Attractors
(via)
6/29/07
6/28/07
"Swarm over, Death!" he said, smiling winningly
John Derbyshire sure had a banner day over in the fever swamp. After a quick bout of racism, he posted some poetry:
The post is gone[1] now, and Derb hasn't posted since. Odd.
In the post Derbyshire explained that his inspiration lay in the Congressional debate surrounding the now defeated immigration bill. He wrote that he had refrained from blogging about the bill until after it's defeat because it made him so darn mad. The poem was presented -- successfully! -- as illustration of that madness.
And with that I yield the floor to Hilzoy.
Update: A commenter at Obsidian Wings found the rest, including the full text of Derbyshire's post. Here's the remainder of the poem:
Double Plus Update: Well what do you know. Turns out some of the other posters in the fever swamp took issue with Derb's poem. Naturally, their criticisms have also been deleted. Once again, though, an intrepid blogger endorses Derb's artistic fancy and preserves reference to the content.
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1 Luckily, intrepid blogger Pat Santy (who apparently has a doctorate in sanity) endorses Derb's call for the violent overthrow of the guv'mint and has done us all the service of preserving (some) of his words.
Come, friendly bombs, fall on D.C.!
It's not fit for humanity.
There's nothing there but villainy.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs, and blow to kingdom come
Those pillared halls of tedium—
Hired fools, hired crooks, hired liars, hired scum,
Hired words, hired breath.
Mess up this mess they call a town—
A seat for twenty million down
And rights to the incumbent's crown
For twenty years.
The post is gone[1] now, and Derb hasn't posted since. Odd.
In the post Derbyshire explained that his inspiration lay in the Congressional debate surrounding the now defeated immigration bill. He wrote that he had refrained from blogging about the bill until after it's defeat because it made him so darn mad. The poem was presented -- successfully! -- as illustration of that madness.
And with that I yield the floor to Hilzoy.
Update: A commenter at Obsidian Wings found the rest, including the full text of Derbyshire's post. Here's the remainder of the poem:
And get that lobbyist who'll spin
His case to congressmen, who'll win
Amendments, raking fortunes in
For racketeers.
And smash his desk of polished oak
(Paid for by honest working folk
Toiling 'neath taxation's yoke)
And make him yell.
But spare the lesser worker bees,
Federal and private employees,
Working for meager salaries
In government Hell.
It's not their fault they cannot see
How power stifles liberty,
How citizens who once were free
Become enslaved.
From childhood they've been raised to think
That federal power solves everything
They can no longer smell the stink
Of power depraved.
Spare these folk; reserve your fire
For those who wallow in the mire—
That smug, smooth, chauffered, canting choir
Of puffed-up fools.
Come, friendly bombs, fall on D.C.!
Leave it as it used to be:
Potomac winding to the sea
By tree-fringed pools.
Double Plus Update: Well what do you know. Turns out some of the other posters in the fever swamp took issue with Derb's poem. Naturally, their criticisms have also been deleted. Once again, though, an intrepid blogger endorses Derb's artistic fancy and preserves reference to the content.
----------
1 Luckily, intrepid blogger Pat Santy (who apparently has a doctorate in sanity) endorses Derb's call for the violent overthrow of the guv'mint and has done us all the service of preserving (some) of his words.
Predictions
- By 2017, most new American sofas will include cupholders. Also, they will be much larger.
- In early June of 2008, Dick Cheney will declare himself to be a planet, thus restoring the Solar System to the traditional nine.
- The Rolling Stones will continue to tour.
6/27/07
The levers of power are almost within my reach
Here's a first[1]. Flipping through the channels on super basic cable I saw somebody I actually know on C-SPAN. Wow.
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1 Ok, technically there was also that time when I was watching a blogger panel from YearlyKos and one of the questions from the audience came from an oddball Ann Arbor local who signs up for public comment at all of the city council, county board, and regents meetings. But (a) I have assiduously avoided making that guy's acquaintance; and, (b) I was streaming YearlyKos over the internet rather than watching it on TV.
