Which Battlestar Galactica character are you?

Entertaining* quiz here.

My results:

Created by BuddyTV

*well, entertaining for some of us geektards anyway

Fiddling while Rome burns, as usual

Dan Froomkin is right. George Bush's continued cockiness in the face of economic downturn, endless war, and awful poll numbers is just "inexplicable." In his column today, Froomkin quotes from a Roll Call interview with Bush ("We have more debt, but we've also got more assets") and reminds us of the 2004 press conference when Bush was unable to come up with a single mistake he had made when asked.

Yeah, that was pretty weird, wasn't it? I mean, that's the first "tricky" question kids learn to answer at a job interview! "What's your biggest weakness? Have you ever made a mistake, and how did you handle it?"

But remember, Bush has never really had a "job interview." Born in the boardroom, thinks he rocked the interview, to paraphrase Jim Hightower.

Waterboarding...cows?

California plant accused of torturing unfit cows
Wed Jan 30, 2008

By Russell Blinch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Humane Society said on Wednesday a California slaughterhouse was using a range of torture including waterboarding to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ultimately ended up in school lunch programs.

But do the cows retain habeas cow-us rights in this slaughterhouse?

Sorry, that was inappropriately facetious. I don't know what is most disturbing: that these animals are being treated in this way, that kids may be eating sick cows, or that the public now understands the meaning of "waterboarding" without additional explanation.

But it gets worse.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said he was convinced there was no health risk involved but the matter was being investigated. "First of all, this issue is taken very seriously by the USDA employees responsible for this area. Obviously, there is a full investigation and inspection going on today."

Hah. If it was DOJ, they'd be writing up opinions about why it is OK to torture cows, not that America would ever do so.

Defeating the plastic bags of death

Plastic grocery bags have been revealed as such a scourge of the environment that municipalities like San Francisco and retailers like Whole Foods have been halting their use entirely. That's great for the People's Republic of SF and regular Whole Foods shoppers, but the rest of us have to take matters into our own hands.

A few months ago this blogger's household resolved to cease or at least greatly reduce its use of plastic bags. So we bought a bunch of reuseable grocery bags and repurposed some of my many canvas totes, and got to work implementing the new no-plastic policy. Results have been mixed, though generally positive--but I'm coming to realize that going plastic-free is not as hassle-free as it sounds.

The main problem is that store clerks are trained to be pretty quick on the draw when it comes to plastic bags. In grocery stores, the simple solution is to put your reusable bags on the conveyer belt first, ahead of your groceries. This works about 90% of the time.

In drugstores and corner markets, you have to alert the clerk way ahead of time (like, before you put your items down on the counter) that you won't be needing a bag. About half the time I get a bag anyway, whether through misunderstanding or through the clerk's unstoppable bagging reflex.

My favorite was the time I said, mid-bagging, "oh, no, I won't need a bag. Use it for the next person!" and had my request half-honored when the clerk removed my items from the plastic bag—then chucked it in the trash.

Seems like the real task, in absence of a legal ban, is sending retailers the message that it's worth it to train their staff to ask before bagging, even though it adds to transaction time.

Economic stimulus, umm, package

Magazine Estimates Britney Spears Is Worth $120 Million to Economy (ABC News)

Rough week at the City Paper?

Color me unimpressed with the Washington City Paper's cover "story" this week. The topic: the public forums at which locals overwhelmingly opposed Mayor Fenty's plan to close 23 neighborhood schools.

The article includes about five hundred words by Erik Wemple, followed by a montage of quotes (in varying point sizes) and photos from the forums. Looks like a scrapbook; reads like somebody got lazy and just filed his notes instead of synthesizing and analyzing the information and stringing it together into a story.

Sigh, it's so hot and cold at our local alternative weekly. I'd take another Eastern Market arson investigative piece any day.

Grey Lady harshes on Giuliani

Today the editors of the New York Times endorsed Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and McCain for the Republican nomination.

They also took the opportunity to discuss, at length, why they passed over hizzoner Rudy Giuliani.

Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani's arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn't share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city's and the country's nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Ouch!

Blogging cable TV --as art

Wouldn't it be nice to write for Slate and get paid to obsess over The Wire all day?

It would, and Jeff Goldberg and David Plotz do it well. If you're a Wire fan I think you'll enjoy their back-and-forth, and especially their reflections on the current season's newsroom plotline.

"[LA Times publisher] David Hiller is the Marlo Stanfield of daily journalism." You're killing us here.

Speaking of Heath Ledger

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS will apparently be picketing Heath Ledger's funeral to protest--posthumously, I guess--his appearance in Brokeback Mountain. Because, in the words of the press release, "God hates f*gs! and f*g enablers!" (via Jezebel)

Wow. You know who God really hates? Assholes.

PS--Did I really just have to censor a church flyer to comport with this blog's standards of decency? Sheesh.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

The news of Heath Ledger's death (WP) has made me profoundly sad...he had such promise as an actor. He was stunning in his taciturn role in Brokeback Mountain. The split with Michelle Williams seemed so fraught. What happened there? And he seemed to really love his little daughter. Bummer. Hope he is in a happier place.

:(

A moral message from Hollywood?

Like Rick Santorum, many of us have noticed the rash of movies on the "girl goes through with unwanted pregnancy" theme. Knocked Up, Juno, Waitress, to name a few. Is there some kind of political message here? Are these movies tapping into something changing in our culture?

Nope. I'm with Christopher Orr at TNR--it's just that "girl goes through with unwanted pregnancy, with hilarious results" makes a better, tenser story than "girl has quiet abortion to terminate unwanted pregnancy" or, worse yet, "girl avoids unwanted pregnancy through the consistent use of appropriate birth control techniques."

For the good of our young people, I'd personally like to see more depiction of the realities of birth control in the movies. (Especially if they could make it as chuckle-inducing as the condom scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.) Films include sex and the crassest sexual references all the time, but how often is the use of a condom actually depicted or suggested? Do we ever see female characters use or allude to the use of oral contraceptives to prevent pregnancy within a committed relationship? No, we do not.

What happened to American Apparel?

I used to shop a lot at American Apparel, as one might guess from my rainbow of identical hoodies. Comfortable, stylish, sweatshop-free casual wear at a reasonable price--that's what I live for. But passing by the downtown DC store recently, I noticed an awful lot of lame going on. Actually, Freudian slip; I meant lame'. Stretch lame'.

The only people I've ever seen successfully pull off stretch lame' are 15-year-old competitive gymnasts. Are you really asking us to wear this? I'll have to go with Jezebel on this one.

American Apparel Will Make You Look Like a Fat Hooker (Jezebel)

We're back!

That would be the editorial "we," of course. After a holiday hiatus, Antigravitas is back in the blogging saddle. (Blogging saddle--you can get them at Brookstone, right? Or maybe through SkyMall.)