Oh my, Dick!

An intoxicated Andy Dick was arrested today for yanking a womans tank top down and freeing her breasts, and was found to have marijunana and Xanax on him... which is strange because he seem to really have it together in his mug shot.

Another fine neocon...

...struck down in the prime of his corruption...
tsk tsk.

Wolfy will resign this afternoon.*

(*abcnews)

Dustin "Dirty Sanchez" Diamond

Uh, Screech? A porn star?

Update: The sex vid's working title is "Saved by the Smell."

From bad to worse

I'm almost ready to let the Mel Gibson thing go, but... just 2 days ago I said I thought he could recover from this, as long as there's no police dashboard camera footage.

The Perfect Shitstorm

Wow, Mel G has really got himself in deep.

He's offended jews, cops, women ("What are you looking at Sugartits?") and respectable alcoholics all in one disastrous night. ABC has dropped production of his Holocaust series. And now just to keep the shame fresh, some pix have appeared, of the church-going family man (with seven kids) squeezing anything with mammary glands under 30, a few hours before his DUI.
I give the Gibson marriage a year. Hope the pre-nup was good.

Mel's looking a bit uhhh.... harsh. He should thank god money is an aphrodiasiac, cause the looks are shot.

Fiasco

Two excerpts from Thomas Ricks' Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, published in the Washington Post.

1) In Iraq, Military Forgot the Lessons of Vietnam

On May 16, 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-run occupation agency, had issued his first order, "De-Baathification of Iraq Society." The CIA station chief in Baghdad had argued vehemently against the radical move, contending that, "By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you'll really regret this."

He was proved correct, as Bremer's order, along with a second that dissolved the Iraqi military and national police, created a new class of disenfranchised, threatened leaders.

2) It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong

Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division's approach was indiscriminate. "With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: 'Round up all the military-age males, because we don't know who's good or bad.' " Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry's approach. "Every male from 16 to 60" that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. "And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency."

[via dack]

Why is this not surprising?

Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina (AP)

Video (iFilm)

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

If you're keeping score

Is it just me or are massive death-causing events the new black?

2,400 dead - Today - Landslide in the Phillipines
1,200 dead - 2006 Red Sea boat sinking
2,000 dead - 2005 Hurricane Katrina
84,000 dead - 2005 Indonesia earthquake
26,000 dead - 2003 Xmas earthquake (Iran)
220,000 dead - 2004 Christmas Tsunami
130,000 - 2002 Misconceived war to force democracy down the throats of Iraqi scapegoat
3,000 dead - 2001 WTC

If there is a god* he's one f**ked up sadist.

(* And this list should prove that there isn't)

Your Tax Dollars At Work

As expected, more photos from Abu Ghraib (or, as Dubya prefers, "Aboo Gareff") are all over the Internets. They are burly.

Guardian Unlimited

uruknet.info

Heaven Knows I'm Miserabler (sic) Now

I am officially throwing in the towel... or maybe I should just throw a rotten tomato instead. unggggggh. Someone please tell me that this is mothersbaugh's subversive way of getting back at all the spuds who hated devo back in the day.

Looks like Booji Boy sold out to the mouse. De-Evolution? Try reductio ad absurdum...

No Xmas for Sony!

Hah hah!

This is a joke, right?

Brownie to start emergency planning consulting business.

I wouldn't hire this guy to oversee the making of a cheese sandwich. I suppose his first client will be himself, so he can plan how to fix his disaster of a career.

Dick Cheney, fire-breathing monster

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh! dickzilla - must - have- fresh - blood!

this is a few days old, but a good read if you want further proof that the VP is a malicious scumbag with no regard for the Geneva Convention.

Cruise fires sister

After having a super straight year of non-gay interest in his very female, very knocked-up girlfriend, Heterosexual star Tom Cruise has dropped his sister as his publicist, or as his um..., publi-sister. Under her guidance Cruise finally cracked the list of the top 5 creepiest celebrities in H'wood. This shoots my "anyone can be a publicist" theory right in the ass.

Here he is looking extremely into women...

Seriously, he's as straight as any one of us.

