Good advice, but still disturbing

Comment appended to a post titled “Man Commits Suicide By Firing Flare Gun Into Mouth”

“If you can only be smart Once in your entire life ... Make sure it's when you are selecting how you will die.” -- “Electric Ferret”

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:10:38 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Round and round and round she goes, but which way?

Which direction does she turn for you?

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:23:34 GMT | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Tales from the Cultural Revolution

Chinese Scholar's Ring / Agate Buttons and Torn Silk

(Sometimes the sheer randomness is what I love most about the web. If Kay Kirscht hadn't posted a comment at buzz.mn, I probably never would have run across her journal, and thus would never have read this.)

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Hollywood's Anti-Communism

"Hollywood's Anti-Communism" might seem an oxymoron, but it did exist (at least on occasion) between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s.  Over at American Thinker, J.R. Dunn offers a list of films, and proposes a box set.

I'd buy one.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:09:40 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Next time take the bus - redux

Did lousy business practices by US Airways and its minion Mesa Airlines pave the way to Carol Anne Gotbaum's death while in the hands of Arizona police? Why Flying Now Can Kill

UPDATE 071020 02:37: US Airways responds (link via Consumerist)

Meanwhile good ol' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) got together with good ol' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to insure that the law doesn't infringe the privileges of our betters in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body (spit!):

Together they put language into a defense appropriations bill that would keep legal the practice of some senators of booking several flights on days they return home, keeping the most convenient reservation and dumping the rest without paying cancellation fees -- a practice some airlines say could violate the new law. -- Washington Post

Via: Insty

Previously:

• Could have driven it faster
• Related: Anyone surprised at this? Anyone???
  

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:04:22 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Oh, those crazy artists

All you can do is shake your head...

Three women have been hurt by falling into Tate Modern's latest installation - a crack in the floor.

At 548 feet long, up to three feet deep and 10inches wide, it zigzags the length of the Turbine Hall and has been described as a highly original work of art.-- The Daily Mail

Installation and construction cost came in at just under $600,000.

The crack is said to represent the division problem of integrating immigrants into European society.

Well, OK then.

Via: Kate

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Quote of the Day

We’re also told that  [mortgage] lenders are “tightening” their standards. Possibly this mean they no longer accept mortgage applications from people who write down Gill Bates as their name, “King of Jupiter” as their job and stated income as “Six Squilion Quatloos.”

Lileks, of course.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:31:52 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The horror! The horror!

Mickey Kaus examines the possibility of Prius ringtones.

If the government requires that Toyota Priuses and other quiet electric vehicles make a noise to warn pedestrians to get out of the way, won't that create a lucrative market for Prius ringtones?
And what kind of noise would be a) distinctive enough to identify the presence of a car, yet b) quiet enough to make a crowd of Priuses tolerable--yet c) not drive Prius owners insane? Get Brian Eno on the case right now. [link in original - o.g.]

-----
OT- Hey Mickey, do you supposed you could talk Slate into giving you the budget for some permalinks?

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Be careful what you ask for

Beldar considers the Michael Richard execution, and explains why precision in communication is vital:
Was Michael Richard executed because Presiding Judge Sharon Keller ordered the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' doors closed at 5:00 p.m., before his emergency stay of execution application could be filed?

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The Flight 93 Memorial and Islamic Symbolism

In his introduction to The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R Tolkien warned readers against confusing "allegory" with "applicablilty"-- one is the intent of the author, the other in the eye of the beholder. One might also say "hindsight reveals symbolism," even where there was no symbolic intent originally.^[1]

But since September 2005, when bloggers first raised the issue of Paul Murdoch's "Crescent of Embrace" design for Pennsylvania's Flight 93 Memorial resembling the Islamic crescent moon symbol, Alec Rawls and others have accumulated enough additional evidence of Islamic symbolism in the design to tell me that it goes beyond coincidence. Despite objections from the public, it appears that construction will proceed.

Rawls has written a book collecting his findings (to be published early next year), which he has made available for download in the interim . I've linked several other sources below, and I urge you to check them out.

In the face of the controversy, the western-Pennsylvania press seems to be in denial. In fact, they're backpedalling:

Professor Daniel Griffith, who is serving as a consultant to the Memorial Project, told the Post Gazette that: "anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round."… He made similar statements to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the Johnstown Tribune Democrat...
[But when the] Tribune Review... commissioned Professor Griffith to analyze the blogosphere's Mecca-orientation claims..., the first thing Griffith [did was] calculate the direction to Mecca:

I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°. [Extract from Griffith's Tribune-Review report. The complete report is available here. - O.G.]

"Azimuth" is the technical term for "direction," measured in degrees clockwise from north. Now Griffith is denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and the Tribune Review refuses to tell its readers that Griffith is contradicting the report that he wrote for them. -- John Stevenson, "Pennsylvania Newspapers Pretend There Is No Direction to Mecca" [Links in original, highlighting mine - O.G.]

Check out the entire NewsBusters post. Read Rawls's analysis. Seems like there's sufficient smoke to justify yelling "fire!" to me.

Elsewhere:

• Zombietime's images (produced September, 2005) of the memorial with superimposed crescent.
• Alec Rawls's (detailed) analysis of the "redesigned" memorial
• Error Theory weblog (complete list/links to memorial posts in the right sidebar)
  
• Cao's Blog: Filght 93 Memorial category (warning: lots of annoying Snap.com popups)

Via: Right On the Right
-------
Footnote:
^[1] For a likely example of "interpretation in retrospect," review the recent flap over the Navy's "swastika-shaped barracks" in California. (One reader comments here: "It's a good thing the Nazis didn't use a rectangle as their symbol or we would have to tear down most of the buildings in the US...")

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