4 Mumi- moms!!

Thoughtful potterer. Simultaneously can cook porridge, bind nose, pour on flower bed and comfort someone, who this requires. And in this case in you everything is obtained! It is improbable!

Who you in the Mumi- portion?

I knew this.

via Kip, who 'splains.

I am also, by the way, Little My's mom. No, the test didn't say so. I just am.

via Elayne, an interesting point from Louise at Kos: according to the german magazine Die Zeit, the original PDB from August 6 was 11.5 pages long, and an earlier mention from the Washington Post seems to suggest that there is more than a little specific material about threats missing from what was released.

5/17/02, Dan Eggen and Dana Priest in the Washington Post:

The Aug. 6 briefing, according to officials with first-hand knowledge, was different. Along with current intelligence, it had a 1 1/2-page analysis -- largely speculative -- of what bin Laden might have been planning. The summary analysis was requested by Bush, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

As redacted and released, the PDB was a page and a half long.

When children are weighed in the balance against a growth market in pharmaceuticals, what did you expect to happen?

10 months ago, when concerns arose about a possible link between children taking antidepressant drugs and suicide attempts, senior officials at the Food and Drug Administration ordered their leading expert to head up an examination of the evidence.

When the government scientist filed his report last winter, however, his bosses decided to keep it secret -- even though it found that children who took the drugs were twice as likely to be involved in serious suicide-related behavior as those who did not.

Instead of revealing the findings, senior FDA officials ordered more studies, which are not expected to be completed until summer. They also squelched plans to have the author, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, present his conclusions to an FDA advisory committee when it took up the issue in February.

And in March, when the agency issued a warning about the possibility of problems for young patients taking the drugs, FDA officials said no conclusive scientific evidence existed on the link between antidepressants and potentially suicidal behavior by children. Officials said they based their action on anecdotal complaints from physicians and families that had been presented to the advisory committee.

They gave no hint that their own chief expert on the subject had examined the results of more than two dozen clinical trials conducted by antidepressant manufacturers and had found an unusually high correlation between their use by young patients and potentially suicidal behavior.

The report still has not been made public, but news of Mosholder's conclusions first surfaced in a recent CBS News report. His findings were detailed in an internal FDA document obtained by the Los Angeles Times and authenticated by government officials.

In justifying their decision to hold back Mosholder's report, his superiors questioned the reliability of the data on which he based his conclusions. They suggested the drug companies, which manufacture the antidepressant drugs and conducted the clinical trials in order to market them, might have been too quick to count some behavior as potentially related to suicide -- that is, too quick to raise questions about their products.

Among the kinds of actions these officials said should not necessarily have been counted as potentially suicide-related were instances of children who deliberately cut themselves.

Some FDA officials defended the decision to sit on the report and seek more analysis of the data, but some psychiatrists and congressional leaders who are following FDA's handling of the issue were angered that the agency had kept Mosholder silent.

"Evidence that they're suppressing a report like this is an outrage, given the public health and safety issues at stake," said Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a Harvard psychiatrist who wrote a book on the problems with the drugs known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which alter brain chemistry to manage depression. "They've been claiming that there's no evidence. Here's the evidence."

Senate and House committees have ordered the FDA to hand over documents -- such as the ones obtained by the Times -- that might illuminate what the agency knew about the possible link between the drugs and suicidal behavior. They specifically asked for any of Mosholder's reports, e-mails, correspondence or notes on pediatric or adolescent antidepressant trials.

These members of Congress are concerned that the FDA may be keeping information from Americans that would help them better assess the possible risks of taking antidepressants or giving them to children.

Keep in mind, this is an administration that values children's sensibilities at $500k per broadcast nipple.

According to Our Fearless Leader, all those Iraqis who say that all they want is for us to get out of Iraq are practicing an unusually subtle and widespread form of reverse psychology for a small faction of malcontents.

Delaying the scheduled June 30 transfer of sovereignty in Iraq because of recent violence would play into the enemy's hands, President Bush said today in his weekly national radio address.

"Some have suggested that we should respond to the recent attacks by delaying Iraqi sovereignty," Bush said. "This is precisely what our enemies want. They want to dictate the course of events in Iraq and to prevent the Iraqi people from having a true voice in their future. They want America and our coalition to falter in our commitments before a watching world. In these ambitions, the enemies of freedom will fail. Iraqi sovereignty will arrive on June 30."

As the sovereignty transfer draws closer, the president said, a "small faction" is trying to derail the process. Saddam Hussein loyalists are responsible for attacks against coalition forces in some cities, he said.

"In other areas, attacks were incited by a radical named Muqtada al-Sadr, who is wanted for the murder of a respected Shiite cleric," the president added. "Al-Sadr has called for violence against coalition troops, and his band of thugs (has) terrorized Iraqi police and ordinary citizens."

Bush said coalition forces in Operation Vigilant Resolve in Fallujah and in Operation Resolute Sword toward the south will defeat the insurgents. "Our coalition's quick-reaction forces are finding and engaging the enemy," he said. "Prisoners are being taken, and intelligence is being gathered. Our decisive actions will continue until these enemies of democracy are dealt with."

As a followup, Bush pointed out that Iraq was a corrupt and destructive regime back when his daddy and his Vice President were still selling him Weapons of Mass Destruction and his Secretary of Defense was still delighted to shake his hand.

"The transition to sovereignty will mark the beginning of a new government, and the end of the coalition's administrative duties," Bush said. "But the coalition's commitment to Iraq will continue. We will establish a new American embassy to protect our nation's interests. We will continue helping the Iraqi people reconstruct their economy, undermined by decades of dictatorship and corruption. And our coalition forces will remain committed to the security of Iraq."

Also, it might be a nice idea if next year someone lets the man know when Passover starts and explains to him about Palm Sunday, K?

Hard Boiled Eggers courtesy of ? - I forgot. Sorry, whoever you are.

As part of low culture’s continuing commitment to you, the reader, we hoped that a summary of Dave Eggers’ newest novel might come in handy. Taking our cue from The Guardian’s Digested Reads and inspired by our dedication to you, the reader, we intended to provide brief summaries of the untitled novel as it is serialized in Salon. We at low culture, however, never quite anticipated how boring that task would prove.

Enter Microsoft Word’s “AutoSummarize” feature. After plugging Episodes 1 through 18 into a Word doc, we simply let our PowerBook do the reading for us. What follows is the 275 word AutoSummary — it’s not entirely coherent, but perhaps it will be of service to someone, somewhere.

Jamie Oliver burns penis while cooking roast - I wonder if he was too romantic to wear oven mitts?

Jamie Oliver burnt his penis while cooking a St Valentine's Day meal for his wife - naked.

He stripped off to treat wife Jools, but wound up in agony when he got too close to the oven.

Oliver said: "It was on Valentine's Day. I was naked in the kitchen and burnt my penis. I really ruined my evening - and my night."

He was apparently preparing a roast when the unfortunate incident happened.

A Favorite at New York Aquarium Is Dead. For you Sesame Street afficionados and hostages, this whale was the mother of the whale that kissed Elmo.

Kathy the beluga whale, the ever-smiling ambassador of the New York Aquarium and holder of numerous cetaceous records, was euthanized yesterday at her home in Coney Island, Brooklyn, after a long illness. She was 34.

According to her keepers, Kathy was the oldest female beluga kept in captivity and had given birth to the first beluga born in captivity to survive more than a few weeks.

"She was the signature animal of the aquarium," said Kevin M. Walsh, the aquarium's director of animal training. Kathy's longtime veterinarian, Paul Calle, called her simply "a great whale."

Easter Bunny whipped at church show; some families upset

Melissa Salzmann, who took her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. “He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped,” Salzmann said.

Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn’t meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.

“The program was for all ages, not just the kids. We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter Bunny, it is about Jesus Christ,” Bickerton said.

Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, southeast of Pittsburgh.

The World Is Awesome, via Electrolite

Now, before her ideas are made into law, there are still some important questions to be asked: are there arm-holes in the sack, or was the editorial dictated? Is the sack really made from the hide of an endangered Taffeta Leopard, or is it a dolphin-safe imitation? And, perhaps most importantly of all: who does your hair? The answers to these questions can be delivered at a later date, as all required credibility has been supplied by the Taffeta Leopard-Skin Body-Sack of Supreme Integrity.

If Iraq like Vietnam, why's there no Coppola movie?

