Barack Obama could read a string of fortune cookie messages and some people would come away thinking they’d heard the Gettysburg address.
He gave a great performance Tuesday. The speech itself, however, was a dud. So much skill operating on so lifeless a text. It was Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopsticks.
See here.
I love House, but did they have to rip off my personality completely?
- Brian at The Agitator.
A senior Vatican official on Saturday attacked US President Barack Obama for “arrogance” for overturning a ban on state funding for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas. [Breitbart]
I don’t think that the fucking Vatican should even be able to use that word.
What is it with libertarians and the Thesis Wordpress Theme?
Jason Kottke has updated the design of his excellent and pioneering blog, kottke.org – and it looks like ass.
He claims that people will learn to love it, either that or ignore it, as has happened with his previous redesigns. If I ever stop noticing this oversized and gaudy new design please shoot me.
I didn’t watch a second of it, but much of the American media claim that Ricky Gervais’ schtick was the highlight of the evening. Across the pond, not so much:
So why did a couple of English papers say it went down badly? Because they’re jealous lying cunts whose lives haven’t turned out like they planned and want everyone to be as unhappy as they are. [Link]
Rick [W]arren is Fred Phelps plus 100 pounds and a smile. [Slog]
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)
A small plane carrying more than a dozen people splashed down in the frigid waters of the Hudson River off Manhattan on Thursday and survivors were seen standing on the wings awaiting rescue, Reuters witnesses said.It was not clear what caused the plane to go down. It was floating on the surface of the fast-moving river and ferries were seen approaching to rescue passengers. [Reuters, 3:51]
A U.S. Airways airplane has crashed into the Hudson River, CBS 2 has learned. The plane appears to be in one piece and passengers are being evaucated by rescue teams.
Officials tell CBS 2 the airplane is Flight 1549, an Airbus 380 that took off from La Guardia Aiport. There are reports that there were about 60 people on board. [CBS, 3:54, Emphasis added]
For reference, the Airbus 380 is the largest passenger jet in the world. Props to Reuters for getting it more right.
“I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles when I was told … the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression,” Bush said. [UPI]
I’ve long questioned the practice of couple sleeping together as inefficient and stupid. I’ve also long been mocked for such a view. Ultimately, however, I’m still right.
But what’s the big deal about sleeping together, anyway?
The weight on the marital bed is artificial and relatively new, argues Stephanie Coontz, who has written extensively on the history and sociology of marriage.
“It represents this cookie-cutter model that developed in the early 20th century that told people you had to get every single need met by this constant togetherness,” said Coontz. “It doesn’t tie in with what we know about the variety of coupled relationships that have worked in history.”
What’s more, noted Coontz, a professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state, that model doesn’t fit contemporary life, in which couples marry later, bringing more experiences and habits to their relationships. The notion that one should be “permanently turned on, permanently available — that if you sleep in another room, maybe you’re not very sexual — is just an unnecessary burden for modern couples,” she said.
Shana and David Jacobs of Chevy Chase aren’t particularly troubled by that notion. The two physicians often go to bed apart: She’s a very light sleeper and he’s a pretty heavy snorer. David, 34, said he finds it reassuring that Shana’s mother and one of her sisters also need to sleep apart from their spouses to get some rest. As for Shana, 32, she said simply, “To be honest, I have never really seen the appeal of spending the whole night sleeping next to somebody. Just because I love someone and want to spend my life with them, doesn’t mean I want to be in the same bed at the same time. I just don’t see the connection.” [Washington Post]
…would anyone miss her?
She’s a disgrace to everyone from 1986.
All along the western front
People line up to receive.
She got the power in her hands
To shock you like you won’t believe.
Saw her in the Amazon
With the voltage running through her skin
Standing there with nothing on
She’s gonna teach me how to swimOoh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feelOoh girl
Shock me like an electric eel
Baby girl
Turn me on with your electric feel
Last month, the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters was the site of a contentious meeting, during which two members resigned from an advisory committee of nine historians that oversees the series. The resignations were the culmination of nearly two years of acrimony between the committee and the State Department’s Office of the Historian, which is currently headed by Marc Susser. Last fall, the committee learned that one of its members, Tom Schwartz, a historian at Vanderbilt, would not be reappointed by the State Department to another three-year term. Schwartz had been the lead drafter of the committee’s 2007 annual report to the Secretary of State and Congress, which noted that the office was having trouble retaining staff historians. A number of staffers had begun to complain about Susser’s management style. Some of the gripes sound like generic faculty-room politics: the Historian, the historians groused, played favorites, doling out perks to those who were deferential. As one staff member put it, “It’s like junior high. I was going to say high school, but it’s more juvenile than that.” In a memo to committee members, Craig Daigle, a historian who worked in the office, claimed Susser warned him that if he “committed any mistake, had any problems with security issues, or created any dissension within the office, he would ‘cut my fucking heart out.’ ”
Read the rest of the amusing story here.
From Regret the Errors 2008 roundup.
Daily Star (UK):
OUR article last Tuesday headed “It’s Sven Giggle Eriksson” pictured Mr Eriksson in a hotel restaurant with a young lady.
We wrongly assumed that the lady was an admirer and suggested that he was fondling her.
In fact the lady was Lina, Mr Eriksson’s daughter, with whom he was having a normal fatherly embrace.
We apologise to Mr Eriksson and his daughter for the embarrassment and distress caused by the publication of the photographs and incorrect assumptions made about them.
