Thursday, September 30, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #9099

Benephoria (noun): a feeling of relief and exaltation experienced upon being free for a few moments from the thought that an insurance company is going to d*ck you over.
(Image originally uploaded by Tom Simpson; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5800

We now join the Khmer version of The Honeymooners, already in progress.

"To the Land of the Hungry Ghosts, Alice!"

(Image originally uploaded by DigiNate; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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15 for 15

For what it's worth*, I got 15 out of 15 on the Pew Forum Religious Knowledge quiz (h/t Attaturk). Let's just say I fit the ironic pattern of atheists/agnostics doing better than believers on tests of religious knowledge, particularly re. other religions, you know, the WRONG/HEATHEN ones.

*(not much, 'cause the questions are pretty freaking easy, but oh well)


Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #0449

Not in Christine O'Donnell's America!

*SWAT team bursts in*

(Image originally uploaded by kailin23; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Hopey Changey

Don't miss yesterday's DN! segment on the recent FBI raids on antiwar activists in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Boy, it sure is good that we elected an anti-war, pro-civil-liberties Democrat in 2008, huh? Otherwise, gosh, just think about how different things would be right now with the wars and the government powers and the economic policies and whatnot.

Irony: the other white meat.


Monday, September 27, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #8004

Staying in character at a RenFest can be a constant challenge.

"Forsooth, I said 'curly fries', not 'potato wedges'. There's a difference, you know."

(Image originally uploaded by K Brower; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #1106

The Koch Brothers shuddered with vague forebodings as they beheld the budding friendship between Skylar and his non-union Mexican equivalent.
(Image originally uploaded by Friedom2B; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Saturday, September 25, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #8391

Abdullah's: it's an identity crisis you can eat!
(Image originally uploaded by bonheath; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Friday, September 24, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #9926

"Hello, and thank you all for coming. Webster's defines 'Human Resources' as..."

*trapdoor behind podium opens*

*whooshes down water slide*

(Image originally uploaded by JobingMatt; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #6293

Product of an unspeakable ménage à trois between Tom Selleck, Ted Nugent, and Martin Heidegger.
(Image originally uploaded by Florian Beyer; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Damn Fine Company

Michael Moore will receive the John Steinbeck "In the Souls of the People" Award:

The Steinbeck award is given to writers and artists whose work captures the spirit of Steinbeck's empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes.

“Courage is 75% of art,” states Thomas Steinbeck, noted author and the son of John Steinbeck. “Michael Moore is a courageous man and a great selection for the John Steinbeck Award. My father would have loved him; my father was the Michael Moore of his time.”

Noted as the “who’s who of disturbers,” previous recipients include Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Miller, John Sayles, Jackson Browne, Garrison Keillor, Joan Baez, and Sean Penn.

"I am truly grateful to the Steinbeck family and the Steinbeck Center for their generous acknowledgment of my work,” says Michael Moore. “The works of John Steinbeck have been a singular and powerful inspiration to me all of my life. Steinbeck believed that a story could change the world. He spent his life telling the stories of the powerless and the exploited. Through him, they had a voice. Today we are sadly, once again, witnesses to another Grapes of Wrath."

One big soul, my friends.


Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #1328

"Oh, for the love of—first we had to sell band candy to pay for these $#@%ing uniforms; now we have to sell band candy to pay for $#@%ing hat polish. Whose $#@%ing idea was this again?"
(Image originally uploaded by Travelawyer; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Your Welcome Dose of Sanity

Today's Democracy Now!: Robert Scheer on Why Lawrence Summers Is Not All That And Never Was and Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef on "barefoot economics."

AMY GOODMAN: And if you’re teaching young economists, the principles you would teach them, what they’d be?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle. One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy. Two, development is about people and not about objects. Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth. Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services. Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.

Remember: as war is peace and ignorance is strength, sanity is COMMUNISM. Pass it on.


Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #3250

Rex enjoyed going with the family to Pops in the Park even if his keen hearing had to put up with the perpetually flat first bassoon.
(Image originally uploaded by dale.wesson; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Monday, September 20, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #2101

Traditions are different in other parts of the world.

"OK, let's get this tailgate party started!"

