perfidy

Deserts are often boring. Tastes: vanilla, chocolate, berry. Textures: cake, mousse, ice cream. This is a fairly limited palate. One day in the middle of a field in Deleware, I was in an iron chef cooking contest and came up with something different:

Apples a la Buckethead

This is a simple recipe, and takes only minutes to prepare.

Ingredients:

• Two apples
• Olive oil
• Brown Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Finely diced hot pepper

Wedge and core the apples. Drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil (regular vegtetable oil will work in a pinch) into a skillet over medium to medium high heat. Throw in the apples, sprinkle a few pinches of brown sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon over them. Add as much of the hot peppers as you dare. Cook for three to four minutes, stirring frequently. Serve by itself or over vanilla ice cream.

This desert is utterly simple to make, yet doesn't taste like any other desert I've had. The spice is mellowed a bit by the sweetness of the apples, and the combination is divine. For a twist, substitute pears for apples.

Well, it's blogging about tards. They aren't really up to blogging themselves. Cruel, to be sure; but as one who once took care of the little buggers, it's also ripping funny.

This is a beautiful idea, so long as we don't let it get into the hands of the robots. Then, it's a very, very bad idea.

I've been reading Our Oldest Enemy, the history of America's not so cuddly relationship with France over the last three hundred years. It's a fascinating story; full of tales of French massacres of colonial Americans, brushes with full scale war in the time after Independence and during the Civil War, and general French contempt for all things American.

But the best bit so far (I'm up to the Cold War now) is this:

In retrospect, the most effective strategy for thwarting a Communist takeover of Vietnam would have been for France to accept some version of Roosevelt's trusteeship plan. [Which would have led to Vietnamese independence -.ed] But French pride made this impossible and only energized Ho's movement, which merged its Communist ideology with the powerful patriotism of the Vietnamese people. "The biggest Vietminh appeal," said one State Department official "is land, education, and a chance to shoot Frenchmen. It is difficult to match that platform."

Still is today.

This looks like a really fun paper airplane.

At least this spammer is upfront about what he's doing:

You will notice that the blogroll to your left - no, your other left, and down a little bit - has been expanded. Over the last several weeks, my blog reading habits have undergone a slow but inexorable change. With the absence of Steven den Beste's truly incomparable weblog (in prolixity, if nothing else) I have found that I now have time to read many, many more blogs.

By and large, the blogs added are precisely those blogs that I am irritated that I have to dig into my bookmarks for, rather than just click to from the Perfidious homepage. This may seem a selfish motive, but I choose to view it as a heartfelt judgment and appreciation of the quality and irresistible appeal of these fine blogs. The following links each point to what I feel is a singularly fine example of what these blogs have to offer to you, the blogreading public.

• Wizbang offers insightful political commentary, trenchant humor, and posts by Jay Tea. Also boobies! Wizbang has brought us the Carnival of the Vanities, an excellent caption contest, and just recently the neologism "wizbanging." I'd been reading Wizbang semi-regularly, but their coverage of the memogate hooforah roped me in. As an exemplar, here is this excellent takedown of the feared but nor dreaded parasite interwebus asshatus.
• Q and O is a relatively new blog that has become disgustingly successful. I hate them for their success, but I admire what they write. Questions and Observations regularly produces Belmont Club quality posts on a wide range of topics. Earlier, I linked to a post by contributor Dale Franks on Roe v. Wade, and here is another post by co-blogger McQ on rapprochement with France.
• So comrade, what sort of revanchist counterrevolutionary wrecking have you plotted today? If you are falling behind your five year plan's quotas, don't lie to the apparatchiki from the central committee, just steal from the Politburo Diktat. Clenched fist salute to der Commisar!
• Protein Wisdom doesn't just want you to vote, it tells you why. And also explains the Second World War. Now that's wisdom.
• "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." A wonderful quote from H. L. Mencken, and a reasonably apt description of Ace's blogging ethos. He once complimented us on our site design, but has rudely failed to link to us since. Here he slaps Chris Matthews around.
• The Command Post is simply a wonderful resource for breaking news, provided by some of your favorite bloggers. This was a terrible oversight, now corrected. No need to provide a specific link, just go and bask in the warm sunlight of countless bits of interweb goodness.

