Surprisingly, the guy's still alive

The Huffington Post has a splendid post from the Wikileaks collection:

According to a recently released cable obtained by WikiLeaks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was slapped in the face by Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari. According to the cable, Ahmadinejad surprised the Supreme National Security Council by taking a liberal posture on opposition protests. The president allegedly argued that people felt "suffocated", and that allowing more social and personal freedoms, as well as more freedom of the press, would help to defuse the situation.
Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari apparently disagreed. The cable, dated 11 February 2010, reads:

According to source, Ahmedinejad's statements infuriated Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari, who exclaimed "You are wrong! In fact, it is you who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!" Source said that Jafarli then slapped Ahmedinejad in the face, causing an uproar and an immediate call for a break in the meeting, which was never resumed.
Source said that SNSC did not meet again for another two weeks, after Ayatollah Janati succesfully acted as a "peacemaker" between Jafarli and Ahmedinejad. Source added that the break in the SNSC meeting, but not the slap that caused it, has made its way on to some Iranian blogs.
The source, who is located in Azerbaijan, is described later in the cable as "a former non-Marxist revolutionary activist". The source goes on to say that political strife is growing within the Islamic Republic, stating that "recent speeches reflect an ongoing effort to split Supreme Leader Ali Khameini from the Ahmedinejad group."

Rumors of dissension within the Iranian political elite have been leaking out of Iran in recent months, with criticism of the president allegedly coming from all sides. As the Los Angeles Times reported in September:

In Tehran these days, the outspoken hard-line politician is under withering attack from all political directions. His detractors in recent weeks have included assorted fundamentalist clergymen who have accused him of interfering in religious affairs, a judiciary that humiliated him by delaying the release of American hiker Sarah Shourd, the editor of a right-wing newspaper handpicked by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the moderate head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, and a member of parliament who condemned him for praising the pre-Islamic Persian king Cyrus, who is an icon of secular nationalists.

Most recently, Ahmadinejad abruptly fired his foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in a move that was seen as directed at Khamenei. The cable notes that some politicians in Iran believe that the president will not be able to finish his term.
ran has denied allegations that the president was slapped. According to ynet.com:

Spokesman Ramezan Sharif said the report was published as part of an attempt to divert attention from the "kidnapping and torture of General Reza (Asghari)." General Reza Asghari is the former Iranian deputy defense minister who disappeared in Istanbul in 2006, reports Ha'aretz. Iran has accused Israel of kidnapping the general.

That's Captain Moron to you

Time has a column by Mark Thompson about the Enterprise commander:

A Navy official says the service will, at a minimum, relieve Capt. Owen Honors of his post as commander of the USS Enterprise until a probe into the videos he created several years ago when he was serving as the Number Two officer aboard the carrier is completed. The suspension could come as early as Tuesday. It's likely to signal the end of his career.
Question: As this vessel prepares to deploy in support of the nine-year old war in Afghanistan, launched to destroy the Taliban and hunt down and kill or capture Osama bin Laden, is this something that should be foremost on the minds of the 6,000 crew members of the Enterprise? Make no mistake about it: it is all they are talking about tonight.
Update: Other Navy officers say no decision has yet been made regarding Honors' fate...best advice from here: stay tuned.

Rico says the guy's an idiot and shouldn't be running an aircraft carrier... (Isn't there a nice little backwater station, on Greenland, say, that he could run?)

Too late; Rico's already got an iPad

The New York Times has an article by Joshua Brustein about potential rivals (hah!) to the iPad:

Welcome to the year of the tablet. Again.
Last year was supposed to be the year manufacturers would wow consumers with offerings of all sorts of tablet computers. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the stage at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the industry’s premier trade show, and displayed three devices that he said would be on sale in the months ahead. Dozens of smaller companies laid out their own tablet plans at the show. But few of these promises came to fruition; none of Microsoft’s tablets ever showed up in stores.
Instead, Apple’s iPad came out. And the year became the Year of the iPad.
This year, manufacturers are promising it will be different, saying that, after the success of the iPad, they have learned a lot about what consumers want in a tablet.
“We could have done this a year ago and rushed it out, but it wouldn’t have had the right features,” said Phil Osako, director of product marketing at Toshiba, which is introducing a new tablet at this year’s show.
Perhaps the most important feature is the ability to watch high-quality video, say industry analysts, pointing to market research showing that, above all, consumers want to use tablets for all kinds of media consumption: watching films, looking at and sharing photographs, playing games.
“Apple competitors’ first instinct was to build a cheaper device and put a cheaper processor in it,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research, a market research firm. “The problem with that is that it wouldn’t have been as good for the video screens.”
At this year’s show, Research In Motion and Hewlett-Packard are expected to show off tablet computers, while scheduled appearances by executives at Motorola and Microsoft are widely thought to be coming-out parties for their company’s devices.
Mr. Ballmer is to give the keynote address in Las Vegas; some analysts and bloggers have described this as a do-over of last year.
And on the show floor this year, manufacturers whose primary expertise rests in cellular phones, personal computers, and even televisions are planning to display their first forays into the tablet market.
At the same time, industry analysts say demand for these devices is poised to spike. More than 24 million tablet computers are projected to be sold in the United States this year, up from 10.3 million in 2010, according to Forrester. IDC, another research firm, expects to see 42 million tablet sales worldwide in 2011.
As of October, Apple had sold 7.46 million iPads worldwide, according to the company’s last reported figures. It had virtually no competitors all year, until the Samsung Galaxy Tab became available in November. Samsung says it has sold 1.5 million Galaxy Tabs since then.
Many companies are withholding the specifics of their tablets until they are formally introduced. But those who have discussed their plans say they will both offer specific features that the iPad is lacking, and undercut their competitors on price.
Mr. Osako from Toshiba said Apple’s experience over the last year has helped his company by creating demand for tablets while Toshiba fine-tuned its plans. Toshiba’s tablet, which will run on Google’s Android operating system, resembles an iPad with a grippy rubberized backing. The company has incorporated features it has developed for its laptops, like stereo speakers and a screen that adjusts in contrast depending on the lighting. Both of those features will make it more comfortable for consumers to watch video.
Mr. Osako also listed features unavailable on the iPad, like front- and back-facing cameras, ports for H.D.M.I. hookups and SIM cards, and the ability to run Adobe Flash. “We really view this as the next revolution,” he said.
Other companies are looking to distinguish themselves by price. Enspert, a Korean manufacturer that is already selling tablets in Korea, is planning to introduce an Android tablet with a seven-inch screen for under $350 at the show, and sell it in the United States this year. By the end of the summer, the tablet, the Identity Tab, will also be available with a data plan through a major wireless carrier for about $100, Bobby Cha, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Cha said technology consumers pay a heavy premium for familiar brand names, creating opportunity for little-known companies with similar products. “The market is open to everybody, so we know where everybody stands,” he said. “Apple changed the market dynamics, but we’re going to occupy a price point that is much more appealing to the American mass-market customer.”
Creating similar products for much lower prices may be difficult because the iPad has conditioned customers to expect a device that is both relatively light and powerful enough to display high-quality media, said Mark Donovan, an analyst with comScore, a market research organization. But he also said that success would be determined largely based on the software that the devices run, and not only on the number of features that manufacturers can pack into the hardware.
The tablet market is shaping up to resemble the smartphone market, in which a few companies, like Apple, Research In Motion, and Microsoft, design their own operating systems, while many others design hardware that runs on Google’s Android operating system.
Perhaps the companies best positioned to succeed are those that make cellphones, several analysts who follow the market said. Handset makers already have relationships with wireless carriers, which can hide the full price of devices by subsidizing them when consumers also purchase data plans.
Many manufacturers are focusing solely on creating hardware that will run on Google’s Android operating system. In part, companies were delayed last year because they were waiting for updated versions of Android that would be designed specifically for tablet computers. That wait seems to be over. Devices can already run Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread, and Android 3.0, known as Honeycomb, is scheduled to be available this year. Andy Rubin, vice president for engineering at Google, showed a prototype of a Motorola tablet running the operating system at a conference in December.
Apple’s experience with the iPad has also shown that consumers place a high value on the number and quality of apps. And so no matter how good tablets look in Las Vegas at the electronics show, the competition will continue as developers begin to write apps for the various devices.
“You can build these devices, which is great, but it’s no longer enough to say, ‘Okay, you have the Internet,’” said Mr. Donovan of comScore. “You need developers.”

