Remember This Tonight As You Celebrate

I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!

The Chronicles of Narnia

It was inevitable that after the huge success of "The Lord of The Rings Trilogy" the oeuvre (I've always wanted to use that word) of C. S. Lewis would be mined for more pg rated family movies. I liked the LOTR films a great deal and think they will stand up over time a hell of a lot better than any of the "Star Wars" films. If you haven't seen the first "Star Wars" movie since you were a kid you should watch it again just to hear the jilted dialogue, it makes "Log Jamming" seem like "Uncle Vanya".
The tough thing about making a movie from a well loved book is that your core audience stands to be the most disappointed in the film because film can rarely equal the saturation of depiction that literature can. In this regard "The Chronicles of Narnia" suffers from the fate of every other adaptation, it's character seem a little flat and not as deeply motivated as the ones you know from the book. That's not really fair because as a movie "The Chronicles of Narnia" is an very good film. The Christian viewer will see all sorts of Christian themes in allegory: Peter the rock on whom Christ built His church, doubting Tumnus and Edmund the confessor. For every person acquainted with Christianity it's hard not to view the White Witch played by Tilda Swinton and Aslan voiced by Liam Neeson as representing Satan and Christ respectively. Everyone else will see a clever fantasy movie and may wonder why some people rave about this film.
Having wasted every opportunity a classical Roman Catholic education provides, I was surprised to have learned something about my faith. Specifically I never quite understood what the big deal was about the forgiveness of sin, why did God have to go through all that trouble when He could just let it slide, He is God after all. This films depicts quite well in allegory, how and why sin separates us from God and how and why we are reconciled to Him. For that reason alone, if no other, "The Chronicles of Narnia" is a film well worth seeing.

H.L. Mencken Quote

"Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel."
It should be an international scandal that the U.N. arbiters of all things good and decent have some how managed to piss through a third of the tsunami disaster relief money for administrative costs while only 20% of those made homeless in the disaster have been housed.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm952.cfm

No one is saying it yet, but I get the impression a lot of U.N. types with soft hands and impeccable personal grooming are flying frequently in business class and eating in trendy new Asian bistros with money donated by working stiffs who wanted to help the less fortunate. Shame on them. I forget who said it but it seems true that international aid is money taken from poor people in rich countries and given to rich people in poor countries. The people affected by the tsunami would have been better served if the U.S. used it's aid money to build a new aircraft carrier. This new ship Named the H.L. Mencken would provide hospitals, fresh drinking water, provide a platform for air lifts and shoot down any aircraft carrying NGO or U.N bureaucrats. Maybe next time.

Cryptozoology And Other Unbelievable Stuff

Do you believe in Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Champ, Yeti, flying saucers? On a scale of one to ten where one is still possible but highly doubtful and ten is pretty much a sure thing here is how I rate the unbelievable.
Giant Apes, including Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch etc. TWO.
There has been some speculation that the sightings and folklore across a wide swath of the northern hemisphere may be Gigantopithecus, a species of gigantic ape that became extinct about three hundred thousand years ago. The coelacanth debacle tells us that it is possible for species to exist long after most experts thought they were long gone. A giant hairy ape is a lot more noticeable to us than a deep water fish, unless the species in question has evolved to hide from us. With all the yahoos running around the woods with high quality firearms you would think someone would have bagged one of these things by now so I doubt will be seeing concrete proof of these creatures in our lifetime.
Loch Ness, Champ, Ogopogo other aquatic oddities. THREE.
Like Bigfoot Loch Ness is thought to be a surviving example of a long extinct species, in this case plesiasaurus. Again these things are reputed to be seen in the northern hemisphere in very deep glacial lakes. The only reason I rated them a three is that it's easier to avoid detection in water. I still doubt we will be buying Nessie steaks at Trader Joe's anytime soon.
U.F.O. and Alien Abductions. NINE and ONE.
I'm pretty confident that somewhere in all the vastness of space there are other intelligent life forms but I am highly sceptical that they fly all the way here to probe the dark recesses of slack jawed yokels across the south west. The belief that our government could and would keep such a juicy story secret for so long is ludacris.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1000312002

Vincent Schiavelli Dead at 57

Vincent Schiavelli the character actor most famous, in our generation anyway, for playing Mr. Vargas in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" has died of lung cancer at his home in Sicily. He was also in some of my favorite films "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest", "Better Off Dead" and "Amadeus" among scores of others. And yes he was in the aforementioned "Death To Smoochy"
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001704/

Merry Christmas

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests." When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Beware of Flying Leatherman

In a freak accident a boy scout had a knife blade lodged between his frontal lobes and lives to tell the tale. Lucky, lucky, lucky. I suppose if he was super lucky, like the rest of us, we never would have heard of him.
http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_356200328.html

La Fée Verte

"After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."
Oscar Wilde
“The absinthe made everything seem better. I drank it without sugar in the dripping glass, and it was pleasantly bitter. I poured the water directly into it and stirred it instead of letting it drip. I stirred the ice around with a spoon in the brownish, cloudy mixture. I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been.”
Ernest Hemingway

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/11-02/11_02_absinthe.htm

Miracle

A child hears Christmas carols for the first time due to cochlear implants,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/23/nhear23.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/23/ixhome.html

This may seem bizarre but there are groups of people strongly opposed to the use of cochlear implants because they feel deafness is not a defect to be cured and are concerned what will happen to the deaf culture if there are no more deaf people.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/cochlear/debate7.html

I usually have an opinion on everything, but not in this instance. I can see where the deaf community might feel threatened and I will never understand what it's like to live in a deaf world. With that said, if one of my children was hearing impaired, God forbid, I would do everything in my power to make him or her "whole" as possible. I say that realizing the term "whole" might ruffle some feathers, if so I apologize.

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Señor Mysterioso es muy poderoso y extraño.

At The Risk Of Seeming Vindictive

The name of this blog "With Malice Toward None" is from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address given just weeks before he died.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Words to live by. Unfortunately in living these words sometime it is necessary to bear great malice towards some. One such individual is Hezballah terrorist and convicted murderer Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was released from a German prison last week. You may remember that Hamadi is responsible for the murder of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem June 15, 1985. I won't go into the barbarity of the crime or the heroism of the victim they are both well chronicled here:

http://www.geocities.com/americanmilitarycasualties/stethem.html

Last I checked the US Navy had several groups of crazy bastards whose thing in life is finding SOBs like Hamadi and shooting them in the head. I think it would send an important message to those who wish us harm and those who actively oppose us, that murdering a US citizen will get you killed.

Victor Davis Hanson on Bruised Egos

LBJ once said of J. Edgar Hoover " Nice Dress". He also said, "It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in", which pretty much sums up what VDH has to say about a lot of prominent war critics.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/VictorDavisHanson/2005/12/22/180075.html

A Tiger? In Africa?

Some mugger in South Africa fled into a zoo and subsequently into the tiger cage. There natural selection took it's inexorable course.

The Meaning of Life
Tiger Brand coffee - it's a real treat - even tigers prefer it - to real meat!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179408,00.html

Irrefutable Proof She Must Be The Smartest Women In The World

Wow what a bad picture! They both look much better today.

Hill Billy

The Drug Store

Is there anything better than an American Drug Store? When I was in Greece in 1994 all I wanted to do when I got home was eat a hot dog at Fenway Park and peruse my corner drugstore for candy, cokes and comic books.
The smell of a good drugstore is a comforting melange of newsprint, candy and some unidentifiable medicine. Where else can you buy new razors, Old Spice, pink and green chewing gum cigars and the latest Mad magazine? I remember buying Phillip K. Dick's Ubik off a rotating stand at Franklin's Pharmacy in Glastonbury. It had an ad in the center for Newport cigarettes. Franklin's was great, they had a lunch counter in back where the cokes came in a paper cone in a stainless steel base with lots of crushed ice.
I would never call a comic book a"graphic novel", but used to love pouring over them - especially the funky ads. Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, Charles Atlas and the hapless wimp who got sand kicked in his face. The best part or maybe the worst part of being a kid was that you didn't know enough of the world to know that Sea Monkeys are brine shrimp, X-Ray Specs can't work and Charles Atlas has no easy answers to tough ass kickings.

Say It Aint So @%$#&!@# Yankees!

Damon, Yankees reach preliminary agreement on $52 million, four-year contract
NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Yankees grabbed center fielder Johnny Damon away from the rival Boston Red Sox, reaching a preliminary agreement Tuesday night on a $52 million, four-year contract.
Details of the deal were still being negotiated and Damon must pass a physical, a baseball official said on condition of anonymity because negotiations were not yet final.
Damon fills a double void for the Yankees, giving them a speedy center fielder who can cover ground and a leadoff hitter to top a star-studded lineup that also includes Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield, AL MVP Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui and Jason Giambi.
Bernie Williams' defense declined significantly over the past four seasons. And while Damon's arm is not much better, he does cover a lot of ground, which is important in Yankee Stadium.
Agent Scott Boras had been seeking a seven-year contract for Damon. The offer Damon accepted was essentially the same as the deal Matsui agreed to with the Yankees last month.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AkH9Kd.KKmuzqhVo8.akXpYRvLYF?slug=ap-yankees-damon&prov=ap&type=lgns

Letter To First Things

In the item “Are Jews Smarter?,” paragraph six opens with your point about bright eighth graders congratulating themselves on the “discovery” that the assertion of the Declaration of Independence “is not literally true.” “In ways important and unimportant, it is not the case that all are created equal. Call equality our ‘founding mythology,’ if you like, but it is crucial to the foundation of the American order . . . .” Well, I don’t think this is right. “All men are created equal” is literally true. The equality in basic worth and dignity of every member of the human family is not a myth. (Or if it is a myth, as Flannery O’Connor might have said, to hell with it.) Of course, as you say, not all men are equal in every respect. That’s obvious. Some are smarter than others, some are stronger, some are more creative, some are more virtuous, etc. But precisely in respect of the matter at issue in the Declaration—basic worth and dignity—all are, literally, created equal. That’s not a myth, not a noble lie, not a generalization admitting of exceptions. It is why it would be profoundly and inherently wrong (and not just imprudent or dangerous because it’s the sort of thing that could get out of hand) for someone to take the life of a single severely mentally retarded child in order to harvest organs to save the lives of Edward Witten (who, let’s imagine, need a heart transplant), Michael Jordan (who needs a liver), and Bela Fleck and the Dalai Lama (both of whom need kidneys). Of course, it is not that the retarded child is as smart as Witten, possesses the athletic prowess of Jordan, displays the musical genius of Fleck, or is as holy as the Dalai Lama (I’m guessing at the Dalai Lama’s holiness, by the way; maybe I should say Jimmy Carter here instead–just kidding! just kidding!!). Rather, it is that in basic worth and dignity the child really is the equal of these guys and everyone else. We don’t just pretend that he is equal in dignity because it helps to support the kind of public order and political regime we happen to favor, or because social life would become unmanageable otherwise. We believe he is equal–literally–and we assert it as a matter of moral truth.

Robert P. George
http://www.firstthings.com/

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1639351/

Transit Strike

It seems the Transit Workers Union has a blog and the good citizens of NYC are letting them have it over the strike. Swing by and read the comments, some are kind of funny:
http://twulocal100.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: It looks like the cowardly SOBs shut down the comments. I guess a couple million angry stranded people didn't have many nice things to say and were tossing many pointy things at their collective coconut.

King Kong Sucks?

According to Will Collier over at Vodkapundit:

Quick review of Peter Jackson's new King Kong movie: for God's sake, somebody introduce this guy to a competent film editor and screenwriter.

http://www.vodkapundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4096

I still want to see it. There just aren't enough giant ape gone amok movies made anymore. Just think how cool Thelma&Louise would have been if they were gigantic apes instead of middle aged women. Talk about missed opportunities.

False Alarm, Other Worries

It looks like Nomar is going to be a Dodger. Good luck to him out there.
Now all we have to worry about is who will be playing right, left and center in Boston. Dexter points out that Damon could very well end up in New York. Possible, that would suck on a lot of levels. Manny the idiot savant slugger wants to be traded elsewhere God knows why. It would be horrible to see them both in New York. Although I think the Yankee aficion and King George would have a lot less patience with Manny being Manny. Any team and fan base will dig Damon if he stays healthy.
The Red Sox and Doug Mientkiewicz are going to arbitration to decide who owns the ball from the final out of Boston's 2004 World Series victory. What horse shite! Mientkiewicz has no more right to that ball than any other team member. He belongs in Kansas City.
Did you know that Lou Gehrig played minor league ball in Hartford?

Nomar A Yankee?

Please just never let that happen. Please. Unlike Roger Clemens who I thought a great pitcher but never really liked, I liked Nomar when he played for Boston. His parting from the Sox could have been better and he has had a tough go of it ever since but that's all in the past, all peccadilloes have been forgiven, I wish him well. It would be shame to have to start wishing injuries upon him if he ever dons blue pinstripes.
The Sportsguy uses the ex girlfriend analogy, I think that's apt. One thinks well of ex girlfriends as long as they don't hook up with one's arch enemy. How would Underdog feel if Sweet Polly Purebred dumped him for Simon Bar Sinister? Pissed that's how.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Turn up your speakers:
http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_christmas.html

Christmas Spirit?

Joseph Bottum writes in First Things:

"So what’s left? There isn’t a style or a diction I can find to use while writing about Christmas. It all seems so hackneyed, so over-used, so trite. Of course, that never seemed to bother Christmas music, so why should it bother Christmas prose? This year I’m reading to my eight-year-old daughter Charles Dickens, and Dylan Thomas, and the story of that first Christmas in the Bible. And somehow, as she listens, it all seems perfect."

Read the whole thing:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=116

For All You Sleepyheads

What will they think of next?
http://www.clocky.net/

I Swear I'm Not A Prude!

Is it me or is modern culture conspiring to make our girls and young women dress and act like whores? Clothing: I went shopping to buy my daughter some clothes and discovered it difficult to find clothing without questionable writing on it. Call me crazy but I'm not sure that "Juicy Queen" plastered across a young girls chest is a message I want sent. Thank God for L.L. Bean whose clothing is so traditional, i.e. frumpy, that Audrey Hepburn would look plain in it. Actually that's not accurate. I forget who said it but it's true that plain clothes make a pretty girl prettier and a plain girl less noticeable. Lest you think me sexist I think that's equally true for men and boys.
Toys: Modern clothing can be bad enough but my biggest pet peeve is with The Bratz line of toys, cartoons, videos, etc. WTF are these people thinking? If my son came home with a girl dressed like these creatures I would reduce his allowance. God forbid my daughter ever aspired to look like that.
Celebrities: Where does one begin here? Brittany? Christina? Mariah? Or my personal favorite Paris who seems to be famous for no other reason than she was born into a wealthy family and is willing to be misbehave both on video tape and in person.
On my way to work one morning I was flipping through the radio stations hoping in vain to hear actual music, traffic and weather. What I found other than the most annoying commercials imaginable was Howard Stern and a lesbian discussing oral sex and Bubba The Love Sponge had some porn star using a vibrator on the air. This is all well and fine, but there is a time and place for everything. I would argue that 7:30 in the morning probably is not the time and in my car alone is not the place. Advocates of shows like Stern's say if you don't like it change the station, true enough. But what if every other station starts to spawn there own little Stern wannabes such as Bubba? Our culture as whole has become demeaned by such antics. What's next radio station broadcasting people have sex in Saint Patrick's Cathedral? That already happened.
I think it's important to allow children to be children, not hypersexualized little adults. The link below talks about precocious puberty I think it's a subject that deserves some discussion.

http://people.bu.edu/celiag/index.html

Happy Birthday Phillip K. Dick 1928-1982

"Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him--one of the few true gentlemen in the world. I don't agree with any of the ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time, when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to him in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine looking man, very impressive and military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."

