At the Nature-and-Civilization Café...

... there's a sandhill crane walking along the railroad track, and you can talk about anything you like, as incongruously as you want.

(Enlarge.)

"Psilocybin is an entirely different mechanism. It has the potential to facilitate what’s been called a psycho-spiritual epiphany."

"The response rates among people with terminal cancer to conventional medications that target symptoms of anxiety and depression are not that impressive."

Oh, here it comes: the argument for medical psilocybin. This annoys me. If there is a "psycho-spiritual epiphany" of importance to be had, let us all have it.

Imagine if religion were restricted to people who were dying.

The Osama bin Laden boring home movie.

1. We see Osama talking, 2. We see a TV which, some of the time, has Osama talking, and 3. The camera backs up and we see Osama watching TV, that is watching himself on TV.

"An immigration judge in Newark on Friday suspended the deportation of a Venezuelan man who is married to an American man..."

"... responding to an unusual signal this week from the Obama administration that it is exploring legal avenues for recognizing same-sex marriages in immigration cases."

"I remember the day when I first came here/And smelt the sweet Abbottabad air."

Those are the first 2 lines of a poem by Major James Abbott about the city named after him — the city where Osama bin Laden hid until the bullets pelleted his lid. It continues, reflecting on leaving the city, which, of course, bin Laden did, before they fed him to a squid:

The trees and ground covered with snow
Gave us indeed a brilliant show
To me the place seemed like a dream
And far ran a lonesome stream
The wind hissed as if welcoming us
The pine swayed creating a lot of fuss
And the tiny cuckoo sang it away
A song very melodious and gay
I adored the place from the first sight
And was happy that my coming here was right
And eight good years here passed very soon
And we leave you perhaps on a sunny noon
Oh Abbottabad we are leaving you now
To your natural beauty do I bow
Perhaps your winds sound will never reach my ear
My gift for you is a few sad tears
I bid you farewell with a heavy heart
Never from my mind will your memories thwart

Get scribbling, my dear poets. This is too easy to miss.

Noam Chomsky: "It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law."

"There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress 'suspects.'"

This is the kind of thing that Barack Obama might have said before he became President. (Or do we only imagine that he used to say things like that?) A great benefit to having Obama as President is that he is not available to say things like that and very few mainstream Democrats or liberals feel tempted to say things like that.

More from Chomsky:

Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

Very, very angry people get even angrier. Chomsky invites you to worry about that. Didn't the decision to give bin Laden a religious burial and not to show the photographs make those angry people like us more? No, apparently, Chomsky has a line to Pakistan and he knows those people are angry and getting angrier all the time.

Speaking of angry, Chomsky proceeds to interpret the "Bush Doctrine" as Bush calling for his own assassination. He wonders how we'd "be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic." The rant continues with material about Nazis and so forth.

It's got to hurt to be so marginalized now that Obama is President.

ADDED: I see some boring bloggers linking here and writing witless attacks on me. May I recommend that you read this post from April 4th and put some effort into understanding The Mind of Althouse before you wallow in your shallowness any longer? I know you won't, but I just felt like saying that.

"The Packers showered quarterback Aaron Rodgers with gifts."

"He received new offensive weapons in the form of receiver Randall Cobb and running back Alex Green, and extra protection with first-round tackle Derek Sherrod. Life is good for the reigning Super Bowl MVP."

(Go ahead. Talk about football in the Althouse comments.)

"The Prosser folks seem on the ball so I doubt this will succeed for Kloppenburg, but succeeding likely isn't the goal."

"The goal is to try to create the appearance of impropriety as a justification either for court challenges or at least to taint the Prosser win."

Says Professor Jacobson, trying to create the appearance of impropriety to the appearance of impropriety he thinks the Kloppenburg folks are trying to create.

Interviewing Condi....

... will be done Condi's way.

"This is where you start the movie about the hunt for bin Laden."

Okay. That's one idea. Suggest others!

ADDED: Kathryn Bigelow, director of "The Hurt Locker," has been working on a movie called "Kill Bin Laden." The idea there had been the failed effort at Tora Bora. So that's one place you could begin a movie: the battle at Tora Bora, when we thought we had him and then lost him. The center of the movie could be all the years of trying to find him, and the ending we all know very well.

That title, "Kill Bin Laden," reminds me of "Kill Bill" — which had "Vol. 1" and "Vol. 2." That title was interesting, in part, because so much else happened before "The Bride" eventually got around to Bill. I think a movie called "Kill Bin Laden" shouldn't be mainly a reenactment of the raid, much as we feel we'd like to see the movie we already see in our heads. It should have all sorts of other things about the people who worked on getting bin Laden. Show us some things we haven't been thinking about.

We have heard so many versions of the kill bin Laden. There could be a "Rashomon"-style movie, showing the raid multiple times, inviting us to think about what really happened and whether everyone is lying.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lincolntf said...

