What better way to respond to a nuclear policy you don’t agree with than a nuclear bomb? Bush is not ruling out nuclear strikes against Iran. Ain’t that just fantastic. Was there a Department of Irony added to our government while I wasn’t looking?

A sworn statement from a (still active) Lt. General directly implicates Rumsfeld in a case of torture at Guantanamo. An investigation carried out in early 2005 actually included two interviews with Don-Rum, and it is said that he was “personally involved”. A Human Rights Watch director says “The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it’s whether he should be indicted.” Well! Get on with it then!

No Child Left Behind? More like millions of children left behind. It appears that part of the testing system disregards the scores of minorities, leaving them out of the picture almost entirely. Come on though, this garbage program came from the Bush cartel. Did you really expect anything less?

The lost gospel of Judas has been translated, and it appears that Jesus asked him to betray him. Weird. If you’re reading this, Jesus, you must have noticed that your ideas have now been bastardized for two millenia. I just hope you’re not going to summon those 7-headed goat monsters from the bottom of the ocean.

The bubonic plague? In LA? Well, after reading the article, I learned that the bubonic plague actually isn’t transmissible between humans, but can morph into pneumonic plague, which is transmissible. The lady must’ve just lived in utter squalor.

There’s some rad artwork from some well-known folks up for auction, and the proceeds are going to benefit a kid with a rare liver disease. I wish I had some cash to blow!

Get a load of this traffic in India! This video is of an intersection that’s clearly lacking a traffic signal. What would be utter chaos in the US is somehow quite graceful and efficient. God, just imagine some SUV-drivin’, cell-phone-yakkin’ asshole plowing through there.

Beaver Overthinking Dam.

Fridge Magnet Pushed To Limits.

Little Donnie Rumsfeld responds to his critics by saying “This too will pass.” So I guess the tactic now is to just wait things out? These fellas sure do have some considerable patience… but then again, to drag out something so utterly wrong for this long shows dedication.

Well, with all the Republicans in office these days, it wasn’t long before something like this happened: Omaha Schools are returning to segregation. Okay, to be a little fair, the re-districting just creates extreme majorities in each of its schools… but even some of their local politicians recognize segregation when they see it.

Al Gore’s global Warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is set to be released this summer. You can view the trailer here, and read a review here. It actually seems like it could be rather informative. (The trailer uses cookies, so don’t disable them if you want to see it.)

Maybe I have a weak stomach, but this was the absolute last headline I wanted to see first thing this morning: Tom Cruise will eat placenta. Hey, fucking congratulations, buddy. You most certainly didn’t need a press release to take care of that. Next time I take a shit, you’re getting a fax… with explicit descriptions.

A Colorado man was arrested for using a traffic signal switching device. It took authorities a while to catch on, but the same signals were experiencing problems each day, and his vehicle was seen moving through those intersections each time. Obviously it would be chaos if lots of people had these things, but I can come up with about 20 instances last week where that would have come in handy.

The Billboard Liberation Front has “liberated” another billboard. Take a look.

Understanding Turbans. All I need to understand is that they’re kick ass. But hey, this helps too.

The Lake Monster of Argentina has been photographed. God dammit, I love lake monsters. (This looks a little hoax-y, but I want to believe.)

I know Echanos will never forget the video we saw on TV long ago featuring a man getting attacked by a deer. Why the two of us found it laugh-out-loud funny is a question better left to a psychiatrist, but I’m experiencing a relapse due to this wonderous video. Perhaps it is just that I think hunting pretty much sucks, and this affords us a view of an animal exacting its revenge on man.

In the wake of NYC deploying an astounding new array of videocameras, someone thought it would be smart to point out the many documented abuses of surveillance cameras in the past few years. While this is an impressive endeavor, it failed to induce the requisite level of paranoia. Perhaps this is because most of the offenses tend to point not toward some nefarious Big Brother scenario, but merely remind us that adult humans are apparently obsessed with watching children undress. How this could possibly be edifying, let alone sexually stimulating, is beyond me. Then again, i’m not forty.

The call for Rumsfeld to resign has finally spread to military leadership. A now-retired general (who could have been a 3-star general had he not refused to work under Rumsfeld) is asking for Rummy to step down, citing … well, do you really need me to recite the list? The guy’s a walking disaster, and a moron. Fortunately, this former general is not alone in suggesting the idea. The commander in chief of the US Central Command, a former Major General, and a former Lieutenant General have all asked for the same. Not to mention, I’ve been asking for some time now.

Now’s a good time to discuss a SomethingAwful.com post that makes some interesting accusations about members of the current administration, including Rumsfeld. I’m a member of SA’s forums, but this isn’t a goon I’m familiar with. No one’s really sure whether or not to take him seriously, but indepedent of the validity of his claims, the posts have been quite entertaining.

Supposedly, you can drop by a bazaar in Afghanistan and pick up a USB drive from a local teenager that’s pre-loaded with US foreign intelligence, much of which is thought to be considered “sensitive material”. The ARMY is investigating, but the damage may already be done.

It appears that the State Department is putting some spin on the whole Iran enriching uranium thing. Given the recent reports suggesting we’re planning military intervention there, I have to wonder - are they beefing up the case for war? It may seem like such an obviously outlandish and incredibly moronic move for the US to make at this point, but you have to take into account how bad we already fucked up the Iraq campaign… and you especially must factor in the way all of us knew Bush was going to invade Iraq well before it was publicly admitted. The UN weapons inspectors didn’t have ample time… there was a false sense of urgency… In any case, where I’m going with this is -> the State Department just came out and said that Iran could be making nuclear weapons within 16 DAYS, now that they’re enriching uranium. Meanwhile, most experts say it would take them years to reach that point. Who are we to believe this time?

I guess I’m hung up on the federal government today.

FEMA has asked residents of N’Orleans to raise their houses 3 feet, or face missing out on federal aid set aside for rebuilding. Considering the process would cost the average resident about 50 or 60,000 dollars, that’s a pretty tall order. On one hand, I don’t think the federal government should always be forced to pick up the tab in the wake of disasters like this - but on the other hand, they slacked ass on rebuilding the levees for so damn long that it’s pretty much their fault. Then you factor in the impact of our careless administration, and….

Here are some interesting maps from Census data, specifically showing our religious distribution across the country. (If you right click on the images and view them, they won’t be all squished. Obviously these weren’t pro web designers.) Just look at that Baptist south! Daaayum.

Last government link, coming up.

Here’s a MetaFilter post that links you to several government-issued coloring books. My favorite is the “Noxious Weeds Are Everybody’s Problem” coloring book.

Google Calendar has been launched. This is actually quite kick-ass! We plan to implement this or something like it on the Sachsenheim website.

Here’s a to-scale evolutionary timeline. Interesting.

A USB drive that inflates as it fills with data! Adorable, but probably annoying.

Yesterday, Iran announced they have begun enriching uranium. “Experts” say that they are nowhere near making a nuclear bomb, but that won’t stop the US from going directly to the UN Security Council with the hope that some retaliatory measures will be taken. While driving to work I heard this news, and my first thoughts were that this will not go over well with Bush. I truly think he is affected greatly by anything he deems a “challenge” to his throne. During the build-up to the Iraq war (which sure didn’t last long), you could almost watch him losing his patience in the face of even the most constructive criticism. Given that there are already reports that military options for Iran are being considered, I can only hope that they won’t continue to provoke him. Not because I think Iran is becoming a legitimate threat, but because we all know that the Bush cartel can turn a baseless assumption into grounds for military conflict.

Dick Cheney threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ opening game, and was met with, according to reports, more boos than cheers! You just gotta love that.

Google hasn’t yet made an announcement, but they were just issued a patent for a voice-controlled search. So sometime down the road, we’ll all be barking commands at our machines. Meh.

Here are the 2006 Webby nominees. Might be some good sites to discover on there.

I want this treehouse. Bad.

Couple of looks at some mainstream items here. Firstly, i’d like to recommend Celia Farber’s recent exposition of the suppressed HIV≠AIDS hypothesis, which Harper’s has kindly (finally) posted on their site. It’s a long read, which i hope you understand means i’m only posting it because it’s not to be missed. Farber’s reputation in the scientific-political-pharmapseudical establishment is that of rancid dogshit, which is one way to tell that she must be onto something. If you have any interest in the creepy, clandestine inhumane bullshit that supports the trillion-dollar AIDS industry, please give this a look. Don’t forget to check out the notes, either.

Then we’ve got Thomas Powers reviewing a recent book by James Risen, one of the NY Times reporters who broke the domestic-spying story last year. Turns out that Risen was ready to run the story in October 2004 (yes, pre-”election”), but was dissuaded by Times brass to hold off until late December — this, from an organ that nominally supported the other “candidate”! This is just one of dozens of gems Powers turns up in his critique. Well written and not without requisite indignance. If i may quote:

“How long the war will last, who will ‘win,’ and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, the president decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press, and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.

“Explaining this fact is not going to be easy.”

On Saturday, right after I returned from the West Side Market, I got a call from Takeaway, letting me know that for some odd reason, the ancient Variety Theatre on Lorain Ave. was open to the public. I promptly mounted my trusty steed, and got down there as fast as I could.

Welcome to the Variety Theatre! The theatre was constructed in 1927, and was used for a variety of purposes. (And here you thought they called it the Variety for no reason.)

This is the lobby, where you’d pick up your snacks and whatnot.

As you can see, their menu selections have changed dramatically. Actually, it appears they’re now using the menu to delegate tasks in reconstructing the place.

I walked in the lobby and down to the front, and then turned back towards where I came. The place is freakin HUGE! All of the seats are pushed together, as you can see in a later photo, but it supposedly had 1550 seats on the 1st floor and 350 on the balcony!

Here is the view from the balcony. I know, these pictures are terrible. My camera was loaded with pictures that I didn’t have time to download to the computer, so I just used my cell phone. Ah well.

Another view from the balcony.

Here’s the projector room, which still has a bunch of equipment laying around.

Finally, the Minut-Bun. Takeaway and I were wondering what the weird metal things on top were for, until I noticed the slot cut into the bun on the front of the machine. Those slots fit onto the bun warmers on top, while your (undoubtedly) delicious BBQ meat slow-cooked in the tubs below. Talk about ingenuity!

I hope you enjoyed this tour of the dilapidated yet awesome Variety Theatre.

Here’s a little more info on the topic:
Historic & Notable Landmarks
Cinema Treasures