Sunday's Brain Is Full of Malice

"Would you rather have the Maliki government in control, or the Iranian-backed special groups in control, or Al Qaeda in control?"

Oh, good grief. The quote is from Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser. The possibility of al-Qaeda ever attaining "control of Iraq" is so vanishingly small that for a "senior foreign policy adviser" to even suggest it shows that he's much more interested in frightening the American people into voting for his candidate than he ever was at telling the truth. But more importantly, let's make this clear: the Maliki goverment is an Iranian-backed special group. They also happen to be our group, too, but their military is still receiving arms and training from Iran. This is why we are currently providing air support for the SCIRI Militia in Basra. You know, SCIRI, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, founded in 1982 to seek the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and based out of Tehran?

Why didn't the Times reporter point this out?

Time Admits Biofuels are "a scam."

The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature.

"It may seem obvious?" Grief, dudes, it was obvious five years ago! Burning crops means less crops for the rest of us, and the law of supply and demand requires that you either pay more or create new resources, and the only way to create new sources of farm products is to create new farmland. The Earth ain't getting bigger. New farmland requires more resources like fuel and fertilizer and time. We all knew this was going to happen. Why the Hell does Time's Michael Grunwald think we're all so frakking stupid?

Say it with me now, everyone: Why oh why can't we have a better press corp?

The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Economic Evil

Ilana Mercer's article on World Net is a demonstration of the true and petty banality of small, evil minds. They don't call one of the presidential candidates "Barack," or "Obama," or even "Barack Hussein Obama," they call him "Hussein," period. They assume their audience knows who that is. They want the audience to fear him, to believe he's a muslim, and they'll push that fnord over and over until the label's worn off the button. Worldnut. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany: we must point and giggle.

Do you mind, Muse? I'm trying to eat here.

Muse and I had an argument last night. We're in that prickly stage with each other, the one where writing a book has become an effort, and it's not a sexy book, and Muse spends most of her time thinking about writing sexy stories. I'd turned down her latest idea and she got all mad with me. "I can't believe this. You're throwing away a perfect opportunity for more sex, especially weird, kinky sex! The Sterlings setting is perfect for this kind of thing! You had a fabulous idea with Polestar, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but it hasn't gone anywhere," I said.

"You haven't had time," she said. "I understand that. But really, think about it: such a heavily genderqueered setting. They're under attack by unknown forces. They have a bioconservative outlook. Athena is an 888B-Agro/Ind ST-plus five world, according to your notes; they'd have all the resources they needed, especially if they're not entirely sure they trust their newfound Pendorian friends but they're grabbing up all the Pendorian G-level tech they can find."

"Muse, I don't have time for this either."

"But, but... It's perfect. Under the Shadow of the Big Gun..."

"Is stupid," I said. "Huge gun emplacements, especially surface-based ones, are such a bad idea I don't know where to begin. The last one was the Hochdruckpumpe Cannon, and all it did was make a great big target for Operation Crossbow."

"The Free Worlders don't know that!" Muse said. "Maybe this was all part of a big push to get people involved. They can't ignore the huge gun in their midst, and the reason it's there."

"Maybe," I sighed. "They certainly know the Hochdruckpumpe didn't work. They must have taken a copy of Wikipedia with them."

She said, trying to change the subject, "If you take the ideas you had in Kyama, and transplant them to the Sterling-Dark War, you create a perfect setting for all kinds of illicit genetic engineering hijinks done by people without a lot of depth of experience with gene-e or its unintended consequences." I gave her my best glare. "Look," she says, getting desperate, "The gun doesn't have to work. Maybe it's a fraud. A reminder of what they're up against. Or it's just decrepit. Decaying. You'd like that."

"Muse, really. I don't know if it'll get written..."

"You just don't like my ideas anymore."

"That's not true," I said. "I love your ideas. True, we haven't been building the audience we used to, but that's partially my fault. I haven't been working so hard on the marketing end. I don't know where to put my stuff to pimp it most effectively anymore. It's not like there's just one outlet. And we have other things to take care of these days. Like writing mainstream."

"You mean like... Caprice." She nearly sneered the last word.

"You liked Caprice in the beginning."

"I didn't know it was going to take so long!" she said. She sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. You'll file it away?"

"Of course I will," I said. "I have good ideas of my own now and then. Maybe there's a Y's-only orgy club in there, and your gene-e experiment goes there."

Her eyes twinkled. "Ooh, ooh, I can see that happening! And the X who loves her and doesn't know she's a gene-e sneaks in to figure out where her girlfriend goes some nights, and... Ooh, ooh. Let me work on this!"

"Yeah," I sighed as she bounded off. "You go work on that. Come back with more for me to do."

MC Richard Dawkins - Beware the Believers!

I have no idea where this came from. I, like most people who've seen it, think it's a mash-up of pro-science and rapper 'tudes, but there's a small subset that wants to believe it's a pro-Expelled movie. Either way, it had me giggling. And I could name everyone in it! You have to be deep into the whole evo-creo debate, but if you are, this is a scream:

The bit with Genie Scott, though, was... um... Well, let's just say I don't try to think of Genie that way.

Just sayin'.

Photography, March, Week 2

My trip to Quinalt, very ugly monster SUVs, and the eerie symmetry of a wind-damaged tree-farm.

( Cut 'cuz it can get big. )