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Muscle Mustangs & Fast FordsHow To Tech Qa
Yo Ken! Tech Q&A - August 2014
Answering Your Technical Questions
Six or EightHow can I modify my '12 Mustang V-6 to increase horsepower enough to run mid-13s? I was told any re-flashing is not really worth the cash. Would it be wise to just trade up, or can I save some money by upgrading what I have?
Via the Internet
Ron, the '12 Mustang 3.7 V-6 is great platform for performance upgrades. A tune will increase power noticeably and is worth every penny. Other upgrades, such as exhaust, cold-air intake, throttle body, and gears, will all increase power and performance. Get yourself a tune, along with these upgrades, and you will have an economical performance car that can run mid-13s all day long—and you'll save yourself some money for trading up later.
Endless ChatterThe Ford dealership recently replaced the clutch assembly at 55,000 miles. Since the replacement, the clutch chatters in First and Reverse if the rpm is below 1,500. Also, the vehicle drivetrain makes a noticeable oscillating humming noise in Third gear at about 50 mph.
The car has been back to the dealer twice, and the crew continues to tell me these problems are normal for the updated clutch that was installed in the car. Is this actually the case, or is the dealer making up stories so they don't have to fix the problem?
Also, the vehicle is in need of new shocks and struts. The car is mostly stock, and I'm wondering what new parts I should get to replace the old.
Via the Internet
Stu, if they replaced it with the stock clutch assembly, then it should have no chatter or noise. If you went with an aftermarket or upgraded clutch assembly, then it could be an issue with the disc and/or pressure plate. I would ask the dealer to fix this issue in either case.
For shocks and struts, I like the Bilstein HD Series, a quality damper that greatly improves handling and ride. If you're looking for adjustable shocks and struts, you can't go wrong with Koni.
Fox TailsI'm 19 years old and restoring my first car ground up, a '79 Mustang hatchback. I'm running into a problem with the taillights. I despise the look of the stock ones, but I found an aftermarket set for an '89 that I like. I'm wondering, will they bolt right up, or will I have to do some fabrication to the car? I'm also looking into other late-model Fox-body trim items.
Via the Internet
Alex, the '89 Mustang taillights are a simple bolt-in with no modifications necessary. It's a great upgrade to give your '79 a fresh look. All Fox-body vehicles can share all trim and mechanical parts.
There is a lot of after-market support for the Fox-body Mustangs. American Muscle.com and Latemodel Restoration.com are just two of the companies that offer everything you could possible need.
Living LegalI have an '02 GT with 110,000 miles. I already have a few mods, including a cold-air intake, 70mm throttle body, aftermarket plugs, and Borla Stinger after-cat exhaust.
I want to increase the horsepower without ruining my fuel efficiency, so I've been looking into headers and a catted X-style midpipe. I live in California, so I want it to appear legal at a glance. Will the headers work on a daily driver? Will they last? Will the catted X-style midpipe be worth it? I plan to get a flash tuner once all this is installed.
Via the Internet
Mpks92, headers will work as a daily driver. Many Mustangs came from the factory with headers.
Headers and an X-style midpipe will give you the best performance gains, and will actually increase your engine's efficiency, which should give you better fuel mileage. Long-tube headers are the most efficient, with the most durable and long-lasting being stainless steel. You can add these with no worries.
Stock as a RockI have a '01 Mustang GT with a K&N air filter as the only mod. I have had it for over a month now, and I'm contemplating ways to add horsepower without supercharging it. I have looked at throttle bodies and gears, and I'm just not sure what to get specifically. I'm open to suggestions.
Braxton Patterson
Via the Internet
The first thing I suggest is a tune—it will give biggest bang for your buck. Throttle bodies, cold-air intakes, and long-tube headers will all increase power, and when combined, they add up to a significant power increase. What's good about these mods is you can add them as your budget allows and have your tune adjusted as you upgrade.
Gears will also give an increase in performance that you can really feel. I suggest 3.73s for a stick and 4.10s for an auto.


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Nov. 2, 2001
Santa Barbara, Calif. -
Senior forward Rob Friend scored an unassisted goal at the 6:16 mark in the first half, and UC Santa Barbara held on for a physical 1-0 win over Cal State Northridge on Friday night in Santa Barbara.
Friend, who leads the Gauchos with seven goals, took the ball down the sideline, dribbled past a pair of defenders and then drilled a shot into the lower left portion of the goal, past Matador goalkeeper Joe Barton, for the matches lone goal.
The final 83 minutes were played with far more fouls than shots. The Gauchos finished the match with nine shots, while Cal State Northridge had just three, all in the second half. The teams were whistled for a total of 56 fouls, 37 by UCSB. In addition, they combined for seven yellow cards and a pair of red cards.
Matador forward Charles Mitchell was ejected in the 55th minute, and just two minutes later, Gaucho forward Gene Deering received a red card of his own. Among UCSB's yellow cards one was issued in the 60th minute to Friend. For the native of Kelowna, British Columbia, it was his fifth of the year, and he will be forced to sit out UCSB's Sunday match against UC Riverside.
With the win, the Gauchos avenged a 3-2 overtime loss at Cal State Northridge on October 21. UCSB improves to 8-4-3 overall, 4-1-1 in the Big West. The Matadors drop to 8-4-2 overall, 3-2-1 in league.
The Gauchos return to action on Sunday, November 4, when they host UC Riverside in a Big West match scheduled to kickoff at 4:00 p.m. at Harder Stadium.

subset: commoncrawl


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Kenny Vaccaro didn't help himself with a sluggish 40-yard dash time at the NFL Scouting Combine on Tuesday, but a lack of straight-line speed doesn't hurt safety prospects the way it might a cornerback.
The Texas safety clocked an official 4.63 seconds, a disappointing result, but Vaccaro looked good in the remaining drills.
At Texas, Vaccaro caused headaches for wideouts from the slot position. He showed plenty of speed staying with receivers on their routes and downfield, even if he's viewed as a player who must become more reliable in the back-half of the field.
NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders openly downplayed Vaccaro's sluggish run. With so many teams around the NFL searching for starting help or depth at the position, his slow time probably won't scare teams away from Vaccaro as the 2013 NFL Draft's top prospect at safety.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.


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France will about halve its purchases of Dassault Rafale jet fighter planes over the next six years, under defence estimates on Friday, and is counting on at last clinching the first sales abroad to keep production lines going.
French officials say that among potential clients are India, Qatar, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil.
The government, struggling to curb public spending, also made clear that there will be no change to the French independent nuclear deterrent which successive governments have treated as a vital issue of national defence.
Dassault Aviation, which builds the Rafale fighters, used to high-profile effect in fighting in Libya and Mali, was to supply 11 planes a year to the French defence forces.
This was intended to ensure an essential minimum amount of work for production lines while France tries to achieve the first sales of the aircraft abroad.
But the government, which is struggling to meet commitments to the European Union and to retain investor confidence by getting its public deficit under control, is crimping public expenditure including spending on defence.
Under the draft defence estimates put before the cabinet on Friday, the left-wing government will acquire only 26 of the planes during the next six years.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had said on June 11, that from 2016 Dassault Aviation would have to count on exports to underpin production of the plane which is able to fulfill several types of mission.
On Friday, the minister said on Europe 1 radio: "There are countries which today are really interested in buying the Rafale, I am thinking particularly of India, Qatar, of other countries, and I am very confident of the chances of exporting the Rafale in coming months."
France has been in exclusive negotiations to sell 126 Rafale planes to India "and I have high hopes that this will be successful," he said.
Sources close to the minister said that the estimates were based in part on a hypothesis that at least one country among other potential buyers would place an order before the end of 2019.
These countries are Malaysia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil.
An adviser to the minister said that the government was not changing its overall order for 180 Rafale planes, of which a total of 120 will have been delivered within the next few months, and it could place another slice of orders.
During the period covered by the estimates, Dassault would receive hundreds of millions of euros to design a pilotless combat drone by 2030 in cooperation with British aerospace group BAE Systems, and also to develop the Rafale to meet new standards, under a programme called F3-R.
The ministry's objective is to underpin nine big defence industry activities, ranging from aerospace to communications and submarines. In order to achieve this, orders are being stretched out over time.
Le Drian, in separate remarks to broadcaster France 2, said that there would be no changes to the French nuclear deterrence capability.
The two components of the French independent deterrence, based on submarines and airborne, would be maintained.
'Ultimate' nuclear deterrence
"The President of the Republic (Francois Hollande) has decided to maintain the two components and they will be maintained," he said.
The minister said that they were "indispensable because the second component (airborne) provides agility, the capacity for rapid reaction in a world where proliferation (of nuclear capability) is continuing and in which France must keep this ultimate security, this fundamental guarantee which is deterrence."
The minister criticised the defence minister in the previous right-wing government, Herve Morin, for suggesting that one of the two components could be axed to save money.
However, Morin repeated his criticism in a statement on Friday, saying that the government was "fooling the defence forces and French people that France is still one of the four global military forces on the planet when in reality it no longer has the means, unfortunately."
Last week Dassault Aviation reported a 20.0-percent fall in net profit for the first half of the year but held to its target for raising sales in the whole of 2013.
Net profit for the first half amounted to 165 million euros ($218 million). Sales fell by 5.0 percent from the equivalent figure last year to 1.82 billion euros.
Orders taken amounted to 1.41 billion euros, little changed from a figure of 1.42 billion euros in the first half of 2012.


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Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's Flesh-N-Bone Creating New Marijuana Strain
Rapper Stanley "Flesh-n-Bone" Howse of the Grammy-award winning 1990s group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony is working on a new collaboration but it's not with another artist.
He is partnering with a Michigan medical marijuana facility to grow and distribute a new strain of marijuana, according to MLive.com.
The owners of Green Oasis medicinal dispensary and Flesh-n-Bone are working on a strain called "Phifty Caliber Kush," which has a floral taste and will serve as a pain reliever and will be distributed to Flint, Mich., area patients.
"We worked closely together to figure out what we wanted out of the medication," Green Oasis owner Anthony Butler told MLive.com. Howse may be the first high-profile artist to partner with a medical dispensary for a project such as this.
This is lighter news for Flesh-n-Bone, who was sentenced to a California prison in 2000, for threatening a man with an AK-47. He was released five years ago, but was arrested on a felony warrant in 2010.
According to TMZ, Howse hopes to expand his business to California, Colorado and Washington in the near future.
Watch Flesh-N-Bone's 'Da Bone in Me' Video


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Helmerich & Payne, Inc. Invites You to Join Its Second Quarter Conference Call on the Web
TULSA, Okla., April 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In conjunction with Helmerich & Payne, Inc.'s (NYSE:HP) second quarter earnings release, you are invited to listen to its conference call that will be broadcast live over the Internet on Thursday, April 26, 2018, at 11:00 a.m. (ET) with John Lindsay, President and CEO, Juan Pablo Tardio, Vice President and CFO, and Dave Wilson, Manager of Investor Relations.
|Helmerich & Payne, Inc.'s Second Quarter Earnings Release. Other material developments may also be discussed.
|11:00 a.m. ET (10:00 a.m. CT), Thursday, April 26, 2018
|Log on to http://www.hpinc.com then click on "For Our INVESTORS"
|Investor Relations, 918-588-5190
/EIN News/ -- Helmerich & Payne, Inc. is primarily a contract drilling company. As of March 31, 2018, the Company's existing fleet included 350 U.S. land rigs, 38 international land rigs and eight offshore platform rigs.
If you are unable to listen during the live webcast, the call will be archived for one year on Helmerich & Payne, Inc.'s website at http://www.hpinc.com under "Audio Archives," which can be accessed through the Investor Relations section of the website by clicking on "For Our INVESTORS."
This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this release and conference call, including, without limitation, statements regarding the registrant's future financial position, operations outlook, business strategy, budgets, projected costs and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. For information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's business, please refer to the "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" sections of the Company's SEC filings, including but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. As a result of these factors, Helmerich & Payne, Inc.'s actual results may differ materially from those indicated or implied by such forward-looking statements. We undertake no duty to update or revise our forward-looking statements based on changes in internal estimates, expectations or otherwise, except as required by law.
Investor Relations, 918-588-5190
EIN Presswire does not exercise editorial control over third-party content provided, uploaded, published, or distributed by users of EIN Presswire. We are a distributor, not a publisher, of 3rd party content. Such content may contain the views, opinions, statements, offers, and other material of the respective users, suppliers, participants, or authors.


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|Allegro CL version 10.1
Unrevised from 10.0 to 10.1.
10.0 version
Arguments: object-editor
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one. The value may be set at creation time with the
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Copyright (c) 1998-2017, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
This page was not revised from the 10.0 page.
Created 2017.2.15.
|Allegro CL version 10.1
Unrevised from 10.0 to 10.1.
10.0 version


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Starz's new big-budget series "Black Sails" is hardly a pirate story inspired by a family-oriented theme-park ride. Instead, these are men and women living on the edge of the world in 1715 during the end of the Golden Age of Piracy — and on the edge in everything else they do.
In the first episode alone, the beautiful and powerful Eleanor Guthrie, played by Hannah New, proves she can be as vulgar as any buccaneer, give and take a punch, and shows — as far as her sex life is concerned — that the door swings both ways.
"It's a world where sexuality and boundaries have been completely broken down," the British actress says. "So to play a young woman who doesn't have those kind of social restrictions put on her, who is free to use her sexuality in whichever way is advantageous to her, is fabulous."
Producer Jonathan E. Steinberg, who created the series with mega-filmmaker Michael Bay, says he always saw tales of pirates as more akin to a Western, with people trying to carve out a life and make a fortune as civilization closes in.
"It's a frontier story," Steinberg says about "Black Sails." "It's a story about necessity, day-to-day survival, breaking down social convention."
If "Black Sails" is out to "dispel myths we have about piracy," as New says, it's doing it on an ambitious scale. Bay's production company is shooting the series on a giant set near Cape Town, South Africa, to re-create the Caribbean of that era. The facility includes two giant water tanks, a beach, two ships, an entire downtown and a cast of about a thousand extras.
Due to the overwhelming positive response given the series at a presentation at last summer's Comic-Con in San Diego, it has already been renewed for a second season. (This season has eight episodes, while production on the 10-episode second season began in November.)
The story draws on fact as well as fiction in that it is something of a prequel to the most classic of all pirate stories, Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel, "Treasure Island," set in the mid-1700s.
"Black Sails" is set more than 20 years earlier. Toby Stephens plays Captain Flint, a character described in the novel as someone who carried "a great weight of terror." Then there is a young John Silver (Luke Arnold), who still has both his legs, and Billy Bones (Tom Hopper), who is an old drunkard in "Treasure Island."
Some of the characters are based on real people: Jack Rackham (Toby Schmitz) is believed to have designed the Jolly Roger flag, a skull with crossed swords; Capt. Charles Vane (Zach McGowan) was known for his cruelty toward the crews of captured vessels; and Anne Bonny (Clara Paget) was known to fight on pirate ships.
While New's Eleanor is fiction, the actress — who played a British spy in a Spanish miniseries — says the best thing about her job is "being able to delve into history and become totally immersed in it," but admits it wasn't easy in this case, "because there wasn't a huge amount written about women at this time in the Bahamas."
One of her inspirations, though, was Grace O'Malley, sometimes called the Pirate Queen, a 16th-century Irish aristocrat who inherited a shipping fortune and is believed to have allowed piracy among her men.
Eleanor wields the same sort of power. As the daughter of Richard Guthrie (Sean Cameron Michael), the wealthiest black marketer in the Bahamas, Eleanor oversees his dealings with the pirates in Nassau; she also operates the town's tavern and brothel.
Still, what would a pirate story be without a search for a treasure? Flint, who is facing a challenge to his captaincy, and Eleanor forge an alliance to fight encroaching tentacles of British power.
"There's a dirty little real-life backstory that changes the whole pirate dynamic," Stephens says. "Until shortly before this story starts, these privateers had almost worked with the British navy. Now, suddenly, they are being treated as criminals."
True, the British — from the time of Queen Elizabeth I — often turned a blind eye toward buccaneering as long as it interrupted Spanish or French trade, but the end of colonial wars had left many sailors unemployed and looking for a way to make a living.
Stephens, who has concentrated on stage work throughout most of his career, is the son of two great British thespians, the late Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith, a longtime star who is currently playing the Dowager Countess on the British period drama "Downton Abbey."
"I appreciate what my mum does in it," Stephens says. "She's great in it. But it's just not really what I enjoy watching."
Stephens prefers pirate adventures.
"Playing this kind of thing, for me, is like going on an exotic vacation because we just don't do this kind of stuff in the U.K.," he says. The series has "a fantastic character, phenomenal production values, and a fantastic story. And that's what I want to be involved in."
What's important for Stephens is that the audience get past the pirate outfits and see the characters as "real people in real situations that you can identify with." His Captain Flint is something of a mystery at first, but Stephens notes that a cable television series allows time to develop characters in depth. .
Steinberg says the aim of the series is to show what it would be like in a world where "the absence of any kind of authority had meaning. And I think that means violence. And so when things get violent, I think we wanted to make it feel shocking."
And there is sex.
"I think we wanted to make sure that it feels real," he says. "People have sex, and they almost certainly have sex in a world in which none of them really have any jobs, and they are living in the Caribbean."
But if "Black Sails" delivers all the sex and violence expected on a pay-cable network, it also clearly has a serious story to tell, with intrigue and drama, and is a series that Starz is willing to take time to develop.
New says the series is about self-made men and questions the idea of heroes and villains.
"All these characters are put in situations where they have to question their own morals," says the actress, who will be seen in Disney's summer release "Maleficent" — a take on the "Sleeping Beauty" story starring Angelina Jolie — as the mother of young Princess Aurora.
But since she shot that role, she has been living in what she calls a "little bubble of fantastic sets" for a year in South Africa shooting "Black Sails." So far, though, they have yet to write her a scene in which she gets to use a sword. "I am dying to get some weaponry," she says.


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Foundations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy - Introduction
Buddhist philosophers often speak of beginninglessness. It is claimed that the minds of living beings, for example, have no beginning, and that our current universe is only one in a beginningless cycle of expansion and decay. Some Buddhist thinkers would claim that even the most mundane task can have no true beginning. That is, if a beginning occurs, there must be some moment, some "now," in which it occurs. For the present to exist, however, there must be a past and a future, for what would "now" mean if there were no time other than now? And of course, if there is a past, then how could now be a beginning? Now should instead be the end of the past. Each beginning, in short, must itself have a beginning.In a more concrete sense, this book also starts from beginninglessness, for it arises from a need for a point of departure—a place from which to begin—in my work on the thought of Dharmakīrti, a South Asian Buddhist philosopher of the seventh century (c.e.).That Dharmakīrti is worthy of our attention seems scarcely necessary to justify. Following upon the work of his predecessor Dignāga, Dharmakīrti addressed at length numerous questions that are of central concern to Buddhist thought and practice. The impact of his views on Buddhist theories of perception, inference, and language is difficult to overestimate. Indeed, it would not be outlandish to claim that his ideas are repeated in every Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophical work written after his time in South Asia. To this day, the Tibetan translations of his Sanskrit texts are recited, studied, and debated by Tibetan monastic scholars to such an extent that, in the central monasteries of the largest Tibetan tradition, a lengthy monastic holiday is devoted entirely to debate on the works of Dharmakīrti.The difficulty in beginning a conversation on the work of Dharmakīrti stems from a problem that often plagues systematic philosophy and theology: the elements of the system are so tightly intertwined that the first word of an argument appears to presuppose the system in its entirety.In Dharmakīrti's case, two circumstances render this hermeneutical circle particularly vexing. First, the systematicity of his thought is matched by its complexity and extreme concision. And second, the Buddhist traditions of South Asia and Tibet, in their reverence for Dharmakīrti, have reappropriated his works through successive generations of commentaries such that we encounter a sometimes dazzling variety of ways to read Dharmakīrti. As a result, we often find a striking lack of consensus on the most basic issues in the contemporary study of Dharmakīrti's thought.
