Hindu devotees believe the area between India and Sri Lanka - now known as Adam's Bridge - was built millions of years ago by Lord Ram, supported by an army of monkeys.
But scientists and archaeologists say Adam's Bridge, or Ram Setu, is a natural formation of sand and stones.
On Wednesday the Archaeological Survey of India told the Supreme Court that the religious texts were not evidence that Lord Ram ever existed.

Posit, for a moment, that Ram did exist... as did his army of monkeys... and the tales of the Ramayana are not intended as metaphor and morality play.

It all makes me glad there aren't any 'god made x' objects in christianity - oh - except the heavens and the earth... and man... and lilith (who wasnt a mistake cause, you know, God doesn't roll wif dat - but he took care of that anyway)

Seriously - can you imagine what would happen in this country if, oh, Jesus and an army of monkeys were responsible for building the twin towers? I'll tell you one thing for sure - there'd be an oversupply of radioactive glass. If people cant put religion away when it comes to thinking - then we have a problem.

Filed under 'kill 2 birds'...
I have a very simple solution for events like this

James Kuehnlein, come on down!!! and welcome to sunny Iraq.

File this one under 'put them in a room with Vick when you unleash the hounds'

Delfino says he asked one of the SWAT officers what happened to Dre and was told that the dog had been "neutralized" with the fire extinguisher. He asked the officer if the dog had attacked anybody, and the cop said no.

As smoke filled the house and Kush's efforts to save the dog failed, he finally fled from the burning home and was immediately thrown to the ground and his hands and feet were cuffed by four SWAT officers.

Meanwhile, Trisha Golden continued frantically to call for Dre to flee the house.

"We were like screaming for Dre, and [a deputy] turned around and said, `Why don't you shut the fuck up?!'" Trisha Golden says.

to quote Morgan from the new book "The way I see it, anyone who's proud of their country is either a thug or just hasn't read enough history yet"

See... I gotta tell you - once upon a time, we could pull stuff like this in our country. But now? not so much...
I miss that... our ability to laugh at ourselves.
I just cant help but feel the terrorists are the only ones laughing now...

What these guys did with their fake Canadian motorcade was genius - insane - but genius. The resulting news coverage? Priceless... lol. What were they thinking... dont they understand that the US has gone INSANE?!?!

If these guys were eaten by bears, would you feel bad?

So it was just another Saturday night… and I had watched a good bit of the Cal/Tenn game because, hell lets be honest, it was pretty entertaining. It ends late – and I find myself flipping channels thinking about going to bed when I stumble across "it"... again...

And much like a def leppard blood pact - I watched. Now normally – the rule is that I’ll sit there, agape, waiting until I simply cant take it anymore (far more generous than the aforementioned). Honestly - I’ll generally make it 30 seconds before I find myself so dumbfounded that anyone finds it funny that I'll simply change the channel. But for some reason I decided to wait it out... to sit and watch... a sort of staring contest – daring them to say something almost funny - something that might make me grin in even the slightest way. It was like stumbling into a KLBJ rock block of High n Dry - I was trapped... trapped by an insistence that reality WILL BEND TO MY WILL... a lot like W and Iraq in a lot of ways, but let's not go there.

Looking back - I blame the Washington Post. Last week, there was a caption contest of a horribly unfunny photo of Chris Kattan where they referred to him as ‘former SNL funnyman’. When was he funny? Wouldn't it be better to refer to him as SNL Carnifex? He was more of a fingernails on a chalkboard man than funny man.

So anyway - there I was - maybe 2 minutes in - a cold sweat breaking out - watching a skit where a person has a miniature head-creature sticking out of its stomach ala total recall who’s saying things that are, in theory, funny... and suddenly I had an epiphany.

