February, 2013 archive
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David Spade takes on those smarmy insincere celebrity product endorsements (warning: language).
(Take that, Robert Vaughan.)
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Raise your children, politely.
Homicide Unit commander Capt. Loyd Baker said Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit had been called to the scene by Northport police to investigate a 45-year-old man who reportedly fired a round into his own leg as he was cleaning a 9 mm pistol, according to Al.com.
In the Baltimore Sun, Dan Rodricks explains that we have promulgated all this politeness:
We’ve become so accustomed to violence like this we accept it as normal. We expect it.
And, in fact, when it comes to gun violence in the U.S., what happened in College Park (yet another murder-suicide–ed.) approaches the tragically common — a gun used in a murder or in a suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 31,672 firearms-related deaths nationwide in 2010. About two-thirds of them were suicides.
This happens because we accept it.
Then there’s this, another manifestation of what happens when you enter the fearful, paranoid world of gunnuttery.
His Party Left Him 0
The Tampa Bay Times reviews the political odyssey of “Doc” Dockery, once a mainstay of the Florida Republican Party.
Actually, he didn’t odyssey–he’s pretty much the guy he always was. It’s his party that has run off the rails.
A nugget:
“And this thing about 47 percent? We want to exclude 47 percent of the people who are citizens and eligible to vote in this country? (Mitt) Romney was representing much of the thought of the Republican Party when he said that, and I don’t think that way,” said Dockery, who changed his party registration about two years ago but said he will switch back to the GOP if he wants to weigh in on a primary.
Read it. If you are clinging to some notion based on the Republican Party of the past, it’s time to give it up and realize that today’s Republican Party is nuts.
Facebook Frolics, Next of Kin Dept. 0
I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.
QOTD 0
Ed Asner, as Lou Grant, Episode 17, Season One of the Mary Tyler Moore Show:
I don’t know what anyone sees in anybody.
Unseen, but Not Heard 0
Chauncey Devega considers how a white university president could consider the “three-fiths” compromise (PDF) to be a model for our political discourse.
A nugget:
You/we/us are footnotes and outliers.
People of color–and likely women, gays and lesbians, the “disabled”, and other folks who are not “normal” by the narrow definitions of hetero-normative, able-bodied, Whiteness–are also non-factors in the worlds of the truly race and class privileged in American society.
Read the rest. It is one of Devega’s typically tightly-reasoned, lengthy, ascerbic posts.
Everybody Must Get Fracked 0
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer editorializes:
Follow the link for the bad news. It doesn’t apply only to Ohio.
Dread Diseases 0
You can’t make this stuff up.
Bing! Bang! Bust! 0
The San Jose Mercury-News has a long article about Microsoft’s advertising campaign designed to impugn Google’s integrity.*
Given Microsoft’s history of duplicitous, underhanded, and monopolistic business tactics (PDF at link), it really isn’t in the position to impugn anyone’s anything.
But there’s a bright spot.
They’ve hired someone with a proven record of fail to manage it.
Penn, who previously consulted for Microsoft, was hired full time last year.
Afterthought:
I seldom use Google. I use Startpage (ixquick in the UK).
____________________
*Not that I’m a big fan of Google, but they do seem to have a shred of integrity, unlike their biggest competitors, Facebook and Microsoft. Google is not a paragon, but neither is it a paragoons.
Zero Tolerance, Zero Brains 0
Kids with active imaginations? Or potential threats to school safety?
Some school officials are taking the latter view, suspending or threatening to suspend small children over behavior their parents consider perfectly normal and age-appropriate . . . .
The school officials are being silly and stupid, but silly and stupid is what grown-ups do.
There’s another issue here.
Where’s the NRA? Who’s protecting these kids’ right to bare fingers?
Aside:
Last I heard, nothing except dignity and good taste had been wounded with a Hello Kitty anything.
When “S-t-o-r-e” = “S-h-o-p” 0
When iJunk casts its spell (emphasis added).
Since an Apple Store opened in Norwich, locals have been calling mistakenly phoning the Apple Shop in Wroxham Barns, with their iPhone and Apple-related woes.
Apple Shop owner Geoff Fisher told the BBC: “My telephone number has a Norwich prefix and so people unawares ring up the Apple Shop. All I can say to them is, ‘I’m very sorry, I can’t help you, but please do come along and get some proper Norfolk cider to get over your sorrows’.”
Some persons couldn’t pass a licensing test for driving a computer.
(It’s probably just as well. Apple Computers probably would have sued him. They do stuff like that.)
Aside:
Funny, I thought iJunk “just worked” in a trouble-free starry-eyed paradise sort of way.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Exercise freedom of expression, politely.
This is not the first time either union office building has has been shot up. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall at 176 Main St. in Fairfield was the target of a drive-by shooting back on Nov. 29 by someone firing .22-caliber bullets. No suspects have been charged in that incident.
Tribe and Prejudices 0
Alex Runner sees similarities between Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham and certain modern pols. A nugget:
I’ll give you a few hints: All teachers are greedy; people on food stamps are lazy; many Muslims are terrorists; undocumented immigrants are criminals; sustainability advocates are tree-hugging sissies.
Full disclosure:
I have not seen an episode of Downton Abbey, though I have heard Julian Fellowes interviewed about it and have been unable to escape the constant tote-bagging wankery about it.
I have no intention of seeing it.
As near as I can tell, it’s Gone with the Wind with received pronunciation.
If I want fantasy, I can reread Lord of the Rings.
Governance by Marketeers 0
Like cowboys in a bad western, the flacks are branding the bull (emphasis added):
They include members of Rubio’s Senate staff and presidential campaign veterans who work for the political committee Rubio formed ostensibly to help elect other conservatives.
Instead, the Reclaim America PAC has focused on consultants and building a national fundraising network. Last year, his PAC spent more than $1.7 million, with the vast majority going toward staff and fundraising, and about $110,000 going to other candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
An argument can be made that one of the elements in our decline is the belief that appearance is all that matters, that the “brand” is everything.
