This picture (click it for a full-size, easier-to-read version)
represents an attempt by Kitty Burns Florey (in an article on Slate) to diagram one of Sarah Palin's sentences from Palin's interview with Charles Gibson a few weeks back. The original: "I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people." I hope this kind of thing catches on; diagramming sentences for Mrs. DiPego back in 7th grade was no fun at all, but nowadays it feels to me like as much fun as Sudoku (you should read no irony in that statement; I mean it earnestly).
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Diagramming Sarah Palin's utterances
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
So painfully dumb
Sarah Palin can't name a Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade.
And she can't name a single newspaper that she reads.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. Videos are linked because Facebook's note importer sucks.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
WTF?! Army unit to be stationed within the USA
This video
contains a report based on this ArmyTimes article, which is just plain scary. Is there really a need for trained killers to be patrolling US soil? Some quotes:
- They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ('Cause these happen all the time, right?)
- Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area. (Isn't this what the National Guard is for?)
- The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them. (Isn't beating people up what cops are for? And really good at?)
- The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. “I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body. I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.” (Awesome, dude. Totally fucking awesome.)
Friday, September 12, 2008
Sarah Palin, foreign policy dim bulb
Anyone who has read snippets from or actually seen Sarah Palin's interview with ABC News's Charles Gibson must know by now that she's completely unqualified to be any kind of executive officer, much less Vice-President. Jack Shafer on Slate put it succinctly:
Without being smarmy about it or unfurling gotcha questions, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson demonstrated that he knows volumes more about national security and foreign policy than does Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.If you've not seen any of this, do yourself a favor and watch it, and then make sure that you make an informed choice in November, and do NOT vote for McCain-Palin.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Mozart effect? Nah.
My friend and colleague Elizabeth Hellmuth (Lisa) Margulis had a nice press release from the University of Arkansas today. She briefly addresses some of the silliness about the so-called Mozart effect and how pleasure from listening to music both is and isn't like that derived from sex and chocolate (one, the other, or both).
I've written about stuff like the Mozart effect before (e.g., Baby Bee Bright), and this kind of thing deserves to be mocked, poked, and tortured at every chance. Nosing around the Web for Mozart effect and similar products turns up astonishing crap, like a book called the The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit by "music visionary Don Campbell" (those four words in quotes produce 57 hits when Googled); Mr. Campbell as pusher-of-the-Mozart-effect is briefly discussed here by a less credulous source. The CDs you can purchase to accompany the book have music that "has been specially selected, sequenced, edited, and mastered to realize the transformative powers found in Mozart’s compositions." The different CDs have different magical powers. One Strengthens the Mind. Another Heals the Body. Others are to Unlock the Creative Spirit and for Focus and Clarity. Awesome stuff!
Friday, August 22, 2008
McCain and reproductive rights
For those who are pro-choice and considering voting for McCain, please note the following from The New Republic:
Life Sentence
by Sarah Blustain
Stop kidding yourself: John McCain is a pro-life zealot.
Post Date Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Moreover, say advocates, he is not open to dialogue. "Whether it's abortion care, birth control, or comprehensive sex education, McCain is not moderate or a maverick," says Donna Crane, policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America and a key lobbyist on these questions. "We never ask--and we never hear pro-choice Republicans question--whether McCain will be with us on a vote. He's always on the wrong side."
read more
Friday, August 08, 2008
Police shoot and kill dogs in botched drug raid
The nanny government has added yet another pair of innocent lives to its list of those mistakenly killed in the name of the "war on drugs" (see here for an exciting interactive map from the Cato Institute of botched police raids of all kinds!), in this case a pair of dogs. This story is several days old, and still developing, but here's the short of it: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, in Prince George's County, Maryland (it's a part-time job), was delivered a package of marijuana (32 lbs., apparently) in a (clever) scheme used by drug dealers in which drugs are sent to innocents and intercepted by dealers. Mayor Calvo, upon arriving home, brought the package inside, and shortly thereafter P.G. County police burst into his home (critically, they did not knock and announce their intentions), shot the dogs (the cops felt "threatened"; the dogs were black labs), handcuffed Calvo and his mother-in-law on the floor by the dead, bleeding dogs, and interrogated the two (the people, not the dead dogs) for an extended period of time.
Apparently the cops did not have a no-knock warrant (although a spokeperson initially claimed they did; but such warrants are not issued in Maryland), and did not produce a warrant after entering when Calvo requested to see one. They have been exceptionally unapologetic about their actions. They did not inform the Berwyn Heights police of their intention to raid the Calvo household. Et cetera. They fucked up in many ways, violating not only decency and common sense, but also the law. All because of a 32-pound package of pot. Calvo has since asked the FBI to investigate the P.G. County police's actions, and they will do so.
In addition the Washington Post story linked above, there is additional big-media coverage of this story on CNN, and a very informative blog post on the Nation Builder blog.
This is a tragedy in many ways, but for those who are more moved by animals being killed than by the same happening to humans, maybe this will get your dander up enough for you to be worried about the way the government operates in the name of fighting the use of marijuana.
Via Metafilter, of course.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Grounds for immediate dismissal
From NewScientist.com (via Metafilter): "Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles." (continue reading)
This is no surprise, of course, but shouldn't teaching religion in a science classroom be grounds for firing, or at least a declaration of incompetence?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Proper dissent; or, One way to stop the insane "war on drugs"
In Time magazine, the creators of The Wire (which can be viewed as a several-season long [and compellingly entertaining] argument against the insanity of the so-called "war" on drugs) along with some frequent writers, briefly and eloquently urge US citizens to exercise their power to do something sane (no worries, there are no spoilers in the article!):
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest ...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Garfield
I truly loved Garfield when I was a kid. I'm sure many kids (and maybe some lucky adults) still love the comic. But it loses virtually all of its oomph when viewed through adult eyes (which is really sad, if I think about it too long). Thankfully, today on Metafilter, someone posted a link to a site that has many Garfield comics with Garfield and his thoughts removed. The result is variably weird, sad, funny, indescribable, and on and on.
Along with this link were many others that revive Garfield in various ways:
- Garfield without his thought balloons (a likely precursor)
- The Garfield randomizer (coherence is a virtual lock!)
- A Garfield Comic Creator (on the National Institutes of Health website!)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Fuck the Senate
The Senate gave the telecom industry legal protection for its (illegal) eavesdropping activities today. Retroactively. Assholes, especially the spineless Democratic weasels who voted to give the telecom industry immunity. From the Salon link:
"The Senate today -- led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus -- will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate and obtain a judicial ruling regarding the Bush administration's years-long illegal spying programs aimed at Americans."
Friday, January 04, 2008
-5 > -6 (the > symbol means "greater than")
This is awesomely pathetic, and wonderful, and depressing as hell. It's bad enough that people waste their money on lottery tickets; it's even worse when they can't even figure out if they've fecking won.
From the November 3, 2007 Manchester Evening News:
A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it.The rest of the article is here. For those who are confused by the apparently very cold temperatures, those are in degrees Celsius.
The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.
To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.
But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.
Via Chance News.
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