I think it’s like Jackson Pollack. People go to a modern art museum – and they see a white canvas on a wall with some ‘meaningful’ title... or a sea of pennies and cattle bones... or a glue gun stapled to a stapler... and I guess a lot of people find it all terribly meaningful. Others go and are confused – and never go back - because it doesn’t touch them; they wander off confused with a 'that was a waste of time' look on their faces. But splattered paint… or big red squares (or yellow ovals)… those create a harmonic in me – not in and of themselves, but through the very reactions of others. They touch the Dadaist / post-modern absurdist in me – in that those sorts of things tend to, in a small minority of visitors, create a strong emotional reaction of any sort. There are some people who will be ANGRY when they see ‘big red square’… others who will find it ‘deep and moving’…. and oh dear are those people and their reactions not some of the most entertaining things about going to a modern art museum (well, unless someone is doing Lyndie England poses with the nekkid statuary). I love the people who can take a blank canvas and understand the powerful message of the artist – and be serious about it. That they tend to run museums makes it all the more amusing – it’s like authors insisting on being the only arbiters of literature - so just going to the museum is like walking right into a real life 3 panel Mutt and Jeff strip. The circle-jerk crowd of intellectual snobbery is absofuckinglutely priceless (that being the single best reason to live in manhattan imo). On the flip side - the people who recognize it - and get upset. Oh god - they're even funnier. It's best if they're on dates - the boy stewing and angry staring at the 'giant lemon' - the girl wondering what the hell was she thinking suggesting the museum... If you're lucky you'll get an outburst.

So there I was – watching this show – and suddenly I flat out wanted to PUNCH this comedian in the face. See – I’m more Buddhist than most other things at the end of the day – the whole non-violence because violence doesn’t solve problems thing is one of those lessons you get from enough time spent analyzing historical human behavior (not to mention game theory, right WOPR?). Ok - sure - i've played the 'intimidate the violent homeless guy into leaving the girls alone' or threaten the drunk frat guy because he's being an ass... but I mean I’m not a person who’d visit violence upon anyone – not even Scalia (well, I might enjoy kicking Santorum in the nuts, but who wouldn’t)... and I swear I just wanted to rear back and really throw my weight into a solid closed fist break-my-knuckles-smashing-his-nose punch.

Which begs the question… is this the funny? Funny like laughing at the genius behind Bazooka Joe? Is SNL deconstructing comedy in a way that’s so subtle it puts the likes of Brother Theodore and Larry Bud Melman to shame? Is their humor simply that much more sophisticated than I was giving it credit - and in failing to appreciate it, isnt my reaction exactly the sort of pleasure-inducing reaction I derive from modern art? I’ll ask Miss Teen South Carolina when I see her next – I’m sure she’ll be able to give me guidance.

So they're having a cholera outbreak in northern iraq - it's not huge, yet, and my guess is the WHO and Unicef will knock it down... but this sort of thing should clearly illustrate the effect of our terrible record on basic services in Iraq. "Oxfam, and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI) last month warned that 70% of Iraq's population did not have adequate water supplies and that only 20% had access to effective sanitation."
So remember that story a couple months back of congressmen trying to live on $21 a week of foodstamps? I say we do the same... only use what passes for drinking water... and let Halliburton executives and Congressmen who continue to back this absurd adventure. Take a good look at that drinking water Senator - and then tell me how wonderfully Iraq is going.

Well - with the GAO pissing on the status of the 'surge' - the WH is busy worrying about the propaganda game rather than the reality on the ground. Makes me wonder how they'll spin this article... "At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons. When Rep. Moran (D-VA) asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled." The initial spin? That this is the only place with electricity for this jackass to watch them. Great. That makes it all better.

The fact is that these assclowns may spin the surge as 'working' - because the idiotic american public may buy it - but that wont change reality... and the reality is grim and getting moreso by the day.

hmmmm

sad when the professionals cant execute a joke as well as the amateurs...

Genius answer

First off - the question is crap. She is thrown a fact - and asked 'why is that' - and she responds with 'I personally believe' - which is the right thing to say rather than 'in my opinion' - the difference between ‘belief’ and ‘opinion’. People use them interchangeably and shouldn’t. A belief is related to the statement of fact… or purported fact… ie ‘I believe the earth is round’. One does not have an opinion that the earth is round… one may have an opinion that people who believe the earth is round are nutjobs – because it’s so obviously flat – and that’s the big difference.

