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Archive for February, 2010

The Beav

February 28th, 2010 No comments

And now: the always enjoyable giant inflatable beaver.

Categories: a beautiful thing Tags:

Checkers

February 22nd, 2010 No comments

I plan to be fabulously wealthy when I die. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that I want to make sure I leave a subsidy in my estate to pay for all of my funeral attendees to have outfits from the company that made Norway’s curling team’s pants. You can’t tell me I wouldn’t be the belle of the links in these puppies:



Oh HELLS yes.

Categories: a beautiful thing Tags:

Stop ruining things

February 18th, 2010 1 comment

I love the Olympics. I really do. I’ll watch just about all of it, from figure-skating to snowboarding to luge to curling. Women’s curling, even, although in my defense, American skip Debbie McCormick is strangely intoxicating.


I even watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, biathlon. Of course, what beginning skiier, when waiting in a 45-minute line for a bunny-slope lift, hasn’t thought “I wish I had a gun?”


So far, however, the XXI Olympic Winter Games brings to mind 4 specific memories that’ll stick with us:


  1. The authorities built a luge track that’s so fast it killed a man.

  2. The Opening Ceremonies, already saddened by death, were screwed up by a malfunction of the torch cauldron. To add to the classiness (a word I just made up), to light the big outdoor torch, they drove Wayne Gretzky there in the back of a big pickup while he held on to a rollbar in the back and held the torch with one hand. He looked like he should have been wearing a tuque and drinking from a can of Elsinore.

  3. The Olympia ice-preparation machines they bought for the speed-skating track (a cheaper product than the standard Zambonis) apparently produce an ice with all the smoothness and sheen of driveway gravel.

  4. Finally, NBC’s coverage of the various sporting events has been…disappointing. They’ve tape-delayed a lot of important events, something that was done in the past (particularly when Olympic Games were held on the other side of the world, like, say, China, and it’s difficult to get a lot of viewership for swimming at 2am Eastern time), but unfortunately in this modern connected world it’s nearly impossible to avoid finding out results before the taped airing. It takes away from a viewing of the women’s downhill when it doesn’t get shown until 7pm despite everyone in the world knowing Lindsey Vonn won gold earlier in the day. On the other hand, maybe a little tape delay is a good idea.

Hey organizers and NBC! I am your key demographic! I’m young, have disposable income, and purchasing impulses that I can’t control! It would be nice if you’d stop screwing up your product so I didn’t lose interest.

Categories: sporty spice, wtf Tags:

Focus on the family

February 16th, 2010 No comments

Don’t worry, not dead. I honestly haven’t posted anything because I wanted to keep the previous post, in which I make myself cold and got to be on the evening news in Philadelphia, atop the page for as long as possible and make sure everyone can see it. Anybody not watched it yet? We’re good? Okay. Now I want to show you this:



In case it’s unclear, a woman attempts to get a marriage license for herself and her (female) fiancee, so that they can legally marry after many years of cohabitation, and having multiple children and grandchildren. Her request is denied. So she grabs a young man whose name she does not know, and requests a marriage license, which is duly processed. What a country.

Categories: politickin' Tags:

Ice cold

February 7th, 2010 9 comments

UPDATE, 2/9/10: I was on NBC 10 News! I looked fat.


I was supposed to do the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge today, but unfortunately it snowed 2 feet all over the state so they had to postpone it. Sadly, I can’t make the new date. Obviously I can’t refund the donations (and wouldn’t if I could, since they go to the Special Olympics), but I felt I owed something to the donors. (If you’d like to add to the donation list, you can do so here). So instead, I did this. (I apologize for the horrible video quality; we’re the last family in America without a video camera, so HW’s holding my Blackberry. It’s hard to even see my face, but trust me: it’s me.)



It was chilly.

Categories: a beautiful thing, wtf Tags:

Rhymin’ and stealin’

February 5th, 2010 No comments

I’ve been reading up on the whole missionaries to Haiti drama. If you’ve missed it, here’s the short version: a group of “well-meaning” missionaries went to to Haiti after the earthquake and collected up a bunch of orphans with the intent of bringing them back to America for a better life. They just didn’t bother with any of the actual paperwork. So the Haitian government accused them of kidnapping and conspiracy, and has jailed them pending trial. Supporters say the missionaries were doing a good thing, rescuing these poor kids from hunger and deprivation.

the leader of New Life Children’s rescue, Laura Silsby, has had serious legal problems in the past, most recently losing the house she bought for the ministry to foreclosure at the end of 2009. The fact that neither of the churches involved with the missions group vetted her thoroughly before leading a missions trip will open them to lawsuits, above and beyond the legal fees and costs incurred from the current incarceration.

Oops.
Silby’s motives are also suspect in part because she seemed to realize what she was doing, stating in an interview on Monday that the group did not intend to offer the children for adoption. “We intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary,” she said.

Eeek…that’s kinda culty.
It also seems that a plan was in place for an orphanage long before the earthquake occurred.

Eeeeeenteresting. My feelings on the subject are remarkably simple: I wonder how Americans would have responded had a gaggle of, say, well-meaning Swedes showed up and “rescued” a few dozen white orphans from New Orleans in September 2005. I suspect phrases like “doing God’s work” and “This is how you thank us for helping you?” wouldn’t be thrown around.

Categories: musings, wtf Tags:

Good news, terrifying response

February 3rd, 2010 1 comment

Lots of interesting happenings in gay rights over the last few weeks. The Prop 8 trial concluded testimony in California last week, with closing arguments and judgments to come later. Yesterday, a major hearing was held on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, pressing for a repeal of the policy. Conservatives, of course, are opposed. Bill Kristol had this to say:

There is no basic right to serve in the military. That’s why forms of discrimination we would ban in civilian life are permitted: Women have less opportunity to fight than men. The disabled are discriminated against, as are the short, the near-sighted, and the old.


Advocates of repeal will say sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance in a way these attributes are not. But this is not clearly true given the peculiar characteristics of military service.


He doesn’t actually spell out what those peculiar characteristics are. He also quotes John McCain, who said:
This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.

This is the same John McCain who said in 2006:
We have the most qualified, the bravest and most capable military we‘ve ever had in our history, and so I think that the policy is working. And I understand the opposition to it, and I‘ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.

Huh.


Responding to Kristol, Glenn Greenwald had this to say, which is spot on:

In American culture, there has long been a group of men (typified by Kristol and [Michael] O’Hanlon) who equate toughness and masculinity with fighting wars, yet who also know that they lack the courage of their own convictions, and thus confine themselves to cheerleading for wars from afar and sending others off to fight but never fighting those wars themselves. It seems that individuals plagued by that affliction are eager to avoid having it rubbed in their faces that there are large numbers of homosexual warriors who possess the courage (the “testosterone-laden tough-guyness”) which the O’Hanlons and Kristols, deep down, know they lack.

Chris Matthews had a fellow named Peter Sprigg of the “Family Research Council” on his show to discuss DADT, and he said:
As Sprigg mounted an increasingly illogical defense of the policy based on discrimination, Matthews pressed him on the question: “Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?”


“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”


“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked Matthews again.


Yes,” said Sprigg.


How about that.

Categories: politickin', wtf Tags:

I quoted a lot

February 1st, 2010 No comments

I love this:


Hey you. You there in the Glenn Beck T-shirt headed off to the Tea Party Patriot rally.

Stop shouting for a moment, please, I want to explain to you why you’re so very angry. You should be angry. You’re getting screwed…Look, you can go back to yelling at me in a minute, but just read this first.


1. Get out your pay stub…

2. Notice that your net pay is lower than your gross pay. This is because some of your wages are withheld every pay period.

3. Notice that only some of this money that was withheld went to pay taxes. (I know, I know — yeearrrgh! me hates taxes! — but just try to stick with me for just a second here.)

4. Notice that some of the money that was withheld didn’t go to taxes, but to your health insurance company.

5. Now go get a pay stub from last year around this time, from January of 2009.

6. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld for taxes in your current paycheck is less than the amount that was withheld a year ago. That’s because of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which included more than $200 billion in tax cuts, including the one you’re holding right there in your hand, the tax cut that’s now staring you in the face. Republicans all voted against that tax cut…But taxes aren’t the really important thing here. The really important thing starts with the next point.

7. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is more than it was last year.

8. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is a lot more than it was last year.

I won’t ask you to dig up old paychecks from 2008 and 2007, but this has been going on for a long time. Every year, the amount of your paycheck withheld to pay for your health insurance goes up. A lot…That’s what I meant when I said you really should be angry. That’s what I meant when I said you’re getting screwed.


I’d add more, but I’ve nothing to add. Go read the whole thing.

Categories: Holy carp, politickin' Tags: