2013 archive
Special QOTD, Galt and the Lamers Dept. 0
Watson: . . . and a book by Ayn Rand.
Holmes: Ah! The philosopher for the intellectually bankrupt.
Both Sides Not 0
Thom and Tommy Christopher explore the weird world of “both sides do it” and find that there’s no biz like show biz.
Today’s Big Nothing 6
The headline writers today are clutching their pearls at this:
These people suffer a severe shortage of clues. They have no idea how the internet or networks work.
Email addresses and most emails travel across the net in the clear.
When an application for tracking and mapping your bicycle rides* wants access to the contact list on your phone, persons willingly run through Facebook in their digital birthday suits, phishing@hooklineandsinker.ru has been emailing everybody for years, and persons (like me) make email addresses public on blogs and websites, I just cannot get worked up over this. It is much ado about not much of anything.
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*Map My Ride (no link–find it yourself). And that’s why I didn’t install it. I use Move! Bike Computer.
Scam Alert 0
A new scheme appears to be moving in just as many folks prepare to move out.
“Consumers are being scammed $10, $15, maybe $30 for changing their address online,” says Paul Krenn, US Postal Inspector.
The Post Office offers the service for free in person or a dollar online.
Drear 0
Today is the eighth straight day of unrelenting clouds, rain, and drizzle.
The clouds parted yesterday evening, but it was merely a cruel joke to get our hopes up. They unparted during the night.
I can’t recall a stretch of such unrelenting dreary weather.
College Admissions 0
Reform is clearly needed.
The Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg (http://bit.ly/17mkggs ) reports the student was using a lighter to pop a dent out of the ball Friday afternoon when he dropped it.
And Now for Something Completely Different 0
Warning: Mild Language.
Burglars in the Breakroom 0
He wants the culprit to get his more-than-just desserts.
Light Bloggery 0
Time off.
Im-pounded 0
If you wish to move pets or animals from one country to another, strict quarantine rules apply to prevent the spread of disease.
In one of the odder side-effects of the Republican refusal to govern in good faith, AKA the “shutdown,” here’s a family pet stuck in Republican limbo.
The Secesh (Updated) 0
If you doubt the accuracy of this, follow this link.
Image via Bartcop.
Addendum, Later That Day:
Dick Polman comments on yesterday’s teabaggery in front of the White House. A nugget:
A Glimpse of Republican Paradise 0
In North Carolina:
Now, at age 54 and two surgeries later, Baginski finds herself at an Urban Ministries homeless shelter in Durham – uninsured and applying for disability. Her former $28,000-a-year job today seems like an unattainable dream.
While Baginski’s reversal of fortune is beyond anyone’s control, the fate of her health care rests in the hands of North Carolina politicians. She is among a half-million state residents who would have been eligible for Medicaid in January had officials here opted to expand that government program for the poor and disabled.
But North Carolina, like about half the states, rejected Medicaid expansion because Obama.
Read the rest, if you can stomach it.
The Republican Party–Meanness, just because it can.
Deadbeats 0
Republicans, that is. Barney Frank explains it in the Maine Sunday Telegram.
A nugget:
I have a message for my former colleague John Boehner:
Don’t do me any favors. Specifically, please stop acting as if allowing the United States of America to meet the debts it has incurred as a result of votes both of us have cast is a concession you are making to me or anybody else. It is simply an act of basic responsibility.
(snip)
With one exception, raising the debt limit relates only to past spending.
The exception is that if you continue to enable the right wing of your party in its demand that America fail to meet its obligations, the interest we must pay when we borrow will probably go up.
Read the rest.