2013 archive
Many Happy Returns 0
The Regent gives back:
In a statement distributed Tuesday through Twitter, the governor again asserted that he has done nothing illegal and said he intends to remain in office through the end of his term in January.
Most notable about this is that The Regent does not seem to have had any idea how accepting huge “gifts” in cash and in kind from someone who wanted something (must-read link) from the Commonwealth could be or seem in any way improper.
As far as I can tell from the story, he still doesn’t.
He regrets the “embarrassment,” not the venality.
Theatre . . . 0
. . . of the Absurd.
Are lap dances a form of theater?
That’s what the owners of three Philadelphia “gentlemen’s clubs” are contending as they try to block the city from taxing income from private dances – a move that would cost them as much as $1.5 million.
During the next few weeks, the city’s Tax Review Board will decide whether Club Risque, Cheerleaders, and Delilah’s will owe an additional “amusement tax,” . . . .
Yeah.
Right.
And the “gentlemen” are critics.
Tidbit:
Delilah’s is enshrined in an episode of Forensic Files.
No Minimum 0
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive
GIve Me a Break (Updated) 0
Based on annual statistical trends, well over 10,000 persons were born yesterday, of which it appears that only one mattered.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
The resident curmudgeon at my local rag gets one right.
Light Bloggery 0
Family matters.
Absurd News 0
Warning: Naughty images.
“Everybody Must Get Stoned” 0
Dick Polman takes a look at the fuss over Rolling Stone’s “Boston Bomber” cover.
Anyone who pays the least attention to Rolling Stone knows that it long ago branched out from covering “the rock scene’ (if, indeed, there is such a thing any more) to covering economic and social issues.
Anyone who read it from the beginning (and that’s when I used to read it) also knows that it’s never been a “fanzine.”
His reaction is pretty much the same as mine: this is a cavalcade of stupid, a tempest over non-existent tea in a broken tea party pot. A nugget:
And that’s not even the best nugget. Follow the link for more.
Facebook Frolics 0
FB status update spooks the spooks, leading to a haunting.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Surprise strangers, courteously.
“They were leaving unarmed with my brother (and) another in the back (of a pick-up truck),” Kayla Redman said in an email. “My brother shielded the younger boy (and) took a bullet.”
Redman is the sister of Daniel Carlton Redman, 21, of 628 Cedar Glen Circle, who was found dead Saturday about 3.5 miles away from where the shooting began at a nearby house.
Twits on Twitter 0
A fervent belief of some is that, if you don’t acknowledge racism, it is as if it never were.
Bullet Points 0
Cultural Anthropologist Griffin Dix explores the proliferation of firearms and find that, in the immortal words of Yogurt, it was all “merchandising, my boy, merchandising.”
A nugget:
The industry’s marketing effort emphasized the need to have a handgun instantly available when — inevitably — your home is invaded. Gun marketers circulated criminologist Gary Kleck’s wildly inflated estimate that guns are used 2.4 million times per year for self-defense. Kleck’s research was riddled with errors soon exposed by Harvard’s David Hemenway. Subsequent studies showed that rather than providing protection, gun ownership greatly increased the risk of homicide and suicide in the home.
Read the rest.
“Rage against the Machine” 3
Will Bunch returns from vacation and posts an angry but quite rational reaction to Trayvon Martin’s stalker’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card and, as seems common at Bunch’s place, the comments turn into a cesspool of racism.
What is it about newspaper story comments pages that so attracts racists?
Do, please, read the post and the comments.
See how George Zimmerman’s defenders think.