50 Essential Science Fiction Books.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Walmart Royalty
The Walton family makes money the old fashioned way. They inherited it.
[Although the founder Sam Walton was an entrepreneur, succeeding generations represent a kind of feudal dynasty, largely based on inherited wealth.
Analysis of data from the Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that, in 2010, the Walton family controlled assets equivalent to those of the bottom 42 percent of American families.
This Arkansas aristocracy may feel a certain noblesse oblige. Offering to give jobs to all veterans honorably discharged on or after the plan’s announcement on Jan.15 is a patriotic gesture, even if it is sweetened by substantial tax credits.
The company values loyalty and its hierarchical management structure may look familiar to men and women who have participated in the armed forces.
However, most veterans taking up Walmart’s offer will have to tighten their belts. An Army private first class, with four years’ experience, earns a base pay of $24,178. The average active-duty service member receives a total benefits and pay compensation package worth $99,000 a year, because of substantial in-kind benefits in the form of housing, health care and food.
The average wage for a full-time hourly Walmart associate in the United States is $12.57, which adds up to $26,108 a year at 40 hours a week. But the primary benefits Walmart offers are slim: a health-insurance plan with high deductibles that workers can choose to sign on and contribute to, and a 10 percent discount on store purchases. As a result, Walmart workers make more use of public health and welfare programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid, than other retail workers.]
[Although the founder Sam Walton was an entrepreneur, succeeding generations represent a kind of feudal dynasty, largely based on inherited wealth.
Analysis of data from the Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that, in 2010, the Walton family controlled assets equivalent to those of the bottom 42 percent of American families.
This Arkansas aristocracy may feel a certain noblesse oblige. Offering to give jobs to all veterans honorably discharged on or after the plan’s announcement on Jan.15 is a patriotic gesture, even if it is sweetened by substantial tax credits.
The company values loyalty and its hierarchical management structure may look familiar to men and women who have participated in the armed forces.
However, most veterans taking up Walmart’s offer will have to tighten their belts. An Army private first class, with four years’ experience, earns a base pay of $24,178. The average active-duty service member receives a total benefits and pay compensation package worth $99,000 a year, because of substantial in-kind benefits in the form of housing, health care and food.
The average wage for a full-time hourly Walmart associate in the United States is $12.57, which adds up to $26,108 a year at 40 hours a week. But the primary benefits Walmart offers are slim: a health-insurance plan with high deductibles that workers can choose to sign on and contribute to, and a 10 percent discount on store purchases. As a result, Walmart workers make more use of public health and welfare programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid, than other retail workers.]
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
No Pressure for 21st Century Males
Normally I like lists: top 100 guitarists, 10 best films, 5 best NBA players ever (Sorry, but bigs make up 4/5 of the list, leaving Oscar Robertson as sole guard for the fifth spot) but a list of skills a man must have really ticks me off.
I have issues.
So when you come up with a list which judges my manhood, cannot practice my usual routine of I know better and all these other commenters just pose hypotheticals for my amusement.
Besides, putting on the list killing a moose, gutting, and cooking it as an essential skill all men must have sets a pretty high bar for manhood. Of course, am down with other stuff listed like filleting a fish or cooking eggs four different ways--except poaching. Why does poaching an egg scare me?
Oh, I could bleed and gut and build a fire and cook and eat moose if really hungry, but do prefer living and eating several steps up the food chain, like getting to know the butchers at my local Winn Dixie, the beef people.
Of course living in the Paradise of Florida, would eat from the rivers and ocean. Ais Indians in the Eden of the FL east coast, lived and loved using oysters as a staple food, leaving behind ten foot tall shell mounds.
Didn't even have to fillet the best fish I've ever eaten: fresh caught blue fish, beheaded, gutted, stuffed with onion, tomatoes, and butter, wrapped in tinfoil and placed right in the fire. You don't even have to scale 'em as you just eat from the inside and leave the skin and bones. Yum.
So screw you Esquire, as if quizzes in Cosmo ain't ruined enough relationships, with this dress a moose to prove yourself a man schtik.
..
http://www.esquire.com/features/life-skills-0411?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_oth_non_011813_life-skills&kw=ist#slide-1
I have issues.
So when you come up with a list which judges my manhood, cannot practice my usual routine of I know better and all these other commenters just pose hypotheticals for my amusement.
Besides, putting on the list killing a moose, gutting, and cooking it as an essential skill all men must have sets a pretty high bar for manhood. Of course, am down with other stuff listed like filleting a fish or cooking eggs four different ways--except poaching. Why does poaching an egg scare me?
Oh, I could bleed and gut and build a fire and cook and eat moose if really hungry, but do prefer living and eating several steps up the food chain, like getting to know the butchers at my local Winn Dixie, the beef people.
Of course living in the Paradise of Florida, would eat from the rivers and ocean. Ais Indians in the Eden of the FL east coast, lived and loved using oysters as a staple food, leaving behind ten foot tall shell mounds.
Didn't even have to fillet the best fish I've ever eaten: fresh caught blue fish, beheaded, gutted, stuffed with onion, tomatoes, and butter, wrapped in tinfoil and placed right in the fire. You don't even have to scale 'em as you just eat from the inside and leave the skin and bones. Yum.
So screw you Esquire, as if quizzes in Cosmo ain't ruined enough relationships, with this dress a moose to prove yourself a man schtik.
..
http://www.esquire.com/features/life-skills-0411?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_oth_non_011813_life-skills&kw=ist#slide-1
"Show me an American president who doesn't sign his name in blood"
Do I have blood on my hands too?
Don't eat quinoa so cool regarding Bolivians now hungry as result of another Western marketing campaign.
Don't have an iPad or other Apple products, so don't buy into victimization of third world workers as do other "Restless Consumers," and don't maim and kill puppies.
Since taking taxis, have had to plan excursions for maximum effect which reduces my carbon footprint.
As a result, would guess my impact on Mother Earth less harmful than the Koch brothers.
[But then, can you show me an American president who doesn't sign his name in blood? If you really look at the record, doesn't every one of the 44 men who've had that job have a Waco, a Japanese internment program, a Trail of Tears, a popular war built on false evidence, a secret Cambodian bombing on their conscience? Abraham Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a secular American saint, and his legacy is built on the 750,000 deaths of the Civil War.
Some of the protesters outside Zero Dark Thirty believe that a second American revolution is required to cleanse our national shame, that we need to tear the whole system down and start over. But as long as we're (almost) all fed and employed and inconceivably comfortable when compared with almost every other human being who ever lived, that simply isn't going to happen. Most of us vote for the person we believe to be morally superior and hope for incremental change toward the good. There is historical evidence for this; politics isn't the story of leaps and bounds, but of hesitant steps. Where we are now as a nation is a destination at which we could not have arrived without the work of millions of people who slowly ground themselves to dust for us. The angriest among us can scoff at this idea as the mincing moral equivalence of a sellout, but to ignore that we move toward betterment by crawling for thousands of miles is to ignore the elephant of history sitting square on your chest.
Besides, are any of us really clean? To live in America right now is to be the beneficiary of untold suffering. Just because we've outsourced our slave labor doesn't make slave labor less real. One of the protesters flashes anti-torture signs on a tablet computer that was surely made by an impoverished person working for pennies in an unsafe, unregulated factory. At least some of the shoes that the protesters wear were made by children in a factory somewhere you have never heard of. Across the street, in the warm, eggnog-colored glow of the Cheesecake Factory, diners are tucking into meals made from the suffering of animals that can definitely feel some form of pain. If the moral high ground were the most important requirement for the survival of our species, we would have fallen into extinction a long time ago.] emphasis added
Since taking taxis, have had to plan excursions for maximum effect which reduces my carbon footprint.
As a result, would guess my impact on Mother Earth less harmful than the Koch brothers.
[But then, can you show me an American president who doesn't sign his name in blood? If you really look at the record, doesn't every one of the 44 men who've had that job have a Waco, a Japanese internment program, a Trail of Tears, a popular war built on false evidence, a secret Cambodian bombing on their conscience? Abraham Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a secular American saint, and his legacy is built on the 750,000 deaths of the Civil War.
Some of the protesters outside Zero Dark Thirty believe that a second American revolution is required to cleanse our national shame, that we need to tear the whole system down and start over. But as long as we're (almost) all fed and employed and inconceivably comfortable when compared with almost every other human being who ever lived, that simply isn't going to happen. Most of us vote for the person we believe to be morally superior and hope for incremental change toward the good. There is historical evidence for this; politics isn't the story of leaps and bounds, but of hesitant steps. Where we are now as a nation is a destination at which we could not have arrived without the work of millions of people who slowly ground themselves to dust for us. The angriest among us can scoff at this idea as the mincing moral equivalence of a sellout, but to ignore that we move toward betterment by crawling for thousands of miles is to ignore the elephant of history sitting square on your chest.
Besides, are any of us really clean? To live in America right now is to be the beneficiary of untold suffering. Just because we've outsourced our slave labor doesn't make slave labor less real. One of the protesters flashes anti-torture signs on a tablet computer that was surely made by an impoverished person working for pennies in an unsafe, unregulated factory. At least some of the shoes that the protesters wear were made by children in a factory somewhere you have never heard of. Across the street, in the warm, eggnog-colored glow of the Cheesecake Factory, diners are tucking into meals made from the suffering of animals that can definitely feel some form of pain. If the moral high ground were the most important requirement for the survival of our species, we would have fallen into extinction a long time ago.] emphasis added
"America's CEOs Want You to Work Until You're 70"
Of course, because the richest family in America--those fortunate folk luckily born as progeny of Sam Walton, founder of WalMart--need older workers as greeters in their stores, most of whom one surmises would rather relax at home in their slippers and have to work to pay prescriptions and an array of copays.
