Lawyers - The Scum of the Professional Classes

In general, for many the law has become a “safety” career or fallback position for those who are intelligent but not gifted enough to go into other, more substantive learned professions, like medicine, science, architecture, engineering, etc. People see law as a chance to use their verbal skills and validate their intelligence and self worth, in lieu of actually having a talent (or developing) a talent for something real.

Joe T, Recovering Lawyer,

 on the post What A Girl’s Job Tells You.

Bad Santa

Matthew Inmam has solved the riddle of What Santa Really Does While You're Asleep.

Jingle Dogs Reunion Show

You have seen their hit video now see their reunion show. Age has not been kind to the Jingle Dogs.

Too Much Drama Christmas

Anti Television Protest in Tunisia

An anti TV protest in Tunisia leads to art installation, story on France 24.

Martini Survival Kit

(from a post at Cookrookery)

Historical Learning

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to learn about it from

Oliver Stone films.

Mr I. L. in a private conversation

"Imagine Finding Meat" - Mmm

Is it wrong that I found this image appetizing? It is screen grab  from an episode of Grey's Anatomy supposedly of a liver resection. Watching my mouth watered and all I could thing about was liver and onions. I think the message is you should never watch a medical show or documentary when you are hungry.

Or you can be normal.

Where To Get Bombed In London

Bomb Sight is the perfect tool for the time traveler to London during the Blitz. Bombs are given their times and locations. It is remarkable how evenly distributed are the bomb sites across London. Looking at the above map of the bombs that fell on Westminster you could imagine in retrospect that the famous bunkers that were built, Churchill War Rooms, were probably not needed. For me the scariest thing is how the government bunkers of WWII presaged the "government continuity plans" in the nuclear age.

In the 70's Darth Vader was Superman's Trainer

The book Superman, by Larry Tye, there is a paragraph describing Christopher Reeve's training regime. The exercise and bodybuilding training plan was put together and run by "...Dave Prowse, a body builder and gym owner in London...". And who is this random "Dave". Only the honorary leader of the 501st Legion that's who.

Mad Men Grunge

In 2005 Paul Anka did an album of rock covers given jazz standards treatment, Rock Swings. This cover is more startling different than many of the covers on this album. Nirvana's fast/slow loud/quiet dynamics that so much of the song's appeal is not carried over to this cover. Instead, the lyrics have power for being comprehensible,

From a link in a post containing weird Nixon posters, "Apart from the Nixon interlude, I did intend to post this from a world where rock music never developed..." in the thread Things that look like alternate history but aren't IIa on AH.com.

George Orwell's Dickensian Existence

...in the new year[1947] he [Orwell] stayed in London for one of the coldest British winters on record and with such a national shortage of fuel that he burnt his furniture and his child's toys.

wiki entry for George Orwell.

Storing Cowboy Hats and Police Headgear In Vegas Late 50's

Vegas S01E08

This is exactly the sort of picky historical detail that is  probably accurate  because it seems so weird. However the problem with depending on the  historical research on the makers of historical drama is the that there was no Russian roulette in Vietnam despite the depiction in The Deer Hunter.

Understanding The Drinking Writer

I think that anyone who writes and likes a drink creates an romantic relationship between alcohol consumption and creativity.

Pete Brown, Beer Writer.

 in BBC Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking

When a beer writer says something like that you have to take it as given.

Walt Disney Stalks the Earth Once More

(from a link at Cold Hard Flash, Walt Returns In Star Wars/Disney Short)

Ultraman Vanquishees Japanese Rubber Suited Monsters

From a link by Aaron Gross in the thread Giant Japanese Robot from Outer Space personnel news, on iSteve.

I went into a trance watching this. The flashing lights, the repeated phrases, the flashing lights, the amazing special effects put me a trance that I only woke up from later.

"Pig Man sacrificed his life for man kind yet you continue to feel sorry for yourself."

Be Doctor Who as a Couch Potato

This, The Sonic Screwdriver Programmable TV Remote, is both what I have always wanted in the whole world and a disturbing commentary on our world. The episode The Power of Three looks at normal life without the Doctor, playing bills, watching TV, living sequentially in the same timeline as the rest of the planet. TV, the couch potatoing, munchie snacking, channel changing/flipping/grazing is anti-Doctor. TV is maybe how we connect to his life, but we want to live in his world not ours.

