Ozzy’s kid doing Thai Boxing

Ozzy, son get their muay Thai kicks in Pattaya

Superstars Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne – stars of the popular reality television series “The Osbournes”– watched from ringside yesterday as their only son fought in his first muay-Thai bout in Pattaya.

“Fighting Jack” Osbourne donned the muay-Thai mongkon (traditional headband) and boxing gloves to fight against veteran muay-Thai professional “The Man” at the Pattaya Stadium last night.

Norwegian Court Convicts First Woman for Rape

From Reuters/Yahoo News: Norwegian Court Convicts First Woman for Rape

OSLO (Reuters) – A Norwegian court has sentenced a woman to nine months in jail for raping a man, the first such conviction in the Scandinavian country that prides itself for its egalitarianism.

The 31-year-old man fell asleep on a sofa at a party in January last year and told the court in the western city of Bergen he woke to find the 23-year-old woman was having oral sex with him.

“I have a cunning plan!”

We’d All Be 3 Times As Rich, If Not For Republicans!

The average GDP growth over this time is 3.56% (I’m rounding off the actual numbers used). Under GOP presidents it was 1.83%, under Dem presidents it was 5.07%–that’s 178% higher.

This suggests a very simple Democratic Plan on how to save Social Security: Elect Democratic Presidents from now until the end of time. That will ensure high levels of GDP growth, which will mean plenty of money in the Social Security trust fund, and absolutely nothing to worry about.

More there, but that’s the gist of it.

A must for any time traveller

Joseph LeConte, 1823-1901: Instructions for the Manufacture of Saltpetre. (Columbia, S.C.: Charles P. Pelham, State Printer, 1862.)

At the UNC Chapel Hill online library. Very cool, and if you’ve ready much time travel fiction, you’ll know exactly why this is so handy if you ever get trapped in the pre-industrial past. I love the internet.

After a week at the new job…

…all is cool, though I’m trying to do more work and procrastinate less than I was doing at Panta. So far I’m succeeding, so no updates here in a while. I’m annoyingly behind on my political blogs, although my sense of things is that a lot of the big moves are in wait-and-see mode anyway.

No real clear thoughts on the new papal situation yet, although I guess since Ratzinger got chosen later in the week than my last post some comment is due. We’ll see if I come up with something intelligent to say about it. It’s more likely that I won’t; as a non-religious person it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.

I actually SAW one for once…

…rather than just reading about it afterwards. I’m referring to a
fare pricing error, this time on USAir.

About $38-40 post tax for fares from pretty much anywhere into Lebanon, NH (and according to the news story, a few other cities… those I didn’t see.) LEB is the airport nearest Hanover, NH which is where my undergrad college was, and guys from my fraternity heard about the deal and distributed the news via our house mailing list. I saw it, nearly booked two tickets for 4th of July weekend, but Marie wanted to check her class schedule to make sure she could go, and wanted to go back to sleep first.

Ah well. Not like I need the USAir miles, but of course AA doesn’t fly to LEB, and being able to visit my family over the summer would have been fun.

Just for fun… your host as a South Park Character

Your host, as a southpark character

Nate looks sort of like this, at least while on vacation. Disturbingly, the proportions are about right.

Artwork via Planearium2’s Southpark Studio (link is to the English version). (update 8/2006: moved to http://www.sp-studio.de/)

Answer the question, Justice Scalia

From the NYU Washington Square News:

In asking about Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas and his view that privacy is not constitutionally protected, Eric Berndt, a law student, shocked the crowd by asking, “Do you sodomize your wife?”

Scalia refused to answer the question while the crowd gasped and the administrators promptly turned off Berndt’s microphone.

via AMERICAblog, among other places.

“… because Congress didn’t stop them”

If you needed one more reason before hating Tom DeLay, here’s one:

Mr. Dinan: You’ve been talking about going after activist judges since at least 1997. The [Terri] Schiavo case gives you a chance to do that, but you’ve recently said you blame Congress for not being zealous in oversight.

Mr. DeLay: Not zealous. I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.

(emphasis mine)

From MyDD citing an interview in the Washington
Times
(“Moonie Times” per MyDD)

My own opinion on the subjects above is that anyone who at this point in time wants to refight Marbury vs. Madison has no business being elected to a local water board, let alone federal office, or as in DeLay’s case, being the most powerful man in the H.R.