Some British researchers conducted a study and have a nominee for the best joke ever. Okay, it was funny, but as far as I’m concerned, this is the best joke ever:
A baby seal walks into a club…
Okay, its sick, and dependent on the listener already having heard a lot of other bad jokes, but it’s short and to the point, and I haven’t been able to get that damn joke out of my head ever since someone told it to me when I was a teenager (maybe that says more about me than the joke — I dunno).
Salon.Com also has a satire about the OBL video, with a parody report about a “director’s cut” DVD version of the video complete with outtakes and bloopers.
OpinionJournal.Com’s Christopher Buckley pokes fun at Al-Jazeera with a parody transcript of the recently released tape of Osama Bin Laden,
Osama bin Laden: I had this dream.
Sheik Sulayman: Me too [inaudible] episode of “Baywatch.”
Osama bin Laden: Not that kind of dream. I was in Neiman Marcus, the satanic department store, trying to buy a white player piano. And they wouldn’t take Visa. Fortunately, I had the American Express Platinum Card.
Sheik Sulayman: Allah be praised. So what have you been up to lately, O Evil One? Kidding.
The film Black Hawk Down — based on Mark Bowden’s excellent book about the dealdy standoff between American troops and thousands of Somali civilians in fighters in Mogadishu — opens soon. One of the odd differences between the book and the movie is that for the movie the soldiers were given fictional names.
USA Today, to my knowledge, is the first to suggest that the reason for doing so may have been due to issues beyond creative and legal ones. It turns out that one of the outstanding heroes of the Somalia engagement, Spec. John Stebbins, was court-martialed by the Army and plead guilty to raping and molesting his teenage daughter. He is currently serving a 30-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., but is appealing the case (USA Today does not say what part of his case he is appealing).
Stebbins received the Silver Star for his incredible act of heroism that day — he was shot several times and had to be literally dragged to safety due to his injuries.
Personally, that sort of story would be more interesting as a movie than simply doing a film of Bowden’s excellent book. Never having been through a war (or any sort of deadly violent personal conflict) its hard to imagine what someone like Spec. Shawn Nelson has had to deal with. He was an M-60 gunner and Bowden makes it very clear in his book that although Nelson initially tried to shoot selectively at combatants and avoid hitting civilians, as huge throngs of people surged toward him he was forced to fire indiscriminately into the crowd.
Now an exploration of that would make an interesting movie.
The best line about gun control and the 9/11 attacks comes courtsey of the New York Times‘ John Tierney in an article about war-related toys,
American males’ fascination with guns doesn’t seem so misplaced now that they’re attacking Al Qaeda’s fortress. No one is suggesting a Million Mom March on Tora Bora.
Second-best gun related quote comes from a piece by Lisa Snell talking about her 5-year-old’s reaction to seeing the 9/11 attack on television,
My mother-in-law called from Baltimore before 7:00 AM [Pacific] to tell us to turn on our television. My five year old saw the live coverage of the second plane crashing into the WTC. He immediately went and found his Spiderman t-shirt and told me that he and Gavin would not be at school when I picked them up because they were going with the Power Rangers to save the world. He urgently wanted to get to school to call a meeting with Gavin and Tanner, his five-year-old compadres, to decide what to do—a typical reaction from a boy who lives and breathes bad guys versus good guys. People are always talking about how bad television is for children and they seldom talk about how bad their schools are for children. Yet, I would rather be on a highjacked airplane with someone inoculated by Power Rangers than someone who believes the message of every school institution: that weapons are bad and that the authorities and the government will solve all problems and protect you.
Amen. At the moment, my daughter alternates between Power Rangers and Batman (we watch the extremely violent Justice League cartoon together). Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I’ll write up a summary of psychological studies of children and mock violent play (it ain’t necessarily a bad thing).
Here’s an odd little story about a controversy engulfing the 2001 World Scrabble Championship. It turns out that “fuck” is in the official Scrabble dictionary and was used by a player in a sixth round game. But when the Scrabble folks posted the game to the 2001 Championship web site, somehow the “f” gets replaced with an “h”.
What really fascinates me about this is the elaborate chess-like notation system they have developed for Scrabble games. How cool is:
10. Andrew: EGPRRWY 12a PREY +38 169
Creatures Labs is porting their artifical life game Creatures to the Gameboy Advance.
New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis is retiring and I have two words for him — good riddance. Lewis used his last column as an opportunity to take a swipe at people who happen to believe that the Bible is literally true by comparing such people to the 9/11 terrorists. Lewis wrote,
I have been writing it for 32 years. As I look back at those turbulent decades, I see a time of challenge to a basic tenet of modern society: faith in reason.
No one can miss the reality of that challenge after Sept. 11. Islamic fundamentalism, rejecting the rational processes of modernity, menaces the peace and security of many societies.
