Prometheus 6

Fish Tale Has DNA Hook: Students Find Bad Labels
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.

In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

"Where are Jerome Corsi's books?" "They're in the Bullshit section, sir. Just follow the stench."

"The Obama Nation" was written and printed because major American publishing houses have decided that there's money to be made in funding right-wing boutique imprints modeled after the Washington-based Regnery, which has made a small fortune stoking the hard-right furnace with combustible prose. Corsi's book is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster, which hired right-wing political operative Mary Matalin to edit the imprint. Random House has a similar imprint in Crown Forum, and Penguin Group USA has Sentinel. Their business model -- and this is all about business -- is predicated on the existence of an echo chamber of right-wing radio and television shows willing to promote these publishers' products -- however noxious. Beyond that is a network of conservative book clubs and organizations willing to place the sort of advance bulk orders for controversial books that will guarantee them a place on the bestseller lists.

It's just that sort of order that made "The Obama Nation" No. 1 on Sunday's New York Times bestseller list, and essentially "laundered" Corsi onto the respectable broadcast media's guest list.

The extreme-right way to make a buck
Jerome Corsi, author of a pitiful new slam on Obama, is the product of a publishing industry that feeds off extremism.
Tim Rutten

...Corsi is frank about his motives for writing "The Obama Nation." As he told the New York Times this week: "The goal is to defeat Obama. I don't want Obama to be in office."

That's clear enough from the text. You can pretty well sum the whole thing up this way: The Democratic candidate is a deceitful jihadist drug addict who, if elected, plans to impose a black supremacist, socialist regime.

I told you this would turn out badly.

Under proposed convention bylaws, delegates would be forced to register their votes on a tally sheet with the convention secretary — the rules could be altered or suspended before the start of the convention.

“By putting her name in nomination, you're putting people on the spot,” said former delegate counter Matt Seyfang.

None of this voice voting fatuousness. You have to put your name on the line. And how much you want to bet this guy

Indeed, many Hillary diehards, including at least one member of the New York delegation, are reluctant to vote for Clinton after switching over to Obama.

...is the same guy as this guy?

“My boss is totally conflicted about it — and pissed Hillary is putting us in this position,” said a congressional staffer for another New York House member. “We still haven’t made up our mind and I don’t know when we are going to.”

Question

Consider that chimpanzees share as much as 98 percent of our genetic makeup. They make and use tools, recognize and identify hundreds of individuals in their groups and learn from others skills like termite fishing. Of course, the reverse is also true: we are 98 percent chimpanzee. Would we condone putting funny clothes on human children so that we could laugh at the way they look like subhuman buffoons?

Answer:  Yes. Yes . A thousand times yes.

Because in "Why Do We 'Keep and Bear Arms'," he asks

Is "Militia" — as the Framers intended — an arm of government? Or did the Framers define militia as something completely different — a group of armed citizens with a right to "keep and bear Arms" to guard against unjust or tyrannical government power?

As you would expect, he says the second option is the answer. And he quotes a couple of dictators to support his contention.

Dictators throughout history sought to disarm their citizenries in order to impose power:

Vladimir Lenin said, "One man with a gun can control 100 without one."

Mao Zedong said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Josef Stalin said: "We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?"

Shaq vs. Kobe, the Ringtone
By Scott Thill
July 01, 2008 | 6:35:47 PM

Last week, a viral video insult surfaced that reignited the supposedly settled feud between NBA stars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. The short version is that Shaq smacked Kobe down in a freestyle rap, which centered around the nasty refrain, "Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes." And proving that nothing on the internet ever truly dies, that viral refrain has in turn inspired a ringtone.

Those who love to insult Kobe Bryant every time their phone rings can now rejoice. The rest of you can roll your eyes starting....now!

His bottle labels follow a long tradition of exploiting the town's name. Even city officials do it.

A sign posted on the way out of town reads, "Temporarily Out of Weed," while another says "100 Percent Pure Weed." Dillmann noted those examples in an appeal letter he sent to the alcohol bureau.

Once, Dillmann said, his wife, a former teacher, was delayed on a field trip to San Francisco as tourists clamored to pose next to the school bus, which said "Weed High."

Come on...laugh.

Drug references on alcoholic beverages were banned in 1994, agency spokesman Art Resnick said.

"We protect consumers of alcohol beverages against misleading advertising and labeling," he said.