Long bad memories

The New York Times has an article by Ellen Barry and Sophia Kishkovsky about Tolstoy:

A couple of months ago one of Russia’s elder statesmen set out on a paradoxical mission: to rehabilitate one of the most beloved figures in Russian history, Tolstoy.
This would have seemed unnecessary in 2010, a century after the author’s death. But last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. Intellectuals accused the Russian Orthodox Church of blacklisting a national hero. The church accused Tolstoy of helping speed the rise of the Bolsheviks. The melodrama of his last days, when he fled his family estate to take up the life of an ascetic, was revived in all its pulpy detail, like some kind of early-stage reality television.
And in a country that rarely passes up a public celebration, the anniversary of his death, on 20 November 1910, was not commemorated by noisy galas or government-financed cinematic blockbusters. Officially speaking, it was barely noted at all.
With this in mind, Sergei V. Stepashin, a former prime minister here, sat down to write to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become an arbiter of politics and culture. In painstakingly diplomatic language, acknowledging “the particular sensitivity” of “this delicate theme”, Mr. Stepashin asked forgiveness on behalf of Tolstoy, who was excommunicated 110 years ago.
The impulse had swelled up during a lonely visit to an unmarked mound of earth where Tolstoy is buried. Mr. Stepashin described the visit, made while he was director of the Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB, as an emotional experience that he has never been able to shake off. “You look at the house where he lived and worked, where he created his works, and then you come to a place where there is nothing but this small hill,” said Mr. Stepashin, who has close ties to the church. “It was puzzling, on a human and a moral plane. And then I decided to write this letter.”
The Soviets planted him at the top of their literary pantheon, largely because of the radical philosophy he preached amid the early rumblings of the October Revolution. The publication of War and Peace and Anna Karenina made Tolstoy so famous that one contemporary described him as Russia’s second czar. He used that position to rail against the church, as well as the police, the army, meat eating, private property, and all forms of violence.
Lenin loved Tolstoy’s “pent-up hatred.” He anointed him “the mirror of the Russian Revolution”, ignoring his pacifism and belief in God. As the fiftieth anniversary of his death approached, the Central Committee of the Communist Party began preparing two years in advance, so a monument would be ready for unveiling.
For the centennial, in a Russia wary of utopian thought, there was nothing of the kind. By contrast, Chekhov received lavish official tributes in 2010 for his 150th birthday, including a birthplace visit from President Dmitri A. Medvedev.
Though a star-studded Tolstoy biopic, The Last Station, opened in Moscow just ahead of the anniversary, it was filmed in Germany, acted by Britons, and directed by an American. The Russian filmmaker Andrei S. Konchalovsky, a producer of the film, said he petitioned “every ministry” in the Russian government for support. In the end, he said, he was forced to invest his own money. “I represent Russia,” he said, with a wry smile, while promoting the film.
None of this came as a surprise to Vladimir I. Tolstoy, Tolstoy’s great-great-grandson, who oversees the museum at Yasnaya Polyana, the author’s estate. Mr. Tolstoy, 48, has the slender, avid look of a professional intellectual, but his last name has called on him to wade into politics. He worked on one of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s presidential campaigns and does favors for area officials when they need “the authority or prestige of Tolstoy”, as he put it.
Ten years ago he asked the church to revisit the 1901 ruling that excommunicated his great-great-grandfather. He received no answer. Though his efforts have not ended— a visitor to Yasnaya Polyana recalled a banquet table laid out in the orchard for the local bishop— Mr. Tolstoy said he was not hopeful. Aside from a reception held by the minister of culture, the anniversary transpired with “a conscious ignoring of Tolstoy”, he said. “Any power tries to adapt great people to its needs,” he added. “The current authorities don’t adapt him, or they are not clever enough. Maybe they are so self-confident, they don’t think they need to.”
It was a relief when Mr. Stepashin joined the effort. The men met about fifteen years ago, when Mr. Stepashin, then director of the Federal Security Service, presented Mr. Tolstoy with sheaves of family letters pulled out of Soviet intelligence files. Mr. Stepashin, who recalls staying up two nights as a ten-year-old so that he could finish Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection, shared the sense that the writer was getting short shrift. “I understood that there would not likely be a decision to return him to the church,” said Mr. Stepashin, now president of the Russian Book Union. “But as for the attitude to him as a person, as a person who did a lot for Russian culture and for the Russian language, I just counted on that, on a change of attitude toward him.”
The church’s letter of response, published in the state-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, suggested not. It acknowledged Tolstoy’s “unforgettable, beautiful works”, and said Russian Orthodox readers were allowed to say solitary prayers for him on the anniversary of his death. But its tone was mournful, calling Tolstoy the most “tragic personality” in the history of Russian literature. It said that Tolstoy “purposely used his great talent to destroy Russia’s traditional spiritual and social order” and that it was “no accident that the leader of the Bolsheviks extremely valued the aim of Leo Tolstoy’s activity”. So there could be no candles burned for Tolstoy inside Orthodox churches and no commemorations read, according to the letter, signed by the cultural council secretary to Patriarch Kirill I, the church’s leader.
Mr. Stepashin said he expected this response and was glad the letter included some praise.
But intellectuals did not hide their astonishment. “It’s as if in the 20th century the church did not survive persecution that made Tolstoy’s criticisms look like childish prattle,” wrote the literary critic Pavel V. Basinsky, whose new book examines Tolstoy’s final days. “It’s as if we have found ourselves in the situation that we were in at the beginning of the last century.”
And, as in the last century, much of the discussion surrounding the Tolstoy centennial was akin to gossip. Mr. Basinsky’s book is part of a wave of new works that, like the film The Last Station, plunge into Tolstoy’s flight from the family estate: the moment when he seemed finally to choose his radical ideas over the aristocratic comforts of home. He died a few days later at a train station, surrounded by throngs of reporters.
At the time of Tolstoy’s death, Russian pundits cast his decision as a spiritual triumph, but the new works retell it as a family tragedy, said William Nickell, author of The Death of Tolstoy. From this perspective, Tolstoy’s wife is a sympathetic figure, his followers are manipulative parasites, and his ideas are hopelessly utopian. “It is as if he is lumped now with communism,” Mr. Nickell said. “Good idea in principle, but a disaster in practice.”

Cowboys are always good

Mild Bill sends along a link to the Cowboys & Indians site, with a listing of famous cowboy actors, including:

The Ringo Kid (John Wayne), Jason McCullough (James Garner), Shane (Alan Ladd), Will Kane (Gary Cooper), Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Tom Horn (Steve McQueen), Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), Steve Judd (Joel McCrea), Rio (Marlon Brando), The Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore), Will Penny (Charlton Heston), Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), Will Lockhart (James Stewart), Curly Washburn (Jack Palance), Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall) and Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones)

Rico says it don't get no better than that...

Still waiting

Rico says he's still awaiting his data backup disks from Mozy; things that should be so simple are, apparently, not...
We shall see. (Or, as Richard Pryor, as The Reverend James L. White, so splendidly put it, we shall see.)

No shit, Sherlock

The Lawdog sends along a recommendation for the Sherlock series on PBS; if you didn't see it, catch it on DVD or the reruns. It's excellent.

Another minority problem

Abigail Hauslohner has an article in Time about yet more issues in Egypt:

Grief quickly transformed into anger on Sunday as a couple of hundred Christians returned to the church in Alexandria that had been bombed on New Year's Day. At the morning mass, women sobbed against each other in the pews as the priests chanted. Afterward, men and women gathered in the church lobby, screaming angrily about a government they say has repeatedly failed them. The bodies and tangled wreckage of cars had already been cleared from the street outside, where 21 people were killed by the blast in the early hours of 1 January. But blood was still splattered across the outer walls of the Saints Church and a mosque across the street. Parishioners of the Coptic congregation crunched over broken glass, making their way through a crime scene with the bloody odor of a slaughterhouse. Hundreds of riot police stood by, blocking the ends of the street, but it was protection that the congregants say was absent when they needed it the most.
Authorities say the powerful explosion was set off by a suicide bomber who had packed his arsenal with nails and ball bearings that tore through a crowd of churchgoers as they exited midnight mass on New Year's Eve. In addition to the dead, the explosion left 79 others wounded, and set nearby cars on fire, leading officials to conclude initially that a car bomb was to blame. Egyptian officials over the weekend painted the bombing as a brutal, foreign assault— though they have not directly accused al-Qaeda; Egypt has typically insisted that the international extremist group has no foothold in the country.
But no one at Saints Church seems to be buying those claims. Instead, many recalled on Sunday that the authorities had failed to help them in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, as Christians stormed the mosque across the street and clashes broke out along sectarian lines, at first Christians vs. Muslims, and then between Christians and the police. "It wasn't just the car bomb. It was after the car bomb; the police just stood there and watched as Muslims and Christians attacked each other," says one parishioner, who gave his name as abu Mark. Others say that when police finally did get involved, it was to hit back at the Christians. Some even accused the authorities of collusion in the attack. "It was the church that they targeted, not the Egyptian people as they are claiming on television," says one congregation member, Girgis Abdel Malak.
"If they were targeting Muslims and Christians, why did it explode at 12:30 at night on a holiday, right when people were leaving the church?" says another, Samia Malak. No one goes to the mosque at that time of night, she points out.
The incident comes as Christian communities around the Middle East have come under increasing threat. Additionally, the Alexandria bombing is going to focus attention on Egypt's worsening sectarian tensions. Already, Coptic anger over the bombing has inspired solidarity protests in Cairo, and with them, violent clashes between Christians and security forces. Coptic Christians, who make up a tenth of Egypt's population, have long complained of government discrimination and neglect, while Muslims have accused the Coptic community, which is subject to slightly different rules and regulations, of preferential treatment and living outside the law.
Almost exactly one year ago, a gunman massacred seven people in the town of Nag Hammadi, following a Christmas Mass. The parishioners of Saints Church say they see a clear continuum from earlier sectarian clashes to their own latest tragedy. "Discrimination against the Copts is a government policy, and that gets reflected in the behavior of the people," says Victor Murab, the church's rector. In an upstairs office on Sunday, church officials contemplated aloud how the influence of a brand of puritanical Islam from Saudi Arabia had made Egypt a far less tolerant place. "While al-Qaeda does not exist in Egypt in an organized sense," says Murab, "it's here as an idea."
Authorities on Sunday said that they had arrested seventeen people in connection with the attack, according to al-Jazeera. But some observers say that simply putting the perpetrators behind bars won't stop the sectarian divide from widening or growing more bitter. "The people they arrested for Nag Hammadi still haven't been convicted. It has been a year," says Fikry Gameel, a Christian who paints buildings. "I'm sure this was al-Qaeda, but from inside Egypt. It was Muslims." Standing in the late-morning sunshine, on a street that glinted with tiny shards of glass, Gameel is hardly optimistic that the worst is over for Egypt's Christian minority. "There was this car bomb, but I think there are more out there," he says to his friends who shake their heads in angry concurrence. "The rest are coming."

Miret El Naggar of the McClatchy Newspapers has the story:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak vowed Saturday to "cut off the hand of terrorism", after a suspected suicide bomber attacked a Christian church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and killed at least 21 people as worshippers emerged from a New Year's Day mass.
It was the deadliest attack against the country's Christian minority in more than a decade, and the latest in a wave of violence against Christians in the Middle East. Experts said that it would stoke growing tension between Egypt's majority Muslims and Coptic Christians, who make up about ten percent of the country's eighty million people.
"This terrorist act has shaken the conscience of the nation. The blood of our children will not be lost, and we will cut off the hand of terrorism," Mubarak said in a televised address. "I promise all Egyptians that all plots will fail to upset Egypt's stability or break the ranks of its Muslims and Copts."
While no group immediately claimed responsibility, Egyptian authorities blamed "foreign elements" and experts said that it carried the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation. If the strike was indeed carried out by al-Qaeda, it would mark a surprising new security threat in Egypt, a staunch U.S. ally on counterterrorism where security forces normally keep a tight lid on militants.
In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the attackers "were clearly targeting Christian worshipers, and have no respect for human life and dignity. They must be brought to justice for this barbaric and heinous act."
Nearly eighty people were injured in the attack. Ambulances rushed to the scene, where bloodied bodies lay scattered in the midst of glass shards, while blood was splattered on the street and on the church walls, according to news services.
Clashes erupted throughout the day in Alexandria, as Christians hurled stones and bottles at anti-riot police, who used tear gas against the mob. The protestors, some wielding crosses covered with bloodied clothes, chanted anti-Mubarak slogans, blaming the government for not doing enough to protect them.
Last fall the Islamic State of Iraq, an affiliate group of al-Qaeda, said it would strike against the Coptic Church, which it accused of holding two women against their will after they reportedly had tried to convert to Islam to obtain divorces, which are barred by the Copts.
That incident had been the spark for a deadlier attack on Christians in Baghdad in October, when a team of suicide attackers stormed a church during evening mass and prompted a shootout with Iraqi commandos that left 58 people dead.
Eyewitnesses in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, said that the blast occurred after a car parked outside the church exploded about a half-hour after the stroke of the new year. The blast caused two other cars parked nearby to blow up.
"I see al-Qaeda's fingerprints on this operation," said Amr al Shobaki, an expert on Islamic militant groups at the Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, an Egyptian think tank. He said that the timing, expertise, and organized approach of the bombing were different from the more ad hoc attacks Egypt has experienced in the past. "The effect is dangerous in any case," he said. "There is a real crisis and an ongoing tension between Christians and Muslims, and this attack could exacerbate an already bad situation."
Human rights groups said that Mubarak's government had failed to address longstanding security complaints by Copts, who accuse Egyptian courts of going too easy on perpetrators of violence against them. The Copts' grievances aren't unique in Egypt, where dissidents of all stripes face prosecution or intimidation for challenging the status quo. However, Copts have long said that they struggle to obtain national identity cards and permits to build churches, and they are noticeably missing from top posts in the security services.
In November, Christian demonstrators in Cairo clashed with police forces over the construction of a church outside the capital. Last January, seven Christians died in a drive-by shooting outside a church in northern Egypt as worshippers were leaving Mass.

Sounds like the End Times are coming early

Rico says this CNN article would bother him, if he believed in omens:

Arkansas game officials hope testing will solve the mystery of why up to 5,000 birds fell from the sky just before midnight on New Year's Eve.
The birds, most of which were dead, were red-winged blackbirds and starlings and were found within a one-mile area of Beebe, about forty miles northeast of Little Rock, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said. Birds fell over about a one-mile area, the commission said in a statement.
As of Saturday, between 4,000 and 5,000 birds had been found dead, said Keith Stephens with the commission. "Shortly after I arrived, there were still birds falling from the sky," said commission wildlife officer Robby King in the statement. He said he collected about 65 dead birds. The commission said it flew over the area to gauge the scope of the event, and no birds were found outside of the initial one-mile area. Karen Rowe, an ornithologist for the commission, said the incident is not that unusual and is often caused by a lightning strike or high-altitude hail. A strong storm system moved through the state earlier in the day Friday. "It's important to understand that a sick bird can't fly. So whatever happened to these birds happened very quickly," Rowe told CNN Radio on Sunday. "Something must have caused these birds to flush out of the trees at night, where they're normally just roosting and staying in the treetops... and then something got them out of the air and caused their death and then they fell to earth," Rowe added.
Officials also speculated that fireworks shot by New Year's revelers in the area might have caused severe stress in the birds. Rowe said Sunday there was evidence that large fireworks may have played a role. "Initial examinations of a few of the dead birds showed trauma. Whether or not this trauma was from the force of hitting the ground when they fell or from something that contacted them in the air, we don't know," Rowe said.
The dead birds will be sent for testing to labs at the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission and the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin. The necropsies will begin Monday, Stephens said, and the findings should be available sometime this week.
The city of Beebe has hired U.S. Environmental Services to begin the cleanup and dispose of the dead birds, the commission said. The firm's workers will go door-to-door and pick up birds still in yards and on rooftops.

Rico says maybe it was just one of Bill Clinton's farts after drinking too much on New Years' Eve...

Outed, but not like you'd think

Tim Padgett has an article at Time.com about an appropriately-named priest:

The Revernd Albert Cutié has a new book out this week, and parts of it offer a scorching indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. But, just a minute, he'd first like to show you pictures of his new baby girl Camila, born 2 December, especially the one of her asleep on his chest with an adorable white bow around her head. "The first time I held her," says Cutié, "I said, 'Oh, my God, why didn't I do this sooner?'"
He knows that's what the media were asking more than a year and a half ago: If Cutié really wanted the love of a woman and the epiphany of his own children, why didn't he just say so and leave the celibate Catholic priesthood? Why did he wait for the paparazzi to force his hand in May of 2009, when a Mexican celebrity magazine published some steamy photos of the handsome Miami priest, the "Father Oprah" of Spanish-language television and radio talk shows, cuddling on the beach and at restaurants with his sweetheart?
Cutié, 41, now an Episcopal priest, hopes to answer that question in Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle with Faith and Love (Celebra; 320 pages; $25.95). In an interview with Time, Cutié admits that "I not only disappointed others but also myself" by leading a double life as famous pastor and furtive paramour. Yet most Catholics, who continue dealing with crises like clerical sexual abuse of minors, shrugged at his indiscretion; and Cutié just as rightly notes that "there are much bigger problems in the church" than his otherwise healthy relationship with a consenting adult. Cutié's tell-all saves its harshest censure not for the gossip rags (which he all but thanks for outing him) but for the Catholic hierarchy's retro hypocrisies, especially celibacy, which he posits, based on a flood of letters he's since received from priests, is a vow violated by many if not most clerics (some promiscuously) as they combat the loneliness it can breed. The church is "disconnected from the very people it was meant to serve," he writes, and it acted more distressed by his peccadillo than by "the truly criminal, outrageous and blatantly immoral behavior" of pedophile priests.
Cutié critics will argue that he's attacking the church to deflect attention from, if not to rationalize, his own dishonest actions, and that he stayed in the priesthood as long as he did because he was as much in love with his talk-show renown as he was with his covert girlfriend, Ruhama Canellis, now his wife. But Cutié, who insists "celebrity is not essential to who I am," writes in Dilemma that he instead felt boxed in by his notoriety. Because Latino Catholics admired "Padre Alberto" in the 2000s as much as U.S. Catholics admired Bishop Fulton Sheen in the 1950s, "I knew that if I left the church for this woman, I would shake the faith and trust of many, many people. I couldn't make myself do that yet."
Either way, Dilemma makes fairly clear that Cutié and the Catholic priesthood weren't the divine fit they seemed on TV. As a young seminarian, Cutié tells Time, "I had a romantic image of that institution," one that was fired by the vigorous, saintly auras of Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. But Cutié's Cuban-exile parents, their memories of the Castro dictatorship all too fresh, had also taught him the value of questioning authority. Eventually, he writes, as he watched his corporate-minded, image-obsessed superiors in Miami turn their backs on parishes tainted by priestly sexual-abuse charges — and where in some cases they sent Cutié to clean up the mess — "I had to ask myself, 'Albert, what are you doing in this inflexible, dictatorial and merciless institution?'"
Cutié, whose religious talk-show career took off around 2000 with programs like Cambia Tu Vida Con Padre Alberto (Change Your Life With Father Albert), suggests that the television studio became his refuge. In contrast to dogmatically rigid Catholic TV hosts like Mother Angelica, he writes, "I didn't want my ministry to be black-and-white" (even though one of his shows was broadcast on her dogmatically fossilized EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network). On air and in his 2006 book, Real Life, Real Love, his style was more counselor than confessor, which made him all the more popular with Catholics grown weary of Rome's doctrinal intolerance on issues ranging from divorce to homosexuality, from abortion to women's ordination.
And he was popular with women, who often called the hunk in a collar Father Cutie (even though his name is pronounced Koo-tee-ay) or Father What-a-Waste. Which makes it less surprising that he began to question the church's controversial celibacy requirement for priests. Cutié emphasizes that he's not against celibacy per se, but believes it should be optional, especially for parish priests, as it was at the church's founding. "Please, the first forty Popes were married," says Cutié, noting that the ban on clerical sex and marriage was one of the many misogynist constructs of the medieval church.
Cutié's doubts overflowed when he met Canellis, an attractive divorcée and single mother who was a member of his Miami Beach parish. During Mass, Cutié writes, "I couldn't help but sneak looks at her," and their friendship morphed into romance one night in the early 2000s with a "very strong" goodnight kiss in his car. "Despite all I had been taught by the church that these feelings were sinful for a priest to have," he writes, "I knew that this love was so good that it must have come from God."
But at that point, Cutié tells Time, he didn't trust then Miami Archbishop John Favalora or any superior enough to confide in them, even though he believes his relationship with Canellis made him a better priest. "I felt much more humane and apostolic," he says, noting that most of Jesus' apostles were married. "Being a priest is supposed to be about getting out among people, knowing their lives. This made me feel so much closer to them, more than my television work did."
The church didn't see it that way when the photos, one of which showed Cutié's hand roaming down Canellis' swimsuit, hit the newsstands and Internet. Cutié was the first Miami priest whom Favalora ordained, in 1995, so the priest understood that the Archbishop would feel blindsided by the revelation of his love affair. Still, precisely because of his long relationship with Favalora, as well as the tireless pastoral and media work Cutié had done for him, Cutié was stunned at how coldly he feels the prelate disowned and publicly denounced him. Favalora paid out millions of dollars in sexual-abuse settlements; yet Cutié had "never heard him 'apologize on behalf of the Church of Miami'" for those cases the way he apologized for the Cutié scandal. (Favalora, now retired, in fact had apologized for them in 2003.)
That sealed Cutié's decision to go Episcopal. Dilemma, as a result, is sure to reheat the debate about celibacy, especially amid the Vatican's campaign to replenish its ever shrinking clerical ranks with married Anglican and Episcopal priests defecting to Catholicism. But just as important, Cutié makes it clear why Catholics shouldn't confuse their checkered church with their religion. In reality, Catholicism encourages the kind of independent thinking that suffuses his book— conscientious human reason, not hoary Vatican doctrine, as the doorway to faith. "I made a promise to be a celibate," he writes in Dilemma, but experienced "transformations, personal ideological struggles, and growth. None of us can be frozen in time." Not even the Catholic Church.

Rico says that 'dogmatically fossilized' pretty much sums up the Catholic Church... (But isn't he the anti-Hef?)

Grubby? Hef? Say it isn't so

David Leafe has an article in the Daily Mail about the decline and fall of the core of the Playboy empire:

The marriage proposal was apparently a rather romantic affair. On Christmas Eve, the couple watched a late-night movie together and then exchanged gifts: for him a framed photograph of their King Charles Spaniel, for her an engagement ring.
‘She burst into tears,’ he revealed on Twitter at the weekend. ‘This is the happiest Christmas in memory.’ ‘The most memorable Christmas ever,’ she tweeted in agreement. ‘I love him.’
All of which might be rather more touching if the prospective groom was not Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner who, at 84, is 60 years older than his fiancée, a platinum blonde model named Crystal Harris.
That Hefner should choose to share details of this intimate moment with the world quite so soon after his proposal is typical of this flamboyant self-publicist. His image as a fast-living Lothario has done much to make a success of the Playboy brand, and news of his impending nuptials to a woman young enough to be his great-granddaughter will further promote the idea of him as a lovable old rascal who has plenty of life in him yet.
This is certainly the image Hefner likes to project to the celebrities drawn to his lavishly debauched parties at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. The attractions there include a games house, with two guestrooms equipped with only a bed, a ceiling mirror, and a phone.
Charlie Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Colin Farrell are among the stars who have enjoyed romps at the Mansion, according to a kiss-and-tell memoir by Izabella St. James, a former member of the ever-changing bevy of pneumatic blondes with whom Hefner shares his home. Stars just needed to ‘click their fingers’ to seduce women at these soirées, recalls St. James. These A-listers no doubt delight in their association with the legendary lover. But unfortunately for Hefner, some of his former ‘girlfriends’, as he calls them, have become disenchanted with life in his harem over the years. One by one they have revealed what life was like behind the glittering façade of the Playboy Mansion. According to them, it disguises a grubby world where some girls feel they are no better than prostitutes, paid pocket money by an octogenarian obsessive who funds plastic surgery to turn them into his physical ideal, and yet must still take huge amounts of Viagra to manage sex with them.
The portrait of Hefner painted by Izabella St James is deeply unappealing. A pretty blonde law graduate, she was 26 when she met him in a Hollywood nightclub in 2002. Soon, he invited her to move in with him and seven other official ‘girlfriends’. Hefner likes to have anywhere between three and fifteen girlfriends at any one time. One of the group will be chosen to be Girlfriend No 1. She will share Hefner’s bedroom at all times, while the others are merely visitors. For Izabella, the Playboy Mansion was far from the glamorous pleasure palace she had imagined. ‘Each bedroom had mismatched, random pieces of furniture,’ she recalls in her autobiography Bunny Tales. ‘It was as if someone had gone to a charity shop and bought the basics for each room. Although we all did our best to decorate our rooms and make them homely, the mattresses on our beds were disgusting; old, worn and stained. The sheets were past their best, too. Eventually I persuaded Hef to pay for a new mattress and bed linen, but I had to turn in every single receipt before I was reimbursed. Hef also eventually permitted us to have the rooms painted and recarpeted. But for some reason he insisted on creamy, white-coloured carpets. He liked the girlfriends’ rooms to look very girly, all white carpet and pink walls. It looked great at first, but with two dogs (most of the girlfriends had pets that lived in their rooms; I had two pugs), butlers delivering food, dirty shoes, and occasional spillages, the carpet was grey and stained in a matter of months.’ She adds: ‘But then Hef was used to dirty carpets. The one in his bedroom had not been changed for years, and things became significantly worse when Holly Madison moved into his room with him as Girlfriend No. 1 soon after I moved in, bringing her two dogs. They weren’t house-trained and would just do their business on the bedroom carpet. Late at night, or in the early hours of the morning, if any of us visited Hef’s bedroom we’d almost always end up standing in dog mess. Everything in the Mansion felt old and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general scent of decay.’
Many girls, it seems, endured these living conditions for the chance of becoming a centrefold in Playboy magazine, an invaluable career boost for any glamour model.
Others admitted that they stayed only for the cosmetic surgery to which Hefner treated them as a birthday presents, keeping a running account with a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
But St James — with big university debts — was more interested in the weekly pocket money which Hefner paid all his girlfriends. ‘Every Friday morning we had to go to Hef’s room, wait while he picked up all the dog poo off the carpet, and then ask for our allowance: a thousand dollars counted out in crisp hundred-dollar bills from a safe in one of his bookcases,’ she says. ‘We all hated this process. Hef would always use the occasion to bring up anything he wasn’t happy about in the relationship. Most of the complaints were about the lack of harmony among the girlfriends, or your lack of sexual participation in the “parties” he held in his bedroom. If we’d been out of town for any reason and missed one of the official “going out” nights [when Hefner liked to parade his girls at nightclubs] he wouldn’t want to give us the allowance. He used it as a weapon.’
The allowance was also withdrawn if there was any infringement of the strict rules imposed by Hefner on all his girlfriends.
‘Little did I realise that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle,’ says St James. ‘Strictest of all was the curfew. Everyone had to be on the Mansion grounds by 9pm every night, unless we were out with Hef at a club or a function. People honestly did not believe us when we told them we had a curfew at the wild and crazy Playboy Mansion.’
Another young woman, model Kendra Wilkinson, now 25, met Hefner in 2004 when she was hired as a living statue at one of his parties, posing naked except for painted-on accessories. She moved into the Playboy Mansion soon afterwards and lived there until 2009. She has since described how his staff noted every time one of the girls left or arrived back at the Mansion. Hefner would pore over the logs every morning, which, Wilkinson said, drove her ‘insane. It was way more strict than my parents had ever been,’ she says.
Freedom of a kind came on Wednesdays and Fridays, the official nights out, which were the prelude to the twice-weekly sex parties in Hefner’s bedroom. The girls travelled with Hefner in a white limousine which had a leopard-skin interior, with Playboy bunny logos sewn onto the seats. As they left the mansion, they drank Dom Perignon champagne and downed Quaaludes, a prescription-only sedative drug popularised in the Seventies and now handed out by Hefner.
‘Quaaludes were supposed to give you a nice buzz,’ says Izabella St James. ‘Hef told me once that they were meant to put girls in the mood for sex.’
The thrill of being out after curfew was tempered by Hefner’s wearying habit of going out to the same few clubs, night after night. And his ever-present security guards ensured that no other men were allowed to pay the girls any attention. At around midnight, according to St James, Hef would take his Viagra. ‘After that, he would constantly check his watch to make sure we left at the right time because if we didn’t, or the timing got messed up, he wouldn’t be able to perform later. We had to line up like geese and follow each other out of the club. Little did I realise that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle.'
As with so much else in their time with Hefner, the girls followed strict rules before entering his bedroom for the sex parties.One of those who witnessed these preparations was Jill Ann Spaulding, an aspiring model who wrote to Hefner in 2002 asking to be a Playboy centrefold. Though 20-year-old Spaulding had enclosed a naked photo of herself, she claims to have been unprepared for what happened when she was invited to stay at the Playboy Mansion for a few days, and was asked to one of these private parties.
Beforehand, all the girls were told to take a bath. ‘I got in, then another girl appeared from nowhere and jumped in with me,’ recalls Spaulding. ‘Then Hef stepped around the corner and took a photo of us naked in the bath together before disappearing. It was all very strange. Another girl led me into Hef’s master bedroom. The only light was coming from two TVs on which adult films were showing. All the other girls were there, dressed like me in pink pyjamas. If you kept your pyjama bottoms on, that was a sign that you didn’t want to have contact that night.’ According to Spaulding there were twelve girls there on that first night, and only she and another girl declined the offer to have sex with Hefner, who did not use a condom. ‘There was no protection and no testing for sexually transmitted diseases,’ she says.
Izabella St James, it seems, was much more open about having a physical relationship with him. ‘I wanted to see if this experienced King of Sexdom knew anything the rest of us did not,’ she recalls. ‘But he just lay there like a dead fish. We often wondered why he did it at all. He must know deep down that it is just a show. But he is trying to live out this fantasy he has been selling to people since 1954. He wants to live up to the Playboy image he created and the expectations people have of him. Hef looked absolutely furious, and one of the girls hissed at me that I was disappointing him. I didn’t care. Hef’s face was like thunder but I was left alone.'
Although still hoping to make Playboy centrefold, Jill Ann Spaulding was determined to resist becoming intimate with Hefner and quickly discovered the consequences when she returned to his room for another of the sex parties, keeping her pyjama bottoms determinedly on. The other girls soon made it clear that she was expected to take them off. ‘I was terrified. They were all looking at me, including Hef from the bed, just staring straight at me. I said firmly that I couldn’t join in. Hef looked absolutely furious.’
Spaulding was quickly dismissed from the Playboy mansion and was later followed by Izabella St James, who left of her own accord.
Unsurprisingly, both were soon replaced by a succession of blondes including, in January 2009, Crystal Harris. When she arrived, Hefner was seeing identical-twin glamour models Kristina and Karissa Shannon. Since ending his relationship with the sisters, in January of 2010 he is said— in what must be one of the most suspect statements of the century— to have been monogamous. Unlikely as it seems, he is perhaps serious about making Harris his wife. If so, she will be little envied by many of Hefner’s former girlfriends. For they know that, while life at the Playboy Mansion appears to offer all that an aspiring young celebrity might yearn for, she is committing herself to a life of squalid degradation in a cage which is far from gilded.

Rico says it's always sad when they pull back the curtains to reveal the squalid little man behind the illusion of The Great Oz...

A bad legacy

Arantxa Cedillo (now there's a name) has an article about the leftover hardware from the war in Laos (you remember the war in Laos, right? Rico says he does)?

At the Vienthong primary school in Laos' Xieng Khouang province, six students take out hand puppets made from clothing scraps and colored felt. Their audience, a class of around fifteen children ages three to five, sits in a semicircle in a darkened classroom as the young puppeteers begin the show.
The puppet theater starts with an old man— indicated by the gray yarn of his hair— asking three child puppets to collect scrap metal. The children discuss the proposition, a dangerous one in Laos, where such a task often requires coming across decades-old explosives. Having learned about the risks in school, the puppets refuse and teach the man about the perils of gathering metal by breaking into song: There are many types of unexploded ordnance/ It is very hard to guess where they are/ If you find one, please run away.
The lyrics are much catchier in Lao, and this isn't the first time the audience has heard the tune. The Vienthong school has twice-monthly classes on the dangers of submunitions, known locally as "bombies." Each lesson begins and ends with the bombie song.
During Washington's secret bombing campaign of Laos from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. made some 580,000 sorties over the country. Its chief weapon was the cluster bomb, which breaks into hundreds of smaller explosives that fall indiscriminately over an area. The U.S. dropped over 270 million of these on Laos, making it the most-bombed country in history. About 30% of these submunitions failed to explode when they were dropped, meaning that there are almost 80 million left dotting the landscape. About 46 million of these are in Xieng Khouang province alone, where they continue to cause havoc, injuring or killing more than 300 people annually.
True, many of the unexploded submunitions have been rendered harmless by corrosion and rust, and the residents of Xieng Khouang put these to many uses. In the village of Tajok, bomb casings have been transformed into fencing, planter boxes, and pillars. "We use them because they're cheaper than wood," says Cho, a local. Nearly every guesthouse and restaurant displays casings and fragments as decoration, luring in visitors on the war-tourism circuit.
The problem, according to Conor Fortune of the Cluster Munition Coalition, is that "the vast majority are still live and have to be treated as such." It's nearly impossible for an untrained person to know which of the remnant ordnance is a dud and which is deadly. For this reason, the Laotian government has banned its collection, but with a per capita income of under $1,000, many in Xieng Khouang find it impossible to resist. Using cheap Vietnamese-made metal detectors, families can collect six or seven kilos a day— just enough to feed themselves. As the price of imported Chinese and Vietnamese steel rises, commercial enterprises are making use of the potentially lethal scrap too. "Absolutely everyone does it, everywhere," says one foundry manager.
But even if money can be made, nobody wants the bombs to remain. The 108 countries party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions met in the Laotian capital Vientiane in November. The landmark treaty, which went into effect on 1 August, not only bans the use and production of cluster bombs, but places obligations on countries to clear affected areas and help victims. (The U.S., which has said cluster bombs are "legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability", is not on the list of signatories.)
Back in Xieng Khouang, 24-year-old Mek Mani leads an all-female team of the Mines Advisory Group, an NGO employing over 200 local residents to locate and defuse ordnance. She says she wants her one-year-old son to grow up without fear of explosives. But he'll have a long wait; it's perhaps thirty to forty years before all clearing will be done, according to some estimates. In the meantime, she had better start teaching him the lyrics to the bombie song.

Another good one gone

Rico says honor must be paid, and especially for those as good as Pete Postlethwaite. The AP has an obituary in The New York Times of the famed actor:

Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite, described by director Steven Spielberg as "the best actor in the world", died at age 64 after a long battle with cancer.
A gritty and powerful actor, Postlethwaite was nominated for an Oscar for his role in the 1993 film In The Name Of The Father. He had recently been seen in the critically acclaimed film Inception and had worked with Spielberg on The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad.
Postlethwaite initially planned to become a priest, but was drawn to acting. He received an OBE in 2004, along with many other honors for his long career in movies, theater, and television.
Postlethwaite lived in western England, in the hills of rural Shropshire. He was a political activist known for his opposition to the recent war in Iraq and for policies to fight global warming.
He had recently returned to the stage to star as King Lear.
The actor had been treated at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Shortly before his death he publicly thanked the hospital staff in the Shropshire Star newspaper for their "wonderful" treatment and care during his illness.
He is survived by his wife Jacqui, his son Will and daughter Lily.

More naval stupidity

Rico says when a story hits entitled Raunchy videos starring Enterprise skipper come to light, you gotta go see. Unfortunately, not that skipper of the Enterprise, but the real one, as Corinne Reilly of The Virginian-Pilot reports:

In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.
In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.
They're all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 and broadcast to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and starred in them is Captain Owen Honors, now the commander of the carrier, which is weeks away from deploying.
The videos, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot this week, were shot and edited with government equipment, many of them while the Enterprise was deployed supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time, Honors was the carrier's executive officer, or XO, the commanding officer's deputy. He took command of the ship in May.
In the videos, Honors indicates that he's trying to entertain the crew. They were shown roughly once a week on closed-circuit shipwide television, according to a handful of sailors who were assigned to the Enterprise at the time. The sailors requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
One of them said he mailed a complaint about the videos to the Navy Inspector General this week. Others said crew members who raised concerns aboard the ship in 2006 and 2007 were brushed off.
The videos were part of what Honors, 49, called XO Movie Night. "They were the XO's project," said one former Enterprise sailor, a ship videographer who, on one occasion, was asked to help in the filming. "He was the one coming up with scripts and the jokes. He was the one planning it."
The Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is set to deploy overseas this month. The videos raise serious questions about Honors' judgment, especially while the carrier is under way, said another sailor, an officer aboard the Enterprise who was also there when the videos were being shown. "When the ship pulls away from that pier, he's it," the officer said. "To me, that's scary."
It's unclear why the videos recently resurfaced, although one sailor who spoke to the newspaper said they remain on at least one shipboard computer.
Honors is a native of Syracuse, New York, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983. He went on to fly the F-14 Tomcat and work as a test pilot before serving as XO on the Enterprise from July 2005 to September 2007. Honors did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Enterprise's then-commanding officer, Larry Rice, who was later promoted to the rank of rear admiral, and now works at the Norfolk-based U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Rear Admiral Raymond Spicer and Vice Admiral Daniel Holloway, who commanded the Enterprise carrier strike group during Honors' time as XO, could not be reached.
The Navy released a written statement late Friday in response to The Pilot's inquiries. "The videos created onboard USS Enterprise in 2006-2007 were not created with the intent to offend anyone," the statement said. "The videos were intended to be humorous skits focusing the crew's attention on specific issues such as port visits, traffic safety, water conservation, ship cleanliness, etc." The statement said that, when leaders with the carrier strike group became aware of the inappropriate content in early 2007, production of the videos ended. At least one video that includes anti-gay remarks and officers pretending to masturbate was made after July of that year, according to Honors' comments in it. The Navy said it plans to launch an investigation.
Some were giving support to Honors. By this morning, more than 1,000 people had joined "We Support Captain O. P. Honors!" on Facebook.
At the beginning of the videos, Honors jokes that his bosses shouldn't be held responsible for them. "As usual, I want to say that the captain and the admiral, they don't know anything at all about the content of this video or the movie this evening, and they should absolutely not be held accountable in any judicial setting," he says. The sailors who spoke to the newspaper said it's hard to believe that Honors' superiors on board weren't aware of the videos as soon as he began showing them in 2006, given that they were routinely broadcast for the entire crew. "People talked about them," the former ship videographer said. "People looked forward to them, at least the people who thought they were funny."
A female sailor who was assigned to the Enterprise at the time said she and a number of other women on board were offended by the videos. She said some crew members complained about them, and in fact, Honors acknowledged it on camera. In one movie, he says, "Over the years I've gotten several complaints about inappropriate materials in these videos, never to me personally but, gutlessly, through other channels." He adds, "This evening, all of you bleeding hearts... why don't just go ahead and hug yourself for the next twenty minutes or so, because there's a really good chance you're gonna be offended." Then Honors tells his viewers to get ready for something that always pleases: "the F-bomb". The video goes on to show a string of clips edited together in which he uses the expletive. The next portion is a series of clips displaying Honors and other sailors, including officers, pretending to masturbate. It's set to a song called Spank. After that, the video returns to Honors. "Finally, let's get to my favorite topic, something foreign to the gay kid over there: chicks in the shower," he says. He gestures to the person next to him, who, through a trick of video, is Honors wearing the blue coveralls of a Navy surface warfare officer, or SWO. SWOs include the officers who crew the ship; they don't include fighter pilots and other aviators. Repeatedly in the videos, Honors, a former Top Gun pilot, draws distinctions between aviators and SWOs and refers to SWOs as "fags".
The video then shows two female sailors pretending to shower together and two male sailors pretending to shower together. While the shots imply nudity, they don't show any; the men are filmed from the waist up and the women from their shoulders.
In one instance, the women are in the shower stall with a cardboard cutout of Honors.
The sailors who spoke to The Pilot estimated that Honors made a few dozen videos for XO Movie Night. They said not all of them contained sexual jokes and anti-gay remarks.
The videos were shot and edited using equipment from the ship's public affairs office, which typically spends deployments documenting and publicizing the good work of sailors.
Of note is the quality of the XO Movie Night videos and the time that Honors appears to have devoted to them, even as the Enterprise was simultaneously supporting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its air wing was dropping record numbers of bombs. The videos have plots, scripts, props, and recurring characters. In several instances, Honors plays more than one character in the same scene. To achieve this, it appears he recorded different takes in which he played the different roles, and then superimposed the takes over each other, allowing himself to appear on screen as two or three people at once.
"Some of it was pretty complicated stuff," the former ship videographer said. The videographer said that while he knew the movies weren't appropriate, in some ways he can understand how they happened. "In his defense, I'll say that sometimes, when you've been out to sea for a while, cut off from everything, you start to think things that you would never normally do are actually a good idea," he said. "You do stupid stuff to stay sane." He added that electronic communication with the rest of the world while at sea can be difficult; it was nearly impossible to email or upload videos from the carrier in 2006 and 2007. "He probably figured they'd never get off the ship."

Rico says this guy's career just tanked. But, if that wasn't enough, there's Mark Thompson's article in Time:

t's hard to believe, twenty years after Tailhook, that some Navy officers still don't get it. So here's the drill: if you don't want your gay-bashing and sexual-harassment antics leading the network news, keep your comments close-held among like-mind cronies and, God forbid, don't broadcast them via video to the entire crew of the USS Enterprise. Because if you do, someone is going to tip off the hometown paper; in this case, the Norfolk Virginian Pilot.
In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.
In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.
They're all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007, and broadcast to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and starred in them is Captain Owen Honors, now the commander of the carrier, which is weeks away from deploying.
Sure, these college-frat videos are four to five years old. But this kind of stuff was finished after Tailhook, nearly a generation ago. It's worth noting: these weren't made by some testosterone-crazed solo aviator, but the Number Two officer aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, who is slated to head out as its commander shortly. It raises as many questions about the Navy as it does about him, just like the case of Captain Holly Graf.
Capt. Honors– savor the name–  is, according to Navy officials, likely to lose command of his carrier before it heads out from Norfolk on its imminent cruise to support U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan. He's lucky if that's the sole toll. It cost Ernie Blanchard a lot more.
Peacetime deaths in the military always seem in some degree senseless. In the case of Captain Ernie Blanchard, the U.S. Coast Guard's top spokesman, that was even truer than usual. Blanchard, it appears, died from a few offensive jokes.
On 10 January of last year, he strode to the podium of the Old Wardroom dining hall at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, to inspire the 118 cadets of Bravo Company and their guests with tales of Coast Guard glory. Aiming to start on a light note, Blanchard promised to "dispense with the political correctness" and opened with several risqué jokes as guests finished their strawberry-covered cheesecake. Blanchard said he had seen a cadet's fiance wearing a brooch featuring maritime signal flags. Blanchard's joke: "She said the flags meant, 'I love you.' They really said, 'Permission granted to lay alongside.'" Then Blanchard offered one about his old buddy, Captain Patrick Stillman, the commandant of cadets. On Stillman's wedding night, Blanchard said, the captain told his bride she could do anything she wanted. "So she immediately went to sleep," he said. Finally there was the one about the cadet who wondered why his fiance was wolfing down a costly meal at a fancy restaurant when she never ate like that at home. "She replied," Blanchard said, "that her mother didn't want to sleep with her." By now, the laughing had stopped.
School officials and cadets, including many of the 25 women who had been present, complained about Blanchard's poor taste. Three days after the dinner, Stillman called Blanchard to express formally the academy's displeasure. Within hours, Blanchard faxed a letter of apology to the academy, where he taught political science from 1977 to 1981. "Old sea dogs need to adapt," he conceded, "and change the way we have always done things." With the letter, Blanchard and Stillman thought the subject was closed.
But, under pressure from a dozen Coast Guard women, most of them at the academy, the Coast Guard brass launched a criminal probe into the jokes, according to a recently concluded review of the case obtained by Time. This was not Blanchard's first such cultural clash. In 1990, as skipper of the Legare, a sleek, new 270-foot cutter, a female petty officer charged him with sexual harassment, saying he and another commander had treated her unfairly and called her a "Jewish-American princess". (For good measure, she wasn't Jewish.) While Blanchard was never punished, the Coast Guard concluded he had harassed the woman. After his speech to the cadets, academy instructors argued that Blanchard needed to be punished if their lessons about gender equality were to take root in a service not always welcoming to women. "All the sexual jokes he told were typical 'male power' jokes and involved males doing it to females," said Judith Youngman, a political-science teacher at the academy.
For Blanchard, the father of two teenagers, the probe threatened to end the career to which he had devoted 30 of his 46 years. "Newspapers are going to have a field day," Blanchard fretted. "My children are going to be humiliated." He abandoned his exercise regime and stared blankly out his office window instead. His unease mounted as his colleagues avoided him. "As chief of public affairs, his phones rang all the time," his widow Connie, an elementary school teacher, told Time. "It was very noticeable when all that stopped."
Blanchard also feared the loss of a pension that a court-martial might mean. He offered to resign if the Coast Guard would halt its probe, but on 10 March, he was turned down. Three days later, Blanchard met with Vice Admiral Arthur Henn, the Coast Guard's second-ranked officer, to ask for time off. "His face was drawn and a little pale," Henn said. "He was mortified that he had caused such potential embarrassment to the Coast Guard and his family."
The next afternoon, Blanchard went into his suburban Virginia backyard, put the muzzle of his grandfather's Smith & Wesson revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun had misfired. He could have taken that as a sign he was meant to live. But Blanchard pulled the trigger a second time. The gun went off. He left no suicide note. A Navy psychological autopsy concluded that "his style seemed consistent with someone whose duty it was to shoulder the burden and assume responsibility, even as that style clouded his ability to keep his situation in perspective. The emotional pain and shame that Captain Blanchard felt he had brought upon himself and the Coast Guard led him to choose suicide as a solution."
Coast Guard officials see the case as a freak tragedy with no larger lessons. Still, some in the Coast Guard are asking whether the institution should have let the potentially career-ending charges hang over Blanchard for so long. By comparison, when a top Navy admiral suggested during a breakfast with the press last year that U.S. servicemen charged in the rape of a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl would have been smarter to hire a prostitute instead, he was out of his job by dinnertime. "The stress level went up as it dragged on and on," Connie Blanchard says. "I've struggled with this, but I think he believed that was the best thing he could do for his family: to end this case by ending his life."

Rico's kinda politician

Rico says it's the curmudgeon's credo:

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

But, in an editorial in The New York Times, Representative Peter King, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Homeland Security Committee, goes that one better (and gets paid for it):

It is disturbing to listen to Representative Peter King, the incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He has announced plans to hold a hearing next month into what he calls the “radicalization of the American Muslim community”. Mr. King, a New York Republican, is no stranger to bluster, but his sweeping slur on Muslim citizens is unacceptable.
The new chairman, of course, acknowledges “the great majority of Muslims in our country are hardworking, dedicated Americans”. At the same time he claims, with no evidence, that the hearing is urgently needed because “law enforcement officials throughout the country told me they received little or, in most cases, no cooperation from Muslim leaders and imams” in tracking domestic threats, according to his essay in Newsday.
We hope that, if Mr. King insists on going ahead, he at least calls a true cross section of law enforcement officials, who we are sure will rebut that hype.
We agree with Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the nation’s first Muslim elected to the House, who called Mr. King’s words “very scary”. It is worthwhile to try to fathom “what turns somebody from a normal citizen into a violent radical,” Mr. Ellison says, but not by vilifying an entire community for openers.
It is all the more perplexing because Mr. King was one of the few Republicans to back the Clinton administration’s interventions in the Balkans to protect Muslims. He has popped off far too often in recent years, claiming, among other things, that President George W. Bush “deserves a medal” for authorizing waterboarding.
He had better recall his role as a gifted intermediary in helping to settle Ireland’s sectarian troubles. He would have bristled at any simplistic talk about the “radicalization” of the Irish Catholic or Protestant communities. Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security is a very serious job. Mr. King needs to get serious.

Rico says 'vilifying an entire community'? Isn't that what they do to us on a regular basis? (And what was 9/11 if not vilification?)

Seemed like such a good idea at the time

Rico says you should always check the internet; that's what it's for.
If he had, of course, he never would have hooked up with Magazine Line to sell his Civil War magazine, Civil War: Weapons & Tactics (which, by the way, they're still offering; don't buy it from them, as Rico will not honor their subscriptions, but from him here).

A nice place to be on New Years'

Rico says his friend Alan went on vacation to Mexico. Nice...

What we have here...

Rico says he's having trouble getting answers out of Mozy, and this sums up his feelings:

Oops is now an armored term

Rico says sometimes being in a tank is a bad thing; as Willie and Joe put it: a moving object attracts the eye:

Bad times for bad boys

Rico says his friend Bill sends along this one, about some guys going to Allah a little early.

Jumping on the bandwagon

Rico says Julia Preston has an article in The New York Times about more desperate solutions to the illegal immigration problem:

Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.
The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.
Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration.
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
Few people expect movement on immigration issues when Congress reconvenes next week in a divided Washington. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives, do not support an overhaul of immigration laws that President Obama has promised to continue to push. State lawmakers say it has fallen to them to act. “The federal government’s failure to enforce our border has functionally turned every state into a border state,” said Randy Terrill, a Republican representative in Oklahoma who has led the drive for anti-illegal immigration laws there. “This is federalism in action,” he said. “The states are stepping in and filling the void left by the federal government.”
But the proposals have already drawn opposition from some business groups. And they are forcing strategic soul-searching within the Republican Party nationwide, with a rising populist base on one side demanding tough immigration measures, and, on the other side, traditional Republican supporters in business and a fast-growing Latino electorate strongly opposing those measures.
In Utah, a state dominated by Republicans, leaders from business, law enforcement, several churches, and the Latino community sought to bridge the divide by joining together in November in a compact urging moderation on immigration issues.
Some of the more contentious measures may not go into effect immediately, including Arizona-style bills and those intended to eliminate birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. Latino and immigrant advocate legal organizations are gearing up for a host of court challenges.
Among the states expected to introduce similar bills: Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. The Arizona law authorized the state and local police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they detained for other reasons, if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant. Acting on a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration, a federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that stay by Arizona.
“States will push ahead regardless of the Ninth Circuit,” said Kris Kobach, a law professor and politician from Kansas who helped many states devise immigration laws, including Arizona’s. “A lot of people recognize that the district judge’s decision is very much open to dispute.”
In Oklahoma, where Republicans won big majorities in both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, Mr. Terrill said he would introduce a bill he called “Arizona plus”. In addition to the terms of Arizona’s law, it would allow for the seizure of vehicles and property used to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
In Georgia, an all-Republican commission of legislators plans to propose measures to enhance enforcement of tough laws already on the books. Georgia will also consider a bill to bar illegal immigrant students from all public universities. The newly elected governor, Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign those bills. But the Georgia Farm Bureau, which represents the state’s powerful growers, voted to oppose any measures that would affect immigrant farm workers, most of whom do not have legal status.
In Kansas, Republicans won big majorities in both legislative houses and Sam Brownback, who just retired as a United States senator, was elected governor. Mr. Kobach, the law professor, was elected secretary of state after a campaign in which he vowed to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship for voters.
But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce has voiced its opposition, and Mr. Brownback has said he will focus on reducing unemployment.
The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday. A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor-baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.” The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.
Some Republicans argue that the party is risking losing its appeal to Latino voters, the fastest-growing minority voter bloc. “The Republican Party is divided between those who see that Hispanics are an essential constituency going forward, and those who don’t see that,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a business coalition that supports legalization for illegal immigrants.
Latino and immigrant advocate groups are resigned to being on the defensive for the next two years. “These laws are creating resentment within the Latino community that is going to last for decades,” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah in Salt Lake City, an immigrant advocacy group.

Rico says the 'no law in the first mile' solution he proposed earlier would solve all this...

In a land of real guns, fake guns are a problem

Rico says John Leland has a story in The New York Times about a problem that's hard, even for Rico, to believe:

The Ministry of Health in Baghdad is campaigning to ban the sale of guns in Iraq. Toy guns, that is.
Baghdad’s toy markets are stocked with plastic weapons in all prices and sizes: toy guns, tanks, knives, uniforms, even silencers. In a country where guns and military gear are heartbreakingly prevalent, basic training begins early.
“It’s the responsibility of the community to get rid of these toys,” said Dr. Emad Abdulrazaq, national adviser for mental health at the ministry. “They make it easier for a child to make the next step to real violence, because every day he enjoys guns.”
The ministry, which itself has no authority to regulate toy sales, has urged the government to ban all toy weapons. But for now it is concentrating on one: a cheap plastic air pistol highly popular among boys that fires plastic pellets and has been the source of hundreds, possibly thousands, of eye injuries.
Dr. Kudair al-Tai, head of the technical department at Ibn al-Haytham Hospital, the country’s main eye hospital, is one of those waging the campaign. On a recent morning, Dr. Tai examined the eye of a five-year-old boy named Mustafa, searching for scratches or internal bleeding. In late November, during Id al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, the boy was playing with his neighbors when one of them fired an air pistol, hitting him in the eye. The boy looked alright, but for seven days he cried and could not sleep. Finally, his father took him to the eye hospital, where Dr. Tai discovered a yellow plastic pellet the size of a small pea lodged between his eyeball and the surrounding socket. There was bleeding in the eye’s interior chamber and partial dislocation of the iris. “He was lucky,” Dr. Tai said. Many children suffer much worse injuries from the pellets. During the five-day celebration of Id al-Adha, when families give children money to buy toys, Dr. Tai said, he often sees several injuries from pellet guns a day, some severe enough to require surgery. This year he went on television to advise parents not to buy the guns. “The problem is not with the parents who purchase these toys, but with the merchants that import such kind of toys,” Dr. Tai said. Because the toys are popular, parents “cannot resist their children’s persistence,” he said. He said he had seen toy air pistols with a range of fifty yards.
Children here live amid the impact of real violence, both on the news and in their neighborhoods. During the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, bodies often remained on the streets for days before being collected. Few children have access to psychiatric care, which is deeply stigmatized. Iraqi families are often large, and the children share rooms with their parents, so they are not sheltered from adult television or conversation, both of which commonly refer to horrific violence, theatrical or real.
“We have our own horror scenes, we don’t need extra,” said a hospital ward matron, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to talk to reporters. “It should all be banned, any fireworks. The other day I started shouting at neighborhood kids who were shooting at each other. But at least they shot at each other’s legs, so they wouldn’t hurt their eyes.”
At the markets on Karada Street, where pellet guns sold for $8 or less, merchants said toy guns were their most popular. “The culture of violence is dominant,” said one shop owner, Hussein Mohammed, who declines to sell pellet guns. “Children are no longer interested in educational games,” he said at his store. “All they want to play with is the games that express power and violence.”
Teachers said that living with so much violence, in both their real and fantasy lives, had made students quicker to fight and less patient with their studies. Where students used to ask teachers to help resolve conflicts, now they rarely do so, said Instisar Mohammed, a primary school teacher in the Yarmouk neighborhood, where most residents are relatively well-educated. “They resolve with their fists more easily,” she said. “They fight a lot more than they used to.” She added that “after fifteen minutes in the classroom they do not pay attention any more and start moving around, then fighting.”
A ban on toy weapons is unlikely because it would require action by a number of ministries, none of them responsible for public health. But the Trade Ministry is in talks with health experts about a ban on some imports, a ministry spokeswoman said.
Mustafa, who was shot in the eye, said he no longer talked to the neighbors who shot him. “I don’t like them,” he said. When he grows up, he said, he wants to be an ophthalmologist.
His father, Raad Kharaibut, 62, said he had tried to persuade the neighbors not to allow their children to play with the guns, but to no avail. “I don’t bring home such things because I know they are harmful,” he said. “We’ve seen similar incidents. Guns are not nice and not civilized toys.” Even without the toys, he said, his son would be growing up in a martial culture. “The child sees checkpoints, he sees the military stop traffic,” he said. “The soldier has the gear, he has the right to express his power. The boy wants to be like that.”
The larger danger, though, is that a childhood spent among guns, real and toy, will make children more likely to embrace any use of power, Dr. Abdulrazaq said. “In the short term, it makes them more hostile at home and in school,” he said. “They become more cruel. In the long term, it will encourage them to engage in more adventures with weapons. He will be more vulnerable to be recruited by police, criminals or terrorists.” Real guns, he said, “will be an enjoyment, not a stress.”
But for many parents, the question of whether to have toy guns at home rests on more immediate considerations. “They like it,” said Saddam Abdulsalam, who buys toy guns for his six children, though one shot his brother in the eye. Even his three daughters play with the guns. “This is the new generation,” he said. “They will grow out of it.”

Quote for the day

"Whatever your vice is, we're your folks."

Tena Alonzo, director of research at Beatitudes nursing home in Phoenix, which gives Alzheimer's patients whatever they want.

Rico says he'll have a twenty-something blonde who likes oral...