Your Elected Officials Speak with Authority

The L.A. Times reports that the County is thinking of introducing incentives to County employees who use hybrid or other greener vehicles. That's great, as long as they don't put Second District Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke in charge of the program:

So, what would it take to make the supervisors themselves trade in the Cadillacs, Chryslers and Buicks they now use to commute to work?
"Not very much," said Burke, who drives a six-cylinder Chrysler 300. "I really like the way the Prius looks, and if I could make sure that I have access to electricity or to the fuel source, I'd be fine."
(In fact, the Prius, made by Toyota, automatically recharges its battery and runs on regular gasoline.)

Belated Fergie Pee Followup

Fergie finally admits that she did, in fact, pee her pants onstage, as mentioned way back in December 2005.

I Love Zoos

Check out the darling red panda cubs born in Australia. I don't get people who object to zoos on principle. Their conservation and breeding programs are crucial and they engage the public's interest in animals. Without pictures like those above, how are we going to get people to care above saving the red panda's habitat or catching poachers? I can understand objections to keeping large and/or intelligent animals like elephants in small areas, but people still need to be able to see and experience these animals up close. Say what you will about training Shamu to perform in a tank at Sea World, but what do you think the average American thought of orcas ("killer whale" isn't a term of endearment) before so many of us had seen them as friendly theme park mascots? I seriously doubt they'd greenlight a movie like this today.

U.N. Human Rights Council Votes Itself into Irrelevance

If you're looking for someone to monitor human rights abuses, don't look for the United Nations.

More: here and here.

First Vietnamese, Persian Mayors

Not only is new Rosemead mayor John Tran probably the first Vietnamese-American mayor in California, and the United States as a whole, but as he points out, since they don't vote for mayors in Vietnam, he's quite possibly the first elected Vietnamese mayor in the world. I suppose it's worth noting that the position he was directly elected to was a city council seat, and that the mayor's job rotates through the council members. But it's close enough.

In other ethnic mayor firsts news, the L.A. Times corrects itself by noting that Beverly Hills mayor Jimmy Delshad is the first ethnically Persian, not the first Iranian-born, mayor of a U.S. city. Coyly, however, they don't reveal who the previous Iranian-born mayors are. This reminds me of how last year the Times reported that Loma Linda was one of a "handful" of cities in the country whose mail is delivered on Sundays instead of Saturdays, but didn't let us in on where any of the others are.

UPDATE: Aha! The L.A. Daily News beats the Times by identifying Iraj Broomand as a previous Iranian-born mayor. Broomand served as mayor of Westlake Village a few years ago (details online are sketchy about when he was actually mayor; he was elected to the City Council in 1997 and was defeated in 2001). I don't know what his ethnic background is; maybe he's a Kurd or Azeri or something, if the Times is right and Delshad is the first Persian. I'm not familiar with how the classification of Iranian ethnic groups goes; Delshad is Jewish and also apparently considered Persian. If I have any Iranian readers who could sort all this out, that'd be appreciated.

UPDATE 2: I spoke with a half-Persian friend who said that Persian Jews tend to consider themselves both as subsets of Persians and subsets of Jews. Works for me.

Freaky Hexagon on Saturn

Clouds near the north pole of Saturn form a big hexagon 25,000 kilometers across.

Misguided pedantry

James Taranto today says,

We take the pedantic view that the 1990s consist of the decade from 1991 through 2000.

Say what? Look, I know he's looking for some parallelism with the fact that the 21st century A.D. started in 2001, not 2000, but there's no direct translation to "the 1990s" starting a year late. The 1990s were the ten years beginning with the digits 1, 9, and 9. That where the term comes from. It's absurd to think of the year 1990 being excluded from the 1990s.

Think of it this way: "The twentieth century A.D." and "the 1900s" are not synonymous. The former comprised the years 1901 - 2000. The latter comprised the years 1900 - 1999.

UPDATE: If you wanted to call the years from 1991 - 2000 "the tenth decade of the twentieth century," it would sound awkward but be correct. But that's not the same as "the 1990s."

