Category Archives: Miscellany/LOL

Arizonans Protest Haboob Job

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The second haboob in a month rolls over Phoenix, Arizona on July 5. People are angry about it, but not for the reason you might expect.

Twice in a month, Phoenix, Arizona has experienced a rare kind of dust storm so sudden and severe that it caused traffic accidents, disrupted airline operations and generally scared people silly. Not hard to understand: the dust cloud created by the storm surge from a group of  thunderstorms was 3,000 feet high, propelled by 40-mile-per-hour winds, and dropped visibility in moments to mere feet. The Arizona chattering class, predictably, is in an uproar. Continue reading →

Three Media Home Runs. No, Seriously.

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If they gave Oscars for journalism, these would be our nominees for this year in the categories newspaper, radio and TV. (Photo by Cliff1066/Flickr)

The Lamestream (news) Media (thank you, Sarah) don’t get much respect here or anywhere else these days, because they mostly do not deserve any. But now and again, traditional journalism rears its gorgeous head, and uses words and images to reveal and explain the realities of our world in riveting and memorable ways. Typically, such works sink from sight and remembrance like stones tossed in a polluted river, so let us remove our hats and mumble a few respectful words over three masterful works that appeared in the past few days — one in a newspaper, one on the radio (remember radio programs?) and, yes, even one on TV.   Continue reading →

Capital Punishment for Corporations: Time to Start

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We used to do this to horse thieves. How about executing a few corporations? (Photo by Joe Hall/Flickr)

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that corporations are citizens, their money is speech, and their right to buy politicians with their money is protected by the Constitution. If they are persons, in this respect, then why should their lives not be forfeit when they commit horrific crimes? We kill people, don’t we? And if we’re going to start meting out capital punishment to corporations, I have a nomination for who goes first: Massey Energy.

 

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Come, Apocalypse: Now It’s Peak Coffee

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(Photo by Stepheye/Flickr)

Wait a minute. I have accustomed myself to the prospects that, approaching and after the Fall, I will have to give up gasoline, electricity, lettuce in the winter, thermostats, my cell phone, 20-minute showers and even — sob! — the Internet. I can handle that. I can stay home, tend my solar panels, grow my own food and cut wood for heat until I’m too hot and tired to take a shower. But Peak Coffee? It’s too much. Continue reading →

Digression: A Modest Budget Proposal

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If simplistic nostrums can save our government, why not the American family too?

From the new christian scientists now ascendant in the politics of America (well, they have been ascendant most of the time since 1980, but are currently enjoying a new iteration as tea partiers) comes a new theory of government. Just as the Bible is literally true in every respect, and humans co-existed with dinosaurs, and there are no such things as evolution, or human-caused climate change, or an end to oil, now comes another self-evident principle to guide our nation. (Self-evident because outside the statement itself, there is no existing evidence or even indication of its truth.) Continue reading →

Keeping Tabs

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How many times have we been right? Stand by.... (Photo by Jerkert Gwapo/Flickr)

Can we talk? About whether this website is an outpost of wild-eyed eco-extremism, cherry-picking alarmist half-truths from the web to scare the unsophisticated? That sort of thing. If we could just take a look at the recent record:

In December of last year (“Food Fights Coming Soon“) and in January of this year (“The People, Sir, are a Great Beast“), we wrote about the imminent threat of popular uprisings because of food shortages. Tunisia’s dictator fell (“unexpectedly,” by all accounts) two weeks after the second piece was published, and Egypt’s after that, as the wave of risings rolled on toward Libya, Yemen, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. But wait, there’s more. Continue reading →

Digression: How to Handle a Palin

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Sarah Palin

When Sarah Palin speaks, you must not listen. It's a celebrity trap. (Photo by sskennel/Flickr

There is one overwhelming worry — and one only — that is shared equally by today’s Democrats and Republicans: not war, not deficit spending, not climate change, but what to do about Sarah Palin. Here, as a post-partisan public service, is the answer.

