We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Well, it's Monday. Your favorite team lost, so the water cooler is looking less like an oasis and more like an enemy gun emplacement. Hey, Bob, did you see Peyton Roethlesberger throw a pick six and a tantrum on fourth down with the game on the line? You know, the one that caused my team to win, and your favorite team and their benighted fans to be consigned to ignominy and defeat? What did you think about that Bob? Did you enjoy it as much as I did? Whaddya say about that, Bob?
Me, I don't mind Mondays so much. I don't root for Jameis Manziel or Cam Bradford or Russell Brees, so it's of little consequence if the Green Bay Pacers fall to the Dallas Drovers. The first day of the work week holds no terrors for me. I kind of like it there. No one makes me rake leaves at the office. I don't have to change every battery in every smoke alarm in the building at 4 AM because I can't figure out which one is beeping. It would be silly to be required to paint the outside of a skyscraper, wouldn't it? I don't even know where to look for the gutters on a 50-story building, never mind clean them out. No, the office is just fine. Besides, the Internet connection is better, and I get to read the Maggie's Farm morning links while pretending to be working, instead of pretending to be asleep on the couch when my wife gets home with groceries.
Two brothers who used H-1B workers to create a low-cost and profitable on-demand workforce were found guilty Thursday in federal court of violating the law. The trial took place in U.S. District Court in Dallas and lasted for six days. At the end, a jury convicted Atul Nanda, 46, and his brother, Jiten "Jay" Nanda, 44, each of one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, one count of conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens and four counts of wire fraud. The U.S. filed the indictment in 2013. Penalties range as high as $250,000 in fines and upward of 20 years in prison. A sentencing date was not set.
Silly me. From what I've observed, I would have assumed that a "fraudulent H-1B case" would involve NOT bringing illegal aliens into the country to work like coolies.
I was a total monster. I was spending $1,000 a week on weed, and everyone I was in the band with at the time smoked as much as I did. There's so much stupid behavior caused by weed, but I always had that cliché: I needed it for creativity. I've come to realize that at the end of the day, it's only you yourself that creativity comes from. It doesn't come from weed.
Um, it's really only necessary for your audience to be stoned, not you. Sober or not, your records sound like Sesame Street on Seconal, dude.
The standard error of measuring inches or liters is usually zero assuming you have perfectly reliable, standard measurement devices. Intelligence tests generally show high test-retest reliability but they also have a standard error, and the standard error is often larger for higher scores than for lower scores. Any intelligence test score change after an intervention needs to be considered relative to the standard error of the test. Studies that use a single test to estimate intelligence before and after an intervention are using less reliable and more variable scores (bigger standard errors) than studies that combine scores from a battery of tests.
I have always found that the only way I could measurably increase other people's intelligence is by drinking heavily. The girls get better looking, too.
He was a successful and well-traveled professional, with close to seven figures in the bank, and plans for much more. And then he gave it all away, more than $718,000, in chunks at a time, to two Manhattan psychics.They vowed to reunite him with the woman he loved. Even after it was discovered that she was dead. There was the 80-mile bridge made of gold, the reincarnation portal. “I just got sucked in,” the man, Niall Rice, said in a telephone interview last week from Los Angeles. “That’s what people don’t understand. ‘How can you fall for it?’ ”
Well, those psychics certainly measurably increased that guy's intelligence. While $718k isn't exactly cheap, it still cost less than a Head Start class.
An official government site confirms the ban with a generic message that reads, "After technical analysis and legal consideration ... administration measure has been taken for this website." The note is dated November 13th. According to the statement, Reddit was taken down under Turkey's controversial internet censorship law, known as Internet Law No. 5651. Under the law, Turkish Supreme Council for Telecommunications and IT (TIB) can ban websites and block internet content for a handful of reasons, including anything involved with pornography, prostitution, drugs, terrorism, illegal file sharing, sexual abuse of children, and "crimes against" Mustafa Atatürk, the first president of Turkey.
I've blocked Reddit from my computer under an uncontroversial lack of interest in the opinions of neckbeards law.
"Made in France," directed by Nicolas Boukhrief, stars Malik Zidi as the journalist who uses his own Muslim background to infiltrate a mosque in the suburbs of Paris. He eventually hooks up with a group of would-be terrorists planning to "sow chaos in the heart of Paris," according to a synopsis on the French movie website Allociné.
The Paris gig has been cancelled. I wouldn't worry about it, though; it's not a big Cinema Verite town.
A local NBC affiliate reports that 30-year-old Branden Joseph Deel began his Downton Abbey–disc binge in January 2014, “when he stole 12 DVD box sets worth a total retail value of $560.88 and has continued to target retailers since then.” As Downton Abbey fans ourselves, we can‘t help but hypothesize that “the Downton Abbey addict” was so enraged by a story line early in the period drama’s fourth season—that Lady Mary would dare to entertain a flirtation so soon after the tragic death of her one true love, Matthew—that, in an act of misguided revenge, he tried to wipe out local retailers’ Downton stocks and possibly save fellow fans from future devastation.
Occam's Razor: he needs coasters and finally ran out of AOL discs.
And as more and more of what we listen to comes from our hard drives and cloud services, we’re less dependent on the medium itself and more dependent on the technology that turns data to drum beats. But the audio company, Schiit, which started back in 2010, argues that the best way to maximize the sound that comes into your headphones is to connect the headphones via USB to an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The idea is that, whether you have lossless, uncompressed files (which, unlike stripped down MP3s, hold more information and more accurately represent the original sound), iTunes, or a streaming service like Spotify, you’re not getting the full potential without a middleman.
First sentence begins with "And." Second sentence begins with "But." The author then uses parentheses to enclose a dependent clause instead of commas. The rest is all stupid, useless Schiit. So the answer to the second question is 01101110 01101111! Whoops, forgot to convert it to analog. NO!
As the largest developer of ad blockers, Eyeo, with its popular Adblock Plus, has found itself at the center of a fierce debate about ethics and, potentially, the legality of blocking mobile browser ads. The subject has been a popular one in Europe for some time, but it caught fire in the U.S. in June when Apple announced that its iOS 9 mobile operating system would enable (and some say welcome) mobile ad-blocker apps on iPhones. (A new Adblock Plus iOS app for iOS 9 was approved by Apple in September.)
