January, 2010 archive
Brendan Writes a Column 0
in which he espouses an excellent idea.
If Ed Rendell must force casinos down Philadelphia’s throat, put one in the S. S. United States.
Afterthought: Apparently the favorable reception surprised him.
Schiavorrific 0
I toyed with blogging about this and got distracted by the local rally for health care.
Now, Karen has saved me the trouble of thinking about what to say.
The Marks Always Lose 1
The house always wins in three card monte:
Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are encouraging clients to buy swaps that pay higher yields for speculating on the extent of losses in corporate defaults. Trading in credit- default swap indexes rose in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2008, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data. Federal Reserve data show leverage, or borrowed money, is rising in capital markets.
Aside: Read this. Read it all the way to the end.
Corporate Personhood 0
Bill Shein foresees the future:
Follow the link for the rest of the predictions.
Blast from the Past 0
I got an honest-to-God typed chain letter in an envelop postmarked Texas in the mail yesterday.
I’ll be mailing it in to the Postal Inspectors today.
Proposed New Congressional Garb 0
As endorsed by John Roberts.
Field has commentary.
(Follow the image link to buy your own so you too can dress like a Congressperson.)
How Can They Tell It Was Shot by Chimps? 0
Because it is superior to US television programming:
Freudian 0
Every once in a while, one of these bozos slips up and reveals how he really feels.
Sacrifice 0
Bonuses in the billions. Words fail me.
The three Wall Street firms set aside $39.9 billion for pay in 2009, below the 2007 record of $44.7 billion. The total fell short of the $46.1 billion five analysts expected this month and is almost $10 billion less than what some analysts estimated in October.
In His Sights, Reprise 0
More on the Trijicon gun sight fuss:
Mother Teresa’s faith drove her to foreswear material riches and spend half a century working to uplift the wretched poor of Calcutta.
Martin Luther King’s faith drove him to gamble his very life in a dangerous campaign to win human and civil rights for African-American people.
And then there’s Glyn Bindon (founder of Trijicon–ed.), whose faith led him to inscribe coded Bible verses on his gun sights.
Who Says . . . 1
. . . dog bites man is not news?
What? No Blueberries? 0
Just down the road a piece, a city has a novel solution to its sludge problem.
When the sulfate (EPA link) level gets too high in the sludge generated in the water purification process (not the waste treatment process), they add pancake syrup.
“It’s not the kind of thing where we run to the grocery store and clean out the shelves,” said A. Craig Maples, Water Resources Management administrator for Chesapeake.
The sugars from the syrup help break down the sulfate, but “I don’t know that we were in agreement with the methodology they were using,” said the DEQ’s (Virginia Department of Environmental Quality–ed.) McConathy.
I’ll never think of IHOP in the same way again.
(I was considering filing this under “Recipes.”)
While I Was Sleeping 0
More banks blanked:
-
Columbia River Bank, The Dalles, Oregon
Evergreen Bank, Seattle, Washington
Charter Bank, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Bank of Leeton, Leeton, Missouri
The failed bank table in the FDIC database is getting pretty full.
Wall Street: “You Can’t Handle the Truth” 0
John Dillinger didn’t want to be regulated either.
In His Sights 0
The fuss over Trijicon’s encoding references to New Testament Bible verses in the serial numbers of its telescopic rifle sights seemed a little over the top to me.
- No one looks at serial numbers.
- You had to know already to what they were to recognize the references. Proselytizing didn’t seem to be an issue here.
But I wonder . . .
These are the two verses in question:
(referred to as JN8:12)
referred to as 2COR4:6
One wonders whether the authors of these words would consider them appropriate for gunsights.
And about the thinking of those who concluded that they were a fitting accompaniment to instruments of killing.