A lack of consensus is not itself a problem: Dominick LaCapra has noted that one frequently acknowledged sign of a great work is its resistance to definitive interpretation. Nevertheless, in the case of a systematic thinker such as Dharmakīrti, some of our most useful readings must emphasize the tightly woven nature of the web of ideas that constitute his thought, and without a consensus on even his most basic positions, such readings become impossible. Instead, we find ourselves arguing over the details of a particular position—such as his notion of an entity's nature (svabhāva)—without ever coming to the point where we ask how theories about an entity's nature relate to other issues, such as the questions of rational justification and authority. The central aim of this book is thus to contribute toward the development of a consensus by presenting the foundations of Dharmakīrti's philosophy in terms of a consciously constructed starting point.
In speaking of the "foundations" of Dharmakīrti's philosophy, I mean those issues that repeatedly surface throughout his work: they are the fundamental elements of his conceptual system that, on my view, make all of his arguments possible. I have organized those elements under three broad categories: (1) ontology, (2) the "natural relation" (svabhāvapratibandha) in inference, and (3) the issues of justification and authority, which I place under the rubric of "instrumentality" (prāmāṇya). These broad categories, which structure this book, encompass all the elements that enable one to understand and appreciate any argument made by Dharmakīrti. At the same time, these categories include what is most difficult—and hence, most controversial—in Dharmakīrti's thought. Thus, somewhat to my surprise, I have written a book that is both an in-depth introduction to Dharmakīrti's philosophy and a detailed interpretation of certain difficult points in his work.
A Question of Method: A Point of Departure
The central concern of my approach to Dharmakīrti's thought is my interest in developing interpretations that attend to its systematicity: the manner in which one theoretical position—such as the uniqueness of particulars (svalakṣaṇa)—is mutually constrained and enabled by numerous others, such as the ultimate irreality of universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) or the role of habituation in perceptual judgment. Above all, one interpretive practice initially led me to read Dharmakīrti's work in this fashion: namely, my ineluctable reliance on traditional commentaries. But while I learned this valuable lesson from the style of reasoning employed by traditional commentators, their practices and certain features of their texts likewise posed a set of historical problems that compelled me to construct a starting point. In sum, I will focus on only Dharmakīrti's earliest texts, the Pramāṇavārttika and Svavṛtti, and I will resort only to the earliest commentators, Devendrabuddhi (ca. 675 C.E.) and Śākyabuddhi (ca. 700 C.E.). To understand my reasons for restricting this study in the aforementioned fashion, I should first explain why I was led to rely on commentaries.
In the several years of research that went into this book, two reasons compelled me to resort frequently to commentaries. First, in practical terms, any reader of Dharmakīrti's Sanskrit texts knows that his elliptical and intricate statements often remain impenetrable without commentarial elucidation. Speaking in general of Dharmakīrti's style, Richard Hayes refers to "the tortuous writings of this highly complex thinker."And referring specifically to the Svavṛtti (PVSV), a text that is especially important for my analysis, Hayes and Brendan Gillon together note, "Dharmakīrti's style is so terse that it is not always immediately clear what philosophical points he intends to make."I would add that, leave alone the question of its philosophical content, even the straightforward meaning of a sentence sometimes seem utterly obscure in Dharmakīrti's sparse style. The result is that, unless one wishes to argue from highly conjectural interpretations, one must refer to commentaries, where missing phrases are supplied and the elegantly tortuous relations of Dharmakīrti's grammar are plausibly restated. Thus, for purely practical reasons, commentaries become an inevitable companion on any foray into Dharmakīrti's texts.
Beyond practical concerns, however, lies another compelling reason for my reliance on commentaries: my larger aim—one that extends beyond the present work—is not to understand Dharmakīrti's thought in and of itself, but rather the subsequent use of his thought throughout the history of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Thus, even if one could somehow understand Dharmakīrti's works in a manner that ignored the history of their interpretation, such an approach would thwart me in my goals. In part, an ahistorical reading would be useless because it is a fantasy masquerading as truth: my assumption here is that my own understanding is historically conditioned, and thus, an ahistorical reading of Dharmakīrti would be at best deluded. But setting aside questions of delusion, one of my central aims in attending to the use of Dharmakīrti's thought in particular historical moments is to create an awareness of my own location by reflecting on the way others from a different time and place appear from my perspective to be conditioned by their circumstances. I do not envision that such an awareness will awaken me from the nightmare of history so that I might move beyond my own "contingent arrangements." Instead, by gaining a greater awareness of that contingency, I hope to create a more effective agency therein.Thus, in consulting commentaries, I have not used them as uncontested restatements of Dharmakīrti's texts. Instead, I have sought to learn and even to employ the style of reasoning that they bring to the interpretation of Dharmakīrti's thought.In doing so, I am not only able to use this work as a foil to the styles of reasoning available to me in my own milieu, but I also hope to have offered an interpretation of Dharmakīrti's thought that readily enables one to more deeply appreciate its relevance in the history of Buddhism.
Having chosen to rely on commentaries, I eventually encountered three features of their style of reasoning that are especially relevant here. The first is the systematicity that we have already mentioned. Put simply, for traditional commentators, the best interpretation of the matter at hand is one that allows for the greatest coherence—or at least produces minimal tension—with any and all other issues addressed by Dharmakīrti. One upshot of this systematic approach is that it inadvertently highlights the pieces that do not fit readily into Dharmakīrti's philosophical puzzle. Among the strategies used to cope with such inconsistencies is the second relevant feature of this style of reasoning, namely, that meaning resides in the author's intention, not in his texts, and that in most cases the author's intention remains the same over the entire corpus of his work. Finally, the third feature of the style of reasoning employed by traditional commentators is straightforward: Dharmakīrti, to put it bluntly, can never be wrong.
In combination, these three features—systematicity, the appeal to authorial intent, and Dharmakīrti's inviolable correctness—lead to several concrete practices among traditional commentators. For our purposes, the most relevant practices concern the resolution of inconsistencies—cases where pieces of the puzzle do not perfectly fit. Specifically, if a commentator confronts an inconsistency for which he can formulate a solution, he will feel free to supply arguments that, if necessary, move beyond the text; from the commentators' standpoint, movement beyond the text is justified because the locus of meaning is not the text but Dharmakīrti's intention. Nevertheless, even though Dharmakīrti's commentators feel free to move beyond the text, their arguments will not contradict the problematic or inconsistent passage at hand. Instead, commentators construct arguments in the semantic space that is left open by the text itself. In some cases, a passage's ambiguity opens it to multiple readings, and this ambiguity constitutes the space where such arguments may be created. In most cases, however, the strict and highly inflected style of Dharmakīrti's Sanskrit—along with a precisely defined technical vocabulary—leaves little room for such semantic maneuvering. As a result, commentators must often depart from the text altogether to compose, in effect, a statement of the unsaid that supplies the requisite argument. The hermeneutical principle that enables a commentator to supply such addenda is the appeal to Dharmakīrti's intention: one is simply revealing his intention.
For a contemporary academic interpreter, these various features and practices of traditional commentaries lead to two clear advantages and some notable problems. We have already touched on one advantage, namely, the attention to systematicity, which permits questions that are impossible if one attends only to minutiae.As a second advantage, the commentarial practices offer the contemporary interpreter an opportunity to consider the regnant intellectual problems and contributions in each commentator's historical era. That is, since the commentators are most concerned with resolving inconsistencies, and since resolutions to old problems lead to new critiques, each generation of commentators is thus responding to a new set of concerns typical of that era. Hence, by providing access to the concerns that are distinctive of each generation, the commentaries can serve as an important tool for the work of intellectual history.
While the traditional commentarial approach offers these advantages to the contemporary interpreter, the very same features and practices also prove problematic in a way that has led me to place strict limits on the present study. The attention to systematicity, inasmuch as it is coupled with an appeal to Dharmakīrti's intention, permits commentators to move freely among Dharmakīrti's texts, and since Dharmakīrti composed eight philosophical works,a contemporary interpreter would encounter significant problems if she were to uncritically accept the commentators' approach. In practical terms, the sheer size of Dharmakīrti's written corpus would require a contemporary historian to apply the current, highly focused standards of historical interpretation over an unmanageable amount of material. But more important, a failure to attend to the differences in Dharmakīrti's texts effectively leads one to adopt the same stance as the traditional commentators, namely, that meaning resides in Dharmakīrti's intention, not in the texts. In other words, if I choose to explain the meaning of a passage in Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika, for example, by recourse to any other passage in any other of Dharmakīrti's texts, I must claim that something beyond that text itself links it to those other texts. For the traditional commentators, that link is provided by the intentions in Dharmakīrti's mind, and unless I affirm an even more obscure linkage, I too will eventually resort to the notion of authorial intention. Beyond the problems attendant upon any attempt to uncover intention,the main difficulty here is that, in constructing my own version of Dharmakīrti's mind, I will fail to see the version presented by the commentaries at hand. In other words, as the particularities of the texts themselves fade from consideration, so too will the distinction between my own imagined Dharmakīrti and the commentators' version.
My response to this problem is not to reject the commentaries in favor of some pure reading of Dharmakīrti, nor to reject altogether the intertextuality of Dharmakīrti's work. Instead, I have chosen to restrict my focus to Dharmakīrti's earliest and most extensive works, namely the Pramāṇavārttika and the Svavṛtti, the lengthy prose commentary on the first chapter of the Pramāṇavārttika. In every case, I move beyond these texts only when the commentators themselves prompt me to do so. This technique allows me to avoid both the practical and methodological problems associated with an attempt to speak in terms of Dharmakīrti's entire philosophical corpus.
