Thursday, June 30, 2005

One last thing

Crazy Foreigners

Apparently, the president elect of Iran is this fuckhead:

fuckhead

The fuckhead on the right is Mahmood Ahmadinejad.  The man on the left is an American hostage.  The picture is from the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Representative of the religion of peace Ahmadinejad said,

“The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world… Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency as saying. “The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end.”

The best way to ensure that in Iran would be for dear Mahmood and his cronies to immediately remove themselves from power, and for good measure, this life. 

Besides participating in the the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Ahmadinejad’s other credentials include serving as Teheran’s mayor, as a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for the nation’s missile and nuclear weapons programs, and has been identified as a suspect in the killing of Kurdish dissidents in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  As an unsurprising bonus, he has long been regarded as the most anti-Western of Iran’s presidential candidates. 

Give peace a chance!


Posted by Buckethead on 06/30/05 at 05:53 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Go west, middle-thirties man!

Just So You Know

The Buckethead Clan will be departing the DC area at an undetermined time this evening, heading toward an undisclosed location somewhere in Ohio.  I am concealing this information from you and my wife for the eminently simple reason that I have no fricken clue.  But sooner or later, probably later, we will load up the bucketmobile with fireworks, small children and dogs; and newly equipped with iPod, we will drive off into the sunset with (at last count) as much as 2.4 days worth of music to listen to.

This patriotic journey to the heartland to celebrate (two days late) the signing of the Declaration of Independence will leave me far, far from my computer.  While I may have occasional access, I doubt I’ll be feeling much like posting, seeing as we have relatives to visit, picnics and fireworks to attend, a wedding to go to, (and wedding gifts to buy) and who knows what else. 

I hope everyone has a explosion and fire-filled Independence Day, consumes vast quantities of cheap hot dogs and cheaper beer, and takes at least a minute to reflect on the liberty we enjoy.


Posted by Buckethead on 06/30/05 at 05:41 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Religious beliefs and other tools for scoring cheap PR points

Unmitigated Gall
Via today's Best of the Web, we find the travails of Bethany Hauf, of Victorville CA, in a story entitled Term paper about 'God' earns student failing grade.
He told me you might as well write about the Easter Bunny. He wanted to censor the word God.
The horror!
Hauf's teacher approved her term paper topic — Religion and its Place within the Government — on one condition: Don't use the word God. Instead of complying with VVCC adjunct instructor Michael Shefchik's condition Hauf wrote a 10-page report for her English 101 class entitled "In God We Trust."

"He said it would offend others in class," Hauf, a 34-year-old mother of four, said. "I didn't realize God was taboo."
So she wrote it anyway. Perhaps she should have dropped English 101 and taken a basic comprehension course instead. Either that or she was spoiling for a fight.
"I don't loose my First Amendment rights when I walk into that college," Hauf said. She is demanding an apology from the teacher and that the paper be re-graded.
Mmmm... o-kaaaay. Which of the words below were foreign to her, I wonder:
Shefchik wrote her back an e-mail approving her topic choice, but at the same time cautioning her to be objective in her reporting. "I have one limiting factor," Shefchik wrote, according to the ACLJ. "No mention of big 'G' gods, i.e., one, true god argumentation."
Being an utterly irreligious fellow, I can't get too jacked up by either Hauf's overt religiosity or her teacher's overt lack thereof - they're each entitled to their kinks. But several things jumped out at me from the story.

First, the author or editor of the story needs to reread the style guide for the Daily Press, assuming they have one. It probably contains a maxim such as "Q: What is hard to lose but can sometimes become loose? A: Your bowels". And if it doesn't have a style guide, it should. Failing an editorial lapse, maybe Hauf actually said "loose", in which case she should be immediately demoted to a remedial spoken English course. And failing that, of course I'm just being too picky, but only because I'm perfect in every way.

Second, even giving credit for the teacher's apparent antipathy toward things religious, Hauf received a valid assignment for an English class, and a challenging one, given her choice of topic. Rather like the lipogram by Ernest Vincent Wright called Gadsby, only a whole lot shorter and easier.

