2012 archive
Out but Not Down 0
Ship Shape 0
No more.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
No laughing matter, the regulations have economic consequences. For example, the water taxi Miss Pittsburgh could carry 72 passengers in 1999, but the number has been cut to 42, which translated into an $800 loss during three Steelers games alone for the boat’s owner.
(snip)
. . . the average weight of American men has increased from 166 pounds to 195 pounds, a 17.4 percent jump, and from 140 to 165 for women,* a 17.8 percent hike.
ABC reports
I did some arithmetic based on the first item:
Methinks something’s missing from my calculations.
____________________
*And my mother used to fret about being a size 12.
Moneyball 0
I used to look forward to New Year’s Day. I would immerse myself in bowl games.
This year, the only college football games I have watched have been those that have gone over their scheduled times and delayed the shows I wanted to see.
I am not alone in my disgust. At sfgate dot com, Dave Zirin explains why he has lost patience with college football. A nugget:
(snip)
The money has metastasized dramatically, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Money often costs too much.” Athletic departments have now become a moral dead zone.
“Misty Water-Colored Memories” 0
If you can’t read the whole thing, read the scan at the end.
I don’t have anything to add.
Developer Magic Delayed 0
The shovel-money-to-developers effort in Virginia Beach appears stalled. I guess the developer magic went out of the public-private partnership:
Sessoms and Jones joined five council members who have already opposed the hotel deal, meaning a majority of the body now opposes the public-private partnership with developer Armada Hoffler.
There is one certainty.
Little time will lapse before another manifestation of the touching faith in developer magic, the simple confidence that the sweet scent of money burning upon the public-private partnership altar will please the gods, moving them to bestow blessings upon believers.
Computer Crashes on Freeway 0
The BBC reports:
In-vehicle internet access is close to becoming reality, according to the world’s top car bosses.
The survey by KPMG looking at future trends shows speech recognition and internet connection with wi-fi and 3G will become the norm.
More than a third (37%) of the 200 car executives believe “infotainment” in cars is nearly as important as car safety.
Car manufacturers will also join forces with music, telecoms and IT companies.
I predict that the bottom will fall out of the scrap metal business because of a smashing increase in supply.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Looking slightly better.
(snip)
The less-volatile four-week moving average (INJCJC4) decreased to 373,250, the lowest since June 2008, from 376,500.
The number of people continuing (INJCSP) to collect jobless benefits fell by 22,000 in the week ended Dec. 24 to 3.6 million. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
QOTD 0
F. Lee Bailey:
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today?
It wouldn’t even get out of committee.
Little Ricky, Republican War on Women Warrior 0
Why are Republicans so interested in the sex lives of others?
Maybe it’s the sweater vest (Warning: “Santorum” defined in the video).
The Colbert Report
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Spill Here, Spill Now, Edit It Out 0
Perhaps some of you have seen Buccaneer Petroleum’s ad campaign portraying the Gulf Coast as cleaner than a computer manufacturer’s clean room. (I saw one and found it rather cloying.)
Facing South takes a look at the reality behind the flackery. A nugget:
(According to the ad campaign) (t)he oil is gone and the seafood is safe. End of story.
Except it isn’t.
(snip)
And every storm in the Gulf brings a fresh wave of tar balls and oily gunk onto the beaches and bayous. Where do you think that’s coming from? Experts say plenty of oil is still sunk on the bottom, some of it in thick tar mats lying just offshore. It’s not clear what will happen to it.
So this brings us back to BP’s ads. Just in case anyone is out there with a sympathetic ear, a producer or reporter looking for a different version of reality to explore, here are some people who won’t be part of BP’s latest promotional onslaught. These are all people I’ve blogged about over the past year, folks who hardly any local politician, tourism official, seafood distributor or oil industry exec wants to promote. But they are there if you want to find them. And they won’t be silenced.
Get the facts. Read the rest.
Bones, the Soft Drink Clue 0
A fellow sued Pepsi, claiming he found a mouse inside a can of Mountain Dew.
Pepsi’s defense: the mouse wouldn’t make it.
After 30 days exposure to Mountain Dew, “all of the mouse’s structures” would have disintegrated to the point that it would not be recognizable. In fact, “the mouse will have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” The only part of the rodent that could possibly survive, added McGill, was “a portion of the tail.”
My mother wouldn’t drink RC Cola because she once found a bee in a bottle. I guess if Mountain Dew had been around when she was young, she would never have found that bee, just a royal jelly-like substance.
The Libertarian Code, Reprise 0
As I mentioned yesterday, Libertarianism is the latest iteration of attempts to create innocent-sounding ideologies to serve as sheep’s clothing for wolfish treatment of others.
Leonard Pitts, Jr., cuts to the chase (emphasis added):
Maybe, it’s easy to make freedom an issue of “property rights” when you have never been the property.
Click to read the rest.
Everybody Must Get Fracked 0
The latest earthquake, registering a magnitude of 4.0, was centered five miles northwest of Youngstown and very close to the 9,000-foot-deep Northstar No. 1 disposal well owned by D&L Energy, which receives most of its brine and fracking wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Pennsylvania.
The fracking industry, of course, is claiming that it’s all for public safety, this was an isolated event, it wasn’t even home, it didn’t see anything, it was in a sports bar watching a football game or a parade or something and someone must have slipped it a roofy.
The Libertarian Code 1
I’m a Southern boy. I can translate the code.
The Booman is not a Southern boy, but he translates it quite well in a long post over at his place. Essential to understanding the translation is putting the words of the code code words into context.
Here’s a couple of snippets from the Booman:
(snip)
Did anyone seriously think that these kinds of attitudes could be legislated out of existence? Or that a significant number of people wouldn’t resent the Federal Government for sending in enough troops to force the Southern people to break down segregation? Naturally, those attitudes persisted. But they persisted in less overtly racist ways. Ron Paul’s newsletters occasionally delved into the former style, but that’s more of a slip-up than a regular practice. People know better these days than to say white people are a superior race. The coded way to say that is to insist that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an unconstitutional overreach that actually made race relations worse.
Because, you know, under Jim Crow, race relations were just fine.
Aside:
I suspect that much of the appeal that Libertarianism and Ron Paul seem to have for some college-age males is the youngsters’ ignorance of Libertarianism’s lineage.
The rest of the appeal is likely Libertarianism’s glorification of selfishness: it legitimizes their desire to pursue any and every woman as they congratulate themselves for the Galtian purity and exemplary idealism that guides their so doing.