Police Blotter

Spring Valley, NY: Police: School bus converted into oven to turn out matzo for Passover

Yeah, that's just goofy.

Product Placement on BoingBoing

Search for the phrase "Secret Headquarters" on BoingBoing, and you'll discover that Cory Doctorow has been awfully enthusiastic about the comic store of that name in Silverlake lately. In fact he's mentioned it in no fewer than 15 entries since August of last year. How does he describe it? Let's see, in chronological order:

8/18/06: my local comic shop, the incomporable [sic] (and wittily named) Secret Headquarters

9/15/06: Cory's new favorite store, Secret Headquarters

10/24/06: My favorite LA comic shop, Secret Headquarters

10/25/06: badass comics store Secret Headquarters, which is definitely worth a visit if you live in LA

10/29/06: My new formula for graphic novel goodness: walk into LA's Secret Headquarters, buy any three books on the recommended new release table, go to funnybook heaven

1/3/07: I don't read a lot of Japanese comics, but this came highly recommended by Secret Headquarters, my local neighborhood funnybook emporium, whose proprietor, Dave, has yet to give me a bum steer. It's a real treat living near a great
comics shop.

1/15/07: you can get signed, personally inscribed copies of [Cory's] book shipped right to your door... get in touch with Secret Headquarters in LA

1/22/07: Secret Headquarters, the best comic shop in LA

2/1/07: Secret Headquarters, the best comic shop in town

2/11/07: My Los Angeles book-signing is coming up this Thursday, Feb 15 at LA's Secret Headquarters comic shop

2/15/07: Secret Headquarters, the best comic-store in town

2/26/07: (another great find from the recommended table at LA's Secret Headquarters comic shop)

2/27/07: This was another find from the recommended table at Secret Headquarters, my favorite comic shop, and they just keep steering me right. If you're in LA, they're the best place to go get your brain inverted.

3/12/07: Secret Headquarters (best comic shop in town!)

3/23/07: Secret Headquarters, LA's best comic shop

Wow! This place must really be something for Cory to be promoting it so much. Either that, or Cory is just heaping praise upon praise again on something that happened to hit one of his many easily-hit sweet spots.

I decided to check it out for myself on Sunday, and you know what? This place is tiny. It's one small room with a few new issues, a few bookcases of collected editions, and one table of recommended stuff. It's pretty much the minimum comic book store, with a mix of mainstream and independent comics. And the guy behind the desk was nice enough to let me see some of the full broadsheet-sized prints of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland that they had.

I wish them well. For its size, it's pretty decent, and the proprietor was helpful. And comic stores are such marginal businesses that I don't begrudge anybody the publicity they need. But seriously, come on, Cory. In no possible way is this the best comic store in L.A.

I challenge you, Cory: Can you tell me with a straight face that this store is better than Meltdown, which probably has eight times the stock, a knowledgeable staff, three locations, and rotating exhibition space? I haven't been a serious comic collector for several years, but I could still easily name a bunch of local stores with several times the stock: Golden Apple, Comics Factory, Amazing Comics, Geoffrey's Comics (with a special event coming to raise funds to Save Darfur), Hi De Ho Comics, etc., just to name a few.

It looks like Cory is floored by the books that Secret Headquarters' proprietor recommended. Which is great, but keep in mind a couple of things: 1) Any comic store worker worth his or her salt will recommend things to you, and 2) Cory is, to put it mildly, not exactly difficult to amaze. Secret Headquarters is a nice little store, a good fit for its neighborhood, and I'm sure they could use the boost. But by pumping them up so much, Cory is 1) shortchanging the other great stores around L.A., and 2) setting prospective customers' expectations way too high. Go ahead and recommend the store, promote the store, and vouch for the proprietor's taste, but seriously, don't treat us like idiots who've never seen the inside of a comic store before.

