Birder porn

Here are three photos every birdwatcher will enjoy: Ride, ride-r, ride-est!

Bill Richardson on energy

I wish I could stop getting spam from Democracy For America and MoveOn; nonetheless, I agree with them more often than not. And DFA is praising Bill Richardson for putting out a solid and specific energy plan. I recommend you watch the video.

I certainly haven't chosen a candidate yet—I'm still in that early fantasyland where Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel have a prayer—but Richardson has a good mix of electable characteristics and principled stands. He panders a little more than I like; having never used "Lopez" in public life I'd be disgusted if he started now. But his top-line items, including "bring the troops home lock, stock, and barrel", are smart and right.

Marketing test

I posted on YouTube for the first time today: a Photoshop video one of my authors, Ellen Anon, made to promote her book, Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers:

Things that make you go hmmm

On May 17, rookie sensation Tim Lincecum struck out future Hall of Famer Craig Biggio four times among 10 strikeouts total. According to the Giants' broadcasters, it was only the third time in his long career that Biggio had struck out four times in one game.

On May 22, Biggio took the day off when the Astros faced Lincecum again, one of only four games he has skipped this year. (The Giants won both games.)

We are paying farmers to help us get fat

American farm subsidies are producing food prices that help increase obesity—and this effect is greater the lower your income is.

For the last several decades [...] U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of [corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton], especially corn and soy. [...] By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Checkin' on my peeps

Did you know that Peeps use the library? Wouldn't you like to know how?

Boomshine

Silly little game o' the week: Boomshine. Caution, may promote timewasting.

Oh great. Another talky drunk.

I do like me some Bushmills.

Get your drunk personality at LiquidGeneration.com.

Giveaway, takeaway

The Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks are better players than the Golden State Warriors, and both should have won their series (as the Jazz did tonight). Some Warriors have a hot-head history. The referees used that hot-head history to go out of their way to make things easier for the Warriors' playoff opponents.

Did I just agree with a Republican? Slap me if I did

Somebody pour me a drink. I think Rudy Guiliani came very close to winning my vote!

Rudolph W. Giuliani offered a direct challenge to Republican Party orthodoxy on Friday, asserting that his support for abortion rights, gun control and gay rights should not disqualify him from winning the party’s presidential nomination and that Republicans need to be tolerant of dissenting views on those issues if they want to hold the White House. [...]

“In a country like ours, where people of good faith, people who are equally decent and equally moral and equally religious, where they come to different conclusions about this, about something so very, very personal, I think you have to respect their viewpoint,” he said. “I would grant women the right to make that choice.”

New H.P. trailer

The trailer that answers the eternal question, "Who are you, and what have you done with Hermione Granger?"

(To which I can't help but hear in the background, "Mmm - nothing - why, do you think I should?")

De-democritizing

I would disagree that her steps 3 and 8 have already been formally taken here. But Naomi Wolf lists 10 steps that are the "blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship"; see how many you think George Bush has already put us through.

Are you a young man from Nantucket?

What poetry form are you? Find out here. (I'm Terza Rima... but it also says that if I were not Terza Rima I would be Heroic Couplets.)