Some kids’ cereals may have way too much sugar, report finds - BostonHerald.com
12.07.2011
Osawatomie...
...that town in Kansas where Obama spoke the other day, was (as you probably know) also the place Teddy Roosevelt spoke during the run-up to the election of 1812. Roosevelt ran in 1812 as the presidential candidate of the progressive Bull Moose party and lost. To Woodrow Wilson. (Maybe you didn't know that.)
12.06.2011
Seriously
Whoa, Did Something Die in Here? Oh, It Was Freedom - Lowering the Bar
While you weren't looking, those hilarious pranksters in Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things authorizes the military to detain U.S. citizens arrested in this country "without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force," meaning until the "War on Terror" is over, meaning never.
That's seriously what just happened.
Yup, much easier to just screw you
Why No Financial Crisis Prosecutions? Ex-Justice Official Says It’s Just too Hard - ProPublica
Well, according to a now-departed Justice Department official who used to be in charge of investigating such matters, the Justice Department has decided that holding top Wall Street executives criminally accountable is too difficult a task [5].
Villains exposed
How "The Muppets" made Occupy Wall Street - Andrew Leonard - Salon.com
A specter is haunting America: the specter of Communist Muppets!
Don’t you dare smile! I just watched, mouth agape, a segment on the Fox Business “Follow the Money” show that definitively exposed the new Muppets movie as yet another example of liberals trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.…
Oh go ahead, tell us what you really think
The infantile style in American politics - 2012 Elections - Salon.com
The farce known as the GOP presidential campaign has officially become a freak show. Newt Gingrich, the creepiest huckster in American politics, whose unique combination of hypocrisy, opportunism and sanctimoniousness led to his being unceremoniously bounced from Congress back in 1998, is now the front-runner to become the Republican presidential nominee.…
12.05.2011
Which is not exactly a far-fetched idea
Kucinich: Is Obama stumbling into war with Iran? | The Raw Story
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Monday questioned whether the Obama administration was trying to provoke Iran into an armed conflict.
A novel in progress by our very own Lynn C Dot
Now & Then, appearing for the first time on our book list and again, no doubt, when it winds up on the best-seller lists.
Can't wait for the movie
Be on the Lookout - Lowering the Bar
The Little Caesar's pizza restaurant in Southgate, Michigan, is asking for information relating to the person in a gorilla suit who has repeatedly invaded the premises in order to dump a bag of sand on the floor. The perpetrator then flees in a dark blue Chevy Cobalt driven by a Caucasian man (or possibly a gorilla wearing a Caucasian-man suit).
So when you say outside…
News from The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA has found a new planet outside our solar system that's eerily similar to Earth in key aspects.
Really? Payfors?
Dems Drop Details Of Payroll Tax Cut While GOP Signals Early Opposition | TPMDC
The payfors haven’t been completely finalized, but will come from three sources.…
Yeah I know, living language and all that (see Lexicographer's Dilemma on our reading list), but do we really need to get that ugly about it?
Keep hoping
Opinion: Wall St. plays Occupy White House - Joel Kotkin - POLITICO.com
Even while trying to exploit the Occupy Wall Street movement for political purposes, Obama still leads in financial sector donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has secured more cash from the financial elite, at this point, than all the GOP candidates combined. He has even raised twice as much as they have from Bain Capital, the venture firm co-founded by Romney.…
12.04.2011
Books everywhere
E-book market forecast to hit $5.2B as the book industry burns — Tech News and Analysis
My previous book reader, a Nook Color, was good but heavier to hold, and I found the back-lit screen fatiguing after a while. I'm planning to install Android on it and use it as a tablet, although I'm expecting it to be mostly a fooling-around-with tablet instead of a real tablet because its processor is on the slow side (presumably the new Nook Tablet improves this situation, but I don't want to know bad enough to find out). Still, fun. And Angry Birds.
These shifts are resulting in the biggest change in publishing since the time of Gutenberg.And the perfect kind of reader is right here (Amazon and Kobo have comparable devices at comparable prices). It's lightweight, easy to carry and hold, runs approximately forever on one battery charge and has a touchscreen, e-ink display. E-ink, it turns out, is far, far preferable to a back-lit, computer-style screen if what you want to do is just sit and read. Also it does nothing else but read: It is essentially a single-purpose device. OK, it does twit, but then everything twits, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure my toaster twits, and I'm sure my phone does. But it (the Nook Touch) doesn't check email or make coffee.
My previous book reader, a Nook Color, was good but heavier to hold, and I found the back-lit screen fatiguing after a while. I'm planning to install Android on it and use it as a tablet, although I'm expecting it to be mostly a fooling-around-with tablet instead of a real tablet because its processor is on the slow side (presumably the new Nook Tablet improves this situation, but I don't want to know bad enough to find out). Still, fun. And Angry Birds.
Bah
12 Days of Holiday Tips | USA.gov
Get your holidays off to a great start!
From the aforementioned USA.gov ("Government made easy") comes this list of 12 tips for celebrating the upcoming season of holidays:
- Make a budget.
- Get a job.
And we can't wait to find out the other ten!
House ethics...
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Lawmaker, Shares in Gas Field Bounty - NYTimes.com
House ethics rules do not prohibit lawmakers from taking steps to aid industries in which they have a financial stake.
...is an oxymoron on the scale of military intelligence or jumbo shrimp. The government is corrupt from bottom to top (who knew US law enforcement agencies conduct "Attorney General Exempt Operations," BTW?) and that is really not a good thing.
(Sorry about the links to the Times but, dude, if you haven't figured out how to deal with that by now you should just go buy yourself a book.)
12.03.2011
Tradition: A shifting target
From a piece on people having conversations with their phones (yes, we said with their phones) in public…
Virtual Assistants Raise New Issues of Phone Etiquette - NYTimes.com
But, he predicted, “there will be a small minority of traditionalists who yearn for the good old days when people just texted in public.”
(And an even smaller minority of "conservatives" who yearn for quill pens (just like Alexander Hamilton!).)
Apparently you need an Alabama driver's license (or one from Japan) to drive in Alabama
Alabama arrests another foreign car executive under new immigration law | The Raw Story
The Guardian reports that Honda manager Ichiro Yada was arrested earlier this week at a checkpoint in Leeds, Alabama, despite being able to show police his passport, US work permit, and international driver’s license. He was not taken into custody, however, but was ticketed and released on a signature bond.
Yada’s international license was apparently not sufficient to satisfy the letter of the law, which required him to carry either an Alabama license or one issued by Japan.
Or you have to be nuts. Take your pick.
New to our Work Avoidance list
iPhonography, a showing of photos made with a, you know, iPhone (or iPad) in which our Midwest bureau chief is, BTW, represented by the following submissions:
http://fxphotostudioshow.tumblr.com/post/13498060150/jaguar-by-philip-r-compton-effects-used-vintagehttp://fxphotostudioshow.tumblr.com/post/13585187154/dreaming-of-the-sea-by-philip-r-compton-effects(If you are a Facebook user you can "like" these pictures, which increases the chances they will be picked for a print show in New York later this month. So why are you still just sitting there reading this?)
12.02.2011
But can it eat Cleveland?
Look at This Giant Bug! | Popular Science
This amazing/disturbing picture is of a giant weta, the world's biggest insect…
Throw the book at 'em
You won't see much mention of it in the traditional media, but Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is suing the big banks for foreclosure fraud. That's a really big deal.…
It still probably won't land these crooks behind bars, but it will certainly be leverage toward much, much stiffer penalties against the banks than the Obama Administration is hoping for with their papered-over settlement.
It's a case case
It develops I have so many cases–cases for gadgets long forgotten, cases for obsolete stuff, cases of every size and shape (but universally, it seems, black)–that I need a case to keep them in. Fortunately, I have one. Is that a lucky thing or what?
12.01.2011
If it was good enough for Tiny Tim it's good enough for Newt
Gingrich Still Wants to Hire Children as Janitors - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
Newt Gingrich, who got some flack last month for suggesting we eliminate child labor laws and allow underpriveleged children to clean schools for pay, has sort of recanted on his position. And by recanted, we mean he acknowledged that janitorial work can be dangerous, so these children shouldn't be allowed to do much more than clean the bathrooms.
Tis the season, etc.
Naah, it'll never fly
December Named National Awareness Month | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
WASHINGTON—In an effort to combat what organizers are calling "our current epidemic of complete and utter obliviousness," the American Foundation for Paying Attention to Things has declared December "National Awareness Month."
Really, this would make a great sitcom
Fox treading carefully in Gingrich-Romney race - Salon.com
The Republican primary campaign has become a two-man race, with unloved ostensible front-runner Mitt Romney currently suffering the indignity of trailing in the polls to self-satisfied serial adulterer Newt Gingrich.
Oh wait. It is?
R is for…
Meet the new Social Darwinists - Republican Party - Salon.com
They’re not conservatives. They’re regressives.
When there's no bar at all
News from The Associated Press
Recent data suggest the economy is picking up. Retailers reported a strong start to holiday sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumer confidence surged in November to the highest level since July and Americans' pay rose in October by the most in seven months.
Many economists say that is driving stronger growth in the final three months of the year. They forecast a 3 percent annual rate for the October-December quarter. That would be an improvement from the 2 percent rate in the July-September quarter.
"A party base that seems to have been lobotomized overnight"
Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community
As seen by the German magazine Der Spiegel…
So I ask myself…
…where is the law that says I can't have a baloney sandwich for breakfast? And why don't I ask myself that more often?
Good question
Inside Obama's re-election math - CNN.com
So why, then, was [Obama] in Scranton this week pushing the payroll tax cut?
It is a complete mystery to me that at a time when everybody is running around blabbering the Social Security system is out of money and the program has to be pared down Obama is making a signature issue out of cutting the Social Security tax. Well, maybe not such a mystery after all. Fail to the Chief.
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