Lazy slacker, Grandma, get off your ass and get to work, they say!
But silk tie and custom suit crowd can't fathom that some trades involve great physical stress and thus older people have more difficulty or face impossibility of continuing as carpenters, welders, and masons--you know the people who built most ever'thing we have.
Golly gee whiz, these clowns make it hard to not hate them.
[....the Business Roundtable, the Washington lobbying powerhouse whose companies together employ 16 million workers, is suggesting raising the age at which people can get Medicare and full Social Security benefits to 70. (The change wouldn’t affect people who are 55 or older today.) The reasoning: Americans are living longer and the costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits are growing faster than the tax revenue that pays for them.
Raising the Medicare age to 70, from today’s 65, would keep the oldest workers, who generally have the greatest health costs, on private insurance for an additional five years. The shift would hit states that cover more low-income seniors through Medicaid, and it would raise premiums for younger people who buy health insurance through state exchanges, as more people with higher health costs enter the risk pool.
This would save Medicare money—a good thing for taxpayers. But it would effectively increase health costs for the country overall, including employers. “For many seniors, their costs will go up. For employers in the aggregate, their costs will go up,” says Juliette Cubanski, associate director for Medicare policy at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s because Medicare pays doctors less for their services than private insurers do.]
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-18/americas-ceos-want-you-to-work-until-youre-70#r=hpf-s
Lazy slacker, Grandma, get off your ass and get to work, they say!
But silk tie and custom suit crowd can't fathom that some trades involve great physical stress and thus older people have more difficulty or face impossibility of continuing as carpenters, welders, and masons--you know the people who built most ever'thing we have.
Golly gee whiz, these clowns make it hard to not hate them.
[....the Business Roundtable, the Washington lobbying powerhouse whose companies together employ 16 million workers, is suggesting raising the age at which people can get Medicare and full Social Security benefits to 70. (The change wouldn’t affect people who are 55 or older today.) The reasoning: Americans are living longer and the costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits are growing faster than the tax revenue that pays for them.
Raising the Medicare age to 70, from today’s 65, would keep the oldest workers, who generally have the greatest health costs, on private insurance for an additional five years. The shift would hit states that cover more low-income seniors through Medicaid, and it would raise premiums for younger people who buy health insurance through state exchanges, as more people with higher health costs enter the risk pool.
This would save Medicare money—a good thing for taxpayers. But it would effectively increase health costs for the country overall, including employers. “For many seniors, their costs will go up. For employers in the aggregate, their costs will go up,” says Juliette Cubanski, associate director for Medicare policy at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s because Medicare pays doctors less for their services than private insurers do.]
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-18/americas-ceos-want-you-to-work-until-youre-70#r=hpf-s
Friday, January 18, 2013
Forget Crossing the Line, Who Erased It?
Straining my ability to care even a whit, seems the current brouhaha over the did she exist scandal surrounding football player Manti Te'o illustrates for us a problem with modern "journalism," the invisible line between the old style adhering to print standards of actual journalism and new wave of teevee commentators spewing whatever comes into their heads in search of ratings, controversy, and cash.
Irony of irony, the new intertubes journalists at Deadspin have done the work of actual journalists, by you know, fact checking what someone says rather than just transcribe athlete's fantasies, making phone calls, and checking public databases.
Yet having done that, the writer seamlessly transitions to talking head teevee personality, free to give his own opinion as fact, a pasty faced white athlete wannabe jock sniffer recently released from his mama's basement now wondering if he "can ever trust Manti again."
Who cares if the kid had an imaginary girlfriend and fell victim to a hoax or if he invented a life for himself he wished he had, a heroic victim of outrageous fortune?
If the former, he shares with me my sin of trust in people; for no matter how many times others have betrayed me, am still tempted to trust.
If the latter, then also have I invented a girlfriend, or at least thought about how to make certain persons happy like Mandy the epicurean philosopher who hated her given name but had caring, ice blue eyes or a newly minted nurse with laughing eyes and aristocrat's fine fingers and manicure or Deidre my bartender withe the 3' diameter Dancing Shiva back piece tattoo, to think of being with one of them and caring about their hurt places, inmost needs, to try and synchronize breathing when falling asleep next to and holding a partner in the darkness of my night..
Society tells us we ought not suffer loneliness, with every Viagra, Cialis, and incontinence ad on teevee. We expect our teevee athlete heroes to live the lives we cannot, so much so they feel the need to conform to what they feel expected of them, perhaps by investing into someone they've never physically met the qualities they seek in a partner.
"Everybody wants to be somebody else."
All humans have an instinctual need to become more than the sum of their pasts. So we fail to see other parts of ourselves or invest into fantasy what we wish to become, or become addictive and embrace but a part of life as the whole, because as the Godz sang, we're all some kind of junkies: booze junkies, bible junkies, dope junkies, love junkies like me carrying kernels of past realtionships and hoping to fan them like embers into flames of a new love.
We used to depend on journalists to research and help us navigate the sliver or chasm between truth and mere fantasy or even lies, to discern through cross referencing and fact checking and old fashioned shoe leather to help us realize that all our heroes have feet of clay, all live as human with fears and foibles and weaknesses. In these tellings and stories as with bards of old, we learn we have good sides and bad sides and must ever use vigilance and discernmnt to perceive and then do the good, to help fellow humans rather than just ourselves.
Nevertheless, these modern day bloggers, besotted wretches, o longer have the purity of ink on their hands but live with and profit from sin of hubris of others, having found fault; they opine on it, pretending themselves above the human fray, casting judgment but accepting none, moving from the intertubes to print to teevee, from reporting to commentary to rank supposition, blithely ignoring humanity of their subjects while refusing to see their own faults, spawining a generaltion venerating the rantings of Skip Bayless and Rob Parker and Stephen A and whomever else you might name.
Where did the line between fact and fiction go?
Buried beneath the bottom line which means money rules all, so controversy gives the goods to teevee,
Irony of irony, the new intertubes journalists at Deadspin have done the work of actual journalists, by you know, fact checking what someone says rather than just transcribe athlete's fantasies, making phone calls, and checking public databases.
Yet having done that, the writer seamlessly transitions to talking head teevee personality, free to give his own opinion as fact, a pasty faced white athlete wannabe jock sniffer recently released from his mama's basement now wondering if he "can ever trust Manti again."
Who cares if the kid had an imaginary girlfriend and fell victim to a hoax or if he invented a life for himself he wished he had, a heroic victim of outrageous fortune?
If the former, he shares with me my sin of trust in people; for no matter how many times others have betrayed me, am still tempted to trust.
If the latter, then also have I invented a girlfriend, or at least thought about how to make certain persons happy like Mandy the epicurean philosopher who hated her given name but had caring, ice blue eyes or a newly minted nurse with laughing eyes and aristocrat's fine fingers and manicure or Deidre my bartender withe the 3' diameter Dancing Shiva back piece tattoo, to think of being with one of them and caring about their hurt places, inmost needs, to try and synchronize breathing when falling asleep next to and holding a partner in the darkness of my night..
Society tells us we ought not suffer loneliness, with every Viagra, Cialis, and incontinence ad on teevee. We expect our teevee athlete heroes to live the lives we cannot, so much so they feel the need to conform to what they feel expected of them, perhaps by investing into someone they've never physically met the qualities they seek in a partner.
"Everybody wants to be somebody else."
All humans have an instinctual need to become more than the sum of their pasts. So we fail to see other parts of ourselves or invest into fantasy what we wish to become, or become addictive and embrace but a part of life as the whole, because as the Godz sang, we're all some kind of junkies: booze junkies, bible junkies, dope junkies, love junkies like me carrying kernels of past realtionships and hoping to fan them like embers into flames of a new love.
We used to depend on journalists to research and help us navigate the sliver or chasm between truth and mere fantasy or even lies, to discern through cross referencing and fact checking and old fashioned shoe leather to help us realize that all our heroes have feet of clay, all live as human with fears and foibles and weaknesses. In these tellings and stories as with bards of old, we learn we have good sides and bad sides and must ever use vigilance and discernmnt to perceive and then do the good, to help fellow humans rather than just ourselves.
Nevertheless, these modern day bloggers, besotted wretches, o longer have the purity of ink on their hands but live with and profit from sin of hubris of others, having found fault; they opine on it, pretending themselves above the human fray, casting judgment but accepting none, moving from the intertubes to print to teevee, from reporting to commentary to rank supposition, blithely ignoring humanity of their subjects while refusing to see their own faults, spawining a generaltion venerating the rantings of Skip Bayless and Rob Parker and Stephen A and whomever else you might name.
Where did the line between fact and fiction go?
Buried beneath the bottom line which means money rules all, so controversy gives the goods to teevee,
You Must Admire Some Liars
No, not Lance nor Manti, but "Bob," who outsourced/subcontracted his own programming job to China. Chinese workers did his assignments while he surfed the web and clocked out at 5 pm. If you think about it, "Bob" just applied free market principles to his work life, getting his work done cheaper by others.
Give him a medal!
[To connect remotely to the company computer system, staffers needed a personal identification number, which changed at regular intervals. Employees were issued security tokens, small devices that updated them with the latest generated PIN.
Last spring, the company grew concerned about computer security breaches and asked its IT department to inspect more closely its remote-access logs, looking for unusual patterns of activity.
To their surprise, they saw that someone connected into their network every day from Shenyang, a city in the historical Manchurian north of China, near the Korean peninsula.
More interestingly, the Chinese intruder was logged in using Bob’s PIN and credentials, “yet the employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor,” Mr. Valentine wrote.
“Based on what information they had obtained, the company initially suspected some kind of unknown malware that was able [to] route traffic from a trusted internal connection to China, and then back. This was the only way they could intellectually resolve the authentication issue. What other explanation could there be?”
Verizon investigators were contacted. They inspected Bob’s workstation, trying to find whether he had unintentionally downloaded a virus.
Instead, the cyber-sleuths discovered hundreds of invoices from a software developer in Shenyang.
The investigation revealed that Bob had outsourced his job. To get around the changing PINs, he couriered his security tokens to the Shenyang subcontractor.
It wasn’t clear how long Bob’s scheme had been running because log records only dated back to six months.
While Bob physically reported to the company that hired Verizon to investigate him, he also padded his income as a contract worker for other local firms, for which he also relied on his Chinese outsourcing arrangement.
Looking at his web browsing history, investigators found that Bob spent his workday checking sites such as Reddit, Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn and watching cat videos. Then he would type an e-mail at the end of the day to update management about his “work” and left at 5 p.m.]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/how-a-model-employee-got-away-with-outsourcing-his-software-job-to-china/article7409256/
Give him a medal!
[To connect remotely to the company computer system, staffers needed a personal identification number, which changed at regular intervals. Employees were issued security tokens, small devices that updated them with the latest generated PIN.
Last spring, the company grew concerned about computer security breaches and asked its IT department to inspect more closely its remote-access logs, looking for unusual patterns of activity.
To their surprise, they saw that someone connected into their network every day from Shenyang, a city in the historical Manchurian north of China, near the Korean peninsula.
More interestingly, the Chinese intruder was logged in using Bob’s PIN and credentials, “yet the employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor,” Mr. Valentine wrote.
“Based on what information they had obtained, the company initially suspected some kind of unknown malware that was able [to] route traffic from a trusted internal connection to China, and then back. This was the only way they could intellectually resolve the authentication issue. What other explanation could there be?”
Verizon investigators were contacted. They inspected Bob’s workstation, trying to find whether he had unintentionally downloaded a virus.
Instead, the cyber-sleuths discovered hundreds of invoices from a software developer in Shenyang.
The investigation revealed that Bob had outsourced his job. To get around the changing PINs, he couriered his security tokens to the Shenyang subcontractor.
It wasn’t clear how long Bob’s scheme had been running because log records only dated back to six months.
While Bob physically reported to the company that hired Verizon to investigate him, he also padded his income as a contract worker for other local firms, for which he also relied on his Chinese outsourcing arrangement.
Looking at his web browsing history, investigators found that Bob spent his workday checking sites such as Reddit, Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn and watching cat videos. Then he would type an e-mail at the end of the day to update management about his “work” and left at 5 p.m.]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/how-a-model-employee-got-away-with-outsourcing-his-software-job-to-china/article7409256/
Thursday, January 17, 2013
John Prine: "Dear Abby"
[Pauline Phillips, known to millions of advice-seekers around the world as the original "Dear Abby," has died. She was 94.
The company that syndicates Dear Abby says on its website that she "died Wednesday ... in Minneapolis after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease."
TMZ.com, which broke the news, reminds us that " 'Dear Abby' first appeared in print in 1956 — and eventually grew to a daily readership of 100 million.]
Life according to Dear Abby.
The company that syndicates Dear Abby says on its website that she "died Wednesday ... in Minneapolis after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease."
TMZ.com, which broke the news, reminds us that " 'Dear Abby' first appeared in print in 1956 — and eventually grew to a daily readership of 100 million.]
Life according to Dear Abby.
Borowitz Reports: Republicans Fume President Using His Powers "To Lead"
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to reports that President Obama is considering signing as many as nineteen executive orders on gun control, Republicans in Congress unleashed a blistering attack on him today, accusing Mr. Obama of “cynically and systematically using his position as President to lead the country.”
Spearheading the offensive was Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), who charged the President with the “wanton exploitation of powers that are legally granted to him under the U.S. Constitution.”
Calling him the “Law Professor-in-Chief,” Rep. Stockman accused Mr. Obama of “manipulating a little-known section of the Constitution,” Article II, which outlines the power of the President.
“President Obama looks down the list of all of the powers that are legally his and he’s like a kid in a candy store,” Rep. Stockman said. “It’s nauseating.”]
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Quote of the Day
“Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.” -Groucho Marx
Martin Luther, Insult Comic and Original Blogger
Don't remember any of these barbs and insults from Luther's Small Catechism, which Lutherans like my self must study in order to take our first communion and to become full members of our church, sort of like a bar mitzvah but without the kosher food.
Am quite happy identifying as a christian of the Lutheran brand even though my particular flavor, Missouri Lutheran Synod, more conservative than other brothers and sisters by not ordaining women or countenancing same sex marriages. This manner of following the teachings of Jesus started by Martin Luther has existed for nearly 600 years, making it time tested and thus resistant to passing fades or fancies or cults like the Heaven's Gate folks who castrated themselves and committed suicide while waiting for aliens following a comet to rapture them to heaven.
My Jesus celebrates and encourages life and weeps over mass suicides and other senseless deaths.
Have read some studies of Luther's works, enough to realize his writings show traces of antisemitism and misogyny but never dreamed he spent so much time insulting those who disagreed with him. I like him better already.
Perhaps we can forgive for for his bombast by realizing in confronting the Catholic hierarchy he started a century of war, which certainly came as a negative consequence of promoting the idea that humans can read the Gospels on their own.
[Those of you afflicted with the stereotype of Lutherans as lugubrious bores will have to confront, as we all do eventually, the irrefutable fact that the Intertoobz are a place of wonder and delight.
You are the prostitute of heretics!
You people are more stupid than a block of wood.
Since you are such vulgar blockheads that you think such lewd and stupid gossip will harm me or bring you honor, you are the real Hanswursts - blockheads, boors, and dunderheads.
Keep clicking through. They get better.
Martin Luther, O.B.
Original Blogger.
Although, I will grant you that it would have been tougher to nail a laptop to the cathedral door.]
Read more: Where It All Began - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/martin-luther-no-time-for-your-foolishness-011513#ixzz2I9jTMNlT
Judge not Luther unless you want to get judged, for he did live and write as a product of his times:
[I, a Lutheran myself, neither approve of nor condone Luther's insults as appropriate for modern theological discourse, nor most modern discourse for that matter. Luther was a product of his time. Some of his insults are inexcusable; a few are so crass as to make me reluctant to put them on this site (e.g. those to do with whoredom). However, when one reads his works, it becomes clear that these insults, a common rhetorical device in the polemical literature of the sixteenth century, were spoken in hopes of defending the pure faith against impure doctrine and guiding the church of his day back into the faith of the Church.
As I have followed commentaries about this website, I have noticed people using these quotes to condemn Lutheranism. It should be known that the Lutheran tradition does not accept most of Luther's works as doctrine, though it does embrace much of his theology. Only three documents written by the reformer are explicitly part of the Lutheran doctrine, compiled in the Book of Concord, and only one of these documents is universally accepted among Lutherans, namely Luther's Small Catechism. Moreover, Lutherans explicitly reject some of the reformer's ideas. For example, Luther's anti-Semitic writings have been rejected by most in the Lutheran tradition, and we continually seek forgiveness and reconciliation with our Jewish brothers and sisters for what Luther said and the effects it had on the world.
To imagine that modern Lutheranism is the sum total of Martin Luther's output is to misconstrue the Lutheran tradition, which was composed of many more voices even in its infancy. Of course, to imagine Luther's crass words are the sum total of the reformer is to misconstrue Luther, for he had many beautiful thoughts as well. As Martin would say, he wassimul justus et peccator.]
http://ergofabulous.org/luther/insults-explained.php
Am quite happy identifying as a christian of the Lutheran brand even though my particular flavor, Missouri Lutheran Synod, more conservative than other brothers and sisters by not ordaining women or countenancing same sex marriages. This manner of following the teachings of Jesus started by Martin Luther has existed for nearly 600 years, making it time tested and thus resistant to passing fades or fancies or cults like the Heaven's Gate folks who castrated themselves and committed suicide while waiting for aliens following a comet to rapture them to heaven.
My Jesus celebrates and encourages life and weeps over mass suicides and other senseless deaths.
Have read some studies of Luther's works, enough to realize his writings show traces of antisemitism and misogyny but never dreamed he spent so much time insulting those who disagreed with him. I like him better already.
Perhaps we can forgive for for his bombast by realizing in confronting the Catholic hierarchy he started a century of war, which certainly came as a negative consequence of promoting the idea that humans can read the Gospels on their own.
[Those of you afflicted with the stereotype of Lutherans as lugubrious bores will have to confront, as we all do eventually, the irrefutable fact that the Intertoobz are a place of wonder and delight.
You are the prostitute of heretics!
You people are more stupid than a block of wood.
Since you are such vulgar blockheads that you think such lewd and stupid gossip will harm me or bring you honor, you are the real Hanswursts - blockheads, boors, and dunderheads.
Keep clicking through. They get better.
Martin Luther, O.B.
Original Blogger.
Although, I will grant you that it would have been tougher to nail a laptop to the cathedral door.]
