Look out!

This happened in Taiwan:



(Via Metafilter.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Ivy observes that you can see the beginning of this amazing incident at 0:03. She tells you where to look, but I won't put that on the front page. It's more interesting to watch the first time without the spoiler. If you watch this once, you will watch it more than once. I had watched this about 10 times without seeing what she pointed out.

Looking for the war protest. Part 2: The video.

Meade and I approach the Capitol, here in Madison, Wisconsin, on a Saturday morning, thinking if there's going to be action, it will be here. This is before Obama emerged to say that he was going to ask permission from Congress. This is a 10 minute video, but it's edited and moves quickly, I think. Look at the tags below to get an idea of what's in store:

Looking for the war protest... this morning in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Make love, not war" says the chalking.



But most folks down at the Capitol were browsing the Farmers Market:



"Obama = Bush."

Nicely played, Mr. Obama.

Besieged on all sides, he made the right move. He's asking Congress, obviously because he wants to be told "no," but this way he'll be able to blame Congress for any bad consequences or accusations of such.

In a hastily organized appearance in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said he had decided that the United States should use force but would wait for a vote from lawmakers, who are not due to return to town for more than a week. Mr. Obama said he believed he has authority to act on his own but did not say whether he would if Congress rejects his plan.

Hastily organized... Congress out of town... Cameron just got out of having to participate by getting his "no" from the legislature... sending Kerry out yesterday to test the reaction was a total bomb. It's kind of a little obvious, and he didn't really have another good move, but I'm going to celebrate the occasion with a Nicely played, Mr. Obama.

ADDED: I would have put this post up a lot sooner, but Meade and I went downtown to see what kind of anti-war protests there might be here in Madison. I'll have some amusing video soon.

“How do you ask a man to be the [first] man to die for a mistake?”

Meade IM's a rewrite of John Kerry's famous Vietnam question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"



The rewrite is on the occasion of John Kerry's new role as Secretary of Defense State:

Kerry Becomes Chief Advocate for U.S. Attack

Jabbing his finger at the lectern, his voice forceful, his words brimming with indignation, John Kerry laid out the case like the prosecutor he once was, making a closing argument to a skeptical jury.

Again and again, some 24 times in all, he used the phrase “we know” as he described the intelligence that Syria’s government massacred more than 1,400 people with chemical weapons. And then, while saying no decision had been made, he left no doubt that the United States would respond with military power.

Here's Bruce Springsteen in 2007 — back when Bush was Prez and everything sounded different —  yelling and guitarizing the morality of "Last to Die":

Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Darlin' will tyrants and kings fall to the same fate
Strung up at your city gates
And you're the last to die for a mistake

I don't know, darlin', but darlin' Barack is President now. Let's check the Springsteen set lists. "Last to Die" is #108 on his most-played list and — by coincidence — it's been played 108 times. (For comparison: "Born to Run" is #1 and has been played 1347 times.) Springsteen has only played "Last to Die" 4 times during the Obama administration, 3 times in October 2009 and 1 last March. (The other 104 times were from September 2007, when it was first played, to August 30, 2008.)

Bruce's current tour is called the "Wrecking Ball Tour" so maybe his more into destruction these days, but I suspect the tour name is just a 64-year-old man's effort to maintain the ethos of rock and roll. Maybe he supports Barack Obama's military adventures, because, you know, it's Barack Obama, man.

I mean, I am just generally wondering, where are all the war protests? I was thinking about going down to the Capital Square this morning. It's a summer Saturday here in Madison, Wisconsin, and the crowds are there, at least for the Farmers Market. There should be some protesters, don't you think? Anti-war protesters, not just anti-governor-trying-to-balance-the-budget protesters.

But I'd like to see Bruce Springsteen whip out "Last to Die" and tweak it to "First to Die." 

"Washington Post’s ‘second look at statutory rape’ click-trolling inspires #WaPoPitches."

"Is the Washington Post getting into Slate’s business of click-trolling, or do the paper’s editors really think it’s time for a national conversation on sex between teachers and underage students?"

"I don’t care who you are; it’s not right to put a human person’s ashes in a Wal-Mart bag."

When you get cremated remains, they're in a plastic bag inside whatever outer container you ordered — perhaps the standard cardboard box, perhaps some urn that you imagined was what urns are supposed to look like. How you feel when you receive that package will depend on a lot of things, but seeing the plastic bag — especially if you chose the ancient-bronze-looking Vessel of Somber Respect — is probably going to hurt. So then what if you pull the bag out and see that it's the cut off bottom of a bag that you recognize as a Wal-Mart bag?

