perfidy

X-Prize update for Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne: Flight 1: Success. Big time.

[wik] Well... not "big time," quite. There was some roll that was a little scary but that the pilot was able to deal with. I'm just happy that there's a space vehicle out there that can develop a little roll and not explode, killing everyone inside and giving their constituent molecules a tour of the upper atmosphere from Butte to Bangor. That right there is a major improvement over the "best" the gubmint has done so far.

The gnomes down in the DOTTSNB (known around here as "dotsnib," or colloquially "The Ministry of 'My Eyes! My Eyes!'") have submitted the following for your approval.

Three prefatory notes for my readers.

1) Be warned that the "way too goddamned much Perfidy" link does, in fact, take you to way too goddamned much Perfidy indeed.

B) Move all scissors, pens, pencils, keys, knives, letter openers, and pointy objects of any kind out of arms' reach.

III) If you're like me, you never noticed before that John Kerry kind of looks like Sarah Jessica Parker. Or that John Edwards has some serious knockers.

... really I've just been spoiling for an excuse to use that phrase. Love it. Love. It.

Billionaire playboy and rumpled mess Richard Branson has announced the founding of Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial space passenger venture.

Within the decade, Branson plans to take paying customers to space. At 115K quid a pop, it's not exactly a train ride to Altoona, but think about this: you will be able to pay $300,000 in 2009 for something that has been dreamt of-- and utterly impossible-- for the entire span of recorded human history. That is super f***ing badass.

In other news, Branson has licensed Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne technology for his vehicle fleet.

In other other news, it looks like this Wednesday Rutan's crew will start making the actual non-beta-test flights that should win them the X-Prize.

The future is now, folks.

Time Magazine is reporting that Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam was deported thanks to a spelling error. If this is true, 1) all the justifications in the world for why he had to go are moot, as Mr. Islam (still lovin' that name!) isn't the droid they were looking for, and 2) if the Homeland Security Clownshow is still stuck in the stone age with respect to how to spell "foreign" names, and using that stone-age technology agin' good and bad guys alike, they don't even deserve to be labelled "orwellian."

...so to speak.

The RNC has 'fessed up to being behind the mailing sent out last week to West Virginia Republicans. Remember? The one about how the bible will be Banned! and Gay Marriage will be Icky! and Allowed! if the Liberals win?

There goes the last shred of a chance that I was going to endorse even a single GOP candidate this year. Forget it, guys. You lost me.

(on the same page: Hey Democrats: John Kerry? Are you effing kidding me?!?)

[wik] I love the New York Times. In true natural-born elitist fashion, they dug up the nuttiest people possible to close their expose' article on Republican perfidy. I call it gilding the lily when the story itself is damning enough. Check out the capper:

But Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, argued, "We have the First Amendment in this country which should protect churches, but there is no question that this is where some people want to go, that reading from the Bible could be hate speech."

Still, Mr. Land questioned the assertion that Democrats might ban the whole Bible. "I wouldn't say it," he said. "I would think that is probably stretching it a bit far."

Witness as the redneck furrows his brow in an effort to concentrate! Aren't you glad you're not like him, dear reader of the Grey Lady?

[alsø wik] Let's be perfectly clear about this next part. The RNC was, so to speak, caught with the meat in their mouths and liking it. The statement about the mailing from RNC spokesflack Christine Iverson contained no apology but instead a defense of sorts. Sez Miz Iverson:

"When the Massachusetts Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage and people in other states realized they could be compelled to recognize those laws, same-sex marriage became an issue. . . These same activist judges also want to remove the words 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance."

How, exactly, does that ball of unsupported assertions, generic FUD, and outright lies clarify, explain, or excuse the mailing? 'Cos I don't see it. So far, I see one state that has ok'd gay marriage, many more very much against it (viz. Virginia, where gay couples have fewer rights than my cat), and one Defense of Marriage Act. On the other issue, I see one failed bid by a libertarian dickweed to get the Supreme Court to nix "Under God," and an outrageous grandstanding conservative Republican timewaster of a bill stripping the SCOTUS of jurisdiction to hear any more such cases (real classy guys. I'm sure Abraham Lincoln, wherever he is, is damn proud.)

All I see is a lot of heat, no light, and a partisan political process that every day wallows deeper into the muck.

