Is there a cure of outrage overload? Seriously.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when culture warriors end up being clueless about the object of their wrath, but this comment from Time magazine’s “Blog of the Year” is pretty pathetic (via Oliver) :

That was a mistake, of course. One “Chris Rock,” the host, whom I’ve never otherwise heard of, led off with an idiotic anti-Bush tirade. $70 trillion? Interesting statistic. What was noteworthy was not the host, who obviously knows nothing, but the crowd–every single person there laughed and applauded.

Never heard of Chris Rock??? Wow. If you’re that clueless about the entertainment industry, why would you even bother watching the Oscars in the first place? That’s why I don’t watch the Grammys.

What’s even funnier is the complaint about the “$70 trillion”. Has this guy never heard of “hyperbole”?? Perhaps Rock should have said “a gagillion bazillion dollars” or something. Either way, the jokes were hilarious and spot-on. Bush has completely pissed away our country’s finances. If we can’t laugh at the irony of somebody screwing up that bad and getting reelected, then what can we laugh at?

I didn’t see the Oscars last night, but I watched Chris Rock’s bit this morning and so far I’m pretty impressed :

“A lot of people like to bash Bush. I’m not gonna bash Bush here tonight. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11, I think Bush is a genius. I thought Bush did some things this year, you, nobody in this room could do. Nobody in this room could pull off ok? Cause Bush basically reapplied for his job this year.

Now can you imagine applying for a job, and while you’re applying for that job, there is a movie in every theater in the country that shows how much you suck at that job?” (Laughter)

I’d be hard to get hired wouldn’t it?(Laughter)

Now I watched Fahrenheit, I learned some stuff man. Bush did some things you could never get away with at your job, man. Never, ever, ever.

When Bush got into office he had a surplus of money. Now there’s like a $70 trillion dollar deficit. Now, just imagine you worked at the Gap.(Laughter)

You’re closing out your register, and there’s $70 trillion dollars short.(Laughter)

The average person would get in trouble for something like that, right?(Laughter-Applause) Not Bush, no.

He started a war, that’s cool, support the troops, he started a war. Now just imagine you worked at the Gap.(Laughter)

You’re $70 trillion behind on your register, and then you start a war with the Banana Republic…(Laughter) ’cause you say they got toxic tank-tops over there.(Laughter)

You have the war. People are dying. A thousand Gap employees dead, that’s right, bleeding all over the khakis. (Laughter)

You finally take over Banana Republic and find out, they never made tank-tops in the first place. (Laughter-Applause)

Another thing that really struck me during the first 30 minutes or so of the awards that I did get to see was Brad Bird (who won Best Animated Feature for The Incredibles) thanked “the Disney marketing team”. That might not have stuck out to most people, but to the few of us who saw The Iron Giant in the theater and remember the way Warner Brothers killed that movie with its hideous advertising, he might as well have said “Now that I’ve got an Oscar, WB can kiss my ass”.

My favorite part of the Oscars is the honorary award that they give to the person who they screwed during their prime. Tonight the likes of Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Chaplin will be joined by Sidney Lumet. His name may sound vaguely familiar, but you’ll definitely recognize his movies like 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and one of my favorites Network. On top of that, he wrote what I consider the be one of the best film books ever written, Making Movies. If you want to read more about Lumet’s work, there are pretty good profiles here and here.

Josh Marshall hits the nail on the head in regards to Joementum :

I talk to various of Sen. Lieberman’s political friends and we wonder between ourselves: What is it exactly? Is he just a man out of time now? Too stung by how the 2004 primaries went and just doesn’t care what Dems think? Or maybe he thinks he’s legislating for history here. A lot of folks who are generally in line with Lieberman, and like him, ended up not supporting him in the primaries because they worried not about his political views but about his political judgment. So the irony here is that he’s displaying the same political tin ear and questionable judgment that kept many like-minded Dems from supporting him. And their very lack of support stung him so badly that it has accentuated those tendencies that kept them off the Joe team to begin with.

That’s it exactly. I don’t doubt Lieberman’s sincerity or dedication to liberal causes. For all the shit he takes about being “Republican-lite”, Joe’s got a fairly solid voting record when it comes to women’s issues, the environment, the GLBT community, civil rights, and labor. Unfortunately, when it comes to “playing the game” of politics, he’s completely incompetent. No, it’s not just that he “sleeps with the enemy”, but that he’s a repeat offender. Despite the fact that the GOP plays dirty and will stab anyone in the back, Joe keeps living under the illusion that nice guys finish first. That doesn’t mean he’s a Democrat in name only. It means he’s a goddamned fool.

