Cheer Babes or NASA budgets

Gregg Easterbrook is truly a renaissance man.

When he's not writing the incredibly detailed and insightful pro football column on the NFL's Web site - which I dearly love as it parses the stats and such about pro football and provides a weekly dose of cheerbabes - or doing whatever senior editors at The New Republic do, or being a visiting fellow at thinktank The Brookings Institution, he's writing stuff like this analysis of the NASA budget for Slate.

He argues that the government should be focused more on science projects related to this planet or projects that have relevance to us - rather than throwing money at the space shuttle or a moon base.

"The new budget request suggests that no one in the agency's hidebound, turf-obsessed upper management wants to think about what NASA can do to actually benefit the public."

While I may be one of those with a "silly Sci Fi channel fantasy" about humans seeking out new life and new civilizations and boldly going where no one has gone before...Easterbrook makes a lot of sense.

His proposed NASA priorities focus on research about the Earth (esp. climate and rainfall changes) and sun, automated probes to study the solar system and our neighboring systems, axing the shuttle in favor of research on new propulsion systems and "a serious program for searching nearby space for asteroids and comets that might strike Earth and figuring out how to deflect any big rock headed this way."

Methinks someone has seen Armageddon on TNT a few too many times. :)

It's the Earth, Stupid [Slate]

The Downward Iraqi Spiral? aka What About the Good News?

So often we hear the refrain - most recently from the VP on "Face the Nation" - that the media is focusing too much on the bad things happening in Iraq but not the good. Howard Kurtz at the Wash Post asks is the media has declared war on the war in Iraq.

Since we live not far from a military base, Little Rock Air Force Base, I hear some similar refrain from acquiantances who are in or were in the military. "But what about all the schools being built? And what about the democratic elections? And what about..." This are good friends who I have a lot of respect for...and for the work they do but I respectfully disagree with the theory that there's some vast media conspiracy against Bush, the Republicans and/or the war in Iraq.

CBS News' Lara Logan offers the response I've been expecting, coincidentally to Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Source":

"...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them?

"You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

"Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?"

She goes on to assail those who accuse media in Iraq of simply "reporting from their hotel balcony." Thanks to Scott for the heads up on this.

A Turning Point in Iraq [Washington Post]
Lara Logan Smacks Down 'Negative' War Charges [Crooks and Liars]

Something I'll Think About Next Time I Get Gas

Gas Prices Jump Nearly 15 Cents Per Gallon [AP via Yahoo]

"The weighted average price for all three grades increased to $2.52 a gallon by Friday, according to Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations in the country.

Gas prices are 40 cents higher than they were a year ago." [I paid $2.48 on Saturday to fill up in North Little Rock at the "cheap" place.

Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil [NY Times]

..."For more than a decade, lawmakers and administration officials, both Republicans and Democrats, have promised there would be no cost to taxpayers for a program allowing companies to avoid paying the government royalties on oil and gas produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf.

"But last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful.

"It is an account of legislators who passed a law riddled with ambiguities; of crucial errors by midlevel bureaucrats under President Bill Clinton; of $2 billion in inducements from the Bush administration, which was intent on promoting energy production; and of Republican lawmakers who wanted to do even more. At each turn, through shrewd lobbying and litigation, oil and gas companies ended up with bigger incentives than before."

Yeah, no cost to taxpayers...but big benefits for the oil companies getting the profits from their oil plus the incentives for drilling for it.

NCAA: Put Up Your Dukes

So, when filling out my bracket for the men's basketball tournament, I first went crazy and filled Florida in as the national championship. Then, on the morning of the first day of the tournament, I chickened out and went safe - predicting the top-seeded Duke Blue Devils to win it all, over other favorite, UConn.

And so it goes. I loved seeing LSU beat Duke, even though it wrecked my bracket. Not that it was already screwed when Bradley upset another Final Four pick, Kansas, the supposed hottest team in the country.

So, I ended up getting one Final Four pick: Florida. And I won't win my group contest with 11 friends, coworkers and a cousin. But Official Wife of JP probably will win. And I didn't even give her any advice and she beat my butt. Going into the Elite Eight, she was the only one in our group to have not lost a Final Four pick. That ended over the weekend, but she's still the only one in the group who hasn't lost her pick to win it all - UCLA. Looks like she'll be cheering for the Bruins, while I cheer for Big Baby and the LSU Tigers.

