© 2010 Stan Spire
Sitting at a coffeehouse.
Your options: Read the book God’s Debris by Scott Adams or mindlessly stare out the front window.
Pick the window.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Killer Combo
© 2010 Stan Spire
Today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's become another national holiday. Everyone has to join in, gather with others and watch overpaid steroidal simpletons chase after a vagina-shaped hunk of pigskin.
Next Sunday is Valentine's Day. A holiday to make sad single people feel even more dejected.
Next year Super Bowl Sunday should be combined with Valentine's Day. That should kill off both stupid holidays, especially after the sudden rise in domestic violence and divorces.
"My husband wouldn't take me out for dinner. He wanted to stay home and watch the game while I prepared and served snacks to him and his buddies."
"I tried to get romantic with my boyfriend during the half-time show but he told me to take a cold shower. He didn't want to distracted and miss any moment of the big game. That's why I hit him in the head with the lamp."
It's all a matter of priorities, ain't it? Following the crowd's actions instead of having an independent mind.
Today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's become another national holiday. Everyone has to join in, gather with others and watch overpaid steroidal simpletons chase after a vagina-shaped hunk of pigskin.
Next Sunday is Valentine's Day. A holiday to make sad single people feel even more dejected.
Next year Super Bowl Sunday should be combined with Valentine's Day. That should kill off both stupid holidays, especially after the sudden rise in domestic violence and divorces.
"My husband wouldn't take me out for dinner. He wanted to stay home and watch the game while I prepared and served snacks to him and his buddies."
"I tried to get romantic with my boyfriend during the half-time show but he told me to take a cold shower. He didn't want to distracted and miss any moment of the big game. That's why I hit him in the head with the lamp."
It's all a matter of priorities, ain't it? Following the crowd's actions instead of having an independent mind.
VY Energy Drink
© 2010 Stan Spire
Made in Vermont! VY Energy Drink! Right from the test wells during a spike in readings. Contains that miracle ingredient, Tritium. Glug a can and feel atomic power!
* * *
With all these experts on TeeVee who say tritium isn't that bad, I would like one of them to drink some of the test water from the Vermont Yankee nuke power plant and then see what happens in a few years.
Made in Vermont! VY Energy Drink! Right from the test wells during a spike in readings. Contains that miracle ingredient, Tritium. Glug a can and feel atomic power!
* * *
With all these experts on TeeVee who say tritium isn't that bad, I would like one of them to drink some of the test water from the Vermont Yankee nuke power plant and then see what happens in a few years.
Pulitzer Prizes Lost
© 2010 Stan Spire
Over at newsosaur.blogspot.com Alan Mutter writes:
"Endless newspaper layoffs have cost readers 'tens of thousands of years of community knowledge,' says media sage Ken Doctor in an important new book.
"As if the loss of community wisdom and lore were not bad enough, it is unclear where local news will come from in the future, warns Doctor in 'Newsonomics'...”
Really. So an old fart reporter is replaced by a young kid who works for cheap and all that local knowledge is completely gone, flushed right down the memory hole? What about local experts like reference librarians and historians? Even a podunk like Plattsburgh has a few books about the history of the area that could get a neophyte up to speed.
Centuries of community knowledge lost forever? How did Doctor calculate that one? Numbers and statistics can be tricky. Let's say a small company boasts that its staff has "over 50 years of knowledge." One old timer has worked there for 49 years and two kids have been there for a year each, part-time. It adds up to over 50 years of knowledge even though two-thirds of the staff are inexperienced.
Statements can be misleading. I'm an international traveler. Does that mean I've been on a commercial airline, that I've visited Europe? No, I've never left North America. I've been to Canada a few times by car, never by plane. Montreal is only 60 miles away. I don't think I'm much of a world traveler with that background.
So let me come up with my own stupid statement about journalistic loss.
If the market for journalists wasn't so competitive, I could've landed a job at a big newspaper and ended up writing an article that won a Pulitzer Prize. There has to be at least a million other people like me who could've won a Pulitzer in the same situation.
Due to the tight job market, there has been at least a million Pulitzers for journalism never awarded!
Over at newsosaur.blogspot.com Alan Mutter writes:
"Endless newspaper layoffs have cost readers 'tens of thousands of years of community knowledge,' says media sage Ken Doctor in an important new book.
"As if the loss of community wisdom and lore were not bad enough, it is unclear where local news will come from in the future, warns Doctor in 'Newsonomics'...”
Really. So an old fart reporter is replaced by a young kid who works for cheap and all that local knowledge is completely gone, flushed right down the memory hole? What about local experts like reference librarians and historians? Even a podunk like Plattsburgh has a few books about the history of the area that could get a neophyte up to speed.
Centuries of community knowledge lost forever? How did Doctor calculate that one? Numbers and statistics can be tricky. Let's say a small company boasts that its staff has "over 50 years of knowledge." One old timer has worked there for 49 years and two kids have been there for a year each, part-time. It adds up to over 50 years of knowledge even though two-thirds of the staff are inexperienced.
Statements can be misleading. I'm an international traveler. Does that mean I've been on a commercial airline, that I've visited Europe? No, I've never left North America. I've been to Canada a few times by car, never by plane. Montreal is only 60 miles away. I don't think I'm much of a world traveler with that background.
So let me come up with my own stupid statement about journalistic loss.
If the market for journalists wasn't so competitive, I could've landed a job at a big newspaper and ended up writing an article that won a Pulitzer Prize. There has to be at least a million other people like me who could've won a Pulitzer in the same situation.
Due to the tight job market, there has been at least a million Pulitzers for journalism never awarded!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Headline
© 2010 Stan Spire
Your choice: a Republican or a Democrat: the evil of two lessers. (The Democrats are less evil.)
Article in the (news)paper referring to that Democratic debacle in Massachusetts over the US Senate seat race. After Ted Kennedy died, the legendary liberal Dem icon, it would seem that a Democrat would easily win that seat. Wrong. The Dems got overconfident, didn't campaign hard enough, and lost, those jerks. Republicans don't get elected as much as Democrats lose the election.
The headline to the article:
"After Mass. defeat, Dems focus on jobs"
Sure -- they're focusing on their jobs, how to stay in office.
As for the average American, screw your job, if you still have one.
Your choice: a Republican or a Democrat: the evil of two lessers. (The Democrats are less evil.)
Article in the (news)paper referring to that Democratic debacle in Massachusetts over the US Senate seat race. After Ted Kennedy died, the legendary liberal Dem icon, it would seem that a Democrat would easily win that seat. Wrong. The Dems got overconfident, didn't campaign hard enough, and lost, those jerks. Republicans don't get elected as much as Democrats lose the election.
The headline to the article:
"After Mass. defeat, Dems focus on jobs"
Sure -- they're focusing on their jobs, how to stay in office.
As for the average American, screw your job, if you still have one.
Another True Fact
(C) 2010 Stan Spire
When I wrote my "Aren't Facts True?" post about the Vermont Yankee nuke power plant, I inferred the corporation that owns the facility, Entergy, was a bunch of liars.
At that time -- and I haven't seen it on lately -- Entergy was a running TeeVee ad with a PR bimbo going on how she wanted people to know about the "true facts" about Vermont Yankee. I'm always suspicious when someone has use "true" as an adjective for "fact."
The other day VY revealed that it made a "misstatement" regarding the existence of underground pipes circulating radioactive liquid. Originally it denied such pipes existed. But -- oops -- now they admit such pipes do exist.
In the past traces of tritium have shown up in water samples taken from groundwater outside the plant but Entergy said no underground pipes were causing the problem because such pipes didn't exist.
But Entergy wasn't lying -- it was only "misstating."
Vermont Guv Jim Doug-ass -- a Republican corporate shill -- looked upset and stunned on the TeeVee evening news regarding the underground pipe revelation. But despite the "misstatement," he still supports renewing the operating license of the aging nuke deathtrap.
