Soldier Ant 

Shocking breakdown of the sway that the Christian right holds over public policy in America. Most disheartening are the ramifications for environmental policy:

[...] many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

Now how the hell did I miss this last year? God, or Satan -- the juries still out -- revealed himself in the form of fish last March:

According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew.

The animated carp commanded Rosen to pray and study the Torah. Rosen tried to kill the fish but injured himself. It was finally butchered by Nivelo and sold.

Bradley is up and running with Wordpress, and I for one am tickled pink about it. My daily dose of Braddles is one of the things I miss most about California. Get to postin' bro! And add me to your blogroll, punk.

Slate points out that ugly-ass teevee husbands are having some hot wives. While one could easily chalk it up to aging-boomer male fantasy (get old, fat, and loserly and still score!) I thought this take was interesting as well:

In portraying husbands as lousy parents, marginal breadwinners, and repellant sexual partners, the fat-husband sitcoms convey a persecution fantasy that rises from the same swamp of resentments as these books do: "Yes, I'm supercompetent and I even look great, despite all the crap I have to deal with, and, yes, that's my husband over there, the fat, useless one scratching his nuts."

Now this looks cool:

Taken straight from a mold for the hand used for stunt work in the film, this life-size movie-accurate replica of Hellboy's stone hand is made of a dense rubber material. The foam of the stone hand is hollow and includes a built-in grip.

Now this guy is serious about his Halo 2.

Ha! Here're some pictures of a 22-year-old Jeep pulling a brand-new Hummer H2 out of a not-very-perilous predicament. Writes the samaritan:

Pictures of your Hummer H2 on the internet being rescued by a 20 year old Jeep from a 12" stump in a parking lot beside a port-a-jon for all the internet to see

$PRICELESS$

Google has introduced a promising development in the war against comment spam:

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." (Abraham Lincoln, 1809-65)

Kottke points to a long New Yorker profile on Carson that contains this tidbit:

Most of what you hear on CB radio is either tedious (truck drivers warning one another about speed traps) or banal (schoolgirls exchanging notes on homework), but at its occasional—and illegal—worst it sinks a pipeline to the depths of the American unconscious. Your ears are assaulted by the sound of racism at its most rampant, and by masturbation fantasies that are the aural equivalent of rape. The sleep of reason, to quote Goya’s phrase, brings forth monsters, and the anonymity of CB encourages the monsters to emerge. Not often, of course; but when they do, CB radio becomes the dark underside of a TV talk show. No wonder Carson loathes it.

I'll leave any deep exploration of the war-on-terror cultural zeitgeist aside, and just say that the first 10 minutes of 24 last night were some of the tautest, most action-packed, Jack Bauer badassery yet aired.

And that bit with Behrooz and the shovel was kinda unsettling. That family creeps me out.

Ha!

What's the difference between an SUV and a hedgehog?

A hedgehog has a bunch of pricks on the outside.

Ferdinand Cheval was a postman with a dream:

Each day on his round if he saw stone or pebble that caught his eye he would put it to one side and when he had finished work he would take his wheelbarrow and collect them and in April 1879 he started work on his "ideal palace". For the next 30 years, working alone, he built what he saw in his visions, a mad, fabulous fantasy palace.

Passed along by an ex-coworker, this puts a whole new perspective on the behavior of my old manager. Suddenly, it all makes sense...

If you have occasion to visit Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco's Inner Sunset, I highly recommend it. Aside from their delicious gourmet pizzas, there are also the world's most wonderful scones. (I used to like them warmed in the microwave for ~15 seconds, then topped with butter.) And even though there are .. oh, about 6 coffee shops in the neighborhood, I used to make the trip to Arizmendi just to get a sip of their small-batch, carafe-brewed nectar. So much better than a huge 2-gallon batch of bitter brew from Starbucks or the Beanery. (Don't get me wrong, I love the 2 Beaneries, too.)

What has me thinking about this old favorite neighborhood haunt? Why, playing around with A9's cool new local results with photos. Also cool is this hot-off-the-presses hack that returns a city-street's worth of photos from A9s database. (Found via onfocus.)

If you ever find yourself in need of actual phone support for XBox or Xbox Live, you can reach them at 1-800-4My-Xbox. I'm sure Microsoft would rather you endlessly wander around the maze of low-overhead, self-serve uselessness that is their official web-based support. When you get 'em on the phone, tell 'em that Bryce sent you. (FWIW, the woman who helped me today, "Bonnie", was awesome. Courteous, helpful and patient. The Web will never replace a smart, kind person. Never.)