Another challenge presented by traditional commentaries is the manner in which they are layered. As noted above, the reappropriation of Dharmakīrti in each commentarial generation makes it possible to appreciate the intellectual interests and contributions of each commentator, but we create that possibility only if we discern clearly the distinctions among commentarial strata. As is already evident, on my view each commentator constructs an imagined Dharmakīrti who replaces the text as the repository of meaning, and in this imagined Dharmakīrti's mind, all systemic inconsistencies find their resolution. In many cases, commentaries from the same generation largely agree—their Dharmakīrti-s can be treated as one—and those commentaries therefore form a single commentarial stratum. When, however, one moves on to another generation (or to another line of interpretation), a new Dharmakīrti appears. And since Dharmakīrti's texts are taken by the commentators to be the inviolable account of all that matters in regard to issues such as perception, inferential reasoning, and semantics, the history of Buddhist theories on these issues in South Asia is embodied by a line of imagined Dharmakīrti-s, each corresponding to the interpretation of a particular commentarial stratum.The chief challenge for a contemporary interpreter is the work of separating commentarial strata. In short, commentaries tend to build one upon the other, and they thus develop historical layers, often expressed in terms of the accrued repetition of key phrases or ideas from their predecessors. At least some interpretations—and even many phrases—of Devendrabuddhi, the first commentator on Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika, appear to be repeated in all subsequent commentaries on that work, no matter how late those commentaries might be.The next commentator, Śākyabuddhi, naturally repeats Devendrabuddhi's commentary, since part of his work is a subcommentary on Devendrabuddhi's text. But Śākyabuddhi also expands upon Devendrabuddhi's work by adding his own insights. When we then come to later authors such as Śāntarakṣita (725?–788) and Dharmottara (fl. ca. 800), we find that the ideas—and often verbatim phrases—of both Devendrabuddhi and Śākyabuddhi are repeated in their works without any indication as to their origin.This trend continues even in Tibet, where ideas and phrases of South Asian commentators are repeated without identification by Tibetan authors.It is worth reiterating that the layering of commentaries does not come about because commentators, in some slavish adherence to tradition, fail to be original. Indeed, the layering of commentaries indicates exactly the opposite: each stratum represents a new set of innovations and insights brought to the issue at hand by that generation's commentators in response to the various developments of their times. Consider, for example, the following comment of Śākyabuddhi. Here he summarizes a passage from Dharmakīrti's Svavṛtti that addresses Dharmakīrti's philosophy of language:
The idea in this passage is that since expressions take as their objects a conceptual appearance that is excluded from other appearances, they are therefore established to have other-exclusions as their objects.
The basic point here is that an object (artha, viṣaya) of an expression (śabda) such as "cow" is actually a specific type of negation that Dharmakīrti calls an "other-exclusion" (anyāpoha). Words, in short, have negations as their objects.
With this passage in mind, let us turn to the much later commentary of Karṇakagomin (fl. ca. 900). As is so often the case, he repeats verbatim this comment of Śākyabuddhi, but he makes an important change:
The idea in this passage is that since expressions take as their object a conceptual appearance that is excluded from other appearances, they are therefore established to have affirmations as their objects.
For Dharmakīrti, the position that expressions have affirmations (vidhi) as their objects is directly opposed to the claim that expressions take otherexclusions as their objects. Thus, when Karṇakagomin repeats Śākyabuddhi's comment, he ends it with a conclusion that is exactly opposite to
Śākyabuddhi's. In altering Śākyabuddhi's conclusion, Karṇakagomin clearly had a specific problem to address,but we can only become aware of that problem if we notice and take as significant Karṇakagomin's modification of Śākyabuddhi. And we can only do so if we resist the apparent synchronicity of the commentaries.
Attention to commentarial strata—a kind of textual archaeology—is central to my interpretation of Dharmakīrti. Specifically, I aim to present an interpretation that focuses on the earliest commentarial stratum as formed by the interpretations of Devendrabuddhi and Śākyabuddhi.The particular version of "Dharmakīrti" presented here thus arises in dialogue with their version. It is only by developing a restricted interpretation in this manner that we can begin the painstaking task of separating commentarial layers so as to learn the insights that characterize each commentator's work.And, as noted above, my aim in doing so is to get some sense of the historical development of Buddhist thought as well as my own historical location. The archaeological metaphor that I have employed, however, can be highly misleading, in that it might suggest an almost naïve objectivity that belies my approach to reading Dharmakīrti.
To be mores specific, the archaeological metaphor of "commentarial strata" usefully describes some constraints that I have placed on my interpretation of Dharmakīrti's thought, but this metaphor does not capture the way I have attempted to read and think through the problems therein. That is, by constraining my approach in historical terms, my aim is not to uncover the meaning of the text as if it were an unearthed object. Rather, I hope to create the conditions that enable me to participate in the vibrancy of the Buddhist tradition's reverence for such an influential thinker. I do not mean that I will bow unconditionally at Dharmakīrti's feet—certain reservations about his thought prevent me from doing so. But by locating my interpretation within a particular historical reading from a particular style of reasoning, my goal is to enact in imagination the aporias found (if sometimes then obscured) by the systematic approach employed by the commentators on whom I have relied. Those often complex and intricate aporias are precisely the inconsistencies around which the chapters of this book have been organized: problems in ontology, inferential relations, and justification. Throughout I have attempted to employ a hermeneutics of charity that gives the best possible argument from within a historically located style of reasoning. I will not thereby resolve the inconsistencies that we encounter in Dharmakīrti's thought, but I do hope that I have come to an interpretation that is "good" in that it "reactivates the process of inquiry, opening up new avenues of investigation, criticism, and self-reflection."
Some Suggestions for the Reader
Because this book has various aims, it also has various audiences. My overall aim is to make the content and style of Dharmakīrti's reasoning—as interpreted by Devendrabuddhi and Śākyabuddhi—available to all my readers, and this goal thus applies to all audiences of this book. I also hope, however, to speak directly to specialists in an attempt to encourage a historically focused consensus on at least some central issues. Hence, I aim to present an argument that is of sufficient rigor and detail to maintain a specialist's attention. In doing so, however, I wish to avoid the risk that, in its technicality and minutiae, my presentation will become impenetrable to readers not actively engaged in this field.
Balancing the needs of specialists and more broadly interested readers has its dangers. Those engaged directly in research on Dharmakīrti or Pramāṇa Theory might occasionally ask for even greater abundance of detail and citation, while those not directly engaged in such research will find additional detail superfluous or even overwhelming. To allay some of this risk, I have taken several steps. First, I have placed all introductory material in the first chapter, where I present an overview of the style of discourse focused on Pramāṇa Theory. Second, when we turn in the remaining chapters to a detailed examination of Dharmakīrti's own views, I offer a sustained but not overly technical argument in the body of the text, while providing greater technical detail in the notes. Third, to provide all readers with the most relevant primary source material, I have included an extensive appendix of translations from key passages in Dharmakīrti's works. Finally, I have attempted to avoid to the greatest extent possible the use of square brackets in my translations of primary texts. In the academic study of Pramāṇa Theory, the use of [square] brackets has become a standard practice as a means to indicate words or phrases in the translation that, while implied by the source text or supplied by a commentary, are not actually present in the source text. This practice leads to an extremely literalist notion of translation, where the mark of an "accurate" translation is its ability to be read as a simulacrum of the original. By ignoring the way in which translation involves a dialogue with the text, such an approach produces translations that will not enable a reader to think through Dharmakīrti's works in the way that I hope to encourage. Brackets, moreover, are obviously directed only at specialists, since only a specialist could sort out the philological implications of such insertions. For other readers, brackets are at best a distraction, and at worst they exclude nonspecialists by reminding them that the translation is simply a crib for the source text, rather than a translation per se. A crib—a tool to ease the reading of Sanskrit and Tibetan—may have its uses, but it obviously is irrelevant to those who cannot read these languages. For these reasons, I have decided to eschew brackets, except where the inserted text is unusually lengthy or not clearly implied. My assumption is that, even without brackets, specialists can readily determine which phrases and words have been supplied by context or commentary.
With the above procedures in mind, I am able to offer some practical suggestions on how a reader might best approach this material. For those actively engaged in the study of Dharmakīrti or Pramāṇa Theory, the overview of Pramāṇa Theory may provoke some useful reflections, but if these readers choose to move directly to the discussion of Dharmakīrti's method and ontology (chapter 2), they will not lack any material essential to my interpretation. Second, I would remind specialists that many notes may be of particular interest to them, since the notes often contain extended, technical arguments. Other readers may also find the notes of considerable interest, but I would suggest that if the annotative technicalia prove tiresome, the argument in the body of the text may remain both intelligible and useful, even if the notes are not consulted. Finally, I remind all readers that the appendix contains lengthy translations of some relevant primary texts. My interpretation succeeds only to the extent that those texts, perhaps initially daunting, become vibrant and intriguing sources of change.
How to cite this document:
© John D. Dunne, Foundations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy (Wisdom Publications, 2004)
Foundations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy by John D. Dunne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/foundations-dharmakirtis-philosophy.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.wisdompubs.org/terms-use.


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The first issue is how doctors may not offer adequate and timely help in the first place, including how to manage basic symptoms like pain.
The second is how patients assume that doctors know how they're feeling and don't insist on more effective help.
Neither one is a good healthcare strategy.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't need a book like Calling the Shots. Nor would the author herself have had to experience the sometimes
appalling but not uncommon slings and arrows of the healthcare system that led her to writing it. But if you've ever been a patient,
especially one with a serious illness or injury, or have ever advocated for a loved one who's a patient, the odds are high that you
know all too well that the healthcare system is far from perfect.
written by Kathi, posted on Sunday, September 18, 2016 at 01:09 pm,
The above is an extract from a review of the recently published book by Beth L. Gainer, Calling the Shots in Your Medical Care
that can be read in full at the link.
http://accidentalamazon.com/blog/2016/0 ... ok-review/


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OJ Simpson lawyers promise appeals for ex-football star's freedom in Las Vegas case
LAS VEGAS – O.J. Simpson has spent the last six months anxiously awaiting a judge's ruling that he hoped would spring him from the prison where he has spent the last five years on an armed robbery and kidnapping conviction. He learned of the decision from his medium-security prison in news reports Tuesday, and it was not what the former football star wanted to hear.