LIFE dies a third time

Ten days ago Slate pegged LIFE magazine as a "zombie brand" that keeps being reused after being canceled or discontinued. Now we learn that the venerable magazine title's third incarnation, as a lowly newspaper insert, has joined its predecessors in the cancellation heap.

What's up with Blogger?

Up until last week, I could use either Internet Explorer or Firefox to log in to Blogger. Now only Firefox works. Who's minding the ship at Blogger HQ? Neither IE 6 nor 7 works, on neither of my computers, even after following Blogger's instructions. I didn't change anything on my end, it was all on Blogger's side. Don't they have people who, you know, test these things before they make changes?

More barbarity in Iraq

From Reuters:

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said adults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat were allowed through a Baghdad checkpoint on Sunday.

The adults then parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside, according to the general and another defense official.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the description is accurate, then that's not really a suicide attack, is it?

Anyway, this highlights how high the tension and uncertainty of trying to police a checkpoint. Profiling is really an uneasy balance; sure, young men travelling alone or in groups are the most likely terrorists, but terrorists can take advantage of that knowledge and send women or children on missions to try to catch guards unawares.

It works both ways flying on airplanes at home, too. Considering the profiles of the 9/11 attackers, the TSA would be nuts not to view groups of young Arab men with suspicion (while still treating them with courtesy and respect and letting them on their way assuming everything checks out OK). But at the same time, the white grandmother who gets pulled aside for a random check shouldn't act all indignant, either. If the TSA were to make a blanket policy of "we don't check white grandmothers" or "we won't check inside diaper bags," well, who do you think al Qaeda's next recruits would look like, and where would they hide their weapons? Use judgement based on past experience, but don't have blind faith in your preconceived notions.

Bobo's Cocktails

Check out this creepy clown sign I saw for a bar in Norwalk:

Guess who else has been lying to you.

That's right, it's Cardinal Roger Mahony. Not really surprising at this point, but disappointing nonetheless. You know, it would have been great if when the molesting priests scandal had broken, the Church leadership had made an effort to be totally honest with us and tried to re-establish our trust that way. But man, they really didn't do that at all. It's sad.

Yet another reason not to trust Bush

In case you were wondering how politics got mixed up with science on climate change, check out this bald-faced admission:

Phillip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy" on climate change.

In other words, those lying sons of bitches manipulated the data to support Republican denial of global warming. Remember that the next time a Republican claims that global warming is just some weird Al Gore guilt trip.

Kitty Kelley vs. the Bush Clan

This morning I felt compelled to send a letter to the L.A. Times in response to this op-ed piece by Kitty Kelley.

I'm no fan of George W. Bush, but revelations that his cousin makes his living interviewing celebrities hardly constitute legitimate criticism of the President's policies. The members of Bush's family are private citizens who can live their lives as they see fit, and he has no power to conscript them into the military. Considering their forebears, I'm happy to see so few young Bushes interested in public service.

Salt Lake City Trip

Last weekend Jen had a pharmacy conference in Salt Lake City, so I tagged along and did some touring in the area. Here's my Yahoo photo folder of the trip, and what follows are a few highlights.

The mountains surrounding the Salt Lake Valley were gorgeous.
The Mormon Temple was pretty impressive.
Salt Lake City had an interesting pedestrian innovation, orange flags, at many crosswalks downtown.
I made a brief foray into Evanston, Wyoming, just for the sake of being able to say I've been to Wyoming.
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty was sublime.
We visited several venues for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
Park City actually has a ski lift in the middle of Main Street.
Lend me your wisdom, Mr. Bear.

Crotchwatch '07

This seems like a fairly innocuous study of news article design and eye movement until you get toward the bottom and discover that one of their findings is that men stare at George Brett's "private anatomy" more than women do.

Whose side d'you claim, Keillor or Savage?

Dan Savage rips Garrison Keillor a new one when thrice-married adulterer Keillor waxes poetic about how great old-fashioned marriage is and how icky gay people are.

New Leopard Species Found

It's on Borneo, and it's called the clouded leopard.

The Yoo-De Man Thesis

George W. Bush, the law, and deconstructionism.