Adblock won't ever stop things like that Popular Science "article" about a particular brand of audio converter. Me, I just want a parentheses blocker.
The Redmond-based tech giant has been eager to build buzz around the launch of its first standalone Asia Pacific location and second flagship, after the two-storey Microsoft store in Manhattan. Customers queued in the bright sun with the the promise of free concert tickets and lucky door prizes for early birds, before the window coverings dropped to reveal store staff dancing and cheering inside.
I wonder. Is it no longer possible for a tech company to survive in the market without pretending the entire business is a Gymboree?
That should be enough information to tide you over until lunch. If you fib and say you have a doctor's appointment right after, you might make it until 3:30 before you're required to do any actual work. Make sure to leave early, too. As they say on the Department of Public Works crew, "No sense killing the job."
Hello everyone. I trust you're all done sleeping one off.
Whoops, I meant to say, I trust you're all back from Sunday service now. If you're like me, there's nothing like a hot cup of joe and the Sunday paper spread out in front of you after church. Of course a printed newspaper was last spotted in my home back when Reagan was abroad in the land, and when the Pope wasn't pro-choice, so I have to make do with a passel of pixels spread out in front of me. On the plus side, the poorly cropped pictures are more plentiful, and some of the articles actually start talking to you, which give the voices in my head a day off. On to the news!
Smartphones, tablets and e-readers should have an automatic "bedtime mode" that stops them disrupting people's sleep, says a leading doctor. Prof Paul Gringras argued the setting should filter out the blue light that delays the body clock and keeps people awake later into the evening. The doctor, from Evelina Children's Hospital in London, said every new model was "bluer and brighter". He said manufacturers needed to show more "responsibility".
Or, you know, you could shut the stupid thing off, and make your kids shut it off. You know, like an adult.
A few years ago, WIRED’s chief photographer was standing in line at Starbucks when inspiration struck forcefully. “The ribbing on the drink holders reminded me of solar panels,” Winters says. “That instantly registered ‘TIE fighter’ in my head.” That sent him on a quest to create a Yoda-sized TIE fighter using only stuff from Starbucks. All told he needed one tall lid, 10 96-ounce coffee boxes, 12 sample cups, 37 grande cups, 63 drink holders, 216 stirrers, and a workspace significantly larger than a coffee-shop table.
Alternate title: How to Make an Infantile Adult Using Only Pop Culture and a Candy Store Masquerading as a Coffee Shop.
Earlier that year, the Comorian government had received a proposal from some visiting Arab businessmen. What if the Comoros started to sell their citizenship to raise funds? There was a great demand for passports in the Middle East, the men explained; for starters, wealthy individuals saw a second or third nationality as a shortcut to make travelling and doing business abroad easier.
I think France has also been toying with the idea of hosting some "visiting Arab businessmen." I wonder how that's going?
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans' phone calls and text messages to monitor drug traffickers across the United States despite objections from Justice Department lawyers who fear the practice may not be legal.
I have a dictionary. I fear that "Fear" is the wrong word in that headline. DILLIGAF might approximate their mood. however.
The hunt for those responsible (eight terrorists were killed Saturday night, but accomplices may still be at large) led to a number of raids in nearby Brussels. Evidence reportedly turned up included at least one PlayStation 4 console. Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon said outright that the PS4 is by used ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor.
"The hunt for those responsible." That's a good one. I imagine common-sense Playstation control will fix everything. With an outright ban on assault Playstations, of course.
As humans, our failings are epic. Some of us eat too much, lie to ourselves, don’t exercise enough, and spend so much money that we have nothing left for that vacation in Hawaii. But technology, Dan Ariely believes, might save us from ourselves. Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, is an investor and the chief behavioral economist at Qapital, a Swedish-startup geared toward encouraging Millennials to save.
Or, you know, you could shut the stupid thing off, and make your kids shut it off. You know, like an adult.
First, a machine learning model takes a first pass on the data, or every video, image or document that needs labeling. That model also assigns a confidence score, or how sure the algorithm is that it’s making the right judgment. If the confidence score is below a certain value, it sends the data to a human annotator to make a judgment.
I know! We could install a steering wheel in self-driving cars! That would let the passenger drive the car using their judgment! Of course, first they'd have to shut their stupid iPhone off, and make their kids shut theirs off. You know, like an adult.
While the term may mean little to your average retail investor, swap spreads have become the talk of financial markets in recent weeks as they plumb historic lows and seemingly defy market logic. At issue is the fact that swap rates—or rates charged for interest rate swaps—have dipped below yields on equivalent U.S. Treasuries, indicating that investors are charging less to deal with banks and corporations than with the U.S. government. Such a thing should never happen, as U.S. Treasuries theoretically represent the "risk-free" rate while swap rates are imbued with significant counterparty risk that should demand a premium.
Let's see: Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama. I only count five.
T-Mobile, the wireless company, said last week that it would let customers watch as many movies as they wanted on services like Netflix and HBO as well as all other kinds of video, without having it count against their monthly data plans. Given the growing popularity of streaming video, its plan, called Binge On, should appeal to many consumers. But there are real concerns about whether such promotions could give telecommunications companies the ability to influence what services people use on the Internet, benefiting some businesses and hurting others.
Or, you know, you could shut the stupid thing off, and make your kids shut it off. You know, like an adult.
On August 21, a new hotel opened on the campus of Denmark’s foremost specialized care hospital, Rigshospitalet. Called the Patient Hotel, this 74-room building provides convenient accommodations for self-sufficient patients who have traveled from far away, for an exam or treatment. For patients undergoing long-tern medical care, the tranquil, sky-lit space also provides a temporary escape from the regular hospital’s blaring machines and daily bustle.
Wow. Those benevolent and intelligent Scandinavians have discovered that neurotic hypochondriacal lonely people prefer a four-star hotel over staying at home and reading Web MD -- if someone else pays for it. There's also a helpful picuture of of a member of this super-race of humans bicycling on two underinflated tires while texting.
Well, that's all the news that fits. Into my schedule, I mean. I think I'm going to, I don't know, shut this stupid thing off now. You, know, like an adult.
I don't get in nearly as many scrapes on Saturday Night as I once did. I'm always the toughest guy at the Olive Garden at 4:10, so no one dares front me over the newly rationed bread sticks, and I'm usually home in bed before the real heavy stuff comes down past 5:00.
