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This is naturally, very late. And only really here for continuity and to tide you over in search of other things. Plenty has happened since this post.
Up top, a selection of vintage advertisements, probably all available at the Vintage Ad Browser linked yesterday. Which are good, but The Big Lebowski in iambic pentameter is that much better. And much longer than the snippets of her husband's sleep-talk a wife posts.
The Century of the Fruitbat marches on in Portugal, as they approve of same-sex marriage on their first vote, althoguh it will be the second vote that counts, while enough New Jersey lawmakers gave into fear and rejected their same-sex marriage proposal.
On the world's stage, The only certified survivor of both atomic attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has died at 93 years of age, meaning the Dead Pool starts with someone who is a celebrity by way, mostly, of the infamy of the usage of atomic weaponry.
In South Korea, in an attempt to appreciate life more, a seminar puts each participant through their own simulated death, including a significant amount of time in a sealed coffin. It could be used as a productivity stimulator, or as a deterrent to suicide (South Korea has a rather high rate), but the process of going through one's death is not one taken lightly by the participants, it seems.
A reminder as to how one wins wars - not just by providing security and killing bad people, but by building schools and educating the populace, by providing girls with hopes and dreams of bigger things than they thought possible, by providing men and boys with new ways of thinking about their world, and by making life better for the people there when you leave than it was when you got there.
Uganda's President has insisted he will soften up the kill the gays bill coming to him, but does not say anywhere that he intends on having it be vetoed or killed before it gets to him. Perhaps he also believes that homosexuals are recruiting children (a line of thinking I find rather bizarre. How can one "recruit" someone to homosexuality if they aren't already inclined to it?)
Not to mention that homosexuals are apparently more dangerous than child sacrificers, considering how many of the Ugandan people seem to be using the services of those who sacrifice children.
Archaeologists may have found the first signs of a historical El Dorado, a place where the legend was built around.
And last, the Vatican adds seven sins on top of the previous seven: polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice. We're a bit surprised homosexuality didn't make the list.
Domestically, The alleged Holocaust Museum shooter has died in prison, according to the AP.
The Pentagon released a report indicating those released from Guantanamo Bay are often returning to their old ways. This will no doubt be used as ammunition on why Guantanamo Bay shouldn't be shut down, conveniently forgetting which administrator it might have been that released these people returning to the fight. It's certainly not all the current administrator. (And the rate is about one in ten, by the way.)
Oh, finally. the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lays down some rules on appropriate use of stun guns. Zapping someone who is nonviolent but not immediately and unquestioningly obeying an officer doesn't make the list.
New York holds incredible things, including an art installation that pairs a tree with a basalt slab, demonstrating the harmony of trees and rocks together, even in opposition. Hopefully the message will get through - the Interior Secretary has decided that "drill, baby, drill" is not part of his policy lexicon and wants more oversight and toughness on how oil and gas leases are awarded on public lands.
And if anyone had any lingering thoughts about whether Richard Cheney is and has been a thorough scoundrel for much of this life, a link-filled retrospective on Richard Cheney and all the dastardly work he's done over the last three decades, by himself or with others that he's hired or collaborated with. Additionally, the tentacles of Xe, nee Blackwater, may reach further and deeper into government contracts than previously thought.
Differences of opinion are holding up a report about the future of the nuclear arsenal, with the no-nukes coalition and the more nukes for defense coalition at loggerheads.
Republican chairman Michael Steele is apparently driving away donators to the Republican National Committee because they feel his book tours and paid speeches are inappropriate or indicate insufficient focus on the party. This doesn't mean they aren't giving, just not to Mr. Steele's organization. Congresscritter Grayson, of blunt talk regarding Republican plans for health care, has found he's raked it quite a bit of cash for his stance, as have his opponents.
Finally, worry and fretting over how hard the American economy could crash if the defecit and debt aren't taken seriously and immediate steps aren't laid out on reducing both of them.
Technology: France considers taxing search engines because music pirates look for music to pirate using search engines, which is probably one of the less-intelligent ideas to come out of the "how do we let musicians eat and live by their work" discussion. After all, downloaders spend the most amount of money on music products, perhaps because they find who they want to support and then do so. From there, TARDIS package delivery - order in the future, get a tracking number indicating the package was delivered in the past, organic transistor e-readers available now and color, video-capable e-readers coming soon.
At the beginning of the opinions, ddjango continues to see the stystem as broken, with the solution being to live a life that doesn't feed the insanity, by not trusting politicians to fix anything for us, giving up personal cars where possible, avoiding major media, big banks, and anything that draws us deeper into the places where abuses are perpetrated against us and we take them and get depressed and let more abuse be done to us, because we see no way of fixing it. No longer does the truth set us free, it only makes us despair more, because the truth is more terrible than we've imagined it to be. Despite the pessimism at the top, it's not a hopeless situation - the people just have to manufacture their own hope, instead of waiting for someone else to provide it for them.
In satirical contrast to the grass-roots of the last opinion, The General lays out his blueprints for a proper Temple of Teabaggers, with all the amenities - a temple of torture, a place to flame liberals, quick and easy marriages and divorces (heterosexuals only, please), the place where being white and un-PC is met with a laugh instead of being fired, and the astroturf plaza where corporate interests can pretend to be putting on grass-roots protests. The shrine to direct action as directed by corporations. Different than people petitioning the government to remove the individual mandate if they're unwilling to provide a public option.
The Slacktivist picks up the thread and crosses it with the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department by pointing out how one always gets the expected result in an opinion survey if the only people surveyed are people who think the same way you do, and as such, it's only natural when evangelists survey themselves that they'll say the greatest issues facing them are abortion and moral relativism, along with mistreatment of others, and that they will say this with a straight face, not noticing how they're committing the last two in their dogged pursuit of imposing their will on everyone, including how they think about their top issue. Speck. Plank. Seriously!
Mr. Lowenstein advocates for homeowners to consider carefully whether or not voluntarily defaulting on their mortgage is the best option for them.
A thought experiment, which may need tweaking, on how difficult it would be to capture the true and accurate words of any one person, when working under the constraints that the Christian Foundational Writings' authors were.
Mr. Fund believes there's a bit of a hit job out on Mr. Rasmussen, because he paints the world and his questions in ways Democrats and liberals don't like, and the way he screens his poll respondents for likely voters. Mr. Fund cites Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, who pointed out that Rasmussen's polls are generally pretty accurate to reality. Pollsters can be right or wrong, but if they're the only thing you swear by as an elected official, you're not going to last long. Better to figure out what the complaints are driving the poll numbers and see if some of them are fixable. In the case fo the next election, though, they may not be, because the opposition is so totally opposed to what you want to do, and doign thigns that go against your promises of transparency, not matter how tempting they are, or how much you think it's the only way to produce an actual product (not necessarily a good product, for which you probably gave up on in committee), are going to hurt your numbers.
The WSJ continues to beat the drum that any information an alleged terrorist might have about other plots is more important than anything else, including even the barest of fig leaves that they're being treated according to appropriate criminal procedure. Indefinite detention for information is a-ok with the unsigned grouping here, and we suspect that in their quest for actionable intelligence, they're perfectly okay with torture, too, while they blame people who believe in treaties, laws, and other such impediments to the information that every alleged terrorist has as having a pre-11 September mindset that will make us weak and vulnerable and unable to stop The Big One! Scared yet?
In our derby for the cee-fractional quiche strike, the bronzed effort goes to the various FCC complaints about the Adam Lambert performance that have very little to do with what the FCC can actually regulate. It is funny in its own way, but also rather sad.
The silver? Rudy Guiliani, claiming that there were no domestic terror attacks in the United States during the previous administrator. Even granting him that he probably meant past the big 11 September attack, he's forgetting about shoe bombers, abortion clinic attackers, snipers, school shooters, and a whole host of other attacks that can easily be classified as domestic terror attacks.