Read more: Where It All Began - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/martin-luther-no-time-for-your-foolishness-011513#ixzz2I9jTMNlT
Judge not Luther unless you want to get judged, for he did live and write as a product of his times:
[I, a Lutheran myself, neither approve of nor condone Luther's insults as appropriate for modern theological discourse, nor most modern discourse for that matter. Luther was a product of his time. Some of his insults are inexcusable; a few are so crass as to make me reluctant to put them on this site (e.g. those to do with whoredom). However, when one reads his works, it becomes clear that these insults, a common rhetorical device in the polemical literature of the sixteenth century, were spoken in hopes of defending the pure faith against impure doctrine and guiding the church of his day back into the faith of the Church.
As I have followed commentaries about this website, I have noticed people using these quotes to condemn Lutheranism. It should be known that the Lutheran tradition does not accept most of Luther's works as doctrine, though it does embrace much of his theology. Only three documents written by the reformer are explicitly part of the Lutheran doctrine, compiled in the Book of Concord, and only one of these documents is universally accepted among Lutherans, namely Luther's Small Catechism. Moreover, Lutherans explicitly reject some of the reformer's ideas. For example, Luther's anti-Semitic writings have been rejected by most in the Lutheran tradition, and we continually seek forgiveness and reconciliation with our Jewish brothers and sisters for what Luther said and the effects it had on the world.
To imagine that modern Lutheranism is the sum total of Martin Luther's output is to misconstrue the Lutheran tradition, which was composed of many more voices even in its infancy. Of course, to imagine Luther's crass words are the sum total of the reformer is to misconstrue Luther, for he had many beautiful thoughts as well. As Martin would say, he wassimul justus et peccator.]
http://ergofabulous.org/luther/insults-explained.php
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Freeway Blogging
Make a maximum impact with a minimal investment: hang signs from highway pedestrian overpasses.
http://americablog.com/2013/01/how-to-be-a-freeway-blogger.html
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http://americablog.com/2013/01/how-to-be-a-freeway-blogger.html
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And I Thought My Marriage Ended Badly
Golly, at least, I never got beaten, tasered, and dragged behind a moving vehicle. Compared to that, sleeping with a butcher knife under my pillow in case my wife's ex con boyfriend made it 30 miles from Apopka during hurricane Charlie ranks as small stuff.
[VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. —
The 911 call was released in the case of a Volusia County man who was dragged behind a truck and nearly beaten to death by his ex-wife and two others, deputies said.
Investigators said they believe the attack was sparked by the victim's jealous ex-wife.
The man had been staying at hisex-wife's house to watch her animals while she was away.
But he reportedly had a woman over and that caused a jealous rage, according to a report.
Deputies said Jeanette Morris, 61, and her brother, Harold Anderson, 63, along with their friend, Joan Hobart, 46, tried to kill Morris' ex-husband, Robert Hall, 54.
Investigators said Hall was shocked with a stun gun, beaten and dragged behind a pickup truck before he escaped to neighbor Tyler Shelvin's home.]
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/911-call-released-man-tied-dragged-behind-ex-wifes/nTrsH/
[VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. —
The 911 call was released in the case of a Volusia County man who was dragged behind a truck and nearly beaten to death by his ex-wife and two others, deputies said.
Investigators said they believe the attack was sparked by the victim's jealous ex-wife.
The man had been staying at hisex-wife's house to watch her animals while she was away.
But he reportedly had a woman over and that caused a jealous rage, according to a report.
Deputies said Jeanette Morris, 61, and her brother, Harold Anderson, 63, along with their friend, Joan Hobart, 46, tried to kill Morris' ex-husband, Robert Hall, 54.
Investigators said Hall was shocked with a stun gun, beaten and dragged behind a pickup truck before he escaped to neighbor Tyler Shelvin's home.]
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/911-call-released-man-tied-dragged-behind-ex-wifes/nTrsH/
Forget the Facts, Ma'am
The basic geology of FL lies on limestone formations which overlay the Floridian Aquifer. Go to Google Earth and zoom in on any portion of my state and you an see it looks like swiss cheese, with a myriad of lakes dotting the landscape.
We use the aquifer as our main source of drinking water pumping it willy nilly to feed the voracious appetite for development. You see, a few thousand acres of scrub pine by itself has little value. Nevertheless, plat the land, subdivide it for housing, and coax/bribe compliant county commissions to extend roads, sewage, and water services to these housing lots, and the same piece of land becomes hundreds of times more valuable in terms of dollars per acre, notwithstanding the value of sandy scrub pine soi which acts as filtration system for water which falls as rain and flows into our aquifer.
As a consequence, municipalities have to pump more and more water for the taps and toilets of the new homes. Evidence has arisen that the aquifer exists as a finite resource, and the wonderful natural resource of FL springs--where fresh water just bubbles up from the depths--getting depleted. leading to lowered flow rate at our springs.
How will FL deal with this?
The current regime proposes putting off for 11 years setting minimum flow rates for our springs, this after taking 30 years so far to apply the law.
ELEVEN MORE Freakin' years, during which time politicians and plunderers will gorge themselves on cheap water while ignoring the long term health of our streams, springs, and rivers.
[The Northwest Florida Water Management District is seeking to delay setting minimum flow levels for Wakulla Springs and other springs in the district by 11 years, raising concerns among environmentalists.
The Legislature more than 30 years ago passed a law requiring minimum flow studies for waterways across the state, but implementation has been slow. The studies can help ensure there is enough water for fish and wildlife, and determine whether too much groundwater is being pumped, scientists say.
The Northwest District said in 2011 it would set "minimum flows and levels" for Wakulla Springs in 2012. In November, though, the district sent a new proposed schedule to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection proposing to set levels in 2023.
"That's just ridiculous," retired DEP biologist Jim Stevenson said Monday. "Every year there is a different schedule and a different timeline. And every year they change it."
Blue Spring in Jackson County would get an MFL adopted in 2024 followed by Econfina Creek and Springs in 2026. Other springs in Walton, Holmes and Jackson counties would receive minimum flow limits sometime after 2026.] emphasis added to highlight idiocy.
http://www.thefloridacurrent.com/article.cfm?id=31092747&utm_source=not_lt_user&utm_medium=article_link&utm_campaign=current_email
We use the aquifer as our main source of drinking water pumping it willy nilly to feed the voracious appetite for development. You see, a few thousand acres of scrub pine by itself has little value. Nevertheless, plat the land, subdivide it for housing, and coax/bribe compliant county commissions to extend roads, sewage, and water services to these housing lots, and the same piece of land becomes hundreds of times more valuable in terms of dollars per acre, notwithstanding the value of sandy scrub pine soi which acts as filtration system for water which falls as rain and flows into our aquifer.
As a consequence, municipalities have to pump more and more water for the taps and toilets of the new homes. Evidence has arisen that the aquifer exists as a finite resource, and the wonderful natural resource of FL springs--where fresh water just bubbles up from the depths--getting depleted. leading to lowered flow rate at our springs.
How will FL deal with this?
The current regime proposes putting off for 11 years setting minimum flow rates for our springs, this after taking 30 years so far to apply the law.
ELEVEN MORE Freakin' years, during which time politicians and plunderers will gorge themselves on cheap water while ignoring the long term health of our streams, springs, and rivers.
[The Northwest Florida Water Management District is seeking to delay setting minimum flow levels for Wakulla Springs and other springs in the district by 11 years, raising concerns among environmentalists.
The Legislature more than 30 years ago passed a law requiring minimum flow studies for waterways across the state, but implementation has been slow. The studies can help ensure there is enough water for fish and wildlife, and determine whether too much groundwater is being pumped, scientists say.
The Northwest District said in 2011 it would set "minimum flows and levels" for Wakulla Springs in 2012. In November, though, the district sent a new proposed schedule to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection proposing to set levels in 2023.
"That's just ridiculous," retired DEP biologist Jim Stevenson said Monday. "Every year there is a different schedule and a different timeline. And every year they change it."
Blue Spring in Jackson County would get an MFL adopted in 2024 followed by Econfina Creek and Springs in 2026. Other springs in Walton, Holmes and Jackson counties would receive minimum flow limits sometime after 2026.] emphasis added to highlight idiocy.
http://www.thefloridacurrent.com/article.cfm?id=31092747&utm_source=not_lt_user&utm_medium=article_link&utm_campaign=current_email
Monday, January 14, 2013
"A Confederacy of Dunces"
So shall we call the current majority of the United States of Representatives, gerrymandered into control for now.
Because heedless of causing another worldwide recession, they evidently plan on shutting down the federal government by refusing to pay for appropriations they have already passed. Golly, they voted for 2 wars they did not fund, tax breaks for the rich which depleted the surpluses of the Clinton budgets and which only just expired, and an unfunded prescription drug benefit.
Now having spent like drunken sailors for all of the Cheney presidency, they want their pattern of excess taken out of the hides of seniors, veterans, and disabled people.
They ran up the bills and now want to evade the tab.
[House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.
The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.]
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/behind-the-curtain-house-gop-eyes-default-shutdown-86116.html#ixzz2HyDFOydY
Ironically having lost in national elections, te Republican'ts now wish to use the Constitutional system to prevent the government from functioning rather than work together to make the damn thing work, to put their narrow, ideological position ahead of what will work.
[But don't imagine that this is all over: two months from now, we start all over again, when Republicans will almost certainly try to hold the debt ceiling hostage, again, in order to wring the spending concessions out of President Obama that they couldn't get in this go-around.
To put it simply, this is no way to run a functioning democracy. But when you have one political party that has basically surrendered the responsibility of governing the United States, this is the result.] emphasis added for scorn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/01/fiscal-cliff-dysfunctional-republican-nihilism
Because heedless of causing another worldwide recession, they evidently plan on shutting down the federal government by refusing to pay for appropriations they have already passed. Golly, they voted for 2 wars they did not fund, tax breaks for the rich which depleted the surpluses of the Clinton budgets and which only just expired, and an unfunded prescription drug benefit.
Now having spent like drunken sailors for all of the Cheney presidency, they want their pattern of excess taken out of the hides of seniors, veterans, and disabled people.
They ran up the bills and now want to evade the tab.
[House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.
The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.]
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/behind-the-curtain-house-gop-eyes-default-shutdown-86116.html#ixzz2HyDFOydY
Ironically having lost in national elections, te Republican'ts now wish to use the Constitutional system to prevent the government from functioning rather than work together to make the damn thing work, to put their narrow, ideological position ahead of what will work.
[But don't imagine that this is all over: two months from now, we start all over again, when Republicans will almost certainly try to hold the debt ceiling hostage, again, in order to wring the spending concessions out of President Obama that they couldn't get in this go-around.
To put it simply, this is no way to run a functioning democracy. But when you have one political party that has basically surrendered the responsibility of governing the United States, this is the result.] emphasis added for scorn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/01/fiscal-cliff-dysfunctional-republican-nihilism
Buy an iPad and Kill a Puppy
Because we in the united States of Rampant Consumerism value our pets more than our fellow humans, their dignity, worth, and well being.
For every iPad, iPhone, and Apple gizmo made comes from Chinese sweatshops where workers labor under horrendous conditions, so bad that authorities had to install nets around multi-story dormitories because workers would rather throw them selves to their deaths rather than endure such conditions.
Now, they have risen in protest.
Solidarity!
[IDG News Service - More than 1,000 workers reportedly went on strike at a Foxconn supplier in China demanding better pay. Riot police are said to have responded by suppressing the protest.
The workers strike occurred at a company called Jiangxi Xin Hai Yang Precision Components, located in the city of Fengcheng, according to labor protection group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). The strike started last Thursday and then continued into the next day, causing a large crowd of workers to block access to a main street in the city.
Chinese media reports and microblogs posted pictures of the protest, showing riot police gathered in the streets. A video of the event was also posted online....
The city of Fengcheng said its mayor visited Jiangxi Xin Hai Yang Precision Components on Friday, but made no mention of the workers' strike. In awebsite posting, the city government said the supplier manufactures computers, servers, printers, mobile phones, and employs 5,500 people.
"Industries that want to manage, and improve efficiency, must also at the same time put their people first and pay more care to their workers' lives," the post added.
Workers at the factory make a base salary of 1300 yuan $207 a month, according to SACOM.] emphasis added
For every iPad, iPhone, and Apple gizmo made comes from Chinese sweatshops where workers labor under horrendous conditions, so bad that authorities had to install nets around multi-story dormitories because workers would rather throw them selves to their deaths rather than endure such conditions.
Now, they have risen in protest.
Solidarity!
[IDG News Service - More than 1,000 workers reportedly went on strike at a Foxconn supplier in China demanding better pay. Riot police are said to have responded by suppressing the protest.
The workers strike occurred at a company called Jiangxi Xin Hai Yang Precision Components, located in the city of Fengcheng, according to labor protection group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). The strike started last Thursday and then continued into the next day, causing a large crowd of workers to block access to a main street in the city.
Chinese media reports and microblogs posted pictures of the protest, showing riot police gathered in the streets. A video of the event was also posted online....
The city of Fengcheng said its mayor visited Jiangxi Xin Hai Yang Precision Components on Friday, but made no mention of the workers' strike. In awebsite posting, the city government said the supplier manufactures computers, servers, printers, mobile phones, and employs 5,500 people.
"Industries that want to manage, and improve efficiency, must also at the same time put their people first and pay more care to their workers' lives," the post added.
Workers at the factory make a base salary of 1300 yuan $207 a month, according to SACOM.] emphasis added
Imagine that, even Chinese communists place people before profits.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Why Do "Christians" Sin So Much?
What could possibly possess "Christians" to profit from breaking the commandments of the Most Holy God as read in his holy and inerrant word? Serving shellfish, oysters and shrimp, contrary to God's holy word as transcribed in Leviticus.
Abomination before the Lord, I say. Such evildoers ought to get stoned to death by the righteous, notwithstanding the words of that hippy Jesus dude. I have my sins sure, but believe I CAN cast that first stone at human's with worse sins than mine.
What gets into folks to commit such hypocrisy, hmmm? Maybe Satan?
Shame on you, Ed McGovern! See you in H-E-double hockey sticks!
[Ariel and Shawnee McPhail said they went into The Stingray Café, on 520 S. Front Street in New Bern, and ate a meal there on Dec. 4. But they said as they were leaving, the restaurant's owner, Ed McGovern, handed them a letter that stated God's opposition to homosexuality. The letter reads as follows....]
Reviewer at Yelp nails the hypocrisy and provides citations:
[For a Christian cafe, this place is chock full of sin and devil worshippers!I was greeted by a waiter who obviously was wearing more than one type of cloth (Leviticus 19:19). It offended me a little, but I let it slide. She gave me the menu and I was disgusted by the fact that they serve seafood that doesn't have scales or fins (Leviticus 11:12). They even serve pork (Leviticus 11:7-8)! I requested to speak to a manager at this point because I was pretty offended by this menu. The manager came and I noticed that he had a neatly trimmed beard and a tattoo on his arm (Leviticus 19:27-28). By that point, I just got furious and walked out.
I also discovered that they are opened on Sundays too (Exodus 31:15). Never again will I enter this blasphemous place they call a "Christian restaurant". For a Christian restaurant, I would expect these errors to be fixed!]
"We are living in the future! Enjoy it"
Missed it at Talking Points Memo but both Juanita Jean and the Earthbound Misfit pointed it out, the official White House answer to the Death Star petition, written with whimsy, humour, and bunch a science facts but 57% less calories.
[We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.
We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.
If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.] emphasis added 'cause am a sucker for positive statements, sentences which affirm that people of good purpose working together can accomplish much.
Nerd Nirvana and Geek Glory: http://juanitajean.com/2013/01/12/nerd-nirvana-and-geek-glory/
"I didn't realize the resultant acronym: Commercial Crew and Cargo Program = C3PO." : http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-death-star-petition.htm
[We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.
We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.
If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.] emphasis added 'cause am a sucker for positive statements, sentences which affirm that people of good purpose working together can accomplish much.
Nerd Nirvana and Geek Glory: http://juanitajean.com/2013/01/12/nerd-nirvana-and-geek-glory/
"I didn't realize the resultant acronym: Commercial Crew and Cargo Program = C3PO." : http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-death-star-petition.htm
Guns Don't Kill People; Zorbs Kill People
Usually try to refrain from commenting on people stupid enough to remove themselves from the gene pool in new and creative ways as recounted at the Darwin Awards, but sometimes you just gotta do it.
Maybe this stems from my very rational fear of heights, due to great respect for effects of gravity, so I'd avoid zorbs near cliffs.
Hmm, strapping yourself inside of 2 plastic balls and rolling down a ski slope, what could possibly go wrong with that? Video found at Earthbound Misfit's place: http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2013/01/blog-post.html.
[It was supposed to be a thrilling ride down a ski slope inside a giant inflatable ball that is to be one of the symbols of next year's Winter Olympics; it ended in tragedy for the two Russian men inside.
The transparent plastic ball — known as a zorb — veered off course and sailed over a rock ledge in the rugged Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. The ball picked up speed as it flew down the steep slope, rolling and bouncing. One man was killed and the other badly injured.]
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/zorb-ride-russian-mountains-proves-deadly-18167516
Maybe this stems from my very rational fear of heights, due to great respect for effects of gravity, so I'd avoid zorbs near cliffs.
Hmm, strapping yourself inside of 2 plastic balls and rolling down a ski slope, what could possibly go wrong with that? Video found at Earthbound Misfit's place: http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2013/01/blog-post.html.
[It was supposed to be a thrilling ride down a ski slope inside a giant inflatable ball that is to be one of the symbols of next year's Winter Olympics; it ended in tragedy for the two Russian men inside.
The transparent plastic ball — known as a zorb — veered off course and sailed over a rock ledge in the rugged Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. The ball picked up speed as it flew down the steep slope, rolling and bouncing. One man was killed and the other badly injured.]
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/zorb-ride-russian-mountains-proves-deadly-18167516
Damn, No Death Star--Wimpy Obama Fails to Support Blowing Up Planets
Let the Republican'ts begin whining; Obama goes soft and refuses planetary destruction What a wimp!
[The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
A "Death Star" won't be a part of the U.S. military's arsenal any time soon.
More than 34,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the Obama administration to build the "Star Wars" inspired super-weapon to spur job growth and bolster national defense.
But in a posting Friday on the White House website, Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, says a Death Star would cost too much to build — an estimated $850 quadrillion — at a time the White House is working to reduce the federal budget.
Besides, Shawcross says, the Obama administration "does not support blowing up planets."] emphasis added for comedy
[The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
A "Death Star" won't be a part of the U.S. military's arsenal any time soon.
More than 34,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the Obama administration to build the "Star Wars" inspired super-weapon to spur job growth and bolster national defense.
But in a posting Friday on the White House website, Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, says a Death Star would cost too much to build — an estimated $850 quadrillion — at a time the White House is working to reduce the federal budget.
Besides, Shawcross says, the Obama administration "does not support blowing up planets."] emphasis added for comedy
Hobbits Existed--and Middle Earth Too!
Around a decade ago, researchers found skeletal remains on a Pacific island of small sized humans. Recent analysis shows bone structure in the wrists of the hobbits different than Neanderthals and Cromagnons, modern humans, homo erectus.
[A study in the Journal of Human Evolution shows hobbit wrists were different than modern human and Neanderthal wrists, which researchers believe is proof that they were their own species — not just very small humans.]
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/weird_news_hobbits_are_still_real/
J. R. R. Tolkein, writer of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, used sites of his youth in Birmingham, England, as scenes in is works.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/centralengland/739039/Sites-that-shaped-Tolkiens-Lord-of-the-Rings.html
[A study in the Journal of Human Evolution shows hobbit wrists were different than modern human and Neanderthal wrists, which researchers believe is proof that they were their own species — not just very small humans.]
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/weird_news_hobbits_are_still_real/
J. R. R. Tolkein, writer of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, used sites of his youth in Birmingham, England, as scenes in is works.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/centralengland/739039/Sites-that-shaped-Tolkiens-Lord-of-the-Rings.html
http://www.birminghamconservationtrust.org/2010/06/30/birmingham%E2%80%99s-influence-on-the-writings-of-j-r-r-tolkien/
Friday, January 11, 2013
Janis Joplin: "Cry Baby"
Seems like most wimmens I've met the last several years only want to date younger men, psychopaths, assholes and brigands.
How can you date someone you can't have a conversation with?
How can you date someone you know bad for you, like my ex wife who dated someone named Gator who'd done 16 years in prison, who helped her smoke up 10 grand from her 401k?
Shit, I'm a self professed full fledged asshole but have at least reached and age and time to become honest with myself and others.
It worked for my old man, married 50+ years to my moms, just trying to live as a good man.
"All you gotta do is be a good man, one time, to 1 woman, and that'll be the end of the road."
"I won't lie no more you can bet; don't want to learn what I'll need to forget."
How can you date someone you can't have a conversation with?
How can you date someone you know bad for you, like my ex wife who dated someone named Gator who'd done 16 years in prison, who helped her smoke up 10 grand from her 401k?
Shit, I'm a self professed full fledged asshole but have at least reached and age and time to become honest with myself and others.
It worked for my old man, married 50+ years to my moms, just trying to live as a good man.
"All you gotta do is be a good man, one time, to 1 woman, and that'll be the end of the road."
"I won't lie no more you can bet; don't want to learn what I'll need to forget."
Lou Reed: "Busload of Faith"
Gave up asking how other peope get by. Only know I "need a busload of Faith to get by."
Blind Faith: "Wasted and Can't Find M Way Home"
Well, not wasted and did find my way home tonight--literally but not metaphorically as still searching--but did have some days and nights where all that not very certain.
Leon Russell: "Jumping Jack Flash/Youngblood"
"If you treat your woman like yourself, it's gonna be alright."
Damn do love this song. Way back in days of yore--ancient days--had a friend with this on vinyl and loved to hear it over and over again--and STILL do.
Might be Alvin Lee to George's right shredding on the guitar.
Wonder if YouTube gods have Alvin at Woodstock?
Damn do love this song. Way back in days of yore--ancient days--had a friend with this on vinyl and loved to hear it over and over again--and STILL do.
Might be Alvin Lee to George's right shredding on the guitar.
Wonder if YouTube gods have Alvin at Woodstock?
George Harrison: "My Sweet Lord"
Pf course for reasons unknown even to me, have Jesus as my Lord, not Hare Hare Rama Rama whatever bullshit George wanted to peddle.
Enlightenment does come from within, however, so if it helped him become more peaceful and inclusive of other huamns can't prove all bad.
Enlightenment does come from within, however, so if it helped him become more peaceful and inclusive of other huamns can't prove all bad.
George Harrison: "Here Comes the Sun"
Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison, first major mega charitable concert.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Keith Moon's Final Song
[Keith Moon was only 31 at the time, but his endless partying had taken a severe toll on his body. He was bloated and out of practice. Nevertheless, the Who powered through a nine-song set that wrapped up with John Entwistle's signature tune "My Wife." They went to their dressing room sweaty and exhausted, but Stein wasn't done with them. The director still wasn't happy with "Won't Get Fooled Again" and he told Pete he didn't feel like it had a "definitive end." "A definitive end?" Townshend reportedly said. "What do you want me to do? Go out there and fall asleep on stage? Maybe I should go out there and die during my last solo? Or maybe I should hit that motherfucker who's been yelling for 'Magic Bus' over the head with my guitar?"
The Who ultimately agreed to play the song one more time. This time Townshend leaped in the air during the climax, did a knee slide and bounced around the stage. He wrapped up with some windmills before lifting his guitar over his head, bouncing it off the ground and then using it to knock some cymbals across the stage. Stein was pleased, and the performance wrapped up the documentary.]
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/flashback-the-whos-final-performance-with-keith-moon-20130110#ixzz2HfuxRh5S
Ordain a Lady
Sounds good to me. At least, one of my 2 churches ordains women.
[One of the oldest women’s Catholic organizations in the world has released a music video in their latest effort to persuade the Vatican to ordain women.
Women's Ordination Conference, which claims to be the world's oldest and largest organization working solely for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops has released a track "Ordain a Lady" on YouTube on New Year’s Eve.
Hey, I was baptized, and this is crazy,
But God just called me, so ordain a lady!
All the other Churches, try to schmooze me,
But I'm a Catholic, so ordain a lady!
My call is a fact, but some Pope in a hat,
Closed discussion on that, and now he's in my way
I pray, sing, and feel
At first communion it's real
I but I refuse to kneel,
To Patriarchy's way]Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ordain-a-lady-campaign-for-women-to-become-priests-goes-viral--VIDEO-185741642.html#ixzz2HbstTQTY
[One of the oldest women’s Catholic organizations in the world has released a music video in their latest effort to persuade the Vatican to ordain women.
Women's Ordination Conference, which claims to be the world's oldest and largest organization working solely for the ordination of women as priests, deacons, and bishops has released a track "Ordain a Lady" on YouTube on New Year’s Eve.
Hey, I was baptized, and this is crazy,
But God just called me, so ordain a lady!
All the other Churches, try to schmooze me,
But I'm a Catholic, so ordain a lady!
My call is a fact, but some Pope in a hat,
Closed discussion on that, and now he's in my way
I pray, sing, and feel
At first communion it's real
I but I refuse to kneel,
To Patriarchy's way]Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ordain-a-lady-campaign-for-women-to-become-priests-goes-viral--VIDEO-185741642.html#ixzz2HbstTQTY
Democracy Means Letting People Vote
Right?
[Swept up in the craze of preventing widespread voter fraud that doesn’t actually exist, Tennessee Republicans passed a voter identification law this year that they claimed would put an end to fraud and ensure fair elections. Like similar laws in other states, Tennessee’s version has come under scrutiny from voting rights advocates, civil rights groups like the NAACP and ACLU, and even Democratic senators, who oppose the laws because they will disenfranchise poor, elderly, and minority voters who are less likely to have photo IDs.
The state now has evidence that that will be the case. Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old Chattanooga resident who says she has voted in every election but one since she became eligible to vote, wanted to ensure she’d have the necessary ID to vote in next year’s elections, when Tennessee’s law goes into effect. But when she went to apply for the ID, she was denied, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:
That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.
“But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.
“I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said.]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/10/05/336392/96-year-old-tennessee-woman-denied-voter-id-because-she-didnt-have-her-marriage-license/
[Swept up in the craze of preventing widespread voter fraud that doesn’t actually exist, Tennessee Republicans passed a voter identification law this year that they claimed would put an end to fraud and ensure fair elections. Like similar laws in other states, Tennessee’s version has come under scrutiny from voting rights advocates, civil rights groups like the NAACP and ACLU, and even Democratic senators, who oppose the laws because they will disenfranchise poor, elderly, and minority voters who are less likely to have photo IDs.
The state now has evidence that that will be the case. Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old Chattanooga resident who says she has voted in every election but one since she became eligible to vote, wanted to ensure she’d have the necessary ID to vote in next year’s elections, when Tennessee’s law goes into effect. But when she went to apply for the ID, she was denied, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:
That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.
“But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.
“I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said.]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/10/05/336392/96-year-old-tennessee-woman-denied-voter-id-because-she-didnt-have-her-marriage-license/
"Torture, rendition, sodomy: with ‘protectors’ like these, who needs ex-friends?"
"We" cannot bring liberty to the world by depriving individuals of basic human rights. Has all the torture, bestial behavior, made me any safer here in Orlando? No, the Mouse house remains a symbolic target for terrorists, foreign and domestic.
Robert Fisk of the London independent explains reality of war on terror.;
In other words, it was a set-up....
At virtually the same moment as the De Silva report was published last week, our Government agreed to pay £2.2m to the family of Sami al-Saadi, who was “renditioned” to Libya with the help of our Protectors in 2004 and subsequently was tortured most savagely in Gaddafi’s dungeons. We have to thank Human Rights Watch for this information, by the way – no government inquiry was set up into this outrage – and HRW was only able to finger our Protectors because of correspondence between the CIA and Gaddafi’s goons in Tripoli.
But then bingo. Again, on the very same day last week, the European Court of Human Rights stated that CIA agents tortured – and sodomised – Khaled el-Musri, a German of Lebanese origin who was supposedly “linked to terrorism”. Now I don’t know if our chaps get up to sodomy during their role as our security Protectors, but the European court was also much exercised by the fact that Macedonian state agents watched as poor old el-Musri endured his beating, shackling and sodomisation in 2003. It was “simply unnacceptable”, said James Goldston of the Open Society Justice Initiative, for the US government to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities. A long bellow of laughter here, I’m afraid.