Dude, we know the difference between beer and weed. Weed is this town in California.

Brewer ordered not to use ‘Legal Weed’ caps
Says it’s just a play on where he makes beer; regulators call it misleading
The Associated Press
updated 9:25 p.m. ET April 23, 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Vaune Dillmann thought the wording on his bottle caps was just a clever play on the name of the Northern California town where he brews his beer — Weed.

Federal alcohol regulators thought differently. They have ordered Dillmann to stop selling beer bottles with caps that say "Try Legal Weed."

See? Dubya DID sacrifice to support the troops

Bush Says He's Not A Golfer In Wartime
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; A02

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

And yes, that's all he was willing to do.

It’s highly significant that the destructive force in question is (fake) electricity. Electricity is epistemologically and morally tricky — shocks can be painful, as a brush with a cow fence or a Taser hit is — but they are used and morally justified in many sectors as a form of discipline. Electric shocks for a 1963 working-class man — who rewired his own lamp, if not his own house — were not uncommon. (My grandfather climbed electrical poles for a living, sometimes in storms, and he had plenty of midcentury big-shock stories.)

So how is this New Haven guy the next Eichmann again?

The Milgram subjects are absolutely right to defer to authority on the question of whether the shocks are dangerous. They very well might not be. And in fact the authority figure says they’re not! Intuition may be a good guide to some kinds of suffering, but it’s not a good guide to electricity; experts are. The subject believes he’s causing the man pain, but not hurting him.

Milgram, the Torturers of New Haven and the Truth of that Obedience Experiment
By Virginia Heffernan

The Quantum Sleeper Unit is a high-level security system designed for maximum protection in various hostile environments

Quantum Sleepers can also be fitted to provide protection from destructive forces of nature such as tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

The Quantum Sleeper is the ultimate in protection, entertainment and communications, “ ALL ROLLED UP IN ONE”.

PROTECTION
With this unit you don't have to run to a "Safe Room", you're already in it.

ENTERTAINMENT
The Quantuum Sleeper comes with options for:
- CD player,
- DVD Screen with PC hookup,
- Microwave and Refrigerator

COMMUNICATIONS
The Quantum Sleeper comes with options for Cellular Phones, CB and Short-wave Radios

We need this, it seems. And no it's not on the front page and therefore not in the syndication feed.

Teacher: Flight to Mexico Was Boy's Idea
By OSKAR GARCIA
Associated Press Writer

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- A former teacher accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student said it was the boy's idea to flee to Mexico and that he told her he would kill her if she left him.

"He was pressuring me and that's why we chose to leave," Kelsey Peterson said at a pretrial hearing Monday where U.S. Magistrate Judge F.A. Gossett denied bail, saying Peterson was a flight risk.

Peterson said the boy left bruises on her arms and chest, told her what to wear and threatened her life. She said he was in a gang and had her name tattooed across his chest, and that the boy's family knew about and encouraged their relationship.

The boy's lawyers disputed Peterson's allegations and accused her attorney of lying and using Mexican stereotypes to cloud facts of the case.

After watching Clarence Thomas on 60 Minutes last night, I've decided not to refer to him using the racialist term, "Uncle Tom."

From now on, it's "QUISLING." I think Vidkun in the Danish equivalent of Clarence anyway. 

I wasn't going to comment at all on Mr. Weeks as it is just not my business. But this

Weeks said their current troubles began on June 3, when, he said, Bynum suddenly announced to their congregation that she was quitting the church, the church that she and Weeks had founded together, never to return. “It was the first time I knew she felt this way about our church family,” Weeks said. Bynum has always maintained her own, separate ministry that she founded and led prior to their marriage in 2002.

is some trifling shit.

Emphasis correctly added by Skeptical Brotha.  Weeks said "The devil made me do it." He did not say, "The devil made the church whip her ass." It ain't the church family she's upset at. It's Mr. Weeks.

"For me every day is an anniversary of Sept. 11," Giuliani said after reviewing emergency response equipment at the Pinellas Sheriff's Office with Attorney General Bill McCollum and Sheriff Jim Coats.

Starting in Louisiana, an intensifying push by lawmakers has determined pants worn low enough to expose underwear poses a threat to the public, and they have enacted indecency ordinances to stop it.

A ‘Great Society’ Conservative
By JOSHUA GREEN

Mr. Rove had extraordinary power within the administration to shape domestic policy. But pushing through many of his programs proved difficult. On Social Security and immigration reform, Congress and the country weren’t prepared to embrace his vision. Like a 1960s liberal in love with the abstract merits of a guaranteed income, Mr. Rove misread the mood of the country and tried to do too much.

Mr. Rove married a liberal’s faith in the potential of government to a conservative’s contempt for its actual functioning. This was the contradiction at the heart of “compassionate conservatism,” and it helps explain the tension between the president’s fine words about, say, helping those hurt by Hurricane Katrina, and his actions.

“Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true for purely logical reasons,” Dr. Gale said.

He even provided a proof, writing in an e-mail message:

The Myth, the Math, the Sex
By GINA KOLATA

EVERYONE knows men are promiscuous by nature. It’s part of the genetic strategy that evolved to help men spread their genes far and wide. The strategy is different for a woman, who has to go through so much just to have a baby and then nurture it. She is genetically programmed to want just one man who will stick with her and help raise their children.

Surveys bear this out. In study after study and in country after country, men report more, often many more, sexual partners than women.

I'm resorting 'chatter' into the undefined terms bucket. 

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.

Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.

Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.

The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.

Unsatisfied with hints of improprieties, Wolfowitz got the certainty he needed to make his next career decision.

Wolfowitz Said to Push for Deal to Quit
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 16 — After six weeks of combating efforts to oust him as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz began Wednesday to negotiate the terms under which he would resign, in return for the dropping or softening of the charge that he had engaged in misconduct, bank officials said.

Mr. Wolfowitz was said to be adamant that he be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigned, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Did he screw up? Obviously. But that doesn't matter. What matters is if official note of the fact is made.

Media figures continue to describe Imus firing as "lynching"

In reference to Imus' calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," Buchanan later claimed: "Imus was lynched because he was a white male who said it."...

I wonder if he gets a bonus if Undercover Mike walks.

Grand Jury in Bell Case Hears From New Witness
By AL BAKER

A grand jury in Queens that is weighing evidence in the police shooting of Sean Bell interrupted its deliberations today to hear from a new witness, a law enforcement official said.

The witness testified for less than an hour, the official said, and the grand jury has gone back to deliberating.

On Wednesday, the first day of deliberations, the panel did not vote on whether to hand up indictments in the case.

Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind
By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER, March 13 — The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about “friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,” in 1972, he was not referring to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question, lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling you get after a nice hike, perhaps.

“A high is medically the releasing of endorphins in the brain — yes, drugs cause it, but so do lots of other things,” said State Senator Bob Hagedorn, a Democrat from the suburbs of Denver who successfully led the drive on Monday to make Mr. Denver’s anthem “Rocky Mountain High” Colorado’s second state song. The tune will have joint status with “Where the Columbines Grow,” which pretty much everyone agrees is about flowers.

On discourse with our recent influx of new readers

Here’s the valued Pandagon Guest:

Guest: The Lord Jesus loves [Pandagon blogger different from the one who wrote the post to which the Guest is responding] purely and deeply and will therefore send you to an eternity of torment unless you love him back. I will pray for you.

How does G00fu5 respond?

G00fu5: Come, let us reason together. Surely if we engage in a Wimbledon-like exchange of several hundred sequential one-line posts alternating between earnestness and insult that displaces all discussion by any other commenters of the actual post to which we are responding, we can come to some sort of productive agreement, if only through repetitive motion injury.

I notice some folks are having comment issues. I'd like to share a couple of resources that didn't actually help my views but encapsulate major sections of it. First, from News You Can Bruise for 2001 October 28

Perusing some Linux Today talkbacks today, I was reminded of the "Tar Pit From Hell" theory of discussion boards which I expounded to my co-workers many months ago. It is basically the following: when you add a public discussion forum to your site you are placing your site on a big slab of plexiglass which floats around on the Tar Pit From Hell. As long as no one actually uses the discussion forum, you are safe. But the more people pile on to use the discussion forum, the deeper your site sinks into the Tar Pit From Hell. There are various measures you can take to slow your descent into the Tar Pit From Hell, but none of them deal with the fundamental problem, which is the fact that your site is sinking into a damn tar pit.

A bit overstated. Still...

Next is the concise Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

I have gotten great utility from this principle, both rhetorically and philosophically.