Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Circus of Midgets: Hope, Change, and the New Old NOW

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OOOOooooo, Cat fight in Kennedyland! Neo-Neocon to Kennedy: "Watch out for those women scorned, Ted." She quotes from a "statement" put out by the petulant women of New York NOW:

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 29, 2008 8:05 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Electicle Dysfunction

soma-cola.jpg Electile Dysfunction: "The inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year."

Quick, break out the Soma!

"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for?" -- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

HT: The Homchick Report



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 24, 2008 8:30 AM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink

IT CAN HAPPEN HERE. It just has. The bullshit of Canada's "Human Rights" Commission seems to have leaked down into Minnesota. New St. Cloud human rights office to focus on discrimination "The new human rights office will have the power to enforce Minnesota's human rights law and reach out to the public. Four Minnesota cities now have the power to investigate human rights violations, including Duluth, Minneapolis and St. Paul."

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 21, 2008 8:49 AM | QuickLink: Permalink
Wind Cities: When They Thought Big About Alternative Energy

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As the 1930s drew to a close with global depressions, wars and rumors of war, there were a few people in charge of the future, the utopian future. And those people saw that maybe, just maybe, coal and oil might play themselves out and other sources of energy might have to be found. And in England it would seem that some creative editors and artists at Modern Wonder magazine looked up into the sky and decided it might be wise to catch the wind. They were publishing a magazine for boys and they didn't have to be right, they just had to be inspiring. It was an era in which publications for kids routinely tried to inspire them.

And they weren't small minded about it as these pictures will attest. They thought big... very BIG. And believed in the far future. Which was a good thing because, in September of 1938, much as it is now at the beginning of 2008, the immediate future was looking grim. Indeed, when this issue was published in September of 1938, War in Europe was only one year away.

Legos would have to wait until after the war, but most boys had Erector or Meccano Sets, so that became means by which these behemoths of the breeze would be built.

Here's the less than modest wind-farm plan of 1938:

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 19, 2008 2:08 PM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Essayists: Brief Links to Long Thinks
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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 17, 2008 7:20 AM | QuickLink: Permalink
On Point
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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 15, 2008 9:00 AM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Saturday Review: The Week That Went

Recommendations here are culled from a week's worth at Kaching!, AD Shared Items, and Vdelicious (Subscribe to see all as they are made):


  • Bacon: It's not just for breakfast anymore. Food for thought played for laughs. Jim Gaffigan shares some truths.

    Continued...

    Posted by Vanderleun Jan 12, 2008 1:42 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
  • Big Brother Goes "Hands On"

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    Another step towards the totally surveilled society... will arrive soon -- for your own good, of course. It is always "for your own good" except when it is "for the children."

    Robert and Andrew Munro at Duke University in South Carolina, US, say it is possible to increase [the frequency of hand washing by restaurant workers] by ensuring that washroom facilities, such as sinks and towels, are fitted with RFID card readers.

    If healthcare workers are carrying RFID tags the number of times they wash their hands can be monitored.

    Keeping a tally would make it possible to reward or punish workers according to their compliance with the hand-washing regulations, and that should improve hygiene and reduce the rate of hospital-acquired infection, say the inventors.

    Now I hate contaminated restaurant food as much as the next person, but this sort of monitoring gives me the creeps. Especially the "rewards and punishment" part of the equation. If experience is any guide there will be plenty of punishment and damn few rewards.

    Back when the seatbelt argument was going on, those who objected to it said it would lead to government intruding in your bedroom. Most people thought this was too far-fetched to credit. But here we are decades later and you can bet your biffy that handwashing monitors in restaurants for the staff are just a question of time. For the public good and all that. And after, well, why not install them in the home. After all, are your hands clean enough to hug your kids? Are your kid's hand clean enough to hug you? Shouldn't there be something in your home that enables your government to help you with these questions? No? What's the matter with you? Do it for the children.



    Posted by Vanderleun Jan 8, 2008 4:12 AM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
    Change? No Change -- 30 Years Ago @ The Nation

    "The more things change, the more they stay insane."

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    May, 1978

    Recently: Never Shut Up, New York, October, 2001

    Rudy Giuliani poking around the rubble looking for his unconstitutional term extension and for sheiks to scapegoat for the loss of liberties that he was already busy eliminating himself. of Donald Trump calling for us to build new phalluses into the sky where David Rockefeller's twin vanity towers stood; and of New York bankers lobbying in Washington so that the hunt for the terror money trail looks under every rock except theirs.

    Continued...

    Posted by Vanderleun Jan 7, 2008 12:57 PM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
    Finest Resolution Ever Made

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    "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." -- Abraham Lincoln

    Continued...

    Posted by Vanderleun Jan 2, 2008 1:10 PM | Comments (27)  | QuickLink: Permalink
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