Linky Linky

Sometimes shocking, spectacularly sharp and stunningly beautiful images from photographer Danny Ghitis‘ photoblog of both US party conventions, Fear and Loathing 2008 :

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The McClatchy newspaper group answers the US media’s big exam question – “ Is John McCain’s vicious hairtrigger temper a potential danger to the nation and the world? Discuss, with examples.”

[…]

There’s a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.

[…]

Cochran recalled earlier this summer that he saw McCain manhandle a Sandinista official during a 1987 diplomatic mission in Nicaragua.

Cochran told the Biloxi Sun-Herald that McCain was talking, and, “I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever.” More…

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Jay Rayner is a bit of an arse. If when a tiny neighbourhood Szechuan restaurant in a newly-trendy area asks a national newspaper columnist not to give them a review for fear of being overwhelmed by foodies, is it ethical for the columnist to say so in his column – thus writing about them anyway and potentially ruining their business?
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A most illuminating post and ensuing comment thread at Obsidian Wings, on why some politicians’ lies are so much worse than others… *cough* Sarah “Boy, you people are dumb as mooses” Palin, and the burden that puts on the average voter. Hilzoy:

When politicians lie — and here I mean not just putting the best spin on things, but out and out lying — they might as well walk up to each and every one of us and say: Hello! I have no respect for the value of your time! You might have other things to do — work, playing with your kids, taking a long hike in the mountains, whatever — but I don’t care. I’m going to put you in a position where you’re going to have to research everything I say, or else just give up on your civic duty. You don’t get to assume that my words are, if not exactly true, at least somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth, and decide whether or not to vote for me. If you want to be an informed citizen, you’ll have to become obsessive, like hilzoy.

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Via Avedon Carol: “British citizens could be convicted in their absence by foreign courts for traffic, credit card or other criminal offences under plans approved in principle by the European Parliament.”

The worst of it is that it’s not even shocking anymore.

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Please, please, please, Flying Rodent, just do it.

OTOH if Nick Cohen’s looking for anyone to follow him about Britain squirting him with a water pistol filled with lukewarm urine, I’d do that gratis…

I’ll even cover costs: I’ve can spare 50 pence at least. For Cohen I’d even go to a whole pound.

UPDATE:

If the Flying Rodent needs any more motivation…. Aaronovitch Watch:

Noted

New Wikipedia user Ncohen2 appears to have some quite strong views about the Nick Cohen/Johann Hari dispute, as well as some information about the circumstances under which Nick left the New Statesman which I didn’t think was previously public. I wonder who this user might be? I hope we see more. (thanks to an anonymous commenter below)

Good morning, this is your monday morning recommended reading:

First up, Alex shows that blogging can be more than navelgazing by showing how he implemented ViktorFeed, a Python based database scraper keeping track of the movements of notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Blood and Treasure shows where those “coercive management techniques” the yanks are using at Guantanamo Bay really came from — not just from that 1957 airforce study on Chinese “brainwashing” techniques, but from a much older, European source.

Via Blood and Treasure, we also learn that China Matters is skeptical about the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from the FARC. Might it all have been just another Jessica Lynch operation?

Making the world a slightly shittier place was the news that Thomas Disch has committed suicide. Disch was a science fiction writer often more read about than read, but those in the know considered him one of the best in the genre. His Livejournal has been described as “a slow suicide note”. What seems to have put him over the edge was not depression or anything like that, but economical issues, as he was in danger of being evicted from his rent controlled apartment.

To balance out the previous link, have a funny cat doing stupid things story, courtesy of James Nicoll, whose cat it is.

And finally, Charlie Stross sounds the alarm about that hideous “three strikes and you’re out” filesharing proposal that has resurfaced in the European Parliament where if you’re accused three times of filesharing you’ll lose your internet access on the say-so of some record industry body.

The office cats of Texas:

Lucky is a natural customer greeter and gives tours of the shop, she said. A lot of times customers will pick him up and carry him around.

“We do have customers who come here just to see him, not to shop,” she said, explaining that he recognizes certain customers when their cars drive up and he greets them at the door highly excited.

“There are other people who tell us they come by at night to play with him through the window.

