So Don Cheadle has a new movie out. Out of sheer boredom I clicked on an interview with him on MSNBC. In that interview, two answers shocked me.

You were on the “Golden Girls” spinoff, “The Golden Palace.” Can we say it? Betty White’s a bitch, right?
Yes, she’s only angelic in every other thing you see her in, but on the show she was completely evil. Made out of evil.

Did you ever try playing “Password” with her?
No, I hit on her. I wasn’t married yet. I wanted to take her out, but the May-December thing wasn’t her thing.

Cheadle’s joking right? Betty White is evil? I never, ever imagined it. I could see it now that it has been suggested, but still I find it hard to reconcile. Oh and can you imagine Betty White dating Don Cheadle? He couldn’t have been more than 30 when he was on The Golden Palace. He wanted to date her? She wasn’t a hot old lady. She was just an old lady! This interview has got to be a joke.

Speed limits are a complete sham! There, I said it. That felt good too. Any law that criminalizes the majority of the population is a sham.

Some students decided to make a short film about the ridiculousness of the speed limit. Four of them got together to line up on an Atlanta-area highway and obey the 55 mph speed limit. Watch the video to see how they completely screw up traffic flow by obeying the law.

Speed limits make criminals out of everyone. By creating a category of laws that don’t really need to be followed, you erode respect for all laws. It also erodes public respect in their local government by turning traffic enforcement into a reverse lottery where if you’re unlucky enough to be picked out from the crowd you have to pay the penalty.

If you want to have any limits, which I’m not convinced is a good thing, they should be set above the typical speed to give people a speed cushion so they can behave normally. The government that supposedly represents us shouldn’t be coercing us in a dubious bid for safety.

We’re all brainwashed to think speed limits are about safety. If that’s the case, why is there a hard limit? Wouldn’t it be logical for the limits to vary by traffic density? What sense does it make to have the same limit at 2 pm when I’m surrounded by cars, than it does at 2 am when I might only see one other car on the road? Besides, if you accept the argument that lower speeds save lives, where do you draw the line? If 65 mph is better than 75, isn’t 55 just as better than 65? Why not go down to 35 mph? Why even have cars? Maybe the government should ban personal cars and save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.

Speed limit laws are just another manifestation of government overreaching into everyone’s lives. The safety whiners get their wishes and the government levies a hidden tax. I guess things will never change.

Ukraine made a pretty obvious plea to the Western World. President Victor Yushchenko announced that since Russia has abandoned the 1992 agreement on integrating radar stations, Ukraine would offer European nations access to its radar and missile early warning system. But that’s not the obvious part. Yushchenko also said that Ukraine’s sovereignty could only be ensured through collective security agreements, and only that “could prevent any actions like those which occurred on 7-8 August at first in South Ossetia, and then in other regions of Georgia”.

International politics does not get more open than that. This is a clear and direct appeal to us in the West to give Ukraine some concrete security assistance. Russia is a coiled snake. Are we just going to watch Ukraine get bitten?

Bush needs to kick NATO into gear and get our European allies to accept Yushchenko’s offer. That’s only a start. Just last week Poland agreed to host interceptors for our missile shield. In exchange, we will move 96 Patriot missiles into Poland and guarantee military support to Poland in the event a third party attacks. This clause is structured to proceed faster than invoking the mutual defense protocols of NATO. That’s not so paranoid when Russia is threatening you with nuclear weapons. We need to make a similar guarantee to Ukraine. Talk of European solidarity with Ukraine isn’t going to do anything to dissuade Russia from destabilizing it. An American presence will.

Part of that presence is organizing a cooperative defense system for Russia’s Near Abroad. As I mentioned in my original post about the Georgian War, nations threatened by Russia have offered Georgia ad-hoc assistance. The US can bring them together into a permanent structure to coordinate their defenses. They can share information gathered on Russian troop movements, create a common defensive strategy to respond to a Russian attack, and pool their expertise in cyberwarfare. I imagine founding members would include Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova and the Baltic states. Armenia and Azerbaijan would likely join soon after its founding if the organization shows promise. The Central Asian states may become interested as well.

Our State Department will have to beef up fast. Those Caucasian nations have a mutual fear of Russia, but they also have a lot of internal political problems. Our diplomats will have to get involved in solving intractable disputes such as the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. A conflict like that will undermine unity against Russia. That’s not the only issue either. There are plenty of enclaves in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia who are looking for some degree of autonomy. Our diplomatic corps must work towards getting these issues settled otherwise this endeavor will collapse in internal fighting.

The other element to America’s presence is something I’ve been arguing for years. America’s European forces should be redeployed. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are long dead, but our force distribution hasn’t changed to reflect that. Russia’s adventure in Georgia is just another reminder we need to change with the times. The US Seventh Army should be moved east from its headquarters in Germany. I want it sent to Ukraine to bolster that nation’s defenses and show we’re serious about defending their sovereignty. Don’t think it’s too risky to place these soldiers near the source of conflict. Our German bases were built right at the front line of the Cold War when that land was in West Germany. However, if wimpier opinions prevail, Poland, Romania, Hungary or Bulgaria would be better choices than leaving them in Germany. The old Warsaw Pact nations have become market democracies, but if we don’t move our forces eastward to counter a resurgent Russia, we risk their freedom.

Of course all these actions will enrage the Russians. That doesn’t mean they will go to war over any of them. Russia’s only assets are nuclear missiles and a pretty good air force. Its navy is rotten. Remember what happened to the Kursk? It’s starting a rebuilding process, but that’s years away from completion and even after spending billions of rubles, it still won’t match the US fleet. The Russian Army itself is in worse shape. Russia is in process of replacing 45% of its armaments by 2015. Shiny new rifles won’t make good soldiers though. It’s still a conscript army with epic corruption and hazing problems. It’s no match for NATO. Look at what the Russians have challenged. It was badly bloodied fighting Chechen separatists and defeated a Georgian army that had, at best, 20,000 soldiers.

Russia’s conventional military is not a threat. They are aware of their deficiencies and will only pick on weak nations. There’s no way Russia will challenge the combined militaries of Europe and America in order to put small border nations under their sway. Would Russia resort to nuclear blackmail? Frankly I think they have too much pride for that. Besides, that would not play well to nationalist domestic public opinion. Russia thinks of itself as a guarantor of civilization. Threatening to set off nuclear weapons is not what civilized nations do. Plus it would make the public question if Russia itself really was a powerful nation. After all, why use nuclear weapons when a powerful nation would have conventional means available?

You may be thinking, ‘Why should we alienate Russia for these nations?’ That question assumes we’re giving up Russian friendship to create an anti-Russia alliance. Sorry but we don’t have Russian friendship. Russia is only interested in having us obey their wishes. We’re supposed to stay out of the former Soviet Union while Russia reorganizes and puts its empire back together. We’re supposed to keep out of Eastern Europe because that’s Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. We’re supposed to let Serbia run amok in the Balkans because Russia has fantasies about being the great Slavic protector. I would love nothing more than to pull US forces out of Europe entirely and keep that money in the treasury. Unfortunately it would be far more costly for everyone if we choose to ignore Russia today.

Here’s a fascinating bit of science. It seems that women who take contraceptive pills alter the receptors that analyze male pheromones. Normally a woman looking to attract a guy would prefer men whose pheromones indicate the most genetic difference. Specifically, that refers to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a gene family that determines the immune system and reproductive success. Ideally a woman would pick a man who has an MHC that’s very different from her own. Doing so would give her offspring the advantage of an immune system that can recognize a wider variety of threats.

Birth control pills throw a woman’s pheromone receptors into reverse because the pill puts the body into a false pregnancy. When a woman is pregnant she prefers men with similar a MHC, probably because she’s looking for family who will take care of her while she has a baby. So every woman who is on the pill ends up becoming attracted to men they normally wouldn’t. Everything is fine until the day they go off the pill and wonder, ‘What the hell did I see in that guy?‘

This news immediately excited me because it made me wonder if this could have played a significant role in the rise in divorces in the last 40 years. So far we assume it’s caused by a change in our culture. Liberals would probably say we’ve become freer, while conservatives would likely claim we’ve become more self-centered. Perhaps both sides are wrong. Maybe divorce has become more common because more women who are using birth control pills are picking the wrong men. It could be that a significant number of marriages that ended would not normally have happened in the first place.

I love the idea that something we were so certain was completely within our control (who we marry and when we divorce), may actually be controlled by use of a common drug.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve caught Olympic fever. On Tuesday I sat down and watched women’s team gymnastics, a bunch of swimming relays, men’s volleyball, and women’s rowing. And I was completely sucked in. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I was actually holding my breath when Michael Phelps was swimming. Watching those gymnasts come so close to stumbling or falling would make my feet sweat and put my stomach in knots.

