As judged and presented by Special AoSHQ Judging-Stuff Guy Michael: more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (52)
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Glad to see that somebody in Europe still has a pair of balls on them.

The Danish People's Party's new spokesman on education affairs describes Islam as a terrorist movement.

'From its beginning, Islam has been a terrorist movement,' Henriksen stated on his website, warning against letting Muslims run for office in parliament and municipal councils.

'It's well known that Islam is lying low, well-knowing that no Islamic group or state has the military power it takes to conquer us. The goal we know, the method is to quietly take over and infiltrate our democratic institutions,' Henriksen said on his website.

I should also like to point out that the Danes have troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I guess you could say that they learned the hard way during World War II that its better to side with the Americans and British rather than the Frogs and Krauts.

Posted by: Tanker at 07:20 AM | Comments (55)
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Stupid Naked Testicle Spiderman.

So, I was kinda ranked in the middle. But the thing is, a bunch of Daddy's girls rated blogs for this poll.

I liked it when they called me Daddy. And they did, too, because they were all hungry.*

*Quoted from washed-up child actor Chris Klein's new erotic novel, Thanks For The Attention, But Now Get Out Of My Face.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 PM | Comments (32)
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Looks like Pinch Sulzberger has ordered his reporters to start submitting a story-every-week about how bad the apparently "booming" economy (by their own admission, last week) really is.

We can expect one of these economic hatchet jobs every week from now until Novermber 2006. So get used to the form. Here, we'll just ignore all the postitive data and conduct an interview with a single sourpuss.

What's Ahead: Blue Skies, or More Forecasts of Them?

The nation's economic forecasters are all but unanimous in predicting that the coming year will not bring a recession. It isn't so clear, however, whether that forecast has any meaning.

Wall Street economists are notorious for insisting that all is fine even when a downturn is just around the corner. The few pessimists who regularly prophesize doom are only occasionally right.

Even the actual start of a recession does not always help. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, spent much of early 2001 saying that a recession was avoidable. In fact, one had already begun.

Trying to predict recessions - an effort that drives much of forecasting - turns out to have little practical use. The more relevant question might be whether growth is likely to speed up or slow down in the coming year, and most of the signs, like still-high energy costs and a cooling housing market, are pointing to a slowdown.

Slowing economies matter because they often set the stage for recessions, and they usually drag down stock prices in any event. By the time a recession begins and job losses are mounting, stocks are frequently rising again....

4.3% GDP growth? Dow approacing new historic highs? Deficit falling by a $80 billion in one year due to rising tax receipts? Unemployment at 5.0% and falling?

It's a trap!!!

Admiral Akbar should be the Democratic nominee in 2008. After all, he's got the military experience the liberals need to help convince the public they're not total weenies on defense.

As a bonus, he's a minority. At least I think he's a minority. Who knows.

Coincidence? According to Drudge:

SOURCE: Bush set to go on offense Monday re the economy; hit Dems for seeking to raise taxes ... Developing...

And, goodness gracious, the NYT is right there playing defense for them. What were the odds.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 PM | Comments (19)
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Here's Dane Cook imitating Tom Cruise's bizarrely hyperexpressive Oprah appearance, on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

More videos here. The ones I know are funny are Public Restrooms, Fighting, I Would Love To Have Acidy Spit, and Satan's *sshole (The DMV),and Teleporting.

Oh, and The Finger's funny too.

And here's his site, if you want to see where he's playing.

The best knock on the guy -- although I think he's hilarious -- is that we're not done with the old Jim Carrey yet.

Posted by: Ace at 06:40 PM | Comments (10)
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Topic starters: Jay Feely missed another field goal. The Bengals beat Pittsburgh. Chicago, who I refuse to believe are really any good, will hopefully lose to the Steelers next week.

The Patriots e-d-g-e-d the woeful Jets. I'm going to go out on a limb right now and predict the Patriots will not repeat as Superbowl champions.

Dr. Pat the Quack from The Joe Schmo Show is now a featured performer on Saturday Night Live. She does a good Megan Mullally impression. Otherwise, the show is completely unwatchable. Fred Amisan and Horatio Sanz* are okay, and Seth Meyers seems like he should be funny, but basically they've replaced the last batch of supporting-players-without-a-star with a new group of unknowns, also lacking any real stand-out talent. And the writing is horrible.

