Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:11 AM | Comments (186)
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19-11. This vote sends the bill on to the Texas House.

Last time it came up, in 2009 (we're smart in Texas, sorta. At least we only let our legislators meet once every two years), an almost evenly divided Texas House (76-74), Democrat Reps were able to kill it with parliamentary rules. But with a 100-50 seat majority, House Republicans will pass it, and Governor Goodhair will sign it.

So that's that.

Also, yeah, I swiped Governor Goodhair from Molly Ivins (RIP). Since I can't speak ill of the dead, I'll just thank her for the nick, cause despite her having been an annoying commie, it is kinda funny.

tip via JoetheMailman

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:25 PM | Comments (81)
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The Storm, Pierre Auguste Cot, 1880
Currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
oil on canvas

How about a break from abstract art? Wikipedia says, "Though long regarded as a symbol of late nineteenth century academicism, The Storm, even today, continues to attract a litany of caustic attacks." I like it. It has a romantic quality for me--long ago, far away, in a better time... Reminds me of an ideal time when I was young that never existed. But should have. That kind of thing. If someone agrees that The Storm is deserving of caustic attack, please explain why and what you believe the problems are.

There is an early 20th century artist I was looking for today--American, I think, or someone who immigrated here. Can't remember the name. He painted light, romantic scenes of beautiful women usually. Lots of sunset lighting. Always outdoors, in beautiful, natural settings. His style is reminiscent of some of the early Coca-Cola artwork--but not exactly. One of them is a woman standing on a rock with her back arched and with her arms up, facing the sun, her hair and clothes caught in that moment by a breeze. Another one is three figures in a portico with fluted pillars overlooking a beautiful landscape. Ring a bell? Anyway, I wanted to put one or two of those up. Someone put me some information.

Update: Steve Skubinna in comments gave me the answer, Maxfield Parrish. And here are the two paintings I mentioned:

Ecstasy, Maxfield Parrish, 1922
oil on panel

Daybreak, Maxfield Parrish, 1929
oil on panel

CAC claims to be busy still and offers this picture as proof. Since I can't understand his description, I'll just quote him below.

In the background are the large latex appliances that will go around the model's 34F breasts, in the foreground one of the "lymph node" appliances (under construction) that will go around the breast, armpit and neck.

So apparently his project involves making latex appliances that resemble lymph nodes. To be placed on a model with large breasts? For what purpose, I wonder, photos? Some kind of medical realism? Art? Horror? Maybe we can get a fuller explanation from CAC if he stops in or when he returns. It would be interesting to know what this is for and to see more pictures. And, 34F? Come on. There must be some joke here I'm not getting. No job can be that awesome.

Now on to moron art. One of last week's participants asked about putting up a link for purchasing information. I think that would best be handled in comments and not up top in the post. Ace has paying advertisers. For now, provide your own link and any other information you might have in comments. We'll see how that goes. I'll be doing the art thread at least until next week, so continue sending your submissions to me, rdbrewer4(at)yadayadagmail.com. Change the "(at)" to "@" and take out the yadas. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 06:34 PM | Comments (88)
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Thirty Years of the Best First Person Shooters Ever Made

And what a long fun shootout it's been. I believe I've played nearly all of these starting with Battlezone back in the day and going all the way up to CoD 4 and soon CoD: Black Ops. However there was a long dead period during the 80s up to Castle Wolfenstein when PC graphics just weren't quite up to the task so I skipped a couple in there.

Few things give me more pleasure than killing Nazis and killing aliens - and in Return to Castle Wolfenstein I was able to slake both desires at the same time. Overall my faves have probably been the Doom and the Half Life series. Good times, good times.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:49 PM | Comments (586)
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Good post by Allah on the basics.

Demagogy on the right -- that our financial problems are due only to Obama care and some overspending on foreign aid -- promises solutions that are easy, popular, and utterly ineffectual.

Yes, we need to cut the things the popular-message right says we need to cut.

And we have to cut quite a bit more than that, too.

Yes, we should do the easy stuff first, because you can't get to the hard stuff without doing the easy stuff -- but at some point, seriously, our leaders have to begin leveling with people, as Tom Coburn does, but few others do.

I don't know -- does Glen Beck talk about this at all? Or does he just sort of say Social Security is unconstitutional or something and leave it that? If so, that seems to be a safe, comforting position to take -- by implying action that everyone knows can't ever happen, he's basically saying let it lay.

Where are the thought-leaders on this? Limbaugh, Levin, etc.? It's relatively easy and popular to tell people things they already pretty much believe. It's hard to tell people things they don't want to hear -- but need to.

I don't know if they do or they don't. But if an equal number of Republicans and Democrats say "don't ever touch Social Security, not a tiny bit," while yipping and yapping about UN funding, I don't know. Seems like the vaunted right-wing shadow media isn't doing a very good job of telling truth to people if so few understand the basics of this.

Voucher Fever: The fever no one has. No one's seriously arguing for Ryan's plan except for Ryan and Coburn (and Sarah Palin, a bit).

Here's a fix, which both the CBO and now Medicare itself says would actually work, but the party of fiscal responsibility isn't talking about it. Just allowing Ryan to allude to it... a bit.

Hmmmmm... curious writes:

Oh for gosh sakes, you have to take politics completely out of the discussion. He has to have Bill clinton and George W. Bush have a heart to heart talk with the american people with charts and graphs and THE TRUTH. Last I noticed they are both well respected and one from each of these stupid political parties.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (583)
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Green Hornet's the sort of movie that disappoints me more than a straight-up failure. A straight-up failure -- nothing salvageable. It's like getting beaten 42-3 -- there's no point worrying about this or that mistake you made because, hell, what did any particular mistake matter?

