From the category archives:
Talk about bending space and time. Here’s a series of photos of certain locations as they were in the past combined with photos the same location now. Yes, it’s a post of something simply because I think it’s cool 
I’ve swiped a couple pics, but link through to Unreality Magazine to see all of them.
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A post by Pat
Tired of the same old chocolates and flowers? How about a romantic getaway to Toronto for some bathroom sex?
Restaurant promotes sex in its bathrooms
This time, the invitation is explicit. On its website, [I'm not linking. Go find it yourself. --p] Mildred’s asks: “Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?
“Check out Mildred’s Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture.”
Actually, the picture is clouded by practicalities. Is the restaurant supplying condoms? What about the health risks of body fluids? And who’s cleaning up?
“We’ve always had little trysts in our bathrooms,” says chef/co-owner Donna Dooher, pointing to lingering weekday lunches as a popular time. “We’re taking it to the next level on Valentine’s weekend.”
The restaurant’s four bathrooms light up outside when occupied. Staff have learned to watch the light flicker twice when two customers enter the same bathroom, usually a few minutes apart.
Toronto Public Health says as long as there’s no sex in the kitchen and the restaurant keeps its washrooms clean and sanitized, it’s not fussed. “As far as bodily fluids, it’s pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there,” says Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program.
OK, that’s a real mood killer for me.
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A post by Pat
Don’t have a dispute with a religious person (shhh! Muslim) if you’re standing in a line in Britain. Shamso Miah punched another bank customer twice when they argued over who was next in line. Miah wound up in court but the judge, Tony Blair’s wife, decided to suspend his prison sentence.
“You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”
Miah went to the bank directly from a mosque.
An atheist group filed suit. I guess they would like to punch people once in awhile too.
Complaint after Cherie Booth spares religious man jail
Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man’s jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth – wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.
The National Secular Society claims her attitude was discriminatory and unjust.
Inner London Crown Court heard that Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, went into a bank in East Ham and became embroiled in a dispute with Mohammed Furcan about who was next in the queue.
Miah – who had just been to a mosque – punched Mr Furcan inside the bank, and again outside the building.
The National Secular Society has complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints, suggesting that Mrs Blair acted in an unjust and discriminatory way, and suggesting that she might have treated a non-religious person less leniently.
She might have treated people of other religions less leniently too. What do you think?
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A post by Pat
Skull Cave was The Phantom’s base
Unlike many fictional costumed heroes, the Phantom does not have supernatural powers of any kind, but relies on his strength, intellect and reputation of being an immortal ghost to defeat his opponents. He is protected at home in large part by the Bandar pygmies, or “Poison-People”, whose fearsome reputation is enough to keep the uninvited out of his jungle.
PC disclaimer:
The cartoon character The Phantom just popped into my head when I read the following article. PC conditioning immediately kicked in cautioning me not to connect Obama to The Phantom. Even though The Phantom is an heroic figure, he lived in a jungle. In Africa. That’s problematic nowadays. The PC police go ballistic over innocent references to things like fictional settings for cartoon characters or, well, just about anything that can be construed as a racial slur. Actually, it was the conditioned thought reflex that made me remember for a minute that Obama is black. I’ll borrow Chris Matthew’s excuse. It’s a good thing I had the thought because it shows how Obama has transcended race. Besides, I loved reading The Phantom in the Sunday comics when I was a kid.
Obama’s 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade revenue
A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama’s 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.
“The White House told Sen. John Kerry’s office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won’t be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change
The House bill projects cap-and-trade revenues of $873 billion.
Whether it’s the $650 billion projected by the Senate bill or the $873 billion of the House bill, it appears highly unlikely, to put it charitably, that either measure will make it to Obama’s desk with the cap-and-trade program intact. That means Obama will be counting phantom revenue as part of his next federal budget proposal.
But then Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal.
Phantom revenue, phantom jobs, phantom promises, phantom greatness.
…anyone who sees the Phantom’s true face without his mask will certainly “die a terrible death”.
Maybe in a comic book world or Chicago. For America, unmasking this President and defeating his pygmies in Congress is the way to save ourselves and our country.
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A post by Pat
The entrepreneurial spirit is as universal as bad bosses. Wang Bang-yu [No comment], a 27-yr old computer engineer in Taiwan, quit his job because he couldn’t stand his boss who, he says, kept stepping on him. To release his emotions he decided to stomp on his boss, so to speak. Wang Bang-yu drew the outline of a doll on the bottom of his socks and inscribed the outline with “my ex-boss” then went on a therapeutic stomping spree. It worked. He felt much better.
Feeling better, but being unemployed, Wang Bang-yu thought there might be some money in these voodoo socks so he’s marketing them. In addition to the original “my ex-boss” palliative inscription, voodoo socks are available to stomp out anger against “my ex-boyfriend”, “my ex-girlfriend” and, most ingeniously, names of politicians. I think that last one may have big potential for a US market.
Angry at your boss? Try Taiwanese voodoo socks
Wang Bang-yu, 27, from the southern city of Tainan, told cable TV channel TVBS on Wednesday that he resigned from a hi-tech company earlier this year because his boss ’stepped on me all the time.’
Two months after launching his business, Wang has sold 500 pairs of voodoo socks. He plans to expand the business by taking direct orders from customers.
Wang’s business is running so well, he no longer feels anger at his ex-boss. Rather, he’s grateful the falling-out helped launch his new career.
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A Post by Pat
This is amazing technology. Using components that cost around $350, Sixth Sense technology changes the way humans interact between the real world and the cyber world using hand gestures. Unlike the famous Minority Report display, images can be projected on any surface anywhere. Wearing a Sixth Sense device you can retrieve data about an object, use any flat surface to project a movie or play a video game, take text from a document and “pinch” it over into your computer, and much more. You can even take pictures by simply framing an area with thumb and index fingers. As the inventor, Pranav Mistry says, “The imagination is the only limit.”
Not this Christmas, but I wouldn’t doubt it will be coming soon.
“Sixth Sense Technology” Will Be Open Source
“Rather than waiting for that time to come, I want people to make their own system. Why not?,” Mistry says in an article on Rediff Business. “People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software…give them basic key software layers…they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything”.
Mistry gives us some background into how he developed his idea which is worth a listen. If you want to jump immediately to the razzle dazzle, start around the 5:20 mark.
Imagine.
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A post by Pat
The smart people are going to study and define hate then teach the kids how to be agents for social change. What could go wrong?
Political Correctness was an amusing loony left notion in the beginning, giving male names to hurricanes, spelling “woman” “womin”, quirky things like that. It got seriously irritating when we had to drop Christmas for The Winter Festival, but PC kept rolling along. It continued getting worse over the years while we all learned to self-censor our thoughts and actions to the point of getting 13 people killed at Fort Hood. Sane people think it’s finally time to pull back from PC. The radicals think it’s time to kick it up a notch. They want to formally define hate within society and develop a comprehensive program to “educate” the young to be social change agents.
The idea for Hate Studies came out of Gonzaga University in 1997. The initial premise, as usual, sounds worthy.
Why do we hate? Academics seek answer in new field
What makes hate tick?” Mohr, director of Gonzaga’s Institute for Action Against Hate, wondered. “How can we stop it?”
Gonzaga founded the institute a decade ago after some black law students received threatening letters. It has since started a Journal of Hate Studies, hosted a conference and offered its first class on hatred last spring.
The hope is that other universities will follow suit, said Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee in New York, who has been involved in the effort. “We wanted to approach hate more intelligently,” he said.
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The media slant on the Fort Hood massacre is a weepy focus on the mental health of our miltary. All of them. So much stress, so many suicides, so few mental health workers. This Fort Hood tragedy, they suggest, points out the heartbreak of what our soldiers must endure. The implications for the upcoming (but who knows when) decision on more troops for Afghanistan is not lost. Are our soldiers turning into wackos because of this hideous war? That’s where the media is taking the story about the massacre at Fort Hood by a shooter named Hasan. We know they have an uncomfortable problem with the facts and have to point away from it.
Then along comes Joe. Senator Lieberman in what counts for a bold move in these times, states the obvious. Let’s ask about the shooter’s possible Islamist extremist motives in “the worst terrorist attack since 9/11″.
[click to continue…]
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A post by Pat
The last day of the series. Carol Costello examines the question of fairness. That Fairness Doctrine thing is long gone. Not even Obama wants that. Noooo. Localism, well that’s something else.
Randi Rhodes demonstrates the liberal talk talent to speak out of both sides of your mouth without using your brain. She’s in the D.C. market but for cryin’ out loud, the conservative shows rule the airwaves even there. Randi insists that for the sake of diversity, there should be less conservative radio in liberal localities. That’s localism. On the other hand, she’d love to get a shot at conservative audiences. That’s fairness.
Camille Paglia uses her brain and nuked the BS in one sentence.
I find the motivation for this, all this talk about the local show, is actually covert, actually a way to ambush rightwing radio which is indeed raising up as a powerful force in response to the shutdown of conservative thought in the major media.
Carol Costello to her credit remained consistent that talk radio is just a business.
The CNN series may be over, but the air war isn’t. This administration goes after its critics and has no tolerance for opposition. Stay tuned.
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How much power does talk radio have? No psychiatrist today to help us on that. For some inexplicable reason those insecure, bully-loving listeners don’t necessarily do what the talk show hosts tell them to do. Go figure. The imagery and subliminal messages that talk radio is populated by weird loud people with extreme views continued.
Camille Paglia sees the opposition party quality of conservative radio these days as a sort of a shadow government and not a problem in a democracy. If you ask me, it’s what democracy is all about.
Michael Harris of Talk Radio Magazine attributes Al Franken’s successful bid for the Senate to his stint as a talk radio host. Yeah, that and some fortuitous discoveries of previously uncounted ballots.
So Obama got elected in spite of talk radio, but will the country be safe from the harm of talk radio forever….time will tell.
I’m getting a sense that Carol Costello thinks we listeners are some kind of dupes being lured in by talk radio con artists. As she pointed out yesterday as though letting us in on a secret, it’s entertainment and about making money. Maybe like a circus, eh Carol? A sucker born every minute? It’s so much fun seeing something so familiar to you analyzed by someone who is clueless.
I’m a news/politics junkie and I love radio. Forty years ago I was listening to shortwave broadcasts from all over the world. My original SW was a hand-me-down. It was gigantic and it had tubes. I sent in my reception reports and received QSL cards in return. Dang, I wish I still had them. I would send a letter to Radio Moscow and two months later get a notice that my letter would be read by Vladimir Posner (future friend of Phil Donahue) on Moscow Mailbag the following month. I never thought that would become a “well, back in my day” story.
Talk radio is like family to me. I’m sure the psychiatrist would make something else of that, but you know what I mean. I’m so grateful to Tammy for how much she’s done to bring like-minded people together. I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails, tweets, have blog discussions and even personally befriend very wonderful people through the Tammy connection. They are salt of the earth decent people who are as concerned as I am about the fate of the country we love. That kind of power is incomprehensible to Carol Costello.
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A post by Pat
Who listens to talk radio? To find out, Carol Costello went to bitter-clingy central PA, hopped a ride in a local’s pickup truck and listened to cowboy hatted local WHP host Bob Durgin (He rants and raves!). Then she asked a psychiatrist.
“Anger in the Air, What listeners don’t know about talk radio”. Since I’m an avid listener I wanted to find out what it is I don’t know about talk radio. I still don’t know, unless it’s that it’s all about anger and that listeners are looking to befriend a bully.
Today, Tammy spoke about what’s “normal” depends on your point of view. That’s why Fox News is biased in the eyes of liberals, but not CNN. From CNN’s point of view the secret behind talk radio’s success is the intoxicant of anger that appeals to conservative personality types. Yes, I’m angry. I’m not an angry person; I’m a person who is angry. Bullies scare me. Bullies like ACORN, SEIU, the White House and Congressional Democrats. That’s partly what’s making me angry.
Carol was delighted by Bob’s analysis of liberal talk radio—too compassionate. Compassion is a badge of honor for liberals and you can never be too compassionate. Randi Rhodes doesn’t think compassion is undermining the success of liberals on the air. It’s that they’re not on the air all that much. It’s obvious to Rhodes that liberal talk radio would be much more popular if only there was more of it. Brilliant.
The post report chitchat was revealing. Kiran Chetry noted that some of the listeners are angry at talk radio. Great point, says Carol. In fact, she says, 56% of listeners are independent. Ah!, but what does she mean by that? Do 56% of listeners disagree with talk radio? Should we ask Randi to figure it out?
CNN posted some reactions to this report.
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Tammy on Twitter
If your enemy is quick to anger, seek to irritate him.--Sun Tzu
Would You Like a Diploma With Your Happy Meal? – UK giving ‘Work Skills’ credit for training at McDonald’s
by Pat_S on March 12, 2010 · 2 comments
A post by Pat
Flipping the idea that a diploma was your ticket to a better job, the UK is giving kids GCSE-equivalent credit (roughly a U.S. High School course) for working at McDonald’s for two weeks. McDonald’s and other businesses will be awarding these certificates in “Work Skills” which will be recognized by one of Britain’s biggest exam boards.
‘GCSEs’ in work experience at McDonald’s
Well, you can’t flip burgers without physics being involved.
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