If you're this lady in Ohio, you call the local TV station and let them put you in front of a camera to enact your grief. And you name the funeral home on television and to the Kentucky attorney general’s office and the Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. The woman's ex-husband, father of the 17-year-old boy who died of a heart condition, also appears on camera, just to say what the funeral home did was "not malicious."

What if your family member had died, and you discovered the ground-up bones they gave you — they aren't really "ashes" — are in a Wal-Mart bag? Fragile souls should close that container back up and forget about it. Cover memories of the bag with memories of the dead person. Look at your best photographs. Remember life.

For less fragile souls: Find the humor. A remark about the value of recycling or what the dead one thought of Wal-Mart — for example: "He was always trying to get me to shop at Wal-Mart and I said I wanted a more posh shopping experience, and now, I can hear him laughing at me for wanting a more posh urn experience. Laughing at me from the grave. I mean from the goddamned Wal-Mart bag. No, not damned. He's not damned. He's gone to the Big Box Store in the Sky."

ADDED: Inevitable movie reference:

The NYT public editor has "found that The Times sometimes writes about the administration’s point of view in The Times’s own voice..."

"...  rather than providing distance through clear attribution. This is a subtle thing, and individual examples are bound to seem unimportant, but consider, for example, the second paragraph of Friday’s lead story. (The boldface emphasis is mine.)"

The negative vote in Britain’s Parliament was a heavy blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who had pledged his support to Mr. Obama and called on lawmakers to endorse Britain’s involvement in a brief operation to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for apparently launching a deadly chemical weapons attack last week that killed hundreds.

"With the use of the word 'apparently' – rather than directly attributing the administration, The Times seems to take the government’s position at face value."

ADDED: The quoted sentence is bad for another reason. There's way too much happening in that sentence ,and phrases end up saying things that are not intended and that we're supposed to straighten out in our heads. Specifically, Cameron didn't call for punishing Assad "for apparently launching" the attack.

Cameron called for punishment for launching the attack, which Cameron believes happened. You only impose the punishment if you're satisfied that the thing deserving punishment happened. It's a separate issue whether it happened. The writer of the sentence and the editor who accepted it realized they don't know, so they wedged "apparently" into the sentence.

That's a type of error that you see all the time, often with the word "allegedly," as in: "John Smith was charged with allegedly murdering Joe Blow." No! Smith was charged with murdering Blow. Whether he did it or not may be in question, but the charge is murder, not alleged murder. You could say that it is alleged that Smith murdered Blow, but no one is charged with alleged murder.

Quite aside from the problem of journalists psychically merging with the government, there's flat out bad writing. Write better sentences that say only exactly what you know. Words like "allegedly" and "apparently" can help, but pay attention to where you put them and whether you're creating new, unintended inaccuracies.

"What Did the Rebel Yell Sound Like?"

"In this exclusive clip from the 1930s, Confederate veterans step up to the mic and let out their version of the fearsome rallying cry:"

"You're short, fat and white. Don't talk to me like that."

Said the Waukesha bus driver.

"All right, you guys. I like some of you. I hate some of you. Uhhhh."

"I forgive some of you. But I don't forgive all of you. You guys have totally ruined my chances of running for Congress or something. Thank you. Good night."

ADDED: "'Was any of it intentional? Like when Andy Kaufman read all of The Great Gatsby onstage, was part of this anti-comedy?' I don’t think so."

Obama has "not made any decisions" on Syria.

But he's "not considering any open-ended commitment." And "In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign."

Does Taylor Swift sound like Hitler?

Take the Taylor-or-Hitler test. I did. I only got 60%.

Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so you are insulting yourself.

"I would like to relive my entire childhood with a mother like this, please."

"Thanks."

AND: There's a comparison to "The Monster Engine" ("What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?").

"If a father and his son take a widow and her daughter in marriage, so that the son marries the mother and the father the daughter..."

"... say, please, what is the relationship between the sons they will bear?"

ADDED: Based on the comments, nobody got what I found amusing here, undoubtedly because they didn't click through.

"David Miranda was carrying password for secret files on piece of paper."

Reckless.

A level of concern for security lower than what I have for my Facebook page.