During his visit to the U.S., the pope will probably talk about income inequality, and many reporters will nod approvingly, write down the quotes, and then hand them off to the unpaid intern to be transcribed. It’s a big issue. An important one. In the view of many progressives, the ultra-super-rich extracted all their money from the poor. Think of Bill Gates in a homeless shelter, kicking over cots at 2 a.m. and blackjacking transients, demanding they fork over $49.99 for a Windows 95 license, and you get the idea. The ultra-rich have probably pooled their money to develop space-based matter-dematerialization beams just so they can transport the coins from the “have a penny, take a penny” trays at the gas station.
The “rich” are never people like the Clintons, who acquired their wealth by the sweat of their brows, toiling in the harsh icy policy-mines of Davos. They’re not the guys who make a bundle off some clever bit of tech, sell the company, then pledge to spend a fraction of their fortune on outfitting polar bears with inflatable vests to help them survive their imminent inundation in the boiling waters of the Arctic. They’re not people like John Kerry, who married his way into a pile of money derived from a ubiquitous condiment; they’re not people like Apple CEO Tim Cook, because c’mon, he’s gay. They’re not the Kennedys, because the Kennedys could strike oil on their Hyannis Port compound, pay African orphans a dollar a day to work the pumps by hand, build a pipeline that ran through a protected Monarch-butterfly preserve, and the media would still hang halos over their heads because JFK was martyred in Dallas by a free-floating toxic cloud of right-wing hatred that inhabited the brain of a well-meaning Marxist.
These are rich people, but they’re good rich people, because you can imagine any one of them writing a check to Planned Parenthood with the words “keep up the excellent mammograms” in the memo line.
No, the bad rich people are hedge-fund managers, people who inherited something, and well-paid CEOs of companies that make things we don’t like or resent having to pay too much to get. They need to be taxed good and hard, according to advocates of the confiscatory state such as the nimbus-haired Bernie Sanders. Nothing says “the future and its bright new ideas” like the image of a liver-spotted limb thrusting deep into someone else’s pocket and pulling out the guts of a golden goose. Sanders’s proposals were estimated to cost $18 trillion over ten years, an amusing projection — apparently after a decade the economy just seizes up and we’re reduced to paying for our bread with chickens or bits of ironmongery.
James Lileks, “It’s Time to Fix America’s Income-Inequality Crisis Once and for All!”, National Review, 2015-09-24.
August 20, 2017
QotD: The rich
August 19, 2017
How to Safely Watch The Eclipse or CNN
Published on 18 Aug 2017
Remy has a few helpful tips for safely watching large orange balls of gas.
Written by Remy. Produced by Austin Bragg
How bad can a business graphic get? This bad
Found on Colby Cosh’s Twitter feed:
CUT TO DESIGN MEETING
“We need something like a pie chart, but worse.”
“Sure thing, boss.”#PieChartsKillKittens pic.twitter.com/lXJ6SKYxNc
— Thomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar) August 16, 2017
"Bet you can't violate every principle in 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information' with one chart."
"Hold my beer."— W. Dow Rieder (@Riderius) August 17, 2017
QotD: “I’m too old for this”
There is a lot that is annoying, and even terrible, about aging. The creakiness of the body; the drifting of the memory; the reprising of personal history ad nauseam, with only yourself to listen.
But there is also something profoundly liberating about aging: an attitude, one that comes hard won. Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: “I’m too old for this.”
This line is about to become my personal mantra. I have been rehearsing it vigorously, amazed at how amply I now shrug off annoyances that once would have knocked me off my perch.
A younger woman advised me that “old” may be the wrong word, that I should consider I’m too wise for this, or too smart. But old is the word I want. I’ve earned it.
Dominique Browning, “I’m Too Old for This”, New York Times, 2015-08-08.
August 15, 2017
The Civil Service on Helping Foreign Nations
Published on 23 Nov 2010
Taken from Yes, Prime Minister
August 13, 2017
CBC Comedy exists to make us appreciate private-sector comedians that much more
In the National Post, Tristin Hopper gently points out that the taxpayers are not getting positive results from their involuntary funding of yet another Canadian Broadcasting Corporation “comedy”:
If there was ever a textbook example of the terrible, bone-chilling things a government can do to humour, it’s CBC Comedy.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the general phenomenon of comedy appearing on CBC. I’m talking instead about cbc.ca/comedy, a section of the CBC website devoted in part to publishing satirical news headlines.
Although it’s existed for three years, chances are you’ve never heard of it. Because while CBC doesn’t publicly release its website analytics, all signs point to the site having utterly dismal traffic.
CBC Comedy’s social media accounts are embarrassingly devoid of attention. On Twitter, posts will commonly fail to attract a single retweet or like — meaning that they aren’t even being promoted by the writers who created them.
