September, 2011 archive
Twits on Twitter 0
Netflix Twits:
Netflix’s plans to re-name its DVD rental business Qwikster have hit problems.
While the firm has secured the web domain for Qwikster, the Twitter handle for it is the property of an American man called Jason Castillo.
Aside:
Where do people get the time to watch all those movies?
Television Throw-Backs 0
Considering the fall telly vision line up, I agree with Dennis Byrne:
Do we have to?
Actually, line up is the right word. The TV executives responsible for Pan Am and Playboy Club should be lined up.
And marched out the door.
And the broadcast networks wonder why viewers are fleeing.
Full Disclosure:
I was once at the original Chicago Playboy Club as guest of a member while on a gig.
It was rather dull and uninspiring, much the same as the show is likely to be.
Follow the link for the rest of the column. It’s worth it.
Teabagging Logic 0
A nice catch of tea bag logic by Mano Singham (emphasis added):
What struck me was the comment of one resident who said, “It looks terrible. I know they don’t have the money, and I don’t want my taxes to go up to fix it. But they need to do something.”
And I want a Lamborghini.
Misdirection Play 0
Richard Wolff, writing at the Guardian, considers Republican claims that expecting those who can most afford shoulder some of the cost of governance is somehow “class war.” That’s another misdirection play designed to distract the discourse from economic fact.
Here’s a nugget:
Dick Polman comments. A snippet:
This has been the GOP’s conditioned response to tax-burden issues since around 1992, when party wordsmiths began to own the phrase via frequent repetition. What’s amazing, of course, is that the Republicans have been allowed to get away with it – given the fact that the GOP’s rich clientele has been incrementally getting richer at the expense of everyone else. If there has indeed been “class warfare” in this country during the past three decades, the rich have already won. They have already staged their victory parade, brandishing a surrender document signed by most of their fellow citizens.
Words Have No Meaning 0
At least, not in Wingnut World:
In Wingnut World, “Socialist” is just another empty dirty word, something bad to say about one’s opponent.
It has nothing to do with the state’s ownership of the means of production.
Empty words appeal to empty heads.
Afterthought:
Indeed, in Wingnut World, “socialism” appears to have become a synonym of “compassion,” something else to eschewed in that universe.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Just yesterday, my brother and I were talking about the absence of courtesy at sporting events. He had attended a college football game and was most distressed at the large number of persons who cut into the line for admittance.
Now comes a remedy for discourtesy at sporting events.
Authorities say members of the cross country team discovered a backpack about 3:35 p.m. as they were preparing for a meet at the school in Cumberland County, New Jersey.
QOTD 0
Cyril Connelly, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.
Cursive! Foiled Again! 0
When I was a young ‘un, in the days of men of iron and computers of wood, schools taught “printing,” then “writing.”
When my kids came home (in the brass age, when computers were made of brass) and told me they were learning “cursive,” I wondered, “What is this thing called ‘cursive’?”
Turned out it was “writing.” (That was about the same time that “typing” became “keyboarding”; it was also coincident with an overall decline of typing skills. Fancifying the name of something seems often coincident with two things: A proliferation of consultants who take money to tell you how to do it better and the overall decline of whatever it is that has gotten a fancified name.)
Now, the fancified name for “writing” is taking its toll:
“Cursive really is on its way out,” said Jill Kennett, who teaches third grade at Brownstown Elementary School in the Conestoga Valley School District. “However, it’s not there yet.”
Kennett, who is in her 23d year of teaching, said she taught second graders in the Manheim Central School District in 1989. Teachers then blocked out time for teaching cursive, and students had cursive workbooks.
Now, she said, “the emphasis is completely different. It has completely lost its importance.”
Well, Golly Gosh Gee, Batman. They Take Money. 0
The local rag is all over surprised upon discovering that pro football players make money from personal appearances:
The gesture cost taxpayers $40,000.
The management team for Anthony Hargrove, formerly of the New Orleans Saints, charged $30,000 for three two-hour sessions over his nearly weeklong stay, which included other appearances with local children. Other costs associated with the visit – meals, a banquet with community leaders and hotel rooms for Hargrove and five others – totaled about $10,000.
My two or three regular readers know that my level of cynicism as regards pro and semi-pro college football is about to burst out of the top of my thermometer like the mercury measuring a fever in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but, as my mother would have said, honestly!
As the actress said to the bishop, “Professional means you get paid for it.”
In other news in today’s local rag, sky blue and apple red.
Afterthought:
Whether or not it was a wise expenditure is a different issue, but was not really addressed in the gee-whiz-look-over-there story. If it keeps one kid out of jail, the visit likely paid for itself.
Death Watch 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., looks at death penalty supporters through the lens of the Republican debate.
Full disclosure: I oppose the death penalty, not because I think it is morally wrong (I am convinced that some persons do deeds so heinous that they forfeit their right to be allowed in society), but because we get it wrong just too damned often.
It was a chilling moment, but also a clarifying one in that it validated the grimmest suspicions about at least some of those who support capital punishment. That support, after all, is often framed in terms of high morality, the argument being that only in taking an offender’s life can a society truly express its revulsion over certain heinous crimes.
But when the audience at a recent GOP presidential debate cheered the observation that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has overseen a record 234 executions, that fig leaf was swept away. You knew this was not about some profound question for philosophers and august men. No, this was downturned thumbs in a Roman arena, vengeance putting on airs of justice, the need to see someone die.
People dress that need up in rags of righteousness and ethicality, but occasionally, the disguise slips and it shows itself for what it is: the atavistic impulse of those for whom justice is synonymous with blood. If people really meant the arguments of high morality, you’d expect them to regard the death penalty with reverent sobriety. You would not expect them to cheer.
Mr. Pitts goes on to discuss one of the cases in which the chances are good that we got it wrong once more.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
There’s irony somewhere in this little story: a person who makes her living managing foreclosed properties can’t get enough work.
“The flow of foreclosures is not big enough” Hughes said, unwilling to speculate on why. “If I wanted to move to Dallas, or to San Diego, I could get a job easily in this business. There are a lot of REO (real estate-owned-ed.) shops there.”
Mitt the Flip 0
At least Mitt is consistently inconsistent. This cartoon is four years old.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Always be polite when attending church:
