The King of Pointland

Captain's Log

This will be the final entry for 2003. Not a bad year, all things considered. And that's all I have to say about that.

Come back in 2004 for more such observations.

Happy New Year.

Interesting Fact

This sentence, which is not a quotation of anyone, appears in today's Washington Post: "They all look great, although [Eleanor] Roosevelt, shown in a rather frumpy suit, probably would have looked better if she were smoking a bong."

Disaster

Quake Toll in Iran Passes 20,000 as Aid Trickles In

The modern brick home that collapsed on Jamileh Hossainzadeh was only a year old. "I had no chance to think about anything," she said. "Suddenly the house went up in the air and fell to the ground."

Her brother pulled her from the wreckage. "He's an engineer and he paid a lot to build a house that would withstand earthquakes," she said. "In that house only one flowerpot fell to the ground."

Gross National Cool

What a coincidence: Japanese culture is apparently all the rage. Who knew.

Japan's Empire of Cool

Things I've Learned

I've learned a few things within the last twelve hours. One of them is that Astro Boy can shoot bullets from his butt. To be accurate, a double barreled machine gun emerges from his butt, and the machine gun fires the bullets.

The other thing I'd like to report comes from an article in today's Haaretz: Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, a spokesman for Iran's Interior Ministry, said "The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime [Israel]."

It's good to know there are some hatreds that no mere earthquake can tumble.

P.S. Some of you will say Astro Boy shoots from his hips. That's bullhockey. Look at the pictures.

Post Post

Here are some interesting articles in today's paper.

U.S. forces think they've figured out how the Iraqi insurgency is structured:

Hunt for Hussein Led U.S. to Insurgent Hub
Five Families Believed to Direct Attacks

Remember the Justice Department investigation into who leaked an undercover CIA officer's identity to Bob Novak? It continues:

Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum

And Israel has it's first suicide bombing in nearly three months. It follows two weeks of "accelerated [Israeli] incursions into the Palestinian territories." The PFLP, who claimed responsibility, "said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of two of its members by Israeli military forces in the West Bank city of Nablus last week." They said the bomber was related to one of the PFLP members killed.

The attack came ten minutes after Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car on a crowded Gaza City street, killing a Islamic Jihad's military leader, another person in the car, and four bystanders.

It seems like more cause and effect to me: 1. Kill terrorist leaders (and bystanders). 2. Wait for inevitable retaliatory strike.

Israeli officials say they had to assassinate the Islamic Jihad leader because he was helping to plan a "massive attack" in Israel. No details were offered. Israel also says the reason it's been quiet in the last couple months has been because they've thwarted at least 22 suicide bombings and 35 attacks overall. Again, no details.

The article in the print edition is headlined "Suicide Bomber Kills Four Israelis", but on-line it gets the more balanced "Eleven Killed in Mideast Violence". The other articles posted on the "Print Edition" section seem to have unaltered headlines (but I haven't checked them all).

Sure . . .

As we all know by now, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit California this afternoon near the towns of San Simeon and Cambria.

There's only one problem: the quake actually struck Los Angeles.

While most news reports have switched to the Cambria/San Simeon version of events, the first reports, which I saw breaking on CNN as I ate a Pride of Baltimore sandwich at the Bagel Place, had the quake occurring in Los Angeles. In fact, there is almost no trace, if any, of that original reporting.

The first question we have to ask ourselves: why is the government hiding the true location of the quake, and why is the news media cooperating? The cost of this cover-up in manufactured images alone must be astronomical.

Even stranger: until today, nobody had heard of Cambria. While references to Cambria can now be found in various places on the web, the town is entirely fictional.

If anybody has any idea what's going on, I'd like to know.

What's the Difference

I suppose it's only fair that I criticize boneheaded comments from Democrats as well as from Republicans. This gem comes from an article in Today's Post:

Dean, for instance, recently spoke of a "most interesting theory" that Saudi Arabia had "warned" Bush about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although Dean said he does not believe Bush was tipped off about the assaults that killed nearly 3,000, he has made no apologies for raising the rumor.

"How is what I did different from what Dick Cheney or George Bush . . . did during the time of the buildup of the invasion of Iraq?" the former Vermont governor said Tuesday night aboard his campaign plane. "There were all these theories that they mentioned. Many of them turned out not to be true. The difference is that I acknowledged that I did not believe the theory I was putting out."

Oh, I feel much better now. To be fair, there's an interesting theory -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- that Howard Dean is a moron, or a vampire, or both. Now, who knows what the real situation is?

I will give our President equal time, though. In this interview with Diane Sawyer, Bush was pressed about the WMD issue:

Diane Sawyer: ... When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. ... stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —

President Bush: So what's the difference? ... The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you.

Did we always have such crappy politicians?

Old Hat

Sometimes, when driving around late at night, I find myself looking at the darkened windows of the houses that line the street. I imagine the residents asleep and cozy in their beds, with faint smiles on their faces. The snow and Christmas lights make the image especially precious this time of year.

Last night, though, I became suddenly aware that the sleeper in my mind's eye is always the same: a chubby black man in his late thirties or early forties, with a mustache, in pajamas, and wearing one of those pointy sleeping hats with a little red ball on the end.

Questions filled my head: why, of all things, would I imagine someone in a sleeping hat? Why did people once wear sleeping hats, and why don't we any more? Does anybody own a sleeping hat? Where can I buy a sleeping hat? Is there a term less cumbersome than "sleeping hat"?

If you have any information, please let me know.

Levels

All praise Futurama.

The other day, I happened to be watching episode S05E11, which you probably know by its production code, 4ACV16. As you'll recall, in this episode the characters must decide how to spend their $300 tax refund check (part of a Silk Surplus from the defeat of the Arachnid homeworld).

Professor Farnsworth walks into a stem cell clinic and asks if it's true that by rubbing stem cells on his face, he can remove all his wrinkles, and look and feel twenty years younger. I'm paraphrasing, but the woman behind the counter responds that, yes, it is true, in the same way it's true that a baby could defeat Muhammad Ali in a boxing match.

I chuckled at first, but then my jaw dropped and my eyes opened in wide wonder when I decoded the true brilliance of this joke. The stem cell debate centers around fetal stem cells. And one of the most promising potential uses of stem cells is in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease. Who is one of the most famous Parkinsons's victims? Muhammad Ali! Brilliant.

Some will say I'm reading to much into this joke. But those people will be wrong.

. . . Under the Sun

The Proclamation of Baghdad

Go Susan!

Berwyn beautification plans to top $150,000
Officials hope to have brick sidewalks, decorative streetlights in place by June

Poor Nerds

Here's another cringe-inducing T-shirt from the folks at ThinkGeek. Listen, this would have been cool at the beginning of 2000, for about three months. Now it's just sad.

How about this cool T-shirt idea for geeks everywhere: "I'd rather be surfing the World Wide Web!"