Athensboy's Blog

Time off, or THE END?

athensboy — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:44:57 +0000

I will be taking some time away from this blog, several months probably. I haven’t decided whether I will return to it, or not. It’s been quite an experience… 2.6 million visitors in less than 3 years! Thank you everyone!

Filed under: blogs, internet

‘Not yo’ cheese

athensboy — Tue, 10 May 2011 23:30:54 +0000

By Jennifer Schwarz

NBCChicago.com

updated 5/9/2011 6:07:19 PM ET

While stealing nacho cheese may sound like the punch line to an old joke, a Chicago man learned Sunday it’s actually no laughing matter.

Michael Richards, 50, is being held in lieu of $10,000 bail on robbery charges.

Prosecutors say Richards bought a bag of potato chips from the 7-Eleven store on the 1300 block of South Halsted, then began pumping nacho cheese — which he had not paid for — into the bag.

When the store clerk told him the cheese was for customers who bought it as part of a nacho tray, he allegedly pulled the man’s arm behind his back and threatened him.

Police arrested Richards Saturday a block away from the store.

On Sunday in court, when Judge James Brown asked, “So what was stolen was the cheese?” The Chicago Sun-Times reports Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Dan Piwowarczyk kept an admirably straight face as he replied, “The defendant was informed that it was ‘not yo’ cheese.’”

Filed under: humor, internet, wackiness Tagged: cheese, Nacho

10 Top Terrorists Taken Down

athensboy — Tue, 03 May 2011 18:28:50 +0000

Beyond bin Laden: 10 Top Terrorists Taken Down (from Wired Magazine)

Filed under: achievement, politics, war, world events

Osama is DEAD!

athensboy — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:31:39 +0000

My comment: ‘Nuff said.

Filed under: achievement, news, politics, religion, war, world events Tagged: Osama bin Laden

Terminators to Tripoli

athensboy — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:46:39 +0000

The global expansion of remote-controlled warfare.

By William Saletan

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the next stage of the most important military invasion of the 21^st century. It isn’t the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. It’s the invasion of warfare by unmanned vehicles.

The invasion began quietly years ago, withscattered, occasional reports of drone strikes in Pakistan. As these reports accumulated, it gradually became apparent that the U.S., without putting troops on the ground or sending pilots into Pakistani air space, was using drones to wage the world’s first remote-controlled war. That was the invasion’s first stage.

The drone campaign began as President Bush’s war. Then, with President Obama’s election, it crossed the political aisle. Therate of drone strikes tripled, and Bush’s war became Obama’s. (On Friday, a U.S. drone killed another 23 people in Pakistan.) That was the second stage.

Drones were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, but only as adjuncts to U.S. air and ground forces. Only in Pakistan did we wage a fully remote-controlled war—until Thursday. That’s when Gates and Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced another American drone campaign, this time in Libya.

This is the invasion’s third stage: global expansion. Pakistan has been a pilot experiment—or, rather, a remotely piloted experiment—in unmanned warfare. Drones have won the confidence of presidents of both parties. Gates’ announcement signals that they will now be deployed beyond Pakistan, to Libya and any other place where we need to kill people without risking American lives.

The quiet, early days of the drone war in Pakistan are over. Unmanned aerial weapons have become an American boast. “Gates: Obama OKs Predator Strikes in Libya,” says the headline on the Department of Defense website. The arrival of our killing machines is now part of the U.S. message to Muammar Qaddafi, the people around him, and our allies.

Why are we sending drones a month after we entered the Libyan war? Because the war has evolved to require them. Thanks to NATO’s air campaign, Cartwright explained, Qaddafi’s forces “that are out in the open know that they’re going to probably perish if a NATO bird sees them. So you’re seeing a much more dispersed fight, people that are digging in or nestling up against crowded areas, where collateral damage is.” To evade or deter air strikes, Qaddafi’s men are traveling in unmarked vehicles and relocating to cities where they can use nearby civilians, in effect, as human shields.

To kill the bad guys without killing innocent bystanders, we need vehicles that can get close enough to our targets—and inspect them long enough—to be sure that what we’re looking at is the bad guys. And then we have to hit them with weapons precise enough to avoid collateral damage. Drones have proved they can do this. Even critics concede that in Pakistan, the drones’ civilian casualty rate has declined from 25 percent to 5 percent.

