Der Spiegel: "Giant Penis Sparks Bizarre Media War"

Only in Europe. And only in a European publication. Read the rest of this post...

It's 10AM on a Wednesday. What's your cat doing?

I don't know about the cats in this study, but our cats most definitely are sleeping. A lot. Since I work at home with our furry friends I don't need a camera to see that Sushi tends to sleep until around 5PM in the afternoon and Nasdaq until around 2PM, when lunch is served. Then it's back to napping. The evening is when the "action" starts and they both wander around for an hour or two. When Sushi is awake, he does enjoy a bit of what we call "terrace TV" as he sits on the sofa and stares outside. Sometimes there's a bird buzzing about and other times, there's nothing as far as we can tell.

Fifty house cats were given collar cameras that took a photo every 15 minutes. The results put a digital dent in some human theories about catnapping.

Based on the photos, about 22 percent of the cats' time was spent looking out of windows, 12 percent was used to interact with other family pets and 8 percent was spent climbing on chairs or kitty condos. Just 6 percent of their hours were spent sleeping.

Six percent? Where do they find these cats? Certainly not here but it's true that Americans are known for their long work hours. Read the rest of this post...

H1N1 flu mutates in Holland

The H1N1 flu mutations are getting creepy quickly enough. And now they are expanding.

Harald Wychgel, spokesman for the Dutch Institute for Health and the Environment, told AFP that there had been a "minor change in the virus to make it resistant to Tamiflu," a key treatment for influenza.

"He died not because the virus was resistant but because he was seriously ill and caught the Mexican (swine) flu," Wychgel said.

Read the rest of this post...

Internet and phone companies aren't just spying on us, they're making money doing it

From WIRED:

He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.

Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.

But Verizon and Yahoo took offense at the request.

Doesn't making a profit off of disclosing our private communications to the government put these companies in a conflict of interest, as it pertains to protecting our privacy? Read the rest of this post...

Women underrepresented in Obama administration

The numbers don't lie. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not what anyone should expect or tolerate. We can do a lot better than this. Doesn't it seem reasonable to expect a 50/50 split? Looking at Obama's senior cabinet posts doesn't help the argument either.

Of the 515 senior-level government jobs tracked by The Washington Post at http://washingtonpost.com/headcount, Obama has named fewer women than Bill Clinton did in his first year in office (no jokes, please), and not all that many more than George W. Bush did in his first year.

Of the 376 people the Obama White House announced, nominated and confirmed in those top-tier administration jobs, only 32 percent have been women. In comparison, 46 percent of Clinton's Senate-confirmed nominees in 1993 were women, as were 26 percent of Bush's first-year nominees, according to a year-end study in 2001 by the Brookings Institution.

(Filtering for only White House officials -- folks who might have their gym shoes or clubs readily at hand, should a call come -- Obama's percentage of women in those top jobs is 37 percent.)

Read the rest of this post...

TN mayor posts racist anti-Obama rant, claims the "Muslim" Obama tried to kill Charlie Brown Christmas special

I wasn't able to confirm whether he's a Republican. But I have a feeling. Here's what the mayor posted on his Facebook page:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."

At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

AP is covering it now too. It's disturbing that so much of this vitriol comes from rural states. Read the rest of this post...

Aetna to force 600,000 to lose health insurance in order to up their profits

This should provide more fuel for a robust public option that covers everybody. But it likely won't. At the very least, the health care reform legislation should be amended so that it goes into effect immediately, rather than in four years - that way this kind of abuse can be stopped now. That is, provided that Lieberman, Bayh, Nelson, Snowe, Landrieu, Baucus, the Blue Dogs, and lady who lives on the floor below me don't complain. (She gets very cranky when she doesn't get her way.) Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: New employment numbers will only feed complacency

It's a good point, if you believe that the drop in the unemployment rate does not signify a change in the prognosis that over the next several years unemployment will remain unacceptably high. By witnessing a "drop," however small, policy makers may now think the problem is solving itself, when Krugman, among others, say that it is not. Read the rest of this post...

White House official refuses to endorse needle exchange after President campaigned on it

This is a bad sign. Generally speaking, if the President campaigned on something, and the White House still supported the commitment, a White House official would not back away from reiterating the commitment. This likely won't sit well with the AIDS community, the gay community, and many others. Read the rest of this post...

When a drop in unemployment isn't all it seems

As noted below, we learned today that the unemployment rate for November dropped from 10.2% to 10.0%. That sounds like good news. But, Tula Connell at the AFL-CIO's blog looked inside those numbers -- and it's still not looking good for America's working men and women. There are millions still unemployed, including a lot who aren't even counted in today's numbers because they've "dropped out" of the labor market -- and there are millions underemployed:

The nation’s unemployment rate moved from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in November, with 15.4 million American workers unemployed, according to U.S. Department of Labor data released this morning. But when both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are some 26 million people without jobs or full-time work. At the start of the recession in December 2007, there were 7.5 million jobless workers and the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Director Larry Mishel says he would not interpret this decline as the beginning of a ongoing reversal in the unemployment rate. In fact, the jobs situation likely will worsen for up to the next 12 months, he says. One reason: There is a backlog of people who dropped out of labor force who will come back in—up to 3 million jobless workers. And when they start looking for jobs again unemployment will rise.