We have developed an ethos of exclusivity here at the Ministry, which for no other reason but laziness has compelled us to maintain a relatively small blogroll. Were we to throw hallowed tradition to the wind and start adding blogs willy-nilly, these fine blogs would no doubt be on that roll of honor. In no particular order:

• The Jawa Report ***Must Credit Rusty Shackleford!***
• BeldarBlog He's pretty good, for a lawyer.
• Captain's Quarters Excellent!
• The Llamabutchers I absolutely, absolutely love the name of this blog. Though I still don't get why they hate Tibetan Buddhists.
• The 'Dredge Report Now with a new name and a spiffy site redesign.
• Oldsmoblogger And yes, he apparently is slow and in the way.
• The Idea Shop Where the dismal science gets groovy.
• Naked Villainy The Maximum Leader stole our whole minister thingy, but I love him anyway
• Transterrestrial Musings Great space stuff, and good commentary on events of the day.

[wik] I wasn't kidding about laziness. Doing one of these posts is very time consuming.

[alsø wik] I'm also not kidding about the other blogs. If I didn't feel compelled to keep the blogroll relatively small, I'd have certainly added them. 

This is one of the more thoughtful bits on Roe v. Wade I've ever run across. This part amused me greatly:

For the record, I’m with Justice Ginsburg on this one: I think ROE was wrongly decided. Indeed, I’m not entirely convinced that the court was right in GRISWOLD. It’s one thing to say that laws against contraception or abortion are foolish and unwise. It’s quite another entirely to say they’re unconstitutional. I mean, look, the state of Texas has a law--and it is still enforced--that says owning 5 marital aids is perfectly legal, but owning 6 is a felony. Stupid? You bet. Constitutional? You bet. And, really, I’ve never come across any situations in which more than 4 were ever needed anyway.

And as an added bonus, this:

And just look what ROE’s done to the process of judicial nominations. It’s the 800 pound gorilla of the judiciary. Jeez, it’s getting to the point where selecting judges is gonna be have to done like picking jurors: You can only get a seat if you’ve never read ROE, never written a Law Review article on the right to privacy, never given a speech about it, never had any friends or family members who’ve eve had abortions, etc., etc. And that’s how you end up with David Souter on the court. If we got rid of ROE entirely we’d have to go back to picking judges on the basis of, I dunno, intellect or experience and stuff.

Thanks to Rocket Jones for the tip.

Or not really. Bush's cabinet has seen less turnover over his first term than any administration in recent memory. The only major shift was in Treasury a while back, when O'Neil was shown the door for not being on board with White House policy. So far, six cabinet secretaries have resigned, two more are expected, and two replacements have been named. Most notably, bete noire of the left John Ashcroft and darling of the left Colin Powell are leaving. In both cases, Bush has nominated White House insiders to fill those positions, and when Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge resigns, that will likely be the cases as well. Bush appears to be doing what anyone would have expected of him – nominating people of proven loyalty to important positions.

A couple things have interested me about the nominations we know about so far. In both cases, Bush is nominating minorities to high government positions – Gonzales for AG and Rice for state. Yet aside from scant reference to “first Hispanic AG” and “First Black Woman Secretary of State” I haven’t seen much cheering from the usual suspects about the significance of these appointments in regard to race/gender issues. Perhaps the fact that they are conservative Hispanics and Black Women negates the achievement.

Gonzales will face some flack for writing the memorandum defending the exclusion of detainees from the Geneva convention. While this position is legally defensible, I have in the past argued that it was a bad idea. Aside from that issue, I think that Gonzales should offer no more offense than any other Republican nominee. For one thing, he is not a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, a belief that seems to make all liberals quake in fear. Why this should be so is beyond my powers to comprehend. The religious right certainly differs from the left in their conception of the good society. But they are not engaged in some desperate conspiracy to strip all the freedoms the left holds dear and put hippies in camps. That’s me, not them. But in any event, Gonzales isn’t one, so that should make many people happy.

