Missives From the Reality-Based World
Last week, two US Border Patrol agents were shot and one was killed. There were certain elements who were quick to start finger-pointing (“Border Patrol Agent Killed Near Drug-Smuggling Route”, says Fox News), notably Rep. Charles Grassley of Iowa, and Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona. Both politicians are Republicans, but I’m not sure party affiliation […]
I wonder what exactly Jonathan Franzen is thinking. I’ve read his The Corrections, and wasn’t that wowed by it, which doesn’t really mean much except that one book of his I read didn’t resonate with me in the same way that his other books seem to resonate with many other readers. But then he tells an […]
Chuck Asay is one of those old-timey white guys who has more than outlived his usefulness to the planet. Born in 1942, he’s the direct beneficiary of most of the social-support systems that were erected during his youth, those same systems he wants to see dismantled now in the name of “conservatism” and — probably […]
Last week some disturbing news broke in my neck of the woods. The long and short is that a school in Prescott, Arizona was painting a rather joyous and exuberant mural that included some of the school’s students. Certain individuals drove past the school and shouted racist comments. A local demagogue got on the radio and fomented action. […]
…I took on a few other icons. Behold Jesus of Nazareth… …Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Buddha… …and one Chas. Darwin of Down House. Wanna guess who gets pissed off? SPOILER: It won’t be the atheists, and probably won’t be the Buddhists.
If this makes you angry, you’re a moron. Via the fun folks at SP-Studio, formerly Planearium.
I’ve been a Bowie fan for a while. It began when a friend introduced me to Labyrinth in the late 80s, and it’s never really ended; though lately it’s come to something like fruition. I think Bowie was hard for heroin. Well, duh, it was the 70s, he did drugs; it is generally presumed that he did coke. But […]
The question is, can you forgive yourself? Crossposted from.
This toon, by Patrick Chappatte and via Cagle, sums up precisely what I think is wrong with “full-body” scanning at airports. What’s striking is that I was thinking it just this morning. There is no way that a “body scanner” can possibly tell you anything about the person being scanned. Reliance on technology to provide us “safety” […]
…but this little political toon by Cam Cardow is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than I would’ve believed, at this same time last year. Via Cagle’s pad.
This is an expansion on a comment I made on a post at BoingBoing about the movie Avatar. I figured with some inflation it’d have the potential to be a review. Yes, there are probably spoilers here. Avatar is a lush, luscious movie set sometime in a more or less human future. We don’t know when, exactly, but a rough guess would be 100 […]
This is not a threat, nor a warning, nor anything else. (I will reiterate it at the end of the post.) That said, and sure to be ignored anyway, here it is. There are two puddles of cat puke in my house, one on the stairway (perfectly arranged to be hit in the middle of the night), the […]
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