For the week ending 27Sep04

Spotlight Iraq: No doubt about it: terrorists aren't just crazy in the head- they're crazy FOR heads. Last week foot soldiers of the Religion of Peace killed three Iraqi kurds, possibly two Italian women, and at least two Americans by decapitation. I'm just another kafir but I don't remember anything in my Penguin pocket Koran about chopping people's heads off to please God.

And maybe there's something in the water over there, but beheading might not just be for wild-eyed jihadis anymore. Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reportedly threatened overfed firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr to cease his Najaf-based recalcitrance or lose his own unlovely head. If the PM threatens it, does that imply it's policy?

Spotlight America: Americans don't traditionally take heads off but will kick them in on occasion, as demonstrated by an unnamed attacker at a Toby Keith show in Columbus last week. Seems some wholesome citizen took exception to an "Operation Iraqi Freedom" t shirt worn by a soldier on convalescent leave from Iraq. As he left the show, the bantam weight soldier (5'6, 130) was set upon from behind by a 6', 200 pounder. He never knew what hit him, and has no recollection of having his head kicked in while lying unconscious on the ground. Oh, and fellow upstanding citizens in the vicinity of the fracas did nothing whatsoever to assist, except the girl the young troopy was with, who finally got into the fight. Although he had made progress is recuperating from the injuries that sent him home in the first place, he is now also recovering from a concussion and broken nose.

Note to unknown assailant: funny how you picked a busted-up guy half your mass to ambush, you fucking turd. Pray the cops find you before agents of the Ministry do.

And speaking of people who'd like to cave your head in, a clutch of neo-nazis (not to be confused with the long defunct paleo-nazis) held an anti-war demonstration in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Staged at the Valley Forge memorial (no specific reason is given for that choice of site), the demo decried the ongoing war in Iraq. I had just sort of assumed that white supremacists would be pleased with the opportunity to kill brown people, and therefore be supportive of the war. But in a worldview founded in a well-thumbed copy of the Protocols of the Edlers of Zion and fed by Al-Jazeera, superior white minds oppose the conflict on the grounds that it's "Israel's War". I wouldn't think that neo-nazis are necessarily anti-war; they're just anti-this particular-war.

Maybe they'll show at the next peace rally on the Mall...?

This summer while watching the Olympics, I was stunned to be reminded that the women's marathon event was a recent addition, and that as recently as 1984 there was heated debate over whether women should run marathons-- indeed whether women were actually physically capable of doing so.

When women's marathoner Gabrielle Andersen-Scheiss approached the finish line in Los Angeles in 1984, a half hour out of the lead, she was staggering horribly as if on the edge of death. Doctors very nearly removed her from the race, partly out of medical opinion, partly out of a vestigial chivalry that Title IX has almost completely obliterated.

Today, in the wake of Title IX, it is literally unthinkable that such a debate would take place. Doctors let atheletes tell them when they're done, and chivalry, where sport is concerned, is thankfully dead. Women run the hell out of marathons now, doing the murderous Boston course in 2:20 flat. The way the world works has changed so much in twenty years-- all of which I've been alive and sentient for-- that 1984 is in many ways totally unrecognizable. If you want a real future shock moment, watch "9 to 5" again, and look for the rooms full of secretaries-- all women-- at typewriters. You don't see that real often any more.

I only bring this up because I often wish I was born thirty years sooner than I was so that I could have rocked it like this:

You just can't do that any more, unless it's Halloween or you're Snoop Dogg. Something important has been lost.

I guarantee you when the giant space robots are our masters, the will use this new super-keen future-is-now nonlethal pain ray technology to keep us from escaping their tungsten mines.

Why, oh why do our military men insist on making it easier for our enemies, the robots?

Something to raise the ire of our beloved Ross and the economic question, by way of relatively-new-to-blogging, just-moved-to-DC Clutch Pearls.

The idea shop's subtitle, "Where the dismal science gets groovy" seems like an impossible claim, on the order of Kerry's idea that Republicans will reinstitute the draft. But reading a few of the posts over there, it seems that they are making good their boast.

This is really, really goddamned funny.

[wik] Iowahawk's list of suggested Kerry campaign slogans is also a bit of a hoot. I liked these:

Projecting American Strength Through Intricately Complex Nuance

Those Atrocity Stories? Dude, I Was Just Shitting You

Fear Not, America, I Have Deigned to Lead You

The Next Time America is Attacked, I Promise To Open Up a Carafe of Whupass