Finally, who is this ACLJ, and why do we need yet another set of harpies to advance the cause of feigned infringement on our basic rights as human beings? Even if we did need such an additional advocacy organization (and I'm not saying we do, by a long shot), at what point in time did the First Amendment become stretched to cover fulfillment of class assignments, as distinct from simple expression of opinion? I don't think one loses one's rights to free speech when entering a classroom, but there's a time and place for expression of opinion, and it's the part of the class where, well, people are discussing opinions. In an expository paper, such as the one she was assigned, opinion has next to nothing to do with, and fulfilling the assignment has everything to do with one's grade. If she'd gotten a bad grade because of her views, I'd understand the umbrage, but she clearly got a bad grade because she explicitly failed to fulfill the assigned task.

And hollering about repression isn't a substitute for just doing the damned assignment.

Posted by Patton on 06/30/05 at 12:09 AM
Unmitigated Gall • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Roe V Wade and Judicial Activism

Just So You Know

Commenter Bram offered Roe v Wade as an example of judicial activism.  Is it?  I think it is not, and here’s my reasoning.

Roe v Wade is a decision that is often discussed, but rarely read.  I just went and read it, and I think you should too.  There’s a lot of historical ground that the decision covers.  This is not a matter of “inventing” a right to abortion; nothing of the sort took place. 

Very specific constitutional grounds were specified in Roe’s appeal—privacy and liberty.  Roe did not argue she had a “right” to an abortion; she argued that she had the liberty to do as she pleased.  Your liberty and privacy are guaranteed by the constitution, and as such preempt state law.  So the question before the court was, can a state impose in liberty and privacy in this manner?

You gotta read the whole thing, but the thinking is something like this:

  • There’s an ancient concept called “quickening”, marking the beginning of life, possibly a “Person”.
  • Medical science puts detectable quickening (movement) roughly around the end of the first trimester.
  • There is tremendous variation in thought over when quickening occurs, but believing it occurs prior to the end of the first trimester is a religious decision.  The constitution contains no definition of the word Person.  We cannot apply “Person” prior to the end of the first trimester unless religious grounds are used.  State abortion laws are predicated upon defining prenatal beings as “Persons”.
  • The state does have an interest in protecting life and as such may make legislation regarding abortion.  This interest must be balanced against the constitutionally guaranteed liberties of the persons involved.
  • Prior to the end of the first trimester, state laws restricting abortion do so by imposing a standard derived from religion, not science.
    • By no means did the court confer an arbitrary right to an abortion.  Rather, the court struck a careful balance between personal liberty/privacy, guaranteed by the constitution, and states’ interests.  It drew the line at the boundary between religion and science.

    I really don’t want to provoke an abortion war, but I think it’s worthwhile to note that the tenor of this decision follows the pattern I’ve noted:  A difficult issue, subject to considerable subjective analysis, but still requiring a decision to be made.  This is not a simple issue of states’ rights.  States may not make laws that violate the constitution, and Roe raised a serious and substantive constitutional challenge.


    Posted by Ross on 06/29/05 at 02:50 PM
    Just So You Know • Permalink

    A question that seriously needed to be asked

    		Unmitigated Gall

    In an editorial from today's WSJ, Peggy Noonan asks the question:

    What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

    As an admittedly devoted fan of Ms. Noonan's prose, of course I'll tell you to read the entire thing. Among other items, covering the range of the political classes, she has a go at Barack Obama's unfortunate-but-inevitable first public attempt at foot-ingestion, as well as Bill Frist's latest.

    Sadly, she's doesn't attempt to answer it, but it's still a pertinent question.

    My sense is that the answer has its roots in that whole "power corrupts" leitmotif. It's certainly not that they're somehow, by nature, more special than the rest of us. But perhaps they don't know that?

    Posted by Patton on 06/29/05 at 11:22 AM
    Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

    Tuesday, June 28, 2005

    The price of being Batman

    		Just So You Know

    Via ace, we find that the ever useful Forbes magazine runs the numbers for how much aspiring crime fighters will need to throw down to become a Batclone.  Short answer, a lot.  3,365,449 samoleans, to be exact.  And that’s the bargain basement price, for those without access to a billion dollar inheritance.  (According to the Forbes ranking of the richest fictional individuals, Bruce Wayne comes in at number seven just after Willy Wonka.  If the Bruce were real, Forbes believes he’d eb a notch below Rupert Murdoch.) So how do you become Batman?  Let’s take a look.

    For the bat-fu, Forbes suggests Shaolin training:

    A good place to start would be an internship at the birthplace of kung fu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. One month of training at the prestigious Tagou school costs about $740, including a private room and training with a personal coach. It’ll take a while to get good enough to stop the Joker’s worst thugs, though, so count on spending at least three years and about 30 grand for the trip.

