Tag: link

I’ll tell you what’s funny (to me)

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Truth and Mister Rogers

Truth and Mister Rogers

Earlier today…

To quote the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (one of my favorite online resources): “Almost every major figure in the history of philosophy has proposed a theory, but after 2,500 years of discussion there has been little consensus about what constitutes humor.”…Considering what we know about MacFarlane’s politics – he’s a liberal, an Obama donor, a supporter of LGBT rights, etc. — it’s unlikely that he actually intended to come off as a sexist boor who was belittling women. Indeed, it’s possible he intended quite the opposite – but as any grad student in literary theory could tell you, artistic intention isn’t that important. His shtick was fundamentally confusing: What kind of comedy was the boob song – juvenile and sexist mockery, or institutional parody? Or both at once? And who was its intended target? Worst of all, the confusion evidently struck many viewers, especially women, as profoundly unfunny.

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I’ll tell you what’s funny (to me)
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This is why Obama can’t make a deal with Republicans

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President Barack Obama is photographed during a presidential portrait sitting for an official photo in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama is photographed during a presidential portrait sitting for an official photo in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Earlier today…

This had led to a lot of Republicans fanning out to explain what the president should be offering if he was serious about making a deal. Then, when it turns out that the president did offer those items, there’s more furious hand-waving about how no, actually, this is what the president needs to offer to make a deal. Then, when it turns out he’s offered most of that, too, the hand-waving stops and the truth comes out: Republicans won’t make a deal that includes further taxes, they just want to get the White House to implement their agenda in return for nothing. Luckily for them, most of the time, the conversation doesn’t get that far, and the initial comments that the president needs to “get serious” on entitlements is met with sage nods.

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This is why Obama can’t make a deal with Republicans
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Bob Dylan’s Biography of American Racism » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

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Young Bob Dylan Entertains

Young Dylan Entertains

Earlier today…

Blind Willie McTell is perhaps most famous nowadays for his song “Statesboro Blues,” most likely titled after the city he grew up in.  Although McTell was somewhat well-known on the blues circuit during the 1920s and 1930s, most folks who know this song today know it because of the Allman Brothers.  Their version is electric and extended.  McTell played a fluid twelve-string and the occasional slide.  He live for sixty years and played throughout the southern United States in a style of picking known as Piedmont—named after the region of the Carolinas it originated in.  While Bob Dylan was recording songs for the album eventually known as Infidels, he recorded his song “Blind Willie McTell.”  A masterpiece of a song from a man who has many such songs to his name, Dylan’s work is about much more than the blues singer Willie McTell.  It is an angry message transmitted via Dylan from an angry god.  Even more, it is about a people & a nation that continues to suffer what Abraham Lincoln…

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Bob Dylan’s Biography of American Racism » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
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Did a gay blackmail scandal bring down the pope? – Salon.com

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Earlier today…

You know what the sudden, surprising, once-every-700-years story of the pope’s resignation needed? What every dramatic storyline does: a gay blackmail twist. And so the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica this week reports on a very tangled web that claims to have brought down a pope, under the irresistible headline “Sex and career, blackmail in the Vatican: Behind the resignation of Benedict XVI.” … Now, La Repubblica says that the trio of cardinals, who’ve been looking into the matter since last year, revealed to the pope a faction within the Vatican “united by sexual orientation” that had been subject to “external influence” of a “worldly nature.” (The paper helpfully explains this is Vaticanspeak for blackmail.) A source it says is close to the cardinals who prepared the report told La Repubblica, with equal poetic obscurity, “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments.”

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Did a gay blackmail scandal bring down the pope? – Salon.com
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The Heartland Dissident – NYTimes.com

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Earlier today…

McCain was an early enthusiast for the war in Iraq, Hagel an early skeptic. Could he imagine the co-chairman of his first national race having a place on a McCain ticket or in a McCain administration? I asked. "I’d be honored to have Chuck with me in any capacity," McCain replied. "He’d make a great secretary of state."

