Nerd News: Got a Doctorate in Disgrace? Be a Professor!

*Sigh.*

There's No Way To Say "Turducken" And Sound Dignified

Thanksgiving is coming up fast, so my buddies and I have been, in person and online, been happily obsessing about recipes.  The one that's always both fascinated and horrified me is turducken, so let's just say this is pure madness and a thing that spawns madness too. So here are three takes on this monstrosity:

I.   An actual recipe for the Ultimate Turducken.  Overengineer that sucker to oblivion!

II.  OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER: OH THANK GOD, THE USDA IS HERE WITH A GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED TURDUCKEN PROTOCOL TO END THE NATIONWIDE EPIDEMIC OF PEOPLE GETTING SICK FROM HOMEMADE TURDUCKEN COOKED WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION. WE'RE SAVED!  *throws handfuls of dry stuffing mix like confetti*

III.  The incomparable Iowahawk mashes up Churchill, Petraeus, Benghazi, and turkey into this hilarity:

Murder, wrapped inside a government cover-up, wrapped inside an extramarital affair: Benghazi is the Turducken of scandals.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 15, 2012

Book Review: The Now-Infamous Petraeus Biography

Well, looky here!  Someone actually bothered to read the biography instead of / in addition to getting sucked into the melodramatic quagmire of l'Affaire Petraeus.  Here's an actual book review.  Unfortunately for the author, the reviewer zeroes in on a certain obvious ... ah ... bias in favor of the subject.  I can't help quoting a bit:

This book could have been titled The Agony and the Ecstasy of David Petraeus; it’s tricky to write a hagiography of someone who isn’t dead yet, but Broadwell manages. ... Broadwell’s book — noted for featuring intimate access to its subject — introduces readers to what might as well be the love child of Achilles and Billy Graham. 

Ouch.

In Flagrante: Scandal and Skulduggery

Having trouble keeping up with all this?  Me too. 4 thoughts:

• Lance Armstrong, David Petraeus, and now Elmo?
• L'affaire Petraeus gets stranger and stranger to the point that ...
• This is now a headline: "CIA Director David Petraeus Is The Only Sane Person In His Own Sex Scandal."
• Something from history: Allen Dulles as comparison.  

UPDATE 1: So ... Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, David Petraeus, some FBI agent, General John Allen, all muddled up with military and security concerns.  One gloriously snarky wag just quipped: "It's not a love triangle. It's a love Pentagon."

UPDATE 2: The Onion strikes again with this fake headline: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

UPDATE 3: How bad is this train wreck?  Professor Drezner has gotten sucked in and is watching this mess as if it were a soap opera.  Yup:

Look, let's be blunt -- as a responsible foreign policy blogger, I should be trying to divert your attention away from the tawdriness that is the David Petraeus scandal.  There's no shortage of other interesting stuff happening in the world.  Things like Argentina's slow-moving debt debacle, or the discord between the EU and IMF over Greece, or even the possibility of the United States overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer.  

The thing is, I can't, I just can't.  I'm weak, and the way this scandal has metastasized is friggin' incredible. 

What the hell.  If you're going to watch, you might as well call in some pizza!

FREE ADVICE: Don't send stupid emails. Especially (a) do not send threatening emails to some other girl if you yourself are indulging in some big-time double-adultery, and (b) do not send 30,000 emails to whomever you're carrying on a fling with.  (Still, 30,000 emails?)  

RELATED: The Secret Service's not-so-secret services.  Insta-Prof - um- nails it.