Everyone's talking about this normal-size woman.

Lizzie Miller is a size 12.

At the Another Uneaten Thing Café...

... you can remember everything you previously forgot.

"Oh, we gotta keep grandma alive so she can tell us more about Woodstock."

What are the chances the younger generations are going to want to keep us Baby Boomers alive? I say we'd better be careful not to be so annoying!

Meade shoots a bunny.

(Enlarge.)

Things we ate and didn't eat.

There were these:



And these:



And these:



None of which we ate. But what have you got there?



Blackberries!



All the blackberries we could eat. Doesn't anybody else walk around here?

Satiated and leaving a ton back there for you, we drove home, making one stop:

Molecule.

Seen.

"Now, I would assume that Dylan was *joking.*"

I said.

Correctly.

At the Orange Mushroom Café...

... you may find the other side of what.

WaPo vindicates Cheney.

Per Politico, WaPo describes "the transformation of [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its 'preeminent source' on al-Qaeda":

This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.

Critics of "harsh interrogation techniques" — they, of course, call it torture — bolster their moral arguments with the pragmatic argument that it doesn't even work. How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone!

ADDED: Obsidian Wings quotes me and comes up with 4 questions, but the 4 questions have absolutely nothing to do with the point I made. Here are the questions:

(1) Is beating a detainee to death with a metal flashlight torture? Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (2) Is beating detainees with butts of rifles torture? Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (3) Is choking a detainee with your bare hands until he almost passes out torture? Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (4) Is threatening to rape wives and murder children torture? Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"?

These questions are about the definition of "torture," but my point is that the Washington Post has said that the techniques — whatever you want to call them — were effective, and, if this is true, it means that people who oppose their use are deprived of a pragmatic argument they normally make. I'm not saying anything about the choice of which term ought to be used, but I do observe that it is the usual practice for people try to make arguments by labeling. Saying "torture" to argue against the techniques is like saying "death panels" to alarm people about the experts who, under ObamaCare, will (it seems) decide who will get which medical treatments. I don't approach these issues by asking what does the word "torture" mean, with the assumption that if it is within that definition, then we should never do it. I would look directly at the question what should we do and not do. I'm not going to weight the issue one way or the other by deciding first whether to say "torture." Let's look straight at the issue and not get abstract and linguistic.

The New Republic redesigned its webpage to make things look nicer...

... and wrecked all the old links to it!

"He liked actors. I didn't know then, of course, that he was a celibate homosexual."

"If he cast you as the lead in a movie, it's probably because he fell in love with you. I didn't understand any of this. I just thought he liked me because I was very talented. It was that too, but it was much more complex. He fell in love with people who were unavailable."

So says Malcolm McDowell about Lindsay Anderson, whom he contrasts to Stanley Kubrick: "Stanley was sort of anti-actor and anti-drama. He didn't know what the hell you were talking about if you wanted to actually analyze the scene... Then I realized that it was an enormous gift because he was saying to me, 'You can do it. Create it. Find it.' That was really fabulous, and I really went for it."

Everyone remembers Kubrick. Do you still think about Lindsay Anderson? I remember when everyone was talking about "O Lucky Man." Here's the scene — with McDowell — that freaked us out something awful:

Today, Google redoes its logo to celebrate...

... no, not Teddy Kennedy — how would you do that? — Michael Jackson!



It's his birthday, you know.

He was murdered.

Teddy wasn't murdered. Teddy Kennedy died of cancer at the age of 77.

At the Country Road Café...

... you can go on and on and on...

No! Don't do that to your poodle!

That's just wrong! (And hilarious.)

It's absurd to use Teddy Kennedy's death to push the health care bill.

First, a collection of clips:

Speaking of naming the bill under Ted Kennedy, we have a State-Run Media montage here, day two: pushing health care for Kennedy. Here we have John King of CNN, Jessica Yellin of CNN, Roger Simon of Politico, David Gregory at NBC, David "Rodham" Gergen at CNN, Brian Williams of NBC, Kelly O'Donnell at NBC, and Kiran Chetry at CNN all talking about the passing of Senator Kennedy and health care reform.

KING: There was a change in the political dynamic after President Kennedy's assassination. Will there be a change in the health care dynamic after his passing?

YELLIN: Senator Kennedy's death will inspire his colleagues in Congress to find a way to pass health care reform.

SIMON: If President Obama wants to carry the torch that the Kennedys had passed to him, President Obama's going to have to pass health care.

GREGORY: ...as the result of the Senator's death, because he was such a champion for health care.

GERGEN: This may open a new window for Barack Obama to bring Democrats and Republicans back to the table in Teddy Kennedy's memory.

O'DONNELL: Democrats are saying respect for Kennedy could change minds now. National sorrow has created political momentum before.

WILLIAMS: I received an e-mail today that said, "In lieu of flowers, let's pass health care reform."

CHETRY: To honor his memory, could lawmakers find the inspiration to reach across the aisle and get health care reform passed?

It's absurd to expect the death of a 77-year-old political figure, who was known to suffer from a fatal cancer, to be anything like the response to the sudden, violent death of a 46-year-old President. Even assuming both men were equally beloved and even if the older man had also been President, the emotion cannot be anywhere near the same.

The murder of John Kennedy was a profound shock that had the power to reconfigure our minds. It made us want to find something positive to do in response. The death of a sick old man, who had had more than the usual allotment of years, is sad for those close to him, but otherwise is an utterly normal event, sad only in the way that it is sad that we are all mortal.

There is nothing to be done about it. It is absurd to use that phenomenally mundane event to push and prod us to take political action.

"I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself."

"And he would ask people, 'have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?' That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too."

That is a quote, not from one of Teddy Kennedy's enemies, but from Ed Klein, who was a close friend.

Listen to the audio:



It's apparent that Klein imagines that joking about Chappaquiddick was an endearing trait.

(Thanks to Fred4Pres for the tip.)

ADDED: All the funniest comedians wear a neck brace.

AND: If Teddy always "saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things," then that's an open invitation. Despite his death, we can make all the Teddy Kennedy jokes we want. If anyone should see fit to criticize us, they need to know: Teddy wouldn't have wanted it that way. Don't defile the memory of the man by drawing the line on humor.