A tail dragging romp through the swamps of the world
Shoppers spent less over Black Friday weekend
Sun Nov 29, 2009 4:53pm EST | By Nicole Maestri
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Consumers spent significantly less at the start of the holiday season this weekend, dimming hopes for a retail comebackthat would help propel the economy early in 2010.
While shoppers turned out in force as early as Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, many said they had zeroed in on highly discounted items, would buy only what they needed and would walk out of a store if they did not find a good deal.
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Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the NRF.
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Shoppers interviewed across the country by Reuters over the weekend said they were lured by bargains, but would stick to pared-down budgets.
"If they don't have rebates and sales before Christmas, I don't think people are going to go back shopping after Black Friday," said Joel Wincowski, a higher education consultant shopping at a Best Buy store in Plattsburgh, New York. He bought an Xbox 360 game console for $299.
"We're going to cut back on everybody, even the kids."
HUMANITIES is a magazine published by the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.
MANY YEARS AGO, back in the late 60's, there was a tired store front on the south side of College St., just east of Spadina. It was the office of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). A dreary, worn, gray edifice, with a tired display of irrelevance in the window. Walking by, I noticed that there was a collection of some 30+ books, all beautifully leather-bound, on sale: the collected writings of Josef Stalin. I think they wanted $50 for the whole set, now probably a fundamental, objective part of a Toronto land-fill. 
THE LA TIMES HAS A DISTURBING REPORT: According to Alexandra Sandels in Beirut, less than a year after authorities stormed the offices of Iranian human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, taking sensitive documents and her computer, unidentified authorities have now allegedly taken the Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma from Ebadi's bank safety deposit box, said officials in Norway, which administers the prize.Outraged officials in Oslo say the incident is unprecedented and has sent shock waves through the Norwegian foreign ministry.
In its statement, the Norwegian foreign ministry also expressed concern over the treatment of Ebadi's husband by Iranian authorities.
They say his pension is not being paid and that his bank account has been frozen. He also was detained in Tehran earlier this fall and subsequently beaten, they said.
Grrrrrrr. The revolution cannot come soon enough. Meanwhile, I can daydream about Ineedadinnerjacket's encounter with a .50 Barrett . . . at 2 kilometers. The 700-grain Excedrin headache. John Moses B. would be so proud.
The recipe's ingredients:
Bon Appetit!
3. Of the XXX detainees we interviewed XXX said XXX had been whipped with cables, shocked with electricity and/or otherwise "hurt" while in NDS custody in Kandahar. This period of alleged abuse lasted from between XXX and XXX days, and was carried out in XXX and XXX. XXX detainees still had XXX on XXX body; XXX seemed traumatized. This alleged abuse would have occurred before the new arrangement between the governments of Canada and Afghanistan was signed'Torture' not mentioned in Afghan detainee reports: Generals
"Three generals declared Wednesday that there was no mention of the word "torture" in reports from a senior diplomat who asserts that he repeatedly warned the government against surrendering Afghan detainees to local authorities because they would almost certainly be abused.
One of the recipients of the widely distributed reports, which Colvin says were copied to 76 government and military personnel in Ottawa and Afghanistan, was retired Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, who was then the head of oversees deployment.
Gauthier told the Commons committee that none of Colvin's 2006 reports, including his May document, mentioned anything about torture.Retired Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's top soldier during Colvin's posting in Afghanistan in 2006-07 : "There was simply nothing there."
THE COMPANY FORMERLY KNOWN AS BLACKWATER, now with a suitably inscrutable moniker of Xe, seems to be a major player in the campaign against the jihaddis in Pakistan. According to Jeremy Scahill's article in The Nation, At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's role in Pakistan.
I'm probably mistaken, but to this old fart, it appears to me that using mercenaries is a sure sign of decadent imperialism. Countries have to look after their perceived interests, but Xe smacks of cynicism and decadence. If you'd like a précis, ol' FABIUS MAXIMUS has a list of salient points about the above. Also, if you haven't seen it, do rent a copy of "War, Inc.", a black comedy about America's first totally out-sourced war. Love the hot sauce.
But, if you need to train an army or rent one, Xe sure can help. Their site proclaims:
Xe has the ability to develop, test, and manufacture weapons and armor. With some of the most qualified firearm specialists in the world, we are able to gather input from experienced professionals for design of high quality weapons and armor. Our team’s extensive backgrounds in military and law enforcement gives us access to the information we need to produce the best armor and weapons for our customers.
A ready supply of clothing, protective gear, weapons, and life support needs is located at our Headquarters. This entire stock of equipment is managed by Xe's logistics and procurement division and securely supervised in a designated warehouse. All personnel are properly outfitted for the requirements of the contract before departing the United States for work overseas. Our personnel are properly prepared to meet the needs of its customers.
