From Pine View Farm

September, 2012 archive

The Spousal Approval Factor 0

Daniel Ruth wonders why all the fuss about the wives of presidential candidates. A snippet:

For some inexplicable reason, if the wife can reveal to voters that her husband likes pork rinds, or leaves his socks on the floor, or is partial to meat loaf, or once drove a rusted jalopy, or prays even more than the pope, this translates into him being just the man jack to be leader of the free world.

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Giving Her Ex the Bird 0

The Providence Journal reports that Lynne Taylor is accused in Warwick municipal court of training the bird, Willy, to say expletives.

The bird allegedly aimed the invectives at the neighbors, who happen to be Taylor’s ex-husband and his girlfriend.

Reminds me of the pastor who was willed a parrot by one of his flock, an reformed pirate. To the embarrassment of the pastor, the parrot swore, well, like a sailor. He was bemoaning this at Sunday school one day when a lady said, “I have a parrot and all she does is pray all day. Maybe we should introduce them.”

The pastor agreed and arranged a visit.

As soon as he saw the lady’s parrot, the minister’s parrot whistled and said, “Hey, Baby, let’s get it on!”

Wait for it.

Read more »

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School Daze 1

The reason is so far unknown, but the influence of foreign substances has been ruled out.

I’m betting it has something to do with the laptop on the console.

An officer was returning from a call a few blocks away when he struck Thomasville High School at 1:56 a.m., Thomasville police Lt. Donnie Rowe said. The school is on Unity Street. Rowe said it appeared the officer was returning to Salem Street.

School Principal Deboy Beamon said he received a call about the wreck at 2 a.m. When he arrived he found a patrol cruiser parked in an assistant principal’s office.

Follow the link. The picture is a hoot.

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Barn Yesterday 2

tobacco barnWe used to see these all along the road when we would go visit my grandmother in South Carolina in the 50s and 60s.

Now they are going away.

Tobacco barns once dotted fields and roadsides across the state (North Carolina–ed.). Often the only structure in a field of tobacco, it was a two-story log or frame building, sometimes covered in tin or tar paper, with low doors and a side shed.

Now the barns are vanishing from the landscape. Made obsolete by bulk-curing methods in the 1970s, many have fallen into disrepair. If you look closely, you can still see them by the roadside, being consumed by kudzu, sliding into a slow sideways collapse, or crushed under fallen trees.

“Catherine Bishir called them one of the most rapidly diminishing historic resources in the state,” says Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro . Bisher is a co-author of “A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina.”

I treasure history. I trained as an historian. One of the afflictions which afflicts us, as afflictions are wont to do, is the cultural inability to the remember further back than last week. It allows con artists and flim-flam men to ply their trade.

Nevertheless, I question the belief of some that, just because something is old, falling down, and useless, it transforms ipso facto into an “historic resource.”

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QOTD 0

Benjamin Franklin:

You may delay, but time will not.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Facebook never deletes anything. They may remove it from view, but it’s there somewhere in the Faceborg.

According to the warrant, White’s Facebook account is being maintained by someone else while he is in custody. Police believe White is Facebook friends with possible witnesses in the case, and the warrant said investigators have “knowledge of personal threats against complying witnesses,” but no one has been charged with making threats in the case, Johnson said Friday.

Police are investigating “the deleting of information” and believe access to the account “may reveal information related to Defendant’s pre-murder behavior, associations, and activities as well as post murder behavior and conversations,” the warrant said.

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Bill Clinton Has Their Numbers 0

Via C&L.

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Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0

The owners of a modest home near Twentynine Palms lost their cherished possessions after a bank mistakenly foreclosed their residence.

A crew broke into Alvin and Pat Tjosaas’ desert home and took everything after being directed by Wells Fargo to secure the structure.

Get Out of Jail Free CardThe couple, however, didn’t have a mortgage on the home.

Via Atrios, who points out that, if you or I did this, we’d be in jail, whereas banksters are different from you and me.

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Facebook Frolics, Airplane Dept. 0

Authorities say a “compromising” picture of a woman, posted to Facebook, was the catalyst for a hoax that forced an airliner from Philadelphia to turn around in mid-flight.

He called the airport alleging that the person who supplanted him in his ex-girlfriend’s affections was packing explosives.

Said rival completed his trip and promptly got pinched over some outstanding warrants.

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A Flame for the Ages 0

This is the most magnificent flame I have ever read. I’ve written some great flames, especially back on the old AOL STA message board, but this surpasses my best work.

Even better, it was sent to a bigoted gay-bashing Maryland state legislator by an NFL player who does not fear speaking out.

Via Balloon Juice.

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“I Got Mine” 0

Jason 330 explains Republicanism.

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Twits on Twitter 0

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

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QOTD 0

Neil deGrasse Tyson:

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

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Dustbiters 0

Back from a hiatus, it’s bank failures!

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Facebook Frolics, Blinded by the Hype 0

Mark Cuban, who is rich because he knew when to get out of the dot-com bubble, says wasn’t suckered in Facebook stock. Instead, he zucked himself.

(Cuban wrote–ed.) “I bought and sold FB shares as a TRADE, not an investment. I lost money. When the stock didn’t bounce as I thought/hoped it would, I realized I was wrong and got out. It wasn’t the fault of the FB CFO that I lost money. It was my fault. I know that no one sells me shares of stock because they expect the price of the stock to go up. So someone saw me coming and they sold me the stock. That is the way the stock market works. When you sit at the trading terminal you look for the sucker. When you don’t see one, it’s you. In this case it was me.”

(snip)

(Blomberg’s Jonathan Wiel comments–ed.) In spite of the shareholder lawsuits filed against Facebook, I have seen no indication that the company’s executives lied to the public about its performance or prospects. Facebook’s prospectus warned about the risks. The decline in Facebook’s rate of revenue growth shouldn’t have surprised anyone. In 2010, sales grew 154 percent. In 2011, they rose 88 percent. By the first quarter of this year, the year- over-year rate was 45 percent. Last quarter, Facebook’s first as a public company, it was down to 32 percent.

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The Opposites Party 0

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

I am confident that there was no misconduct here. It was merely an attempt to spread politeness:

Police are trying to determine why an .40-caliber Glock handgun with two fully loaded clips was hidden in the emergency room of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Hughes Spalding.

As the twig is bent and all that, eh, what.

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Ironclad Android 0

Russia doesn’t trust Google. Asia Times reports:

It has been well publicized that Google collects personal data from Android users in order to target them with advertising. Less than pleased that that sensitive information could find its way into US government, the Russian defense ministry has developed its own stripped-down and encrypted version of the operating system especially for government and military devices. This week it was announced that the prototype platform would be available to the public by the end of the year.

Lots of details at the link.

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Akin Shaken? 0

Rep. Todd Akin’s effort to continue his bid for the Missouri Senate seat is now faced with a new challenge: Paying the campaign’s bills for TV ads on time.

(snip)

The Akin campaign told CBS radio that the payment problem was a scheduling mistake, and the next checks are on their way.

Akin has been frozen out of conventional Republican fundraising efforts, following his false comment that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape,” and the GOP’s efforts to pressure him to drop out.

As the public record shows, the issue is not the scientifically illiterate falsehoods; the GOP thrives of falsehoods.

The Republican Party is not punishing Akin for what he said. It’s punishing him for saying it where it could be overheard.

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The Voter Fraud Fraud 0

Simply the resurrection of Jim Crow, nothing more nor less.

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