Turn Your iPad Into Desktop Computer

The iLuv Workstation Pro is a docking station that turns the new ultra modern latest iPad into the desktop computer of the past. It is available from Neiman-Marcus. The basic design from the cube farms of yesteryear, the screen plopped on the box. The screen is also about the same size as in the olden days when 386 was a exciting new number.

The Internet - a Definition

“A most ingenious innovation, like…the greatest library in the world, yet accessible from your desk, yet also current matters, a newspaper, a gazette, a…”

Christopher Nuttall 

in There'll Always Be An England Part II

Tales of Action From "Spaceship House"

A friend, Tim Carter, made this film to promote his campaign in Alien Swarm, see Reduction Campaign as well as this and this post. Now it seems that this video has gone from nearly nothing, 300 hits, to over 6000 overnight. This could be the next viral.

I would like to respond to some the comments to the video, since one of many aliases also was involved in the making of this film.


Tyrannosir
"IT'S DA MWONSTAHS"
fleskmiodogmjiod
OH MY GOD IT'S A NEST OF THE BASTARDS

My response
What would interstellar aliens be. It is common in wartime dehumanize the enemy even when it is a civil war or between closely related countries, like the Scandinavians. If we dehumanize human enemies why wouldn't we do the same to nonhuman enemies.


jgoodwin2013
do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do

My response
Not everybody has foley artists at their beck and call. Sometimes you have to make sound effects "old school".

Car Ad as Lego Racing Game

What it says on the tin.

A Communist, Evil, Faithful, Deluded or Stupid

On Marketplace today there was a story,  An old friend of the party assesses China's new leaders, about an American member of the Chinese Communist party, or as I like to call them the "ChiComs", An old friend of the party, the First American member, assesses China's new leaders. Sidney Rittenberg is over 90 at this point and has spent more than a sixth of his life in ChiCom gulags. He is still a committed communist. That takes faith. After the Cultural Revolution he got out jail and was repatriated to the US. But he still believes.

The message of his life and Johnny Walker Lindh is that some religious/political conversions should be considered the equivalent of voluntary abandonment of citizenship. 

Buy Your own Reproduction Panzer on Ebay

Earlier this year I posted a story about a Russian built Panzer replica, Modern Day Russians Build German Panzer. The above is from Ebay, German Panzer V "Panther" Ausf A Full Size Tank - MAKE AN OFFER! There is a number of videos attached which are listed below. 

However you have only 9 days, or less, to buy this Panzer.

Look how this video seems to be from an alternate timeline.

The Roman Equivalent of Afghanistan = Scotland

According to the movie Centurion, it was another "asshole of the world". Take a look a some the screen shots. It all very grim isn't it.

A Good General

I never saw generals so beloved of their men. 

Quintus Dias, Centurion

In training he is our scholar. At a feast he is our father. In the ranks he is our brother. And in battle he is the god pray to save our souls.

Centurion of the 9th Legion

Conversation in Centurion

Doctor Who / James Bond Mashup

In a thread on AH.com about how to fit all the plots of the Bond movies into one storyline, Rationalised James Bond Universe, there is a link to something else. Lavanya Six provides a link to a story, Recap, by Adrian Tullberg. It explains all of the  inexplicable details of Mr Bond.

Calvin and Hobbes Costumes

I know Halloween is already over but this a perfect set of costumes.

Originally posted at reddit. I discovered this from a link at American Digest which led to My Modern Met which led to the original reddit thread.

ChiCom Censors As Just Another Form of Executive Meddling

Read an interesting article in Foreign Policy about a journalist and her censor, Me and My Censor. I have read many other stories, historical and fictional, of censorship in the past, Newspeak and Stalinist airbrushing being the most notable. This story show something else, it makes scary ChiCom censorship as something no worse than Executive Meddling, see TV Tropes, which is pretty bad itself.

