I think they're doing a damn fine job of teaching English to non-native speakers in Fairfax County, Virginia

Check out the picture at the top of the Fairfax County Public Schools front page. And because I assume the picture will get yanked soon, here is a screen grab of it -- you can click the photo to zoom in a bit:


(hat tip to Joe for passing this along)

Crazy Number of the Day

62

That is the combined age of Pittsburgh's two primary office holders:   35 year-old Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and 27 year-old mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Or to measure from one of the defining moments in Pittsburgh history (notice that I said "Pittsburgh history" and not "Pittsburgh sports history"), Tomlin was only seven years old when the Steelers won their fourth Superbowl in January 1980. Ravenstahl wasn't even born yet.

The little-known [imaginary] power of quotation marks

I was reminded yesterday of the Washington Times' insane standing policy on the use of the words marriage and marry in articles about same-sex marriage. I think it's hilarious that they put quotation marks in there, as if their editorial decision can somehow magically reach out across hundreds of miles and completely nullify the laws and legal system of a U.S. state.

The other thing I noticed about the story, though, was that it was actually an AP story rather than a Washington Times-authored piece. So this led me to wonder whether the Washington Times simply alters AP stories or if the AP actually puts out a specific gay-unfriendly version of their stories for publications like the Washington Times. The latter would be pretty disturbing. And if the former, then I wonder how the AP feels about the Washington Times fooling around with the punctuation in their stories for the purpose of giving the AP's writing a very specific political slant.

And just for the sake of comparison, I quickly found a few other newspapers' webpage versions of the same AP story:

The Stamford Advocate
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The New York Sun

No quotations to be found anywhere else... no surprise there.

Breaking news just in from the Michigan bureau office of the Department of You Couldn't Possibly Get Any Higher

This is just awesome. So so awesome.

This part in particular was just perfect:

On a 5-minute tape of the call, obtained by the Free Press, Sanchez told an emergency dispatcher he thought he and his wife were overdosing on marijuana. "I think we're dying," he said. "We made brownies and I think we're dead, I really do."

I fucking love how the dude switched from saying "I think we're dying" to "I think we're dead" as if it had already happened and he was just reporting that fact with one foot out the door, on his way to the afterlife. He must have been ridiculously high. And he must not have had a clue what he was getting himself into when he chowed down on the brownies (sort of like the Empire Strikes Back Rice Krispie treats incident for those of you that get that reference).


UPDATE - And while on the subject of The Empire Strikes Back, you may as well click here.


UPDATE 2 - There's audio of the 911 call. You definitely want to listen to the whole thing. It's fantastic.

Astronomy Picture of the Day


The Snowflake Cluster versus the Cone Nebula

Tuesday diversions

First, I did not see this linked anywhere. I just typed beavisandbutthead.com into my browser on a whim. MTV appears to have posted every episode of the show online for free! At some point I'll have to invest some time in watching a few of these.

Second, today is the 30th anniversary of one of the all-time classic Dead shows: Cornell '77. I actually used to think the show was a bit overrated, but I keep coming back to that perfect second set. I could argue with a straight face that that set was one of the greatest moments in rock and roll history... or at the very least, one of the greatest moments in Grateful Dead history. In particular, it's almost universally accepted (which is quite unusual when it comes to comparisons of various Dead performances) that the set contains the finest versions of Scarlet Begonias>Fire On the Mountain and Morning Dew ever played. Here's the link for streaming audio of the show -- scroll down a bit to get to the May 8th part of the run.

Finally, caught this image on Mondesi's House. Slight reliance on homophobia notwithstanding, the juxtaposition is just flat out hilarious:

I call this a Bookmark Remover



I used to have CNN.com on my browser's bookmark list. Then yesterday, this story was listed as one of their top headlines and I was left with little choice but to delete the bookmark. How could I ever look at CNN.com as a real source of news after this???

True, CNN often places dumb shit among their top headlines. But this took it to a whole new level in my opinion. This story exquisitely combined overwhelming doses of "Who the hell cares?" and "Big effing surprise!"   And what's up with the Associated Press actually assigning someone to write this piece? Seriously, Lindsey Lohan having big 21st birthday plans is like the Pope planning to recommend Catholicism as his religion of choice. I think you could argue that this is one of the all-time dumbest headlines/stories. It is the literally the opposite of news.

Best tournament ever

I went to Tom's Tourney this past weekend. It was a huge three day ultimate tournament in Brugge, Belgium. I played with the Bruxelles XLR8RS, the club team I've been practicing with since arriving over here.


the XLR8RS - or at least the folks that were there Sunday

Our team actually underachieved badly, going 2-5 during the first two days while I was there (though four of the five losses were by only one or two goals each). But the results were besides the point for me. The tournament was quite an experience for someone like me that has been playing ultimate frisbee for 15 years entirely in the United States. And the gorgeous weather all weekend certainly didn't hurt... though the bone dry, hard fields were quite tough on my knees.

Over the course of the weekend, we played two teams from Germany, one from Italy, one from Spain, two from Belgium, and one from France. One funny tidbit related to that schedule: at some point, I realized that I was giving the stall count in French against teams that probably understood English better than French.

Our games were only one hour long, so we had a lot of bye rounds. During one of these byes, some of us spent time watching an open team from ?Northern France? play.   [An aside to put this story into better context -- The tournament had an open and a women's division but no mixed division, but at least half of the open teams brought a couple women with them. So the open division was often more like a 6:1 or 5:2 mixed division, but some open teams did only bring men.]   The team from France had a RIDICULOUS woman with them. She was absolutely sick. I never caught a name, but she wore jersey number 06. Seriously, it was fucking incredible. The team they were playing against did not have women, yet she was out there on the field, OWNING men at times. She was a significant part of the offense and would also stay on the field for some D points, matching up on men. During this game, she had plenty of touches on most of the offensive points she was in for. And along the way, we watched her throw a perfect 40 meter pass for a score and also score a goal on a perfect deep cut to beat her man. We saw her get two or three D blocks on men. We saw her put on ferocious marks that totally flustered a couple guys. Maybe it was just the game of her life?? Or maybe we were lucky enough to have stumbled across a game featuring the Michael Jordan of women's ultimate??

Okay, back to the tourney. There were a lot of interesting quirks I noticed during the weekend that gave the tournament a totally different feel. The first was the one hour rounds. Essentially this meant timed rounds as only one of our seven games made it to 15 points. There were loudspeakers all over the sprawling, disjointed field complex wired to the main tent. When it was almost time for a round to start, the opening section of Guns N' Roses' Paradise City would play. Then a couple minutes later, you would hear a recording of the tournament director saying "Hey guys it's time for ooltimate, the time is running, the time is running!" with a thick Dutch accent, followed by some quirky upbeat music which more than a few people actually danced around to as they stepped on to the field. There was also a strange end of game jingle that would play with five minutes left and then again when time was up.

What else... hmmm.... the losing team in each round had to leave behind at least one person at the field during their ensuing bye round to run the scoretable for the next two teams schedule to play on the field. And guys seem to be even more comfortable about peeing anywhere and everywhere. Though maybe that's just a Europe thing, not an ultimate thing. Another thing you could probably chalk up to Europe in general: we stayed in a local hostel on Saturday night.

There was not any post-game cheering, but spirit is definitely a big part of things over here. After games, both teams would get into one big intermingled huddle and lock arms/shoulders while one person from each team gave a little speech about the game -- my teammates forced me to give one of these speeches after one of our games which was a bit unexpected and strange for me. During the beginnings of games, members of opposite teams often shake hands while matching up during turnovers or other brief moments of down time.


a post-game huddle

And the tournament itself was just brilliantly run with all sorts of things going on. There was a massive Saturday BBQ. And not just burgers on paper plates. There was real china and silverware and a serious spread of local food including salads, sausages, chicken, and a few delicious items that I don't know the names of. There was a real musical act followed (FOLLOWED!) by a seriously entertaining 40 minute, five man bar-themed juggling/magic act that then segued into the five guys running an actual bar when the show ended. Throughout the weekend, real beer was available day and night at the main tent in real beer glasses... and I did not see a single dumbass brake a glass the whole time. The tent also had all sorts of food going throughout the weekend, which of course included waffles at times.

