News?

Scuba Adventures, which affords "Shark Experiences" to "Shark Enthusiasts and Photographers" in Bahamian waters, by chumming to attract Tiger and Hammerhead Sharks, then inviting the aforesaid enthusiasts and photographers to jump in with them, has announced that a 49-year-old Austrian was bitten on the leg at their latest "experience," and was taken to hospital where he died. Scuba Adventures reminds prospective enthusiasts that they do not provide cages or any other sort of protection for their Shark Experiences.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're dumb enough to jump in with a bunch of sharks chummed into a feeding frenzy--however enthusiastic you may be--likely you'll be bitten.   The same thing applies, as I recall, to an enthusiasm for grizzly bears.  If only we could get the enthusiasts for other large predators--Bengal Tigers and Giant Spitting Cobras, say--similarly off their guard.

Reading Ted Rall today, whose opinions, as I sometimes forget (how did he get so marginalized?), are my opinions:  "The 'differences' among Bush, Hillary, and Obama on the 'war' are a fairy tale," quoting, with some compression, Bill Clinton.  Alas, how true!

But, so looking over the many Ted Rall cartoons and editorials which so entirely represent my own point of view that I find them painful ("Too true!" as the Evil Pope said of his portrait by Velazquez), and googling out of curiosity the adverse reaction to them, I find a World Awash in "Support of the Troops," and other things too fucking dumb to deal with ("Terrorist Threat," for example, and the "Ticking Time-Bomb" defense of Torture).  I forget how long ago, how completely, I stopped believing in America the Good.