Yes, it’s scary and upsetting, but this is also the funniest article about white supremacists that I’ve ever read. (via waxy)

And in closing I add, “Where shall we meet?”

The local leader of the hate group — an organization that is a direct spinoff from the old American Nazi Party and that sees itself as carrying on Hitler’s dream to purify the white race and prevent Jews and blacks from degrading “our” culture — responds:

“How about Applebee’s? I’ll be coming with my wife, baby, and one other member. We can meet in the reception area. I’ll be coming with two women and a baby?”

Bingo! I’ve got a date with hate! And who doesn’t love Applebee’s? It has quality dinners and a wide selection — and all at budget prices!
[. . .]
I’m nervously sick to my stomach at the prospect of the entire evening as I drive the 1 1/2 hours from San Francisco, purposely making sure I’m 40 minutes late for my white supremacist rendezvous. That way, they’re going to absolutely hate me.
[. . .]
“There’s nothing I hate more than traffic,” I present as an excuse. “Except, of course, the Jews.” Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), they agree.

Of course, like most profiles of this nature, the article is full of revealing moments that would probably make you queasy if it were written by a more somber writer. Haveing read articles like this before, the article didn’t contain many shocking moments, but this one definitely stuck out :

“This is another of our publications,” white supremacist Kevin says, doing so while avoiding eye contact; his voice fills with pride. “It deals with current issues. It deals with historical issues.” He pulls out a magazine geared toward “A New Consciousness; A New Order; A New People.” “It’s kind of like Time magazine, except it’s for us.”
[. . .]
Just like Time, this magazine’s entertainment section reviews Saturday Night Live skits that feature Jewish performers (need I tell you its take?). A review of Ann Coulter’s book Slander reads, “Slander is fast, funny and factual. Although, unless you know the code, it can also be frustrating. The secret code is this: Almost every time you read the word ‘liberal,’ think ‘Jew.’ [Sounds like a crazy racist drinking game to me.] By not stating the real problem, Ann is aiding and abetting the enemy.”

Ahem. The code?? Do these white power assholes know something we don’t? Perhaps somebody could ask Ann (through her bosses at the Universal Press Syndicate) if she knows anything about the codes she’s supposedly throwing into her work.

Kudos to President Bush for standing tough in favor of democracy :

Struggling to repair troubled relations, President Bush prodded Vladimir Putin on Thursday about Moscow’s retreat from democracy but the Russian leader bluntly rejected the criticism and insisted there was no backsliding.

“Strong countries are built by developing strong democracies,” Bush said he told Putin. “I think Vladimir heard me loud and clear.”
[. . .]
Yet Bush challenged Putin about his government’s behavior, saying that democracies reflect a country’s customs and culture but must have “a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition.” He said he talked with Putin about his “concerns about Russia’s commitment in fulfilling these universal principles” and about Putin’s restrictions on the press.

Of course, Pootie-Poot had a pretty devestating comeback of his own :

In public, Putin compared his move to end direct popular election of regional governors to the American process of electing presidents through the Electoral College rather than by the results of the popular vote. “And it’s not considered unsenate, is it?” Putin said.

Ouch. I don’t agree with Putin’s moves to consolidate power, but it’s nice to see somebody call the President on his “do as I say, not as I do” lecturing.

This is brilliant (via MetaFilter):

You’re an Ashcroft! No, you’re the Ashcroft!

Imagine hearing that exchange in a movie — you’d think that Hollywood had come up with a crazy new insult. Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film “Sideways” on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing “Ashcroft” as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice.

The Post’s Monte Reel, based in Buenos Aires, tells us he heard the former attorney general’s name substituted at least twice in “Sideways” dialogue when he watched the film earlier this week on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru. The movie was shown in English and the dubbing was done “in the actual voices of the actors,” Reel reports. Star Thomas Haden Church utters the A-word.

I’m sure this will prompt more conservative grumbling about liberal Hollywood elites, but as far as I’m concerned, those Condis are so full of Bush that they can all go Cheney themselves in the Rumsfeld.

Is this the future of renewable energy?

