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min -- Building our moon base
S -- How does he run that fast with only one bionic leg?
min -- Next he'll show you his Eagle Briefs
min -- Whoodwin?
Wanyas The Self-Proclaimed -- Fakin' it
Anonymous -- What i'm trying to tell you is he's like a human bullet

When the Snowden news first broke, Josh Marshall at TPM put out an honest if surprising post where he said that he personally didn't see Bradley Manning as a whistleblower and while he's a little more on the fence about Snowden, he basically feels the same way.

Let me put my cards on the table. At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I'm not a bystander to it. I'm implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does. I think a military force requires a substantial amount of secrecy to operate in any reasonable way. So when someone on the inside breaks those rules, I need to see a really, really good reason. And even then I'm not sure that means you get off scott free. It may just mean you did the right thing.

...

The Snowden case is less clear to me. At least to date, the revelations seem more surgical. And the public definitely has an interest in knowing just how we're using surveillance technology and how we're balancing risks versus privacy. The best critique of my whole position that I can think of is that I think debating the way we balance privacy and security is a good thing and I'm saying I'm against what is arguably the best way to trigger one of those debates.
But it's more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it's clear he's trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he's doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don't think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he's not just opening the thing up for debate. He's taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that's a betrayal.

In response, Daniel Ellsberg, the guy that leaked the Pentagon Papers, said "I think what he said there is stupid and mistaken and does not do him credit."

Readers here won't be surprised to learn that i side with Ellsberg over Marshall here, although i think the question of whether Snowden should be prosecuted is secondary to the matter of the program that Snowden is bringing newfound attention to, which i think needs to get shut down or at least greatly reduced in scope.

Today, though, TPM has an unusual story. They tried to put out what was meant to be a routine educational piece where they explain how the Senate Intel Committee provides oversight on the NSA program. It was just meant to explain to readers how the procedures work; if you want to attribute motive considering Marshall's earlier declaration of loyalties, you could view it as a propaganda piece that says to people "It's ok; your elected officials are supervising this, so you technically have control through the democratic process". But the person they reached out to for info on the article, the former General Counsel for the Committee, wound up getting gagged by the Committee and was disallowed from going on record about anything, which is really suspicious. Very strange story and worth a full read. Here's Marshall's lead-in and here's the full article.

One commentor speculates:

1. The committee has perhaps taken some things at face value, assuming they had a level of understanding of the information that in fact they did not have. Now that a whole bunch of people are saying "are you sure about that?" they have realized, that they are not, in fact, sure at all. They don't want to reveal details about the process because it could lead to questions like "at a briefing on date Z, you were told something classified about program X. Did you realize that your assent meant that consequence Y would become a certainty?
In other words, committee members have figured out that metadeta about their process might be just as useful as the data itself....irony anyone? I think that may be the "committee sensitive" part.

2. Given the discussion of the previous administration, there may have been some decisions to "let sleeping briefing policies lie" rather than bring them to light, change the procedure, and then take heat for being "soft on terror" in the event of a disaster. Again, information about how the briefing system worked would tend to shed light on this issue.... So that would be the "out-of-date" part, that Divoll would be working from a 2003 understanding, not realizing that the procedures had been secretly changed later by Bush officials, and then secretly changed again by Obama officials, but not perhaps as much as it should have been. These would not be good things to put down on paper when hundreds of thousands of wonky folk are paying attention.

Anyway, just wondering if all of this in any way affected Josh Marshall's confidence or opinions in any way.

(By the way if you want to torture yourself, read the comments in any TPM article about the NSA or PRISM programs. The mind-numbing "debate" between the Obama loyalists and the civil liberties-minded liberals is absolutely cringe-worthy.)

By fnord12 | June 18, 2013, 2:31 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Building our moon base

Actually these are pictures of some new subway construction in New York.

By fnord12 | June 17, 2013, 4:47 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (1) | Link

We're back

And all i want to know is how long before i can make a "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" reference?

