From Pine View Farm

March, 2011 archive

Booty Cull 2

Language changes.

Not always for the better.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has ordered up a new translation of the Bible, one it says is more accurate, more accessible and more poetic.

Now “booty,” a word that sets off snickers in Sunday school, will be replaced by the “spoils” of war when the newest edition of the New American Bible, the English-language Catholic Bible, comes out on Ash Wednesday, March 9.

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Linus Torvalds:

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

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All the News that Twits 0

Via Funny or Die.

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Other Persons’ Bedrooms . . . 0

. . . seems to be where Republicans wish to be.

Keep them out.

From Atrios:

. . . I think it’s safe to say that the Village believes that “morality” is about women not having sex or abortions, and people not being gay, and that’s basically it.

He was commenting about this, but it also could preface this:

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Cantor’s Cant 0

Bob Cesca comments on Eric Cantor’s casual dismissal of the soon-to-be-unemployed so I don’t have to:

Is Eric Cantor saying that it’s not his job, to create jobs? Didn’t the Republicans all run on a platform of job creation during the 2010 campaign? Isn’t repealing healthcare reform, cutting spending, defunding Planned Parenthood, and policing women’s internal organs all part of the plan to create jobs?

Afterthought:

Recent history shows that Republicans will say whatever they think voters want to hear, then go back to doing just what they were doing before: Making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

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Jettisoning Ballast, Republican Style 0

Auth

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Where No Google Has Gone Before 0

Google deploys street-view tricycles.

Google’s Street View service has mostly been limited to places where cars mounted with cameras can drive. But now, Street View increasingly will include images of public and private sites ranging from selected hiking trails of the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve near Los Altos to Sea World Orlando to Kew Gardens in London.

Follow the link for pictures. The trike looks like a cross between a giant Big Wheel and the Seattle Space Needle.

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Good Hands? 0

Allstate, which has already sued several banks, alleging that the banks sold Allstate mortgage-backed insecurities which the banks knew to be hinky, has allded Credit Suisse to its list of targets.

Credit Suisse is the latest target of Allstate’s litigation over mortgage-backed securities. The company last month sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. over $700 million of the securities the bank sold the insurer; Citigroup Inc., over more than $200 million; and Deutsche Bank AG, over about $185 million. Allstate said the banks misrepresented underwriting standards, owner occupancy data and loan-to-value ratios.

“The systemic (but hidden) abandonment of the disclosed underwriting guidelines led to soaring default rates in the mortgage loans underlying the certificates,” Allstate said in the Credit Suisse complaint. “The value of Allstate’s certificates has plummeted, causing Allstate to incur significant losses. These losses were not caused by the downturn in the U.S. housing market, but by the defendants’ faulty underwriting.”

I tend to root for Allstate, but not by much. I suspect that no big corporate players in the high-falutin finance field have clean skirts.

But I sure as shootin’ want to see this go to trial.

The testimony in open court should be delicious.

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A Pizza To Go with No Ratatouilles 0

This guy has no future in black tomato ops.

Nickolas Galiatsatos, a pizza shop guy in Upper Darby, had a simple plan, according to police.

He allegedly tried to infest competing pizzerias with mice.

The plan, however, quickly unraveled when Galiatsatos, 47, owner of Nina’s Bella Pizzeria, tried to slip a bag of mice past two uniformed police officers eating lunch at Verona Pizza around 3 p.m. Monday, authorities said.

Read the whole story. You need a chortle.

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QOTD 0

Ben Hecht, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

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