…Conservatives say women at the wheel create situations for sinful temptation. They argue that women drivers will be free to leave home alone, will unduly expose their eyes while driving and will interact with male strangers, such as traffic police and mechanics.
It is easier (and safer for all concerned) to get there when you can frickin’ see, although judging by the picture accompanying the article…
…old girl came damn close to using the Braille method.
‘Splain to me again why we need to keep sending these 7th century misogynist goat herders $700 billion a year? In the name of humanity, if ANY thing says “Drill Now!”, it’s that picture. Let them pull that sh*t on their own dime.
…Lilo [ed:Lindsey Lohan] was texting Billy Bush (???) the other day during Access Hollywood’s interview with Michael’s mom Debbie Phelps. Lilo wanted Billy to relay a message to Michael:
“Tell him he’s f8cking amazing, and I want to meet him.”
Best part is Billy decided to show this to Debbie who looked about as repulsed as a mother can get and spontaneously and hilariously vocalised her repulsion too:
“OK, Lindsay!!! — Delete! Delete! Delete!”
In other words – get your low classy, child star drama away from my son.
Iraq and China will sign a deal next week to develop the Ahdab oil field, restoring an agreement that was canceled after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an Iraqi spokesman said Thursday.
…Saddam Hussein’s regime defied United Nations sanctions that limited direct dealings with Iraq’s oil industry and signed a deal in 1997 with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
That contract, worth $1.2 billion, gave a subsidiary of the Chinese company concessions to develop the field on a production-sharing basis for 22 years.
The new agreement will be a service contract, under which China will not be a partner in profits and instead will be paid for its work.
Once the contract is signed, it will be the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new Iraqi government. A number of companies say they signed deals with Saddam’s regime and demand that those be honored, or the countries involved be given priority on new agreements.
How is it American companies are the only ones getting screwed, when we paid for the freakin’ war to begin with?
Barack Obama’s ‘lost’ brother found in Kenya
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate’s half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.
“No-one knows who I am,” he told the magazine, before claiming: “I live here on less than a dollar a month.”
Just hitting the wires, crude inventories for the week ended Aug. 16 rose a massive 9.4 million barrels, much larger than the expected increase of 1.0 million barrels.
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Sound depressingly, horrifyingly familiar?
Today’s history slice brought to you by the Stone Age, a commenter over at HotAir…
…and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Young British Soldier“.
Authorities cut open a slain bear and found a shoe lost by a Florida man while fighting off a bear that attacked his 8-year-old son in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The footwear was discovered in the black bear’s stomach during a necropsy at the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center, Smokies spokeswoman Nancy Gray said Monday.
It leaves little doubt rangers killed the right bear.
No, not the “ask Manolo about fashion forward forest footwear” lesson. I mean the “don’t tease bears when you smell like a bucket o’ Popeye’s spicy” lesson!
Authorities say the attack was unprovoked, though Pala said their clothes might have smelled like fried chicken from a meal an hour earlier.
Jeez louise, I’ve got a brain and an opposable thumb, and I’d still bite you for that!
Fried chicken is one of the world’s least understood provocateurs. Makes anything with olfactory neurosensory cells lose it’s mind.
The International Olympic Committee should punish Russia by moving the 2014 Winter Olympics out of Sochi, Russia, the co-chairs of the congressional House Georgia Caucus said.
Reps. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., and Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said in a joint statement they plan to file a resolution declaring that Russia’s movement of troops into Georgia on the eve of the Beijing Olympics makes it an unacceptable country to host the games.
“It is practically and financially untenable to hold the 2014 Winter Olympic Games less than 20 miles from a zone of conflict, particularly when the prospective host country has played a significant role in the escalation of that conflict,” according to a draft of the resolution.
World Stuff | Mr. Bingley | 2:39 pm | Comments Off on It Does Display a Certain Lack of Reverence and Respect
…I was reminded of a magical vacation we took in the early 60’s, when Bingley was just a Brussell sprout. He developed chicken pox while we were there. In answering a customs officer’s question about the origin of the puling infant’s pustules, mother described them as the result of “swarms of mosquitoes taking tender baby bites”. They let us on the plane back to New York. Only afterward did she find out about the machete that Grinch had received as a parting gift from the gardener and tucked ~ unsheathed ~ into his golf bag. How the other customs guy shoved his hand down into the bag and came up with all his fingers is a mystery to this day.
Mountain Man and I, being all of 6 and 9 or so years old, had the best time. For instance, the garbage service consisted of one affable native, an ancient donkey and a well worn but servicable cart with a couple drums lashed to the back. Such as the times were, he offered to take the children and mother duly dumped us in the cart to help him with his rounds. EVERY OTHER DAY. ( I would happily have handed ebola off to the first stranger in a wheeled conveyance, had one wanted him, but none did and now you wouldn’t dare. That’s a shame.) (That you can’t trust the cart man, I mean.) (Not about getting rid of ebola. What kind of mother do you think I am? He only gets given away if they bring him back.) (Pffft. And don’t they always.)
So wonderful childhood memories sparked by the Jamaican uniforms.
And now I can’t get the damn song out of my head.
“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhat enlightened, or do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican Party’s worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?”
…one of my favorite summer treats has always been a re-reading of this:
Louis L’Amour’s Haunted Mesa. It’s just the right mix of mysticism, fantasy, detective story and old time Western.