I'm no shrinking violet, though. I was a welterweight pacifist back in the day. Since I didn't believe in violence, I was only allowed to fight with other pacifists in my weight class. I once gave an Indian burn to a Hare Krishna in an airport terminal that I bet he's hasn't forgotten yet.
Anyway, if you venture out this evening with a glint in your eye and the devil in your heart, be careful of hanging around known tough guys like Elton John. Did you ever listen to the lyrics of Saturday Night's All Right (for Fighting)? That dude would kick your ass with his crepe-soled sneakers at the drop of a straw boater.
Householders in America have struggled for years to work off the excess borrowing taken on during a global housing boom in the 2000s. The economy has suffered from a shortfall of spending as a consequence. The world economy was dealt a second blow, after 2010, when the delayed effects of that earlier boom were played out in a debt crisis at the fringes of the euro area, one that at several points threatened to break up the currency union.
Housing debt? Ten years roll by and somehow everything is still George Bush's fault.
The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear. Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights. Effectively, the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don't, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.
The verdicts, delivered after little more than two days of deliberations, left many in the courtroom stunned, most visibly prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office, which had spent years building a case against Mr. Asaro, 80, with testimony from high-ranking Mafia figures and recordings by an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
People are stunned that jurors don't want a purported mafia member angry at them. That is stunning.
France has declared a national state of emergency and tightened borders after at least 128 people were killed in a night of gun and bomb attacks in Paris. Eighty people were reported killed after gunmen burst into the Bataclan concert hall and took hostages before security forces stormed the hall.People were shot dead at restaurants and bars at five other sites in Paris. At least 180 people were injured. These are the deadliest attacks in Europe since the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Hmm. It would appear they don't - want - to live like a refugee. Don't want to live like a ref-huge-gee.
Apple bought Beats last year for $3 billion in large part for the technology behind its streaming-music service. Unlike so many recent acquisitions, Apple let Beats Music live on instead of its more typical strategy of immediately shutting down acquisitions after incorporating their technology into its own products.
William Howard Taft wouldn't leave a scrap of flesh on Tim Cook's bones.
Terraserver could have, should have been a product that ensured Microsoft would remain the world’s most important internet company well into the 21st century. It was the first-ever publicly available interactive satellite map of the world. The world’s first-ever terabyte-sized database. In fact, it was the world’s largest database for several years, and that Compaq was—physically speaking—the world's largest computer. Terraserver was a functional and popular Google Earth predecessor that launched and worked well before Google even thought of the concept.
Oh look. The same people who said Microsoft was an evil monopoly because they made an operating system and a web browser are mocking them for not taking over the whole Internet.
...the system uses an electrically driven shockwave within a stream of flowing water, which pushes salty water to one side of the flow and fresh water to the other, allowing easy separation of the two streams. The new approach is described in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, in a paper by professor of chemical engineering and mathematics Martin Bazant, graduate student Sven Schlumpberger, undergraduate Nancy Lu, and former postdoc Matthew Suss.
Somehow I don't think Mizzou students would have come up with this.
The deceitful papers tend to be vaguer, more difficult to read, and have fewer quantifying words, the authors found. They also use a bit more jargon, with fraudulent publications containing 1.5% more technical terms. Another trend, Markowitz told ScienceInsider, is that spurious papers generally had more references. Such characteristics tend to make fraudulent papers more “convoluted” and “costly” in terms of readers’ time, he says.
The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.
I only watch football on TV so I imagine the continuous stream of high-pitched swearing will interfere with this scheme.
Well, if you manage to crawl to the finish line at 5 PM today, you've made it through another week. Look on the bright side. Unless you're melanin-challenged and work at a college, you'll still have a job on Monday, and you have two whole days to show your liver who's boss. On to today's links!
Although little-known to people who work at home sewing, writing, designing, illustrating, party planning or tutoring, their perfectly legal pursuits are deemed "unlicensed" by L.A. officials, and they must register with City Hall. Then, these tens of thousands of residents are notified to pay an obscure annual city "business tax."
Just drive an Uber cab. Your magic iPhone transubstantiates all regulations into ponies and cupcakes.
Between 1954 and 1973, the country erected public housing in the suburbs surrounding the City of Light. These towering structures, which included some six million units, embodied the prevailing idea that modernist architecture could help foster a utopian state by improving people’s lives. “They were praised as places where men could blossom away from the agitation of big cities,” Kronental says.
My Utopian dream is living in France after all these buildings are demolished.
When the house's asking price was announced last May, some people figured it was an absurd marketing ploy, since if the property fetches anything close to $500 million, it will obliterate the current world-record price of $221 million, for a London penthouse. But absurdity is all relative in today's gigamansion market—particularly in L.A., where previous milestones such as the $85 million sale of the 123-room Spelling manor in 2011 are beginning to look quaint.
The author of this article sure doesn't know much history. Try putting in an offer on the Biltmore Estate. You'll have to buy 1/6th of the Pisgah National Forest to go along with it. It used to be the back yard.
"The overall assessment when we collect information from the police, the Civil Contingencies Agency and the Migration Agency is that it is warranted to impose temporary border controls," interior minister Anders Ygeman told a press conference. More than 120,000 people have arrived since January in Sweden, which is, with Germany, one the favoured destinations for migrants coming to Europe and wich has, until recently, upheld what Ygeman called a "generous" policy.
At this point, wouldn't Swedish border controls only keep Muslims in?
The announcement came as the company celebrated the one-year anniversary of its nanodegree program. The nanodegrees are now recognized by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Salesforce.
I guess homeschooling is only bad when conservatives do it.
What the researchers failed to find was any connection between helmet laws and bike-related hospitalization rates. That held true whether they looked at all cycling injuries or just traffic-specific injuries. Surprisingly, it also held true when they narrowed in on body parts protected by a helmet: the brain, head, scalp, skull, face, even neck. Since helmet laws don’t necessarily mean compliance, they looked at helmet usage, too, and once again found nothing.
Humans take chances. Increase their feeling of security, and they'll take bigger chances.
One thing uniting the most high-power leaders with the lowest-level workers is time: Day in and day out, we all have the same amount of it. Where the variation comes in is how we use it. Some of the most successful people tend to attribute their achievements at least partly to time management.
