An old painting uncovered in our closet: The Beatles

click to enlarge - 2' x 3', poster with acrylic paint, pen, stickers, ephemera, and duct tape

An old piece--Claire recently found this in a pile in one our closets, where it has resided for at least ten or fifteen years. . .

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Blowback on the ten hottest female sex offenders in Texas

By Mona Goldwater, Ethics and Mores Editor





The "10 hottest women on the Texas' sex offender list" has, not surprisingly kicked up a firestorm.  Did they really think it wouldn't?  The Houston Press featured the article on their blog.  The controversy was probably exacerbated when the blog post's author admitted that he was looking for eyes and mouseclicks. 

click to enlarge the ten "hottest"

Richard Connelly the author, tried to explain: "Last week I spoke to two veteran child-porn prosecutors for a Q&A on how they do their jobs -- how they deal with looking at such horrific evidence -- and how parents can protect their children from being exploited."

"They talked of how child predators don't fit any category -- the people they prosecuted included successful lawyers and doctors, as well as unemployed losers."

"It triggered an idea about how people have a preconceived notion of what dangerous predators "always" look like -- slovenly fat guys in T-shirts asking kids if they wanted a ride -- and how best to shake that notion up."

"I also wrote an over-the-top intro, trusting that the outrageous headline (Anything putting "hottest" near "sex offenders," I thought, would clearly show over-the-topness)."

Well, it misfired.  But Connelly appears to have kept his job, and they didn't even remove the offending blog post, although they did offer up the above comments and a sort-of-apology.

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1972: Facing the Selective Service System, and The Draft

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

It's hard to remember now what we faced in the late 60's and early 70's, when involuntary conscription was still the law of the land.  It wasn't so much the draft per se, as the fact that there was a bloody war raging in Vietnam (and vicinity) and every single day, the 'papers and news were filled with body bags and body counts.  And very little of the news was good news.  Before the war was over more than 58,000 American boys would die in Vietnam.

The debate over the war was constantly raging--between parents and sons, teachers and students, police and protesters. . .it happened constantly, and everywhere.  It was absolutely exacerbated by other changes in the "youth culture": drugs, sex, rock and roll, underground newspapers and radio stations, long hair and beards, strange clothes, rock festivals, gigantic marches, people dropping out of society for communes, and people joining political and action groups like the Students for a Democratic Society, The Yippies, The Panthers, The Weatherman, The Draft Resistance, and hundreds more.  It was a strange and wonderful time.  And always hanging over our heads (I turned 18 in 1971) was the draft, and being sent to Vietnam, or at the best, enlisting in the Navy or Coast Guard to avoid 'Nam.  When you were drafted, they did not send you to dig ditches in Omaha.

In 1970, the the Selective Service System instituted a national lottery for draft numbers.  The target draft age was 19.  In 1972, the picked the numbers for people born in 1953.  My birth date came in at 182; I was safe.  That guy born on March 6th--he was No. One.  If you were born on Christmas Day, you were No. Six.

The draft (not just the lottery) ended on July 1st, 1973.

This list shows the number of inductions into the military over the terrible arc of the Vietnam War.

Year   Inductees

1962     82,060

1963   119,265

1964   112,386

1965   230,991

1966   382,010

1967   228,263

1968   296,406

1969   283,586

1970   162,746

1971     94,092

1972     49,514

1973          646

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Huck pulls out::::Ron Paul leaps in with a sure-fire way to energize the rights and tea-party--legalize heroin:::::Trump stumps::::::Newt Leaps in:::::And now, all the contenders will draw a bead on Mitt

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
Illustration by Jack Brummet

Ex-Governor Mike Huckabee today pulled out of the Presidential contest.  I was surprised, although he has clearly been waffling, and his consultant Ed Rollins hinted this week that Huck was a no-go.  This is a definite game-changer.

“All the factors say go, but my heart says no and that’s the decision I have made,” he said.  Huckabee stressed the decision was not financial (many pundits have noted the vast amount of money he has made in the last couple of years on books and Fox--and he is building a very expensive home in Florida), or political.  He said his family urged him to run.  The polls showed he was a serious contender and that he could draw voters from outside the south and wingnut arm of the GOP.  He is known to really dislike fundraising, but was convinced recently that he could raise the cash for a serious run.  I'll admit, I don't agree with much--if anything--he says, but he has always seemed by far the most likable of that entire crowd. 

In the meantime, of the serious candidates, Pawlenty is in, Mitt is in, and Newt Gingrich is in.  Interestingly, Jon Ward, on the Huffington Post wrote today that "Perhaps no one will benefit more than Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) if she decides to run. She has the capability -- probably more than any other potential GOP candidate -- to unite social conservatives in Iowa in the manner Huckabee did last election."  God forbid!