A judge denied his bid for a new trial on claims of ineffective legal counsel, ruling the evidence is overwhelming that Simpson "planned, organized and led" a group of armed men in a confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers six years ago.
Simpson's lawyers vowed Wednesday to keep appealing for his freedom.
"He was disappointed and disheartened, as was his family," lawyer Patricia Palm said of Simpson's reaction to the news. "But we're definitely not giving up."
Simpson is serving nine to 33 years for his conviction on armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges. He was granted parole on some convictions in July, but still faces at least four more years in prison.
Simpson's next opportunity for freedom will be in an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court. His legal team planned to file a notice of appeal as early as next week with the state's highest court. Palm said they're also preparing a federal court claim that Simpson's fair trial rights were violated.
"He is looking forward to the appeal," Palm said. "We're confident that when we get to the right court we'll get relief because he deserves relief."
The 101-page ruling by Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell came more than six months after she held five days of hearings on claims that Simpson's former lawyer botched his 2008 trial and appeals to the Nevada Supreme Court. The hearings included testimony by Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 in the stabbing deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.
In her order released after business hours Tuesday, the judge ruled Simpson "failed to pinpoint significant errors that either alone or combined would have changed the outcome of his case. Additionally, Mr. Simpson has failed to demonstrate significant errors from his appeal."
The lawyer who handled Simpson's trial and appeals, Yale Galanter, faulted Simpson's current attorneys for questioning his work and said he felt vindicated.
"In an effort to capture the spotlight, O.J.'s new legal team created a laundry list of falsehoods and attacked my reputation and integrity without contacting me to get the facts, review my files or review any of the documented evidence in the case," Galanter said.
Bell faulted Galanter for collecting excessive fees from Simpson and not hiring experts or investigators for his defense, and identified other mistakes. But the judge said none would have made a difference in the outcome.
Simpson, meanwhile, drew blame for asking men to bring guns during the 2007 caper, then denying he knew anyone was armed, and for failing to follow his lawyer's advice not to use force to obtain items he believed were his.
"Mr. Simpson failed to disclose a material fact, the use of guns, to Mr. Galanter," the judge said. "The evidence does not show Mr. Simpson followed Mr. Galanter's advice."
Bell rejected Simpson's claim that Galanter advised him not to testify in his defense, noting that Simpson declared in open court that he was choosing not to take the stand.
Simpson also contended Galanter never told him about a plea bargain that had been offered by prosecutors that would have had him serve two to five years in prison if he pleaded guilty to robbery. The judge said that because testimony conflicted and no formal offer was documented, she couldn't determine if Galanter ever told Simpson about a plea deal.
Simpson testified in May that he would have taken the deal. If he had, he'd be out of prison now.
In the end, "Nothing indicates that the jury's verdict would have changed had any or all of the issues brought forth by Mr. Simpson been addressed at trial," Bell wrote.
A legal expert who has followed Simpson's legal tribulations since his "trial of the century" acquittal said the ruling indicates the judge strongly believed Simpson was the ringleader of the heist and knew guns would be involved.
"Between his credibility and the lawyer's, she believed the lawyer even though the lawyer did make mistakes," said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor.
AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch contributed to this report.
Find Ken Ritter on Twitter: http://twitter.com/krttr


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Thursday, May 31, 2007
Whales vs Japan - The War The World Ignores
Were I a whale, I imagine I too would harbour considerable resentment for the Japanese. After all, nothing ruins one's morning quite like an exploding harpoon in the ventral pleats.
It is commendable that the whale community has decided to sit down around the table and solve this seemingly intractable conflict through diplomacy rather than violence, despite intense provocation.
If my pods were attacked with such ferocity, I guarantee that I would not be so sanguine.
Firstly, I'd like to make it clear that I'm an unbiased observer in this conflict - I condemn both the Japanese use of hi-tech weapons, which allows them to strike at the whale population with impunity, and also the whales' suicide bombing tactics.
It remains to be seen how the Japanese will respond to this measure. In all likelihood they will tell the whales to stick their resolution up their blowholes, and the tragic cycle of violence will recommence. After all, the Japanese point out, if the whales would only cease their encroachment into Japanese waters there would be no conflict in the first place.
I can only endorse the calls for international mediation and call upon both sides to exercise restraint - obviously, nobody wants to see any more blubber shed.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties, Normal Service Will Resume Shortly
The answer is simple - no longer can I read their fevered prose. They've finally mated with the multinational chimera that is the Murdoch media empire, and have all simultaneously accepted Flash advertising* for Sky television. For some reason, this instantly crashes my browser every time I click on one of their sites.
This is a nothing short of a catastrophe. Taunting those who take themselves so seriously is rather like taking candy from a baby, albeit a very large, angry baby that takes a very dim view of immigration and is sexually aroused by machine guns.
Now I find myself lurking in David Duff's comments for entertainment affecting an air of detached boredom; casually exuding smarm and condescension while slyly pushing metaphorical turds through his electronic letterbox like a rat-faced teenager.
At this rate, I'm going to have to go door-to-door annoying people, so if any readers feel like taking pity and providing me with technical advice, I'll be delighted to hear it - layman's terms, mind.
Thank you.
*Have you accepted a few pennies a month in exchange for garish Flash advertising? Does it fire your dead, grasping soul with avaricious glee as you finger the dank, dirty dollars that plop wetly into your bank account as payment for your service?
Do you seek to fill the aching hole at the centre of your very being by converting this grimy currency into a neverending procession of bleeping, fiddly technological doodads as evidence of your personal worth?
Then cut out the middle man through the wonder of the internet - draw a large smiley face on your arse, present it to a live-streaming webcam then turn on "The Birdie Song" and get a-jigglin'!
Why suffer the degradation and loss of self-respect that comes with being a cog in the merciless machine of a fantastically evil Australian hobgoblin when the same filthy lucre is merely the wink of an eye away?
Better yet, why not just sell yourself to drunk punters on Skid Row?
Advertising - It's a mugs game. Don't do it.
News Round-Up
Israel Continues to Hit Palestinians Because it Loves Them
US Criticises Syrian Failure To Elect Anti-American Fundamentalist Extremists: "That Is Not Democracy" - Bush
Chavez Heroically Defends Venezuela From Fascist, Imperialist Criticism Of Chavez
Greenland Admits It "Just Hates Those Fucking Whales"
US Demands Changes to G8 Climate Change Text; Wants Protection In Cases Where Raped Environment "Was Asking For It"
Lebanon Bombs Extremism Out Of Palestinians - Everything Wonderful Now
Bush Nominates White House Dog To Lead World Bank - "Arf!", Says New Chief Barney
Parents Of Missing Child To Enjoy Audience With Elton John
Feel free to note any exciting developments during the day...
Monday, May 28, 2007
It's A Royal Knockout
I'm something of a political magpie, picking up bits and pieces of theories and positions here and there, so I'm inclined to take a free marketeer's stance on this issue - since there's obviously a demand for smashed and mangled royalty, why not allow Channel 4 to plug the gap?
They could make it a series, in fact - have the public vote which member of the aristocracy they'd like to see pulverised, then blast them from cannons into walls like over-ripe tomatoes.
"This week on It's a Royal Massacre, Charles faces off against Andrew in Chainsaw Challenge! Which of these plucky Princes will prevail in this regal rumble?"
I'm not saying they should adopt a solemn tone, of course. If we're going to dispatch the Royal Family in all manner of gruesome ways, it'd put everybody off their popcorn. No, the only way to do it would be Japanese-style, with garish manga splatters across the screen, duck-whistle pratfalls and comical boings.
After all, you can't spell slaughter without laughter.
Come on, regicide is a great and noble British tradition - in a two hundred year period, not one Scottish King died in his bed, and the English were always pleased to dispatch their monarchs by axe or red-hot poker.
And if a man can't stand up for British traditions in the modern age, by God, we might as well have handed the country over to Hitler and had done with it.
Truly, it's a terrible thing when a dissolute misanthrope such as myself has to take a stand for British values.
By Winnie Tha Pimp
Anyhow, what I'm tryin' ta say ta y'all is, y'all seen my girl Kanga? I got bidness I wants to discuss wit' the ho.
Yeah, tha's right, y'all know what I'm sayin'. Dat girl been laying low, but Tha Pooh be lookin' fo' his payoff, and tha bitch better have my Hunny.
Yo, y'all know me, I ain't never crossed nobody, never done taken no beehive that I ain't earned straight.
I be tha baddest pimpin' muthafuckin' bear in tha Hundred Acre Hood, but all I'm askin' for is tha respect I'm due, see?
It's gettin' so a playa can't shoot shit on a street corner wit'out gettin' disrespected by a Tigga. Dis crazy ass Tigga come up to me the other day an' he's all poppin' off like, yo, you a bear of little brain and shit.
What tha fuck, I says, who y'all callin' a bear of little brain, muthafucka?
I shoulda smoked his ass right there on tha corner, but that wack-ass donkey Eeyore was all Hey, easy, the Tigga just messin', yo. I be a reasonable man, so I step off, but shit, man.
Why a Tigga gots to run up on a playa like that anyhow?
Hey, I gots to run, but if y'all see my girl Kanga, don't tell her ya saw me, just gimme a call an' I'll be right on down ta pick up tha ho.
Shit, it's tha Piglets! Bail, dog, I'll see y'all up at tha Pooh Sticks Bridge.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Call That Holy War? Bad Kitty, No Tuna
The immediate problem is that three terrorist suspects have absconded while subject to control orders, and there's no doubt that we'd know exactly where they were right now if the Home Secretary had the power to imprison whoever he likes, whenever he likes.
Doing so would mean derogating from the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, a document largely drafted by British officials and signed by Winston Churchill's administration in 1951.
