perfidy

The Ministry of late has not talked much of politics. This could be because the Ministry feels that politics is beneath us. Because we operate on a higher plane, and do not wish to sully our hands with the stinking, encrusted cesspool that is politics. Or, it could be because politics gets in the way of dick jokes.

Our recent reticence to discuss politics is not a hard and fast rule. Its more a guideline. And today, a political item caught my eye. It is perhaps passe to pile on Howard Dean; he of the scream, the pulsating cranial veins, and overheated rhetoric. Shooting ducks in a barrel, some might say. Nevertheless, today's performance before a group of business types in Florida is remarkable even for our Rove-controlled Deanomatic android.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

With a lead like that, one could expect to hear soothing, healing words follow. Something about how infighting and rhetoric distract us from sober and responsible discussion of the issues of the day. Maybe a nod toward respecting differences, knowing that human knowledge is forever imperfect, and however much we differ in our policy proscriptions, we all reconize that everyone has the best interests of the nation and its citizens at heart.

But wait, this is Dean:

"the most divisive president probably in our history."

Divisiveness is bad, you fucking divisivist!

"He's always talking about those people. It's always somebody else's fault. It's the gays' fault. It's the immigrants' fault. It's the liberals' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's Hollywood people,"

Ending divisiveness by accusing others of bigotry, zenophobia, partisanship, blinkered ideoloical fixation, hatred of the Lindsey Lohan, and, well, divisiveness, is probably not the most well thought out scheme. Maybe even risky. What it looks like is what the psychologists call projection.

The Republican agenda "is flag-burning and same-sex marriage and God knows what else,"

Is Deano suggesting that the Republicans are for flag-burning and same sex marriage? I mean, big tent and all, but I don't think that's what there about. Oh wait, they're against all that. Which, if Dean is against the evil Republicans who can do no right, does that mean that he supports flag-burning? Or is he suggesting that "flag-burning and same-sex marriage and God knows what else" is the sum of the Republican agenda? That God knows what else leaves a lot of room for fiscal, national security, and lots else. Regardless, casting your opponents' agenda in such terms is hardly conducive of unity.

Dean also attacked the president on national defense, health care, education and Social Security.

"He is bankrupting the middle-class," Dean said.

"Attacked." A key ingredient in any effort to end divisiveness. And a little class warfare fearmongering to liven up the mix.

"The president made a big deal about bringing the Iraqi prime minister to address Congress," said Dean, the former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate. "The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite."

Calling the only elected Arab leader in the whole fricking world an anti-semite is perhaps unwise. Especially when his next door neighbor is the real deal. Dean opposes the President. The President hates Ahmedijubabbul, who is an anti-semite and has called for the extinction of Israel. If Dean supports the right of Israel to defend itself, supporting the President might be a useful first step.

The AP article neglected to mention one thing, though. Dean also compared a Republican to Stalin. The irony here is delicious, a leftist calling... oh, never mind:

"Thank God for Bill Nelson, because we'd have another crook in the United States Senate if it weren't for him. He is going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris," Dean said during his 20-minute address. "She doesn't understand that it's…improper to be chairman of a campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia and she is not Stalin."

There isn't a Godwin's Law for comparisons to Stalin, but there should be. Dean loses the argument on style points alone, no matter Harris' actual character.

It really, truly amazes me. I am astounded that a public figure, the head of one of America's two major political parties, could have the unmitigated gall to call for an end to divisiveness, and then say all of... that. What kind of cognitive disconnect exists in his brain that allows the simultaneous presence of such mutually exclusive ideas? It becomes ever more plausible, at least to this observer, that Dean really is a covert Rovian operative, and possibly a more animated version of the original Gore-class andoid.

[wik] GeekLethal reminds us in the comments of a salient bit of movie-quotery; or rather, indulges in some creative movie-quote-paraphrasery:

"The Gore series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. The Deans look human - sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.”

If you think that Murdoc skims FBI wound ballistics data for light bedtime reading, or takes his Jane's materials on vacation, you are correct.

But he is also abreast of current events, and particularly skilled at being where the present meets the past. Read his coverage and linkage regarding the recent discovery, by Polish divers, of the Nazi aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Originally designed in the '30s, construction began and halted (and began and halted and...) but never joined the fleet. Strictly speaking, then, I guess it could not rightly be called an "aircraft carrier" since it doesn't seem it ever carried any. Due to the vagaries of war and the inescapable fact that the Nazis were rather losing it, the Graf Zeppelin never put to sea and never saw action. Well, until the Commies sank it.

Born to be the lynchpin of a mighty Teutonic warfleet, the Graf Zeppelin wound up consigned to the briny deep by the very Untermenschen the Nazis made all the fuss about in the first place. In the immortal words of Nelson (from the Simpsons, not Trafalgar), "HA-ha!"

Anyway, read MO. As if you didn't already.

Today's forgotten punchline:

"What the fuck do you mean, 'the wrong hole'?!"

Stars and Stripes online edition has apprently been hacked.

That was thoughtful.

If you don't know who Frank Frazetta is, you're wrong. You most certainly do know his work; it's been in early comics, movie posters, and about a bazillion book covers. He is perhaps most widely recognized for his graphic rendering of Robert Howard's hero from the time "...between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas":

The Barbarian

Frank Frazetta's Conan is Conan. Every artist in the Marvel stable in the last 30-odd years who has worked on Conan titles takes his cue from Frazetta. And that's OK.

But the man's talent is much greater than as an illustrator; he started on a path to fine art as a very young boy, a path he could not finish through no fault of his own. He can work magic with oils, watercolors, pencil, or naked ink. He's a photographer and a sculptor. After a stroke damaged his right side, he learned how to make art with his left. Thrown to his own devices to make a living he wound up in comics, and we are all better people because of it.

If anyone gets the IFC on their cable, keep an eye out for "Frazetta: Painting with Fire", a documentary about his life, his achievements, and his struggles. The interviews with other artists and filmmakers are no less interviews with fans: Brom, John Buscema, Kevin Eastman, Ralph Bakshi, Dino DeLaurentis; the list is long and distinguished. The net effect is not at all a cloying love fest, but simple and heartfelt affection for the man. And the man himself defies stereotype; no scrawny artsy-fartsy, bespectacled fixture of the comic convention, he. Huh-uh. His powerful frame and personal strength he no doubt translated to canvas in his male figures. The guy had a stroke and is just this side of 80, but still could probably thump me. If you don't have IFC, rent "Painting with Fire".

If you can't rent it, buy it via the Frazetta Museum. Matter of fact, I think I'd like to go there in person. Anyone else up for a road trip to PA? My personal fave below the fold:

Snow Giants

Recently, I have been reading the delightful and sanguinary webcomic, "Schlock Mercenary." Amidst the many treasures to be found there, there is this, quotes from the self-help manual The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates:

1. Pillage, then burn.
6: If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
8. Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock.
9. Never turn your back on an enemy.
12. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.
13. Do unto others.
16. Your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth.
27. Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
30. A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.
31. Only cheaters prosper.
34. If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.
35. That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.
36. When the going gets tough, the tough call for close air support.
37. There is no "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload."
n. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.
n+1. Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it can't be hard on your clients.

If you are unfamiliar with the Schlock Mercenary universe, you can start here. And on your way out, ponder these last three nuggets of existential Schlock wisdom:

On a scale from 'that's not free checking' to 'heat death of the universe', I'd say we're looking at 'the enemy has a superweapon we can't track.'

Somebody sounds stressed, and I think it's a me!

'Minimal collateral damage' and 'Entire star system' do not belong in the same sentence

Our next state, Indiana, has something of an inferiority complex. Even the official state motto, "Crossroads of America," admits that Indiana's major purpose is to serve as a flat yet uninteresting obstacle to travel somewhere else. Let us pile on:

• Corn Corn Corn Corn Indianapolis 500 Corn Corn Corn
• Can you tell us just what the fuck is a Hoosier, anyway?
• 2 Billion Years Tidal Wave Free
• Bring Something to Do
• Dan Quayle's Favorite Country!
• OK, we admit it, we miss Bobby Knight
• Where EVERY year is 1957
• Come for the flat and uninteresting scenery, stay for the flat and uninteresting scenery
• Not just corn, we have meth labs, too
• Proud Home of David Letterman and John Hoosier Mellonhead
• Come See Our Corn!
• The New Jersey of the Midwest
• Proud home of Raper RVs (Where fun begins!)
• If we weren't surrounded by the rest of the US, someone would probably kick our ass
• That's Hoosier girls, not Hooter girls
• Do you think our obsession with basketball is unhealthy?
• We're not as flat as Kansas
• Gateway to the lower Ohio Valley
• Does this basketball make me look fat?

Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote a piece discussing the work of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro. From his lab outside Kyoto, the professor was working on lifelike replicants designed, among other things, to help his research into human behavior. In that piece I included this photo of the good professor and his latest creation; aware that he's not the most, um, charismatic of photographic subjects, I pointed out that "the dude with glasses is NOT the robot":

Ah, but that was then. Our man in Kyoto has cashed in some more nice grants, and recently demonstrated his latest project: himself! In other words, the dude with the glasses now could very well be the robot:

He has named his creation "Geminoid", a label both properly scientific-sounding and chillingly non-human, which will make it just that much easier for robot conquerors to use them to infiltrate society. I would've gone with homo sapiens simulacra, but Geminoid works too I guess.

Professor Ishiguro continues to explore the fundamentals of human interaction with his synthetic double:

But why bother to build robots that look like humans? Ishiguro views machines as good vehicles to learn more about human nature. He combines engineering with cognitive science with the aim of making very humanlike robots, which can be used as test beds for theories about human perception, communication and cognition. He calls his approach "android science."

"A robot is a kind of simulator for expressing human functions, especially the cerebellum or the muscles," says Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR lab that developed Geminoid. "It's a kind of ultimate human interface."

Ok, super. It's a test bed for exploring the interaction of the blah with the semiotics of which and the effect of huh and the wazzit. But Geminoid research also has more immediate, real-world applications more familiar to the rest of us: he uses it to go to meetings or class in his stead (which may explain why the thing looks irritated) and surely it is just a matter of time before it can make decisions and actually do your job for you. And I'm certain that baser applications will yet prevail, however advanced the design may be or lofty the goal.

Entrepreneurs, banking on the depravity of humankind, might have changed the above quotes thus: "Why bother to build robots that look like humans?" " To fuck 'em, of course!" Oh wait- they already do.

[wik] Minister GeekLethal inexplicably failed to point out the the confluence of these two stories leads to the inevitable conclusion that Professor Ishiguro can, in fact, go fuck himself. [- Minister B.]

[alsø wik] Minister GeekLethal inexplicably included the phrase "Entrepreneurs, banking on the depravity of humankind..." written in a tone indicating that he might have been expecting something else. [- Minister P.]

I've been doing some number crunching and the results are...discouraging.

I've looked at my current debt load and played it against potential earnings. I've used historic earnings data, leavened with broader industry trends, as the core of my prediction models. Then, not feeling quite down enough, I put all that against actuarial data: height and weight, lifestyle, hobbies, career, etc etc.

I have determined that, barring some sort of ridiculous and unforeseeable windfall (and knowing that there's no real-life equivalent of a "Community Chest" card coming my way), I will not live to see the day I'm out of debt. From now until the day I die, I will be servicing debt. Sure everyone has their own financial woe and worry to contend with. I get that. But I never put things in quite this perspective before, that I'll be dead before I'm free.

It's sobering. It's heavy. It's Tuesday.

And it's Tuesday's Heavy Thought.

After a brief hiatus and respite, the Ministry returns with its seemingly endless series of alternate state mottoes posts. Today, we ridicule, poke fun at, needle, and harass the moderately fine state of Illinois. Behold, the Prairie State:

• A wholly-owned subsidiary of Richard M. Daly Industries, Inc.
• Gateway to Iowa
• Home of da Bears
• Please, Please Don't Pronounce the S
• Land of the voting dead
• At least we're not New Jersey
• I See Dead Voters
• We're in the Middle Somewhere
• Proud home of the two greatest statesmen in American History: Abraham Lincoln and Richard M. Daly
• We keep our nastiest suburbs in Indiana
• Construction ahead, Be prepared to stop
• Hicks, and Chicago
• Remember Us?
• Meatpackers, if you know what I mean
• If we only knew what the Illini were, or where they are now, we'd make more progress in the fight against them.