Torture news: The guilt goes right to the Oval Office and permeates all levels of US government. They’ve all got blood on their hands. But the actual evidence that might bring the President and his perverted cronies to justice for this:

The records on al-Qahtani, who was interrogated for 48 days – “were backed up … after I left, there was a snafu and all was lost”, Dunlavey told Philippe Sands QC, who reports the conversation in his book Torture Team, previewed last week by the Guardian. Snafu stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

Saudi-born al-Qahtani was sexually taunted, forced to perform dog tricks and given enemas at Guantánamo.

and for other crimes, like the abduction and torture of children as young as 7, has been disappeared. Isn’t that handy? Shorter Bushco – “No Nurembergs for us…”

Libel and defamation law for bloggers.

A Kentucky 13 year-old is arrested for ‘felony wanton endangerment’ – for dropping peanut crumbs onto an allergic child’s cookie.

Would you like to voice broadcast online but don’t know how? Here’s how:

Open-radio.nl allows radioactivists, audio artists and basically everyone interested to upload their shows, newsflashes and jingles to share with the world. All content is under a creative commons license and times without content are filled up with creative commons/copyleft music, so that we provide a 24-hour stream.

Fun with wikis – a Pennine village is devastated by a tapeworm.

Lights in the sky, weird booming noises: whatever’s going on in Indiana?

“Seen In The Suburbs Of Adelaide, South Australia” by the Wooster Collective:

Can it really be true? Be still, my trembling heart!

“We’ll haveta travel undercover if we wanna stay aheada the law,” says me. “By the time we reach the checkpoint I’ll be Henri DuMarche, international financier, socialite and diamond thief, an you can be NGC 5024, a mild-mannered globular cluster.” “The guards will suspect nothing!” says Giblets. “At least not til a stray gust of wind dislodges our fake plastic mustaches at the last minute and blows our cover in fronta the feds.”

Yay, it’s true!, Giblets, Fafnir and the Medium Lobster have returned, yes indeedy, but thankfully without the eye-waterin’ purple and green and with much more pie. The deity (Pasta be Upon Him) is indeed in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

Women’s Health News: “Why is a Government-Funded Reproductive Health Database Blocking Users from Searching for Abortion Articles?”

[Pic from My Left Wing]

What to read, when to read, where to read and much more importantly, how books should be shelved – Alphabetical? Genre? Size? Spine colour? Publisher? – all are reliable flashpoints for arguments in our house. Luckily we generally make it work by agreeing to disagree: but what do you do when his or her taste in books reveals that the love of your life is a complete and utter philistine? [Via]

More lovelife negotiation this time from .au:

An Australian parliament member is suggesting that women sign “sex contracts” in order to avoid unwanted advances. Ann Bressington said this in front of Parliament yesterday, “”Perhaps this parliament could devise a contract which men could carry around in their pocket, next to their condoms. There could be a waiver should a man meet up with a woman who has had a couple of drinks before they engage in sexual intercourse. The contract may contain the name and address of the women, with her driver’s licence number, so that the man can see the signatures match, clauses that state that the woman has or has not been drinking or taking drugs – licit or illicit – and that she consents to foreplay.” How imminently practical Ms. Bressington is! [Link: News.com.au]

[Via Jezebel] Is another form needed to go further than foreplay? What about oral sex or anal sex? And will one be required to keep the paperwork for six years like tax receipts? The mind boggles.

From the archive of safe sex and VD posters from the National Museum of Health’s Flickr gallery. [Click on image for gallery]

Some people don’t have choice when it comes to sex; they must, because their lives depend on it. From an NPR report on human trafficking in Eastern Europe –

“It’s one thing when you are planning an effort like this, this is a work of journalism — I’m not going to interfere with my subjects. It’s another thing when you are in an underground brothel in Bucharest, who has this girl with Down Syndrome, who you know is undergoing rape several times a day. When this girl is offered to me in trade for a used car … I walk away … it’s not an easy thing to do,” he says.

I don’t suppose it is easy to walk away, no. Personally I’d be inclined to say to hell with objectivity and rescue the girl. But then I’m not a journalist – people suffering, to me, are a damned sight more important than a byline and a life more important than a career. By all means get the story out – but don’t let false objectivity mask physical cowardice. Anyhow, isn’t there enough human trafficking happening in the US to be going on with? And let’s not mention the fact that it’s the globalisation of cheap labour that’s enabling profit from slavery. Now, who was it pushing that again? [H/T R. Mildred]

Speaking of which: Majikthise considers the implications of US ally and serial human-rights violator Uzbekistan’s legalisation of money-laundering for international crime and politics.

