October 29, 2009

A Question

How much do we need to pay Mrs. Lieberman and Mrs. Bayh in order to get their husbands to support health care reform?

Oh Economic Growth, How I've Missed You So.

It's back! Growth is back! Been gone so long!

Why Pink?

October is breast cancer awarness month. Which means I'm being bombarded with pink. Why pink? People keep trying to sell me pink stuff for breast cancer research. Buy a pink ribbon, buy a pink balloon. Heck I was looking at laptops from Dell and if you buy the pink one, they will kick in ten bucks for the cause.

Don't get me wrong, I love breasts and hate to see anything bad happen to them. But I hate pink. Pink is for baby girls right when they come home and when they go through that phase with princesses and plastic ponies. Heck most adult women I know (don't give me that look, I know a few) wouldn't be caught dead in pink. Manly man that I am, I just can do pink. So why pink?

Is there a way to support breasts and the sisterhood without gettin drapped in pink?

October 27, 2009

Why Yes, That Does Work

The thought of George W Bush having to pick up dog crap, does motivate me.

I'm ready to take on the day now.

Special

Normally, I don't pay that much attention to up-state New York special elections, but what's happening in New York's 23rd congressional district is pretty fascinating. The incumbent Republican has joined the Obama administration as Army Secretary, and a free-for-all has broken out to replace him. Normally this district would be a easy win for the GOP, but in this case a three-way race has developed. There's a wishy-washy Dem, a wishy-washy GOPer and a hard-core conservative spoiler. All the notable right-wingers, such as Palin, Rush, and Beck, are lining up with the right-winger. With the right side of electorate split, the Dems could pull out a win in a place they should have no right to.

Who says you can't find a good election in an off year? Here comes November!

October 26, 2009

You Can Escape McDonald's

If your economy goes far enough out of wack, it is possible.

It takes a pretty nasty crash, so this is not recomended. Think of it as "at least your waistline will go down."

The Messy Act of Creation

There's a pretty good reason why the most common metaphor for the legislative process is "making sausage." Good grief this is a messy, ugly process. Public option, no public option, half a public option, 60 votes in the Senate, 218 in the House, this committee and that. Not much to done but keep an eye on the process (read Johnathan Cohn and Ezra Klien)call your Senator from time to time, and wait.

Oh ick, I just got a raw piece of legislation on my shirt.

October 25, 2009

He Never Stops Teasing Me

When, oh when, will this torment stop.

Too Much Good Stuff

Ok, forget the safe-for-work, safe-for-network television, film institute of whatever top 100 movie quotes list. Check out the Pajiba other 100 best. But don't just read them. Watch them all and let the greatness wash over you:



Not to be played with your boss and/or mother in earshot.

October 22, 2009

My Entry

The Washington Post is holding a contest called America's Next Great Pundit. The grand prize of which is a dozen columns in the paper. Here's my entry, delivered about an hour before last night's deadline:

I may be new to the pundit game, but some parts I already know. First, I’m expected to be an expert about all topics, and two, I’m not an expert on all topics, despite Wikipedia. So I need to cheat. The gap between the pundit’s need to know everything and the size of the human brain can only be filled by cheating. Yelling is an easy cheat. Just make up for low knowledge with high volume. Sadly, this is really only a viable tactic for television punditry and arguments at the local bar. There’s no viable way to yell in a print piece, and ALL CAPS DO NOT WORK. I need some other way to cheat or, put another way, take a shortcut to the heart of the issue. My favorite move is to cite an expert with whom I agree or, even better, an idiot with whom I do not agree.
Take the debate over Net neutrality. Net neutrality is an effort to ensure that the providers of Internet access treat all content equally. There are rules to make sure that everyone’s Web page loads equally fast and everyone’s e-mail shows up at the same time. That no one gets a raw deal due to the content of their site or the company they work for. Of course, that’s just the quick and dirty version. I’m sure when the FCC takes action it will be much more complicated than that, with pages and pages of technical regulations and legal findings and charts and graphs and an easel. At that point it will be beyond my ability to be an expert on the subject. Now one way to cheat, er, take a shortcut to expertise on this matter, would be to cite an expert like the technologist quoted in this Post article, Vint Cerf, one of the builders of the Internet, who urged the FCC to adopt a "pro-innovation policy agenda" by adopting Net neutrality. But even more effective would be to see where the lunatics are, and then run the other way. On his show yesterday, Glenn Beck said that Net neutrality is a plot to get everyone free Internet and for the Obama administration to take over all media.
The fact that Beck believes Net neutrality to be an evil plot that needs to be stopped is the strongest argument I can mount in favor of adopting it.


Thanks to Krissi for the late editing assist, and everybody -fingers crossed. I could call Charles Krauthammer my honored colleague.

October 21, 2009

Metaphor

Maybe this will help you understand:

Nice

Al Franken, Senatoring the hell out of it.

Senatoring -act of being or acting as a senator. Your Craigorian Chant made-up word of the day.

October 20, 2009

Ho-Hum

Science marches on. These day we discover new extra-solar planets all the time. 32 new ones announced today. Woo!

We need something fresh to liven these discoveries up. We need a earth sized planet! With green stuff on it!

Need a better telescope.

Making Money Off the Nuts

Mike Madden shows you how.

The lesson here is no matter how dumb the investment move, if you can get enough morons to make the investment, it makes money. It could be comic books, it could be triple-compounded derivatives. Whatever the thing, if enough people buy it, it goes up in price. The intrinsic value doesn't matter, inflation doesn't matter, the price to earning ratio doesn't matter. All you need are enough dopes with money and you get a price increase.

In this case it's gold, but this trick could work with anything. Just put you ad up on Glenn Beck, tell people X is a great investment and will protect you from the Obama administration.

And then count your money.

October 19, 2009

Good One

What other major roadblocks to action can we change as a joke?

NRA fine with ban on machine guns.

Comcast in favor of net neutrality.

The BCS now supports a playoff system.

You heard it here first.

Congradulations!

You are, in fact, famous.

Famous as a d-bag and a fraud, but now a very well-know d-bag and fraud.

Well done sir.

October 16, 2009

The Right to 100 megabits per Second

The Finns have a legal right to broadband access. So cool.

Via Oliver, who thinks its silly. Oliver is wrong!

I Protest!

Getting pretty hard to mock right-wing protesters these days, but this is noble effort:

October 15, 2009

Today Moment of Zen



The apple makes it high class.

Batman Appears

Today on scenes I love, an occasional and ongoing series here at the Craigorian Chant School of Film Study, we look at Batman Begins. Specifically, the first time we actually see Batman:



Where are you!

Here.


I could watch that all day. But we are not just about entertainment here at CCSFS, we seek a deeper understanding of art. So I give you a complete, shot-by-shot breakdown of the scene:

Batman as A Monster in a Classic Horror Movie

We take you deeper

Hunting

We are getting pretty close to "Have you now or ever been a Muslim" territory here. Of course, intelligence standards have fallen among the McCarthy Right over the years. At least McCarthy was hunting Soviet spies. Imaginary Soviet spies, but still. Interns. They are hunting Muslim interns.

October 14, 2009

Within this Square Lies all Wisdom

So lately my web surfing has been regularly taking me to the world of web comics. Given that the medium is basically guys doodling on the Internet, this is high-class nerdism. My favorites are the brilliant xkcd, and the highly meta Darths and Droids and Order of the Stick.

xkcd will surprise you over and over again with what can be done with stick figures and is a must read for any nerd involved with or contemplating love and sex. Which I do.

Order of the Stick is little less accessible, it requires that you have spent some time role-playing, D&D 3rd edition in particular. It depicts a slapstick world governed by the rules of D&D, where you call out "sneak attack!" when you sneak attack and you can miss the goblin standing right next to you if you roll you dice wrong.

Darths and Droids is even more meta. The graphic panels of the comic are screen captures from the Star Wars movies. But dialogue is based on the premise that the story is the result of a role-playing game session. Sounds crazy, but in a lot of places, this comic makes more sense than the original movies.

So what do you guys read?

Murder and Cover-Up

The State of Texas killed an innocent man and is now trying to cover-up that fact.

Of course it would be Texas.

October 13, 2009

Space Exploration Porn

50 years of space exploration on one map.

Via

Explaining Berlusconi

Anne Applebaum takes a crack.

What is it with this guy?

Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of bribery, tax evasion, corruption, and subversion of the press. His wife has left him on the grounds that he consorts with prostitutes and holds orgies at his villa in Sardinia. He makes embarrassing jokes (and then repeats them, as he did with the one about President Barack Obama's "suntan") and periodically disappears to undergo more plastic surgery. He is at war with the Italian legal establishment, with almost all the journalists who don't work for him, and with the Catholic Church.

