Doug Stanhope: "I Did It To be A Prick!"

Star Wars: The 15-Minute Version!

The Conspiracy Theory Flow Chart

Jon Stewart Shows his TRUER Colors as an "Equivalantist."

Increased corporatization is wrong, or dubious, but aren't teachers' unions too rigid?

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

The source of Stewart's not-well veiled antagonism toward Ravitch and her message is almost revealed at the end of the segment below, when Steward defends his 'friends' in the Charter Industry...and they're "really good people."

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Zozobra: The ORIGINAL "Burning Man"

 Have your OWN "Burning Man," the authentic, the original Zozobra!
Banish gloom, incinerate your "issues," dispel your worries!
Viva La Fiesta!!!!!
According to the accompanying link: #Zozobra has been burning away worries since 1926. "Zozo" wants to make the whole world worry free. We've reached 40 states and 10 countries. The only states we're missing are Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont. Enter your worry with our Virtual Zozobra and share with your friends from out of state and out of the country.
Each flag represents someone who has offered up a "worry," their problemas y preocupaciones, to Old man Gloom's cloak. Join us!

Pre-Nuptual/Pre-Procreative Preparation: Required

Camp Gyno! Very Funny!

The Way of the Mister: Must a Skeptic Be An Atheist?

Come to New Mexico...

For all the summer fun.
Here's a FBook image from NM tourist interests, hyping:
Hatch Chile Festival, Santa Fe Fiesta, New Mexico State Fair, and OF COURSE the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta!!!
Not to mention all that artsy-fartsy shit in Santa Fe, Taos, and like that.

Hey! Listen UP@!
If any o'y'all are planning to visit our fair, but parched, state, please bring your own water. We don't really have enough for just us. So bring along a couple of cases. And pee before you leave, please. Thanks. --The management

Pangeia (with subtitles)

Here's what Pangea looks like mapped with modern political borders

Pretty wild, right? It's a map of Pangea — a supercontinent that formed roughly 300 million years ago — mapped with contemporary geopolitical borders.

What you see here is an anachronistic mashup — a modern map, complete with geological features that did not exist 300-million years ago, with its various parts relocated to the general position they would have occupied before Pangea began rifting apart some 200-million years ago. It's a view of the supercontinent not often seen, and a mind-bending way of relating to the world on a geological time scale. [Hi-res]

Redditor LikeWolvesDo, who posted the image last week, stumbled across this particular interpretation of Pangea at this roundup of Pangea Maps. Unfortunately, the source link is dead, so neither of us was able to find the map's true provenance. At the bottom corner of the image however, is a name – Massimo Pietrobon – and an email address; so, for the time being, we're going to assume he's the creator. We've reached out to Pietrobon, but have yet to receive a response. We'll let you know if and when we do. Edit: As ukuleledan points out in the comments, Pietrobon does, in fact, appear to be the map's creator.

"I'm A Little Teapot..."

Stephen Frye on the Craig Fergusson programme.

A Question of Balance

As BOTH amazing skill and gripping metaphor!

Home, Sweet Home

Sunday"Funnies"

Speakers in order of appearance:

1. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer
2. Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate in Literature
3. Professor Isaac Asimov, Author and Biochemist
4. Arthur Miller, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
5. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
6. Gore Vidal, Award-Winning Novelist and Political Activist
7. Douglas Adams, Best-Selling Science Fiction Writer
8. Professor Germaine Greer, Writer and Feminist
9. Iain Banks, Best-Selling Fiction Writer
10. José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature
11. Sir Terry Pratchett, NYT Best-Selling Novelist
12. Ken Follett, NYT Best-Selling Author
13. Ian McEwan, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
14. Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate (1999-2009)
15. Professor Martin Amis, Award-Winning Novelist
16. Michel Houellebecq, Goncourt Prize-Winning French Novelist
17. Philip Roth, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
18. Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize-Winning Author and Poet
19. Sir Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
20. Norman MacCaig, Renowned Scottish Poet
21. Phillip Pullman, Best-Selling British Author
22. Dr Matt Ridley, Award-Winning Science Writer
23. Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate in Literature
24. Howard Brenton, Award-Winning English Playwright
25. Tariq Ali, Award-Winning Writer and Filmmaker
26. Theodore Dalrymple, English Writer and Psychiatrist
27. Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
28. Redmond O'Hanlon FRSL, British Writer and Scholar
29. Diana Athill, Award-Winning Author and Literary Editor
30. Christopher Hitchens, Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Columnist

