Eric Robert Rudolph has been caught:
Olympic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph -- wanted in bombings that killed two people and injured more than 100 in the Southeast -- was arrested early Saturday in western North Carolina, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft confirmed.I lived in Alabama when he bombed a Birmingham abortion clinic, injuring a nurse and killing a police officer, and when he bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (we were watching it unfold live at a local watering hole).
The Army of God is now one member short - hopefully Ashcroft will make it permanent with a death sentence.
Hey, hey, today we're off to celebrate RoverPundit's birthday in Fort Collins. So, posting will be non-existent (from me anyway) until I return - hopefully with some photos for your personal amusement.
Have a great day!
* He's even gotten his boobies.
AP: Americans in Gaza warned of kidnap threats
With nobody willing to toss themselves under bulldozers or standing in front of armed terrorists as human shields anymore, the ISM gets desperate in its recruiting efforts.
MSNBC: Tyson says he wants to rape former accuser
“I JUST HATE her guts. She put me in that state, where I don’t know,” Tyson said. “I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her.”A call for comment to Tyson’s adviser, Shelly Finkel, was not immediately returned.
That's got to be a fun career, being Mike Tyson's adviser. I figure that any overtime you spend on the job you get comped off of your time in Purgatory.
Jim Treacher has moved, adjust your clothing appropriately.
Uh oh - the conservatives aren't going to like this one bit:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Teenagers at high schools where condoms were available were no more likely to have sex than other teens, a study published Wednesday finds.Of course, this was common knowledge to people who understand their own sexuality and remember what it was like to be full of raging hormones. The kids who are going to have sex are, well, going to have sex - and no virginal sweetheart is going to suddenly say "C'mon boys, sex me up somethin' good!" just because there's a condom in the nurse's office.
Some conservative groups have staunchly opposed such programs, saying they send the wrong message and in effect encourage and enable teens to have sex before marriage.Because we all know that teens can't have sex unless they have condoms. That's right - the male penis doesn't work properly unless it's covered in a sheath of latex, and the female vagina automatically punishes any uncovered fleshy intruders with the very sharp teeth that girls have down there*. Fascinating stuff, this right-wing "science."
* If we just told boys a line like that, they'd never be willing to have sex. See, sometimes the solution is so simple that we overlook it.
What happens if you put one right-wing Christian* primate at the keyboard and give him a deadline? This.
Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog") is said to have come up with the most famous defense of the atheist belief that life was created by chance, not God. In a debate at Oxford, he is reported to have stated that if enough monkeys randomly pressed typewriter keys for a long enough time, sooner or later Psalm 23 would emerge.Actually, Dennis, it doesn't - you see, in order for the analogy of monkeys banging on the typewriters to work, anytime the monkeys put a letter in the right place, we'd keep it - and anytime they did something incorrect, we'd erase it. The analogy also, of course, assumes that the monkeys know to hit the keys (and the recent for-fun experiments reported in the news show that - duh - they don't). Apply the same thinking to the evolution of life in the universe, and you'll be on the right track.Not all atheists use this argument, but it accurately represents the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you'll get you, me and Bach's cello suites.
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I know I've done this test before, but I don't know if I've posted the results. So, here they are. My scores place me in the same quadrant as Hayek, Friedman, and Rand - not bad company, if you ask me (and for those of you who consider it bad company, I didn't ask you). Woo.
Maybe Tom and Jon will play along.
USA TODAY: AOL to launch area for African-Americans
Instead of a busy signal, you get the theme to "Shaft."
CNN details the lengths to which President Bush will go in pursuit of peace in the Middle East.
It looks like Instapundit, DailyPundit, VodkaPundit, and RoverPundit are - besides being remarkably similarly named - all offline at the moment.
Whoops.
Update: Michele (don't bother clicking, she's one of the down and out as well) says that our hosting company, HostingMatters, had a bit of a fire today.
Whoops.
Hooray, the templates and CSS files are in working order now, thanks to the very kind help provided by AstreaEdge, whose own blog has a layout and design that makes this one look like it was put together in semi-WYSIWYG software by someone very far behind in their web design skills (and hey, what do you know, it was!).
Many, many thanks for your help in isolating and remedying the problem (hint: it begins with M, ends with T, and has ICROSOF in the middle).
Lenny Bruce fans are harassing New York Governor George Pataki to posthumously pardon the comedian for his obscenity charges.
"I truly believe my father's soul can rest in peace with this," Kitty Bruce said.
I'm sure we'll be seeing that on the next episode of John Edward and his "Bogus Handsome Psychic" show.
Finally getting around to getting the old WWR material onto the MT-version of the site. Unfortunately, when we moved to MT, it only imported the last 1000 posts, leaving nearly the first three months untouched. So, piece by piece, I've been cutting and pasting them in - cleaning up the code - and publishing them. Since I've been doing it, it looks like I wrote all of the posts, but - truth be told - Tom wrote a good two or three.
To date, our first month - March, 2002 - is up and available. For some reason, using the same style sheet as the main page gave me a completely different (and poor) rendering of the page - so I've tweaked it a bit.
It's still not perfect, and it still doesn't make sense, so any CSS gurus out there that would care to help out - it'd be appreciated. I did some web design in 95/96, and then let my skills fall woefully behind. As you can see.
Anyway, if you're interested in our first half-month "on the air" - see the link above to the March '02 archives.
And if you're moved to give a little somethin' somethin' for our fourteen months of moderately entertaining whatever, there's a PayPal button over there for just such an event. PayPal is your friend.
I've been on a search committee for a position here and have conducted several telephone interviews this week. Apparently I either have better reflexes or more a devious bent than most people because I avoided the ENORMOUS missteps they make. A few tips in case you're being interviewed in the future:
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The latest front of the Cola War has opened up in China, and the United Nations can't do squat about it to prevent catastrophe...
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Yao Ming filing suit in pop war - Pepsi fan seeking to stop Coke ads
Yao Ming would not like to buy the world a Coke or even sell it one, because he endorses Pepsi. So, why is his image appearing on bottles of Coca-Cola in China?Coke won the rights to Yao's face as well because it cut a deal with the Chinese men's basketball team to display Chinese team players, including Yao, on its products.
Now the 7-foot-5-inch center is caught between two cola makers that can be as in-your-face as the Utah Jazz's power forward Karl Malone when it comes to endorsement deals.
So now he's fighting back -- sort of. "I am strongly against Coke's unauthorized use of my name and image to sell its products and for business promotions," Yao said in a written statement.
Yao has sued Coke, demanding an apology from the world's largest soft drink company and for 1 yuan, the equivalent of 12 cents.
Question... is Yao Ming allowed to come out and publicly state that he finds the flavor of Coca Cola to be utterly revolting as a form of retribution/negative advertising?
"I like Pepsi. I think Coca-Cola sucks. I wouldn't wash my pet dog's balls with it, let alone drink it."
I never thought I'd see a less threatening sports team name than that of my old high school, Sidney Lanier, whose intimidation factor was sent plummeting into the negatives with the following name:
The Sidney Lanier Poets
Yes, nothing would strike fear into the heart of the Vols or the Tigers across the way like a man with a pen and the ability to write lovely verse. Were we there to beat them or romance them? One could never be sure.*
Well, it looks like my hometown of Montgomery, Alabama has decided to do the Poets one better. They've just acquired a Class AA minor league baseball team. After spending the better part of two bits on in-depth name research, the owners have decided to call the team:
The Montgomery Biscuits
I shit you not.
* More often than not, it was to be beaten by them, like the sissy-named team we were.
Or at least know how to spell their belief:
"Creationism Vs. Evolutionalism," topic of Sunday's lecture through June 29; 11 a.m.; Institute of Divine Metaphysical Research, 11354 Amalgam Way, Suite B, Gold River; (916) 869-8217 or (916) 424-7427.Evolutionalism?
Um, ok.
Institute of Divine Metaphysical Research?
I'm afraid to ask.
First Persian Campaign, or the Stabilization of South Central Asia.
At least, that's how I hope this plays out in 50 years. We've suspended relations with Iran, and I'm sure Khamenei, for all his anti-American rhetoric and bully-speak, is sweating bullets. After all, I'm sure he's perfectly aware that the US military occupies two nations bordering his own.
Not being a Republican nor even a "little L" libertarian even, my inner Liberal immediately sat up and thought, "Oh my God! Not another war! We'll just create more terrorists, etc."
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What would happen if you continually randomly sampled the newest posts from over 40,000 blogs and tried to put some of them together in a semi-coherent format that resembled an e-newspaper?
This would happen: Bite My Blog.
The results can be... interesting.
I thought I knew about all the rather nasty stuff which the Bible holds, but this was a new one for me. The passage, Deuteronomy 28, has 14 verses detailings the blessings of God if you obey him, and 54 detailing the horrors that await those who would disobey.
And horrors they are:
53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you-so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot-will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.That's right - life will be so bad, thanks be to God, that you will eat the flesh of your own children. I'm happy to say that in my atheist household we've not had to resort to such extreme measures.
And people worship this beast? It boggles the mind.
Original idea came from here via here
AP: Girl rescued from washing machine
A 2-year-old girl was rescued from a locked, running washer at a coin laundry and her mother was arrested after a surveillance tape allegedly showed her putting the child into the machine, police said. An officer smashed the window of the machine with his baton to rescue the girl, who was "submerged in water," police Sgt. Matt Stone said.The child was unconscious when she was pulled from the washer Saturday but breathing. She was taken to a hospital where she was listed in serious condition with cuts, scrapes, bruises. She had inhaled some water but was expected to survive, Stone said.
Her mother, Erma Osborne, 35, of Pomona, California, later was arrested for investigation of child endangerment and held on $10,000 bail.
What an idiot... didn't she realize that the socks go missing in the dryer not the washer? If she's going to put her kid in the machine to catch any socks escaping, it really needs to be the dryer.
The Raving Atheist has been writing recently on the legal presumption of atheism: that the law, for all intents and purposes, assumes that relgious beliefs are false. His primary example is that of rendering medical aid to an individual in an emergency room (and, in most cases, I'd agree his argument is sound).
However, this story shows it doesn't work in all cases.
London — Walter Zepeda was possessed by the devil.Sounds like murder to me - how about you?His parents, devoutly religious members of a Pentecostal church that believes in such manifestations, knew that much to be true...
So Diego Zepeda-Cordera called his friend Alex Osegueda, a fellow member of the Missionary Church of Christ and a man of equal devotion, to help him rid his son of the evil. They had no idea the seven days of forced confinement it took to drive away the devil would also, literally, drain the life out of Walter.
He lost nine litres of fluid as he lay strapped with men's ties to metal chairs in the basement apartment he shared with his family in this western Ontario city. Ultimately he died of dehydration.
If I didn't like the fact that Fiona cried for no good reason at night, and blamed it on a boogeyman going bump in the night, and then wrapped her in duct tape and put her in the closet for a few days, I'd rightly - I hope - be sent to prison for life, or committed to the Sunny Days Happy Land Institution for the Insane, for my obvious inability to maintain a grasp on reality.
So, what did the law give the murderers in question?
Yesterday, the squarely cut shoulders of Mr. Zepeda-Cordero heaved silently as a judge sentenced him and Mr. Osegueda to four years in penitentiary for the ritual that caused the death of the teen...Yeah, boo hoo, so she spent an extra 499 days in prison FOR KILLING HER SON. If you're looking for sympathy, move along.The young man's mother, Ana Mejia-Lopez, sobbed into a handkerchief as she was given a single day for failing to provide the necessaries of life to her son. She was freed yesterday afternoon — the 500th day the trio had spent in incarceration.
And four years is a laughable joke of a sentence (as was the five that the prosecution was seeking).
Ontario Court Judge Deborah Livingstone said she had been struck through the long hours of the preliminary hearing by their emotion, obvious distress, and significant remorse.Note to the judge - who the hell cares? They killed their son. What did they think would happen by tying him up in the basement for seven days?
I doubt they would have been let off as easily had they claimed that Gulong the Space Turtle had possessed their son, and that Vortu the Mighty Pan-Galactic Chicken Curry Dish demanded the exorcism to free his soul. Somehow, god-belief gets special consideration - perhaps because it's an all-too common irrationality.
The law is atheistic? Not nearly enough.
(original story found via Corsair)
Fiona, aka The World Wide Runt, hit a major milestone this evening.
We fed her before dinner, then proceeded to enjoy a traditional Sunday roast (apparently traditional in LimeyLand, from where my wife hails). As we sat around for after-dinner talk, I took Fiona from her babyseat and proceeded to burp her.
She burped out the back end instead.
Lots.
And it leaked.
Lots.
On to me.
Lots. Lots. Lots.
