Who do you want answering the phone? KLF!
Start this one first, then this one a second later. Keep replaying the latter as necessary.
I have no opinion as to whether Hillary Clinton is, in fact, a monster.
I just want to know: How is "Samantha Power" not an adult film stage name? (What kind of movie would that be?)
...extended to fan commentary:
"Jason, when you ask to be traded from the team you signed a contract with, you quit on them."
--ESPN.com's "Featured Comment"
Maybe I'm just being eccentric here (is it the Milton Bradley in me?) but it's disrespectful for this "Gazzellioni" user, or anyone else who doesn't know Jason Kidd personally, to address him by first name only. (It pains me that one of the worst offenders here is Oakland A's GM Billy Beane.)
What we know and love isn't "insurance" in the conventional sense. (I've been waiting for months, if not years, for someone to point out the obvious.)
(Meanwhile Megan McArdle points out a crucial distinction between health insurance and, say, fire insurance. Both links via this post.)
Despite everything unsavory about the past few weeks of the Democratic campaign -- despite everything from the NAFTA pandering to the Rezko trial, and even the Iraq war rhetoric -- I'd still take Obama over Hillary specifically because a health insurance mandate is unnecessary and unjust.
(Maybe I could be persuaded otherwise if someone rolled out a dirt-cheap insurance program with (let's say) a $25K deductible, that covered only life-threatening injuries and illnesses.)
Workers in this building may have to go up (or down) one flight of stairs because the elevator only stops every third floor? The horror!
(I'm ambivalent about the climate control part, and actually somewhat aghast at the social engineering involved here, but dumbstruck that having to take one flight of stairs is complaint-worthy -- and contemptuous of the able-bodied people who are too lazy to do even that, and thus crowd the disabled-access elevator.)
"My preferred D&D character classes were clerics and fighters, neither of which have much connection to my current career."
--Ilya Somin
The tributes to Gary Gygax reminded me: I only ever had one AD&D character, a fighter. Very strong, not much charisma. The one real-life person after whom I patterned this character, more than any other, was...
Sebastian Janikowski
(Not the biographical details -- my guy had been a shipyard worker -- but more of a WWSJD?)
Secondary influences would be every guy who ever wore a full costume into the Black Hole -- at least the personae those guys dreamed of assuming.
Sometimes campus conservatism confuses me. Let me get this straight:
It's wrong for a university to have a single-sex gym, even for a few hours, yet it's also wrong for a university not to have single-sex bathrooms?
Sure, several years have passed, and it's not the same people, but in general it's the same movement.
(I'm ambivalent about the restroom issue, but offended that other people are offended by the gym accommodations. What possible harm could this do? When we do silly things that gratuitously offend Muslims, we lose all leverage for arguing the non-silly things (the societally crucial things like free speech) that also offend Muslims.)
Rezko accused of paying a bribe to get an Iraq contract. Some anti-Obama analysis, with a link to this piece. ("Guys, I mean come on. I just answered like eight questions")
Clinton hasn't come back far enough
More about NAFTA as campaign issue
The case for foreclosures would be much more compelling if there weren't so many houses just sitting there empty.
Am I crazy that I'd rather have four more years of Bill than four years of this?
While we're here talking about the Democratic nomination: Didn't everyone know a month ago that the primary sequence had a bunch of Obama-friendly states followed by some Clinton-friendly states? It seems like there's been a lot of overreaction both directions, by people who either didn't realize this or didn't remember to account for it.
It's the political equivalent of overrating a team that built up a big winning streak against cupcakes, then underrating the same team right after it lost to a division leader.
An assistant basketball coach may have broken rules by visiting high school players to tell them why they should go to Harvard.
"Why should someone go to Harvard?" is a question that shouldn't even need to be asked.
How are you supposed to clean up after your dog?
Stupid drug war. It's bad enough that we can't use the best available cold medication.
Usually I can spot a satire pretty quickly, but last night Slate briefly had me convinced that Jenna Jameson was a virgin. (Actual article is an exercise for the reader.)
I suppose thousands of people think they've seen video evidence to the contrary (unless the special effects were just incredible). Would you believe I'm not one of those people? (As far as I know, I'm not.) I've seen very few adult movies.
1. Debbie Does Dallas (loved everything about it)
2. Behind the Green Door (hated the last few scenes, when they decided to just pretend to be Doc Edgerton)
3. Some guy recruited women into a cult. (Soft-core, despite the potential there.)
4. The meta-concept was recruiting college co-eds to do first-time adult movies.
5. Some French thing from the 1930s.(?)
6. I remember when (hotel room, during a blizzard that canceled a bunch of flights) but couldn't tell you a thing about the content.
I presume nobody uses "Hi" anymore, since the spammers hijacked that one years ago. And everyone remembers to put a subject line.
The next one to crack down on is "Question." Not necessarily for spam-based reasons (even though I always think an e-mail with that subject will be spam, surprisingly often it isn't), but just because a much better subject line would reflect what the question was about.
Oh, and if you're trying to prevent your legit e-mails from being mistaken for spam, apparently you should avoid subject lines where the penultimate line is "for." To Bayesian filters, it would seem a subject line like "ICT Invitation for [name of school]" looks a lot like "Rolex Watch for [name of person]."
