I saw and heard some funny stuff in the past day or two.

Method Man and Redman did a commercial for Powerstripe deodorant.  It’s not "ha, ha" funny, but sad-funny.

Saw a Navy commercial that said, "Life. Liberty. And the pursuit of all who threaten it."  Very cool.  It even had decent music.

On David Letterman last night, the Top Ten list was "Top ten ways Kim Jong-Il [the murderous North Korean dictator] can improve his image."  One of the ways was "Goodbye weapons of mass destruction; hello cookies of mass tastiness."

On All Things Considered Wednesday, there was a commentary by Andrei Codrescu about a talking fish recently reported in the New York Times.

I don’t subscribe to cult news letters, so I have no idea if signs and miracles have been multiplying out there.  So when a Hebrew talking carp made the New York Times front page, I paid attention.

The carp was about to be chopped up by two fish-mongers, a Ecuadorian and a Jew, when it started spouting prophecies.  The Ecuadorian heard it first, and couldn’t understand what it was saying so he thought it was Satan.  But then his Jewish colleague listened, and it was saying Biblical things.

Despite their differences as to the import of the voice, they chopped up the talking carp anyway and sold it.  I can understand the Ecuadorian getting a little spooked because the carp wasn’t talking Latin or Spanish, the two main languages of non-human miracle messengers.  But what’s with the Jew?  He knew both what the carp was saying, and what a talking carp might be worth whole.

The New York Times report was kind of jocular too, and I didn’t like that.  Catholics have been receiving messages via tortillas, trees, and sheep for years, so the Jews get one turn through a fish, and the world laughs?

What gets me is that unaware people ate the carp.  I mean, there are people out there now with a piece of talking Gefilte fish in their bellies.  Everybody listens when their stomach rumbles.  But now they’ve got to listen extra carefully because the message, which was apocalyptic as I understand it, has gotten scrambled like a Dada poem and it’s all bits and pieces among the gurgles and growls.

The Jews say that thirty-six just men keep the world going.  Now there are thirty-six bellies out there, each one holding part of the message, and it’s a matter of some urgency that they be found, sat next to one another, interviewed by Rabbis, put in the right order, deciphered, and translated, first into Latin, then into English.  The Jews don’t have a Pope that can certify the message, but we can put it to a vote, and then have Joe Lieberman introduce it to the world.

Joseph recently pointed me to radioU.com which, unlike most internet (and other) radio stations, is actually pretty good.  But the best thing about it so far is that they have 2 interviews with the brothers Chaps, creators of HomestarRunner.com.  (If you’ve never been there to see Strong Bad emails, your life is not complete.)  And these interviews are stinking hilarious.  Here’s the page they’re on, and here are direct links to the first interview and the second one.

Finally, Protesting the Protesters is really funny too.  My favorite answer to the "real reasons for the war" question was that it’s for the control of water in the middle east.  Ahh, of course, how sinister!

Charlie Daniels speaks his mind!

We received a press release from Charlie Daniel’s people regarding the issues in Iraq. Read on...

for immediate release March 4, 2003

An Open Letter To The Hollywood Bunch:

Ok let’s just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your way and the U.S.A. didn’t go into Iraq.

Let’s say that you really get your way and we destroy all our nuclear weapons and stick daisies in our gun barrels and sit around with some white wine and cheese and pat ourselves on the back, so proud of what we’ve done for world peace.

Let’s say that we cut the military budget to just enough to keep the National Guard on hand to help out with floods and fires.

Let’s say that we close down our military bases all over the world and bring the troops home, increase our foreign aid and drop all the trade sanctions against everybody.

I suppose that in your fantasy world this would create a utopian world where everybody would live in peace. After all, the great monster, the United States of America, the cause of all the world’s trouble would have disbanded it’s horrible military and certainly all the other countries of the world would follow suit. After all, they only arm themselves to defend their countries from the mean old U.S.A.

Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps. Get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning. Do you think that a trip to Iraq by Sean Penn did anything but encourage a wanton murderer to think that the people of the U.S.A. didn’t have the nerve or the guts to fight him?

Barbra Streisand’s fanatical and hateful rankings about George Bush makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a railing.

You people need to get out of Hollywood once in a while and get out into the real world. You’d be surprised at the hostility you would find out here. Stop in at a truck stop and tell an overworked, long-distance truck driver that you don’t think Saddam Hussein is doing anything wrong.

Tell a farmer with a couple of sons in the military that you think the United States has no right to defend itself.

Go down to Baxley, Georgia and hold an anti-war rally and see what the folks down there think about you.

You people are some of the most disgusting examples of a waste of protoplasm I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear about.

Sean Penn, you’re a traitor to the United States of America. You gave aid and comfort to the enemy. How many American lives will your little, "fact finding trip" to Iraq cost? You encouraged Saddam to think that we didn’t have the stomach for war.

You people protect one of the most evil men on the face of this earth and won’t lift a finger to save the life of an unborn baby. Freedom of choice you say?

Well I’m going to exercise some freedom of choice of my own. If I see any of your names on a marquee, I’m going to boycott the movie. I will completely stop going to movies if I have to. In most cases it certainly wouldn’t be much of a loss.

You scoff at our military who’s boots you’re not even worthy to shine. They go to battle and risk their lives so ingrates like you can live in luxury. The day of reckoning is coming when you will be faced with the undeniable truth that the war against Saddam Hussein is the war on terrorism.

America is in imminent danger. You’re either for her or against her. There is no middle ground.

I think we all know where you stand.

What do you think?

God Bless America! Charlie Daniels

<warm-fuzzy-feeling>I just saw something really awesome on Fox news: footage of a US soldier in a recently liberated Iraqi town [update: it was Safwan].  People were gathered around him, all with giant smiles on their faces, shaking his hand, giving him hi-fives.</warm-fuzzy-feeling>

Also saw this headline: "Surrenders coming as fast as we can handle them."

I worry about Baghdad though.  During the weeks before the war, there were rumors about the Iraqi army digging trenches around the city and filling them with oil.  Who knows what’s true at this point, but I’d hate to see our troops walk into a trap when they enter the capital.

Rachel Corrie was recently killed when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was demolishing / about to demolish a house in the Gaza strip.  It was not an accident.  She was opposed to the demolition, and apparently in her mind, that made it a good idea to stand in front of an advancing bulldozer.  The news media is reporting her death as a murder by Israel, and even a murder by America.

This is one of the things about the news media that makes me extremely angry.  No one is willing to state the truth of the matter here.  The truth is that Rachel Corrie was killed for acting like an IDIOT.  She did something IDIOTIC, and got herself killed.  That is the only way that an honest person can explain this situation.

Was it wrong for the driver of that bulldozer to intentionally drive over her?  I believe that it was.  Does that make Rachel Corrie’s actions any less idiotic?  Absolutely not.  She made an exceedingly bad decision when she chose to stand in front of that bulldozer.

I understand that the idea was to make the driver stop the demolition.  However Rachel chose an asinine strategy for achieving that goal.  She forfeited her life, and there will be little if any benefit from it.

Some people incorrectly believe that man is "basically good" and tends to "do the right thing" most of the time.  Perhaps Rachel Corrie subscribed to that false concept.  Unless she had a death wish, it’s safe to say that at least in this situation, she expected the driver to do the right thing.

But that is not the real world.  In the real world, you can’t expect anyone to do the right thing.  You can hope for that, and you can believe that people should strive for that, but to expect it is either naive or, more likely, idiotic.

Don’t get me wrong; a person has been killed here, and that is a sad thing.  I’m not trying to minimize that fact.  But my point here is that it’s lamentable that the media will not say that what Rachel did was foolish.

A similarly ridiculous scenario that is all too common is when a girl gets raped while she is drunk, because she was unable to say / enforce "no" to the guy.  Is it wrong for her assailant to rape her?  Of course.  But she made the idiotic decision to get drunk, and that is what prevented her from saying no.  (I’m not talking about a situation where the guy overpowers the girl, but the situation where he takes advantage of her because she’s drunk.)  She deliberately put herself out of control of her own body.  That is a supremely stupid decision that she chose for herself.  She has every right to be upset and hurt and mad about being raped, but she has absolutely no right to be surprised about it.  Because to be surprised about it, she must believe that all people are basically good and therefore no one ever rapes anyone -- indeed, she must believe that we live in a perfect world.  Only in a perfect world would it be anything other than IDIOTIC to put yourself out of control of your own body by getting drunk.

Kofi Annan: "Perhaps if we had persevered a little longer, Iraq could yet have been disarmed peacefully..."  Yes.  And perhaps Iraq could have attempted genocide again, or launched a massive attack (with all those missles they don’t have, that they’re currently firing on allied troops) on another nation before troops were in place to protect them.  Thank God we’ll never have to face those "perhaps" scenarios because some nations have the brains to see that something needs to be done, and the balls to do it.

In other news from the mentally-challenged department, "peace protesters" around the country are protesting for peace by disrupting the peace in US cities.  Nuke Berkeley is all I have to say.

Allied forces have captured Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only major seaport.

