As I once again shill for Comedy Central

Stewart's take on "MC Rove:"


For the "full effect" watch this:


Personally, I thought Colbert was funnier.

Their comedy is like an Ogre... lots of layers

The Onion is producing their own video content now, we'll have to see how well their humor translates to the new format.

Immigration: The Human Cost

All the good "Snow-job" jokes have already been done

So here is more on Tony Snow, sometimes, in his own words.

Where even I would be King

Found this via the Bad Astronomy blog: an exemplary take down of psychic phenomena. Possibly not entirely factual in the presentation (sounds to me somewhat like a Jack Chick tract), but the analogy is good (from a skeptical point of view anyway). OK, no where as goofy as Chick, but almost too "pat."

TDS follow-up

Apparently, Stewart clarified a couple of matters regarding the Bolton interview the next day:

Brayton on Tony Snow

Since I alluded to Tony Snow, White House press secretary, in my last post but didn't elaborate, here is a little backstory on the guy provided by Ed Brayton over at Dispatches.

Bolton on Stewart

Why does Jon Stewart seem more politically informed than Tony Snow?



And Stephen Colbert with a little something in the trunk:

Watching the players, not the ball

Some very instructive tennis clips from the 2007 Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells CA. Note the universally great footwork. I'm sure Sparky and I look just like that when playing.

Each snippet illustrates a different but important aspect of the competitive game, whether it is Ai Sugiyama's amazing recovery out of the corner, David Ferrer's attacking the net when he has his opponent off balance, or Max Miryni's use of the soft slice in doubles to entice his opponent closer to the net to set up the lob. There is something to be learned from each person.

Figaro on the air

Jay Heinrichs does an interview on public radio aimed at persuading us to buy his new book. I already did, so it is wasted on me. But a good introduction to rhetoric, and why it is both important and misunderstood.

Perfect for the daily commute

I personally am not into fast cars, but the engineering that went into this machine is simply incredible.

Bugatti Veyron at top speed
Uploaded by Flabber

One more thing to forget under stress

'Kiss of life' increases risk after heart attack - health - 16 March 2007 - New Scientist

This would have been handy to know a week ago.

People who collapse from a sudden heart attack should not receive mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, according to a study that overturns the advice given on how bystanders should react in such a situation.

Chest compressions alone - without so-called "rescue breathing" - appear more likely to save people whose hearts have stopped beating and reduce their risk of brain damage.

This realization has been long coming: the CPR standards have been steadily changing in the last thirty years de-emphasizing rescue breathing and playing up the importance of chest compressions. The newest standards call for 30 compressions for every 2 rescue breaths, whereas back in the old days, with two rescuer CPR, the ratio was 5 to 1 with a relatively slow cadence.

The one mistake I made in giving CPR last week was forgetting the newest standard: in the "heat of battle" I was doing the outdated 15 compressions to 2 rescue breaths ratio. When the rangers arrived after about twenty minutes they corrected me, but even by then, it was too late.

March Carnage from YouTube

Here are a couple of very impressive videos illustrating just how powerful many river features can be. Personally, I tend to go around this kind of stuff, but as noted before, the business seems to be changing towards a much more aggressive style.

This is the Zambezi in Africa:



This one from Maine won't allow embedding.

AEDs

Otherwise known as an automated external defibrillator, these devices are a great piece of technology.

In the event of a sudden cardiac arrest, about the best chance a patient has for survival in the field is proximate availability of an AED.

SCAs (sudden cardiac arrests) need to be distinguished from "heart attacks." In a heart attack, a blood vessel supplying blood to the heart becomes blocked leading to parts of the heart muscle "dying" from lack of oxygen.

A heart attack may cause an SCA, but not always, and not all SCAs are caused by blood loss to the heart.

An SCA happens when the heart takes on an abnormal rhythm, usually a ventricular fibrillation.

SCAs often happen with no warning: the patient simply collapses with no discernible heartbeat or breathing. At this the point, the only thing that will return the heart to normal function is a defibrillating electric shock.

