Cafe Arcane
A conservative is a radical who got his way and is afraid of losing it to someone with a better idea.
Geoffrey Fortier
May 15th, 2008 by Mystech
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Bush Compares Obama to Nazi Sympathizer

(Huffington Post) President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Obama himself quickly responded to the comparison, calling it a false attack and listing past presidents who didn’t think that diplomacy was such a bad idea:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel.”"Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

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May 12th, 2008 by Mystech
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squirrel_eat.jpg(The Guardian) It tastes sweet, like a cross between lamb and duck. And it’s selling as fast as butchers can get it. It’s low in fat, low in food miles and completely free range. In fact, some claim that Sciurus carolinensis - the grey squirrel - is about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve on a dinner plate.The grey squirrel, the American cousin of Britain’s endangered red variety, is flying off the shelves faster than hunters can shoot them, with game butchers struggling to keep up with demand. ‘We put it on the shelf and it sells. It can be a dozen squirrels a day - and they all go,’ said David Simpson, the director of Kingsley Village shopping centre in Fraddon, Cornwall, whose game counter began selling grey squirrel meat two months ago.

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May 11th, 2008 by Mystech
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I used to be a regular MARTA rider in my attempts to curb my commuting impact (I walk to work most days now) and we once did a campaign for MARTA so this article naturally caught my eye…

Police in Atlanta’s public transportation have issued a warrant for the arrest of a young woman known as “Soulja Girl” after she was seen violently rebuking an elderly woman on a subway line.

The woman was seen screaming on the train at the elderly woman while reciting lyrics to the rapper Soulja Boy. The woman is seen on a widely-viewed video screaming, “Yaaa, n***a, yaaa” and “I’ma beat you’re a** on this train.”

She also called the senior citizen a hoe and a b***h and threatened to kill her.

Wanda Y. Dunham, the chief of police for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), issued a statement requesting help in arresting the female.

Video (audio may not be suitable for all work places) and More after the cut

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May 10th, 2008 by Mystech
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Sitting in the light of the rising sun on my patio this morning, I finished Crime and Punishment. I have to say, I really enjoyed the novel and regret never having read it before.  The setting and characters are richly Russian but quite sympathetic and accessible even to those of us with little knowledge of the culture.  Dostoevsky elegantly uses one man’s madness, depths of depravity and conclusions as a microcosm of justified practices of societies and their leaders.

After finishing Crime and Punishment I was tempted to continue the Russian immersion,  turn right around and start Anna Karenina (also on my list), but I think I’ll save that one to revisit later.

May 8th, 2008 by Mystech
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10) Stuff it under your mattress… assuming you still own one.

9) Euros!

8) Invest in ammunition… you know in case of Cloverfield, Chud or another Republican regime.

7) Stockpile food… Its not just for Mormons anymore!

6) Donate to an Impeachment fund… oh the sweet, sweet irony.

5) Canadian citizenship processing fee… with change left over for plaid jacket and hockey lessons.

4) Send it back and pay down your share of the US economic debt ($30,000/citizen and climbing)

3) Contribute to your favorite environmental charity… there must be some species left.

2) Buy lottery tickets… about as solvent as anything else these days. :-(

1) Make a loan that makes a difference through Kiva.org… 99.7% pay back rate and the ability to see a relatively small amount of your money make a relatively large difference in someone else’s life.

May 5th, 2008 by Mystech
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Avian Mafia has figured out the bird bath… found tiny, tiny feathers in it this morning. The avian equivalent of hair in the drain. Tony (the dominant male finch) got into a big fight with another bird on the feeder yesterday afternoon. Total micro-velociraptor throw down. Sort of a compromise…. Tony shared one side of the feeder with his mate, while the other bird stayed on the opposite side. Tony usually likes to have an entire side to himself, so he’d keep peeking around to see if the other had left.

My strawberry plant has little green strawberries coming in. I will nurture them, care for them, cherish them…. and then I will eat them. Nom Nom Nom!

May 5th, 2008 by Mystech
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(Associated Press) One gray squirrel, its bushy tail twitching, barked a warning as another scrounged for food nearby. It was an ordinary spring day at Hampshire College, except that the rodent issuing the warning was powered by amps, not acorns. Dubbed “Rocky” after the cartoon character, the robo-squirrel is working its way into Hampshire’s live-squirrel clique, controlled by researchers several yards away with a laptop computer and binoculars. Sarah Partan, an assistant professor in animal behavior at Hampshire, hopes that by capturing a close-up view of squirrels in nature, Rocky will help her team decode squirrels’ communication techniques, social cues and survival instincts.

Mystech: Do I even need to point out the dangers at work here?

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May 4th, 2008 by Mystech
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While I acknowledge that Faulkner successfully experimented with a very unusual technique in creating this book, I do not think the novel is all that compelling as a work in itself. So little in fact, that its reading is more an academic indulgence of writing style, rather than that of a storytelling masterpiece. That being said, I can see how readers that are particularly emotionally or culturally invested in this particular setting are so infatuated with the novel.  However, without this toe-hold, I found The Sound and the Fury only modestly engaging.

Perhaps I should have chosen Absalom, Absalom.

April 29th, 2008 by Mystech
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According to the US Census Bureau News for April 2008 (PDF), there are now 18.6 million empty houses in America.  Salon.com’s Andrew Leonard, “4.7 million are for “seasonal use” only, the Census tells us — unoccupied vacation homes, in other words. 4.1 million are for rent, 2.3 million are for sale, and the remaining 7.5 million ‘were vacant for a variety of other reasons.’ “

The census also lists the total number of homeless in America as 759,101, so there are 24 empty houses for every homeless person in America.
(via Salon.com

April 28th, 2008 by Mystech
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It only took the local avian mafia a few days to figure out the bird feeder I put up last week. Territories have shifted a bit and my patio now appears to be contested space between three pairs of birds as well as the occasional stranger. The most aggressive and possessive of these belongs to a pair I call the Sopranos. I believe that, Tony, the male is a House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) which are not uncommon city dwellers in the southeast. He only tolerates his mate at the feeder, and even then generally only if she feeds from the other side. Any other visitors, are generally forced to wait till they are done.

Picture and more after the cut.

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