The most successful people don't spend all day reading lists on the Internet.
The painter's magnificent brushwork made (intuitive?) use of a property known as luminance, a measure of the relative brightness between different points. The eye is more sensitive to luminance change than to color change, meaning we respond more promptly to changes in brightness than in colors. This is what gives many Impressionist paintings that familiar and emotionally moving twinkle, as we can see, for example, in Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise.
Hey, NPR: His brain didn't work. His eyes were fine.
Comic books? Educational? The very idea is comical to anyone familiar with the 1954 Senate subcommittee investigation that linked juvenile delinquency to horror and crime comics. The politicians dealt the industry a staggering blow that it overcame only after superheroes, plus corny teens like Archie and a rascal named Dennis, came to the rescue. Still, comics are seldom associated with literacy. But Françoise Mouly started Toon Books precisely to get more young people reading, and thinking, and enjoying the printed word, lushly illustrated and handsomely bound as well.
So, my collection of Classics Illustrated never happened, right Francoise?
A group of Italian microbiologists had compared the intestinal microbes of young villagers in Burkina Faso with those of children in Florence, Italy. The villagers, who subsisted on a diet of mostly millet and sorghum, harbored far more microbial diversity than the Florentines, who ate a variant of the refined, Western diet. Where the Florentine microbial community was adapted to protein, fats, and simple sugars, the Burkina Faso microbiome was oriented toward degrading the complex plant carbohydrates we call fiber.
Florence, Italy, gave us the Renaissance. I'm pretty sure you can buy manganese mined by hand in Burkina Faso, which is pretty swell, too.
Everybody have a great day, and make sure to buy a drink for your whole microbial community tonight after work. It's the friendly thing to do.
I was wondering. Does anybody know how to write jokes any longer? Or more to the point, write humorously? If they're extant, I haven't noticed it. It takes a light touch to write humor, and few seem interested in giving it a try. The best writers would only salt in jokes as foils to a larger humorous situation. Wodehouse had Bertie Wooster, who was impersonating Gussie Fink-Nottle, trying to tell an inappropriate joke at dinner, which is being hosted by a gaggle of grim old sisters, some of whom are hard of hearing.
- There are these three deaf chaps on a train and it stops at Wembley. - What's he doing? - Mr Fink-Nottle is telling an anecdote. - Anyway, there it is at Wembley, and one chap says, "ls this Wembley?, and the other says, "No, it's Thursday." - What did he say? - He said, "No, it's Thursday." - No, it's not. lt's Friday. - l know. - l changed my library book. - lt's a joke, Charlotte. - Thank you. - The third one says, "So am l. Let's go and have a drink." - lt's a joke about drink, Charlotte. - No, it's not about drink. - lt's about Why did the first man bring up the days of the week? - No, the first man is the one who says, "ls this Wimbledon?'' - No - That was the second man. - Let Mr Fink-Nottle finish his joke before we judge it. - Well, that was it, actually.
In the book this is adapted from, the text is funny because it is a comic situation described in an amusing way. The joke is an excuse to be humorous. It's supposed to be a bad joke, but it really isn't. Twain used the same sort of approach to tell good jokes, but by prefacing them by saying, "This is a bad joke," he had an easier time weaving a humorous narrative around them. The woefully misnamed "situation comedies" have become the modern version of this form of light comedy, but they are usually just a series of blunt jokes barely strung together. Not the same thing.
At any rate, is this Wembley? Time for the links, all supplied with PG Wodehouse quotes to suit:
The Korean War began in the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, when North Korean soldiers stormed across the 38th parallel in a coordinated attack against South Korea. The first military action of the Cold War lasted three years and claimed the lives of 5 million soldiers and civilians. On the 65th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, learn about 10 notables—from astronauts to actors—who served in the conflict.
“...it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking.”
Singles' Day was originally a mock celebration in China for people not in relationships. But Alibaba in 2009 co-opted the event into a consumption-fest for all, featuring steep discounts and other promotions aimed at attracting droves of customers online.
"You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underwear. One or the other. Not both."
Exactly how slow will it be? Will I be alive by the time it finishes? Will any of my grandchildren live to see how it actually ends? Will the inevitable heat-death of the universe interfere with the Rube Slowberg machine, or is that part of it?
“In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.”
Young professionals willing to stretch their budgets now should consider Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., among other cities, according to a new report from Trulia. In New Haven, Conn., the typical millennial (defined by Trulia as an adult between ages 25 and 34) can expect to spend 37 percent of her income on housing in the first year of her mortgage. Three years later, though, the same homebuyer’s monthly payments will fall below 31 percent of her income, according to Trulia’s estimates.
“Beggars approached the task of trying to persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the difference. It was one of those happy mornings.”
But despite those decisions and perhaps more importantly, the court was careful to make another point: That merely tracking the URLs someone visits can constitute collecting the contents of their communications, and that doing so without a warrant can violate the Wiretap Act. And that’s an opinion that will apply not just to Google, but to the Justice
Department.
“I mean, imagine how some unfortunate Master Criminal would feel, on coming down to do a murder at the old Grange, if he found that not only was Sherlock Holmes putting in the weekend there, but Hercule Poirot, as well."
Photographs of Peking, now known as Beijing, made by Thomas Child in the 1870s and 1880s are to go on show in London's Chinatown as part of Asian Art in London season. More than 30 original photographs from the Stephan Loewentheil Historical Photography of China Collection, the largest holding of historical photographs of China in private hands, are included in the show.
"Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them."
When I look around, I see people who want to make a contribution. I see people who want to make a better world, by doing groundbreaking scientific work, by creating impressive works of art, by writing critical articles or inspiring books, by starting up sustainable businesses. And you all have chosen your own instruments to fulfill this mission of creating a better world. Some chose the microscope as their instrument. Others chose dancing or painting or making music like we just heard. Some chose the pen. Others work through the instrument of money. Ladies and gentlemen, I made a different choice….I chose the gun.
“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”
Facebook Inc. director Marc Andreessen has sold nearly half his stake in the social network since Oct. 30, securities filings show.Between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6, Andreessen sold 921,362 shares in Facebook collecting about $96.5 million, according to three filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again.”