FEATURED MUSIC:

Mozart - Piano Concerto No.23 In A Major, K 488 Adagio 00:00
Ludovico Einaudi -- Solo 00:54
Brian Crain - Dream of Flying 07:53
Ludovico Einaudi - I Giorni 12:54
David Nevue - Watching The Clock 17:30
David Nevue -- Winter Walk 21:54


Copyright disclaimer--"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

TBGO: Black Powder; Bingo...er, I Mean: "Bang-o"

Bingo...er, I Mean: "Bang-o": Context is everything.




Central Coast Horticulture

Woody do love this part of Cali...I love a LOT of it, actually, mostly north of Ventura. I plan to have my ashes distributed upon the waves at Morro Rock. If there is also an orgy at the same time, that'd be good. I could live widdat...so to speak.
As far as vegetation: Those are wild calla lillies along a creek in the Big Sur. 
Personally, I am an ardent admirer of CalTrans' iceplant...I'd grow it in my yard, if 1) I could get it and 2) it would grow in NM. Other than the sea itself, there is no other quotidian reminder of Cali that is more evocative of the place than iceplant (see below).

 

Old People Are Smarter!

I realllllly like Louis CK!

A Woman? Not On My Terms!

Glenda Jackson, an actor of some fame and justified renown, has been a member of the House of Commons for more than 20 years, for Labour. Here she delivers a right smart bitch-slapping to the sainted memory of Baroness Thatcher into the teeth of torrid (for Tories) torment from the other benches.

     You might well recognize her face or voice., She played Elizabeth, I, in the memorable BBC/PBS teevee series in 1971, Elizabeth R, but she had a reputation for fierceness even before that, winning an Oscar for a controversial adaptation DH Lawrence's Women in Love, and demonstrating time and again her willingness to commit art. She delivers such a stroke, here, for her constituents.

Flash: Screw Mad Meg. Long Live Glenda Jackson!

Speechless? What Shit Like This Leaves Me

What the gun goons see when they stare down the barrels of their AK 47s and AR 15s is NEGROES!
It's the dominant, though usually unspoken, rationale for their obsessive attraction to their firearms. 
They are, as least spiritually, the descendants of the slave-owners on plantations in the ante-bellum South, always (rightfully) fearful of slave revolts. 
And they save the last rounds for their female relations. 
These knuckel-dragging baffoons offer sufficient evidence in this vid to go after their drivers' and weapons' licenses. 
They're fuukin' DANGEROUS!

God: Tantamount to Child Abuse

Teaching children to fear the vengeance of some mythical, but threatening, punitive, wrathful,  jealous and terrifying "Deity" BEFORE they've sussed out the Tooth Fairy's equivocal provenance is exactly equivalent to psychological abuse.

A Hole for An A Whole--Colbert-licious

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Economic Reality Is NOT What We THink It Is!

New: Mr. D & the Advocate...

Is "Capitalism" the PRoblem? Fucking DUH!

More annoyingly kid-gloved criticism from LBJ's former press secretary:

Join The Party!

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian and my dream-crush!

NPR's "Spurious Objectivity" Drives Another Listener Away

      

Woody normally DON'T listen to NPR's Morning Edition, or any of their "news" programs, anymore.
Never Provoke Republicans radio.
NPR: Youm cannot spell "RePublicaN" without it.
The "bias" toward the spurious "middle" is too unrelenting...
And besides, it makes me physically ILL to listen to the inanities and chirpy, chipper maunderings of Insqueak and Rene Mundane.
Today I reminded myself why.
In a segment discussing the possible implications of the impending/threatened "sequestration," the editorial cretins invited the painfully orthodox, Friedmanesque "economics editor of the Wall Street Journal, David Wessell,  for "clarification."
Nearly the first thing out of his reeking gob was a blithe, off-hand repetition of the canard that the biggest problem going forward was "the growth in entitlements."
And there was NO even remotely skeptical voice heard from NPR.

