4.02.2016
Wait, what?
Sanders camp calls the prospect of debating on the night of the NCAA championship "ludicrous." pic.twitter.com/hzXwNyJYxK
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) April 2, 2016
One thing you've got to say for these R's; they've got a very deep bench
"Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who helped author the work requirement as a U.S. congressman in 1996, is among the conservative politicians arguing that able-bodied adults should not receive SNAP benefits if they are not working.…
A spokesman for Kasich, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said reinstating the requirement would prod people to seek work in the improving economy."
The collected works
Better than joining a book club, right? But wait. The election doesn’t happen until November or something. Plenty of time for even more insults.
And yes, Time has you covered.
Make your own!
This is one of the things I don't get (there are many, I should start a series)
Obama, world leaders urge action on nuclear security, terror | Miami Herald
"Despite their calls for further action, the roughly 50 leaders assembled announced that this year's gathering would be the last of this kind."
Why don’t these guys quit urging action snd just, you know, act? Seems like that would be more productive, no?
Go Washington!
If the Washington women can beat Syracuse in the women’s Final Four Sunday we could very likely wind up with Huskies v. Huskies on the 5th. How cool would that be?
4.01.2016
"No, no, no."
Area Congressman Thinks Bernie Is Going to Sneak in Your House to Set Your Alarm Clock
Don Young is a member of the United States Congress. He is not a crackpot.
We'll wait
A Futuristic Suit That Gives You a Taste of Old Age - The New York Times
"An exhibit opening on Friday at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City answers the question by letting you walk a proverbial mile in your elders’ orthopedic shoes. Slip into the R70i Age Suit, a robotic contraption complete with 'augmented reality' goggles, and suddenly you are 85."
By the time we feel like going to Jersey City we won’t need it anyway.
We're staying here
New York Today: A Fools’ Parade - The New York Times
"The nonexistent parade is solely a fixture in the imagination of the New York artist Joey Skaggs, a prankster who creates elaborate hoaxes as a form of social activism."
It’s supposed to rain anyway. Unless that’s a joke too—which would be fine with us. Also you could cancel the snow in next week’s forecast while you’re at it.
No joke.
We used to do it with toboggans tied behind a jeep—but that was then
Cross country skiing + dog = skijoring, with love - CNN.com
"Technically, to be called, skijoring ('ski driving' in Norwegian, and pronounced Ske-JORE-ing), it doesn't need to be canine-powered. There's horse skijoring, snowmobiles, even motorcycles pulling skiers."
Indeed
Slate’s mistakes for the week of March 28.
"In a March 30 Brow Beat, Katy Waldman midentified the American Bird Conservancy as the American Bird Conservatory."
[Emphasis mine.]
It's not just The Donald any more
Hillary is losing her grip on New York | New York Post
"The former secretary of state got fired up after hecklers shouted, 'She wins, we lose!'
'We’re very sorry you’re leaving!' Clinton declared as the demonstrators were escorted out."
(Possibly in New York as well.)
The U.S. has nuked itself (and the Pacific Ocean) more than 1,000 times
Eight countries. 2,055 nuclear tests. 71 years – mapped - Washington Post
Russia comes in at over 700—and there’s more.
This animation at the Washington Post web site tells the story.
3.31.2016
Feel the Bern
You Paid for Ted Cruz’s Red Hot Fundraising Date With Donald Trump - The Daily Beast
"The FEC filings for Cruz’s leadership PAC showed that in January of 2014, Trump made the maximum legal contribution of $5,000 to Cruz’s PAC. And Cruz’s trip to get that money cost taxpayers more than $1,200, according to USA Today.
"Cruz’s team defended the expense to the paper by pointing out that the senator had made a Fox News appearance while he was there -- even though Fox has a studio just a block away from Cruz’s senate office on Capitol Hill."
Let's hear it for kippers
Kippers are sort of like sardines on steroids. You get them at a grocery store. They’re packaged in long, flat tins like sardine tins only, you know, on steroids. Some of them are named after a Norwegian guy called Oscar (where else would an guy called Oscar be a king?).
