The Chinese government has banned reincarnation without government permission. All serious implications for the Dalai Lama and others aside (and there are certainly serious implications), the thought of a government trying to control a reality that may or may not be real makes my head spin.
Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Suggestions for his replacement include Michael Chertoff, current Homeland Security Secretary. Maybe he’ll have a gut feeling about indicting Gonzales, too.
Sadly, I just noticed this morning how much Gonzales looks like Dondi, the funny pages’ loveable, non-aging orphan. Just when I finally have a perfect nickname for him, he resigns.
There is no justice.
Truthout is running a piece written by seven soldiers who have seen time in Iraq. It’s worth a read.
A Chinese couple wants to name its new boy “@” — sparking quite a bit of confusion in the Ministry of Baby Naming, or whatever they have over there. The pronounced word “at” apparently can be translated to mean “love him.”
Seems to me that a culture who uses a pictographic written language can’t really argue with it. And maybe it seems that way to them, too — in a country where decisions are often handed down with some force and finality, they’re all scratching their heads.
Generally, I don’t link to Truthout — I read fairly often and get headlines through my Google homepage, but I tend to avoid quoting it as fact because it’s so deeply slanted. Not generally wrong, but still slanted.
This one’s scary if true, though. Turns out that not only did Ashcroft come off looking like the good guy in the whole Gonzales Great Race to the Hospital, but now it seems that the administration was keeping aspects of the surveillance program from him. Him. The Attorney General.
So what can be gleaned from this is that they knew it was wrong, and wrong enough that Ashcroft (who was quite the team player) could potentially put his foot down and expose the whole thing. God, I don’t know what all they were doing, but it must have been even worse than I thought. Because it’s not like Ashcroft was known for protecting citizens’ rights. Eeek.
MoveOn.org is mailing out a link to a video (and contribution site for them) of Cheney in 1994, explaining why invading Baghdad would have been such a terrible idea. He spells out several things that are wrong with Iraq right now. The two-facedness of it is pretty astounding.
For those of you in the Chicago area (or interested in Chicago food), I just found out about this forum:
It’s pretty cool — I used to participate in the chi.eats newsgroup years ago, but that turned into a bunch of whiners. I think this is probably a bunch of the same people, but the forum format makes it easier to avoid the whining.
Turns out one of the studies indicating that global warming is happening had a Y2K bug that made it look like everything jumped alarmingly in January of 2000. When adjusted with proper dates, 1934 was apparently the warmest year, not 2000.
What sucks about this is that now everyone who already barks about Al Gore and his “propaganda machine” will now have a very real bullet to use. I guess if it weren’t that it would be something else, but still, there’s no need to pitch soft ones over the plate.
As the owner and operator of a five-year-old, I could have told the researchers this — still, it’s interesting that they have defined the fact that kids will always prefer food in a McDonald’s wrapper. I love this kind of thing — it makes graphic designers like me feel like Dr. Evil.
I just noticed this alarming resemblance, thanks to a link from my blog for Young Frankenstein from a few days ago and one from Doug’s a day or two ago:
Now I don’t want to be needlessly nasty about bald guys with freaked out stage presence, but they do both have dance numbers on the Internets (Boyle, Ballmer).