    I had no idea that Shaolin training was that cheap.  If I had known that ten years ago, I would now be the baddest technical writer in world history.  But I don’t think Mrs. Buckethead would approve of me going off to China for several years at this point.

    Where do you stash your gear between missions?  Seeing as the underlying geology of New York is not conducive to cave formation, Forbes recommends another alternative:

    So what’s a budget-minded vigilante to do? We recommend you find yourself a nice out-of-the-way warehouse. In the outer boroughs of New York City, a decent-sized ground-floor commercial space can be leased for as low as $2,000 a month, particularly in isolated, questionably safe neighborhoods, exactly the kind of place the Bat would fly.

    That’s not a bad deal.  Certainly cheaper than what my friend Drew is paying for his condo in Battery Park. 

    This is the kind of hard hitting, informative investigative reporting we need to see more of.


    Posted by Buckethead on 06/28/05 at 04:55 PM
    Just So You Know • Permalink

    Monday, June 27, 2005

    I finally understand why my grandfather always read the obituaries

    		Entertainment
    There are two publications whose obituaries I always read. The Economist, which does a single obituary as a full page item to close each issue, always provides interesting facts about important, though sometimes little-known, people of our time.

    And then, there's the Telegraph, which does the same, but with taglines such as this:
    William Donaldson

    Wykehamist pimp, crack fiend and adulterer who created Henry Root and produced Beyond the Fringe.
    27 Jun 2005
    How, I ask myself, could I not read such a death notice?

    Posted by Patton on 06/27/05 at 11:08 PM
    Entertainment • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

    Just say no hitter

    		Entertainment

    Garfield Ridge has a great post up on one of Baseball’s true greats:  Dock Ellis.

    Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he’d flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid.

    A bit later, how long exactly he can’t recall, he came across Mitzi flipping through a newspaper. She scanned for a moment, then noticed something.

    “Dock," she said. “You’re supposed to pitch today.”

    Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn’t pitching until Friday. He was sure.

    “Baby," she replied. “It is Friday. You slept through Thursday.”

    Dock went on to pitch a no-hitter.


    Posted by Buckethead on 06/27/05 at 05:49 PM
    Entertainment • Permalink

    Historical Perspective

    		Partisan Politics

    Maybe Buckethead doesn’t like it when uncomfortable comparisons emerge.

    Rather than pluck words, let’s look at it.

    The apology came a week after Durbin, the Senate minority whip, quoted from an FBI agent’s report describing detainees at the Naval base in a U.S.-controlled portion of Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures.

    “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings,” the senator said June 14.

    If I read or heard about prisoners “chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures” I too would assume that it referred to prisoners of some repressive regime.

    If I read your comments correctly, you all are telling me that you would not make this assumption, and that you acknowledge such activities occurring in US prisons.  You then neatly “cover your asses” with finger-wagging about how you don’t approve of such measures, but comparing us to really bad guys just isn’t fair.

    All the guy said is that these are practices that Joe Average, who believes that we’re the good guys, would attribute to some of the repressive regimes that are commonly known.  That sounds pretty damn fair to me.

    But you want to generalize the statement, and to achieve that generalization you invoke logic that can be used to stifle, eliminate, and declare treasonous any criticism.  This has distressing parallels to the politics of the moment.

    We have some very solid knowledge in history present on this blog. 

    If those regimes were the wrong ones to compare these particular actions to, please tell us the right ones.  Which governments or regimes chained up prisoners, denied them food or water, and subjected them to extreme temperatures? 

    Or would you prefer that we simply engaged in comparison-free dialog, arguing all of this from relativist positions, without reference points?


    Posted by Ross on 06/27/05 at 12:30 PM
    Partisan Politics • Permalink

    Bureau for Bitching and Moaning Pt. 2

    		Partisan Politics

    This court decision is a major blow to the citizens of this country.  I am compelled to point out that in the last six years American citizens have had the character of their relationship with the government changed radically:

    1. Takings: Any local government can now hand your private property to another private owner if any excuse for redevelopment is avialable.  This is a clear invitation for corruption, and will inevitably result in a major upswing of same.

    2. Trial by Jury: The current administration has reserved for itself the right to detain and permanently imprison any citizen, without trial or justification, under the guise of “fighting terror”. 

    Let’s recap.  Any property you own is yours strictly subject to the whims of the government.  Your freedom itself is also an illusion in the “conservative” world of George W Bush; it currently has no force under the law if some arbitrary member of the administration decides otherwise.

