I always thought I enjoyed a comfortable expat life here in Taichung. But I guess I really should move up to Taipei:





Sizzling night life indeed. Is that the kind of thing that is going on at Carnegies these days?

The Skeptics' Circle. Sort of lacking in profanity and the word "woo" for my tastes, but still a good read.

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Time to get out the checkbook and send Tom Tancredo some money. Can I do that, even though I'm registered to vote in Florida? (not Colorado) If I had more money, I'd send some to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana), Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-New York), and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois), the other sponsors of the bill. Hey! Why is there only one Democrat in this 'bipartisan' resolution? Oh yeah, I remember! My party only stands on principle when it is politically and financially convenient!

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In other news, the U.S. Navy will commission an attack submarine- The Jimmy Carter. Kent finds that to be kind of weird, and wonders if the Navy will subsequently commission a Mahatma Ghandi aircraft carrier, or a Jeanette Rankin nuclear missile cruiser. Well, is this any more incongruous than a Ronald Reagan library? What they should do, is whenever the Navy wants to commission a new ship, they should put the bidding rights on E-bay, like they are doing now with stadiums. Evidently Fark.com bought the naming rights to some stadium, so I expect that hilarity will shortly ensue. So the navy could do this for all of their boats, raising cash and letting the American people feel further vested in the military. I'd max out all my credit cards to get a Karl Smith Joint Command Ship. But the damn squids would probably come up with some kind of clever navy slang for my boat, like the Listing Drunkard.

Best headline of the year so far on Fark: Maryland approves biology textbook without creationism. Also examining geography textbooks without Atlantis, physics textbook without ESP

And now for the bad news: China military buildup threatens US forces: CIA chief. Please don't forget to tip your Porter.

Oh well, so much for my converting to Islam (click on Chess). Not that I was planning on it anyway, but I guess I can definitely rule it out now.

You know what you don't hear too much about here in Taiwan? Muggings. We have all kinds of crime- cars stolen, houses broken into, even the occasional alcohol or drug-fueled vicious beating. But not many muggings (assuming that purse-snatching is not mugging). Anyway, it turns out that the weekend before the Lunar New Year, Adrian (he hangs out at La Terrasse sometimes) got mugged outside of a 7-11. Got whanged in the head by some kind of bat, lost his watch, kept his wallet.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago there was this report, claiming that Abstinance-only sex education programs were not working in Texas. Whether this says something about abstinance programs, or Texas teenagers, I will leave for my learned readers to decide. But if the two links below are the kind of abstinance-only materials they are using, I think I can see why they are having problems.
WARNING! Offensive material in links below! Don't click!
Sex is for Fags
Iron Hymen

A while back there was some kind of fuss about the White House paying some commentators to advocate certain positions that the White House wanted advocated. I could not see anything particularly pernicious in that. As I understand it, the people who received money were conservatives anyway. I guess the fact that it looks like tax dollars were used for this might upset those of you who pay U.S. taxes. But if yer gonna get upset over $240,000 paid to a journalist, go Google "tobacco buyout" and look at those numbers. Yer head will asplode.

Then, there was this thing where this guy was getting a daily press pass and lobbing softball questions at the president. And the president like always picked him first or something. But he wasn't a real journalist, just some guy who ran a conservative web site that copied and pasted content from other conservative websites. So he was a plant of some type. Now, I have a limited supply of outrage, and I'm not about to go wasting it on something like that. Journalistic integrety you say? What am I gonna do, get mad because a guy who is not a journalist doesn't have any? Get mad at the White House for using a plant in the press corps? Seems like a pretty good idea to me. If the people watching the press conferences can't figure out that this one guy keeps posting rhetorical bail for the prez, then serves 'em right for being maroons.

But then, the twist: The press corps plant is a MALE PROSTITUTE?!?!?!?
Here is a link to the americablog post with the details, but please note that it is not exactly safe for work: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

Dude. The Hoax-a-meter immediately put on his work gloves and jump boots, and started doing calesthenics in the living room. The Woo-dar took a baffled look at some of the "United States Male Corps" material, shook his head, and went back to playing X-box. The Lefty Partisan opened the lid of his coffin, chuckled a bit, then asked for a cup of hot tea.

Well, if this is true, (and the hoax-a-meter is now doing one-armed pushups on the balcony) does that mean that the Republican platform is now going to be simultaneously against gay marriage, but in favor of gay prostitution? And if I want to get a White House press pass in the future, do I need to be a gay prostitute first? How much money do gay prostitutes make?

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UPDATE: The alleged male prostitute / press corps plant is Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. James Guckert, a.k.a. theconservativeguy, of theconservativeguy.com.
He has axed the index page to his site, but for some reason has left all the other pages up, which are easily Googled out:
Here is Jeff Gannon on:
Why we need to invade Iraq
The Oklahoma City Bombing
McDermott's Remarks Treasonous

McDermott boldly asserted that "I think the president would mislead the American people" in order to bring about war with Iraq.

JeffGannon