"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 » March 31, 2008Obscene Teddy Starfaith is responsible for sending me this obscenity. And now i share it with you.  By min | March 31, 2008, 2:42 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link China Will Eat You Next My mom once told me a story about my great grandmother. My great grandmother always contended that those creatures on earth whose backs faced the sky were meant to be eaten by those of use whose backs do not. The emergence of China's middle class is adding hugely to demand not just for basic commodities like corn, soybeans and wheat, but also for meat, milk and other high-protein foods. The Chinese, whose rise began in earnest in 2001, ate just 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, of meat per capita in 1985. They now eat 50 kilograms a year. Each pound of beef takes about seven pounds of grain to produce, which means land that could be used to grow food for humans is being diverted to growing animal feed. However, the Chinese aren't picky. If there wasn't enough food to go around, I think you might start to look pretty delicious regardless of where your back faced. The amount of energy and resources used to raise animals for eating is one of the big reasons for going vegan. Instead of using that land and those resources to raise animals, we could be growing food for people. How many people could you feed if you traded seven pounds of vegetables and grains for every pound of cattle raised? The article also mentions the usage of land for growing crops to be used as biofuel instead of food has contributed to the problem as well. Farmers can make more money selling palm oil for biofuel than for cooking. Money they need to buy food and other essentials for living. But in the meantime, the people are starving because all the land they used to grow food on has been commandeered for more biofuel crops. And round and round it goes. By min | March 31, 2008, 2:09 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Mukasey, are you sure that's the argument you want to make? Mukasey: At that point in his answer, Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America's anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. . . . We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure. Glenn Greenwald responds: These are multiple falsehoods here, and independently, this whole claim makes no sense. There is also a pretty startling new revelation here about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 failure that requires a good amount of attention. Michael Mukasey can cry all he wants about the 9/11 attacks. But neither he nor the rest of the Bush administration are the proprietors of those attacks. There were millions of New Yorkers in Manhattan on 9/11 other than Michael Mukasey, who lived and worked there for a long time. Neither Mike Mukasey nor his tearful pleas for unchecked government surveillance power and the erosion of the rule of law are representative of them. By fnord12 | March 31, 2008, 9:49 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link To his credit??!?? Quoted on Digby: Our media is sooooo broken. Go read that Digy post. By fnord12 | March 31, 2008, 9:30 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Question of the day In the Beastie Boys song "Something's Got To Give", they say "This one's called 'Rectify'." But it's not. It's called "Something's Got To Give." Please to explain. By fnord12 | March 27, 2008, 11:24 AM | Music| Link  Forget the Halloween costumes; i want a series about three crime fighting midgets whose powers were derived from Cap, Spidey, and the Hulk. Look at the arms on those "kids", they are hella strong. And yes, the "Hulk" midget will wear a picture of his face on his shirt. These guys are awesome. Actually, considering the bags of loot they're holding, maybe they're bad guys? I predict a run-in with Roughouse and Bloodsport. "Hold, my fine fanged friend! Methinks these be not babies after all!" Also: "Camp it up as Capt. America"? What the hell does that mean? By fnord12 | March 27, 2008, 9:03 AM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link Moving waves, the wind has left you We are still repeating the word it has taught us Waves, why do you all become excited Rising waves...what motive is behind your impulse? The desire to reach upwards! By fnord12 | March 27, 2008, 8:56 AM | Music| Link
 Get out while you can. By fnord12 | March 26, 2008, 1:58 PM | My stupid life | Comments (2) | Link Slip-throughs Check out these interviews by Charlie Rose and Peter Jennings, where "off message" Iraqis somehow wound up being interviewed. What's amazing is how shocked Rose and Jennings seemed to be that they somehow wound up interviewing these people. By fnord12 | March 26, 2008, 1:44 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Predictable ...and here it is. Quick glance says no substantial change from last year's projections. On to dig through and see what's up with the assumptions... CNN: Social Security looms for next president This is the same half-baked information we've been hearing for a while. The truth, as they obscurely refer to further down in the article, is that if we do absolutely nothing, the SS office will stop being able to make 100% of payouts in 2041 (it will at that point be able to pay out at 80%). The obvious and simple solution to this is to raise the income cap at which SS taxes are paid (currently you don't pay for SS taxes over about $100,000 of your salary, assuming you make that much). This should be done (and i'd like to see a push to actually expand SS benefits) but there is certainly no crisis. If we want to worry about potentially unsolvent government programs, we can look at Medicare, but the real issue here is that there is a strong push to make people think that their Social Security benefits won't be there for them when they retire. Once people are convinced that SS is in trouble, they can push to privatize the benefit, which means putting it in the hands of the people who recently invested all of their money in worthless mortgages. By fnord12 | March 26, 2008, 1:26 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