Anyway, here's a fact for you, a true one.
At the EPA website it is stated:
"As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer. However, because it emits very low energy radiation and leaves the body relatively quickly, for a given amount of activity ingested, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. Since tritium is almost always found as water, it goes directly into soft tissues and organs. The associated dose to these tissues are generally uniform and dependent on the tissues' water content."
OK, tritium is less dangerous among cancer-causing agents, but is it still good for babies and other growing things?
Source: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/tritium.html#peopleshealth
When I wrote my "Aren't Facts True?" post about the Vermont Yankee nuke power plant, I inferred the corporation that owns the facility, Entergy, was a bunch of liars.
At that time -- and I haven't seen it on lately -- Entergy was a running TeeVee ad with a PR bimbo going on how she wanted people to know about the "true facts" about Vermont Yankee. I'm always suspicious when someone has use "true" as an adjective for "fact."
The other day VY revealed that it made a "misstatement" regarding the existence of underground pipes circulating radioactive liquid. Originally it denied such pipes existed. But -- oops -- now they admit such pipes do exist.
In the past traces of tritium have shown up in water samples taken from groundwater outside the plant but Entergy said no underground pipes were causing the problem because such pipes didn't exist.
But Entergy wasn't lying -- it was only "misstating."
Vermont Guv Jim Doug-ass -- a Republican corporate shill -- looked upset and stunned on the TeeVee evening news regarding the underground pipe revelation. But despite the "misstatement," he still supports renewing the operating license of the aging nuke deathtrap.
Anyway, here's a fact for you, a true one.
At the EPA website it is stated:
"As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer. However, because it emits very low energy radiation and leaves the body relatively quickly, for a given amount of activity ingested, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides. Since tritium is almost always found as water, it goes directly into soft tissues and organs. The associated dose to these tissues are generally uniform and dependent on the tissues' water content."
OK, tritium is less dangerous among cancer-causing agents, but is it still good for babies and other growing things?
Source: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/tritium.html#peopleshealth
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Aren't Facts True?
(C) 2010 Stan Spire
The TeeVee ad blares:
"Act now and receive a free gift."
Funny. I always thought gifts were free. I mean, if someone gives me a gift, I don't have to pay for it. If the giver tried to charge me a fee, I would kick their ass.
I'm always suspicious of the redundant adjective. If they tell you that a gift is free, then something else in the deal ain't.
Controversy on the other side of the lake in the Green Mountain State. Entergy, the corporation that now owns the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, has been running slick TeeVee ads. Vermont Yankee wants to yank the taxpayers by letting it keep operating the plant twenty years beyond its present license. Problems: part of a cooling tower collapsed back in 2007 and nuke waste keeps piling up with nowhere to permanently store it.
But don't let those details stop a VY spokesgal, a young professional cutie, to go on in TeeVee ads about how she wants people to know the truth, the facts, about her company. If if someone doesn't agree with her, she still wants them to know "the true facts."
If the old VY nukie gets a license extension, I have a question:
Three Mile Island or Chernobyl?
The TeeVee ad blares:
"Act now and receive a free gift."
Funny. I always thought gifts were free. I mean, if someone gives me a gift, I don't have to pay for it. If the giver tried to charge me a fee, I would kick their ass.
I'm always suspicious of the redundant adjective. If they tell you that a gift is free, then something else in the deal ain't.
Controversy on the other side of the lake in the Green Mountain State. Entergy, the corporation that now owns the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, has been running slick TeeVee ads. Vermont Yankee wants to yank the taxpayers by letting it keep operating the plant twenty years beyond its present license. Problems: part of a cooling tower collapsed back in 2007 and nuke waste keeps piling up with nowhere to permanently store it.
But don't let those details stop a VY spokesgal, a young professional cutie, to go on in TeeVee ads about how she wants people to know the truth, the facts, about her company. If if someone doesn't agree with her, she still wants them to know "the true facts."
If the old VY nukie gets a license extension, I have a question:
Three Mile Island or Chernobyl?
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