August, 2011 archive
QOTD 0
Edith Hamilton, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Myths are early science, the result of men’s first trying to explain what they saw around them.
Retro-Schlock 0
According to something I just saw on my telly vision, Charlie’s Angels the Remake, new with Hollywood’s idea of Diversity! is coming to my ignore list this fall.
If Hollywood wants to know why the world is losing interest, I have the answer in five words:
Remakes, CGI, Comic Book Heroes.
Afterthought:
Also, comic book hero remakes with extra CGI.
Site Redesign Update–Housekeeping Notes 0
I just went through my blogroll and removed blogs that seem to have gone inactive (see Afterthought) or irrelevant to my interests, as well as added a couple I have recently been visiting and citing frequently.
I removed the Blogroll Amnesty category, as it has outlived its usefulness; since the passing of Jon Swift, the concept has no prominent champion. I merged the links that I kept into my regular blogroll.
I also restored the “Other Stuff” to the sidebar–somehow I had overlooked it.
I’m looking to have some fun with the banner picture next.
Afterthought:
In the podcast world, a podcast’s going inactive is called “podfading.” Would this be “blogfading”?
When Good Bloggers Go Bad 0
Ask Amy offers advice.
Stray Question 0
Am I the only person who finds the increasing tendency to refer to soldiers and sailors as “warriors” kind of creepy?
I don’t consider Sparta an ideal role model for a state.
Twits on Twitter 0
Twit twits and twits respond.
If you follow the link, be sure to read beyond the first paragraph or you won’t get the full twitifericicity of it all.
“Whites Only” Partying Down 0
Chancey de Vega states what is obvious except to those who don’t want look. It is not for nothing that Doug J. started referring to the Republicans as the “Confederate Party.”
This is but a bit of a much longer post (emphasis in the original):
As the pundit classes try to make sense of the debt ceiling-credit downgrade political drama, they are overlooking a central element in the Tea Party GOP’s almost mouth-frothing resistance President Barack Obama since his landslide election in 2008.
While the black blogosphere (and even Twitter) has been bubbling with this issue for some time, the mainstream media has been dancing around a fact which remains hidden in plain sight. Just as they did with their poor coverage of the Birther issue, and out of fear of a Conservative backlash, the mainstream media is loathe to speak truth to power and point out the obvious: racial hostility is one of the primary forces driving the opposition of the Tea Party GOP to President Obama. This has been evident during the debt ceiling debate and on policy matters across the board. To fail to understand this most basic of realities is to fail to understand American politics in the Age of Obama.
Follow the link to see him identify, then connect, the tea three elements of the strategy,
Scoring a Debt 0
We Need Single Payer 0
So we don’t need special events like these:
So many people stood in line seeking dental care Friday than many were told to come back Saturday. Many of those who couldn’t see a dentist before the event ended were given information about dental clinics around the area.
Woodstock police estimated 2,300 to 3,000 people were waiting outside the church when the doors opened Friday morning at 5 a.m. Some had waited since Thursday morning.
Facts vs. Fox 0
Megan Fox slips and admits that corporations are made-up people.
Wasserman-Schultz misses the opportunity to point out that poor folks who pay no income taxes do so because they are poor, for heaven’s sake.
The Things That You’re Liable To Read in the Bible . . . 0
. . . They ain’t necessarily so, as scholars at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University are verifying:
The scholars note where the text we have now differs from older versions.
For example, the Book of Jeremiah is now one-seventh longer than the one that appears in some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.
QOTD 0
Carolyn Wells, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
A Picture Is Worth . . . . 0
By their words shall ye know them:
Infographic from the Republican sideshow er, sideshow in Iowa:
Via Contradict Me.
Afterthought:
“Sterilization.” Hmmmph. Whom exactly are they planning to sterilize?
Lemmings 0
In the Boston Globe, Brian McGrory visits a farm to figure out why financial types show so much herd behavior. Here’s how he frames the issue:
Short of that, we would visit expert investment managers in their plush downtown offices to learn why a company like Bank of America is as safe as Fort Knox in July and has the same basic value as a warm bucket of spit in August. But all these important executives are too busy drowning people’s 401(k) plans in a river of tears to allow me through their hallowed doors.
Click to read what he found out.
Teabagger Logic: Can’t Lose for Winning 0
In Wingnut World, this would make sense.
Facebook Frolics 0
Anonymous announces that it will go after Facebook.
This is hardly upsetting. Indeed, were Facebook inaccessible for a few minutes, the world might be a little better.
England 0
Russell Brand comments on the riots in England. It’s a long, worthwhile article.
Here’s a snippet (emphasis added).
These young people have no sense of community because they haven’t been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron’s mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there’s no such thing.
They remind me of the Watts riots, which were also a self-destructive explosion of pressure that had been building for a long, long time.
When pressure results in a spontaneous explosion, you won’t find a strategy to the explosion, but you will find causes.
Link and video shamelessly stolen from C&L.