Clinton, Obama campaigns both complain about Ohio voting irregularities.
That darn Ohio GOP, always disenfranchising Democrats, even in their own primary.
But Welch is deeply disappointed in the latest tabloid piece.
If you'll forgive the pretentious trailing 'e' then Alameda Towne Center is a nifty place. It's exactly what a shopping area in California should be like.
Now, I think it was very short-sighted of the powers that be not to let Target do any expansion on the empty building where Safeway used to be (before Safeway moved to its much much bigger quarters). Instead they hit an impasse, Target walked, and that building stays empty. But on balance Alameda has worked out very nicely.
I feel very fortunate to be within walking distance of all our errands, and across the street from San Francisco Bay. The main difference between our life and the modern urban planner's ideal is that we hardly ever use public transportation. But it's not like we drive around the island a lot either: I drive to and from work (8.2 miles each way; a comparable Tulsa commute would be 51st & Sheridan to downtown -- since obviously everyone who reads this knows their Tulsa geography cold). We drive to A's games (4.8 miles, at least until the move) and to {SF, Berkeley, or points south}.
In any case I was reading about this heinous crime, and even though I have nothing but contempt for the terrorists in question, I'm still quite relieved not to live in a distant suburb, even a "rural cluster."
Bugs vs. Daffy: a presidential race metaphor.
The Most Complicated Game: if I'd written a similar piece, completely eviscerating a popular game, I'd have chosen Pictionary. But the one actually mentioned here also richly deserves its treatment.
Very interesting number-crunching blog.
Add this one to your collection of dark humor about Communism (this time the Cuban variety):
"He lied to me! He told me that he was a luggage handler! It turns out, he's nothing but a neurosurgeon!"
Pretty good discussion thread, with a financial market metaphor that I don't know enough to understand. (Not that I know enough basketball to comment intelligently on Yao Ming's career either.)
Ohio and Rhode Island to H. Clinton; Texas too close to call.
No Democratic candidate goes to the convention with the nomination mathematically clinched, in fact it's close enough that kissing up to the superdelegates matters a lot.
(But after all that Obama holds on.)
Thoughts?
They seem to be the biggest thing in Austin.
(Typed from memory. Pretend we're at open mic night and I take the stage, speaking rather than singing. I firmly believe this is one of the 20 best songs of all-time. 100% serious.)
Girl you're looking fine tonight, and every guy has got you in his sight (EXCEPT ME!*). Whatcha doing with a clown like me? That's surely one of life's little mysteries.
[Chorus]
So tonight I'll ask the stars above: How did I ever win your love? What did I do, what did I say, to turn your angel eyes my way?
I'm the guy who never learned to dance, never even got one second glance. Across the crowded room was close enough; I could look(*) but I could never touch... [chorus]
Don't anybody wake me, if it's just a dream, cuz she's the best thing ever happened to me. All you fellows, you can look all your life, but this girl you see(*) she's leaving here with me tonight.
There's just one more thing I need to know: If this is love why does it scare me so? Must be something only you can see (well I sure can't*), but I can feel it when you look at me.
[chorus]
*- too soon? I honestly didn't realize he was blind until reading his obituary.
UPDATE: From three co-workers' worth of workplace e-mail banter:
"I never knew Jeff Healey was blind until now."
"Then you clearly have never watched Roadhouse (at least not closely enough)"
"The irony of that statement is not lost on me."
Will Saletan quotes a study. But Alex Tabarrok downplays the study results, correctly pointing out that correlation is not causation.
Megan McArdle cites both posts, and adds a delightful YouTube link from the TV series Coupling.
Let's say for the sake of argument that tying kids up were about as widespread a punishment as spanking is. Would anyone be truly surprised to find a correlation between people who were tied up as a childhood punishment, and who tie each other up as a sexual kink?
I'd like to suggest as a general rule that you SHOULD NOT USE AS CHILDHOOD PUNISHMENT anything that adults use for sexual pleasure with any degree of frequency.
(Even though this is surely common sense, there's a problem with how to craft it, inasmuch as I know there are random (e.g.) diaper fetishists out there, and you surely wouldn't use them as a reason not to give your kids diapers. But as far as I can tell, "don't use it as punishment" is the simplest, most effective workaround.)
Which is worse: A scientifically ignorant candidate, or an economically ignorant candidate?
Hey, I have a great idea: Let's blast the current president for not cooperating enough with the rest of the world, but then at the same time promise a bunch of tariffs and import quotas. That won't anger anyone.
(Remember the original NAFTA debate, when Al Gore and Ross Perot went on CNN? This comes up any time there's a discussion of the most watched shows in cable TV history; I think one or two Monday Night Football games on ESPN have since surpassed it. Anyway, Gore was the voice of reason in that debate, and he so badly trounced Perot (at least in my opinion) that I never thought being a fervent free-trader would imply the need to support one party or the other.)
UPDATE: Here's everything you need.
If all else fails just play all five of these at once.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UO3PAQodYg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XXBTAVOMyM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K0eknfuix8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M70emIFxETs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8HxuDcZQsk
By all rights this video should make me livid. You know how I feel about cruel pranks, and it's hard to think of anything more cruel. And yet I enjoyed it.
The most plausible explanations for why I enjoyed it are all beyond creepy.