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1 Ok, technically there was also that time when I was watching a blogger panel from YearlyKos and one of the questions from the audience came from an oddball Ann Arbor local who signs up for public comment at all of the city council, county board, and regents meetings. But (a) I have assiduously avoided making that guy's acquaintance; and, (b) I was streaming YearlyKos over the internet rather than watching it on TV.
6/26/07
6/25/07
Sip on this
It seems to me that the Bong Hits 4 Jesus was correctly decided, and obviously so. You got a problem with that?
You should really read this
This post at splodinvark. Read the post, but don't neglect the comments, which are excellent (I'm not talking about my own little throwaway quip). Take the quiz if you are still interested.
There can be only one
All the usual suspects will soon be posting informed Supreme Court commentary about today's decisions, but consider this. The dearly departed William Rehnquist served until he was nearly 81 years old. If Chief Justice John Roberts stays on the Court until he reaches a similar age, he'll be there through 2035.
Kind of takes the shine off your hopes for practical immortality treatments in our lifetime, doesn't it?
Kind of takes the shine off your hopes for practical immortality treatments in our lifetime, doesn't it?
National Security, hey
I guess if you were the sort of person who would be inclined to read the Post's Cheney expose then you wouldn't need a link from me to find it. Anyway, this paragraph, discussing an incident from late 2001, jumped out.
One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.
Planet Unicorn, hey
Julia, who some of you may remember from her tenure as recycling co-ordinator for the third floor of Putnam Hall, sent me this video on Friday. She also sent me a link to this comic. I think it was not a productive day at work.
6/22/07
A toast to the Bellmen
DR and I have been discussing the qualities of arguments in a comment thread recently and it has me thinking about how a person's style of argumentation affects the course of the argument, and it's persuasiveness as well.
Reflecting on this led me try to compare different argument styles found at the Bellman to the experience of drinking. Both of them can get your thoughts all screwed up, after all.
Arguing with DR is like drinking scotch. Strong with a serious bite and you get fucked up in a hurry.
Arguing with Jason is like drinking Jagermeister. Not only do you get fucked up, but you have a fun time doing it, in a vaguely European way.
Arguing with Joe6Paq is like drinking Irish coffee. You didn't even realize you were drinking, but you end up hammered nonetheless.
Arguing with Maray is like drinking a fine wine, smooth and seductive, but with a kick that makes you wish you hadn't started drinking on an empty stomach.
Arguing with DefCon1 is like drinking a Long Island Iced Tea, lots of texture with different strands weaving in and out before you finally end up puking out your nose.
Arguing with Tyson is more like slamming Tequila shots. The next thing you know you wake up in an alien landscape and you cannot remember how you got there or why there's blood all over your clothing.
People misled by their own illusion
Blessed science has now revealed that eldest siblings are a little smarter than younger siblings, and that this condition is the result of family dynamics. Amid all the discussion of the NY Times article hyping the study, I haven't seen any mention of the part that jumpted out at me.
So we've got a study which only looks at men and which unearths a result explained by family dynamics, and, we're told, the results will "almost certainly apply to women as well." This is just crazy talk. Even granting that 'sex has little effect on I.Q. scores' from some perspective or other, surely sex must be relevant insofar as I.Q. is impacted by family dynamics.
Moreover, researchers said yesterday that the results — being published today in separate papers in two journals, Science and Intelligence — would lead to more intensive study into the family dynamics behind such differences. Though the study was done in men, the scientists said the results would almost certainly apply to women as well.
...
Because sex has little effect on I.Q. scores, the results almost certainly apply to females as well, said Dr. Petter Kristensen, an epidemiologist at the University of Oslo and the lead author of the Science study.
So we've got a study which only looks at men and which unearths a result explained by family dynamics, and, we're told, the results will "almost certainly apply to women as well." This is just crazy talk. Even granting that 'sex has little effect on I.Q. scores' from some perspective or other, surely sex must be relevant insofar as I.Q. is impacted by family dynamics.
6/21/07
The Ladder of Law Has No Top and No Bottom
How many documents have been classified since 2003? We don't know. Why don't we know? Because Cheney's office is not part of the executive branch.
What?
What?
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