*everybody meditates for hours*

(Image originally uploaded by Navreet Singh & Satnam Kaur; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Can't Judge a Book

You wouldn't think that a guy named Percy Schmeiser—a Canadian, no less—could be such a badass, but check out last week's Democracy Now! segment on this mild-mannered farmer and his mild-mannered wife and their long battle with Monsanto, the corporation that messed up the Schmeisers' crops and then made the mistake of giving them sh*t about it, from lawsuits all the way down to brute physical harassment. And all over crap like this:

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by a terminator seed.

PERCY SCHMEISER: A terminator gene basically, quite simply, is a gene that’s put into a seed. And when the seed becomes a plant, all seeds from that plant are sterile. And so, it cannot be used the following year for seed. But the danger also of the terminator gene, it can cross-pollinate into indigenous crops, heirloom crops, and render those seeds from those plants also sterile. So it’s a termination of the future of life.

AMY GOODMAN: So it forces farmers to buy seeds every year, rather than to conserve seeds so that they can be used every year.

PERCY SCHMEISER: Exactly. And that’s why we say it’s the greatest assault of life we’ve ever seen on this planet, where you terminate the future of life. Farmers would be forced to buy the seed each year, whether you’re a gardener, a tree planter or a grain producer.

Man, genius doesn't get much more evil than that. Before long they'll be using chemicals to render us impotent and then charging us for the privilege of f*cking.

Hey, wait a minute....


Sunday, September 19, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #6777

The Skywriters Karamazov came to a swift end when Alyosha just climbed away and kept going, Dmitri peeled off to buzz the cheerleader tryouts, and Ivan made a suicide dive into the nearest church.
(Image originally uploaded by osprey1050; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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So Many F*ckups, So Little Time

Drew Westen and George Lakoff on what the Dems can, but almost certainly won't, do to stave off defeat in November.

Yeah, well, almost two years in, we could barely talk Obama into giving Elizabeth Warren a job; I won't be holding my breath waiting for a stirring embrace of New Deal protections for working people, a paring back of the military-industrial corporate welfare state, etc.


Saturday, September 18, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5052

Wow. People who haven't seen Bronson Pinchot for a while are in for a shock.
(Image originally uploaded by grizzlyteaser79; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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The Battle of Laffer's Curve

Don't miss Jay Bookman's quick fack-check on the real record of supply-side economics:

IT'S A BIG FREAKING LIE.

(h/t Dean Baker)


Friday, September 17, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #4993

EveryBODy's...TALKing at...ME
(Image originally uploaded by mertensjp; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton. C'mon, he looks a little like William Shatner.)

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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Want, Buy, Have

Speaking of the Julia Roberts vehicle Urgh Grunt Splash Eat Pray Love, PR Watch has an interesting look at the merchandising effort that accompanied this ostensible pretty-woman's-quest-for-enlightenment story. Kitchenware! Shower gels! T-shirts! Gelato makers!

It's just like The Noble Eightfold Path...if it led to the Galleria.


Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #1997

Product of an unspeakable ménage à trois between James Hetfield, Andy Capp, and John Stuart Mill.
(Image originally uploaded by gritphilm; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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ROTFLMAO

John Cole made the mistake of watching one of my favorite films with teabaggers on his mind:

Somewhere around the time I cracked the second bottle of wine I started watching Blade Runner, and the scene where Leon was told “The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping…” I yelled out “give the fucker a tax cut and tell him to pull himself up by his boot straps.”
Hey, you know the score, pal. If you're not GOP, you're little people.


Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #1898

Much of the audience for Jean Shorts: Private Eye drifted away as the writers found ever more implausible reasons for her to retain her namesake garb even as she attended weddings, funerals, inaugurations, coronations, papal elections, etc., but the horny male demographic never wavered.
(Image originally uploaded by CG MEDIA; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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O No

Another h/t to PZ for this tale by Science-Based Medicine blogger Harriet Hall recounting her brief and utterly unfulfilling stint as a science columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine. The problems started right away: a 200-word limit, graciously increased to a whopping 250. (As Chomsky has said of the time constraints that govern "discussion" in the corporate media, it's almost impossible to do critical thinking in a few minutes between commercials; this format encourages the repetition of conventional wisdom and discourages the questioning of assumptions, the raising of inconvenient facts, etc.) Rigid editorial control over which health myths Hall could write about. Relentless editorial nitpicking. Incompetent fact-checking. Editors dodging her emails. Finally, Hall gave up on the big O:

I had gotten to the point that when I saw an e-mail from the magazine I would get a sinking feeling and dread opening it. It has become clear to me that I don’t have what it takes to be a media whore. I’d much rather write independently without pay for a select few readers than be controlled and abused for $2 a word with an audience of millions.

I’d be willing to bet that Dr. Oz has had a very different experience with the O editors.

O snap. Read her sad tale. And by the way, there's a nice audio interview with Hall in the For Good Reason archives.


Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #0018

After a timely spell sends André Rieu back to his native form, thousands of PBS fans wonder whether the same incantation will work on Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Celtic Softcore.
(Image originally uploaded by pmboston; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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The Internet Is In On The Heliocentrist Conspiracy

I was going to mention the Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right conference about the great conspiracy to keep the truth of geocentrism from the public (h/t PZ), but I just tried to take another look at the conference page, and

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

Sigh. It just goes to show: whether the Sun moves or not, there is nothing new under it.


Monday, September 13, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #3515

Admittedly, I'm no expert on blind dating, but surely it's a bad sign when, instead of Love At First Sight, you feel the Fight-or-Flight Response.
(Image originally uploaded by earlyadopter; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Sunday, September 12, 2010

A Bit Like the Genealogy of Morals, in Stand-Up Form

A colleague passes along a bit of Patton Oswalt:

If I ever have a child, I am naming him or her "Sky Baklava."


Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #9473

The food and decor at OCD House win high marks, but the less said about the service, the better.

*pulls dessert slightly closer*

*maitre d' begins muttering to self and turning in circles*
*busboys blanch, huddle together trembling*
*jittery hovering waiter gently pushes dessert back*

(Image originally uploaded by RafaleM; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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A Good Way to Start the Week

Watch Dean Baker eat George Will for breakfast and then spit out chunks of his prissy little horn-rims.


Saturday, September 11, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #0911

That's right...keep talking, stupid humans...just a little longer...the paella will soon be mine...
(Image originally uploaded by Charles Family; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Friday, September 10, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #2157

The Chinatown Amateur Theatrical Society got revenge for Miss Saigon by casting little Soon Li as the lead in their dinner-theater version of The Odyssey.
(Image originally uploaded by lepham; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Thursday, September 09, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #0935

Few dogs are more aptly named than Yin and Yang.
(Image originally uploaded by shark92651; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5559

Denise and Brian designed their own invitations, wrote their own vows, and mixed their own pitcher of ceremonial Black Russians.
(Image originally uploaded by originalrocker; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Tomasky Sums It Up

I haven't had a chance yet to peruse Tim Noah's new look at income inequality in the US of A—I'm still a bit shocked that anti-oligarchism has apparently become contrarian enough for Slate—but Michael Tomasky does a great job today of summing up the political realities of "The Great Compression," which unfortunately looks increasingly like a freak historical anomaly rather a defining feature of modern American civilization:

The evidence couldn't be clearer. Income inequality shrank or remained stable at tolerable levels in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and again (a little) in the 90s. That's five decades. Democrats were making policy in four of them. In the other one, the Republican president was an economic moderate who'd embraced the New Deal and did nothing to lower top marginal tax rates.

In the 1920s, 70s, 80s, and 2000's, income inequality increased. Republicans in charge in every decade, except for the Carter four-year stretch. Could this really be an 80-year coincidence?

Nnnnnnnnnnnnope.


Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #8496

Advertising campaigns targeted at Buddhists tend to be kind of...self-deconstructing.

KARMA-KARRY!

Hey, conditioned existence is already bad enough, what with the impermanence and the suffering and the not-self and all. As you walk the Noble Eightfold Path, why not make it easy for your stuff to walk with you as you seek liberation from...stuff.

KARMA-KARRY!

