Lunar

Friday marked the 43 anniversary of the first lunar landing.  Here, in commemoration, is the long lost audio:

Bitter Laughter

I found this by total accident: a fairly long wikipedia page of Russian political jokes.

A few examples:

A knock knock joke about KGB. The "knocker" knocks on the "knockee"'s door (the joke receiver). The door answerer asks the questions "who is it". The knocker replies stating that he is the KGB, (knocker only says "KGB"). The answerer replies by saying "KGB who" as with all knock knock jokes. The knocker slaps the answerer before allowing the answerer to finish saying the previous line of "KGB who". Then the knocker yells "WE WILL ASK THE QUESTIONS!"

Or

A frightened man came to the KGB and said, "My talking parrot disappeared."
KGB: "This is not our case. Go to the criminal police."
Man: "Excuse me. Of course I know that I have to go to them. I am just here to tell you officially that I disagree with that parrot."

I think there's a fairly good chance Zizek himself wrote some of this.

taping toy guns to trees

Al Gore, taking it to the next level.

Gitmo goodness

Gitmo news fron the NYT:

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that allegations against an ethnic Chinese man held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims, according to the decision released Monday.

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its allegations against a detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a Lewis Carroll character: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

But wait for it. Here's the punchline of the story:

American officials have said that they cannot return Mr. Parhat and 16 other Uighur detainees at Guantánamo to China for fear of mistreatment.

What do you have against baboons?

Eddie Izzard does biblical history. Via Atheist Media Blog.

It's just silly!

Via Gerry.

Oh wait, I am the law

You probably don't need me to be the one to post this, but I'll go ahead and do it any way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the second and final installment of Pearl:

Tuesday Links

I'm thrice an uncle,

as of 12:36 central time yesterday.

I present Samuel Wientzen Schafer, and a kickin' batch of links.



Boingboing and my friend Amar are linking to a paper on class division, as seen through Myspace and Facebook.

Gerry Canavan has got a fun link to The Perry Bible Fellowship that's worth checking out.


Also, Drag City Records is promoting Neil Hamburger, who is touring the south right now. Here's a clip of the man on the Jimmy Kimmel show, as well as one of him telling off a couple of hecklers at a show. Warning: neither of the clips are work-safe, and the first contains the crassest Michael Jackson joke I have ever heard, which is really saying something.