Keep on Linkin' in the Free World!

A surprising number of people have asked that I update the blog in order to move the Gallery of Deep Fried Stuff further down the page. It seems I'm not the only one disturbed by spiders - but I thought the one below was rather funny. In a crunchy kind of way.

People will sign anything. This really conveys the need to read before you sign.

Ursula K. Le Guin isn't terribly pleased with the Sci/Fi channels depiction of her Earthsea books. Well, neither am I! The books held most dear since childhood are all askew, full of a quite a few sex scenes I don't remember (and I re-read this series once every few years) and Ged is... let Le Guin tell you: "My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid."

This is a major issue for Le Guin. "Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white."

"So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention."


Now naproxen causes heart attack and stroke risk. When I asked my dad, an arthritis sufferer extrodinaire, what he thought about the potential for all of these drugs being taken off the market he said he'd rather risk the heart attack to cut down on the pain. And he didn't think the FDA would ask him before more medicine goes the way of Vioxx.

A recently released memo states that interrogations in Iraq went beyond FBI standards. While the memo apparently doesn't mention who authorized the torture, two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity (of course) said the methods were approved. By whom? The man blissfully unaware of afore mentioned standards, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. And he chose to remain a cabinet member. Alanis, once again, that is ironic.
UPDATE: The ACLU has issued a statement that indicates that newly obtained FBI records call the Defense Department's Methods "Torture," and say that there is a "cover-up." NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

We grow 'em dumb in Milwaukee. A man robbing a bank wrote the robbery note on the back of a parole form that had his name and address clearly printed on it.

Visit the Museum of Obsure Patents. The patent of the week? A Laser-operated security mailbox.

A German golden retriever lived up to its name after it chased a mugger and returned a handbag to his female victim.The dog and his owner were out walking in Berg-am-Laim when the 51-year-old woman had her handbag snatched and began shouting for help. The passer-by sent dog Sizko off after the mugger, who quickly dropped the handbag when he felt the dog snapping at his heels.

Controversial former chess champion Bobby Fischer, who fled to Japan to avoid U.S. visa-violation charges, is smarting from a recent Time magazine description of him as something less than a babe magnet. He defended his virility to a Mainichi Daily News reporter in October by pointing out that he wears "size 14 wide shoes. Just keep that in mind when (they) say I'm not a dreamboat." After recounting an episode at a hot spring nude bath in Japan in which two fellow customers seemed in awe of his "size," Fischer then accused Americans of having persuaded Japanese authorities to lock him up in a facility close to a nuclear plant so that the U.S. government can "make me impotent."




What is a conservative, really? For the definitive answer, look here.

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
--Ronald Reagan

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."
--Barry Goldwater