(Image originally uploaded by ij_sydney; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Monday, September 06, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5999

"Why'd Australia have to die, Pa?"
(Image originally uploaded by marj k; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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For Labor Day

It's a rainy one here. John Nichols wishes that Obama would take a lesson from what FDR did in Wisconsin on Labor Day in 1934:

In Green Bay, in the summer of 1934, the 32nd president needed to explain to a crowd that was sympathetic but worried that the economic wrangling in which he and his administration was engaged had to be seen in perspective – not just the perspective of the presidency of the man he replaced, Herbert Hoover, but the perspective of the long American struggle between a privileged few that engaged in the “private means of exploitation” and the great many that had “waged a long and bitter fight for (their) rights.”

Roosevelt did this with a history lesson, of a sort, in which he traced back to the founding of the republic in to recount the long fight “against those forces which disregard human cooperation and human rights in seeking that kind of individual profit which is gained at the expense of his fellows.”

That fight between patriotic proponents of economic justice and the Tory defenders of an old economic royalism had, Roosevelt argued, come to a head with the arrival of the Great Depression.

Recalling the 1932 election that swept Democrats to power and ushered in the New Deal era, the president argued, “In the great national movement that culminated over a year ago, people joined with enthusiasm. They lent hand and voice to the common cause, irrespective of many older political traditions. They saw the dawn of a new day. They were on the march; they were coming back into the possession of their own home land.”

“As the humble instruments of their vision and their power, those of us who were chosen to serve them in 1932 turned to the great task,” Roosevelt continued. “In one year and five months, the people of the United States have received at least a partial answer to their demands for action; and neither the demand nor the action has reached the end of the road.”

The primary barrier to action, the president explained, was erected by those who still entertained the fantasy who argued that FDR could restore confidence only by “(telling) tell the people of the United States that all supervision by all forms of Government, Federal and State, over all forms of human activity called business should be forthwith abolished.”

So, like Obama, Roosevelt faced an opposition that claimed government was the problem.

Unlike Obama, however, Roosevelt refused to even entertain – let alone embrace – the absurd constructs of the private-sector fabulists who “would repeal all laws, State or national, which regulate business—that a utility could henceforth charge any rate, unreasonable or otherwise; that the railroads could go back to rebates and other secret agreements; that the processors of food stuffs could disregard all rules of health and of good faith; that the unregulated wild-cat banking of a century ago could be restored; that fraudulent securities and watered stock could be palmed off on the public; that stock manipulation which caused panics and enriched insiders could go unchecked.”

“In fact,” the president continued, “if we were to listen to (the anti-government crowd), the old law of the tooth and the claw would reign in our Nation once more.”

“The people of the United States will not restore that ancient order,” thundered Roosevelt. “There is no lack of confidence on the part of those business men, farmers and workers who clearly read the signs of the times. Sound economic improvement comes from the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof.”

With those words, Roosevelt took a side.

He did not imagine that it was possible to compromise with those who wanted to return to the “tooth and claw” past.

No, he would stand against the Tories and for the new order where it was understood that the purpose of government was to achieve “the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof.”

Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt’s call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift – in Wisconsin and nationally – because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on.

Yeah, well, FDR welcomed the oligarchists' hatred; Obama mostly welcomes them to brunch.


Sunday, September 05, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #9032

Sure, you can add whole grain oats and nuts to turn artery-clogging Jambalaya into healthy Müesbalaya, but ye gods man, isn't an early death preferable?
(Image originally uploaded by lei a lui berlin; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Saturday, September 04, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5807

Busy week here—I hope everybody is enjoying the Labor Day weekend.

Can Jara and Sonn-Tar stave off disunion over his fondness for mead and wenching and her constant nagging for him to move up in caste? Next on Marriage Counselors of Gor.
(Image originally uploaded by FrankD5; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Friday, September 03, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #5286

Iambic Pentameter EPIC FAIL
(Image originally uploaded by Kevin Naylor; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Thursday, September 02, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #4737

"I find the minibar charges here disturbing. *breathe* Come, let us decamp to the Radisson, which has *breathe* a better Continental breakfast, anyway." *breathe*
(Image originally uploaded by leshoward; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Daily Random Flickr Blogging, #1827

Oh, my, who among us is not transported by the Canadian Brass playing The Art of Fugue, eh?
(Image originally uploaded by www.ShootJoeC.com; Random Flickr Blogging originally invented by Tom Hilton.)

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