After Katrina fiasco, time for Bush to go

The disastrous federal response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence, misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to serious doubts that the Bush administration should be allowed to continue in office.

They rode into office in a highly contested election, spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to undermine the federal government in every way but defense (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and sheer profiteering behind it.

It is time to hold them accountable - this ugly, troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich lawyers, ideologues, incompetents and their strap-hangers should be tarred, feathered and ridden gracefully and mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves, clubs in hand.

can't get in? try this

via scott b.

You think traffic is bad now.

Save Chicago Transit.

When Chimps Attack II

Fred Durst shows you his 'O' face (WARNING: Spyware-laden link. Proceed at your own risk. Thanks, Nora).

WARNING: NSFW. Actually, not safe for anyone with the gift of sight.

More
everywhere
else.

Tsunami relief efforts

Following on from here, I've emailed Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Swapagift.com regarding gift card donations directly to tsunami relief charities.

Amazon.com has already implemented the ability to donate via their One-Click system.

If you've received a holiday gift card, contact the company and ask if they'll take it as a donation to a tsunami relief charity.

Tsunami affects celebs

Richard Attenborough (actor in Jurrasic Park, and director of the godawful film A Chorus Line and the long but inspiring Gandhi) has learned that his 14 year old granddaughter Lucy was killed in the tsunami. Actually his daughter Jane and her entire family are missing but for now they are only acknowledging the death of Lucy.
- Super-suave Chicago interior designer Nate Berkus survived his beachfront assault but his partner photographer Fernando Bengoechea has already been listed among the dead.
- Susan Sontag missed the tsunami, but died anyways. (Gomez you are forbidden to rant about Susan Sontag. Just keep pondering Cheney's schlong.)

I don't have a TV so you may already know this stuff.

Worst Case Scenario

I'll take nuclear war for 800, Alex

Isn't life a bitch? The world is going to end. You don't even have to be a religious fundamentalist to see that's true.

Some people collect postal stamps; Exit Mundi collects scenarios of what could go wrong with the world. Sure, our planet could get hit by an asteroid. But hey, that's nothing. Did you know we could all be munched away by hungry molecules? Or that our physicists could unintentionally wipe us all out while tinkering with particles? `Oops, sorry...'

I'm sure our intrepid House8 readers could concoct their own gory end-time scenarios, but these guys have done all the thinking for us...

The KFS Sweater Project

Shameless charity to the InterNerd at its finest. This man is generous and brave enough to share with the world his fashion car wreck, without even blurring out his face. Bravo, Kevin Sherry. Bravo.

...Morse code for "please kill me."

Wal-Mart's thoughtful memorial.

Retreat Into a Substitute Reality

Good commentary on Resident Bush's debate performance:

After months of flawless execution in a well-orchestrated campaign, President Bush had to stand alone in an unpredictable debate. He had traveled the country, appearing before adoring pre-selected crowds, delivered a carefully crafted acceptance speech before his convention, and approved tens of millions of dollars in TV commercials to belittle his opponent. In the lead, Bush believed he had only to assert his superiority to end the contest once and for all.

But onstage the president ran out of talking points. Unable to explain the logic for his policies, or think on his feet, he was thrown back on the raw elements of his personality and leadership style.

read on...

Sneer....

On MSNBC.com 450,000 people have voted and 70% of them think Kerry won tonights debate!

Deep in the heart of Texas Bush did even worse!!! Houston Chronicle currently has Kerry at 86 percent!!! Now that's a disaster. That's Walter Mondale bad!

Ever notice that Bush and Bee-yotch sound kind of similar? I imagine right now Cheney is spanking him over his knee.

Punch his face off

I have a dollar for anyone who gets within punching distance of Ralph Nader, the silly ass.

I hope there isn't another Steve Bartman living in Chicago

The Smoking Gun outs Chicago's #1 fan.

The Fan

Green turtleneck.

Roy attacked by Montecore

Unfortunately, this is dead-serious real, and not an Onion article.

Invasion of the lakefront

Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin exhaustively and figuratively deconstructs the new Soldier Field. Blair, please, tell us how much you hate it again?

