Redd Volkaert

When I was in Austin recently for Ethan and Amy's wedding, I had the great privilege of seeing a band play at the Continental Club. Can't remember the name of the band itself, but it was pointed out to me that the guitarist, a kinda chubby guy with the big beard, active eyes, and a cud-chewing constant scan back and forth of the audience, was some famous guy.

I was smitten.

His name is Redd Volkaert, and I don't know a lot jack shit about country music, really, but I fkcuing loved it. Unbelieveable. As Ethan put it, his "familiarity with the instrument" was astonishing, although he would be the first to say that just those words wouldn't convey anything about it.

Have a look at his site - you can find a few samples there - but if you EVER have a chance to hear him play ANYwhere, do so. One of the best live performers I've ever seen.

Skorpion

Skorpion, originally uploaded by Axel_.

This is a real sharp one. Have a look at the high res on the flickr page to really see the textures.

Adult?

Doo-de-doo...wandering around Amazon, like a good little brother, searching for maybe something yoda-ish, and - whoa!

Shiver. That's fkcd.

Murtha:"What has he said that would give him credibility?"

These words were said by John Murtha, in response to comments about whether his suggestions to work on bringing the troops home might not endanger Bush's credibility.

Fuck yeah, John.

(image AP)

KpoccBopg

This was the word that appeared above a crossword puzzle on someone's Russian newspaper I saw in the train this morning.

I do not know its meaning.

I've been to the internet. I've seen your Babelfish. I've Launched your Apple Translation Widgets.

But not this time. This time I am going to let KpoccBopg exist on its own, and remain a mystery in my life.

Probably.

John Gibson Wins By An Asshole!

John Gibson from FOX News may actually have receive the Asshole Comment of the Year award:

"Minorities ought to have the same sense of tolerance about the majority religion - Christianity - that they've been granted about their religions over the years."

Go visit the Poor Man for more of this transcript - where I found it myself!

This Is the Face of the Administration

This is why this Administration is creating hatred and world turmoil that will not be fixed for generations to come.

Appalling. Where are our leaders?

Just Keep Moving

What the hell is wrong with these people? I heard this on NY1 this morning, and felt all icky inside:

"Physical exercise and moving your body is a great way to lose weight," says Samantha Heller, Contributor, Health Magazine. "So, my suggestion is when you go to the mall, go early. Do your mall walk exercise which means go really quickly among all the levels. Check out the sales what you want to buy. Then you can go shopping."
...
When you're not power-walking at the mall, you could be power-dancing at the office holiday party. They say that half an hour's worth can help burn about 150 calories.

"When you go to a party even if you're not comfortable with dancing– try it. First of all, it's really fun, the time flies, and it's great exercise," says Heller "If you really don't want to dance, maybe you're in stilettos or something, standing burns a few more calories than sitting and it's certainly better."

So the main goal this holiday season, whether you're hitting the stores, the party circuit, or the gym, just keep moving.

Yup, that, and, um, Kong looks corny.

"patch of face, chilled"

Comma Chilled. This story has been like Christmas for writers the world over. Consider the language...

From Friday's NY Times:

The swollen nose, lips and chin she saw there were not her own - those had been ripped from her head by her pet Labrador retriever in May - but they were a blessing for a woman whose face had become a lipless grimace.
...
They dismissed assertions that they were bent on glory at the patient's expense.
...
According to Dr. Dubernard, the woman had quarreled with her daughter that evening in May and the daughter had left to spend the night at her grandmother's home. The woman was agitated, he said, and took "one pill" to help herself sleep. At some point during the night, he said, she arose and stumbled through the house, encountering the dog.

Local press reports have suggested that the woman fell unconscious and that the dog chewed and clawed her face in an attempt to revive her, but Dr. Dubernard said the dog had been adopted from the local pound and was known to be aggressive.

And the grand champion paragraph:

Harvesting of the face was complicated by the convergence of several teams to remove other organs from the donor, but the operation was complete by 5 a.m. and Dr. Devauchelle rushed with the patch of face, chilled, to Amiens to begin the transplant...

The writing seems more like a cult novel than journalism.

One of the nurses asked if they might applaud and when one of the doctors nodded, they began to clap.