I’m a little embarrassed because I’ve written off the Olympics since the Atlanta games in 1996. It all just seemed so boring to me. The results never seemed to matter. US wins a bunch of medals, blah blah blah. Russians and Romanians are good at gymnastics, blah blah blah. Olympic spirit this, dreaming of gold that, blah blah blah. And always Bob Costas’s steady baritone narrating the soft-focused, feel good stories of the athletes who must have some struggle to overcome. Yet this year I’m eating it up. Well, most of it. I’m getting Phelps fatigue. How many times can you hear “eat, sleep, swim” before you start to hope he fails?

But last night I watched badminton for the first time in my life. It was China versus Germany (who actually had a Chinese athlete) and it was a fantastic game. Badminton is FAR superior to tennis. Those two women really fought for every single point. The shuttlecock would get slammed back and forth dozens of times before a point was scored. In tennis you’re lucky if you see the ball get returned three times. Booooring! The only time one of those badminton players didn’t practically kill themselves to hit the shuttlecock, was at the second game’s matchpoint when Germany’s athlete didn’t move because she was doubled over gasping for air. Now that’s sport!

Oh but don’t let me leave out Bela Karolyi’s great commentary with Bob Costas after the US women’s team won the silver medal. Now, let me preface this by saying, I don’t pay any attention to gymnastics so maybe this was old news to you aficionados. When Karolyi started ranting about how half the Chinese team was under age 16, well I was just beaming with excitement. You just don’t hear that kind of rumor-mongering on TV, and I want to applaud it. It really brings you inside the sport.

Also, I feel I should say thanks to Alicia Sacramone. She’s the first gymnast I’ve ever thought was hot. Gymnasts have a certain status in pop culture I’ve never agreed with until now.

So I’ll probably be staying up late to watch more tonight. There’s the women’s gymnastics individual competition tonight. Plus who knows what else? I never knew how much I liked badminton until last night and I saw a really interesting rowing competition too.

I don’t purport to be an expert on the subject of Georgia’s breakaway regions but unlike most Americans I have paid attention to the situation over the years. So maybe it’s surprising that I didn’t bother to write anything when war broke out between Russia and Georgia. Well I didn’t think I had anything new to contribute to the discussion. Pretty much everyone said this was a long time coming. A couple of real alarmists thumped that Russia was going to absorb South Ossetia and Abkhazia or even conquer all of Georgia.

But now that the war is winding down (sort of), there are a few things I wanted to say in the aftermath. Not only did Russia send in the tanks, but they also engaged in some robust cyberwarfare. Georgian government and media websites were compromised. Many of those sites had to be moved to overseas servers. Most interesting is the international assistance Georgia is getting. Two cybersecurity experts are coming from Estonia to advise Georgia on cyber-countermeasures (Remember last year when Estonia came under a sustained cyberattack from Russia?). Plus, Poland has made room available on their presidential website for Georgia to post situation updates. In the real world, as opposed to the cyber world, Ukraine threatened to bar Russian ships from returning from action at the Georgian coast to their rented naval base in the Crimea.

What stands out in my mind is that here we have the bones of an anti-Russia alliance. All of these are nations Russia has horrible relations with. Russia meddled in Ukraine’s last election and cut off its supply of natural gas; Estonia suffered under Russia’s cyber-wrath, and Poland is absolutely fearful Russia will do as it did to Ukraine and cut off its gas supply, and it has historical grivances as well. These four nations, united, could have a chance of pressuring Russia into better behavior. If an organization came into being, I imagine the other Baltic states would join. There’s a low chance Sweden and Finland would too. They have been getting concerned about a resurrgent Russia. This hypothetical group would certainly be able to chastize the West into action.

I am very disappointed in the response coming from Europe and the US. I have heard next to nothing from Western Europe. France sent mediators to Georgia but I can’t recall reading any firm denounciations from the governments of France, Germany, the UK or even the EU. Besides the expected “this is bad” type statements, I didn’t hear any concrete threats. The US did a little better. The condemnations have been louder and from more sources, but I still haven’t heard any concrete steps that will be taken to retaliate. US diplomats have been pushing for a stern rebuke in the UN Security Council but we all know that will never pass anyway.

Frankly I wanted the US response to be a lot stronger than a few angry words. Since we’re tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan ground troops are out of the question, but couldn’t we have offered air and naval support to Georgia? That would have been a hell of a shock to the Russians. Don’t we have an aircraft carrier stationed in the Mediterranean? We should have first sent that to the Black Sea to “monitor” the situation. Russia would have thought twice about how far it would push into Georgia, the West wouldn’t have looked like wimps, and we could reserve the ability to strike fast if the situation became something dire. No, instead all we gave were cheap, meaningless words.

It’s not that I’m pro-Georgia. After all, they started this war. We in the Western World need to be doing more to restrain Russia. If we don’t confront them when they become aggressive, the Russians will just get more aggressive. They will learn the only consequences are cheap, meaningless words.

