Archive for the ‘Raised Eyebrows Dept.’ Category
Mmmm: Lemony
Sometimes I am stupefied by the breathtaking depth of philosophical / ethical thinking on exhibit in the political discourse of modern politicians. Sharron Angle, I'm told, is a Republican candidate for US Senate in Nevada. Here is part of her response in answer to a question about abortion in the context of a father raping [...]
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Miss Analyst Regrets
Call me perverse if you like, but when some link someplace showed me this headline Sony Tumbles After Forecasts Miss Analyst Estimates [from Bloomberg Business Week, 13 May 2010] I read it with the sense that would be implied by punctuating it thus: "Sony Tumbles After Forecasts, Miss Analyst Estimates". I found myself wondering who [...]
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Metaphorical Inaccuracy
Some people hold a boning knife like a conductor's baton during a particularly slow part of Pachelbel's Canon. [Tom Mylan, a Brooklyn butcher, quoted by Kevin Purdy, "A Butcher's Tips for Avoiding Cuts in the Kitchen", Lifehacker, 10 February 2010.] Unfortunately, Pachelbel's famous "Canon" has only one tempo, one speed. Sections of the work have [...]
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"Entirely under Priesthood Direction"
I took a few minutes today to glance through yesterday's trial transcript from Perry v. Schwarzenegger (transcript of the proceedings for Wednesday, 20 January 2010, of Perry v. Schwarzenegger (Volume 7, pages 1480–1741), and found a few things that caught my attention. You may recall that during the campaign last fall, accusations were made that [...]
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D'you Remember Joseph?
What happens when biblical literalism become biblical forgetfulness? Odd things certainly. Herewith a brief, heart-rending excerpt from an opinion piece by Chuck Norris (via Tinyfrog because I hate to link to the original): What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had [...]
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Possible or Impossible?
Love her or loathe her, Lady Gaga is impossible to ignore. [Napoleon Perdis, "Going Gaga for Lady Gaga: Makeup Lessons of a Pop Diva", Huffington Post, 17 December 2009.] Um, not true, actually. Share on Facebook
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Christmas Oddities
Isaac was obsessed today with finding another 15 feet of the silver garland he was using on the blue tree this year. We finally found some, I'm happy to say, so he's bearable to be around tonight. Anyway, our travels took us to Lowe's hardware store where two items in the seasonal shop caught my [...]
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Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
When I awoke this morning I thought I was hearing unusual sounds coming from outside the house, sounds I couldn't quite identify. Now I realize it must have been the sounds of conservatives' heads exploding. I have to admit that I didn't really expect this news this morning. It does make me try to remember [...]
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Who Are the People's Lobbyists?
Here's another gloss on the corrupting power of money from large corporations, in this instance health-care insurance companies — not to mention the silly, antidemocratic notion of "corporate personhood" that recognizes campaign "contributions" from such corporations as political "speech" protected by the First Amendment. First, note the observation the the health insurance and HMO corporations [...]
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Faster or slower?
A few days ago I ordered prescription refills. They will be delivered to our house from some remote location. The medications on my list come in two types: 1) plain old pills, requiring no special handling; and 2) temperature-sensitive insulin, which is usually sent in special packaging containing cold packs via expedited delivery. I got [...]
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Like a Laser Beam
A few days ago I read a piece by one Ellen Sterling;* I don't know who she is but I know a bit more about her after reading what she wrote. Her subject was someone else unknown to me named Lior Suchard. Of Suchard she says At 27, Suchard is the heir apparent to Uri [...]
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Hate your Job Much?
[Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, speaking of a "public option" in health-care reform, said,] "every time the government gets involved in something it doesn't work." [Dave Zirin: Michael Steele: Meet Amanda Duzak, Huffington Post, 2 September 2009.] Which is worse, Politicians who want positions in government while protesting that government is an awful idea; [...]
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Stephen Hawking Erroneously Found Dead in "Death Panel" Marketing
How interesting. I learned from Avedon Carol (who learned from Wonkette….) of an editorial in the Investor's Business Daily that, in explaining how government-run-healthcare "death panels" wold imperil your grandmother's life, used as the centerpiece of it argument that famed physicist Stephen Hawking, whose life is challenged with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as [...]
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For Dummies Only
Yesterday in the check-out line at the supermarket I saw a small-format book with the title Numerology for Dummies. It promised to explain the important and mysterious effects that numbers have in one's daily life. "How singularly appropriate!" I thought. How likely is it that Numerology for Really Smart People who Know what a Crock [...]
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Yumm! Peppermint!
This weekend Isaac and I did a bit of after-Christmas shopping. We didn't find much but we did see a few things. One of the more extraordinary was on the mark-down shelf at Target. Now, while I understood what the product was and what it was used for, I was caught off guard by the [...]
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The Thrill of Museums
If you add up the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game this year, the combined total will come to about 140 million people. That's a big number, but it's barely a fraction of the number of people who will visit American museums this year. Museums are big business, attracting billions of [...]
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That McCain-Palin Mob
Via virtually everyone comes links to these worthy videos at Blogger Interrupted that Tim Russo following a Sarah Palin rally: The McCain-Palin mob in Strongsville, Ohio; and McCain-Palin Mob Part 2 – Woman’s child says of Barack “you need gloves to touch him” (I link to his page so that you can see his commentary [...]
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All Pleasure is a Risk
Isaac asked me to post this where we could find it easily, since it is these days frequently referenced in conversation. This little sign seems to have great predictive powers, eliciting gratifying responses–or non-responses–from people we find more fun to be around–or less so. [via Arnold Zwicky at Language Log ("Today's little amuse-bouche") whose attention [...]
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Tortured, Opaque Prose
This morning I read a posting on a blog that began with this sentence. It's amazing how different some people like to perceive themselves as whilst maintaining an utterly normative attitude to life. I'm not attributing it because the author claims to be a writer.* Is it just me or is this about the most [...]
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No-Sex Sex-Ed
I just read this sentence* and the little light bulb lit up. In a letter sent to the student body and faculty, and obtained by WIS News 10 Columbia, Irmo High School Principal Eddie Walker wrote, "The formation of this club conflicts with my professional beliefs in that we do not have other clubs at [...]
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