It looked remarkably like chili con carne, but I seriously doubt it tasted anything like it. And I had no plans to sample her digested wares. The real trick was figuring out how to get my polo-style shirt* off without making contact with poop-laden cotton. Mission accomplished.
I'm so proud of my little girl.
* Not a Polo shirt, though. Do I have to hand in my neocon card?
It's the weekend - a holiday weekend - and you know what that means! That's right, pointless quiz-time. I do it for you, my people.
then get an endorsement deal from Minute Maid.
The thriving desertropolis of Battle Mountain, Nevada, was voted "Armpit of America" by Gene Weingarten in last year's Washington's Post. Rather than send suicide bombers to the paper's headquarters like some desert dwelling people would have done, they're having a $75,000 celebration underwritten by Old Spice underarm deodorant.
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Perusing the referrer logs, I came across the Canadian site Discover Teenergy.
I'm used to Site Meter showing referrals that have nothing to do with the WWR (such as CNN, or the NYT, which when they first showed up nearly gave me a heart attack), so I didn't expect to find a real link to the WWR.Welcome to DiscoverTeenergy.com
Teen + Energy = Teenergy! Discover Yours!
Exciting activities to enrich the lives and learning of teenagers.
Well, lo and behold, there we are.
Not sure if they chose us because we have something to offer gifted students (having been ones ourselves, thank you very much, and yes you may touch us, but not down there - well, maybe the cute ones can) - or because my name is Andy (as there seems to be an Andy thread running through the links they provide). Maybe both. Maybe neither.
Either way, welcome, Canuckistan teens!
My ex sent me some thoughtful greeting cards that you won't see from Hallmark, and - as it's a holiday weekend and I might not blog much - I thought I'd share.
Enjoy.
Bigwig over at Silflay Hraka is a daddy again. Go congratulate him and his wife - moreso the wife, as she did the real work while he just blogged about it. I think Mrs. WWR would have killed me had I been blogging during the c-section; she's already not so keen on the series of photos I have of it.
Yes, I'll post them, if you want. Well, some of them.
Thanks to Matt for pointing out the news.
Sure, sure, Vicky can say that SARS comes from cats, but those of us in the know, well, know:
The SARS virus might have originated in outer space, according to a scientist in Britain.I bet those damnable Operating Thetans are behind it all. Stupid old space-based spirits.
REUTERS: Bunny picks up parking ticket
A lop-eared rabbit has picked up a parking ticket that is well beyond its means, pet shop owner Cliff Chamberlain says.Chamberlain said he drove off before a traffic warden could slap the ticket on his van outside the shop. The frustrated official then stuck the ticket to the creature's hutch on the pavement.
Chamberlain said zealous traffic wardens made loading and unloading animals from his pet shop in Eccles, near Manchester, extremely difficult. "Somebody makes up all these rules and they have messed up," he told Reuters.
A parking official said tickets were only valid if they were handed straight to the driver or stuck to the vehicle.
The bunny's sudden fame has encouraged a number of potential buyers but Chamberlain insists it is not for sale.
I don't think this guy's problem is the loading and unloading of animals at his pet shop. Instead, I think he really needs to learn Supply and Demand: if people want to buy an animal from his pet shop he needs to be willing to sell it.
Why would he be unloading animals he isn't willing to sell them? What kind of pet shop is that? Is it next door to Michael Palin's cheese shop with the bazouki player?
by Andy
This story is about my in-laws. They are really great. I like them very much. They are very nice. They brought me a good gift*. My in-laws are good people.
The End
* It's not on the site anymore, but it's a lovely 18-year old bottle of the Glenturret single malt scotch. We opened it last night for a toast to Fiona - ahhh, a wee dram of heaven, it is.
Today, I got to thinking - something I like to do from time to time, just for giggles - that I've seen some companies with some really unfortunate names in the last couple years.
One of them is the Colorado Boring Company. Don't invite them to your next party.
Another is Cummins - whose webpage motto is "Unleashing the Power of Cummins." Well, alright, you just be sure to clean yourself up when you're done - here's a tissue.
Even better is when they put their name up alongside one of their subsidiary's names - that subsidiary being Onan. Kind of like they do here. Do the boys and girls in marketing think these things through?
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Raytheon is hiring.
Too cool - but you'll need to have cooking skills.