But the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism is not to be found in Islam alone. Fundamentalist Christians in America, believing that the Bible’s story of creation is the literal truth, question not only Darwin but the scientific method that has made contemporary civilization possible.
Religion and extreme nationalism have formed deadly combinations in these decades, impervious to reason. Serbs in the grip of religion and mystical nationalist history killed thousands and expelled millions in their “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia. Fundamentalist Judaism and extreme Israeli nationalism have fed the movement to plant settlements in Palestinian territory, fueling Islamic militancy among Palestinians.
Fundamentalist Christians dare to question Darwin and the scientific method? But I thought the entire point of the scientific method was to question provisional facts and theories?
I happen to think the creationists are wrong, but to lump Fundamentalist Christians and creationists in with the 9/11 terrorists is absurd.
This argument makes about as much sense as does the argument by someone like George Gilder who points out that the worst human rights violations of the 20th century were all carried about by men who rejected Christianity — therefore, Gilder argues, it is atheism, humanism and paganism which are responsible for mass murder.
This month the chairman of the Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, was arrested for allegedly plotting to blow up a mosque and other targets in Los Angeles. This shouldn’t have been surprising — Rubin and the JDL have long been advocates of violent action against Muslims and Arabs. What was surprising was that not only was Rubin a member of the Libertarian Party, but that the Libertarian Party went out of its way to highlight and celebrate Rubin joining the Party in March 2000.
There’s Rubin featured on the Libertarian Part web site saying that he became a Libertarian Party member after “recent attacks on Jews” in the United States. The long article is pretty much a fluff piece which never once mentions the JDL’s support of violence, other than Rubin’s admission that he supports U.S. military support for Israel. Rubin is even quoted as saying, “When visions racists give Americans a bad name, Libertarians should speak up.”
But what is the Libertarian Party going to do after not only allowing a vicious, violent racist — Rubin — in their midst, but also openly publicizing his involvement with the Party?
In June 2000, Eric Garris wrote an article for LewRockwell.Com in which he expressed his exasperation at the Libertarian Party openly promoting Rubin’s entrance into the Party. As Garris wrote at the time, it was not like it would have been difficult for the LP to do a minimum of research and discover Rubin’s history and the fact that the JDL was a terrorist organization linked to numerous acts of violence. As Garris wrote at that time,
The leadership of the Libertarian Party has made a grave error. In their desperate pursuit of political success at the cost of party-building, they may truly be sitting on a political time bomb.
Of course, Garris was right and that time bomb went off with Rubin’s arrest. Now the Libertarian Party’s Steve Dasbach is left to lamely spin the arrests. The Libertarian Party put out a press release saying,
Libertarian Party National Director Steve Dasbach said it is too soon for anyone to judge whether Rubin — whose dues-paying LP membership lapsed in June 2001 — is guilty of the charges against him.
“Given Mr. Rubin’s past association with the Libertarian Party — and given that he signed our membership statement that specifically renounces the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals — we certainly hope that he played no role in any plot to destroy property or injure innocent people,” he said.
…
“Not only is there no place in the Libertarian Party for any individual who would support, endorse, or engage in this kind of violent act or plot, it is troubling to think that any American would be involved in such a reprehensible plot.”
Do they really expect people to swallow this line? The JDL web site openly endorsed the actions of Baruch Goldstein who walked into a Mosque and murdered 29 Palestinians while they prayed. If there is no place in the LP for people who “would support, endorse, or engage in this kind of violent act or plot,” why did they feature him so prominently in March 2000? Are they really that stupid? Do they think we’re that stupid?
With friends like the Libertarian Party, who needs enemies?
Source:
Irv Rubin and the Libertarian Party. Eric Garris, The Libertarian Party, June 26, 2000.
Jewish Defense League leader signs up with the LP. Libertarian Party, March 2000.
Here’s a quote from a column that appeared in the Spokane Spokesman-Review about Israel and the United States:
What is the extent of that [Israeli] power? According to Israeli radio (Washington Report on Middle-Eastern Affairs, November 2001), Prime Minister Sharon recently reprimanded Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, saying, ‘Every time we do something, you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America, and Americans know it.’ Last November, while in Chicago, Sharon declared, ‘We have the might and we are right; the Arabs must listen.’
Of course, there is much less here than meets the eye.
For example, most readers might find it surprising — despite the attributions — that this alleged quote does not come from either Israeli radio nor did it originate with the anti-Israeli Washington Report on Middle-Eastern Affairs. Rather, the first appearance of this quote is in a press release from the Islamic Assocation for Palestine. That press release, dated October 3, 2001, was picked up and republished by the WRMEA.
The Islamic Association for Palestine, meanwhile, is a front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and has a habit of a) voicing its support for the killing of Jews and b) publishing anti-Semitic materials.
It is hardly a disinterested party in the conflict, and as such should not be relied upon to provide an accurate translation and context to such a quote (which, to be frank, just fits the IAP’s anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic agenda a bit too well).