However we before start having positive feelings for soft and cuddly commies is that there worse things that resistance to executive meddling can cause such as unemployment/underemployment. Communists on the other hand play hard ball in very hard and nasty ways. See an earlier post at this blog, Death of a Communist Hitman 40 Years Ago. Check out this talk by a KGB infiltrator, Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, 1984 - Complete.We need to remember that Commies are evil, and if they are not they are stupid, check out Odd Definition of Loyalty / Treason Among America's "Civil Rights Community" which explores Paul Robeson's moral blindness.

Definition of the Term "Minor Celebrity"

I can't ask Wil Wheaton to leave, he's a minor celebrity. Once you explain who he is many people recognize him.

Dr Sheldon Cooper

 defining "minor celebrity",

 Big Bang Theory S06E07

How To Be a Good Guest

...I would really like to avoid killing anyone in here. It would get in the way of me being released.

Victor Sirko,

 trying to make stay at a Florida resort

 as trouble free as possible,

Dexter S07E06

50 50 Florida

Screen scrape from Real Clear Politics election night coverage at 21:40 

How to Get Along with Teenagers and Others Weridos

My husband was a great traveler and I spent many nights without understanding a word. The thing is to keep smiling and never look as if you disapprove.

The Rt. Hon. Violet,

 Dowager Countess of Grantham,

 Downton Abbey S03E08

Don't Ask Don't Tell - Downton Abbey

I cannot lie that I find your situation revolting. Whether or not you believe I am not entirely unsympathetic. You have been twisted by nature into something foul. Even I can see you did not ask for it. 

Mr. Carson sacking Mr. Barrow

 for things that will not be named

 and giving him a good reference, 

Downton Abbey S03E08

End of the World TV Gameshow

All of the above is from That Mitchell and Webb Look. A British sketch show from the same guys from Peep Show. Watching this helps you Stay Indoors.

Got the links to these from perfectgeneral in the thread 2012 Britain Sent Back to the Post-Dunkirk Battle of Britain by corditeman.

Literary and Historical Criticism of Ancient Works

The problem with many ancient works is they depend on references to missing works. The libraries they come from are gone. Some ancient authors are only known by the footnotes of other ancient authors of whom we have limited copies.

How would you interpret the following you have never seen a certain luggage brand TV ad. "Lo, did the ape pound on the Samsonite".

The End of Piano-Industrial Complex

In a Ken Burns documentary, I forget which, there was a reference to how in the late 19th century more American homes had pianos then indoor plumbing. They were aspirational object that signaled one's arrival into middle class gentility. In the TV documentary The 1900 House a piano was installed in to the parlor. A Globe & Mail story a few years back profiled a family of recent Chinese immigrants. The father was an engineer, now a factory foreman. They lived in a cramped basement apartment, with a piano but no TV. Piano sales are up in China.

Today is different. The above image is from a BBC report of a London piano restorer, Will your piano end up in the dump? The piano being dissembled was made in London's former piano district.  It was judged and found wanting. Its parts well go on to other uses, other pianos. The Image below, Elergy, is from a show The Piano as Art, by Penny Putnam and Shauna Holiman.

The newer cultural artifact of our age is the TV. Soon there won't be any cathode ray tube televisions left, there will be hauled away as trash. The factories that made them are also gone.

Here is an example of a new player piano system that can also replicate a full range of volume, from piano to forte. Looking at through the site of the people who created the modern player piano industry suffers from proprietary and shifting technological standards.

Cats, the Internet and K-Pop

The entire Internet is losing its hive mind for K-Pop genius Psy and his breakout hit, "Gangnam Style."

Noisey, Music Column for Vice Magazine, 

introducing a video of cats

 listening to Gangnam Style,

 Do Cute Cats Like Gangnam Style? - You Review.

Official Warning to All Imperial Storm Troopers

Unused Propaganda and the Earlier Drafts

I had always assumed that was an example of WWII British propaganda that has its uses in that war along with aircraft recognition  posters, "loose lips sink ships" and "is this journey really necessary?'. Not forgetting thsee misogynistic anti-VD posters,"she may look clean". I didn't know that these posters were locked away only to used in event of "aquatic feline" aka Unternehmen Seelöwe. In the nature of advertising there were earlier versions of this poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On", that didn't fully meet with client approval as seen below. It makes one wonder about what Strangelovian materials were created "in the event of" for the edification of those who remained.