The Green Hornet's like getting beaten in overtime 24-21 when you had three opportunities to salt the game away in regulation. The mistakes may not be as huge in the 42-3 route, but they hurt all the more, because, hell, it was almost in the grasp.

I'm not a Green Hornet fanboy -- I saw the show like once or twice, years ago, and wasn't impressed. I never read the comics (if they have comics). I do know the basic gist of the idea, though, and the bit of trivia that Brit Reid (the Green Hornet) is actually the descendant of John Reid (the Lone Ranger), as they'd been created by the same radio-show team. So, I sort of like the idea of the Green Hornet, but not enough to have every actually taken an interest in the old show or the character in another medium.

I give it the two and half star rating, for a movie barely worth seeing, just on the right side of the good/bad divide. But honestly, they had a three star movie lurking around here. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (219)
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Follow the money.

The book is the basis of psychiatristsÂ’ authority to pronounce upon our mental health, to command health care dollars from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research. It is as important to psychiatrists as the Constitution is to the US government or the Bible is to Christians.

From Wired. Al Frances, editor of the DSM-IV and Robert Spitzer, editor of the DSM-III, joined in criticizing the upcoming DSM-5. (No kidding, roman numerals are out.) There is a tremendous amount of change proposed for the DSM-5, and it appears that not all of it is supported by good science or good sense. In trying to solve the problems of the DSM-IV, the new editors are creating bigger problems. Frances and Spitzer are worried about disaster. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:06 AM | Comments (254)
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Here's the link... yes, it seems to be an even earlier galaxy found with the Hubble.

The other thing I don't like about these press conferences is that science doesn't really work the way it suggests -- they are making an announcement as if there is some definite timely event that just happened, and thus the "news" of the press conference. But in fact, they probably saw this object a half year ago, postulated it was quite old a month after that, began to take educated guesses about its age, etc.

What I mean is that this is a process that is ongoing. It's not even proven yet. Based on how they're talking, they're saying it's consistent with what they believe about just-after-the-big-bang objects, but that's a far cry from "settled fact."

Then again, in science, there really is a settled fact per se. There are theories and hypotheses with increasing (or decreasing) levels of confidence and acceptance. There's not really some discreet moment where you can say, like a sports team, that some theory "won" and another was "defeated."

So this is kind of interesting but I find the "news" format of the "discovery" sort of deceptive. I think it's probably more accurate to say "We found an interesting object which we currently hypothesize to be extraordinarily old."

Correction: 500 million years post big-bang, not billion, as I headlined it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (195)
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A commenter mentioned something like this yesterday.

Is it true?

Well there are real reasons to think it's not -- revolutionary movements like this have a strong interest in putting claims out there like this, because sometimes the belief can quickly become the reality. (If army generals think the leadership has fled, they make cut deals with people to save themselves, which then in turn makes it necessary for the leadership to flee.)

Also, it's Debka, which a lot of people seem to cite but I really can't think of a Debka scoop that panned out.

Still, there's the tidbit. Via Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (48)
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Sorry to bug you with personal matters, but I've been trying to save money and several great ideas occurred to me last night. I hope you won't mind if I work some of my thoughts out on paper.

ACE'S PLAN FOR FISCAL SALVATION

Part 1: Investments in Competitive Edge aka Ace's "Win the Future" Initiative.

a. Invest in additional skill-building PS3 games I want, like the well-received James Bond title Blood Stone.

b. Invest in a larger information dissemination device (i.e., a television; see a., supra)

c. Invest in my continuing education in Doctor Who. Since Season Five is available on Amazon at the super-discounted price of $53 and change, I'm almost losing money if I don't buy it. See, again, a., supra.

d. Make continued necessary investments in my health, to wit, protein incorporation via Five Guys cheeseburgers.

e. Expand investments in my scientific research into human sexual diversity -- How do fuckin' busty lesbians work?

f. Finally invest in long-delayed improvements in my personal critical transportation infrastructure.

Part 2: Spending Cuts in Important But Unnecessary Areas.

See Part 1, supra. All my new investments are in fact "spending cuts," because you have to spend to save.

Part 3. Revenue Enhancements.

a. Stop paying my wasteful, unnecessary, and duplicative cable bill. When they call to terminate my service, I will tell them that "China has my float."

b. Set up a "Race to the Top Fund" for my wealthier friends to invest in my continued excellence and competitiveness.

c. Set up an "Enterprise Zone" in my mom's basement, where I can exist rent-free, utilizing all of my time for enterprise and/or Pringles.

d. Impose additional taxes on my local money-grubbing supermarket. The method of taxation will be hiding ground beef and taco powder underneath my coat while only paying for less expensive items in the U-Scan checkout, like this month's copy of Lucky (and also critical investments in those astrological mini-books they have next to the gum).

e. Impose additional taxes on my money-grubbing neighbor's supply of gasoline via siphoning.

f. Impose an additional tax on that supermarket, by boosting the siphon too.

g. Begin applying for every welfare subsidy in existence so the government will be made aware that I am ready to be invested in and willing -- nay, eager -- to experience my own personal Sputnik Moment.

...

Well, take care, suckers! I'll see you losers on Easy Street, yo!

Add This: A reader said this was like "Troll Science," a site I'd never heard of, which is pretty funny.

Amidst the funny stuff, I saw this one, which actually could work.

No, seriously, that would work. That right there would increase my monies by 50%.

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (215)
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