Not Funny

This cartoon is considerably more creepy than what is normally published in the New Yorker. It was sort of unfortunate that I read it the morning after I saw this story.

And while I'm at it, this cartoon isn't funny at all. I don't know what it is about prison rape that sends people into fits of giggles, but you'd think the editors of the New Yorker would have better taste than that. Making fun of Polish names? "We just don't publish that kind of thing." But, condemning American citizens to serial rape? That's comedy gold.

Embarrassing

Over the course of this year, the Oberlin College Republicans have, as part of the "Ronald Reagan Lecture Series" hosted, among others, a climatologist to challenge global warming orthodoxies, a woman to discuss the failures of feminism, and a black guy to discuss the end of affirmative action. Yesterday's speaker, given this hilariously transparent MO, was not particularly surprising, but they made a mockery of themselves in a way I wouldn't really have though possible. On Tuesday May 1st, the Republicans hosted a speaker of Mexican descent who discussed immigration reform. What's the big deal, you ask? The big deal is that they titled it:

"An Evening with a Mexican-American: Essentials of Real Immigration Reform."

Are you fucking kidding me? An evening with a Mexican American? It's like they don't want to be taken seriously. I guess it's kind of brilliant because you can't ridicule something if its title is so mindbendingly stupid it leaves you speechless.

Vetoed

The President vetoed a bill that I don't really understand last week, but it at least made gestures at getting the US out of Iraq. There's now something of a standstill, in which Congress needs to either defund the troops, which no one seems to want, or pass some sort of bill that the President will sign. John Edwards is asking for money to run an anti-war ad directed at Congress in DC, and John Kerry has a great diary at DailyKos already thinking ahead to targeting key Republicans in '08.

Congressional tactics are very very complicated, especially to the extent they intersect with procedural matters, but I think the thing to do is to pass a bill that funds the troops for 2-3 months. When the President comes back to ask for more, pass the bill he just vetoed, or a stricter one. If he vetoes that, give him funding for another short period of time. Right now we just don't have the votes to end the war, but its sure not getting any more popular. If Pelosi makes the Republicans vote to stay in Iraq and support Bush every 2 months until November of 2008, they will have a worse election then than they did in 06. Either that, or sometime between now and then we will see major Republican defections, big intra-party clashes, and hopefully an earlier (but long overdue) end to the American involvement in the disaster in Iraq.

In which I agree with Mitt Romney

and disagree with liberal bloggers. There's been some fuss, like this post at TPM, that Mitt Romney said it probably wasn't worth it to expend a huge effort to capture Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, the responsible thing for the media to do would have been to flip a collective shit and destroy the man without ever analyzing the value of his statement. It's undoubtedly true, and unfair, that Nancy Pelosi would have gotten this treatment. But Romney happens to be right, so its a good thing it didn't happen. Capturing Osama Bin Laden would accomplish approximately nothing. People would feel slightly better about 9/11, perhaps. We might or might not embarrass ourselves by botching his trial, a la Hussein. The world and country would be not at all safer. I would rather, to use Romney's words, be "moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars" to do things that will actually protect America, as opposed to make good headlines. I'm all for criticizing the media when they obsess over offhand comments by Democrats that are poorly phrased but basically true, but that's because I want the media to be good, not because I want them to be equally bad to everybody.

Gravel for President

The first primary debate was tonight, and Mike Gravel stole the show. Tell your friends. Join the Facebook group. Volunteer. My guess is his performance in South Carolina tonight will catapult his name recognition into the high single digits.

His most memorable assertion was that, and I'm paraphrasing here, running for President is like being in the Senate. The first day you walk in and you think, "wow, how did I make it here?" The third day you ask yourself, "How did all of these guys!?"

Terrorist attack on US soil narrowly averted

Or at least, you'd expect the headlines to say that. In actuality, you can't find this story using Google News at all if you include variations on the word terrorism in your search.

One of the obvious problems with the media reporting on "Islamic terrorism" is that if you define everything bad Muslims do (buying cell phones) and nothing Christians do (murdering civilians with IEDs) as terrorism, it suddenly seems like Islamic terrorism is an awfully big problem.

Really?

Via John, an article on building giant skyscraper farms to feed the world's cities. This is exactly the kind of technology reporting that I can't stand. It's really common in magazines like Discover (which I love.) They uncritically report on cool ideas that range from totally impossible to very unlikely except under extraordinary conditions and claim that they'll... solve global warming!

The building/farm is supposed to do all sorts of fancy things. It'll generate energy through 1) a photo voltaic collector that will presumably turn the electricity into light. This is obviously less efficient than just letting the light hit the plants, and so will presumably not even power one story of this 50 story building. 2) The building will collect wind power, which is pretty sweet, but I can't imagine it will reliably generate power for light for all 50 stories of the building. 3) The non-edible plant waste will be used to generate power. That's awesome, but the energy in the plant waste had to come from light the plants absorbed, so that's only an efficiency improvement, and certainly isn't an energy source. Yet the article suggests that this building is going to produce more energy than it consumes. 4) Everything will be organic. How? Because it said so! 5) Even though all of the unused plant waste is being removed to make fuel, it won't need fertilizers. Why not? Because it said so! Right there in the first page of the article.

There's a lot of cool stuff in there with really interesting implications for urban design, but pardon me if I roll my eyes when I read the article. I'd love to see buildings using solar and wind power, purifying sewage, collecting rain water, and using energy and space efficient design, but I'll believe in the magical energy and water and food producing organic building when I see it in Manhattan.