August, 2013 archive
Droning On 0
Der Spiegel reports on the paparazzi and the paragliders.
The lengths that folks go to provide pablum for the celeb-crazy is stunning.
Here’s a snippet.
Really, now, why does anyone care about these people and the victims they photogragh?
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” (Updated) 0
Diaper politely.
Danville police say a 2-year-old child is being treated in Roanoke for a gunshot wound to the back.
Addendum, the Next Day:
It was another case of child-on-child crime.
Charlie Rangel Is Right 3
Let Chauncey Devega explain. A nugget:
In the most obvious and public examples, Tea Party rallies have featured signs depicting Barack Obama as an African “witchdoctor” or “savage”. Tea Party supporters have also carried signs emblazoned with the Confederate flag, or used monkey and ape imagery to describe the country’s first black president at their rallies.
Matters of Size 0
Since when did a women’s 10 or 12 become a “larger size”?
Probably since models could get Photoshopped into looking like emaciated aliens.
The “Precariot”–The New Proletariat 0
Robyn Blumner:
(snip)
The industry’s excuse on wages is to claim that it provides a stepping stone to upward mobility — a whopper as big as a CEO compensation package.
Read it.
And, while you’re at it, read this too.
The Republican War on Women 0
Dick Polman cuts through the phony PR of Republican pearl-clutching over Anthony Weiner and San Diego Mayor “All Hand on Deck” Filner:
No matter how many times Weiner tweets his crotch, here’s what a war on women really looks like:
In North Carolina, on the eve of the July 4 break, Republican state senators brought up the new abortion restrictions without any public notice in the dead of night. (At the time, the restrictions were attached to a bill banning the invocation of Sharia law in family courts – Sharia law being such an epidemic in North Carolina.) Women with an abding interest in making choices for their own lives rushed to the chamber, hoping to give testimony. But the Republican lieutenant governor, presiding over the chamber, told them: “The senators are your voice here on all matters. They are the only ones we’ll be hearing from today.”
Hitchhiker 4
This cicada green fruit beetle* landed on the wiper arm at a stop light, snuggled down between the wiper arm and the wiper, and hitched a two-mile ride.
__________________
*See the comments.
Robocrap 0
The Sacramento Bee has a nice little article with hints about how to deal with unwanted telemarketers*.
According to it, the best thing to do is to hang up on them, whether they are real or robotic.
Like one of the persons mentioned in the story, we have virtually stopped answering the landline, not even checking the caller ID unless we are expecting a call from a real live human being who we know face-to-face.
________________
*Is there such a thing as a “wanted” telemarketer, other than by the law, that is?
Stray Question 0
How were parents able to rear children successfully before psychologists came along to tell them how?
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
The state of Florida is poised once again to strike groups who lean Democratic possibly ineligible voters from the rolls.
It worked out so well the last time (emphasis added).
“That was embarrassing,” said elections chief Jerry Holland in Jacksonville’s Duval County. “It has to be a better scrub of names than we had before.”
Election supervisors remain wary of a new removal effort, which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively authorized in June when it struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act.
Genteel Racists 0
At Philly dot com, UPenn Professor John L. Jackson Jr. reacts to the reaction to a recently highly-publicized (because it involved a white member of the Philadelphia Eggles) incident of n-word. A nugget:
That is certainly one version of what racism looks like, and its adherents are still out there. But racism has never worked exclusively that way, not even during chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation, though society’s institutional commitments to racial inequality have always been nonstop assaults on black bodies and spirits – and on the very humanity of its white beneficiaries.
The genteel racists are everywhere. One needs only to be willing to see them.
Do follow the link and read the rest.
The Cinderella of Modern Crime 0
The cops want to finger the toes.
Altoona police Lt. Jeffrey Pratt tells the Altoona Mirror (http://bit.ly/19BKxNi ), “We have his shoes” . . . .
They are shoer they will catch him.
Cantor’s Cant 0
Jay Bookman reports on Eric Cantor’s claim that the Affordable Care Act will allow the IRS to rifle through your medical records.
The IRS performs two functions in the administration of ObamaCare:
- Use a taxpayer’s income to establish how much subsidy, if any, the taxpayer is entitled to receive to offset the cost of health insurance.
- Collect a $95 tax from those who do not choose to purchase health insurance.That’s it. Period.
Follow the link for details.
Were it not for hate and lies, Republicans would have no platform at all.
Facebook Frolics 3
Don’t believe them likes:
There’s just one problem: the liking was fake, done by a team of low-paid workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose boss demanded just $15 per thousand “likes” at his “click farm”. Workers punching the keys might be on a three-shift system, and be paid as little as $120 a year.
George Smith’s term, “the culture of lickspittle,” is an understatement.
By the way, courgette is Brit for zucchini.
Absurdity Today Keeps Pacemaker 0
In all fairness, folks who pay attention to news about such things have long known that computerized medical devices have little or no security features. Most of them were designed with no thought whatsoever of security.