I know a solution to this problem Link: Should take about 2 hours of our federal government's time to take the language of NY's law and turn it into a federal law, and i can't imagine it'd be a terribly unpopular law to pass. You do have to admire the balls of the airline industry in challenging a law that requires them to provide food, water, toilets, and air to people trapped on their planes. By fnord12 | March 25, 2008, 6:25 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link Master of analogies Dick Cheney, whose intial response to the fact that the public is at this point heavily against the Iraqi invasion was "So?", has now clarified: Just like, 30 years ago, everyone was against President Ford's decision to pardon Nixon's criminal behavior, but now they are apparently in favor of it, 30 years from now everyone will approve of the Bush's decisions in Iraq. And I have the same strong conviction the issues we're dealing with today -- the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong. By fnord12 | March 25, 2008, 12:03 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Whoodwin? By fnord12 | March 25, 2008, 9:11 AM | Video Games & Whoodwin | Comments (5) | Link
UPDATED: As our economy collapses, put the guy who let it happen in charge. Can you imagine that Hillary Clinton is proposing putting Alan Greenspan in charge of fixing our mortgage crisis? I'm all for forcing the man into doing community service for the rest of his life, but how about picking up litter on the sides of the highways instead of running an agency where his incompetence can once again screw us over. This may be pushing it a bit too much (i tend to be attracted to the most apocalyptic doomsayers), but we're going to be in big trouble for the next few years, and if the best our presidential candidates have in mind is handing the keys back to the people who got us here, things will be bad. Update: "Not only that, but the Fed didn't act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach." Awesome. Do any of our presidential candidates understand economics? By fnord12 | March 24, 2008, 3:07 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link SuperMegaSpeed Reviews Incredible Hercules #115 - I was kind of hoping Cho would go the supervillain route. Hercules talking him down is more conventional, but it was still done well. The development of Hercules' back story - something that didn't even seem possible since his myths are pretty much what they are - is being done very well. Captain America #36 - Missing Epting's art just a little bit but it's still good. I wonder if the Winter Soldier's more violent approach to fighting (including, but not just referring to, guns and knives) is something Brubaker is setting up in a negative light, or just a way to distinguish him from Cap. I thought the failed inspirational speech was a great moment. And of course the cliffhanger - wasn't expecting that so soon. Order #9 - I was expecting a downgrade in quality now that they're cramming everything in to finish up the story before it is cancelled after next issue, but it's still OK. Not great, but not bad. Iron Fist #13 - This really is a great book, and since i'm currently reading the original Iron Fist stories as part of my marvel timeline project, it's nice to see that things are well researched as well. Looking forward to the big kung fu ass kicking next issue. Iron Man #27 - I am enjoying the politics of this (although a part of me wonders why Norman Osborn gets to have anything to do with an inquiry on SHIELD's actions - especially since it was originally the UN that performed the 'arrest). I also liked the mental fake out the Mandarin pulled - i suspected it but the delivery was still unexpected. But was anyone else fooled by the preview for Secret Invasion - i just assumed it was part of the Iron Man story and was wondering how the hell Tony could be in a lab with Reed and Hank when he's supposed to be dealing with the fallout/arrest. By fnord12 | March 24, 2008, 1:00 PM | Comics| Link  Tom Tomorrow's comic is related to this feature in Slate where "liberal" hawks explain their rational in supporting the Iraq invasion five years ago. Tim Noah's article is the best of those, since he actually admits he was wrong and correctly wonders why the people who got it so wrong five years ago are still the ones with prominent columns and frequent television appearances. The same should apply on economic news - all the economists who discounted the warnings about the housing bubble should no longer be the go-to experts for journalists writing articles on the economy, and yet the same people who didn't predict the bubble are the ones who are now being asked what the impact will be and how long the recession will last. By fnord12 | March 24, 2008, 12:25 PM | Comics & Liberal Outrage| Link
Chris Wallace chides fellow Fox anchors over Obama 'coverage' I'm a little suspicious of the motives (Wallace is no angel, he's been agitating for Obama to come on his show for a long while now, and why would Fox's producers allow this sort of infighting to happen on the air?), but it's still good and interesting to see this message reach Fox viewers. And the other anchors sure don't look happy. By fnord12 | March 21, 2008, 3:45 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link Scott Pilgrim movie Directed by the guy who directed Shaun of the Dead. It's be nice if O'Malley finishes the series before the movie is made, unless this movie is the first part of a series. By fnord12 | March 21, 2008, 9:45 AM | Comics & Movies| Link Nice Job, Guys Up until just a few years ago, lawmakers would go "window shopping" for interns at the start of every legislative session. In a practice that went on for decades, the interns would be corraled in a Capitol newsstand so that legislators could pick their office help based on their looks, not their resumes. The hanky-panky even has its own lexicon: There's the "Bear Mountain Compact," which says that what goes on north of the state park just outside New York City stays there. Lobbyists, staffers and reporters who seek to enhance their influence by bedding powerful lawmakers are known as "big game hunters." And the men who sleep with the women lawmakers are "boy toys." That'll go a long way towards convincing the rest of the country that "those east coast libruls" aren't a bunch of sexual deviants. By fnord12 | March 21, 2008, 9:31 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (3) | Link
