and now there's just no denying that you're an a$$hole...

So, we have a new national treasure on our hands. Conservatives, fed up with the "Neutral Point of View" policy of Wikipedia, decided to set up "Conservapedia", because let's face it, in the immortal words of Stephen Colbert, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".

Why Conservapedia, you ask? I'll let them tell you:

On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America.

Yes, a set of facts that explicitly favors one religion and one country...not that that should introduce some serious cognitive dissonance. From their more detailed list of complaints:

9. Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored. [ed. note: That's because there are no "facts' that contradict evolution, and you, Conservapedia's founders, are flippin' wingnut idiots!]

13. Often key facts are missing from Wikipedia entries in favor of meaningless detail. Wikipedia's entry about Indentured Servitude is massive, but it omits any reference to Bacon's Rebellion, which was the turning point for the use of indentured servants in the New World! [ed. note: Then add it, dumbass! By design, anyone can do so! ]

18. Wikipedia's article on Feudalism is limited to feudalism in Europe and does not mention the feudal systems that developed independently in Japan and India. [ed. note. And your point is....what, exactly?!?!]

Of course, there is an obvious problem with this approach: anyone can edit pages. If you restrict only to members, you don't get enough content generated. Thus, liberals have been having a field day, and some Conservatives make things easier by being nuts themselves. Here are some amusing entries:

1984: "1984 was a book by George Orwell. 1984 describes an alternate history in which Oceania (Australia) is at war with Eurasia. It is a utopian book because it talks about a place where everyone is watched over by Big Brother, who makes sure people are doing what they are supposed to.

The protagonist is Winston Smith. There is something about rats at the end, but it is confusing. The end is probably supposed to be ambiguous. " (since changed, but that was fantastic!)

Islam: "Because Islam is an uncomplicated religion to live by, it is sure to continue in its popularity around the world." I like how this is now a verifiable fact.

Crusades: "It seems that the Christian armies lost sight of our goals to bring and spread love and Christianity along the way, got drunk with power and glory and decided to pillage towns and murder people (note that this is breaking many commandments “thou shalt not murder.” “thou shalt not steal”)

The Crusades went against our Christian teachings and the words of Christ, “love thy neighbor as thyself” “turn the other cheek” etc. " Umm, "our goals" and "our teachings". Again, I'll remind you, this is an encyclopedia.

Seriously, thank the Lord for wingnuts. As evidenced by Fox's attempt to emulate the Daily Show, they may not be funny when they try, but they certainly are most other times....

You can't get what you want, you can't want what you get. Desire's a fire with big red eyes and it'll leave you hungry

One of the great mysteries in American life was answered today. In the case of Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President Bush, was he an actual idiot in real life or did he just play one on TV? Apparently, it's the former. From Slate's coverage of the Libby trial:

Turns out Fleischer saw a story in the Washington Post suggesting that anyone who revealed Valerie Plame's identity might be subject to the death penalty. And he freaked.

Unfortunately, Swopa at the Needlenose blog thinks this might not be quite right, but it's still hilarious, in a "these bastards risked our national security to get revenge on one of the few honest people we had in government and his wife, who was helping to fight arms proliferation until said bastards outed her to the world, and ain't comeuppance quite the raging bitch" kind of way.

Fleischer's plight reminds me of another of life's great mysteries, or at least mysteries to me. Why would anyone want a job where they are basically an extremely prominent peon, a familiar face to millions at a job utterly devoid of actual power to do anything at all? When your superiors ask you to bend rules, the result is almost inevitably a felony, and those same superiors will make sure that when certain excremental products hit the fan, you are the one covered head to toe while they come out smelling like a rose (at least if someone other than Patrick Fitzgerald investigates the case). Why would anyone want a job like this? Sure, ambition can drive people up the job ladder, and the Peter Principle guarantees that everyone rises to the level of their own incompetence, as this administration has proven hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Still, who grows up wishing that they might someday become a felonious peon standing near the centers of actual power without ever being delegated any for themselves? It's not a problem unique to government, of course, as any number of corporate executives have proven over the years.