Mr. Creosote lives:

‘Luxury Bangkok hotel combines luxury meal with ‘poverty tour’

BANGKOK: Somewhere in the firmament of Michelin-starred chefs there must be one willing to accept $8,000 for a single night’s work.

The only catch is that this particular dinner at a Bangkok luxury hotel has stirred up a mighty controversy, and two dozen chefs around the world have declined to cook it. Several have confessed fears of losing a coveted star in the Michelin guide, the gastronome’s bible that can make or break culinary careers.

Bangkok’s Lebua hotel, which is organizing the dinner, is no stranger to publicity – or to Michelin-starred chefs. Last year, it put on a decadent feast billed as the meal of a lifetime for $25,000 a head. Six three-star Michelin chefs were flown in from Europe to cook the 10-course meal, each plate paired with a rare vintage wine.

On April 5, the Lebua is offering another 10-course spread, this time for free. The hotel has invited 50 of its biggest-spending customers to the dinner prepared – it hopes – by three top-ranked Michelin-starred chefs.

There is one twist. Before dinner, guests will be jetted to a poor village in northern Thailand to spend the afternoon soaking up the sights of poverty. The dinner and full-day excursion will cost the hotel $300,000.

Oh well, that’s all right then. What I’d be interested to know is how much of that three hundred grand is for thr meal and how much for the poverty tour and what, if anything, went to the villagers. [Via Last Appetite]

Real sports made to look like tiny dioramas: the tilt-shift work of photographer Vincent Foret (via Shape and Colour)

A guilty thing surprised… (Warning, NSFW kitty pr0n)

Yay, another timesink: I’m indebted to Unfogged for introducing me to Prolific Squalor, a new blog featuring excerpts of IM conversations, like this one:

I know the type.
March 21, 2008

A: Oh, so you’re talking german now…
A: What’s next, the all-esperanto gmail status?
B: I don’t speak German so much as randomly exclaim it.
A: I know the type.

Curiously compelling. More please. (But Ogged, a thousand bucks for lunch? I call that wantonly extravagant – a thousand dollars, wow,that must be all of 50 euros.

Lucent and Cisco, European wireless giants Nokia and Ericsson, and Canada’s Nortel Networks – what do they have in common other than being massive telecoms corps? They’re all making big money from China’s ‘Golden Shield’ Tibet surveillance programme.

Anger is an energy… The Grauniad didn’t know what a box of horrors they opened when they asked commenters ‘What makes you angry?’:

Keylimepie

Comment No. 1223488 March 25 15:06
DEU

@djhworld- o thank god, i thought I was the only person to feel homicidal rage whenever I enter a supermarket…
But what really makes my blood boil is my partner sneezing. he makes himself sneeze by sticking a rolled-up cigarette paper up his nose and moving it about until he sneezes. and then his eyes start tearing up and his nose starts running and he has this sort of glowing almost post-orgasmic-like look on his face and I have to leave the room so as not to smack his puss. I realise this pet hate of mine is pathetic. I just can’t help it. Anybody else’s partners/spouses drive them nuts with little things like that? And how do you deal with it? Am looking for anger-management techniques…

I dunno about pathetic. That would make me reach for a shotgun in disgusted rage.

What else there to do when it snows, except to play in it in your underwear?

My husband doubted the accuracy of the weather forecast. He said “If we get 10 inches or more of snow, I will run up the street in my underwear”. That was a bet I had to take.

Some day all wars will be fought like this! (via By Neddie Jingo!)

A cheese -eating surrender monkey writes: thoughts on the departure of the NY Times’ France correspondent:

So what does she do for her au revoir column? How about a list of clichés and stereotypes!

And she didn’t disappoint! […]

Never [….]

– Eat sorbet with a fork (No, I ain’t making that up.)

And the most amazing of all:

– Never say “Bon appétit” at the start of a meal.

Did this woman really just spend 5 years in France?

Cue a similar rollout of banality and cliche from the British papers during Sarko’s UK state visit. Any Reports of his vulgarity, on the other hand, are completely justified.

No, you silly policeman, he said “20 bucks to help me getup” not “20 bucks to help me get off”:

Prosecutors are moving ahead with a case against one of two 93-year-old men picked up during undercover prostitution stings.

In the case of Frank Milio, prosecutors have issued subpoenas and plan to take him to trial in April.

Milio, according to police records, tried to pay $20 in November to an undercover officer on 14th Street West.

Pah. Prodnoses everywhere. (Via Ballooon Juice)