87 people were brought in, tagged and released...

(Photo from WCCO slideshow.)

Update:

Puke (Mark Sieve) and Snot (Joe Kudla)

Update:

Glenn Eller is a lanky, baby-faced 20-something from Katy, Texas, a cushy suburb outside of Houston.

He is friendly, quick to laugh and has an odd affinity for Oreos topped with Cheez Whiz.

He's single.

He's looking.

And when he leaves Beijing after competing in the Olympics, he's going back to Georgia and his day job: teaching other baby-faced 20-somethings how to shoot and, if necessary, kill people.

Walton "Glenn" Eller III — that is, Army Spc. Eller — is a marksman trainer in Fort Benning, Ga. And he's one of six members of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) that is competing in shooting in the Olympics.

It's not among the sexiest events to watch, so you probably won't catch him on the tube. But just because shooting doesn't make for good TV doesn't mean it's lacking in drama.

Not when you consider that our nation is at war.

And members of our military are competing against military personnel from countries we have strained relationships with.

And we're competing in a country with the kind of human rights record that forced the Olympic torch to be hidden from protesters.

So while the latest incarnation of the Dream Team has garnered the most attention, the 14 Olympic athletes in the U.S. military — six of whom are in the USAMU — likely feel the most tension.

Then there's this uncomfortable truth: During times of war, a lot of people die. It's up to military trainers, like Eller and fellow Olympians Maj. Michael Anti and Staff Sgt. Libby Callahan, to help make sure the American casualty numbers stay low.

Not to take anything away from Michael Phelps — whose surgeon-like focus has received a lot of ink recently — but the word "focus" takes on a whole new meaning when you're not only representing your country but also juggling life and death to protect that country.

Update:

Scouring ancient texts, researchers from Wolverhampton University found the jokes laid down in delicate manuscripts and carved into stone tablets up to three thousand years old.

Dr Paul MacDonald, a comic novelist and lecturer in creative writing, said ancient civilizations laughed about much the same things as we do today.

He said jokes ancient and modern shared “a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.”

“Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research,” he commented.

Lost civilisations laughed at farts, sex, and "stupid people" just as we do today, Dr McDonald said.

But they found evidence that Egyptians were laughing at much the same thing.

...

The world's oldest surviving joke "is essentially a fart gag", he said.

The 3,000-year-old Sumerian proverb, from ancient Babylonia, reads: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

...

Dr McDonald commented: "Toilet humour goes back just about as far as we can go."

UK beer sales have fallen through the five billion litre mark for the first time since 1975 as the consumer downturn and smoking ban continue to hit Britain's pubs and brewers.

News that annual beer sales have slipped below 50m hectolitres will come as a further blow to an industry already suffering as pubs go out of business and brewers are forced to consolidate.

Figures released to the brewing industry by the British Beer and Pub Association, and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show total UK beer sales fell 1.7 per cent in the year to the end of April.
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The effect of the decline in consumption, combined with rising utility and commodity costs, an increase in beer duty, and the impact of the consumer downturn and smoking ban is having a catastrophic impact on Britain's pubs.

Pub closures are running at 27 a week, according to the BBPA, amounting to some 1,200 that have been forced out of business over the last 12 months.

That came as the volume of beer sold through pubs hit its lowest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with sales in the whole of the UK beer market down by 22 per cent since 1979.

Pubs have sold 175 million fewer pints in the past year as a direct result of the smoking ban, according to market analysts AC Nielsen.

Jake Shepherd, marketing director AC Nielsen, said: 'The winter months were particularly bad. Sales fell nine per cent through November to January when smokers would have been reluctant to stand outside in the cold to have a cigarette.'

Sales of wine were not hit as hard, dropping four per cent after the ban. Shepherd said: 'Wine has held up somewhat better than other drinks, benefiting from the increasing importance of food and women to the trade.' Cigarette sales have dropped 6 per cent since 1 July last year with smokers buying 2 billion fewer cigarettes between 1 July 2007 and April 2008.

How do you know men's lib is in full swing? When men start wearing skirts. On the street. In everyday life. The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman, snapped two men wearing skirts on the streets of Europe, and it caught us off guard — it's not like these guys were heading to a Scottish wedding in ritual dress. No, they evidently woke up that morning and decided that instead of putting their pants on one leg at a time, they'd slip a skirt over both legs. We thought we weren't ready for mirdles, but this is a whole new level.

We admit, we find the looks Schumann shot stylish. But we can't get past the fact that they're men wearing skirts, and something about that trend catching on just doesn't look or feel right. Don't get us wrong — we're all for equality of the sexes, and if Yves Saint Laurent can put women in pantsuits, there's no reason other designers can't put men in skirts. We expect to see them on the men's runways from time to time. And we find it delightful when we do, but in a non-serious way. But now that it may be getting serious, we're a bit unsettled. We don't know if America is ready for her men to be traipsing around the streets in skirts. And if they're just barely catching on in Europe now, how long before they're popular here? Five to ten years?

Commenters on the Sartorialist are smitten by these men in their skirts. One writes, "I'd do it myself (in ten years maybe)." Another writes, "There was a great Met Costume Institute show of men in skirts a few years ago — it took about 5 seconds inside to realize that the West has missed an opportunity for beautiful tailoring and sexy knees." And yet another writes, "I love both looks — I was struck by the usage of the belt on the guy with the tie — these looks are hot."

Hot? As in, Damn, that outfit compels me to get that guy's number? Hm. Dunno. But that's not to say that in several years we won't find a hot man in a hot skirt to be the sexiest thing since Brangelina. For now, though, so long as they're off the runway, we can't help but prefer to see guys with that extra bit of fabric between their thighs. But maybe we're just behind. So we'll ask you: How do you feel about men in skirts? Is the world ready for it? Or do you think it will take another decade or so for the planet to prepare?

Metro's buses [Note: St. Louis, MO area. NW] today consume more energy and emit more greenhouse gases, per passenger mile, than a typical sport utility vehicle. Its light-rail lines do better, but consume almost as much energy, and emit almost as much greenhouse gas, per passenger mile, as the average car.

Moreover, even where rail operations do save energy, this savings almost never makes up for the huge energy cost of rail construction. Highway construction also consumes energy, but because highways are more heavily used than rail lines, their energy cost per passenger mile is far lower.

If we ignore construction costs, many rail operations do consume less energy than the average auto — but almost none consume less than a Toyota Prius. As Lave suggested in 1979, to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is far more cost effective to encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars than to build rail transit lines.

Transit agencies that want to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions should focus on increasing bus loads or reducing the size of their buses. The average Metro bus has 39 seats, yet averages less than 10 passengers. Concentrating service in areas where loads are higher, and using smaller buses in areas or times of day where loads are lower, will do far more to save energy than building rail transit.

You've probably heard that transit fares will be rising, probably about 25 cents, probably around October 1st. A number of public hearings are scheduled in July.

Most of us will be paying more for transit July 1, however, when the sales tax goes up 0.25% in Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, Dakota, and Washington Counties. Also starting July 1, you'll be paying a $20 Transit Improvement Vehicle Excise Tax when you sell a vehicle registered in these Counties.

But that's already figured into the projected $15 million shortfall in the fiscal year starting July 1. As I posted earlier, that amount is suspiciously similar to the Light Rail subsidy. Increased business for an enterprise with such high fixed costs should more than cover the rising fuel costs.

So what does Metro Transit do? Raise bus fares, which will reduce ridership by pushing some back into their cars or carpools. And not just this fall, and not just a quarter, mind you. The resolution also would grant authority for another increase of up to fifty cents in 2009.

What else can we do to discourage ridership? Let's expand the morning rush hour to start at 5:30 AM, not 6:00 AM, so we can charge 50 cents more for these early birds. Isn't the purpose of off-peak fares to encourage off-peak ridership?

Oh, and let's make it complicated again, with the return of suburban fare zones to nickel and dime quarter and dollar us further.

All of this of course is just a double shuffle to secretly get more Light Rail subsidies. They're going to need still more money to run the Central Corridor and the Metropolitan Council is willing to further degrade the bus service to get it.

“For Hamas, the key is to keep the rocket attacks below an understood threshold and Israel's response will be tolerable, precise and produce minimal collateral (Palestinian) damage. The Hamas pattern is to fire one, two or three rockets at Sderot. Wait a few days and do it again. Injure two, three, four Israelis. Kill one or two, but not more than that - this week. Increase the range and accuracy of the rockets incrementally. Hit Ashkelon, but just once. Then wait. Hit a shopping center, but if no one is killed, the Israeli response is unlikely to threaten Hamas rule. If Israel does retaliate, the world will probably be more annoyed by the "disproportionate response" than the original rocket attack.”

As I was reading, though, something was bothering me. I was still stuck on the seemingly more limited issue of the terror involved. Who are these people who are being killed by the rockets? How do they live knowing that, only if some, unspecified number of them of them are killed and maimed, will their government be moved to do something about the terror under which they live? This dangerous and painful situation is only partially a product of the Arab/Islamist dream of annihilation of Israel. It is made possible by a combination of ruthless internal enemies (e.g. the far left peace movement), clueless dupes (e.g. Olmert, Livni, et al) and shortsighted erstwhile foreign “friends” who do not understand the reality of the threat. This motley assortment of fools and instigators hold Israel’s defense establishment, her regard for her own citizens and, indeed, her very moral, civic, ethical and intellectual integrity hostage.

