just like a real disemboweled tauntaun!

uh, how does it smell?

(via sunny @ FB)

triple helping of stupid

holy shit! an eleven year old wore a t-shirt with a peace symbol on it!!! i guess a small right blogistan freakout is in order. after all, this can only mean that the symbol is fully endorsed by her parents.

because parents always endorse everything their eleven year old wears. and because it would be a disaster of untold proportions if the president of the united states supported the concept of peace.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee're dooooooooooooooooooomed!!!

iranian hostage crisis ends

not that one, the more recent one.

for the record, it's been 909 days since u.s. forces stormed the iranian consulate in erbil and snatched the five iranian diplomats. that means that iranian hostage crisis 2.0 lasted 465 days longer than the original.

excuses excuses

when people ask me how often i post on my blog. i usually answer "one-to-four posts a day." except when i don't.

sometimes i don't post because i'm busy. sometimes it's because the server goes down. sometimes it's because i have nothing to say that hasn't been said better elsewhere. and sometimes it's because a family from the west bank is in town and i would rather march them around philadelphia to make up for when they showed me and mrs. noz around nablus last august than goof around on the internet.

sometimes it's all of those things. sometimes it's none.

i've got 18 channels of shit on the tv to choose from

sometimes i feel like i'm living on a different planet than most other people.

not about national security

a revealing bit at the end of this article:

Before being released from Guantánamo in February, Mr. Mohamed was offered a plea bargain, which required him to agree to abandon his efforts to obtain documents that might bolster his torture claims and not to file lawsuits against the United States government or any of its officials.

He rejected the offer and a few months later all charges against him were dropped.

it's not about national security, it's about covering their ass.

what's in it for him?

looking at it from sanford's perspective, why would he resign?

the "appalachian trail" kerfuffle has now passed. the media was distracted by michael jackson, then sarah palin. once that happened, sanford seems like "old news" even though the story really isn't that old. when the media moves on, something big and new has to happen for them to come back. the political damage has already been done. sanford's prospects as a presidential candidate have been damaged, perhaps fatally. but resigning isn't going to make any of those things any better. he's got almost two more years in his term as governor. his national reputation may be shot, but it's possible that he can do something as governor to improve his image in the state and maintain his local political viability. that option is only available if he doesn't resign.

so what would sanford gain by resigning? nothing really. and staying as governor offers him a chance at rehabilitation (slim as it may be). plus he doesn't have to find another job. resigning may be the honorable thing. but if he were going to do that, he would have done it by now.

UPDATE: it looks like the SC GOP has taken a page from moveon.org. i think resignation is officially off the table now.

carte de la blogistan politique

wow, i'm actually on the map.

i've seen several other attempts to map out the blogosphere, but i think this is the only time this little taco stand made it on. or maybe i've been on some other one. this is at least the first one i've seen that has a search function. i doubt i would have found my tiny dot without that.

bills + a long addendum

if palin really resigned because of she couldn't handle all the legal bills, why has she been threatening to sue so many people since her resignation speech?

i almost didn't publish this post because i think the palin-mania is a little stupid. i understand why an out-of-nowhere incoherent resignation speech from a nationally known governor would make headlines for a day or two. but it's already stretching beyond that with no end in sight. i've long felt that palin has been getting a lot more attention than she deserves since the election ended. if the media made any sense at all, that would be doubly true at the end of the month when she's not even a governor anymore. but i expect that she won't just fade away after july.

at this point palin is covered like a tabloid figure rather than a politician. she's a star because she's a star. she gets the coverage because she remains in the public's eye and thus the public must be interested in every detail about her. but she only remains in the public's eye because she keeps getting coverage.

it's a vicious cycle that is sure to continue. and it's also sure to generate some unfair commentary about her and andrew sullivan is sure to hawk his conspiracy theories about her children. but the unfairness doesn't mean that she isn't also a terrible politician, one who seemingly has no ability to speak coherently about any substantive policy. unless and until she runs for something else (or becomes a news commentator, thus intentionally puts herself back into the conversation), why should i pay any attention to her?

a priest, a rabbi, an imam and a buddhist monk walk into a game show...

i think that all four will be at a serious disadvantage in this show. in my experience, most believers haven't thought about what actual atheists believe nearly as much as atheists have thought about what believers believe.

as an atheist who has sometimes solicited a conversion pitch for fun, my impression is that most proselytizing religious people have little contact with living breathing atheists and thus have little idea with what real atheists think about the world. but no matter how ignorant they are of how real atheists think, proselytizers think they know, often relying upon some crude (and sometimes funny) stereotype. atheists, on the other hand, live in a world of believers, and cannot help but be familiar with how believers think. at the very least, they are familiar with the dominant religion in their society and/or the religion of their family.

this puts the believers at a severe handicap in the game show, which means that it's likely that no one will win in most cases. if the people who run it are hoping for some dramatic on-camera conversion, they need to either lower their expectations or cheat and hire actors to make one happen.

i wouldn't totally rule out the latter.

(via b²)

why do americans celebrate independence day by blowing stuff up?

i suppose it's better than beating up british people.

it had steam?

i'm not even sure that it was ever really a movement.

boo!

that's it? that's the missile launch that everyone has talked about for the last few weeks? they put interceptor missiles in hawaii only to have the rockets fall thousands of miles short.

have the north koreans ever done a test that wasn't a whole lot less fearsome than the pre-test hype? maybe these tests are really about the internal power struggles in that country. or maybe they are an attempt to strike fear into the hearts of the foreign community about the NoKo military might. if it is supposed to be the latter, i'm not sure what is so scary about it. quite a lot of countries have missiles with a 500km range.

only dead fish go with the flow

i'm completely stunned by this.

i must admit, before today i had been feeling sorry for palin. i mean, the presidential campaign is over, she really doesn't matter anymore, except for in the tabloid gossipy side of politics. but watching that speech (especially part two) is like watching some kind of bizarre stream-of-consciousness train wreck.

failed state index

i always find rankings like these to be both fascinating and completely suspect. it's hard to argue that somalia or zimbabwe aren't basket cases and the ones listed as "most stable" clearly are pretty stable places.

but, for example, is iran really more stable than bhutan and less stable than georgia? bhutan? seriously? has there ever been serious strife there? and georgia has two regions that are outside of the government's control, with a much larger neighbor regularly threatening another invasion. as bad and as unstable as iran is right now, i don't think it's as bad as georgia. FP may have tallied the numbers, but i don't know if that methodology is really any better than my own gut.