From Pine View Farm

September, 2013 archive

Palantir 0

John's Weather Forecasting Stone:

Via Eric Garland.

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Twits on Twitter 0

Twits of shameless commerce.

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Rand around the Rosie 0

Below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

Read more »

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“Pay for Performance” 0

All that’s missing is the performance.

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Foiling the Frisbee Menace 1

Old Dominion University is a local university which started as the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary.

A few years ago, they started a football team, which has done reasonably well, if you care about such stuff. It plays at Foreman Field, a small stadium that seats about 20,000, though they are starting to have arena dreams.

Now they are going big time.

But Saturday, when ODU hosts Howard in its home opener, that policy is changing. Bags will be searched and banned items such as Frisbees, alcoholic drinks and cowbells must be pitched into nearby trash cans.

Are they doing this because there is any demonstrated threat to college football games, other than fistfights between drunken tailgaters?

No.

They are doing this because searching people is the Next Big Thing, enabled by two crackpots leaving backpacks on city streets.

All the cool teams are doing it.

Mike Fryling, assistant general manager for Global Spectrum, the company that handles game-day operations for ODU football, said bags were inspected in 2009, the school’s first season. ODU had a more relaxed attitude the past three years.

He said that’s changing in large part because other colleges have beefed up security at athletic events.

“It’s a national trend,” he said.

And you thought that The Naked City was just a movie.

Such is life in the home of the brave.

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Everybody Must Get Fracked 0

Well, it’s about time.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s decision to prosecute a major Marcellus Shale natural-gas driller for a 2010 wastewater spill has sent shock waves through the industry.

Shockwaves my anatomy.

They thought they had been given a ticket to set drinking water on fire ride.

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QOTD 0

Walt Kelly:

God is not dead – he is merely unemployed.

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Why I Haven’t Posted a 9/11 Thread 0

Because there are enough empty pro forma remembrances.

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Cheeseheads 0

Here’s a slice of news.

The city’s (Milwaukee, natch–ed.) Department of Public Works will go ahead this winter with a pilot program to determine whether cheese brine — a liquid waste product left over from cheesemaking — can be added to rock salt and applied directly to the street.

A report prepared by the city’s Department of Public Works notes that Milwaukee, like most cities, relies on rock salt as its primary de-icer on roads. Rock salt, according to the report, is plentiful, inexpensive and very effective.

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News, Ripped from the Ticker 0

In the usual bad taste.

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The Secesh 2

Another outbreak of my way or the highway.

A group is calling for five western Maryland counties to secede and form their own state.

Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the Western Maryland Initiative, said people are fed up with the liberal majority and want an “amicable divorce.” He wants to live in a smaller state, with more “personal liberty, less government intrusion, less federal entanglements.”

I’m beginning to wonder whether the nation will survive Teabaggery.

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Come Again? 0

You realize, of course, that these people are nuts.

Afterthought:

The irony is, they don’t believe the words of the Savior they claim to venerate.

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A Picture Is Worth 0

Let Cowgirl Up explain what it means.

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The Convenient Pacifist 0

Republican today, piously:

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

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Filtering the Internet 0

Thom reports on Verizon’s attempt to ration your internet so they can collect money on both ends.

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Cooch and the Charitable Contribution 0

Emphasis added.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has moved to put aside questions about gifts he received from a business executive by writing a check for that amount to a Richmond-based charity.

I made the decision to send the check because it is the right thing to do, plain and simple,” he said Tuesday.

Cuccinelli has received gifts amounting to $18,000 from Jonnie Williams, chief executive of Star Scientific, a diet supplement company that is contesting a $1.8?million tax bill from the state.

Right for efforts to salvage his image, that is.

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QOTD 0

Dick Cavett:

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

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Break Time 0

Off to drink liberally.

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A Bug in the System 0

Bug


Click for a larger image.

bug_500x441

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Cheap Thrills 0

Well, maybe not. From Der Spiegel:

To sadomasochists keen on fresh air and the country life, it must have seemed like a dream come true. A 35-year-old woman advertizing herself as a dominatrix promised strict discipline to paying clients on her farm in the northeast of Austria.

(snip)

Instead of savoring the sweet pleasure of pain, the men found themselves consigned to farm labor such as chopping wood in the nude and mowing the lawn while wearing black fetish masks on the farm near the town of St Pölten. In effect, they were paying for the privilege of doing farm work.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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