brainrow

Dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit…

It took ESPN five days to fire this guy:

Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.

His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

…

At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:

“I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.

“I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”

At the urging of station general manager Mike Thompson, Madden apologized over the air for his remarks about two hours later.

After initially reviewing the situation on a local level, Madden was neither reprimanded nor suspended. When asked if there would be some form of punishment, Thompson said, “No. The fact is we took action right away. Frankly, it was a comment that was stupid. He admitted that. I don’t think it requires any such thing as [discipline].”

ESPN had a change of heart, and it came from the corporate level in Bristol.

You know, I don’t think Madden’s going to have any trouble getting another job. On radio and some cable TV channels, outrageous hate speech is a career move these days. Who knows — CNN Headline News, perhaps?

The same orbiting camera that captured yesterday’s photo of the Earth and the Moon from Mars got this photo of the Phoenix spacecraft descending toward Mars under its 30-foot wide parachute. That’s the Martian surface in the background.

(How it was done.)

The Washington Post has faces of the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial is online.

Of course, there are many other wars, many other fallen soldiers, many other memorials.

Happy Memorial Day.

Via Stranger Fruit, the planet Earth and its Moon, as seen from Mars. To the naked eye, Earth would be nothing more than a bright blue point of light in the Martian night sky. This photo was taken by a very high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, like looking through a powerful telescope.

Today’s a big day for Earth-Mars relations. The Phoenix lander is scheduled to touch down in the far north at 7:53 PM EDT tonight. Scientists believe there is water ice under the surface there, and Phoenix is equipped to dig for it. (Speculation that Phoenix will bring the ice back to earth to counteract global warming is a pretty good joke, I think.)

If you are a space nut, Space Nut Central (better known as The Planetary Society) suggests places where you can follow the landing live.

Update: Photos from the Phoenix lander.

It sounded like Hillary Clinton was explaining to her most rabid followers that she still had a path to the nomination, if only one of them would take the hint:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” she continued. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Her advisers quickly explained that Clinton merely intended to note that this was not the first primary campaign to stretch into the summer, not to suggest that Obama might be assassinated. Clinton later apologized to the Kennedy family while speaking to reporters, saying she did not mean to offend anyone.

So it was really just about the fact that primaries run until June, that’s all.

Open Letter:

Dear Ohio Obama Delegate:

Because I voted for Barack Obama in the Ohio primary, I’m happy to say I contributed, in my small way, to your selection as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Therefore, I’ll make bold to ask a favor of you. I would ask the same of all Obama delegates, if I could.

Please: if something happens to Sen. Obama before the Convention ends — if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he’s swallowed up in an earthquake, or if a meteor hits him, or if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning — then please support John Edwards at the Convention.

Thank you for your attention and consideration.

I don’t think Sen. Clinton would listen to my advice, if I offered it. Even though it would give her a lot more leisure time.

Update: A little more perspective from a New York Times reporter traveling with the Clinton campaign.

Via Daring Fireball, Mac Mother Ship has a gallery of Apple advertisements and brochures. I bought my first computer — an Apple //e — twenty-five years ago, and this didn’t bring back memories for me until well down on the second page.

This John McCain ad reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s Christmas gift ad:

McCain does seem to be trying to distance himself from Bush. Why, this ad promises to reverse almost everything done by Bush and Cheney.

To be fair, if you had videotape of everything I’d ever said in my life, you might be able to put together something to create the impression that I wasn’t presidential timber, either.

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, on returning to earth after walking on the moon:

Since that time, I have not complained about the weather one single time. I’m glad there is weather. I’ve not complained about traffic. I’m glad there’s people around.

One of the things that I did when I got home, I went down to shopping centers, and I’d just go around there, get an ice cream cone or somethin’, and just watch the people go by, and think: “Boy, we’re lucky to be here. Why do people complain about the earth? We are living in the Garden of Eden.”

(This is from the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.)

Conservatives talk in code:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Guess he had to add that last sentence, in case anyone failed to get the signal.

I kinda liked Huckabee during the primaries. He’s very conservative, but he didn’t seem mean-spirited. So I’m guessing he just wants to be surrounded by Secret Service agents. After a remark like this, he might get his wish.

At first I was amused by this post from This Modern World:

If John McCain was hoping to use his speech at the Republican convention in September to try to woo working class voters away from Obama, he might have hit a snag. It seems that McCain’s speech (which traditionally happens on the final night of the convention) will be happening at the same time of the NFL season opener between the Superbowl champs NY Giants and the Washington Redskins.

On reflection, I think this is part of a massive conspiracy by the NFL to get McCain elected. I mean, if people actually heard his convention speech, what chance would he have? The NFL is helping to hush up the Republican agenda, and this year there’s no greater service they could render for the Republican Party.

Josh Marshall:

Every time the president does something like this, the Democratic nominee needs to point out again that President Bush bungled the country into a disastrous war that has damaged America, failed to find Osama bin Laden, funded it all [by] driving us further into debt to China and various Gulf sheikdoms. And McCain supports it all 100%.

Always stay on the offensive.

Question: Could George W. Bush have done more damage to the country if harming the country had been his actual intent?

Follow-up question: How do we know it wasn’t?

John Gruber makes an interesting point about Apple:

Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.

But it is frustrating, buying the latest best-of-breed product in order to have bragging rights over all the poor saps who don’t have the latest, coolest thing, and then seeing it made less cool when the same company releases something even cooler only a few months later.

The Daily Show on what went wrong for Obama in West Virgina (some crude humor):

If Obama’s looking for a fighting running mate, maybe he should consider Joe Biden:

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden, D-Delaware, called President Bush’s comments accusing Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats of wanting to appease terrorists “bulls**t” and said if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran then he needs to fire his secretaries of State and Defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.

“This is bullsh*t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden said angrily in a brief interview just off the Senate floor.

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

On CNN, Biden just said he shouldn’t have used that word. I think he’s wrong. I think it’s high time Democrats call it like they see it on this administration.

I try to avoid “bad language” myself, but sometimes the situation calls for it. Sometimes it’s exactly the right word.

Tell it like it is, Joe.

Update: from Daily Kos:

Obama doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) do all the pushback. That’s what surrogates are for… and Bush just did his Great Uniter bit to help unite everyone in the Democratic party behind Obama.

I’ve been wrong. Bush is good for something.