What's dumber than a suicide bomber?

These guys.

Just asking

The outlets that are making so much of the US and now British abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib - did they raise a ruckus when Saddam Hussein was doing it?

Writer's workshop here in DC

See EveTushnet.com for details.

Get a life!

Seriously. You must have better things to do that to read this. It's all John Derbyshire's fault, but then what can you expect from a guy who writes books about the Riemann hypothesis!

The real investigation

Here I am, a humble blogger, linking to something someone else wrote again. Secondhand, even - I saw Glenn Reynolds' link to it at the bottom of a long updated post. But at least I'm not spinning the truth, and I'm not taking credit for something someone else did.

It's too bad that CBS News doesn't uphold such standards. As Greyhawk notes here, it was US military personnel who identified the problems with the Abu Ghraib prison, and it was an Army legal team that pursued it. And the investigation was conducted before 60 Minutes II showed the pictures.

I'm sure the 60 Minutes II folks would like to present themselves as crusading journalists exposing iniquity to the world to see it corrected. By dumping on the guys who make their beloved First Amendment possible.

Sorry guys, you're late to the party. That US troops break the rules from time to time is not news - just ask John Kerry. That they and other institutions don't choose to air their dirty laundry is not news either - just ask the news networks themselves.

Don't misunderstand me - this is legitimate news and should be covered. It should also be covered when the perps get what they have coming. But in particular, it should be noted that the military itself identified and started disciplinary and corrective actions long before some self-important overgroomed talking head with a teleprompter started mugging for a cameras. Was that acknowledged?

As for the perps, I don't want to hear any of the "didn't know the Geneva Convention" crap - we have any number of military bloggers over there so there must be some way to access the Web. Get on it and find the answer right here. (I gave myself two minutes to find this and I beat it - Google geneva convention prisoner of war and hit "I Feel Lucky".)

And these creeps wonder why their numbers are going down. Hey, if I want al-Jazeera I'll tune it in.

The rubes did it

By now everyone has heard of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. About anything I would say about it has been said quite well by others.

Except possibly for noting this: ": "'The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating"Got that? City folks, or maybe rural Vermonters might have handled it just fine, but you'd better keep an eye on those rustics from Virginia...

Astonishing insight

Rosenblog notes the common factor in all terrorism.

More on Oil-for-Food

"Basically, Oil-for-Food was Saddam--just slightly harder to spot, swaddled as he was in that blue U.N. flag."

You know, if Dick Cheney were as crooked as the Dems say, he would have had Halliburton's hands in this raking in the bucks, and he would have opposed the invasion of Iraq. Instead it's the Dems who were against it. Verrrrrry interesting.....

John Kerry Claims His Penis is Larger than George W. Bush's

Well, no. But a few more days ought to do it.

And if he's wrong, he'll claim that the rest was shot off in Vietnam.

Alright, I'm not Scrappleface. But I'll leave you with this collection of John Kerry jokes.

Cosmo, beware!

Billy G. Cates, 18, was fined $325 last Tuesday for letting loose his dog "with the intent to annoy, worry, maim, injure or kill the squirrel," according to the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil and the Omaha World-Herald.

The black-colored squirrel (search) is Council Bluffs' unofficial mascot, and an ordinance protecting it has been on the books for decades.

They're not the only ones with black squirrels - for more, check here. For white squirrels, go to Olney, IL, or several others.

Incidentally, Cosmo is columnist Jonah Goldberg's dog, well known for his dealings with squirrels.

Awwww

"We take France to be a declared enemy of Islam."

Sophos Spam glossary

A few days ago I got some email from a respectable address but with a subject that looked like spam. After standard precautions, I opened it. It turned out to be spam.

So I went to the company's website to find an address to forward the spam to, so they'd know what was going on. That's when I found this spam glossary

It doesn't have an entry for "irony".

Will same-sex marriage lead to incest and polygamy? Let's hope so!

Title stolen from here.

Septic tanks?

It was during the Cold War, and I was taking an "American History since 1865" class one randy spring quarter. It was late in the term, the prof was discussing NATO et al, and Poland was in ferment.

I'm in the zone, writing notes as the professor said "Did you hear that the Poles were buying 10,000 septic tanks? As soon as they figure out how to start them they're gonna invade Russia". I had about half of that written down before I realized I'd been had by a Polack joke (yeah, we troglodytes actually told them back in those pre-PC times). My kingdom for a rotten tomato!

Hey, this was engineering school - we didn't take our history too awfully seriously, and it wasn't as if you could major in it there. But perhaps this prof was just a bit ahead of his time. Because, via Matt Drudge, we have this - what appears to be a fuel cell designed to run on human waste.

The article states that the device would produce all of 51 scuzzy kW of power from the waste produced by 100,000 people. That's about 70 horsepower for you old-timers. I'm guessing that you couldn't even pump that much waste with that amount of power.

It's better than nothing of course. But with further research, this could come out smelling like a rose.

Hmmm

Jay Bryant: Don't Drink From This Well: "Gorelick (whose last name, I was depressed to learn, consists of three syllables) should remain on the commission for precisely the same reason Ted Kennedy should remain in the Senate: the final product won't be noticeably different, and her having participated in it will help discredit whatever final nonsense it produces. "

Of yellow porn, the fruits of wrath, and obestiality

There's no particular reason to link tothis, other than that it reminds me of some things I have written.

Say what?

Tina Fey is a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live and wrote the new release "Mean Girls". Here's an anecdote about her:

: "'When she was about 7, she drew this street scene of people walking along, holding hands with huge chunks of Camembert and Cheddar,' her brother recalls.
'At the bottom, she wrote, 'What a friend we have in cheeses!'' "

Pop songs are often misunderstood this way, and of course there's a book and website about it. Both of them are named for a line in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze".

But you never make mistakes like this, right? Alright, try these examples from the comments on the book at Amazon - what songs supposedly contain these lyrics?:

• the ants are my friends, they're blowin' in the wind (oh come on, it's a gimme)


• The girl with colitis goes by
• Just floss my teeth before you leave me, baby


• I was born...to four cross-eyed lesbians

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The official explanation

You might have heard this tragic story: a ship full of blue paint collided with a ship full of red paint and both sank. Their crews were marooned.

Or there's an old classic from Snopes about the unfortunate Civil War vet who took a round through the gonads which later lodged in the abdomen of a woman and impregnated her.

And this is how the North Koreans are explaining the big blast at Ryongchon last week:

: "Jang Song Gun, an official in charge of rescue efforts, said that the blasts occurred at noon after an electricity pole was knocked down when an oil wagon collided with two other wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertiliser. The fire caused by the short circuit ignited the oil wagon and the chemicals as the trucks were being shunted. "

Yeah, yeah, they've accounted for the ingredients in a OKC or 1993 vintage WTC bomb. What they haven't covered is the effort of mixing the ingredients, or managing to detonate them such that it all goes off at once. Otherwise you don't get much yield for your ingredients.

I'm no expert on ANFO, but I won't be taking that one at face value.