Now, an even modestly intelligent person of ordinary, critical faculties might wonder WHY an ostensibly 'non-partisan' radio program would invite a representative of the most recalcitrant attacker of "entitlements,' one Rupert Murdoch--OWNER of the WSJ and dozens of other right-wing rags--to be the sole and only explicator of these intricacies. There ARE other possible commentators: Dean Baker, Joe Stiglitz, even the "Shrill One,"Paul Krugman, etc. Any of them could have answered the questions.
But NPR CHOSE to enlist a man who contributes to the MOST reactionary editorial board in North America, and he named the "usual suspects," and the drooling drones and mephitic minions of the most CORRUPT "Boss" on the planet never uttered a fuuking PEEP.

THAT'S why I have 1) cancelled my donation and 2) why I no longer defile my smoky, dusty domain with their feculent codswallop.
Here's the segment:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=172373131&m=172373122

What Would Jesus Do?

Lee Camp: Empire's in Decline Make Celebs of Their Chefs

The Journey of the Sperm: Sex Ed from BBC

Did We Go To The Moon? Why It Matters...

I REALLLY wish he hadn't disabled the comments. There would have been considerable opportunities for schadenfreude as the heads exploded...

Clean Water for EVERYONE? A Dream No Longer...

SLINGSHOT | Paul Lazarus from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

This is Slingshot, the aptly named water purification device that is now taking on a Goliath of a challenge, the worlds clean water supply.

Slingshot was created by Dean Kamen who’s best known for inventing the Segway PT. The idea was inspired by the World Heath Organization (WHO) statistics that portray a rather shocking story of 900 million people across the globe without a readily available supply of drinking water and around 3.5 million people many children under 5 dying annually with diseases related to unclean water.

The world’s surface is about two-thirds water yet only about 1% is fresh potable water with the large percentage making up saline oceans and ice. Slingshots objective is to tap into this vast resource creating drinkable water that is readily available and inexpensive to produce.

Climate Change: A Postscript

 

 

 

(In 10-minute segments is the only way I can find it Click on the link for all 10 subsequent sections.) I copied the following comments from the Fbook correspondent, one Marco Spinelli, who introduced me to this.

 James Burke of "Connections"-fame produced an excellent program about 30 years ago called "After The Warming" that you can see online. It's done as if it's 2050 with Burke looking back over the history of the world's climate changes and the effect that cyclical warming and cooling has had on the development of animal, vegetation, and civilization. Up until the industrial revolution, and how what's happening is man-made, how we know that it's man-made, and how fast it's happening. In less than one generation, human civilization on the planet is going to irrevocably break down. Mass die-off of species, specifically humans, from a whole host of assaults (famine, drought, disease, pandemics, wars, etc.).

If every Fox viewer saw it, they might be convinced, but it wouldn't matter; it's too late.

What's happening politically now is that the world leaders are arranging for the time when chaos will be the order of the day. The loss of civil liberties, setting up for martial law, endless wars, etc. I think they're giving the 'haves' one last bite at the apple, to amass as much wealth as they can, to move their families to high ground for the coming bad times. The US is positioning itself much like the Roman Empire did, and will take what it wants through military might - Not for we ordinary mortals, mind you, but for the survival of the elites.

I think it's obvious that the decision was made some time ago, like several decades ago, that the US wasn't going to respond and try to avert the catastrophe. Too many people to get on board, too much work, and altruistic work at that. It was a cynical and corrupt decision, with greed controlling it, with the likes of Jim Baker and the Bushes making fortunes by the decision (in oil). War industries were another venue for amassing great wealth, and that's the path that Cheney took.

In the late 1990s, when the bubbles were taking shape, I estimated that those who didn't have a net worth of, at least, $250,000 wouldn't stand a chance, but I'm revising that upwards to $5 million. That's just bare bones, to keep from dying from an inability to purchase food and water, and keep a roof over your head that you don't have to trade watch duty with family and friends to keep marauders out.

Bleak? You bet. But we have to start talking about it and demanding politicians address it.

Watch "After The Warming" with your families and friends. It's somewhere to begin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oFjy5FORbo&list=PL16E277DDB6723CC0

Corporate Welfare Bums! The Return of Ascher Platts

We are Star-dust: Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the Periodic Table

Lewis Black on Guns, Lately:

Fugelsang Takes On "Creationism"

Trouble with parable and metaphor:

Advertizing: Pernicious but SOME of It Is...

JUST TOO FUUKIN FUNNY!