Crazy Hamster

Oh my... This hamster trying to eat a bag of cookies is cute beyond words. From Cute Overload.

R.I.P., Jean Baudrillard

Postmodern French philosopher Jean Beaudrillard died yesterday. I'm far from an expert, but I read some of his earlier stuff in grad school, and it made sense, discussing the nature of reality and fakeness and such, kind of like the academic cross between Andy Warhol and Philip K. Dick. The description in the news article of his later works, like The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, though, makes them sound pretty dubious. I can't judge, though, not having read them or at least a more detailed summary.

Cheney Resignation Watch?

I'm a sucker for this sort of prognostication, even when it's not for somebody I despise like Dick Cheney. The basic rationale for Cheney to resign would be that the Libby conviction and associated scandal taint the administration, and Cheney's continued problems with his circulatory system offer an easy excuse. If Cheney's a liability, then forcing him into early retirement, the reasoning goes, would help rid the administration and the Republican party of excess baggage. The problem is that whether or not it would be in Cheney's health interest to resign, everybody would know that it's all about trying to save face for the White House.

But I'd be pretty surprised if it happened; Bush and Cheney are pretty darned stubborn. And it's not like Agnew's resignation (yes, I know it was an unrelated scandal) saved the Nixon administration. It would be a calculated risk on the Republicans' part, but it's hard not to see the Democrats relishing a "Vice President resigned in scandal" tag to hang on the Republicans in the election.

I'd suppose it's possible, but unless Cheney himself were indicted in a criminal investigation, I don't really see it happening. Maybe a 20% chance.

For the sake of argument, though, let's say he did resign. The big juicy question is who gets appointed Veep. I say it's Condoleezza Rice. As Mark Daniels says in the article I linked to above, putting somebody already running for President into the Veep's chair would rub a lot of people the wrong way, both within the GOP and outside of it. Appointing some old retired guy who basically wouldn't be doing anything besides taking up space might be the safe option, but it would hardly do anything to help the President, would belie any claims about Cheney's resignation being about health reasons, and would essentially mean that Bush would be flying solo. If Dick Cheney's pulling the strings at the White House, it'd be tough on the President to kick out Dick and say, "Congratulations, Dubya, you're on your own now!" With Rice he gets a trusted advisor who isn't entirely disliked by the American public and isn't likely to run for President, and as a bonus the Republicans get to pull a little bit of the rug out from the Democrats by appointing the first woman and the first black person to the Vice Presidency.

At this point, though, I don't think Cheney will resign.

AND ALSO: Lieberman? Barf.

UPDATE: Ari Emanuel over at the Huffington Post (I must admit that I giggle inside when Taranto says "Puffington Host") predicted a couple weeks ago that Cheney will be out and Rice will be in, along with a few other things. I think that his first two predictions are likely to be true (McCain* will not be the Republican nominee, Hillary will not be the Democratic nominee), but I'm still not sold on Cheney resigning. Remember how long it took for Rumsfeld to go?

*Who was it who first called McCain a MINO (Maverick in Name Only)? Ouch.

Somebody brings up the idea of Jeb as a Veep appointee. I suppose it's possible, but there's only so much nepotism people can stand (c.f. Hillary).

If Rice were to become V.P. (through whatever means), I'd still only give her maybe a 35% chance of even running for the nomination. I just don't think she's the type who'd want to run for office like that.

The third commenter on Emanuel's blog predicts that Al Gore will be drafted to run, will win the nomination, and will win the election. I doubt it; it would only happen if the Democratic frontrunners are all in serious trouble; he wouldn't run against Hillary and his newfound rockstar status doesn't beat Obama's. All it would do is drag up hoary old memories of the 2000 election. I do think he'd be a prime choice for a cabinet post, like Energy or Interior.

