The Colossus

On the money with this call:

Liberals are citing the "British model" as the one Bush should emulate (but won't, as he's so stupid-- a chimp, you see). Well, what was the British model for cracking the SkyBomb plot?

-- constant email and phone surveillance, assisted by the American NSA

-- bank records monitoring, probably also assisted by America

-- ethnically profiling, focusing only on those likely to be involved in the plot (i.e., Pakistani Muslims and their non-Pakistani Muslim associates)

-- "coercive interrogations" by Pakistan which yielded crucial information with only a short time left before the plot was set into action

Hmmm... pretty much all the techniques they're so agahst [sic] about.

And now that you mention it -- why are liberals always on the other side? Could it really be that we've just managed to get so unlucky we've been on the wrong side of things ever single time in history?

Or is there simply some narcissistic malice in the liberal mind that convinces them that is so?

For all of the Bush administration's sins, they are trying to protect us. The alternative -- doing nothing -- doesn't reassure me in the least.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace takes a look at X-Men 3 and The Da Vinci Code, so we don't have to.

Posted by The Colossus at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lest I get named in the inevitable class-action lawsuit.

FOR THE RECORD: I hereby disapprove of PVC flamethrowers, no matter how cool they may seem. DO NOT try this at home.

Posted by The Colossus at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And the high price of research. Heh.

But even as a kid I was a little underwhelmed by the Shuttle. Partly that was out of childhood ignorance and unreasonable expectations; a real space ship, I thought, ought to be able to manage more than an orbital mission. Or a scientific mission (many of these scientific missions concocted by fourth-graders in unending public-relations maneuvers to justify continuing the program) to determine how spiders build their webs in zero-g.

Is this really a concern for anybody? I can't even imagine arachnologists being particularly excited about spiders in zero-g. See, they don't actually live in zero-g. So what the hell does that tell us? That creatures will behave slightly differently, and be a little disoriented, in an enviornment entirely alien to them? For this we need $500 million shuttle missions?

It's like designing an experiment to find out how a pack of pumas behave when addicted to smack and forced to live 24/7 in one of the seedy back-booths at the Viper Room.

Sorta fun, yes, and it would be just terrific to see Steven Dorff mauled by junkie hipster pumas, but is that really the sort of science that we're interested in funding?

Depends on the price, I guess. If it could be done for a ten thousand or so, it seems well worth it to me. More than that, and I'd demand a bigger name celebrity than Steven Dorff. Someone like, say, Stacey Q, or Rip Taylor. Or, preferably, both.

Posted by The Colossus at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace's moving elegy to Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott.

Laugh with him, cry with him. Remember your favorite Scotty stories and toast him with Saurian brandy.

But please -- do it at Ace's.

Posted by The Colossus at 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace has noticed the SWAT Monkeys story that my Llama friends noted a few days back.

He feels the SWAT Monkey efforts are not focused in the right direction. He wants them armed.

I'm up with it. nothing strikes fear into the hearts of evildoers like a monkey with a Glock.

Posted by The Colossus at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace has the details. The money quote:

To which Gov. Schwarzenegger responded, "I did not mean to demean de women in any way. I realize there are special problems that confront de women in de workplace, what with de manicures and de laughable jumping upon chairs and shrieking at de mouses and de screwing up de conveyor belts in de candy-factory and other such things as dese.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Richard Hatch, also known to watchers of "Survivor" as "the Prince of Darkness", seen here mercifully clothed, apparently forgot to tell the IRS that he won a million dollars.

I mean I know CBS has had its ratings troubles, what with Rathergate and all, but it is still a major network, Richard, and did you really think they'd forget about you? Even government worker-drones watch TV . . .

Hat tip: Ace.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Naturally, I will have to include "numbers stations" in The Google Graphic Novel.

But not EVP. Way too creepy.

Posted by The Colossus at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

He may not be able to sing, but he can play the stand-up bass. And he has the rumpled trenchcoat look down.

I'm thinking he won't be quite as blunt as Orbach's character, though. A little more nuanced.

"You expect me to believe that, Mr. Hussein? You forget. I've been to Cambodia."

Hat tip: Ace.

Posted by The Colossus at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace alerts us to another slapdown of Tucker Carlson. My feelings about Carlson mirror what Ace is saying. I'm also positive that the bowtie Carlson wears is a signal. To me it says "Hello, everyone, I'm a young George Will . . ."

Which is code for:

"I'm a conservative who will not embarrass you. I'm not Ann Coulter. I won't get angry and confrontational, I won't shatter your precious illusions, I will accept your initial premise for an argument no matter how ridiculous it is, I will politely smile when you call me a fascist."

Don't get me wrong. I have been a George Will fan since the 1970s. He has a Pulitzer. Consider how hard it is for a conservative to win a Pulitzer -- William F. Buckley, Jr. apparently does not even have one. But maybe that's my point. George Will is the kind of conservative who can win a Pulitzer.

Not that I think Tucker Carlson could win a Pulitzer; he hasn't shown me anything that has proven he can. The bowtie is merely a signal that he is a well-behaved conservative. He's George F. Will, "lite".

ASIDE: I had planned to put a picture of George Will in a bowtie in this post; but all of the sudden, he seems to have stopped wearing one. I had to go back to a 1991 book cover to find a picture of him in one

His most recent pictures have him abandoning the bowtie for a regular four-in hand.

Strange. He is a remarkably unphotographed man, considering how much he has been in the media in my lifetime. Consider this google search. I expected it to generate 50 pictures of Will smiling in a bowtie. It generated none. Putting "scare quotes" around his name helped, but even so -- where's the bowtie?

Memo to Tucker Carlson: the signal's no longer working. Not even George Will considers it elegant any more. Looks like its just you and crazy Raj from the Apprentice.

Posted by The Colossus at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Ace! No links for you! One week! You know why.

Some of us were eating lunch when we saw this.

Posted by The Colossus at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And for a reasonable price, too. His design is looking like the Ace of old, but with improvements. And he promises us a flaming skull for updates.

I've got MT issues of my own to resolve here, but I think I'll pass on the "Andrew Sullivan" rate that Web Diva is offering.

Oh, and Ace: bring back Mencken.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good analysis by Ace; I particularly like the shot at Pat Buchanan. I'm not expecting that apology from 'ol Pat anytime soon.

Ace also makes a good grammatical catch.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace of Spades was worried, a while back, that he might be in a slump. And he's been making noises lately about his site having "jumped the shark", which is blogspeak for having passed one's prime.

My understanding of the phrase's etymology is that it comes from television, where it was coined to describe the decline of the show Happy Days. The show's zenith was sometime before the episode where Fonzie, on a motorcycle, jumped over a tank with a shark in it.

Blogosphere example: Andrew Sullivan jumped the shark here. OK, maybe Andrew Sullivan's not a good example. His site's pretty much the Evel Knievel of the shark-jumping blogosphere. Or, perhaps there really never was a shark there to jump. Maybe the guy just ain't got shark.

Make no doubt about it, folks, Ace has not yet jumped the shark. This post is a good example.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some good advice from Ace of Spades. Enjoy.

Posted by The Colossus at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ace of Spades has broken the million hit milestone.

Skilled artisans are already working on the bronze bust of the Playing Card of Death for his niche in Knoxville's Blogger Hall of Fame . . .

I suspect that there will be Cowbell and Kim Richards on his site for all, once he gets his Movable Type demons resolved (not criticizing --I don't have a Sitemeter up here, yet, either. It's in the works).

But in the mean time, read this post. Classic Ace.

Posted by The Colossus at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)