February, 2009 archive
Ad Agency FAIL 1
All joking aside, this commercial is just obnoxious.
The premise is obnoxious, the pseudo-marine is obnoxious, the script is obnoxious, the concept is obnoxious.
Fisherman’s Friend, the best cough drop.
Full Disclosure: Fisherman’s Friend has no knowledge of nor interest in this blog post. All they do is make cough drops that work.
Oscar 1
I agree with this post with a footnote.
Footnote: I have never been interested in the Academy Awards. Or the Emmies. Or the Golden Globes. Or any of the other entertainment industry self-abuse. I have no desire to sit in front of the teevee and watch the entertainment industry stimulate hair-growth on its palms.
Exercise the Right 0
The one that’s linked.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This Is Not Right 0
I agree with John Cole.
The most optimistic Pollyanna rationale that I can come up with is that the Administration is buying time because it hasn’t figured out what to do yet.
I’ll be writing letters tomorrow.
Stray Thought 0
The same persons who are complaining that the stimulus package will be paid for by our grandchildren didn’t seem to care that the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq would be paid for in the same way.
God, how I love hypocrisy.
Stray Thought 2
Why does every company keep changing its phone menu options?
Making the Desert Bloom 0
AKA “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” (emphasis added):
If the zero estimate proves true, it would effectively eliminate hundreds of farmers’ principal water supply. Water supplies to wildlife refuges, cities and industrial sources would also see smaller cutbacks, but agriculture would be hardest hit.
Those cows aren’t going to be happy.
Truth in Spending 0
Honest(er) accounting:
(snip)
“The president prefers to tell the truth,” he (Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget–ed.) said, “rather than make the numbers look better by pretending.”
You can’t deal with stuff that you can’t see.
Stay Safe 2
Don’t eat.
Fun fact, from a food inspector I used to work with: Most of the illnesses that persons attribute to “intestinal flu” are actually food poisoning. If it lasts 24 to 48 hours, it’s probably food poisoning.
Coleman Makes Nice Stoves 0
But a lousy Senator. This is beyond stupid.
Que Passa? 0
From TPM:
Reverse Anachronism 0
I’m watching Psych, which I really enjoy. It’s plotted in a most disjointed manner, but has a nice sense of humor.
Our heroes are chasing down a steam train as if it were a regularly scheduled mainline train. I know it was a steam train. The shot of the passing engine showed a triple-cylinder compound drive.
In a quarter of a century of working for the railroad, I never saw a steam train in scheduled mainline service. Or branch line service. Or siding service.
Diesel. Diesel-electric. Electric. No steam.
Furrfu.
Diversification 0
Also posting at Geekazine.
This Week’s Dustbiters 0
The FDIC just started posting at 21:00.
So far there’s only one.
Number one: Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, Oregon (no relation to Silverado).
A Constant 0
Don’t believe what you see on teevee.
Among its many criticisms, the study counted a backlog of 359,000 requests for forensic analysis in 2005, a 24 percent increase in delays since 2002. A survey of crime laboratories found 80 percent of them to be understaffed.
Still Making Stuff Up 0
It’s a Republican thing. They dumped the country down the toilet, got nothing on their side, so they return to their tried-and-true tactic: Making stuff up.
From FactCheck dot org (emphasis added):
- Rep. Tom Price of Georgia says the measure creates “a national health care rationing board.” Not true. What it creates is a council to coordinate research into which treatments work best, and are most effective for the money. And in fact, the new law states quite specifically that the council has no power to “mandate coverage” and that its recommendations are not to be construed as “clinical guidelines for … treatment.
”
- Betsy McCaughey, a Republican former lieutenant governor of New York, claims that the bill creates a “new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.” Not true. The office was created in 2004 by President Bush. McCaughey also says the office “will monitor treatments” and ” ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions.” But that’s nothing new. Bush’s initiative called for creating a health IT system to transmit information to “guide medical decisions.”
Critics of comparative effectiveness research, which the government has been funding for decades, claim that it will lead to treatment being approved or denied based on costs. Proponents say it will improve the quality of care and can, in some cases, show that more costly treatments aren’t as effective as less expensive alternatives.
We can’t predict what will happen in the future, but we can say that several claims being made about the impact of the bill are simply opinions being passed off as facts.
“. . . opinions being passed off as facts.”
Yeah.
Right.
There’s a nice short pithy word for opinions passed off as facts.