That, and Obama agreed to arm the rebels in Syria because Bill Clinton called him a wuss? Seriously?

By fnord12 | June 17, 2013, 2:40 PM | Boooooks & Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Site shut down notice

If you are assembling a team of Mantlo creations to save me, i vote Ursa Major, Rocket Raccoon, Mr. Fish, and the Hypno-Hustler.

Be back in a week!

By fnord12 | June 6, 2013, 11:27 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Snood

snood [snood]

-n

the distinctive headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

a headband for the hair.

a netlike hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

the pendulous skin over the beak of a turkey.

-v

to bind or confine (the hair) with a snood.

I can't decide if i prefer the traditional "worn by unmarried women" definition best or the one involving a turkey.

By min | June 6, 2013, 3:03 PM | Good Words | Comments (0) | Link

I just like his insistance on writing "the Things"

Penny Arcade's comic and write-up today makes the new Marvel MMO game seem like some sort of surreal nightmare.

So we arrive in the zone and immediately notice that all the bad guys are already dead. We begin moving through the city streets and find more corpses scattered around. Eventually some bad guys spawn behind and run to catch up with us. I'm not sure why some gang thugs would run towards the Thing and Daredevil but they did and we beat them up. All the while we see groups of heroes running around just like you would in any other MMO. Over here you see three Scarlet Witches beating up some dudes. Around the corner you find four the Things and a couple Spidermans doing the same. Eventually we found a massive group fight against Electro and joined in. I was one of five the Things hitting this dude and I felt like a complete jackass. It's very cool to be the Thing. It's dumb to be one of many the Things. Also I have a hard time believing there are many bad guy type problems that five the Things could not solve.

By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 7:17 PM | Comics & Video Games | Comments (0) | Link

And now a message from our iconic characters

You'd think with all the backissues i buy, i'd have more examples of defaced comics, but the truth is most comic fans know better, so this is really rare.

And remember, ASS! Titles are mailed flat!

Ok, Nighthawk's not an iconic character.

By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 4:46 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Next he'll show you his Eagle Briefs

The internet probably reached maximum saturation on Hostess ads long ago, but i can't really get enough of Ralph G. Fake.

I briefly wondered if the Tea Party tried suing Obama, but i didn't want to google it.

He destroys the bill of rights! And calls Spider-Man a "soft humanitarian" for complaining about it!

But i've always wondered why Legal Eagle, the Monster Eagle, would be green? I guess it's because he's a Monster Eagle? But i suspect the colorist just said "i guess that's the Vulture". I've seen this ad more times than i can count and i always have to remind myself it's not the Vulture. But that's the colorist's fault.

I do have to give the colorist credit for this scene where the Eagle's feathers just melt away after he turns back into Ralph G. Fake, though.

God, the wordplay. 'Stealing the rights? Wrong!' 'For once you tell the truth, Fake!' A lot of work was put into these things, people!

By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 4:20 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link

Free market for thee but not for me

It really is incredible how Congress can get motivated when it's about stuff that affects them personally.

But it's even more amazing how talk of the free market goes right out the window, too. I kind of give the Democrats a pass on this (although i don't agree with them here). But the free market Republicans like Joe Barton that want to dictate where airline companies should fly their planes? Even if there's no ROI in having a direct flight to their home town? You gotta be kidding me.

It's actually the same thing with the post office. I often bring up the fact that they legally have to overfund their pension when the issue of their solvency comes up. But there's also the fact that they have an obligation to keep post offices open, and deliver mail to, every tiny town in America. No business would do that. FedEx and UPS don't do that (they dump their stuff on the USPS). So they're criticized when they don't run their organization like a business, but they legally can't run their organization like a business. We should really be thinking about the USPS as a government service that we need to fund, not a business that has to stand on its own.

The airlines, by contrast, are nominally businesses but they are stuck dealing with this nonsense. And to be fair, a lot of regulation really is required for the airline industry. Not that "fly to my hometown" is defensible. But if Congress wants to go down this path, maybe they ought to consider nationalizing the air transport industry.

By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 2:30 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

It is, after all, Transformer Tuesday

Was looking up how to spell Sienkiewicz and i found this.

By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 8:41 PM | Comics & TeeVee | Comments (0) | Link

SuperMegaSpeed Reviews

Uncanny X-Force #5 - Dexter Soy?! What are you doing here? But using him for the dreamscape sections works well enough. And this was good. I'm sure Storm deleting a portion of Bishop's memory will have some repercussions. And confirmation that we're dealing with the demon bear is cool, and i wouldn't even mind a better explanation for the demon bear, which is where it looks like this is going. I thought the Sienkiewicz inspired cover was a nice touch.

Avenging Spider-Man #21 - From this issue it seems like OctoSpidey is collecting the Sinister Six villains because he feels responsible for them, but i'm still hoping it's to launch some sort of Sinister Six scheme. In any event, liking the writing from Octavius' perspective quite a bit.

X-Men #1 - This was fantastic. Nice clear backstory (Hickman please take note), good characterization, nice scenes for everyone and fantastic art. Only hindrance is having just read a book with half these characters doing something else entirely, knowing Rogue is with the Uncanny Avengers, etc.. There's enough characters in the Marvel Universe that we shouldn't have to deal with so much overlap. Not this book's fault, of course, but it's still annoying.

Indestructible Hulk #8 - This was also great in its own way. Good fun. I'd really like a more classic Hulk face - both here and Avenging Spider-Man and generally; i don't like the way he's been drawn lately. But this was a nice three-parter and i hope it's the start of seeing some more Walt Simonson at Marvel again.

By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 8:33 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Whoodwin?

	vs.
Tim Boo Ba		The Boobahs

By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 9:27 AM | Comics & TeeVee & Whoodwin | Comments (1) | Link

Wanted: Assata Shakur

I've been meaning to blog this for weeks but i keep forgetting. We keep seeing a billboard like this on the Turnpike on our drive home on Friday nights.

I didn't take the above picture; it's from this site.

The first time i saw it i made a noise that made min slam on the brakes (sorry!). For anyone who doesn't know, Assata Shakur was a Black Panther that was convicted of shooting a state trooper. In the late 70s, she escaped from prison and and fled to Cuba, where she has been living for three+ decades. Shakur's story is difficult, and many people maintain that she was innocent or set up.

When i saw that billboard i thought she had for some reason come back to the US and maybe even launched some new attack or something (she's 66 years old). But that's not the case. For some reason, the FBI has recently added her to the terrorist watchlist and now they are putting up billboards in New Jersey.

I can't find any straight news organizations covering this. Here's the most comprehensive article i've found (note: a goddamn video will start playing as soon as you load the page). But it does seem to be an egregious and arbitrary decision to call her a terrorist and start putting up Wanted signs for her in May 2013.

By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 3:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Did Chris Christie increase or cut education funding?

While we were out this weekend, we saw a campaign ad by Chris Christie saying that he provided "the most education funding ever". That was a bit unexpected, so i looked it up when we got home, but i can't really figure it out.

The NJ Star-Ledger and Politifact have a piece on this. Politifact rates the ad "Half true" but that's because of a separate claim on merit pay for teachers that i'm less interested in. Regarding the budget claim, the article says:

As for "most education funding ever," Christie's proposed fiscal year 2014 budget calls for nearly $9 billion in education funding, about $1 billion more than the previous year. State aid to schools would increase $97 million. While no district saw a state aid decrease, many either received a nominal increase of $1 or their funding remained flat.
Wollmer agreed that in terms of dollars, the ad's claim is correct, but points out that there's more to Christie's education funding story.

"But what he doesn't mention is that he cut $1.3 billion from state aid in his first year - Withholding $475 million in aid in January, which was the amount that the state's nearly 600 districts had in total surpluses for unanticipated expenses (a new roof, a bus that needed replacing, an unanticipated special ed placement), and another $820 million in the FY11 budget (which began for schools in September of 2010)," Wollmer said. "Districts cut back dramatically, and 10,000 teachers and staff were laid off, programs were cut, and class sizes increased."

The state Supreme Court in 2011 also ordered Christie to increase aid to the now-former Abbott districts by about $500 million.

And then:

Also, Christie may have a history of slashing education funding as a way to close budget holes, but the ad's claim about the most education funding, ever, is correct.

Ok, what? Forget the $1.3 billion he cut from state aid in the first year; this claim is about FY 2014. So he increased aid by $1 billion, but aid to schools only increased by $97 million. What's the rest of it for? The article doesn't say. And all of Wollmer's paragraph seems to be about an earlier budget; is any of it relevant to this discussion?

By the way, Wollmer is from the New Jersey Education Association, and they are pretty clearly anti-Christie. That's understandable, but this is supposed to be a fact-checking article. The point wasn't to balance Christie's claims with claims from someone on the opposite side of the issue. A fact checking article should just be checking the facts, not giving equal time to both sides. Couldn't they have found anyone who would just objectively say "Yes, this is a larger budget than ever" or "No, it's not."?

I expected this article to be looking at inflation or other technical details. Instead i got a mishmosh of details that don't add up to anything. It comes down to "Christie says this, Wollmer says that, believe what you like."

Compound that with another Ledger/Politifact article rating the AFL-CIO claim that Chris Christie cut education funding by $1.6B while giving out $2B in corporate tax breaks as "Mostly True", and only mostly because Christie's education cuts were $1billion, not $1.6 billion. But wait, that was in 2010.

Sussing things out further, here's an article from a different site, saying:

It's not easy to tell whether this is the most generous education budget in history or one of the most egregious, given the rhetoric coming from both sides in the debate.
Actually there is a bit of truth in each.

The governor is in full reelection mode, pitching the state's investment in school aid as the highest ever. And strictly by the numbers, the amount is indeed the most the state has directly paid.

But that's hardly the full picture. In fiscal 2010, schools actually received more in overall aid, helped by an additional $1 billion in federal stimulus money. The year after, without that help, Christie made deep aid cuts to schools, leading to unprecedented layoffs and decimated programs.

Three years later, districts are getting close to returning to those 2010 totals under Christie's latest budget, but the financial wounds were deep and with a 2 percent tax cap in place since then, few would say they have healed.

Really, a dollar?

Christie has made a big point that two-thirds of all districts will see an increase in state aid this year, and none will see cuts. But that's not exactly true, on a couple of counts.

For one thing, 41 districts are seeing a $1 boost in their aid. Not $1 per student, a small figure in itself when per-pupil spending is in the thousands, but a single dollar overall.

Doubly stinging, another nearly 500 districts are seeing an increase in their required contributions to the debt service on grants they received for new construction costs, not a sizable amount for many of them, but a significant six-figure hit for more than a dozen.

That seems to answer some questions. The overall education budget for NJ is catching up to its 2010 levels, but the contribution from the state government is the largest ever. Right? And maybe the remainder of the $1 billion - $97 million is going to grants for construction costs?

It seems like someone can get the details if they really work at it, but that fact checker article doesn't do a bit of good.

By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 2:39 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Turkey background

Talking Points Memo surprisingly (for a site focused on politics) has some nice background for what's going on in Turkey.

By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 2:37 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Kwirkegard!

I can't believe Seanbaby never covered this one. Or that i never really noticed it before. It's brilliant! It's not every day that you see references to Soren Kierkegaard in your advertisements. And i love that the solution to depression is eating unhealthy snacks. Perfect!

Well, eating unhealthy snacks and delivering some steel-hard fist to an unprotected face.

By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 2:21 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Loving Allred loving Buscema

I loved this recent cover for FF #7...

What sells it for me is She-Hulk's expression and lack of response. 'I dunno. It's all too ironic hipster for me!'

...but didn't realize until Tom Brevoort pointed it out that that it was a tribute to John Buscema's Fantastic Four #109.

Sue, you wait there. It might not be safe. In fact, maybe it'd be best if you go tidy up the living area.

I do see now that it says "Loves Buscema" under All Red (you'll never see it in this scan, ofc). I kinda want to make it a t-shirt. It would be cool to try to line the two covers up side by side, but that red bar at the bottom kinda ruins that.

By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 1:35 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Scariest Chart Ever still Scary

I've been doing my best to ignore the "scandals" and politics generally but it's time to check in on what really matters.

Compared to here and here, it looks like things are better, until you realize that where we are now is still worse than half of our post-WWII recessions, and that line is going up slowly, slowly, slowly. What's another two years for people to be out of work, right? It's not literally destroying the futures of an anyone who's graduated college in the past several years or creating a permanent class of the structurally unemployed. No need to do anything about. We'll just let it run its course and hope Europe doesn't implode.

By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 11:15 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

John McCain helps explain why we shouldn't get involved in Syria

You gotta love this:

Senator John McCain's office is pushing back against reports that while visiting Syria this week he posed in a photo with rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi'ite pilgrims.
The photo, released by McCain's office, shows McCain with a group of rebels. Among them are two men identified in the Lebanese press as Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, two of the kidnappers of the group from Lebanon.

A McCain spokesman said that no one who met with McCain identified themselves by either of those names.

I'm sure there's a way to work in a Madoff Schmitler joke into this but i'm having trouble.

And i know it's all kind of a cheap shot. But really. Doddering old man wandering Syria, hooking up with terrorists and demanding we go to war. As Kevin Drum and Joe Klein (Klein via Drum, for me) point out, what a metaphor.

By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 11:01 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Fakin' it

Sure, most people will just say Potemkin Village and move on, but what was that movie with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis where they bought a house near a small town except they didn't like the townees and the townees didn't like them so they convinced the townees to act like the old fashioned folks and then Keaton and Davis liked it so much they decided to stay there after all? My point is maybe the UK will decide that they actually like having nice towns and they'll drop austerity and commit some stimulus money to fixing their economy.

By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 7:42 AM | Liberal Outrage & Movies & Ummm... Other? | Comments (1) | Link

Wash your hands

Really sad that this was even necessary.

By fnord12 | May 30, 2013, 2:37 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link

The Complicated Corporate Tax Code

The latest Tom the Dancing Bug.

By fnord12 | May 30, 2013, 2:32 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

My Requirements for a Thor Movie

All Asgardians must wear their awesome hats for the majority, if not the entirety, of the movie.

Odin should be like a goddamned Chinese bride at a wedding banquet. He should be changing into a different outfit and a different hat in every scene, each one more awesome than the last (fuzzy robe and slippers scene optional)

More "Kra-ka-thoom"

By min | May 30, 2013, 10:45 AM | Comics & Movies | Comments (0) | Link

I Can't Wait for the Thundarr the Barbarian/WWE Team-Up

Really, that would have been my first choice over the Flintstones.

The Flintstones are being brought back to the big screen with the help of professional wrestlers. The film - a return to animation for the brand following two ill-fated live action outings in 1994 and 2000 - sees Bedrock residents Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty attend a wrestling event. Here, they encounter real-life smackdown stars CM Punk, Vince McMahon and John Cena, who are voicing themselves.
...
The film, as yet untitled, is the second collaboration between WWE and Warner Bros, following the announcement of a Scooby-Doo movie. The plot sees Shaggy win tickets to WrestleMania, and the whole gang hightail it to WWE City for the event.

