Just So You Know

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

A trenchant question, searching for an answer

Just So You Know

While looking for the answer to a completely different question, I ran across this nugget at Yahoo Answers:

Should politicians who fillibuster be tazed?
And put on Americas funniest?

This from a person named “Dr. Spanky”.  Oddly, the site doesn’t appear to list where s/he went to med school or garnered a PhD, but since it appeared, ignoring the inherent irony of the site’s name, on Yahoo Answers, you know it’s a credible and important question, needing an answer.

Or not, as it turns out. Most of the several answers were provided in what I think was the spirit of the question. One, however, I think his name was “Buzzkill”, responded:

No, because the rules specifically allow for that activity.

You cannot (reasonably) punish someone for following the rules. All you can do is change the rules.

And since he’s flagged as a “Top Contributor”, whatever that implies, I guess there’s supposed to be some authority behind his revelation, for which we’re all better off. I’m sure that his next act, after posting that clarification, was to go out and yell at the neighbor kids to get off his god damned lawn.

[Wik] Apparently, I ran across that question while it was still fresh, and Buzzkill’s comment was less than a minute old. Serendipity, I guess. Anyway, the discussion’s already degenerated to whinging about brown shirts with Tasers, how they should actually taser the guy who started a war based on lies, and the usual bullshit claptrap. It was fun for the couple minutes it lasted, though.

[Alsø wik] But wait - the fun’s not quite over yet! This, from the (appropriately) self-monikered “Deep Thought”:

Why stop at tazering for filibusters? I’m sure there is good money to be made if you just let people tazer Robert Byrd for fun. Think of the potential. 535 members of Congress. Millions of upset voters. We could pay off the deficit.


Posted by Patton on 09/19/07 at 08:50 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Monday, September 10, 2007

I Made This

Holy Shit!Just So You Know

Well… we did.

Linus John:

image

... and with a very sleep-deprived papa, enjoying the soothing tones of Cuban dance music played at deafening volume. Good kid. (Nota bene: even on no sleep with a new infant in the house, I still look at least 5-8 years younger than my actual age. Good genes, evidently!)

image


Posted by Johno on 09/10/07 at 08:54 PM
Holy Shit! • Just So You Know • Permalink

Monday, August 20, 2007

That’s my boy

Holy Shit!Just So You Know

The other day, I detailed my son’s incisive reasoning in regard to human-robot relations.  Today, he made his Dad proud once more.  We were down in the basement, playing around a bit, when John had a new idea for a game:

Dad, you be the cops, and I’ll be the Blues Brothers.

My heart just leapt.  Then, not fifteen minutes later, he picked up a stick, handed it to me, and told me:

Let’s fight.  You bring a sword, and I’ll bring a gun.

Such strong tactical awareness in a child not even four and a half years old. 


Posted by Buckethead on 08/20/07 at 11:50 PM
Holy Shit! • Just So You Know • Permalink

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sounds like sound advice to me

Just So You Know

My son turned to me, and said, “Let me tell you the rules about robots.” Enumerating them with his fingers, he laid them out for me:

  1. Don’t burn yourself
  2. Keep telling them what to do
  3. Stay smarter than the robots

My son has come up with a new three rules for robots.  And you know, I think they are a vast improvement on Asimov’s original Robotic Laws.

[Wik] Later in the trip, he added a fourth law:

  • Don’t let the robots into the woods, they might break themselves


Posted by Buckethead on 08/19/07 at 06:26 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Friday, August 17, 2007

But they seem so manly, with the outfits and the tigers and whatnot…

Just So You Know

Apparently Messrs Siegfried and Roy have decided to publicly own what has been blatantly obvious to everyone but Siegfried and Roy for years.

Note the word “schwul”, which made this Minister laugh out loud when he read it.

[Wik]Which is funny because the adjective “schwul” means “queer” or “humid”; and the adjective “hitze” means “hot” in both the ambient-temperature sense and the libidinous sense.  And when I saw the article, I remembered one time rappin’ to some fly madchens at this little dive I frequented...*I* was talking about the weather; *they* were hearing about what a flaming homo I was. 


Posted by GeekLethal on 08/17/07 at 09:39 AM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Henry Rollins Interview

Just So You Know

Color me giddy. Henry Rollins does an interview with Mother Jones.

I fucking love the guy. No, I can’t stand the unibrow or the massive SEARCH AND DESTROY tattoo on the back. I tend to prefer my men clean and slightly pretty. But HOLY COW. I can still hear Salt on a Slug and Family Man in my head at the mention of his name.

Strangely I just saw Johnny Mnemonic the other day and I had the pleasure of Mr. Rollins’ company onscreen. I thought he and Ice T were good in that film. You can see Ice T just starting to get the hang of acting.

Good stuff. Entertain yourselves, no don’t get mad at me for reading Mother Jones. I was following a link about credit card use in the US and stumbled upon the article. And I’m still looking for the damned credit card article for my other blog.


Posted by Mapgirl on 08/16/07 at 10:11 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Come dig a hole in Wyoming!

Just So You Know

We come to the end of our educational series, “Alternate State Mottoes for Stupid States” with a state that is last on many lists, no matter how ordered, Wyoming.  There is surprisingly much to say about a state that 99.83% of America’s population has wisely chosen not to live in:

  • Come dig a hole in Wyoming!
  • The Cowboy State.  Other Village People not allowed
  • WyOMFG!
  • ET’s Summer Home
  • Cedant arma togae
  • First to make the tactical error of allowing women to vote
  • Less is more.  But more is more, too
  • Square, but fun
  • Rodeo riding is not gay
  • Don’t Feed Grizzly Bears.  They Eat People.
  • Don’t Feed Cowboys.  They Eat People.
  • The other square state
  • Home of the majestic jackalope
  • Largely Balrog Free
  • Woefully underdeveloped and tragically cowboyified
  • Come for the arid emptiness, stay for the arid emptiness
  • Save a horse, ride a Wyomingite
  • Yogi lives in Jellystone Park, fucko
  • Got Geothermal Activity?
  • Join the Dick Cheney Memorial Hunt Club and bag a lawyer!
  • No limit on lawyers!
  • It’s Wyoming, Baby
  • It takes decades of training to become a competent cowpoker
  • Brokeback Mountain is in Faggotty Colorado
  • In Bauxite, the Future
  • Rocky Mountain Oysters, it’s what’s for dinner
  • We Love Our Congressman
  • The Diversity State, if by Diversity you mean lots of white folk in jeans and cowboy hats
  • Land of a perverse number of mountains
  • Like No Place on Earth.  That’s not a good thing.
  • Not Much, And Lots Of It
  • Land of Wary Glances
  • Big Fats
  • A Rocky Mountain New Jersey
  • The Suffering State
  • With this few people, you’d think it’d be harder to find assholes
  • Flat Is Where It’s At
  • Say “Wynot?” and I’ll pop a cap in your ass
  • The Dwarrodelf
  • Jackson Hole isn’t as bad as it sounds
  • I Live In Wyoming. Please Kill Me.
  • Proving You Don’t Need A City To Be A State
  • Where men are lonely and sheep are scared
  • 48% Government Owned
  • Alice doesn’t live here anymore
  • Gateway to Utah

[Wik]Don’t worry, your alternate motto fun is not completely dead - there are plans in the works to attack Puerto Rico and our Nation’s capitol, and our crack team of researchers is looking into new and innovative ways to ridicule Europeans.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/26/07 at 05:36 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

It’d be more like a blog if there were actual, you know, posts

Just So You KnowWar

While it may surprise you, gentle reader, to hear that I am again guest posting on MO, considering that I am barely posting on this, my own website, the fact is that I have been Rossed to a large degree over the last couple weeks.  The end is in sight (or at least the headlight of the oncoming train) and my time for blogging should be substantially greater in the immediate future.  Unless I pick up all those freelance gigs I’m chasing.  Anyways, here is the first of this week’s Murdoc Online guest posts:

Greetings again, fellow Murdoc-cultists.  The great and powerful Murdoc is once again goofing off, and has asked me to take up the slack with a few posts for you to educate and amuse yourself, and to productively use your time at work. 

Our first topic is the troubled V-22 Osprey Tilt-Rotor, which is flying right over my head as we speak.  The 418th flight test squadron out of Edwards in California has temporarily relocated to the tiny, tiny airport in Winchester, Va, only a half hour from my fastness in the wilderness.  If you follow this link here, you can watch a very small video that shows some CV-22’s landing and whatnot, and hear the reporter mispronounce several words.

The reason the Ospreys are in my neck of the woods is simple.  They need the bad weather that California simply refuses to provide.  In particular, they’re looking for fog in which to test their terrain guidance systems.  There’s typically a lot of fog up here, so they shouldn’t have too much trouble.

