Archive for November, 2007

3-0

That was the most relieving end to a football game in a long time.

And they even name-checked Woodland Hills. (Though from what I’ve read lately, it’s probably not a place to be proud of anymore. Be sure to read the part where a student tries to excuse his punching a cop because he thought he was only punching a security guard.)

Living Up To Stereotypes

I’m off to Indiana for Thanksgiving, and like a good stereotype, I look forward again this year to eating potatoes. I will not be consuming a six-pack of beer to make it the Irish seven-course meal, and for the record, the one about the two dudes, the genie and the sea of Guinness is a far better ethnic slur anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my family, friends and the rest of yinz out there in web land.

Whales

Two stories:

1. A whale swam so far up the Amazon River that he gets to take a boat back to the ocean.

2. Another whale got trapped in fishing lines, but freed itself and bailed. I got caught in that stuff scuba diving one time and it took me a long time to get out, even with my human brain.

If whales are riding in boats and solving complex logic problems, we can’t be far off from talking whales who establish their own civilization. Who knows what they’ll say and do? Not me, but it promises to exceed everything, ever, in awesomeness.

Divisive

Last night I was hitting the new gym — this one has TVs on the treadmills, so I rocked the informative running action — when this story came on CNN:

Saudi Court Ups Punishment for Gang-Rape Victim

The gist of the story is that a woman was gang-raped by seven Saudi men, yet the Saudi court’s sense of justice resulted in 10-month to five-year sentences for the attackers, while the victim got 90 lashes with a yard-long bamboo reed for committing the ultimate sin of talking to a dude. (Thankfully, her hair must have stayed covered during the process, as the misogynistic nature of this sentence would seem to indicate that a stray tress would see her locked her up for 25 to life.) But, it gets worse: When her lawyer — seemingly the only sane person affiliated with the Saudi Shari’ah legal system — appealed the lenient sentences for the attackers, the court agreed with him and gave the attackers two to nine years, but it also decreed that the lawyer be disbarred and the rape victim now get six months in jail and 110 more lashes. This is all for taking the incredibly selfish action of being raped and then following proper legal channels to complain about the lack of justice.

I knew the U.S. government would be leery of angering King Abdullah because of both oil and any Saudi anti-terror efforts, but not to the level of calling the punishment only “astonishing” and going no further:

QUESTION: Just to be clear, you’re in no way condemning the sentence at all?

SEAN MCCORMACK, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: I’ve said what I’m going to say about it.

We all know that governments say things in public that are not followed up in action, but here the U.S. government isn’t even making the public statement. I can think of many better words than “astonishing”; “savage miscarriage of human decency” comes to mind.

Suffice it to say that this is exactly the sort of thing that al-Qaeda and its sympathizers believe in, and exactly the reason I believe that such fundamentalists need to get utterly wrecked. Tuesday the Saudi government released a statement “clarifying” things by saying the victim received the extra punishment because she illegally talked to the media. I can’t say that 110 extra lashes for contempt of court makes any sense to me as a rational human, but this statement doesn’t even address the gross miscarriage of justice that is the original 90-lash sentence except for a weak non-explanation.

Today I was looking for more on this story and on Iraq when I came across this blog post — on a side note, Reuters, you’re really sending mixed messages by saying you don’t approve of any third-party BlogBurst opinion items but then wrapping them in your own site branding — echoing the usual “The Democrats want America to lose in Iraq” sentiment. Sure, a detached analysis of the situation would find that yes, the more anti-war party will do better if the war is going badly, and therefore would potentially lose ground should the war effort improve. But, we aren’t operating in a vacuum; Democrats are paying the same costs in blood and treasure as Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, Lyndon LaRouchers and any other party that lives under the American government, and therefore Democrats too ultimately rise and fall from the war’s effects just the same as Republican war supporters. Do they want to lose? No, they want to see success for all the sacrifice, and perhaps demand it even more having opposed the invasion in the first place.

