I was looking though some old postings and found this little gem, which is as true as ever:
It is a sad real-world fact that most legislators, when presented with something they do not understand, almost always attempt to ban it. This probably started with the first neolithic fire-tamer . . . who was probably beaten to death with sticks when the tribal shaman saw it. Senator Hatch is showing all the finely nuanced reactions of Ug the caveman here.
This was in reaction to Senator Orrin Hatch introducing a bill to make peer-to-peer file sharing illegal back in 2004.
If you objected to high school students getting spied on in their homes by school district-issued webcams, maybe junior high students under nonstop cam surveillance on school grounds by a tubby administrator with a chinbeard (but no chin) will be the charm [. . .] I’m creeped out by the obvious glee with which Beardy McBeardsworth describes his prey at a Bronx junior high school in almost exactly the same tones you hear from Air Force flacks narrating thermal footage of hits on insurgents. But I must acknowledge that the concept of school as a place where the rights of students are severely curtailed dates back at least to my own schooling during King Philip’s War, was recently upheld by the Supreme Court in the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case, and seems to enjoy broad popular support. For the majority of Americans alive today, the function of school has always been to break you for a workplace where you will meet obstruction and indignity every day, be subject to every type of invasive surveillance, and generally, as even that greatest of working stiffs Jerry Langford put it, “have idiots plaguing your life.”
My new Olympic hero, with a gold medal in press relations, Sven Kramer:
Update, 25 February: If you felt that Kramer was showing Hubris in the clip above, you might also feel that Nemesis showed up right on schedule, too:
After 25 laps around the Richmond Olympic Oval, Sven Kramer of the Netherlands crossed the finish line Tuesday and raised his arms in triumph, having secured — or so he thought — his second Olympic record and gold medal of these Winter Games.
Within seconds, Kramer’s celebration turned icy cold. When his coach, Gerard Kemkers, caught up to him during his cool-down lap, he palmed his head and delivered the bad news: Kramer was disqualified for incorrectly changing lanes with eight laps remaining in the 10,000-meter race.
Kramer, who has dominated the distance since finishing seventh at the 2006 Olympics, spiked his glasses upon learning his fate. He looked as if he wanted to punch Kemkers, who later accepted full blame for what happened. He said he glanced up from recording split times, became momentarily disoriented and barked at Kramer to switch to the inner lane.
The most recent season of The Guild got released on DVD this week. I’m certainly going to be ordering a copy, but there appears to be a hitch: it’s not (yet) being carried by my usual online suppliers. Amazon.ca doesn’t have it listed yet, and Chapters/Indigo says it won’t be available until May 25th.
Amazon.com says it’s shipping right now.
And this will be another case of “nobody wants it” in Canada when it finally does become available through Canadian channels because anyone who wanted it already ordered it from US sources.
The Super Bowl is one of those great annual events that is uniquely American — except for the Roman numerals. I think those still belong to the Vatican.
If you missed it, the final score was Saints, XXXI and Colts, XVII.
The Super Bowl represents what we Americans are all about: creative commercials occasionally interrupted by violence. During the six-hour broadcast, there were only 11 minutes of actual, live football action. Some of the commercial breaks were so long that, when we finally came back to the game, I had forgotten which teams were playing.
And what better Norman Rockwell-esque ritual could I have with my kids than to watch 20 erectile dysfunction commercials to every snap of the football? “Daddy, why are those people in bathtubs watching the sun set?” I just tell them the people lost their homes to foreclosure.
Football is a lot like sex: countless hours of advertising how good it will be with only 11 minutes of actual action. Then, for me, there is always that awkward moment at the end when my credit card is declined.
I’ve been living under a bunch of misapprehensions about the “sport” of Curling. I admit, I haven’t subjected these revelations to any peer review or fact checking, but if the climate “scientists” can get away with that kind of sloppiness, why can’t I?