Finally, the provides a bit of scientific grounding:

As with all transplants, the doctors said, there was about a 33 percent risk of death, a 33 percent risk that the body would reject the graft and only a 33 percent chance that the transplant would prove successful.

"As with all transplants?" 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3? Whaddya know. What a coincidence.

Face Transplant Is Freakin Me Out

This story just became even fuckin weirder. Suicide?:

"The world's first face transplant recipient suffered her injuries after trying to commit suicide, her family claimed last night.

Isabelle Dinoir, 38, was disfigured when her dog tried to wake her after she took an overdose of sleeping pills, said her 17-year-old daughter. She added: 'We don't know whether it bit or clawed her, but it managed to pull her awake. In a way, it was lucky for her that the dog was there.'

The revelation fuelled the ethical debate around the operation, which involved grafting the nose, lips and chin from a dead woman. But it infuriated the medical team who carried it out in Amiens, northern France. Leading transplant surgeon Jean-Michel Dubernard insisted: "There was no suicide attempt."

He said Mme Dinoir had taken a pill to try to sleep after a family argument and was bitten by her labrador during the night.

Dr Dubernard said several psychiatrists had examined her before the 15-hour operation and all had said she was mentally fit for it. Facial surgeon Bernard Devauchelle said his patient regained consciousness 24 hours after the surgery on Sunday. Her first words were 'Thank you.'

She has since been able to drink coffee and fruit juice, and eat strawberries and chocolate. Mme Dinoir comes from Valenciennes, in northern France. The donor was a brain-dead woman from Lille.

Um. So, "brain dead" or dead? What does the brain dead woman's family say? Did they leave her alive, with an open skeleton for a face? Finally:

"It was an accident. She loved her dog," Dr Testelin said.

The Calamari Wrestler

PZ Myers (not pictured above) is a professor of biology at University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM), and maintains a most excellent blog called Pharyngula, about his research and about teaching science in general (including some excellent anti-ID work).

His main research focus is on squid, so today he writes a bit about a Japanese movie called The Calamari Wrestler, including some very nice screengrabs like the one at the top of this post.

Take it away, PZ!

Bill O'Reilly Earns a Laugh Track

There's little more that really needs to be said about Bill O'Reilly. You can go visit Media Matters any day of the week - or, to be fair, just turn on his show for 5 minutes - and, if you treat Bill like a human being with opinions that are of a like "kind" to opinions that other human beings have, you'll get worked up, exasperated, astonished, pissed, etc. Part of me feels like he's just playing us all into constantly TALKing about him, about what he said recently, how awful he is - and part of me feels like he WINs if we do.

So, with all due respect to the thousands of websites out there that effectively point out the infinite fallacies of his arguments and inexcusable turds he spits, I direct your attention to this fabulous little MP3 file, submitted by a reader of Eschaton. Originally an OFF THE FUCKING WALL rant from O'Reilly, this version includes some fine added chuckles. A real hoot.

It's already in MY iTunes. Maybe you'd like it, too?

Go here, and then click the link he offers.

NYTimes Editoral: "Plan: We Win"

The New York Times calls bullshit on Bush's speech yesterday and the release of the inane Strategy For Victory document:

It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.

Good stuff in here. And great title. Read it.

Also, if you like "strategies" like "Winning," you'll LOVE the great and glorious Fafblog as he discussed the War on Losing. Or, if you're really bold, view his Q & A on Bush's new plan here:

A. This course is the same course as the previous course but is now served on a bed of fresh leafy green victory along with a side of pasta salad and your choice of vegetable.
Q. Mmmm, sounds delicious! How come the old plan didn't have this much victory in it?
A. It did! We just didn't tell you about it. This is newly declassified top secret victory.
Q. Does that mean the new plan is really the old plan?
A. Every day is a new day for the plan! Today is the first day of the rest of the plan's life.

Chelicerate in Harry Potter

Did you see the Harry Potter movie that's out now?

Did you curl up in a ball of terror when that buglike THING showed up and ran all over everyone's head in the scene with Mad-Eye Mooney?

Did you know that, while digital and animated, that thing is a Real Creature?

And, what's more, a chelicerate. All hail the Amblypgid, or tailless whip scorpion. Fuckin TERRIfying.



photo of amblypygid, Paraphrynus laevifrons: Paraphrynus laevifrons from Carara, Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Copyright 2003 by Carlos Viquez. Posted at American Arachnology.