Fact is, the White House says, there are a number of substantive differences between the war in Iraq, and the war in Vietnam. To prove its point, it has released a list of them:

Iraq is over here, and Vietnam is way, way over here, to the right.

Francis Ford Coppola hasn't made a movie about Iraq. He hasn't even started casting.

During the Vietnam War, while the country's young people were being sent into battle, rich Americans back home had to do without huge tax cuts. Not this time! Today, well-to-do Americans don't have to make any sort of financial sacrifices -- in fact, they're coming out ahead! -- while the country's young men and women are being sent into harm's way.

There were lots of protest songs written about Vietnam, like "Give Peace a Chance" by John Lennon, "Bring 'Em Home" by Pete Seeger, and "The Story of Isaac" by Leonard Cohen, but hardly any protest songs about Iraq have been recorded yet by major artists.

Uh, hello? Did you ever hear anyone talking about huge oil reserves in Vietnam?

As the war in Vietnam dragged on and seemed more and more hopeless, the United States was forced to send over thousands more troops to try to get a handle on the situation, but today ... whoa, hang on, let's just move on to the next item.

A few weeks after the war in Vietnam began, the president at the time wasn't able to land on an aircraft carrier and declare "Mission accomplished!", now was he?...

The Six Patron Saints of Graphic Design

St. Concepta Brainstorming and Procrastination
Concepta experienced her first creative ecstasy -- a vision of John the Baptist selling hats -- in 1454, when she was but five years old. Constantly sketching on serviettes, she longed to know more about design and asked her father if she might go to art school. Outraged at the prospect, her father urged her to try real estate. Instead, she rebelled, enrolled in art school, and went through a phase where she wore a lot of black. After spending a great deal of her creative lifetime daydreaming out of windows, Concepta died in 1505 and a spring with inspirational properties sprang from her grave. (ed. note: I guarantee you that her followers still bring their own bottled water nonetheless)

And we have reached a new low

...You know what'd be a great Fox show? We'll call it Who wants to inflate my cock. You get a bunch of guys who think they could use a bigger wang. Then you give each one a seperate room, and a surgeon to cut open their members and inject or restructure or whatever it is one has to do when they think their dick needs remodelling. Who knows, maybe it involves gelatin or packing peanuts. I don't know, I've never felt like my penis needed a new annex so I've never researched this, and I don't plan to now.

Then, you tell them that at the end of the show the guy who allows himself to get the biggest cock enhancement out of the group will win a prize. I don't know, maybe he can nail the self-conscious and emotionally manipulated winner of The Swan or something.

Then we, the audience, get to watch all these guys refuse to tell the surgeon to stop enlarging their schlongs. So then the guys get gigantic- I don't mean porn star huge, I mean like comically oversized, as if they now have a sausage-shaped pinata the size of a basset hound hanging from their crotch...

The Memespread Project: Spread this Meme!

...I initially submitted this page's URL only to kottke.org. Since then, I have simply sat back and watched my hit counter logs to see who has come to this site and when. As the hits progress and die down, there will be an analysis of this data, in combination with related data as is seen fit (such as what is found on the Blog Epidemic Analyzer). ...

Deva Lifewear

This is, I guess, a personal note: this company rocks. They have their clothes made by home businesses and self-sufficiency projects, here and abroad; some of the styles are a little too hippyish but some of them go to the office just fine; the fabrics are light and cool in the summer, survive the washing machine beautifully and don't have to be ironed; you can't see through the clothes, so you don't have to wear layers; the colors are nice, and (here's the best part) by summer clothing standards, they're incredibly cheap.

Oh, also large sizes and comfortable unstructured pants and the models are people who work there.

Practically too good to be responsible shopping, really.

post up at American Street, FYI

USDA won't allow independent testing for mad cow

The U.S. government rejected a request by Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to allow the beef company to test all of its cattle for mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

USDA Undersecretary Bill Hawks said Creekstone's request for a license to test for mad cow disease "in a private marketing program can not be granted at this time."

"The use of the test as proposed by Creekstone would have implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted," Hawks said in a statement.

So, what's it been, not quite a week?

There are some people you really shouldn't encourage.

ed: More peepish goodness

I pretty much agree with this.

‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’

~ G.K. Chesterton

There's something in that, I think. It's still your mom, right? You love her, you appreciate the stuff she's done for you, you recognize all her lovely qualities, you feel loyalty for her, on balance you respect her and you don't want to see her hurt.

Which is why, if you care at all, you do everything you possibly can to get the car keys away before she does something that she can't fix.

Both for her sake, and for the sake of any kids that might be playing outside between your house and hers.

The guy who hands her the keys is not going to be there cheerleading for her in court.

Powell Calls U.S. Casualties 'Disquieting'

Deeply unfortunate headline of the day, in reference to the ongoing investigation of (former RNC head) CT Gov Rowland and his thriving little Tammany on the Sound:

Extension granted in Rowland probe

Dammit, that just was not necessary.

Not fair? I don't agree, but bluntly I don't give a shit.

Because it is true.

Here is/are the face/s of the war.



A closer look here.

via the poor man

Did you know that Our Fearless Leader was on vacation this week?

The Alamo is over-rated as a tourist attraction, dammit

We just got back on base. For a while there, I didn’t think that would happen. We got ambushed yesterday, except it was a twenty-one hour ambush. We made CNN, except of course they got it wrong. They said that the Ukrainians have left my city. This is not true. We had to evacuate the compound. If you see first a clip of a guy in a white shirt running carrying an AK next to a railing, that's my city. That bridge behind them? The insurgents mined it.

At about four AM the other day, the Ukrainian force rode out the gate and took back the town. At nine thirty we rolled out, arrived at our usual destination, and by ten thirty, we were under fire. We were in a compound of five or six major buildings, large enough to be hotels, not quite large enough to be palaces, that had once been owned by Chemical Ali.

We started out on the roofs, looking for snipers. But RPGs and mortar fire forced us down and as we retreated, the shooters started hitting the building more often because they were walking their weapons closer. Eventually, our safe area was reduced to just one hallway in a central building.

I have never been so scared in my life. Scared doesn’t cover it: terrified doesn’t, either. I'd never known it was possible to be terrified and be totally calm. I’d look around, seeing the trails of weapons, seeing the F-16s overhead---they never dropped bombs, they just flew around------and then look down and see the chameleons running in the grass. And then you’d hear the thump of another mortar round, but you don’t really hear those---you feel them, somehow. They’re loud enough to make you flinch, and these were all close----I saw one land in front of me at about three thirty AM, no more than fifty meters away.

My captain didn’t know I heard him say what he just said. “Honestly, last night, I think every one of us thought that was it, that we weren’t going to make it back. It was that bad.”

We faced a force of four to five hundred rebels, with mortars, RPGs and various handheld weapons. There were four US soldiers---myself and the other people in my team----about twenty Ukrainian soldiers, and thirty or so scared British and Aussie expats, including the British governor. The Ukrainian soldiers had a couple tank/hybrid vehicles, but they didn’t have much ammo for them. By midnight, everyone was running out. We kept impressing this on Higher, and they just couldn’t get that through their heads. What the fuck good are they? We are running out of ammo. We will be over-run if light hits this place in the morning and finds us still here...

Hey, all you folks who think that on balance this was a good idea, because, well, you supported it and you’re never ever wrong?

Sleep well.

Whoever did this, and whatever they were thinking (I wouldn't completely discount the possibility that it was a drollerie from our friends on the right), the veterans have taken enough of a beating in the last three years, and they're likely to take more.

There are no sides on this. This kind of shit is completely out of bounds.

Shame on whoever did it.

Sometime overnight, someone used yellow spray paint to write "Kill Bush" on a section of the memorial where names of local veterans are displayed on a sloping wall. The same slogan, along with others, was repeated on the back of the memorial.

"It's very disgusting," said Robert Guerrero, who served in Germany during the Vietnam era. "I have a lot of friends right there who gave their lives for this country," he added, pointing to the portion of the monument where the names of soldiers killed in action - which wasn't vandalized - are displayed. "It's just disgusting."

Comments of some others who stopped by the memorial Saturday morning are unfit for publishing in a family newspaper.

Santiago Villarreal, a Vietnam veteran whose name is not yet displayed on the wall, said his initial feeling was one of sadness.

"These are all veterans who did for their country, some who gave all," he said. "It's just sad, sad that someone would vandalize something like this. Especially right now with all that's happening in Iraq, it should be bringing more people together."

via Off the Kuff