"The Pentagon already includes unmanned drone attacks in its arsenal."

"Next up: housefly-sized surveillance craft, shape-changing 'chemical robots,' and tracking agents sprayed from the sky."

The future of war.

"When I got the part, I thought, 'Dear God,' because she sings, 'island of tropic diseases'..."

"... and I thought, 'I can't say that about my beautiful little island'... island of tropic diseases? Whew!"

Rita Moreno won an Oscar for playing Anita in "West Side Story," but she felt bad about having to trash Puerto Rico — you ugly island.

There were other issues, too. Co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins wanted a big contrast between the warring gangs, the Sharks and the Jets.

"So the white kids had to have their hair bleached and have extra-pale makeup," Moreno recalls, "and we had to wear all one-color makeup, almost the color of mud — and it felt like it. We all had to have accents — many of us who were Hispanic did not have them. I asked the makeup artist, 'Why do we have to be one color? Because Hispanics are many different colors.'"....

During the filming of West Side Story, she created her own Puerto Rican character with an amusing, exaggerated accent: Googie Gomez. "One day I hiccupped her," Moreno says, before singing, a la Googie: "'I had a drean, a drean about chu, bebe.'"

Here that is on YouTube, from "The Ritz," which as a Broadway show won Rita Moreno a Tony. Of course, Moreno had to fight off the accusations that she herself, with this Googie Gomez character, was trading in offensive ethnic stereotypes. Her answer seems to be: No, because it was so funny and because it was an exaggeration of a particular type of person that people recognize. Make sure you understand how to distinguish and an actual offensive ethnic stereotypes.

Wikileaks stops leaking.

Out of money, due to "what the group called a blockade by US-based finance companies."

"I have 17 kills throughout the Northeast United States."

"Perfect victims and well executed, controlled endeavors."

Lacking in "commitment and control" was the partner in murder he found after he "searched my whole life for someone who could embrace and had the capacity for evil as I possess."

"Taxation is theft when you take money from one group to give it to another, when you transfer the wealth."

"Now, taxation could be accomplished with user fees and, you know, highway fees and gasoline taxes and import taxes. But the income tax is based on the assumption that the government owns you, owns all of your income and provides the conditions on which they allow you to keep a certain percentage. That, to me, is immoral, and the founders didn't like it. That's why the Constitution had to be amended in 1913."

Said Ron Paul on "Meet the Press."

In case you're wondering what David Gregory — NBC's Tim Russert replacement — did with that rich, ripe material: He did nothing, just read his next question on the next topic.

Ron Paul, interviewed by William F. Buckley in 1988.

"The libertarian movement has come of age. We've been around for 15 years, and I think we're going to have a real impact...."

Via a reader who wanted me to know — after this — that Ron Paul's eyebrows are real.

And, by the way, I liked Ron Paul on yesterday's Meet the Press.

"Musician suing for age bias says his 88-year-old judge is too old to preside..."

Violinist Martin Stoner knows "it sounds kind of like hypocrisy," but Judge Robert Patterson is, he says, "slow-witted and unable to function." The federal judge is 88. Stoner, who is 60, is suing the Young Concert Artist for excluding him from a their competition which is for... young concert artists (apparently capped at age 20).

Patterson refused to comment, but his defenders claim he's sharp as a tack. When another judge fell ill two years ago, Patterson stepped in midtrial, ripped through a 2,282-page legal transcript in a single weekend and handled the case with aplomb, Manhattan Federal Court Chief Judge Loretta Preska told the New York Law Journal.

Stoner — are you surprised to hear? — is representing himself in this lawsuit.

At the Roadside Café...

... there's room for everyone.

"Realistic portraits of the women of animated Disney films."

A Metafilter post with comments like: "I've never seen Hercules. Does Megara look that drunk and horny in the movie?"

And: "See these Disney characters? See how they are really gorgeous and skinny but they're animated? Imagine what they'd look like if they were gorgeous and skinny and looked like very highly photoshopped people instead of cartoons!"

3 views of the new museum.

It's the new addition to the Chazen Museum on the University of Wisconsin—Madison campus. The glass sculpture in the case is "Large E. coli," by Luke Jerram.

"A Very Simple Venn Diagram of Where the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Agree."

Blogged by Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic back on October 14th (so I don't know why my attention hasn't been directed at this before (Is it too obvious? The obviousness is what I love about it)).

"And then while your girl goes to the ladies', you go out front to smoke a cigarette..."

"... and on the way back you ask your waitress — the one with the tattoo of the meat cleaver on her grass-fed bicep — if she wants to go to a steakhouse on her night off."

A fine last sentence to an essay by Tom Junod called "The Death of the Entrée," published in the "Eat Like a Man" section of Esquire.

Madonna's homeless brother.

Reason's Hit & Run takes the opportunity to attack the big pop star:

For the Material Girl, charity, apparently, does not begin at home. Born and raised in Bay City, Michigan, Madonna gave $135,600 in campaign donations to Democrats last year. And two years ago she contributed $11 million of her own money toward Raising Malawi, an elite academy she founded for impoverished girls in Malawi. The academy was abandoned this year after $3.8 million was spent without a brick ever being laid.

It's one thing to spend on a charity — and Madonna seems to have a problem getting that right — and another to hand out money to individual friends and family. What is the whole story here? What problems led to this man's downfall? I see that he was fired from a job in his father's vineyard and winery. I know, it seems so easy to punch Madonna around, but we're talking about a 50-year-old man. There's a long history to his predicament, and we don't know what it is.

Madonna should probably...
	Set up a trust to give her brother at least a modest home.
	Set up that trust, unless his past behavior was truly heinous.
	Set up that trust and give large sums to charities helping the homeless.
	Leave him in the gutter where he belongs, since that's where he is, and spend on whatever she likes.
pollcode.com free polls

There's no music in the politics... and no politics in the music.

Ziggy Marley bemoans the separation of politics and music.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, there was plenty of music for peaceful revolutions,” Marley said. “Where are these songs now? Who is writing them? From Occupy Wall Street to revolution in Egypt, I wonder where the music is.”...

And as for the music these days:

“I use the analogy of circus with music,” he said. “You have clowns, tightrope walkers, the man that puts his head in the lion’s mouth. But now the circus is all clowns trying to keep us laughing. The tightrope walker is still in the back, but no one’s watching him. People just want entertainment. There’s more to music than entertainment.”

Funny to think of the music without politics as a circus that's all clowns. I tend to think of politics as the clowns. If music came into our politics, it would bring more gravity, not more foolery. That's what I think. I keep seeing commentary saying the Occupy [Your City] movement needs its Bob Dylan, but if you think he would entertain and encourage you — ease you and cool you and cease the pain — you don't know your Bob Dylan. To point out the obvious:

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you

"Babe Ruth, twice. Reggie Jackson. Albert Pujols."

"That is the complete list of players with three home runs in a World Series game."

"It is a liberal canard to say I am personally pro-life, but government should stay out of that decision."

"If that is your view, you are not pro-life, you are pro-having your cake and eating it too."

Said Rick Perry at last night's GOP candidate forum in Iowa. It's a well-crafted line, intended — I presume — to trip up Herman Cain, who just a few days ago delivered up precisely that "canard." He's walking (waddling?) back from the canard, but — as Rick Perry also said last night — "Being pro-life is not a matter of campaign convenience; it is a core conviction."