Well, I hope y'all are still having a great holiday weekend. I finished putting up my Christmas lights/decorations today and now I can kick my feet up and enjoy the rest of the weekend. Didn't do any of the Black Friday shopping stuff. With this economy, they'll still have Black Friday prices all the way through to Christmas so why bother with the crowds.

Remember that article last week talking about the rising cost of coffee? Well, this might work for you as an alternate. Cocaine Tea! I think I'll just wait for Cocaine Coffee.

The tea provides an effect similar to coffee, but instead of caffeine, it contains a little more illicit stimulant, cocaine.
Cocaine is actually present within the tea, but only a small amount – enough to act as a stimulant akin to caffeine, but many believe it to produces a less "jittery" energy effect. When consumed as a tea, the euphoric effect associated with cocaine use is also absent.

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Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (567)
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You know what they call this window on the International Space Station? "The cupola." Are you kidding me? That's a Palpatine window. All windows in space like that are called Palpatine windows.

Good grief. Who gets to name this stuff anyway? "Ah, yes. I think I'll call it 'the cupola.'" No, Einstein. You get to name the wires that run behind the walls. If you're lucky, maybe we'll let you name the batts of insulation too.

Follow me on Twitter.

Open thread.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:01 PM | Comments (134)
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A few more of these. Some of these snippets are so blatant in showing bias I worry that they are, actually, taken out of context.

The emails paint a clear picture of scientists selectively using data, and colluding with politicians to misuse scientific information.
‘Humphrey’, said to work at Defra [UK's Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs], writes: ‘I cannot overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the government can give on climate change to help them tell their story.

'They want their story to be a very strong one and donÂ’t want to be made to look foolish.Â’

Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the centre of the affair, said the group findings did stand up to scrutiny.

Yet one of the newly released emails, written by Prof. Jones - who is working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - said: 'Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.

'IÂ’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.'

That's the one I worry about. It seems so blatant.

However, Jones has frequently before made "intellectual property" rights claims over the raw data, insistent that only he and his fellow cultists could examine the actual data. This could just be an advisory to always keep their Golden Goose hidden from outside observers.

Some scientists weren't completely comfortable with the deceptions:

One nervous scientist wrote: 'The figure you sent is very deceptive.'

'I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,' wrote another.

The lead author of one of the reports, Jonathan Overpeck, wrote, 'The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide whatÂ’s included and what is left out.'

"Science" is always about political messages, and tailoring releases to buttress those messages. Duh.

A global warming believer, Clive Cook, has reportedly said:

'The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.

'The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'

Not so much to me anymore.

Thanks to Just the Tip.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (237)
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Thanks to Laura, some good pissing and moaning from a bearded intersex representative of Occupy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (153)
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There's probably stuff going on in the world but who cares? There's leftovers and hockey on TV (Red Wings vs. Bruins on NBC). more...

Posted by: DrewM at 09:19 AM | Comments (265)
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Ace really hates rattling the tip jar, so every now and then the cobloggers do so on his behalf. This is one of those times, but we're going to do it a little differently.

The little, lonely PayPal button over there on the left side of the blog remains option A, and Ace swore he wouldn't blow all the dough on hookers and booze. This time.

But we're instituting a new program here at the HQ that lets you do something you'd do anyway, namely order stuff from Amazon.com, and simultaneously kick some dough towards the head Ewok.

It's simple. Just use the search widget below the fold instead of going to Amazon's home page to do your Black Friday shopping.

Ace is working on making this a permanent feature of the blog that'll have a search widget somewhere on the main page and direct links (like in Monty's Sunday Book Thread) that hit his account. But you elder morons remember the New Site, right? Yeah, you get the idea ... I'll take the over on 2013.

HARD TIMES ADDENDUM from lauraw: Seriously, guys? King Moron needs some new bling-bling. I think you can agree that this look is just starting to get a bit dated.

That's a several-years-old picture of our fuzzy, prolific content-provider, by the way.
I can't show you what he looks like now because it's shameful.

That hat-feather broke off to a nub ages ago and was never replaced, customs officials confiscated the leopard skin and fined the solid gold dollar-sign right off his chest, and the metal in his mouth was recently traded for five cases of Ramen noodles, twenty-four e-cig refills, and an urgently needed flea dip.

The man is a walking shambles, barely differentiated from the hobos he hunts for food, and in desperate danger of being mistaken for prey.

If you're going to shop on Amazon anyway, please do it from here, and know that you are helping out a guy who looks like a giant talking woodchuck.

OH - and who also writes things that inform you and make you laugh. Either/Or. I think the woodchuck thing is cooler, but YMMV.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE [DiT]: Hookers and blow don't grow on trees.

As far as I know.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE UPDATE [rdbrewer]: I see in comments some are suggesting turning off adblock and allowing all blocked items on the page. Not necessary. If you have Firefox, click on the little red stop sign shaped button at the lower left in the Firefox frame. Click on "open blockable items" in the box that comes up. Find the two or three Amazon widget items. Right click on them one by one and hit "disable filter" in the box that comes up. That way you don't have to disable adblock for everything on the page.

Open thread in the comments. more...

Posted by: andy at 05:00 AM | Comments (154)
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Happy Friday, folks. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (101)
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Happy Thanksgiving All!

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:08 PM | Comments (502)
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Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (215)
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As the time to eat approaches. Or, the time to start making sandwiches approaches, if you ate at 2.

Hey, Why Do Dallas and Detroit Always Play on Thanksgiving? Since I was a kid, it was always Dallas and Detroit (playing other teams, not each other).

I just looked up why on Wikipedia.

Football games being played on Thanksgiving day all the way back to 1887...

The first owner of the Lions, G.A. Richards, started the tradition of the Thanksgiving Day game as a gimmick to get people to go to Lions football games, and to continue a tradition begun by the city's previous NFL teams.
Several other NFL teams played regularly on Thanksgiving in first eighteen years of the league, including the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals (1922-33; the Bears played the Lions from 1934 to 1938 while the Cardinals switched to the Green Bay Packers for 1934 and 1935), Frankford Yellow Jackets, and the New York Giants (1929–38, who always played a crosstown rival). During the Franksgiving controversy in 1939 and 1940, the only two teams to play the game were the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles, as both teams were in the same state (Pennsylvania). (At the time, then-president Franklin Roosevelt wanted to move the holiday for economic reasons and many states were resistant to the move; half the states recognized the move and the other half did not. This complicated scheduling for Thanksgiving games. Incidentally, the two teams were also exploring the possibility of a merger at the time.[3])

I never heard of the "Franksgiving" controversy. I'll put that up after the history of the Thanksgiving games.

...

When the Thanksgiving games resumed in 1945, only one game would be played each year (except 1950 and 1952), and only the Lions would have a permanent Thanksgiving game. In 1951, the Packers resumed its regular role on Thanksgiving, becoming the perpetual opponent to the Lions each year through 1963.

In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys, who had been founded six years earlier, adopted the practice of hosting Thanksgiving games. It is widely rumored that the Cowboys sought a guarantee that they would regularly host Thanksgiving games as a condition of their very first one (since games on days other than Sunday were uncommon at the time and thus high attendance was not a certainty).

...

The two "traditional" Thanksgiving Day pro football games have then been in Detroit and Dallas. Because of TV network commitments, to make sure that both the AFC-carrying network and the NFC-carrying network got at least one game each, one of these games was between NFC opponents, and one featured AFC-NFC opponents. Thus, the AFC could showcase only one team on Thanksgiving, and the AFC team was always the visiting team.

And then in 2006 the NFL network added the night game.

Now, about this "Franksgiving." God Do I Hate FDR. There's just always some new interference in people's lives, the more you look.

In August 1939, Lew Hahn, general manager of the Retail Dry Goods Association, warned Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins that the late calendar date of Thanksgiving that year (November 30) could possibly have an adverse effect on retail sales. At the time, it was considered bad form for retailers to display Christmas decorations or have "Christmas" sales before the celebration of Thanksgiving.

In keeping with a custom begun by Lincoln in 1863, U.S. Presidents had declared a general day of thanksgiving to be observed on the last Thursday in November. By late October of that year, President Roosevelt decided to deviate from this custom and declare November 23, the second-to-last Thursday, as Thanksgiving that year.[1]

The plan encountered immediate opposition. Alf Landon, Roosevelt's Republican challenger in the preceding election, called the declaration "another illustration of the confusion which [Roosevelt's] impulsiveness has caused so frequently during his administration. If the change has any merit at all, more time should have been taken working it out... instead of springing it upon an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler." While not all critics were political opponents of the president, most parts of New England (then a Republican stronghold relative to the rest of the nation) were among the most vocal areas. James Frasier, the chairman of the selectmen of Plymouth, Massachusetts (the commonly alleged location of the first Thanksgiving holiday) "heartily disapproved"

The short-notice change in dates affected the holiday plans of millions of Americans. For example, many college football teams routinely ended their seasons with rivalry games on Thanksgiving, and had scheduled them that year for the last day in November; some athletic conferences had rules permitting games only through the Saturday following Thanksgiving. If the date were changed, many of these teams would play their games for empty stadiums or not at all. The change also caused problems for college registrars, schedulers, and calendar makers.

A Gallup poll[when?] discovered that Democrats favored the switch 52% to 48% while Republicans opposed it 79% to 21%. Overall, Americans opposed the change 62% to 38%..

A lot of states -- Republican-controlled -- refused to follow Franklin's diktat and observed Thanksgiving on the regularly-scheduled day.

And how did Franklin's attempt to force patterns of human celebration into a Greater Economic Plan fare?

Well, it turns out, the smarty-pants' idea that an earlier Thanksgiving would boost sales was wrong:

In 1940, 32 states' governments and the District of Columbia observed the earlier date on November 21, while 16 states chose what some were calling the "Republican" Thanksgiving on the 28th.

On May 20, 1941, a Commerce Department survey found no significant expansion of retail sales due to the change.[citation needed] November of that year once again saw 32 states and the District of Columbia observing the holiday on the 20th, while the remaining 16 states did so on the 27th.

In 1941, FDR proclaimed a national day of prayer on the fourth Thursday of November, and this became the national date of observation.

Eventually. Many states kept the final-Thursday-in-November rule. Texas, for example, continued observing Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November until 1956.

A Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon (you know, the Bugs Bunny cartoons, but without Bugs Bunny) made a joke about the situation in 1940, noting we had two Thanksgivings, one for Democrats and one for Republicans.

By the way, if any of you missed Thanksgiving (like me, sort of, as I have no real plans), that means that you still have a shot at doing it next Thursday -- "Republican" Thanksgiving. Nope! Darklord points out next Thursday is December 1st, so this is both real Thanksgiving and Republican Thanksgiving.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (131)
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