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Great NE Earthquake of August 23, 2011. It’s Virginia’s fault.
Seismograph picture via Steve Jurvetson
“Earthquake? No… we don’t get earthquakes like this in New Jersey. Maybe the guy mowing his lawn next door fell asleep at the wheel and rammed into my house. Or maybe a bear is attacking my garage.”
I was right the first time. (Although 5.9 is really unusual, even for Virginia’s Seismic Zone.) That’s how my brain work. It thinks of something reasonable and then it retracts that and replaces it with something complicated and ridiculous. I am glad though it wasn’t bears.
If there’s any aftershocks, I’ll be sure not to think that it’s the cubs that have returned to feast on my flesh.
Here’s how my brain works: it’s stupidity, followed by self hatred, and then further analysis.
– Louis C.K.
Webcomic Wednesday: Lollipop
I’m not bringing back WW on a regular basis, but I would feel bad about going three days without posting anything. I have a couple half-written posts that I’ll finish and edit when I’m not so sleep-deprived.
Today I finished up my continuing education for the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board. Now I have to pay the bastards $80 and renew my piece of paper that says I’m all dedicated to my job and shit. Four of my CE hours were insulin-related education.
In honor of my achievement, have a tasteless webcomic:
Marcus Bachmann eats a corn dog
So I don’t normally do one picture posts, but this is the very heterosexual Marcus Bachmann in Iowa circa August 2011 eating a local delicacy:
This is best thing I’ve seen since the Gay Barbarians telling him they need to be “disciplined” and Bachmann’s dance in this youtube video at 1:45.
Oh, here’s Michelle too:
GOP Republican 2011 Iowa Primary Debate Highlights
Image via flickr's DonkeyHotey. Pretend 'June' is 'August'
TPM compiles a video of some highlights of the August 11, 2011 Republican debate. It was more interesting than the first GOP primary debate for sure.
The Daily Beast declares Rick Perry as the winner. They also compiled their 7 favorite moments from the debate.
T-Paw blew it big time in this debate, says Salon’s Steve Kornacki, and didn’t do much except try to tear Bachmann a new one. And they all generally defensive about fiscal policy questioning, according to the NY Times.
BarackObama.com has put together “a helpful guide to a few of the more fascinating positions they’ve taken.” The charts pays close attention to what the candidates said–and what they didnt say. Will they backtrack? Will they double down? Will they hope we forget?
Herman Cain signed off closed off his portion of the debate (where he tried and failed to temper his earlier remarks about Muslims) with: “A poet once said, ‘Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line.” Daily Intel identifies the quote as disco singer Donna Summer, from her song The Power of One. She recorded it just over a decade ago as the theme song for Pokémon: The Movie 2000.
Colbert Wants You To Write In Rick Parry. With An A. (via Introspection)
“Knock knock?” “Who’s there?” “Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions.” “Unlimited union and corporate campaign contributions who?” “That’s the thing, I don’t think I should have to tell you.”
Link below for Colbert’s first SuperPAC video.
(I like WordPress’s recent adoption of the Tumblr reblog function.)
via Introspection
Round-up of columnist opinions on the S&P downgrade
There are 75,500 Google image results for "sad stockbroker."
Round up time:
Paul Krugman, of course, is highly critical of the move. He dedicated a post in his blog to a quote from Atrios:
Apparently we’re supposed to care about what some idiots at some corrupt organization think about anything.
Statistics whiz Nate Silver provides us with a comprehensive post with solid statistical evidence that S&P’s previous ratings are pretty worthless and says their “advice has more often than not led investors toward the losing side of bets.”
My favorite libertarian blogger, Andrew Sullivan, thinks the that downgrade makes sense.
A libertarian I like much less, Professor Richard A. Epstein, claims to have “4 Reasons S&P Got it Right,” but mostly rants about spending.
An anonymous author for the WSJ says, “The Obama Administration’s attempt to discredit S&P only makes the U.S. look worse” and it was the “Keynesian and statist revival of the last four years have brought the U.S. to this downgrade.”
Economics of Contempts says, “To say that S&P analysts aren’t the sharpest tools in the drawer is a massive understatement.”
Karl Smith of Modeled Behavior comments, “I think the value of S&P’s action is that it has given both sides ammo where they need it, which seems like it should strengthen our ability to make a deal. Ironically, perhaps the act of issuing this report will help make the conclusions of the report less true. I hope so anyway.”
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I hope so too.
I can understand S&P wanting to reclaim their integrity after their terrible track record, but is manufacturing a fear-induced international market crisis really worth that right now? I’m leaning towards no, so I’m still not fully understanding S&P’s motivation here. Especially when they own and maintain the S&P 500 index, which unsurprisingly dropped after their parent agency’s own downgrade.
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SlutWalk NYC is pissing me off with its DSK protesting
Slutwalk Toronto via Wikipedia.
I though the concept of Slutwalk was cool when I first heard about it. Taking back derogatory terms for sexual liberalization? Awesome! Sign me up for SlutWalk NYC for October 1. I also followed them on Tumblr to remind myself of the date and get updates of any changes.
But I was not happy to receive an invite to the Dominuque Strauss-Kahn Protest, which seemingly presumes his guilt in the sexual assault case and labels the accuser as “the victim.” Slutwalk’s characterization that DSK was treated lightly by the press this whole time is wrong. Their claim that DSK paid people off for character assassination of the victim is unfounded. They cited no evidence in that claim, presented no rebuttals to all the contradicting evidence, and are walking on a dangerous presumption of guilt that is against the spirit of our entire legal system.
Reuters’ Anya Schiffrin makes excellent points in her blog about other organizations presenting their visceral emotional reactions rather than talking about the facts:
By creating this fringe protest, SlutWalk NYC is undermining both its credibility and primary objectives. A single court case with dubious evidence is hardly a paradigm of “rape culture” worthy of a protest.
I hope SlutWalk’s home-based Toronto organization doesn’t associate itself with its New York City satellite organization’s poor choice in politics.
[Edit: I wrote a related post, On Feminism and Gender Egalitarianism, partially as a response to comments below. And another post commenting upon a race-issues blog which criticized a sign at Slutwalk NYC.]