2010 archive
Make Me Feel Old 2
Picked up a Stouffer’s frozen stromboli because I didn’t feel like cooking after six hours on the road.
Package doesn’t even have directions for heating in a real oven, just for a radar range.
QOTD 0
Eliezer Wiesel, from the Quotemaster:
Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.
DST in a Nutshell 0
From SAL:
“It’s an hour later than it is.”
Speed Test 1
At Broadband dot gov. The FCC is collecting information about the quality of broadband connections.
Go there, because your ISP probably doesn’t want you to. (My ISP tested out pretty well, about 18 megs down and four megs up.)
Via Balloon Juice.
Robin Hooding in the UK 0
On the other side of the Big Pond, some persons are starting to see the light: tax people who can afford it so as to benefit the polity as a whole. Polly Toynbee discusses what over here we would call “deficit hawks”:
Just as in the United States etc.
Except that, somehow, a large percentage of US citizens have been convinced that closing schools and denying health care to the sick is somehow both moral and sane, as compared to raising the marginal tax rate a few points for the persons who gave us credit default swaps.
Security Theatre 0
A court sees through the charade.
Life under the Regency 0
Shadows of Massive Resistance.
Dick Polman:
. . . But this new nullification effort is not about legal scholarship, it’s about political theater. It’s about ginning up grassroots opposition and flipping off Washington. It’s about scaring the Democrats during the run up to the November elections . . . .
Massive Resistance didn’t work either. But it did a lot of damage along the way.
The Ersatz Jingoism of the GOP 0
In it for the money.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. (emphasis added):
The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it down as a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel.
Here, then, is the smoking gun, concrete validation for those of us who contend that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the GOP’s leading export, that under the aegis of George W. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove, the party’s message boiled down to a single command: Be very afraid.
And some of us have eagerly complied, fearing Muslim terrorists, Muslim Americans, Latino immigrants, gay people, black people, even salespeople if they say “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Some of us see socialists around every street corner.
Probably the Fashion Police 0
If some of the bridesmaid’s dresses I’ve seen are typical:
When the pair returned to the car, they found a pink Watters bridesmaid dress and a Vera Bradley bag were missing, police said.
It was not recovered in time for the wedding.
All seriousness aside, this does seem pointless and possibly vindictive. What is the resale value for a bridesmaid’s dress and where are you going to fence it anyway? Most of them you can’t give away.
I suggest the cops look for someone who is or has a girlfriend who is the same size as the bridesmaid.
Life under the Regency 0
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Gaywatch – Virginia Edition | ||||
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Via X Curmudgeon.
We Need Single Payer 0
Remote Area Medical set up free clinics, sort of like fairs. They move into an area for a weekend, solicit medical people to volunteer, and open themselves to the public.
They held one recently out in the Valley of Virginia. People came from as far away as West Virginia (not all that far) and North Carolina (real far):
Banks Shot 0
No longer on the pool table, not even in the pockets. No longer banks:
And this one disappeared yesterday.
Bend a Twig When It Is Young 0
And it grows up bent.
Behind this is a truth: The facts of history do not list to the far right. Wingnuts recognize this, so they manufacture their own facts, such as their bogus idea that the Founders created the United States as a Christian nation.
As they wrote Constitution when the European religious wars of the Reformation were recent history; had lived, many of them, obligated under British rule to support an established church; and witnessed persons persecuted by the British colonial rulers because of their religious beliefs, the last thing the Founders wanted was to establish a church. Hence, the establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment.
Manufactured facts have the troubling characteristic of not being factual.
There is another word for manufactured facts which are not factual.
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Lies.
H/T Karen for the link.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
A recipe for use by self-policing markets:
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1. Bring water to boil.
2. Add books.
3. Boil until books thoroughly cooked.
Serves: One crash.
More here.
Twits on Twitter 2
Hubris:
I can see it now:
@Heartburn: Hamburger for lunch.
@Notip: Lousy service at Joe’s bar and grill.
@Takeaction: Support HR2789.
@3rdFloorScottDorm: Who wanna part-tay! Hot chicks cold brewskis wanted!!!
Lord help us.
Housekeeping: Automatic Registration Disabled 0
Enough with persons (or more likely bots) registering as “stripteasegirl” and “sexywebcam.” Ripping them out of the database is annoying.
Any real live person wishing to register here, not that registration conveys any benefits since I switched to Askimet for filtering comment spam, can email me using the link at the top of the page.
“And All the Birds Did Shrink” 0
With apologies to Samuel Coleridge:
This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures.