To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Bungalow Bill, Ann Althouse, and others are talking about the new DNC ad for the 2010 elections. That must be some effective ad, since it’s now marked a private video and is unavailable to normal YouTube viewers like you and I.
This makes a pretty compelling case. For something.
(Cross posted at JTGOP.com.)
UPDATE: Legal Insurrection has the video.
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I’m a pretty big Cosby fan. I just watched Bill Cosby Himself earlier in the month, I’ve listened to his old comedy albums on audiocassette during long drives, and I’ve read a number of his books before.
This book is a short afterthought to some of his earlier works, though. It collects a series of shorter essays and musings, some meandering. They’re not particularly strong material, either. A bit of amusement, but not a lot of insight.
Still, it’s newer Cosby. I’ll take it over nothing but not over his earlier works.
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On Facebook, I posted this photo that I cribbed from Big Hollywood:
Immediately, one of my few liberal progressive authoritarian acquaintances chimed in:
Tell me about this photo.
You know, I wasn’t born then, either, but I can tell you what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
But those who would rule us (or who would elect rulers) sort of fail just about any history exam they’re given, do they not?
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
UPDATE:
Just to keep you apprised of the conversation:
Brian J. Noggle
Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_SpringWhile American students and whatnot were facing down The Man with sit ins, long hair, and all that feldercarb, Czechs and Slovaks were baring their chests to tanks.
That’s resisting oppression.
Brian J. Noggle
Sorry, I sorta minimized it. They weren’t just baring their chests to tanks like American university students were standing up to the campus police.They were dying, too.
Authoritarian:
I agree. And it is good of you to recognize the anniversary of that battle today. Many Americans dont even know it happened because we – as usual – were too busy with our own struggles.
That said. many people have died for the freedoms we en…joy today. Though it wasn’t bloody and gory like Prague Spring or the struggles in Darfur today, every BODY counts.
Oppression never occurs without collateral damage.
Awesome. And this particularly authoritarian is not unintelligent.
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This book stems from an era, lo those 25 years ago, where it was slightly fashionable or at least humorous to oppose the impersonal answering machine. I didn’t really recollect it until I saw this book. But there were lots of books in that era about having funny answering machine messages and this book about leaving funny messages on someone’s answering machine. Wow, the novelty of that has passed, hey? Do you remember seeing actual pretaped humorous answering machine cassettes? How old am I?
As I mentioned, this book includes humorous messages you could leave to show your disdain for the answering machine. Its first chapter, in fact, is about bad outgoing messages and having to talk to a machine yourself. There are some messages purportedly from celebrities and then some from fake businesses. Finally, there was a section on jokes, most of them corny, but the only laugh I got out of the books was from the joke What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? About half way.
The book apparently rode a trend and was some kind of success at the time; this is a printing five years after the original edition. The publisher and authors also had a line of books with funny outgoing messages. I wondered about people who would buy these books new, which led me to wonder about people who buy these books second hand. Before I got too introspective, though, I smelled the book and realized that I hadn’t bught it at all–the book had been my mother’s, tucked among the four shelves of books in her office. How-to home improvement books, some antique reference she’d gotten from her sister, a couple dictionaries, some paperbacks from television shows she’d liked that I’d bought her (which I’m reading these days), and this book. I wonder where she got it. I wish I could ask.
At any rate, the hour I spent on the book was worthwhile for the anachronism of the subject matter and for the anachronism of the contemporary humor within it, not to mention one funny joke. That makes it worth a whole Reader’s Digest without the latter’s modern turn into Gaia-worship.
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Beloit College came up with its annual Mindset List that reminds us old people the limit of 18-year-olds’ experience. As I previously said, I think this year’s list is full of trivia and little else.
Then I thought, hey, the elected leadership in Washington is glibly fundamentally transforming the country. So what might the Brian College Mindset List for the Class of 2034 look like?
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On Robin Carnahan’s official campaign Web site, RobinCarnahan.com, we see several photos of Robin Carnahan sporting work gloves. Three of the seven photos where her hands appear, in fact. And what do those work gloves tell us about Robin Carnahan.
<dramatic chord>
Those are some good quality workgloves. Definitely cowhide. Probably set her back $8 to $15 dollars, but they’re worth it, since they don’t tend to wear holes in them like the $4 fabric gardening gloves. Why, you could a couple hours swinging a pick or turning soil with a shade and not feel that at all.
