Aaron Burr Lives

Run for your lives, everyone! Vice-President Cheney is ARMED AND DANGEROUS:

Via the Guardian:

Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, accidentally shot a man in the face with a shotgun while hunting for quail on a Texas ranch.

Mr Cheney, 65, sprayed birdshot into Harry Whittington, a fellow hunter, while trying to hit a flock of quail on Saturday afternoon. Mr Whittington, 78, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, was taken to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital where he was treated for pellet wounds to the right side of his face, neck and chest.

A spokesman for the hospital said he was not seriously injured and described his condition as "stable".

A witness, Katharine Armstrong, said Mr Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Mr Cheney and a third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second flock. She said: "Whittington came up from behind the Vice-President and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself.

"The Vice-President didn't see him ... the covey [flock] flushed and the Vice-President picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good." Mr Cheney was said to have visited his friend in hospital.

Politically, does this mean anything? I doubt it. Still, considering all the scandals floating around, it would've been too perfect an image if Cheney had actually shot himself in the foot.

Goerge W. Bush vs. The Minotaur

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.

- President Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union adress

While certainly everyone is entitle to their opinion of how much life is worth and the limits of science, I think in this case Bush has gone too far. His hard-line stance against inerspecies breeding negates everything we hold dear about the future human-animal relations.

This piece of midieval dogma would rule out the combination of people and goats:






























bulls:




























super-intelligent dogs:



















and even harmless insects:





























So, I say: shame on you, Bush. Keep this up, and Mr. Peabody will use his WABAC machine to ensure you were never born.

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, and probably only a month or two from now will be the 250th anniversary of when he started composing.

Mozart was not, as most people think of him, simply a composer of light, fluffy minuets and coldly perfect serenades that provide accompaniment for little girls to scatter flowers and drink tea. He tackled a range of issues which landed him in hot water with the censors, from the rising tension between the social classes (The Marriage of Figaro) to the abuses of the nobility and sexual liberation (Don Giovanni) to Freemasonry (The Magic Flute).

His music can be tender, sweet, harrowing, life-affirming, and even - especially in his unfinished Requiem and in the finale of Don Giovanni - tempestuous and fiery. The amazing thing is not only that he managed to write such amazing music, but that he never wrote anything bad which wasn't meant as a joke. Genuis, as we think of it, isn't supposed to be like that. It's something unpredictable, which burns brightly one minute and is gone the next. Yet Mozart kept the light shining his whole life.

So happy birthday, Mozart you genuis.

Iran?

I've been neglecting this blog alot lately; and while I don't have a decent post in me at this point, I can at least say: I hope Iran doesn't develope nuclear weapons and blow up the whole world. Profound, no? Let's see Achmanij..Achmedijen...Achmidejin... Mr. Iran President Guy squirm out of that one.

Of course, if he had a nuke (and had the authority to use it, which the President of Iran does not), the real targets would be either the US or Israel.

I honestly don't think Iran would use a nuke against Israel. What are they going to say; "Oops, I blew up the Dome of the Rock"? I don't think that would cut it for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even so, I'm sure Israel can take out their nuclear plants if need be, and the threat of a nuclear strike is something that might even convince the almost unanimously hostile 'international community' to give them the green light. But then, maybe not.

As for the US, it's not really an issue until Iran devleops ICBM, though their new Jihadi Avenger Catapult is pretty fearsome.

Speaking of which, Iran guy just accused the West of having a Dark Ages mentality, which, if you remember that the European Dark Ages were the Muslim Golden Age, doesn't even make sense as an insult.

But... He Was Good to His Mother

I must say, even though Jack Abramoff is a corrupt, lying, cheating, law-breaking scoundrel who has disgraced my alma mater, I gotta love his style.