It's always fun to watch the Republicans when they are out in the cold.  They start acting like Democrats.  I suspect everyone's gunsights (to use Sarah Palin's metaphor) will be focused squarely on Mitt Romney, who sometimes at least, seems to be the only possibly electable one of the entire pathetic bunch.

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We lost a handful of posts in the recent Blogger hiccup...

In case you were wondering, we lost a handful of posts in the recent Blogger hiccup...some art by Jack, a finger of the day by Mona, and an in depth look at Ex-Governor Mike Huckabee's Presidential prospects by National Affairs Editor Pablo Fanque. And, no, we had no backups. We back up once a week, alas.

Draft Resistance pamphlet from Seattle in the late 1960's

By Jack Brummet
Seattle History Correspondent

I worked part time as a draft counselor in a community center in 1970-72.  We worked mostly with people trying to file for conscientious objector status, took part in marches, letter writing campaigns, and distributing literature about the draft.  We weren't really part of the hard-core resistance movement (meaning we didn't perform acts of sabotage and most of our customers did not want to go to jail.), but we were fellow travellers and, really, just different branches of the same tree.

These pamphlets and posters remind me that everything was hand-made/analog in those days.  You can see in this flyer that they used three different typewriters (or different IBM type balls).  Maybe it was commercially printed, or maybe it was typed on mimeograph stencils and then duplicated.

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Anti-recruiting poster from the University of Washington, 1969: Shut The F***er Down!

click to enlarge

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Porn found at Osama Abbottabad hideout

By Mona Goldwater
Cross-cultural Affairs Editor


Pornography found at the Osama Abbottabad hideout/compound includes Men and Camels 3, Pulp Friction, My Bare Lady, and Sheepless in Montana. . .

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Alien Lore No. 204: Hitler's deal with The Greys

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Faces No. 208: Clown Wars/Clone Wars

Drawing by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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An amazing & interactive chart showing the U.S. population center for the last two centuries

This is a pretty masterful interactive chart showing the center of population of the United States for the last 220 years--fascinating, and just maybe, an example of the far reach and influence of the information visionary Edward Tufte?  The center of population "is determined as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight."

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Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov & The Russian DogBot

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton, our Number One paranormal and bizarre happenings tipster. 

Over the last few years, a lot of fascinating news and images have emerged from Russia and the former Soviet Union.  And this, like much of the news and images, is both difficult to pin down and incredible to imagine happening in what was then an extremely tightly-controlled society.  Neither Jeff nor I can determine if this is just an excellent PhotoShop hoax, or "real," whatever real actually means.

Gizmodo--whom I tend to believe--pronounces these images as excellent fakes (and say and, "like all good lies, there's a some truth in this story").

"According to recently unearthed—and completely fake—scientific papers posted in Russian forum Stepashka, the Soviets took over where the Nazis and Dr. Frankenstein left it: During the 1950s, a team of communist scientists from Moscow University and the Soviet Academy of Sciences led by Dr. Vladimir Demikhov worked on the creation of a giant robot controlled by a dog head in secret facilities created by Joseph Stalin."

Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov was an actual Soviet scientist (and one of the first people to believe that human lung and heart transplants were possible). He was both a latter day Frankenstein/madman and a scientific visionary.  He performed bizarre experiments with dog heads--including keeping them alive, separated from their bodies, and transplanting them to other dog bodies.  And just maybe, created a DogBot. . .

Click images to enlarge/zoom

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Faces No. 207 - drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Dennis Kucinich, about to be gerrymandered out of a job, considers carpetbagging to Washington State

By Pablo Fanque, Congressional Affairs Correspondent

Dennis Kucinich, about to be gerrymandered out of a job, is considering  carpetbagging in Washington State.  Representative Kucinich's 10th District seat in Ohio may well be eliminated next year as Ohio loses two seats in the House due to population declines.  Washington State will add a congressional seat next year.

In the fine carpetbagging tradition of Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, Kucinich is pondering relocating (at least legally, if not physically) to Western Washington.  Jay Inslee's seat may be vacant if he decides to run for governor.  Maybe Jim McDermott will throw in the towel.  He is always returned to Washington by huge majorities. . .even if he is a back-bencher, because our district is unrepentantly Democratic.

The Seattle Times pointed out an interesting Washington-Kucinich connection.  The Congressman says he saw a UFO south of Seattle, when he was staying at Shirley McLaine's house.

Kucinich's press secretary, Nathan White, claims that Kucinich has been urged by people in 20 states to move to their district and run for office.  Right.  White went on to say "As he has repeatedly said, he fully intends to remain in Congress; he just doesn't know in what district he will run."

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John Lennon sings "mother" live at MSG

Mother by John Lennon

Mother, you had me but I never had you,
I wanted you but you didn't want me,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Farther, you left me but I never left you,
I needed you but you didn't need me,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Children, don't do what I have done,
I couldn't walk and I tried to run,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home.
Mama don't go,
Daddy come home...
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