In fact it may be that the most seductive novelists are also the ones most willing to risk irritating you. Faulkner comes to mind, so often on the edge between brilliant and garrulous. Italy’s Carlo Emilio Gadda was another. Muriel Spark. Sometimes even Kafka. Resistance to these writers is never a surprise to me. On the other hand, I do spend endless hours mulling over the mystery of what others like. Again and again the question arises: How can they?
“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”
Well, Bird Dog has gone off for a few days to make sure his mountain redoubt/bolthole is still stocked with beans and ammo. That means you're stuck with me, Roger, the King of Sicily.
Not to worry. I'm not prone to strong opinions, so there's no need to offer trigger warnings for the faint of heart and pushy college students. The only trigger warning I ever paid attention to was a shell being racked. All the rest is conversation, and a dull one at that. On to this morning's links!
The study, published in Nature, found that sexual selection does play an important role in creating colour differences between male and female plumage. But the contrast is largely driven by females evolving to become drab.
Life, ah,finds a way. I bought plenty of drinks for some pretty drab females back in the day.
According to a draft communication on copyright reform leaked yesterday (via IPKat), the Commission is considering putting the simple act of linking to content under copyright protection. This idea flies in the face of both existing interpretation and spirit of the law as well as common sense. Each weblink would become a legal landmine and would allow press publishers to hold every single actor on the Internet liable.
Oh dear. Bloggers would have to produce their own text and stop linking to newspapers they purport to hate.
Amid low interest rates, McDonald's also plans to add a "meaningful" amount of additional debt, said CFO Kevin Ozan in a release."As a result, we are increasing the Company's cash return to shareholders target to about $30 billion for the three-year period ending 2016 - a $10 billion increase over our previous target, with incremental debt funding the vast majority of the increase," he said.
There's a term for borrowing money to pay existing investors instead of trying to turn a profit.
The Bladen Journal reports that a mummified hand found in Castleton, North Yorkshire, England is the only known ‘Hand of Glory’, a grotesque artifact meant to aid thieves in their work during the night, still in existence. This mummified hand supposedly has the power to “entrance humans” according to the Express. Hands of Glory were also a favorite tool for thieves and creative storytellers for over 200 years.
I hereby propose we call Obama's autopen the Hawaiian Hand of Glory.
But as Dylan grew older, as the immense catalogue of his songs came to embrace everything—folk, rock, gospel, blues, Tin Pan Alley—he looked back on the golden period of 1965-66, the moment of the hot hand, when the songs came two and three a day, as if from heaven, and he seemed as filled with wonder as the rest of us.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Schmidt, a center-left Social Democrat, led West Germany from 1974 to 1982. He was elected chancellor by lawmakers in May 1974 after the resignation of fellow Social Democrat Willy Brandt, triggered when a top aide to Brandt was unmasked as an East German agent. The new leader brought a sometimes abrasive self-confidence and his experience as West Germany's defense, finance and economy ministers to the job, which he took during the economic downturn that followed the 1973 oil crisis.
Better than what they have now. Neither could carry Adenauer's jockstrap, however.
Between July 2011 and August 2015 I lived in a ~400sqft studio apartment in San Francisco. I moved in a bachelor but by the time I moved out, I was one member of a four person family. Here are some things I learned along the way.
Six of us lived in a 960 square foot ranch, and were about average. Why do Millennials demand a trophy for everything? Move.
There are no two ways about it: This dating app was built for threesomes.London-based startup 3nder — the name can be pronounced “Thrinder” to rhyme with “Tinder,” according to its founder — said it has raised $500,000 in seed capital from a pair of unnamed angel investors.Since 3nder’s mid-2014 launch, nearly 1 million users have downloaded the iOS app in search of kinky hookups — whether “straight, bisexual, gay, poly- or pansexual,” says founder and CEO Dimo Trifonov.
Are the organic hand-picked tomatoes sold at farmers’ markets really better, in a technical sense, or do they just make us feel like better consumers – perhaps even better human beings? If the organic tomato is just a vehicle for romantic fallacy, then we have to look dispassionately at how they are grown from the perspective of sustainability.
I see the generation that thinks they invented small apartments thinks they invented agriculture the week before.
Well, everybody sally forth and make sure you make enough money today to buy sustainably grown tomatoes before the farm goes out of business and you're forced to buy the pinkish baseballs they always had at the A&P.
A monkey's diversion. Hmm. You know, Darwin didn't have a clue compared to Gregor Mendel, but we are just monkeys when examined dispassionately. I've never heard the Internet described properly until just now, in my head. I asked Google what the Internet was, which I was afraid to do at first. If you ask the Internet what the Internet is, that's like dividing by zero. I could have broken the darn thing, and then everyone would be angry at me. So I asked with some trepidation, but nothing much happened, good or bad, just like when you search for anything else. It told me this:
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices worldwide. It is an international network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government packet switched networks, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), the infrastructure to support email, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and telephony.
No, that's way too many words. I hereby declare: The Internet is A Monkey's Diversion. Someone go update the Wikipedia page, will you? Now on to some desultory links, with crabby commentary. A Monkey's Diversion!
Be flexible. Line up work in advance. Get banking set up. Don't plan to work 40 hrs/wk. Travel light (28L backpack). Go.
Regulation has plunged us back to the hunter-gatherer stage, this time for pixels. If this behavior bothers you, don't fret. Everyone young that tries to copy this method will never procreate.
It all began, as these things so often do, with a drink. One drink, which led to another, then more besides. Each one, generously given by a genial customer. Each one eagerly slurped by the monkey chained to the bar
That reminds me. I can't wait until Saint Patrick's Day!
A recent report from Reuters has also suggested Apple is in talks with multiple health providers at Mount Sinai, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Allscripts, with the company pushing HealthKit and its Health app as an all-in-one patient data resource for medical professionals.
The biggest heist ever committed in America was bribing politicians to make Apple the defacto computer used in public schools. They were useless for any sort of productive work, which made them wildly popular with academics. Apple smells sweet, sweet Obamacare money now.
Knowledge Vault is a type of "knowledge base" – a system that stores information so that machines as well as people can read it. Where a database deals with numbers, a knowledge base deals with facts. When you type "Where was Madonna born" into Google, for example, the place given is pulled from Google's existing knowledge base.This existing base, called Knowledge Graph, relies on crowdsourcing to expand its information. But the firm noticed that growth was stalling; humans could only take it so far.
Asking the Internet for facts is like telling a bicyclist to go get moon rocks. Facts aren't located on the Internet, dudes. But you knew that. They're looking for their brand of facts.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go through training as an ISIS terrorist? Or better yet, where you would go to find such advanced training? All you have to do to find the answer to these questions is turn to the nearest ISIS media twitter account and click on that bright blue Justpaste.it link. Let’s take a look at the photos posted in July showing one of the Islamic State’s training camps in Ninewa Province and see what we can learn.
Please note the trivial amount of effort it takes to find where these nests of vipers are located. But we're married to proportional response now, I guess, if that. Please also notice the comment section that immediately devolves into: But Christians teach Creationism in Texas Public Schools!
Life has become a complicated muddle, hasn't it? There are many big decisions. Should you become a newsreader because you have a lisp? Should you become an athlete because you're missing limbs? Should you join the military because you're a pacifist?
College calls. It needs deconstructivists like you. The NBA needs midgets, and the NFL needs gay men. International politics needs a low handicap, and international banking needs wizened ovaries, bad. There's a place for everybody, and you just have to follow the signs and portents to figure out where you fit in.
The only really big question is if you should have any hair below your eyebrows. The rest is easy.
The Adam Smith Institute examines currency reform in Ancient Rome Pertinax embraced deflation,reformed the denarius, and ordered that NOTEWORTHY GOOD SENSE be engraved on all the coins. His bodyguards stabbed him to death 86 days into his rule. And you wonder why Ben Bernanke had an easy money policy.
I only read the "newspapers" when I cover for Bird Dog. Do you people really read that stuff, and act on what you've read as if it's informative?
Oops, did I just call our readers "you people"? Jeez, I'm sorry. I meant to say, Do us people really read this stuff...
No, that won't do. Does we people really reads that stuff...
I can't remember all that subjunctive gobbletygook from my McGuffey's Reader, so let's just agree that the newspapers all suck and move on. On to the news -- or whatever it is:
Counterfeit U.S. Cash Floods Crime Forums These counterfeit bills will do more to stimulate actual commerce than Quantitative Easing ever did, because they'll make it into the private economy instead of into the government economy. The Treasury will save on printing costs, too. It's a win/win.
Later advances in neuroscience revealed that schizophrenia is disorder of thought processes rather than of thought content, associated with subtle differences in brain structures and in brain chemistry, consequently no amount of psychotherapy can "cure" schizophrenic delusions. However, thanks to modern medicine schizophrenia and similar disorders are quite controllable with the use of antipsychotic medications.
There's a lot of words until you get to that paragraph right there, the only one worth mentioning: It really doesn't matter what crazy people believe. They're crazy.
Unlike Americans, Nordics/Scandinavians have a conversational culture which treasures the silences. This comes from a significantly increased comfort with silence compared to their American counterparts. Nordics/Scandinavians have a very turn-based structure and style. While the Finnish are notorious for the slow pacing of their conversations and their extreme comfort with what would otherwise be considered painfully uncomfortable periods of silence, it is a trend present to a lesser extent across all of the Nordic countries. The result is a conversational practice which is heavily turn based with definite gaps to signify the closure of a point. In this way a traditional Nordic conversation much more closely resembles the structure of formal debate than a round table free-for-all discussion.
A Norwegian extrovert looks at your shoes when he's talking instead of his own.
Running kind of late this morning. I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!
Fancy a waterslide that takes you straight from your dance floor to your swimming-pool? What about an unobstructed view of the crystal clear Mediterranean Sea? Believe it or not, this property exists… and it could be yours for a reported $400 million.
This is where Janet Yellen's funny money ends up, one way or the other: Dissipated when there's nothing productive for it to do.
Mitt Romney: Obama worse than even I expected That lack of imagination might have cost you the election. He's exactly what I expected: Barack Hussein Huey Curley James Michael Long
I've decided not to riot today. I'm fairly certain I'm not going to loot anything. I don't feel like overcoming, or singing about overcoming. I'm overcome with not overcoming, actually. I believe I can resist the urge to lock arms for days at a time. I do not wish to be quoted in the press. You can quote me on that. On to the news.
There is a story about the great Catalan surrealist painter Salvador Dali. It is said that in the last years of his life, when he was already famous, he signed checks knowing that they would not be submitted to the bank for payment. Rather, after partying with his friends and consuming the most expensive items the restaurants had to offer, he would ask for the bill, pull out one of his checks, write the amount, and sign it. Before handing over the check, he quickly turned it around, made a drawing on the back and autographed it. Dali knew the owner of the restaurant would not cash the check but keep it,put it in a frame, and display it in the most prominent place in the restaurant: “An original Dali.”
History may be evolving away from the Westphalian State, with its unitary national culture, flags and traditions and moving towards affinity groups whose allegiance is primarily to themselves; which only form temporary alliances based on expedience in competition with other affinity groups.
It’s hip, it’s entertaining—but where are the families?What is a city for? Ever since cities first emerged thousands of years ago, they have been places where families could congregate and flourish.
A city is a place where everyone is lonely together.
Well, happy Monday to you. That's Bird Dog at the beach. He's older than that now, and the trucks are rustier. He left me in charge, and I ran out of his bourbon yesterday, and he won't be back for a week. He asked me to look after his Australian Goldfish, too, and that's not going so well, either. I assume they're Australian, because they're floating upside down right now, and they're so somnolent, I think they think it's nighttime. Ah, well, here's the links:
When deciding whether Google should spend millions or even billions of dollars in acquiring a new company, its chief executive, Larry Page, asks whether the acquisition passes the toothbrush test: Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?
The New York Times assumes Google is full of geniuses. I don't. They're just sitting on a pile of cash. They have little idea how they got it, and it should have been distributed to investors and paid as taxes. Instead they hoard it and squander it. Nothing but their hijacking of the old fashioned Yellow Pages has ever made a nickel.
Well, why not go out there and change your view of humanity today. Drive to a Starbucks in a unionized cab, and try not to run over the homeless people playing soccer in the parking lot. But whatever you do, don't like anyone on Facebook.
