Nov
30
Another Awkward Moment
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A longtime State Department official said this week that the US treats Tony Blair and the UK like–in the words of the London Daily Telegraph–”a poodle.” Kendall Myers was speaking at Johns Hopkins this week, describing the way Great Britian is viewed inside the Bush Administration. He said the relationship is “totally one sided” and “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business.” (I wonder if this will sound familiar to the Baker commission.) He went on from there but I think you get the idea.
The State Department rushed their spokesperson to the podium to say that Myers didn’t represent official administration policy (video below) and he was definitely speaking out of school. But the damage comes because Myers was doing just that—he wasn’t representing the official party line but was describing what he actually has seen from working inside the government. The State Deparment said Myers comments were “ill-informed.” That’s going to be a tough charge to make stick, since Myers is a 30-year veteran and considered an expert on US-UK relationships.
This has not been a good week for world leaders who had been thinking they were close friends with the Administration.
Nov
30
“A Commotion of Grunts and Squeaks”
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Rookie novelist Iain Hollingshead has won the 14th Annual Bad Sex in Fiction award for his debut novel Twentysomething. The award was presented last night by Courtney Love, who probably knows a thing or two about the subject.
Judges were moved by Hollingshead’s evocation of “a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.” His description of “bulging trousers” sealed the win, the judges said.
This year’s runner-up was Tim Willcocks’ medieval action novel, The Religion, for a scene in which characters grapple passionately in a forge “across the cold steel face of the anvil.”
“In the pit of his stomach a cauldron boiled and some seething and nameless brew rose up through his spine and filled his brain with the Devil’s Fire,” Willcocks writes.
A number of more established authors were also in the running for the award, given out each year by editors of Literary Review magazine, but the judges said they picked a first time author because they “wished to discourage him from further attempts.”
Nov
30
Another Russian Poisoned
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Doctors are now saying former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was probably poisoned. Gaidar became ill in Ireland last week and is now recovering at a hospital in Moscow. For more details, see this earlier post.
Nov
30
The Color of Money
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A federal judge in Washington made a ruling yesterday that could effect every single one of us–he ordered the US Treasury to come up with a way to change US currency so that the blind can distinguish between different denominations.
The ruling came from a case filed by the American Council of the Blind (although some blind advocacy groups opposed the lawsuit) who argued that there is virtually no way for a blind person to tell the difference between bills and they often have to rely on a store clerk to help them.
The judge gave Treasury a month to start coming up with ways to modify the currency, and he gave them some suggestions to help them get going: change the size of different denominations, add bumps or perforations, create an embossed mark that could be felt by your fingers or change the color (I don’t get how that would help a blind person.)
Nov
30
Grammer Schmammer
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Lindsey Lohan’s open condolence letter to the family of Robert Altman, where she appears to be channeling Borat, especially toward the end.
Nov
30
When Whales Go Bad
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As the head trainer at Sea World said last night “they are killer whales.” He was speaking to reporters after a trainer working in the Shamu show was grabbed by a killer whale and dragged under water twice, where he was held for one-two minutes each time. Other trainers were able to persuade the whale to surface and pull the injured trainer out of the pool. He is in good condition at a Sand Diego hospital.
The whale–Kasatka–is one of seven who play the part of “Shamu” in shows. It sounds like she was angry or upset about something and decided to take it out on the trainer. Amazingly it seems he maintained enough composure to do things to calm the whale while he was being dragged under water, which may have been the reason she let him go.
Best quote was from a spectator and it ended with the words “Shamu’s gotta go.” Watch it:
Nov
30
Today is the last official day of the hurricane season, and judging by the news this morning, the first day of the “Stormwatch” season–a season of breathless reporting from shivering reporters who break in to report that it’s beginning to snow and–listen to this–the roads are slippery. It’s the season of phrases none of us ever use in day-to-day conversation like “nation’s midsection” and “plummeting mercury.”
Is there really a burning desire among viewers to see video of people snow blowing their walkways or pushing a stuck car?
Nov
30
Iraq Study Group Report Leaked
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President Bush is going to get the final report from the Iraq Study Group next week…but if he doesn’t want to wait he could read about it in the New York Times this morning. The Times has a copy of the report, which was unanimously approved yesterday by the bipartisan commission led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton.
The take home message from the group is that the US should begin pulling out about 70,000 troops–a large portion of the American forces in Iraq. The “when” and “where to” were left pretty vague. The report doesn’t get specific about whether the troops should be brought home or just pulled back to locations just outside of Iraq. As far as the timetable goes:
The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.
Nov
29
Where Have I Heard That Before?
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Jack Cafferty on CNN this afternoon on the exchange at the White House between President Bush and Democratic Senator Elect Jim Webb:
“It was not pretty.”
Hmm….where have you heard that before?
Here’s a hint.
(Full disclosure: the phrase was the subject line in an email today from columnist Michael Winship.)
Nov
29
Maybe It’s Already Too Late
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The average temperature of the Atlantic Ocean has risen by 0.015 degrees Celsius over the last seven years according to British researchers—that’s 15/1000ths of a degree. How could such a tiny temperature change mean anything to anyone not wearing a lab coat? Some scientists says it could mean a lot–in fact, one thinks it could mean the end of the road for most of the earth’s population.
Here’s the story: water can absorb many times more heat than air can (that’s why a walk in a fifty degree day is comfortable but a swim in a 50 degree ocean is life threatening.) And the researchers involved in this study say that tiny change in the ocean temperature actually represents a tremendous amount of thermal energy being stored in the water–enough to raise the temperature of the atmosphere by as much as 9 degrees Celsius–a huge increase in global warming terms. The scary part of that theory is that it means a certain amount of climate change is built-in already, and no reduction in greenhouse gases will stop it.
UK Professor James Lovelock says there is enough of this built-in climate change to make much of the earth uninhabitable and food production nearly impossible. He thinks climate change will kill billions of people this century.
“We are not all doomed,” he said. “An awful lot of people will die, but I don’t see the species dying out.”
Wow. I bet he’s a lot of fun at a party.
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