Water is not wet enough to prevent dehydration, and after an arduous three-year study the European Union has written a law to clamp you in gaol if you claim otherwise.
Joel has the details of this particular idiocy.
Nov 21, 2011
888888 post
About three "real" essays rest in my blogger "save" box, but damned if I can get motivated to call up any one of them and batter it into some semblance of readable coherence.
Maybe I'm demoralized because, unless I misconstrue her, Ron Paul has lost Tam.
(Remember Lyndon Johnson at the height of his Asian diplomacy and Vietnam War fubar fest? Remember the night Grandpa Walter of CBS called him on it? Remember Lyndon moaning, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country?" History rhymes.)
Or maybe my synapses are discommoded from messing around with a bunch of non-organic electrons. To wit:
I have sybaritic dreams of stepping out of the shower into an 88-degree chamber on winter's most evil day and to do it without heating up the entire house. So I finally got round to installing the beautiful old Arvin heater.
When I got the plasterboard* out I found the light switch didn't need to be disturbed, but the little box for the existing duplex outlet was too busy for the tie-in. The replacement double box is still tight and -- to come to the point of this whine -- it's in a cramped corner requiring left-handed work. Ladies and gentlemen, I am fully entitled to bitch about having to screw screws and wire nuts and wrap tape in such a sinister manner.
Anyway, it's all done now, and perhaps I'll be able to improve my mood by persuading myself that all that left-handed agony will strengthen my weak-hand shooting.
I'll let you know.
---
*AKA "sheet rock" and "wall board" and "the world's most obnoxious construction material." In a properly run nation it would be outlawed.
Maybe I'm demoralized because, unless I misconstrue her, Ron Paul has lost Tam.
(Remember Lyndon Johnson at the height of his Asian diplomacy and Vietnam War fubar fest? Remember the night Grandpa Walter of CBS called him on it? Remember Lyndon moaning, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country?" History rhymes.)
Or maybe my synapses are discommoded from messing around with a bunch of non-organic electrons. To wit:
I have sybaritic dreams of stepping out of the shower into an 88-degree chamber on winter's most evil day and to do it without heating up the entire house. So I finally got round to installing the beautiful old Arvin heater.
When I got the plasterboard* out I found the light switch didn't need to be disturbed, but the little box for the existing duplex outlet was too busy for the tie-in. The replacement double box is still tight and -- to come to the point of this whine -- it's in a cramped corner requiring left-handed work. Ladies and gentlemen, I am fully entitled to bitch about having to screw screws and wire nuts and wrap tape in such a sinister manner.
Anyway, it's all done now, and perhaps I'll be able to improve my mood by persuading myself that all that left-handed agony will strengthen my weak-hand shooting.
I'll let you know.
---
*AKA "sheet rock" and "wall board" and "the world's most obnoxious construction material." In a properly run nation it would be outlawed.
Nov 19, 2011
Well, Uncles are supposed to be avuncular
I don't know what set Uncle off, though it looks like a case of misusing the internet. Meaning he may have spent too much time reading the iron-clad conclusions of the uninformed while unsolaced by ancient Irish Whiskey.
But I'm glad something tripped his trigger.
I especially liked the suggestion to gun-terminology pedants:
Yeah, I know a silencer doesn’t completely silence a gun. But the guy who invented the things called them silencers. He gets dibs. And you don’t.
This could even be extended to suggest that if you slip up and call a magazine a clip you are not automatically sentenced to dinner with Barbara Boxer.
The rest is good, too, including most of the comments.
H/T Joel.
But I'm glad something tripped his trigger.
I especially liked the suggestion to gun-terminology pedants:
Yeah, I know a silencer doesn’t completely silence a gun. But the guy who invented the things called them silencers. He gets dibs. And you don’t.
This could even be extended to suggest that if you slip up and call a magazine a clip you are not automatically sentenced to dinner with Barbara Boxer.
The rest is good, too, including most of the comments.
H/T Joel.
Occupy Heros, Police Heros
I can't find any.
Some of the individual cops deserve a little slack. Much like soldiers, they are paid to take orders, and on the line of intense confrontation they are paid to obey commands (Gas 'em!) instantly and without question. Their personal beliefs about humanity, reasonable exercise of police powers, and Constitutional protections are officially deemed irrelevant.
Still, the video of the cops Macing citizens at UC Davis yesterday afternoon suggests the political masters still lack a way of eliminating officers who simply enjoy exercising raw power. (If, in fact, the community and campus overlords even care about such things.) Insofar as the two videos reflect what actually happened, we're seeing a dog licking his balls because he can and because his masters applaud, toss him a Milk Bone, and shield him from unpleasant consequences.
---
Since the first Occupiers hit the streets I've been looking for a reason to murmur approving words.
Sorry Biffie. I can't do it despite a congenital urge to cheer anyone who annoys authoritarians.
The problem is your confusion. A vague discontent with the way things are is a perfectly good reason to yell and scream for a while -- just long enough for you to get it out of your system before you get a haircut, shower, and go back to work. Everyone is entitled to an occasional spasm of street theatre and a good cathartic rant about how life ain't never gave you no breaks.