Announced several years ago, the 3,280-foot Solar Tower is one of the most ambitious alternative energy projects on the planet: a renewable energy plant that pumps out the same power as a small reactor but is totally safe. If built, it will be nearly double the height of the world’s tallest structure, the CN Tower in Canada.

The Solar Tower is hollow in the middle like a chimney. At its base is a solar collector — a 25,000-acre, transparent circular skirt. The air under the collector is heated by the sun and funneled up the chimney by convection — hot air rises. As it rises, the air accelerates to 35 mph, driving 32 wind turbines inside the tower, which generate electricity much like conventional wind farms.

But the Solar Tower has a major advantage over wind farms and solar generators: It can operate with no wind, and 24 hours a day. Thanks to banks of solar cells, the tower stores heat during the day, allowing it to produce electricity continuously.
[. . .]
It’s estimated the Solar Tower will generate 200 megawatts, enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, and will keep 830,000 tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere annually.

Before you get too excited about the prospects of a cheap, endless supply of energy, here’s the rub :

Despite the advantages of solar power towers, especially over the long term, it’s unlikely one will be built in the United States. The federal government is pinning hopes on hydrogen as a new energy source, while continuing to overexploit fossil fuels, said Collins. “Not many years from now we’ll have to choose between using oil for energy, plastics or fertilizers,” he said.

If we had visionary leaders, we’d be halfway through the construction of one of these towers in the middle of the California desert. Instead, we’ve got oil industry shills who insist that our only energy problem is keeping the oil supply in pace with demand. It should come as no surprise that their best idea for a future energy source is hydrogen (which will likely need to be produced by — you guessed it — fossil fuels).

For those who don’t really pay attention to the Supreme Court, you should really keep you eye on the eminent domain case.

Traditionally, the “public use” requirement in eminent domain cases allowed the local government to condemn property to build railroads, or bridges, or highways. But in a 1954 case, Berman v. Parker, the Supreme Court found that “public use” could include condemning blighted neighborhoods to build better ones. Fort Trumbull isn’t blighted, but since the Michigan Supreme Court decided its famous Poletown case in 1981?razing hundreds of homes to build a GM plant?many jurisdictions have insisted that increased tax revenues and the prospect of new jobs was “public use” enough to justify nabbing land that subsequently became Costcos, shopping malls, and fancy office buildings.
[. . .]
Scott G. Bullock represents the homeowners, and his first words to the court strike terror in the heart of anyone who looks into their backyard and sees the ghostly outline of the Target housewares section looming over the trees: “Every home, church, and corner store would produce more tax revenue if it was turned into a shopping mall,” he says. There can be no limit to what the state can condemn if the only requirement is that the proposed project improve the tax base.
[. . .]
Justice Antonin Scalia asks what difference it makes that New London is depressed. What if a city acknowledged that it wasn’t doing badly, but just wanted to condemn land to attract new industry? He describes Horton’s position as: “You can always take from A and give to B, so long as B is richer.” And O’Connor offers this concrete example: What if there’s a Motel 6 but the city thinks a Ritz-Carlton will generate more taxes? Is that OK?

Yes, says Horton.

“So you can always take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?” asks Scalia.

“If they are significantly more taxes,” says Horton

“But that will always happen. Unless it’s a firehouse or a school,” protests Kennedy.

If the Supreme Court rules against the plaintiffs in this case, then it’s open season on real estate. All it’ll take is a vague promise about increased taxes and job creation for anyone to lose their land. Taking land that’s “depressed” to build shopping malls is just the beginning. What’s next? Razing charming old neighborhoods to build condos? Replacing small rent-controlled coffee shops with Starbucks? As long as the hostile land developer is able to clear the low bar that stands between them and gentrification, then the sky’s the limit.

I’m completely serious here : Could someone out there explain the appeal of NASCAR to me? From what I hear, it’s the most popular sport in the country, but to me it just looks like a bunch of billboards driving around in circles. Even if I found any appeal in watching cars race, the fact that they’ll slap advertising on anything seems insulting to the audience. That alone is enough to keep me from watching, yet I’m not going to assume that just because millions of people like something I don’t that it means they’re all idiots. Am I missing something here?

Based on the devotion these drivers seem to inspire, it looks like a personality-driven phenomenon, but when do viewers have a chance to get to know these guys? Every time I flip past it I just see nothing but cars. If you rarely get to see the actual guys who are competing (which seems to be in contrast of every other sport), how can people feel so strongly towards the people who they never see? Are the broadcasts broken up by a bunch of interviews or something?