How about that supposedly weak SEC, BTW. Two teams in the Final Four. No ACC...No Big East...No Big Ten...No Big 12. :P

Seven for Sunday, 3/26

This week's list was marked by the fact I saw Nine Inch Nails in concert last Tuesday. So I listened to a lot ofNIN all week in advance and in the aftermath. Good, heavy melodramatic stuff.

1. The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand - With its snark and roll, FF still elbowed its way past NIN and the Foos into the top spot. (2)
2. No Way Back - Foo Fighters - The straight forward rock of FF stayed strong. FF and FF, huh? (1)
3. Getting Smaller - Nine Inch Nails - A intense track not played in concert that I really like. (-)
4. Wish - Nine Inch Nails - Another rage-filled tune. This stuff keeps you calm when dealing with morning traffic...gives you something else to focus your aggression on. :) (-)
5. Terrible Lie - Nine Inch Nails - A throbbing, burning track off NIN's first album. (-)
6. Hand That Feeds - Nine Inch Nails - The anti-war track off the most recent NIN album.
7. World Wide Suicide - Pearl Jam - Well, look what ducked its head in under the wire and just ahead of NIN's "March of the Pigs." (7)

Overhyped Bands: Brought to You by the Word 'The'

Seems some self-described "bitter computer geeks" at boston.com have put together a list of bands they feel have been over-hyped by the critics. They seem to have something against, as LT calls em, "definite article" bands...

You know: The Artic Monkeys, The Strokes, The Killers (hey, I like The Killers), The Libertines, The Vines, The Streets and The Steven Seagal. Err wait, no, "the" on the last one.

I think I'd agree on a lot of these. I mean heck, The Artic Monkeys' debut album ranked ahead of The Beatles and The Clash on a best album of all time list??!?! But what do I know, my tastes are pretty low brow when compared to your typical music snob...I mean critic.

Thanks to Pop Candy for pointing Jonworld in that direction.

Still a Pretty Hate Machine After All These Years

For 17 years Trent Reznor has been expressing alienation, isolation, anger from social injustice and conformity in song and sound. Last night, his Nine Inch Nails showed that after all those years, platinum albums and Grammys, he still knows how to find that place of hurt and madness and take an audience there for a couple hours.

NIN fired salvo after salvo of high-grade industrial metal to a large and appreciative crowd at Alltel Arena in North Little Rock. The band alternated the frenetic pace and noise with quiet moments and ballads of soul-crushing pain. And Reznor was a man of few words, just an occasional "thank you."

From an opening of songs from Reznor's most recent release "With Teeth," ("Love Is Not Enough" and "You Know What You Are?") he dipped into the catalog for the hypnotic and crashing "Terrible Lie" from 1989's "Pretty Hate Machine." Throughout the night, the guitarists and keyboardist created a literal Wall of Noise puntuated by the drummer, who was playing his ass off (I thought his hands would fly off). Reznor, looking bigger but buff with his black hair buzzed tight, still managed to muster the intensity after all these years - jumping around, strumming the guitar and letting out his Viking yawp.

During the more intense songs, the light rigging above the band lowered to a point seemingly just over the band's heads...making for a more confined space to rage against.

The band went from the thrash "March of the Pigs" to a personal favorite, the ballad "Something I Can Never Have." Reznor's voice seeming to bleed over lines like "gray would be the color/if I had a heart."

A middle section of the show saw the curtain come back down and the band perform three songs while weird and sometimes disturbing images were projected onto the cloth. Ballad "Right Where It Belongs" was set against scenes of anonymous and conforming subdivisions and happy families mixed with images of gruesome death, war and destruction. "What if all the world you think you know is an elaborate dream...and if you look at your reflection/is that all you want to be?/what if you could look right through the cracks/would you find yourself afraid to see?"

The dynamics of the set list were again evident as the mournful "Hurt" (famously covered a couple years back by Johnny Cash) started with Reznor alone on stage with a keyboard. It was a little strange to hear a song of such lonliness and despair become an arena rock singalong, but the delivery by the band remained effective.

From there the band hit another inudstrial thrash nugget, "Wish" before launching finishing with "Only," "Every Day is Exactly the Same," the seemingly anti-Iraq war "The Hand That Feeds" ("What if this whole crusade's a charade...") and closing right where they belonged, with the song that put NIN on the map, "Head Like a Hole."

For a NIN fan, it was a satisfying show (though I would've loved to see the never-done-live "Perfect Drug"). For the uninitiated, the crowd seemed to groove and gyrate like it was 1994 - the probable peak of NIN's mainstream popularity with the release "The Downward Spiral." Perhaps it was out of tune with today's hip-hop pop world, but I don't think Trent's letting it bring him down.

