February, 2011 archive
Super Bull: A Celebration of the NFL 0
The San Jose Mercury-News lists why the Super Bowl is special. A nugget:
Reason No. 1: It’s not soccer.
American exceptionalism is alive and thriving on Super Bowl Sunday. National Football League franchises are overwhelmingly owned, managed and manned by American citizens. Even as other major sports have growing numbers of Latin American, Asian and Eastern European players, professional football remains ours alone. Neither immigration nor foreign capital has made a perceptible dent in the game.
And you and I have proudly subsidized all this. American taxpayers have built many NFL stadiums, and American universities, with their government grants, have shaped the sport. Multimillion-dollar college football programs (which, despite claims to the contrary, are rarely profitable) train the players, and sports management departments train the front-office personnel.
Calvacade of Crazy 0
Dennis G. on sacrifice.
Nothing Beats Ignorance as a Job Qualification 0
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
Workforce Optimization 0
Bill Shein looks at the Republican Party’s plan to decrease unemployment by decreasing the workforce through eliminating “job-killing regulations.”
(In Wingnut World, everything not sufficiently wingnuttificacious is ipso facto “job-killing.”)
Ya gotta read it.
A nugget:
Currently, the national unemployment rate is exactly nine percent.
“Can This Marriage Be Saved?” 0
No.
When she went to the airport to get her return flight back, officials told her she could not board the plane and did not explain why.
She called her husband for help, and he buried the request in his in-box. For three years, until his bosses caught him out.
Via Wait Wait.
Snake on a Train, Reprise 0
In a follow up to this post, Penelope is home safe.
Penelope the pet snake’s long journey on the MBTA came to a happy end yesterday.
The Dumeril’s boa had slithered away from its owner, Melissa Moorhouse of Allston, while she was riding on the Red Line nearly a month ago. Moorhouse said she first noticed the snake missing as she headed outbound on the Red Line in the late morning of Jan. 6.
Penelope’s portrait graces the link.
Dusbiters 0
The FDIC is honoring responsible fiscals once more. Early start this week.
Disappearance at Roswell–Georgia, that is. Among the missing:
Updates throughout the evening.
Also disappeared:
That seems to be the crop so far.
One of these days, they will run out of banks to fail.
Exporting Culture 0
Britain should consider this a hostile act:
Facebook Frolics 0
Words have consequences.*
The students–three 14-year-olds and a 13-year-old–were arrested yesterday at school and charged with aggravated stalking, a felony.
_______________________
*Unless you are Republican or Fox News “personality.”
Citizens Benighted 0
The current issue of the Nation has dueling columnists discussing the Citizens United ruling. You can read both of them at the link, but, as far as I am concerned, here’s the clincher, from the second of the two articles at the link (emphasis added):
That bit about self-incrimination is not hyperbole.
Verizon has already attempted to hide behind the Fifth Amendment to avoid inquiries into corporate malfeasance.
“No, Thanks. I’ve Had Enough.” 0
Advertising FAIL in today’s local rag:
I’m Getting Old 0
Last night, I saw Neil Sedaka (who is by any standard a great talent and a classy guy) on an Infomercial selling oldies from the 50s and 60s.
He looks like Ed Asner.
But he still sounds like Neil Sedaka.
Stray Thought 0
In Media World, if it snows in Washington, D. C., and New York, New York, it snows all over the world.
QOTD 0
Walter Bagehot, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.