Ubermensch

The fact that Christian conservatives statistically favor the theory of intelligent design over evolution is freshly ironic, since a new study suggests that conservatism is the more evolutionarily traditional path. Reaching the conclusion that intelligence is higher in people who exhibit tendencies that are "novel" with respect to evolution, liberals, atheists, night-owls, and monogamous men all hit the top of the IQ chart. The study will no doubt be derided by some as "ivory tower elitism", as it clearly has flaws. Show me a liberal dude who parties all night and rejects the concept of an afterlife, and I doubt I'll be looking at a one-woman man.

White Power

Congress is on its third day of recess because of blizzard conditions in DC, delaying work on a federal "jobs" bill. (Let's hope that legislation doesn't involve any snowplow unions.) For anyone who still believes in the patriotic fortitude of our elected officials, keep dreaming. If our nation can't even handle a naturally-occurring weather phenomenon, it doesn't give me much hope for the bigger stuff. Sadly, the irony of the mid-atlantic being buried under feet of snow, while the Winter Olympics in Vancouver remain bone-dry is lost on the climate-change deniers. More shocking is when the residents of these states remain shocked at the crippling power of winter. It happens every year, people. How can 25% of the snow plows in the DC/Baltimore area be broken when we all own calendars that are pretty good indicators of when we'll need to gas them up? If Phoenix got a foot of snow, I could understand everyone keeping one eye peeled for a litany of biblical plagues. Sure, this winter is a bit of an anomaly but otherwise, there aren't a lot of surprises if you live east of the Mississippi. It's gonna get deep.

Aural Fixation

Hurtling through time and space with a handful of songs that you must find and download, if only to make your tastes seem more impressively broad.

Steely Dan, Glamour Profession
Bruce Cockburn, Lovers In A Dangerous Time
Roxy Music, More Than This
Thievery Corporation, The Glass Bead Game
Brian Eno & Harold Budd, Late October
Gojira, Ocean Planet
Failure, Pillowhead
Daysleepers, Release The Kraken

Double-C 4

Religious fundamentalism is like a late-night infomercial: appealing to people who are groggy with lack of sleep, angry at the state of their life, and convinced that some useless gadget will make it better. In the case of Al-Qaida,it seems that gadget might be boobs. Recent intelligence chatter gathered by the United States and Britain's MI-5 indicates that Al-Qaida is certain to launch another attack on US soil in 2010; more specifically, that radical Muslim doctors trained in the UK have returned to their respective countries to fit teen female suicide bombers with explosive breast implants. In what counts for suffrage in the Middle East, it seems detonating yourself into oblivion is no longer a man's game. Given the inveterate horndogs that men are, it may prove to be terrorism's master stroke to turn our own vices against us. (I doubt American men would notice a sudden influx of Pakistani hookers.) Of all the weird things women scream during sex, "death to the infidels" probably isn't even in the top ten. In the interest of gender equality, similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are most frequently inserted into the buttocks. With all due respect to Taco Bell, if your last living act is blowing your ass out, you've earned your share of virgins.

Player Haiti

The devastation in Haiti presents us with a wide spectrum of interesting choices and opinions- none of which are wrong, but none of which are altogether right, either. The fact that the poorest nation in the western hemisphere is finally getting the attention it desperately needs means that the earthquakes that demolished its major cities were a blessing in disguise. While reconstruction efforts will probably remain largely cosmetic, they will still provide marked improvements to that country. Some Americans are outraged that taxpayer funds desperately needed here at home are being sent overseas for humanitarian efforts, though it seems too casual of a response to be anything other than selfishness passing as patriotism; I doubt those same people are continuously petitioning for some of our nation's largesse to still be sent to New Orleans. The flipside of the altruism coin are those who have taken Haiti as a cause celebre, despite ignoring the fact that the country has personified abject poverty for over a half century and may only be slightly better off when the cable news cameras leave. When the President is sending email to the middle class asking them to donate their money towards his efforts to deliver them from their own unemployment, it becomes clear that no individual or institution can provide simple answers on how to prepare for disaster.

Sigh

Even at 4 degress, I miss it. Props to my peeps braving the winds.

Breaking The Chains (Of Obscurity)

My new favorite commercial. Man, was I into these guys in high school. If George Lynch was still with them, he could just crush the chicken with his bare hands. Or an undeniably aggressive arpeggio.

Hot Air

A new poll says that, while a majority of the public still believes global warming is a serious issue, an increasing number believe that it's exaggerated. I love public opinion on matters of a scientific nature. We live in a culture where the general population hardly reveres intelligence to any noticeable degree, taking pride in being referred to as "average" Americans. People say they want leaders who are "just like them" (which entirely negates the definition of "leader"), where nonsense like intelligent design gets intermittent footholds in public school systems, and one-third of Americans say they believe in the existence of angels. But when it comes to a consensus from the majority of the world's environmental experts that global warming is a very real and impending threat, the jury's suddenly out for lack of "evidence". I guess we'll just have to hope that our guardian angels are fireproof. And can swim.

Skiv Row

So much for the argument that poverty (and not religion) induces Islamic fanaticism. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man (with self-proclaimed ties to Yemeni Al-Qaida) accused of attempting to detonate an explosive device on a flight to Detroit, is the son of the former head of Nigeria's largest bank- just another rich kid with too much time on his hands and plenty of manufactured ennui. However, the attack is a splash of cold water; a reminder of just how hollow our post-9/11 cries of "everything has changed" have become. In fact, a cursory glance at the story is enough to make you remove large portions of your hair: A Nigerian Muslim whose name is on a U.S. list of suspects with terrorist connections was was allowed to board in Amsterdam- with no passport. I guess authorities there are too busy subjecting college students to body-cavity searches for fear that a nug of Black Lady kush might be hiding in their nether regions. I suspect no one with more than 4 oz of shampoo was allowed on the flight, either. Good thing the rest of the world is still keeping air travelers safe from the horrors of Prell and bugging the flight attendant for more Funyuns. In their race to the 70 virgins finish line, the disenfranchised Al-Qaida wannabes are usually too long on fanaticism and too short on brains, resulting in blowing themselves up in a Hamburg hotel room or lighting their lap on fire on a plane bound for Detroit. (Sorry, Umar. I doubt even virgins would go near your charred junk.) But Flight 253 might also be a warning. Not to get all Glenn Beck on you, but can we be so sure that things like this are merely rogue fuck-ups? Vigilance (you know, that thing we pretend to have?) requires that we entertain the notion that bigger and badder things are being planned for us. Then again, this guy was an engineering student who couldn't even make an underwear bomb work. Had he consulted with any of the passengers who subdued him, he would have learned that Motown already looks like the victim of a terrorist attack and his would have merely been the tinsel on their post-apocalyptic Christmas tree. Go ahead and flip a coin on the future of our security.

Hate The Game

My return to the airwaves is somewhat bittersweet, now that my former boss and mentor, Jonathon Brandmeier is off the air. The still-undisputed king of the Chicago airwaves recently walked from his very lucrative contract at WLUP because he was rightfully fed up with the current "dash to slash" mentality pervasive in media outlets these days, along with the near-complete abandonment of high-value talent. JB is worth every penny and, as he does on the air, he speaks for a lot of people in his situation.

high