Tuesday, December 22, 2009
North woods tab dump
It is five degrees Fahrenheit outside, and I am looking out over a frozen lake waiting for the TH Teenager to wake up so we can plot an expedition through the cold. It is beautiful out there.
Anyway, his sloth is your boon, for I have accumulated a great many tabs to dump, with the usual bonus shallow commentary.
Dude, where's my recovery? Third quarter GDP, reported originally at 3.5%, was revised down first to 2.8% and now 2.2%. Look for President Obama and the Congressional Donks to use this as a reason for even more pork deficit spending.
The good guys win again! So sad the burgler was not deterred, and therefore had to be interdicted.
Officer Krupke smiles: Crime rates continue to decline around the country. So much for the theory that economic hardship causes crime.
The winter solstice in the world's oldest building. Talk about your feng shui.
A cool analytical graph showing the growth in the Las Vegas gaming industry over 40 years. It certainly looks as though rooms will be inexpensive there for the next couple of years, so now may be your chance to plan the dream trip. You know, on the small chance that Vegas is your dream trip.
A different sort of Christmas commercial opportunity...
Let us praise the venture capitalists. Indeed we should, because we will not be able to pay for all this new federal debt without a rapidly growing economy, and that will depend on starting and funding the new growth companies of tomorrow.
James Cameron seems like he might be a little bit annoying:
The director James Cameron is six feet two and fair, with paper-white hair and turbid blue-green eyes. He is a screamer—righteous, withering, aggrieved. “Do you want Paul Verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?” he shouted, an inch from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face, after the actor went AWOL from the set of “True Lies,” a James Bond spoof that Cameron was shooting in Washington, D.C. (Schwarzenegger had been giving the other actors a tour of the Capitol.) Cameron has mastered every job on set, and has even been known to grab a brush out of a makeup artist’s hand. “I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt,” he says. “It saves so much time.” His evaluations of others’ abilities are colorful riddles. “Hiring you is like firing two good men,” he says, or “Watching him light is like watching two monkeys fuck a football.” A small, loyal band of cast and crew works with him repeatedly; they call the dark side of his personality Mij—Jim backward.
"Hiring you is like firing two good men." I'm going to look for an opportunity to use that. At least in a Facebook status update.
This much we know is true: Climate science ain't bean bag.
Twenty market, political, and economic surprises for 2010. There are some good ones in there, and some bad (the Palins get divorced, oh no!).
Speaking of Sarah Palin, scroll down for a nice summary of the reasons why the chattering classes hate her so much. This one is really going to irritate Them:
She’s an interloper outside the normal cursus honorum. Almost all our female columnists, many of our politicians, and several of our TV personalities either married into, or were born into, influence and can trace some of their careers to the wealth or influence of powerful husbands, fathers, and mentors. Not Palin—she had no family or marital connections, no money, no powerful fixer, she’s a genuine up-from-the-bootstraps sort of feminist that, oddly, feminists don’t define as feminist.
More later.
3 Comments:
By 
Bomber Girl, at
Tue Dec 22, 10:24:00 AM:
"Almost all our female columnists, many of our politicians, and several of our TV personalities either married into, or were born into, influence and can trace some of their careers to the wealth or influence of powerful husbands, fathers, and mentors."
I think you could probably replace "female" with "male" and "husband" with "wife" and this would also be a true statement. W comes to mind immediately.
I think the issues are elsewhere. (btw, the link does not appear to be working).
By Bomber Girl, at
Tue Dec 22, 10:49:00 AM:
(sorry, tried to put up a clarifying post but Al Gore and the others who invented the internet seem to be blocking me).
I am trying to separate the "interloper issue" which I think is valid from the "female" issue which I think requires further analysis.
By Foxfier, at
Tue Dec 22, 12:34:00 PM:
Sounds to me like Cameron is a rolling bastard-- and not a bit immature.
