Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktWork has been miserable. A lot of not great information from our Rapid Notice Service provider has made adding SMS numbers to student outreach much, much more problematic than it has to be. So I’ve been busy.
However, a U.S. Navy Ship-Mounted Rail Gun is closer to reality. It’s about time we started flinging superheated aluminum at distant objects at supersonic speeds.
Here’s an original 1982 Featurette on The Making of Tron.
Michelle Obama indulges in $50,000 shopping spree. I’m pretty sure the cost of vacationing on Air Force One is a lot higher, and the tax payers foot the bill for that.
Warren Buffett says: "I'm too rich! And so, I demand the government take your money! Mine, of course, will remain in untouchable tax shelters."
Warren Buffett is not an oracle of public finance. It covers a lot of the stuff we touched on previously. But here it is again, if you just can’t get enough.
If you don’t use coupons, you’re leaving money on the table. Why not set some cash on fire, while you’re at it?
UPDATE! The Muppets respond to Fox accusing said Muppets of advancing an anti-oil, anti-capitalist agenda:
Filed under: Bits and Pieces |
All Things in Moderation 
They don’t even cite an anonymous source on the Michelle Obama shopping spree story.
I used to clip coupons but managing brands and expiration dates is a near full-time chore. Not comparison shopping for groceries is a luxury I afford myself.
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Nice, the Michelle number chosen just out the blue for a headline. and we think OUR news people are bad.
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yello:
You corked me!
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We do have to manage the expiration dates, tis true. But it’s like money in the bank. Love Target. 5% off with the Target Card, we routinely get an extra 5% coupon for filling prescriptions there (which are cheaper than Walgreens or CVS), then they offer a lot of coupons, and they are really good about taking coupons. And frequently we get coupons that give us $5 or $10 towards a future purchase. It’s $1000 a year of savings, just at Target. Of course, for sundry shopping, nothing just beats shopping at Aldis.
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and we think OUR news people are bad
The British tabloid press are in a class by themselves.
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Worth a link: The Ferris Bueller Honda ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VhkDdayA4iA
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We do low-hanging fruit like the Target discounts. I bought a complete set of wine glasses with our last one. I probably save more on Groupon than I ever will clipping store coupons.
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“and we think OUR news people are bad
The British tabloid press are in a class by themselves.”
I still love the phrase “Reverse Ferret”
“*The etymology of this phrase is interesting: it goes back to the nineteen-eighties, when Kelvin MacKenzie, a legendary tabloid figure, edited the Sun, the daily stablemate of the News of the World. On those evenings when he was about to publish a particularly incendiary front page—a top-tier celebrity caught in a sex and drugs binge, say—a delighted McKenzie would sometimes cackle to his staff, “Ferret down the trousers, ferret down the trousers.” The next day, if something went wrong and the story had to be retracted, or heavily modified, a stricken McKenzie would announce, “Reverse ferret, reverse ferret.””
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/07/murdoch-latest-rebekah-brooks-targeted-in-two-police-investigations.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_ferret
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Look forward to seeing the Honda ad. Alas, YouTube is now firmly blocked here. 😉
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Oh, take that back. I pointed my DNS to Google’s DNS server and I was able to get it to work. Funny.
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Important update to the piece, above. 😉
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I’m enjoying an awesome sunset after a warmer-than-seasonal-average day.
Try buying THAT through Groupon! 😉
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ARGH! I just checked my poll and I’ve got 5 votes for Newt, 5 votes for Paul, and 1 for Mitt. Can someone please break that tie? Or else I’m going to end up having to make a decision ….
Primary is tomorrow — I’m voting before work.
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Kevin…Good link on Buffett by Forbes.
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The 50,000 shopping spree story is utterly unsubstantiated and denied by both the White House and the shop. I expect a little better of the Telegraph (one of the broad sheets). They do, however, give you this:
BB
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Thanks for the Honda CR-V video, jnc! One of the greatest movies of all time. . . and the ad was brilliant!
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danke schoen, darling….
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Hey Mike, I just checked your poll and Gingrich has pulled ahead by one vote….so there ‘ya go.
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It’s a little slow tonight so I thought I’d practice my photo embedding. I was lurking at the Plumline earlier, after all the commentary, and noticed that yellojkt mentioned a website about cats with Hitler mustaches. I’d never heard of such a thing but now I understand why Pursy Lane’s new best friend is nicknamed Kitler, although she does have a real name.
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Goldens. . . there’s nothing like them! 🙂
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http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/are-we-ready-for-a-morality-pill/
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Mark:
Very interesting link. One interesting thing that Singer doesn’t broach is the implication that this has for the very notion of morality or ethics.
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Scott, I also replied to you about taxation and morality – but without pills.
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So what do the lawyers around here think about federal sentencing guidelines? I heard this story just now on NPR.
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Mark, from your link
Those who are at much greater risk of committing a crime might be offered the morality pill; if they refused, they might be required to wear a tracking device that would show where they had been at any given time, so that they would know that if they did commit a crime, they would be detected.
Yeah, that’ll cause nothing but trouble, right? There was a story over the weekend about a woman who was raped as a fourteen year old and became pregnant (1960’s). Not only was the child taken away from her but she was sterilized as she was thought to be incapable of quality motherhood. I think it was in SC and they’re trying to reach a settlement, not only with her but all the other women they did this to.
It’s best to leave study in the realm of academia and not let it bleed over into policy.
[Edit]Just call it a lobotomy pill (shades of Cuckoo’s Nest)
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Kevin
Thanks for the advice about Target…we should probably move my wife’s ‘scrips’ over there and if it’s 5% on every purchase it’s time to get a Target card. Is that right?
5% on every purchase or even a significant number of purchases is certainly worth obtaining.
MsJs
I’m enjoying an awesome sunset after a warmer-than-seasonal-average day.
Try buying THAT through Groupon!
If only we had a way to take care of your hubby and then get you up to Copper Harbor, MI. I’d love to share sunsets with you because you sound like a lady who knows what’s really important in life!
If I knew how to insert a pic into this post I could show you some great examples. You’ll just have to take my word for it…although Sue could provide corroboration
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Thanks for all your votes in my poll. Gingrich got at least one vote from my precinct.
I got to the polls at 7 am and was 11th in line, all of us in the “P-Z” last name line. Odd. I think turnout will be good though.
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RUK: 5% off everything but the super-discount scrips. And they offer lots of coupons. But if you ever shop at Target, it makes no sense not to have a Target card. Then, when we get 5% off shopping days, it’s 5% off of 5% plus coupons . . . with everything, we’ve done shopping trips where we save 40%, and have had the checkers whistle, impressed.
Not a fan of Krogers. 😉
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RE: a morality pill. It’s an interesting thought, but aren’t most immoral acts spurred on by our appetites, and if you suppressed our carnal appetites you’d cut down radically on what is generally considered immoral activity?
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Kevin:
If the morality pill is made in China, the middle East, India, Texas, Massachusetts or anywhere other than your own locale we could have problems.
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mcurtis:
If the morality pill is made in China, the middle East, India, Texas, Massachusetts or anywhere other than your own locale we could have problems.
Most especially Massachussetts.
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Kevin,
Thanks again. Actually I’m already a fan of Target, I like the wide aisles and their layout…Wal Mart just looks as cheesy as the merchandise they sell.
Krogers? I grew up in greater Cincinnati be-still yourself. Krogers was a Queen City claim to fame along with “Cincinnati Chili” which of course is actually a Greek creation.
Down here we have Publix as the main store in Florida…their slogan..”Where shopping is a pleasure”..I could add NOT. They tend to squeeze in tons of special displays in the aisles, to the point where cart traffic jams are not infrequent.
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Has anybody noticed the changes at WaPO? Including a new policy on moderation!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ask-the-post/post/about-our-changes-in-comment-threads-and-moderation/2012/01/30/gIQAjSPMdQ_blog.html
Be more aggressive in banning users who don’t regularly post quality comments as well as those with a high percentage of deleted comments.
• Delete all comments that direct name-calling and insults at other commenters.
