This is astonishingly on the mark, aside from my never having heard of #10 before. (I was going to take issue with #5 until I played the video and matched the title to the song.)
Or was it Paula Parkinson? I wish there were a way to liberate brain cells by force.
(If you care, one of the latter two was a GHWB rumor and the other was a Dan Quayle rumor. Interchangeable.)
2008 candidates. 2000 candidates.
I've taken a Myers-Briggs test at least twice (self-administered on-line, so take whatever grains of salt are appropriate): First I was INTP ("the architect"), more recently INTJ ("the scientist"). Both seem apt enough. I generally identify as INTJ.
(What a weird sentence: When, if ever, one would be called upon to "identify" as an M-B type, much less "generally identify"? Except, of course, when one choose to comment to exactly these types of posts.)
102,000 political executions in a nation of 6.3M people (via Volokh.com).
I don't like those odds.
Flipping through radio stations this morning I happened across "Rock Your Body."
Despite what people remember now, the most offensive element of the Super Bowl 38 broadcast had nothing to do with the halftime show (I swear I was watching the most notorious moment, yet it even didn't register with me, nor anyone else at that SB party, that anything out of the ordinary had happened); rather, it was arguably the farting horse from a beer commercial.
Since the of course the half-time shows have been sanitized. Have the ads also gotten cleaner? My general impression is yes. What were the most offensive elements (if any) of the 2008 ads? I wish there had been less gratuitous yelling, but that's a personal problem. Really, the only things that stand out are the over-the-top racist caricatures from sales tool ads, plus maybe the crotch smacking inflicted on (ironically) Justin Timberlake.
Sneezing fire is even a rough analogue to farting fire, though distinctly less pushing-it.
(Oh yeah, just thought of this: 38 was also the year of the Brazilian Wax beer ad. The guy thought he was getting free beer, but didn't see the sign on the door and instead [...] "Yeow." This is significantly less appropriate for family viewing than a mammary gland with a pasty on it, if only because you know every seven-year-old watching asked the same question ("What's a Brazilian wax?").)
This screen contains 13 months of better blogging than most bloggers' 13-month output.
(He has a more conventional blog whose target audience is people who care about himself, as opposed to just his best ideas.)
I did not know about Python's pass command (having never written Python) but I do use # do nothing quite often (as should you).
I also emphatically share the "inordinate thrill" mentioned in the January 11 entry. Just reading that made me irrationally euphoric. Math geeks have weird happy places.
As best I can tell, Michael Clayton was a box office bomb, yet for some reason everyone and his dog has written a review timed to the DVD release. Slate has one, for example.
I always find it galling when people draw conclusions about real people and real professions based on elements of a vaguely plausibly authentic (the hit men notwithstanding) work of fiction that happens to fit their prejudices.
I finally watched the "Yes We Can" video. It's OK. But the introduction by will.i.am (on the leftmost column of the official site) destroys the whole message by being whiny, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and relentlessly negative.
But despite the claims I saw on Instapundit this morning, I don't see any similarity at all between the words in that video and the lyrics of "Cult of Personality." (here's the latter if you feel like rocking out.)
I couldn't sit through this prank. Are these things supposed to be funny? Am I crazy to be almost violently offended that the world actually enjoys stuff like this? I couldn't care less about violence or pornography, but so help me, this particular genre (everything from wacky morning DJ phone calls to whatever MTV fills its time with these days) is singlehandedly what's bringing down our civilization. There's no good way to convey how serious I am about this.
Oh, and ambient music from Windows.
I expected this Obama/Patrick comparison video to be orders of magnitude more damning than it is, instead of the polar opposite of damnation.
Are we to believe now that the very idea of stringing together historic quotes is an act of plagiarism against the first person to think of doing that? It's an especially ludicrous charge when Patrick himself (rightly) claims no unique ownership of the concept.
When Bill Simmons writes:
"There wasn't that hard-core N'Awlins stench that always makes you feel like you're inhaling 150 years of garbage, spilled drinks and various forms of bodily fluids."
...he reminds me that the stench in question was otherworldly, and is by far what I remember most from every time I've been to the French Quarter.
You know Gogol Bordello from Everything is Illuminated.
Google Bordello is already in use as a blog name.
If you were going to pick a Democratic nominee (from the two remaining contenders) based solely on which one had the less alarming "better half," the decision would be surprisingly close. (Post titled "Is that an S-Chip on Your Shoulder [...]")
"for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country"
Really? Forgive my jingoism but WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? There's an old bumper sticker, "America; Love it Or Leave It" -- terrible cliche, mainly because I infer that it demands unwavering, unquestioning loyalty, which is antithetical to freedom. But really someone's never (as an adult) been proud of this country?
There comes a time when one should just say "OK, this must not be working out," and feel free to leave. Seriously! Find a country you like more; the exchange will make everyone better off.
1. Proportional delegate awards. This is actually the least silly point of the three, since I can see the case against winner-take-all primaries. I happen to prefer winner-take-all, but that's just the evil free-marketer in me. Even if you don't do winner-take-all, though, what's the sense in saying that a 60%-40% victory means that the victor gets six delegates to the second place person's four? There's no plausible reason the balloting would ever be even something like 75-25, so the ratio should be at least square-versus-square or something.
2. Superdelegates. I get the feeling this Wikipedia entry gets frequently edited by party hacks on both sides. As far as I can tell, the GOP seats a handful of Republican National Committee big-wigs at the convention. Based on the best numbers I could find, though, it's a difference between being 5% of the delegates and being 20% of the delegates.
3. Implausibly draconian punishments. States like Florida and Michigan ran afoul of both parties by jumping the gun with their voting dates. The Republicans cut off half their delegates and life went on. Everyone understood this would happen and adjusted for it; the sanction was (if you ask me) just about right, since those voters still get some say.
The Democrats, on the other hand... take away all the delegates? They honestly expected everyone to believe that one, and honestly didn't foresee a big brouhaha when one candidate or another had a huge incentive to get them to go back on their word? That's like a clueless parent who makes a big show of grounding someone for six weeks and then can't follow through on any of it.
So I have a vested ideological interest in claiming to believe what I believe here, but my goodness: Not that this would ever be the deciding factor, but if you're going to pick who runs the country, shouldn't it be somewhat relevant whether they can run their own election without f'king the whole thing up?