An stunning and deeply troubling example of the ravening depravity and twisted perversity of what it means to redefine and desecrate one of our most basic social institutions, marriage ……
An stunning and deeply troubling example of the ravening depravity and twisted perversity of what it means to redefine and desecrate one of our most basic social institutions, marriage …
… well, no, actually, it’s an example of how gay marriage isn’t all that stunning and deeply troubling … unless you’ve decided, axiomatically, that it is.
That’s my Mom’s reaction to the sudden dearth of campaign ads. Here, by the by, is yet another map of the electoral vote, this one with states the roughly proportionate…
That’s my Mom’s reaction to the sudden dearth of campaign ads.
Here, by the by, is yet another map of the electoral vote, this one with states the roughly proportionate size to their EV contribution. Again, makes things look a lot closer …
(map via Stan)
In a world where super-heroes once saved the day, but are now outlawed and “relocated,” what happens to a super who just wants to help people, and his equally-powerful wife…
In a world where super-heroes once saved the day, but are now outlawed and “relocated,” what happens to a super who just wants to help people, and his equally-powerful wife who just wants to raise their family without any trouble?
It’s funny. It’s poignant. It’s not terribly deep, but it’s not just a laff riot. And it is freakin’ beautiful.
(No spoilers below.)
NY transit authorities are a bit abashed to discover that what seemed to be pro-reading clothing ads from Akademiks had a double-entendre they weren’t hep to: The advertisements that ran…
NY transit authorities are a bit abashed to discover that what seemed to be pro-reading clothing ads from Akademiks had a double-entendre they weren’t hep to:
The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan “Read Books, Get Brain.”
What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that “get brain” is street slang for oral sex.
Heh.
The ads were out for the past two months, and nobody complained, but the transit officials decided that they were offensive (once they realized the were offended) and had them removed.
Similar ads were placed in LA, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Kelly, who said he was his 60s, said that after he was tipped to the hidden meaning of the phrase on Thursday he ran a test among some young MTA workers. “I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad,” he said. “I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.”
Again, heh.
“What movie are we going to see tonight?” Katherine asked. I stood up tall and did a big muscle flex. “Spider-Man!” “Nooooo …” I started running in place really quickly….
“What movie are we going to see tonight?” Katherine asked.
I stood up tall and did a big muscle flex.
“Spider-Man!”
“Nooooo …” I started running in place really quickly.
“Justice League!”
“You’ve seen commercials for this on Disney Channel,” Margie suggested.
“Yeah, the mommy is all stretchy,” I added.
“Oooooohhh!! I’ve seen that commercial!”
RIP, Pontiac Aztek. (via Daimnation)…
(via Daimnation)
The teaser trailer for SW III is still subscriber-only at starwars.com, but Anne has a fun screen shot from somewhere ……
The teaser trailer for SW III is still subscriber-only at starwars.com, but Anne has a fun screen shot from somewhere …
Heh. IAmLuke1: NO. Go To TashiStation.com and get some power converters download. Owen1: DO that later. Check out new droids. IAmLuke1: <– Will never get away from this 56K modem…
Heh.
IAmLuke1: NO. Go To TashiStation.com and get some power converters download.
Owen1: DO that later. Check out new droids.
IAmLuke1: <– Will never get away from this 56K modem 🙁
< IAmLuke1 HAS LOGGED OFF TATTOOINE CHATROOM >
< IAmLuke1 HAS LOGGED ONTO GARAGE CHATROOM >
The first person who gets Katherine hooked on this gets a cricket bat to the head. I promise. And I’m looking at you, Jackie. Hello Kitty and friends welcome you…
The first person who gets Katherine hooked on this gets a cricket bat to the head. I promise. And I’m looking at you, Jackie.
Hello Kitty and friends welcome you to the exciting and fantastic Hello Kitty World! This is the first-ever online game platform featuring the all-time-favorite Hello Kitty characters from Sanrio!
Hello Kitty World will allow thousands of players to live and participate in Hello Kitty’s magical and cute online world. You will be able to roam the streets of Kitty Kingdom, XO Federation, and Melody-land. Enjoy the beautiful landscape and architecture of Puroland or Badtzcity and participate in numerous puzzles, story lines, or adventures lead by the worldwide community of Hello Kitty World subscribers. You can even have a successful career, open different shops, earn and spend Sanrio Dollars in your bank, buy a house, and trade with other players around the vast game world.