When Shirley Jackson's famous short story The Lottery was first published sixty years ago in the June 26, 1948 edition of The New Yorker magazine, it set off the most violent reaction the magazine had ever experienced. In the story, the reader is gradually drawn into a nightmare- as what seems to be a “normal” American farming village gathers for some sort of annual community gathering. There is a lottery involved and little by little it becomes apparent that it is a “selection process”. The reader’s curiosity gives way to bemusement as the author quietly seeds in ominous details that build a sense of foreboding. Then, near the end of the story there is a sudden shift to horror when we realize that the “slightly too” nonchalant dialogue and mysterious references have been leading up to the revelation of a sacrificial rite. One person in the community is chosen by lottery to be stoned to death- sacrificed for “the good of all”.

It is little wonder that the story caused the explosion of controversy that it did. A scant three years after World War II, the cataclysmic battle against totalitarianism, here was a story that hinted that the enemy was not dead, but could lie ever so close beneath the surface in the most unlikely of places. Is this lottery totalitarianism? I think it is. It is a society that holds itself hostage in a suicide pact. The eerily believable rationalization that the lottery must be carried out because the welfare of the group is everything- the individual is nothing- is the brutal signature of fascism.

The weird, unconvincing quality of the “reason” that stoning one member of the community to death is “for the good of all” is also a dead giveaway. It is true that an oblique reference to the sacrifice having a good effect on the corn is made but there is a dispiriting vagueness about it and nobody seems to endorse it convincingly. In fact, the agricultural pretext is really irrelevant. The central drama of The Lottery is the absence of individual human value. In my post about Islamofascism, I quoted Louis Menand (ironically, writing in the New Yorker), “official ideology can be, and usually is, absurd on its face, and known to be absurd by the leaders who preach it.” This is another hallmark of totalitarian systems. These lottery victims are the moral equivalent of suicide bombers, human shields and hostages. They have no power to achieve anything. Their own genuine emotions and aspirations are anathema to the system in which they live. Only their annihilation is of value. Every one of them is a martyr- most of them just aren’t dead yet. They are, in every sense imaginable, dead men walking.

...The people of Sderot listen for the sirens all day and all night 365 days a year and all must wonder if today is the day that a rocket will come through the ceiling in a busy dining hall or a kindergarten classroom or a high school auditorium and finally be “enough” to force the government to use the power it has always had- but may not always retain- to eliminate the threat. They wait for the government to act. They pray for the rest of the world to recoil in horror. They face each day with bravery and hope. Just like the people in Jackson’s story, they are hostages.

If there was outrage in 1948 over the publication of that short story, how could there not be outrage today when an Israeli government dares Hamas to kill one more Israeli and see what happens and when they do, dares them to kill another one. Over and over again the children of Sderot draw lots and when one of them is torn apart by ball bearings or has a leg blown off, what happens? Is it somehow “for the good of all” that they suffer?

Do you believe that it is about The Nakba or The Occupation or The Settlements? Do you allow yourself the fantasy that there is a way to stop the madness- a sacrifice big enough to satisfy this ravenous cult?

Then what did the innocent victims die for on 9/11- or Madrid- or London- the Darfur? This is part of the same grotesque lottery that has been going on for 1500 years. In spite of the sacrifice of the innocent victims of 9/11, it is all too easy for us to deny that we are hostages too, but those “zero beings” from the Islamist void will not be happy to delete only Israel. They have "selected" them for annihilation first but it is nothing personal, you understand, just a sacrifice to prove there is no value to human life. There is no value to anything that does not affirm the spiritual vacuum of Islamism. It is not because they worship Allah, nor is it is that they believe Mohammed was a prophet. It is that they believe that he was the only prophet, that they know the absolute truth and that it is their mission to ignore (and destroy) all evidence to the contrary. If you believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they will not rest until they destroy you too.

The Jihadists are not interested in cease-fires or peace. They are happy to tell you what they want. They want the world to live under Shari’a law. They believe that anyone that doesn’t want that is sub-human and deserves to be killed. This is nothing less than another confrontation with the evil of fascist, totalitarianism, and that is a beast whose hunger cannot be sated with souls, nor can its thirst be slaked with blood. The lottery they are holding is to determine not if you will be destroyed but when you will be destroyed. We are all citizens of Sderot- its just that most of us don’t know it yet.