The top ten most dangerous toys of all time. My favorite was the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab:

…a radioactive learning set we can only assume was fun for the whole math club. Gilbert, who Americanmemorabilia claims was "often compared to Walt Disney for his creative genius," had a dream that nuclear power could capture the imaginations of children everywhere. For a mere $49.50, the kit came complete with three "very low-level" radioactive sources, a Geiger-Mueller radiation counter, a Wilson Cloud Chamber (to see paths of alpha particles), a Spinthariscope (to see "live" radioactive disintegration), four samples of Uranium-bearing ores, and an Electroscope to measure radioactivity.

The toy was only sold for one year. It's unclear what effects the Uranium-bearing ores might have had on those few lucky children who received the set, but exposure to the same isotope—U-238—has been linked to Gulf War syndrome, cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma, among other serious ailments. Even more uncertain is the longterm impact of being raised by the kind of nerds who would give their kid an Atomic Energy Lab.

It’s all fun and games until little Johnny's pee glows in the dark!

Bush's Hypocrisy knows no bounds: 

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate. 

How many times have we heard Bush defending low troop levels by saying commanders weren’t requesting them.  Now that they’re unanimously against troop increases, suddenly it’s Junior Knows Best.  I guess when you’re The Decider, it’s you’re prerogative to decide to escalate a failed war effort at the expense of a few measly lives.  And if someone disagrees, censor-ho!

 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.

 The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.

“Right now, grassroots groups don’t have to report at all if they are communicating with the public,” said Dick Dingman of the Free Speech Coalition, Inc. “This is an effort that would become a major attack on the 1st Amendment.” 

Nothing annoys me more than people who claim that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Not only is this patently absurd, but it betrays a complete lack of rational thought, observation, insight, and plain common sense.  When people say this, I assume they mean that on certain important issues, there is no difference.  Both parties, for example, are economic neoliberals and are consequently beholden to large corporate interests.  Moreover, both parties are addicted to their own power that they pursue further entrenchment to whatever degree they can manage. 

Even in a supposedly representative democracy, they government functions as a singular entity in which the minority rule the majority.  Grassroots organization has always posed a serious threat to this form of elitism.  However, the power of grassroots organizations to reach a wider audience has increased by several orders of magnitude alongside the digital revolution.  We can argue, of course, that this is part of democracy’s evolutionary process.  And in a zero-sum power game, any power increase for populism is axiomatically a power decrease for the establishment pols. 

I have been hard in the past on the GOP.  Moreover, I will freely admit that there is a certain element of the Democratic Party with which I identify.  But this does NOT translate into any kind of free pass for authoritarian trajectories.  Pelosi is dead wrong on this bill my bile and venom to politicians of either party who try to exceed the mandate of their authority.

At long last, all the hours of laughter and familial mirth commemorating the brutal slaughter of your countless brothers and sisters: 

Everyone starts with the best intentions. Then things start to get cramped. Then you notice your neighbour has more oil than you. Before long, war is waged, nukes are dropped, revolutions are fought and terrorists are doing your dirty work, before turning on you...

This is the War on Terror, the boardgame: A quality boardgame for 2 - 6 players, lovingly illustrated and politically correct (in a very literal sense). Playing it will bring out the nastiest, greediest, darkest, most paranoid aspects of your character. It's all great family fun.

John over at AmericaBlog has an interesting theory on Reid’s support for McCain’s troop increases:

Reid may be using the troop increase as a backdoor way of getting a firm commitment to end our combat engagement in Iraq by 2008. By giving our commanders on the ground what they want - if in fact they want more troops - Reid and the Democrats are seen as supporting our commanders rather than undercutting the war effort, and ultimately being blamed by the Republicans for losing the war. But at the same time, Reid is giving our generals, and our commander in chief, one last change to fix things. And if they don't, we're out of there - the public will know that Bush has lost this war, Harry Reid gave him a fair shot, and it was the Democrats that finally got our troops home safely.

Intentional or not, the trajectory seems to indicate that this is what’s panning out in the Senate. The question is whether Reid is going to have the influence to push this through with proper controls.

Time Magazine, I appreciate that you want to make me the 2007 Person of the Year, but I must unfortunately reject the award on the grounds that I have done nothing worthy of comparison with the pantheon of former recipients.  Oh, and because giving the award to 300 million other people is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. 

The whole point of Time’s Person of the Year award is that it’s not for everyone.  It’s supposed to be for the person who most influenced world events in a given year.  If they really feel as though 2007 was a spectacular year for technological evolution, then they should have identified an individual or team who most contributed to this trend.  This isn’t playschool, we don’t all have to win.  In fact, I never considered myself in the running.

George Bush: Landowners and Consumers Citizens of the United States, I present to you – The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board!

George Orwell: Dude, you’re good!

The first public meeting of a Bush administration "civil liberties protection panel" had a surreal quality to it, as the five-member board refused to answer any questions from the press, and stonewalled privacy advocates and academics on key questions about domestic spying.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which met Tuesday, was created by Congress in 2004 on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, but is part of the White House, which handpicked all the members. Though mandated by law in late 2004, the board was not sworn in until March 2006, due to inaction on the part of the White House and Congress.

The three-hour meeting, held at Georgetown University, quickly established that the panel would be something less than a fierce watchdog of civil liberties. Instead, members all but said they view their job as helping Americans learn to relax and love warrantless surveillance.

Call me crazy, but when we legislated the creation of this group in 2004, I think it’s safe to say we all assumed it would be to protect ourselves from civil rights infringements and one. privacy. debacle. after. another. In fact, it seems like the issue of privacy is a guaranteed, bipartisan no-brainer. But apparently, the radical right is only concerned about their own privacy and would rather spend less time protecting us from identity theft then in blaming it on the Mexicans. What better way to usher in Bill of Rights Day and Human Rights Week?

Of course, come January we might be witnessing an entirely different approach to getting things done, rather than the do-nothing Republican congress who last year, while setting a record for the fewest working days in congressional history, spent a full 25% of their time naming buildings.