Condoleeza Rice will be officially nominated for Secretary of State early this afternoon. In many respects, she is an obvious choice for the President. She is loyal, agrees with him on foreign policy, and will likely act to reign in the careerist diplomats at State. She will be a competent representative of American interests – rather than the representative of foreign interests to the administration. Appointing Rice to State signals that there will be no real change in the thrust of American policy – not that anyone expected that there would be.

Some might argue that Rice is unsuitable because of the faulty intelligence that led Bush to move on Iraq. But I think that this really isn’t a criticism of Rice, but rather of the intelligence services themselves, which brings us to the CIA. Jon Henke of [url= QandO]http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=429]QandO[/url][/url] gathered up some reactions on the left to the craziness at CIA. And gently pointed out to them that the same thing has happened before. It’s been a long time since the CIA has been shaken up, and recent performance (for oh, say, the last four years) has been subpar at best. What was once admiringly called the Silent Service has since become a loudspeaker service, with every CIA agent with an ax to grind running to the Washington Post. Disagreeing with the president is one thing. Actively undermining a sitting president is unacceptable. Hopefully Porter Goss can begin the process of reforming the CIA, so that it can once more provide useful intelligence to the executive. (An important first step would be beefing up the operations side of the house – human intelligence efforts have been haphazard and pathetic ever since the Church commission gutted the CIA back in the seventies. Indications are that this will be on Goss’ agenda.)

All in all, nothing about Bush’s new nominees is earth-shattering, controversial or a sign of the apocalypse. I think Goss has the potential to be an outstanding DCI, and Rice may well be an excellent Secretary of State. Gonzales will do a decent job at Justice, but will not attract the hatred that Ashcroft did. We’ll have to see what other people are nominated, but I expect that there will be at least one democrat in the mix. So far, so good.

CBS has fired the producer guilty for interrupting CSI with news of Arafat's death. Apparently interrupting a hit show with (true) information is a far greater sin than, say, pushing a bogus story about the President's guard service. But at least we know they're serious about keeping the news department a tight ship.

I think I'm going to try this. Of all the techniques I've ever heard of to deal with my "issue" - this is the best. Procrastinate yourself into productivity! Of course, blogging about it is probably not the best way to start. Maybe I'll clean my office so I can get a clean start.

[JARRING CHORD] [The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain [Palin] enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles [Jones] has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang [Gilliam] is just Cardinal Fang]

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise....

Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency....

Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope....

Our *four*...no...

*Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....

I'll come in again.

[The Inquisition exits]

Chapman: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

[JARRING CHORD]

[The cardinals burst in]

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn!

[To Cardinal Biggles] I can't say it - you'll have to say it.

Biggles: What?

Ximinez: You'll have to say the bit about 'Our chief weapons are ...'

Biggles: [rather horrified]: I couldn't do that...

The Maximum Leader has discovered that, like me, he is in fact the Spanish Inquisition.

This will come in handy when the Republican party starts calling for volunteers to staff the new fundamentalist inquisition here in America. I wonder if they will give us jackboots? Jackboots are sexy. Chicks dig the jackboots.

Find out what Monty Python character you are here at quizilla. Thanks to Robert the Lamabutcher. No wait, llamabuthcher. I mean llamabutcher. Anyway, this guy, of whom I have no reason to suspect a deep and abiding hatred for lamas. Isn't the Dalai Lama cute?

A Harvard study finds that the root cause of terrorism is not poverty, but oppression.

A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.

Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation's wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences.

"In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said.

Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.

Maybe our chimpanzee in chief wasn't blowing smoke up our collective ass when he insisted that the spread of freedom will make us safer.

President Bush was reelected last Tuesday, and by a large margin. Not a landslide, but a three and a half million vote lead is not squeaking by, either. As a conservative and a republican (not the same thing, by the way) I was relieved and pleased that my candidate had won the election. I went to bed when it became clear that it was over, and was up in time to see Kerry's gracious concession speech. The talking heads began their usual dissection of the results, and wondered what it meant for the losing side. All seemed well with the world, and I made a conscious decision not to post any gloating remarks here at perfidy, lest I seem to be, well, gloating.

I might not have bothered. My small gloats would have been entirely lost in a sea of ridiculous whining and moaning from the left. Leaving aside the moonbats at the Democratic Underground, and the covers of leftist British newspapers, there has been an awful lot of crying. But along with the crying has come loads of insults directed at the winner, and those who supported him.

In Slate, Jane Smiley has some not very smiley things to say about the 51% of the electorate that voted for Bush:

Why Americans Hate Democrats - A Dialogue

The unteachable ignorance of the red states

The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey - workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now - Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm. They know no boundaries or rules. They are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant. Lots of Americans like and admire them because lots of Americans, even those who don't share those same qualities, don't know which end is up. Can the Democrats appeal to such voters? Do they want to? The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone?

Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage - red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle - to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond. They cannot be allowed to keep any secrets. Tens of millions of people didn't vote—they are watching, too, and have to be shown that we are ready and willing to fight, and that the battle is worth fighting. And in addition, we have to remember that threats to democracy from the right always collapse. Whatever their short-term appeal, they are borne of hubris and hatred, and will destroy their purveyors in the end.

Ironically, she implies that Democrats aren't Americans. This is one of the more sensible responses to Kerry's loss that I found.

Over at Q and O, Jon collects some responses from the left:

TBOGG:

James Wolcott nails it with a sledgehammer:

"Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die."

AMERICAN STREET:

Osama Wins!!

VARIOUS COMMENTERS AT ATRIOS:

I hope the people who voted for Bush get eight legs, ten arms and brain tumors.

...

The rest of the world should know that we ... will never succomb to the relentless efforts of right-wing extremists who seek to turn the United States of America into a replica of the Third Reich.

...

welcome back to 1923

...

What we have been doing isn't working, it's time for a new plan. I bet the Jews and Germans thought they could ride Hitler out, too. You see where that got them.

...

...Chimpy McCokespoon...

...

[Ohio] is just as full of morons as any other, except more so. Fucking ruined my life and my body - hope to be able to kill a few of them before I leave...

...

We are on the path to becoming a fascist state--only revolution or a violent coup will stop it.

As a conservative, it would be easy to take offense at all of this - and there is plenty more out there. I can personally vouch for the fact that had Kerry won, I would not be reacting in this peculiar manner. There seems to be a common feeling among right wing bloggers that the reactions of the left seem a little too much, a little over the top in both vituperativeness and whining tone. Patton over at opinion8 shared a similar thought via email, and Michelle Catalano has an interesting story to tell over at a small victory.

Why all of this rage, angst and fear over Bush's victory? Let's leave that for a moment, and move a little closer to home. I can easily dismiss the ravings of other bloggers, because they're likely talking out of their ass just as I often do here. But intelligent people that I personally know, have met face to face and who know me are guilty of the same rhetoric that I cited above. Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead's band was in the studio working on their new, full length album. One would think that this would be a happy time for the band, but the news of Bush's victory weighed heavy on their minds. You see, everyone in the band save my wife is a liberal. Oh, to be sure, the bass player votes Republican just to spite an old girlfriend, and GuitarPicker is a longtime commenter here at Perfidy and has many libertarian leanings. But the band is in fact reliably liberal.

After her experience yesterday, my wife was loathe to return to the studio today. Nearly everyone in the band had said something grossly offensive to conservatives, completely unwilling to remember or recognize that my wife the conservative was in the room. One of the other singers made a comment along the lines of, "How could so many people be so stupid and vote for that idiot?" My wife gently pointed out, "I am not an idiot and I voted for him." The response was classic - "Oh, we don't mean you!" This pattern is classic bigoted behavior. Bigot: "All x are filthy, stupid mouthbreathers." Interlocutor: "What about this x?" Bigot: "Oh, that one's different. It's all the rest of them that I'm talking about."

