Osama bin Laden, who is increasingly becoming irrelevant, has released another audio message through the internet.

This message concentrates on the publishing of the Mohammed cartoons in the Dutch paper Jyllands-Posten from 2006 (which I have posted on previously). Strangely, it criticizes the Pope regarding these cartoons.

The timing of this message is also peculiar, coming on the 5-year anniversary of the Iraq war, but a full 2 years after the Mohammed cartoons.

So in defense of freedom of speech and of the West against attempts by Islamofascists to impose their beliefs on us, I hereby republish one of the Mohammed cartoons:

Sigh, sometimes real life is so absurd that fiction just can't hold its own. Enter stage right: an aid to former NJ governor James McGreevey says that he participated in 3-ways with McGreevey and and McGreevey's wife. This all happened before the governor admitted to the public that he is gay, the aid alleges.

What I find humorous, though, is this following tidbit from the article:

The aide, Theodore Pedersen, said he and the couple even had a nickname for the weekly romps, from 1999 to 2001, that typically began with dinner at T.G.I. Friday's and ended with a threesome at McGreevey's condo in Woodbridge.

They called them "Friday Night Specials," according to Pedersen.

T.G.I. Friday's? Really??

And all of this follows the mess that New York is facing with its governors and their infidelity. I must admit, I'm baffled by all of this.

Pretty cool photo from CNET News.com:

England's Royal College of Psychiatrists, after considering new studies that show a closer link between mental illness and a woman's choice to have an abortion, has recommended that clinics include this data in their consent pamphlets to women considering abortion.

Personally I am unsurprised by these studies. The choice to end a life, no matter how that choice is hidden by language such as "termination" (death) and "fetus" (unborn baby), has to be taxing on a person's psyche. I can never know the strain that a woman faces when she has an unwanted pregnancy, but to deny the emotional impact of having an abortion would be to deny human nature.

So now that it's Obama and McCain in the general election (see my earlier post), what do we know about the political relationship between these two men? I recalled an incident that occurred a couple of years ago regarding ethics reform, but I couldn't recall the exact details.

Thankfully, Michael Crowley at The New Republic, has detailed just that. What happened was that McCain sent Obama a sharply-worded letter criticizing what McCain felt was disingenuousness in Obama's bipartisan overtures regarding an ethics reform package before the Senate.

Anyways, if that was a taste of things to come in the general election campaigns, then this could shape up to be quite an interesting match of personal maverickism (yeah I just made that word up). Definitely check out Crowley's column if you have time.

In honor of National π (pi) Day, I present to you π (pi):

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944...

That's 60 digits from memory, though I have to admit that it took me a bit to recall it this time. [Hat-tip: Emperor Dan]

So this past Sunday, nearly all of America turned their clocks forward an hour to go on Daylight Savings Time yet again. New studies suggest that contrary to the purpose of DST, it actually results in a net energy-use increase.

Congress expanded DST by several weeks and thus this was the earliest we ever turned our clocks forward. However, Congress also charged the executive branch to research the exact energy savings of DST, so as to determine whether the longer DST period should remain.

While the government has yet to release its conclusions, other surveys have already been released. The latest is a study performed by a Univ. of Cal. Santa Barbara professor. That study looks at Indiana, which just adopted DST last year, thus making it a great real world case study. What did it say? Energy-use increased, not decreased, as a result of DST.

So I'll reassert my call from numerous times in the past: let's, as a nation, end this stupid time shifting farce.

The United States and Europe should join together and lead a global boycott of the Chinese Summer Olympics, and here's why:

• The Chinese Communist government repeatedly has committed human rights and political offenses against the people of that great country; the government has never apologized for the atrocity it perpetrated at Tian'an men Square; attending the Beijing Olympics legitimizes and supports the communist government.

• Beijing authorities have destroyed entire neighborhoods of the city and forcibly displaced poor residents, sometimes to camps outside the city, in order to make the city appear cleaner.

• Beijing authorities have rounded up both dogs and cats and taken them to warehouses to die. In the case of the cats, they have spread a false rumor that cats carry a disease that can spread to humans, in order to get people to get rid of their cats on their own.

• Chinese communist officials have increased political-based arrests in order to silence protest during the Olympics.

• Having knowledge of these recent acts by the Chinese government, attendance at the summer Olympics amounts to a tacit approval thereof.

China so desperately wants to impress the world with these Olympic games. The facilities China has built for the games are visually stunning (though they are designed by European, not Chinese architects). I have no doubt that the ceremony at the games will be magnificent as well.

But in its zeal to impress the world, the Chinese government has repeated some of the abuses for which it has been condemned in the past. If much of the world boycotts these olympics, we will send a message loud and clear to Beijing: what impresses us is respect for human and political rights, not city blocks free of cats, dogs, and poor people.

...

Update: The U.S. State Department, in its annual survey of human rights around the globe, yet again classifies China as one of the world's worst abusers. It also cites forced relocations, including those in Beijing regarding the Olympics.

How can we in good conscience attend? The only way I may even approach supporting would be to attend the games but use them as a platform of protest and to spark internal reform there.

The question before the court is whether or not, under that state's and the federal constitution, California's legislature may proscribe same-sex marriage.

The court heard 4 hours of oral argument and appeared to be divided on the issue. If it rules that equal protection guarantees a right for same-sex couples to wed, it would become only the second court in the nation to do so (the other being Massachusetts).

California statute currently forbids gay marriage but provides many benefits typical of domestic partnerships and/or civil unions.

The more that comes out about Obama's positions, the more the nation will realize that he's a liberal not unlike all other Democrats--in fact, he's more liberal than most.

Here's what Obama had to say about selecting federal judges:

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.

Now I, of course, have no problem with judges having empathy, but that should not be the top criteria for federal jurisprudence. How about we get judges that uphold and protect the language of the Constitution? The problem with taking a subjective aspirationalist approach to jurisprudence, as Obama seems to advocate, is that even if it is well-meaning, it always possesses the ability to harm individuals and society at least as much as it could help, in addition to introducing doubt and politics into the nation's highest law.

This interactive graph in the New York Times is utterly fascinating. Going back to 1986, it shows the box office returns of every major movie made, showing how much money they made over time.

The graph neatly shows how Oscar-contenders and higher quality movies in general have more enduring power than blockbusters which peak early.