The effectiveness of this shock is inversely proportional to the length of time it takes get it: the longer the period between the SCA and initial defibrillation, the less effective it will be. After about ten minutes, defibrillation will generally not work (which doesn't mean you shouldn't try).

AEDs are nearly dummy-proof. You hook one up to a patient, and it will not shock the patient unless it detects a "shockable rhythm." In other words, if you hook it up to a person with a "normal" heart rhythm, it won't shock them.

If you hook it up to a person with no heart activity at all, it won't shock them.

It only delivers a shock if it detects a rhythm that it can correct.

AEDs even talk you through how to use them: they require very little training.

You can now get an AED for about $1000.00 that weighs about two pounds.

SCAs happen to about 600 people in the U.S. every day. Most of them die, but could possibly be saved with a quick application of an AED.

This past week I lost a friend to an SCA, and though I performed CPR on him almost from the moment he hit the ground, in hindsight, he never had a chance. It took almost 40 minutes to get him on an AED, and by that time, nothing could really be done.

God hates jackasses!

For those who don't know, the Westboro Baptist Church is a congregation of folk who think God hates America. So they travel around the country "protesting" outside the memorials and funerals of dead soldiers. Because God has cursed the U.S. Because we tolerate gay people. So anything bad that happens to anyone is the result of this curse. The bible, as is so often the case, is very clear on this.

They came to my hometown this past weekend to protest outside the memorial of Marine Sgt. Travis Pfister, who was killed in Iraq.

I misread the original story and thought the memorial was on Saturday when Sparky and I were unavailable, but it was in fact on Sunday March 4th at 1:00pm.

So we realized our mistake at about 1:30pm on Sunday. We wanted to show our support for the family (Sparky went to high school with Pfister though didn't know him), and of course we didn't want to miss the opportunity to ridicule whoever was there representing Westboro.

When we got there just before 2pm, we found that we weren't the only people who had this in mind.

The Westboro folk were already gone. Exactly what kind of jackasses come all this way from Kansas and then don't even spend a full hour doing their actual "protest?" This is what we saw:



While the ridicule aspect of our trip was a bust, we joined about 2500 other people who were there to shield the Pfister family from the funda-wackjobs. The show of support was amazing.

Dan Strom, a West Richland member of the Three Rivers Unitarian Universalists, stood across Convention Place from the protesters waving a sign proclaiming the corner a "Hate-Free Zone."

"This is a hate group as far as I can tell," he said. But look what it had done, he said as tattooed, ponytailed bike riders stood with youth from church groups. Liberals, conservatives, centrists, Republicans and Democrats were united against them, he said.

Couldn't say it better.

Funny

Via the Amused Muse, we find Lewis Black holding forth on religion. Not safe for work, but Lewis Black never is.

American Conservative Union? Is that like the National Progressive Plutocracy?

How can anyone take the conservative movement seriously when Ann Coulter is taken seriously by the conservative movement?

Outspoken U.S. conservative columnist Ann Coulter is drawing fire from Republicans and Democrats alike after publicly using a derogatory gay slur in reference to Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards.

That by itself isn't that bad; the only way she makes money is by being controversial, saying inflammatory things is how she, as an entertainer, makes a living. But then,

Coulter made the comments on Friday during a speech at the influential American Conservative Union's Political Action Conference, calling Edwards a "faggot."

Completely aside from the eighth grade rhetoric, why would you have Ann Coulter give a speech to "serious" conservatives in the first place? It would be like having Jeffery Dahmer give a speech at a meat-packers convention.

Aside from the fact that no respectable meat-packer would ever want to be associated with Dahmer, Dahmer was in no real sense a meat-packer. I would think conservatives would feel the same way about Coulter.

At the same conference last year, she used the word "raghead" -- a slur against Muslims -- in referring to U.S. homeland security policies. In a column published in the National Review after the September 11 attacks she urged an invasion of Muslim countries and forced conversion to Christianity.

But apparently, they keep inviting her back to imbue them with her well thought out, consensus building wisdom.