They’re made out of herrings, I think. Herrings are a good fish. They’re good4u and, as far as I know, not endangered. They are certainly not endangered by me.
But I do like to keep a tin or two around for emergencies. Like lunch.
Tay returns?
Twitterbot Tay could be the future for Microsoft - CSMonitor.com
"The bot was shut down originally after it learned a new profane vocabulary from other Twitter users, adopted an affinity for Adolf Hitler, and picked up a more offensive attitude."
"As an industry, we are on the cusp of a new frontier,” says Microsoft.
Seems right.
I guess if you have enough money this makes sense
Pro-Clinton super-PAC hoards cash for historic blitz | TheHill
"'I think it’s gonna come to a conclusion, and she has expressed every confidence that she thinks it will resolve itself in a way that reveals that, besides what she’s already addressed, there’s nothing else there.
'And I believe that that will be the case.'"
(Or maybe what you need is an Ivy League law degree. And enough money.)
Breaking, boiling, some kind of point, anyway—what's your point?
GOP nears the breaking point | TheHill
"'This race is kind of at its boiling point,' said Matt Mackowiak…"
When "can't afford the time" really means can't afford the time
Smartphones are killing the watch industry | New York Post
"Chanel, for one, is investing more heavily in its entry-level line of watches, known as the Boy.Friend, that sell for $4,000 to $8,000."
And yeah, I know four grand is cheap for a high-end watch. Just read the ads in the New Yorker.
But me, I’m more of a Timex guy. As far as I can tell, cheap minutes are about the same length as really expensive ones—or is that the other way around? It’s true we spend a whole lot of money keeping accurate time—atomic clocks and so forth—which is necessary for certain things like, for example, running this network, but there’s nothing in the rulebook that says time has to be kept in “minutes” and “hours”—it could just as well be peanuts and butterflies. In fact, sometime back in the 90’s, the watchmaker Swatch tried to market a new decimal-based timekeeping system that used “beats” for minutes and had the entire globe functioning in just one time zone (a concept that more or less lost its meaning in Swatch’s plan)—but the whole project failed because I was the only one who took part in it.
Time is a thing, all right (see Einstein) but keeping track of it is arbitrary at best. I once saw a women interviewed on TV who objected to Daylight Saving Time because it wasn’t God’s time. The Interview took place in Georgia and the God’s Time she was referring to was Eastern Standard. Keep that in mind if you live on the left coast.
I had a pocket watch just like my Dad’s when I was a kid, then got a wristwatch as a high school graduation present. You don’t see pocket watches around much any more, but the way you tell real bluejeans from imposters is still looking to see if they have a watch pocket (the real ones do). My graduation watch, which probably cost thirty or forty bucks in the Money of the Ancients, was undoubtedly the most expensive watch I ever owned.
I still have several cheap wristwatches lying around somewhere but none of them work because their batteries are dead. One of them is an Apple watch marked “Think Different” which runs backward. I wore it for quite some time, until I started having trouble reading time in the regular way. My classes were getting disorganized because the clock in the computer lab ran forward.
It turns out, however, that except for the fact they’re different, backward minutes and forward minutes are the same.
Some people set their clocks a little bit ahead to avoid being late to appointments and then are late because they think they have more time than they do. But let’s not get into that. In my sister’s house there is a time zone for every room.
So a decade or so ago I ran across an old-fashionedy pocket-style watch in a drug store somewhere and, seized by an attack of retro, almost bought it—but then remembered I had a phone in my pocket that told me the time for free, if I didn’t count what it cost. And I’ve been doing that ever since—using my phone as a timepiece (see above).
The only difference is that it—especially the one I have now, which is approximately the size of the Sunday New York Times—no longer fits in the watch pocket of my real jeans.
The Cajun rider
Some Guy in Seattle notes…
Three-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Calvin Borel retires | Sport | The Guardian
"Borel is the only jockey to win three Derbies in four years. He rode Street Sense to victory in 2007, won a second Derby in 2009 aboard 50-1 long shot Mine That Bird and won the next year with Super Saver."
