Monday, June 30, 2014
Ernest Hemingway - Wikiquote
'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked.
'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'
---Steve
TV Ratings in U.S.-Portugal Tie Show World Cup’s Draw - NYTimes.com
While not near the totals scored by the N.F.L. playoffs or, certainly, the Super Bowl, the American audience for the World Cup game on Sunday easily eclipsed the N.B.A. finals this year, which averaged 15.5 million viewers, as well as the 2013 World Series, which averaged 14.9 million viewers. The N.H.L. playoffs are not even remotely as popular as the World Cup, having averaged only five million viewers this season.
---Steve
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Tweet from Gina Ferrari (@WordYouDontKnow)
Gina Ferrari (@WordYouDontKnow) | |
Try not to let your mind wander...It is too small and fragile to be out by itself. |
Download the official Twitter app here
---Steve
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Friday, June 27, 2014
This Internet Millionaire Has a New Deal For You - D Magazine
He looked down at his plate. Bezos had ordered a dish called Tom's Big Breakfast, a preparation of Mediterranean octopus that includes potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg. "You're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast," Rutledge remembers Bezos saying. "When I look at the menu, you're the thing I don't understand, the thing I've never had. I must have the breakfast octopus."
Not until Rutledge had returned to Dallas and related the story to his anxious employees—now Amazon's employees—did he realize just how absurd that explanation sounded. Before it can be eaten, generally, the breakfast octopus must be killed.
---Steve
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson: “One of the biggest problems with the world toda...”
"One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research."
---SteveThursday, June 19, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Jay Carney Had The Perfect Response To Dick Cheney On Iraq
If there's one thing this country does not need, is that we should be taking advice from Dick Cheney on wars," Reid said. "Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history. To the architects of the Iraq War who are now so eager to offer their expert analysis, I say, Mr. President, thanks, but no thanks. Unfortunately, we have already tried it your way and it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the country."
---Steve
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Quoted: Remaking Silicon Valley’s idea machine | SiliconBeat
"We are not a research center. We think of ourselves as a moonshot factory, and the reasons for using that phrase is the word 'moonshot' reminds us to be audacious, and the word 'factory' reminds us we have to industrialize it in the end."
Slate: Could the U.S. Have Stopped the Collapse of Iraq?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/06/14/what_could_the_u_s_have_done_to_prevent_the_rise_of_isis_the_answer_is_in.html
---Steve
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
American, Delta, and United just reduced size limits for carry-on bags. Will yours fit? - Boing Boing
better check the size. All three airlines have announced plans to reduce the acceptable maximum size to 22 inches long, 14 inches wide, 9 inches high.
---Steve
Scientia Salon
It is in terms of meta-ethics [21] that I am a quasi-realist (or a bounded instrumentalist). I don't think that moral truths exist "out there," independently of the human mind, which would be yet another example of Platonism (akin to the mathematical / ontic ones we encountered last time). But I also don't accept the moral relativist position that there is no principled way in which I can say, for instance, that imposing genital mutilation on young girls is wrong — in a sense of wrong that is stronger than simply "I happen not to like it," or "I have a strong emotional revulsion to it."
Rather, I think of moral philosophy as a method of reasoning about human ethical dilemmas, beginning with certain assumptions (more or less analogous to axioms in mathematics, or postulates in logic), plus empirical input (from commonsense and/or science) about pertinent facts (e.g., what causes pain and how much, what policies seem to produce the highest amount of certain desiderata, like the ability to flourish, individual freedom, just distribution of resources, etc.), plus of course the basic moral instincts we have inherited from our primate ancestors (on this I'm with Hume: if we don't care about X there is no reasoning that, by itself, could make us care about X).
---SteveSlate: Keeping Up With Dad
---Steve
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Winner, a Lefty Hero, & a Plagiarist. | New Republic
---SteveAbstract words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and dates.
Slate: Darwin’s Abominable Mystery
---Steve
Slate: David Brat Thinks Economics Is a Sham
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/david_brat_thinks_economics_is_a_sham.html
---Steve
Slate: Read David Brat's Dissertation on Protestantism and Science
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/06/11/david_brat_wrote_a_dissertation_on_protestantism_and_science.html
---Steve
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
House Of Anarchy - Esquire
As for the winner, Brat seems a very bad combination of serious religious quester and devout Randian economist, a combination that would have had Ms. Rand herself reaching for the opium pipe. He got his undergraduate degree at Hope College in Michigan, which is run by the Reformed Church in the United States, a conservative evangelical wing of the United Church Of Christ. He then got a Masters in Divinity at Princeton, which is a very conservative seminary and now, according to his website,Dave attends St. Mary's Catholic Church with his wife Laura and their two children: Jonathan, 15 and Sophia, 11. So either he's a Douthatian convert, god help us, or his faith is all over the lot, which may account for his rather startling announcement last night that he won because God was speaking through the voters of the Seventh Congressional District of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
---Steve
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Jack White’s Meg White Problem «
Aesthetics are at least as important to White as they are to Lady Gaga. This helps to explain how a guy who makes trend-averse, bluesy Americana records has managed to remain a pop star for more than a decade. If White didn't care about aesthetics, he might've become Joe Bonamassa.1
---Steve
Slate: Think Before You Share
My point is straightforward but urgent: This is the front line against viciousness and madness and anti-science and anti-reason. When people post slanderous, malevolent lies, if you forward them without censure, then you are abetting slanderous, malevolent lies. Forget that line on so many people's Twitter page about retweets not constituting endorsement. Sorry, wrong. If you share something on any social medium, you're saying, overtly, that you approve of it being shared. That you think it's worth people's time. That its point is either valid or worthy of consideration.
---Steve
Slate: The FDA’s Misguided War on Bacteria That Makes Cheese Taste Good
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/06/10/fda_wood_aged_cheese_ban_bad_news_for_comt_and_cheddar_lovers.html
---Steve
Monday, June 09, 2014
Uncensored John Simon
People nowadays no longer have problems or difficulties, they have "issues." I myself have problems with this use of "issues," unless I am mishearing, and what is said "is shoes." Too tight, too high-heeled, too expensive.
---Steve
Sunday, June 08, 2014
PUFA Foods and Sources - Nutritional Wolves in Sheeps Clothing | Doctor Scott Health Blog
Cooking Oils with Low Omega-6 – Avoid cooking with cottonseed, safflower, corn, peanut, soybean, sunflower, sesame, walnut oils. Instead use butter, coconut oil and olive oil. Canola oil is okay; it contains omega-6 fatty acids but is only at about a 2:1 (omega-6 to omega-3) ratio, which isn't too bad. Use it sparingly. If trying to heal an inflammatory disease I recommend cutting canola altogether.
---Steve
Saturated fat
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/06/health/saturated-fat-debate/index.html
---Steve
Saturday, June 07, 2014
XXXII. From far, from eve and morning. Housman, A. E. 1896. A Shropshire Lad
FROM far, from eve and morning | |
And yon twelve-winded sky, | |
The stuff of life to knit me | |
Blew hither: here am I. | |
Now—for a breath I tarry | 5 |
Nor yet disperse apart— | |
Take my hand quick and tell me, | |
What have you in your heart. | |
Speak now, and I will answer; | |
How shall I help you, say; | 10 |
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters | |
I take my endless way. |
---Steve
Friday, June 06, 2014
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
U.S. got a good deal with Taliban prisoner exchange | Dallas Morning News
Let's recall that the United States negotiated the release of 591 U.S. POWs held by North Vietnam as part of the 1973 Paris peace accord. McCain was among those who benefited from the accord. There's no doubt that the accord came at a heavy price for the U.S. war cause because, in order to get those prisoners out, the U.S. effectively had to agree to withdraw from Vietnam. Considering what the United States had to give up in order to win his freedom, John McCain is the last person I would expect to question this administration's effort to achieve the same result for Bergdahl.
---Steve
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
Monday, June 02, 2014
Elliot O. Rodger’s Killings in California Followed Years of Withdrawal - NYTimes.com
It is almost impossible to tell if a person struggling with any mental disorder might ever turn violent; the vast majority never do, even those who make threats and preparations to do so.
---Steve
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Blog | jlake.com - Part 35
some days the hamster wheel in my head breaks loose and rattles down the highway, carrying me with it screaming all the way.
---Steve
Blog | jlake.com - Part 32
While I've had MRIs before, I've never had a brain MRI before. If you've never seen an MRI machine, rest assured that they are terrible traps for the claustrophobic or the circumferentially enhanced (I fall into that latter category myself). And frankly, much time spent in an MRI would drive anyone to claustrophobia. And they are noisy. Like Anvil Chorus noisy. Like sticking your head in a jet engine noisy. Something on the order of 125 dB clanging right next to your ears for however long you're in there.
I was handed earplugs. A mask was put over my entire head that looked sort of like a cross between the Alien facehugger and something Dumas wrote about, rendered in the bland, taupe, pebble-finished plastic so beloved of technology designers. Pads were inserted around my head, after a brief discussion of how surprisingly large my skull is.
I then spent forty-five minutes in the tube.
Lately I've been meditating in the mornings. As a formal practice, I mean, not the lie-in-bed-and-groan-about-morning meditation that we all indulge in from time to time. So I meditated inside the MRI tube for forty-five minutes. Which is about like trying to meditate on the flight line of an aircraft carrier. On the plus side, the tech later reported that I held amazingly still, which helped them get good images as quickly as possible. On the minus side, I had my head in an MRI tube for forty-five minutes.
---SteveBlog | jlake.com - Part 23
I rail constantly against the influence of religion in politics and culture. Likewise I rail against religious hypocrisy, bad acts, harm to others outside the faith, and sheer cruelty perpetrated under the cloak of religious privilege.
What I do not deliberately do is criticize the tenets of faith. Regardless of my personal opinion of specific religious beliefs, about which I am in fact a deeply cynical bastard, it's not for me to comment in this public frame on theology, or what happens behind the doors of church, temple or mosque, or the hearts and minds of believers. I really am a First Amendment absolutist when it comes to protection of free religion. Especially religions that trouble me profoundly.
I am also profoundly anti-majoritarian on this question, which I suspect sometimes comes across as a more simplistic and hostile opposition to American Christianity. But religious freedom is one of the places in our society most susceptible to the tyranny of the majority.
No religion is safe when any religion can dictate public policy, law and education. It's that simple. Hence my dictum that freedom of religion means freedom from religion.
When I say that, it is not a call for deconversion. It's a call for a secular state where all faith is equally protected, and no faith at all is just as protected.
That's what I believe about what you believe. That you have an absolute right to believe it, and that you have absolutely no right to impose your beliefs on others through the public instrumentalities of government, law and public education. Any more than any one else has the right to impose their beliefs on you. I think Christians call it the Golden Rule.
Pretty simple, really.
---Steve
[culture] The 1% and hard work | jlake.com
---SteveSomeone who believes the 1% are wealthier because they work harder has never met a migrant farm worker, a janitor or a single mother.
Best Way to Stop Bug Bites | Prevent West Nile and Lyme - Consumer Reports News
For mosquitoes
- Stay inside or in screened-in areas during mosquito hours. The bugs like to come out during sunrise and sunset, and in early evening.
- Cover up. During mosquito heavy hours, put on long sleeves, long pants, socks, and closed-toe shoes.
- Plug in a fan. It will help you keep cool and keep mosquitoes from landing on you when you're outside on your deck or patio because the insects are not very efficient flyers, even in wind speeds of as low as 5 mph.
- Buy outdoor LED or yellow bug lights. Use them on your porch and around your house because they won't attract pests like other lights might. (Read our light bulb buying guide.)
- Light citronella candles or tiki torches. These standbys work as mild insect repellents.
- Keep mosquitoes from breeding in your yard. Dump out any water-filled containers, such as birdbaths, tires, wheelbarrows, and wading pools. Clear away decaying leaves and ivy on buildings and on the ground, because mosquitoes like cool, dark places to rest during the day.
Blog | jlake.com - Part 9
After Lisa came home, we tooled up and rented Ender's Game. Setting aside both my memories of the book and my feelings about OSC, it was a pretty good movie. A lot of the plot was forced, but then, that was kind of the point. With occasional clicks of the pause button for discussion,
---Steve
Blog | jlake.com - Part 8
If normal snoring can be likened to sawing wood, this was Godzilla tearing apart the lumberyard and being pissed about the splinters.
---Steve
Fuck Your Religious Beliefs, Sincerely: An Open Letter to Michele Bachmann
Soon To Be Former (Thank God) Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,
There are very few words that can accurately describe just what malady you have made yourself on the United States of America. You are a symptom of a great illness that has always managed to make life insufferable for one group or another. Americans it seems have always had to grapple with a group among their ranks that just can't keep their God out of everybody else's lives, and while some have been able to play the role of theologian-cum-politician with at least some grace and an empathetic ear, you are simply the card-carrying bigot of your time; the female George Wallace, and I'm sick and tired, madam, of having to genuflect to the First Amendment every time you let forth from your mouth hole with the kind of backwards, antiquated and just plain mean pabulum that you try to pass off as intellectual dialogue. So I'm going to call upon my own First Amendment privileges now, and while I harbor no delusions that this letter will reach your dead eyes, nor that it will be comprehended in that vacuum that rests upon your neck, but I write this letter on behalf of everyone who is fed up with God, Jesus and the Holy Scripture being used both as a cudgel to bludgeon people with, and as a shield against any criticism, no matter how justified or earned.
- See more at: http://www.politicalgarbagechute.com/fuck-your-religious-beliefs-sincerely-an-open-letter-to-michele-bachmann/#sthash.LRRXH5nv.dpuf---Steve
Blog | jlake.com - Part 4
Last night I didn't just get a few postcards from my subconscious. I got a whole truckload 70mm CinemaScope reels shot on expired TechniColor film stock, complete with house posters and lobby standees.
---Steve
Slate: I Could Have Been Elliot Rodger
---Steve