Knock your socks off. more...

Posted by: CAC at 09:10 AM | Comments (256)
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As apparently the only co-blogger left behind, I join the rest of you morons in facing a very unfortunate day:

Remember- they can open doors, outsmart big game hunters, and even killed a guy who hated snakes on his plane.

Open Thread.

*LATE BREAKING RAPTOR DAY UPDATE*
After digging through Monty's DOOM posts, I discovered this SHOCKING hidden message which may explain why he was taken and my plaid-short-wearing-ass was left:

"That expensive college degree is looking more and more like a waste of money to a lot of people. There are a lot of problems in America's higher-ed system: some regulatory, some financial, some cultural, some demographic. The main problem (I think) is that too many kids are going to college because they view it as a ticket to a better job -- but as a jobs-training program, a college education fails more often than not, and it's an expensive failure at that. And there's a horrible amount of malinvestment of human labor at work there -- many young people invest 12 years of primary and six years of secondary (or more) into schooling, meaning that they are often in their mid to late 20's before even entering the jobs market...only to find that their 18+ years of education were -- well, not exactly wasted, but rather misdirected. Whatever marginal gain in earning power the college degree gives them is offset by the killing debt and the time loss they incurred just getting the degree in the first place. Yet American parents and children both seem absolutely bent on a college education, the costs be damned."

If you have any culinary skills whatsoever, there is still time. But what kind of dessert he would like, that is the bigger mystery.

Posted by: CAC at 07:13 AM | Comments (405)
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I just started watching this ten minutes ago. It's available on Netflix now (and other places, of course).

Initial thoughts:

1. Martin Freeman is one of my favorite actors (from the British The Office) and is immediately perfect as a sad, wounded, lost Afghanistan veteran. The guy playing Holmes I've never seen before, and I don't think I like him. He's clearly very young (much younger than Freeman) and is odd looking, and I know Holmes should be sort of odd looking, but so far I'm not loving him. We'll see. I've known this guy all of five minutes so he can grow on me.*

(* Maybe this is a clever bit of casting. Since Watson is supposed to be the viewpoint character and the one we identify with, while Holmes is supposed to be the odd man of mystery, it maybe makes sense to cast someone we already feel like we know as Watson while keeping Holmes a relative unknown.)

2. Updating to the modern day was so seemless I barely even notice. When John from Verum Serum asked me if I was watching it, I said I probably wouldn't like it because of the modern setting. I like the cobblestones, Black Marias, and gaslamps. But it just immediately works and I sort of just stopped noticing it was modern quickly. The fact that there is currently a war in Afghanistan for Watson to come home from makes the series well-timed (and reminds of the repetitions of history); the fact that Watson will recount his adventures with Holmes not in books but on his blog is a cute touch.

The characters are immortal and timeless, so they sort of bring their own period with them. They have a hint of a lost age about them, even while in 2010.

3. It's clever, or at least I think it is, so far. Upon meeting Watson, Holmes did the "I know everything about you based on a cursory examination" schtick. He quickly divined that Watson was:

a soldier;

a doctor;

in need of moral support, but would not seek it from--

his brother, who

had just left his wife,

and that his injury was believed by his therapist to be psychosomatic.

He didn't explain how he knew these.

First, I thought the series had already gone wrong. Holmes is not psychic, after all. He can infer things about you from clothing, bearing, wear marks on shoes, physical traces of your workplace, and your hands, which are often calloused or smooth, rough or pink, stained or clean, etc., per one's occupation.

But that bit about the brother? That's out of bounds. That's magic. Holmes could not possibly know that.

So I thought, Oh, they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

However, now I realized something so obvious. Yes, he would know about the brother, and several other details that couldn't be gleaned from clothing. Because he had done something I forgot about, because I was just trying to "think like Holmes" and only look at clothing and posture.

The point is, I thought they got dumb but they didn't. They sort of set someone up to use his own limited knowledge against him (a type of con I think they call the Kansas City Shuffle, where a mark is a good mark precisely because he's just smart enough to think he's on top of things but not quite smart enough to actually be on top of things).

