 2009, where DHS is not to be messed with, missile defenses should be built, military spending should go up, and space should be thought of, along with sensible suggestions like securing the computers and making sure the borders stay relatively secure. The selection of Leon Panetta as head of the CIA generates fear and panic among some, who are convinced he has no experience in intelligence and will move to cut funding, agents, and be “asleep” when it comes to fighting Islam or stopping the next terror attack. I guess I’m having a trust issue, here. We did trust that the outgoing administrator would appoint intelligent and capabale people to do the job, right? Even if since then, they’ve not proven to be the greatest, why is it that the incoming administrator’s picks are immediately suspicious or unable to perform? Is it just the President picking them or what?

The Slacktivist tells us that despite conservative rhetoric to the contrary, it is companies like utilities and telecoms that are more likely to steal our money and leave us destitute, thank to their ability to bill you for whatever, refuse to admit mistakes in billing, and make you fight them the whole way to get an overcharge corrected. Then, supposedly, it’s Uncle Sam that makes you destitute, according to that opinion. However, if the monopolies were still regulated, then they couldn’t engage in their creative billing practices. (Credit cards are also evil about this.) What the people need is for Uncle Sam to go out and fight for them.

Last from the opinions, Daniel Henninger calls everyone in the world with 'Net access stupid and says we should resolve to not be so in the upcoming year. Apparently our Web habits make us more accepting and more prone to commit errors.

In technology, prize bull back from the dead as cloning experiment succeeds, which suggests some currently extinct creatrues could make a return, because of what we know about their genomes and ome of the samples we still have, advertising-as-mind control better than previously thought, speculation that space elevators are a necessary component for above-atmosphere solar satellite power, less emmory-intensive algorithms that can handle lots of data points, microbes that could convert coal to natural gas, reducing emissions, and likely the efficiency of the coal by some amount, radio signals that could be some of the first stars going nova, having finally managed to make their way to our ears, as we catch a glimpse of stellar-size objects moving at high velocity, a lab demonstration of a quantum effect theorized nearly fifty years ago, and a biodegrabale cell phone made of grass for the outer housing.

Last for tonight, to break your brains before bed, the Twilight Edward action figure pre-order, courtesy of Hot Topic. That, and The Odyssey as a Choose Your Own Adventure.