Gender Is A Flimsy Construct
An SJW heard the first line of the joke, and had a temper tantrum. ~ It sounds like such an obvious line that thousands have said it over the years, each one thinking it is original. ~ Compared to the glamor challeged Bernie and Hillary, MO’M is a greek g-d. ~ Learn the art business, know your number do the math, cross t dot i now ~ I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. Albert Einstein Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997) ~ @ApprovedNews6 Concerned Parents Claim Teenager Died of Political Correctness ~ @FilmVerity @MooseAllain So close to ‘bookkeeper’ – the only word in Eng Language with three doubles in a row. Free fact! Free fact! ~ Thousands of Facebook Profiles Went Black This Past Weekend, Here’s Why. ~ There was a memorial stone made. The stone said “Faygele Baker of Bread Giver of Head.” ~ Is this for the meaningless overall popular vote, or for the handful of swing states who will decide the election? ~ This show has three stories. The first is a gross out sex worker story, by Atlanta resident TS Madison. The third is about a failed suicide attempt. It gets TMI about the effect of taking a hundred hits of tylenol. Risk is doing a live show in Atlanta November 4. ~ The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. H.L. Mencken ~ I heard Depak Chopra on a book tour radio appearance. The host said something tacky. Mr. Chopra “That says more about you than it does me.” ~ Mr. Chopra’s response was much shorter. In a spoken context, it is less likely to be interrupted. Also, there was a station break coming up. ~ Opiates are the religion of the masses. ~ @postcrunk gender is such a flimsy construct that it needs constant defense ~ 7 Ways To Identify A Member of Hotep Twitter ~ Hari Ziyad ~ facebook ~ Letter from Billie Holiday to Tallulah Bankhead ~ Here’s What LGBT Organizations Need to Tackle Next: White Privilege ~ pictures from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Streets Alive
There is a thing in Atlanta. They close off a street to motor traffic, and let bikes, people, and dogs take over. This time it was Peachtree, between 17th street and downtown. PG thought the best way to do it was to take the train. Uzi pointed out that for what it took two people to take marta, you could pay to park. After some wandering, a lot behind the Fox Theater was found.
The first unexpected excursion came at a Lutheran Church. A labyrinth was laid out in the lobby. PG decided to walk it, but had to take his shoes off first. This was a quick trip, with a fellow traveler waiting on the sidewalk outside.
Moving north of Peachtree, there were plenty of bicycles and dogs. In front of a bar, cheesecake samples were given out. Uzi felt a pang of nostalgia for the strip. Many people, of a certain age, remember when this part of Peachtree was much less wholesome than today.
Just shy of 14th street, Uzi decided it was time to turn around. A discussion of prescription painkillers came up. Just about then, PG’s knee began to hurt. Was it the talk about medication, or the realization that many of the high rise apartments cluttering the thoroughfare were specimens of ugly architecture? Developers are not known for having aesthetic vision.
At the Federal Reserve building, Uzi went inside. PG stayed on the sidewalk, which was three times as wide as the old sidewalks. This was where a porno theater was converted into Weekends, one of the best dancehalls to ever entertain this town. Next door was a Kresge’s, that had become a theater. A production of Rocky Horror show was staged there, with RuPaul playing Riff Raff.
Soon, PG’s phone went off. The Federal Reserve was open to visitors. PG went through a thorough metal detector, and was ushered into the house of money. A lady stood in front of a processing machine, that went through millions of dollars of bills a day. Out of many, many millions, only twenty or so are counterfeit. Soon, PG wanted to be moving again. Standing still is rougher on your back than doing something. The less discomfort, the better.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. None of the photographed dogs attacked PG. The Krystal on 7th street is still gone. The Peachtree Manor hotel is standing … maybe they found a way to keep the walls from talking. The car was not damaged when PG returned to the parking lot.
Contextomy
It is a popular line. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The credit, or blame, for this gem is assigned to Ben Franklin. Did he really say it? What was he talking about?
The good news is that Mr. Franklin did say these words. (Here is the text. ) What follows was written by a lawyer. Prepare to be confused.
The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.
Mr. Franklin was writing on behalf of legislators who wanted to assess a tax. The quote is used by tax hating conservatives. The modern conservative wants to send a hundred thousand troops to a conflict eight time zones away, and pay for it with tax cuts.
Another article tells much the same story, but with a couple of twists. There is a google gimmick that shows how often a quote is used. The BF quote was little known until the twentieth century.
The techcrunch article introduces a dandy word for the rampant misuse of quotes. The word is contextomy. This explanation is from Matthew McGlone of the University of Texas at Austin.
“‘Contextomy’ refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as ‘quoting out of context’. Contextomy is employed in contemporary mass media to promote products, defame public figures and misappropriate rhetoric. A contextomized quotation not only prompts audiences to form a false impression of the source’s intentions, but can contaminate subsequent interpretation of the quote when it is restored to its original context. …”
Episode 39 of The Fallacy-a-Day Podcast deals with contextomy. The spell check suggestion for contextomy is contentment. This is a repost. Pictures for this feature are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Free Bacon
There was a tweet. Perspicacious One @JessSmith_TPC LOLOLOL Can’t make this stuff up @EWErickson President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman http://shar.es/ES3kQ. The link is to a story, President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman. The medium is something called The Washington Free Beacon. Free Bacon is a typo.
TWFB has some interesting stories. When PG was a kid, his mother said story when she meant lie. One entertaining example is Pro-Iranian Regime Journalist Defends Controversial Tweet Former translator for Ahmadinejad called WSJ editor ‘Iranian House Negro’. The offending tweeter owns a fashion blog, the house of Majd. Rumors that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a model cannot be confirmed.
A more believable story is Netanyahu’s Mission: To Head Off Iran Sanctions Relief. The thought of a deal between Iran and the West is very troubling to Israel. An important distraction to the Palestinian tragedy would be removed by the rehabilitation of Iran. One interesting section of the story mentions 911 labor supplier Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia, another key U.S. ally in the Middle East, is also deeply worried about any sign of a deal between Washington and the kingdom’s arch-rival, Iran.”
Free Bacon is the order of the day in the last story we will look at. USDA Celebrates Forcing Kids to Try Kale, Chard, Collard Greens. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) extolled a local elementary school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for making its students try broccoli gratin, Tuscan kale, and beet hummus, as an example of the department’s efforts to fight obesity.” Pictures for this repost are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Puns
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from eating too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. The teacher confiscated a rubber band pistol was confiscated from a student in an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. A baseball cap and a beret were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. The beret said to the cap:
‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.
21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’
The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?
He wanted to transcend dental medication.
26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
27. This is a repost. Pictures for this questionable use of technology are provided courtesy of “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Martin O’Malley
There was a lovely comment on facebook. “Ok, I used to think it was just that I was biased, but I have since confirmed that this is an objective statement (don’t ask how, just trust me): these white boys y’all be swearing are fine are just not. It’s like the criteria for fineness in the white demographic is “does not look like a coked out naked mole rat post-mortem.” I mean, seriously. Martin O’Malley???” If you have popcorn handy, the rest of the thread is entertaining.
Since the Democratic debate, Martin O’Malley has surged ahead as the glamour dude of the current campaign. The Democratic Party, in the days of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton, used to stand for sexual performance. Now the front runners are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. It does not take much for Mr. O’Malley to stand out.
On the Republican side, things are not much better, The Mod Squad of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina are a plastic surgeon’s fantasy. Ted Cruz looks like a refugee from Archie comic books. Jeb Bush inspires nostalgia for his handsome brother. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have a bit of charm, and may come out ahead in the all important looks department.
Political races are supposed to be about issues, but really they are about image and fundraising. Do they have naked pictures of Hillary in the inner sanctum of the one percent? Have the former long haired hippies gone establishment for Donald Trump? Maybe it is the standards of political grooviness that have caused the country to go off the rails. If a fuddy duddy like Martin O’Malley is seen as a hot daddy, we may be in worse shape than imagined. Pictures from The Library of Congress.
Cougar
@SlavojTweezek Philosophy aims at explicating the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence through the application of logic and bullshit. ~ “the most popular leftist pastime” is saying racist. The louder the better. Finger pointing and pearl clutching are optional. ~ The celebrity remains beautiful, while the phone turns to crap. ~ jesus wants me for a sunbeam ~ That goes for Fox News as well. The sound off/closed caption tv’s are tough to ignore if it is in you line of sight. Football is like moving wallpaper, and easier to ignore. ~ In the first chapter of “Plays Well with Others” by Allan Gurganus, someone cleans out the apartment of a man about to die. He takes the dildo collection, and puts them in a paper bag. The paper bag breaks open on the subway. ~ @MarkHarrisNYC @AlysiaAbbott Monstrous Asshole Racist Xenophobe= MARX ~ @rgay IDGAF. I like the Kardashians. – I don’t watch their shows but I will read any glossy article about them. ~ @WernerTwertzog The truth will set set you free. Just like the other forms of delusional madness. ~ Is she saying there is one chemical in that can? ~ I like BS less after seeing this video. Right now, I am thinking over a blog post, where I will go into this in more detail. BS is good at rheotoric, and telling his followers what they want to hear. The question was electability. Is BS electable? In the electoral college nightmare that is American presidential elections, does electability matter. Al Gore can tell you how much the popular vote counts. ~ Every cougar that ever lived on the planet earth @natsecHeather @dandrezner ~ It was a debate not a football game nobody won, except for viewers that saw a movie instead ~ procrastination, fear in five short syllables, good day tomorrow ~ haiku happening, equal sign five syllables, make it so easy ~ Man charged in slaying of transgender woman ~ don’t look at this ~ Can you name the 5,000 most common English words grouped by frequency? ~ full rush transcript ~ Can We Sum Up Your Life Story In Just Six Words? ~ What to Do When Someone Tells a Racist Joke ~ ‘You Talk White:’ Being Black and Articulate ~ 33 Questions White People Have For White People ~ cougar ~ come on all you big strong peeps uncle sam has got in deep she got herself in a terrible jam out there in afghanistan put down your phones and give us your loot there’s women and children to shoot ~ #Bernie supports the murder of women and children in Afghanistan “I voted to make sure that Osama bin Laden was held accountable in Afghanistan” ~ @VeryShortStory I cooked a special meal for our date, but Adele screamed when I put the fish on her plate. Apparently mermaids don’t eat their friends.~ @WernerTwertzog “It is not a significant apocalypse.” ~ @NightlyForecast We don’t understand the problem. We put all your organs back. Now they’re in even more interesting locations. Trust us. We’re professionals. ~ An SJW heard the first few words of this joke and started shouting. ~ Pictures are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
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