Your problem is that you expect to be taken seriously without giving thought-enabled persons reason to do so. In other words, what do you want? Or even, who is your enemy? Your chants that your foe is the "power structure" and you want "fairness" prove your movement is an exercise in loud, unwashed, idiocy, more an excuse to raise Hell and get on teevee than anything else.
There is power structure. Any society of three or more humans needs one. Fairness may be the ultimate moral achievement of a society, but it is not the natural order and not yours or mine by some divine right. It is the result of rational thought processes heavily concentrated on keeping the power structure honest.
---
You called your virgin invasion of the streets and parks "Occupy Wall Street." That may have been enough, as an intellectual matter, to dismiss you out of hand.
You wouldn't know what to do with the financial system if we handed you the keys, largely because your anger -- real or feigned -- blinds you to the partial truth Wall Street apologists are fond of spouting. Markets do provide liquidity, and liquidity is crucial. Without the means of changing your mind about an investment by buying or selling, no one would invest, meaning Steve Jobs would have spent his life farting around in his garage.
Markets do create vast hordes of capital, the kind of capital necessary to, for instance, create systems which make it possible for you to fulfill your deepest desire. That is, without huge capital availability no one could support the network teevee camera. Then you would have have no place to wave your sign. Then the world would ignore you. Then you would have to run around wearing a frownie face. You would be sad.
But take heart. A real enemy does exist, and his name is Fraud, so I have a suggestion. Go find a copy of "Atlas Shrugged." (It's a book. You know, with pages and like that.) Find the passages which explain fraud as simply the intellectual and emotional equivalent of theft. That is, there is no moral distinction to be made between a thug stealing a little kid's lunch money and a broker peddling a CDO rated AAA when he knows it has no more intrinsic value than the turd you deposited behind the tree in Zucchini Park.
That just might lead you to other books explaining how economic and political systems (1) are designed to work (2) actually work and (c) might be made to work better.
I know that kind of regimen isn't as much fun as sitting around a kum-bye- yah campfire, but it is sort of what people do when they yearn to be taken seriously.
Some of the individual cops deserve a little slack. Much like soldiers, they are paid to take orders, and on the line of intense confrontation they are paid to obey commands (Gas 'em!) instantly and without question. Their personal beliefs about humanity, reasonable exercise of police powers, and Constitutional protections are officially deemed irrelevant.
Still, the video of the cops Macing citizens at UC Davis yesterday afternoon suggests the political masters still lack a way of eliminating officers who simply enjoy exercising raw power. (If, in fact, the community and campus overlords even care about such things.) Insofar as the two videos reflect what actually happened, we're seeing a dog licking his balls because he can and because his masters applaud, toss him a Milk Bone, and shield him from unpleasant consequences.
---
Since the first Occupiers hit the streets I've been looking for a reason to murmur approving words.
Sorry Biffie. I can't do it despite a congenital urge to cheer anyone who annoys authoritarians.
The problem is your confusion. A vague discontent with the way things are is a perfectly good reason to yell and scream for a while -- just long enough for you to get it out of your system before you get a haircut, shower, and go back to work. Everyone is entitled to an occasional spasm of street theatre and a good cathartic rant about how life ain't never gave you no breaks.
Your problem is that you expect to be taken seriously without giving thought-enabled persons reason to do so. In other words, what do you want? Or even, who is your enemy? Your chants that your foe is the "power structure" and you want "fairness" prove your movement is an exercise in loud, unwashed, idiocy, more an excuse to raise Hell and get on teevee than anything else.
There is power structure. Any society of three or more humans needs one. Fairness may be the ultimate moral achievement of a society, but it is not the natural order and not yours or mine by some divine right. It is the result of rational thought processes heavily concentrated on keeping the power structure honest.
---
You called your virgin invasion of the streets and parks "Occupy Wall Street." That may have been enough, as an intellectual matter, to dismiss you out of hand.
You wouldn't know what to do with the financial system if we handed you the keys, largely because your anger -- real or feigned -- blinds you to the partial truth Wall Street apologists are fond of spouting. Markets do provide liquidity, and liquidity is crucial. Without the means of changing your mind about an investment by buying or selling, no one would invest, meaning Steve Jobs would have spent his life farting around in his garage.
Markets do create vast hordes of capital, the kind of capital necessary to, for instance, create systems which make it possible for you to fulfill your deepest desire. That is, without huge capital availability no one could support the network teevee camera. Then you would have have no place to wave your sign. Then the world would ignore you. Then you would have to run around wearing a frownie face. You would be sad.
But take heart. A real enemy does exist, and his name is Fraud, so I have a suggestion. Go find a copy of "Atlas Shrugged." (It's a book. You know, with pages and like that.) Find the passages which explain fraud as simply the intellectual and emotional equivalent of theft. That is, there is no moral distinction to be made between a thug stealing a little kid's lunch money and a broker peddling a CDO rated AAA when he knows it has no more intrinsic value than the turd you deposited behind the tree in Zucchini Park.
That just might lead you to other books explaining how economic and political systems (1) are designed to work (2) actually work and (c) might be made to work better.
I know that kind of regimen isn't as much fun as sitting around a kum-bye- yah campfire, but it is sort of what people do when they yearn to be taken seriously.
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