Things are looking ugly in Tibet By fnord12 | March 20, 2008, 5:14 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link How is Rick Jones still alive? Rick Jones, sidekick to the stars, has learned a lot from the heroes he's partnered with. From Captain America he learned his fighting techniques. From Captain Mar-vell he learned military tactics and information about all the star-faring races. From ROM he learned that even walking toasters can be awesome. But what did he learn from his first partner, the Incredible Hulk? Answer: how to take a hit from a 3-ton monster and not get your neck snapped. Look at this history of abuse:      Although to be fair, he did try to help Rick sometimes, too:  By fnord12 | March 20, 2008, 2:01 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link Monkey Robot Army Scientists at Duke University Medical Center implanted electrodes in a monkey's brain, then set it on a mini treadmill and got it walking. Signals from the electrodes were able to control a robot and cause it to walk. There's a YouTube video here. Although, for the most part, the commenters seem to be raving idiots, i, too, am curious as to just what was done to the monkey. They did say the electrodes were implanted in the monkey's brain, not just placed on the outside of her skull with some of the gel stuff. Does she now have tubes sticking out of her head? If she does, she would totally be within her rights to gain control of the robot and use it to reap her fiery revenge. By min | March 20, 2008, 11:52 AM | Science | Comments (1) | Link  By fnord12 | March 20, 2008, 9:56 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link Aim for the body rare, you'll see it on TV By fnord12 | March 20, 2008, 9:02 AM | Music| Link
Oh my god, we're a third world country You've seen this video a million times, but it usually takes place in Bangladesh or Zambia or somewhere not America. By fnord12 | March 19, 2008, 10:08 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Two semi-disturbing pictures from Marvel These are both from the August 93 print date. Picture #1:  Maybe i'm overly sensitive, but this poor lady doesn't look like she wants to be posing in a bikini. I have a feeling she was a moderately attractive woman working with a bunch of shut-in Marvel staff geeks on the Swimsuit Issue project (a disturbing idea in its own right), and they badgered her into doing this. Picture #2:  The "joke" here seems to be that an underaged girl took her two younger brothers on a tour of the Marvel offices, and all the staff thought she was really hot. Is that something you'd want to admit to in print? Am i missing something? By fnord12 | March 18, 2008, 2:18 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link That's Right! You Can't Top Jersey! From TPM: But I have to say that Paterson will have to do better than this thin gruel to make his mark on the landscape of tri-state governors. In fact, the competition seems to be escalating even in recent days. In 2004, Jim McGreevey resigned as Governor of New Jersey after admitting to an affair with his dubiously qualified homeland security advisor, Golan Cipel, and coming out as a "gay American." Then last week former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) significantly upped the ante by admitting to being a habitual user of extremely high-priced prostitutes. But over the weekend, despite having left the political game, McGreevey engineered the revelation of the fact that, while still professedly heterosexual in the years just before winning the governorship, he and his wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, routinely engaged in threesomes with a young McGreevey staffer. Still more lurid, the trysts usually began with Friday night dinner at TGI Friday's. This most recent news would seem to put McGreevey back firmly in the saddle in the regional gubernatorial shagstakes. And Patterson appears to realize he simply cannot compete. By min | March 18, 2008, 12:12 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link Drink Up! I've always said if you knew the things i knew about where your water comes from and what criteria needs to be met to be considered "potable," you prolly would stop drinking. You might reconsider any activity that included water, actually. Well, now there's something new that i didn't know about. The concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose, and water utilities insist their water is safe. But the presence of so many prescription drugs -- and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen -- in so much of the nation's drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health. In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas -- from southern California to northern New Jersey, from Detroit, Michigan, to Louisville, Kentucky. The pharmaceuticals enter the water because the bodies of people who take pills absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater from your toilet, sink, shower, street gutters, etc ends up at a wastewater treatment plant where it's "cleaned". It then gets dumped out into some body of water and somewhere downstream of that, a water treatment plant pumps it in, "cleans" it some more and pipes it to your homes. As the article says, the processes used to treat this water does not remove the drug residue. And why should they? They weren't designed for that. It does say that the utilities are insisting the water is safe to drink, but let me put that in perspective for you. These are the same people who took over 3 months to tell us they exceeded their E. Coli levels. Not to mention the fact that there are no standards set for pharmaceuticals. So, really, as far as they're concerned, they haven't exceeded "acceptable risk" levels yet in their effluent. They most likely weren't even testing for it. Every test costs money and the fewer you can do, the better. And if they had been, knowing there's no limit set for it, it's likely they just let it go. I say this having worked for a consulting company that knew an area was contaminated by their client's product but had no plans to do anything about it because the government only expressed concern about another location - that location being uphill from a residential area. So, basically, don't ask, don't tell is the usual policy. Is this absolutely the case here? I don't know. I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me. And it's only come out now because the AP had journalists who discovered it. So, who's thirsty now? I bet you Brita people with your carbon filters feel pretty silly now, eh? It only really removed volatile organics anyway. You prolly could have achieved the same by shaking your water vigorously. By min | March 18, 2008, 11:29 AM | Science | Comments (4) | Link
You Said It Would Never Happen But you were totally Wong. Har har.  By min | March 17, 2008, 4:29 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (2) | Link And guess which party is going to be left holding the bag? The next steps will be up to the politicians. I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it's doing to an angry public. The next president will be a Democrat, and he will spend the next 4-8 years cleaning up this mess that the Republicans have left him. He won't be able to initiate any major programs because all his time will be spent focusing on this financial disaster and the war in Iraq, and he will likely have to take some very unpopular actions like raising taxes and cutting benefit programs. This will ensure that in 4-8 years the Democrats will once again be very unpopular, just in time for a Republican to come in, claim credit for the recovery, and screw everything up again. By fnord12 | March 17, 2008, 1:21 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link --The hell? What's going on at MTV? They're airing these anti-police state commercials. Anyone know why? What is the context for this? By fnord12 | March 17, 2008, 1:11 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Damn Straight, You Don't Get In The Bed With Dirty Feet "When he awoke, the two began fighting before a very drunk Wang collapsed. As fire engulfed the bedroom. Luo escaped to the living room, leaving her other half to burn," it added. I admit that burning him alive might have been a bit extreme, but he should have known better. By min | March 17, 2008, 11:51 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link  Thanks to our friends who came to see us at the Blue Room on Friday. We were worried that we wouldn't meet the 12 person "minimum" draw, but we actually exceeded it by quite a bit and it turned out we were the band with the biggest draw. It also seems that the minimum isn't such a big deal in any event as there were several groups there that didn't have that many "fans". Also thanks for sticking around as they had some scheduling problems and we didn't go on until midnight! Despite some sound issues, we seem to have went over well, and the organizer was very complimentary and wants to have us back at a more promising time slot. Our next show is a Friends of Suzanne benefit concert on a saturday afternoon in a park. There's no draw requirements so we won't be badgering anyone but it looks like there'll be some good music and food and such, and it's for an organization that helps cancer patients, so come support us and them if you're free. By fnord12 | March 17, 2008, 10:14 AM | Music | Comments (2) | Link Modern capitalism: Privatize the profits, socialize the losses Unless public money is used on a very temporary basis to achieve an orderly wind-down or merger of Bear Stearns this is another case where profits are privatized and losses are socialized. By having thrown down the drain the decades old doctrine and rule that the Fed should not lend or bail out non-bank financial institutions the Fed has created an extremely dangerous precedent that seriously aggravates the moral hazard of its lender of last resort support role. If the Fed starts on the slippery slope of providing massive liquidity support to non-bank financial institutions that have recklessly managed their risks it enters into uncharted territory that radically changes its mandate and formal role. Breaking decades-old rules and practices is a radical action that seriously requires a clear public explanation and justification. The finer distinctions are probably lost on me, but this doesn't seem too different than what we did in the 80s during the S&L Scandal (and we are still paying off the debt we created during that bailout). Seems the government is always there to bail out rich investors when their risky or stupid investments don't pan out. By fnord12 | March 17, 2008, 9:05 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
SuperMegaSpeed Review Marathon Marathon Forever Quest It's been a while since i've done my comic reviews here. I've got a very large stack, and we're going to go through it very quickly. Iron Fist: Orson Randall & the Green Mist of Death #1 - When i say this is "like Sandman" i don't really mean that it's up to that level of quality, although it's quite good. I just mean that the writers are building this big mystical backstory. It's quite good. Iron Man #29 - Basically an old school fight between Iron Man & the Mandarin, to the point where we even have IM in his old armor. It's done very very well, and there are really good character moments for Maria Hill and Dum Dum Dugan as well. And i'm really liking the art. Logan #1 - Average and unnecessary, but it's Vaughn so i'll stick it out for the remaining two issues. There's no way that pregnancy can be good news, whatever comes of it. Mighty Avengers #9 - Well, i was worried that the Doom story would be treated as a quick flash in the pan story like the Venom arc was but A) It's not and B) it turns out that the Venom arc and the Doom arc are actually tied together, which is really nice. I like the angle that Doom was not actually responsible for the attack (although suggesting that Doom's equipment wouldn't have security measures in place to prevent such an accident could be dangerous!). The Morgan Le Fey/Doom stuff in the beginning was really good, too. But - and i know we're running late and trying to catch up - 3 two-page panels of the avengers fighting a bunch of robots is just ridiculous. Order #8 - It's not bad now that i'm thinking of it as a mini-series. Punisher War Journal #17 - Wow, Sunset Bain. Cool. Stuart Clarke is a nut and i enjoyed the focus on him. Chaykin's art wasn't bad. Captain America #35 - Brubaker on Cap 4Ever! ClanDestine #2 - Ye gods, not the Cross-Time Caper! I'll be honest, while i don't really care where this story is going, i enjoy letting Alan Davis take us there. He's really good at what he does. I think i need to fill in my Excalibur collection. Daredevil #105 - Is there any horrible thing we haven't done to Matt Murdock yet? Incredible Hercules #114 - apparently this is really a Hercules book now permanently? You know, i'm OK with that. Because Hercules is more mainstream than the Hulk, because he was an Avengers longer, and all i care about is how mainstream things are. Runaways #29 - Who are these people? She-Hulk #26 - I'm starting to think that getting this book was a mistake. Thunderbolts: International Incident #1 - Very good for a fill in. My geeky question is where does this Arnim Zola appearance fit in with his regular appearances in Captain America? Also, get Gage on a regular book! Preferably something mainstream. Damage Control #2 - Honestly, i haven't liked the previous Damage Control minis very much because they've been too silly and the art has been overly exaggerated comedic art. This series avoids all of that and it turns out to be a good story that also has some satirical elements. We need to woo McDuffie back to Marvel. X-Force #2 - Magus. Awesome. People mocked me for wanting to get this X-Force book, but it's been really good, in my opinion. Nimrod! Magus! And a good black ops story. I have no problem with the art, it's a little stiff, but the storytelling is still good and the pictures look good. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nextwave (1st two trades) - Reading it as a non-continuity satire, it's pretty good. Some great moments and pretty good overall. Robot brains that need beer, Elvis-MODOKs, Fing Fang Foom put you in his pants!, misogynist Captain America - all very funny. I don't necessarily see it as Ellis hating super-heroes so much as wanting to write a big dumb action movie and also poke a little fun at super-hero conventions. But there's too many continuity errors and deliberate mischaracterizations to consider this as part of the MU. Thunderbolts (1st trade) - This was really good. The characterization of Osborne was awesome. Ellis' depiction of Screaming Mimi as a real field leader was great. Bullseye was appropriately dangerous. And the characterization of the lesser-know unregistered heroes in the story was great too. I still don't like that Venom is actually the Scorpion. It just seems stupid to me, and every time i see Venom i can't help think "Yeah, but that's not the real Venom", although Ellis does a good job with him as well. Deodato's art is great, too. It's funny how Deodato was basically a joke for a while but has really restored his reputation. I thought the fact that they included all the weird one-shots in the back was kind of annoying, especially since the one written by Jenkins actually wasn't terrible, and i would have preferred if they had stuck it where it belonged in the story. Welcome to Tranquility (1st trade) - Not great. We need to woo Gail Simone back to Marvel so she can write Runaways. Pride of Baghdad - Enjoyable, but i'm glad i didn't spend a lot of money to buy the hardcover version. Vaughan is a good writer and i'm glad he is able to do little stories like this. Nice art, too. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Annihilation: Conquest #5 - Nice to see the tie-in with Ultron's recent appearance in Mighty. I was afraid they were just going to say that it was two separate iterations of Ultron with no connection. And i still love Star-Lord's misfit team. This has been a cool mini. Nova #11 - Yes! This is what i've been telling them to do all along! Awesome! It's interesting that we've got Magus in X-Force and Warlock here. It'd be really odd if it were just a coincidence. Avengers: The Initiative #10 - Why did this feel like I was missing a New Warriors crossover issue? I'm enjoying this, but i think we need to hurry up now and move past this KIA plot. Taskmaster and Ant-Man bonding was funny. Fantastic Four #555 - Nice that they are using Claremont's Alissa Moy character instead of adding more bloat to Reed's backstory. The Reed/Moy relationship is being developed very nicely. Mighty Avengers #10 - i enjoyed the "70s era comic" gimmick. I really like Doom here, and i enjoyed the captions showing the undercurrent war between Doom and Iron Man's armor systems. Using the Sentry and the idea that everyone would forget all his actions as a way to solve their dilemma was a really clever move by Bendis. Doom showing respect to Mastermind was cool. Last Defenders #1 - well, this wasn't very good at all. The characterization was stiff and dry and the story wasn't very interesting. The Blazing Skull character is just annoying. Still to read: Powers, Sub-Mariner, Omac. Overall, it was a very impressive pile of comic books. I like comic books. By fnord12 | March 15, 2008, 3:05 PM | Comics| Link
Have you ever thought of becoming a police officer Strom Thurmann? I get the weirdest spam. Why do they think i'm Strom Thurmann? And once again, it's from the year 2038. Can you imagine some sort of dystopian future where all the police officers are Strom Thurmann clones dressed like Judge Dredd? I knew you could. By fnord12 | March 13, 2008, 11:02 AM | My stupid life | Comments (7) | Link Score one for the Commies There's been a lot of debate lately on whether Nazis or Commies made better comic book villians, and the consensus has generally been falling on the side of the Nazis. But did the Nazis ever have super-gorilla soldiers?!?*  *Probably, but the Commies had them too, dammit. By fnord12 | March 13, 2008, 10:48 AM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link I saw the best minds of my generation running on empty, superglued to the T.V., Watch all the bridges collide, I saw the best minds of my generation caught up in the virtual reality of living Jesus said " Lay down your arms". Jesus said "Children come home". Scared shitless, witless, clueless, useless, tightlipped, tightfisted,tightassed, half-assed, sniveling, groveling, moaning, groaning. Nutopia. By fnord12 | March 13, 2008, 8:55 AM | Music | Comments (2) | Link
 By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 6:33 PM | My stupid life & Video Games | Comments (3) | Link Man, not only is David Mack slow ...but apparently he's also a hack. A good hack, mind you. By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 4:28 PM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link Someone's lying to me. By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 4:24 PM | Comics| Link Sinbad crosses the threshold Only one man has the experience it takes to become commander-in-chief. By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 3:55 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Pesky continuity again. Is this (scroll down to "Proof That Cyclops Is A Skrull, or That Ed Brubaker Is Lazy") continuity getting in the way of telling a good story? Is it continuity preventing comics from being accessible to new readers? Or is it just a failure to check your references? P.S. I'm currently reading Nextwave and there's no way it can be canon. It's got to be read as an out-of-continuity satire book (in which case it's pretty good). By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 3:27 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link Bailout In such circumstances, investors would be very reluctant to accept the credit of any of the major financial institutions. They couldn't know whether most of their assets were in fact counterfeit, and they were dealing with a bankrupt institution, or whether the counterfeit currency was only a limited share of the wealth, which would not jeopardize the institution's ability to meet its obligations. This is in fact the credit squeeze that we've have recently witnessed. The spread between the interest rates on a wide variety of assets and the interest rate on safe assets (U.S. government debt) has soared. As a result, the Fed's effort to stimulate the economy, by lowering the federal funds rate, has been largely unsuccessful because other interest rates have remained high. In response to this situation the Fed today announced that it would lend $200 billion to banks and other financial firms, accepting mortgage backed securities as collateral. This is effectively the same as saying that the Fed is going to lend money to banks and accept the counterfeit currency as collateral, treating it just as though it were real money. The intended effect of this policy is to convince other investors that the counterfeit currency is in fact real currency, or at the very least that there is a really huge sucker out there (the Fed) which is prepared to treat the counterfeit currency as real currency. So how does this story play out? Well, insofar as the Fed is successful, the counterfeit currency retains its value for a while longer. This allows Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bears Stearns and the rest of the big boys more time to dump their counterfeit currency on suckers who haven't figured out how the game is played. It is possible that they won't be able to find enough suckers, in which case these banks will end up defaulting on their loans and the Fed (i.e. the government ) has lost tens or hundreds of billions dollars paying good money for counterfeit currency. Alternatively, perhaps the big boys are successful and can offload enough of their counterfeit money to restore themselves to solvency before the music stops. Then the Fed is repaid, but the counterfeit money now sits in the hands of other, less informed, or less inside, investors. Either way, this is a policy of dubious merit. Why wouldn't we want the banks to be forced to come clean and eat their losses? This is always the policy that the economists advocate when the parties in question are not the big New York banks. Does anyone remember the East Asian financial crisis when the media was full of condemnations of crony capitalism and the IMF insisted imposed stringent conditions on South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia as a condition of getting bailed out? At that time, everyone insisted on transparency. Aren't there any economists who still have this perspective? If so, why aren't their views appearing anywhere in the news? By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 2:42 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Holy crap! "Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene. "Take away all of his Federal dollars?" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing. She typed symbols for a smiley-face, ":-D," at the end of her January 2007 note. Cabrera wrote back a few minutes later: "Let me look into that possibility." The e-mails, obtained by The Washington Post, came to light as a result of a lawsuit provoked by HUD's decision last September to strip the Philadelphia Housing Authority of as much as $50 million in federal funds. In December, it declared the agency in violation of rules that underpin its ability to decide precisely how it will spend federal housing funds. Kendrick was the official who formally notified the authority that she had found it in violation. But Eliot Spitzer slept with prostitutes! Naughty! By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 1:52 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link Gary Gygax a Hack? nsxt290 sent me this link today. What's wrong with Dungeons & Dragons? It plays like a video game. A good role-playing game provides the framework for a unique kind of narrative, a collaborative thought experiment crossed with improvisational theater. But D&D, particularly the first edition that Gygax co-wrote in 1975, makes this sort of creative play an afterthought. The problem is most apparent in one of Gygax's central (and celebrated) innovations: "experience points." To become a more powerful wizard, a sneakier thief, or an elfier elf (being an elf was its own profession in early editions, which is kind of like saying being Chinese is a full-time job), you need to gain "levels," which requires experience points. And the best way to get experience points is to kill stuff. Every monster, from an ankle-biting goblin to a massive fire-spewing dragon, has a specific number of points associated with it--your reward for hacking it to pieces. So while it's one player's job--the so-called Dungeon Master--to come up with the plot for each gaming session and play the parts of the various enemies and supporting characters, in practice that putative storyteller merely referees one imagined slaughter after another.
I have a hard time taking the word of anyone who uses the term "my homies" in such a context. His sneering contempt for Star Trek convention attendees coupled with the claim that he is a "real" geek (presumably unlike D&D lovers and Gygax fans) doesn't sit well with me either. Having never played a GURPS, i can't comment on the accuracy of his claims. I do know that when we play D&D, we get awarded based on how well we play our character and killing monsters is only 1 aspect of the game. Every character has a backstory. Otherwise how the hell do you explain all of them getting together? And there have been several times where we've almost died because we were too stupid to figure out the puzzle and tried to win the fight by killing everything (monster-generating skull, anyone?) So, did this guy just have really crappy DMs all his life or is fnord just that good*?