(via BoingBoing)
Absinthe is making a comeback. After a century of being illegal in most countries (including the US), due to a “Reefer Madness” reputation, Switzerland, the drink’s original home, is going…
Absinthe is making a comeback. After a century of being illegal in most countries (including the US), due to a “Reefer Madness” reputation, Switzerland, the drink’s original home, is going to legalize its production again.
For Swiss distillers like Mr. Bugnon, the goal is to produce top quality, high-octane, government-approved absinthe produced from Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood, a plant native to the Val-de-Travers, the region in western Switzerland where the drink was invented.
If all goes well the distillers hope to obtain an official governmental “appellation” declaring that the region produces the only real absinthe in the world. Legalization will help the Swiss cash in on the rising global market for absinthe, which can be bought easily, and often illegally, over the Internet. There are Internet sites offering absinthe recipes and sources for wormwood seed.
In addition to prodigious amounts of alcohol, absinthe contains thujone, a toxic chemical found in wormwood that was used to treat stomach ailments as far back as ancient times but can cause tremors, hallucinations, paralysis and brain damage in large enough doses.
Some countries never banned it, and others have recently legalized the sale of low-thujone absinthe, including including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Japan, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain (hmmmm).
Of course, given the shadowy ambience surrounding absinthe, making it legal is removing some of its illicit panache.
Not everyone in the Val-de-Travers is sanguine about legalization in Switzerland. For Pierre André Delachaux, a high school teacher and author of several books on absinthe, the move will destroy the mystique that came with the ban.
“I want to preserve the myth that comes with keeping absinthe forbidden and clandestine,” said Mr. Delachaux, who is also the curator of a small museum in Môtiers with a special absinthe section.
“The myth is the thrill of breaking the law and not getting caught,” he said. “The myth is offering as much money as you can and maybe still not finding what you’re looking for. Next year you’ll find absinthe in all the supermarkets.”
(via Hit & Run)
People laughed and made jokes a couple of years back when airlines started charging over-obese folks for two seats on airplanes. Less amusing is the news that overall increase in…
People laughed and made jokes a couple of years back when airlines started charging over-obese folks for two seats on airplanes. Less amusing is the news that overall increase in passenger weights is driving up costs for airlines.
Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight of Americans, the federal agency estimated in a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“The obesity epidemic has unexpected consequences beyond direct health effects,” said Dr. Deron Burton of the CDC. “Our goal was to highlight one area that had not been looked at before.”
The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide were released into the air, according to the study.
I dislike the “obesity epidemic” rhetoric, but it’s still an interesting bit of analysis.
No doubt someone will dig up a large enough skeleton — or perhaps just a bone — in the closet of this new member of the Bush White House to…
No doubt someone will dig up a large enough skeleton — or perhaps just a bone — in the closet of this new member of the Bush White House to lodge a protest …
I’ve made five pots of coffee today. I’ve just poured my third cup. That cup took the last of the coffee from three different carafes. Stupid, rotten, unfeeling, selfish non-coffee-pot-fillers….
I’ve made five pots of coffee today.
I’ve just poured my third cup.
That cup took the last of the coffee from three different carafes.
Stupid, rotten, unfeeling, selfish non-coffee-pot-fillers.
I personally blame the Bush Administration.
The Catholic Church has issued — or at least formally sanctioned — some new guidelines on sex. And, unlike the common expectation (even among a number of Catholics), they don’t…
The Catholic Church has issued — or at least formally sanctioned — some new guidelines on sex. And, unlike the common expectation (even among a number of Catholics), they don’t just say that Sex is Bad. Indeed, just the opposite.
The controversial book, It’s A Sin Not To Do It, written by two theologians, promises the reader answers to “everything you wanted to know about sex but the Church (almost) never dared to tell you”.
In their attempt to galvanise the faithful, Roberto Beretta and Elisabetta Broli, who write regularly for the Italian Bishops’ magazine, Avvenire, have written one of the raciest works ever to deal with the Church and sex. Bullet points on the jacket cover underline the central message: “Sex? God invented it. Original sin? Sex has nothing to do with it. Without sex there is no real marriage.”
[…] The pages of It’s A Sin Not To Do It, however, feature a frank interview with Cardinal Ersilio Tonini in which he emphasises that “the Church is not an enemy of the flesh”. He argues that Vatican doctrine has always defended the “nobility of sexuality”, which is regarded by the Church as a “treasure” of humanity.
Another chapter likely to raise eyebrows unearths theological justification for post-coital masturbation for women who fail to achieve orgasm during intercourse.
Still, despite some extensions of doctrine, the book doesn’t actually break any new ground, theologically. It is certainly a change in emphasis, though.
Beretta told The Telegraph: “The Church is not against sex. Something needed to be done about the cliches and stereotypes. The Church is not only about forbidding the use of contraception and warning against the sins of the flesh.
“In view of the trivialisation of sex and the rise of impotence and frigidity in consequence, as well as the increasing number of only children, it is better for the Church to promote sex in the right circumstances, instead of just focusing on prohibitions and perversions.”
In other words, it’s emphasizing the place where the Church thinks sex is good, not just the places where it thinks it’s bad.
Even so, it’s refreshing, even if part of the shift in focus is in response to some worldly worries, especially for European Catholics.
The Vatican has regularly expressed its concerns over Italy’s low birth rate, which stands at fewer than nine births per thousand inhabitants. Two years ago, in an address to the Italian parliament, Pope John Paul described the declining rate as “a serious threat that weighs on the future of the country”.
And I suppose they’re more likely to get that birth rate back up if they emphasize that sex can be nifty and virtuous, and not just imply that folks should Lie Back and Think of St Peter’s …
(via BoingBoing)
Some interesting stats on the Election Season, via the NYT. A few fun excerpts: The money race was fueled by changes in the campaign financing law that allowed individuals to…
Some interesting stats on the Election Season, via the NYT. A few fun excerpts:
The money race was fueled by changes in the campaign financing law that allowed individuals to contribute as much as $2,000 per candidate, up from $1,000. And it helped make one sector of the media very rich – local TV stations. According to TNSMI/CMAG, which tracks television ad spending, from March 3 to Oct. 28, about $575 million was spent on presidential TV ads. That’s the equivalent of more than $2 million spent for each of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
While the increases in individual contributions were supposed to help President Bush, Senator John Kerry and his Democratic allies outspent the president and his Republican allies in each of the five big battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). These five states accounted for more than half of the money spent by both parties and their allies for TV ad time (about $380 million of the $575 million spent).
[…] But a true campaign still wouldn’t be real without a few retail stops, and the battleground states found themselves deluged by the repeated visits of the candidates and their surrogates. For much of the year, some critical states shed their flyover-state obscurity. Since March, Mr. Bush visited six states more than 10 times: Pennsylvania (23), Ohio (20), Florida (19), Wisconsin (14), Iowa (13) and Michigan (11).
During the same period, Mr. Kerry visited seven states more than 10 times: Ohio (29), Pennsylvania (24), Florida (23), Wisconsin (17), California (12), Iowa (11) and Missouri (10).
(via RantingProfs)
AOL seems to be in a long, downward spiral. AOL, a unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., has lost millions of subscribers to lower-cost rivals and higher-speed cable and…
AOL seems to be in a long, downward spiral.
AOL, a unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., has lost millions of subscribers to lower-cost rivals and higher-speed cable and telephone Internet services over the past few years.
In order to meet double-digit profit growth goals, AOL has trimmed its network costs over the past two years in the face of no revenue growth. The source said most of the job cuts would be made at AOL?s Dulles, Virginia, headquarters. About 5,000 of AOL?s 13,000 U.S. employees are based at Dulles. AOL cut 850 jobs in 2003.
While they can cut service further to keep the margins up, that can only work so long. AOL’s selling point has always been a relatively inexpensive and user-friendly online experience. But various factors seem to me to be working against them, in the long run:
So folks don’t need the user-friendly part, don’t need the cost, and don’t want the slow access. AOL doesn’t have all that much more to offer, except ways to frell up your PC. The synergy between AOL and the rest of Time Warner never really materialized, and seems unlikely to now. Unless AOL’s execs can think of something extremely clever to do (beyond sending out a zillion more install CDs), I’d expect to see AOL spun off within the next year or two, and extinct within a few years after that.
(via Les)
In conjunction with Our Voting Adventure the other day, Kitten and I had a long discussion of political signs, and I trained her to keep an eye out for them….
In conjunction with Our Voting Adventure the other day, Kitten and I had a long discussion of political signs, and I trained her to keep an eye out for them. “I see one all blue and red and white!” The ones that were the most visible to her — large lettering, simple and clean design, actually probably the most attractive ones out there, were for Pete Coors. I appreciate a good design. The Salazar signs were pretty ugly, by contrast, single color and blocky and messy.
Of course, Salazar won and Coors lost. My aesthetic sense continues to bat a thousand.
As part of the discussion, I noted that one of the presidential candidate signs had a “K.”
“Like Katherine?” she asked, catching on.
“Yup. Only it’s ‘K’ for ‘Kerry.'”
“That’s a boy’s name.” She must know one. In my day, it was (phonetically, at least) a unisex name. One of my first girlfriends was named Kari. Hmmm. Wonder if that hurt the Dems.
Anyway, driving home yesterday, she brought up the “what was that word, ”lection?'”
“Uh-huh.”
“Pres’dent Bush won the ‘lection.”
I have no idea who taught her the name. Though she may have picked it up as I was listening to the radio and NPR’s sonorous post mortem. Like a sponge, that girl. “Yup.”
“Does that mean we get to keep him?”
Until you’re 8 years old, kid. Which is, upon reflection, mildly appalling.
While the electoral college system encourages a binary blue/red split, this map (click on it) gives a bit more, ah, nuanced approach, letting the color tones within each state reflect…
While the electoral college system encourages a binary blue/red split, this map (click on it) gives a bit more, ah, nuanced approach, letting the color tones within each state reflect the balance of popular vote, not electoral.
Yes, there are broad patterns — a more red-violet in the south and Midwest, pretty much red through the northern mountain states, more blue and purple along the coast — but it makes things a lot more clearly muddled, too, if that makes sense. If only there weren’t a typo up in the date, it would be perfect. If nothing else, it shows that even if you think the Other Side is nothing but a flock of whackos, there’s plenty of Your Side hanging out there, too — unless you live in Utah, or Massachusetts.
(via BoingBoing)
UPDATE: It occurs to me that this map demonstrates one of the biggest weaknesses/strengths of the electoral college system. On the one hand, it overemphasizes the size of victories, lending a certain added air of legitimacy to the winner, usually a good thing. On the other hand, it overemphasizes the size of victories, making the voting seem much more divisive than it may actually be.
Another long-overdue home improvement for us. Yay! The garage door folk came yesterday and replaced the garage door. The new one is metal (with Real Faux Wood Grain), painted a…
Another long-overdue home improvement for us. Yay! The garage door folk came yesterday and replaced the garage door. The new one is metal (with Real Faux Wood Grain), painted a dark brown (close to, but not identical, to our selected trim color), insulated on the inside, and, with the new garage door opener, about a tenth as noisy (which will delight Margie to no end, every morning at 5:30a or so, as I leave the house for work).
Not cheap. But done.
I don’t think we’re going to get the house trim and deck painted this season, though. Weather’s turned too cold. I might do something with the trim out front at the garage door (esp. where it got worked on by the garage door people), but the rest will have to wait for spring.
But, really, it’s been an amazing year in the HI biz. The french doors. The buffet (finished). The a/c and furnace. The garage doors. The siding. Yowzers.
All we have to do next year is finish up the paint and start doing terracing/steps in the front yard. W00T. Then replace the deck. Then, of course, move. No, just kidding about the last.
I’m going to stop nattering about this Real Soon Now, I promise, but a friend passed this on to me: The talk outside the school where I took my daughter…
I’m going to stop nattering about this Real Soon Now, I promise, but a friend passed this on to me:
The talk outside the school where I took my daughter this morning, a bastion of Kerry/Edwards supporters, was mostly bewilderment about where people in urban areas — who overwhelmingly supported Kerry — can go politically now. Here in the bubble of Seattle, the outlook was voiced by one father: “It’s like we’re an island now, cut off from the rest of the country. And we just have to go it on our own now.”
Unfortunately, I think that’s the problem. Urban liberals have been writing off their rural counterparts for too long. The larger the gap grows and festers, the more isolated they’re doomed to become. Outreach, not withdrawal, is what is needed.
If progressives are serious about making a real effort at rebuilding their political machinery from the ground up, they need to start by going back to their rural roots. And it can’t just be lip service.
While much of the rest of the post is more than a scosh conspiratorial, I definitely agree with this conclusion. For whatever reason, those Red State and Red County folks voted for Bush. Arguing over whether they should have or not is meaningless. Arguing over whether they’re all slack-jawed yokels tricked by beads and trinkets, or gun-nuts shilled by Karl Rove into voting to protect their guns from the gummint, or Bible-thumping retards who are deluded by their religious views, or just plain The Enemy, is not only meaningless, it’s counter-productive.
They are Americans, and they vote. You can try to deny them. You can try to despise them. But if the Dems really want to take the White House (or majorities in either chamber of Congress) back, decisively, they will actually have to reach out to them, make friends of them, convince them that they, the Dems, can best represent their needs and ideals.
Otherwise, those blue islands will only get smaller, and smaller, and smaller …