More about amblypgids, tailless whip scorpions:

- Wikipedia

- A very nice sharp (but small) shot of one from the Saint Louis Zoo website

More about Whip Scorpions:

- A tale about keeping a "Vinegaroon," or giant whip scorpion, as a pet.

- More from the The British Tarantula Society Journal.

Cranbrook

PB234939, originally uploaded by urban_tank.

Some of you may know that I grew up as a facbrat, or child of faculty, at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Michigan. I was born and raised there, finally moving with my family to CT after 6th grade.

Cranbrook is an incredibly beautiful and dream-like place, and being an 8-year old with a bike, free (and safe!) to wander the several hundred acre campus just made it more surreal. I cannot convey how deeply ingrained every texture and building is in my psyche and memory.

I keep a monitor on Flickr pics with the tag cranbrook, and here are a couple other recent ones I've seen. Credits with each.

hound statue, originally uploaded by Brimley.

Saarninen House + Extras 049, originally uploaded by bport.

Advocate Me, Baby!

Ooh. This one's fun.

I present to you The Center For Consumer Freedom. From their About Us page:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.

The growing cabal of "food cops," health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know "what's best for you" are pushing against our basic freedoms. We're here to push back.

Hmm. "Food companies" finally getting up the guts to push back against health care enforcers, huh?

Q:Who funds you guys? How about some "full disclosure"?
The Center for Consumer Freedom is supported by restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals. From farm to fork, our friends and supporters include businesses, employees and consumers.
...
Many of the companies and individuals who support the Center financially have indicated that they want anonymity as contributors. They are reasonably apprehensive about privacy and safety in light of the violence some activist groups have adopted as a "game plan" to impose their views.

Oh sure, yup, right. These poor little individuals fear for their safety.

Okay. You know what? Fuck you. I thought that fishy smell was familiar.

What you meant to say was "We were formed in 1995 with initial funding from Philip Morris. Our primary funders include Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Wendy's, and Tyson [funders not disclosed since 2002]. We are a lobbying group run by the same man, Rick Berman, that created The American Beverage Association [which I wrote about a couple months ago in regards to their study showing no connection between soda and childhood obesity]."

More information at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

For those of you who have read this long, I humbly submit to you this GEM of a cartoon from their "Cartoons" page. Tells a rich story about their angle on the world. (For them, a "nanny" is an outta control activist trying to take our freedoms away, etc.)
Remember. This is not a Libertarian "Freedom" organization. This is an Industry Promotion PR attack.

And, finally, as a goodbye, I give you a Thanksgiving Op-Ed...an Op-Ed from a Lobbyist group. Huh?

Some highlights

...
I’ve seen turkeys up close. They live up to their rep. They’re weak, slow, fat, and not very agile. And they can't fly. There’s an urban legend about turkeys being so stupid that they often look up at the sky with their mouths open, fascinated by raindrops, until they drown. Exaggerated? Maybe. But the turkey is no bald eagle.
...
Last year HSUS [Humane Society of the United States] installed its very first “vegan” president. Think “vegetarian” with a cape and tights.
..
Each November when the President ceremonially declares that at least one Washington turkey will be safe for a while, some of us hope that the “pardoned” bird winds up stuffed and dripping with gravy anyway. Like the Pilgrims, we’re a frugal people. Waste not, want not.

Oh, stop it, you guys are TOO MUCH! This Op-Ed, brought to you by David Martosko, Director of Research at the Center for Consumer Freedom.

Snowy Thanksgiving

DSCN2195.JPG, originally uploaded by cricketheron.

Oh, it was such a glorious snow at my Dad's house this past Thanksgiving. This whole set also includes some good shots of CT deer nosing close to Sarah's house.

Unturkey Club

DSCN2339, originally uploaded by cricketheron.

Odd to Creepy

I could take it from "odd" and "happy" to "creepy" and a little scary if I were to actually COMMENT on this BLOG page...

http://fleshy.org.nz/yum/archives/314

It's nice to know he enjoyed my comment tho... :-)

Pets

Yummy, originally uploaded by Skea.

Heh. Whaddya know.