According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, 106,700 vehicles a day travel the stretch of Lake Shore Drive that passes Soldier Field. If you apply the rule of thumb used by traffic experts -- that every vehicle has 1.5 occupants -- then 160,050 people a day drive by the stadium's most prominent (and ugly) public face.

Even when Soldier Field is used for concerts, movies, pro soccer and other public events, the balance is unlikely to tip in favor of those who elect to experience the fetching inside of the stadium versus those who have no choice but to drive by the botched piece of civic architecture.

...

[Former Governor James] Thompson now has his indelible mark on three of Chicago's most prominent eyesores, the other two of which -- the James R. Thompson Center (the former State of Illinois Center) and U.S. Cellular Field...

Well, two of them look like they're gonna lift off at any moment. Big Jim -- an extraterrestrial? Hmmmm...

Forbidden thoughts on 9/11

Warning: Some of these are unbelievably shallow and crass. Which is why I suppose they feel right at home here at House 8.

Fox News: "Fair and Balanced"

House 8: "Shallow and Crass"

Yeah, that fits.

For those not interested in wading through all 6 (!!) pages, this one pretty much sums it all up:

We were living in D.C., but it didn't really faze us that terrorists had hit our very own city. We attempted to go to the movies where a homeless man kindly told us that no movies were being shown that day; grudgingly ate at the only food establishment open --Taco Bell -- and ended up renting Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson Lee's staged X-rated extravaganza. We did the nasty all day (no thanks to Tommy and Pam), convincing ourselves that what we were doing was life affirming. And it was.

-- Name withheld

Gawd Bless Umuricuh.

via one.point.zero

Face Off

The license plates won't change. Neither will the highway signs. Or the state letterhead. Or even this state's very own quarter. The Old Man of the Mountain has fallen, but the image of that hardened face won't slide away just yet.

Before & after:

They're actually talking about rebuilding it!

Close Shave for Ian Watts brother

Matt Watts was driving back to school in Ohio Saturday night when a driver from the oncoming lane hit him head-on at 70 mph. The other driver, (allegedly drunk, single mom Rhonda Kay Jayjohn LeMay) did not survive. It took an hour and a half to cut Matt out of his car (below). He was in and out of consciousness while they worked to free him and was excited when he came to, after hearing he'd be transported via helicopter to the hospital.

Unfortunately both his legs were broken and squished into that little gap over the seat (dark area / below center). He has many bruises, scrapes and cuts but he's lucky to be alive.

The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped

What happened to moving toward the relatively successful unmanned, lower-cost probes and robotics projects at NASA? Who doesn't love a spunky lil' robot explorer that can be re-sold as a LEGO kit?

Capitalism, of course, is supposed to weed out such inefficiencies. But in the American system, the shuttle's expense made the program politically attractive. Originally projected to cost $5 million per flight in today's dollars, each shuttle launch instead runs to around $500 million. Aerospace contractors love the fact that the shuttle launches cost so much.

Throwaway rockets can fail too. Last month a French-built Ariane exploded on lift-off. No one cared, except the insurance companies that covered the payload, because there was no crew aboard. NASA's insistence on sending a crew on every shuttle flight means risking precious human life for mindless tasks that automated devices can easily carry out. Did Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons on the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, the payload package he died to accompany to space?

And perhaps most sickenly:

The bottled water alone that crews use aboard the space station costs taxpayers almost half a million dollars a day. (No, that is not a misprint.) There are no scientific experiments aboard the space station that could not be done far more cheaply on unmanned probes. The only space-station research that does require crew is "life science," or studying the human body's response to space. Space life science is useful but means astronauts are on the station mainly to take one another's pulse, a pretty marginal goal for such an astronomical price.

via the morning news

Obviously, A Major Malfunction

An acquaintance of mine wrote this article about the Challenger disaster and it's aftermath (one of many he wrote over the years), outlining the turf wars and boneheadedness that has defined NASA.

I read the article Saturday, and emailed him a note.

