Category: News

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety

A massive auto safety overhaul bill has made its way out of committee and onto the floor of the House of Representatives for voting. According to Automotive News, the biggest changes that the bill proposes is the mandatory addition of black boxes and brake override mechanisms to all new cars and trucks. The event-data recorders would track information shortly before and after an accident for a specified period of time in order to help investigators determine the cause of an accident. Legislators and manufacturers alike began to push for the recorders in the wake of multiple accidents associated with Toyota’s unintended acceleration woes.

Originally, the bill would have required the black boxes to record data for a total of 75 seconds, though the House Energy and Commerce committee changed the legislation to allow the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to determine the length. The bill also deals with regulations concerning pushbutton starts, pedal placement and a number of other auto-safety issues. If the bill passes the House of Representatives, it will be sent to the Senate for a final vote before becoming law.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

Report: House committee passes bill requiring black boxes, brake overide systems originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 May 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hedge fund manager David Einhorn’s op-ed in the New York Times this morning details how the imminent crisis we’re about to experience will not be the burden of our granchildren, but us instead.

Now we have the full presentation Einhorn made to the Ira Sohn conference to back up his beliefs.

Big thanks to Market Folly for finding it and posting it:

David-Einhorn-Ira-Sohn-Presentation-2010 –

Join the conversation about this story »

Johnson & Johnson faces possible criminal liability for the contaminated products, like Tylenol, coming from its division McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

William Weldon got the invitation to attend Thursday’s hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform with some FDA officials but the J&J CEO did not commit due to his health issues.

Worldwide chairman for J&J, Colleen Goggins gave her testimonies pertaining to the recalls that severely marred J&J’s reputation as safe products especially for newborns. She has particularly spoken about the May 1 incident, which she claims is a precaution to the presence of “tiny particles” in the content which she assures to be non-hazardous. On top of that, Goggins also defended McNeil on issues showing that excess acetaminophen or bacteria can never pass through its quality inspection.

On the latest count, there are at least 775 grave side effects cases submitted to FDA involving McNeil products. Even 30 cases of death are blamed on these medicines. Johnson & Johnson has already suspended the production of the McNeil site but these complaints are already hunting them down.

Customers’ complaint began in 2008 but it was only in September of 2009 when McNeil started to recall several Tylenol items that are mostly for infants and children.

Related posts:

1. FDA criticized Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol plant
2. McNeil and Johnson & Johnson under investigation
3. Tylenol Recall 2010 by McNeil Consumer Healthcare

After three years doing this blog a wearisome predictability in types of hate becomes apparent. The unoriginal uniformity of the hate is its most intriguing feature, as it makes one wonder whether humans come preinstalled with mindware that executes in scripted patterns when certain sensitive buttons are pushed, or if the haters all gather in a secret Hatesonic Temple under the Capitol building to agree upon an approved suite of category hateration.

In the interest of advancing a sociological experiment for the benefit of my amusement alone, I’ve made a compendium of the typical incantations of hate directed at game and at those of us, like yer ‘umble narrator, who preach the Good Word of Game. Below each hate archetype I’ve helpfully included my mischievously glib responses to illustrate the empty-headedness of the hate.

1. “Bitter Beta” Hate

Hater: You are a bitter misogynist.

Translation: Your words make me weep from every pore.

2. Expectation Bias Hate

Hater: No one who writes the horrible things you do could possibly do well with women.

Back in Genghis Khan’s day, haters were known to remark “no one who crushes as many enemies as you do could possibly do well with women.”

3. Moving the Alpha Goalposts Hate

Hater: A real alpha male would be married and raising children as his legacy.

Alphaness required to marry the typical girl and knock her up: minimal.

Alphaness required to avoid the raw deal of marriage and the fun-hindering ballast of children while enjoying the love of many women in long term relationships: sniff my jock strap!

4. StrawHate

Hater: You argue a false alpha/beta dichotomy.

What part of dregs –> lesser omega –> greater omega –> lesser beta –> beta –> greater beta –> lesser alpha –> alpha –> super alpha don’t you understand? (Please note the date stamp of that post.)

5. Etymology Hate

Hater: Your definition of an alpha male is false. In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is leader of the pack, not a cad/badboy/jerk who pumps and dumps women.

Isn’t it just like a nerd to get hysterical over the appropriation of a narrow-sense scientific term to conveniently illustrate broader truths about men and women.

6. Unironic Internet Smear Hate

Hater: Alphas don’t blog. They’re too busy meeting women.

Because, you know, alphas don’t have hobbies. *alpha eye roll*

ps feel free to log off the internet any time.

7. The Political is Personal Hate

Hater: A true alpha lives the life, and does not neurotically obsess about his status on an internet blog.

Other than in a facetious fashion, I don’t think I’ve ever written about my own status, neurotically or otherwise, on this blog. Instead, I simply speak the truth about the world as it is, and give advice about attracting women that has worked for me and many other men. People who are offended by that decide I must be revealing my inner neuroses and obsessions, for any other explanation would surely pucker their sphincters. These people are best suited for careers as buttplug testers.

8. False Premises Hate

Hater: Yeah, sure, game works well for picking up low self-esteem bar skanks.

A great deal of hate is fueled by false premises. Concocting convenient scenarios, imagining the worst of your enemies, and reinterpreting their successes are a salve for the burned ego. Newsflash: your thin-skinned indignation is not my moral crisis.

9. Lifestyle Critique Hate

Hater: You live an empty existence if all you do is have one night stands with sluts.

Some people imagine that because I write about seducing women that must mean I strictly counsel avoiding long term loving relationships in favor of purely physical short term flings. These people are wrong. But they knew that. Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the occasional no muss no fuss empty sexual encounter.

10. Gay Love For John Wayne Hate

Hater: If you’re not a leader of men, you’re not an alpha.

I’m sure every male celebrity and emo punk singer drowning in pussy is crying bitter tears that he does not have the alpha imprimatur of Real Men of Stoicism bootlickers like yourself.

11. Rape Hate

Hater: Rape! Rapety-rape!

When all you have is a desiccated, dusty muff, the whole world looks like an unwelcome phallus.

12. Fallacy of Misdirected Obsession Hate

Hater: A guy who spends his life obsessing over how to get women is a loser.

A guy who spends his life obsessing over climbing the corporate ladder to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over mastering guitar and playing in a rock band to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over pursuing financial rewards and acquiring resources to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who….. ah, you get the point.

13. Fallacy of the Natural Hate

Hater: Naturals get women because they aren’t trying to get them.

After many years of practice, I’m sure it looked like Beethoven wasn’t trying when he played piano.
Or: A natural is simply a man whose game is internalized, but the tactics remain the same.

14. Just Be Yourself Hate

Hater: Game is fake.

Game is no less fake than any other self-improvement pursuit to which a man might set himself in order to move upward from his natural inertial state.

15. Victimology Hate

Hater: You’re using game to manipulate woman and control their minds.

In other news, losing 20 pounds was discovered to grant formerly chubby girls strange hypnotic powers over the minds of men. Feeling manipulated, men took to the streets en masse to demand relief from their attraction to these newly slender girls.

16. Dancing Monkey Hate

Hater: Men who run game are just doing the bidding of women. Alphas don’t entertain women.

If you want success with women, you are going to have to entertain them… one way or the other. The same is true of women. Once a woman stops entertaining men with her body, her femininity, and her commitment worthiness by getting fat, old, ugly, bitchy, or single mom-y, she stops having success with men. We are all doing the bidding of our biomechanical overlord, and on our knees to his will we surrender, by force or by choice. You fool yourself if you believe you have some plenary indulgence from this stark reality.
Or: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

17. Voyeur Hate

Hater: You’re lying about the women you’ve had. Where are the photos?

I remember having a conversation with a buddy about this, where I mused aloud about what delicious fun it would be if I went nuclear and posted on this blog erotic jpegs of the women I’ve been with (hi blogger chicks!) over the past three years, (excepting those lovely ladies whose privacy I value more than the others), just to enjoy the exquisite paroxysms of cognitive dissonance that would rattle the souls of the haters who have spent so much mental energy comforting themselves with caricatures of me. He said not to bother. He explained that I could have pics of me facialing a slew of cuties and the haters would still find some excuse for not believing their own eyes. In other words, haters gon’ hate. Let them stew.

Filed under: The Id Monster, Tool Time

WASHINGTON–President Obama, in a rare press conference his team called for him to lay out the administration response to the BP oil spill, said Thursday his administration fell short in anticipating the tragic consequences of a major off shore drilling accident.

