CapitalistImperialistPig

Shakespeare's plays were written not by him.....but by another playwright of the same name. Or maybe by ancient space-invaders. Or not. Devilstower at Daily Kos is not too sympathetic to ancient astronaut theories: It's not the idea that there may be other life in the universe that bugs me; it's the implication that people in ages past were too stupid to stack one rock on top of another. Easter Island, Stonehenge, and the civilizations of Mesoamerica all have been targeted as potentially alien-assisted, but no civilization has suffered from a greater assumption that "they just couldn't have done it themselves" than that of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Check the links for the concrete details.

American actress Gwyneth Paltrow is quoted: "I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," the 34-year-old added. Hey, I happen to be slightly anglophillic myself, and always enjoy my visits to that "...envy of less happier lands," or Limeytown (as Jesse Jackson and I like to call it), but is it really fair to call the Brits more civilized? I mean, like, Gwyneth dear, have you ever been to a football game? (soccer to us) Or a quidditch match?

If you were less than thrilled at the sight of Britney's unpantied rump, you might not care for the latest treat the Transportation Safety Agency has in store for us. Actually, even if the Spears rear does thrill you, you might quail a bit at TSA's new see-through technology . Not to worry though: But the TSA said the X-rays will be set up so that the image can be viewed only by a security officer in a remote location. Other passengers, and even the agent at the checkpoint, will not have access to the picture. In addition, the system will be configured so that the X-ray will be deleted as soon as the individual steps away from the machine. It will not be stored or available for printing or transmitting, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said. I say they will be on You Tube in six weeks. Personally, I'm more concerned with the idea of being bombarded with ionizing radiation. Is this really an X-ray technology? If so, it can hardly be good for you. The total absorbed dosag...

A couple of months ago the New York Times Magazine ran this fascinating story about how elephants are cracking up under stress, raping and killing rhinoceruses, and generally behaving badly under the stress of human impact on their environment. While bizarre, I found this story pretty convincing. I can't say the same about the story being put out by the British government that Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by rogue elements in the FSB (the current incarnation of the Russian KGB). With a deathbed accusation and a mountain of evidence pointing to Russia and Vladamir Putin, why should we doubt the obvious? No evidence for that theory has been mentioned, but we have evidence that Tony Blair is a pathetic ho. Not content with the shame, degradation, and harm to his country brought by six years of being Bush's bitch, Blair now seems determined to be Putin's as well. This is doubly disaappointing to me. Bush talks and acts like an unprincipled idiot, so it is not too...

The dollar is now down to about 50 p which sucks, since I buy a lot of books from Cambridge University Press. The general trend poses a few other major threats to my consumption as well, of course, but the real avalanche doesn't start till the Yen and Renminbi come unstuck.

A Hurricane by any other name would still be a tropical cylclone. The usual denialist suspects are making a big deal out the the mild Hurricane season we had in the North Atlantic. Since it's likely to be an el Nino year next year they can probably expect another mild one next year. None of this has much relevance to the (in my opinion) still speculative notion that global warming produces a larger proportion of intense tropical storms. The relevant word here, as always, is "global." A hot day at Aunt Melba's house doesn't prove global warming, and a cold one doesn't disprove it. Ditto, a mild season or two in one ocean basin. As it happens, this has been a somewhat violent season in the Pacific (there are two tropical cyclones in the Pacific and one in the Indian Ocean, right now. As always, cherry picking the evidence is the favorite tool of every scientific fraudster, from anti-evolutionist to GW denier.

I would like to nominate Nina Burleigh for membership in the Order of the Shrill - those driven to shrill, unholy madness by the manifold evils of BushCo: Here in the United States, the blithe and oblivious masterminds of Iraq's total ruination - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith - remain members of the ruling elite. They go about their business chastened perhaps - or not - by the recent election, but apparently in no danger of being called to account for the 150,000 (or 600,000-plus) Iraqis who have died as a result of their Frankensteinian experiment in nation-building. We now know with certainty, thanks to the reportage of Risen, Ricks and Woodward, among others, that our worst imaginings of the incompetence and utter inhumanity of our leaders never approximated what was really going on in the White House and the Pentagon. ... Democrats in Congress, thinking about 2008 and suspecting, probably correctly, that any attempt to do more than get the troops home -- a...