October 12, 2009

May Its Ok After All

The Insurance industry is taking shots at the health reform bill, so maybe the legislative sausage factory hasn't completely made a mess of it.

Where Have You Gone William F. Buckley?

When the story of William F. Buckley, patron saint of conservatism gets told, one part that always gets highlighted is the great casting out of the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society, and its leader Robert Welch, were the Glenn Becks of the 1960's, wacky right-wingers who thought that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist mole. Buckley, famously, worked it so that the Goldwater '64 campaign, and the conservative movement in general, threw the nutters out.

This action, the story goes, kept the conservative movement respectable and mainstream, which lead to Ronnie, Newt and the current state of things. Which brings us to the John Birch Society of today: Glenn Beck and his merry band of teabaggers. Glenn Beck represents that same brand of ultra-nutty conservatism, the paranoid, delusional, and just downright scary strain of right-winger that has been back around from the 1950's on. So who will cast Glenn Beck out of the movement? Who will make conservatism safe for America again?

No one will. Buckley is gone, and he hasn't been replaced. The center of the conservative universe isn't the National Review any more, now all roads lead to Fox News. Where Glenn Beck has set up shop and now rules the ratings. Beck now has a platform to inject his madness straight into the GOP. Have a look at this piece in Salon, documenting how Beck's obsessions become the obsessions of GOP Congressmen and Senators, sometimes in a matter of hours. Beck isn't just an influence, he's setting the agenda for the Republicans in Congress. We also are seeing signs that "Tea Party" activists are now taking aim at the GOP, in an attempt to drive the party even further to right. No one is casting the nutters out of the movement. They are the movement.

This is bad, both for Republican Party and for America. Republicans are never going to get it together with a paranoid delusional calling the shots and America can't move forward if half of the political system is lost to madness.

October 11, 2009

Angels

Instead of church on Sunday, here's some U2 singing about stuff:



Jesus never let me down
You know Jesus used to show me the score
Then they put Jesus in show business
Now it's hard to get in the door

October 10, 2009

A Movie for Your Day

Blues Brothers 2000.

Nowhere near the original, but it does have:

1. Heartbreaking opening, where Elwood waits for Jake.
2. The largest car pile-up ever filmed.
3. Killer all-star line-up, including the world's most epic all-star band at the end.

October 9, 2009

NASA Verse The Moon

Last time we went to collect rocks and play golf, but this time

THIS MEANS WAR!

The Prize

American is such a powerful nation that all it takes is us to elect a President who is against torture and random acts of war against Countries that haven't attacked us and the cause of peace in the world is hugely increased.

So yeah.

I would prefer that he get it later in his Presidency, after we are out of Iraq and have avoided war with Iran, but lets face it, replacing Bush with Obama has led to a more peaceful world.

October 8, 2009

October 7, 2009

Social Trends worth Following.

The return of happy hour.

Killing 30% of His Material

Seeing as a huge chunk of late night comedy consists of mocking dudes (always dudes, somehow cheating ladies are just not funny) caught with their pants down, has Letterman lost 30% of his act?

October 4, 2009

Live Your Life



Don't know why this is by T.I. featuring Rihanna. It's Rihanna's part that makes you want to hear to it again.

October 1, 2009

Action/Reaction

After 9/11 they wouldn't let you take anything sharp onto an airline. Sure.

After the shoe bomber got caught you had to take your shoes off for inspection. Ok.

Some terrorist in Britain came up with a fairly half-baked plan to smuggle explosives hidden as household liquids. Now we restrict the size of liquids that you can take on a flight. Ummm, Really?

And now this. Which means the obvious countermeasure is...oh boy.

What Could Go Wrong?

Like most adults I've had very little in way of fights and violence in my life. No, Muay Thai class does not count. But every close call I've had, every heated moment and "wow, dude, i though we were going to have to throw down for a minute" event in my life has come in a bar.

So naturally, such a conflict-filled place is the ideal environment to introduce guns!

Way to go Arizona! Other States just start bar fights. Arizona finishes them. With gunfire.

No More Saturn

Saturn is coming to an end, part of the larger carpocalypse sweeping the nation. I'm getting a bit nostalgic. My 95 Saturn LS2 wasn't my first car, but it was the first car I bought and paid for. The first car I drove that I liked. It was green. It sat four comfortably. At least a few times I slept in it. I don't think it ever attracted the girls, but it didn't scare them off either.

Now its gone, replaced by a Toyota. Which is pretty much the whole world of cars summed up nicely.