On Facebook, a sample of 53 recent satirical news posts found that they averaged 65 reactions apiece — a standard routinely bested by Newfoundland grandmothers.
So where can you go to get your regular ration of full maple-flavoured online comedy? That is, something actually funny, unlike CBC “Comedy”.
Of course, there already is a Canadian Onion: The Beaverton, an online satire site founded in 2010.
The Beaverton became so widely read that its producers secured a show on the Comedy Network. Meanwhile, their posts routinely tear up social media, constantly topping 1,000 likes on Facebook and dominating the Canada sub-forum on Reddit.
They are a motivated, private sector venture that has arguably mastered the form — and yet our public broadcaster insists on propping up a piss poor competitor.
In head-to-head competition, The Beaverton routinely spanks anything that comes out of CBC Comedy offices.
H/T to Chris Myrick for the link.
August 12, 2017
Troll the Patent Trolls
Published on 11 Aug 2017
Patent trolls are on the run. Let’s finish them off.
———
It’s been a bad year for patent trolls, from a Supreme Court decision squelching their ability to funnel lawsuits to East Texas, to this week’s ruling that Personal Audio LLC can’t claim it owns a patent on the entirety of podcasting. In the latest Mostly Weekly, Reason’s Andrew Heaton explores what patent trolls are, the damage they do, and the next step in driving them out of courtrooms and back into dank caves.Trolls camp out on piles of weak and frivolous patents, hoping to one day sue inventors and businesses. Many of the patents they register or buy are vague, representing novel ideas only insofar as trolls are innovative at finding things they didn’t invent to claim legal ownership of. It doesn’t matter that these patents wouldn’t hold up in court, because a business is more likely to pay off a troll than to hire an expensive attorney to fight them. Trolls suck more than twenty billion dollars out of the economy each year.
The parasitical nature of “non-practicing entities” (the PC term for trolls) has raised questions about whether the modern patent system helps or hinders innovation, and if the best solution is for comprehensive reform or just to burn the whole thing down.
Heaton has an idea to hinder patent trolls. It may not be a silver bullet, but it will definitely piss them off.
Mostly Weekly is hosted by Andrew Heaton with headwriter Sarah Rose Siskind.
Script by Andrew Heaton with writing assistant from Sarah Siskind
Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.
Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.
Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood.
In reaction to the movie Dunkirk, Hollywood reloads with daring new concepts!
Kurt Schlichter goes behind the scenes in Hollywood to let us know what movies we’ll be watching soon:
People say the movie industry has lost its way and alienated its audience, but I’m super-excited about the future of movies, especially in light of Tinseltown’s current trend towards goose-stepping leftist conformity! How can that go wrong?
[…]
Xe-Day: After the racist, sexist, and homophobic nightmare that was Dunkirk left audiences literally shaking, moviegoers are begging to see a war movie that doesn’t just focus on the people who were actually there or things that really happened. Well, your wish is Hollywood’s command! You thought you knew the whole story of the Normandy operation, but what you really knew was the phallo people of pallor version that minimized and invisibled the contributions of trans soldiers of heft! Xe-Day is the stirring story of the she-roes who didn’t let their birth genders or carbohydrate addictions get in the way of defeating the Nazis! With the cry of “Come on you she-males, you want to live forever!” these pudgy paratroopers aren’t about to allow the Third Reich to mansplain away their girl power! It’s no longer just Band of Brothers anymore! It’s band of brothers, sisters, and others! Opening this Winter Solstice!
1984 II: This exciting reboot turns expectations on their heads as courageous social justice warriors root out bad thinking thought criminals like Winston Smith! You’ll thrill as angry college students confront people with ideas they don’t like, and punish and kill them for daring to be different – all in the name of diversity! When this smash hit is over, you too will love Big Mother!
Dirty Harriet: Take that, cro-magnon Clint Eastwood clichés! This modern cop movie teaches us that every life matters, except blue ones! Female-identifying (but curious!) Detective Harriet Callahan gets all the dirty jobs, like running diversity classes for those knuckle dragging patrolman who refuse to abandon their wrong thinking. Pairing up with a differently-abled Muslim dwarf of color, she busts the real villains…the people trying to keep order on the streets! And she does it with hugs! Go ahead, make her day – by admitting your privilege!
Son of an Inconvenient Truth: It’s his third try, and this time it’s personal! Al Gore takes time away from his busy schedule of eating, dining, having dinner, and pestering innocent masseuses, to explain in detail why his previous predictions of total climate Armageddon that were supposed to come true a couple years ago haven’t. Spoiler Alert – it’s all Trump’s fault!
August 10, 2017
The Treaty of Westphalia
Published on 20 Nov 2008
Treaty of Westphalia
August 7, 2017
How to Swear Like a Brit – Anglophenia Ep 29
Published on 20 May 2015
Swearing is a fun stress reliever, and the British do it so well. Anglophenia’s Kate Arnell provides a master class in swearing like a Brit.
August 6, 2017
QotD: Confessions of a book-hoarder
Well, tomorrow I’d bring up stuff from the basement. So the next day I go downstairs to the utility room. The floor’s wet. The rug is sopping. I open the freezer, and discover that I’d locked the freezer door before closing it. The door had been open all night. Dead meat, droopy brats, sloshy ice cream — and water everywhere. The utility room was full of boxes from the storage room — we’d just had some shelves installed, and I’d moved out crates I’ve hauled around since my dorm room days. Books. Hundreds of books.
I felt the sides of the boxes to see if they’d wicked up the horrid slurry from the fridge — were they ruined? Would I have to throw out all these old, venerable friends? Everything I read and saved from 1976 to 1997 — were they lost to me forever?
They were dry.
You cannot imagine my disappointment.
This was the perfect opportunity to be rid of these mummified albatrosses forever. Friends, let’s be honest: Books are a curse. We’d all love to have a library with shelves stretching up to heaven, a ladder on rollers that lets you access the 17th level, where you keep the minor Polish poets and the monographs on eighth-century Chinese mandarins. But you end up with boxes of books in the basement, and you cannot part with them. Simply throwing them away feels sinful — hey, why not build a time machine and go back to Nazi-land and burn them, dude? You could sell them, but there’s something depressing about getting $7 for 70 pounds of paperbacks. It’s like auctioning your kid’s baby pictures on eBay and getting a high bid of a buck-fifty. The last time I divested my excess books I dumped them off on a Goodwill dock in the middle of the night, and I felt like someone pushing the family dog out of the car on a country road. The books will find a good home. I’m sure there’s a farmer around here they can live with.
James Lileks, Star Tribune, 2004-07-11.
August 5, 2017
QotD: Harley-Davidson bikes
One thing I resent about motorcycles, especially Harleys, is that they make the heavens tremble as if before the approach of a God. But the “god” in question sometimes turns out to be a greasy, 50 year old, biker with a prison record, a meth problem and a history of wife abuse. Unless of course he is one of those boomer executives who have taken to riding Harleys, in which case you can scratch the meth problem.
Originally posted to the old blog, 2004-09-14.
August 3, 2017
Not the Nine O’Clock News – Monty Python worshipers
Published on 21 Jan 2009
A sketch from the british series Not the nine o’clock news commenting on the controversy created by the Monty Python’s film – Life of Brian.
August 1, 2017
QotD: NFL preseason game passion and intensity
The NFL pre-season is getting underway, with teams using their matchups to assess the rookies and free agents who all hope to make the team. The Vikings played the Arizona Cardinals in Minnesota on Saturday night. The new coach of the Cardinals was formerly the head coach of the Vikings. The Cardinals had a last-second, fourth-down, desperation play in the last regular season game which knocked the Vikings out of the playoff race. There was thought to be plenty of incipient drama to this game. This article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press talks about the lack of excitement in the game:
Last and best sign it’s the preseason: The Vikings were offside on a fourth-quarter kickoff. Twice. In succession.
Reposted from the old blog (no longer online), 2004-08-15.
July 31, 2017
QotD: Naming Mount McKinley as an amusing “up yours” gesture
Just one thing makes me regret the change. “Mount McKinley” was originally named as a amusing “up yours” gesture with which I have enormous sympathy.
The story told by the prospector who pinned the moniker on the mountain is that he had crossed paths in the wilds of Alaska with two advocates of “free silver.” This was a political craze that, like the Dreyfus Affair or the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, took over an entire civilization for a while, but now defies easy explanation. The “silverites” were Western populists and farmers who wanted silver to be accepted as currency and minted into coin “freely” by the government, as gold then was — but at a face price far above silver’s market value. This would have expanded the money supply explosively, letting the chronically indebted off the hook.
Most economists now regard the silverites as having had a ridiculous answer to real problems with a gold standard. But the important point is that the prospector, Frank Dickey, ran into classic monetary cranks of a type that still exists. And he had done so in a unique situation which permitted no immediate escape. One shudders upon envisioning such a hell.
Dickey got so tired of his companions’ laborious tirades — one imagines them arguing with him long, long after he had stopped arguing back — that when they ran across an impressive mountain, he immediately decided to name it after the new presidential nominee McKinley, Great Satan of the silverites. As the Secretary of the Interior’s Order No. 3337 points out, William McKinley never visited or had any other connection with the mountain, or with Alaska. He was, for Dickey’s purposes, a punchline.
Colby Cosh, “Mount McKinley was a most amusing ‘up yours’ aimed at monetary cranks”, National Post, 2015-09-01.
