- The middle class is even more screwed than the numbers show.
- Could the mythical cancer wonder drug be on the horizon, or is this just another typical bit of overhype? Concept seems good: turn your own immune system against the cancerous invader.
- Forensic “science” isn’t science.
- The NSA now claims it’s too big to comply with a court order.
- Aw, the poor Clintons. Don’t you just weep for their desperate financial struggles?
- This is nice. Twins joined at birth became co-validictorians of their high school graduating class.
- Whew! One more apocalypse averted!
- The backlash against police militarization heats up.
Okay, cat people. Enjoy. It’s a commercial, but another good one:
If the voice and approach sound familiar, it’s because you remember Sad Dog Diary and Sad Cat Diary.
What a good commercial. I loved the sad cat/dog diary ones, too.
What an extraordinary claim by the NSA. Not that they didn’t already believe (know?) that they are above the law, but that they blatantly asserted it in federal court. And the judge backed down!
We are well and truly f*cked.
Bayou Renaisance Man’s take on middle class screwage: http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-different-and-scary-look-at-inflation.html.
I remember wistfully the last time I had real medical insurance.
Wonder drug: As described, it sounds more like a treatment for cancer, and any preventive value is not exactly well established. And that preventive process… They’re saying that they think this stuff retargets the immune system from “cancer becoming immune to our body’s defences towards the body becoming immune to the cancer”; which is tricky because cancer cells are out-of-control body cells. Be damned unfortunate to trigger an autoimmune disease on top of cancer.
I’d have to do some more searches to verify this, but I think that I recall that p100delta is associated with a wide range of cancers, but far from all sorts. In short, this sounds like a promising treatment, but no global panacea to work up too many hopes over. People often speak of cancer as if it were one disease, but it’s a lot of different diseases with different causes, and one common characteristic: uncontrolled cell growth. Kinda like classifying everything that causes a fever as “common cold.” That’s what makes curing “cancer” tough.
This NSA thing is just one more notch cut into the big tree that is the U.S. Once the cut becomes big enough, it’ll come crashing down.
As for the middle class problem, if the riches and TPTB don’t have alarm bells clanging their heads off, then they’re idiots. As for the rest of us, it is incumbent upon us to figure ways to do things that don’t require money or having a huge stash of necessary equipment so we can feed ourselves. We will survive, and the rich should be put on notice that we’ll remember assuming they survive too.
I agree with Bear on the cancer “prevention” drug.
Cancer is still an unknown entity; no one knows what causes cells to go wild in any part of the body ― and many drugs tend to mess with the autoimmune system anyway. When the system is weak and out of control, there is no guarantee. Even the drugs used to “cure” cancer are a shot in the dark for any patient on any given day.
I can appreciate the research scientists who care enough to try finding some method of prevention, but until they can find the definitive CAUSE (which there isn’t any *one*), they will not be able to put a rein on it.
You simply cannot prevent something you don’t understand and have no control over. And like Bear, I don’t think they can control multi-cancers with one drug.
So, dog diary guy got himself a voice gig? Or has that always been his vocation? Well, it’s a nice change from the sort of stuff I hear a lot on the radio. And those diaries are always funny to me.
Link day? Okay.
Living Off Grid in a Boeing 727. Sorta brings a different meaning to “Cabin, Sweet Cabin”.
jed — I was wondering the same thing about the diary guy getting a voice gig. I really hope Friskies did hire him just because the diaries were so wonderful & not just because he’s already a professional voice.
Shwoof on that Boeing 727 home! I can’t imagine. I mean, I love innovation in housing, but to spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars and go to such horrendous trouble for a 1,000-square-foot home (that looks like a dump inside)? [Shakes head. Shakes it again.]
Turns out the voice in those videos is a semi-famous guy and pioneer of “vlogging,” Ze Frank:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/dear-kitten_n_5471151.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze_Frank
So no, not just some amateur who happened to catch ad folks’ attention with his clever diaries. Pity, that would have made a lovely story.
I did notice he had an active YouTube channel. Wasn’t quite up for digging up his bona-fides. Seems he’s done a good job carving out a niche for himself.
Yeah, the plane house is not all that great, but still, it’s a friggin airliner! I just find that appealing on some undefined level.
$300/sf home? Yeowch.
And the middle class is getting the shaft, but it isn’t because the rich have too much.
if the riches and TPTB don’t have alarm bells clanging their heads off, then they’re idiots
I’d guess the folks who worked for lots of money are thinking about it. Movie stars, sports jocks, notsmuch. TPTB? They still think they can progressively fix things..
For you cat lovers:
http://www.treelobsters.com/2014/06/588-solar-collector.html
Laird. 🙂 And ain’t that the truth?
Re forensic evidence: The perfect article for anyone who still harbors any misconceptions about the criminal “Justice System”.
From the article:
“American jurors today expect a constant parade of forensic evidence during trials. They also refuse to believe that this evidence might ever be faulty. Lawyers call this the CSI effect, after the popular procedural that portrays forensics as the ultimate truth in crime investigation.”
Makes a person wonder why such shows are so ubiquitous on TV, eh? Maybe that is the effect that the shows were intended to create…
“Given the flimsy foundation upon which the field of forensics is based, you might wonder why judges still allow it into the courtroom.”
I don’t wonder at all. Courts exist for the benefit of the ruling class and no one else. Expecting such an institution to be concerned about truth is naive in the extreme, even laughable.