 First version

 Second version

The images / screen captures of the earlier versions of KCaCO are from the documentary Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History Of Britain.

The South will NOT "Rise Again"

Deeply depressing overview of the American South, that is their South East, by someone who currently lives there.

"It will never, ever occur to this person that the causation just might work the other way: if you live in a blue state, with all its high taxes and regulations to try to protect people, you might be more likely to be poor.

Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that."

I'm trying to curtail the length of my posts on this site, so maybe this won't be as complete as it should.

I am from the South, and currently live there again. Probably I'm going to leave again one day, and never go back, but that is a story for another day.

Additionally I am from the rural south. Now let me say what this post is all about:

There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. The world of even 50 years ago is gone. Agriculture is a game that takes serious funds to operate now. You still see some guys do the little watermelon farming and whatnot, but essentially they are playing at it. The mills are gone now, and the other assorted factories that were once there are gone as well.

There are still some agriculture jobs, but not many. Mechanized agriculture has totally destroyed the world that existed as short a time ago as the 50's.

If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).

Even if you got the land for free.

The sad fact is that essentially no one is interested in these areas enough to even be Darwinian about it anymore.

sunbeam / Cail Corashev on Steve Sailer's 

post Dept. of Not Getting Moynihan's Joke

  about the Canadian Border.

Gandalf Style

For an explanation of how Korean Pop music is more music video and TV orientated listen to this NPR story, Gangnam Style: Three Reasons K-Pop Is Taking Over The World.

Cheney Not Darth Vader - Mark Hamill

Here is Mark Hamill discussing which various Star Wars characters most resemble which various American political figures. He discounts any resemblance between Darth Vader and Dick Cheney, see previous post How Cheney Can't be Darth Vader. Hamill then suggests that Indonesian citizen Barry Soetoro most resembles Obi-wan Kenobi.

"Ben" Kenobi was a man in the figurative and actual wilderness. Obama on the other hand has not had a political career long enough to include time in wilderness, unlike Nixon and Churchill. Thinking back on those two, Winnie and Dick, history has proven that Communism and Nazism are both very bad ideas and those that appease or collaborate with the proponents of such political systems are traitors. Obama will probably be looked in disgust for his appeasement of jihad.

Why George Lucas "..And All His Works" Have Sucked Since 1983

I recently saw the some of the movie/art installation The Clock. What it does is point out the primacy of the editor to cinema. The editor can create almost anything out of the raw material that the director produces. Check out the posts marked mashup in this blog. These may only be "amateur" creations but show how editing can completely change everything. Editing and editors matter more in film than is immediately apparent.

There is not a day/year goes by when I do not curse George Lucas to the heavens for what he did to Howard the Duck. It was confusing that a director like Lucas could be so sensitive to his interpretation of golden age pulp sci-fi could be so ham handed when adapting a comic book. At this point the most profitable part of Hollywood is comic book adaption. But it must done right, by fans who understand and respect the material. Admittedly Howard the Duck was the first movie adaption for a long time however it be safe to say that just about everything that George Lucas has done since the last real Star Wars movie, The Return of the Jedi, sucks.

And why does everything that George Lucas has done since 1983 suck? The short answer is that he divorced his wife and film editor Marcia Lucas. Without her he was lost. Read at this long exploration of Marcia Lucas' influence on Star Wars, Tribute to Marcia Lucas at the Secret History of Star Wars.

Computers Without GUI

"...inscrutable machines used only by engineers and insurance statisticians"

Anonymous (or Timbo?)

 describing computers  before GUI in a comment at

 The Killer Within - At Microsoft.

"Gosh, We're All Really Impressed Down Here I Can Tell You"

From Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

Chaplain: Oh Lord...

Congregation: Oh Lord...

Chaplain: Oooh you are so big...

Congregation: Oooh you are so big...

Chaplain: So absolutely huge.

Congregation: So ab - solutely huge.

Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.

Congregation: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.

Chaplain: Forgive Us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.

Congregation: And barefaced flattery.

