Mailbag – Quick Items and Links

Reader Michael sent in this interesting chess set:

The description?

“For their RS&A chess set commission, the Chapman Brothers chose to create a game played by postapocalyptic adolescents, the one side white with Arian haircuts and the other side black with Afro hair. The set is displayed in its own handcrafted games box, the board inlaid with white and black double-headed skull and crossbones.”

Fatemeh sends in the news that Representative Keith Ellison was arrested in a Darfur protest:

Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and four other members of Congress were arrested Monday [April 28th] in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington as they protested the expulsion of aid groups in Darfur.

It was an apparently unprecedented act by a member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation and somewhat out of character for Ellison, a Democrat who has generally avoided controversy since he arrived in Congress, attracting international attention as its first Muslim member.

Minnesota Republican Party officials, while saying they respect Ellison’s advocacy against genocide in Darfur, criticized his decision to get arrested as a “publicity stunt unbecoming of the office he holds.”

Keeping in tradition of the racist sock, we now have a racist camera:

We got our Mom a new Nikon S630 digital camera for Mother’s Day and I was playing with it during the Angels game we were at on Sunday.

As I was taking pictures of my family, it kept asking “Did someone blink?” even though our eyes were always open.

(Thanks to reader Mandy for sending this in!)