Keddy says he's sorry for referring to unemployed as 'no-good
bastards'
By Alison Auld (CP)
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Nova Scotia Conservative MP who stunned the opposition and advocates for the homeless after referring to the unemployed in Halifax as "no-good bastards" apologized Tuesday for the comments.
In a statement, Gerald Keddy said he did not mean to offend Nova Scotians who are out of work.
Well, there's a bunch of sober-minded Finns who disagree, and you can check it out at DOTSUB. It's a 29 minute video, with clear English subtitles, plus two of the participants are English-speaking. I realize that skepticism over global warming is politically-incorrect, but, like I care? Knee-jerkers can bite me.
Anyway, it seems that the Gore gang haven't been entirely honest. Check out the video, then, if you feel it might have validity, ask yourself, who gets to make money out of the P-C hysteria? Like Donald Sutherland's character in JFK said, follow the money.
Because he doesn’t care about eldery people like me. I am in that care home on tv and my daughter is helping me with this on her laptop. She was laid off two months ago and lives in a small apartment, but I need more help than she can do while she is looking for a new job.
Where will we go? There is no where else to go, and I think his mother would not be proud to have a son who has been so cruel to so many people in need.
Thank you.
Vera.
OSHKOSH 365 is the site for the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) who promote civil aviation in the US, especially home-built aircraft. Every summer, the Oshkosh fly-in is astounding to see — thousands of home-builts and restored factory fliers.Well, here's a truly unique home-built. Jim O'Hara, a retired college professor, learned to fly 21 years ago. Six years later, he began construction of a two-thirds-scale P-38. He's now 81 years old and he and his wife made its maiden cross-country trip three weeks ago.
Awesome.
Kodachrome is a very unique film that has played a major roll documenting much of the last century of our world's history. It has encapsulated many important eras preserving them safely in the cradle of its superior archival properties. As a result, Kodachrome's 75 year lifespan will have become an era in its own right; an era deserving of its own preservation effort.
That the film exists at all, is amazing. It was invented by two New York city musicians, Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes. Like Dan says, Kodachrome is unique:
Kodachrome is fundamentally different from other transparency and negative color films that have dye couplers incorporated into the emulsion layers. Kodachrome is unique because it has no dye couplers in the emulsion; these are introduced during processing.
That makes its processing much more complex, compared to other emulsions, except the Technicolor 3-strip dye transfer process. That's why, except for the U.S. (because of antitrust concerns) Kodachrome was sold with processing included, with a mail-pouch to put the used cassette in to send to the Kodak lab.
So why was it important? Well, it was originally introduced as 16mm movie film, but soon afterward, some bright soul in Kodak authorized its manufacture in 4x5" sheets, for the big view cameras and Speed Graphics used by serious photographers.
When WW2 came along, the U.S. Government put a corps of photographers out in the field to capture America at war — using 4x5 Kodachrome. To the delight of archivists, as decades passed, it was discovered that if processed Kodachrome transparencies were stored in darkness, there was virtually NO colour degredation, unlike other colour film, which would start to deteriorate rapidly.
And this brings us to SHORPY, a delightful web site that is a compendium of all manner of photographs. They have a great number of these 4x5's to display — and they are awesome. Great saturated colour that is 70 years old, but looks as fresh as today. Anyway, go visit Shorpy for some colorful history.
Notice the subtle, non-fried, non-faded 70 year-old skin tones in the photo below, of workers on lunch break at North American Aviation's Inglewood, California factory:
THE NEW YORK TIMES has a report about what has been called a "computer hack" into the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre.Why should you care? Well, according to the Times, the revelations:
are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
FABIUS MAXIMUS has a page about the hack, with numerous links, as does WATTS UP WITH THAT?
There is going to be so much knee-jerk on both sides over this, rehab clinics are going to have to hire more staff.
TPM HAS A REAL THIGH-SLAPPER — Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn't Actually Win 2008 Election -- ACORN Stole It! According to Eric Kleefeld,The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.
The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.
Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided.
Teabaggers and Birthers and Nutters. As MeMeMeMeMe observed in the DAILY KOS,
This is the state of today's GOP: it counts as some sort of triumph of reason that only four out of ten of them are birthers. At this rate we'll be handing out gold stars to them for not making poopie in their pants.
One last thought: pause for a moment and ponder how they'd be handling things if they'd lost the election by, say, 500 votes. In a state run by Obama's brother.
Last Rites: Even with God's help, this shopping center in Pahrump, Nevada, probably cannot be revived.Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages
Dave Montgomery | Fort Worth Star-Telegram | November 18, 2009
AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married?
Maybe not.Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.