Our winners tonight, Ms. Lori B. Reagan and unnamed companion, not only for her praise of a sophmoric taunt of Al Gore, but for her extrapolation of that taunt and its response into a screed against the "intellectual dishonesty" of liberals, led by the "empty suit" Obama, of whose academic days we know nothing, who used ghostwriters on his books, who is thus unqualified to lead the country, having done nothing, the mainstream media, who jumped at every opportunity to turn a Bush gaffe into unkind comedy, who eviscerated Sarah Palin for being unqualified to lead (despite fawning over Obama, whom Ms. Reagan has already demonstrated her opinion of), and, of course, the climate change liberals ignorning science and suppressing dissent, the health care liberals who refuse to acknowledge that universal health care always fails, and the "no Concept War here" liberals that refuse to be properly terrorized.
Focusing for just a moment on the taunt itself, from the sounds of things, Mr. Gore had no desrire to deal with someone who had already declared their own minds made up and was seeking only to make him look bad out of spite. Thus, instead of feeding the trolls, he communicated his desire for them to raise themselves up to the level of civility. When they failed to do that, he left, although not without Mr. Gore's companion providing an appropriate rejoinder for the taunter. Second, while the taunt itself was a soundbite, if one expected a witty retort that also worked as a soundbite, one expects a complex issue to be simplified to the point of stupidity and mischaracterization.
After that, though, it echoes birtherdom by demanding that only when every detail of a person's private life is laid bare and passes inspection by the most hostile of hostile forces are they qualified for the Presidency, and then descends into a pretty standard media rant, indulges in the "smoking gun of Climategate" nonsense, and then just talks about people she doesn't like. The error compounds from its inauspicious beginnings until it produces this piece of drek and names its writer and her companion the Worst People In The World (for today.)
At the end tonight, Samurai, by Chanel, reasons why pigs are more awesome than humans, and Send me Something, where you provide the SASE, and they will send you something, although nothing of great monetary value.
Up top, a selection of vintage advertisements, probably all available at the Vintage Ad Browser linked yesterday. Which are good, but The Big Lebowski in iambic pentameter is that much better. And much longer than the snippets of her husband's sleep-talk a wife posts.
The Century of the Fruitbat marches on in Portugal, as they approve of same-sex marriage on their first vote, althoguh it will be the second vote that counts, while enough New Jersey lawmakers gave into fear and rejected their same-sex marriage proposal.
On the world's stage, The only certified survivor of both atomic attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has died at 93 years of age, meaning the Dead Pool starts with someone who is a celebrity by way, mostly, of the infamy of the usage of atomic weaponry.
In South Korea, in an attempt to appreciate life more, a seminar puts each participant through their own simulated death, including a significant amount of time in a sealed coffin. It could be used as a productivity stimulator, or as a deterrent to suicide (South Korea has a rather high rate), but the process of going through one's death is not one taken lightly by the participants, it seems.
A reminder as to how one wins wars - not just by providing security and killing bad people, but by building schools and educating the populace, by providing girls with hopes and dreams of bigger things than they thought possible, by providing men and boys with new ways of thinking about their world, and by making life better for the people there when you leave than it was when you got there.
Uganda's President has insisted he will soften up the kill the gays bill coming to him, but does not say anywhere that he intends on having it be vetoed or killed before it gets to him. Perhaps he also believes that homosexuals are recruiting children (a line of thinking I find rather bizarre. How can one "recruit" someone to homosexuality if they aren't already inclined to it?)
Not to mention that homosexuals are apparently more dangerous than child sacrificers, considering how many of the Ugandan people seem to be using the services of those who sacrifice children.
Archaeologists may have found the first signs of a historical El Dorado, a place where the legend was built around.
And last, the Vatican adds seven sins on top of the previous seven: polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice. We're a bit surprised homosexuality didn't make the list.