Chaplain: But you are so strong and, well, just so ... super.

Congregation: Fan - tastic.

Congregation: Amen

Chaplain and Congregation: Oh Lord, please don't burn us, Don't grill or toast your flock, Don't put us on the barbecue, Or sim - mer us in stock, Don't braise or bake or boil us, Or stir-fry us in a wok... Oh please don't lightly poach us, Or baste us with hot fat, Don't fricassee or roast us, Or boil us in a vat, And please don't stick thy servants Lord, In a Rotissomat...

Nobody wants to be a "Job".

Fake Craiglist Ad About Barry Soetoro

(screen scrape of Craig list Ad)

Manure Spreader - $1 (Washington D.C.)

Date: 2012-10-02, 4:25PM EDT

wfwss-3311853951@sale.craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya. Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the US via Hawaii. Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard. Apparently, it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn't work very often, but when it does it can sling shit for amazing distances. I am hoping to retire the manure spreader this November. I really don't want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.

Location: Currently being stored in a big white house in Washington, D.C.

From a link posted by revereridesagain in thread about the Muslim Brotherhood Congressman. Completely different than a story about the Muslim Brotherhood president.

The Great Man Theory and American Economic History

History has gone through many twists and turns over the past the century. The Great Man Theory has now been mostly discredited as historians of the annales school and others have examined the socio-economic conditions that give rise to the "great men" and the sea they swim in. That said it is useful to examine the captains of industry that made our near modern world and primordial ooze they crawled out of. This series seems, according to promo and this video, to be about a bunch of American "robber barons". As an aside the term "robber baron" is like "creeping barrage", it is term which is made of two synonyms.  The series is about the people who in the generations between the US Civil War an d the Great War built the industrial and technological capacity of the US.

Lately thinking of the recent Florida incarceration of Conrad Black I think how unlovable are all the press barons I have ever learned about. It made me think at first the interest in news corrupted and ink stained one's soul. Press Barons were creeps not because they saw newspapers as avenue of profit or as a venue of information but as a means of power. Using such a definition Lenin and Hitler were also Press Lords.

There have been power hungry men through out history.  They trundle over the earth exercising petty tyrannies extending over a some few generations. At certain hinge points their power can be magnified and men like Caesar, Genghis Khan and Cortez change the world forever.

Rap Battle Translated

Here is a rap battle with an overdub translation of all the posturing and braggadocio. Mostly it is "sound and fury/signifying nothing".

I Don't Want To Set the World on Fire After the World Burns

Somehow I have ended up on the song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire". I previously came across this song in the short Logorama. It was the song I needed to hear today. There are several straight version of this song on youtube, one of which is the just a shot of the 78 rpm record going a round and around. The version below is from the game Fallout 3. Anything involving nuclear war is not going to be positive.

Why Americans Don't Vote

Americans hate politics because the people who are passionately involved tend to be such contemptible assholes.

Philo Vaihinger in  thread

 Reza Aslan calls for fascist vandalism

 of AFDI pro-freedom ads.

The SUV of Winterwear

The SUV craze got weird because people would overestimate their need for them. They were been bought by suburbanites who needed four wheel drive for about an hour every year. Canada Goose parkas seem to be the in this category, bought by the clueless and fashion obsessed. The only "Canada Goose" parkas I see in Toronto are their bomber jacket, not a style of clothing to keep you warm when not sitting down.

There are not many winter jacket brands out there. A winter jacket needs to meet certain function requirements before satisfying fashion needs. I think "Canada Goose" needs to tone down its marketing or it will destroy its brand value. Their bomber jacket needs to be dropped. Or "Canada Goose" will only be connected in many people's mind/ my mind as the parka for idiots who don't know that winter exists.

Party Balloons Will Become Extinct

Party balloons might disappear in the future in order to preserve limited supplies of helium, slashdot article Scientists Speak Out Against Wasting Helium In Balloons, BBC report Helium shortage prompts scientist's balloon use warning.

Of course once breeder reactors are available maybe helium can be created by splitting hydrogen. The wold needs to invest heavily in nuclear technology so we can escape the carbon trap we are currently in.