By min | May 29, 2013, 11:54 AM | Movies & TeeVee | Comments (0) | Link

SuperMegaSpeed Reviews

FF #7 - This book has obviously been crazy all along but with this issue, maybe because it's theoretically a more straightforward fight story, it really became apparent to me how loony it is. I love it, but it reads more like someone's crazy dream about a super-hero fight than an actual fight. I don't know if Fraction is trying to get across real themes - i know he keeps referencing Cassie Lang's death, and then there's the Wizard's ranting about a traditional family structure - but if so it's totally undermined by the surreal insanity. I love it, but it's clearly not for everyone. You can see a little debate in the comments here where someone refers to the art on this book as being "jokey hipster" and then Caleb from Every Day Is Like Wednesday jumps in to ask what the heck the guy is talking about because to Caleb's eyes this book is classic Silver Age style. I have a lot of sympathy for the "jokey hipster" guy, though. Sure, Allred is doing a Silver Age pastiche but there's an ironic twinge to it which Fraction also contributes to, and i think."jokey hipster" describes it fairly well (and i'd love a vegan cupcake, thank you). There's no way this book is meant to be taken straight. But i think it's a lot of fun, too. You have to love when the narration caption says "When suddenly--" and shows one thing which really isn't all that sudden and then a panel later "Until--" but it's not in any way something the guy in the previous panel was doing until this panel. Speaking of narration captions, though, my one complaint is still about those 4 logos they put in front of some of them. 4 Twenty Minutes Ago? Huh? Oh.

Avengers: The Enemy Within #1 - I'm really annoyed by this crossover because the way Avengers Assemble has been reading, it's not even in continuity. So i dropped it to avoid giving myself a brain hemorrhage. But now we've got this crossover. My inclination would be to drop the CM book for the duration. But min wants to support Captain Marvel. So we're going to wind up getting parts 2,4,6 etc. of a storyline. Annoying. And we kinda dithered on whether or not we wanted to bookends so we ended up with this one by default. It looks like this story is a direct continuation of the plot from the CM book. The Avengers barely figured into it (well, except for Spider-Woman, but she's been a regular in the CM book anyway). Artwise, this was almost as "quirky" as De Andrade's but not nearly as good. Did not like. Storywise, i'm ambivalent. I've been enjoying this in CM. But as i've said, i'd much rather she was fighting the real Deathbird instead of an illusion or whatever. The dinosaur repeat was also a little disappointing. Anyway, i guess we'll (sort of) see where this goes, as best we can with only half the story.

X-Factor #256 - Certainly an odd choice for an ending.

Thunderbolts #9 - *This* ending, or cliffhanger or whatever, was a little ambiguous. But besides that i am still enjoying this and i think we're back to some decent character stuff - the focus on Flash, for example - in addition to a cool action story.

Young Avengers #5 - Continues to be great great great. I was glad to see an explanation for Young Loki - i was feeling like the ending of Journey Into Mystery was being ignored but i was patient and Gillen did indeed address it.

Daredevil #26 - A great reveal. Awesome sequences, great art. It's been a nice build up. It's a really good book.

Iron Man #10 - Your enjoyment of this is going to be based on whether or not you accept the revisions/additions to Howard Stark's backstory. That pooch is already screwed thanks to Hickman's SHIELD series, so why not add an Ocean's Eleven heist story as well? I guess my biggest concern is showing that Jimmy Woo and Dum Dum Dugan had an adventure together since that wasn't really evident in the Steranko stories where Woo joined SHIELD. I also see that Gillen has built in some plausible deniability into this, so either it'll turn out to be a fake or at least you'll have the option to disregard it if you want to. Storywise, accepting that this is a pure flashback issue, i don't think Gillen really gave the various members of Stark's Seven enough to do after the build-up of introducing them, and it really relies on the Ocean's Eleven concept to sell it. But i still thought this was a fun issue.

By fnord12 | May 28, 2013, 11:24 AM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Somewhere between cute and terrifying are... the Marvel Mites

It's the expressions. Sort of an all-knowing but bemused contempt.

By fnord12 | May 27, 2013, 9:35 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

How we fight

So these scenes from Uncanny Avengers #6 caused a bit of a local uproar (including from me) about how catty and annoying the in-fighting was amongst the Avengers.

But it got me thinking about how inter-team disputes have been depicted in the past, and that while the above scenes are annoying, they are arguably more realistic than earlier scenes.

Now, to prove my point i went through a not-at-all-comprehensive review of Avengers issues that i've covered so far in my project. And the older comics actually came out looking better than i expected. I recall the Avengers actually coming to blows a lot during their arguments, but i couldn't actually find a lot of examples of that (if this were about the Fantastic Four it'd be a different story).

I've put the rest of this post below the fold to avoid a long string of images on the main page. (Also, breaking with tradition for the main blog, there's no alt text on these images.)

Keep reading.

By fnord12 | May 24, 2013, 11:54 AM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link

Lego X-Wing

Full-sized X-Wing made of Legos now in Times Square.

By min | May 24, 2013, 11:29 AM | Star Wars | Comments (0) | Link

Stump Munchers

By fnord12 | May 24, 2013, 9:15 AM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link

Hey! Sweden's on Fire!

Cause there's been rioting for the last four days. I dunno why, but i find social unrest in a Nordic country to be quite odd. Mebbe cause they usually have really good social programs and a high standard of living. Mebbe cause in my imagination, it's too damn cold to want to do anything energetic.

Violence spread across the Swedish capital on Wednesday, as large numbers of young people rampaged through the suburbs, throwing stones, breaking windows and destroying cars. Police in the southern city of Malmo said two cars had been set ablaze.
Media reports said a police station was set on fire in Stockholm's southern suburb of Rågsved, where several people were also detained. No one was hurt.

What they need to do is take all these youths and enter them into a state-funded training program that prepares them for competing in the World's Strongest Man competitions (or "the Viking Show", as i like to call it).

By min | May 23, 2013, 2:55 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link

Soon, All of Your Wishes Will Come True

The cicadas will be here in a few weeks, just like you always wanted.

[I]n about eight weeks, once the transformation is complete, the brood's males will start chirping their distinct mating calls all over the Garden State.
Steven Melendez, a data news developer for WNYC, said he has received reports of sightings from Flanders to Westfield, Short Hills and South Orange. WNYC partnered with RadioLab to create the Cicada Tracker map to record sightings on the East Coast.

*shudder*

I'm not leaving the house.

By min | May 23, 2013, 2:38 PM | Science | Comments (0) | Link

Dr. Doom's proclivity for rhyming goes way back

Doom appreciates that Marvel changed the name of its fan club from Merry Marching Society. Saying 'Berry Blarching Variety' is not very regal.

Previously identified Doom rhyming.

By fnord12 | May 22, 2013, 5:32 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

More Star Trek in Real Life

It's like a tricorder.

Meet Scout, a device that can monitor and track your vital signs, temperature, ECG, heart rate, oximetry and stress by just holding the it up to your forehead for 10 seconds.
As simple as it sounds, to use the device you simply hold it against your forehead and wait. Results are synched from Scout to your smartphone, where you can track your health over time. On a basic level, you can see that your temperature or heart rate is elevated from the norm at any given time. On a larger level, you can also see potential problems headed your way by noticing abnormalities before they become physical issues.

But would it have warned me months ahead of time that i was in danger of having a back spasm? Cause that's the sort of shit i need a diagnostic report for so that i know my muscles are shriveling up and can do something about it before the injury occurs.

I don't need it to tell me my temperature. I need it to tell me what the hell is with those random sharp pains in my chest.

By min | May 22, 2013, 8:55 AM | Science | Comments (0) | Link

Food Replicators!!!

NASA is funding research into making a 3-D printer for food. That's awesome.

But they're going to have to program them to make the container as well as the food else it'll be really difficult to request your "tea, Earl Grey, hot".

By min | May 21, 2013, 1:56 PM | Science & TeeVee | Comments (0) | Link

Panel of Experts Watch Video and Declare Pope's Exorcism Real

In case you had any doubts or anything. Link

Smiling broadly, the Pope initially shook the man's hand, but the South American pontiff's expression changed dramatically after a priest from the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative order, leaned in close and spoke a few words to him.
With a more serious expression on his face, Francis placed both hands on the man's head for 15 seconds.

...

The [television] station gathered a panel of clergy specialising in exorcisms who scrutinised the footage and concluded that the pope had performed an exorcism.

...

The Rev. Giulio Maspero, a Rome-based systematic theologian who has witnessed or participated in more than a dozen exorcisms, said he was certain that Francis' prayer on Sunday was either a full-fledged exorcism or a prayer to "liberate" the young man from a demonic possession. He noted that the placement of the pope's hands on the man's head was the "typical position" for an exorcist to use.

Clearly Pope Francis is a badass cause all it took was 15 seconds to exorcise four demons. It took Damien Karras days just to exorcise one demon, and he ends up dead.

By min | May 21, 2013, 1:32 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link

Quick links

Matt Taibbi: The war on drugs doesn't apply to banks illegally working with drug cartels.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The black vote helped Obama win the election. "Perhaps they cannot practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn."

Paul Krugman: Latest CBO reports show that the deficit has been reduced. Where are the celebrations?

The Taibbi article is from December, but Atrios re-linked to it today in the context of this story.

By fnord12 | May 21, 2013, 10:04 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

Poles Positions

Did you know the distribution of snow and rain and humidity actually causes the earth's geographic poles to shift? Mean either!! Cause that sounds crazy, picturing the earth as this wobbly ball that has to re-center itself occasionally. Now, thanks to climate change and Greenland melting, the poles have shifted at a much faster rate than before.

From 1982 to 2005, the pole drifted southeast toward northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds --or roughly 6 centimetres -- per year. But in 2005, the pole changed course and began galloping east toward Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year.
...
They found that recent accelerated ice loss and associated sea-level rise accounted for more than 90% of the post-2005 polar shift.
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When mass is lost in one part of a spinning sphere, its spin axis will tilt directly toward the position of the loss, he says -- exactly as Chen's team observed for Greenland. "It's a unique indicator of the point where the mass is lost," says Ivins.

Guess Santa better start packing.

By min | May 20, 2013, 3:09 PM | Science | Comments (0) | Link

Marvel Sales

April.

By fnord12 | May 20, 2013, 3:06 PM | Comics | Comments (0) | Link

Advice found on hotel soap

More advice: Try combing your hair and putting on some pants.

By fnord12 | May 20, 2013, 2:46 PM | My stupid life | Comments (1) | Link

Going After the "Real" Media - Now the DOJ Has Gone Too Far

Glenn Greenwald has a post up about the media finally waking up to the danger the DOJ's targeting of Wikileaks poses to them. Duh.

Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment's guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ - that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for "soliciting" the disclosure of classified information - is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself. These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama DOJ submitted court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this.
That same "solicitation" theory, as the New York Times reported back in 2011, is the one the Obama DOJ has been using to justify its ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: that because Assange solicited or encouraged Manning to leak classified information, the US government can "charge [Assange] as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them." When that theory was first disclosed, I wrote that it would enable the criminalization of investigative journalism generally.

...

If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted in this way, and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable.

Obviously, i don't like what the DOJ did in terms of getting the AP's phone records, but it's good that the media has finally woken up to the danger they are in. I wonder if it's too damn late, though. It's certainly too late for this poor guy:

New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ's attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US. Instead, the DOJ alleges that he merely communicated this innocuous information to a journalist - something done every day in Washington - and, for that, this arms expert and long-time government employee faces more than a decade in prison for "espionage".

By min | May 20, 2013, 12:25 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link

No need to stop here. There's plenty more SuperMegaMonkey where that came from.