    So what private right is Bush for, exactly?  Well, he’s strongly in favor of allowing property owners to pollute the hell out of that property, regardless of the effect on others.  Apparently there’s some sort of principal at work in that case.  I struggle to understand how environmental concerns are less of a “public use” than protecting the profits of developers, but there it is.

    These two things are pretty damn fundamental, and I’d say the average citizen of this country figures they’re his birthright.  They are, of course.  But we are in exceptional times, times in which corruption and greed flow like electricity through the body politic, taking the path of least resistance.  This administration is indistinguishable from its insider supporters, and its policies, while lacking any verifiable correlation between promised and actual effect, have inevitably benefited those same insiders.

    ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’


    Posted by Ross on 06/27/05 at 12:07 PM
    Partisan Politics • Permalink

    Silencing Phillip Carter

    		War

    I was distressed to read that Phillip Carter, author of the Intel Dump blog, received reactivation orders last Thursday.  Phil’s taken the news with characteristic class; well-wishers abound in the comments, hoping for the best for Phil. 

    What no-one seems to be saying, and Phil is obviously unable to say himself, is this: Is this payback?  I don’t know, but I’ll say it, and I’ll say that this administration and this military leadership will breath easier in the information vacuum his forced activation creates.

    Phillip Carter has been one of the more outspoken critics of the military and of the government since leaving the active service.  He’s written clear and precise articles as an intelligent man who’s been there and done it.  He advocates the draft, and calls’em like he sees’em.

    He advocates very effectively for positions that are highly inconvenient to the administration and to the military. 

    We all know that very large numbers of recently departed active service members are being reactivated as the military struggles to keep the necessary forces in place.  Recruitment has suffered hugely; forcing the recently active to serve additional tours is very much the only option at this point.


    Posted by Ross on 06/27/05 at 11:36 AM
    War • Permalink

    Sunday, June 26, 2005

    Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow may be tax time or something. And that would suck, you know?

    		Entertainment

    Last night, some folks got together to drink and play pool. Some took in dinner and a movie. Other people went to a ballgame, or had a clambake, or fought a couple guys before passing out, or dealt out a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em.

    Last night my buddy Brendan came over and we all made flavored vodka. We decided to go the low road, utilizing a theory first promulgated by the website Oh My God It Burns! which posits that a home water filtration unit (such as a Brita filter pitcher) can remove the impurities from cut-rate vodka and render it the near-equal of top-shelf brands.

    What we found was that filtering a bottle of cheap (plastic-bottle store-brand distilled with pride in Somerville, Massachusetts) grain vodka five times does in fact remove nearly all the nasty smell, aftertaste, and burn, making it almost but not quite as delicious as the magically smooth Luksosowa brand potato vodka we used as a control. Although a faint hint of the gluey flavor of cheap vodka remains, the newly enspiffened and filtered liquor is nevertheless the full equal of Skyy, Stoli, or Ketel One, and will work very nicely once infused. Brendan had already made some raspberry and lemon vodkas, both of which were delicious in lemonade.

    We ended up making four different vodkas: pepper, orange, ginger, and cranberry. Think about it! Instant seabreezes with just soda water! Orange vodka in cream soda! Ginger vodka in ginger ale! And the by-now hackneyed spicy martini!

    We expect the pepper and cranberry vodkas to be ready within a few days based on past experience. The orange zest can sit in the vodka for months, though we anticipate maximum flavor extraction to be achieved in a month or so, possibly sooner. The ginger vodka is a total toss-up, (just a little ginger flavor so far) and I expect I will end up adding another quarter cup or so of grated fresh ginger to the 500ml of vodka and quarter cup of sliced ginger already in the jar. For the pepper vodka we chose one lone poblano pepper. Both Brendan and I have tried making pepper vodka in the past, and have learned caution accordingly.

    My first attempt at pepper vodka used 750ml of Luksosowa and three fresh cayenne peppers fresh from Chainsaw Mick‘s garden. Within three days the vodka had turned green and was spicy enough to kill a lesser man. I enjoyed every drop of that vodka in a succession of my own patented “filthy” martinis, the recipe for which follows, until I got to the dregs. It seems that capsaicin, the active heat ingredient in chili peppers, is both alcohol soluble and heavier than vodka. The last martini from that bottle nearly killed me, but through generous applications of ancillary oral analgesics (shots of Jim Beam) I managed to get through it. Brendan’s prior experiences were similar, so for this new iteration we chose to employ the mild and flavorful poblano chile. If after 48 hours the vodka has not taken on any heat, I can always drop in a leftover cayenne for a little while to kick it up, but I expect I won’t have to.