Start with a shot at the bottom of the ocean, slowly panning over a cast of crabs dispersing after finishing off what looks to be the remains of a canvas bag.

The body in the water... that's the "Sunset Boulevard" beginning.

What Rick Santorum said about the "truce" on moral issues make me think he could accept a truce on homosexuality.

I didn't watch the GOP debate the other night, but I did listen to the podcast of Rush Limbaugh's Friday show and heard the snippets he played. Rush's theme was: "GOP Debaters Rip Into the Regime... Every one of them took it to Obama." This snippet caught my attention:

RUSH: Sounds like Rick Santorum took it right to him. Sounding like me. This is what Mitch Daniels said that he's not ready to do yet. Santorum did it. 

Mitch Daniels was not one of the debaters. He wasn't there to not take it to Obama. But Santorum was, and Rush is into Santorum, because Santorum sounds like Rush Santorum took it to Obama.

Here's more Santorum. Shannon Bream later: "Senator Santorum, you're often characterized as the most socially conservative in the GOP field, a man who may join you at some point in the primary, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, says Republican candidates should, quote, 'Declare a truce, close quote on social issues in the next election.' Is he right? Are you willing to tone down your positions on abortion and homosexuality in an effort to reach more voters and to help the GOP coalesce behind a more fiscally focused platform?"

SANTORUM: Anybody that would suggest that we "call a truce on the moral issues" doesn't understand what America is all about. America... America is a country that is based on this concept and the Declaration of Independence that we are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights." Rights come from God and the first of which is "life," the second of which is "liberty." 

And the third of which is "the pursuit of happiness." Why leave that out?

Those two concepts really transformed the world...

And so did the third one!

... because it said that government was gonna be limited, allow people to be free and to pursue their own dreams....

Happiness!

.... to serve...

The dream is service?

... their God to serve their family and community -- and if we have a respect for human life, because we're all created equal... 

All right. I see where you're going trying to go there. The right to life. The unborn are also human beings and they have rights too. (If that's supposed to connect to limited government, it's incoherent, because the argument for protecting the unborn demands more government, in the form of regulating abortion. But my point here is not about Santorum sticking to his long-held anti-abortion position. It's about what he doesn't say.)

And so those founding concepts, what transformed the world in this United States of America was a belief in family, a belief in life and the belief of dignity of every person. If we abandon that, we have given up on Americ [sic]

RUSH: So Santorum is not for a "truce on the social issues." 

Ah, but Santorum only said why he had to keep fighting abortion. The question asked about a "truce" on abortion and homosexuality. Not only did Santorum fail to address homosexuality (unless Rush elided that), but he left out the "happiness" part of the unalienable rights. Santorum knows from past experience that those who reject his antagonism to homosexuality will jump on that phrase — "the pursuit of happiness" — and say that for gay people that includes gay sex.

So, a truce on homosexuality, right, Mr. Santorum?

"We're here, we're sluts, get used to it."

With "SlutWalking, the old anti-rape protests acquire a new angle... after a cop at a 10-person meeting at Osgoode Hall Law School said: "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

The cop has already "grovelled profusely," by the way.

It gets your attention, but then the question is, do the women — and men — in the protest dress sluttily?

Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.

Kind of a dilemma, isn't it? Getting women to dress like sluts and all come out to a protest where it's socially acceptable acceptable to gawk and take photographs?

I wonder who, really, is promoting these protests. Perhaps a lot of different people with various mixed motives. "SlutWalking" a catchy title, but there so much that can go wrong, including divisiveness among women. How do the jeans-and-T-shirts women react to the woman who are seizing the occasion — like it's Halloween — to parade about in "slutty" clothes? 

It's Friday night on the big Instapundit blog, and Althouse has taken over, with lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Drugs, drugs, sex, and sex and rock & roll.

"If Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining measure becomes law and forces do-or-die recertification votes for public employee unions..."

"... some large public unions may simply skip the votes and drop their official status with the state..."

Bob McLinn, president of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, which represents blue-collar workers, said his union may instead seek to keep representing members as a voluntary organization without the official recognition the union now receives from the state.

"There has been a discussion about not recertifying because of the fact that there would be little or no benefit," McLinn said.

To stay alive, the unions under Walker's legislation would have to get 51% of the vote of all the potential union members in their bargaining unit, not just the ones who actually cast ballots. They also will have to win the vote again every year or their union will cease to function and be unable to reconstitute itself for at least a year after that.

Madonna breaks up with her 24-year-old boyfriend because they fought about...

... religion.

"Would you ask Barack Obama in an interview with him ... what's your current relationship with cocaine?"

Andrew Breitbart gets pissed... at that extremely mild-mannered C-SPAN interviewer guy: