Sure, it happened in the Netherlands, but I'll bet that some eager activist groups in the US are salivating over the prospect of filing similar charges here. Excerpt:

The Dutch animal protection agency demanded prosecution Tuesday for the shooting of a sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record.
The ill-fated bird flew into an exposition center Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden, where employees of TV company Endemol NV had worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes.

The common house sparrow — of a species on the national endangered list — was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle.

"Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to public health or a crop," said agency spokesman Niels Dorland. "That was not the case."

"I might add: Is it really necessary to kill a bird that knocked over a few dominoes for a game?" he asked.

Dorland said the agency plans to submit the case to national prosecutors.

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I was feeling pretty good this week. The President, along with many other prominent GOP'ers, finally started rebutting the BUSH LIED! meme. Add the Alito nomination to the mix and the GOP appeared to be on the rise. Then the Senate Republicans decided to give a vote of no-confidence on the war in Iraq.

Guys, here's a suggestion: go fuck yourselves. And start packing your bags. I now believe that 2006 will top 1994 as a political perfect storm.

Update: Only 13 Republican nays? The Party of the Stupid just became the Party of the Irrelevant. If those feckless sphincter muscles from the GOP aisle of the Senate think that this storm will pass, they're right. What they don't seem to grasp is that it might possibly move Republicans to permanent minority status. Us conservative/libertarian types have put up with a lot of crap from the GOP if only because Team Elephant appeared to be the only party serious about the War on Terror. If, like yesterday, Republicans act in the same manner as Democrat, voters will stay home in droves.

Via Hugh Hewitt comes this telling quote: Bill Frist is dead to me.

Look at the roll call of the vote. "Nay" votes from McCain, Kennedy, Kerry and Leahy, but not from George Allen or Rick Santorum, or Bill Frist? If you'll excuse me, I'm headed to the window to see if a certain group of Horsemen are riding by.

Update: McQ has more.

Final update: The Puppy Blender states, "It's almost as if the Republicans want to go back to being the minority party."

You mean that they aren't?

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It's time for the 2005 Weblog Awards. Nominations are now open.

Personal request: someone-I have no idea who, because it sure wasn't me- nominated me last year for, I believe, best humor blog. Notice the 2004 Weblog Award Finalist image in the sidebar. It sure would be nice to be nominated again this year....

Okay, I can be tacky and nominate myself. Feel free to move about the cabin now.

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Harvey has a doozy of an assignment this week: Is the Mainstream Media patriotic? Why or why not?

Good: Investigative journalists dig up some documents that prove Bush failed to meet his National Guard requirements.
Bad: The documents are such ridiculous forgeries faxed from a Kinkos that the journalists's own experts didn't support them.
Good: Kinkos profits for 2004 go through the roof.
Worse: "Journalists" still claiming the forgeries are authentic one year later.
Good: Dan Rather and Mary Mapes continue to provide material for late night talk show hosts.

Good: ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN provide round the clock coverage of our troops in Iraq.
Bad: That coverage consists of photos of flag-draped coffins or maimed soldiers.

Good: Major networks cover the President's morale building visit to our troops at Thanksgiving.
Bad: The visit is called a crass, politically opportunistic photo op.
Worse: The MSM incorrectly state that Bush used a plastic turkey during the photo op, and harp on "fake" turkey for months.
Good: Manufacturers of plastic turkeys get free publicity.

Good: The press crap themselves to show as many photos as possible of Saddam Hussein's capture.
Bad: Katie Couric and others actually ask whether or not Iraq is safer without Hussein.
Ugly: Many in the press claim that Bush is worse than Saddam.
Good: Katie wore black the day after Saddam's capture, and it really had a slimming effect on her.

Good: After Uday and Qusay get killed during a battle, the MSM show many pictures of the two crapweasels so that they people of Iraq can be certain that Saddam's hellspawn are actually dead.
Bad: MSM spends the next month describing how insensitve the US to Muslims for displaying photos of the deceased.
Good: The little fuckers were still dead.

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Are you reading the Dilbert Blog? If not, you're missing out. Check out this post and its followup.

Sure, Scott Adams makes with the funny every day, but you might not have noticed that the guy can actually write pretty well.

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A sad, sad story, but it had to be told.

Click on the extended entry to see what happened.
more...

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Tim F. over at Balloon Juice posted his weekly Friday beer blogging post. Reading someone else who suffers from the same obsession as me is always a hoot, but I especially like his description of the boiling wort smell from a batch of pumpkin beer. Excerpt:

A short story; bear with me. Picture a freshman dorm in Colorado. Two friends have to run out to the homebrew supplier so itÂ’s up to me to watch ten gallons of boiling, stinking pumpkin beer mash. For those of you who arenÂ’t brewers, thatÂ’s roughly what it would smell like if Halloween died in a hot, sealed room and stayed there for a week. Rachel, a feared RA who loved nothing more than to bust students doing outlawed things like brewing beer, wanders in holding her nose.

“Whad are you doing?”
“Uh, ”
“Cooking dinner.”
“Seembs like a lod…”
“Guests.”
“Whad is dat?”
“...Gazpacho. Ukranian pumpkin stew. It’s a family specialty. Want to try some?”
“Gick.”
“Your loss. Sorry about the smell.”

I like to think that some day in the future she grabbed a waiter at a fine restaurant and declared, “I’ve seen gazpacho, and THAT’S NOT GAZPACHO.” Or something to that effect. The beer was worth the wait.

Tum actually reminds me that I still haven't written the Bottling Your Beer post in my Brewing Your First Beer series. I really want to finish that series and move on to intermediate brewing.

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Cosmic Conservative has a script excerpt from a movie that, while I'm certain I haven't seen it, seems strangely familiar...

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This week, Carnival of the Recipes is hosted by Eric of Myopic Zeal. Lots of tasty recipes there. Sadly, I forgot to submit one. Again. ::sniff::

Anyway, go there and drool.

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Michael Newdow and Cindy Sheehan see a television camera. Who gets to it first? Chuck Shumer, of course.

Looks like Newdow is making a bid to supplant Shumer as the biggest camera whore in the US. He's now filing to have the phrase "In God We Trust" removed from the US currency.

A couple of years ago, I told a friend of mine that it was only a matter of time before someone filed this lawsuit. He told that I was full of shit, that no one would be that big of an asshole. And while my friend may be accurate in his assessment of the quantity of feces my body can hold, he seriously underestimates the enormous size to which walking, talking anuses can grow.

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Tape a chocolate bar to the outside of your microwave. If the chocolate melts you will know that the microwaves are escaping and it is time to have the oven serviced.

A mouse trap, placed on top on of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep.

Old telephone books make ideal personal address books. Simply cross out the names and addresses of people you don't know.

Before attempting to remove stubborn stains from a garment always circle the stain in permanent ink pen so that when you remove the garment from the washing machine you can easily locate the area of the stain and check that it has gone.

Lose weight quickly by eating raw pork and rancid tuna. I found that the subsequent food poisoning enabled me to lose 12 pounds in only 2 days.

Avoid parking tickets by leaving your windshield wipers turned to fast wipe whenever you leave your car parked illegally.

High blood pressure sufferers: Simply cut yourself and bleed for a while, thus reducing the pressure in your veins.

Olympic athletes. Conceal the fact that you have taken performance enhancing drugs by simply running a little slower and letting someone else win.

Heavy smokers: Don't throw away those filters from the end of your cigarettes. Save them up and within a few years you'll have enough to insulate your ceiling.

Create instant designer stubble by sucking a magnet and dipping your chin in a bowl of iron fillings.

X File fans: Create the effect of being abducted by aliens by drinking two bottles of vodka. You'll invariably wake up in a strange place the following morning, having had your memory mysteriously 'erased'.

A sheet of sandpaper makes a cheap and effective substitute for costly maps when visiting the Sahara desert.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Here goes the first installment of Beat the Geek. Here are my picks for this week. Leave your picks in the comments if you think that you can do better than me. I welcome the challenge.

Detroit over Arizona - Detroit is at home and Arizone sucks.

Jacksonville over Baltimore- Ditto

Indy over Houston- Double ditto

KC over Buffalo- Buffalo is at home, but their defense has been ragged this year

NY Giants over Minnesota- Triple ditto pick #1

Chicago over San Francisco- Actually, both teams might lose in this game

Denver over Oakland- A road win for Denver puts them on track for a home playoff game

Carolina over NY Jets- Carolina is my preseason NFC champion and I don't see any reason to change now

Tampa Bay over Washington- This cruddy contest will be forced fed to me via my local Fox affiliate this weekend, which means I'm headed to a sports bar

Atlanta over Green Bay(sorry, Harvey)- Atlanta is pretty good. Green Bay has outgained their opponents and outscored them and somehow they're losing. A lot. Call it a trend and move on. I sure would like to see Favre play for a better team this late in his career, though.

St. Louis over Seattle- Seattle wins this game and I'll believe that they're for real. I don't believe it yet.

Pittsburgh over Cleveland- Pittsburgh is better than the Browns. Much better.

Philadelphia over Dallas- Against all rhyme and reason, I'm picking the Eagles. The TO distraction is gone and the team will pull together, I believe. Remember: Philly won 2 playoff games without Owens last year.

My last 3 weeks I've gone 10-4, 12-2 and 11-3. I won't be surprised if I lose 10 games this week. I don't like these matchups.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Bashing the French, of course.

The following is from an email to Neal Boortz:

AP and UPI reported today that the French government announced that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender". The raise was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France's white flag factory, thereby disabling its military.

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I've ranted on many occassions about the Katie Couric/Matt Lauer/ Tom Brokaw/Dan Rather/CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN/NY Times cabal who keep moaning about the horrid state of the US economy, conveniently ignoring all of the indicators of an amazing, continued expansion. Bizzy Blog adds the proper context:

QUESTION: When is this economy going to some respect?

The economyÂ’s 3.8% third-quarter growth (subject to revision in the coming months) was remarkable, given the storms that occurred during almost the entire final month of the quarter:

Economists had forecast GDP would advance at a 3.6% rate in the July-to-September quarter. The economy has now expanded faster than 3% for 10 straight quarters.

So when was the last time the economy expanded faster than 3% for 10 straight quarters?

It didnÂ’t happen during the 1990s (the longest streak was eight).

It last happened during the 13 quarters from 1Q 1983 through 1Q 1986. Not coincidentally, a president who believed in lowering taxes to stimulate economic growth was in charge the last time it happened.

So despite being at war, despite devastating storms, and despite legislative and regulatory drags on the economy like Sarbanes-Oxley, this has been most consistently growing economy in almost 20 years.

Not only that, the US economy has NEVER had a streak of more than 7 quarters of 3.0% or greater annualized growth at any other time in the 58 years that quarterly GDP statistics have been kept! (besides the ones already mentioned: i.e., the current streak of 10, the 1990s streak of 8, and the 1980s streak of 13–Added Nov. 3 for clarity)

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Fortunately, the aforementioned Overlords won't be in power much longer. My money is that they'll be handed their Minority Party papers sometime in early November, 2006. There is a downside, of course, to this: jackasses like Charlie Rangel and Ted Kennedy will be setting the tone for all economic and environmental decisions made in DC. Then again, I'm not certain that the nation will notice the difference.

Michelle Malkin displays some e-mails from pissed off GOP voters. As for me, I'd say that I'm pissed off, but I'd be lying. I fully expected the GOP to cave on this issue. Why anyone would expect our feckless, cowardly GOP elected officials to finally display any backbone is beyond me.

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Stop by and wish Cal Tech Girl a Happy Birthday, a birthday that she shares with the US Marine Corps, God love 'em.

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But the news is so good, I don't care: Steven Den Beste is back blogging again, this time at Red State. Check out this excerpt in his bio:

Yup, it's me alright. Accept no substitutes.

By the way, please show some couth and don't gush all over the comments.

What is this couth thing, and why is he talking about it?

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The first Avian Flu death was reported in Anaheim, California. Look at the picture in the extended entry. It's horrifying. more...

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Stephen Green typed a masterpiece. Read it all right now.

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Two aliens land in Metro Detroit, and they happen to land next to a gas station. So, the aliens waddle out of their ship and look around.

The first thing they see that resembles a human being is the gas pump. The two aliens approach and the first one says "Earthling, take me to your leader!" Of course he gets no response...

The first alien looks at his buddy then addresses the pump again. "Earthling, I said take me to your leader!" Of course, still no response...

The alien then turns to his buddy and says "If this Earthling doesn't show me some respect and at least acknowledge me, I'm going to blast him!"

At that the second alien replies, "OK. I'm just going to stand down on the next block."

The first Alien looks a little puzzled, but waits for the other to waddle to the next block. He then addresses the pump a third time.

"Earthling take me to your leader!" Still nothing. So the alien then pulls out his ray gun and vaporizes the pump...

The gas station goes up in a huge explosion, blowing the alien all the way down the block to his buddy. He gets up, dusts himself off, and turns to the second Alien. "If you knew that was going to happen why didn't you warn me!?"

The second replies "Well, I didn't know exactly *what* was going to happen. But there's no way I'm gonna' mess with a guy who's dick hangs to the ground, wraps around his body twice, and is still long enough to stick in his left ear."

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