Another thing that I’ve noticed that makes NASCAR stand out is that the affiliations are by sponsor and not region. I can understand why someone would root for the home team, but there are probably a dozen drivers from Atlanta for example. Their only difference seems to be that one would be sponsored by Pepsi and another by Taco Bell or something. Does brand affiliation play a role in choosing a favorite?

Or does the appeal of NASCAR lie in America’s lust for cars? If so, what makes NASCAR stand out above other forms of automotive racing? Is it that the car’s bodies look like generic Ford or Chevy sedans? Personally, I can’t tell them apart, but is there a car brand rivalry aspect to the appeal as well?

Or could it be that NASCAR broadcasts are more family-friendly than the boobies and beer commercials that are an essential part of every other professional sport? Would the relative tameness of NASCAR be because of the sport itself or because the races aren’t broadcast in prime time?

Perhaps it’s a southern thing. Are NASCAR fans more comfortable watching an event that’s the exclusive domain of white dudes with mustaches and country music as opposed to the ethnic diversity that marks just about every other sport? Not that I’m trying to connote that there’s anything discriminatory about NASCAR fandom, but that familiarity can lead to comfort.

While I’m starting to think I may be on the road to answering my own question, looking back at the points above, I still can’t figure out why the hell anyone would like NASCAR. Obviously there’s something to it, so I’m gonna open this one up to my readers. Do you like NASCAR? If so, why?

I thought Andrew Sullivan retired from blogging? Not that I’m saying he should retire or anything (he’s one of the few conservative bloggers I can stand to read every day). I’d just hate to think that the only reason he announced his retirement was to fish for compliments. Then again, if rock stars can go on bullshit “farewell tours” all the time, then why can’t bloggers?

This is the best article about intelligent design I’ve ever read (via Kottke) :

But if we can’t infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock’s tail or the human male’s nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?
[. . .]
And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

…but that’s just the setup. These two sentences, in my mind, make up the brilliant punchline of the piece :

It is hard to avoid the inference that a designer responsible for such imperfections must have been lacking some divine trait — benevolence or omnipotence or omniscience, or perhaps all three.
[. . .]
Of course proponents of intelligent design are careful not to use the G-word, because, as they claim, theirs is not a religiously based theory.

So ID proponents should have no problem with someone questioning the motives of the “designer” behind creation. After all, we’re not talking about the supposed embodiment of love who had his son murdered for us, but some anonymous soul who put our species together the way a child build something out of Legos. Perhaps those who find themselves on the losing end of a battle against “intelligent design” should lobby to have the “theory” given a more appropriate name. I suggest “indifferent design” or “ignoble design”.

Oliver’s got a link to one of those embarrassing “greatest president ever” surveys. What makes it so damn embarrassing is the fact that Reagan and Clinton top the list. The breakdown by party affiliation is even worse with the dueling results that shout “Oh yeah? Well, our president’s the best”. It’s nice to see that there’s a little more sanity among those who don’t have a partisan axe to grind :

I’m a bit of a history buff, but only in a “smart enough to sound stupid” sorta way. So instead of trying to come up with my own list, here’s a what I think of some of the contenders above :

Bill Clinton – I like Bill Clinton a lot. Of the guys on the list, I think he probably had the most potential to be a great President, but we all know how that one ended up. Maybe if he’d been able to pull off universal healthcare he’d be topping more lists, but he was way too embattled to get much done and too accommodating to force his agenda through Congress unscathed.

Ronald Reagan – Maybe if conservatives had spent more time reading the newspaper at their Invisible Hand circle-jerks they’d remember the explosion in the homeless population, the S&L scandal, the 1987 stock market crash, the recession that followed his term, and the Iran-Contra scandal. Seriously, he was no hero.

Franklin Roosevelt – If forced to name a favorite, he’d probably be my pick for the top spot. This list of New Deal programs alone makes him my pick for the top spot.

Abraham Lincoln – My favorite Republican President. The party should could use more like him these days, huh?

Dwight Eisenhower – How the hell does he rate worse than Nixon? I’m shocked that more Republicans don’t hold Ike in high esteem.

John F. Kennedy – A martyr President. Yawn. If he’d lived long enough to take the blame for Vietnam, I doubt he’d be on this list at all. At least he was openly supportive of the civil rights movement.

