Monday Miscellaney

by folkbum

• Unsolicited plug: Guido G's Pizza, 13th and Morgan, 383-7776. Best. Pizza. Ever. Blows the chains out of the water.
  
  
• See why Ken Mobile is fast becoming one of the best new local bloggers.
  
  
• Speaking of Jessica McBride, one thing has confused me for some time about her WTMJ blog: When you click on this header----you get redirected to . . . Charlie Sykes's blog. There's probably something to that.
  
  
• Get your hands off me, you damn, dirty ape! (Or, more elliptically:

  McArthur Parker: Have you ever heard of "Planet of the Apes"?
  Troy McClure: The movie or the planet?
  McArthur Parker: The brand new multi-million dollar musical! And they want you to play . . . the human!
  Troy McClure: That's the part I was born to play, baby!)

  
  
• All snarkery aside, this seems to be a tremendous misapplication of justice:

  Julie Amero was a substitute teacher who found herself in a pickle while teaching a class of 12-year-old boys.
  
  The school computer in her classroom, which she had been told not to turn off under any circumstances, and which had no virus protection, spyware protection, and was running a 9-year-old operating system, started popping up porn ads. Not just one or two, but loads.
  
  When Julie tried to click them off by hitting the little X on the top corner, more popped up. And more.
  
  With the kids clamoring for a look, Julie tried to block the screen from them, but there were too many, so she ran out to the teachers' lounge and asked for help.

  And for being a victim of Windows 98, she could get 40 years in prison. There's plenty more to get you angry at the link. And it's not a joke.
  
  
• I know you've probably already seen the Conservapedia by now. If you haven't, you should take the time to get to know it before it is completely overrun with graffiti--it's hilarious enough now. (Here's some of the less funny parts.) But here's what gets me: On the main page, they claim to be at least in part a response to the "anti-conservative bias" on Wikipedia. Among their examples of Wikipedia's bias, they include things like "Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words" (particularly British spellings), and that biographical entries are often gossipy. Neither of those seem particularly biased against conservatives. I don't get it.
  
  
• Al Gore won an Oscar, unless things go wrong for him at the Supreme Court.
  
  
• Just a reminder: Atheists (if I may be so bold as to speak for all of us) are opposed to neither morality nor religion. The problem is forking over my tax dollars to pay for expressions of that religion. How is that hard to understand?
  
  
• Here's one for all you people who can't write three words in a row without slipping into some sort of "Democrats and al Qaeda share talking points" hoopdedoo.
  
  
• Stoller explains why the adulterating, drag-wearing, gay-rights-loving, pro-choice Rudy Giuliani might still win:

  Like a lot of us, [Josh Marshall] thinks that Republicans base their political judgment on issues, ie. gay rights, abortion, national defense, taxes, etc. He makes the same mistake that a lot of Democrats make, assuming that conservatives think the way that we do. They don't. They are authoritarians. Gay marriage, abortion, taxes, national security, none of it really matters to them. What they are looking for is an authoritarian to look like he's taking charge, and the way an authoritarian takes charge is to attack liberals and stomp on people who aren't like them. Giuliani did this in New York, so he's a rock star in Alabama.

Thursday Thumbs

Another in a series wherein I express my approval or disapproval concerning news of the week, happenings, or other trivia through a cute graphic, rather than with my usual long, hard-to-follow, and humorless rants and rambling.

Thumbs up to you, you person of the year, you.

Thumbs down to Microsoft. I remember the old "Windows 95=Mac 88." We can now say "Vista=Jaguar."

Thumbs down to anti-Muslim bigotry. Keith Ellison, by the way, was born in this country to Christian parents. Jeebus save Ellison from his fellow Congressmen.

Thumbs down to anti-Muslim bigotry. (It's a different link this time; it's about Obama.)

Thumbs up to this metaphor: I would also like a president willing to stand up for me in a bar fight.

Thumbs down to Judge Zeigler, who still has geography issues.

Thumbs up to Aaron, who is walking us through all seventy-bleeping-nine of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. Too bad for Aaron that the Decider done decided to ignore the ISG.

Thumbs down to the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. Would I like $100,000 a year? Yes. From a private company like Edison? No way.

Thumbs up to Midwest Airlines, and their cookies. And, sad to say, some of us need those extra two inches.

Thumbs down to people who don't understand the concept of satire. Not that I favor censorship in any form, however.

What are you thumbing up and down this week?