So even though I figured it out (I think), they did trick me, at least at first, so they seem pretty good at this.

I haven't finished yet but based on a good opening I'm thinking it's generally good.

Easter Eggs: I was wrong about how he knew about the brother. The Easter Egg here is just taking the thing from the book (a pocketwatch) and making it the modern equivalent (a high-end cell phone).

This is a fun game of Spot the Easter Egg, like noticing how the ubiquitous black British taxis of today look an awful lot like like the old British coaches of the original setting.

Actually I liked my solution about the information regarding the brother better ("elementary, Watson: You handed me your phone and I saw your emails, try to keep up"), but theirs works and is from one of the books.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 PM | Comments (314)
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Well Moron Nation, this is last minute tasking so do with it what you normally do. I blame the coming Rapture.

So when you see this picture, is it a painting or is it real?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:32 PM | Comments (692)
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Yeah, we're all just scratching the surface with Big Fat Baby.

I just put up the link without reading it. It can be mined for further gold.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:08 PM | Comments (53)
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I need an excuse for this. Profanity Warning. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:15 PM | Comments (144)
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Be ready to fap yourself bloody.
As a disclaimer, this is not going to happen (emphasized to reassure you all I am not an idiot, just a plaid short-sporting moron). Every state that is in bright red represents a senate seat currently held by a Democrat that flips in our no-way-in-hell scenario. Imagine if 2010 was simply a mild ripple in your bath. This is the equivelant of a tsunami hitting your penthouse on the 43rd floor. (The seats in blue are, lets face it, never going to flip save for Satan himself running in them as a Dem, and even then it is 50/50).
Prepare yourself with lotion and tissues: more...

Posted by: CAC at 04:44 PM | Comments (161)
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This big baby is whining that if we take away his SSI money (which he should not have), he'll kill himself.

And we get to keep the money too, right?

There's more where that came from.

And oh, if you want to be babied by his mama, he has a... bed and breakfast business for that?

Crib and crepes? Eh.

Morgen from Verum Serum doesn't know what the hell to do with it. Neither do I.

I don't know how political you can get here (as opposed to just saying WTF? fifteen hundred times), but... this is the point about incentivizing nonproductive behavior at the expense of those who are productive.

Why are any of us working when we could just decide to get into some bizarre fetish of our choosing and take the rest of our lives off?

Michele Malkin writes on it, and Ed Morrissey has a post about an SSI judge who simply cannot say no to anyone.

I'm sure he couldn't say no to a baby, then.

Predictions Three:

1. This story has legs. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Another tip peaked up above the waves.

Leroy Fick, 59, of Auburn, Michigan, struck it rich by winning $2,000,000 in a Michigan Lottery game "Make Me Rich!" Fick is in the news, and is taking a lot of heat Thursday, May 19, 2011, for legally using the system to continue collecting food stamps.

Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, and Rep Charles Brunner, of Auburn, Michigan's 96th District are outraged, as are many low-income individuals and families trying to make ends meet.

Their gripe? Michigan Lottery winner Leroy Fick is legally using taxpayer money for his groceries.

2. There shall be hearings, and they will be big news. Subprection, which I won't even count as a prediction because it's so effin' obvious: The media will claim this is our new attempt to demonize "Welfare Queens," a new opening in the Race War.

3. We will find that the welfare reforms of the 90s were partly illusory-- gaming the system, social workers, bureaucrats, and tax-thieves simply moved from one category of welfare (AFDC) to another (SSI), contriving some new malady that prevented them from working. And we'll find thousands of cases where this happened, usually with bureaucratic connivance and judges' winking.

Anyone want to bet?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:28 PM | Comments (222)
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Top men.

Who?

Top. Men.

DAVID GREGORY, “MEET THE PRESS” HOST: I just want to make a point here. Joe, I disagree with you. This is not just the view of the White House in terms of what they think Israel ought to accept. This also reflects prominent views within Israel that this speech was actually good news for the Israeli government for some of the points that have already been laid out here.

...

JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: Obviously, we talked about earlier, on the minds of a lot of people inside the White House and the state department is the U.N. vote coming up this fall, David, and this is seen as leverage obviously for that. WeÂ’ve talked about that. But you said this is also seen as good news for some in Israel. What major Israeli public figures have come out supporting the President's speech?

GREGORY: Well, I (stammers), I don't think there have been major public figures that have, but some of the commentary thatÂ’s coming out of (stammers) the commentary in the press there and others who are looking at the situation are, are recognizing that some of these factors diplomatically are actually positive for Netanyahu.

Just take my word for it, I'm David Gregory, and I'm paid to make up lies for the White House on television.

So many prominent people, golly gee willickers, I can't think of any! It would be unfair to single out a few of these prominent people at the expense of the others!

But... there is "commentary"! Here and there, there is "commentary"!

Anyone want to bet his "commentary" is from the Huffington Post or Daily Kos?

I can't wait until David Gregory reports on one of those liberal-favorite stories like "Tim Pawlenty failed a pop quiz on Asian leaders."

Mr. Prominent Voices.

Video at the link. Thanks to De Debil Himself.

I Expect So: Some of Obama's defenders in the media are calling Netanyahu the guy who did wrong, because, after a series of demands laid upon Israel by Obama, he said he "expects" Obama to reaffirm security commitment, and liberals are trying to claim this means he's trying to bully America.

America? Or President Trouser Crease? And "expect" can simply mean "expect."

It seems like they're really reaching. Who knows, maybe they think that Obama might have really done himself some damage.

Ah: Prominent views, he said, not voices. Same thing, but I botched the quote.

Jubicon? Ed Koch, who's been conservative-leaning for years but has always maintained his Democrat registration and supported Obama, says that's it for him. He's says he'll support "the right" Republican candidate in 2012.

“I believe this is the most dangerous and critical period that Israel has ever faced and regrettably it does not have the support of the President of the United States, which in past difficult situations it could count on.”

Koch, who crossed party lines to support President George W. Bush against John Kerry in 2004 due to his foreign policy stance, said he would do it again. All it would take is the right candidate.

“I’m a Democrat. I support the Democratic domestic philosophy and policies and will always be supportive of them,” said Koch, mayor of America’s largest city from 1978-89. “But I have no hesitation in crossing party lines when I think America’s interests demand that I cross party lines.

“I supported President Obama, believing he would be good on foreign policy, particularly with respect to the support of Israel. It turned out badly.”

Uh, it's turned out badly for everyone.

He adds that Jews' complete bitchslapping and beclowing by the post-FDR liberal coalition is bad for Israel.

Thanks to Hussein the Plumber.

Funny: Netanyahu calls for America to return to 1845 borders.

No, seriously, that's the point: A war was fought and one nation won.

I said this today: Israel occupies Palestinian in much the same way as America occupies Indian land and Australia occupies aboriginal land. Or, for that matter, that the genetic population we call British occupies Welsh or Celtic land.

Land won by conquest is not given up. Not when a new population actually puts down roots. Period.

The entire problem here is that the Muslim world, and Obama, encourage the Palestinians to continue fighting a lost war, forever and ever and ever.

Rather than pushing the Palestinians to accept the facts created by a lost war -- and thus spare lives, as everyone adapts to reality -- the left, the Muslim World, etc., continue encouraging the Palestinians to win back by the sword what was lost by the sword.

And that's fine... if Israel gets to unleash the sword too, and put an end to this.

I think that is what will end up happening, and it will not be Israel's fault. It will be those who refuse to tell the Palestinians to make a new life for themselves, a real life, rather than killing endlessly to get back a lost one that is never coming back.

At least, not without Iranian nukes.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:57 PM | Comments (140)
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The rapture begins today:

I am pretty sure that Sean Penn's new guffaw-worthy bomb is the first Seal of the Apocalypse.

The second Seal? Oliver Willis writes something interesting.

I don't know about you but my eyes are glued to Twitter right now.

Please don't do it, Odub. Don't do it.

Just keep writing the same stupid crap and maybe we just live through this...

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Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (221)
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