I want to live in one of these

How cool is this house? Hand made of mud and local materials, using equipment available to anyone (and usable by anyone), except for maybe the cows used to stir the mud mixture.

It wouldnt take much to bring this up to my standards (windows, screens, etc). Wooden houses are stupid, except in places where you have lots of wood. I'm especially offended by Dallas houses often built with no eaves and a stone exterior, all in a place with six months of 90+ degree weather and sun almost every day.

via Boing Boing

further proof that television is too stupid to survive

Okay, so I'm watcing the last available episode of Eureka* on Hulu, (and if you dont know what Eureka is I'm not going to try and describe it) and this high school girl's trying to decide what to study in college. She wants to study medicine, but a supposedly super-accurate career/aptitude test indicates that she should study robotics. Then, O! a bit of drama ensues (not much, it's just a sub-plot), of course, because she wants... well, you get the idea.

Now, I'm no genius, but immediately I had the solution to the problem presented in the show. They didnt resolve it my way at the end, and it's too early to tell if they will do it my way in the next show, but still, it was pretty easy.

My simple solution? Duh! Prosthetics!

Seriously, if I can come up with the answer, why cant someone in a town full of super-geniuses?




* Eureka, by the way, is nerd-candy, so dont judge me. It has cool devices, beautiful women, and every week the clever guy shows up the folks who are soooo much smarter than him. And yes, I said smarter, because the thing about nerds is that there is always somebody smarter than they are, and figuring out something before they do is the appeal of many nerd shows.
And no, it's not an odd plot-line, just substitute brawn for brains and you've got every Chuck Norris movie ever made.

doh!

Two things...

1. A fuckup by Republicans in their bid to remove Acorn from the voting equation, and

2. a possible reason as to why they're such poor planners.

we're still losing to St. Ronnie

As Robert Reich points out (without saying), trickle down economics is still in full swing, only now the government is playing middle-man.


Peasants of the Nation! Ri...


oh wait, American Idol's on!

hmmmm

Had a thought: Maybe the failure of Democrats to follow an actual progressive platform, but instead to apparently pursue old Bush Administration positions of various programs is born of an attempt to woo more disaffected centrists from the GOP to the Democratic Party. It will come at the expense of the base, I'm afraid, but I'm not sure that it will matter to those in charge of the party, especially if the Republican Party continues to implode and drift ever farther right. Whereas progressives thought they were finally getting to have a say in things, all that seems to be happening is that the center-right faction that have been running things for decades (and fucking them up) has a new label.
Tough shit, liberals, sucks to be you, huh?

falling short

Maybe we should admit that the reason we cannot deal with climate change is not because it is not real, but because we are simply not capable of doing so. After all, this is not the Greatest Generation, engaging in rationing and turning all our industrial might towards a single goal of saving the world from tyranny. No, this is the Me Generation, grabbing and consuming with both hands and sending all our industrial might overseas towards the single of goal of increased profits. For sixty years, all of America's efforts have been turned to one purpose - to gather the most stuff before we die.

Hey folks, the warning bell's being sounded, and it looks like it's time for the final dash, so, I guess I'll see you in Hell.Oh, and a tip for all the folks who deny global warming by pointing to the cold winters in the Northeast: As I understand things, apparently one of the possible effects of global warming is the slowing of the Gulf Stream, which would make winter colder up north by not bringing up as much warm water from the south.
Also, by the way, that's not a snow covered snow plow, it's a snow plow that fell through the (thin) ice.

where is everybody?

I'm getting less than a half dozen hits a day. Okay, maybe that's not terribly surprising. But if you go down the mutual blogger list over there on the right, you'll find that people who used to post daily are only posting every few days, and people who used to post every few days are lucky to post weekly, and people who posted weekly are barely posting at (if) all. Some havent posted anything in months, One may be posting, but I cant get in.
Obviously, it's time to update my sidebar, 'cause it's getting lonely in my corner of the blogosphere.

messin' with the enemy

Okay, so I was a discussion on the heartache of forwarded wingnuttery, and I had this idea: Instead of deleting them, go through the text, amp up the nuttiness (talk about Obama killing kittens, maybe) and then replace any video links with ones where wingnuts still appear, but are pwned by people who actually use their rational thinking facilities. Then send it on to every conservative you know, or just hit "reply all".

Or, you could do what Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon suggests, which is probably far more reasonable and effective...

but where's the fun in that?

there are no new ideas

Hey, check it out, this guy Fred Kaplan suggests that we should bribe our way out of Afghanistan. Gee, what an idea! A concept very similar to the one I made about Iraq (in a retrospective manner, granted) almost two years ago.
Man, why I dont have a plush pundit contract is beyond me.

it's talk like a pirate day

First, a list:

Top 10 pirate pick-up lines:

10. Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?
9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?
8. Come on up and see me urchins.
7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.
6. I’d love to drop anchor in your lagoon.
5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole?
4. How’d you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?
3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.
2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pirate pickup line is…

1. Avast! Prepare to be boarded!

And now a little PVP.