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rekre8The Misty Mountains song from The Hobbit — This gets me every time, even in this European cover version from str8bvoices.
Notes After a Viewing of Red Dawn (2012) — The Mumpsimus is interesting. Long but worth the read if you're interested in either film criticism or politics.
'Bird Buggy' keeps noisy parrot quiet — and mobile — I for one welcome our new psittacine overlords. (Snurched from @jeremiahtolbert.)
Tennis star Novak buys up world's supply of donkey cheese at £400 a pound for new restaurant chain — Because… I got nothing. Except that I want to try it. (Via
danjiteCafe Ginza: 1941 — I continue to be fascinated by this image, both for haunting historical reasons (note the date, and probable fate of all the business owners and families on this street), and for the curious details, like the name of the doctor on the sign in the right edge of the frame. Even the movie posters on the wall of the cafe are interesting.
Apple Maps 'is life-threatening' to motorists lost in Australia heat — Hey, Apple. Your Maps app is the Newton of this generation. Give it up already. Enough with the corporate dick waving. Can we please have our damned Google Maps back on the iPhone?
On "Otherness" at Christmas — The Velveteen Rabbi writes about being Jewish at Christmas. Highly recommended reading for any Christian who somehow imagines they are part of an imperiled religion in modern America. I think there's something profoundly valuable in the de-centering experience of recognizing that one's own paradigm is not the only paradigm. But I recognize that it isn't always easy or comfortable. And if it isn't happening in a reciprocal way -- where I recognize that my way isn't the only way, but so does the other guy; specifically, so does the person with the privilege of being in the dominant / majority position -- it can feel alienating and painful. Everyone else is having a great time and I'm outside the party -- alienating and painful. That mainstream experience is "normal," and I feel perennially "other" -- alienating and painful.
Climate Change 101: Separate Fact from Fiction
Same-Sex Issue Pushes Justices Into Overdrive — I'm extremely dubious of the assumption that the narrow ideologues on the Court's Right are going to place any emphasis at all on public opinion. They've proven time and again they'll place the conservative political agenda above either the national interest or the Constitution. Scalia's tortured reversal of a lifetime of his own legal reasoning in order to avoid supporting the Obama administration on the ACA ruling was just the latest example.
Likely Increase in Births Has Some Lawmakers Revisiting Cuts — The latest Health and Human Services Commission projections being circulated among Texas lawmakers indicate that during the 2014-15 biennium, poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control. And it's costing the state a lot of money in post-natal healthcare. Gee? Ya think? Obviously it requires a grasp of that nasty liberally-biased reality to understand the causal link between availability of birth control and birth rates.
Laura Ingraham Has the World’s Worst Imagination — Conservative commentator outraged at liberal-progressives doing with Obama exactly what she did with Bush. More of that justly famed conservative intellectual consistency in action.
?otD: By the way, which one's Pink?
12/10/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo brain)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours stationary bike ride
Weight: 216.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block dissolving traditional marriages and plastering OBAMA bumper stickers on SUVs: 0
Currently reading: The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks