August 2009
More on SIGG →
ZRecs drums out an email exchange w/ SIGG from 2007 between a customer and SIGG rep in which the customer persists on BPA question. The SIGG rep insists that BPA is not used. SIGG was more careful w/ public statements on BPA, saying things like “There are no BPA leaks from our bottles” rather than the outright lies of a statement like “We do not use BPA in our bottles.”...
Pragmatist? Maybe not.
When I was young, given the choice between a Democratic Party that was true to the principles of progressivism, and a Democratic Party that was in power, I would have chosen the former. The Democratic Party was my horse in the race, but I really wasn’t about the race. As I got older, I think I lost sight of something. Maybe it was because things were so bad, and with George W. Bush and a...
“There’s this fear that Barack Obama will become the Grover Cleveland of this era...”
– Bill Moyers
Ding… sigh… For… sigh… the… win… sigh… !… sigh…
WatchDeath Panel Advisors
KICKSTARTER: Chicago Rocked! →
Help fund this non-fiction book on Chicago music in the 1990s, written by James VanOsdol. Rewards for every donation. If you pledge more than $10 you’ll get 50% of that back in the form of a gift certificate to Challengers Comics + Conversation. Or: $50 gets your name in the list of contributors, a free copy of the book, and cds or comics from the authors personal collection. You...
Crazy Ag Facts #1: Iowa
First in a series, probably of one.
When you think of Iowa, what do you think of? Corn, I bet. And rightly so. Iowa is the biggest corn producer in the country (16% in acreage), followed closely by Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota. (This kind of helps to explain why a Senator from Illinois running in the first presidential primary might be so in favor of subsidies for corn-based ethanol, no?)
...
ellie greenwich for dummies →
via @timoni
Open this up in a background tab: http://bit.ly/bkS18 and go browse through http://threeframes.net. Amazing.
Oh, indeed!
Why I am Not a Professor →
This essay strikes very close to home.
This year, 2007, marks the marks the eighth year at which I ceased to be a tenured lecturer in the UK, what is called I think, a tenured professor in the USA. I’ve never worked out whether I was, in American terms, an assistant professor or an associate professor. But it really doesn’t matter, because today I am neither. You see I simply walked out and...
“It’s a fight, a struggle to the death, to avoid death and suffering. The right...”
– Billionaire Cannibals Murder 22,000 Americans Every Year
The left could use some more of this focused anger. It is as if we said, “Well, we just worked so hard to win this election, we’re done. Now go do it, Obama!” I am not immune to this criticism.
Ted Kennedy's death leaves committee vacancy →
Oh boy, one of these things is not like the other.
Here’s the scenario, which is plausible: Dodd turns down chairing Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to stay Banking chair, so Harkin takes it. Harkin leaves a hole in Ag, but the next three in seniority are Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, and Pat Leahy, who are not giving up their other chairs for Ag.
So who does this leave...
So let me get this straight...
R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post:
Helgerson [CIA inspector general in 2004], however, said in an e-mailed comment on Monday that he undertook the study in part because many CIA employees involved in or aware of the program “expressed to me personally their feelings that what the Agency was doing was fundamentally inconsistent with long-established US Government policy and...
Ebert on A.A. →
“In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn’t take it any more.”
Glenn Beck Advertiser Campaign on... →
I’m generally against these types of boycotts, partly because I believe strongly in a democracy predicated on freedom of speech, and partly because I don’t boycotts like this work all that well. But Beck has crossed the line. He is actively inciting fear and hatred in a way that, to me, is more like crying fire in a crowded theater than railing against the machine. He may be doing it...
WatchIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Kitten
Good news, boys and girls: Dennis, Charlie, Mac, Sweet Dee, and Frank are back, starting on September 17. Better news: Sunny’s coming back to Hulu. Kind of crap news: There’s an eight day delay (meaning you get last week’s episode the morning after everyone you know watched this week’s episode).
The SIGG BPA Confession: You Arent Going To Like... →
ZRecs is all over this story, which seems to me to pretty much bury the SIGG brand. For the last three years, consumer organizations and the BPA freakout community have been alleging that SIGG bottles were lined with a BPA-containing epoxy. This was kind of a big deal because one of the main reasons why everyone was scurrying to SIGG from those Nalgene style hard polycarbonate bottles was because...
Angelo Cammarata, the world's longest-serving... →
This guys’ been serving since April 7, 1933, the day Prohibition ended. 77 years ago. This should be national news. I wonder if Radiohead will write a song about it…
And for the record, the author is unrelated…
WatchYouth in Revolt - Trailer No. 1
This looks like Lucas re-envisioned as Fight Club, with Michael Cera as Corey Haim AND Charlie Sheen AND Ed Norton AND Brad Pitt.
Recipe: Orange and Honey Glazed Bacon →
Just when you thought the internet festival of bacon was drawing to a close…
The Most Epic Star Wars Design Fails →
“Lightsabers: Yes, I know, I want one too. But I tell you what: I want one with a hand guard. Otherwise every lightsaber battle would consist of sabers clashing and then their owners sliding as quickly as possible down the shaft to lop off their opponent’s fingers. You say: Lightsabers can slice through anything but another lightsaber, so what are you going to make a hand guard out of?...
“By conceding key arguments before they’ve even begun, the Democrats risk...”
– Mike Madden, on why cowardly Senate Democrats are giving up so easily on the public option
Inept
This Administration is inept at selling policy. Absolutely, horribly, pathetically inept. They fucked up TARP, they fucked up the stimulus, they fucked up Sotomayor hearings, and now they’re fucking up health care. They are burning through political capital like it’s lint. The wildfire of hatred is burning bright from the right to the middle, where fickle “independents” are...
Wonkette : Wingnut Hotel Millionaire Who Funded... →
tane →
taaaaaaaaaaaane
On Health Care
kittykittybangbang: vindicatedcommunications:hortenseg:
When I was 22 years old, I was very, very sick.
My insurance company, the one my father had worked for for 20+ years, mind you, refused to cover my intensive inpatient treatment for anorexia nervosa b/c they felt, after I had eaten my breakfasts for 5 days in a row, that I was cured. Never mind that my heart rate was 43bpm, or that my...