Domestically, The alleged Holocaust Museum shooter has died in prison, according to the AP.
The Pentagon released a report indicating those released from Guantanamo Bay are often returning to their old ways. This will no doubt be used as ammunition on why Guantanamo Bay shouldn't be shut down, conveniently forgetting which administrator it might have been that released these people returning to the fight. It's certainly not all the current administrator. (And the rate is about one in ten, by the way.)
Oh, finally. the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lays down some rules on appropriate use of stun guns. Zapping someone who is nonviolent but not immediately and unquestioningly obeying an officer doesn't make the list.
New York holds incredible things, including an art installation that pairs a tree with a basalt slab, demonstrating the harmony of trees and rocks together, even in opposition. Hopefully the message will get through - the Interior Secretary has decided that "drill, baby, drill" is not part of his policy lexicon and wants more oversight and toughness on how oil and gas leases are awarded on public lands.
And if anyone had any lingering thoughts about whether Richard Cheney is and has been a thorough scoundrel for much of this life, a link-filled retrospective on Richard Cheney and all the dastardly work he's done over the last three decades, by himself or with others that he's hired or collaborated with. Additionally, the tentacles of Xe, nee Blackwater, may reach further and deeper into government contracts than previously thought.
Differences of opinion are holding up a report about the future of the nuclear arsenal, with the no-nukes coalition and the more nukes for defense coalition at loggerheads.
Republican chairman Michael Steele is apparently driving away donators to the Republican National Committee because they feel his book tours and paid speeches are inappropriate or indicate insufficient focus on the party. This doesn't mean they aren't giving, just not to Mr. Steele's organization. Congresscritter Grayson, of blunt talk regarding Republican plans for health care, has found he's raked it quite a bit of cash for his stance, as have his opponents.
Finally, worry and fretting over how hard the American economy could crash if the defecit and debt aren't taken seriously and immediate steps aren't laid out on reducing both of them.
Technology: France considers taxing search engines because music pirates look for music to pirate using search engines, which is probably one of the less-intelligent ideas to come out of the "how do we let musicians eat and live by their work" discussion. After all, downloaders spend the most amount of money on music products, perhaps because they find who they want to support and then do so. From there, TARDIS package delivery - order in the future, get a tracking number indicating the package was delivered in the past, organic transistor e-readers available now and color, video-capable e-readers coming soon.
At the beginning of the opinions, ddjango continues to see the stystem as broken, with the solution being to live a life that doesn't feed the insanity, by not trusting politicians to fix anything for us, giving up personal cars where possible, avoiding major media, big banks, and anything that draws us deeper into the places where abuses are perpetrated against us and we take them and get depressed and let more abuse be done to us, because we see no way of fixing it. No longer does the truth set us free, it only makes us despair more, because the truth is more terrible than we've imagined it to be. Despite the pessimism at the top, it's not a hopeless situation - the people just have to manufacture their own hope, instead of waiting for someone else to provide it for them.
In satirical contrast to the grass-roots of the last opinion, The General lays out his blueprints for a proper Temple of Teabaggers, with all the amenities - a temple of torture, a place to flame liberals, quick and easy marriages and divorces (heterosexuals only, please), the place where being white and un-PC is met with a laugh instead of being fired, and the astroturf plaza where corporate interests can pretend to be putting on grass-roots protests. The shrine to direct action as directed by corporations. Different than people petitioning the government to remove the individual mandate if they're unwilling to provide a public option.
The Slacktivist picks up the thread and crosses it with the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department by pointing out how one always gets the expected result in an opinion survey if the only people surveyed are people who think the same way you do, and as such, it's only natural when evangelists survey themselves that they'll say the greatest issues facing them are abortion and moral relativism, along with mistreatment of others, and that they will say this with a straight face, not noticing how they're committing the last two in their dogged pursuit of imposing their will on everyone, including how they think about their top issue. Speck. Plank. Seriously!
Mr. Lowenstein advocates for homeowners to consider carefully whether or not voluntarily defaulting on their mortgage is the best option for them.
A thought experiment, which may need tweaking, on how difficult it would be to capture the true and accurate words of any one person, when working under the constraints that the Christian Foundational Writings' authors were.
Mr. Fund believes there's a bit of a hit job out on Mr. Rasmussen, because he paints the world and his questions in ways Democrats and liberals don't like, and the way he screens his poll respondents for likely voters. Mr. Fund cites Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, who pointed out that Rasmussen's polls are generally pretty accurate to reality. Pollsters can be right or wrong, but if they're the only thing you swear by as an elected official, you're not going to last long. Better to figure out what the complaints are driving the poll numbers and see if some of them are fixable. In the case fo the next election, though, they may not be, because the opposition is so totally opposed to what you want to do, and doign thigns that go against your promises of transparency, not matter how tempting they are, or how much you think it's the only way to produce an actual product (not necessarily a good product, for which you probably gave up on in committee), are going to hurt your numbers.
The WSJ continues to beat the drum that any information an alleged terrorist might have about other plots is more important than anything else, including even the barest of fig leaves that they're being treated according to appropriate criminal procedure. Indefinite detention for information is a-ok with the unsigned grouping here, and we suspect that in their quest for actionable intelligence, they're perfectly okay with torture, too, while they blame people who believe in treaties, laws, and other such impediments to the information that every alleged terrorist has as having a pre-11 September mindset that will make us weak and vulnerable and unable to stop The Big One! Scared yet?
In our derby for the cee-fractional quiche strike, the bronzed effort goes to the various FCC complaints about the Adam Lambert performance that have very little to do with what the FCC can actually regulate. It is funny in its own way, but also rather sad.
The silver? Rudy Guiliani, claiming that there were no domestic terror attacks in the United States during the previous administrator. Even granting him that he probably meant past the big 11 September attack, he's forgetting about shoe bombers, abortion clinic attackers, snipers, school shooters, and a whole host of other attacks that can easily be classified as domestic terror attacks.
Our winners tonight, Ms. Lori B. Reagan and unnamed companion, not only for her praise of a sophmoric taunt of Al Gore, but for her extrapolation of that taunt and its response into a screed against the "intellectual dishonesty" of liberals, led by the "empty suit" Obama, of whose academic days we know nothing, who used ghostwriters on his books, who is thus unqualified to lead the country, having done nothing, the mainstream media, who jumped at every opportunity to turn a Bush gaffe into unkind comedy, who eviscerated Sarah Palin for being unqualified to lead (despite fawning over Obama, whom Ms. Reagan has already demonstrated her opinion of), and, of course, the climate change liberals ignorning science and suppressing dissent, the health care liberals who refuse to acknowledge that universal health care always fails, and the "no Concept War here" liberals that refuse to be properly terrorized.
Focusing for just a moment on the taunt itself, from the sounds of things, Mr. Gore had no desrire to deal with someone who had already declared their own minds made up and was seeking only to make him look bad out of spite. Thus, instead of feeding the trolls, he communicated his desire for them to raise themselves up to the level of civility. When they failed to do that, he left, although not without Mr. Gore's companion providing an appropriate rejoinder for the taunter. Second, while the taunt itself was a soundbite, if one expected a witty retort that also worked as a soundbite, one expects a complex issue to be simplified to the point of stupidity and mischaracterization.
After that, though, it echoes birtherdom by demanding that only when every detail of a person's private life is laid bare and passes inspection by the most hostile of hostile forces are they qualified for the Presidency, and then descends into a pretty standard media rant, indulges in the "smoking gun of Climategate" nonsense, and then just talks about people she doesn't like. The error compounds from its inauspicious beginnings until it produces this piece of drek and names its writer and her companion the Worst People In The World (for today.)
At the end tonight, Samurai, by Chanel, reasons why pigs are more awesome than humans, and Send me Something, where you provide the SASE, and they will send you something, although nothing of great monetary value.
