The Far Center

This is the end, my friends

2006-06-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the odds of the world ending on Tuesday, 6/6/06 are 100,000 to 1 according to Vegas oddsmakers who, simply because of the fact that they're dealing with lots of money and lots of potentially angry men who hate to lose money, are often right.
Now according to the National Weather Service, the odds are 400,000 to 1 (I took the more conservative estimate) of you being struck by lightning within the next year.
Therefore, it's four times more likely that the world will end on Tuesday than it is that you will be struck by lightning in the next year.
Now several people have been struck by lightning twice in one year. One of them is Jan Michelini.
Michelini works in the movie industry.
Coincidentally, Michelini was struck twice while helping to make to make a religious film, one with apocalyptical implications.
This movie was The Passion of the Christ.
Anyway, the odds of getting struck once are 400,000 to 1, so the odds of it happening twice within the year, as it happened to Jan Michelini, are 400,000 X 400,000 for a whopping total of 160,000,000,000 to 1. Imagine, the world ending on Tuesday is 1,600,000 times more likely than getting struck by lightning twice in one year.

Michelini was Mel Gibson's assistant director on The Passion . Gibson also was in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. In that movie, Gibson's character asks, "Is it possible that there are no coincidences?" I say, Yes, Mr. Gibson, it is all too possible.

The world's gonna end today. Put your money on it.

They call it public service announcements, I call it stupidity

2006-06-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

The New Republic brought to my attention several videos created by conservative think tank The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which apparently has heavy ties to the oil industry. The first two will be TV spots aired in several major U.S. cities in response to Al Gore's new film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Watch them and laugh.

The first video, "Energy", argues that we breathe out carbon dioxide (featuring a cute little white girl blowing dandelions, screenshot below), plants breathe it in, and industry depends on its output, so how can it be bad? No, it is the politicians that are trying to ban carbon dioxide who are bad. Bad liberals! It concludes with what I think has jingle potential:
"Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life."

See the flying fluffies! See the pigtails! Does this look like the makings of a global catastrophe to you?

If CEI can make "Energy", then I can make:
"Wetness"
Voice-over: Water-We and the rest of life on Earth depend on it (Footage of lush tobacco fields in the rain). We enjoy ourselves by swimming in it (Footage of Jack Abramoff and a Congressman lounging by a pool aboard a cruise ship). We wash ourselves in it to stay clean and sanitary (Footage of oil drillers washing off the residue of a hard day's work). But these nasty liberal politicians are trying to rebuild levees around New Orleans to keep the water out. Does that make any sense?
Water: They call it natural disaster, we call it life.

The second video, "Glaciers", is part of the same campaign and has the same slogan, but also claims that scientific studies have shown ice sheets to be growing, not shrinking. I will leave others of more scientific expertise to deal with that one fully, although I can say the two or three articles featured are probably the only ones to contain that thesis OR they have been taken out of context big time.

The third video, "An Inconvenient Story" is almost as hilarious. It points out that although Gore has been preaching restraint in fossil fuel consumption, ironically he has been producing an astronomical amount of carbon dioxide by travelling around the country to exhibit his environmental sanctimony! Walk the walk, Al! Of course, this would mean that Gore was riding all those airplanes by himself (the video even has footage of a crop duster that Gore apparently took!). And, if Gore was really serious about saving the environment, he should put his money where his mouth is and bicycle from his speaking engagements in New York to his movie's premiere in L.A.!

I mean, come on, America.

willin' for a drillin'

2006-05-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

House Votes to Allow Drilling in Alaska Refuge

They finally did it. The people wanted oil when prices went up, the people wanted blood when prices stayed up, and now the House is merely giving America its fish instead of teaching it how to fish.

So here it is: If oil is there, we will compromise our treasures so that we won't have to compromise our consumption. What's next?

Old Faithful?

Lincoln's forehead?

Your own backyard?

Query: What are the odds of this happening?

I'm hoping the Senators stay a little more reasonable.

The East's way of tackling the controversy.

2006-05-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

How Asians feel about The Da Vinci Code

One of those blah articles except for this snippet:
'The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which isn't governed by the Vatican, accused the film's makers of "...insulting the feelings of clergy and followers,"...The church urged the country's more than 10 million faithful to avoid it.'

Upon reading this, I had a mental image of a line of little pouting Chinese bishops crossing their arms and saying, "Lon Howard and Dan Blown bad men for hurting our feerings. You no watch! You no watch!"

Ya can't make this stuff up...

2006-04-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

Apr 4, 11:47 PM EDT

Homeland agent arrested in seduction case
By MICHELLE SPITZER Associated Press Writer

"hey there. asl?"

MIAMI (AP) -- The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said.

Full story here

Screw violation of privacy and rights of the accused. These guys are coming after the children.

The children!!!

Reconquista

2006-03-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry that my first post had to come in these troubled times. I have a major term paper due soon, but this immigration debate has forced my hand...er, pen...er, keyboard.

Being a foreign-born resident myself (my family came to this country from South Korea when I was 3), and being good friends with several illegal immigrants, I immediately opposed H.R. 4437 and had a serious problem with the provision that criminalized those who "encouraged" illegals to stay. I supported the student walk-outs and mass protests. The Mexican flags were pretty stupid and reeked of reconquista, but I personally had little problem with it. I was willing to join a demonstration. I even agreed with Cardinal Mahony's calls for civil obedience.

Then there was this:

This little j-peg is from the Whittier Daily News. Students from surrounding high schools such as El Rancho marched to Montebello High School and ran the Mexican flag up above an upside down American flag, not only symbolizing desecration but also school official's loss of control over the school.

If that weren't enough, there was also this:

From the Dallas Morning News, the caption reads: Michelle Marquez (left), a student at Lamar Middle School in Irving, was criticized for having a U.S. flag during an immigration protest at Kiest Park in Dallas. "My heart is with the Mexican flag and Mexico but I'm standing on American ground and I'm Mexican-American," she said.

So on the behalf of foreign-born residents of America, I urge these demonstrators to stop waving the flags of their home countries, and especially to stop desecrating or criticizing the American flag in any way. There are those of us who wish to be Americans, and even though we find some parts of the immigration policy to be unjust and worthy of disobedience, we will not even think of undermining America. You are doing more harm to this cause than any Minutemen ever could. Your actions are doing to our name what al-Qaida did to Islam on 9/11. Already many Americans have been angered by these scenes, and they feel compelled to round up every last one of us and either punish us or send us back. So please, for our sake, stop.

We need a Martin Luther King, Jr. type of figurehead, one who will emphasize the suffering and victimization of immigrants instead of shouting ethno-centric chants.

*Thanks to Michelle Malkin's blog for putting all the information together (and hosting the pictures). I just put up the response.