Radley Balko writes at Fox News about how the word "liberal" has been misappropriated and tainted by the left:
The problem is that "liberal" has been so defiled here in America, true liberals may never be able to reclaim it. In America, "liberalism" has been attached to such miserable public debacles as the welfare system, ever-expanding (and ever-failing) government and Michael Dukakis (search). Dukakis, you might remember, wore the "liberal" label George H.W. Bush tagged him with proudly -- and was promptly trounced in the 1988 election.The word "liberal" has become so infused with negative connotations, that the left is now attempting to hijack another word for their own use:
It's easy to see why the left likes "progressive." "Progressive," of course, connotes "progress," and by calling themselves "progressive," leftists can then point to their opponents as "regressive" or "opponents of progress."It's similar to how the mainstream recording industry stole the label of "Alternative" from indie college rock and used it to mean "a band you've never heard of but now we're going to shove it down your throat, so you better like it." It had nothing to do with what they were offering, but everything to do with what they wanted you to think they had to offer.But if your measure of "progress" is similar to most people's -- rising standards of living, longer lives, a happier citizenry, general prosperity -- the policies embraced by self-described "progressives" haven't done much to push us in that direction. The welfare state has wrought mass poverty, perverse incentives and a generation of fatherless children. Big government and excessive regulation have put unnecessary restraints on economic growth, innovation and the free market. And there are a growing number of environmentalists who now take the position that "progress" actually means moving backward, that we've put too much emphasis on human welfare at the expense of what was here before us.
The left is simply trying to sell itself - while hiding its failures.
Balko suggests that free-marketers, libertarians, and some conservatives should adopt the title of "liberal" and steal it back from those who ruined its proud history with their collectivist, socialist nightmares; I'm not sure I'm that brave.
For now, "small-L libertarian" suits me fine.
Okay, not to sound like a neocon or anything, but...
The school board where I live (Georgia college town- population 20,000) is hearing motions today on whether or not to use a part of its already overextended budget to buy Spanish language textbooks and hire more bilingual teachers. The county's non-English speaking population is 6.1%.
Okay... not to sound like Limbaugh but here goes- in this part of the country as is the case in other parts of the country (even moreso in most), English is the language of government, newspapers, popular culture, commerce, traffic signs, and medicine not to mention being the language of Shakespeare and Jesus. Why isn't it the official language?
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I'll be doing a little guest blogging over at Vicky's place today. Won't you stop by?
Would it help if I said she had her photo back up on the site?
(It turns out that someone I linked to over at Vicky's is unable to comment, so in case that person wants to comment, I've reproduced the post as an extended entry below)
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I almost don't know what to say about these people.
Oh wait...it's coming to me- here it is: They're a pack of self-righteous mongoloid philistines*. Maybe when we've solved this problem (which I think is so much more pressing than the removal of everything but silent prayer and the "Evolution is just a theory" stickers from the Montgomery County School system) we can send Johnny Cash back to prison.
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Goldberg's third installment on neoconservatism is up for public consumption.
Thanks to John for tipping me off to it.
REUTERS: Court: Bank Robber Had Gun, Wasn't 'Armed'
More stupidity from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the Left Coast:
A federal appeals court has tossed out the armed bank robbery conviction of a Los Angeles man after finding that -- while he admitted being armed and robbing the bank -- he did not mean to show his gun to a teller while demanding money.Deshon Rene Odom carried a loaded revolver in the waistband of his pants while he and an accomplice robbed a Los Angeles-area bank in 1996, but he did not brandish the weapon or even mention it to employees.
A manager noticed the gun only when Odom raised his jacket to stuff away a pillowcase full of stolen cash.
When it comes to thinking a guy armed with a gun in his belt is unarmed, I guess you shouldn't except any less rational a decision from a panel of judges who are incapable of judgement.
Feeling relatively uninspired today, so I'll take this opportunity to fill you in on my literary and musical pursuits of the moment. Feel free to add your own to expand our horizons, leading us to new vistas of exemplary displays of the written word and auditory pleasure. Or tell us you're reading Michael Moore and listening to Blink 182. Either way.
| Currently Listening | Currently Reading |
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The second installment of Goldberg's series on neoconservatism is up. The more I read, the more convinced I am that Goldberg's assertion that:
And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it....succinctly describes certain people who like to throw the neocon label on anyone who dares disagree with their liberal views.
(thanks to Josh for the pointer to the new installment)