    We also chose to try to make our vodkas extremely concentrated, so that when the infusions are ready we can dilute them down with freshly filtered cheapo liquor to a usable strength. We have future plans for combo infusions, say, ginger and lemongrass or orange and vanilla. I am hoping to try out more savory flavors as well like cinammon, clove, and cardamon. If anybody has any hott drink ideas, please send them along. Perhaps I could substitute dark rum for the vodka in the last instance and make insta-mulled cider when winter comes. Nummy-num-num-num.

    So that was my Saturday night. Any of my friends living nearby can expect fancy-pants liquor for Festivus this year.

    Filthy Martini

    2 oz. ice-cold pepper vodka
    dash chilled dry vermouth
    2 tsp chilled green olive juice
    1 Tbsp chilled kosher pickle juice (use fermented pickle juice with live cultures, not just vinegar pickles)
    2 green olives

    In a shaker, pour vermouth over ice and drain, leaving behind only a residue. Add vodka and olive and pickle juice, and shake or stir as desired. Strain into martini glass and garnish with olives.


    Posted by Johno on 06/26/05 at 06:35 PM
    Entertainment • Permalink

    Saturday, June 25, 2005

    A depressing loaf

    		Entertainment

    This installment of my ongoing bread-blogging is about mediocrity. Although I sometimes forget it, it is entirely possible for a highly reputed artisan bakery to be nothing more mediocre.

    I don’t mean to say bad. Bad bread is another thing entirely, and usually comes as a gummy sliced loaf touted as “whole grain” but packed full of lethicin and additives to make the texture over as something akin to Wonder Bread. A loaf of oversweetened spongy whole wheat bread studded with toothbreaking seeds is as appetizing as cat vomit, especially for $4 a loaf for the Pepperidge Farm and Cape Cod offerings at my local Stop & Shop. No, my object today is mediocre bread.

    This morning I took my weekly summer jaunt into the yuppie haven of Marblehead to hit the weekly farmers’ market. While stocking up on six different kinds of greens, locally made cheeses and the first beets of the season, I picked up what looked like a beautiful baguette with which to enjoy the aforementioned cheese. I specifically chose this baguette because another vendor at the market recommended them as the “best bread in Boston.”

    I now know that this statement is not only a lie but also a calumny and an act of treachery.

    A baguette is among the very simplest of doughs: nothing but water, flour, yeast, and salt gently kneaded together to form a fairly soft mass without a great deal of strength. True baguette dough is always made one of two ways: with a pate fermentee, which is basically yesterday’s dough left overnight and incorporated into today’s bake; or a poolish, which is a mix of equal weights flour and water with a tiny amount of commercial (or wild) yeast added and left to stand overnight to ripen. Either method results in a slow-rising dough that contains a surprising depth of flavor. Pate fermentee generally contributes a slightly sour note to the loaf, where poolish is slightly more sweet and wheaty tasting. Either way, you end up with a very flavorful loaf.

    Like the best French recipes, making a baguette is simple but not easy. There is a highly refined set of techniques for rising, shaping, slashing, and baking that helps achieve desired result.

    And what is that desired result? You want a caramel-brown and very crisp crust with well-defined flaps rising from where you slashed the loaf, a proper ratio of crust to crumb (the baguette must be neither to fat nor too skinny), and a crumb that is creamy yellow in color and rather springy and interspersed randomly with a lattice of holes ranging from smaller than your pinky tip to the size of a large marble. No holes or larger holes means you need to work on your shaping technique and possibly on your dough formula.

    These simple ingredients, when handled according to the best techniques, add up to one of the culinary wonders of the world. I have bought French baguettes in Paris that rank among the very best things I have ever tasted, and despite the fact that baguettes made here in the USA can never quite replicate the fleeting and transcendent flavors of their French counterparts, they can come awfully close to equalling this perfection.

    So what of the highly touted and expensive baguette I bought today? Well, eww.  Up close, the crust proved to be a tawny gold color several shades short of brown and devoid of any of the crispness or delicious browned flavors that baguette crust promises; the loaf as a whole was nearly floppy. The thing had been made much too fat and a bit too short so there was far too much crumb for the amount of poor crust. The crumb itself was pillowy and nearly snowy white and the hole structure was more like that of Italian scala bread with its fine network of tiny holes than a true baguette. The flavor was insipid and lacked any of the depth and complexity that comes from pre-fermenting. It tasted more like a straight dough whipped up start to finish in about five hours. In short, everything that could possibly have gone wrong did, except for the slashing. The slashes on top were perfect, with the desired trademark “ears” that ideally allow one to pick up a baguette by one of these flaps. At least that was done right.

    I can (and have) do better than this in my own kitchen, and I am not a master baker by any means, merely a dedicated amateur. The Bread & Butter Bakery in Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA should be ashamed to offer such half-assed product for sale anywhere, especially for better than $3 per loaf. If they cut the amount of dough per baguette by an ounce or so, increased the bake temperature and oven steam, and paid more attention to flavor, they could not only get a fair $3 for their baguette but would cut production costs as well.  I can only hope that this was just an unlucky day for the baguettes; I dimly rememember being fairly happy though not impressed with their breads last year, including their epi, which are made with baguette dough.

    People keep telling me I should open a bakery; if this is my competition, maybe I should think more seriously about it.


    Posted by Johno on 06/25/05 at 12:26 PM
    Entertainment • Permalink

    Encapsulated, the best reason to let Africa sort its own self out

    		Crazy ForeignersFilthy Lucre

    Saturday's Telegraph tells the tale of just where a good chunk of the world's aid dollars have gone, specifically focusing on Nigeria, Africa's largest, natural-resource-richest, and most populous country. $220 billion, down a rathole in the last 40 years, just in Nigeria.

    A taste:

    The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.

    British aid for Africa totalled £720 million last year. If that sum was spent annually for the next three centuries, it would cover the cost of Nigeria's looting.

    They've got 35 billion barrels of proven reserves there, and I'd suggest they get to work digging them up, because more money from other peoples' pockets doesn't look like it's ever solved a problem in Nigeria.

    Sani Abacha was one of the worst, as detailed in this add-on story, but his kleptocracy was unique only in its absolute size, and would have been far larger if he hadn't died of a heart attack under the ministrations of three Indian prostitutes after only 5 years in office. You see, even at the high end of his estimated thievery, he was responsible for only 1.5% of the total aid money wasted in Nigeria. And Nigeria wasn't the only failed experiment in assuagement of white guilt - it was just one part of the roughly 100% failure rate among African nations who've received aid.

    Sometimes, a rational guilty white man just has to say "If at first you don't succeed, try, try... aw @#!?% it!". And perhaps, in some small way, some Nigerians might agree:

    Mr Obasanjo will travel to the G8 summit to press the case for debt relief. Nigeria is Africa's biggest debtor, with loans of almost £20 billion, because previous rulers not only looted the country but also borrowed heavily against future oil revenues.

    The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the debts of 14 other African countries this month.

    Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is all written off?" he said.

    I'm thinking "Nobody", that's who.

    [Wik] For other views, not all at odds, see the first three letters to the editor in the June 25, 2005 Houston Chronicle.

    Posted by Patton on 06/25/05 at 01:03 AM
    Crazy Foreigners • Filthy Lucre • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

    Friday, June 24, 2005

    Well hello, Mister Fancypants!

    		Entertainment

    The top 100 movie quotes of all time (according to the AFI) have been released.

    The top dozen:

    1. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.
    2. “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “The Godfather,” 1972.
    3. “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am,” “On the Waterfront,” 1954.
    4. “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” “The Wizard of Oz,” 1939.
    5. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “Casablanca,” 1942.
    6. “Go ahead, make my day,” “Sudden Impact,” 1983.
    7. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” “Sunset Blvd.,” 1950.
    8. “May the Force be with you,” “Star Wars,” 1977.
    9. “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,” “All About Eve,” 1950.
    10. “You talking to me?” “Taxi Driver,” 1976.
    11. “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” “Cool Hand Luke,” 1967.
    12. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” “Apocalypse Now,” 1979.

    I can’t believe that the ending line from Casablanca doesn’t make it higher than 20.  Travesty!  Also, they should have included the whole quote from Apocalypse Now! - “It smells like… Victory.”

    Although I am partially appeased by the inclusion of #77. “Soylent Green is people!”; my biggest problem… no Ash quotes. 

    Insensitive.  Bastards.


    Posted by Buckethead on 06/24/05 at 05:57 PM
    Entertainment • Permalink
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