Garfield character is removed from famous comic strip

A sampling from "Garfield minus Garfield," a website that has removed the Garfield character from the comic strip:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

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william f. buckley, r.i.p.

proto-conservative and faux-brit commentator, william f. buckley, has passed away. here are some classic buckley-chomsky debate clips:

(i can't embed it here, but check out the opening seconds of this video when buckley, somewhat jokingly, tells chomsky that he would smash him in the goddamn face, not to be confused with when buckley threatened to pop gore vidal in the goddamn face here.)

if nothing else, this interview shows how far the candor and composure of the televised debate has fallen.

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the day grand central station stood still

"Improv everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places."

I had seen some of this groups stuff in the past and it was pretty good but this mission is one of their better executions, mostly because of sheer scale.

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Your Assignment

I would like to extend a challenge to the patrons of TIA, similar to the classic comic strip contests that are held by The New Yorker. Your task is simply to come up with a good caption for this photograph. I'll leave you to it then.

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Man of ideals and courage hurts Party (and country) because Party hasn't balls to be courageous

Clinton shows moment of true ignorance, quoted in the New York Times blog:

Speaking to reporters on board her campaign plane, Mrs. Clinton expressed surprise at the news that Mr. Nader planned to run.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, when a reporter asked for comment. “Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It’s not good for anybody, especially our country.”

. . .

“But it’s a free country and I don’t know what party he’ll run on. What did he run on last time, does anybody remember?”

The Green Party [sic!], a reporter replied.

“Well, you know his being on the Green Party prevented Al Gore from being the greenest president we’ve ever had,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And I think that’s really unfortunate.”

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Last French Fry Told To 'Get Your Ass Over Here'

AURORA, IL—Plaza Diner patron Roger Trabers, upon noticing that one french fry on his plate had eluded his field of vision, demanded that the fried potato strip "get [its] ass over here." "Whoa, where do you think you're going, buddy? I see you hiding behind that pickle," said Trabers, who called the fry a "smart little fella" before picking it up and dunking it in ketchup. "Thought you could get away, eh? Well, time to say hello to Mr. Tummy." Trabers then popped the fry into his mouth, made a satisfied "gulp" noise, and went home and blew his brains out.

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McCain's ethical lapses . . .

I love the following McCain quote per the hated NYTimes article, which seems to be true btw. . . .

In the early '80s McCain was beginning his political career and needed a financier. He found that in Mr. Keating, a "man of great confidence and daring," McCain said:

“People like that appeal to me,” [McCain] continued. “I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities.”

You'd think a wise, responsible person (McCain) wouldn't forget that wisdom and responsibility are more admirable than reckless, ultimately scandalous ambition. But shucks, we're all fallible, right? McCain's honesty + repentance = spiritual orgasm.

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U.S. caught lying to Brits re rendition sites, backtracks, endangers relationhip with U.K.

The CIA says it's really really bummed that the information the U.S. gave Britain ''turned out to be wrong.''

''Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, unfortunately, even with the most rigorous searches and, unfortunately, with good technology, sometimes administrative errors occur and this was the case. . . . We regret that there was an error in initially providing inaccurate information to a good friend and ally.''

. . .

''Mistakes were made in the reporting of the information. . . . But we will continue to have a good counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and United Kingdom.''

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Former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo says trials are rigged

From The Nation article. "Davis" in the excerpt below is the former Gitmo prosecutor. Six detainees will probably be put to death, and Pentagon counsel thinks the spectacle will be the "Nuremberg of our time."

"[Pentagon general counsel William Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.'"

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computer lover

this unnerves me:

"I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said.

"We're already a human machine civilisation, we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that."

Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil.

"We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News.

The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system".

(from the BBC)

if this actually happens, i'm going to pack my bags for the miniature version of our solar system that was just discovered, and live with my gay, black, non-android bizarro version of myself.

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Ecological impact on our oceans

I heard a story on ATC today and it inspired me to check it out online. this website is a fascinating way to approach cartography. we tend to look at the world map as landforms, and neglect the oceans. this map does the opposite, it elucidates the often overlooked human impact on the world's oceans.

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"the age of american unreason" book

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

NYTimes article

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hi,i'mdr.stevebruule

john c. reilly on tim and eric awesome show, great job!:

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one word...clownshoes.

Found on BoingBoing, i have seen similar photos individually and was scared to death. but with several in the same place it made me poop a little on the floor out of pure fright. its like a car wreck, you just have to look, even though you know its so wrong. its hard to believe that these people are choosing to look like this. steer clear of new jersey.

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Defense Sec. Gates rewrites Iraq war narrative, says wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not linked

Excerpted from the AP wire:

“Gates for the first time publicly linked Iraq to what lay behind Europe’s general skepticism about fighting in Afghanistan. ‘From our standpoint, I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused. . . . I think they combine the two,’ he added. ‘Many of them I think have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan and don’t understand the very different -- for them -- very different kind of threat’ posed by al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as opposed to the militant group in Iraq that goes by the same name and is thought to be led by foreign terrorists linked to al-Qaida”

P.S., Five years of war and still the enemy is "thought to be led by...."

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romney drops out, pouts, lies, lays down and plugs self back into power outlet

from the bbc:

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I'd be making it easier for Senator Clinton or [Barack] Obama to win," Mr Romney said at the conference.
...
He added that the Democratic candidates would be a disaster for the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq.

"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," he said.

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foreign thrillers

recently, there have been fascinating events in turkey and russia that read like real-life thrillers. in turkey, a secretive, anti-government, ultra-nationalist group that looked to overthrow the government by 2009 was taken down. the group is considered "deep state", which refers to the collection of often high-ranking members of the government who act outside of the law in what they consider turkey's best interests. wicked. from the bbc:

In 1996, many Turks' suspicions of a "deep state" were confirmed when a car crashed in the town of Susurluk. Inside were a senior police chief, a prominent politician and a wanted assassin.

"Susurluk revealed weird connections between state officials and those who operate outside the limits of the law. It happened at a time when we had a lot of extra-judicial killings in Turkey," Mr Candar explains.

and in russia, a top russian model was killed when she tried to stop a car-jacking in moscow. in addition to her job as a supermodel, she was also a martial arts expert and moonlighted as a high-paid bodyguard, and has stopped thieves from stealing her car before. from cnn:

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