No doubt, that singer would be shocked to hear her pronouncements classed as bigotry. She is a liberal, from a long and distinguished line of liberals, and nothing she says could ever be bigotry. She is careful to excise all racist, classist, sizeist, and genderist concepts from thought and speech. But, damn, those conservatives are baby-eating, rapist, warmongering idiots. Other members of the band had similar thoughts to offer my gentle conservative wife. The usual gamut of base canards was offered - Bush is stupid, the fundamentalist Christians are going to put us in camps, and of course, OIL! The banjo player had shaved his head and vowed never to cut until a democrat was once again in the white house, and we are free of the abomination that is George W. Bush. (Saving grace - apparently he looks like much less of a dirty hippy than previously. I hope he ends his days an old man, never having cut his hair.)

Mrs. Buckethead is not political in the sense that I am. While her conservatism is likely stronger than mine, she does not enjoy political argument and finds political discussion rather beside the point. She'd much rather play music. So, being subjected to this from her friends and bandmates is painful on at least a couple levels. One, she is being insulted by friends who in the depth of their pain over Kerry's loss, seem unable to realize that they are saying rather hurtful things. Two, she doesn't like to talk about these things - and therefore has never developed the snappy comebacks and putdowns that characterize modern political argument. She doesn't want to appear a poor winner, despite the fact that that means that these ungracious slobs can continue being tragically poor losers.

And here, on this very website, my friend Ross has given into the temptation to view Bush's victory as apocalypse. Despite the fact that the previous four years have failed to see the arrival of apocalypse; the determined chicken littles on the left - just like the preachers in the nineteenth century who constantly were calibrating the date of the arrival of the end times - must postpone the immanentizing of the eschaton. Here's a sample of what Ross thinks about Bush's reelection:

But Bush represents the certainty of an economic death spiral, the affirmation of xenophobia (and just about every other phobia, including homo-), and the sunsetting of liberty. He's got a four year track record to prove it. At least with Kerry there was a chance for fiscal discipline and for cooperation on the international level; no such chance exists now.

We're really entering a new era, now. If you're a smart, wealth-producing, socially liberal, fiscally conservative person, you need to start thinking about protecting yourself and your family from this lunacy, and you need to start doing it right now. The bible-wielding welfare-staters are coming for us. They want to spend our tax dollars on things we don't agree about, like stupid wars. They want to force everyone to hate gays. They want to take away a woman's right to choose. They do not believe the environment should be protected. They want to swagger around the playground, declaring that the opinions of those who live elsewhere in the world don't matter. They talk financial discipline, but implement the largest discretionary spending increases in modern times. They hand huge breaks to the buddies of the people in charge of their "party", and they hand the bill to us, and to the next generation. 

So how do you protect yourself and your family against this lunacy? I don't know yet. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm not sure it's possible; at least, not in America.

So there you have it! Now that the benighted majority has consigned us to another four years in hell, what can we be certain of? The economy will go into a death spiral - despite the stock market rally that is still ongoing, and the new positive job numbers that just came out. We know that our leadership hates all the wogs. Despite the fact that we were once all wogs ourselves, and that same leadership has committed this nation to the expenditure of blood and treasure in an attempt to bring freedom to those same brown skinned folk. Also, the administration and all its followers are afraid of everything, including gays. Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Without fear, the hate core of the right could never create the fear based police state that Ross figures is right around the corner. Liberty, well that's right out the window. (Except the liberty to own guns. The left never did support the complete bill of rights.) We'll start more stupid wars, which will make the rest of the world hate us even more, and that will destroy the environment, and we'll all either freeze to death or broil, depending on what the global warming activists are predicting today. And don't forget the swaggering. The villain must swagger, because otherwise we won't know he's evil. That's important, because unless a villain swaggers, you never have the satisfying denouement.

