xkcd gets it wrong.

Doesn’t happen all that often.

childrens_fantasy

…but, really, I find it amazing that xkcd has never heard of Agatha’s Law:

Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!

I mean, the hero of this particular strip is a science-inclined type who’s just been able to personally observe dimensional travel.  Directed dimensional travel, under the control of a human operator.  He needs to get done with mourning the loss of his heroic fantasy adventure vacation and get started with reverse-engineering that shit.

Latest Cape Wind excuse: “A long-submerged ancestral burial ground.”

(Via Riehl World View) Let us start by correcting the Washington Post’s headline for it:

Cape Wind’s fate unclear, even in Obama’s hands

The title implies that for some reason this President is immune from the automatic suspicion that habitually occurs when an elected official has to make a decision that is vehemently and personally opposed by one of the official’s close political allies.

…two Obama appointees to agencies connected to the project’s review have links to its chief opposition, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

U.S. National Park Service head Jonathan Jarvis is the brother of alliance consultant Destry Jarvis. And Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt has worked for the alliance. Both are recused from any decisions involving Cape Wind.

And yet, the National Park Service is taking seriously claims that a stretch of water is a National Register of Historic Places Traditional Cultural Property, and the FAA is… never mind the FAA right now, and let’s go back to the NPS thing:

The Wampanoag argued the project would interfere with sacred rituals which require an unblocked view of the horizon and would be built on a long-submerged ancestral burial ground.

This is not actually creative of the Kennedy family: the ‘ancestral burial ground’ anti-development ploy has been around for decades, although this is the first time that I’ve seen it used for an offshore coastal situation.  That being said, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.  After all, the Kennedys can’t even get Marcia Coakley elected these days…

Moe Lane

Don’t do this, George Lucas.

Just… don’t.

…now the original Star Wars films could be given a modern make-over and converted into 3D.

Director George Lucas has hinted that the new advances in technology mean it is now a possibility to see all six films re-made.

Please, let it be over. Maybe in thirty years or so a new director will be able to repair the damage that you have done to your own masterpiece. Until then, let it go.

Via AoSHQ Headlines.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t care what your ‘artistic vision’ says. I don’t care what your ‘evolving sensibilities’ challenge you to change. I don’t care if you are the ultimate arbiter of canon, and even if you were able to control the rest of the world in the same way that you were apparently able to control the t-shirt trade I would still sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world:

Damn your eyes, George Lucas.

HAN.
SHOT.
FIRST.

Breaking: thank you for DE-SEN, Democrats.

(Via AoSHQ) Beau Biden looked at the calendar, looked at the actuarial tables, and decided to wait until 2014.

Delaware attorney general Beau Biden announced Monday that he will not seek election to the U.S. Senate seat once held by his father, Vice President Joe Biden.

The younger Biden told supporters in an e-mail that he will run for re-election as attorney general rather than seek the Senate seat his father held for 36 years.

Biden’s decision comes on the heels of a GOP upset in Massachusetts last week that ended the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It leaves veteran Republican congressman and former two-term governor Mike Castle, one of the most successful politicians in Delaware history, still waiting for a Democratic opponent.

I’m translating, mind you. Also, I’m not really surprised.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I blame… what is the current thing to blame divorce on, anyway?

I really should get cable TV, if I want to keep up. Anyway:

Experts have told of their surprise after witnessing a rare “divorce” between a pair of swans at a Gloucestershire wildfowl sanctuary.

The Bewick’s swans have returned to winter at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Slimbridge – but both have brought new partners.

It is only the second time in more than 40 years that a “separation” has been recorded at the centre.

Staff have described the new couplings as “bizarre”.

Mind you, this ‘bizarre’ thing is coming from people who apparently can tell swans apart by their ‘unique bill pattern.’ Although if one of the swans suddenly bought a cap, a leather jacket, and a sports car, that might also be a tell…

Marion Berry (D, AR-01) cuts and runs.

Somebody call up Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook (ooh, Charlie had this one as Likely Democratic): they need to adjust their Democratic DOOMWatch lists again.

Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry to retire

Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow morning, according to three sources briefed on the decision.

Berry will become the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months but the first to announce his retirement since the party’s special election loss in Massachusetts last Tuesday.

Speculation was rampant after his comments a couple of days ago; note that politicians routinely deny that they’re going to retire until they actually do.  Presumably, there’s always the hope of a convenient asteroid strike or something as a game-changer.  It’s a shame, in its way: we were all going to really enjoy watching Berry lose that race. As the video at the link shows, the man was seriously off of his game.  When you can’t even remember your own farm subsidy shenanigans…

Moe Lane

PS: It looks more or less like Rick Crawford for AR-01, on the GOP side.  Check him out.

Crossposted to RedState.

So, I’m complaining to my wife about engineers…

…because they have this annoying habit of making stuff that works; unlike, say, English majors who can never quite turn the ingenious ideas in our their heads into some sort of objective reality (I’m saying this to her as I’m pulling our firstborn around on the sled that my wife improvised out of an Amazon.com shipping box and some ribbon*).

So she looks at me and says “Three words.  Tacoma. Narrows. Bridge.”

I wittily go “Huh?”

She says “Get thee hence to Google.”

Concrete shouldn’t do that.

Moe Lane

*As you probably have gathered, my wife is an engineer.