Phillip K. Dick "The Golden Man"

UPDATE:Dexter sent in this link for a decent article on Dick:
http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_02/lethem.html

Tookie And The Left

Jack Dunphy columnist over at nro.com hits the nail on the head:

A headline on page A37 in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times reads: “Large Funeral Planned for Williams, Friend Says.” The brief story that follows tells of preparations being made by Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s longtime friend and collaborator Barbara Becnel to receive the executed man’s body and stage a large public funeral in Los Angeles. The ceremony, the story says, will be “on a scale of the funeral for Rosa Parks.”
So, in the eyes of Barbara Becnel (and, apparently, many others), a man who murdered four helpless people during the commission of two robberies, and who is sometimes credited with founding a street gang responsible for thousands of additional murders, is deserving of no less a tribute than that given to a pioneer of the civil-rights movement. This is what passes for enlightened thinking on the fringes of the American Left, which for years has lionized such homicidal thugs as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Yasser Arafat, and which now very noisily places Tookie Williams, like convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal before him, in this pantheon of heroes. How long will it be before someone proposes to name an elementary school after him?
http://www.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy200512160821.asp

In a related story:

New Tookie Book Warns Kids About Lethal Injection
http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2097

Boys Will Be Boys

Males and females also tend to have different kinds of eyeballs, with boys better at tracking movement and girls better at distinguishing subtle shades of colors. Presumably, these separate skills evolved when men were hunters trying to spear fleeing game and women were gatherers searching out the ripest fruit. So, today, boys want to catch fly balls and girls want to discuss whether to buy the azure or periwinkle skirt. Cognitive differences are profound and pervasive. Don't force boys to explain their feelings in great detail, Sax advises. Their brains aren't wired to make that as enjoyable a pastime as it is for girls.

But I still feel pretty!

http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2005/sailer.html

Gifts For The Hard To Buy For

http://www.mcphee.com/index.html

What Would We Do Without Federal Investigators?

NTSB: Plane at Midway Needed More Runway
CHICAGO - A jetliner that skidded off a landing strip and into a city street needed about 800 more feet of runway to come to a safe stop, federal investigators said Thursday.
The Southwest Airlines jet crushed a car, killing a 6-year-old boy, after it skidded off a 6,500-foot runway and crashed through a fence at Midway International Airport earlier this month.
A preliminary investigation by the
National Transportation Safety Board shows the airplane touched down with about 4,500 feet of runway remaining, but snowy conditions and other factors meant the plane ideally needed about 5,300 feet of runway, according to a report released Thursday.

Read the whole thing.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_re_us/midway_accident

Bill Mueller is Now A Dodger

It's sad to see a guy like Bill Mueller leave your team, no matter how things turn out. I've always liked the way he played the game, both in the field and at the plate. I really appreciated the utter lack of drama with this man, soft spoken and self effacing he was calming presence in a club house filled with characters. Good luck to you Bill, thanks for everything.

My Other Life

From September of 1986 through September of 1990 I served in the USAF Air Weather Service, primarily at Fort Devens Massachusetts. Though I had joined the Air Force I ended up working with the Army because when the Air Force separated from the Army back in 1949 one of the many functions kept solely by Air Force was meteorology.
Looking back it wasn't a bad gig at all and I'm glad I did it, but I am just as glad it's over - they don't call the military the service for nothing. The Army warrant officers with whom I worked were some of the most professional people you can imagine. The Air Force on the whole and the Air Weather Service in particular is staffed with bright, hard working and dedicated young people, I am proud to have been associated with them.
One of my pet peeves in Hollywood movies depicting things military is all the actors are in their late twenties or older. In fact you'll see some peach fuzzy18 year kid doing some tough, dangerous and/or highly technical job with aplomb. In a military operation a guy in his mid thirties is pretty damn old on average and usually a senior NCO or officer.
The link below has pictures and info on all the equipment we used to observe and predict the weather. If you have any interest in the subject check it out.

