the blog quebecois

I first thought that this was a photoshop; but it is, in fact real.

I wonder if baby walkers were common in the Biblical era (I rather doubt it) or whether the artist anachronistically projected some medieval device back in time. Now, a Jolly Jumper, that would be suspicious . . .

I called the election for Romney on September 12, on the heels of the debacle in Libya, and I see no need to change my mind. Mitt will win easily, with 300+ Electoral College votes.

The happiest person to see it will be Barack Obama, who, I think, will be glad to quit this whole business of being President. It's a bit tougher than it looks.

And it's probably just as well for him. He would be the lame duckiest of lame ducks, with a poisonously hostile Congress that owes him precisely zero favors, and facing impeachment over Benghazi. (As a bonus, it likely destroys any Hillary Clinton political future, too.) But all that goes away if he loses on Tuesday.

I won't be live blogging it; I intend to repair to my bed early in the evening, with only a pitcher of my famous martinis (secret ingredient: a few dashes of Angostura Orange bitters) to keep me company while I watch the proceedings unfold. To be sure, I might be wrong about all of this, and Obama will sweep to a triumphant victory. But fear not -- I have prepared for just that eventuality, having secured a few fistfuls of barbiturates (secret ingredient: cyanide), and will see you on the other side of Eternity.

Our Company lost eleven men killed in the summer of 2009. A further two, who survived that tour, have died since then; one in Afghanistan in late 2011 and one by his own hand. It seems that Death is never satisfied...

Death comes again in a gut-wrenching roll of thunder
that rages and echoes through valleys
and cracked mud compounds
and turns men inside-out.

Walls shake and vibrate as dust-clouds rise
and mud bricks and dust fall from ceiling to floor.
Dust meets dust, “for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

A man, though scarcely a man, helps to gather and carry what remains of five friends
whose guts and blood have spilled onto the dispassionate dust of an Afghan alley.
Now, twenty two months later, he swings gently in a breeze
that carries only the coo of wood pigeons
and the steady hum of the early-morning traffic on the A429.

Ed Poynter

Never having heard of Ed Poynter, I looked around for some information about him. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page (there's a Edward Poynter, but he was a 19th century English painter), but this report from the BBC is our guy, I think. (It details the same attack that he wrote the poem about, and mentions that he wanted to become a teacher after his Afghan tour was over. And there is another poem on the same page that deals with a teacher ruminating on the nature of war to his students' questions.)

The Globe and Mail:

Even since an Ontario mother launched a campaign to have the oak trees near her kids’ school cut down, arguing that falling acorns endanger children with severe allergies, mommy bloggers have been calling her nuts.

“Apparently, making schools nut-free facilities isn’t enough!” exlaimed cafemom.com. “We now have to fear school-aged children munching on yard debris.”

Donna Giustizia, appearing before the city of Vaughan, insisted that acorns dispersing from oaks on city-owned property next to St. Stephen Catholic Elementary School gave students at the nut-free facility “a false sense of security,” the Star reports.

The mere sight of acorns could trigger anxiety in an allergic child, she said, while the nuts themselves could be used by other students “to bully and torment children.”

But a child would have to be forced to eat the bitter nuts to have an allergic reaction, allergists say.

I think that severe mental retardation, rather than nut allegies, is in play here.

According to Dr. Spock, properly-mothered children usually abandon acorn-eating by the age of 10 (I was quite precocious in this regard, having quit by the time I was eight-years-old. And all it took were a few vigorous whacks on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper!)

CBC:

Beijing's representative in Ottawa says Chinese firms are not involved in foreign espionage and he challenges anyone who says otherwise to produce evidence or keep quiet, in a rare interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House.

Zhang Junsai, China's ambassador to Canada, tells host Evan Solomon, "I can assure you that our companies working in other countries are strictly doing business according to the local laws."

"If you really have the evidence, come [out] with it. If not... shut up," Zhang says in no uncertain terms.

Well, that's certainly . . . um, undiplomatic language. But maybe we should cut the ambassador some slack. I understand that the young Zhang's first real job was in the rough and tumble world of the Chinese clothing trade.

Gizmodo:

Anonymous has never been a well-run organization—it's at its best and most fundamental when it isn't really organized at all. That's what used to make it so dangerous; thousands upon thousands of hiveminded hackers and hack-minded who would DDoS on command and break website security for the cause. Emerging from this mess was LulzSec, an elite and independent Delta Force of Anons, commanding respect among sympathizers and fear among corporations. They got things done—giant things, like embarrassing major credit cards, dumping gigantic data leaks like clockwork, and even knocking down the CIA's website.

And then everyone went to prison.

Today, Anon lacks the talent and semi-cohesion it once boasted across the net, and its most recent online crusade is an embarrassing reminder. This is less a war than the hacker equivalent of egging someone's house and then smoking weed behind a Denny's.

When I was in training to become a young hacker, I was warned (well, I just read it somewhere, but my initial description is much more hackerish) to never try to hack government computers. The people running them weren't the brightest on the block; but they could command unlimited money, time and resources to run any intruder to ground. And they don't have to be the best at anything -- they can bring in the hired guns (see above, "unlimited money") who are.

As it turned out, it was all rather a moot point, as I turned out to have the hacking skills (or skillz, if you prefer) of your average turnip.

At any rate, I doubt the Israelis are very much worried about this gaggle of clueless script-kiddies. They are the folks, after all, who probably wrote the Stuxnet worm.

A few years ago I linked to a satire on celebrity "products." The site is dead now, but give it some time . . .

Via Penny Arcade

Umphrey's McGee is a critically-acclaimed ("They're the next Phish!" For whatever that's worth.) American prog-rock band, here playing a short instrumental piece at a concert in upstate NY. They decided to strap a video camera onto drummer Kris Myers to find out exactly what it is he does back there.

As it turns out, quite a bit. Hitting the skins, obviously, but also adjusting mic stands; repairing his kit; flipping drumsticks -- and, for all I know, brushing his teeth and making sandwiches for the backstage party. (I'll need some more camera angles to be sure.) It certainly adds credence to my theory that all drummers are grown-up ADD kids.

Big Hollywood:

You'd think all the Messiah-like buzz around Barack Obama would have faded over the past four years.

After all, not only did President Obama not deliver on his otherworldly hype, he proved to be a nasty, divisive politician during his successful run for re-election.

Tell that to Jamie Foxx.

The "Django Unchained" star made sure to give Obama a spiritual shout out during the Soul Train awards telecast last night.

JAMIE FOXX: First of all, give an honor to God and our lord and savior Barack Obama. Barack Obama.

OK, remember what happened to the last one. Let's crucify the bastard on Golgotha or Capitol Hill, whichever is closer. If he's truly our Lord and Savior, he'll bounce back in about three days, ready for some strenuous golf and nightclubbing expeditions.

Even by the standards of Slate, this is lame, lame, lame -- an attempt (did I mention it was lame?) at tying racial significance to holiday grazing. I'll bet he's a real treat at Xmas dinner, assuming anyone remembers to invite him.

Ron Rosenbaum:

White meat turkey has no taste. Its slabs of dry, fibrous material are more like cardboard conveyances, useful only for transporting flavorsome food like stuffing and gravy from plate to mouth. It's less a foodstuff than a turkey app, simulated meat, a hyperlink to real food.

But I am fascinated by how tastes get made and unmade, the intersection of culture, class and sensory responses. Not being a postmodernist I wouldn't call the overwhelming American preference for white-meat turkey a form of cultural hegemony. More like a mass hallucination. Why, for instance, hasn't white meat shared the same fate, the same cultural disenfranchisement, as packaged white bread?

Via Big Journalism

Warning: Mildly NSFW if you happen to work for feminists and/or idiots (but I repeat myself).

Via See Mike Draw