Well, Bird Dog must be halfway to Canobie Lake Park by now, wearing black socks and flip-flops and an "I'm With Stupid" T Shirt his wife gave him for Christmas back in Reagan's first term. It's faded a bit with washing, and the arrow on the belly under the text that used to point to his companion has been worn away entirely by the rusty chrome arm of the mower every Saturday, so it's kind of a Zen thing now. Have fun, Bird Dog.
"The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do."
At any given time, there are always a few people that see things as they are, not as they wish them to be. If you put a gun to my head, I'd have trouble naming them right now.
A Google employee forgot to remove Post-it notes and it’s fueling a lawsuit Google, Facebook, Apple et al. are run by the worst kinds of greedy grasping turds ever seen in commerce. They would have had a back desk with no responsibilities in any Gilded Age business that produced anything worthwhile.
They've awarded this year's Fields Medals. It worries me that I completely understood one of the descriptions, because I'm a dolt. I thought they only gave out phony Nobels.
Well, Bird Dog has abandoned the farm for, er, greener pastures, and left me in charge again. You reap what you sow, big feller. I’m going to link to sites without tone. I’m going to link to sites without sand. I’m going to link to sites without panache. I’m going to link to sites without cachet. I’m going to link to sites without je ne sais quoi. I’m going to link to sites that don’t know which fork to use. I’m going link to sites about sausages. You heard me: sausage links!
Still the greatest website on these here Interwebs: Zombo.com
The truck in front of us turns off, revealing an ancient, angry man standing in the road ahead. He has a vast white beard and looks like one of the grumpier Old Testament prophets. In his hand he holds a long wooden staff. Threading his way between cars, the man singles out a stopped truck and starts beating on it as hard as he can with the staff, yelling the whole time.
Don't say that he's hypocritical. Say rather that he's apolitical."Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down; that's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
Calm down, civil liberties traditionalists. Policemen have been looking at your face as you walk by since Robert Peel invented them. Besides, if you fill out a 1040 form, you have no rights. The rest is conversation.
For thirty-eight days, with the greatest unconcern, he joined in all their games and exercises, just as if he was their leader instead of their prisoner. He also wrote poems and speeches that he read aloud to them, and if they failed to admire his work, he would call them to their faces illiterate savages, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all hanged.
Writing everyone a check for $12,000 is cheaper than all federal and state poverty programs combined. But then who would write $12,000 checks to re-election campaigns for politicians? Won’t someone think of the poor politicians?
General William Tecumseh Sherman burned the city of Atlanta in 1864. He warned: “I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told you of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.” Add a zero to calibrate the problem in the Levant today. War in the Middle East is less a strategic than a demographic phenomenon, whose resolution will come with the exhaustion of the pool of potential fighters.
I’ve never seen Spengler be wrong about anything. And he’s right in advance, the only kind of right that matters.
It's Sunday. Have a pleasant Sunday. But remember, Sunday is Monday's mother. She seems nice, but she's just as likely to smack you with a hairbrush as not. Happens almost every week.
But we were good boys. We didn't break the Sabbath often enough to signify--once a week perhaps. Anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold. --Twain
There are some fairly bright people abroad in the land that don't understand that if the velocity of money is zero, as far as inflation is concerned it doesn't exist.
Check out their blog. As with all such schemes, the only people who want to show themselves naked are the only people you don't want to see naked. And the books suck.
It would be unchristian of me to point out who the little darlings voted for twice, wouldn't it? Pardon me while I go find a pagan to laugh at them and tell them to stop sh*tting where they eat.
‘New evidence strongly suggests that the very different kinds of society seen in the various races and in the world’s great civilizations differ not just because of their received culture – in other words, in what is learned from birth – but also because of variations in the social behaviour of their members, carried down in their genes.’
Erm, I don't want to rain on your parade, but that's only earthshaking news to people who Occupy public parks.
Several waiters in white coats told the council they, too, didn't like Brunei's laws but they asked why workers should possibly suffer for the City Council's vote of condemnation.
"It strangles our livelihood," said Ann Romer, a server in the hotel's Polo Lounge, a renowned gathering spot for Hollywood stars and filmmakers. "It causes us to be unable to support our families, my children and my sick grandmother in Vietnam."
There's more than a hint of Two Minutes Hate when the media mob gets interested in any particular thing. The object of their vitriol is chosen at random, by persons who stand to lose nothing, at the expense of the usual innocent people. And by the way, when I have sketchy outlays from strip joints and casinos I need to put on my expense report, I prefer listing them under "Entertainment", not "My sick mother in Vietnam." It's good accounting practice.
H.M.’s operation took place on September 1,
1953. Scoville peeled back his patient’s scalp, then used a hand crank
and one-dollar drill saw from a local hardware store to remove a bottle
cap’s worth of bone from above each eye. As cerebrospinal fluid drained
away, the brain settled down in its cavity, giving Scoville more room to
work. With what looked like an elongated shoehorn, he nudged aside
H.M.’s frontal and temporal lobes and peered inside.
PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
“You know,” he said to me, “it’s just wood.”It took me a moment to realize how liberating this statement was. To him, woodworking held no mystery at all - it was just a thing you did. If he wanted a garden bed, there’d be no question in his mind that he’d make it himself. Why spend more on something suboptimal when you can build exactly what you want?
I think I've heard this line of reasoning before. My toddlers experienced it the first time they went boom boom by themselves.
I'm taking turns lifting my eyelids. One seems to force the other down, like a teeter totter would.
I dislike teeter totters. Playgrounds should be free of physics examinations. Weight, lever arms, torque... bah! Archimedes has ruined my life. Taken the whimsy right out of it.
What Ruth’s doctor had done was unusual, or maybe even inappropriate, they told me—delivering bad news, especially over the phone, before it needed to be conveyed. When I asked them when the right time was to tell someone that death is unavoidable, they most often told me that the moment occurs after several successive attempts at stopping the cancer have failed. Only then, when the patient is cornered by cancer, that’s the time.
I'm not your buddy, guy. If you need a friend, get a dog. A doctor is supposed to give you competent care and then leave you alone.
He was the profane rube who had a mystical obsession with grammatical
punctilio and syntactical clarity. He was the untutored knucklehead (“Is
Moby Dick the man or the whale?” he famously asked) who lived on
unfiltered cigarettes, poker chips, and Scotch and yet somehow managed
to hire James Thurber and E. B. White, Janet Flanner and Lillian Ross,
Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, A. J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell.
