Friday, June 30, 2006

What Does a Mechanical Frog Say?

Robot robot.

That is all.

Justified Usage

Via Atrios, via Prospect, via the Chron...everybody's doing it so why can't I?

Advocating putting people in the gas chamber for writing newspaper articles that make the government unhappy is reason enough to say "Melanie Morgan is a Nazi" and have the label stick. Not that anyone should be climbing all over themselves and pointing fingers and yelling "Hitlah!" at everyone who once had a nose browned with Bush bum, but you know, if the skin lampshade's looking nice in the living room, what more needs to be said?

Yes, yes, she was talking about what might happen after a conviction for treason, but that just means she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about it in the first place.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Workers of the World Unite

Fans of both butchered English and the idea of labour as soul-destroying misery may find amusement/distress in this list of vocations from the Ministry of Science and Education of the Ukraine.

Among the highlights:

Facing worker with thin slab
The seller from a tray (in the market)
Mechanic of bodies repair
Collector of top of footwear
Tighten shoes man
Younger medical sister of a caring of the patients
Painer
Turner - whirling man
Moulder of sausage products
Machinist of scraper (scraperist)
Incrustationer
Collector of a bottom of footwear
Rolling Meat maker
Meat and subproducts Cuter
Elector-erector of schemes
Defectoscoper on magnetic test
The inspector of the orders
Sewing man of leather fancy good products
Improvised of Steel maker of electroslag remelting
Rewinding man of a string
Machinist of the bulldozer (mountain robots)
Forcemeat maker
Crush man (chemical industry)
Spray of a stone (manufacture of art products)
Centrifuge man (Lemon, vine stone acids production)
Artist of tiny painting
Mechanic - collector of flying devices
Composer of trains
Beet cutting man

Aging Ears

Went to a Chinese store for some junk food at lunch, heard some yowling yet syrupy drivel on the radio and assumed it was another ordinary and embarrassing Chinese take on Western pop. Approached register, paid, and realized it was midway through Whitney Houston's Greatest Love bullshit.

My Widening Influence

Always nice when you get what you want. I finished a re-read of The Third Policeman this morning, and I'll have to get to At Swim-Two-Birds again soon.

What did I actually want? Another way to think about The Third Policeman. Rather than ask for that specifically I figured Thers would have something useful to say about Flann O'Brien anyway, and fucked if he didn't deliver. This reaffirms my faith in psychic powers or something.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Astrology?

Why so respectful?

As for the stat cited, how many really comprehensive polls have been done on astrology? Do people answering yea or nay actually pay attention to astrology in a serious way or do they just agree that a Scorpio is a trouble-maker but hot in bed? That is, I dunno what kind of depth people assenting to astrological interest will generally go into when answering a broad poll question.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

It's Only Part I

Jeff Goldstein in all his glory, without having to visit the site. Let there be cock.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Academic Freedom

Holy. Quite a wonderful speech.

The Urchin's Own: What I meant by being a Muslim fundamentalist

The Urchin's Own: What I meant by being a Muslim fundamentalist

Having a little debate about fundamentalism with a guy who appears to be nice and sincere. However, there are mythical elements to be dealt with, such as a completely consistent Qur'an and the idea that all muslims swallow everything whole and inerrant. Not the case, and a good thing too, at least for various science departments in universities throughout the Islamic world.

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

The Lazy Kind of Blog Post

Re-reading Fiskadoro. Yup, that's about it.

Monday, June 5, 2006

Bloggers are Broken

It is interesting to note that this blog entry has attracted 34 responses versus only 4 for your last 10 entries. Conclusion… your reputation and wisdom is respected in your field of expertise. Take this as a vote of confidence in striking new ground and setting different standards in the world of jounalism. Submit a paper for academia to dedate.

Alternate conclusion: it made boingboing and many commenters thought it was dumb enough to add a comment.

The title's a cliche and it goes downhill from there, confusing the selling of journalism with the journalism itself, and I suspect not even considering the work-a-day journalism as most people use it: opinion doesn't make a lot of difference or sense if someone wants to find out about the bank-robbery that happened in the mall, or whether or not the hotel tax passed, what the weather's likely to be and so on.

The five Ws and an H still have an enormous constituency, whether in print, on-line, or on TV. They also make money. If this audience is being eroded due to other options, that's the way it goes, and it's not a death-knell or even a surprise, but it shouldn't be taken as a given that the basic enterprise of journalism - attempting to deliver unvarnished facts - is unwanted or unwise, especially when you consider that opinion-based journalism - that fabulous Fox News everyone should seek to emulate - helped gull the US into an idiotic war.

I await an article entitled Boys are Broken in which tampering with the brains of males is advocated because girls are doing better on tests.