2010 archive
Round and Round It Goes 2
You’ve heard of the 30 Years War? Here’s 23 years of Fruitcake War.
Read the whole thing. It contains more than one smile.
QOTD 0
Rebecca West, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.
The Entitlement Society 0
Andy Borowitz on Goldman’s sacks.
Follow the link for the full report.
“I don’t doubt for a minute that my friends at Goldman deserved those bonuses,” Satan said, adding that “buying their souls was the best investment I ever made.”
Update from the Phony War on Christmas 0
Zombie lies never die, American Red Cross version:
Atrios, talking about something else, puts the phony war on Christmas in a nutshell:
Responsible Fiscals 0
Cuomo sues the some of the three-card monte dealers on Wall Street, in this case, Ernst and Young for helping Lehman hide its debt.
Bloomberg:
The state seeks to recover more than $150 million in fees collected by Ernst & Young for work performed for Lehman from 2001 to 2008, plus investor damages and equitable relief, Cuomo said.
Interview with an Exorcist 0
From the Guardian, offered without comment:
QOTD 0
Susan Langer, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them.
Brendan Tells a Christmas Story 0
It’s kind of scary and depressing and it’s one of the best-written things he’s done.
Words Fail Me (Updated) 0
Facebook Frolics 0
Frankly, I think this is creepy:
There are some reassuring aspects to the announcement. To begin with, the company has said that it will keep its existing privacy options around photos and tagging, which include your ability to block tagging or limit who can tag you as well as the ability to remove tags from images after they are posted. Facebook also notifies you whenever you’re tagged in an image.
The company also announced that it will allow users to opt out of having their name suggested to friends during the photo tagging process. If you disable “Suggest photos of me to friends,” your name will “no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually,” according to the Facebook blog.
With the new system, face-recognition software will analyze your photos as you upload them and attempt to identify who is in the picture. It’s not trying to compare the pictures you upload with a database of everyone in the world, everyone on Facebook or even every one of your friends. Instead, according to a representative, it’s looking at the people you interact with most frequently.
I do not tag pictures on Facebook. In fact, most of the few pictures I post are of scenery. not persons.
One reason is that I seldom take pictures of persons when I am with them; I’m too busy enjoying (I hope) their company. The other, and more important one, is that I wonder about the wisdom of uploading someone’s picture without permission. I wonder even more about naming them, even if they use Facebook, unless they are already public figures doing things in public.
My limited use of Facebook leads me to believe that most Facebook frequenters do not mess with the default privacy settings, and the default so far has tended towards treating all your “Facebook friends” as if they were your long lost brothers and sisters with no secrets from anyone.
Follow the link for more information on how “feature” is expected to work.
DWD: Driving While Dumb 0
From El Reg:
An Indianoplis man was pulled in by cops last week for drunk driving while watching porn.
Actually, he was only charged with drunk driving – Indiana law not appearing to have a law governing the viewing of smut while hurtling down the highway while nominally in control of a tonne-and-a-half of car. At least not at the moment.
He was so engrossed in the flick that he didn’t turn it off when the cop came to his window.
I predict a sales increase for the producers.
The Actual War on Christmas (Updated) 0
The Republican policies that make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.
Santas can’t get work.
“People are telling us they just can’t afford a photo with Santa,” Trolli said.
Even in-demand Santas with real beards have had to slash rates, Trolli said. They once commanded $200 an hour, but now they’re charging half that.
Trolli said that anecdotally, his members’ bookings are off about 25 percent. Other Santas around the nation said that in good years, they booked 40 events a season and are down to fewer than 10. Others who once booked 10 events a year are down to none.
Addendum:
Talk about serendipity, this was in my RSS feed this morning:
QOTD 0
George Bernard Shaw:
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Seen on the Street 5
What’s wrong with this picture?
Twits on Twitter 0
No incoming twits about RLS and couples who use separate bathtubs:
They worry that one wrong move will land them in the penalty box with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, their federal regulator.
A recent survey from audit and consulting firm Deloitte found that 35 percent of companies surveyed had no interest in social media, a striking number given that the general public seems enamored with such 21st century pleasures as Tweeting on Twitter and Friending on Facebook. Many firms see the new media as a gold mine for customer engagement.
But more than half of firms surveyed by Deloitte said confusion about what regulators believe is appropriate communication over social networks gives them heartburn about participating.
Was Jesus a Liberal Democrat? 0
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat | ||||
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Via Delaware Liberal.