The Air Force version isn’t scheduled to enter service until 2009, but the Marine MV-22 will be heading to Iraq in September.

I haven’t actually seen one yet, they’re actually flying a bit west of where I live.  I am thinking of driving the boy up to the airport to see if we can catch a glimpse of one of those, and if I do, I’ll post pics if I can get some decent ones.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/24/07 at 03:49 PM
Just So You Know • War • Permalink

Monday, July 09, 2007

Mike Huckabee?

Just So You Know

I just heard him on On Point via public radio, WAMU in DC.

I was really stunned and impressed at his enthusiasm, optimism and outlook. I don’t think I have heard such an uplifting guy in politics since the OTHER guy from Hope, AR.

You gotta love a guy that lost over a hundred pounds. That’s transformation.

Politically speaking, I am not wild about Mike Huckabee at all. He’s pro-life and frankly I’m enough of a one issue voter that there’s NO FREAKIN’ WAY I’d vote for him because of that position alone. But I found him remarkably in line with my thoughts about the stupidness of the creation/evolution debate. His feeling is that he takes his kids to church to indoctrinate them about religion and doesn’t expect school to align with religious views because kids learn a great many things at school but do not take all of them to heart. HEAR HEAR. Give your kids some credit and let them think on their own about God! After all the beauty of God’s gift of free will is that when faced with the notion that God perhaps didn’t create the world exactly as we know it, you can either reject or accept it.

All of his kids went to public school for all twelve years. He’s a guy who puts his money where his mouth is and I’m all for that.

I didn’t listen to all of it in detail because I was busy doing some other blogging, but the parts I did hear left me with a good impression. I mean, if I have to choose between evils, the guy is looking pretty good.


Posted by Mapgirl on 07/09/07 at 10:58 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Uh, thanks for clearing that up?

Just So You KnowLead Pipe Cruelty

Found in today’s NY Times:

Correction: Just Don’t Call Them Inexpensive

Published: July 5, 2007

An article last week about inexpensive dresses misstated the name of a clothing store on Broadway. It is Yellow Rat Bastard, not Dirty Yellow Bastard. 
(Go to Article)


Posted by Patton on 07/05/07 at 09:49 PM
Just So You Know • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Hey, watch this

Just So You Know

I haven’t had time to post much lately, for which I abjectly apologize.  But I have run across some interesting bits I’d like to call your attention to.

  • Here’s a nifty National Geographic piece on swarm behavior, or how while individual ants are staggeringly inept, ant colonies are not.
  • While I certainly like the new iPhone more than Mapgirl, this guy is really down on the Jesus Phone.
  • The Ministry has for some time now been trying to alert the public to the threat of robots.  While humanity as a whole will certainly all experience the cold metal boot of robot domination, we probably won’t all feel it at once.  Among the first groups to feel the iron grip of robotic oppression might just be migrant workers.  As if they didn’t have enough to contend with.
  • The New Yorker is occasionally interesting.
  • The recent release of some old CIA documents has raised some eyebrows.  And sent conspiracy types into overdrive.  And it looks like we did after all try to get the mob to rub out Castro.
  • Wired interviews Hans Reiser, linux guru and accused murderer.
  • Times puff piece on cyberwar.
  • Yes, it does.
  • Mars or Bust!  I think that terraforming Mars would be a fabulous idea.  Of course, we need to get there first.  One real advantage with Mars, is that we could use rather, uh, drastic methods in the period before we start setting the planet.

Enjoy, and I’ll try to post something substantive real soon now.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/05/07 at 05:03 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Friday, June 22, 2007

Beer Drinkers of Norfolk, VA Unite!

Just So You Know

Do like beer?
Do you like to raise money for charity?
Do you like to drink beer to raise money for charity?

If you answered yes to any of those questions and live in Norfolk, VA, please go to the 2007 Summer Ghent Bar Tour! They raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation. Last winter’s tour raised over $14,000.00, blowing their goal of $8K out of the water.

And don’t click on the Ashtin and Braden link. You’ll see two totally adorable little tykes who are really sick. Once you see them, of course you’ll donate money!


Posted by Mapgirl on 06/22/07 at 06:07 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Don’t freeze the paintballs, that’s cruel

Just So You KnowPartisan Politics

My personal college experience with larval Republicans was sub-optimal at best.  I was constantly called upon to explain the tactless mouth breathing of my small school’s single fanatic Republican Kool-Aid drinker.  Having to repeatedly agree with this idiot was painful - “Well, he’s right, it’s just that he said it in the worst conceivable way.” At least these young Republicans have something of a sense of humor.  The Alexandria, Va YR’s are planning the first annual Dick Cheney Paintball Tourney, “named in honor of our Vice President and second amendment enthusiast Dick Cheney.” So, if you’re not busy, go shoot with, or shoot at, some young conservatives.


Posted by Buckethead on 06/22/07 at 12:06 PM
Just So You Know • Partisan Politics • Permalink

Monday, June 18, 2007

What’s wrong with this story?

Just So You Know

Subject?  Supreme Court rulings.  Found in today’s news, a story about the several decisions just handed down by our benign judicial overlords.  The first two cases on which they ruled are interesting, but not part of the current exercise.

The case in question, Brendlin v. California, is covered in a Washington Post story entitled “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Car Passengers”.  The heart of the case?

The court decided that when police stop a vehicle, passengers are “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and—like drivers—can dispute the legality of a search.

The ruling overturned a California Supreme Court decision in the case of Bruce Edward Brendlin, who was arrested on parole violation and drug charges after a November 2001 traffic stop in Yuba City, Calif. Brendlin, who subsequently was sentenced to four years in prison, appealed his conviction on the grounds that the drug evidence should have been suppressed because the traffic stop amounted to “an unlawful seizure of his person,” according to today’s ruling.

Although the state acknowledged that police “had no adequate justification” to stop the car, in which Brendlin was a passenger in the front seat, it argued that he was not “seized” and thus could not challenge the government’s action under the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections. Government lawyers also argued that Brendlin could not claim that the evidence against him was tainted by an unconstitutional stop, according to the ruling.

California, in this case, was clearly and deeply wrong, and it’s good, if unsurprising, to find the Supremes coming down unanimously in Brendlin’s favor.

So, what’s wrong with the story, you might ask? Well, not so much the story as the storyline - The WaPo story didn’t cover this angle, but in the Wall Street Journal version of the story (subscription), I found this nugget:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP backed Mr. Brendlin, arguing that a ruling in the state’s favor would encourage police to conduct arbitrary traffic stops to target passengers, especially minorities, who lack the same rights as drivers.

Left unspoken is the irrelevant fact of Mr Brendlin’s minority status, but I’ll assume he’s black.  He could have been chartreuse without having any impact at all on this case, for all it would have mattered.

So Brendlin got the precisely correct result from the Court, for what I think hope are the right reasons, including the prima facie absurdity of California’s position on the case. But the underlying theme, when the NAACP’s and ACLU’s involvement, their raison d’etre in this case, seems to indicate that absent some racial grievance, the alternative result would have occurred.

I have zero concern about the involvement of those two august organizations in providing Brendlin the legal and financial support in his battle, and good for them. Couching this as an issue that only or primarily resonates for minorities?  That, I think, is a problem


Posted by Patton on 06/18/07 at 04:15 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Miscellany

Just So You Know

Here’s some interesting things: 

Yesterday, the Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, in memory of the hundred million and more victims of global communism.  Thanks to the Daily Brief for the heads-up, I’ll have to check that out.

Also, the Brits are moving ahead on their new nuclear sub - the Astute, first in a new class of subs for the Royal Navy.  Soon to launch, and only five years late and 900 million pounds overbudget.  But look at this:

SubMoved_468x427.jpg

That wheely thing at the bottom would be great for the Iowa-class Main Battle Tank, no?

My current preferred candidate for President is the Fred Thompson, who is apparently pissing off all the other candidates by out-polling them without even having a declared candidacy.  And, they’re gunnin’ for ‘im.

A physicist is soliciting funds from you, yes, you, to conduct research into quantum retrocausality.  That means, John Cramer of the University of Washington Physics Department wants to see if “signaling, or communication, in reverse time” is possible.  I read both his sf novels, I think I might send him maybe a buck-two-fifty. 

Tony Blair has turned the UK into a panopticon surveillance society.  Let us hope we can duck that one here, but I think it’s largely inevitable. 

And finally, it is my birthday.  Please email me for details on where you can send your Apple gift cards so that I can get my iPhone.


Posted by Buckethead on 06/14/07 at 02:21 AM
Just So You Know • Permalink
Page 1 of 45 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »