Walked Into A Bar
Engineers from IBM, Apple, and Microsoft were attending a tech conference. They met at the queue to the toilet by chance in-between talks. The Engineer from IBM took a leak, washed his hands, and dried his hands with about 20 sheets of paper towels. He said to the other two “At IBM, we are very thorough”, then left to conference hall. The engineer from Apple pissed, washed his hands, then dried it with one sheet of paper towel, making sure he used every millimeter of the towel. “At Apple, we are efficient”, he quipped to the Microsoft engineer before returning to the conference hall. The Microsoft engineer did the number one, then directly went to the hall, muttering to himself “at Microsoft, we don’t piss on our goddamn hands”. ~ A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a martinus. “You mean a martini?” the bartender asks. The Roman replies, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!” ~ Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control at Paris airport. “Nationality?” asks the immigration officer. “German,” she replies. “Occupation?” “No, just here for a few days.” ~ You’re the worst topology professor! You couldn’t tell your ass from a hole in the ground! True, but I can tell the difference between my ass and two holes in the ground ~ A Higgs Boson walks into a church and the priest says “we don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here”. The Higgs Boson then replies “but without me, how could you have mass?~ Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer, the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react. ~ We don’t serve faster-than-light particles here”, says the barman. A tachyon enters a bar. ~ Standard deviation is not enough for a perverted statistician. ~ Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, “Clearly this is a joke, but how can we figure out if it’s funny or not?” Gödel replies, “We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke.” Chomsky says, “Of course it’s funny. You’re just telling it wrong.” ~ A biologist, a chemist, and a statistician are out hunting. The biologist shoots at a deer and misses 5ft to the left, the chemist takes a shot and misses 5ft to the right, the statistician yells “We got ’em!” ~ The programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen.” The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread. ~ An Irishman goes to a building site for his first day of work, and a couple of Englishmen think, “Ah, we’ll have some fun with him!” So they walk up and say, “Hey, Paddy, as you’re new here make sure you know a joist from a girder…” “Ah, sure, I knows” says Paddy, “twas Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.” ~ Your mother is so classless, she could be a marxist utopia ~ Lenins tomb is a communist plot. ~ A recent finding by statisticians shows the average human has one breast and one testicle. ~ It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally. ~ is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me? ~ Did you hear about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality… ~ A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “Five beers, please”. ~ A pun, a play on words, and a limerick walk into a bar. No joke. ~ There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet. ~ How may Freudians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two; One to screw in the lightbulb and one to hold the penis… I mean ladder. ~ A philosopher says to a linguist “What if, instead of periods, women had apostrophes?” and the linguist replied “They’d be more possessive and have more frequent contractions”. ~ Linguistics: the most misunderstood field of study in all of everything. ~ What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care. ~ Three logicians are sitting in a restaurant. The waitress asks “is everyone having coffee?” The first logician says, “I don’t know.” The second logician says, “I don’t know.” The third logician says, “Yes.” ~ Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ Selah ~
#ThingsACrazyPersonWouldSay
The number one trending hastag at 1:23 pm, on 12/13/14, is #ThingsACrazyPersonWouldSay If you are familiar with contemporary logic, the tweets will come as no surprise.
@thePatriciaRae I’m not worried. The Government is gonna take care of me
@Thomasismyuncle I’m a Liberal Democrat… … and I’m here to help.
@cmclymer “Police brutality and structural racism don’t exist.”
@chamblee54 I have read all of #ThingsACrazyPersonWouldSay
There is a comment above in the twitter feed. @RobinDGKelley READ @NaomiAKlein ON Why #BlackLivesMatter Should Transform the Climate Debate via @thenation
The linked article is a doozy. “The annual United Nations climate summit is wrapping up in in Lima, Peru, and on its penultimate day, something historic happened. … The historic event was the decision of the climate-justice movement to symbolically join the increasingly global #BlackLivesMatter uprising, staging a “die-in” outside the convention center much like the ones that have brought shopping malls and busy intersections to a standstill, from the US to the UK.”
The rest of the article is an orgy of overblown rhetoric. “What does #BlackLivesMatter, and the unshakable moral principle that it represents, have to do with climate change? Everything. Because we can be quite sure that if wealthy white Americans had been the ones left without food and water for days in a giant sports stadium after Hurricane Katrina, even George W. Bush would have gotten serious about climate change.”
Really? Hurricanes have happened for years. A channel was created to help shipping in Louisiana, and took out barrier islands that would have absorbed the impact of Katrina. George W. Bush, and his arab oil industry buddies, are not going to let a few lives get in the way of their profits.
The debate on carbon pollution is not going away. We may already be past the tipping points, with an unstoppable slide into disaster. Alternative energy is a long way away from being able to satisfy our needs. None of these realities is going to change because protesters in Lima, Peru, staged a die in. These are #ThingsACrazyPersonWouldSay. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Bah Humbug
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”
“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.
“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.
“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”
“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
“Let me leave it alone, then, Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!”
“A Christmas Carol” was written by Charles Dickens. Text is supplied by Project Gutenberg. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Al Pieda
PG was downloading files from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Some of their fine images accompany this report. While his eyes and fingers were busy, his ears were listening to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, a.k.a. the black guys on Bloggingheads.tv. This is a repost. The war on Christmas is observing a cease fire.
The problem with multi tasking with tbgobh is when you hear something that requires a sound clip. You have to interrupt your downloading to create a dingalink. Doctors Loury and McWhorter like to talk about the quandary of being a proud black man, and what role to let it play in your life. To them, many people are more concerned about their race than they are other parts of life, to their detriment. Not everyone is pleased by what they have to say.
PG has mixed feelings. He doesn’t think much about things in terms of being a white person. Is this the way it is, or is it white privilege? Life can be confusing.
At some point, the conversation turned to Wayne Williams. He was convicted of killing two of the missing and murdered children in 1982. PG had heard, somewhere, that DNA testing was going to be done on Mr. Williams. Then nothing more was heard. What would Mr. Google say about this? It seems as though DNA testing “strengthens” the case against Mr. Williams.
This is part of the problem of working on the internet. You have access to amazing collections. You are also tempted every minute. There are millions of ways to kill time online. If you don’t stay focused, you will never get very much done.
After the Wayne Williams search… or maybe before … PG thought of a conversation he had the day before. Someone said that Ann Coulter had been attacked onstage, and her body guards pulled the attackers away. There were supposed to be videos available.
A youtube search of “Ann Coulter attacked” brought up the embedded video. This was the work of Al Pieda. “… an international terrorist group consisting entirely of pastry chefs. The organization consists of clandestine cells known as “bakeries,” which are believed to operate mostly within Estonia, Albania, and the less-interesting parts of Iowa but mostly in the Wigan area. Al Pieda has claimed responsibility for several heinous crimes, including the assassination of Betty Crocker in 1996,”
Judy Roasting On An Open Fire
SFFILK (Not his real name) passes along a story about Mel Torme. It seems like Mr.Torme was eating a leisurely breakfast at a food court in Los Angeles, and a quartet appeared singing Christmas songs. They wound up performing “The Christmas Song” for co- author Torme…and the singers had no idea who he was. It is a good story, better told in the link. This is a repost.
According to the inerrant Wikipedia, Torme colloaborated with Robert Wells , until they had a falling out. One afternoon, on the hottest day of July in 1945, Mr.Torme went to visit Mr.Wells, and saw the first four lines of “The Christmas Song” (including “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose”). The lines were on a note pad, and the two agreed to beat the heat of summer by completing the song. Supposedly, Mr. Torme did not like the song very much. After three divorces, he probably didn’t see many of the royalties.
Mel Torme was the music director of the ill fated “Judy Garland Show” in the early sixties. He wrote a book about it… The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol . The story is that Miss Garland would get blasted, call Mr. Torme in the middle of the night, and pour out her troubles. While the show did not last longer, there are some great youtube clips left over.
If A Jury Will Convict
PG is listening to Serial. The show deals with the murder of Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction of ex boyfriend Adnan Syed. Serial is highly addictive. If you want to download the show, Chrome is the best browser to use.
Episode 7 is “The Opposite of the Prosecution.” The voice of Serial, Sarah Koenig, talks to Deirdre Enright, head investigator for The Innocence Project. TIP thinks that Syed is innocent. Ms. Enright had some comments about the case. When reading this text, think about some controversial decisions made by grand juries recently.
Deirdre Enright … . I look at this as, this is just a case that wasn’t ready to be brought. You don’t have enough to put Adnan away. Not to me, you don’t. Sarah Koenig Yeah but doesn’t the fact that they did put him away mean that they had enough to put him away? Deirdre Enright Well, yeah. They would say yes, and I would say no. The reason I say that is because I look at this and think, law enforcement and prosecutors and defense attorneys, we all– we act like if a jury will convict, then that’s fine. I think those of us that know a good case from a bad case should know that even if we can get a jury to convict, it doesn’t mean we necessarily should ask them to do that.
Unworthy Of All Of Us
Jon Stewart nails it. It’s nice to hear a prominent liberal admit there were significant problems with the Mike Brown case but the Eric Garner case was much more clear. Absolutely insane. ~ In other words, we were lied to last week ~ @MHanson62 While I appreciate your Mother’s military service, her combat footwear is inappropriate and unflattering. #UnwieldyInsults ~ Maybe *they* do know we are seeds. *They* throw fertilizer on us. ~ I wonder how large a donation Monsanto made to the HRC to get that ranking. ~ defriend me because of a facebook comment? you were never my friend ~ ob’s sounds a lot like obese ~ You might want to consider that “practicing racism” is a two way street. Does it include the person who perceives themself as being persecuted ~ When decrying racism opens no door and teaches no skill, it becomes a schoolroom tattletale affair. It is unworthy of all of us: “He’s just a racist” intoned like “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!” ~ I was in the mood to read disgusting facebook comments. “Louise are you just posting psycho babble in every Salon post and you don’t even read the gotdamn article? Get back on your meds sweetheart.” ~ @PublicWagon All I do is consume and complain about it. ~ I think there may be more to this story. Mr. Carageorge joined the team as a “walk on” last summer. Apparently, he saw football as a path to glory. What were his motivations? Did he see this as a way of getting a scholarship? Did he just want to play football for Ohio State? This is a sad story. I agree that there is a lot of exploitation of athletes, especially at the college level. The thing is, we are going into the post season, and the winning teams will be awash in glory. The players will be paying with their pain, for both the winning and losing teams. ~ How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? ~ Does ATM mean Automated Teller Machine, or Machines? I know the WMD is weapons, plural, of mass destruction. POC is people, plural, of color. The plural of medium is media. Sometimes an s at the end of the word is not needed. ~ This tweet is getting some attention :Kiara Rhodes @NthnEvenMatters Dear White People, Stop telling us what MLK would think of today’s world. Maybe we’d know if y’all didn’t kill him. Thanks, Black People 11/24/14, 7:20 PM from Desoto, TX Here is a reply. Dear Black People Stop telling us what Malcolm X would think of today’s world. Maybe we’d know if y’all didn’t kill him. ~ you can always stay at home and watch netflix ~ You’re the Nile, You’re the Tow’r of Pisa, You’re the smile On the Mona Lisa. I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop, But if, baby, I’m the bottom You’re the top! Cole Porter ~ Do they have a choice for “Like, except I don’t know the specifics”? People are way too proud of their opinions. ~ I am not sure if they are beside the point. Often people exaggerate to make a point. This makes other people doubt their honesty. Maybe it would be best to stick to the truth and not exaggerate. … Thank you spell check I usually have trouble with words like exaggerate. ~ Cigarette smokers must get an exemption on the no idiot policy. ~ ” and we can’t keep making decisions in the same way we did in the 1980s” When were you born? I believe it was in the late eighties. You were not making any decisions at all. I can see several sides to this discussion. The eighties, and first half of the nineties, were an experience I would not wish on anyone. I am very lucky to be able to type this sentence. ~ Local social justice warriors are too busy with MO & NY to notice an execution in their own state. People only care about what the corporate media tells them to worry about. ~ People, take a timeout from screaming about Ferguson. You can point fingers, and holler racist, later. It may be too late to worry about Wayne Holsey. Activism isn’t about results, it is feeling good about yourself. Activism is validating your privilege, by pointing fingers and crying about racism. ~ The clemency hearing was today. It was denied, and the execution happens tomorrow. You can make arguments both for, and against, this execution. Whatever people say now will make little difference, either in the Holsey execution or the Ferguson/Staten Island grand juries. The media cheerleaders are egging people on about the out of state grand juries. That must be where the profit centers are ~ pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
Stella Young
Writer and comedian Stella Young died Saturday evening in Melbourne, Victoria. The disability activist was 32. “Young was born in Stawell, country Victoria, with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that causes bones to break easily.” She spent most of her life in a wheelchair.
Ms. Young gave a TED talk, I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much. There was a chamblee54 response, Inspiration Porn. PG has a similar view about people who try to make your life better with their happytalk. Good intentions are sometimes not enough.
Somebody posted 17 things Stella Young wanted you to know. Here are a few.
I started calling myself a disabled woman, and a crip. A good 13 years after 17-year-old me started saying crip, it still horrifies people. I do it because it’s a word that makes me feel strong and powerful.
I dance as a political statement, because disabled bodies are inherently political, but I mostly dance for all the same reasons anyone else does: because it heals my spirit and fills me with joy.
These images … are what we call inspiration porn. And I use the term porn deliberately because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people.
That quote, ‘the only disability in life is a bad attitude’, the reason that’s bullshit is … No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille.
While [Peter Singer] may see value in the life I’m living now, and may even treat me as an equal, he still believes that on the balance of things, parents and doctors should be given the choice to end lives like mine before they get tricky. For me, and for many other people with disabilities, it’s personal.
I’ve been an atheist for a long time – ever since I first heard that there was only a stairway to heaven.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Robert Wayne Holsey And Will Robinson
December 9 is the scheduled day for the execution of Robert Wayne Holsey. On “December 17, 1995, Robert Wayne Holsey was arrested and charged for the murder of Baldwin County Sheriff’s Deputy William E. Robinson IV. There apparently is little doubt that Wayne Holsey (his family calls him Wayne) committed the crime. Here is the Murderpedia account:
“The evidence at trial showed that shortly before 1:30 a.m. on December 17, 1995, Holsey entered the Jet Food Store in Milledgeville with a gun and demanded money. After receiving money from the store’s cash register, Holsey directed the store clerk to open the store’s lottery machine. Although Holsey ordered the clerk into a back room, the clerk was able to observe Holsey leave in a small red automobile. The clerk immediately called the police and provided a description of Holsey and his car.
Less than four minutes after Holsey left the food store, Deputy Sheriff Will Robinson stopped a red Ford Probe at a nearby motel. He relayed the vehicle’s license plate number by radio and approached the vehicle; Holsey then fired. Forensic evidence showed that the deputy suffered a fatal head wound.
Several guests at the motel observed a person matching Holsey’s description returning to the red Ford Probe and speeding away. The police soon discovered the vehicle and gave chase, but Holsey was able to avoid apprehension. One witness testified that she observed the red Ford Probe and recognized Holsey, with whom she was personally acquainted.
Holsey’s girlfriend testified that shortly after the shooting Holsey called and asked her to meet him at his sister’s house. He told her to drive her blue Jeep Cherokee rather than her red automobile because the police were searching for a red Ford Probe. When she arrived at the house, Holsey was hiding behind a fence. Holsey had his girlfriend drive him past the murder scene. When she refused his request to be driven to his mother’s house where he could monitor a police scanner, Holsey had her drive him through back roads to his sister’s house where she had picked him up. Holsey instructed her to park directly behind the red Ford Probe in order to conceal its license plate.
While Holsey and his girlfriend were still in the Jeep, a law enforcement officer drove up to the red Ford Probe. The officer checked the Probe’s license plate number, which matched the number transmitted by the victim. The officer then illuminated the Cherokee and the Probe with his headlights and transmitted a request for additional support.
When Holsey exited the Cherokee “very quickly,” the officer turned on his blue police lights, exited his own vehicle, drew his service weapon, and twice commanded Holsey to raise his hands. Holsey failed to comply, began looking around as though searching for an escape route, and, after the officer threatened to shoot, Holsey finally raised his hands.
The officer then commanded Holsey to lie prone on the ground. When the chief deputy sheriff arrived less than two minutes later, he confirmed that the Probe’s license plate number matched the number from the victim’s radio call and discovered a fresh bullet hole in the back of the Probe. He then awakened and interviewed the occupants of the residence. The occupants, Holsey’s sister and another woman who was the owner of the Probe, both stated that Holsey had borrowed the vehicle that night. The chief deputy then, less than fifteen minutes after Holsey was initially detained, asked Holsey his name and placed him under arrest.
Clothes matching the description of those worn by the armed robbery perpetrator were discovered nearby. Shoes removed from Holsey after his arrest matched the description given by witnesses to both the armed robbery and the murder. A sample of blood taken from one of the shoes proved through DNA analysis to be consistent with the blood of the victim.”
Mother Jones has an excellent article about what happened at the trial. If you have a few minutes, you should read it. They tell the story much better than this slack blogger.
Wayne Holsey had an alcoholic for a lawyer. Andy Prince had recently gone to an emergency room with a blood alcohol level of .345. He was drinking a quart of vodka a night during the murder trial. Mr. Prince had numerous other issues, and was eventually disbarred. Mother Jones discusses Mr. Prince in great detail. Brian Andrew Prince died December 2, 2011.
Several details about Mr. Holsey were not told to the jury. Mr. Holsey has an I.Q. of 70, and is considered borderline disabled. He grew up with considerable abuse, in a house that neighbors called the “torture chamber.” If the jury had known this, the sentence might have been different.
The District Attorney has a different view of Mr. Prince. “Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright convicted Wayne Holsey and will argue against clemency. His recollection of Prince is different. “He was the go to guy for the death penalty defense lawyer at the time.”
Bright said from his side of the table, Prince was a tough opponent regardless of whether or not he was an alcoholic at the time. “It wouldn’t shock me that he drank at night. I’m not there so I wouldn’t know, but that wouldn’t shock me,” But Bright says what Prince did at night doesn’t matter. He says in court, Prince was formidable. “During the day when he was in court he was sober, he was lucid, he was a fighter, he worked his tail off.”
The case went through the standard protocol of appeals. On Sept. 14, 2012, “The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, in a 2-1 decision issued Thursday, said that even though Robert Wayne Holsey’s trial lawyers did not do a competent job, their deficient performance did not prejudice the outcome of the trial.”
Circuit Judge Ed Carnes wrote the 104-page lead opinion in the case. Senior Circuit Judge J.L. Edmondson wrote a concurring opinion. He criticized the lead opinion for being too long. “In my experience, longish opinions always present a strong possibility of error lurking somewhere in the text. That the opinion writer is a skilled and careful judge does not eliminate the risk. Furthermore, no one wishes to join in an opinion that they do not understand fully.”
UPDATE: Wayne Holsey died at 10:51 pm, December 9, 2014. According to reporter Randall Savage, who witnessed the execution, Wayne Holsey addressed the father of his victim: “Mr. Robinson, I’m sorry for taking your son’s life that night: I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and my family.” Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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