Richard Nixon – I’ll say it again…how the hell did he get on this list? My only thought is that maybe the survey respondents were so stupid that they couldn’t even name 10 presidents.

George Washington – I think the obviousness of choosing the first President as the best obscures how great a President he really was. Although it was a losing battle, his fight against the formation of political parties should put him in the top five of anyone’s list.

Also worth noting is that 1% of Democrats named George W. Bush as the greatest President. In other news, a new survey shows that 1% of Democrats are completely retarded.

Oh. My. God. It’s like somebody is shitting on my eyes (via Tom) :

Hoping to breathe new life into its animated Looney Tunes franchise and prop up the WB television network’s slumping Kids’ WB line-up, Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. is planning to launch a new cartoon series this fall based on “re-imagined” versions of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tasmanian Devil, Lola Bunny, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

Warner Bros. has created angular, slightly menacing-looking versions of the classic Looney Tunes characters for its new series, dubbed “Loonatics” and set in the year 2772. Names for the new characters haven’t been finalized, but they are likely to be derived from the originals: Buzz Bunny, for example. Each new character retains personality quirks of the original. The new Bugs, for example, will be the natural leader of the Loonatics’ spaceship; the new Daffy will remain confident that he is the one who should be in charge.

Brace yourselves for the picture everybody….

BOO-YAHHHH!!

This reaction from Cartoon Brew pretty much says it all :

A friend last night made this perceptive comment about the new Looney Tunes-inspired TV series LOONATICS: “Warners has already desecrated these characters so many times, why the hell would anybody care at this point?” That pretty succinctly sums up how I feel about the new series.
[. . .]
That having been said, I’m still pissed about this project. But for a wholly different reason. Pissed, because for every misguided show like LOONATICS, we lose out (and Warner Bros. loses out) on discovering the next Chuck Jones, the next Bob Clampett, the next Tex Avery, the next individual who could be creating the Bugs Bunny’s and Daffy Duck’s of our generation. There are countless modern creators out there who have ideas…who have something to say…and it’s a slap in the face of every talented artist working in this business whenever a major animation studio chickens out like this. Shoving a tired rabbit down America’s throat for the umpteenth time will never reap WB the rewards of giving America a great new cartoon star, an honestly-created cartoon that speaks to our time and place. But why take risks, especially when you can be successful by playing it safe: successful like BABY LOONEY TUNES and its sweet ranking of 104th in children’s programming or LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION and that delectable $20.9 mil it accrued in North American box office receipts.

To display anger over LOONATICS means that Warner Bros. has won yet again. The executives love hearing affirmation that people still care about these characters; when somebody likes the cartoons enough to voice concern, they know their job is safe. It’s not like they’ve created any cartoon characters of their own that audiences actually give a fuck about. These classic characters are their lifeline to a weekly paycheck. So let me be the first to say to Warner Bros.: take Bugs and fuck him however many ways you want – make him anime, give him pants and a spongy complexion, pair him up with Snoop Dogg and produce a Broadway rap-musical…I just don’t care.

Somewhat along those same lines, my good friend Josh had this interesting question to those who are offended by X-treme Looney Tunes :

Not that I think that Loonaticz-X is a good idea or should be done, but when does a character gain folklore status? When is it okay to start reimagining, interpreting, adapting or whatever they want to call it.

Dracula was created in 1897 and has had many adaptations over the years and I think most everyone on this list is pretty keen on several of those interpretations.

Batman is even younger and I like both Frank Miller’s reimagining, as well as some of the countless other offshoots and adapations. With any of these characters there have been misses and hits.

My immediate thoughts are that Batman, Dracula, and (my favorite) Superman are more archetypes than characters at this point. Unlike Bugs Bunny, the characters above don’t really have much of a personality. For that reason, Adam West’s campy Batman, Bob Kane’s Shadow-inspired original, Frank Miller’s postmodern antihero, Tim Burton’s movies, and the Timm/Dini animated series can all exist side-by-side. Bugs Bunny, thanks to the brilliant voice-work of Mel Blanc, has a strong enough comic persona that the character should be held in the same regard as Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, or Groucho Marx.

Then again, Josh brings up an interesting point. At what point do characters graduate into the realm of folklore? When everyone who cared about the original dies or stops caring? Or does it just depend on the originality of the reinvented version?