The USS turtle, 1777

]]> http://worldoftoday.org/2008/07/23/addendum-our-long-tradition-of-semi-submersible-pilotry/feed/ http://worldoftoday.org/2008/07/23/drug-runners-ruin-submarines-for-the-rest-of-us/ http://worldoftoday.org/2008/07/23/drug-runners-ruin-submarines-for-the-rest-of-us/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:35:36 +0000 adrian http://worldoftoday.org/?p=498

A coke-filled submarine

First:  If you do not read the bloggings of Michael Chertoff and friends over at the Department of Homeland Security it is your duty as a terrified American citizen to point your RSS feeder there now. (Also, comments are enabled, which presents the exciting possibility of an Osama Bin Laden-Geroge W. Bush flame war.)  Perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve learned from reading this blog is the sheer variety of vehicles Bad Guys might use to penetrate our supple borders–it’s like GI-Joes over here.  They include: trucks, planes, boats, the Internet, missiles, human bodies and ideas.

But also: Submarines!

A week ago, the Mexican Navy captured a “self-propelled semi-submersible” (SPSS)  filled with 5.8 tons of cocaine as it attempted to sneak into the US–one of about 45 detected in 2008.  These Colombian built SPSSs cost $2 million each and can’t completely submerge, but it’s enough to evade radar detection.  They also conveniently sink if captured, destroying any evidence.  So now Admiral Thad W. Allen (ahem) of the Coast Guard writes on Chertoff’s blog that the US needs a law banning the “operation of and embarkation in” SPSSs.

Which, I’m sorry, but no:  If keeping drugs out of America means giving up our long tradition of self-propelled semi-submersible pilotry, then I’m willing to take the risk that tons of cocaine might accidently end up in my living room even if I am only in the mood for a kilo or so.

Self-propelled semi-submersibles don’t kill people, people who fill those submersibles with tons of cocaine kill people.

What’s next:  A dirgible ban?  Hovercraft moratorium?

I am a Celebrity Chef.

So, famous and controversial blog Stuff White People Like becomes a book tomorrow.  I had actually never seen the site before tonight!  I think it is minimally funny but maximally ripe for parodying.  Let me be the last person on the Internet ever to make a joke about SWPL.

The World of Today presents an original parody Tumblr: Stuff People Like.

I wanted just to say, “No, don’t do that.”

The hands with the camera started rising toward her face, reached chest level, wavered, then went back down.  The man saw this and raised his hands in front of his own face.  That’s when she took the picture.

Free financial advice, in 17 seconds.

Note:  I created a Facebook group here.
If you join you get special nude versions of all my previous videos.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Note: I am in Prague, Czech Republic for the summer. This is the second in a series of letters from me, to the Internet.

-Livescience

A sordid tale, but it deserves to be told.

Not Jesse Helms

When I first read last week that conservative politician Jesse Helms was dead, I felt sad that the former governor of Minnesota and ex-WWF wrestler had passed on after providing me so many years of delight both in and out of the ring.  When I read that he was 89, I was surprised that the World Wrestling Federation had existed pre-WWII.  Then I realized I was thinking of Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  I also realized my interest level in politics declines sharply when it comes to people who weren’t even in a single Predator movie.

No:  The dead Jesse Helms was the longtime senator of North Carolina, and I guess the first sentence of this NYT story says it all:

Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator with the courtly manner and mossy drawl who turned his hard-edged conservatism against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86. (emphasis mine)

Here was a man who waged a political campaign against Modern Art, AKA “most of the artistic work reckoned anywhere from the early 17th century until the present time”(wikipedia).  Which, I guess says a lot for his conviction.  Most people would get exhausted from raging just against Cubism.

I am currently working on a self-help book for young people based on Helms’ life.  Basically it boils down to:  Study this man carefully, kids, learn what he believed in and how he lived his life–and do the exact opposite.

Senator Helms got all teary-eyed with nostalgia about segregation, filibustered the bill to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday and opposed funding AIDS research because it was a Gay Disease, but did you know he also:

• Invented reality television
• knew about the design flaws in the Challenger space shuttle but kept them to himself until the day before that fatal launch, then told NASA officials but in kind of a mumble so people just thought he was going on about “that queer Warhol” again
• was so racist he only fathered one illegitimate black son
• Won the annual “boogie-woogie atop George Washington’s Grave” invitational tap dance competition twenty-eight years in a row.
• caused the Columbia space shuttle disaster