This is why the focus of the Obama administration and Democrats on the Hill is jobs, jobs, jobs. The economic debacle left from the Bush years is going to slam the Democrats in 2010 if the situation doesn't improve in a real way before the congressional elections next November. Read the rest of this post...

Welcome to Pompeii, courtesy of Google street views

Drag your mouse on the picture to turn 360, then click on the arrows to walk through ancient Pompeii.


View Siti archeologici di Torre Annunziata, Pompei e Boscoreale (NA in a larger map Read the rest of this post...

Texas does it again

Continuing to live up to its reputation where the knuckle-draggers rule. The state executed a convicted murderer despite arguments that he was mentally impaired.

Tests administered to Mr. Woods over the years placed his I.Q. between 68 and 86, prompting a bitter debate between his lawyers and the state over whether he was too impaired to face execution. The state and federal courts repeatedly sided with prosecutors.

The debate reflects the gray area left by the Supreme Court in 2002, when it ruled that the mentally impaired were not eligible for the death penalty but left it up to state courts to interpret which inmates qualified as impaired.

Read the rest of this post...

Unemployment dropped to 10.0% in November -- movement in the right direction

Finally. Some good economic news on the all-important jobs front:

U.S. employers cut a far fewer-than-expected 11,000 jobs in November, the smallest decline since the start of the recession in December 2007, government data showed on Friday, strongly suggesting the deterioration in the labor market was in its final stages.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent from a 26-1/2 year high of 10.2 percent in October. The government revised job losses for September and October to show 159,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Maybe, just maybe, the recovery is starting to hit Main Street, not just Wall Street. But, we still need a lot more jobs. That 10% represents who are still unemployed represents millions of families without a steady paycheck. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is heading to Allentown, PA today to talk jobs and the economy. That's all the Democrats want to talk about these days. (Perhaps if the Democrats hadn't caved so much on that first stimulus, the job situation might be better. Perhaps.) Anyway, once health care is finished, every thing Congress and the White House does for the next year will be filtered through the prism of job creation. That could inhibit other key items on the agenda, which aren't viewed through that jobs prism.

Last night was graduation night at Language ETC. That's where Carlos and I teach English to immigrants. This semester, we taught the Basic class, which is the very introductory level. I think the most productive (and rewarding) part of my week are the two hours I teach. Carlos has been doing it for years and is an excellent teacher (he also speaks several languages, which helps.) I'm still learning how to teach -- and slowly learning Spanish. The students really make it worth it. And, it's also great to see so many of our former students who are still in the program in more advanced courses -- and to have full conversations with them in English because their proficiency keeps improving.

I still don't care about Tiger Woods or the White House party crashers, although those seem to be the only stories being covered by the TODAY Show and the cable networks.

Let's get threading. Read the rest of this post...

Recent Samoan tsunami was up to 46 feet high

It's difficult to imagine how anything could have survived such a hit.

The massive waves that struck Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga totally destroyed traditional wooden buildings, many of them singly story, along the coast while reinforced concrete buildings sustained only minor damage, said Stefan Reese, a risk engineer with New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

The waves were up to 46 feet (14 meters) high, Reese told The Associated Press. The scientists measured watermarks on buildings and trees to help confirm the height of the waves.

"In some areas there was virtually nothing left" after the waves reached up to 765 yards (700 meters) inland, Reese said.

Read the rest of this post...

Putin delivers US-style town hall meeting

Then again, did the US borrow from Putin or was it the other way around? All he needed was his very own Jeff Gannon to blast the opposition and it would have been complete. It's so hard when you start mixing former Soviet KGB people and George Bush. There's nothing quite as heart warming as a staged event with friendly questions. Bothering to ask real questions is so old fashioned. Oh, and Putin delivered a real shocker, suggesting that he may come back to reclaim his old job. Who could have guessed?

Ever since he made way for Dmitry Medvedev to take over the presidency in 2008 after eight years in office, there has been speculation that he is planning to return at the next presidential election in 2012. Today Putin did nothing to dispel the impression that he is Russia's most accomplished and popular politician – and that it is he who actually runs the country. Most of his questioners apparently agreed. They reverentially addressed the prime minister as "Vladimir Vladimirovich".

Putin's eighth annual phone-in was screened live on Russian TV and entitled A Conversation with Vladimir Putin: The Sequel. The event is an opportunity for Putin to demonstrate his stamina, charm and mastery of local detail. Hostile questions are weeded out – with pre-selected factory workers and studio guests "spontaneously" picked instead.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama-shaped ecstasy pills hitting the market

I'm not sure what this means in the grand scheme of things. I just find it interesting. Read the rest of this post...