Duh. Writers like money. Writers really don't like anything but money. In this country, the man who gives victory in battle is prized beyond every other man.
In the new Internet economy, pious leftist code jockeys found companies that do nothing but put people out of work, then use the money they make to support redistributionist leftist politicians. It's the circle of life.
For example, say there's limited food in the environment. In such a
context those persons that associate food with anger and turn aggression
into an attack response to get the food are more likely to survive. "If
the food does not make you angry or doesn't produce aggression in your
system, you may starve and lose the battle," Aarts says.
I see the scientific community has discovered the Taco Bell drive through lane. Keep up the good work, guys.
In my day, you whippersnapper, "walk up music" was salsa music I heard through the door, being played at 90 decibels by the guy in 7A when I walked up the stairs to my third floor apartment. Don't get me started on the trumpet player.
Let's have a good day, people. And be careful out there
I tried to read the Drudge Report this morning but it's like TMZ from some alternate universe where slime molds sit on golden thrones and the statues in their temples are fashioned from earwax after a Pantheon of lesser gods like the god of thunderjugs and the demigod of Big Gulps. But other than that, Happy Tuesday!
And all the ones that are being created are just four Asperger agoraphobes in San Francisco that haven't run out of angel funding yet for their potential Twitter app that will let you post reviews of artisanal pottery clay in real time.
Ah, remember Orson Welles? Not skinny Orson Welles. I mean Fat Orson. He grew a big beard so he'd have the semblance of a chin, and hawked cheap wine on television in between reminding Merv Griffin (thanks, Bulldog) or Mike Douglas how big a deal he used to be. Whatever those brigands at Paul Masson paid the talented dirigible to utter their slogan, it wasn't enough. I remember it as clearly, and with affection, as the day it was uttered. I remember the only glass of Paul Masson I ever tried too, for other reasons.
By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”“The advertiser sees a report on an Excel spreadsheet that says, ‘Yeah, these ads ran,’ ” says Matt Timothy, Vindico’s president. “But more than half of them ran without being seen by a human being.”
Oh look: The Great Unread wants to point out their competitors for ad revenue are the Great Unwatched. Awesome concern trolling.
Let's be jerks. Let's read it, and then run away without leaving a quarter.
There you go. Have a great Monday. I have no idea why I said that. And I have no idea in the hell what a great Monday might look like. I've never seen one.
Happy Sunday. I advise you to go to church and pray for the sins you're planning during the sermon.
"What is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims. "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it." "Then why do you not become an atheist?" "Impossible! I should be ashamed of atheism." "In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
I thought that was his job description. Good luck with that show without him. He made a hit out of the equivalent of describing naked women to blind teenage boys. I'm sorry, was that offensive?
If you even hesitated to answer this question, there's something wrong with you. You shouldn't need to see the picture of a child with smallpox to answer it, either.
We used to shoot enemy combatants found out of uniform. Now we just round up the other army from time to time to ask them questions like The Usual Suspects. Turn to the right...
I think I can put my hand on my heart and say that I have no tyrannical leanings, though no doubt like everyone else there are a few things that I should like to see prohibited, such as (in my case) chewing gum, drinks sold in cans, baseball caps, rock and other forms of pop music in public places, and preferably in private as well, fast food, men wearing suits without ties, television, mobile telephones in trains and restaurants, burqas (except for drunken British girls on Friday and Saturday nights, for whom they should be compulsory), tattoos, piercings, celebrity magazines, pasteurised cheese, the use of the word chair for chairman, conversations in public about football, the Olympic Games, jeans, skateboards, eating in the streets, coffee served in plastic containers, basketball, etc.
He's the only author on the Internets I find essential. It was nice of him to write that list for me, to save me the trouble.
Well, we all hate Chicago Transit Authority, don't we? When did it become OK for wedding bands to get real, live, rock band careers? Who signed off on that? I know I wasn't consulted. Maybe it's not Chicago's fault. Maybe they thought they were just going to play the Bernstein wedding at another Mediterranean-themed stripmall function room; four hours, twenty minute breaks each hour; chicken and shells for dinner. Perhaps their agent bollixed it up and sent them to a recording studio instead. Back before GPS, it could happen. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, Blood Sweat and Tears was much, much worse, and sooner.
I sort this sort of thing out the old-fashioned way: If suspicious, I punch them, hard, on the nose without warning. If they cry, they're usually innocent.
He was handed the greatest cash cow in the history of the world and tried to ride it in the derby. Should go on the Rushmore of incompetence,
despite the money he's made.
When Bird Dog told me he needed a rest, and was heading out to "take the waters," I pictured him going to one of those fancy hotels with lots of ceramic tile on the walls, within sight of the Danube, where all the women speak with a heavy Bavarian accent and they smear you with the local mud. Silly me. Let's get these links out of the way so I can go post Bird Dog's bail. Apparently, to him, "taking the waters" means shoplifting a couple of bottles of Poland Spring and some beef jerky in a convenience store on Staten Island.
Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro,1 you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver."
They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it's certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you're an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.
It's an enormous misappropriation of the word to call software designers "engineers." You're stressed because your stuff doesn't work, you're incompetent, and people notice it from time to time.
There you go. Read all that stuff. It won't make you any dumber, I promise. After I bail out Bird Dog, I'm going to ask him to chain me to an oar on the other side of Maggie's Farm's Trireme. My left bicep needs work.
Bird Dog needs therapy, so you're stuck with me. I imagine he's
currently trying to convince some girl to rub him the wrong way in order
to relax his tense muscles. He should just read the papers. Everything
in there will rub you the wrong way.
As the
employees examined some of the equipment, the owner stood by and said
nothing. He was remembering how difficult it had once been to afford
those machines, even the basic ones. What the employees regarded as
standard, he saw as an achievement.
Lots of things shock the Times -- except shocking things, generally. CEOs get a piece of the action, and talking about it like it's wages is stupid. Me? I just like saying "Marissa Mayer's remuneration" over and over.
I know, I know. If you're from New York City and you hear Iowa mentioned, you think it stands for Idiots Out Walking Around. But Maggie's Farmers know the value of a good Farmall driver, and farmers in Iowa can square dance with their tractors. Ain't that America?
Tractor Square Dancing Is Real, And It's Spectacular.