It’s ill to see someone make that kind of circa-2004 divisive statement because this Saudi thing is a clear example that the real fight is much broader than what’s happening in Iraq — remember that Saudi Arabia is an American ally, yet does these things and produced the 9/11 hijackers — and that wasting energy condemning an anti-stable-Iraq sentiment that doesn’t even exist outside of the fringes displays a failure to grasp that global reality. I agree with this piece by Anne Applebaum that explains how invading Iraq did more damage than good to the anti-fundamentalist fight by shoving away our potential allies and hurting long-term American strategic goals. There’s never a need for “We told you so” here — lots of us opposed the Iraq war for realist strategic reasons instead of childish fringe anti-Americanism, and an improved Iraq would help those interests that have been so heavily damaged by the invasion in the first place. The Saudi verdict shows that the bigger fight is both larger than Iraq and more complicated than supporting one thing or another.

In regards to the Saudi non-condemnation, perhaps the government wrongly skipped the public shaming part but is somehow working on the private part I’d love to see: massive scientific alternative-fuel projects to get us out of the Saudi stranglehold. It’s doubtful. If not that, then the government needs to offer amnesty to this woman and allow her to live in the U.S. At least we’d be showing the sense of justice that’s so sorely lacking in our ally.

Not the Time to Attack Iran

The U.S. government says attacks in Iraq are down 55 percent since last summer, thanks to the American surge and better cooperation with Iraqi police. (Although the fact that the surge is about to end is worrying.) The interesting and hopeful side note in the piece, which I’ve read in a few places, are the claims that Iran is stemming the flow of weapons into Iraq.

I hope this is true, because it represents two potentially good outcomes: one, it dents Shi’ite militias’ ability to kill Americans and other Iraqis; and two, it would be a good-faith gesture by Iran indicating that they’re not hell-bent on destroying America at all costs, as right-wing dudes would have us believe.

TIME editor/soulja Tony Karon wrote a while back of the importance of reaching an agreement with Iran to promote Iraqi stability, and this reduced weapons flow would seem to be an opening to approach such an agreement. As much as many Americans believe we shouldn’t negotiate with the Axis of Evil (despite it happening exactly that way in North Korea), reaching a stabilizing agreement with Iran would do far more for America’s interests–a calmer Iraq, a calmer region and, let’s face it, undisrupted oil supplies–than a bombing campaign. We’d also have more legitimacy to pressure them should they break the agreement in the future, and the evidence from North Korea seems to be that negotiation is the best way to prevent what the world really fears: nuclear Iran.

Economical

My hair’s about at the stage where I need to cut it again. Fortunately I have my trusty $20 clippaz to get the job done.

I was thinking the other day about just how much money these things have saved me. I started cutting my own hair about sophomore year of college and haven’t gone to a barber since. (Which is sometimes sad, because old-school barbershops are the phattest thing in grooming.) I’ve been through two pairs at $20 apiece since then, so that’s a total hair expenditure of $40.

If I cut my hair once a month, which is actually less often than I do it now, then that’s roughly $18 per month for your standard haircut. That seems like a total ripoff, so it’s good that I’m paying the high cost of zero. It’s been eight years and two months (!) since I started my sophomore year of college, so that works out to 98 months. If you multiply that by $18, you get $1,764. Subtract $40 and you still have $1,724. Oh snap.

So each set of clippers is a net positive worth of $862. What about if I assume I cut my hair every two weeks, which is a lot more realistic? At 26 times per year over eight years, plus four more for two months, then I’ve got a net of $3,776—$1,888 per clipper set.

This 2006 unkempt version of me, with glasses and a buzz cut, agrees wholeheartedly that that is amazing.

What To Do With $611 Billion

Here is a link from the Boston Globe detailing ways the U.S. government could alternatively spend the amount of funds that has gone to the Iraq war.

I think I would take Forbes.com’s example and outfit 4,073,333,333 people in custom-made leather underpants. That way, nearly 2/3 of the Earth’s population would be just a little more rock ‘n’ roll.

Tuna - Too Good

The Washington Post ran this thought-provoking article about the dearth of bluefin tuna in the sea. I’m not cool with that, because tuna is awesome.

As much as I love tuna sushi, I’ll think twice about ordering it now. I like my oceans healthy and full of awesome fish, so the whales have somebody to eat and intimidate.

Tank J.

Is any football fan surprised that the Cowboys picked up a dude who pled guilty to weapons and assault charges? I’d like to see them play the Bengals in an arrest-off.

Wiz Khalifa

This guy came out last year, but I had to give blog props to Pittsburgh’s newest and best rapper:

412!