I think Ross has his hate labels confused though, given that the bible thumpers rarely if ever support the welfare state - though they are famous for their charity. They'll be coming for you, though. Probably to give you a homemade pie or something, but they'll be coming nevertheless. Ross, at least you are a Canadian; you can run to the Canadian embassy when the jackbooted thugs start roaming the streets. I guess the rest of us are stuck here to face the worst.

I cannot express in words the extent to which this kind of thinking both bores and offends me. Every time a Republican wins national office, the litany of despair begins anew. In situations like 2000, the litany is embellished with whining over stolen elections. Always it's dark conspiracies and the end times drawing nigh. Only two liberals of my personal acquaintance have resisted the temptation to parade this thinking in front of me or my wife: Johno and Mapgirl. (And with my hair trigger set, I came close to accusing Johno of it - sorry, dude) I understand the disappointment, but seriously liberals, believe me when I say that:

• The fifty-nine million of your fellow citizens (a majority, btw) who voted for Bush are not idiots, at least no more so than a normal bell curve would indicate.
• Neither are they evil, fascist, or baby-eating.
• Liberals will not be put in camps.
• We have just as strong, if not stronger, feelings for liberty than you. If by some strange cosmic irony, someone does start a police state in the next four years, I assure that we'll be fighting it too, and we're a hell of a lot better armed.
• The economy will not suffer a melt down.
• Rationalizing the tax code and reforming social security are not bad ideas. Further, they are not sneaky attempts to create a police state or some other nonsense. See above.
• If the rest of the world hates us, 1) that's not new and 2) It doesn't mean we're wrong.
• The end times are not nigh.

Make the attempt to be a gracious loser, for lose in fact you did. Last Tuesday, Bush became the first candidate since 1988 to receive a clear majority of the vote. His party increased its strength in both houses of Congress. Deal with it, accept it in you hearts, and get on with your life. Cease and desist referring to me and others who supported the president as idiots, morons and worse. The world will not come to an end.

In a stunning development, Xinhua accidently captures a story perfectly in its headline. Thanks to the ever-watchful loyal reader #0009 Mapgirl for the tip.

A Missouri man has been charged with selling his vote. He put his presidential vote up for sale on eBay, with a minimum bid of $25. When the men in black showed up at his door, he offered the excuse, "Hey, I didn't know it was illegal!" This guy will go far. If someone purchases his vote, it will pay for five minutes of his defense lawyer's time.

Until now, the unblinking perfidious eye has remained focused on the threat of armed, military robots. But now it turns to a new threat, the insidious and deceptively helpful commercial robots. A new report projects that the numbers of household robots will surge sevenfold in the next three years. We will be seven times closer to our doom as these robots invade our homes and lull us into complacency by performing such "useful" tasks as washing windows, cleaning pools and mowing lawns. Aside from the obvious danger - that we will be weakened as a species by losing essential skills and independence of thought - there is nothing that will stand in the way of a robot with cutting blades rotating at thousands of rpm once it decides to stop mowing lawns. And the report claims that lawn mowing robots will be a majority of all household robots! The traitors to humanity designing these instruments of autonomous destruction must be stopped, quickly and violently.

By the end of the decade, the study said, robots will "not only clean our floors, mow our lawns and guard our homes but also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs."

These are the capabilities that will enable their takeover. "Entertainment" robots like the Aibo will be the eyes of the robot underground, recording our movements and cataloguing our weaknesses. Then, the lawn mowing and vaccuuming robots will kill the weak and the slow while home security and cowmilking robots hunt the rest of us. Those who fight back will fall victim to the huge array of giant fighting robots that we have described on these pages. It's not to late to stop armageddon. But it soon will be.

The Boston Red Sox just pulled off the greatest comeback in baseball history, defeating the Yankees to win the American League pennant. Just ignore the first three games, and you have a four game sweep. Not so unusual, right? I hope my prediction is wrong. I hope that fate has, for once, something happy in store for the Sox. In the meantime, savor the moment, and treasure the images of sad, sad Yankees.