This guy looks really surprised to be a Khmer Rouge leader.

Almost like they snuck up on him to take his mug shot.

See 'First Khmer Rouge leader charged' at the BBC.

The AP reports that everyone passed away yesterday.

Michelangelo Antonioni
Ingmar Bergman
Tom Snyder
Bill Walsh

So who exactly is Walter Mead?

If you were in policy debate at any time in your life, there's a good chance you know the short string of words that have made him famous amongst the forensics nerdery known by all as "the Mead card":

But what if it can't? What if the global economy stagnates -- or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India -- these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to the world than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.

Mead, New Perspectives Quarterly, Summer 1992.

No econ DA impact is complete without Walter Russell Mead. Didn't know this until I looked him up after a conversation with my old debate partner Joey, but Mead is actually a respected senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a foreign policy scholar in the tradition of Joseph Nye. Yet amongst young intellectuals, he will always be remembered as the person who could put global nuclear holocaust together with economic decline in the fewest number of words possible.

"The way to deprive them of their ability to recruit is to attack the message. If you take Islam out of the message all that is left is criminality."

Was alerted to this on a Guardian board. This treatise could become a very big deal in the coming months when it is published.

Sayid Imam al-Sharif is a founding member of Islamic Jihad in Egypt. Long ago he authored Foundations of Preparation for Holy War, the so-called "Jihadist's bible." He has long been a comrade of Ayman al-Zawahiri and has been serving a life sentence in Egypt since his capture in Yemen.

Now he has just finished a document aimed at undermining the theological basis for violent jihad that is already causing ripples amongst Islamists. Several Arabic newspapers are jockeying for the rights to publishing the work. There are no guarantees, of course, but a condemnation of violence from such a person could finally spark a much needed dialogue amongst Muslims as to the future of their religion.

The Guardian has the scoop here.

Something I always suspected: the Grim Reaper is a cat. Just another reason why I don't care for felines.

'He only saved a billion people'

Jonathan Alter questions why Norman Borlaug's Congressional Gold Medal ceremony went overlooked by the media this last week. Borlaug is an agricultural scientist and University of Minnesota grad credited with jumpstarting the Green Revolution by creating agricultural techniques that doubled crop yields in many third world nations. This week he became only the fifth person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Article here.

(He's also apparently a former Big Ten wrestler and member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Doubt Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela can say that.)

Sheer unintentional hilarity

Advertisement from the Drudge Report:

Leave it to ESPN to hold a college basketball-style popularity contest that pits Peyton Manning against Amanda Beard. Really getting sick of this interrupting my morning sports fix.

That thing is frickin' sweet. I promptly purchased a good war game (Medal of Honor - Vanguard) and we got to work on it last night. Pretty pimp setup although it takes some getting used to. The first few times we tried invading Sicily, we'd end up with our guns pointed straight up in the air, unable to do so much as walk. You have to get accustomed to keeping the control stick and the nunchuk balanced. Always a little ridiculous when you throw a grenade straight up in the air and then watch it land at your feet.

Anyway, highly recommend it. This is going to be good for keeping me busy until 24 and Lost start up again.

My wife just bought a Wii.




Also, my wife kicks ass. Details coming.

So New York has been piping steam around the city for the last century? And they wrapped all of the pipes in asbestos so that if one explodes, it'll rain carcinogens? You know, might be safer just to heat yourselves some water. Just sayin'...

Cleaning out the camera again.

Found my camera over the weekend which means, once again, it's time to clean the sucker out:


My little sister Kendra graduated from Great Falls High School in June as valedictorian of her class. She went to that high school on the other side of the river, though, so that's the equivalent of about a 3.2 at CMR. Kidding aside, she's an incredibly bright young woman and I couldn't be more proud of her. She'll be attending the University of Montana in the fall.

But speaking of the Great Falls High Bison, have you ever heard of another high school that skins its own mascot and hangs it on the wall of its fieldhouse? Especially with "Pride and Tradition" scripted beneath them. I know we didn't have any dead Rustlers hanging from the rafters at C.M. Russell. Am I the only one who finds this odd?

Odd as that other high school might have been, as I've mentioned on here before, my grandfather Bob Cislo was a die hard Great Falls High fan--without a doubt the biggest fan the school has ever had. He attended every home basketball game and football game, health permitting. He even used to drive to away games when I was younger. And on occasion, he would be the only person in the stands watching a Lady Bison softball game during a blizzard, even though no one in our family does now or ever has played softball. After he passed away about a year and a half ago, Great Falls High honored him by placing a plaque on his seat, informing posterity that:

After Kendra's graduation, we took a family trip out to Holter Lake on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Lea and Mad Dog enjoying the view:
This last weekend I took a trip to Chicago with a group of law school buddies for Jason's bachelor party. I don't have many pictures, but we did take a few from the bar on top of the Hancock Building, 95 stories up. That's the Sears Tower off in the distance.

The view was incredible. You can see clear off into Indiana and, at night, the lights off in Michigan City.

This is the crew. Pretty funny trip. Jason's a big time Twins fan, so he and three other guys went to the doubleheader on Friday, where the Twins shallacked the White Sox 20-14 and 12-0 respectively. The other four of us came up later Friday and hit the Saturday game with him. In a nutshell, we hit a club or two, had some gentlemen's disagreements with a bouncer or two, the occasional pop, and a dog at the Wiener's Circle at 4 a.m. Now that place is nuts. They made a pretty good dog, but the novelty of the place is that when you place your order, the clerks start shouting obscenities at you. Not my gig exactly, but it's a Chicago staple.

Anyway, that's the skinny. Chicago kicked. Batman Returns was also being filmed across the street from our hotel too. Looking to take the Mrs. down there later this summer.

All Star game just ended. Frickin' National League. That's embarrassing. Shoulda had more Dodgers in there.

A former Muslim extremist explains why blaming terrorism on Western foreign policy only serves to strengthen the fundamentalist cause.

From the UK's Daily Mail:

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube calls upon Great Britain to invade Zimbabwe.

Story in the Times:

Ncube said that far from helping those struggling on less than £1 a week, Mugabe had just spent £1m on surveillance equipment to monitor phone calls and e-mails. “How can you expect people to rise up when even our church services are attended by state intelligence people?

“People in our mission hospitals are dying of malnutrition. We had the best education in Africa and now our schools are closing. Most people are earning less than their bus fares. There’s no water or power. Is the world just going to let everything collapse in on us?”

Rented the original Transformers movie over the weekend. It was a lot more exciting and believable when I was six. Couple things worth noting.

First, there is at least one S bomb in this movie. It has a PG rating, but Spike distinctly states at one point in the movie, "Oh s**t, what are we going to do now?" Couldn't believe it. And this was back in 1986 when PG movies had no profanity whatsoever.

Also, the rumor that the song "The Touch" is the same one that appears in the movie "Boogie Nights" is true.