"Times have changed since then," an opposition MP said on TV this week, and how right he is. I'm sure Churchill never had to face down any threats to the nation as grave as that posed by three fugitive wannabe-holy warriors.
Well, why throw out the baby with the bathwater? If we had any sense, we'd just fit potential terrorists with little bell collars, like the one my neighbour put on his cat.
A holy terror that cat was to the local birdlife, but as soon as the collar went on, its blackbird torturing days were over. If I heard that distinctive ting-a-ling and turned around to discover a rat-faced little wanker creeping up to suicide bomb me, I'd call the cops sharpish.
I'm aware that stuff like this is meant to "reassure the public", by which I mean "slake the furious indignation of the tabloids", so I see no reason why the bell collars couldn't be rigged to explode Scanners-style if interfered with.
I jest, of course, but it's the only response a sane man has when the preferred model of government in the old democracies of the world appears to regress ever more quickly to a form of Enlightened Absolutism.
Update!: Good news for Britons, as the Government is now considering granting powers to "Stop and Quiz" citizens, with £5000 at stake!
I hope they stop me, I'm brilliant at quizzes.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Attack Of The 50 Foot President
You almost wouldn't notice it at first, unless there was a major international crisis underway such as, say, the imminent invasion and occupation of an oil-rich middle eastern dictatorship.
At such times, certain aspects of American media can seem rather odd - their habit of unquestioningly publishing government "intelligence" without any analysis, for instance, or their tendency to give the views of super-wealthy cretins like Tom Friedman prominence.
This is partly because the Americans' most endearing feature is their eternal optimism and can-do attitude, but it's mainly due to the fact that the average American journalist would rather have red-hot pokers pushed into each of his earholes simultaneously until they met sizzling in the centre of his skull than put his career at risk in the name of truth.
For all that countless bloggers have made their names by attacking US media for its liberal bias, journalists in America owe their allegiance to only one party - Hiz'b Shekel, whoever is holding the purse-strings.
These polite fictions continue to this day, of course. My favourite is the story of how President Bush is a politician with convictions - a man who fearlessly sticks to the course of action he feels is correct regardless of the damage it may cause him.
This is complete nonsense, of course - Bush is no more a conviction politician than he is a seven-legged donkey with a degree in the liberal arts.
Today's polite fiction - and this is a humdinger - is that the US Army's recent "surge" in Baghdad will continue until September, at which point its successes and failures will be debated and the appropriate lessons drawn.
The reality is that American soldiers will continue to blunder about blind in a hostile urban jungle, thoroughly pissing off the locals while trying to avoid being picked off by an enemy they can't see. Come September, the operation will get the rubber stamp to continue whichever way the chips fall.
This is problematic for the President, who will likely find that all he has to show for the surge is a pile of dead American soldiers and a country full of furious Arabs.
Naturally, I have a better plan, one that would achieve the same ends whilst minimising American fatalities.
Now, I know this sounds a bit off the wall, but I think it's a viable option.
Think about it - drop Godzilla outside Sadr City, point him in the right direction and stand well back. Within two days he'd have smashed the place to pieces, toppling minarets and noisily pissing uranium all over the streets. For added effect, you could replace his lizard-shriek with a tape recording of the President shouting We're making good progress in Iraq! into a bucket.
Net result: some dead insurgents and militia men, a lot of dead civilians and damaged infrastructure, but - and this is critical - not a single coffin shipped back across the Atlantic.
In short, all the achievements of a troop surge without any of the drawbacks. Score!
But, I hear you say, Surely Godzilla is nothing more than a risible fantasy created to entertain credulous audiences. He is, essentially, an amusing distraction from reality.
Well, if that's your view, I suggest you keep away from CNN or the Washington Post over the summer, because they're going to make Godzilla, Mothra and King Gidorah: Giant All Out Monsters Attack! look like The World At War.
Slaying The Beast With One Back
I'm inclined to support American blogger Garance Franke-Ruta's proposal that young women should have legal protections against unethical pornographers who would take advantage of them, convincing them to do things that they'll later regret. It's been causing quite a stir stateside.
After all, nobody knows more than me what unpredictable and capricious creatures young women can be.
I recall an incident that occurred a couple of years before I met Mrs. Rodent, discussing sexual fantasies with my then girlfriend in the wee small hours of the night.
"I think think it would be quite sexy to, you know, watch each other playing with ourselves," said my ex-girlfriend, the cheeky thing that she was, and probably still is.
"Really?" I said, a little intimidated and embarrassed by the prospect, "Well, yes, I suppose it would be quite sexy, wouldn't it?"
My ex giggled, quite thrilled with her naughty suggestion.
Of course it was a different story the next evening, when she walked in to find me on my knees in the living room in the middle of a semi-circle of my favourite artistic pamphlets, furiously knocking one out.
If anything, she looked rather annoyed, and the look on her mother's face said she wasn't any happier.
She dumped me not long after that, a bitter experience which taught me a valuable lesson - never take anything women say at face value, because they can turn on you in a second.
So I say more power to Miss Franke-Ruta's arm in leading her campaign, and I wish her every success in her endeavours.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Start Your Engines
"He repeatedly drove erratically, ignored no entry signs, failed to stop when asked, repeatedly sounded the horn and gesticulated at police.
The teenager, of Macduff, Aberdeenshire, admitted driving dangerously.
He also admitted stealing the tractor from Millbank, Pitmedden, and driving without a licence or insurance, on 25 June last year..."
I can imagine what the witnesses would respond to questioning - "Now, in your own time madam, could you tell me what happened?"
"Oh, I don't know officer," the witness will say. "It all happened so quickly..."
Scotland? South Central, it's not. This could only have played up to Scottish stereotypes more if the kids involved had been clad in tartan, necking whisky and throwing shortbread at the coppers.
100,000 Smeared In Decent Left Shite-Cannon Attacks
I am opposed to - terrorist attacks on civilians and state violence against civilians; propaganda aimed at dehumanising ethnic groups; the chopping off of heads; the use of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons; repression of women, homosexuals and minorities; funding groups who commit terrorist attacks upon civilians; the kidnapping of journalists and other civilians; rape, torture and murder; pre-emptive invasions of soveriegn nations; official discrimination; death squads, religious police and private militia; the use of indiscriminate weaponry such as artillery, warplanes and high explosives in urban areas and totalitarian religious beliefs.
There is entirely too much of this kind of stuff going on these days, and I think that those involved should really cut it out.
Aha, sings David T., Chairman of The Revolutionary Committee For The Betterment of The People's Republic of Harry's Place, I have you now.
Why do you not condemn Lebanon's assault on the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp? And why do you say nothing of factional violence between Palestinian paramilitaries?
"Curses," I say to myself, "If it hadn't been for those wily Decent Lefties, my plan to assist in the destruction of Israel and the creation of a totalitarian Global Caliphate would have worked."
Huzzah, glorious victory to the People's Movement of Decency, cries the chorus, masturbating furiously. Reload the shite-cannon, and prepare to fire again!
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, or close up the breach with the bodies of foreigners! Give me petty-minded point scoring or give me death!
And in the real world, a shell is fired and arcs into the sky, heavy with murderous potential.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Shagging And Fighting - A Correction
I say this because I'm watching The Greatest Britons 2007 on ITV, a witless cavalcade of drooling idol worship and celebrity fluffing. A more obsequious meeting of D-List lips and A-List anus couldn't be imagined.
The line-up of Britons saluted for their Greatness ranges from Aren't they dead yet? (McCartney, Thatcher) to If that fucker comes near me, he will be dead (Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsey) and ends at They might as well be dead for all I care (Banksy, Simon Fuller).
And, just to show that they're not a grindingly predictable shower of forelock-tugging couch-monkeys, the British public have pronounced The Queen the Greatest Living Briton.
Jesus Christ, this brand of chewing gum TV makes me want to throw myself to the ground and begin viciously headbutting the pavement, not stopping until I bash myself brainless or I feel the warmth of Australian sunshine.*
In all this though, we're missing a real candidate for greatness - a stalwart Brit from humble beginnings who rose to become one of the nation's best-loved leaders. A man who has faced adversity and public scorn, yet has emerged unbowed and triumphant.
I speak, of course, of John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, sadly soon to leave office.
You may laugh, but in his all-too-brief time in the public eye, Prescott has beaten up a protestor, boned his secretary and probably got up to some socialism when he was able to find the time - a record of which any Parliamentarian could be proud.
Some humourless types might say that, as a senior politician, he has been somewhat rubbish, but I defy them to name another member of the cabinet who has provided the nation with such entertainment.
Compare him to his possible competitors from tonight's show...
Robbie Williams, a prancing sack of mum-rock and self-pity - Baroness Thatcher, a rattling, ambulatory skeleton held together by malice and Milton Friedman, and the Queen, a granite-faced crone who would be trounced by one of her Corgis in a charisma contest.
God help us if these charmless misery-fountains are representative of British society - give me a boozing, blundering oaf as our representative on the world stage any day, at least there's a chance he'd stand his round.
In light of this, I defy any of you to deny Prescott the prize that is rightfully his. I salute you John, he of the broad waistband, short-temper and downwardly-mobile trousers.
We shall not see your like again in our lifetimes.
*Although it's only fair to point out that there are similarities between the two outcomes.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Blair Bombed In Basra
As with so many modern problems, the shocking misbehaviour of our politicians has its roots in the decadence of the 1960's, when such shameful antics were regarded as a model for leadership.
Take Captain Kirk in Star Trek, for instance. Every week, it was the same thing - Kirk shows up on a planet and, faced with a life-or-death situation or a thorny moral quandary, would either fight or shag his way to safety.
It wouldn't surprise me for a second if there was an episode in the archives in which Kirk, faced with a marauding slime-beast that kills by enveloping and then digesting people, stuck his dick in it then thumped it in its extra-terrestrial eyeball.