The Kentucky Derby this year is Saturday, May 7th. Ir will be the 142nd running of the race.
Kasich nearly blows it in New York
Kasich Visits Queens Pizzeria, Gets a Slice AND REACHES FOR A FORK
"But [whew] rather than double down on his pizza-related blunder, Kasich made the choice endorsed by serious New York pizza aficionados and picked up his slice."
Marco comes untied
"Marco Rubio may have suspended his campaign for President, but, in the event there is a contested convention, he still wants his delegates. In a signed letter to the Chair of the Alaska Republican Party, Rubio writes, “The decision to suspend my campaign for President of the Untied States is not—” haha wait WHAT."
3.30.2016
You need a permit to get stuck in Halifax?
Town: Stuck man had no permits | Boston Herald
No, but shoulda had one anyway, paper says.
Be still my heart
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Endorsed Texas Senator Ted Cruz - The Atlantic
And in other GOP governor news:
Florida Governor Wants Yale to Move
(To Florida, of course. Too far away for Liverlips and Sunshine Joe.)
Can't wait til it comes to Netflix
"Grace Cunard appeared in Lucille Love, The Girl of Mystery, which was billed as the 'Most Sensational Series of Pictures Ever Produced … AEROPLANES—LION—TIGERS—CANNIBALS—SHIPWRECKS …'"
A lot of rubber chicken that is
Sanders on Clinton’s Clooney fundraiser: ‘It is obscene’
"Clinton is asking donors for $353,400 for two seats at the head table with herself, Clooney and his wife, Amal, at the April 15 event in San Francisco. "
3.29.2016
There are 147 FBI agents involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation - The Washington Post
Writing about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email this morning, a political blogger named Chris Cillizza unleashes this parenthetical zombie:
(Worth noting: Lots of other secretaries of state used private email accounts to supplement their official accounts; none used only a private email account and server.)
“Lots of other secretaries of state” who used private email accounts are, in reverse chronological order, (possibly) John Kerry, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powel. For the record. The other 64, plus a dozen or so acting, going all the way back to John Jay, did not.
Here's the relevant discussion from a Politifact article on the subject dated March 8th, 2015:
While it may be hard to remember a time before email, only four former secretaries have held the job during the prominence of electronic communications: Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.…According to MSNBC, an aide for Albright said she "did not use email while she was in office" from 1997 to 2001.
Doesn’t look like a whole lot of lots to me.
3.28.2016
Go Husky women
The UCONN Huskies play Texas this evening at 7:00P EDT (or Real Time for all you westerners). They're getting close to the end of their season and if you haven't seen them play you're running out of chances. Crank up that TV. This team is a joy to watch.
Bernie being all mean to Hillary, awww
Hillary Clinton campaign: Future debates depend upon Bernie Sanders' tone - POLITICO
"'They’re talking about running harsher negatives now,' Benenson said, responding that he was not distracting from the issue but explaining the campaign's stance."
All that blather about Hillary's supposedly solid black vote…
…being held up as an explanation of her poor showing in last Saturday’s primaries—here’s an example from the Washington Post: Why did Bernie Sanders dominate Saturday? Caucuses in states with smaller black populations.—is based on the proposition that if states like Washington and Alaska did have large black populations they’d vote the same way as blacks in Alabama or Mississippi. Can anyone imagine making the same argument about white voters? Do white voters in Georgia reliably vote the same way as white voters in California? Or, for that matter, Minnesota? Or Vermont?
Doubt that.
Seems pretty demeaning to black people, that argument. At least, it does to me.
And that Mary Todd
Smearing presidential candidates’ wives is totally normal | New York Post
'Federalist candidate Charles C. Pinckney 'circulated the tale that the Democratic-Republican candidate James Madison had made wife Dolley Madison sexually available to the widowed incumbent President Thomas Jefferson for his endorsement, turning her into, well, a political whore…'"
3.27.2016
René Descartes walks into a bar…
“Want a drink?” the bartender says.
“I think not,” Descartes says, and disappears.
Some Guy in Seattle sends a set of 15 jokes that only smart people will truly appreciate in addition to the one above.
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