2012 archive
And, While We’re at It, Let’s Bring Back Bear Baiting 0
Congressman Steve King (R-Not the Humane Society) on dog-fighting:
There may be an argument that there’s a larger context to this quotation, but, honest to Pete, what could give this “context”?
Studies in Stupid 0
Man moves near to airbase.
Man doesn’t like jet noise.
Man shines laser at fighter planes.
Pilots lock targeting computer on laser.
Man cops plea, gets sentenced in October.
If you don’t like the smell of pigs, don’t move next to etc.
Cloud Cuckoo Landmines 4
Fundamentally, these weapons fetishists are deeply bent.
Bad Birdies 0
Simon Jenkins suggests that, if indeed some badminton teams threw games to get an advantage in later seeds, well, that’s what the contemporary quadrennial athletic marketing event is really about–Not the striving, the surviving to the winner’s circle. A nugget:
(snip)
The concept of the Olympics as being not about winning but “about taking part” ended long ago. Modern Olympics are parodies of Hitler’s nationalist games of 1936. They are a statist contest determined by who wins the most medals.
Also, endorsements.
Twits on Twitter 0
Olympic twits.
Twitter restored his account Tuesday, admitting that “we did mess up” when its staff encouraged NBC — which Twitter is teaming with for Olympics coverage — to file the complaint that resulted in the suspension.
Tempest in a twitpot.
Six months from now, no one will remember this.
Six years from now, no one will remember Twitter (CompuServe, anyone?)
Ask the Commander Guy 2
The innerwebs alert me that, in Newsweek, Michael Tomasky asks, “Is Romney a wimp?”
And the Commander Guy answers.
Mittsteps Abroad 0
Der Speigel considers the Mittsteps in Europe:
The remark didn’t come after the Republican presidential candidate’s snafu-filled European tour over the past week. He made it after spending two years as a missionary for the Mormon Church in France in the 1960s, according to his biographers Michael Kranish and Scott Helman . . . .
Fast forward to last week in Europe, and things haven’t really gone any better for Romney. His visits to Britain, Israel or Poland didn’t go very well. The result has again been rejection of one kind or another. And the candidate has only himself to blame for this gaffe-filled tour.
Facebook Frolics 0
Frolicking through the wingnutosphere.
Meebo No Go 0
I have escaped from that vile Meebo bar that’s crawling through the internet like some sort of evil slime mold.
Don’t think that clicking to hide it makes it go away. It’s still following you around in its seedy trench coat; you just don’t see it.
I installed the NotScript extension in Opera and the No Script extension in Firebox. (I primarily use Opera, but sometimes use Firefox.)
The Opera Not Script extension displays a little pyramid in the address bar. Clicking the icon displays the settings dialog. It may need for you to modify your Opera preferences for storing user script information; Opera’s default is no storage space. If it does require the change, clicking the message (which shows when you click the pyramid) will take you to the entry that needs modification and tell you what to enter (5000–the value is in kilobytes).
Both extensions allow you to configure them to allow scripts to run on pages where you find them useful. For instance, the WordPress post editor uses Java to handle the menu, so I allowed scripts from my own domain.
In Opera’s Not Script, I did that by clicking the pyramid for the dialog and selecting to allow scripts on from pineviewfarm.net.
Firefox’s No Script displays a message bar at the bottom of the browser window if scripts are present on the page; clicking the “Options” button to the right displays the settings menu. You can click to allow scripts there.
I took a quick look in Microsoft Internet Exploder, but could find no such functionality. Plus Internet Exploder tried to reset my default search engine to Bing! (Hoick! Ptui!) without asking permission.
I haven’t needed “no script” extensions before because my hosts file was sufficient for my needs, but Meebo make me go over the edge.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
It’s a Republican thing:
Dr. Republican, M. D. 0
I think I posted this once before, but it turned up in my RSS feed and is worth rerunning.
Warning: Almost as tasteless as the old white men in the Republican Party.
Cavalcade of Spots 0
Mike Gruss, columnist for my local rag, is fed up with the political commercials, and the conventions haven’t even happened yet. A snippet:
Those commercials were the building blocks of the American dream to get fat and stupid. But in the wrong hands, (dramatic music here) and during the wrong season, television commercials are miserable and force us to do things like read books or play Solitaire on our phones.
(Out of context black-and-white clip from cable news here.)
Candidates promise to make America better, but then they go on TV and make everything worse by playing their stupid ads over and over again. Is this the America you think we want?
Death of a Dream 0
Shaun Mullen drafts the obit.