Incoherent ramblings of an overworked computer geek who rarely has the sense to keep his mouth shut!
Monday, April 30, 2007
Funnies
Well I see our fine local paper has decided to try out some new comics. Ho hummm... How can you take them seriously when The Family Circus continues? Here is a fun little site that randomly pairs TFC panels with Nietzsche quotes. http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
THE TAO OF GONZO (a.k.a., The Spiritual Side of Twisting the Truth)
Verse 1:
"I now understand that there was a conversation between me and the President." --Tao of Gonzo, Apr 19, 2007
Ah, yes. Here we are introduced to a moment of deep spiritual contemplation. There are times in our lives, he is saying, when we understand the experiences we have when we are having them. I ate a sandwich, I understand. I drive to work, I understand. But there are other times when we have an experience, but we do not understand the experience as such at the time. For argument's sake, we could call these "moments we are breaking the law." For example, if we are having a conversation with the President and his advisers about illegally circumventing the authority of Congress, it may be difficult to understand that it is happening at the time. One might say, I am having this conversation, but is this really me? Is this really a conversation? Is this really a law and if it is not a law, then can I be breaking this law in this conversation that may or may not be happening? These are moments of spiritual drift, vagueness of identity. Am I undermining the Constitution? Hard to say. Am I in violating the public trust? Hard to say. Am I in charge of my own actions? Not clear. They are moments of great spiritual questioning, wonderment, lack of understanding.
He certainly isn't Reagan or Roosevelt (either one).
It's Hard Work
You know, it's a -- there is -- the President spends time at disasters.
Must... Resist... Saying... "Decider"...
My job is a job to make decisions. I'm a decision -- if the job description were, what do you do -- it's decision-maker.
Realization
I realized that there is an enemy of the United States that is active and is lethal. At further study of that enemy, I realized that they share an ideology, that these weren't -- that the -- and when you really think about it, the September the 11th attack was not the first attack.
There Was Attacks
There was a 1993 World Trade Center attack, there was attacks on our embassies in East Africa, there was an attack on the USS Cole, there have been other attacks on U.S. citizens, and that these attacks were instigated and carried out by cold-blooded killers who have a belief system.
But perhaps no longer. The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter.
The "citizens" who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (OK, I'm not sure what's in it for them), along with seven other food producing associations. ..... I can tell you right now — we will notice the difference. How do I know? Because the product they're trying to rename "chocolate" already exists. It's called "chocolate flavored" or "chocolaty" or "cocoalicious." You can find it on the shelves right now at your local stores in the 75% Easter sale bin, those waxy/greasy mock-chocolate bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs that sit even in the most sugar-obsessed child's Easter basket well into July.
It may be cocoa powder that gives chocolate its taste, but it is the cocoa butter that gives it that inimitable texture. It is one of the rare, naturally occurring vegetable fats that is solid at room temperature and melts as it hits body temperature — that is to say, it melts in your mouth. Cocoa butter also protects the antioxidant properties of the cocoa solids and gives well-made chocolate its excellent shelf life.
Because it's already perfectly legal to sell choco-products made with cheaper oils and fats, what the groups are asking the FDA for is permission to call these waxy impostors "chocolate." Because we "haven't formed any expectations."
Go here - right now - find docket 207P-0085 - and let the FDA know that chocolate needs to remain chocolate. Comments end on 4/25.
I thought Robert Price's column this week to be on the mark...
How much Virginia Tech is too much? Forty-eight hours after the worst campus shooting in U.S. history, I suspect some readers may already be asking that question. ..... Does media's dedication to Virginia Tech as a news story reflect genuine, widespread shock and anguish? Or is Virginia Tech merely this week's Don Imus?
When CNN, Fox and the rest of them report the same information over and over again, with every new morsel of updated minutia given the breathless "breaking development" treatment, it's easy to take the more pessimistic view.
But TV is just feeding the beast it helped create (and, to an increasing extent, newspapers are too, given the preponderance of "print" web sites and RSS feeds). We've become an insta-news society. The information age has made us ravenous for information -- newer, faster, more and now, now, now.
NEW YORK A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. For example, only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, while 74% could identify Dan Quayle in that post in 1989.
Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.
Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.
And lastly may I leave you with this, along with a small disclaimer.
“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people’s liberty teeth keystone… the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable… more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour.” - George Washington
I own one gun (a rifle) and haven't fired it in a long time. It does sit ready with a box of ammo on the shelf. I'm not a gun nut. I'm a true Jeffersonian Bill of Rights nut. There's a reason for the second amendment and when one nut case does something awful it helps to remember the cause is the nut case, not the gun. For people like that, they would probably use something else (like a car bomb or an airplane). The real failure was in the system that let a guy loose that they evaluated as having a problem over a year ago.
Well so it goes. We'll have this with us for years now,
The Supreme Court's new conservative majority gave anti-abortion forces a landmark victory Wednesday in a 5-4 decision that bans a controversial abortion procedure nationwide and sets the stage for further restrictions.
It was a long-awaited and resounding win that abortion opponents had hoped to gain from a court pushed to the right by President Bush's appointees.
For the first time since the court established a woman's right to an abortion in 1973, the justices said the Constitution permits a nationwide prohibition on a specific abortion method. The court's liberal justices, in dissent, said the ruling chipped away at abortion rights.
I'm no fan of abortion but I even less of a fan of government intrusion into what I view as a very private decision. The right to choice crowd is salivating.
I just got an automated call from AT&T yellow pages trying to confirm if I had received the new phone book. A man's recorded voice in slow and overly precise pronunciation asks
"If you have received the new AT&T yellow pages, the one with the picture of TEE-JOHN ranch on the cover..."
Oh please..... y'all know right here in the San JOE-AW-KWIN Valley.
Always my favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut has died. I would call him the best American writer since Samuel Clemmens (and isn't it odd how much the two came to look alike in old age. Maybe Vonnegut wanted that).
I think I need to go back and reread some of his work. Let's see 'Deadeye Dick' right here on my shelf behind me. Good start.
Imus is an ass (who am I to talk?), but he did apologize and believably so (imho). The comment was bad and without a doubt an insult to those women. People like Sharpton that keep insisting he be fired are just trying to bag big game to bolster their prestige amongst their supporters. What interest does Sharpton have other than his own? And is he not frequently a jerk on the air? I sometimes watch Imus in the early morning in spite of Don Imus because he does often have interesting guests and the comedy schtick is better than CNN's.
