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.
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.
"Poor people get fat, and watch TV" because they are too passive: The Myth of Poverty:
When we think of true poverty, the famous picture of the migrant mother in the Dust Bowl comes to mind, but today’s poor look more like Honey Boo Boo’s mom. They live in big houses or subsidized apartments. They play video games. They watch TV on a massive screen and they stuff their faces.
What do these people do in exchange, to justify their existence and to pay back to a generous society which helps support them and, often, their kids? Or does the entitlement state erase a sense of obligation, duty, and gratitude to tribe, community, and nation?
The free-loaders are what bother me. I have known plenty of people who are poor by life-style choice, but they are not seeking freebies from their neighbors via government programs and they are neither fat nor lazy. You know some such people too, I'm sure. What do they do?
I'll start with a few people I have known in that latter category: Maine Guides, ski instructors, organic farmers with small plots, tennis bums, aspiring artists, actors, writers, and dancers, pastors with tiny congregations, grad students, Catholic priests, nuns and monks, older people with minimal savings who would rather try to live on Social Security than to keep working at something - and I could go on. Many do not choose to make accumulating money their life priority although few people would refuse a windfall.
Your examples of such people are welcome in the comments.
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.
Between the Bundy mess, ACA, and a myriad of other issues currently presented to the American citizen, we may be faced with another situation of government overreach very soon.
Is it any surprise the idea emanates from a Democratic Party Think Tank? No, not really. Force and coercion are their stock in trade.
Compulsory voting is a very bad idea. While there is sometimes more than one choice on any ballot, I have definitely felt the need to abstain from voting simply because I didn't like the choices. Furthermore, not voting is a 'vote'. It is an expression of either complacency (I'll accept whatever everyone else wants) or disgust (I have no use for anyone on the ballot). When I abstain, it's always out of disgust.
The right to vote is akin to a right of free expression. In fact, it is free expression. Compulsory voting, as a result, is a violation of your right to free speech.
Chalk this up to the two parties (because while the Republicans would likely oppose it, if it passed they would support it just like they are beginning to give up on repealing the ACA) wanting to make false claims of 'popular support' where none exists, and further increase their choke hold on the voting public.
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.
Here’s a shocking idea: liberals should be liberal, especially on college campuses. To be truly liberal, you must endorse the free exchange of ideas. The university doesn’t exist to swaddle students in a protective cocoon, safe from any possible offense, insult, or challenge to their beliefs. It exists, in part, to prepare students for the rough-and-tumble of real life. It cannot do so by coddling students and warding off any possible “triggers” that could upset them. By practicing illiberal liberalism, colleges are failing in yet another way to prepare students adequately for real life.
In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I've learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.
As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.
So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?
That is not from The Onion. Wood stoves and furnaces, and charcoal grills too. These bureaucrats are crazy and drunk with power.
"Everything that is not banned should be mandatory." Your moral and intellectual superiors say so. It's all for the best, for the greater good. Trust them.
In time, these houses won't be as ugly and more will be able to be produced in shorter periods of time. I'd expect these innovations to be available soon, too. Say three to five years. Affordable homes are much needed here in the U.S. I expect some entrepreneur here will figure out how to make that work very soon.
I am more intrigued by a 3-D printed home than by the tiny house 'movement'.
Watching Face the Nation now, and they are discussing the Don Sterling racism situation. Which is good, after all, the media has covered Bundy's obtuse behavior, trying to make his racism more important than his legitimate claims of government overreach. Several clips of people, including Obama, speaking out against Sterling's statements, were shown. Some called for the NBA to "do something" to Sterling.
However, the show spent all of maybe 20 seconds discussing Sterling with Dem. Senator Clarie McCaskill before she shifted the discussion to a bill she is working on. I wonder why?
They do acknowledge the rather obvious fact that bears have legs and go to where the food is. They can swim for miles, too, and seem to like to do that.
*Music
at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert* - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/music-at-midnight-the-life-and-poetry-of-george-herbert.html#sthash.jpFJhS6D.dpuf
It's Spring up here, so I'm gonna get me one, in black. Be the first guy on your block to have one. Those Brooks Brother's dead sheep logos are so dorky, and the Ralph Lauren polo player is just plain gay, and nobody wants to be gay unless they are. A seahorse is cool, like Neptune.
I submit that many Americans — regardless of race — are increasingly exhausted by what Chief Justice Roberts declared in 2006 was this “sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
We probably all remember Obama's "You didn't build that" speech. Which, of course, was really lifted from Elizabeth Warren's "You didn't build that" speech, itself lifted from yet someone else whose views helped frame the Occupy Movement.
In the US, it's not the 0.01% of movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, hedgie stars, and NYC heiresses. It's the other end - single parents. Anyway, Piketty is Frenchand thus not worth thinking about.
...common to all these cases is the notion of a technocracy of better-educated elites who know what is best for their social inferiors. They just know that gas-burning yokels have to be taught to forgo natural gas. For the right people to be in places to affirm affirmative action, then hoi polloi must accept that affirmative-action allowances be made to give them power. They know that tea-party zealots have to be taught that their politics are bad for America’s trajectory and that tax laws must make accommodations for that fact. Women must somehow be persuaded that liberal abortion laws are good for both them and the collective.
Once we go down that road of assumed noble ends justifying questionable means, then anything becomes not just possible but assured.
For Some, 
Could we 
The EPA Is Going to 