Seven for Sunday, 3/19

Here you go. What I've been listening to on my iPod this week - based on play count.

1. No Way Out - Foo Fighters (1)
2. The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand (-) - Could not get this one out of my head last week.
3. Perfect Situation - Weezer (2)
4. Beast and the Harlot - Avenged Sevenfold (3)
5. Good Two Shoes - Adam Ant (-) - Caught a video of his on VH1 Classic last week and reminded me how much I liked this one back in the day. "Don't drink/Don't smoke...what do you do."
6. Lights and Sounds - Yellowcard (5)
7. World Wide Suicide - Pear Jam (-) - I enjoy PJ, but haven't purchased an album since "Yield" (which I liked more than this reviewer). This one rocks but I'm still sinking my teeth into it.

'The Pony in Slavery'?!?!

Wonkette seizes on a potential new catchphrase in the making - used to justify slavery in America. Yeah, it was God's way of bringing black people to America.

Courtesy of opinion writer Adele Fergusen in the Kitsap (WA) Peninsula Business Journal:

"Remember Ronald Reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? He went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, "With all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere."
The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it."

Says Wonkette: "The pony in slavery," people. Like the toy in a box of Cap’n Crunch. If Cap’n Crunch were, say, made of poison. And it took several generations and thousands of lives to get to the toy. And then when you got the toy, you weren’t allowed to play with it for another hundred years."

Folks, Meet Your New Catchphrase [Wonkette]
Why Do Blacks Continue to Support Democrats? [Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal]

49 Feet and 25 Years Later: U.S. Reed and the Hogs

As the Arkansas Razorbacks gear up for their first trip to the NCAA men's basketball tournament (aka "March Madness") since 2001, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette takes us back to a classic Razorbacks basketball memory today. It's been 25 years (!!!) since U.S. Reed launched his 49-foot prayer shot that was answered as time expired to beat the defending champion Louisville Cardinals 74-73 in the second round of the 1981 tournament.

The D-G story catches up the Reed, now 46 and a pastor in Pine Bluff. Reed said he is often asked about the shot and told by fans where they were when it happened.

JONWORLD CONFESSION: I missed seeing one of the biggest moments in Razorbacks basketball history on TV. :(

I was 10 and along with my parents for a visit to the grandparents in Magnolia. I remember watching part of the game on TV but went outside to play with a friend down the street. I remember returning later as my excited parents told me about the winning shot - and I later saw the replay on TV.


Reliving U.S. History [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]

Cool Star Wars Lego Stuff

You can always count on the Internets to find something cool to waste time looking at...and now, thanks to Pop Candy, I behold a photo of Han Solo in carbonite, made out of Legos. Pop sends us to a cool list of 10 strange and interesting Lego creations - and there at #9 (shoulda been higher) - is Han, built by Nathan Sawaya out of 10,000 mostly dark gray Lego bricks.

Nathan has some other Star Wars creations, including a Liberty Jedi and a Death Star II, in addition to many non-SW works, such as a John Lennon tribute.

Seven for Sunday, 3/12

A new number 1.

My list, based on iPod playlist (last week)

1. No Way Back - Foo Fighters (2)
2. Perfect Situation - Weezer (1)
3. Beast and the Harlot - Avenged Sevenfold (4)
4. Foxy, Foxy - Rob Zombie (7)
5. Lights and Sounds - Yellowcard (3)
6. Wings of a Butterfly - HIM (5)
7. I.R.S. - Guns N' Roses (6)

The 'Cronkite Moment' in Iraq?

During the Vietnam War, CBS Evening News achor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam and following a series of stories on American involvement to supress the Viet Cong, declared in an "editorial opinion" that it seemed more likely that "that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

President Johnson famously remarked after the broadcast that "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Flash forward to 2006 and conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan becomes the latest high profile conservative to back away from supporting the war in Iraq. You remember, the war started over Iraq's weapons of mass destructi...to topple Sadda...to bring democracy to the Middle East.

Sullivan cites three "huge errors" in support for the war:
1. "to overestimate the competence of government, especially in very tricky areas like WMD intelligence. ...The result was the WMD intelligence debacle, something that did far more damage to the war's legitimacy and fate than many have yet absorbed."

2. "narcissism. America's power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes. Those resentments are often as deep among our global friends as among our enemies--and make alliances as hard as they are important."

3. "not taking culture seriously enough. There is a large discrepancy between neoconservatism's skepticism of government's ability to change culture at home and its naiveté when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian cultures abroad."

Seems reasonable to me.

Though Sullivan salvages some optimism:
"...we know that no perfect war has ever been fought, and no victory ever won, without the risk of defeat. ...War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will. And sometimes the darkest days are inevitable--even necessary--before the sky ultimately clears."

We'll see.

What I Got Wrong About the War [Time.com]

Latest Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

I freely admit that heavy met-ul and particularly cheesy 80s "hair metal" is a guilty pleasure of mine.

I admit that I often enjoy musicals, both classic and contemporary.

This makes me cringe.

Hoth Bids for Winter Olympics; Bring on the Tauntaun Races

E! Online points us to a story of one guy who says what the Winter Olympics needs to boost its popularity is being hosted on the fictional Star Wars ice world of Hoth. He's even started a Web site, www.Hoth2014.com, to promote this bid. I can see the tauntaun races now across the barren ice fields. But watch out for the Wampas.

So maybe then we can look at having the summer Olympics on Naboo.

Hey, while we're talking Star Wars, here's an envious shout-out to LT buddy Darrell, who had his SW collection recently featured on SW collecting site rebelscum.com. The Force is strong with him. He has a lifesize Yoda in his corner...no, really, right there in the corner of one room.

Seven for Sunday, 3/5

Another week, another music list. Not many changes as Weezer's "Perfect Situation" spends another week at the top.

The top 7 most-played songs on my iPod this week, based on playcount (last week):
1. Perfect Situation - Weezer (1)
2. No Way Back - Foo Fighters (2)
3. Lights and Sounds - Yellowcard (4)
4. The Beast and the Harlot - Avenged Sevenfold (-)
5. Wings of a Butterfly - H.I.M. (5)
6. I.R.S. - Guns N' Roses (6)
7. Foxy, Foxy - Rob Zombie (3)

Five for Friday, Vol. 24: Cheney Vision Edition

Sorry for the lack of posts. Work again becomes hectic.

So, lest we forget, here are my favorite quotes from the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. In most cases, I think history has already judge most of this as BS.

1. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." - Speech to the VFW 103rd National Convention, Aug. 2002.
2. Pre-Iraq war: "...my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - "Meet the Press," March 16, 2003.
3. On the insurgency against US troops and the fledgling Iraqi government: "...I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." - CNN, Interview by Larry King, June 20, 2005.
4. "...and I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting. ...And I thought that was the right call." Interview with Fox News' Brit Hume about the accidental shooting of a hunting companion. (now granted, his buddy who went to the paper said there was no drinking, not a bit. But ends up the VP told police he had a beer with lunch before the hunt.
5. Expressing the traditional Senate decorum: "Go f__ yourself." Reportedly said to Democratic Senator Pa Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

'...And With Any Luck, It'll Happen in Time for the November Elections'

"I'm confident he will be brought to justice," Bush said of the 9/11 mastermind in a suprise visit to Afghanistan.

I read this not long after reading this...and then I think: Hmmmmm....

Bush Confident bin Laden Will Be Captured [AP via Yahoo!]
Bush Thinks bin Laden Tape Helped Re-Election Bid [CNN]

Real World 17!?! NES is 20!?!

As if there was any question that I'm older, two pop culture icons are marking anniversarys.

MTV's seminal reality TV show "The Real World" is set to begin its 17 (!!!) season today when we find out what happens in Real World: Key West. Yikes, as Slate writer Troy Patterson notes, "The youngest of these seven people having their 'lives' taped have known of the show for perhaps longer than they've known how to spell television."

I got past my Real World phase back around season 6 or 7. But there for a while, I wouldn't miss an episode - which wasn't hard since MTV airred them each about 1,000 times. Who can forget RW1 when the Alabama white girl asks the black rapper girl if she was a drug dealer after her pager goes off. Or the shower semi-orgy in Miami. Or the Seattle slap. Or Puck. Some things are better left to the young. I marked another milestone the other day when I took MTV off my "favorites" list of channels on my cable box.

Meanwhile, the other day LT pointed me to another sign of age: it's now been 20 years since the first Nintendo Entertainment System debuted and began the video game craze in earnest. Of course, I was around for the first one, remembering Pong and going crazy when I finally got an Atari 2600.


House Arrest - Another Trip to MTV's The Real World [Slate]
Top 10 Real World Moments (from the show's first 9 years) [MTV]
NES: 20-year-old Legend [Joystiq]