Skandie Results

I should have noted earlier that the results for the 2006 Skander Halim Memorial Movie Survey were posted a couple of weeks ago. I've participated in this most years, but didn't this time because I hadn't seen enough movies. Winners (click here to see the top 20 in each category):

Best Picture: The Departed
Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Best Actor: Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed
Best Supporting Actress: Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
Best Screenplay: Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan, The Prestige
Best Scene: Automobile ambush, Children of Men

Mike D'Angelo has done a cool thing this year in linking to clips of the top 20 finishers for Best Scene on his blog. Good job, Mike.

Cory Doctorow, Twit (again)

Today on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow includes a link to a guy's website where he advocates sleeping naked. Fine, the "let me explain why my lifestyle is superior to yours" movement is annoying, but OK, whatever. What I'm posting about, though, is this line Cory wrote:

I hadn't realized that there were people who chose to sleep otherwise these days, but I guess the sinister forces of Big Pyjamas aren't to be underestimated.

Obviously the remark about Big Pyjamas is a joke, but the part before the comma is quintessential Cory. Note how he says "these days." Cory's way of living his life is the progressive way of the future, and those who don't do as he does are behind the times. Obviously the naked-sleeping issue is extremely minor, but this just struck me as typical of how he elevates his own preferences into obvious choices we would all be dupes not to agree with. I don't think he recognizes that the different preferences of other people are valid.

Wasted?

Another one of these conservative memes that's having no traction with me is this idea that calling the American lives lost in Iraq "wasted" (as both Obama and McCain have in recent weeks) is somehow offensive. James Taranto attempts to explain it today, defending McCain's apology, in which he clarified that he should have said "sacrificed":

What's odd about this is that waste and sacrifice are opposites. To sacrifice is to give up something of value to oneself for the sake of something more valuable that transcends the self. To waste is to give up something of value for the sake of something of lesser or no value. A sacrifice is an unselfish act; a waste is an act of misdirected selfishness.

OK, fine. I agree with those definitions. He then proceeds:

If a young man goes out, gets drunk, gets behind the wheel of his car, crashes and dies, it is fair to say he has wasted his life. That's quite different from a young man who loses his life in the course of doing dangerous work in the service of his country.

I can agree with that, too. But what's that got to do with what McCain or Obama said? Both politicians referred not to the soldiers or marines wasting their own lives, but to the country or its leadership wasting the lives of its military. If you send a bunch of soldiers out to another country and they get killed in a failing mission because you failed to come up with a reasonable plan to stabilize that country, then yes, you've wasted their lives. The soldiers weren't the ones who screwed up the mission, it was the leadership. Saying that we've wasted lives in Iraq is a critique of the leadership, not the soldiers.

Not content to find offense where there is no legitimate offense, Taranto then tries some extremely twisted logic to claim that McCain's apology shows his motives were pure, while Obama is somehow still a jerk:

Obama's initial statement was crystal clear; his "explanation" was a cloud of smoke. Obviously he meant what he said in the first place... But here is the difference: McCain's statement tells us something worrying about his personal character; Obama's tells us something terrifying about his ideological character.

Huh? Yeah, Obama meant it... he really does believe Bush has done a lousy job running the war. So does the majority of the country.

A broader point here is that as much as conservatives have railed against "political correctness" over the past decade-plus, over time they've certainly learned to play the game themselves. Say the word "wasted" anywhere in conjunction with soldiers' lives, and your ideology is "terrifying." Note that many people enter the military because they lack other job opportunities, and you're an unpatriotic jerk (yes, John Kerry's "botched joke" was crass, but no, not everyone joining the military is doing so for patriotic reasons untainted by economic considerations), etc. etc.

Conservatives are enforcing their own system of doublespeak and untouchable opinions. Remember the attempt to introduce "homicide bombers" into the lexicon? I once heard a talk radio host claim that illegal immigrants weren't "immigrants" after all because "immigrant" only applied to people who came here legally. He preferred just the term "illegal" as a noun, which, besides being questionable grammatically, is a poor term because it doesn't specify what they've done that's illegal. On the other side of the conventional political divide, it's the same reason why "pro-choice" is an obfuscating term to describe the advocacy of legalized abortion. Those vague terms are used, though, because they rephrase the debate in ways that are favorable to those who use them. What law-abiding citizen would be in favor of an "illegal?" Who is against "choice" in the abstract?

While I'm at it, Andrew Sullivan brings our attention to some of the bizarre opinions held by conservative bloggers, who were surveyed by Right Wing News:

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?
Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?
Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%

These people are nuts. At least four of them had the decency to abstain on the global warming question.

This'll warm the cockles of your heart

A man in Aceh who lost his wife and three daughters in the tsunami has become the father of female triplets.

Another great headline

Snails Save Energy by Re-Using Mucus Trails

Actually, when I was a kid and would observe snails in the garden, I noticed that they re-used mucus trails. But I didn't realize they were conserving energy in the process.

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Warning: Lots of lists

A website called They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? has consolidated "top 10 movies of all time" lists from more than 1,300 critics or filmmakers into a giant master list of 1,000 top movies. It's quite a list, though, as a consolidated list, by its very nature there aren't many surprises. Yes, the inevitable Citizen Kane is #1.

In sort of an act of bloggerly confession, film blogger Andrew Horbal (whose site has some really keen observations) took a look at this list and compiled a list of the top 50 films on the list he hadn't seen. His list goes deeper into the Top 1000 than my own (which you can see below), but it can at least give me a little satisfaction to see that I've seen a few films that a much more dedicated cineaste like Horbal has seen. Here's what's on Horbal's unseen list that I have seen, with the first number indicating its rank of Horbal's list of 50, the second its rank on the TSPDT list of a thousand, and asterisks indicating films I've seen in a theater:

• 2/46: Intolerance (1916)
• 3/58: The Conformist (1970)*
• 12/94: The Decalogue (1989)*
• 13/95: Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
• 19/122: Umberto D. (1952)*
• 20/126: Broken Blossoms (1919)
• 25/149: L'Eclisse (1962)*
• 28/156: Nights of Cabiria (1957)*

Here are the entries in the top 100 that I haven't seen, A.K.A. The Twenty-Three Best Movies I Haven't Seen:

• 1/23 La Dolce Vita (1960)
• 2/24 Children of Paradise (1945)
• 3/26 Grand Illusion (1937)
• 4/41 Ordet (1955)
• 5/42 Pather Panchali (1955)
• 6/49 Contempt (1963)
• 7/50 Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966)
• 8/51 The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• 9/60 The Mirror (1976)
• 10/62 Fanny and Alexander (1982)
• 11/64 Greed (1924)
• 12/68 Earrings of Madame de... (1953)
• 13/69 Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
• 14/70 Pickpocket (1959)
• 15/72 L'Age d'Or (1930)
• 16/73 Ikiru (1952)
• 17/75 Voyage in Italy (1953)
• 18/81 Pierrot le fou (1965)
• 19/85 The Leopard (1963)
• 20/89 Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
• 21/91 Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
• 22/92 My Darling Clementine (1946)
• 23/97 Amarcord (1973)

The percentage of films on the list that I've seen falls off like so:

• 86% of #s 1-50,
• 68% of #s 51-100,
• 46% of #s 101-150,
• 42% of #s 151-200,
• 41% of #s 201-300,
• 30% of #s 301-400,
• 29% of #s 401-500,
• 25% of #s 501-600,
• 31% of #s 601-700,
• 29% of #s 701-800,
• 21% of #s 801-900, and
• 27% of #s 901-1000.

That's a total of 354 of the 1,000 movies on the list that I've seen. Perusing the list brought back a ton of memories of really great films. Wow, what a wave of images. I thought about posting my own top 10, but man, thinking about so many great movies, it'd be really tough to choose.

You wanna see a really ignominious list? Here are the movies that made the list of 1,000 that I haven't seen even though I own them on DVD!

• 111. Birth of a Nation (1915)
• 285. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• 566. Dog Star Man (1964)
• 741. Grease (1978)
• 849. Patton (1970)
• 877. Lessons in Darkness (1992)

So there you go.