“And — and part of the purpose of this press conference is to explain to the folks down in the Gulf that ultimately it is our folks down there who are responsible,” Obama said, addressing critics who say his administration has not taken firm charge of the effort to cap the drill.

In a 63 minute East Room session–with an 11 minute opening statement–Obama took responsibility for the disaster, triggered by an April 20 explosion–but rejected any comparisons to the slow Bush administration government response to Hurricane Katrina.

“And when the problem is solved and people look back and do an assessment of all the various decisions that were made, I think people can make a historical judgment. And I’m confident that people are going to look back and say that this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis.”

Lost Planet 2 is getting its second multiplayer map pack next week. Included in Map Pack #2 are the Dockyard Battle and Frozen Wasteland maps. Better have your five bucks ready if you want ’em.

CNN is reporting that the FDA has referred the Tylenol recall case to their criminal division for investigation. At issue is a pattern of non-compliance with FDA warnings and failures by management of McNeil to investigate and provide a timely resolution to serious problems with the product. These problems include excess amounts of the active ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen.

At a House hearing today the Food and Drug Administration discussed “significant violations” of manufacturing regulations by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, says CNN.

During the hearing Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, asked a FDA official whether there was criminal liability as a result of the recalls.

From CNN:

“Well, it has been referred to the FDA’s crime division,” said Deborah Autor, a director at the FDA’s compliance office.

“I’m going to take that as a yes, that there are potential criminal charges and indictments,” Issa responded.

The FDA is currently investigating 775 reports of serious side effects from recalled McNeil products.

Tylenol recalls referred to FDA crime division [CNNMoney]

In 2002, the National Security Strategy issued by George W. Bush expressly precluded the United States from allowing a new superpower to develop. Speaking today at the Brookings Institution to officially unveil President Obama’s National Security Strategy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed the idea that the U.S. had anything to fear from a “multipolar” world of new great powers like China or India.

Smirking a bit, Clinton, just back from a trip to Southeast Asia, acknowledged that “some” believe that a multipolar world “undercuts American power and leadership.” But she said that was simplistic. “We’re seeking to gain partners in pursuing American interests, and we happen to think those interests coincide with universal” aspirations, Clinton said. The alternative approach of demanding foreign nations cooperate with the U.S. is a nonstarter. ”We can’t begin a conversation with someone by saying, ‘Here are the ten things you need to do to be a responsible stakeholder,’” Clinton said when challenged by a former U.S. ambassador, Martin Indyk, on how to persuade sometimes recalcitrant nations that U.S. interests overlap with their own interests.

Several days’ worth of far-ranging dialogue with the Chinese government on energy security and China’s development role in Africa, Asia and Latin America, she said, contributed to her endorsement of the National Security Strategy’s rules-based internationalism. “The sum of the parts add up to a strong endorsement of American leadership,” she said.

To no one’s surprise, T-Mobile is positioning the myTouch 3G Slide as its next big device launch. In fact, from these leaked slides, it looks like their building an entire summer campaign around the myTouch brand. We’ve been decently impressed with what we’ve seen in the myTouch 3G Slide and think it vibes with all those current and former Sidekick, T-Mobile G1, and myTouch 3G users. Given that most people who bought the G1 are due for an upgrade, the myTouch 3G Slide’s release can’t come at a more perfect time.

Some cool details in the leaked slides show that there’ll be A LOT of advertising for the myTouch 3G Slide (like for the original myTouch) and a big push on accessories (which we’re sure you’ll be able to find here). What’s interesting is that though the launch date is June 2, myTouch 3G Slides won’t be demoed in store until June 7 and the ad campaign doesn’t start til June 16. June 17 is marked mysteriously and interestingly as: "STAY TUNED – THIS WILL BE BIG". What could that mean? [via engadget]

This is a post by Android Central. It is sponsored by the Android Central Accessories Store

Magnets have always been able to suspend soda cans in midair, haven’t they? That’s just basic science, right there. More »










Magnet – Business – Shopping – Home and Garden – Industrial Goods and Services

Noah’s multi-part review of Verizon’s fastest Droid, the Incredible. In this episode: Hardware.

Bieber, a diva? Say it ain’t so! Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber has denied a tabloid report claiming he told a TV stage hand “Don’t ever fucking touch me again” during a chaotic appearance on Australian morning show Sunrise last month.

Word on the Curb claims His Bangness threw a profanity-laced tantrum that would make JLo and Mariah proud after a sound technican had the brazen audacity to touch him just moments before his performance, according to Sunrise employees.

Peter Koch — who co-hosts the AM chat show — suggests the 16-year-old pop star is overdue for a royal ass-whipping after swearing at the floor manager just before he performed on the show during a promotional visit to Sydney in April.

“We had him on and he was a thoroughly nice bloke… really decent guy,” Koch told Sydney’s Mix 106.5 radio station Wednesday. “(But) our floor manager was directing him to where he was about to perform and (Bieber) turned around and said to him: ‘Don’t ever fucking touch me again.’”

Koch said the stunned floor manager was reassured by Bieber’s regular sound tech that “he tells us that all the time.”

None of its true, says Bieber — who slammed the claims on his Twitter account yesterday afternoon, writing:

“Family time with my mom couldn’t come at a better time….I was raised to respect others and not gossip…nor answer gossip with anger…”

“I know my friends family and fans know the person I am. Hearing adults spread lies and rumors is part of the job I guess….”

It was not until President Obama has fired Elizabeth Birnbaum who is the head of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service that she finally has to leave her position.

According to some associated press sources, president obama will announce that Elizabeth Birnbaum must leave her current position. Considering that she had been there since July 2009.

Its all about her agency who leases oil companies and monitors offshore drilling had caught the eye of some people which finally resulted in criticism for lax oversight since the BP Gulf of Mexico explosion last April 20, 2010.

At 12:08 pm ET, it was official that Elizabeth Birnbaum has resigned from her job. Kel Salazar had talked about Birnbaum’s departure at some hearing early in the morning. Actually Elizabeth should be there but it was Salazar who showed up.

He left the place with these words:

Birnbaum resigned “on her own terms and her own volition.”

During a news conference later in the day, President Obama didn’t clearly tell if he had fired her or not all he  the president said, he wants “people operating at the highest level”

Related posts:

1. Elizabeth Birnbaum Resigned! Elizabeth Birnbaum quits MMS!
2. New President For Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan Nigerian President Officially
3. Obama calls David Cameron to visit U.S. in July

Early this morning, the rumormill went a bit bonkers. A hole to a parallel universe apparently ripped open outside of an analyst’s office. Through this hole, the analyst saw a world where Steve Ballmer presented something at Apple’s WWDC 2010 keynote. Alas, the analyst didn’t realize that this was a parallel universe, instead interpreting it as a glance into the future. “Steve Ballmer will be presenting at WWDC! Steve Ballmer will be presenting at WWDC!”, he shouted.

People were skeptical, and rightly so. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, says Microsoft.

In a brief statement issued over Twitter (what else?) this afternoon, Microsoft straightened things out:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

Good. Between starring as the next Bond villain and training for the Olympics, we figured that Ballmer’s schedule was already getting stretched a bit too thin. While Microsoft could very well make an appearance during WWDC keynote as a partner, it probably won’t be Ballmer’s mug staring back at the audience.

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Wednesday ordered the release of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Mohammed Hassen [NYT profile]. Hassen had been initially detained [Miami Herald report] in March 2002 following a raid in Faisalabad by Pakistani security forces. He has maintained throughout his detention that he had traveled to Pakistan to study the Qur’an [text] at Salafi University and had no knowledge of al Qaeda [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] prior to his detention. Hassen is the third detainee captured in this raid to be released. The court opinion remains classified.

The ruling brings the number of Guantanamo detainees who have prevailed in habeas corpus proceedings [JURIST news archive] in federal court to 36. The government has prevailed in only 14 cases. Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered the release [JURIST report] of Russian Guantanamo Bay detainee Ravil Mingazov [NYT profile]. In March, the DC court denied the habeas petition of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Makhtar Yahia Naji al Warafi [NYT materials] on its merits, allowing the US government to prolong the detention indefinitely. In late February, a DC judge ruled that the government can continue to hold indefinitely [JURIST report] two Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainees, even though Fahmi Salem Al-Assani and Suleiman Awadh Bin Agil Al-Nahdi [orders, PDF] had been cleared for release by the Bush administration two years ago.

In the summer of 2004, two years and four months before she was gunned down in the entrance to her Moscow apartment, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya made a bold visit to Chechnya to interview 27-year-old Ramzan Kadyrov, who had recently become (with the Kremlin’s blessing) the republic’s de-facto leader. It proved to be a harrowing experience. When they met face to face, Kadyrov could not contain his rage at Politkovskaya for reporting on his brutal rise to power, even threatening to have her shot. Politkovskaya concluded later that “a little dragon has been raised by the Kremlin. Now they need to feed it. Otherwise it will spit fire.”

Politkovskaya was all too right. Since becoming president of Chechnya in 2007, Kadyrov has made the republic into his own fiefdom, which he rules by violence and terror. He has also, apparently, had his gunmen carry out a series of brazen killings of his perceived enemies in Moscow, Dubai, Istanbul and the North Caucasus.

Until recently, the Kremlin, which has provided military and economic support to Kadyrov’s regime, consistently brushed off the murder allegations against him. Since April, prosecutors in two separate cases—a murder in Vienna and a murder attempt in Moscow—have for the first time implicated Kadyrov directly. And in the weeks since those revelations, the Kremlin leadership appears to be showing misgivings about its unconditional support for Kadyrov. How these cases play out could have profound effects on the future of Moscow’s Chechen policy.

It has long been known that Moscow has allowed Kadyrov to run the Chechen Republic with ruthless force, facilitating his extensive cult of personality and funding his lavish lifestyle while ignoring the alarmingly frequent kidnappings, disappearances, and torture of those suspected of opposing his rule. But Kadyrov’s bloody vendettas have not been limited to rival Chechen clans. Indeed, it now appears that he has been going after anyone who draws attention to the shocking human rights abuses in Chechnya committed under his auspices—and that Politkovskaya herself may have been one of his first targets.

The list of likely victims is chilling: In January 2009, there was the Moscow shooting of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (together with a journalist friend) who had pursued legal cases against Kadyrov. That same month Umar Israilov, a former member of Kadyrov’s security team who was granted asylum in Austria and subsequently made shocking allegations of human rights abuses against Kadyrov, was killed by Chechen gunmen in Vienna. And in July 2009 came the murder of Politkovskaya’s close colleague, Natalia Estemirova, who had been documenting the widespread abductions and extra-judicial executions by Kadyrov’s counter-insurgency forces for Novaya gazeta, Human Rights Watch, and Memorial. Estemirova was kidnapped by four men in broad daylight as she left her Grozny apartment. Hours later, her body, riddled with bullets, was found in a ditch in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

After the Politkovskaya killing, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin went out of his way to point out that the murder hurt Kadyrov “much more than any newspaper article [i.e. those written by Politkovskaya] could do.” Last summer, when Estemirova’s family, friends, and colleagues gathered in Grozny to mourn her on the 40th day of her death (a Russian orthodox tradition), Putin flew to the Chechen capitol to attend a state ceremony with Kadyrov by his side. Significantly, Kadyrov was allowed to take personal control of the investigation into Estemirova’s murder and there have been no arrests.

Moscow has also rejected demands by the Dubai government for the extradition of Kadyrov’s cousin Adam Delimkhanov, a member of the Russian parliament and Putin’s United Russia Party, who they accuse of having organized the March 2009 murder of yet another Kadyrov opponent, Sulim Yamadayev, who was a member of a rival Chechen clan. (On April 12, a Dubai court sentenced two men of Central Asian origin to life imprisonment for the killing.)

But how long can Moscow ignore the mounting evidence against its Chechen puppet? In April the counter-terrorism department of the Vienna police handed over a confidential 214-page report to Austrian prosecutors in which they named Kadyrov and his top aide, Shaa Turlayev, as the “principal offenders” in the January 2009 murder of Israilov, the former member of Kadyrov’s security guard. According to Israilov’s widow, Turlayev appeared in Vienna shortly before the murder and tried unsuccessfully to meet with her husband. In addition, the man charged with organizing the killing locally, a Chechen refugee who now calls himself Otto Kaltenbrunner, placed a call to Turlayev immediately after the murder. Moreover, a copy of Turlayev’s passport was found in the getaway car, along with an electronic airline ticket that he used to travel to Austria. As a representative of Human Rights Watch puts it: “the conclusions reached by the Austrian Prosecutor’s Office about Ramzan Kadyrov…should prompt the Russian government to finally take the necessary steps to restore the rule of law in Chechnya.”

Meanwhile, Kadyrov’s Kremlin backers have also been facing pressure from a Moscow investigation into an attempted murder in June 2009. The victim of the failed attempt was Isa Yamadayev, the brother of Salim Yamadayev, the murder victim in Dubai, and of Ruslan Yamadayev, a State Duma Deputy who was killed in Moscow in 2008. In April of this year the Moscow District Court began holding secret hearings about the case. Incredibly, a transcript and video of the interrogation of the accused would-be killer ended up in the hands of the intended victim, Yamadayev, who leaked it to a major Russian paper, Moskovskii Komsomolets. During his questioning, the accused, Khavash Yusupov, confessed to the crime and claimed that he was hired by none other than Shaa Turlayev. Yusupov said that Turlayev took him for a meeting with Kadyrov, who ordered the killing.

It remains to be seen whether Austria will indict Kadyrov when it issues formal charges in the Vienna murder in a few weeks, and what the Moscow Court will decide to do about Kadyrov. But the fact that, in the Moscow case, highly damaging testimony about the Chechen president and his top advisor was allowed to appear in the Russian media suggests that some members of the Kremlin elite may have decided that Kadyrov needs to be reined in. Could Russian President Dmitry Medvedev be among them? In contrast to Putin, Medvedev has expressed strong concerns about the unsolved murders and the problem of human rights abuses in the Caucasus. Responding to the Estemirova case last summer, Medvedev said it was “obvious” that she was killed because of her human rights work and expressed his personal condolences to her family and friends.

In January, Medvedev appointed a presidential envoy, Alexander Khloponin, to a newly formed North Caucasus Federal District, which some observers interpreted as an effort to exert Moscow’s control over the region, especially Chechnya. More recently, on May 19, Medvedev invited human rights activists to a two and a half –hour meeting in Moscow, in which Estemirova’s murder was discussed. It was not the first time the Kremlin has met with human rights advocates. But it was a departure for Medvedev because the meeting was devoted entirely to the situation in the troubled North Caucasus. With Khloponin at his side, Medvedev listened to grim details of the abuses attributed to Kadyrov’s counter-insurgency forces in Chechnya and to the concerns that surround unsolved murders like Estemirova’s.

“If you think I don’t know some of the facts,” Medvedev told the participants in the meeting, “well, that’s not the case. I know more than anyone else here because it is my job to know. Have no doubt. I know some very sad things.” In what seemed to be a reference to Kadyrov, who routinely ridicules the efforts of human rights workers, Medvedev also said that political leaders in the Caucasus who do not engage in a dialogue with non-governmental organizations in the region “must ultimately leave.”

However sincere Medvedev might be (and there are many skeptics), at the moment he is not in a position to topple Kadyrov without the concurrence of Putin and members of his powerful Federal Security Service, who installed Kadyrov as the leader of Chechnya. And it appears that the Putin has been unwilling to rein in Kadyrov in part because he fears that doing so would create even more instability in the North Caucasus region (and possibly more terrorist bombings in places like Moscow).

As Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, observed: “The impunity and omnipotence of Ramzan Kadyrov depends on the support of…Putin. As long as Putin supports him nobody will touch a hair on Kadyrov’s head, even if he kills us all.” Perhaps the recent revelations about Kadyrov will finally convince Putin and his colleagues that it is time for Kadyrov to go.

Our clichés need updating. “Axe to grind”? How many people still regularly use axes, axes that need grinding? Why not something like “hard drive to defrag”? “Best thing since sliced bread”? Why not “best thing since the iPad“? We are surrounded by technology, but our language still reflects life on the farm. Let’s do this!

First off, yes, this topic is completely ripped off from Fez Ron and Fez. If you going to rip off, you might as well rip off from the best.

It’s an interesting idea. So many idioms and clichés and whatnot are based in language that has no relevance to us here in the year 2010. Some examples:

• “Straw that broke the camel’s back.” Means nothing to the average person. Why not “baseclock frequency that causes the processor to overheat and continually crash”?

• “When pigs fly.” What? Try “when Spotify comes to America.”

• “Free as a bird.” Lame. I much prefer “free as Firefox.”

• “Money makes the world go ’round.” Sorry but as we all know “SEO makes the world go ’round.”

And so on.

If we’re not going to ban clichés outight, then we might as well update ‘em. I don’t know how to grind an axe, but I do know how to defrag a hard drive.

Actually, upon further thought, I think this must be the Texas BoE candidate entrance exam.

Tip o’ the Susquehanna Hat to Fark.