• Suffering Sappho. . .
  
  
  Not a joke. The island of Lesbos is suing a Greek gay-right's group over the use of the term 'lesbian'. This fight has long since lost. Nobody thinks "resident of Lesbos" when she hears the word lesbian. Best case, they think Xena. Or of Xena.
  
  
  (tags: Bbc Greece article Lesbos Lesbian)
  
  

• . . .and here's his reward!
  
  
  Bush is now the most disapproved president in the history of Gallup polling
  
  
  (tags: GWBush)
  
  

• It's near unanimous... Bush is a failure as president.
  
  
  When you get 98% of historians to declare your term as a failure -- and historians still argue whether or not terms by Buchanan, Grant, Hoover or Nixon were failures or not -- you've achieved something grand. Give this man a prize.
  
  
  (tags: GWBush history politics)
  
  

• Sex-Changing Chemicals Make Male Starlings Sing Sweet Songs
  
  
  Finally, a scientific explanation for the existence of boy bands.
  
  
  (tags: science Wired environment)
  
  

We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence. Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, "Not ready for duty, sir.". . .

The world needs America's strength and leadership. And America's armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay.

We will give our military the means to keep the peace, and we will give it one thing more: a commander-in-chief who respects our men and women in uniform and a commander-in-chief who earns their respect.

A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming.

'Appalling Gap' Found in Homeland Defense Readiness
National Guard, Reserve Forces Lack Sufficient Personnel, Training to Respond to Crisis in U.S., Report Says

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 1, 2008; A04

The U.S. military is not prepared to meet catastrophic threats at home, and it is suffering from an "appalling gap" in forces able to respond to chemical, biological and nuclear strikes on U.S. soil, according to a congressional commission report released yesterday.

The situation is rooted in severe readiness problems in National Guard and reserve forces, which would otherwise be well-suited to respond to domestic crises but lack sufficient personnel and training, as well as $48 billion in equipment because of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves.

• In The Shadow of Bush
  
  
  (tags: politics GWBush Reagan conservatism GOP)
  
  

He was right about dancing with the devil. Bad Wondie.

Looking at so many comic covers, I bet this is how far to many illustrators learn too draw costumes on people.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (Jan. 20) - Betting on the state lottery for some quick cash? Get in line: State governments across the country are thinking the same thing.

Courted by Wall Street investment houses, Vermont is one of more than a dozen states where proposals have been floated to lease state lotteries to private investors.

...

Lawmakers in Illinois, Indiana and Texas have rejected lottery lease proposals in the past two years, but governors in all three states have indicated they'll raise the idea again.

In Indiana, the plan was to use revenue from a privatized lottery for a scholarship program to stem a brain drain from the state, according to Tom Osborne, an official handling infrastructure investments at UBS Investment Bank.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, had cancer research on his lottery-earnings shopping list. In Vermont, Douglas wants to split the proceeds between stemming increases in the property taxes that pay for schools and chipping in for school construction projects.

"Not only will this proposal ease the financial strain on homeowners, it will help clear the backlog of school construction, giving our students 21st century learning environments in energy efficient buildings," Douglas told lawmakers in his annual State of the State address earlier this month.

Rachel Volberg, president of Northampton, Mass.,-based Gemini Research, which studies gambling and advises governments about it, said that when states run lotteries, the operations are tempered by concern for what's best for citizens. That could change if private companies were the ones drumming up the games, she said.

"Private operators running lotteries are going to be much more likely to try to introduce games that are going to be extremely profitable, and that could be very problematic in terms of gambling problems," said Volberg.

In an April 1995 memo, Bush invited his staff to come to his office to look at a painting. … The picture is a Western scene of a cowboy riding up a craggy hill, with two other riders following behind him. Bush told visitors—who often noted his resemblance to the rider in front—that it was called A Charge To Keep and that it was based on his favorite Methodist hymn of that title, written in the eighteenth century by Charles Wesley. As Bush noted in the memo, which he quoted in his autobiography of the same title: "I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves." Bush identified with the lead rider, whom he took to be a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity.

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."

• "It Costs Just $2,500. It's Cute as a Bug. And It Could Mean Global Disaster." By Mira Kamdar
  
  
  India has invented the world's cheapest car. Everybody will want one now. While you chew on that, realize that thanks to that invention, we will all have to chew our air. As an animated friend of Al Gore might say, "we're boned!"
  
  
  (tags: environment washingtonpost oped India)
  
  

Wow - crazy weather over southern Wisconsin for January 6th & 7th!

If you think the weather can’t make up its mind, you’re correct. We seem to have a little bit of everything going on. Let’s try to summarize the recent crazy weather, and make some sense out of it. Get ready, get set, go.....

1. The Milwaukee/Sullivan NWS office issued 3 different Severe Thunderstorm Warnings for 4 counties during the morning hours of January 7th due to the likelihood of penny-size hail stones. This is crazy - in the past 14 years, this office never had a reason to issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning in the month of January. Winter storm warnings and blizzard warnings - yes, but not Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. Several severe weather spotters reported hailstones up to 1/2 inch in diameter, and an amateur radio operator measured hailstones up to penny size about 4 miles west-southwest of the Capitol Square in Madison at 10:30 A.M. The last time we experienced severe weather in a winter month was February, 1999, when storms in southern Wisconsin produced hail up to golf-ball size and wind gusts to 70 mph. Crazy.

2. Many streams and rivers in southern Wisconsin are running at near-bankfull or bankfull stage, and some have exceeded flood stage. Some rivers are forecast to exceed flood stage. Normally, river flooding is a spring-time event due to snow melt and heavy rains, or perhaps a summer event due to very heavy thunderstorm rains. But in January? Crazy. We’ve experienced a noteworthy warm up the past couple days along with some rain, which caused the 15 to 33 inches of snow that fell in December, 2007 to melt. The Fox River at New Munster in western Kenosha County is forecast to crest at 13.2 feet around the noon hour on Thursday, January 10th. Crazy.

3. We have areas of dense fog this morning which continues a period of several days of dense fog. The worst of the dense fog occurred on January 6th. There was a group of multiple-vehicle accidents (about 100 vehicles) on Interstate 90/39 about 2:25 P. M. just south of the interchange with State Highway 12/18, in which there were two fatalities and around 50 injuries that required medical treatment Dense fog was a factor and had reduced visibilities to 25 to 100 yards in that area. Crazy.

4. Temperatures over southeastern Wisconsin rose to the upper 50s to lower 60s in the early afternoon hours of January 7th, with dewpoints in the mid to upper 50s, while southwest winds gusted to 25 to 30 mph. This is spring-time weather - more typical of April. Milwaukee’s temperature reached 63 degrees, smashing the old record of 47 for January 7th set back in 2003. Madison reached 50, which broke their old January 7th record set back in 2003. Milwaukee tied their old record high for January 6th of 52 set back in 1933. Crazy.

A quick fun post of two songs with similar aims. . .

• How Super-Precise Atomic Clocks Will Change the World in a Decade
  
  
  It's amazing what you can do with clocks these days!
  
  
  (tags: article Wired relativity physics science space-time)
  
  

Yes, this is too late for Christmas but it's probably worth knowing anyway. More megapixels do not automatically make for a better picture. More megapixels actually could lead to worse pictures! According to a number of testers, the best quality came from around 6 megapixels. The explanation is complicated, but as summarized by Tim Bray: "As you make pixels smaller and closer together, you lose sensitivity and increase visual static." The pictures start looking like a pointillism experiment gone wrong. Remember this, especially now with camera manufacturers using that one number as the "More Power Arrr Arrr Arrr!" number.