nourishing obscurity

Ah yes, that famous equation: Ws + Wm + B + C = V + E – R – Cd, where Ws = westerner, Wm = woman, B = black, C = celebrity, V = victimhood, E = entitlement, R = respect and Cd = common decency.  [See Oprah Winfrey for other examples]: Chair umpire [...]

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Filed under: History & Culture, Leisure, travel & sport, Society & human issues

Sackerson sent me this: One of the most macabre moments of last night’s debate occurred when members of the audience cheered the idea of letting people without health insurance die. “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage?” CNN’s Wolf [...]

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Filed under: History & Culture, Society & human issues

There needs to be some mechanism for inserting snippets onto this site without going into full-blown posts.  So let’s call these … er … oh … snippets, for want of a better word.  There’ll be many of them, at random.  Here’s one from Adam Smith’s heirs: Turning to the first of the recommendations, ring-fencing is [...]

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Filed under: Blogging, Politics & economics

Sackerson asked yesterday what I’ve got against this woman and I’ll answer that further down.  Firstly, Launch lists her legacy: Bartz was great at cutting jobs and dropping F-bombs, but she sucked at creating product. This list is stunningly underwhelming. Almost every item here is a “catch up” feature to the market leader Google. The [...]

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Filed under: Politics & economics

Some current thinking is: The future may not be bright for the next generation of the Russian fighter. Many Western defense experts believe Russia’s fourth-generation fighter jets cannot withstand the U.S. stealth-enabled tandem of F-35 and F-22, which offer high maneuverability and near invisibility to surface radars because of advanced radar suppression equipment. Moreover, U.S.-based [...]

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Filed under: History & Culture, Technology & ideas

Warning: rambling and self-indulgence ahead.  If of a sensitive disposition, please just ignore this post. ….. Covering two questions here – firstly, Lord T said he thought Christians were allowed to fight in self-defence, so why did those priests and nuns get killed by Hindu mobs [yesterday's post]? I’d say it’s a confusion with the [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

First the news: As was unfortunately expected, despite no evidence that this made any economic sense at all, the member states of the EU have agreed to retroactively extend copyright another 20 years, at which point you can expect it to be extended again (thanks to jtdeboe for sending this over). This is nothing short [...]

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Filed under: History & Culture, Society & human issues

When school bus driver George Daw was called to his supervisor’s office after Daw rescued three people from a storm, he thought he might be getting a commendation. Instead, he was fired. “Employee endangered welfare of student he was transporting when he picked up three unauthorized passengers,” the termination notice said. The three men he [...]

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Filed under: Politics & economics

Catholic nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order sing hymns for a special prayer during the eleventh anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata September 5, 2008.

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Filed under: History & Culture, Religion & Philosophy, Society & human issues

Hard to know where the style originated or why it became so popular.

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Filed under: History & Culture, JD, Music, Society & human issues

[H/T Chuckles]

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Filed under: Art, Leisure, travel & sport, Technology & ideas

From This is True: Jerald T. Navarre, 34, of Iowa City, Iowa, was arrested after police responded to multiple complaints about him harassing people. Officers found him shouting at people and smelling of alcohol, they said, and charged him with public intoxication. While Navarre admitted to being “a little drunk,” he refused breath tests and [...]

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Filed under: Humour, Society & human issues

Our resident ghost, Chuckles, has been moonlighting around other blogs and achieving immortality in the process. Bishop Hill picked up on his latest and: “Does this mean that John Abrahams comments, reported in the Guardian and Daily Climate, about Dr. Spencer constantly having to correct errors and revise work, are in fact correct? Just not [...]

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Filed under: Earth and cosmos, Technology & ideas

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Filed under: Leisure, travel & sport

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Filed under: Chuckles, Humour