2013 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Dick Polman comments on the price of politeness exacted in the Los Angeles TSA shootings.
A nugget:
It was a relief to learn that the kid had chosen to exercise his free expression with the Smith & Wesson assault rifle, because that’s a product of all-American know-how, a real honey – a true Freedom tool, according to popular websites like budsgunshop.com . . . .”
Granted, there’s always a chance that you or I or someone we know and love might wind up as a Freedom lover’s collateral damage – hey, there’s always an inherent risk when you walk in an airport terminal, or when you munch popcorn at the movies, or when your kids play in kindergarten – but as a culture we’ve made our choice
Read the rest.
“Junk Insurance” 0
Wendell Potter explains the scam:
(snip)
Limited-benefit plans like that one, blessedly, will not be available next year, and that’s because of the Affordable Care Act. Neither will plans with sky-high deductibles. Another way insurers have shifted costs to patients in order to enhance profits: luring or forcing them into plans with such high deductibles they join the ranks of the underinsured the moment they enroll. When people in these plans get seriously sick or injured, they are on the hook for thousands of dollars in medical bills they’ll have to pay out of their own pockets.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness casts a bigfootprint.
According to Sheriff Scott Walton, the three men were hunting Bigfoot late Saturday night, when one of them was spooked by what he thought might be the legendary beast and fired his weapon, hitting his friend in the back.
“When you start off with an explanation like that, do you believe anything after that?” Sheriff Walton said.
We live in a society of stupid.
The Crazification Factor 3
There’s that 27% number again.
More Proof That the Fashion Industry Hates Women 0
Yes, indeedy-do, that’s about the size of it.
Afterthought:
Some years ago, I had a short email exchange with a student from France. Somehow the conversation turned to fashion for a while, so I sent her a link to a chart similar to this one comparing European and American sizes for women’s clothes.
She could not make sense of the American sizes, because the system is, frankly, stupid.
Gamy 0
Frankly, I’ve always found “cornhole” to be an unfortunate name for a party game.
Now comes the American Cornhole Association.
Scam Alert 0
Telephone scam du jour:
If victims refuse to send money, callers will threaten them with arrest, deportation or suspension of a business or driver’s license.
B(l)ank Checks 0
Der Spiegel warns not to let the hype surrounding the occasional arrest of bankster to mislead you. The grift goes on.
Regulatory agencies and politicians have not set effective controls on banks and bankers, and although their reputation may be tarnished, their power remains unbroken.
More at the link.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Things are getting creepier in Texas.
He’s going to try again Monday with a copy of his birth certificate in hand.
Can anyone seriously believe that anything about this law was legitimate and above-board?
Details at the link.
Facebook Frolics 0
College students who drink too much apparently violate Facebook’s “community standards.”
Without college students drinking too much, what would be on Facebook? And when did Facebook get “community standards”?
As far as I can tell, Facebook’s “community standards” are things of convenience, a movable feast, a convenient foxhole, a hiding place for the zuckers.
Old N(SA)ews 4
In Japan Times, Gregory Clark says there’s not much there there in the fuss over the NSA’s internet vacuum cleaner’s indiscriminately sucking up signals and that, furthermore, the only folks who didn’t know this sort of stuff was happening are folks who don’t pay attention.
He suggests that the real danger is corruption of the public discourse through the use of misinterpreted or twisted information. A nugget:
Over Iraq, bogus reports of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear ambitions (the “mushroom cloud”) and phony al-Qaida links (by a regime dedicated to suppressing al-Qaida?) were all fed into that “twilight world” to call for an attack that today no one even tries to justify.
As the U.S. and U.K. try to dig themselves out of the current diplomatic mess created by their runaway spy agencies, both like to insist they have not used spy information for economic gain. But that is untrue; business information is a major target for all such agencies, especially since it usually falls into the easily code-breakable category.
Read the rest.