Happy Tuesday.

Virginina ABC stores (the state liquor monopoly) are cutting workers' hours because of Obamacare.

DC Comics, ever determined to demonstrate its relevance, has launched two new series exploring the themes of Occupy Wall Street, which, you may recall was a short-lived wannabe post-anarchistic protest movement that fizzled last year after dozens of participants were the victims of sexual and other assaults while other participants plotted domestic terrorism. Bravo, DC Comics.

Awww, Politico notices that Obama's election-year promises are worth shit.

I don't know if this has been mentioned here or not, but it seems like something that could bear mentioning twice: Makers Mark is responding to increased demand by watering its booze.

North Korea conducted its third nuclear test yesterday. FLASHBACK: "North Korea Says It Will Abandon Nuclear Efforts"

Obama to use State of the Union to make the case against spending cuts and for tax hikes. Surprise.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (260)
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The National Safety Council estimates 24% of highway crashes are cell phone or texting related.

There were over 5M crashes in 2010, ~30k of those involving a fatality.

We've got our priorities straight, so naturally we put all our national focus on mass shooting events that kill on the order of the same number of people that lightning does each year.

Cell phones/texting - over 1M crashes/yr, ~7k fatalities.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:36 AM | Comments (48)
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The new "Acting School" is pretty funny. Guest appearance by Steven "Milton Waddams" Root.

The beginning (well, not the beginning, it's Adam Carolla, he takes a while to get there) of this podcast making fun of Tracy Chapman & other Coffee Shop rockers is pretty funny.

And in the category of Not Funny: I further explicated why Saturday Night Live is not funny and is furthermore also unfunny.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (102)
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How Long Does It Take To Get a Building Permit?

One of Adam Carolla's constant complaints is how regulated everything in society is in general and in particular how long and complex the city of Los Angeles has made doing the simplest of (legal) construction projects. Depending on where you live adding a pool to an existing house on flat stable land can take up to a year and cost $100K+ just for the permits and studies. If it's on a sloped lot... well you better be rich and have plenty of free time - although according to Adam even Jimmy Kimmel Joel McHale balked when he found what a new pool would cost him.

Well it turns out that lots of cities have decided to effectively stamp out any new (legal) building.

Here's a heat map created by Prof. Stephen Oliner of UCLA/AEI showing the average time to complete the planning process for new construction projects. As you can see depending on which county you happen to be in it can take up to 10x times longer. Basically any county in dark red doesn't truly want people to build anything new and will grind them down with process until they give up - all the while demanding federal and state help in bringing new jobs to the area.

Also: Meet Your New and Improved 3-D Printable AR-15 Magazine

The 3-D printing gunsmiths at Defense Distributed are about to release blueprints for an upgraded magazine that won't degrade even after you fire hundreds of rounds.

...In recent tests at a gun range near Austin, Texas, Defense Distributed fired a total of 342 rounds using the magazine with no issues, according to the group's founder, Cody Wilson. The group fired 227 of those rounds using full automatic fire, while swapping out the barrels on the rifle to keep them cool. The group also uploaded a promotional video, seen above, demonstrating a portion of the test.

And of course YouTube promptly pulled the video down although it seems to be back up now.

Also Geico and Intuit Hate Guns, Gun Businesses. Apparently Time-Warner too.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:47 PM | Comments (678)
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Allah thinks it's not realistic that Carson could run for President as his first elective office bid -- I think that's wrong.

The typical pathway to the president is indeed a stint as governor (or, if you're a Democrat, sometimes a Senator, which everyone understands is just not real preparation for the presidency but sometimes we pretend it is).

There's a big exception to this rule, however. People who are vastly accomplished what we might call Heroic Fields (military, and, yes, medicine, I'd argue) do in fact have all the "gravitas" that a governorship or (giggle) Senate posting is supposed to confer already, just due to their day jobs.

And Carson has quite an impressive day job indeed. People have already called him "The General Eisenhower of pediatric neuroscience." *

I wouldn't bet the farm on him but I think he's actually a possible candidate. One thing I worry about is that people that are very accomplished in fields other than politics do not learn the vital political skills of shit-eating, groveling, pandering, and lying for advancement in a bureaucratic situation, and in fact naturally recoil from such things.

And I'm not kidding around when I say those are important skills. People who are greatly accomplished sometimes have a difficult time acting as if they're not greatly accomplished, and sometimes act like They Know More Than You, which the American public hates, because people hate things that are obviously true.

Trump could never, ever learn to temper his Master of the Universe act. Mitt Romney tried his level-best, and always came across as disingenuous in his efforts.

I imagine Carson is a very bright guy, and is Usually Right, and furthermore is Usually Right even in the company of other bright guys. People who are Very Bright and Usually Right sometimes act as if they're Very Bright and Usually Right, and do have some trouble not coming across as someone who knows he's Very Bright and Usually Right.

But all of this is two years off.

The news here -- or, news to me at least -- is that Carson is retiring from surgery this June.

Gee, active guy, very used to being a Top Dog in a Highly Competitive Field.

I wonder what he might do with his free time.

Maybe origami.

* When I say "people have already called him The General Eisenhower of pediatric neurosurgery" I meant me. I'm a people. But you guessed that.

Corrected: Retiring in June, not "next year," as I said.

Posted by: Ace at 04:34 PM | Comments (359)
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You dummies are really taken with @comradearthur's stupid flying squids.

You're missing the real headline -- Fossas! (They appear as the heroes late in the clip.)

Fossas prove the theory which I, a latecomer to the whole Naturalism game (but out of the gate with very solid work), have developed:

Any animal where you go "what the hell is that?" is some form of weasel.

Always. There are no exceptions.

Fisher? What the hell is that?

Per the Ace Rule of Non-Identifiable Mammals: It's a form of weasel.

Bang, you just impressed your friends.

No exceptions. "Weasel" is the "Other" category of animals. If it's not clearly something else it's a weasel.

Zen and the Flight of Squirrels: Not as cool as fossas, and not a type of weasel, but cooler than those dumb non-flying squids you can't get enough of. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:05 PM | Comments (135)
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For some of you, this may be a bit more challenging. The last two, Greatest Whole and Greatest Ever, were dominated by music from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. It takes time for music to stand the test of, well, time, but I find it interesting 21st century offerings were few and far between. There are hundreds of excellent albums that have been cranked out since I was in high school, so for this edition, ONLY albums released between 2001 and 2013.

more...

Posted by: CAC at 03:33 PM | Comments (285)
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One thing that keeps making me laugh is that many members of the liberal media claim they are not liberal -- not biased at all; completely straight shooters -- and yet all other out-and-out, self-confessed liberals rally out to defend the supposedly not-liberal media.

Outright leftwing outfits like Media Matters make it their sole mission to attack those who critique the liberal media -- that is, their sole mission is to defend the liberal media by attempting to refute all criticism.

Every once in a while one of these leftist outfits makes the Make Pretend claim that they think the media is conservative, but that's just something they have to say on occasion. Their meat and potatoes is insisting the liberal media is perfect. (But not at all liberal.)

I can tell what side you're on by who comes running to your defense every five minutes, you know.

The Guild extends similar Most Favored Nation status to all other members of the liberal guild, of course. Today, thoughtless mediocrity Dylan Byers attempted to push back against my (irrefutable) point that The New Republic is overwhelmingly white and long has been, and yet, despite its unbearable whiteness, postures as some kind of Friend of the Black Race.

Friend of the Black Race, maybe. Employer of the Black Race? Decidedly not.

I imagine that Dylan Byers feels duty bound to protect other liberal outlets (but I'm sure he'd tell you that he's not biased and neither is TNR) as a matter of course.

But I'd also imagine that this defense goes a little deeper than that:

Overwhelmingly white membership is not something the media wants to talk about, at least not when the subject is their own overwhelmingly white membership.

They love to talk about Whiteness when it's a group they disfavor, such as the Tea Party.

But they don't want to talk at all about how their very own staffs "look nothing like America."

The Netroots also wants to talk about the whiteness of the Tea Party... but never their own blazing pallor.

