Web Zen 1, Boston 0

What Boston really should have been looking for:



Go see more at Boing Boing (the entry in question).

Duh duh duhduhduhduhduh, part 2

The terror alert for the nation's capital just went up. Not officially, mind you, but I guarantee you someone over at DHS saw this news story and exasperatedly said, "Oh, shit."

So, you remember last May, when these two geniuses from Lancaster County forgot how to navigate a plane or something and sent DC into an absolute panic for about an hour? (If you don't, I talked briefly about the story over here.) Well, it turns out that after originally admitting he was wrong and swearing fealty to the rules of the FAA, he's now changed his tune, now blames the rules for what happened last year and - you are seriously not going to believe this shit - wants to open his own flight school.

I can see the ad slogans now:

• Martin Aviation: Can't We All Just Get Along?
• Martin Aviation: We'll teach you to say "niner" alot.
• Thrills! Chills! Exclusive aerial tours of Washington DC! Fly with Martin Aviation.
• Martin Aviation: WHEEEEEEEE!
  

etc etc...


Seriously. Come on.

I'm reticent to use the words "crash and burn" with anything having to do with aviation, but I sincerely hope his "investors" come to their senses and pull out of this incredibly bad idea before dude has the chance to menace anyone further.

Huh II

Huh.

This actually goes some way in explaining why it is that even though I'm not writing about politics, I'm still observing them with a passion. It does feel vaguely like an addiction.

I've long held, however, that there's some other cause for the nature of the red/blue divide. Folks on either side of that slash see the world very differently. From my perspective, they view torture as okay under certain circumstances. I view the NSA's wiretap program as an unabashed violation of the Fourth Amendment; they don't. I've long held, and continue to hold, that what I've called here (in one of my more intemperate moments) "a steadfast refusal to acknowledge reality" (or something like that - too lazy to actually look up the quote) is actually some deeply-rooted, hard-wired difference in how Red versus Blue see the world. There are variations, shades of colors if you will (which explains things like fundamentalists, anarchists and Methodists), but most folks fall into one of the two camps. It does strike me that there should be a reason why. So, let's hear it, all you cognitive specialists out there... whazzup widdat? Bizotch.

Huh.

Huh.

Republicans: It's getting to the point where you would be ill-advised to continue ignoring the 60% of the country who do not support this president any longer.

Democrats: This is not a good thing. Do you not remember how awful 1998 was? It was not a good thing for the country then, and would not be now either.

Fifteen minutes with Rush and Sean.

While putzing around earlier today, I decided to check in on Rush Limbaugh, who I used to listen to quite a bit in the late 90's trying to understand the conservative frame of mind. Know thy enemy, or something. Anyway, I was subjected to three grievous assaults on reality within 15 minutes. Here's how that went, and the research I've done in the past 20 minutes to refute them:

Circa 2:55 pm EDT: Rush declares only ten people died in the gulf hurricanes.

Truth: Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was only referring to Rita, the actual death toll stands over 300% above what he instructed his listeners to believe. The death toll from Katrina stands at 2,140, or 21000% over his estimate.

In the same sentence, we learn there were no murders or rapes at the New Orleans Convention Center.

There is some question about whether or not there were any rapes. No victims have come forward, according to authorities. The same is also being said of murder victims, although it appears that at least one major US news source has an account of a murder victim at the Convention Center.

Circa 3:10 pm EDT: Hannity was refuting the claims that global warming is influencing the climate and producing stronger hurricanes. To that end, he cited the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which was the most deadly natural disaster in American history, which occurred before - as Hannity stated - America was using fossil fuels.

Truth: Two major points where Hannity is intellectually dishonest or outright wrong. First, the 1900 Galveston storm does not even show up in the most intense storms to hit land from the last 150 years. However, four of the top five most intense storms - Alan (1980), Gilbert (1988), and Katrina and Rita - have occurred in the last quarter of a century.

The second point, and the obvious one, is Hannity's rewriting of history. The claim that America wasn't using fossil fuels in 1900 is laughable. The first coal mine incorporated in the US did so in 1820, and the first oil well appeared (quite famously) in 1856. The two sources had been used by other civilizations previous to that for thousands of years.

Unlike some Republicans (Hannity among them), I do not view conservatism as a mental illness. I am baffled, however, by the continued willingness of Republicans to tolerate the kind of foolishness displayed by Rush and Hannity today (and presumably on other occasions). And it's not like they're crackpot, tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists. These are two commentators in the mainstream of the Republican party who have massive news organs and multi-million dollar fact-checking machines at their disposal (Rush and Hannity are both on ABC Radio, and Sean has the added benefit of the Fox News network to utilize). Yet for some reason, they weren't able to conduct the same sort of vetting of information I was using nothing but my internet connection and some Google and Wikipedia searching. It's almost as if they don't want to hear the truth, or disseminate the truth to their trusting listeners.

Anyway, after Hannity declared the absence of fossil fuels in America previous to the 20th century, I turned it off. I advise you to do the same.