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Homeland Security: Report from the Front

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Everything you need to know about Homeland Security: the agent is the Muslim in the hijab, the suspect is the nun in the habit. Photo by Dean Shaddock

It’s hard to pick my favorite part of flying today. I say flying, but when I travel by air today I spend most of my travel time riding: in cars going to and from airports on roads clogged to near-gridlock (but that’s only during rush hour, which now begins at 5 am and usually is over by 3 am); on buses to and from airport parking lots, which these days are often located in nearby, not-necessarily-adjoining states (for example Dulles Airport, near Washington D.C., has its economy parking in Nebraska); on people movers, multi-million-dollar wonders of technology that whisk you around an airport at the speed of — oh, I don’t know, a brisk walk; and on airplanes that instead of flying at 600 miles per hour are sitting at a gate or inching along a taxiway at the speed of the aforementioned people mover. All this non-flying gives me lots of time for quiet reflection, for example on the fact that if I had started from home and had driven toward my destination, I would be there by now (does not apply to most intercontinental flights). Continue reading →

Blizzard Strikes US: Drops National IQ 24 inches

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Two snowstorms of epic proportions in quick succession this month have triggered mass episodes of brain trauma among the public, and among public figures.

Drivers, of course, are the first to be afflicted. The third consecutive flake of snow divides all drivers (in all but the northernmost tier of states) into two categories: the feckless and the reckless. The feckless feel safer driving at 15 miles per hour, no matter how desperately momentum is needed to get up the next icy rise in the road, and no matter how many dozens of vehicles are stacked up behind them. They obey the legendary advice given the pilot by his mother: just fly low and slow, and you’ll be fine. The reckless, on the other hand, do not lower their speed or alter their driving habits for anything, because, like, why should they? Continue reading →

Scientists Find Murder Gene

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Scientists at the Universal Genome Center, in Burbank, California, say they have identified the human gene that causes people to commit murder.

The discovery capped a three-year, $30-million-dollar research project involving as many as three people poring over the 20,000 genes catalogued in the Human Genome Project (most of them labelled as, and I’m using the technical term of art here, “junk” genes). “Oddly enough,” said Dr. Oscar Able, co-director of the study, “We found it in the Ms.”

As might have been expected, the gene was in the Y chromosome associated with male characteristics. Another oddity, according to Dr. Able, was that the gene was closely associated with another that causes men to name their sons after John Wayne.

The discovery could lead to a cure for murder, according to Dr. Calvin Cain, co-director, who spoke at a separate news conference because he doesn’t get along with his colleague. “We are seeking fundng now,” said Dr. Cain, for a mammoth research project to develop a murder vaccine. “We think we already have a genetic treatment for murder, but it can only be applied after the fact. We think it is effective, but it has some unfortunate side effects.”

When pressed for details about the side effects, Dr. Cain demurred on the grounds that the subjects given the medicine had all died too fast for doctors to determine what was killing them. As a result of these complications, future testing will be limited to people who are within seven days of their execution date, with all appeals denied. “If you are in that group,” said Dr. Cain, “call your doctor and ask if this trial is right for you.”

Dr. Cain said he expected to bring to market a perfected medicine and a preventive vaccine, “within this eon.”

The announcement drew immediate reaction from NORMAL-C, the National Organization for the Restoration of the Murder Lifestyle Choice. “It’s what we been saying all along,” said president John Wayne Johnson from his death-row cell in Texas, “Murder ain’t a choice. Nobody in his right mind would choose to be a murderer. You’re born a murderer. People don’t kill people, genes kill people.”

Later, NORMAL-C issued a news release demanding, on the basis of the new research, that all murder convictions be overturned and the voting rights of convicted murderers be restored, pending the inevitable appeals. “Hey,” said John W. Johnson, “you people elected Bush, twice. How much worse could it get?”