Cut forward twenty years, and the generation that was raised on Star Trek were fully-fledged football hooligans, rioting and boozing their way across continental Europe leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
Little wonder that Blair, who grew up with such lax moral standards, chose to end his term as Prime Minister by blowing off some steam in a bout of drunken iniquity.
That's nothing compared to what's going to happen when wee Gordon Broon takes office, however.
You've no idea how glad I was to see that Broon wasn't presenting the trophy at the FA Cup final at Wembley on Saturday - as a Scotsman, he'd never have been able to restrain himself from ripping up the turf and tearing down the goal posts in a fit of sheer nostalgia.
So much misery, all caused by one daft sci-fi show. That Roddenberry's got a lot to answer for, I tell you.
Middle East Deathbowl XXII - Excitement Builds
Interest in the competition has reached fever pitch in America and Europe, where fans can barely contain their enthusiasm for this fierce contest. It's a sensational rags to riches story - from what was relatively obscure backwater twenty years ago, the ME Division has become the world's premier competition with millions of devoted fans worldwide.
With the pre-season unfriendlies well under way, it's difficult to predict how this year's title race will pan out. The evidence indicates another year of white-knuckle action, with relative newcomers Hamas and Hezbollah vowing to compete with established outfits Fatah, Israel, Syria and Lebanon.
Even at this early stage, there's only one question on the fans' lips - can the teams possibly top the gripping drama of last year's classic Israel v Lebanon tie?
Indeed, insiders are already saying that this season may be a straight head-to-head between Israel and ME Division dark horses Hezbollah, whose shoot-on-sight tactics and attacks from long range were last year's big surprise.
Supporters of the Palestinian sides will be less optimistic, but they must feel that sooner or later their teams' counter-attacking style will yield results. While their decision to deploy female strikers has been controversial, both Hamas and Fatah are capable of devastating over-confident opponents and their commitment and self-belief are second to none.
It looks like another difficult season for perennial also-rans Lebanon and Syria, however, who are surely long shots for the title. In all likelihood, their campaigns will be characterised by shoddy defending against the superior firepower of the Division's big guns. For these battling underdogs, this year will be a constant battle to keep themselves afloat.
However the competition pans out, one thing is certain - every result will be pored over and every refereeing decision will be scrutinised by millions of avid fans worldwide, and their fanatical support will ensure that this contest will run and run.
With the ME Division generating so much interest in fans from Los Angeles to London, this engrossing competition will go from strength to strength - the huge influx of money and goodwill from supporters pouring in from all corners of the globe have secured the future of the Middle East Deathbowl for at least the next thirty years.
Here's hoping for another thrilling year to match the high drama of season 2006/7!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Flying Rodent Is Unwell
What better opportunity? Off work, nothing to do but scratch one's arse and muck about online posting sarcastic comments about politicians and celebrities...
Well, now that it's me that's at death's door, I can see where they were coming from. I'd rather cut off my johnson than spend two seconds trying to grapple with the internet.
For relative newcomers, you'll get a feel for the childish humour and idiotic scribblings that pass for entertainment round these parts in the archives - the more recent, the more likely it is to be worth reading.
Hopefully I'll be back full of piss and vinegar tomorrow, although to be honest, I've never really liked vinegar.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Daughter of Hope and Fear, Explaining to Ignorance the Nature of the Unknowable
My workmates were united in derision, clapping each other over the back as they hooted over the Scientologists' belief in the Galactic Warlord Xenu, body Thetans and engrams.
I'd like to add that two of my colleagues are Catholics, one is a Muslim and another is Jewish, and that all of them believe we are watched over by an invisible superhero who, upon their deaths, will spirit them to an eternity of blissful tranquility in His presence.
I had to laugh at their absolute lack of self-awareness as they cheerfully ripped into Tom Cruise for his foolishness and gullibility.
After all, as everybody knows, Satan is our Lord and master, and we shall all dwell in the bowels of the Earth forever, shrieking for His pleasure in an infinite Lake of Fire.
What cretins.
Hands Across The Border
Most importantly, I'd like to say this to smokers - however bad you think it's going to be, it's actually going to be far, far worse than you could possibly have imagined.
I'm not talking about being driven outside for a cigarette, which isn't much of a hassle in the summer months, but rather the attitude of your non-smoking friends and family. It won't be enough for them that you've been cast into the street, while they enjoy their blissful immortality fantasies - they will expect you to be grateful for the experience.
Take it from me, quiet acceptance of your outcast-status will be insufficient. You will be expected to agree that the ban is a wonderful idea and that it has "made socialising so much more pleasant".
Thankfully for the disgruntled smoker, there are ways to deal with such conversational gambits. You should print off the following guide to dealing with the snotty and self-righteous, and be sure to follow it to the letter.
Flying Rodent's Guide To Surviving The Ban
"Don't you find that it's so much nicer coming home from the pub and not stinking like an ashtray?"
Easily dealt with and surprisingly common, all manner of non-smoking acquaintances will engage you with this classic. Simply nip to the gents, buy a pack of three and return toting the Pish Balloon.
Aim, throw, then stand back to admire the results. Simple, yet effective, this is a good starting point for beginners.
"I think this'll really help you to give up smoking. Did you know they're giving away nicotine patches on the NHS?"
Slightly more tricky, such a presumptuous statement must be dealt with politely, but firmly. Quickly squirt a stream of Lighter Fluid onto your friend's lap, then chase him around the pub with a match.
"I think that this is brilliant for the nation - imagine how much money the NHS will save now that we'll all live so much longer!"
Defcon Three on the Fuckwit Scale, this line shows disrespect both for you and your intelligence, and you should retaliate accordingly - drop to your knee and deliver a sharp Cock Punch to emphasise your strong disagreement.
"I don't think it goes far enough - I reckon the government should just ban cigarettes altogether, and force you all to quit."
Be warned - behind his chummy demeanour, your acquaintance has just metaphorically dropped his fly and taken a leak in your drink. Drastic measures are required - bring the argument to a decisive conclusion by belting out your finest Bruce Lee scream and unleashing the Flying Nunchaku Decap-Attack.
It's the least he deserves.
"The waste product of your cigarette is second-hand smoke, whereas the waste product of my beer is urine. If you don't blow smoke over me, I won't piss all over your desk."Make no mistake - anyone deploying this argument is telling you that he has had sex not only with your mother, but also your grandparents and quite possibly your distant ancestors.
Only the most brazen and self-important prick would dare trot out this line - annihilate the motherfucker with Mula Ram's Cardiac Splatterfest. Few are the men who could look upon their still-beating hearts without recognising the error of their ways.
And remember - just because you've officially been declared fair game, a hanging pinata for the entertainment of arseholes, doesn't mean you have to take it lying down.
Monday, May 14, 2007
It's Fun To Be In The Mujahideen
U.S. says Padilla "gave himself" to Al-Qaeda
U.S. citizen Jose Padilla provided rare support for terrorism by offering himself to al Qaeda as a trainee, a prosecutor told a jury on Monday in the trial of the former "dirty bomber" suspect.
I, for one, had no idea that the world's most depraved terrorist organisation held initiation rituals that would be more suited to an Ivy League frat-house.
No wonder Ayman Al-Zawahiri looks so bloody smug all the time, the old deviant. How dare he keep lecturing us Westerners on our moral depravity when his shower of "holy warriors" are merely a cunning front for a seedy, clandestine cottaging scam.
As for jokers like Mr. Padilla who cheerfully submit to the kind of treatment that would startle a Sudanese goat, it's no surprise they call them "dirty bombers".
That's as opposed to the Taliban, who have deployed several thousand dirty soldiers to Helmand province.
Mind you, this should make it easier to spot potential suicide bombers - they'll be the ones in the big coats, walking funny and grimacing shame-facedly.
This is the kind of thing our psy-ops guys should be playing up, you know. I imagine that the even the disgruntled youths of Britain's dingy council estates might think twice about waging righteous Jihad against snoozing commuters if they have to picture themselves yelping "Thank you sir, may I have another!"
I'll be grateful to hear your thoughts, but the first person to use the phrase "suicide bummers" will be instantly banned.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Thou Art The Ref - What Shalt Thou Do?
Fair DESDEMONA, daughter of Venetian senator BRABANTIO, hath skipped past the left-back and advanceth goalward.
Yet even as she approacheth the angle of the box, IAGO doth bring down DESDEMONA with a crude, two-footed lunge.
"Verily," cries IAGO, "I barely happened to nudge the lily-livered strumpet!"
Thou art unsure whether this venomous act of knavery occurred within the box, and thy assistant referee declaims that he was sore unsighted.
What shalt thou do?
a) Award a penalty unto the attacking team, and send forth IAGO unto an early bath?
b) Award a free-kick upon the box-edge, and issue IAGO a fulsome admonishment?
c) Smother the fair DESDEMONA, assail IAGO with thy blade and then slay thyself by thine own hand?
2. Much Ado About A Fair Challenge
OPHELIA and ROSENCRANTZ doth contest a fifty-fifty ball within the central circle. OPHELIA winneth the ball, leaving ROSENCRANTZ with an ugly gash upon his foreleg.
ROSENCRANTZ assails thee, crying "Thou art a dull, sheep-biting punion, sire! Thou needest glasses, thou blind bastard - may the worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul, thou mountain of mad flesh!"
In the meantime, play hath continued and lo! OPHELIA hast been bodychecked by HORATIO. A vexatious melee doth ensue.
What shalt thou do?a) Inscribe the name of the whoreson mandrake ROSENCRANTZ in thine notebook, and adjudge the dropping of the ball?
b) Allow the play to continue anon, and issue ROSENCRANTZ a stern rebuke upon the exit of the ball from the field?
c) Send forth OPHELIA unto a nunnery, therein to be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow?
3. The Three Gentlemen of Midfield
While thine sight is distracted, thou doth hear a calamitous uproar from behind, and, turning, presently discover that MERCUTIO, kinsman of PRINCE ESCALUS, hath been struck an injurious blow and now bleedeth in sanguineous torrents.