The Navajo called them the Anasazi, the “ancient enemy,” and their abandoned cities haunt the canyons and plateaus of the Southwest. For centuries the sudden disappearance of these people baffled historians. Summoned to a dark desert plateau by a desperate letter from an old friend, renowned investigator Mike Raglan is drawn into a world of mystery, violence, and explosive revelations. Crossing a border beyond the laws of man and nature, he will learn of the astonishing world of the Anasazi and discover the most extraordinary frontier ever encountered.
Many of the plot devices were drawn from Mayan mythology ~ the portals between worlds, the underworld itself. I’m not sure you can imagine my absolute delight (and the source of a shreiking “holy CRAP!!!” email to ebola) when I came across this MSNBC article, but I was stoked.
Portal to mythical Mayan underworld found Archaeologists discovered maze of stone temples in underground caves
Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.
Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.
Archeologists say Mayans believed the underground complex of water-filled caves leading into dry chambers — including an underground road stretching some 330 feet — was the path to a mythical underworld, known as Xibalba.
Part of the reason the book spoke to me was personal. I’ve spent weeks climbing over stones and up pyramids in places like Tikal, Chichen Itza and Uxmal, as well as using a candle for light in the excavation tunnels under Kaminal Juyú, visiting just unearthed sacrificial remains (nothing like confronting a Spielberg-ish silent, screaming skull with skeleton illuminated suddenly out of the dark, 20 feet underground). You hear voices in the jungle in those places, if you’re any kind of spook at all, and I am a reluctant but consummate one. (In fact, Tikal translates to “place of voices” and I swear they’re still there.)
Oh, man, I so enjoyed my time in the past.
And now Xibalba is real. DAMN.
That’s cooler than shit.
Highway crashes kill more than 41,000 in 2007
Traffic deaths in the United States declined last year, reaching the lowest level in more than a decade.
Some 41,059 people were killed in highway crashes, down by more than 1,000 from 2006.
The fatality rate of 1.37 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled in 2007 was the lowest on record, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in its report Thursday.
“Every 100 million miles” means what, I wondered. How many miles did Americans travel in 2007 for those 41K deaths? About 270 BILLION.
That’s a lot of tires. And damn near a Qantas-type safety record.
US team blame stadium official for gymnastics loss
Strange to blame officials, since the Chinese team had just handed you an opening with their own balance beam bobbles.
While a transparent attempt at shifting the blame, it was completely the “falling-on-the-ass”pect that cost the U.S. the gold. And don’t nobody do that but your ownselves.
And I do mean “in” and not “of.”
Seriously. I walk by here every day, and the crowd of tourists is many deep and never ending…and they are having a great time getting their pictures take next to it…embracing it…caressing it.
And, let’s be honest: if you were a tourist in Manhattan, you’d be there too!
You know what I’m talking about…
That would be the Archbishop of Canterbury’s view of Communist China.
…But one of the things which struck me there was that we were not talking just about a moral vacuum in general, but a vacuum in what was once before the Cultural Revolution essentially something which guaranteed everyone’s welfare.
The Evening Standard points out an inconvenient fact or two about cuddly communists.
…”During the Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, the guarantee ran out for 40 million Chinese, leaving them equally dead. Others survived by eating leaves and bark or, in remote provinces, babies.”
Walden, author of China: A Wolf in the World? goes on to observe with a note of sarcasm: “The regime guaranteed the welfare of intellectuals, too, notably when it encouraged them to speak out during the Hundred Flowers episode of 1956. Mao then scythed them down.”
According to a statement, Mr Medvedev told his defence minister and chief of staff that “the goal has been attained”.
“I’ve decided to finish the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace. The safety of our peacekeeping forces and civilian population has been restored,” he said.
The CNN anchor is asking about the President who just used phrases like:
“…dramatic and brutal escalation.”
…along with…
“…and is unacceptable in the 21st Century.”
Tough talk. Raising tough questions:
“The question on the table is, if the U.S. cannot do anything to protect Georgia, do they [Poland, Baltics, Caucusas, etc.] then throw their lot back in with the Russians?”
15:30 ET Dow +14.24 at 11747.18, Nasdaq +19.06 at 2433.16, S&P +4.47 at 1300.79:
[BRIEFING.COM] Stocks attempt to turn higher but run into selling resistance. The major indices remain in positive territory.
The Dow is underperforming, as it has throughout the session. IBM (IBM 126.05, -2.76) and Boeing (BA 66.53, -1.34), which have heavy weightings in the price-weighted index, are the main drags. According to reports, Boeing may not bid on the $35 billion Air Force refueling tanker contract.
Great news for our neck o’ the woods if it is.
WHOA!! It IS true!
Boeing Co is “strongly considering” not bidding on the upcoming competition for a $35 billion U.S. Air Force refueling tanker contract, Aviation Week, the aerospace industry magazine, reported on Monday, without identifying its sources.
The No. 2 Pentagon contractor has not commented on the issue publicly, but some of its backers in Congress have argued that the revised terms of the competition, issued by the Pentagon last week, favor Northrop Grumman Corp and its European partner EADS.
Gotta get major dad started on that French Rosetta Stone course just in case…
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof | Mr. Bingley | 
August 21, 2008 2:50 pm | 
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