So

For example…

Racism. People may have the opinion that someone of a different ethnicity is ‘less good’ than another – but that is generally predicated on the belief that there is some fact to back that up. Those beliefs, when confronted with factual evidence, can be termed ‘mistaken beliefs’ by the rest of us – and thus the opinion denigrated as baseless.

Once upon a time, we believed lightning was the result of Thor’s hammer, or Jupiter’s anger. Others believed the earth was the center of the universe – and it took Copernicus and Brahe to correct that misconception. Now what happens when we base fantastic supposition upon poorly founded belief? It cracks. Without a basis in fact, belief systems become interchangeably valuable.

As children grow up – they begin to face realities… beliefs begin to fall away… there is no tooth fairy… no easter bunny… no santa claus… there are no prince charmings waiting in the wings to sweep you away… and the more of those beliefs you cling to – the bigger the veil of tears one must face. In this case, the girl in question 'believes' - so that's a good start...

it continues... 'that US Americans' - which is a distinction that too few make. The fact is that the Americas constitute 2 continents and a rather large number of nationalities... and with this being a map question - it's doubly important to set the proper tone for the response. In actuality - she's correcting the question itself - by calling the generic use of 'Americans' itself to account.

it continues... 'are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation dont have maps...'. Now - honestly, i dont think i have a world map in any way handy... other than the few ancient species in my old texts (my favorite being wonderfully illustrated and exacting cribbed from Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658 -- it folds well...) in fact, of the people i've spoken with on the subject, there really does seem to be a lack of distributed world map cartography in this country. We really aren't a nation of people who keep maps - certainly not ones without UNITED STATES OF AMERICA printed boldly across the midwest... Even then - I assume we're talking about Mercator projections here - the very Eurocentric mapping projections that have been forced upon us by our forebears - much like the NTSC color palette. Then again - what with the recent tendency to refute science with such idiocies as Intelligent Design and Pi=3 - perhaps the questioner was using a Beatine map to perform the survey. Again - without seeing the map in question and knowing what sort of projection was used (Austronesian perhaps) - it might be best to simply assume that the people who were questioned were not familiar with the particular style of cartography.

it continues...'and i believe that our education, "such as" in South Africa and Iraq - everywhere - [implied 'should be'] like "such as" - and i believe that they should...'

As the great Albert Einstein once said "Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means." 'Such As' - the use of Exempli Gratia - is a critical method of educating people. In this example - she is simply and eloquently making the case that the lack of contextual relationships in our education system is no different than the lack of boundary divisions in maps. South Africa and Iraq are quite simply the perfect examples - for each of these nations may well be termed 'nations' in our limited western hegemonistic sense - but with longstanding ethnic divisions such as the Bantustan or Lesotho situation in South Africa or the Marsh Arab and Kurdistan groups in Iraq - a national 'border drawing' identity that is at odds with its own regional and ethnic drives creates a difficulty in applying quick and easy border definitions. A nation of broad divisional generalizations, such as blue states and red states, cannot long stand -- and teaching said approach should be not be tolerated. If we are ever to understand and treat the deep underlying causes of social outgrouping and its resultant hatred - one must begin with the sense of arbitrary borders as implied in maps should be approached with this broader sense of inclusiveness in mind.

it continues... 'our education over here in the US should help the US or should help south africa - it should help Iraq and the asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our ch(ildren).'

Simply stated - education is universal - and by drawing the question of borders and maps into the forefront - she is emphasizing that our insistence on arbitrary demarkation only impedes our ability to pursue an ever expanding economy - a pursuit that is already a goal that should be questioned as a unreasonable. Her awareness that our education must take into account the coming cultural and economic dominance of the asian nations is not something one would necessarily expect from a teen from South Carolina - but as that would be implying some sort of regional discrimination based on an arbitrary border - which flies in the face of her answer to begin with - I'll refrain from such a supposition out of respect to her answer.