The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:
"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively "eliminates marriage in Texas," including common-law marriages.
She calls it a "massive mistake" and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem.
_______________Radnofsky, the Democratic nominee in the Senate race against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2006, said she voted against the amendment but didn’t realize the legal implications until she began poring over the Texas Constitution to prepare for the attorney general’s race. She said she holds Abbott and his office responsible for not catching an "error of massive proportions."
"Whoever vetted the language in B must have been asleep at the wheel," she said.
THE BORDER BETWEEN CONGO AND RWANDA has had a lot of nasty things happen over the years. Well, it seems God thinks this should continue into the future, too. You see, there's this lake, called Lake Kivu, part of the freshwater lake system bordering Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Well this lake has a problem, in that it appears it could explode.According to Science Daily:
Scientists can't say for sure if the volatile mixture at the bottom of the lake will remain still for another 1,000 years or someday explode without warning. In a region prone to volcanic and seismic activity, the fragility of Lake Kivu is a serious matter. Compounding the precarious situation is the presence of approximately 2 million people, many of them refugees, living along the north end of the lake.
Vodacek likens the contained pressure in the lake to a bottle of carbonated soda or champagne. "In the lake, you have the carbon dioxide on the bottom and 300 meters of water on top of that, which is the cap," he says. "That's the pressure that holds it. The gas is dissolved in water."
When the cap is removed, bubbles form and rise to the surface. More bubbles form and create a column that drags the water and the gas up to the surface in a chain reaction.
"The question is, and what's really unknown, is how explosive is that?" Vodacek says.
"Despite endorsing the strategy in the first hours of Monday's meeting, the 192 participating countries did not commit to the $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.
Soon after the delegates approved the declaration, Pope Benedict took the floor to decry "opulence and waste" in a world where the "tragedy" of hunger has been steadily worsening. Benedict's speech marked the first time a pontiff attended such a gathering since Pope John Paul II took part in a 1996 food summit.
The pontiff, lending his moral authority as head of the world's 1 billion Catholics, also called for access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, which he said are often relegated to the sidelines."
NATURE weighs in with details on H1N1. Nature reports from three laboratories scrutinizing the pandemic flu virus. One is working to find out what it might do . . . The profile emerging is of a distinctive virus. Although seasonal flu tends to infect just the cells high in the upper airway, H1N1 penetrates down into the terminal air sacs called alveoli.
If you think the influence of the US christian 
I had previously heard Ms. Joya on a PBS program in the US, but to hear her story live in person was very moving. It is something I would recommend to anyone that has the opportunity to attend one of her appearances on this tour."What will happen to Afghanistan if all the foreign troops leave?"was:
"The Afghani people will work it out. Slowly, they will begin to see that democracy and equal rights for all people, genders, religions is the thing to do. It won't be easy. It won't be fast. But it will happen. Having foreign troops there only more firmly entrenches the Taliban and the war lords in power. Make them leave, and the situation will slowly begin to change."
"Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort."An example : NCL Holdings, a licensed security company in Afghanistan, has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars - a 600% increase for the proposed new "surge" - to handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan. Its chief principal is Hamed Warduk, the American son of Afghanistan's current defense minister, who graduated as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997, earned a Rhodes scholarship, and interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where "he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick".
"The security firms don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation.
"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."
To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister's son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai's cousins, for protection."
Censored gay sex scenes in From Here to Eternity revealed
Daughter of author James Jones discloses details of cuts insisted upon by the novel's original publisher
* Alison Flood | * guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009
It is one of the most celebrated images in cinema, an icon of heterosexual romance: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerrkissing as the waves crash over them in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. But behind the Hollywood gloss is a tale of censorship and repression, with the author of the award-winning novel on which the film was based forced to remove scenes of gay sex from the manuscript before publication.
Kaylie Jones, a novelist in her own right, says her father, James Jones, was told by his publisher Scribner to eliminate both expletives and homosexual scenes in From Here to Eternity, which was based on his own experiences in Hawaii in the army on the eve of the Pearl Harbour bombing.
The original manuscript of From Here to Eternity went into "great detail" about the kinds of sexual favours soldiers like Private Angelo Maggio, played in the film by Frank Sinatra, would provide to rich gay men for money, Kaylie Jones revealed in an article written for US news website the Daily Beast.
"'I don't like to be blowed [by a man]'," the novel's hero Private Robert E Lee Prewitt tells Maggio in a section cut from the novel. "Angelo shrugged," writes James Jones. "'Oh, all right. I admit it's nothing like a woman. But it's something. Besides, old Hal treats me swell. He's always good for a touch when I'm broke. Five bucks. Ten bucks. Comes in handy the middle of the month ... Only reason I let Hal blow me is because I got a good thing there. If I turned him down I'd blow it sky high. And I want to hang onto that income, buddy.'"
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James Jones, she wrote, "believed that homosexuality was as old as mankind itself, and that Achilles, the bravest and most venerated fighter ever described, was gay, and to take a younger lover under your wing was a common practice among the soldiers of the time". "He also believed also that homosexuality was a natural condition of men in close quarters, and that it in no way affected a soldier's capabilities on the battlefield. What would have amazed him is that the discussion still continues to this day, cloaked in the same hypocrisy and silence as it was 60 years ago," she wrote. The US military's current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep quiet about their sexuality. President Obama has previously announced his intention to revoke the rule, but for the moment it remains in force.
FABIUS MAXIMUS is an American who has an eponymous blog which is "a discussion about geopolitics, broadly defined, from an American's perspective". Over the years, I have found a sage perspective.Anyway, Fabius has a page on the current debacle that is Mexico, leading with the comment, "Mexico continues to fall apart in slow-mo. There seems to be little we can do to help, so our government pretends all is fine — rather than take defensive measures." Fabius is not given to hyperbole, so, just how bad is it?
He cites an article in THE ATLANTIC, by Philip Caputo, titled "The Fall of Mexico":
In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.
14,000 people killed in 3 years? Wow. Here there be dragons. As well, the Fabius page has links to other articles about this festering problem. As Pete De Lorenzo says at Autoextremist, "a heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good".
Others concur. William S. Lind is what you could call a "paleoconservative", which seems somewhat whacko to my milquetoast weltanschauung, but, Willie is something of an avant-garde theorist, when it comes to things military. His take is that La Familia, one of the Mexican drug outfits, is different from the rest, in that it is the acquiring the shape of a "4GW" entity. That's 4th Generation Warfare. He is a major contributor to Defense and the National Interest, and what he has to say is worthy of attention:
An article in the October 23 Washington Times points to what I think may be the next important evolution in Fourth Generation war. The piece concerns Mexico’s third-largest drug gang, La Familia. La Familia is best known for beheading people it does not like. But according to the article, its real claim to fame may be as a pioneer in seizing the mantle of legitimacy previously worn by the state.
CITY JOURNAL is a thoughtful magazine that covers issues of concern. Sol Stern has a worthy article, titled "E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy". So, who is E. D. Hirsch, and why should you care?
THE BOSTON GLOBE has a picture section on their web site, and this week, it's about Martian landscapes. These are not the dreary rover pictures of rubble-strewn plains, but an exciting variety of views. The Boston.com has links to the respective science labs responsible.
"It’s time for real change," says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new Tea Party Party's chairman, promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races. Yes, the Teabaggers are now an official "Tea Party" registered with the office of the Secretary of State.
Let the nationwide tea-bagging begin!
Fox News Reports: Millions of Grannies Flee U.S. as Death Panels Loom
Glenn Beck: "Run For Your Lives"
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - With the establishment of government-mandated death panels just days away, grandmothers began fleeing the United States in record numbers today, reports Fox News.
"I am never one to yell ‘Fire' in a crowded theater," said Fox News host Glenn Beck. "But run for your lives!"Across the country, slow-moving caravans of 1980s-era Cadillacs with turn signals blinking were making the torturous journey to the Canadian border, their back seats laden with cats, knitting projects, and bottles of Ensure.
Fox News may have set off the mass exodus by warning grannies that if they did not flee quickly enough they would face government-mandated organ harvesting.
Elsewhere, anti-healthcare protesters objected to the language of the House bill, saying there were too many polysyllabic words.
Beauty queen busted for bar brawl with rival
November 07, 2009 | Toronto Star
You might expect pageant queens to demonstrate their talent, beauty and poise, but Miss England has added fisticuffs to her resumé. Rachel Christie, 21, has relinquished her crown after being arrested on suspicion of punching Miss Manchester, 24-year-old Sara Beverly Jones, at a nightclub.
_______________The dispute arose when the two beauty queens encountered each other at a bar on Monday.
The BBC reported Jones was allegedly punched in the face after an argument said to be about a TV personality from the Gladiators program, which airs in the U.K.
It is believed that Jones is an ex-girlfriend of TV gladiator Tornado, whose real name is David McIntosh.
Christie, McIntosh's current girlfriend, has been released on bail until January 2010.
LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide), commonly called "acid," is the most powerful known hallucinogen - a drug that radically changes a person's mental state by distorting the perception of reality to the point where, at high doses, hallucinations occur. Even in very minute doses 0.05g LSD can significantly alter one's perceptions to the point of hallucination. Although it is derived from a fungus that grows on rye and other grains, LSD is semi-synthetic and has to be chemically manufactured in illicit laboratories.
