Slaking the thirst for knowledge in the irony-free-zone

"The human thirst for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures or the most detailed measurements."
-- Dub

Isn't he the guy who claims (despite evidence to the contrary) that he QUIT drinking 18 years ago? Actually, those two statements explain a lot.

No Longer an Irony-Free Zone

A 20-year-old woman died in a one-car collision in Bridgewater, Mass., in November; according to police, she lost control of her car while talking on a cell phone and crashed into the Cingular Wireless store on Route 106. Boston Globe 11-2-03

And a 16-year-old student in Indianapolis was killed in November on his morning school bus ride when he stuck his head out of a window to see a dead raccoon in the road and was clipped by a tree. Indianapolis Star 11-17-03

West Virginia Sold In eBay Auction

Short version of the story.

For the long version, read the news or a history book. Politicians have been auctioning off their constituencies for decades.

Blasts from the past

Remember "Zork"? (Mac + Commodore 64)
Remember "Adventure" on the Atari?
They're back, they're for Windows, and they're free.
Brought to you by the other voices in my head.

Prez Promotes New Space Program

Well, sort of....

That giant snoring sound you hear is the response from the American Public.

A look into the future? November, 2004

The fat lady is singing, so it must be over for the Administration run by a Colon, a Bush and a Dick. Woo-hoo!



Then I woke up. Duh-oh!


Sweet dreams are made of this.
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas.
Everybody's looking for something.

Why, Paul, Why?

The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind reveals a former Bush Administration cabinet member's observations on the President in general, and on the obsession with Iraq in particular. Not just the snivelling of an insider turned out, the book has 19,000 insider documents to back it. You might say that the book is highly embarrassing to the Bush Administration.

After an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday night, Mr. O'Neill found out the price of disloyalty. The Bushies turned their hurricane-force (Category 5) wrath on O'Neill, attempting to discredit him. Never mind that they employed the logical fallacy known as ad hominem. What's important is that O'Neill cowered and back-pedalled - not a lot, but enough for his detractors to catch doubt on him.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said on Tuesday that he used some "vivid language" to describe President George W. Bush and would take it back if he could.

During the 60 Minutes interview, O'Neill said "I'm an old man and I've made plenty of money. They can't hurt me." In other words, knowing the Bushies, he knew that they would attack him. However, he understimated their viciousness.

My take on it: behind the scenes, they have informed him that they will hurt someone else. O'Neill is now trying to protect someone else from the White House's thuggery. This is hardly the first time the Bushies retaliated against a patriot who exposed the Administration's underhanded ways. A recent, obvious, example happened when Joe Wilson proved that the Iraq purchase of Uranium was a lie. The Bushies "outed" his wife as a CIA undercover operative.

Stupid Celebrity Tricks

Next, crocodile hunter Steve Irwin will dangle Michael Jackson over a balcony while feeding a hungry croc.

Double-edged humor

Donovan McNabb led the Philadelphia Eagles to victory over the Green Bay Packers Sunday. He showed greatness while leading the final drive to win the game. If you think Brett Favre had a rough day, Rush Limbaugh had to watch it without painkillers.
-- Argus Hamilton

Commentary

He couldn't tell his *ss from a hole in the ground even if he bought a few mirrors, a Magic Marker, and a manhole cover.

How much do YOU make?

Warning: do not visit the linked web page if you use - or should use - anti-depressants. This might send you over the edge.

The Real Hourly Wage Calculator calculates your true pay, considering
unpaid breaks
commute time
time spent getting ready
transportation costs
daycare expenses
and so on.... Truth in Earnings

New splash of color

The United States is pushing ahead with plans to screen and color-code all passengers flying in the country despite resistance from airlines and privacy groups.

Once the person's identity is verified, the name is then run through federal law enforcement databases to see if the traveler is a known or suspected terrorist, or has been convicted of a violent felony.

The passengers will then be assigned a security color-coding based on their potential risk to the flight.

All passengers will receive a numeric and a color code.

Those designated as "red" will be prohibited from flying
"Yellow" coded passengers will face secondary screening, similar to that now given to some passengers
"Green" passengers will be allowed access to the plane. CNN.

Elmo will be hitchhiking or riding a Greyhound.
Bert will be strip-searched.
Kermit is OK

Uncle investigates

Investigation #1
Last summer, a "senior administration official" leaked the identity of a CIA undercover operative. Many feel that the leak was in retaliation for the agent's husband's disclosure of proof of one of the White House's many lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq. After widespread uproar, the administration relented and started an "investigation" into the leak.

Investigation #2
Today a kiss-and-tell book hits the shelves. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind reveals a former Bush Administration cabinet member's observations on the President in general, and on the obsession with Iraq in particular. Not just the snivelling of an insider turned out, the book has 19,000 insider documents to back it. You might say that the book is highly embarrassing to the Bush Administration. Naturally, there will be an investigation.

My question: Which investigation will get top priority?
- The one which would reveal illegal actions by a "senior administration official" - actions referred to by G. Bush Sr. as "treason".
- The one which would smear the name of a patriot willing to prove improper actions by the administration

On Blondes, Polaks, and North Dakotans

Before blond jokes, there were Polak jokes (an international phenomenon - a Czech friend tells me that Polish jokes were popular when she lived in Czechloslovakia in the 50s & 60s). The idea is to pick on the lack of smarts of a particular group. In the Pacific Northwest and Colorado, Californians find their way into humor.

Sarah Vowell, essayist, tells this story about her father's North Dakota joke.

"Montanans do not, as a rule, vacation in North Dakota. In fact, there is a cottage industry of jokes about the diminished intellectual capacity of the Northa Dakota neighbors."

"My parents were having a garage sale at their Bozeman [Montana] home. My father hoped to sell a wheelbarrow he bought at someone else's garage sale the previous summer. He bought it for ten bucks, he tells a potential buyer, so he's selling it for five, because, he quips, 'I attended the North Dakota School of Business'."

"'I'm from North Dakota, too!' the woman exclaimed, asking him what town the business school is in."
[Source: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell, Simon & Schuster, 2002]

Tom was a real Paine, but he deserved better.

On this day in 1776, British political theorist Thomas Paine published a pamphlet called Common Sense, arguing eloquently for American independence. In it, he wrote,
"These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered."

Common Sense sold over 500,000 copies in a land whose estimated population was 2.5 million. That would be equivalent to selling 58,000,000 copies in the US today.

Paine and his pamphlet had a great influence on the Declaration of Independence. In fact, many scholars argue that Paine ghost wrote the Declaration of Independence, and that Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, et al edited and fine-tuned it.

Not just a thinker, Paine served as a soldier in the revolutionary army, and continued writing his inspirational works for the cause of liberty - The Crisis Papers being the most remarkable of those. After the defeat of the British, he continued writing such revolutionary works as The Rights of Man. In England he was charged with sedition for advocating overthrowing the monarchy; he left England for France, where he went on to provide philosophical support for the French Revolution. As a foreigner in the French National Convention, he argued bitterly to spare the life of the ousted King of France. That positon landed him in French Prison.

The last of his radical works, The Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice earned him the disfavor of the pious and the wealthy. How quickly people forgot that a few years earlier John Adams, President of the US, said "Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain."

Paine died penniless and ignored. Only six mourners attended the funeral of the man who had once inspired millions to think in new ways about the world. Appropriately, 2 of those mourners were black. A friend of Paine's attempted to bury Paine's remains in England; the Britsh crown refused, and in the subsequent confusion, Paine's remains were lost forever. I like to think that his friend buried Paine in England, near a palace, in defiance of the royal ruling - and that Paine was buried face down, so that the monarch could K#SS PAINE'S %SS.

I said it's appropriate that African-Americans were at Paine's funeral. Here's why: of all of the people credited at various times with writing the Declaration of Independence, Paine was the only one who did not own slaves; Paine dealt with Negroes as peers. Paine's vision of a free society included women and Negroes as free and equal participants. How many of the "Founding Fathers" can claim that?

Think About It

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James

Advice

Crow is best eaten when fresh and warm. The longer it sits around, the worse it smells and the tougher it is to chew.

Don't you hate it when this happens?

At the UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Oakland, Pa., a 35-year-old man having a kidney transplanted from his mother awoke prematurely from his anesthesia and bolted upright, which caused the just-sewn-in kidney to thrust up with such force that it ripped an artery and protruded from his abdomen. The kidney could no longer be used and was removed the next day. Source.