I blame the morality of large enterprises. Neither the government nor large businesses act in a way that individuals would consider "moral". It's not their job to do so, but we seem to pretend frequently that they will anyway. People are loyal to their employer, even though their employer will fire them the second that they no longer contribute sufficiently to make the shareholders and CFO happy. People are loyal to an administration, even though it's policies will generally fall vastly short of their lofty rhetoric and they will be expected as part of their daily duties to cover this fact up. Frankly, blind loyalty to inanimate entities makes idiots of us all, and what's worse, turns people who would otherwise be relatively harmless putzes into virulent schmucks. And in the end, for what? I know people can justify it, but I simply don't get it. What exactly is it that people need, anyway? Once you've got a significant other, family, and friends with whom to spend your time, a good personal library, a kickass TV with a 5+1 surround sound audio system, high speed internet, and enough cash to afford frequent seafood, periodic entertainment events (sports, theatre, movies, dancing, etc...), and the occasional trip somewhere exotic, what more could a person seriously ask for? I'm not even joking here. If you can get all those things by working no more than 10-11 hours a day, then what exactly is the point of all the extra time (for those who can pull it off in 8/day, my hat is off to you, unless you happened to inherit it...)? I just don't understand ambition.

Catblogger/Jim's Big Ego/Too Hot for TNR (Friday Cat/Concert/Better Know a Blog Blogging #4)

Friday Catblogging

Karina is tuckered out from a long evening spent editing all my spelling errors and grammatical mistakes as I post another blog entry.

Friday's Concert Clip

Today, we'll go with a favorite from my grad school days in Boston. The band is Jim's Big Ego, one of the bands I saw live upward of twenty times. Jim is a cool guy, a great songwriter, and something of a visionary. Their last album was released under a Creative Commons license, allowing listeners to do basically what they like with it, including redistribute it, use it to make videos, or sample it into other forms. You can buy either the CD version or the downloadable e-album here. Back in the day, he used to post the band's songs to Napster, before the big fish decided to kill it off, and he also designs websites.

In honor of my very busy week, here's a youtube video for Stress, his ode to caffeine, more caffeine, and getting away from it all, set to video with clips from the anime series Cowboy Bebop. I cannot begin to tell you how funny the song is. Listen to it right now.

Also hilarious, especially as a historical document, is the flash animation he himself made for Y2K Hooray, his song about the end of the world. Little did we know that armageddon would skip January 1, 2000 and hit us instead on November 7 that year.

Finally, for those who want an extended sample, check out this free concert recording from archive.org, and check out the free stuff at his website.

Better Know a Blog

Today we'll go with the first of several bloggers who also write for The American Prospect, America's finest liberal political magazine. He is Spencer Ackerman, and his blog is called Too Hot for TNR, in honor of The New Republic, which canned him because he's not a crazy neoconservative Likudnik hawk. Rather, he is one of the finest journalists we have in the country on matters of Middle East foreign policy. I particularly recommend the first story he wrote after joining the staff at TAP, in which he argues that we should make human rights the centerpiece of American foreign policy, rather than democracy promotion (see Iraq for an example of the latter not working so well just yet). See also why he predicts that the current escalation "surge" "augmentation" will fail.

Lest anyone think he is just another boring reporter, I should relate the story that he once tried to prove to the yahoos at TNR that one could be against the Iraq war but still hate terrorists by volunteering to “skullfuck” the corpse of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to establish his anti-terrorist bona fides. He's also a courageous guy, who signed up for an embedded tour of Iraq for stories that will appear at some point in TAP, The Nation, or a similar as yet undetermined source. Basically, he's a foul-mouthed guy with a fantastic grasp of Iraqi policy, and he's more than proving that at least in the case of The New Republic, age does not bring the slightest drop of wisdom. Check out his blog and you will learn some shit.