Stuff I’ve been collecting for you while having the living room flooring done, ripping siding off the house, and extracting rusted bicycles from the foliage.* Oh, and deadlining, too.
- “Neighbors confront alcoholic child abuser about his lawn.” (Don’t worry, it’s only The Onion this time.)
- Not that you actually needed proof that government is filled with idiots …
- An ISP that puts privacy first?
- Did you know there was a U.S. holiday called Loyalty Day? I didn’t. But it’s coming right up. Clearly we need to celebrate!
- “Born this way.” This article would be fascinating if it admitted the existence of something other than conservatives and liberals.
- I hesitated to post this. Seems reports of horrific weapons-in-development ring alarms every week, and many of them never go farther than that. Must admit, though, this one’s particularly creepy. Let’s hope this is one of the vaporware weapons.
- One of the few intelligent things I’ve seen about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case.
- Hmmmm. And wasn’t it just a week or two ago that we were praising this guy for his enlightened views on the drug war?
- Alternative currencies. In the real world. In Greece. (H/T EN)
- The New Yorker belatedly discovers medical tourism (aka affordable medical care).
Happy Friday the 13th!
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* Okay, only one rusted bicycle. But I’ll bet that’s more bicycles than you have integrated into your landscaping. (The old car tire and the broken float are bonuses.) It’s a testimony to the sort of neighborhood I live in that within an hour of tossing that non-functional bike onto a trash heap, somebody asked if he could have it. Said he figured it was worth at least three bucks from a scrap dealer.
Love The Onion! Up on my wall I have a card of theirs, which is my favorite article ever. It’s a picture of a very cute kitten. The caption is “Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day”.
Another great one they had was that due to budget cuts, national public radio was changing the name of the program from “All Things Considered” to “Some Things Considered”.
Chicago has their very on HEAT weapon that is said to be able to disable you in seconds at Level 2. They say it can be cranked up to level 12. NATO sumit coming in May.
The Greek Tem is just one of the alternative currencies surfacing in poor economies. I find it interesting that some people consider this “not money” although it satisfies all the requirements for money.
There’s a lot to consider about alternative currency that the BBC story misses, probably because they don’t wish to awaken the populace. 😉
I blogged the Tem story a few weeks ago, and I’m planning a column on alternative currencies as part of the “Phoenix Society” series I’m doing.
http://tirelessagorist.blogspot.com/2012/03/greece-surrenders-to-underground.html
The bike in the brier patch is cute. Could make a neat painting if you were so inclined.
Your house is going to look great with the original siding.
On Zimmerman: Alan Dershowitz, on MSNBC of all places, says the indictment is “irresponsible and unethical”…that it’s politically motivated and the prosecutor should be held to account for it. He says there is nothing new in it and it doesn’t even meet the standard of probable cause.
http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/04/12/alan_dershowitz_zimmerman_arrest_affidavit_irresponsible_and_unethical.html
That old tire might be worth a couple of bucks to a tire recycler too.
Alternative currencies such as the Greek TEM are possibly referred to as “not money,” to keep them from being considered competition with fiat money and destroyed.
You can use microwaves to make someone very miserable, but as far as thought control or some such-unlikely. At best, iffy results. With that said, some people are sensitive to strong magnetic fields-a lot of “haunted” rooms are near circuit breaker boxes, transformers, motors and so on. All the various paranormal shows claim ghosts hang out near strong magnetic fields, but most likely it induces the feelings of fear/I’m being watched or possibly hallucinations in some people.
Nice bike pic. Looks like “home”. 😉
Microwave and other heat weapons are a great idea until your target walks away and reforms out of the path of the magical ray. Probably the best heat weapon, although highly controversial would be napalm. A bit messy, but it would ultimately disperse your crowd.
Don, here’s something you might like. It’s also from the NYT which is shocking in itself. The German notion of righting things has always been self serving and surely designed to keep Germany in control. The entire notion that strangling the private economies of the PIIGS could somehow increase revenues is silly. Greeks are now going to the underground market place, which is tax free in case you’re a German and don’t understand, thereby destroying the EU system entirely. Reality always wins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/an-overdose-of-pain-for-spain.html
“Spain could be the next European economy brought down by German-led mismanagement of the euro-zone crisis. It need not turn out that way. But it surely will unless Chancellor Angela Merkel and her political allies inside and outside Germany acknowledge that no country can pay off its debts by suffocating economic growth.”
Your home/property is full of unexpected things, Claire…..it’s like one big, long scavenger hunt around there LOL…..
I was thinking about you when I read about this – meet this “dorky looking” and “very much a clown” dog named Dragon http://www.denverpost.com/athome/ci_20390153/dragon-pit-bull-is-tamed-from-life-fighting
Oh, naturegirl — that’s a marvelous story in so many ways, from the ATF agent to the family that eventually found Dragon.