Other random bits of info: an American woman named Carly picked up with our team. She recognized the BRDM jersey I was wearing because she knew some DC folks including Paul Peek. And if that isn't "small world" enough for you, I ran into former Maryland Ultimate player Marco Rietveld on a sideline Saturday afternoon. I probably hadn't seen the guy in about six years and had no idea he was now living in Amsterdam. What else??? Hmmm... oh, I finally got used to the kissing hello/goodbye on the cheek during the course of the weekend.

Okay, this was a really really long post. In terms of getting to truly experience something interesting in Europe, playing at this tournament and spending two days with my Belgian team was possibly a thousand times better for me than any other touristy thing I could have come up with. Beyond all the frisbee/tournament stuff, it was also really nice just getting to know all sorts of new people.

a quick revisiting of my post from yesterday

I just read it and thought I should clarify one thing:   Though I don't like the idea of a formal withdrawal schedule or timetable, I do still want the Bush Administration to get us out of there as soon as possible. And though I begrudgingly agreed with the President about this timetable issue, I was/am definitely against his early 2007 troop escalation.

Iraq, four years after we totally accomplished the hell out of that mission

With regard to the Harry Reid comment from 10 days ago, I think it's unfortunate that we are focusing on whether the "war is lost" or if the "war can still be won." I also think it's unfortunate that Reid used that terminology. There is no disputing the fact that we won the war in Iraq. Decisively. In 2003.

The problem since then is not whether we are winning or losing that first war. The problem is that we are hopelessly stuck standing in the middle of a second war, a civil war, that we stupidly helped kick off in the process of winning the brief war against Saddam Hussein's regime. To say that our military forces can either win OR lose another country's civil war is absurd. So in a way, Reid and others are still playing into the Bushies' gameplan by giving away soundbytes that refer to Iraq as a regular old war that can be "won" or "lost" by American forces.

But despite having hated our involvement in Iraq from day one, I think the President is right today when he says timetables are not the right way to go. All politics aside, you have to acknowledge that the troublemakers in Iraq would be pretty thrilled to actually know how long they needed to hold out before we leave. I almost barf when I think about the possibility of open-ended involvement there, but the bottom line is that -- 2006 Congressional elections notwithstanding -- that's what America voted for when we [sort of] elected and then [definitely] reelected a borderline mentally retarded* man to be our leader and commander-in-chief in 2000 and 2004. Iraq is our potentially bottomless reward for being so foolish.

The Democrats have control of Congress and should be working to hold the Administration accountable on a variety of fronts. They have every right to scream and shout about Iraq and should keep dragging the GOP through the flames over this issue right through November 2008. But I don't like the cut-and-run maneuver. We, as a nation, royally screwed up in Iraq and now we must face the ongoing and evolving consequences. We are not fighting a conventional war in Iraq from which we can withdraw. As Colin Powell cautioned the President about Iraq before the war, "You break it, you own it." So now we are the not-so-proud owners of an ugly civil war.


* People that know me know that I would be the last person on Earth to use the term "retarded" in a derogatory way... I actually worked at a disability rights organization for a couple years after college. I use the term here purely because it seems to me to be a good, accurate description of the person in question. I am referring to intelligence and the possibility that the person's IQ is below 75, which is one common way of diagnosing borderline mental retardation.


Also, totally changing gears here -- I thought this was a pretty funny parody of all the bullshit 9/11 conspiracy stuff. (via Boing Boing)