Since it is plain that MERCUTIO hath not so wounded himself, the only possible culprits are TYBALT, cousin of JULIET, and ROMEO of the house of Montague. Thy assistant referee was, alas and alack, unsighted.
"Marry, I never touched the nondy fucker, sire!" quoth TYBALT.
"A plague on both your houses, thou dirty, hacking bastards!" cries MERCUTIO.
What shalt thou do?
a) Bring play to a most untimely halt, and allow the physick to attend the effuse of blood?
b) Send TYBALT unto the dressing room like a common dog, therein to ruminate upon his dastardly action?
c) Slay TYBALT, and flee unto exile?
Ye shalt find the answers in comments.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
And Instead Of A Mouth, It Has Four Arses...
Movie Review
Dir: M. Thatcher
London, 1979 - Disaster consumes Britain as a highly contagious virus escapes from a monetarist think-tank and infects a small cadre of senior Conservative politicians.
The virus, known as "Rage", causes the "infected" to devolve into feral monsters, lashing out violently at innocent bystanders, slashing top-rate taxes and crushing all resistance.
The Rage-fuelled Tories unleash a firestorm of violence and terror upon the country, driven by maniacal fury and an insatiable lust for human cash.
In the face of such brute savagery, people bolt their doors, watching fearfully for any signs of hope on their televisions...
28 Years Later - 2007, and the Rage has infected practically the entire population. The Government has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the people and has been reduced to enacting the orders of the sinister General Murdoch.
This apocalyptic vision of Britain reduced to a Darwinian nightmare seems eerily real, sucking the viewer into a world of paranoia and dread. Despite the film's ludicrous premise - that a small band of drooling zombies could infect an entire country, transforming it into a land where citizens unthinkingly attack each other - it paints a curiously believable picture.
The movie's portrait of a nihilistic nation filled with mindless zombies whose only instinct is to savagely assail everyone and everything they encounter is ultimately all too convincing.
28 Years Later is on general release today from all newsagents.
Recognising One's Own Mortality
Somebody ought to do something about this. No wonder they fired the Prime Minister.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
A Nation Mourns
Evening Standard, May 10th 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Amateur Dramatics
I don't want you all kickin' off an' gettin' angry, so will ya just hear me out?
This terrorist cell used to be radical, but now it's totally bogus.
Monday, May 07, 2007
They Say That The People Get The Government They Deserve, But I Don't Remember Kicking That Many Puppies
A man can only dance to the tune of his masters for so long, after all, and I'm sure that Reid will want to break out with his own plans for the arbitrary detention of terror suspects, perhaps in a large cage in his back garden.
He's stated that he's looking forward to spending more time with his family, which should delight his nearest and dearest.
"What time do call this, young lady?" he'll shout, purple-faced and livid. "That's it, you're grounded for ninety days!"
And don't you go running to your mother asking for a judicial review!"
If nothing else, it'll free him up to devote more time to haranguing illegal immigrants. I imagine he could do so quite capably from any street corner while swigging from a brown paper bag. I can even imagine the his press releases...
"Away an' fug off the lotty yez, ya fuckin' shower ay foreigners who come to oor country and steal oor benefits," the former Home Secretary announced today, speaking from a bus stop in Govan.
"Yez are a pack ay fuckin' arseholes, an' I'll make life constrained and uncomfortable fur aw ay yez!"
Even better, he could spend his time personally sending text messages to immigrants when their visas are about to expire. We can only hope that the next Home Secretary is a little less reactionary - perhaps Richard Littlejohn would like to step into Reid's shoes, since he's always full of big ideas.
One thing's for sure though - a man as resourceful as John Reid will find gainful employment elsewhere.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
TV Highlights
If you'd like to know what happened to the eapons-way of ass-may estruction-day, click here.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Live-Blogging The Election
Of Pots And Kettles
The report grades Russia in the bottom third of nations, behind Bahrain, Afghanistan, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait and even Iraq.
What has Vladimir Putin done to his country to merit this bleak assessment?
In the past five years he's shut down independent TV stations, intimidated opponents and passed restrictive laws on publishing. Most starkly, many Russian journalists have been murdered with impunity by persons unknown.
At least twelve Russian journalists and dissidents have been killed in the past few years, including Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Viktor Popkov, Igor Domikov and Yuri Shekochkin.
These are just the few I've found from ten minutes' research - clearly, Russia deserves its place on the Freedom House list of shame.
Sadly, press freedom seems to be on the wane worldwide. In the past few years, many journalists have been killed elsewhere...
Details can be found here, but reporters killed included Mahmoud Za'al, Maha Ibrahim, Ahmed Wael Bakri, Waleed Khaled, Ali Abdel Aziz, Ali Al-Khatib, Burhan Mohamed Mazhour, Assad Kadhim, Mazen Al-Tumeizi, Dhia Najim, Terry Lloyd, Tareq Ayyoub, Jose Couso, Taras Protsyk, Mazen Dana and Ahmad Kareem.
And yet the nation responsible for these deaths sits sixteenth in the Freedom House list and its rulers remain uncensured by the fickle NGO.
Why? Because these journalists were all accidentally killed in Iraq by the American armed forces, and Freedom House is the most neo- of neo-con NGOs. Previous board members have included James Woolsey, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Ken Adelman, Samuel Huntington, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.
In a telling irony, the most prominent media figure to question whether these deaths were actually unintentional was forced to resign.
That's not to say these deaths weren't counted towards the list - they were added to Iraq's statistics. If I'd included the names of journalists killed by insurgents in Iraq it would've been a page long - Iraq is a death-trap for all its citizens, reporters included.
And where is Iraq in the Freedom House list?
In the bottom third, seven places above Russia.
Press freedom? I'm all for it. It's a shame that those who are tasked with monitoring it don't seem quite so concerned.
It's Good To Talk
How fortunate that you were sharp enough to concoct an elaborate cover story to explain your absence from the office today.
Had you told your employers the truth - that you were in hospital because a gentleman you met last night had ripped your anus and rectal wall while attempting unnatural intercourse - you would surely have been severely embarrassed.
How my heart filled with sympathy as you detailed the precise dimensions of the stitch on your nipsy and bemoaned the immense irritation it was causing you.
I'm sure that my fellow passengers were just as impressed as I was by the dignity with which you comported yourself at this trying time.
I hope that your injured nether-parts recover quickly, and wish you all the very best.
Yours sincerely,
Flying Rodent
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Two! Minutes! To Midnight!
Where would five British kids get the idea that they were constantly victimised and living in a stinking hellhole of debauchery, sin and criminality?
Why would they decide that the "slags" dancing in British nightclubs were sub-human tarts that deserved punishment? What would make them decide that the chavs of Britain's shopping malls were in need of a short, sharp shock?
What could make ordinary kids suddenly decide that Britain was an immoral, degraded country in need of swift and brutal correction?
Could be that they were indoctrinated by extremist groups into a nihilistic death-cult committed to the destruction of Britain, I suppose. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that a charismatic leader had brainwashed youngsters into committing criminal acts.
That's the scenario we're all hearing about in the press, anyway. But what if that wasn't the whole story?
What if they simply read British newspapers every day?
I've repeatedly mocked the backlash culture we live in, the bullhorn that blares incessantly in our ears of how all politicians are corrupt liars, that the streets are awash with criminality, that today's youngsters are a feral mob of snarling animals and irresponsible sex fiends.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the backlash - the very movement that's supposed to close our borders, crack down on crime and force modernity to sit still and behave, had spawned such ugly offspring?
In such fertile ground, well, just about anything could grow.
When every newspaper, radio station and TV show blasts us with the iniquity of our society, when all of us compete to claim ultimate victimhood, when every politician finds himself fighting a losing battle to pass draconian crime-fighting legislation in the face of a hurricane of public anger, are we surprised that young, stupid men are such easy prey for our enemies?
Oh well, fuck it, I'm sure it'll all sort itself out eventually - I'm off out to the pub.
Take it easy, now.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Slopping Out
What a wasted opportunity the Blair era has been - elected with a gargantuan majority on the goodwill of the nation, he chose to spend his time in power launching Thatcher-lite privatisations and Anthony Eden-esque foreign policy catastrophes.
This was a man who could weave gold from a few sentences, which is just as well, since he'll be serving at least one by this time next year.
A man of many convictions, although not as many as he'll have once the Crown Prosecution Service are finished with him.
I can just imagine an older, greyer Blair, many years from now, contemplating his legacy to the nation with a companion.
"Could we have done more?" he'll ask, "Was there a way we could've revitalised left-wing politics and brought democracy to the Middle East?"
"No idea mate," his companion will respond. "Now, do you want to be Mummy or Daddy?"
"Er," Blair will say, furrowing his brow, "I think I'd really rather be Daddy."
"Excellent," his cellmate will say, "Now, come over here and suck Mummy's dick."
What a sad way to end such a glorious career.
Surely a small minority of Britons will send their best wishes to him upon his retirement, although he might find it more useful if they sent him a file in a cake.
Still, at least Blair won't be lonely - if he spends much of his retirement surrounded by criminals, fraudsters and mass murderers, I imagine he'll chiefly feel a warm glow of nostalgia.


text:
Patrick Dempsey: A Family PortraitSteve Marsi at . Comments
Featured in the newest People magazine, the Grey's Anatomy leading man and his whole family look extremely happy - and with good reason.
Patrick, wife Jillian and daughter Tallulah recently welcomed twin sons Sullivan Patrick and Darby Galen, born February 1 at an L.A.-area hospital.
"I was watching everything that was going on with the doctors, and you see a lot of that in the show," says Dempsey, who helped cut both cords.
The new dad admits that when he and Jillian first learned they were expecting not one, but two new additions to the family, "I was a little overwhelmed."
With three little ones occupying in the house, are there more on the way? Doesn't look like it. "I think we're done now," Dempsey says.
As for how Tallulah is handling big sister duties? Dempsey says not only did his 5-year-old help decide on the boys' names, she's "very excited and very good about taking care of her brothers."
Here are People Magazine pictures:
Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.