But wait a minute. Those work gloves are clean.
That’s not the way used work gloves look. Used work gloves look like this:
That’s some dirt and whatnot ground into those work gloves, and I’m not a manual laborer. I just wear them when I’m landscaping, sweeping, mowing, or using power tools repetitively.
Here’s another picture of Carnahan taking those gloves off after a long, grueling photo session:
Is it dirt, or is it shadow? Does Robin Carnahan have more than one pair of favorite work gloves? What on earth kinda hoity-toity has more than one pair of work gloves? Or does Robin Carnahan’s wardrobe and prop department have more than one pair of work gloves?
The third image from the Web site has a completely different set of gloves:
These are not her cowhide gloves. Those look like fabric gloves. Are they special tractor driving gloves? Does she have goggles and a scarf to go with them? Or am I the only peon in the state of Missouri who has a favorite pair of work gloves and uses them for most things?
Roy Blunt’s Web site depicts him in dozens of images with his hands showing, and none of them that I saw show him in work gloves. Roy Blunt is in government service, but unlike Robin Carnahan, he’s not pretending to be a brush-clearer like George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan.
Robin Carnhan’s Work Gloves: Wrong For Missouri.
(This post was far funnier in my head. Try to put yourself there for the full effect.)
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Or just unknown.
In a story about how the Auto-Tune The News guys are getting a television series, and we get this:
With this move, the Gregorys join a small but growing cadre of folks who have managed to move from the online space to television: The Onion, Fred and Sh*t My Dad Says, to name a few notables.
As we all know, The Onion started as an actual newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.
Or some of us know.
Put that on your Beloit College Mindset List, I guess.
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The new annual Beloit College Mindset list is out. You know, the list that indicates that this crop of college students is so young that they never drove a rear wheel car or never dialed a phone but always punched numbers, that sort of thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the things on this year’s list are kind of trivial changes, aren’t they?
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.
And so on.
Maybe it’s that Beloit College is now compelled by the list’s notoriety to put something out every year, but the kids don’t know how to write in cursive? Lands’ sakes (a saying kids these days don’t use), but I was taught cursive in elementary school, but one could argue that I don’t know how to write in cursive.
I think it says something about the flattening of our culture in the last couple of decades and perhaps how technology changes in since the middle of the 1990s haven’t been so revolutionary. We’ve had the Internet popularly and the Web mostly through that span, and no matter how fanboys spin it, the iPod is really just a souped up Walkman. A change in degree, but not a revolution.
Do you think in fifteen years these lists will be meaningful, or just silly? Or, worse, do you think these things will be in poor taste if most of the changes are bad (This year’s freshmen have never eaten ice cream since the FDA added it to the banned foods list.).
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I’m just a caveman, your modern science of economics confuses me. Which is why I don’t understand the new law of supply and demand I infer from this AP article: Oil up to near $76 in Europe amid economic worries:
Oil prices edged up for the first time in five days Tuesday as rallying stock markets in Europe and a weaker dollar masked concerns of a slowing global economic recovery that could dent demand for fuel.
So demand is going down, and the price goes up, huh? That’s so weird.
However, those of us with a lick of economic sense (I got mine from my high school Economics class with Miss Hutson) can suss out the real reason. Let me try rewriting that:
Oil prices edged up for the first time in five days Tuesday as a weaker dollar meant that it takes more of them to buy a fixed commodity, such as a barrel of oil, in an international market.
Is it true? Hey, I don’t know what made the price fluctuate, but I think I have a better grasp than the AP reporter of basic economics.
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Story: FDA considers revoking approval of Avastin for advanced breast cancer
Federal regulators are considering taking the highly unusual step of rescinding approval of a drug that patients with advanced breast cancer turn to as a last-ditch hope.
The debate over Avastin, prescribed to about 17,500 women with breast cancer a year, has become entangled in the politically explosive struggle over medical spending and effectiveness that flared during the battle over health-care reform: How should the government balance protecting patients and controlling costs without restricting access to cutting-edge, and often costly, treatments?
The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the recommendation of influential scientific advisers to revoke authorization of the drug to treat metastatic breast cancer. Contrary to initial research, new studies indicate that the benefits of the drug, which costs $8,000 a month, do not outweigh its risks, the advisory panel concluded.
Quip: They’re not Death Panels. They’re Not-Life Panels.
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This is just like the time I photocopied an entire book because the professor put all copies in the Marquette University Memorial Library on reserve, which would have meant I could borrow it in two hour blocs in the library itself, requiring a large number of two hour round trip bus rides to cut into my short evenings. No, I had a large number built into the prepaid photocopy card, and I used them. I’d probably do it again because I’m just as bad as any peer-to-peer guy when it comes to flouting the law.
Which is why I am reposting, in its entirety, this copyrighted work in its entirety:
Remember that any time you want to use the phrase “Print Paper = OK”, you need to credit it to Autogas and perhaps pay them a royalty, or you’re a thief.
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Power, trout needs must be balanced
Someone had better explain to me what “balance” means here.
Here’s the lede, so you can understand what the story is about:
Table Rock Dam was built to control flooding along the White River and, secondarily, to generate hydropower electricity for the region.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers runs the dam in concert with Southwestern Power Administration, a federal agency that markets electricity produced by White River hydropower dams.
Both find they must balance the needs of power generation and flood control with maintaining the health of the trout fishery below the dam.
They also have representatives on the White River Dissolved Oxygen Committee, which has worked for years to solve the problem.
Fritha Ohlson, civil engineer with Southwestern Power Administration and a committee member, said keeping oxygen levels up at Lake Taneycomo has not been cheap.
Southwestern Power buys liquid oxygen by the ton to inject inside the dam’s four turbines. Liquid oxygen mixes with the lake water and also cools it, both beneficial for Taneycomo trout.
“Our average use since 2001 to 2009 has been over 100 tons a year,” Ohlson said. “Liquid oxygen costs about $200 a ton, on average.”
Please, someone tell me how the needs of the trout outweigh the needs of the people who use power. For example, how many trout balance against the need of a single ventilator for a human? That’s determining balance, brothers and sisters. On one side of the scale, some number of fish and on the other side of the scale, people.
You might say I reduce it to extremes, but really, that’s what it comes down to. If you cannot defend a simple equation like this, you cannot defend the position that the needs must be balanced.
I’d happily accept considered, as in Trout Needs Considered in Power Generation.
But to put some number of fish on balance with a single human life, I cannot do it.
No, no, Brian J., one might say, we don’t mean turning off the ventilator for someone, we mean excess power consumption.
Like air conditioning, maybe some refrigeration for food storage?
Oh, no, excess.
You mean like electric cars?
Heavens, no!
How about those snazzy entertainment centers that hipnocrats have? A pile of recharging cords for iPhones, iPads, and laptops?
There’s your excess, brothers and sisters. But don’t expect a hipnocrat to go back to writing his or her thoughts in a paper diary instead of tweeting. Instead, expect hipnocrats to compel you to give up incandescent light bulbs and to turn your air conditioners up. For the greater good of a fish.
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I got tired of these old games just cluttering the shelves in my desk, so I decided to mount them on the wall:
I put some adhesive-backed Velcro on the back of the games and the loop side of the Velcro on the wall (with a couple of staples to help the adhesive). Now, when I want to play, I can just reach up and grab one for a dose of 1980 electronic blip goodness, and when I’m not playing, they display rather nicely.
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This is a very interesting book.
It’s a collection of connected short stories that take place over the course of 20,000 years as mankind travels to other planets in the solar system, advances in technology, and slowly loses its civilization until the dogs and then the ants take over.
That is, cheap land (hydroponics replaces farming, which leads to cheap land), cheap transportation, and a benevolent central government make it so all mankind, or at least the ones in America and Europe, can live on lots of land. Cities (including the city in the lead short story that leads to the name of the book) break down as there are fewer people to fund services that no one really uses any more, but the local governments insist upon providing. Then, agoraphobia sets in as man grows very accustomed to his surroundings and does not want to leave his homestead for anything. This leads to a surgeon who specializes in Martian anatomy failing to help a friend, a Martian philosopher who has discovered a philosophy that could advance mankind hundreds of thousands of years. Then, a descendent of the fellow learns how to build a star drive, and another descendent advances dogs to speaking and learning.
The book has a frame story as a scholarly tract relaying myths and legends of man. A dog scholar, way in the future, discusses each story and outlines the controversies between other dog scholars who might or might not believe the stories or true or that the race of man existed at all.
The book is a quick enough read, and it really looks into a number of themes of race (human) versus individuals and the programming of the race (in the book, man is unperfectable in that he will always be warlike and future non-human civilizations must be protected from his influence). However, it’s not that straight man is bad, since other animal races, when raised, retain some bloodlust and desire to hunt. So it’s a very thought-provoking book, and although you can somewhat figure out what Simak thinks, the author leaves you room to ponder.
That’s old school science fiction.
I understand a later edition of the book has an additional epilog added. I’ll have to hunt that one down so I can find out what that means. The book I read was the old edition.
I’ve read some Simak before even though I can’t find any reports on the book the blog here. I don’t mind reading another if I find it at a book fair or even on my own shelves.
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You know when they started changing the way American money looks after like 50 years of quarters and dollar bills to make them look more like foreign monies?
They were planning to devalue the currency even then.
Think about it, man. Suddenly, you’re looking at your pile of change on your dresser and you can’t tell your fifty different US quarters from Canadian money or your nickels from other silver coins, and suddenly your big, colorful five dollar bills have a 3-d image of Lincoln on them. You start thinking, this isn’t the money I grew up with. This isn’t real money at all.
Then, BAM! It ain’t.
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The conservative blogs are spilling some pixels on an operation known, charmingly, as F*ck Tea.
Last summer, Democrats argued that the tea party movement was the AstroTurf creation of corporate groups. Now that the grass-roots conservative resurgence has emerged as a clear force on the right, the left is making a different case: that tea parties are simply the enemy.
To that end, the Agenda Project, a new, progressive group with roots in New York’s fundraising scene and a goal of strengthening the progressive movement, has launched the “F*ck Tea” project, which is aimed, the group’s founder Erica Payne wrote in an e-mail this morning, “to dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause.”
“”We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea,” Payne told POLITICO. “Products like a Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy (Beck B Scrubbin) and others are perfect holiday gifts or just a great way to say, ‘I love you and our country’ to your spouse, friend or family.”
This is not a political movement. It’s a retail operation aimed at people with a political point of view, like a Harriet Carter for the hipnorats, although probably not as successful.
I find it encouraging for two reasons.
But I have to hand it to the people behind it. They know how to get the word out to the very people they want to court: trigger the opposition.
(Link seen on Trog. See also Ed Driscoll and Hot Air.)
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This book collects some humorous anecdotes and quips from each president, ranked by how humorous the presidents were (according to Bob Dole, I guess) as well as the Al Gore and George W. Bush, who were running for President in the year in which the book was written.
Only a few of the anecdotes are truly examples of the President’s wit, and most of those come from recent presidents whose every utterance and quip lies either in archival television footage or in Presidential library complexes. Other anecdotes include amusing anecdotes about the President or the President’s family or insults and barbs directed at the President.
That said, it gives a little historical insight into the conditions of each President and his times and tribulations that everyone could probably use now and then. However, the arrangement of the Presidents not in historical order makes this a little more tricky to put into historical context. It also provides perspective into how vile politics has been throughout history. Somehow, in our current self-flagellating ways, we have forgotten this in a quest to be the worst ever at everything.
And as every one of these books leads to Jeopardy!, reading this book let me question the answer “This US President’s son died as a pilot in World War I.” So I got to impress my wife anyway.
A good little read.
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As the Facebooker amongst you know, I’ve baked a lot of zucchini bread. I had eight zucchini plants in my garden, and they produced a bumper crop of summer squash. I discovered that you can more easily give away a dessert bread than a summer squash. So I went onto the Internet and got a recipe for chocolate zucchini bread.
However, as it gets to the middle of August, I’ve found that I’m running really low on one of the ingredients.
There just aren’t that many psychics around these parts. I’m going to have to start substituting in some dog whisperers or something.
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In addition to the teddy bear trophy that she wants in the worst way, note that MfBJN has found one of those wookiee suits she always talks about and misspells:
Apparently, the rumor on the Internet is that Adidas is actually going to make these.
She’s going to have some kind of Christmas this year.
(Link seen on NeatoGeek.)
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Stone Temple Pilots coming to Family Arena
The only way that could get any more incongruous would be if the next part of it was To Open For Muppets on Ice.
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