The US presidential candidates also weighed in on this. McCain was definitely tougher on Russia, condemning the invasion and calling for an immediate withdrawal right from the beginning. Obama essentially said the fighting was bad and both countries should show restraint. Obama toughened his condemnation on Monday but I’m calling it too little, too late. Maybe he needed to be briefed on the existance of a country named Georgia. McCain has opposed Russia for a lot longer than this war (he called for their expulsion from the G8 because of the anti-democratic actions of the government) so I’m with him on this issue.

By the way, let’s salute Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili for making the world forget Georgia started the war and casting it as a case of pure Russian aggression. That was a masterful spin of the situation.

Alex Trebek is synonymous with Jeopardy. He’s been the host of that game show for as long as I can remember. For all I know he’s been hosting since the show began. The thing is…I can’t think of anything else he has done. Can you? I know he’s had some bit parts, but they all play off his Jeopardy fame. But what did he do to get that show? Seems like one day God formed Trebek from clay and charged him with hosting a new game show.

Well to my astonishment I actually found pre-Jeopardy Alex Trebek footage. I feel like I glimpsed a moment before the Big Bang.

Sorry I couldn’t record the whole game show. I only stopped on Game Show Network because I saw the name “Double Dare”. I was all set to travel down memory lane with Marc Summers and green slime, but instead I got this show. I spent about a minute watching in quiet astonishment before I bolted up to my room to record what I could.

I can think of one person who will complain about this so I might as well come out and say it. I am aware the video loses sync when the show comes back from commercial. That’s probably because I chopped the commercials out. No, it is not worth my time to fix the sync. Just enjoy it for what it is; a chance to see Alex Trebek with some ridiculous 70′s hair.

I found this old Craigslist post linked on Gothamist a few weeks ago. I made a note of it, but forgot about it until right now. I guess this is just another sign I’m old before my time, because I was pretty surprised by it. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that goes on in NYC, but I can’t help it.

Does this pass for a modern, urban romance story? Girl meets guy on crowded subway train. Guy fingers girl on crowded subway train. Girl misses guy and tries to find him on Craigslist. Maybe this could be the basis for a 21st Century Jane Austen novel.

I don’t really know what annoys me more about this. Actually, scratch that. I realized it almost as soon as I typed that. I’m really annoyed this girl wrote “red line”. That is unacceptable! You were fingered on the 1 train, 2 train or 3 train. Actually it must have been the 1 train if you got off (Ha. Ha. Double Entendre!) at 116th Street/Columbia University. There is no such thing as the red line in NYC.

It seems a little insane to me that this happens at all. It’s one thing for a couple who needs the sick thrill of getting caught in a lewd act, but this is two random nobodies who bump into each other. I suppose this counts as kismet? I just hope that guy had clean hands.

I found the Republicans to be a great big mess of disappointment since 2001. For five years they controlled Congress and the Presidency, and what did they do with it? Is government any smaller? Is the budget balanced? Are welfare programs, oh excuse me, ‘entitlement programs’ (because you can’t offend the old people by telling them they’re welfare queens) being cut back?

No, instead we got some wonderful culture battles. Terry Schiavo taught us it’s better to keep someone on life support forever. Larry Craig’s wide stance brought media attention to the plight of narrow width bathroom stalls.

Well for the first time in years I am quite pleased with those Republicans in Congress. On Friday afternoon, instead of accepting defeat at the hands of Nancy Pelosi and going on vacation, six Republicans stayed in the House chamber to protest the House leadership’s refusal to schedule a vote on lifting the offshore drilling ban. Those six grew to 20, and they continued to make their speeches even when the Democratic aides turned off the chamber’s lights and microphones, and forced C-Span to turn off the House cameras. You can read all about it on Politico. It’s a fantastic story. I really wish I could have been there to join in when they let the public on to the floor.

I guess my only complaint is that the Republicans didn’t keep this going. They called off their protest at 5 pm. That’s a shame because something as wild as this had the potential to really galvanize public opinion. If they kept it going through the night, the MSM would have been forced to cover it. The public would see these Republicans scraping together to fight for an issue that’s dear to most people. Oh and by the way, didn’t any of the Republican staff members have the sense to record what was happening with a cell phone camera and upload it to YouTube? That would have been even better than getting media attention. That kind of grassroots action would make the media look both flatfooted for being late to covering the story, and pro-Democrat for trying to ignore it.

Even with those flaws, it’s nice to see the Republicans trying. This is the sort of action I want to see from politicians.