2011 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Impotent, but polite.
About 7 p.m., the man reached in his pocket and apparently discharged the weapon by accident, shooting himself once in the groin.
Bachmann’s Floundering Fathers 0
All seriousness aside, wingnut “history” is dangerous.
Persons who do not understand–indeed, who intentionally misinterpret–the past have no hope of dealing with the present nor of preparing for the future.
Via The Richmonder.
The Sociopath Party 0
The Rude One sums it up quite succinctly in discussing the situation in Minnesota:
Follow the link to undelete the expletive.
And Now for Something Completely Different 0
I’ve been playing around with my new camera.
This looks crude, but some work into it. It was originally 1280×720 and 92 MB in size.
I lightened it and resized it using Avidemux. That took some effort because, although Avidemux is a great program, it’s help file could use some work, at least for the version I have, and, as a colleague of mine once told me way back in the early days of computers,
If the program promises that it will simple, it likely won’t do what you want it to.
If the program promises that it will do everything you want it to, it will not be simple.
If the program promises that it will be simple and that it will do everything you want it to, it will likely accomplish neither.
So far, he’s not been proved wrong.
Note:
The embed works fine for me, but my Windows 7 computer claimed it was missing a plug-in to play it. It’s a standard *.avi file and should not require anything special to play.
If you have problems with the embed, please try the “Download” selection and let me know what error messages you received, using the comments.
Stewart Rips Himself to Shreds 0
Must listen.
Via Hanlon.
Boogie Woogie Budget Boys 0
Daniel Ruth at the St. Petersburg Times writes about what he calls the “Washington kabuki.” I can’t say I agree fully with this, bit I agree mostly. I’m glad he included war defense spending. A nugget:
If you are a Democrat you will not fill a $14.5 trillion hole by simply raising taxes, unless you also are willing to fiddle around with entitlement spending on stuff like Social Security and Medicare, as well as defense.
If you are a Republican you will not address the debt problem by opposing an increase in taxes, or at least making sure wealthy people and corporations pay their fair share of the tax burden they should be paying anyway. When General Electric, which made a profit of $14.2 billion last year, paid zero in corporate taxes, something is horribly nuts.
And Wesley Snipes went to jail for not paying his taxes?
For both sides, the debt crisis won’t be solved if every time someone offers a proposal Washington’s special interest lobbies start sobbing uncontrollably while accusing the offending politico of being an anti-American sot with Marxist and/or fascist tendencies.
Follow the link. The first part of the column, in which he describes the empty ritual of Washington meetings, is a hoot.
(Link fixed.)
Stray Question 0
Why do advertising agencies think that extreme closeups of greasy, gooey, poorly prepared, cardboard cutout, unappetizing food will somehow make it appetizing?
TSA Security Theatre 0
Where privacy is assured, except, of course, for the jokes.
Twits on Twitter, Spill Here, Spill Now Dept. 0
Buccaneer Petroleum, Orwellian twits.
Parallels 0
Harold Meyerson looks at similarities in the stories of the L. A. Times and the L. A. Dodgers and sees a lesson (emphasis added):
In His Merry Oldsmobile 0
Poetry would require that an Olds Cutlass have been involved, but it wasn’t.
Preparing for the Nightly News 0
Presented by Comically Vintage.
Facebook Frolics, Crowdsourcing Dept. 0
Vancouver, B. C., hockey rioters being identified via Facebook. From MarketWatch:
If you’ve been identified — rightly or wrongly — as one of the rioters in the hundreds of cellphone pictures posted online by outraged Vancouverites since the June 15 ugliness “you could apply for a job in 20 years and all the employer has to do is Google your name. If you’re in one of those photos, you’re out of luck,” correctly noted the Vancouver caller. Current employers of alleged and confessed rioters are also feeling the public’s wrath (more on this below).
The internet is still a public place.
Chartering the Wrong Course, Reprise 0
As a follow-up to this post, here’s a pointer to Monday’s Radio Times, which spent an hour discussing the Stanford report on charter schools. From the website:
Here’s a bit from the comments of Gary Miron at the 22 minute mark:
It’s time to revisit the original goals of the charter school reform. I’m one of those who argues that the charter school idea is a very good idea. Unfortunately what we are seeing implemented today and the growth of charter schools today being fueled by for-profit companies, is a very different reform and I’ve suggested that we use a different term for it. Let’s call this “corporate schools,” let’s call them “franchise schools.”
The charter school idea is a good idea but unfortunately we are not pursing that idea right now. We’re pursuing something different in the name of charter schools.
Follow the link to listen or listen here (mp3).
H/T to Cassandra M for tipping me about the episode.
Don’t Bank on the Cloud 0
My two or three regular readers know that I am skeptical about the “cloud,” the latest marketese for “file servers,” except that these servers belong to someone else, out there, out of your control.
Now there’s another reason not to put your data on their computers. Raw Story reports:
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, their concerns are essentially moot thanks to the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which a key Microsoft official said recently permits the U.S. to spy on data stored within cloud servers across the European Union.
The revelation of transcontinental spying, which has long been suspected, came from Gordon Frazer, Microsoft U.K.’s managing director, speaking at an announcement event for the company’s new suite of office software.
Third Rail Ryan 0
Had Paul Ryan offered something constructive about Medicare, he might not have turned himself into a third rail for Republican candidates.
But the public quickly realized that, ultimately, his plan was classic Republicanism: Decreasing the quantity and quality of services while turning buckets of money over to Wall Street bonus babies.
In other words, more rich richer, poor poorer.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The patient’s condition is unchanged.
No doubt laying off more teachers will fix this.