(Last Tuesday, at a rally in Cincinnati:) “You’ve got to get out there and turn out the vote… that’s what we call the grass roots. I’ve come to fertilize the grass roots.”
This is what we call an “unfortunate metaphor.”
There are strange things on television.
The Hezbollah has a game show.
I suppose it would be appropriate to say something about postmodernism here, or about how media is starting to pervade and reshape even corners of the world that seem anti-modern by their nature, but this is really just surreal.
Things you learn…
One of my favorite Jack Chick tracts. (For those of you not familiar with these, they’re… shall we say… very Christian little pamphlets that evangelists hand out on street corners. This one in particular is about evolution, and why it’s obviously incorrect and against all religious law)
According to this tract, quantum chromodynamics is a lie, gluons do not exist, and strongly interacting particles are held together by the direct force of divine intervention. (Which is, apparently, somehow distinguishable from gluons. Maybe it has different scattering properties or something.)
That’s going to be a very busy personal divinity. There are a lot of baryons in this universe.
I think I’m going to have to start using the phrase “As busy as the Holy Ghost during baryogenesis.”
Barbie girl
Mattel has specifically but somewhat unfirmly denied that the much-discussed breakup of Ken and Barbie has anything to do with the new “Cali girl Barbie” that was recently introduced.
This took a whole different spin in my head when I saw a print ad for the latter in a local paper, and noticed that when printed on low-grade newsprint, a lower-case i looks an awful lot like an l.
Lunatics. All of them.
So Focus on the Family, a political group headquartered out of Colorado Springs, has issued a statement about the recent South Korean research on stem cells, describing it as “nothing short of cannibalism.” (news story)
(1) I am, once again, embarassed to be from the same state as these idiots.
(2) It’s a fscking blastocyst. The South Korean group has found a way to manufacture a large volume of cells from any donor starting from cells from that donor. It uses a denucleated egg cell from another donor as a component. I fail to see the moral difference between this and taking a skin scraping and culturing it in a petri dish.
(3) “Nothing short of cannibalism” sounds like an excellent motto.
Footnote: I suppose this is a good place to quote Dr. Keuntz from Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death:
This is war! The battle between the sexes! Anything short of cannibalism is just beating around the bush!
I just received spam with the subject line “Juicy, plump, chubby girls!”
Unfortunately, I deleted it before thinking to check whether they were offering porn or cannibalism.
Odd statement
From an article in today’s NY Times:
“I don’t cast my ballot based on learned behavior.”
I’ve been trying to come up with a rational explanation for this sentence, and so far this is the best I can do:
Mr. Eddings (the speaker) is part of a new breed of voter – literally. Thanks to the wonders of modern biotechnology, he has been designed since before birth to enter into a dramatic frenzy of hole-punching and button-pushing whenever shown his programmed party affiliation. These changes are revolutionizing the once-stuffy polling places of a generation ago; already voters are reporting the normal calm and poise of the booths as being replaced with a zoo-like atmosphere, punctuated by the hoots and howls of the major parties and accented by the spectacular plumage displays of the occasional Green Party member.
Party leaders are hopeful that these new technologies will help ensure high voter turnout in an age of increasing apathy. Reports of more extensive engineering — Democrats programmed to form protest marches and Republicans programmed to eat Democrats — have so far been fervently denied by both sides.
Other parties may soon enter the fray, as well. When asked about a rumored “Project Oompa-Loompa,” Ross Perot of the Reform Party answered “You can’t make hay and cut bait at the same time!” Analysts are still trying to determine whether this amounts to confirmation or denial.
Your quote of the day
From an article in the Guardian:
“Canada is subversively sending idiots into the global marketplace with American accents”
Forth, my faithful minions! Wahahahahaha!
(No, I’m not Canadian. I just like having hordes of minions.)
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 