Now - the real question is... does anyone have her number?

Dogfighting

"Some have said things to save their own necks. Michael Vick has received more negative press than if he had killed a human being. His crime is, it was a dog." --Atlanta NAACP Chapter President R.L. White
White said he does not support dogfighting and that he considers it as bad as hunting.

As bad as hunting.

Hmmm.... "It didn't surprise anyone - most people knew the fights were going on - just nobody talks about it. There's a certain code on the streets..." ... "...even in a gang shooting, most people say 'the guy had it comin to him' - who's going to be concerned about a dog when they have to deal with their own life in situations every day"

Hmmmm.... "They will be forced to run on treadmills with "bait" animals such as cats dangled in front of them - the reward usually being to maul them afterwards." ... "Part of the psychology of dog fighting is the same as other forms of animal cruelty - a lot of it is about power and control. The dog fighter sees his dog's victory as having a direct reflection on his strength and manliness, which I think is one of the reasons that we see brutal treatment of animals that don't perform well," Dr Lockwood said.

Well there ya have it...
Some are saying 'this is a cultural thing' and part of the culture is to treat the individual the way the dog is treated. Fine by me... would you like me to oversee the drowning and electrocution - i'd be more than happy to do so.

I've got a Lee Greenwood earworm going... after seeing this, you will too

Highlights of the Spring Season

Not that anyone cares... since no one who reads my blog will sit through several hours of cartoons on a recommendation... but the series have been running long enough now that it's worth commenting.

Best Anime of the Spring

Seirei no Moribito (go ahead, watch the first 2:30 of that... and remember that this is youtube... imagine this in HD - because it's available that way)

Hands down - better than the overly stylized Champloo or X or those horrible 90s samurai abominations, this isn't just a good story. Not much filler... nothing subtle... just very well told and unbelievably well drawn. Already licensed for the US, if they get good voice talent (which is a LOT less likely than it should be) they could run it in primetime and it might hold its own. This is the sort of standard to which the studios in Japan are churning out animation and it's SOOOO much better than the garbage American's create.

Others of note: Claymore, El Cazador de la Bruja - both good (so far...) - just that Seirei is a real standout.

Three underappreciated series have already finished - Sola, Rec, and Hitohira. Of them, Rec is my favorite. I'm not really Hitohira's target audience (though i think Hitohira as a school play might be really genius - if only for the recursiveness), Sola tried a little too hard to be something bigger than it was, but Rec - Rec was subtle. It's a love story between an advertising executive and the voice actress for his product... episodically built around 10 different Audrey Hepburn films... this is the sort of thing that you can do in anime and it uses the medium perfectly. Yes - it's a bit cloying - but it's a love story... that's like saying Saw III was a bit bloody.

Now - dont get me wrong - there's some real crap out there too. There's a lot of it - but for example...

Idolmaster Xenoglossia

What happens when you combine a 'save the world from meteors' mecha story with an all girl pop-idol competition? yeah... exactly. This one is... hmmm... bad. Bad in a I want to shoot minmei sort of way. The Mecha arent even pretty - though you can tell there are moments when the male element of the animation team went a little whole hog to try and rectify that - usually in the fight sequences. Lots of repetition - reusing sequences and backdrops - overused memory sequences. Considering that - the story isnt too terrible. It's a bit copy and paste - but honestly - what CAN you do with something like this. Good to know that 12 yr old Ami Futami has a B bloodtype... strange people... and the old guy hanging out on the beach with all the 16 yr old girls in swimsuits is more than a little pervy (fan service is bad enough - but come on...).

What's odd - this feels like one of those 'trying to be all things to all people' animes that ends up being shallow and abysmal everywhere as a result. Feels like Mai Otome in some ways - with less interesting art... and when we get to the inevitable best friend betrayal homestretch that i see coming - it all just feels like a mess.

One worth watching

when you're done... if you want to understand why he's so upset - yeah...