Gideon Decorating the Tree

Gideon is almost four, and I thought this was a fairly good picture. It sure is better than the crap he was drawing 2 years ago.

Al Hirt Java and drunk dude in mini-mart

I love Al Hirt.

Laughable

The espionage community must be absolutely aghast after hearing about the military ban on removable media. They must be shivering in their boots. How will they do their spying stuff without being allowed to possess criminal tools such as removable media? Excerpt:

According to the report, Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations issued a "Cyber Control Order" on Dec. 3 instructing airmen to immediately stop using removable media on the Defense Department's secret network. The other branches of the military have reportedly received similar directives.

The order is a response to the leaking of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and documents to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, which has come under international scrutiny for publishing the names of military and intelligence informants.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May and charged in connection with the leaks, allegedly downloaded classified materials to a CD disguised as a Lady Gaga album.

This is so laughable. Let's court martial soldiers for having a digital camera in their possession. Digital camera's, as you know, use removable media. Let's go through everyone's CD collection and listen to every disk to make sure it's authentic. Full cavity searches for mini SD cards? We're all in--I'll take the women's line, thanks.

While we're at it, let's also ban guns to stop violent crime. Banning things always works so well.

Bill Donohue: "Stop funding the leisure of rich white people"

It is to LOL. William Donohue once again opens up a can of pure pwnage on the effete elites of the museum industrial complex. Here's the money paragraph:

In a large survey of museum-going households released in April, it was found that they are significantly better educated and affluent than the U.S. population; they are also overwhelmingly white. The time has come, then, to stop funding the leisure of rich white people: all public monies for the arts should cease. Quite frankly, to make the working class pay for the leisure of the rich amounts to class discrimination. In the spirit of social justice, a better case could be made to fund professional wrestling—it's what the working class enjoy.

"[A]ll public monies for the arts should cease." Yes, sir, I second that emotion, if for no other reason than this art sucks shit.

Global Warming Lunacists Face "Uphill Battle"

The global warming talks start off with an appeal to Ixchel, a Mayan moon goddess. Excerpt:

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools."

She called for "a balanced outcome" which would marry financial and emissions commitments from industrialized countries aimed at combating climate change with "the understanding of fairness that will guide long-term mitigation efforts."

"Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skillful interlacing of many threads," said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. "I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel."

Ixchel is also the goddess of spreadsheet software and displaying one's buttocks. Strikes me as the Saint Jude of the pagan world. Seriously, maybe she can use her divine feminine charms to get the mean old sun god to cool down a tad. But I'm not going to suggest that to her. I've heard they have a complicated history, and my guess is they had a "falling out" a few million years ago.

Meanwhile, I've collected a number of spare nails I've found around my garage and will be donating them to be used on the coffin for the UN's credibility on all things related to climate change.

Offenbach on a dulcimer

I don't know why, but this is one of the tunes that constantly plays in my head. I'll be sitting at my desk, then suddenly I'm banging things around and can-canning.

George Weigel on the "Media Condomania"

I thought the Pope Benedict's remarks about condoms were completely understandable and non-controversial, But they've been sensationalized and misunderstood, so George Weigel has clarified the original remarks and provided the proper context for understanding them. Excerpt:

The first false assumption beneath the latest round of media condomania is that the Church’s settled teaching on sexual morality is a policy or a position that can change, as tax rates can be changed or one’s position on whether India should be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council can change. To be sure, the theological articulation of the Catholic ethic of sexual love has been refined over centuries; it has come to an interesting point of explication in recent years in John Paul II’s “theology of the body.” But it has not changed and it will not change because it cannot be changed. And it cannot change or be changed because the Catholic ethic of sexual love is an expression of fundamental moral truths that can be known by reason and are illuminated by revelation.

The second false assumption beneath the condom story is that all papal statements of whatever sort are equal, such that an interview is an exercise of the papal teaching magisterium. That wasn’t true of John Paul II’s international bestseller, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in which the late pope replied to questions posed by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori. It wasn’t true of the first volume of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, in which the pope made clear at the outset that he was speaking personally as a theologian and biblical scholar, not as the authoritative teacher of the Church. And it isn’t true of Light of the World. Reporters who insist on parsing every papal utterance as if each were equally authoritative — and who often do so in pursuit of a gotcha moment — do no good service to their readers.

He goes on to list a third ludicrosity pertaining to the very concept of a pope announcing a major clarification in church teaching within the medium of an interview with a journalist.

I remember some idiots I knew in my teenage years discussing AIDS and how if they ever found out they were infected that they would try to pass it along to as many people with it as they could before they succumbed to the illness. This vampiric approach to sexual ethics would appear to be addressed be the Pope's remarks, and so it was the first thing which came to my mind. Obviously full repentance and turning away from an impure lifestyle is the goal, but moving toward responsibility and away from a video game approach to sexual relationships and subsequently to life itself can be seen as progress.

Also—whoever is surprised to discover that the Catholic Church believes that different sins have different degrees of evil has not been paying attention very well. We don't need to bring up Hitler to demonstrate this. Janet Smith's analogy referenced within the article is one of hundreds which may be easily produced by any person in the category of those who believe in the existence of objective morality. This group surely includes some journalists, one hopes.

WHAT IS OUR GOVERNMENT DOING IN AREA 51???!??!?

I've been watching Area 51 vids on Youtube. They're all funny, some inadvertently. The guys in this clip seem to get what Area 51 is really all about.



Oh, yeah, happy belated Thanksgiving. I'm planning to "quit cold turkey" since it's Friday, but I'll be chowing down on it tomorrow, you can bet your cranberries.