In Libya, Cartwright observed, drones will give NATO the “ability to get down lower” for “better visibility” on its targets. “They’re uniquely suited for … urban areas where you can get low collateral damage,” thanks to “their extended persistence on the target.” Any pilot who tried to fly low enough, or hover long enough, to get the same level of visual confirmation might be shot down. And we can’t have that, because Obama has promised us an almost risk-free war.

On Thursday, Gates reaffirmed the pledge with which Obama began the Libya campaign: no ground troops. When reporters asked whether the drones’ arrival signaled “mission creep” in Libya, Gates said no. “The president has been firm, for example, on boots on the ground,” Gates reiterated. With the drones’ help, Obama intends to keep that pledge, waging a war without footprints. He won’t even have to risk another downed American pilot.

Drones alone can’t win the war in Libya, any more than they’ve won the war in Pakistan. But they increase our ability to kill the enemy while sparing civilians and avoiding risk to ourselves. To that extent, the unmanned invasion of warfare is a force for good.

On the other hand, it may also create a new kind of mission creep.

“If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi,” Obama warned Americans three weeks ago, “we would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater.”

But if drones continue to improve and to take over the conduct of war, the risks to civilians, U.S. troops, and pilots might diminish to the point where we feel emboldened to attempt the overthrow of other dictators. In that case, the unmanned invasion of warfare might turn out to be the most significant invasion of this century, but certainly not the last.

Filed under: aircraft, news, politics, war, world events Tagged: Barack Obama, Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Robert Gates

Qaddafi’s Hat

athensboy — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:12:15 +0000

What’s up with the Libyan dictator’s headgear?

By Brian Palmer

The tumult in Libya has treated news hounds to countless images of leader Muammar Qaddafi, many of which show him wearing a round black hat pulled most of the way down his forehead. Is that kind of hat popular among Libyans?

Yes. Qaddafi’s hat is a traditional Libyan variant of the North African fez called a checheya. The more familiar, red, tassel-topped look is common in Tunisia and Egypt, where it’s called a tarboosh. The checheya is shorter, and never includes the tassel. It’s worn low, touching or almost touching the top of the head. The version that Qaddafi has been photographed with during the recent conflict is the heavy, woolen type designed for winter. During the hotter months, many Libyans switch over to a lighter cotton model.

While Qaddafi is famous for wearing outlandish ensembles—Time magazine published anamusing pictorial—the outfits are part of his message. For the first decade of his rule, which began in 1969, he rarely wore the checheya. He preferred to emphasize his military credentials, and sported full dress uniform at formal events, including a MacArthur-style cap.

Once his power was better established, Qaddafi pushed the notion that he was separate from and above the military and political establishment. Rather than referring to himself as colonel or president, he insisted on al-qa’id al’mu’allim, or “leader and guide.” During this era,bedouin robes and the checheya became more regular features of his wardrobe, adding a populist touch. (Not one to fall into a fashion rut, Qaddafi still goes military on occasion.)

When he’s feeling pan-African, Qaddafi adopts a West African look. The mustard-colored robes he wore to the 2009 summit of the African Union, for example, are his take on the grand boubou. His hat looks more like a West African kufi than the checheya. While the outfit isn’t entirely alien to North Africa, it’s very rare to see a modern Libyan man in a boubou. This aesthetic is part of Qaddafi’s campaign to build a continent-wide base of power among African leaders; he styles himself as the African king of kings.

Leaders in the Muslim world have long recognized the symbolic power of the fez. According to travel writer Jeremy Seal’s book, A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat, the Western-influenced Ottoman sultan Mahmud II decreed in the 1820s that most of his subjects replace the traditional Turkish turban with the fez. While the Ottomans initially resisted, the fez eventually became ubiquitous. Over the following century, the meaning of the hat flipped: In 1925, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, president of the new Republic of Turkey, banned the red chapeau for being uncivilized. (Ataturk himself was partial to the Panama hat.) More than 800 violators were arrested, and 57 executed.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Ali Abdullatif Ahmida of the University of New England and Abubaker Saad of Western Connecticut State University.

Filed under: bloggers, design, politics Tagged: Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Muammar Qaddafi

Donald Trump: The president we deserve

athensboy — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:46:01 +0000

He’s got Reagan’s blarney, Clinton’s libido and plenty of experience with massive debt and bankruptcy. Perfect!

When Timothy O’Brien’s “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald” landed on my desk in 2005, I consigned it to the slush pile without thinking twice. Just being alive and conscious from the 1980s to the present day had subjected me to more feckless Trumpitude than any sane man should be expected to endure. I saw no reason to willingly seek out even more.

But six years later, Trump is leading polls of Republican presidential candidates and taking steps to form a campaign organization, and suddenly, I feel the need to be a little bit better informed. Yes, Donald Trump is a cartoon, his 2000 “campaign” proved to be nothing more than a tease, and his current media manipulation is most likely a hoax.But in 2000 the Republican Party had real candidates — including George W. Bush and John McCain — bucking for the nomination. The current crop are almost all cartoons. When measured against the likes of Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin, the chances that a crazed loon might get the GOP nomination in 2012 are not just high, they’re almost inevitable. A B-movie hack actor once became the leader of the most powerful nation on earth — who’s to say a wildly erratic businessman with strange hair couldn’t also?

So it’s best to be prepared. I spent Tuesday speed-reading “TrumpNation,” in the hope that it would help me imagine what a Donald Trump presidency might be like. The experience has been illuminating. I’m a changed man, and I’m here to tell you, Donald Trump is everything Americans deserve as a president.

I didn’t expect to think this. I thought that a review of a business career marked by, to borrow O’Brien’s summation, “repeated failures, flirtations with personal bankruptcy, sequential corporate bankruptcies, [and] the squandering of billions of dollars” would provide grist for a thorough denunciation of the Donald. As the political analysts have been quick to point out, Trump’s career should be a gold mine for opposition researchers — and not just because of the multiplicity of political views he has expressed. Let’s not forget that in the early 1990s, the Trump brand meant failure. He had fatally overextended himself by wasting billions of dollars of borrowed money on a spending spree that included, among other things, casinos, airlines, ridiculously overpriced hotels, and luxury yachts unloaded by bankrupt Middle Eastern arms sellers.

He dumped his first wife for a younger trophy, and then dumped her for another trophy, shrugging off the tabloid chatter by telling a reporter “You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write when you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” He made a habit of buying property when the price was high, and then being forced to unload it at a huge loss when the real estate market crashed. He has proved comically inept as an Atlantic City casino owner — really, it’s one thing to imagine a gambling mogul in the White House, but an incompetent one? In the course of his career, he’s been bailed out by his father, by his siblings, and by the banks to whom he owed hundreds of millions of dollars. By any rational standpoint, his disasters are far more spectacular than his successes. He’s a reality-television star, for crying out loud!

But this is not a rational country, and we sure do love our reality TV. And the more one is forced to confront the reality of Donald Trump’s life, the more one comes to a grudging, horrified, sickly fascinated realization that he may be the single man most suited for confronting the intractable problems the United States faces today.

Think about it. We are currently facing the consequences of living on borrowed money in the wake of a huge real estate meltdown. Who, I ask you, has had a more intimate acquaintance with what happens when the value of your real estate holdings collapse and your creditors come calling than Donald Trump? And yet he keeps living to see another day! Donald Trump is the living, breathing proof of John Maynard Keynes ‘famous maxim: ”If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.” In the 1990s, the sums Trump owed his creditors were simply too big. If forced into bankruptcy, Trump would have brought his lenders down with him. They had to cut a deal, extend him even more credit, and help him muddle through. You can call it a comeback! “Donald enjoyed an almost mystical ability to keep convincing bankers to lend him funds,” writes O’Brien.

Even better: The terms of his second casino bankruptcy filing resulted in a contract guaranteeing Trump a minimum salary of $2 million a year, for three years, with a clause stating, “Mr Trump shall not be required to devote any fixed amount of time to the performance of his duties.” That’s some nice work, there.

It’s doesn’t take much reflection to realize that this is exactly the kind of life experience that suits our current predicament. Trump, as president, would realize that the extent of U.S. indebtedness to the bond market and foreign creditors is simply too great to allow for any kind of default, and he would undoubtedly find a way to weasel through. We need a president who knows how to get bailouts, not give them! And lest liberals fret at a corporate takeover of Washington, just listen to the endorsement of spending he gave to “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in 1984: “I believe in spending extra money … I believe in spending maybe more money than other people would think almost rational.”

Take that, John Boehner! Fiscal stimulus ’til the cows come home.

During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, his second wife, Marla Maples, called him an “ego-driven attention addict unfit to run for president.” But this is unfair. America was built on unfettered ego, and there are clear advantages to self-delusion. We need a president who just never gets down in the dumps, who always can blithely misrepresent misfortune as heaven’s boon and knows how to find a silver lining in any imploding balance sheet. Timothy O’Brien’s biography paints a portrait of Trump suffused in Reaganesque hues. But for Trump, every day isn’t just “morning in America” — it’s morning in America on a private jet with a hot babe bringing you a mimosa while you fly to Palm Beach for the unveiling of a statue of yourself. Trump is one upbeat mofo. O’Brien writes that his family followed “the power-of-positive thinking teachings of the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale,” and it shows. As president, Trump wouldn’t always be bringing us down by harping on rising healthcare costs or unmanageable deficits or the failure of our schools. He’d just redefine it all as a massive party, and we’d feel much better. It worked for Reagan, and Trump is nothing if not a creation of the go-go ’80s.

I can’t put it better than the producer of “The Apprentice,” Mark Burnett (who also created “Survivor”): “[Donald Trump] is a brilliant businessman that stands for what is great about our country, what makes America the best country in the world.”

Exactly. We need him.

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.

Filed under: advertising, bloggers, brain, politics, wackiness Tagged: Donald Trump

World’s oldest man dies at 114

athensboy — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:05:18 +0000

Walter Breuning, 114 years old, sits for an interview in the lobby of his senior residence in Great Falls, Mont., on Oct. 6, 2010. (Michael Albans – AP)

The world’s oldest man died of natural causes in a Montana hospital Thursday, the Associated Press reported. He was 114 years old.

Walter Breuning had memories that encompassed two world wars, the Great Depression, the “swinging ’60s,’ the space race, and the technological revolution.

But his first memory was from when he was three years old, when his grandfather would tell him tales of killing Southerners in the Civil War.

“I thought that was a hell of a thing to say,” Breuning said.

Breuning worked for the Great Northern Railway for more than 50 years, starting at just $90 a month. He bought his first car, a Ford, for $150 in 1919 . He bought a piece of property for $15.

When Breuning sat down for an interview with the AP this past October, he offered what he thought were the secrets to long life. This is what he said:

— Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. (“Every change is good.”)

— Eat two meals a day (“That’s all you need.”)

— Work as long as you can (“That money’s going to come in handy.”)

— Help others (“The more you do for others, the better shape you’re in.”)

And the hardest of all: Accept death.

“We’re going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you’re born to die,” he said.

Breuning died at a retirement community called Rainbow in Montana, to which he had moved in 1980. He would spend his days at Rainbow in an armchair in a suit and tie, sitting near a framed Guinness certificate that said he was the world’s oldest man.

The only medication Breuning took was aspirin.

To his death, he received letters from admirers from around the world.

Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga. — born 26 days earlier — is the world’s oldest person.

By Elizabeth Flock | 09:19 AM ET, 04/15/2011

Filed under: achievement, education, nature Tagged: Oldest people, Walter Breuning

Miley Cyrus: Not Enough Love For Me To Tour In The U.S.

athensboy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:26:38 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Miley Cyrus says she feels more at ease heading out on an international tour now that things are fine on the home front.

Earlier this year, her parents, Billy Ray and Tish Cyrus, were getting a divorce, and her father was critical of his daughter’s behavior. But the Cyruses recently called of their divorce and the family is spending time together.

“I think it’s good, especially when you go on the road. You have to make sure everyone is happy before you start traveling, you’re away. My family is good. They are stoked for tour. As long as I’m happy they are happy,” Cyrus said in an interview on Thursday.

The former “Hannah Montana” star is leaving for South America and Australia on April 27 for her Gypsy Heart Tour. It will be the first time Cyrus, whose most recent album is titled “Can’t Be Tamed,” has gone to South America, and she’s excited – even though she won’t be able to communicate with her fans in their language.

“I speak zero Spanish. I actually failed Spanish so I will have someone with me making sure I can get through my way,” she said.

She recently released one of the album’s songs, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” in Australia, and said she’s excited to sing the Poison cover (which featured Bret Michaels) there live.

But she won’t be releasing that song in the United States, and right now, she has no plans to tour in her native country either.

“I just think right now America has gotten to a place where I don’t know if they want me to tour or not. Right now I just want to go to the places where I am getting the most love and Australia and South America have done that for me,” she said. “Kind of going to the places where I get the most love. Don’t want to go anywhere where I don’t feel completely comfortable with it.”

Filed under: internet, music, wackiness Tagged: Miley Cyrus

Donald Trump is losing it

athensboy — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:45:05 +0000

At first I thought it was clear that Mr. Donald Trump — a television star famous for his “billionaire” character who makes a good living licensing his name after failing in the casino business — was just pretending to run for president in order to drum up publicity for the new season of his reality show. But now I fear that his childish stubbornness might demand that he actually run for president. Or, at least, he must somehow convince all of his myriad doubters that he is serious. And that way lies madness.

Because Donald Trump is patently ridiculous. He is obviously, transparently silly. This “campaign” has long since stopped being good publicity for “The Celebrity Apprentice.” It’s just rehashing ancient birther memes to growing howls of derision at this point. But Donald Trump cannot accept that he is a farcical figure.

And so Trump is now scrawling complaints on blog posts someone printed out for him, and then mailing his scribblings, via the United States Postal Service, to Vanity Fair.

What was at first a horrible example of the political press’s forced credulity is now an increasingly amusing example of a good old-fashioned pile-on. Politico is mocking him, Bill O’Reilly is mocking him,the New York Daily News put him in clown makeup on the front page, and now media outlets are purposefully printing his snippy letters to the editor, unedited, in order to publicly embarrass him. This kind of thing gets to Mr. Trump. He is a very sensitive soul.

Trump is giving every journalist in the country the opportunity to delve into his past financial troubles, his old political donations, his marriages, his horrid books, his failed business ventures, his defaulted loans — everything that the viewers of “Celebrity Apprentice” and the purchasers of Trump-branded crap don’t quite remember through the mists of time.

This is Trump undoing the years of public image rehabilitation that allowed him to host a show — on network TV, in prime time — in which he hires and fires people to begin with. He’s politicizing his straight-talking billionaire persona, and soon only Free Republic commenters will have him. There’s money in being a right-wing folk hero, as Ollie North could tell you, but it’s not Macy’s national ad campaign money. General-interest celebrity “business” books surely come with fatter advances than vanity right-wing publishing books, even with all that Scaife money still sloshing around.

But Trump pretended to be a Republican, and now he has to prove to every troll who ever mocked him that he’s always been a Republican, and he’s the best Republican. And so Donald’s doing ridiculous interviews with the Christian Broadcasting Network about what he does with all of his Bibles.

Trump: Well I get sent Bibles by a lot of people.

Brody: Where are all those Bibles?

Trump: Actually, we keep them at a certain place. A very nice place. But people send me Bibles. And you know it’s very interesting. I get so much mail and because I’m in this incredible location in Manhattan you can’t keep most of the mail you get.

There’s no way I would ever throw anything, to do anything negative to a Bible, so what we do is we keep all of the Bibles.

I would have a fear of doing something other than very positive so actually I store them and keep them and sometimes give them away to other people but I do get sent a lot of Bibles and I like that. I think that’s great.

Donald Trump keeps his Bibles “at a certain place.”

This is no longer just a means by which to get on morning shows. We passed that bridge a while ago. This is a man desperately trying to prove his seriousness. Donald Trump isn’t just a clown, he’s a sad clown.

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene

Filed under: advertising, bloggers, brain, politics, wackiness Tagged: Apprentice The, Bible, Donald Trump