http://www.airweaassn.org/Library/Equipment/Weather%20Museum.htm

This Is Cool

It is reported that 50% of people in London are worried about security and sleep with some form of self-defence to hand, for use against intruders.
The 'Safe Bedside Table' has a removable leg that acts as a club and a top that doubles as a shield for self-defence. This is for people who are willing to take on an intruder, providing an extra sense of security whilst in bed.
Those crazy Brits. Hat tip Jonah Goldberg at The Corner.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Singularity, The Rise of The Machines

Singularity is the theory that in our lifetime man will cease to be the pinnacle of intelligence, replaced by super intelligent machines who in turn will create still more intelligent machines ad infinitum. Whether or not mankind is the beneficiary of this progress remains to seen.

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Weird Disease Of The Week - Pandemic Flu

In 1918 The "Spanish Flu" killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. Almost 700,000 Americans were killed including 43,000 soldiers. There has been some speculation that this pandemic originated in American swine:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The 1918 influenza virus that killed more than 20 million people worldwide originated from American pigs and is unlike any other known flu bug, say researchers. They warn that it could strike again.
Using lung tissue taken at autopsy 79 years ago from an Army private killed by the flu, scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology made a genetic analysis of the virus and concluded it is unique, though closely related to the ''swine'' flu.
''This is the first time that anyone has gotten a look at this virus which killed millions of people in one year, making it the worst infectious disease episode ever,'' said Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger, leader of the Armed Forces Institute team. ''It does not match any virus that has been found since.''
Although the disease that caused the worldwide epidemic was called ''Spanish flu,'' the virus apparently is a mutation that evolved in American pigs and was spread around the globe by U.S. troops mobilized for World War I, said Taubenberger.
The Army private whose tissue was analyzed contracted the flu at Fort Jackson, S.C. For that reason, Taubenberger and his colleagues suggest in the journal Science that the virus be known as Influenza A/South Carolina.
http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/032197/1918flu.htm

With Friends Like This....

While Tookie Johnson was awaiting execution one of his more prominent erstwhile supporters, Jamie "No More Than One White Man At A Time" Foxx had something more important to do:

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. Dec 13, 2005 — Terrell Owens doesn't need to score touchdowns to celebrate. Exiled from the Philadelphia Eagles last month, the All-Pro wide receiver known for his flamboyant end zone theatrics hosted a birthday party Monday night at rapper Jay-Z's 40-40 club. T.O. turned 32 on Dec. 7. The bash drew several NFL stars, some of Owens' former teammates on the Eagles and a few celebrities. Among the celebrities on the guest list were Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=1400348

Scheduling can be such a pain in the ass. Still there were other celebrities who managed to protest Tookie's execution in person among them "Shotgun" Sean Penn and Joan "Holy Shit She's Still Alive" Baez who sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" which in itself is a violation of the eighth amendment.

Execution in California

Tookie Johnson will be executed just after midnight pacific standard time. In principle I marginally oppose the death penalty simply because when given a chance between preserving life and ending it I believe the better choice is life. I'm not concerned with whether or not the condemned deserves death they almost always do. In this case Johnson more than deserves what's coming to him. He killed four people in two separate robberies to prevent witnesses testifying against him. I find it troubling that celebrities are devoting a lot of time and effort to preserving this mans life. Would these same celebrities spend as much effort appealing for the end of violence that men like Johnson espouse.

FN Herstal Five Seven Pistol

The future of small arms? This is the FN Herstal Five Seven Pistol chambered in the revolutionary 5.7X28mm which can effectively penetrate most modern body armor out to 200 meters. It has a twenty round magazine and the felt recoil is 2/3 that of a 9mm which greatly increases accuracy.

Rudie Can't Fail

http://www.johnnyspencer.info/imagetexts17/bornforapurposeDA.htm