Iraq has fired a few missles at allied forces; some were destroyed by our Patriot defense missles, and some simply landed / crashed without causing any damage.  The missles may have been of the shorter-range Al Samoud 2 (formerly known as Ababil 100) type, or longer-range scud missles.  Scuds are illegal for Iraq to possess because they greatly exceed range limits imposed on them after the first Gulf war -- scuds can range about 300 or 400 miles depending on the variant.  And UN inspectors recently determined that Iraq’s Al Samoud 2 missles also exceed the 150km (~92 mile) limit; Iraq subsequently destroyed some of these missles.

"Three or four" oil fields in southern Iraq have been set ablaze.

There are more than 40 nations supporting the US in this "unilateral" war, more than those who supported us in the first Gulf war.  Because France has no practical strengths, it has been not only lying, but yelling its lies loudly, hoping that the world will buy into it if they just repeat the lie loud enough and long enough.  Sadly some people have bought into their propaganda.  The truth is that just because France, Russia, Germany, China, Iraq, and North Korea are against this war, that doesn’t change the fact that the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Czech Republic, Kuwait, Italy, Portugal, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan, New Zealand, and bunches of other countries are supporting the war.  The bottom line: don’t believe the hype.

Our innocents, that is.

It’s been mighty difficult to concentrate on this prelab for EE tomorrow... I’ve been watching the TV networks and checking some blogs since the first strike at ~9:30pm EST.  Thank goodness there’s Fox News so I don’t have to watch CNN.  On the net I’ll be checking Little Green Footballs, USS Clueless, and Debka most often.  Here’s a handy map of the middle east.

Some of the more interesting bits so far: US forces have taken over Iraqi radio and are broadcasting on it... in addition to these initial strikes in Iraq, our forces are attacking targets in Afghanistan... in a video aired on Iraqi TV, a spokesman invited any countries who wanted to help Iraq to do so... our cruise missles travel at 700mph and take ~45 minutes to reach Baghdad from the Persian Gulf, ~60 minutes from the Red Sea.

Wednesday on All Things Considered, there was an interview with Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he spoke on the history of casualties of war.  Boot is the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.  Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

"In 1945 when we were attacking Japan with B-29 bombers, we did not flinch when inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties on Japanese civilians, and that’s even before the atomic bombs were dropped.  Whereas now, it creates a national scandal if a smart-bomb goes astray and hits a wedding in Afghanistan... In part, this is simply due to the fact that targeting technology is so much more presise and that in 1945 you couldn’t be sure that a bomb would hit within a mile of its target.  Whereas today, you have a very high degree of certainty that precision-guided munitions will hit within a few meters of their target.  So we are much less accepting of civilian casualties, but I think in some sense, we may have set the standard too high.  We have come to think of war as being a surgical business where we only hit the bad guys and leave all the innocent people alone, but it’s never going to be that way.  It’s always going to be a messy, ugly business with innocent people on both sides getting killed, and I think we have to accept that as being the inherent nature of war.  That’s not going to change, no matter how much technology may change."

Also during the show, they mentioned the numbers of US soldiers killed in some of our most recent wars/conflicts:

Korean conflict: 33,000
Viet Nam: 58,000
1991 Gulf War: 147
Panama: 23
Somalia: 43
Balkans: 30
Afghanistan: 47

And finally, since I don’t think I posted about it before... or even if I did... you should watch the video Protesting the Protesters.  It’s about 10 minutes and it’s quite enlightening.  There are a few versions for your viewing pleasure: high-bandwidth Real video or Windows media, or low-bandwidth Real video or Windows media.  And after you watch it, be sure to read the Q & A about the video too, because it has a lot of good information.  Here’s a quote:

1. What inspired you to produce this video?

While watching TV coverage of the peace protests this past January, I noticed a large contingent of signs bearing extreme language that attacked President Bush--insulting him personally, calling him a terrorist, and comparing him to Hitler. At the same time, I didn’t notice any signs criticizing Saddam Hussein. There were no signs asking him to abide by the Gulf War cease-fire agreement or the various U.N. resolutions he’s been violating for over a decade.

Despite the extremist language used by many of the protesters, despite the fact that they seemed to blame President Bush for a crisis caused by twelve years of Iraqi noncompliance, the media portrayed the protesters as mainstream. This must mean the media perceives as mainstream the notion that Bush and Hitler are similar. The media also apparently perceives as mainstream the notion that, to resolve this conflict, nothing should be asked of Saddam Hussein.

...

Frankly, I was angered that the media glossed over the obvious extremism within the protests. I was angered that the media would not challenge--or at least examine--the mentality of the people comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. And I was angered that the supposedly mainstream marchers seemed unwilling to acknowledge the extremism of their comrades.

So, I decided that, at the next protest, I would show a truth of the protesters that was going unreported by the traditional media.

2. What is your background in producing videos of this nature?

None. This was the first time I’d ever attempted it.

It’s good to see a balanced view of the protesters, as opposed to the one-sided presentation
that the media has been showing.