The Strasbourg court added that Macedonia had been responsible for Mr el-Musri’s “torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extra-judicial ‘rendition’.” So what, I wonder, does all this mean? That the CIA lads (for they must be lads, mustn’t they?) sodomise prisoners – or that they get the Macedonians to carry out sexual assaults on their behalf?
What the hell? How many more of these guys – the Finucanes, the al-Saadis, the el-Musris – are supposed to win our sympathy just because they got murdered, tortured and/or sodomised by our Protectors. Next, we’ll have to recall how the Canadians paid C$10.5m (£6.5m) to poor old Mahar Arar, a Canadian of Syrian origin “renditioned” in 2002 by the US to Damascus, where he was tortured by Syrian goons – on America’s behalf – until the Syrians themselves announced that he was “totally innocent” of all al-Qa’ida connections.
This, of course, is a rather dodgy situation for America’s Protectors. After all, Bashar al-Assad of Syria is now supposed to be the devil incarnate, the latest Middle East Hitler, the man whom Obama and La Clinton would like to have liquidated. So why did the Protectors send Mr Arar to him?
Well, of course, a decade ago, Assad was our mate, wasn’t he? He was our chum, a man we could do business with, whose own Protectors were happy to help our Protectors, as worthy to be kissed by a Blair as Gaddafi was.]
Robert Fisk of the London independent explains reality of war on terror.;
[Last week was a bad week for our Protectors. It kicked off with theshameful details of the De Silva report, which concluded that the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane had been murdered with British state collusion. It’s something that all who knew Finucane had long suspected. Sir Desmond de Silva concluded that “a series of positive actions by employees of the state (ie MI6) actively furthered and facilitated his murder” and that there was afterwards “a relentless attempt to defeat the ends of justice”.
In other words, it was a set-up....
But then bingo. Again, on the very same day last week, the European Court of Human Rights stated that CIA agents tortured – and sodomised – Khaled el-Musri, a German of Lebanese origin who was supposedly “linked to terrorism”. Now I don’t know if our chaps get up to sodomy during their role as our security Protectors, but the European court was also much exercised by the fact that Macedonian state agents watched as poor old el-Musri endured his beating, shackling and sodomisation in 2003. It was “simply unnacceptable”, said James Goldston of the Open Society Justice Initiative, for the US government to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities. A long bellow of laughter here, I’m afraid.
The Strasbourg court added that Macedonia had been responsible for Mr el-Musri’s “torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extra-judicial ‘rendition’.” So what, I wonder, does all this mean? That the CIA lads (for they must be lads, mustn’t they?) sodomise prisoners – or that they get the Macedonians to carry out sexual assaults on their behalf?
What the hell? How many more of these guys – the Finucanes, the al-Saadis, the el-Musris – are supposed to win our sympathy just because they got murdered, tortured and/or sodomised by our Protectors. Next, we’ll have to recall how the Canadians paid C$10.5m (£6.5m) to poor old Mahar Arar, a Canadian of Syrian origin “renditioned” in 2002 by the US to Damascus, where he was tortured by Syrian goons – on America’s behalf – until the Syrians themselves announced that he was “totally innocent” of all al-Qa’ida connections.
This, of course, is a rather dodgy situation for America’s Protectors. After all, Bashar al-Assad of Syria is now supposed to be the devil incarnate, the latest Middle East Hitler, the man whom Obama and La Clinton would like to have liquidated. So why did the Protectors send Mr Arar to him?
Well, of course, a decade ago, Assad was our mate, wasn’t he? He was our chum, a man we could do business with, whose own Protectors were happy to help our Protectors, as worthy to be kissed by a Blair as Gaddafi was.]
The Fix is in at Campaign to Fix the Debt
Talk about foxes raiding the hen house! These well heeled ideologues say "We'" must cut Social Security, driving seniors and the disabled further into poverty to preserve favorable tax treatment for capital gains, which allows millionaires to pay less in tax rates than their secretaries.
[But in the weeks ahead, many of the campaign’s members will be juggling their private interests with their public goals: they are also lobbyists, board members or executives for corporations that have worked aggressively to shape the contours of federal spending and taxes, including many of the tax breaks that would be at the heart of any broad overhaul. While Fix the Debt criticized the recent fiscal deal between Mr. Obama and lawmakers, saying it did not do enough to cut spending or close tax loopholes, companies and industries linked to the organization emerged with significant victories on taxes and other policies.
“Some of these folks who are trying to be part of the solution have also been part of the problem,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning advocacy group, and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “They’ve often fought hard against the kind of balance that we need on the revenue side. Many of the people we’re talking about are associated with policies that would make it a lot harder to fix the debt.”
Sam Nunn, a former Democratic senator from Georgia who is a member of Fix the Debt’s steering committee, received more than $300,000 in compensation in 2011 as a board member of General Electric. The company is among the most aggressive in the country at minimizing its tax obligations. Mr. McCrery, the Louisiana Republican, is also among G.E.’s lobbyists, according to the most recent federal disclosures, monitoring federal budget negotiations for the company.
Other board members and steering committee members have deep ties to the financial industry, including private equity, whose executives have aggressively fought efforts to alter a tax provision, known as the carried interest exception, that significantly reduces their personal income taxes.
Erskine B. Bowles, a co-founder of Fix the Debt, was paid $345,000 in stock and cash in 2011 as a board member at Morgan Stanley, while Judd Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire and a co-chairman of Fix the Debt, is a paid adviser to Goldman Sachs. Both companies have engaged in lobbying on international tax rules.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/us/politics/behind-debt-campaign-ties-to-corporate-interests.html?_r=0
[But in the weeks ahead, many of the campaign’s members will be juggling their private interests with their public goals: they are also lobbyists, board members or executives for corporations that have worked aggressively to shape the contours of federal spending and taxes, including many of the tax breaks that would be at the heart of any broad overhaul. While Fix the Debt criticized the recent fiscal deal between Mr. Obama and lawmakers, saying it did not do enough to cut spending or close tax loopholes, companies and industries linked to the organization emerged with significant victories on taxes and other policies.
“Some of these folks who are trying to be part of the solution have also been part of the problem,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning advocacy group, and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “They’ve often fought hard against the kind of balance that we need on the revenue side. Many of the people we’re talking about are associated with policies that would make it a lot harder to fix the debt.”
Sam Nunn, a former Democratic senator from Georgia who is a member of Fix the Debt’s steering committee, received more than $300,000 in compensation in 2011 as a board member of General Electric. The company is among the most aggressive in the country at minimizing its tax obligations. Mr. McCrery, the Louisiana Republican, is also among G.E.’s lobbyists, according to the most recent federal disclosures, monitoring federal budget negotiations for the company.
Other board members and steering committee members have deep ties to the financial industry, including private equity, whose executives have aggressively fought efforts to alter a tax provision, known as the carried interest exception, that significantly reduces their personal income taxes.
Erskine B. Bowles, a co-founder of Fix the Debt, was paid $345,000 in stock and cash in 2011 as a board member at Morgan Stanley, while Judd Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire and a co-chairman of Fix the Debt, is a paid adviser to Goldman Sachs. Both companies have engaged in lobbying on international tax rules.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/us/politics/behind-debt-campaign-ties-to-corporate-interests.html?_r=0
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Slash; "Sweet Child O' Mine"
Damn, I do love this song. C'mon, Axl, get your head out of your ass and start making music we care about.
The Clash: "Rudie Can't Fail"
"Hear them sayin'
How you get a rude and a reckless?
Don't you be so crude and a feckless
You been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can't fail"
How you get a rude and a reckless?
Don't you be so crude and a feckless
You been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can't fail"
The Nightwatchman: "Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse"
"whiskey in my hand
razor in my pocket,
babty, Im your man."
razor in my pocket,
babty, Im your man."
Fiscal Cliff Deal: "praise an arsonist for extinguishing his own fire."
[Congress voted to permanently preserve the Bush tax cuts for roughly 99 percent of taxpaying households, but the rate increase for the 1 Percent has infuriated antitax purists, who vow to exact more spending cuts in a couple of months, when the U.S. faces the triple threat of a debt ceiling, postponed automatic spending cuts, and expiration of the law that keeps the government funded. The arsonists now have a new box of matches.
Why have Americans been sentenced to this years-long cycle of pettiness, delay, and zero-sum gamesmanship? You could argue it’s a crisis of leadership—that our elected representatives are examples of our worst, most partisan selves. That seems unlikely. Rather, the budget conflict, at its essence, is a clash over something that rarely lends itself to compromise: morality. Budgetary puritans believe, ferociously, that too much government spending is not just inefficient, but self-indulgent. They view the world’s largest economy as an indebted family that needs to get back to basics. “The federal government needs to tighten its belt just like every hardworking American family has had to do during our economic recovery,” Representative Kurt Schrader, a fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrat from Oregon, said last year.
The economy-as-family metaphor is familiar, emotionally intuitive—and incorrect. It’s a fallacy of composition: What’s true for the part is not necessarily true for the whole. While a single family can get its finances back on track by spending less than it earns, it’s impossible for everyone to do that simultaneously. When the plumber skips a haircut, the barber can’t afford to have his drains cleaned.] emphasis added
Why have Americans been sentenced to this years-long cycle of pettiness, delay, and zero-sum gamesmanship? You could argue it’s a crisis of leadership—that our elected representatives are examples of our worst, most partisan selves. That seems unlikely. Rather, the budget conflict, at its essence, is a clash over something that rarely lends itself to compromise: morality. Budgetary puritans believe, ferociously, that too much government spending is not just inefficient, but self-indulgent. They view the world’s largest economy as an indebted family that needs to get back to basics. “The federal government needs to tighten its belt just like every hardworking American family has had to do during our economic recovery,” Representative Kurt Schrader, a fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrat from Oregon, said last year.