Obama's 2012 campaign Headquarters was plenty interested in rooting out discrimination wherever it thought it might detect it... but forgot to ask why apparently only white people were qualified to have positions there.

CNN just took Soledad O'Brien's show away from her due to its audience being "too ethnic." By which they mean black.

Has a single other media entity, apart from the online operation Fishbowl DC, followed up on this story?

As far as I have seen -- No. They have buried the story because they know they're all compromised on the same exact point.

I have a more interesting post about this entire phenomenon, but I'm not really up to it brainwise. So for now I'll just make the basic point: The media is, in fact, overwhelmingly white, and they know they're overwhelmingly white, which is why they squirm so much when the standard they insist on for everyone else are applied to themselves.

They have no good answer to it, so they do what anyone does when he's confronted with a damaging but unanswerable point: they either ignore the point entirely (as TNR is doing, and as CNN has been doing since it took Soledad O'Brien's show) or, like Dylan Byers, they attempt to demean it as not mattering.

Here's what Dylan Byers says about TNR's complete failure to diversify itself:

Should TNR diversify its offices? That's up to them.

It's up to them? Is that what affirmative action/non-discrimination law says in this country-- whether or not a company makes a special effort to hire minorities is "up to them"?

Is this a special license that only the media has? Because I'm pretty sure it is not "up to individual corporations" which are not in the media industry as to whether they make aggressive efforts to recruit minority candidates.

And then he adds:

But for the GOP, it isn't a case of should or shouldn't. It's a case of must.

This is dumb. Let me explain why: TNR is, if I can rely upon this post by Jack Shafer (a member of The Guild), itself losing lots of money.

For more than a century, rich guys who think theyÂ’re smarter than the rich guys who came before them have been buying money-losing publications under the impression that by spending more money than their deep-pocketed predecessors, theyÂ’ll turn the red ink black. This tradition, whose ranks include [all manner of White Guys] gained a new adherent about a year ago when Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder whose net worth currently bounces around in the vicinity of the half-billion mark, purchased the New Republic.

Since then, Hughes has followed the century-old script to a T, wheel-barreling a load of cash into the magazine, replacing the top editor with the former top editor, adding staff, opening a New York office, making plans to move his Washington staff to a nicer home, and ordering a makeover of both the magazine and website. This week, those redesigns debuted, with the magazine getting slicker and thicker, and the website receiving a sumptuous transformation that makes the competition look like theyÂ’re squatting on GeoCities sites.

Like the rich guys who have come before, Hughes has also set the goal of making the magazine profitable in “a couple years.” Making money is a wonderful ambition for the New Republic, which was losing about $3 million a year several years before Hughes began the current expansion, according to Martin Peretz’s ex-wife, Ann Peretz.

My problem isn't that Byers suggests that diversification would be a good avenue by which the GOP could improve its own political balance sheets.

My problem is how he immediately dismisses the idea that a media organization which is itself struggling could profit from its own diversification effort.

Apparently diversity-efforts are things Other People must do -- never people who Dylan Byers works for, or may work for at some point down the road. They have a special dispensation.

Just Because They Said So.

If TNR was making money hand over fist, one might say "Don't fix what's not broken."

But it's not. And yet Dylan Byers blithely (and thoughtlessly) rushes to their defense, saying that any effort to diversify is "up to them."

Without doing any investigation into this matter, Byers pops off to defend His Tribe.

You said something about My Tribe? Well then buddy, you and me are gonna rumble.

After Byers wrote his reflexively Defend My Tribe Against All Filthy Insinuations That We Ought to Practice What We Preach, he got a little head's up from some commenters. Here's one former intern agreeing that TNR does in fact have a major problem on the diversity front:

I would venture to say that the Republican Party cares more about diversity than the New Republic does.

The Republican Party has at least recognized that it has a problem with outreach to nonwhite voters. I haven't seen any such soul searching from a magazine that professes to be the New Yorker of Washington D.C.

It's a big deal when one of the most prominent liberal magazines in the United States has a staff that's almost entirely white.

It's a problem when a rebooted, reinvigorated, well-funded version of that magazine decides that diversity is not one of their concerns and assembles a new almost all-white masthead that looks nothing like the country or journalism industry.

TNR doesn't represent a broad cross-current of American, liberal or center-left thought. How can it when it has no prominent nonwhite contributors, editors or staff writers?

TNR has a diversity problem from top to bottom — it always has. Nothing's changed in the Chris Hughes era.

It has hired the occasion nonwhite intern or fellow. It ran some very good John McWhorter pieces a few years ago. But that's what some might call "tokenism." Those people have never been promoted to editor or staff writer. They've largely been allowed to walk right out the door. It's never had a nonwhite or female running the show.

If TNR wants to opine about the state of the Republican Party, that's their business. But the current leadership should take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves if they really care about diversity in their midst. And whether the country at large or the journalism industry as a whole looks anything like the staff they've assembled.

And in 1995, the Washington Post responded to a TNR sneer.

In 1995, The New Republic ran a thirteen-thousand-word article by Ruth Shalit about alleged racial tension in the Post newsroom, which prompted an acidic letter from Graham himself. "Since she works at The New Republic," Graham's letter stated, "the last practitioner of de facto segregation since Mississippi changed, Ms. Shalit has little or no experience in working with black colleagues." (Graham noted that the magazine, founded in the early part of the century, has "never had a full-time black staffer" and quipped: "Motto: Looking for a qualified black since 1914.")

Byers dutifully quotes these, but apparently draws no particular conclusions from them; he adds nothing at the end to suggest perhaps he was a bit kneejerk -- and a bit rush-to-defend-the-white-privilege-of-My-Guild -- in claiming that affirmative action and minority outreach are "up to" corporations themselves (so long as those corporations are in the media industry).

"That's up to them"?

Extraordinary.

Extraordinary.

I should add I'd be interested in seeing Politico's own diversity efforts, and its own balance sheets, so I can gauge as to whether it should be "up to them" to pursue a more diverse employment policy, and whether they can profit from same.

But I won't be seeing anything of the sort, so my conclusions will have to remain in the plane of the conjectural.

The White Republic: I don't know when this employee list dates from, but it's fairly recent. (I recognize most of the names as having been staffers/editors at least until the last couple of years.) Update: Chris Hughes is listed as owner/EIC so it is current. I don't know if any black staffers are for some reason not on the list, but let's say there's one missing: Does this masthead "look like America"?

Look, there's no getting around it: They're all white.

And I gotta say this: No, "Jewish" does not count as "minority" for these purposes. Not in the media, guys. Give me a break. The Jews have suffered historical discrimination but not in the media, at least not for 50 years.

I don't want to say "quite the opposite" because I don't like the dark "Jews control the media" stuff but in fact Jews are very well represented (overrepresented, if we're beancounting) in the media and simply cannot be counted as "minority hires."

Posted by: Ace at 02:53 PM | Comments (278)
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Commenters are adding some dimensions to the Space Cadets hoax -- comparing it to the media generally.

It's actually a great point: Our "reality" is a rather consensual thing, isn't it? Brian Williams is a thoughtful, credible anchorman because enough People In Red Ties decided he is, right?

Obama Cares About the Poor (despite blocking the poor's only avenue of advancement, school choice) because People Who Pick the Pictures That Appear on Our TV have said he does.

This show is about -- now that commenters have spurred me into thinking about -- the basic untrustworthiness of the media and the dynamics of groupthink among those with suggestible minds and how the eye may be tricked and how the brain might ignore the blatant truth right in front of your nose to indulge in pleasing fiction.

I actually... did not see any of that on first viewing. I just saw a fun, extravagantly-funded practical joke. But it is all there.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (167)
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Have you seen what they cut? The show pretends that Republicans' problem with Hagel is that he made the innocuous claim that "Israel's and America's interests will not always line up perfectly."

They pretend the problem isn't his frequent talk of a "Jewish lobby."

The sketch died at dress rehearsal -- you can hear pins not just dropping but merely contemplating giving gravity a spin -- so they cut it.

But these political complaints mask a more serious problem -- Saturday Night Live's problem isn't political bias, it's its failure to deliver anything resembling comedy week after after week.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (142)
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