Here's part of his response dated yesterday:

>>
based on what i have heard over the years from engineers in nasa, the kind of examination of the remaining shuttles that is likely to take place will reveal some breathtaking problems and evidence of a return to the "it didn't crash before, so we can live with it" mentality toward problems. i suspect that there is close to a 50 percent chance that the shuttle fleet will be grounded permanently.

which would not necessarily be a bad thing, if it leads to a reappraisal of what we seek to do in space and how we seek to do it. our abandonment of the moon is in my view (and that of many in nasa) unforgivable, as is our fixation on low earth orbit. sadly, any such reappraisal will be threaded through a matrix of turf defense and similarly typical and irrelevent behaviors. but we might just get the right outcome anyway.

best,

dep
<<

UPDATE From Dennis:

>>
i've put together my three major shuttle stories in one place; the second and third ones make me wonder whether nasa will truly be as forthcoming as they've promised. they're here

<<

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty

Fascinating article from 1980 on Columbia.

The main cause of delay is currently the shuttle's refractory tiles, which disperse the heat of reentry from the ship's nose and fuselage. Columbia must be fitted out with 33,000 of these tiles, each to be applied individually, each unique in shape. The inch-thick tiles, made of pyrolized carbon, are amazing in two respects. They can be several hundred degrees hot on one side while remaining cool to the touch on the other. They do not boil away like the ablative heat shieldings of capsules and modules; they can be used indefinitely. But they're also a bit of a letdown in another respect-they're so fragile you can hardly touch them without shattering them.

These are the wild, uncharted rivers of space. Unknown; unknowable; beyond programming. To find out if your ship can cope with them, you have to take it up there.

Also see Go at Throttle-Up, a 1996 examination of the state of NASA and the shuttle. Both articles

via scripting news

Nasa's Death Trap Part 2

La Times:

"NASA was told in no uncertain terms ... that it must not rely on the shuttle, NASA simply did not take that seriously."

"You can only improve on a 40-year-old design so much." Today, some Apollo-era technology has become so dated and obsolete that engineers repairing the shuttle have had to scavenge for parts and computer chips now considered primitive. The Intel 8086 chips used in the shuttle are a variant of those that powered IBM's first personal computer in 1981.

Even the infrastructure is crumbling. Workers at the Vehicle Assembly Building where the shuttle is kept at Kennedy Space Center have strung a net below the ceiling to catch chunks of concrete plummeting from the roof.

The Tribune
Last August, a retired NASA engineer, Don A. Nelson, wrote Bush about what he said was inadequate safety of the shuttle: "Your intervention is required to prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident." He suggested that shuttle crews be limited to 4 people, saying that "if this ... is ignored we can watch in horror and shame as the astronauts face certain death."
He was rebuffed by the White House's science adviser.

Aaaack!

via Drudge - I know, I know

Jam Master Jay, 1965-2002

21st Century Shipbreakers

These workers are sorting plastic by heating it with a cigarette lighter and sniffing the fumes. They complained of headaches.

This reminds me of the shipbreaking villages in India.

The scrap metal to be had from such an operation could be profitably sold, because of the growing need in South Asia for low-grade steel, primarily in the form of ribbed reinforcing rods (re-bars) to be used in the construction of concrete walls. These rods, which are generally of a poor quality, could be locally produced from the ships' hull plating by small-scale "re-rolling mills," of which there were soon perhaps a hundred in the vicinity of Alang alone. From start to finish the chain of transactions depended on the extent of the poverty in South Asia. There was a vast and fast-growing population of people living close to starvation, who would work hard for a dollar or two a day, keep the unions out, and accept injuries and deaths without complaint. Neither they nor the government authorities would dream of making an issue of labor or environmental conditions.

(William Langewieshe article from The Atlantic Monthly, who has also written the fascinating piece on unbuilding the WTC.)

via svn

Maybe we should send Billy Bob, just in case.

And while we're at it, Bruce Willis, too. Yippie Ki Yay, Muthafucka!

20 bucks to the first band that renames itself "2002 NT7." I've got it in my wallet right now, I swear.

via Everywhere

Michael Jackson Nearly Crushed to Death by Fans

From the "inexplicably anachronistic news story" category... did CNN go back in time 20 years to get this dish?