*He's also barely on the show, despite being one of the strongest cast members in a pretty weak cast. I think he must have negotiated some contract in which he agrees to be on the show, but only for ten minutes a week. Sweet.

Memo to Tina Fey: You're not nearly as funny or cute as you seem to imagine.

The host last night was Dane Cook, one of the best comics out there, and so at least there was five minutes of funny material (his opening stand up, which of course had nothing to do with the actual show).

How did this show get so bad? And it's been bad, like Charles Rocket/Terry Sweeney era bad, for a long time.

Oh, and: re advertisers' woes-- I see more and more ads incorporating the stars from a show in commercials. They're trying to trick fast-forwarders into watching the commercials, but it doesn't work. Yes, they get you to hit the play button half the time, but as soon as you see what's what, you hit that fast-forward again like a freakin' banshee.

Posted by: Ace at 06:03 PM | Comments (33)
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I hope Ace will indulge me here, this post is meant to be a continuation of a short conversation with commenter F15C in an old thread.

Here is a link to our little back-and-forth (scroll down a few) and here are the last inquiries from F15C, which I am not qualified to answer:

The loss of 4000 well paying jobs plus in our city of 90,000 is significant - and that is from HP alone. NEC has laid off unspecified numbers, and even Intel which hires/fires in spurts is not making up the differnence and neither is small business. Think too of all the peripheral businesses that serviced those employees and survived on their spending - I'm sure they will have requisite negative impacts to their businesses and people as well.

I may be wrong, but I don't think wages are keeping up with inflation in America. Though inflation is fairly low, the trend is bad.

It seems that we have 'x' number of Wal-marts being built per day, but less than zero high technology business expansions being built. Skewed though it may be, it is some kind of indication of what is going on.

My point is that if we are seeing the same thing happening to high-technology R&D functions that happened to manufacturing functions what does that portend for America's leadership in the world economy?

If we give away our leadership (I'm talking pragmatic leadership - leadership that primarily benefits Americans as wage/salary earners, consumers, and investors) in high technology, then what are we going to lead? We are - no question - offshoring our R&D and engineering capabilities to India and China. I fully expect those countries to lead the world (as do they) within ten years to the detriment of the US.

I suggest reading a bit on Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages.

I freely admit that I am not an expert in the topic of offshoring jobs in the technical fields; but I don't really see it as much different than getting a lot of our clothing cheaper from overseas than we can fabricate it ourselves.

We had to export a lot of technical know-how and infrastructure during that switch, too. As a result, clothing is much, much, cheaper and more plentiful now than it ever has been. We don't fret about being able to afford new shoes for the kids. When I was a kid, my mother had to save for that. People today pay cash out of pocket and throw good clothing away when it has a teensy spot on it or doesn't fit quite right anymore. That ought to tell you something.

It would seem to me that high-tech will go the same way for quite some time.
But not being well-versed in the ins and outs of R&D, engineering, etc., it may well be a whole different ballgame.

Can anyone address F15C's concerns?

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:20 PM | Comments (49)
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Dr. Reo Symes reminds us of this controversial, and apparently ineffectual, treatment.

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (18)
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They're rethinking the high cost of tv ad buys.

And considering more advertising in "nontraditional" venues, like the Internet.

Crazy blog-money, here I come! In, umm, 10-15 years or so.

What the heck is going to happen to television when everyone realizes that no one watches commercials anymore? I guess it will go subscriber, but please, who the hell is going to pay good money to watch The King of Queens every week? Television's free now and I barely watch it.

(Okay, except for The Apprentice, Survivor, Rock Star: INXS, CSI, Arrested Development, and Prison Break.)

Posted by: Ace at 02:36 PM | Comments (24)
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Wait, it's not women, it's the American public generally. It's Bush's highest approval rating since October.

It's only one point higher than the previous snapshot, which means it means nothing at all, but, what the hell. I don't think Bush's 36% rating meant anything either, but the MSM sure had a field day with that.

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (6)
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