Posts

I appear to be shorter (5'6") than almost every famous modern male. Makes me feel like a hobbit. Of course, I have to wonder about some of the reported heights. Bea Arthur is only 5'9"? For that matter, Cher is 5'4"? That’s the same height as Alan Ladd. (Seriously. They used to have him stand on things to look taller than his female costars. Except for Veronica Lake. 4'11". The Glass Key. Good movie.) I personally think the best height is for Charles Schulz. They report him as 5'12". :) ...

Not as bad as it could have been. :)

So how were Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster paying the bills when they were coming up with that revolutionary idea? Why, drawing the comic adventures of Slam Bradley, private detective and racist thug, of course! Ben-San Arizona shares a few choice panels from his collection of old Detective Comics (before Batman took over). Courtesy of Daily Scans

First, we teach them to fly fighter planes. Then we enable them to assemble small robotic parts. I, for one, do not welcome our future rat cell overlords. Link courtesy of Boing Boing

Another writer makes the mistake of assuming faith is only present in religious belief and gets called on it in a review by Reason. If faith is “belief in things unseen” — the definition I grew up with — it’s not hard to see that we run a substantial portion of our lives on faith. And if that is the case, it’s pretty obvious that just because some people do bad things because of their religious faith doesn’t somehow mean it is qualitatively different when others do bad things because of their faith in a utopian system, a strong leader, or Jodie Foster finally noticing them if they just assassinate that president. ...

Only an UNC fan could know how much these words truly mean after the last few seasons: “[We’ve gone] from being the most selfish team I’ve ever been a part of to the most selfless team I’ve seen.” - Melvin Scott, Senior Guard sniff… Courtesy of Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports

According to Newsweek, one proposal before the Pentagon now is to use Special Forces soldiers and local paramilitaries to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, both in Iraq and if they crossed the border into Syria. Here’s a quote from Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service: “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.” ...

While I don’t subscribe to our hometown newspaper — I prefer some of the weekend coverage of The News & Observer over in Raleigh — it’s a shame that a “small, family-owned media group” comes in and immediately starts axing employees at the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun. Link courtesy of Romenesko

The legal fights continue, but the Washington state Democratic Party says their candidate, Christine Gregoire, has defeated Republican Dino Rossi by eight votes in the gubernatorial race. Link courtesy of Talking Points Memo

This article has the overblown title of " The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing," and it’s the Hoover Institution on Marxism, but it’s still interesting. “The Baran-Wallerstein revision of Marxism does provide a new global reformulation of the immiserization thesis. But the locus of this misery, the Third World, does not and cannot provide an adequate objective foundation for a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system.” I would think an even larger problem is that there would be the need for an organized opposition representing and supported by the exploited, which is far more likely within a country than across the world. Is the identity of a global underclass really more powerful right now than so many religious, political, ethnic, and other identifications? ...