* The movie Death Race 2000 was loosely based on curling. * Curling has been described as shuffleboard plus ice plus chess times football plus ninjas times a grizzly bear plus a nuclear explosion minus badminton. * Curling is banned in most of Europe due to making their heads explode with its awesomeness * The stones in curling are made from brimstone mined from the very depths of hell. * Placing a stone perfectly in the house has been rated the hardest act in any sport, harder than hitting a fast ball or catching the golden snitch. * Due to the excitement, curling is not recommended for the elderly, those with heart conditions, pregnant women, and people who suck and don’t like awesome things. * In ancient times, only the greatest, strongest warriors were chosen to play curling… and housewives good at sweeping. * No one is sure where curling came from, but most guess it was a collaborative project of Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Jack Bauer, and Fred Thompson.
I’m just as happy that my area didn’t receive any of the snow that’s been blanketing areas to the south of us. Eric Raymond wasn’t as lucky:
Now I understand the Viking Era So I’m sitting here, looking out my window at the 3-foot snow and the 5-foot icicles, reverting to ancestral type. Thinking:
And Ken Burnside points out even more opportunity for enriching historical knowledge:
The reason why Minnesota and Wisconsin were settled by Norwege and Swenske isn’t because the other cultures couldn’t hack the winters.
It’s because compared to 19th century Norway and Sweden, Upper Minneosta and Upper Wisconsin are *paradise*.
“Look! Farmland! Lakes for fishing! Timber and lumber to build from! And no morass of petty aristocracy to tell you no. And, hey, it only snows for five whole months here! They won’t believe THAT back in the old country!”
The only reason there weren’t more of them was because a lot of Norski STILL remember the marketing flimflam that was Greenland. They had a completely justified 900 year old mistrust of ANYONE telling them about ‘great farmland, only snows for five months of the year, plenty of timber…’
Now that I have a manly garage, with a manly workbench, I was delighted to receive for Christmas a Shop Vac. It’s a magical device that sucks up all sorts of debris, even liquid. It has attachments for everything. I think one attachment is for haircuts, but I haven’t tried it yet. The Shop Vac is gray and black and reminds me of R2D2 so much that I expect it to jack into my breaker panels and reprogram my DVR.
My point is that my Shop Vac is totally awesome. That is, unless I try to move it. It has wheels, but at the first sign of movement, the Shop Vac starts squirming and tossing off attachments like a balloonist heading into a volcano. The hose becomes like a spastic elephant trunk. It will find all of the loose objects in your garage and fling them one-by-one into oil spills and darkened spider nests. If you focus your attention on the flailing vacuum hose, the power cord will wrap itself around your legs and try to trip you into the pyramid of old paint cans. And the screaming. Good lord, the little wheels scream on the concrete floor. It’s Shop Vac language for “LEAVE ME ALONE! DO NOT MOVE ME! I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY TENTACLE!”
The worst of it, if I can pick just one thing, is that the situation totally ruins my manly vibe. I live in fear that Shelly will come into the garage and see me losing a cage match to R2D2.
L. Neil Smith looks at the sad remains of a once-great Muppet:
My only child turned twenty years of age early last month, so it has been some time since I kept daily track with her of the various comings and goings of the diverse and colorful inhabitants of Sesame Street.
Thus it was with considerable dismay that I recently learned that my favorite of these denizens had been abducted, tortured, brainwashed by the vile forces of political correctness, and returned to society a broken, pitiable shadow of his former self, rather like Winston Smith in 1984, after rats had been used to force him to scream “Do it to Julia!”
A product of merciless North Korean-style mind-conditioning, the great blue googly-eyed Cookie Monster now mouths mindless, robotic platitudes and slogans like “cookies are a sometimes snack”. He even eats broccoli — the Green Death — in public, like a circus geek consuming broken lightbulbs and handsful of worms. Gone is the joyous hedonist we knew who was a living exemplar of Robert Heinlein’s famous dicta, “Dum vivamus, vivamus!” and “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!”
He has become just another “progressive” icon, different-looking on the outside, yes, but filled up on the inside with the same bland, gray, unappetizing pablum as Smokey the Bear, Bono, and Janeane Garofalo.
