Premise: A sample of Jesus’ blood is found and cloned.

Film website.

Cheney and The Imperial Vice Presidency

Even the watered-down version of events in the [9/11] Commission’s report made it absolutely clear that Cheney, ensconced in the White House bunker on the morning of the attacks, had issued shootdown orders outside of the chain of command and then conspired with the President to conceal this fact from the Commission.

Since then, I’ve gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d’etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President. [..]

The other day I was at the grocery store, and being a generally silly person, I decided to get a package of Hormel Fully Cooked Entree Beef Roast Au Jus.

Now, the package of the Hormel Fully Cooked Entree Beef Roast Au Jus has the words ‘Hormel,’ and ‘Beef Roast Au Jus’ in really big letters, with ‘Fully Cooked Entree’ in smaller ones. And even tinier than those were the words ‘Serving suggestion’ at the bottom of the picture. The picture was roast beef in brothy gravy with mashed potatoes and carrots.

Now, in all honesty, I didn’t read any of this very carefully because I was overtaken with fits of giggles looking at the back of the package.

How many times have I anguished at the need to puncture the bag! My prayers are answered! Scissors! Scissors! How I hate them!!

Plus, it’s just silly to have this graphic of a meal being prepared in an inflatable plastic balloon, as reassurance to the American consumer that nothing is going wrong if it blows up big like that.

So the deal here is that the package looked like it would have a whole meal in it, rather than just a bunch of beef in broth. So that’s one count of misleading advertising. Add to that the disappointment of a much less impressive inflated balloon of plastic, and I cannot recommend this product. I wanted the plastice to look like it was ready to pop! All I got was a pathetically small deviation from the vacuum-packed shape. Sigh.

Actually, the meat was pretty good. No doubt I’ll die 5 years earlier for having eaten it, but it was alright. I shredded half of it and made a sandwich. The other half is biding its time in the refrigerator. And at least it didn’t say ‘with au jus.’

I love these guys.

Oh, and, by the way….

Via boingboing, we get to this:

Romania “built our country on pirated Windows”

Gates hears unpalatable words

By Nick Farrell: Friday 02 February 2007, 07:50

ROMANIAN PRESIDENT Traian Basescu told Microsoft’s Supreme Vole, William Gates III that his country’s IT industry would be nothing if it was not for pirated Windows software.
Basescu met Gates at the opening of a global technical centre in Bucharest.

According to Reuters, Basescu said, during a joint news conference with Gates, that piracy helped the younger generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania.

It also helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world. He claimed that all this piracy “ten years ago” was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.

Gates didn’t say a dickey bird as we suspect it was not the sort of thing that he wanted to hear. We would have thought that Gates would not have supported any piracy in any country even if it helped the nation get where it was today. [..]

Dancedout asks if I’ve ever been to Canyonlands.

No, never been there.

And speaking of cairns… As you can see, they’re a theme:

BTW, I’d like to point out that Xanga’s Photo Manager still sucks. Selecting the checkbox under individual pictures doesn’t work in Safari, and once you select them, the only thing you can do with the batch is to make them public, private, or delete them. So you go from one to the next, adding a ‘canyonlands’ tag, only to discover that you can’t just link to a tag to show you the photos with that tag.

Also, shouldn’t I be able to use the Photo Manager to copy and paste some HTML so that when people click on the image, it takes them to the comments page?

I don’t know anyone who wants to go to war with Iran. Do you?

Who wants to go to war with Iran? Is there anyone you know who thinks it’s a good idea?

If we go to war with Iran, we will be attacked non-stop. We will be at risk, all the time. We will have made a blunder of epic proportions; no one will trust us, no one will want to be our trading partner, and no one will help us when we need it.

In essence: If we attack Iran, even if we win, we’ll lose. No matter what. We might even find out (in a bad way) where all those surplus Russian nukes ended up.

Why are we in the midst of brinksmanship? Why does Congress sit with its collective thumb up its collective ass?

Update: Much more here from Scott Ritter.

Looking back on some old photos. I reworked this one to be big enough for use on your computer’s desktop:

Full size version here.

I was thinking about these pictures because there are two roads you can take to get there. One is the Index-Galena Road, which is now part of the river, and the other is Beckler Road, AKA FS 65, which is washed out at mile post 10. The Forest Service says high ground clearance vehicles could make it over the Beckler washout, but there’s also a snow-covered mountain pass beyond. And it’s February.

Every time I’ve driven the Index-Galena road, I’ve given thanks that it exists. It’s a beautiful place, and the pavement was a luxury. I bet it’ll be gravel, at least at that section, in the forseeable future.

Update: Love you some cairns? Then click on the cairns tag.

From Craigslist:

Since it’s an ’87 Wolfsburg, it’s essentially identical to my van. Except, of course, for one important difference.