• Add words to our list of terms that call for automatic deletion of a comment.
• Be more aggressive in our efforts to eliminate “trolling” — generally defined as posting comments that serve more to incite emotional responses and disrupt conversations.
It is the last bullet point that fascinates me. I admire them for making an attempt but isn’t their criterion very subjective? E.G. IMO some folks might be normal posters at PL but Trolls on Rubin’s blogs and vice versa. At least the “direct name calling” should be easy to enforce. Wow does this mean we won’t get to see john/banned called an effing moron anymore. What will poor john/banned do for entertainment?
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Scott, thanks for your reply on the Open Thread. You really have given me food for thought.
Of course, I favored consumption and transaction taxes anyway, but for simplicity, collectibility, and volume reasons. Posing consumption taxes as a rider on the personal choice to spend rather than the circumstance of income or ownership is, I tentatively think, a distinction with a difference. So thanks again.
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I’d be more than glad to call john/banned a fucking moron (we can swear here, right?) if he misses it, but my heart wouldn’t be in it because he isn’t. However, people who do call him one just might qualify. (I would put a smiley here but I don’t believe in them as a passive aggressive way to insult someone and pretend it’s a joke)
I do love that in the latest round of deck chair arranging they have managed to make the comments section even uglier and more non-intuitive without addressing any of the functional aspects. Perhaps someone can email comments@wapo.com and tell them about WordPress.
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As for Singer’s article, the more difficult decisions for humans cannot be addressed by tinkering with the capacity for empathy. We are often faced with even mundane decisions that will not be made clear by altering brain chemistry. Are we to be kind, and lie, or unkind, but truthful? I pose both kindness and truthfulness as moral and virtuous, obviously, for this example. When is risk aversion discretion, and when is it cowardice? Would I, a healthy 68, personally try to save a woman on the railroad track, given a few seconds to act? I had a 26″ vertical leap when I was 18; doubt I have a 12″ vertical now. Makes a difference in how I am now conditioned to react. I would still want to save that woman, but now I might hang back unless I were her only hope. Were I her only hope, I would like to think I would risk it, but she would have to weigh less than 150# now, in any case. So let’s say I would do it for a child if no younger, ostensibly quicker person were around. At least, I hope I would. Empathy pills would just make me feel worse about abandoning a 160# person to the train’s wheels.
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Mark:
Empathy pills would just make me feel worse about abandoning a 160# person to the train’s wheels.
Suppose it was your mother-in-law….
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Suppose it was your mother-in-law….
I love my mother-in-law. It’s my wife’s mother-in-law who drives me nuts.
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Scott
Suppose it was your mother-in-law
My mother in law is 95 and in the nursing home so that brings up another question about empathy. She has no quality of life left..people wiping her posterior everyday, lifted out of bed with a sling, bad eyesight, very little hearing left…
I guess that brings us to the question of our time…perhaps she would be better off left under the rails. I’m not for euthanasia because of all the grease on the slope, but I’m really questioning the way our society is handling aging, especially when combined with the “life saving” miracles that keep our organisms breathing long after any real “living” is taking place. To steal from John Mellancamp…
“Oh yeah life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”
I know you are getting a personal exposure to this situation as am I, Scott; and so I hope I’m not aggravating any open wounds. It’s just the more I go to the nursing home the more I question…….
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(I would put a smiley here but I don’t believe in them as a passive aggressive way to insult someone and pretend it’s a joke)
Anti-smiley bigotry may be socially condoned, but I think we should be better than that, even so.
🙂
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Unfortunately, this is the month my nice, but demented, mother in law will enter a nursing home. We had her here in Austin for 6 months, than my bro-in-law had her in PA for 6 mos, but she needs professional care. She has just about completed spending down, by paying her property taxes for 2011. She weighs 180#+ now and I could not pick her up off the floor by myself the last time she fell in our guest room, in June 2011. She could not get enough leg push to help me once I lifted her upper body off the floor. Rosanne grabbed her high and I grabbed her low and we lifted her to a sitting position on the bed, from which she could lie down again. It was that experience that made me think of the limitations I would have in making the choice to save the woman who fell on the tracks.
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Scott and RUK, we are probably not the only ones here who have experienced and are experiencing this, so I certainly did not mind that you used the standard m-i-l joke. I know what you are going through, too.
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Anti-smiley bigotry may be socially condoned, but I think we should be better than that, even so.
🙂
I only wish I could hit a Recommend button.
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Mark
She could not get enough leg push to help me once I lifted her upper body off the floor.
Wow does this bring back memories. Until about a year ago we were able to bring my mother in law home for Sunday visits and some good food after all that institutional stuff. The home gave us a belt you put around her waist to aid in lifting and moving. Like you I had great difficulty, and I’m a fairly avid weight lifter in the gym, but I was afraid of dislocating shoulders or other damage when I grabbed her.
The belt worked but with great difficulty, and again if I hadn’t been lifting weights I’m not sure what would have happened.
A funny incident..at least in retrospect. My 86 year old mother who can still get around was visiting from up North. We picked up my mother in law for a Sunday at home. All went well until it was time to load her back into the car. She had enough leg strength to help the first time or two we lifted her…by the time of her return her legs were shot. I opened the door to the car to help her into the front seat and her legs simply went limp and she quit on me. She would have gone straight to the concrete driveway but I was able to “muscle” her into the car seat before the accident.
Her retort…”STOP PUSHING ME AROUND!!!” My mother in the back seat starts laughing her arse off…perhaps now I know where my sometimes sick sense of humor comes from. Perhaps that is why I am a big fan of Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoons.
Of course MsJS has enough stories about caregiving to fill our blog…God bless her for the challenges she overcomes daily. It humbles me when I think of the piddly things I face in my life.
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RUK, it’s no solace to the living, but (at least for the first world), it’s very likely that this is a temporary problem, and quality of life will be able to be maintained indefinitely within 100 years. Unfortunately, that does our elderly relatives no good. At some point I should stipulate, in a living will, that I wish to be allowed to expire peacefully at whatever point in my life that I can not effectively watch television or listen to audiobooks. I expect I could endure a low quality of life, if I could still enjoy some mental stimulation, or at least entertainment, but when I cannot maintain myself or seek some more of mental stimulation, I suspect I wouldn’t see much point in hanging on.
But, if it happens, if I can remember, I’ll try to keep in mind all the good in my life, and take it as the final price I pay for what I received earlier on. Still, no one wants to be a burden (financial or emotional) on their children or grandchildren. My wife’s mother died suddenly, and her father fought cancer for a while, but managed to keep going pretty well until a month or so before he died (in fact, arrangements had been made to put him in hospice, but he died before it happened). I know it was hard, but still easier on everybody than had a painful death been drawn out for months or years.
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Kevin
Yeah I echo many of your thoughts…Remember the post from shrink back in the old days. He was friends with a family who were upset with their father. The father was in his early 90’s and barely able to hang on living at home. He was scheduled to go to a nursing home and a week before he went, he took at a handgun and ended things.
He left a warm heartfelt note to the kids reflecting his desire to do this before he no longer had the capacity to choose and be able to do it. His kids were angry and hurt.
I would have been very accepting. I pretty much go with any decision someone over 90 makes for themselves. They have earned that right IMO. In the nursing home I’ve witnessed at least two old ladies who had decided enough was enough. Their only recourse was to simply stop eating. For whatever reason, and I truly do not know the legal ramifications..the nursing home is not required to insert feeding tubes and so these two old ladies passed way. Fortunately for them, their age and weakened systems meant they only hung on for about a week.
Not an easy subject…and as MsJS suggested a couple of weeks ago our nation is not prepared to deal with this reality and the coming aging of the baby boomers..not financially, emotionally, or spiritually.
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For whatever reason, and I truly do not know the legal ramifications..the nursing home is not required to insert feeding tubes
Purely a guess on my part, ruk, but they probably had an advance directive that they weren’t to be given a G-tube and they also had DNR orders. Otherwise, the nursing home would have had to call 911 as a minimum. . .
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