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The Heartland Dissident – NYTimes.com
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Paul Krugman – Marco Rubio Has Learned Nothing

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Nixon shakes hands with the ancestor of the Tea Party

Nixon shakes hands with the ancestor of the Tea Party

Earlier today…

Faced with overwhelming, catastrophic evidence that their faith in unregulated financial markets was wrong, they have responded by rewriting history to defend their prejudices. This strikes me as a bigger deal than whether Rubio slurped his water; he and his party are now committed to the belief that their pre-crisis doctrine was perfect, that there are no lessons from the worst financial crisis in three generations except that we should have even less regulation. And given another shot at power, they’ll test that thesis by giving the bankers a chance to do it all over again.

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Marco Rubio Has Learned Nothing – NYTimes.com
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Flame retardants in furniture and baby products on the way out

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Her Teeth were White Lies

Her Teeth were White Lies

Earlier today…

In a move that could affect consumers nationwide, California officials Friday unveiled plans to scrap an obscure 1975 rule that led to the widespread use of toxic flame retardants in upholstered furniture and baby products in American homes. The proposed changes would require upholstery fabric to resist a smoldering cigarette — the biggest cause of furniture fires. California currently requires the foam cushioning underneath to withstand a candlelike flame for 12 seconds, a standard manufacturers meet by adding flame-retardant chemicals. The rule also has been applied to baby products such as diaper-changing pads, highchairs and nursery rockers. If the changes are adopted later this year, scores of new household products might soon be free of flame retardants linked to cancer, developmental problems, lower IQ and impaired fertility. Studies show the chemicals migrate out of products into household dust ingested by people, especially young children who play on the floor…

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Flame retardants in furniture and baby products on the way out – chicagotribune.com
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Miles Davis: The Bootleg Series, Volume 2: Live in Europe 1969

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miles davis with john and yoko

miles davis with john and yoko

Earlier today…

“It was really a bad motherfucker,” Miles Davis wrote in his autobiography of the live band he led in 1969. With somewhat less panache, Davis completists have pegged the group the Lost Quintet, since, unlike the two longstanding Davis five-pieces that preceded it, this one never made a proper studio recording. All of the members– saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette– appear on 1970’s landmark Bitches Brew and other scattered sessions from the time, but only as part of larger ensembles; until now, if you wanted to hear them as a stripped-down unit, you had to consult imports, bootlegs and YouTube. This second installment in the Miles Davis Bootleg Series, which follows an excellent 2011 set focusing on the trumpeter’s prior working band, gives us three complete Lost Quintet gigs, plus the majority of a fourth, on three CDs and one DVD.  It’s a real trove, and not just because this lineup is relatively obscure

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Miles Davis: The Bootleg Series, Volume 2: Live in Europe 1969
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The Catholic Church’s Convenient Morality

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Enraged

Earlier today…

But the church has simultaneously reserved the right to behave just like any other institution, leaning on legal technicalities, smearing victims and demonstrating no more compassion than a tobacco company might show. “In the name of Jesus,” Anderson told me, “they do things that Jesus would abhor.”
They do things erratically, that’s for sure. From my extensive reporting on the sexual abuse crisis in the 1990s, I don’t recall any great push to excommunicate priests who forced themselves on kids. But when Sister Margaret McBride, in 2009, was part of a Phoenix hospital’s decision to abort an 11-week-old fetus inside a 27-year-old woman whose life was gravely endangered by the pregnancy, she indeed suffered excommunication…

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The Catholic Church’s Convenient Morality – NYTimes.com
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Amazon Q4 profits fall 45 percent

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Beasts_of_tarzan

Earlier today…

The company’s shares are down a bit today, but the company’s stock is taking a much less catastrophic plunge in already-meager profits than Apple, whose stock plunged simply because its Q4 profits increased at an unexpectedly slow rate. That’s because Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers. The shareholders put up the equity, and instead of owning a claim on a steady stream of fat profits, they get a claim on a mighty engine of consumer surplus. Amazon sells things to people at prices that seem impossible because it actually is impossible to make money that way. And the competitive pressure of needing to square off against Amazon cuts profit margins at other companies, thus benefiting people who don’t even buy anything from Amazon.

 

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Amazon Q4 profits fall 45 percent.
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Why Kraftwerk are still among the world’s most influential bands

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Kraftwerk - Electric Cafe

Earlier today…

David Bowie adored Kraftwerk, writing the track V-2 Schneider for his 1977 album Heroes (the band would namecheck him back on Trans-Europe Express). African American DJs also found an odd kinship with the Germans. Keen to find a new musical language, they were familiar with the urban sounds Kraftwerk were using; 1978’s The Robots became particularly influential on the dancefloor, and in the burgeoning B-Boy and breakdancing scenes. Afrika Bambaataa fused the melody of Trans-Europe Express and the rhythm of 1981’s Numbers to create Planet Rock, one of hip-hop’s pioneering tracks. Trailblazing electro group Cybotron used a loop from 1977’s Hall of Mirrors; its founder, Juan Atkins, would create techno, and from there came modern dance culture.

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Why Kraftwerk are still among the world’s most influential band
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White House Staffers React to Insane Online Petitions

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Spock trim

Earlier today…

After being hit by all sorts of, shall we say, nonserious petitions like the Death Star one that reached the 25,000-signature benchmark, the White House has raised the bar. From now on, a petition will require 100,000 signatures in order to win White House attention. …”If you had told me a year and a half ago that the White House would be devoting time writing [an official statement] on how Lord Vader could fix our economic woes, I would have just laughed loudly at you,” one White House staffer who has worked on the WTP outreach program tells Mother Jones. Another White House staffer connected with the program is more blunt: “Sometimes, I find myself thinking, ‘My God, what have we done?'”

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White House Staffers React to Insane Online Petitions

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Congress less popular than cockroaches, traffic jams – Public Policy Polling

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My Lips Are For Blowing

My Lips Are For Blowing

Earlier today…

Facing low approval ratings after a historically unproductive 112th session and  a series of last-minute showdowns over fiscal matters, Congress is now less popular than root canals, NFL replacement referees, head lice, the rock band Nickelback, colonoscopies, carnies, traffic jams, cockroaches, Donald Trump, France, Genghis Khan, used-car salesmen and Brussel sprouts.

When asked if they have a higher opinion of either Congress or a series of unpleasant or disliked things, voters said they had a higher opinion of root canals (32 for Congress and 56 for the dental procedure), NFL replacement refs (29-56), head lice (19-67), the rock band Nickelback (32-39), colonoscopies (31-58), Washington DC political pundits (34-37), carnies (31-39), traffic jams (34-56), cockroaches (43-45), Donald Trump (42-44), France (37-46), Genghis Khan (37-41), used-car salesmen (32-57), and Brussels sprouts (23-69) than Congress.

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Congress less popular than cockroaches, traffic jams – Public Policy Polling

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Creationism and racism » Pharyngula

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6006988305_21835c00fe_o

Earlier today…

Ken Ham was indignant and outraged. How dare we connect creationism to racism? He was claiming that all races were one, descended from a common ancestor, Noah, 4000 years ago! Of course, what he neglects to mention is that the Biblical story claims that Africans are the product of a curse of servility placed on Ham and all of his descendants.
Well, and he also neglects to mention that the story is totally bogus, disproven by modern evidence, and has no relationship at all to the patterns of migration in human history.
Ken Ham is wrong and racist. The Biblical story of the origins of the diverse peoples of the earth is wrong and racist. It really is that simple. It takes a complex history and turns it into a pat partitioning of humanity into the chosen people, and the cursed people.

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Creationism and racism » Pharyngula
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Drinking Like a Poet

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Earlier today…

Rabbie Burns Cocktail

1 one-inch strip of orange peel

1 1/2 ounces Dewar’s White Label

1/2 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth

3 dashes Bénédictine.

Rub the rim of a cocktail glass with the orange peel. Shake the other ingredients in a glass with ice. Strain into the cocktail glass and garnish with the reserved peel.

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Drinking Like a Poet
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