The economy-as-family metaphor is familiar, emotionally intuitive—and incorrect. It’s a fallacy of composition: What’s true for the part is not necessarily true for the whole. While a single family can get its finances back on track by spending less than it earns, it’s impossible for everyone to do that simultaneously. When the plumber skips a haircut, the barber can’t afford to have his drains cleaned.] emphasis added
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Bob Dylan: 'Like a Rolling Stone'
Holy F***, the band features an upright acoustic bass!
Yeah, How Does it FEEL!
Yeah, How Does it FEEL!
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Republican'ts Have Gone Crazy
Republican't ideologues have become enamored with fixztions promoteed and pqaid for by their philosophical daddies and masters such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, free market modern day pirates who feel government ought not place qny limits on their plund4ring and rapacious selves.
Having procured a majority in a gerrymandered US House of Representatives, these amsteders of delusion seem willing to wreck the US economy and the world in order to increase their influence and wealth.
[“Leverage” only works against rational people. A large number of House Republicans aren’t just “nihilists,” willing to blow up the economy to get what they want, they’re plain morons who have impossible and horrible goals and no clue whatsoever how to reach them.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who held an iPad listing the names of would-be anti-Boehner conspirators in full view of a journalist’s camera, is an idiot. He is not just a person whose politics I find distasteful or extremist, he is a dumber-than-average human. Paul Broun and Louie Gohmert are two of the dumbest people on Earth. In a slightly better functioning political world, these three would just do what their smarter leader told them to do. Instead, they and their colleagues have forced their leader to act as if he is as dumb as they are regarding the process of governing. Boehner’s new position is that he will not attempt to negotiate with the party that shares control of the government, which makes no sense as a strategy for achieving conservative policy goals, but makes sense if you think the best way to achieve conservative policy goals is to destroy the country until everyone agrees with you.
As we race to the coming debt ceiling fiasco, please remember that while John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan know that raising the debt ceiling is a thing that just has to be done, there is no indication that the Gohmerts, Huelskamps, Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns of their caucus agree. You can’t negotiate a compromise with people who are positive they’ll get their way if they refuse to negotiate at all. You can’t avert a catastrophe if you need the assent of people who think the catastrophe is precisely what this country needs to get back on the right track.] emphasis added
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/lesson_of_the_failed_boehner_coup_were_dealing_with_idiots/
[“Leverage” only works against rational people. A large number of House Republicans aren’t just “nihilists,” willing to blow up the economy to get what they want, they’re plain morons who have impossible and horrible goals and no clue whatsoever how to reach them.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who held an iPad listing the names of would-be anti-Boehner conspirators in full view of a journalist’s camera, is an idiot. He is not just a person whose politics I find distasteful or extremist, he is a dumber-than-average human. Paul Broun and Louie Gohmert are two of the dumbest people on Earth. In a slightly better functioning political world, these three would just do what their smarter leader told them to do. Instead, they and their colleagues have forced their leader to act as if he is as dumb as they are regarding the process of governing. Boehner’s new position is that he will not attempt to negotiate with the party that shares control of the government, which makes no sense as a strategy for achieving conservative policy goals, but makes sense if you think the best way to achieve conservative policy goals is to destroy the country until everyone agrees with you.
As we race to the coming debt ceiling fiasco, please remember that while John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan know that raising the debt ceiling is a thing that just has to be done, there is no indication that the Gohmerts, Huelskamps, Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns of their caucus agree. You can’t negotiate a compromise with people who are positive they’ll get their way if they refuse to negotiate at all. You can’t avert a catastrophe if you need the assent of people who think the catastrophe is precisely what this country needs to get back on the right track.] emphasis added
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/lesson_of_the_failed_boehner_coup_were_dealing_with_idiots/
Friday, January 4, 2013
Star Trek Next Generation Gag Reel
Found at HuffingtonPost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/01/star-trek-gag-reel_n_2392963.html.
Let's try a different one, available until censor robot algorithms weed them out of the intertubes:
Virtual Moog Synthesizer
[Much like the musical machines Bob Moog created, this doodle was synthesized from a number of smaller components to form a unique instrument. When experienced withGoogle Chrome, sound is generated natively using the Web Audio API—a doodle first (for other browsers the Flash plugin is used). This doodle also takes advantage ofJavaScript, Closure libraries, CSS3 and tools like Google Web Fonts, the Google+ API, the Google URL Shortener and App Engine.]http://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday
British Dr. Who Stamps
[The Associated Press
LONDON — The many characters in the science-fiction show "Doctor Who" will be zooming through time and space on the edge of letters in 2013.
Britain's Royal Mail is marking the 50th anniversary of the popular show with a series of stamps featuring each of the 11 actors who have played the title role, known as the Doctor. Those featured include the most recent actor, Matt Smith, as well as past Time Lords such as David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston.
The series will also include a miniature sheet that brings together Second Class stamps featuring the Doctor's time-traveling machine and four of his iconic foes — a Dalek, an Ood, a Weeping Angel and a Cyberman.
The stamps honoring the cult British television program will be available starting at the end of March.]
http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/entertainment/royal-mail-to-issue-doctor-who-stamps/nTkMK/
LONDON — The many characters in the science-fiction show "Doctor Who" will be zooming through time and space on the edge of letters in 2013.
Britain's Royal Mail is marking the 50th anniversary of the popular show with a series of stamps featuring each of the 11 actors who have played the title role, known as the Doctor. Those featured include the most recent actor, Matt Smith, as well as past Time Lords such as David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston.
The series will also include a miniature sheet that brings together Second Class stamps featuring the Doctor's time-traveling machine and four of his iconic foes — a Dalek, an Ood, a Weeping Angel and a Cyberman.
The stamps honoring the cult British television program will be available starting at the end of March.]
http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/entertainment/royal-mail-to-issue-doctor-who-stamps/nTkMK/
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Part of getting old means that...
......I can go to bed when feeling like it, like at 9:48 pm watching my beloved Gators employ every flaw seen all year in a disturbing tonight rout by second rate conference USA school. Or did Louisville move to Big Least?
If Lord willing wake tomorrow and reptiles gain stunning comeback win, will see it on news and not have to watch more of this Insufferable and Irrelevant bowl.
At least, Maddow on MSNBC.
Da-Da Dah Dah Dah, Doh!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Holy Third Eagle of the Apocalypse, Batman!
Found this tidbit over at Juanita Jean's, proprietor of the most dangerous beauty salon on the planet, with a dandy little link to self appointed--presumably--third eagle of the Apocalypse and "Co-Prophet of the End Times."
This dipwad, whose elevator only goes to the odd floors, actually did a third video on the viral sensation of "Gangem Style." 3 12 minute videos claiming that this rapper Psy, actually Psych for this joke video, actually reveals secrets of that angry old white-bearded Jehovah dude.
Words just do not suffice to ridicule this drivel.
People, pay attention to the Gospels and leave that Revelations stuff to the professionals.
This dipwad, whose elevator only goes to the odd floors, actually did a third video on the viral sensation of "Gangem Style." 3 12 minute videos claiming that this rapper Psy, actually Psych for this joke video, actually reveals secrets of that angry old white-bearded Jehovah dude.
Words just do not suffice to ridicule this drivel.
People, pay attention to the Gospels and leave that Revelations stuff to the professionals.
Advice from Bartenders
[22.
Everyone should bartend a few nights in his life.
You learn so much about people.
19. I like a sophisticated palate. You’ll win points with me if you request gin in your martini.
16. I've heard it all. One guy told me I had the worst smile he‘d ever seen. I found out that he thinks a girl won‘t remember him unless he puts her down. I guess it worked; I‘m telling you this story three weeks later.
9. The smoothest guys compliment a woman, then walk away-it's very nonthreatening.
7. If your tipping guideline is still 'a buck a drink,' listen closely: That doesn't fly if you order a $12 cocktail. Tip at least 15 percent.
4. Liquor sales in bars and restaurants were down 2.2 percent last year. Even beer sales are slow. But people scrimp on food first, drinks second. (Or as my rule goes, try not to eat on an empty stomach; lubricate the digestion process with a few beers first.)
1. Yell, whistle, or wave money and I'm going to make you wait.Make eye contact and smile, and I'll come over as soon as I can. Know what you want and have your money ready.]
http://www.rd.com/slideshows/13-things-your-bartender-wont-tell-you-slideshow/?trkid=outbrain-all#slideshow=slide1
19. I like a sophisticated palate. You’ll win points with me if you request gin in your martini.
16. I've heard it all. One guy told me I had the worst smile he‘d ever seen. I found out that he thinks a girl won‘t remember him unless he puts her down. I guess it worked; I‘m telling you this story three weeks later.
9. The smoothest guys compliment a woman, then walk away-it's very nonthreatening.
7. If your tipping guideline is still 'a buck a drink,' listen closely: That doesn't fly if you order a $12 cocktail. Tip at least 15 percent.
4. Liquor sales in bars and restaurants were down 2.2 percent last year. Even beer sales are slow. But people scrimp on food first, drinks second. (Or as my rule goes, try not to eat on an empty stomach; lubricate the digestion process with a few beers first.)
1. Yell, whistle, or wave money and I'm going to make you wait.Make eye contact and smile, and I'll come over as soon as I can. Know what you want and have your money ready.]
http://www.rd.com/slideshows/13-things-your-bartender-wont-tell-you-slideshow/?trkid=outbrain-all#slideshow=slide1
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