Day: May 10, 2005

A grenade was thrown in front of President Bush during his trip in Georgia; it didn’t go off; no injuries. (h/t The Political Teen)

MORE: MSNBC calls it a ‘device’.

A device, possibly a hand grenade, was thrown toward the stage on which President Bush addressed 300,000 cheering Georgians on Tuesday, but it was not discovered until after the president’s appearance, NBC News has learned.

ABC News:

Local police told the Secret Service the device was thrown as Bush spoke in Freedom Square in Tblisi, the Georgian capital. The device hit someone and fell to the ground about 100 feet away from the stage, the Secret Service said.

The Secret Service said it was unaware of any disturbance until it was informed of the incident by Georgian police.

The greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World announces a new tour. Thumbing their nose at Father Time, Mick (the man is 62 years old), Keith (61), Charlie (63) and Ron (the baby, at 57 years) wowed NYC by playing ‘Start Me Up’ – the first time they’ve performed live at a press conference since 1975.

If you are, be sure to read the 25 pieces of advice posted by John Hawkins. Each point is important.

Just one thing amongst the hundreds of things that don’t exist.

Whiplash, the cowboy monkey.

According to the website, Whiplash is a 17-year-old Capuchin Monkey. Despite his monkey heritage of climbing trees and swinging on branches, Whiplash is a true Cowboy, he rides the range herding and rounding up sheep along with his trusty steed, an imported Border Collie from Scotland. Whiplash loves the Cowboy Way, he travels from city to city displaying his cowboy skills as he demonstrates the “proper” way to herd livestock. Even though Whiplash’s riding skills are unchallenged and his herding skills unmatched, he never misses a chance to let the monkey come out in him. While the dog is running full blast he will hang off to the side, pick up dirt, pet the dog or even take the saddle from side to side mimicking an Indian Hideaway, all the while in complete control of the situation.

They may end up here, at the found footage festival, for all to see. (QuickTime Req.)

The truth finally comes out…PETA Kills!

Anyone familiar with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) knows that its activists complain bitterly about meat eating, livestock farming, biomedical research, and every other sensible use of animals by humankind. Hooking a striped bass, says PETA, ought to be a crime. And raising a chicken for food? Forget about it. PETA’s philosophy is built around the idea of “total animal liberation,” a strange utopian vision that requires us to treat animals as our equals. But PETA, it turns out, doesn’t practice what it preaches. This weekend the Center for Consumer Freedom unveiled a gigantic billboard in New York City’s famed Times Square to announce that PETA kills animals.

What color eyes will your children have? Use the Eye Calculator to find out. I’ve got kids, and this test rightly pegged them.

(BTW: This page enters position # 9 on my list of why the web is sooooo cool.)

What do you know about your moral intuitions? Take a quiz and find out something about yourself. I took it, and the results were as follows:

Your Moralizing Quotient is: 0.67
Your Interference Factor is: 0.60
Your Universalizing Factor is: 0.75

So, what does this mean?

Your Moralizing Quotient is an aggregate measure of your tendency to condemn the actions described in these scenarios as morally wrong. A score of 1.00 indicates a fully moralising position. A score of 0.00 is a fully permissive response.

Your Interference Factor is an aggregate measure of your tendency to judge the actions described here as being the legitimate target of societal interference in the form of prevention or punishment. A score of 1.00 indicates that you think that every act described in these scenarios is subject to societal interference. A score of 0.00 indicates that you think that these acts are essentially a private matter, and that societal interference is inappropriate.

Your Universalizing Factor is an aggregate measure of your tendency to judge moral wrongdoing in universal terms. A score of 1.00 means that every time you have determined one of the acts depicted in these scenarios to be morally wrong, you have universalized the judgement of moral wrong doing; that is, you have indicated that the act is wrong regardless of prevailing cultural norms and social conventions. A score of 0.00, on the other hand, means that where you see moral wrong in the acts depicted in these scenarios, you have not once universalised the judgement of moral wrongdoing; that is, you have indicated that whether an act is to be thought of as wrong is largely a matter of social norms, and that it is quite possible that what is wrong in one culture may not be wrong in another. A score of -1 means that you saw no moral wrong in any of the activities depicted in these scenarios, and so it is not possible for this activity to determine the extent to which you see moral wrongdoing in universal terms.

The results are pretty dead on as they describe me. How about you? Take the quiz and see for yourself.

(h/t Marginal Revolution)

That’s what I did when I read this headline from the Boston Herald.

Centrist Dean urges Mass. Dems to Unify

That’s centrist Howard Dean…Scream Dean…Ha ha ha ha ha.

Talk about an oxymoron! My nostrils still ache from the snort.