Best comment in the slashdot thread was by cellocgw, also the first comment in the thread. 

There may be a free-market solution. Let's float a trial balloon and see how everyone reacts.

Project Trinity - Complete Film

Years and years ago I saw Project Trinity at tiff. I mentioned this documentary in an earlier post, Nuclear Testing as Art/Astronomy. The above is a complete copy of Project Trinity.

Kill Aliens - Support The Reduction Campaign

The Kick Starter campaign for the Prepare to Drop is on. There is less than 30 days to fund this campaign. Speaking as a player I have found that so of the best experiences as a player has come from user created content. I have played great mods in Civilization and great maps in Counter Strike. As a player sometimes you have to prime the pump and ante up to provide for good gaming times in the future.

2000 Light Years From Home - On The Reduction Campaign

To see more of these levels in Alien Swarm go to Reduction: The Bug-War-On-Earth Sci-Fi Game Campaign.

Test Your Vocabulary

The above is my score from Test My Vocabulary. Take the test and see if you can get a score better than me. I dare you.

How Criminals Die of Natural Causes

Coroner: These two men died of natural causes.
Police: What do you mean? They were both shot.
Coroner: Yes, natural to their line of work.

Joke left by RunningMacon in

 Macon police searching for man in double-slaying case.

It's sad that the 90% bad ones make the other 10% look bad.

comment by "John" in 

Long Island Wedding Guest

 Charged For Trying To Steal Gifts.

The Addict Doctor in Reality and Fiction

...his remoteness, severity, and mordant sarcasm were the products of a daily struggle with addiction.

Frederick Crews, in the review

 Physician Heal Thy Self: Part 1 about the book

 Genius on Edge: the Bizarre Double life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted
 in the New York Review of Books Volume LVIII, Number 14

That sentence fragment could also describe a certain fictional doctor.

Theoretical, Historical and Current Air Lanes of The World

Years ago on this blog I posted a link to a study of shipping lanes in the 18th and 19th centuries, Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes. Now very little commercial cargo is shipped on sailing ships. Instead now there are container ships and air cargo. Weirdly there is a coincidence. Fed Ex according to Wiki shipped 15 million tonne kilometers in 2004.  One clipper, The Blackadder, with a tonnage of 900 tons on a trip to Sydney was capable of shpping 20 million tonne kilometers in one 2 month voyage.

Here is a map of the air lanes of the world published as of 1944 from The Atlas of Global Geography. Link from Thande in Things that look like alternate history, but aren't at AH.com. Look at how Canada is nearly empty of air routes. And how the USSR has dense network of air routes compared to China, India and the Middle East.

Here is a map from 1920 about possible air lanes from The People's Atlas. This atlas was published so soon after WW1 with the result one of the only sections that is not prewar is this section. Helpfully it also has pictures of warplanes drawn to scale. As you can see the scale it presumes that commercial air travel was going to limp along at 100 miles per hour. What may please the those futurists who drew this map is that four airlines that were founded in 1920 still exist.

Here is an illustration of the air traffic in 2008 based on observed contrails. It is from a blog concerned with contrails, Contrail Science. The image below comes from a blog post about the growth of air travel in last 30 years, 30 Years of Airline Travel. The paper that blogpost is based on is not available.

Actual Working Phone Number Given in TV Show

The number, (323) 271-9162, is a an existing phone number in Los Angles. The screen capture is from The LA Complex S02E06. The last time I saw a TV show give a non 555 phone number was one of the early episodes of SCTV.

Taxes Versus Charity

I was listening to NPR coverage of the US Republican convention, while playing Civilization V. In a speech by Mike Huckabee he contrasted Obama's and Romney's charitable giving. In Huckabee's numbers Obama gave 2% versus Romney's 16%. Admittedly in the tax returns that Romney released showed he pay taxes at a rate of 15%. More of Obama's income is "earned" than Romney. However the idea to replace public sources of welfare with private sources of charity is a nonstarter. It has already been tried in the 18th and 19th century, read Dickens et al. 

"Here in North America"

"We are blessed with energy resources"

Condolezza Rice at the US Republican convention glossing over the fact that not all North America resources are American resources.

Misogynist Economist Joke

"I'm sorry you're so jealous of economists. Did they steal your wife?"

Yeah but they calculated that she was a Declining Value Asset and that the cost of entering into a long-term partnership with her held a strong negative correlation with their future growth aspiration graph, so they returned her. 

Truth in a discussion

 on Steve Sailer's blog about

this graph

Archives, Computers And The End of Histroy

Solzhenitsyn is one of the last major writers to leave behind a vast archives of handwritten manuscripts. (His successors will bequeath their hard drives if they dare.)

David Remnick,

 In the Archives: the Widow's Peak,

The New Yorker, June 18, 2012

Computers make it easy to duplicate, manipulate, search, relocate information. At the same time it makes it easier lose stuff down the memory hole either by action, inaction, error, or mechanical failure. But any simple filing cabinet has a solidity that makes it hard to chuck out the window. I have came across several different predictions about our future data storage needs from sci-fi witters and/or futurists.  There is the scenario that we must eventually need to go space so we can find new places to store our records. In Raj Whitehall's world everything was in computer databanks, when computers failed. So all records, history, knowledge is lost. I have read other futurists that suggest this is the likely outcome and that future history will note a "dark age" where there are scattered and fragmentary records in proprietary obsolete formats.

Computers are great for ephemera, but there needs to be hard copies for posterity.

Hedonismbot Gets Own LOL Cat Poster - "Oh, The Indulgence"

Posted/made by Rainbow Sparkler in the AH.com thread ASB/ISOT - "A War of Atonement" by von hitchofen.

Reduction Campaign Preparing to Drop

The Reduction Campaign for Alien Swarm will be available on September 4.

And don't forget to go out there and kill aliens.

Reality Undramatic

"Generally speaking", Lobsang  pronounced, "reality having little sense of narrative, ancient sites are not heavy with swinging blades that decapitate, or rock panels that fold back to fire darts."

Lobsang, after discovering the enigmatic ruins

 of  a dead civilization in

The Long Earth

Ad for Mayan trap merchants from luvthecubs

 posted at Crack's 16 Unseen Jobs That Must Exist in Movie Universes.

A Kind of Respect/Fear

...the politeness you might observe when dealing with a politician belonging to a country that had nuclear weapons and a carefree approach to their deployment.

How Joshua Valienté

is treated after joining a powerful mega-corporation

 In The Long Earth

God's Eye View of the Universe.

To move across the milky way would take light 40,000 years, and this video spans the distance of a galaxy in a millisecond or two. So, 40,000 years is 14,610,000 days, is 350,640,000 hours, is 21,038,400,000 minutes, is 1,262,304,000,000 seconds, is 1,262,304,000,000,000 milliseconds. If we say that that the "camera" in this video is spanning the distance of a milky-way sized galaxy in 1 millisecond, then it's travelling at 1,262,304,000,000,000 times the speed of light. VERY rough estimate.

Nic Foster, explaining
what we are seeing
in the comments section of this video
on YouTube.

Explanation of this video/simulation/animation from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, The First Public Data Release from BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey .  

This video seems to be part of the Total Perspective Vortex as makes galaxies appear as meaningless specks of light. That is the view of the egoist needing validation of the universe. This animation makes your sized galaxy feel small and weak.

At the Clippie Awards For Delivery Boys

You have to sign for your prize/statuette/award.

Futurama S07E10

NPR News Host (Vacation Replacemnet) Doesn't Recognize Political Terms/Argot/Slang

RUDIN:...Eric Hovde and Mark Neumann backed by conservatives, Tea Party Express, Club for Growth, but they kind of split the anti-Thompson vote. Thompson's seen as kind of like a moderate, a squish - you know, squishy RINO, as some conservatives have called him. But he won the nomination narrowly, but he will be the Republican nominee against Tammy Baldwin, a very liberal congresswoman from Madison, Wisconsin.

DONVAN: Squishy RINO is - what's the allusion there?

RUDIN: Well, no, no, just the fact that he's not as strong. Like he backed some Obama stuff, he supported some...

DONVAN: He's not an elephant.

RUDIN: Well, he's a RINO not as in rhinoceros but RINO as in Republican in name only, not the rhinoceros.

How Ryan Will Shift Campaign Strategy In Florida

John Donavon is the summer replacement host at Talk of the Nation filling in for Neal Conan. Ken Rudin is a long term political editor at NPR.

Here is information on the Picard face palm meme from Know your Meme, part of the Cheez Burger Network.

The Perils of Auto-Transcribing

After looking at some puzzles at the Wall Street Journal I clicked on the discussion above, Why Buffett Is Betting Big on Housing. The man above is talking about the housing market and made reference to [the] Case-Schiller [index] instead that got transcribed into Kaye Scholer. Kaye Scholer seems like weird stretch of a personal name until wiki revealed that they are a high level law firm. The problem seems to be that incomplete references that are understood by humans can confuse programs by the lack of  small words like [the] and [index].

The History of GTA and Counter Strike

Watching these game retrospectives made me feel my age. The editor of these videos, blablue123, has also created similar videos examining the history of Max Payne, Doom and Hitman among others. But I never played those games so their history has little meaning for me.

The Midseason Replacement or Later

Here is the upcoming schedule for the sitcom Baby Daddy from a TV guide site, Not the official "TV Guide". Christmas in Ausust is the tip off that this wasn't originally made as a summer series.

Workforce Dumping - Update

There is a move by the Canadian government and business interests to admit 700,000 people in one year to clear the immigration backlog. In a move to support this action there have been a number stories sprinkled throughout the media about worthy small business that have trouble recruiting enough people. There was a story last night of a truck manufacturer and its trouble recruiting welders. Today in the Globe and Mail Jeffery Simpson had a snarky column about how Canadian employers have to recruit aboard because locals are unreliable. In this Simpson gave the example of Stanfield, Underwear makers, and how it has trouble recruiting locals (id est Canadians) because they (a) can't work (b) won't work (c) work badly.

My answer to these champions of free enterprise is pay more money. People are willing to do more for union wages (living) than for a few bucks above minimum. For the sake of saving $5 bucks a hour our champions of industry want more people in the country.

In Alberta there is an example of the difference over time between high quality, high wage, low turnover, jobs with low quality, low wage, high turnover, jobs. A couple decades ago when meat packing plants were primarily in cities there was a long strike at Gainers against Peter Pocklington. Pocklington wanted to reduce the wages at Gainers, a union shop, to a couple of dollars above minimum wage. Now the biggest Albertan packing plant is in Brooks. The wages there are $10/hr versus $20/hr twenty years ago at Gainers. After the plant was established it quickly ran out of people who would work at slaughterhouse for $10/hr. So the company turned to mass immigration.

In the NY Times there is a story of illegal immigrants that have been hired by contractors to clean up New Orleans. The locals are very angry with this development. The question is why would government contractors would feel they are free to hire illegals. Because in America immigration policy is aimed at maximizing are creating a large pool of insecure workers. Otherwise their illegal immigration problem would disappear if the crime of immigration violation would apply equally to employers as with the employees.

Mass immigration is crutch for bad employees. Productivity improvements occurs when more value added is created for each additional input. Attempting to get discounts on labour, raw material and energy is just way of getting productivity increases on the cheap. Technological improvements are more long lasting than any slight temporary saving. Also the business may be saving money through negative externalities as its costs are borne by the wider public.

Note

National contractors in New Orleans preferring to hire illegal immigrants over locals, In Louisiana, Worker Influx Causes Ill Will

I can't link to the Jeffery Simpson oped. The Globe and Mail's website has gotten worse. They have put more and more of their content behind a paid registration screen.

Update: November 6, 2005
Here is a recent story, link in cutout limbo, from the wire service AP about the abuse of illegal workers. A number were employed by subcontractors of a subsidiary of Haliburton. The entire crew were stiffed out of their pay. These "white collar" crimes are fraud, theft, and conspiracy. The local authorities should lay these and RICO charges all the way up the chain from subcontractor to Haliburton. The local law enforcement should actually lay charges and enforce laws but the practice of condoning immigration offenses by employers in the US has become traditional. 

Update 08/04/2012: For greater visibility.