By min | March 12, 2008, 1:02 PM | D&D | Comments (8) | Link Gaming the system Ohio: That includes 931 in Rocky River, 1,027 in Westlake and 1,142 in Strongsville. More than a third of the Republicans in Solon and Bay Village switched. Pepper Pike had the most dramatic change: just under half its Republicans became Democrats. And some of those who changed - it's difficult to say how many - could be in trouble with the law. At least one member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections wants to investigate some Republicans who may have crossed party lines only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November . . . . In a nutshell, here's how it's supposed to work: Ohio voters are allowed to switch party affiliations on the day of a primary election but only if they sign a pledge vowing to support their new party - and mean it. In the days following the election, The Plain Dealer interviewed more than two dozen voters - most of them Republicans who crossed over to Democrats last week. None - including five who acknowledged lying about supporting the Democrats - were challenged. And several said poll workers never asked them to sign a pledge but gave them a Democratic ticket . . . . It started a few weeks ago when conservative radio powerhouse Rush Limbaugh suggested that his Republican following cross over during the primary to vote for Clinton. Clinton, Limbaugh argued, would be easier for McCain to beat in November than Obama. In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats: I suspect partisans on either side will draw different interpretations from it. But here's another interesting tidbit out of the Mississippi exit poll. The conventional wisdom and to a significant degree the reality in many other states has been that Barack Obama has picked up the lion's share of Republican crossover voters. Not in Mississippi. According to MSNBC's exit numbers, Republicans made up either 12% or 13% of the voters in tonight's primary. And they went for Hillary Clinton by a decisive 3 to 1 margin. Big difference between Mississippi and Ohio, of course. In Mississippi it was an open primary. In Ohio, it was illegal. But either way you have to wonder if you're a viable contender for the general if your opposition is helping you along in the primaries. By fnord12 | March 12, 2008, 10:56 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Marvel Sales January. Late due to an initial problem with the reported numbers. By fnord12 | March 11, 2008, 3:02 PM | Comics| Link Geek Flow Chart There are many inaccuracies with this flow chart, one of which being "fantasy baseball" presence on the chart at all.  At least they remembered the Mountain Dew. H/T to starfaith for sending me the link. By min | March 11, 2008, 1:35 PM | D&D & Star Wars & Video Games | Comments (1) | Link It starts rolling before he's even turned it on. Ha! By min | March 11, 2008, 10:17 AM | Science | Comments (2) | Link Stump the Chump McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy." Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?" McCain: (Long pause) "You've stumped me." By fnord12 | March 11, 2008, 10:02 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link
Not very reassuring. So what should be done? I'm not sure (and I'm thinking about it, hard.) For now, I'd just say that this is really, really scary. By fnord12 | March 10, 2008, 3:34 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link I'm not alone anymore Look at all these people who hate using the telephone (see comments). By fnord12 | March 10, 2008, 3:10 PM | My stupid life| Link Loose Centerfolds As long as it was just the one comic with a loose centerfold problem, there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, Marvel might produce replacements. But if it's more widespread than that, the likelihood that Marvel would essentially reissue a week's worth of new books is incredibly small. Maybe I'll be surprised, but I'm not betting on it. I know, this isn't what you wanted out of a post entitled "loose centerfolds" but my copy of Clan Destine was "iffy", and it's interesting to see that it wasn't just the usual "gorillas handle my comics before they get to me" situation. By fnord12 | March 10, 2008, 10:24 AM | Comics| Link Really Terrible Orchestra This is very punk rock*. My own playing set the standard. I play the bassoon, even if not quite the whole bassoon. I have never quite mastered C-sharp, and I am weak on the notes above the high D. In general, I leave these out if they crop up, and I find that the effect is not unpleasant. I am not entirely untutored, of course, having had a course of lessons in the instrument from a music student who looked quietly appalled while I played. Most of the players in the orchestra are rather like this; they have learned their instruments at some point in their lives, but have not learned them very well. Now such people have their second chance with the Really Terrible Orchestra. Some of the members were very marginal musicians, indeed. One of the clarinet players, now retired from the orchestra for a period of re-evaluation, stopped at the middle B-flat, before the instrument's natural break. He could go no higher, which was awkward, as that left him very few notes down below. Another, a cellist, was unfortunately very hard of hearing and was also hazy on the tuning of the strings. As an aide-mémoire, he had very sensibly written the names of the notes in pencil on the bridge. This did not appear to help. *In the old-school, before-punk-became-a-genre, sense. By fnord12 | March 10, 2008, 9:45 AM | Music| Link Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns? Credit to Tucker Carlson for being so (unintentionally) candid about the lowly, subservient role of the American press with regard to "the relationship between the press and the powerful." A journalist should never do anything that "hurts" the powerful, otherwise the powerful won't give access to the press any longer. Presumably, the press should only do things that please the powerful so that the powerful keep talking to the press, so that the press in turn can keep pleasing the powerful, in an endless, symbiotic, mutually beneficial cycle. Rarely does someone who plays the role of a "journalist" on TV so candidly describe their real function. Update: Tucker cancelled. By fnord12 | March 10, 2008, 9:28 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link
On the Air While at the NJProghouse show, we met a guy named Bill Fox who DJs for Muhlenberg College Radio in Allentown, PA. Not ones to pass up an opportunity, we sent him an EP soon after the show. He posts his playlists online once a week. Well, guess what?  Perhaps this should be added as another appropriate moment for a fist pound. By min | March 7, 2008, 3:01 PM | Music | Comments (1) | Link
The boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea The boy looked at Johnny, Johnny wanted to run, When suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by There's a little place, a place called space Baby calm down, better calm down,
(up there is a wall of possibilities) (up there there are several walls of possibilities) (up there) (in a sea of possibilities) I felt his hand on my knee (on the screen) (in the heart of man) (the spoon) (the veins) I put my hand inside his cranium, oh we had such a brainiac-amour
(I feel it I feel it I feel it I feel it) (at that Tower of Babel they knew what they were after) (they knew what they were after) looked at my hands, and there's a red stream (how much fits between the eyes of a horse?) (His fingers) (his vocal chords shot up) (possibility) (like mad pituitary glands) (there is nothing happening at all) In the sheets By fnord12 | March 6, 2008, 9:04 AM | Music | Comments (4) | Link
Who You Gonna Call? Prolly not these guys. Cicconi and another member of the group, Sergio Ocasio, 20, went to the man's house and waited until 3 a.m. to catch a glimpse of the ghosts. "I caught something on tape," Cicconi said. "It looked like two lights moving around, like the spirits were playing with each other." He said they used a homemade Ouija board - often used in seances to supposedly talk to the dead (or undead) - to coax the bogeymen to leave. But it didn't work. "Sometimes, spirits are afraid to talk or to show themselves to us," Cicconi explained. Not that i don't believe in ghosts. I'm chinese. Ofc i believe in ghosts. We are a superstitious lot. But these guys sound pretty lame. Dancing lights? pfft. I certainly wouldn't trust them to help me with a tree spirit that sucked out my life essence with its hideously long tongue. And yes, trees in china have tongues. Obliviously. Duh. By min | March 5, 2008, 1:58 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (1) | Link My Mom Was Right She always suspected the people writing the bible were smoking doobies. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. Thinking always ruins religion. Why can't people just accept God did it and leave it at that? By min | March 5, 2008, 1:51 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link I'm Back And you all get to pay for it. Oddly Enoughs time!!! Residents anxiously watched television showing victories for Hillary Clinton among Democrat Party voters in Ohio and Texas, where losses could have forced her out of the White House race. By min | March 5, 2008, 1:46 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link Ice(cream)-Man A little known power of Iceman's:  (From X-Men #6, Jul 64) By fnord12 | March 5, 2008, 11:21 AM | Comics | Comments (5) | Link
NBC's Irish Conspiracy Bob Somerby has been hinting at this for years, but this is the first time he's come out and said it. And, looking at the list of people, it sure seems like he has a point (scroll down to Klein's Gaffe). By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 3:51 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Evil scientist brain drain It seems the kids today don't want to build bombs anymore. It's a real shame. By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 3:47 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Gary Gygax Died today at the age of 69. I'd like to think he's rolling up a new character as we speak. By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 3:01 PM | D&D | Comments (7) | Link  If a pitch like this works for a two-bit villain like the Vanisher, imagine how well it'd work for a real super-villain like min. (From X-Men #2, Nov 63) By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 3:01 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link  Norrin Radd encounters the evil bunny doctor in Silver Surfer #7 (Aug 69) By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 10:39 AM | Comics| Link  More. By fnord12 | March 4, 2008, 8:52 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link
We're back And hopefully faster! By fnord12 | March 3, 2008, 6:24 PM | My stupid life| Link Spreading Democracy in the Middle East Link (8 page article). By fnord12 | March 3, 2008, 2:01 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Lead Singer Syndrome at the Blue Room We'll be playing our second gig at the Blue Room in Secaucus on Friday, 3/14. This is a place that cuts your stage time if you have less than 12 'fans' show up, so we can use your support! C'mon out and enjoy your favorite instrumental rock band (that's us, people!) along with an assortment of what usually turn out to be surprisingly good groups. They have a full bar and serve food, too. By fnord12 | March 3, 2008, 10:08 AM | Music | Comments (4) | Link
The situation so far Seeking something called the 'essence of frost' and forwarned to use "stealth, cunning, or diplomacy" instead of a frontal assualt, the party travelled to the Plane of Frost. There they met a group of Frost Giants who revealed that they were allies of the evil wizard Mangar. The Giants imprisoned the party, thinking they were agents of the "Ice Queen Gloiterwome". Under threat of having their heads torn off, the party bribed its way out of imprisonment. The centerpiece of the bribe was a gem artificially (and temporarily!) increased in size by an Enlarge spell. Semi-convinced that the party was not allied with Gloiterwome, they sent them to her lair. Arriving at the lair, the party discovered that Gloiterwome was in fact a huge white dragon. Sent to scout out her cave, Flerm was detected. The dragon allowed the Drow elf to live only because he demonstrated a very low intelligence, leading the dragon to deduce that he was but a henchmen. She demanded that Flerm return with his master. Flerm brought Snow back into the cave, and the two entered parlay. The dragon revealed that it was from a clan of dragons that allied itself with the evil Flying Monkey monks in the ancient wars against Snow's Drunken Butterfly clan. Seeing Josy, it also indicated that it used to eat hobbits, and implied that it knew more about Vain that the party did. Gloiterwome also said that it hated the Frost Giants because they killed her babies and were immune to her frost breath. Intimidated by its presence, Snow agreed to bring Gloiterwome the head of the Frost Giant clan in return for the Essence of Frost. However, upon leaving the cave, Snow's sense of morality began to nag at her. She felt it was immoral for her to attack the Frost Giants in cold blood. She returned to the dragon's cave but the dragon refused to renegotiate the deal. Thus the party was faced with both a moral and physical dilemma. Was it right to attack either the Giants or the Dragon without having been provoked? And if so, could the party survive a fight with a giant dragon or a group of 30 Frost Giants and their pets, especially in light of the warning to not engage in a frontal assault? By fnord12 | March 2, 2008, 8:44 PM | D&D | Comments (56) | Link |
