Moe Lane

[UPDATE, April 25, 2010]: They made the video private on YT, but you can watch it here.

Trust me, you’ll get it if you watch for long enough.  You want to let it tell its story in its own time*.

My only problem with pointing out Top Gear 10: The Complete Season 10 is that I can’t quite believe that the other episodes can measure up to that clip, which is made up of crystalline awesome suspended in an energetic liquid-dude solution. Really, the only way that they could have improved it was to have a cameo by Iron Man.

Moe Lane

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No word yet whether he was sipping wine from a jeweled chalice and gnawing on a drumstick at the time.

There are times when you don’t need to go past the title and subtitle:

Dodd Says Questions About Wife’s Role in Health Care Industry ‘Offensive’
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., whose wife Jackie Clegg Dodd sits on the boards of four health care companies, disputes the suggestion that his wife’s career could pose a conflict of interest.

It really does say it all, doesn’t it? We’re facing a ‘universal health care system’ scheduled to cost us at least 1 trillion and decrease the number of uninsured by maybe one-third; and the guy who is helping get that boondoggle enacted into law is also the guy who’s been playing games with his financial disclosures. Again.

And yet, bringing up the minor little detail that his wife is on the board of four health care companies is apparently Beyond the Pale, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Well, it’s not.  This is not an aristocracy, and Dodd is not a Duke: his actions are ultimately accountable to the population of both Connecticut, and the nation.  If he cannot grasp that concept, he does not have to keep being a Senator.

Speaking of which…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Alternate site here (via Instapundit).

Via @Fausta, via Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, the #iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners:

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

There’s more.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Big Hollywood and Instapundit readers.  If you’d like some lighter fare after this, try this.

Compare this:

…to this:

A certain attitude adjustment can be detected there; amazing what a spot of actual activism will do, yes? Particularly when it’s directed at advertisers.  The general reaction elsewhere to this one is ‘kinda real‘; see also Cynthia Yockey, Michelle Malkin, Little Miss Attila, the Rhetorician, The Other McCain, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Big Hollywood, Wizbang, & Dan Collins.  Also, Governor Palin has already accepted the apology:

“Of course it’s accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who ‘joke’ about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve,” she said.

“Letterman certainly has the right to ‘joke’ about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,” Palin said. “This is all thanks to our U.S. Military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America’s Right to Free Speech – in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.”

And I don’t think that these guys are going to stop.  Given that Letterman should have started with a “Sorry you were offended” last week, instead of smirking it off, well: I can see why they wouldn’t.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Some context:

Fast Car, Tracy Chapman

I associate this song with ‘worry.’ Just not personal, in this case.

Hey, it’s something to keep you from thinking about how the Mob may be waking up in Iran. Which it didn’t have to do.

Anyway, you can vote here for which one of Penny Arcade’s three strip ideas you want to see worked out further. I prefer Automata, but it’s your call.

We both want to link the (for-now) Governor of New Jersey to the President. Admittedly, their reasons are not ours; but that’s why we have elections. And the White House is worried about this one, to the point that they brought in Corzine to discuss it with Rahm Emanuel:

A senior Obama administration official familiar with the meeting said Emanuel did not express concern with the Corzine campaign, but rather wanted to gather intelligence on Corzine’s gameplan as the governor sought advice and help from the Obama political operation. The administration official, who requested anonymity when discussing the private meeting, said the president and national party leadership are well aware Corzine is in a tough fight, but believe he will be able to turn it around – particularly with core Democratic voters – as he begins to campaign heavily this summer.

“We’re invested in this victory and we’re confident of it,” the official said.

Asked about the discussions, Corzine campaign spokesman Sean Darcy said in a statement today: “The Vice President’s two recent visits here mere days ago entirely disproves this gossip item.”

He declined to elaborate.

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Sometimes, I can almost see the Hawaiian separatist movement’s point:

Even for tiki culture, this is kind of mortifying. The more so because I can only imagine what the lyrics originally meant.

There are apparently two R. Borgstroms in the gaming world: there’s Rebecca Borgstrom, who wrote Nobilis*…

…$150?  Excuse me while I get my copy out of the reach of children and into an inert nitrogen atmosphere.

…and then there’s Rolfe Borgstrom, who got mentioned in this article about gaming out Land of the Lost.  The main site (Transitive Property of Gaming) looks interesting, too.  As for the article… true enough, as far as it goes; but you should also try GURPS Dinosaurs & Cadillacs & Dinosaurs: there was also one involving an alien planet, dinosaurs, and cowboys, but the title has slipped my mind.

What? No, actually, I know plenty of women who game. My wife’s a GM, in fact. Why do you ask?

Moe Lane

*Which I personally feel would be just crying out for a d20 version, if only I had any morally justifiable reason to be that nihilistic and cruel.

Don’t watch this if you’re prone to epileptic fits.

Via Frank J. of IMAO, who notes: “It was weird to watch, because I kept waiting for Mount Rushmore to morph into a 3-headed Hitler who sends his eagle-morphing-into-a-vulture flying into the ghetto to devour screaming, helpless minorities or something.” I’d likewise make a sardonic anti-hippie comment in response, except that my eyes are still trying to decide whether they’re going to start bleeding.

@jaketapper

AP News alert FROM IRAN: AP photographer sees pro-government militia fire at opposition protesters, killing at least 1.

And if this is true:

@StopAhmadi (via AoSHQ)

The Basiji police that killed 4 ppl in Tehran got killed by the ppl! eye for an eye! #iranelection

…we’re now at the cusp of something. If the crowds start thinking that the militia are going to shoot at them anyway – well, they stop being ‘crowds,’ and become the Mob.

No, that is not good. The whole point of having a Velvet Revolution is to avoid waking up the Mob.

Moe Lane

PS: Jules Crittenden has put together a roundup of some of the reactions to the Iranian situation in general.

PPS: Via @magnolia_tree (her website, btw), these pictures. Whoa.

Crossposted to RedState.

First off, let’s avoid euphemism, particularly when it involves the Iranian regime: Dennis Ross does not have a ‘Jewish background.’ He is Jewish: Jewish mother; observant of the Conservative sect of Judaism; co-founded a synagogue.  And bless him for all of that, although the anti-Semites currently in control for Iran certainly wouldn’t; it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want him as envoy from the USA.  I just can’t for the life of me understand why the administration would care.

But apparently they do:

Ross Ousted as Iran Envoy
Dennis Ross, “who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties,” sources told Haaretz.

I would like to believe that the reason for the abrupt removal has nothing to do with his book Myths, Illusions, and Peace, which suggests that it is a fallacy “that Iran’s leadership is immune from diplomatic and economic pressure.”  I would like to believe this, because if the reason does have something to with it we are faced with the prospect that the White House does not intend to do anything meaningful about Iran’s recent election fraud.  I do not consider that to be an optimal response to the problem, and would like to think that we were planning something smarter.

Note the repeated use of the term ‘would like to.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.