Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent catches a bizarre resolution introduced by Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R) in Oklahoma, whose state legislature he describes as a "petri dish for wingnuttery."

The proposed "Oklahoma Citizen's Proclamation for Morality" would blame the economic crisis on moral collapse.

You simply have to read this unbelievable example of absolutely gonzo politico-religio-psychopathy. “Could it be…SATAN?”

 Oops ...

BBC reports that Russia's oil and gas behemoth Gazprom
and Nigeria's state-owned energy outfit have announced a new
joint venture that they've given a most unfortunate name ...

"Nigaz"

"You know, they say that marriage is reserved for only a man and a woman... I of all people know that simply does not work." ~ Elizabeth Taylor

 

 

 

 

They just keep on doin' it.

After Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada admitted on Tuesday that he’d had an extramarital affair, and resigned from his leadership post with Senate Republicans, now we have yet another GOP politician admitting to the same thing.

Today, news reports tell us that Governor Sanford of South Carolina, who said he'd been hiking along the Appalachian Trail for a week or so, now admits to getting it on with a "dear dear friend" in Argentina.  Said he'd decided he "wanted to do something exotic" instead.  Yeah ... we're guessing that those Argentinian women can certainly be ... uh ... "exotic".

Question of the day:

Is there a Republican politician anywhere who hasn't besmirched his hypocritical claims to what now appear to be utterly mythical "Family Values"?

OK ... you probably know that "E Pluribus Unum" above the eagle in the United States Great Seal means "Out of many, one".

But what do the other two Latin phrases on the reverse side mean?

Do that eye and pyramid actually have anything at all to do with Freemasonry?

And what is that number in Roman Numerals?

Find out by visiting greatseal.com.

The New York Times reports that:  Nevada Senator John Ensign, who admitted on Tuesday that he’d had an extramarital affair, resigned from his leadership post with Senate Republicans.

While I'm certainly not sorry to see yet another highly-placed political hypocrite get his just desserts, one can only marvel at the lingering Victorianism in our American values which Stephen Colbert so expertly parodies.

So a guy got a little nookie on the side.  Big deal.  Though most will deny it, just about every married man in the world has done (or will do) that at some point in his relationship.  Married women are certainly not immune to that temptation either.  In most other civilized nations, word of such indiscretion barely even makes the tabloids, let alone general news, and providing it doesn't blossom into an ongoing affair, the affected couple usually kisses and makes up, just as the Ensigns have, and the world continues to turn.  But here in the good ol' US of A, we make a huge to-do of it.

Of course what gets guys like Ensign into the boiling pot is their outspoken hypocrisy - usually the result of hanging around with far-right fundamentalist wingnuts.

And so the blatantly obvious lesson in all of this is simple:  Don't claim that you're somehow far above the rest of us in terms of dealing with basic human desires.  Every normally virile man at some point feels the need to briefly dally with a hottie who's not his spouse.  So he'd best not get publicly trapped by unrealistically strict religious dogma - especially the kind that's irrationally linked to politics.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, under growing criticism for not seeking to end the ban on openly gay men and women in the military, is extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Read the whole story Here.

Opera Unite.  Opera says:

"Today, we reinvent the Web.  Continuing our legacy of innovation, we present a technology that will enable you to get more from your browser – and the Web – than you have ever experienced. Opera Unite marks a milestone in our march towards online freedom."

A web server of your very own.  Easy and inexpensive to install and maintain.  Create your own file sharing service, somewhat like the original Napster.  Your own Facebook or My Space clone.  Your own music player, ala Pandora.  Your own photo gallery like Flickr.  Maybe even your own virtual world games like World of Warcraft or The Sims, or hey ... why not your own version of an adult "anything goes" virtual reality like The Red Light Center.

A neat idea.  Of course techies like me are already running servers on which we could install chat rooms, music players, and all that other neat stuff if we really wanted to.  But this thing may well provide such options to the non-technical masses in an interesting way.

My experiences with GLIB, ZZAPP!, and this blog tend to indicate that something like this will be fun and frequently shared while it's still a novelty, but because everyone and his brother will be doing it (or at least able to), it'll probably cool down considerably after initial exposure.  Why?  Well, mainly because, for the kiddies at least, it's the "mass hysteria effect" of a lot of people in one virtual "place" (like Facebook) that's the attraction - like a rock concert or street demonstration.  They're not really all there on-line at once, of course, but such huge social networks give users the illusion that they are, and in large numbers.  I seriously doubt that sort of attraction can be sustained on thousands of individual "Facebooks", each with a couple dozen users.  Facebook, My Space, and their clones have become as popular as they are simply because the number of such services is relatively limited, and, for the most part, only the guys who got there first reached the critical mass necessary to gain and sustain dominance.

Do most people want to maintain a list of individual URLs - one for each friend - or would they rather just go to My Space and type in their friend's name?  I suppose a "Unite Directory" will soon surface in which folks can do lookups and searches, but one wonders if that'll be quite as popular.  Time will tell ...

And I can't wait to hear the anguished outcries from the music industry about that music player (not to mention the very concept of direct file sharing - without a central server somewhere they can go after).  The lawsuits should be great fun for years.

And oh yes ... what about those User Agreements most high-speed internet subscribers agreed to, which explicitly prohibit running servers on consumer accounts?

Apparently, during these past few days, Twitter has been a major communications medium for Iranian dissidents.  And fortunately, as the variety and availability of such new information exchange systems expands, the more efforts to squelch them by repressive regimes becomes a futile game of whack-a-mole.

But for me, although I've never used Twitter, I despise its very concept.  So far as I'm concerned, it fits into the same intrusive category as instant messaging (which I also never use).  If my friends or associates wish to contact me in anything other than an extreme life-threatening emergency, I expect them to do it in a way which allows me to take notice of their messages and respond on my schedule, not theirs.

Frankly, at the office, I always resented even the telephone interrupting my train of thought, and yearned for the day (which never came) when I'd have a secretary to answer it and then discreetly slip me message notes for my later perusal.

I have instant messaging on my iPhone, but have only tested it twice with my partner, just to know it works.  He and I never use it with each other, however (he knows how much I dislike it), though we do communicate frequently by e-mail, and when we need speed, via voice phone.  So far as I'm concerned, one can communicate far more efficiently by simply picking up the phone than by any form of written communication.

And thank God for Caller ID.  When the phone rings, I glance at it, then let most calls go straight to voice mail.  Also, one of the nice features of this new phone service I now use is that it totally blocks all calls which don't provide caller ID (such as most telemarketers).

I know ... I'm an old fart totally out of touch with the fun communications kiddies now use.  I treasure my privacy, and cannot begin to fathom why anyone anywhere could possibly want to know the trivia of my daily activity, because I don't give a rat's ass about theirs, and besides, it's none of their damn business.  So there.