Went to the movies yesterday and found that Regal Cinema has joined the ranks of Chevron and Walgreens as companies willing to hit up customers for a charitable donation as part of their regular purchase. You’re part of an industry that burns up a billion dollars making pirate movies and Baywatch and special effects science fiction bullshit. Donate that money to whatever cause you’re passing the hat for, instead of hustling the customers for a donation over and above the price of a ticket and a 6-dollar soda and a 10-dollar sack of popcorn, and then tooting your own horn over your generosity and community involvement. Read more →
May 2017
See You In Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Doctors are right to give transgender kids puberty-blockers and hormones at younger ages. https://t.co/DcNgjUTXj7 pic.twitter.com/UFziAAZwQC — NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) April 9, 2017 I just wanted to let everyone know that Joseph Mengele is down here kicking himself because he didn’t think of this first. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
Denis Johnson, 1949-2017
Three rules to write by: Write naked. That means to write what you would never say. Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it. Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail. RIP Denis Johnson Read more →
Aside
I just don’t understand it . . . I just don’t understand it . . . I just don’t understand it . . . I must have got lost . . .
Big Losers
I saw this headline on an AP story today — Poor and disabled big losers in Trump budget. The story includes a photo of the budget (see below), so I think it’s safe to say that the AP writer didn’t read the entire thing before announcing who the “big losers” are. He’s just flogging his own agenda. (See also Harvard Study Says Media Are Very Biased Against Donald Trump) “Trump’s plan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 makes deep cuts in safety net programs . . .” the story says. What’s the difference between a “cut” and a “deep cut”? The latter sounds mean and scary. Why not just say something factual like “10 percent cut” or “50 percent cut” and let readers put their own characterization on it? “Safety net programs” is also a loaded expression. “Trump’s budget would cut the food stamp program by $191 billion over… Read more →
Harvard Study Says Media Are Very Biased Against Donald Trump
According to a Harvard University study, the mainstream media are very biased against Donald Trump. Here’s a chart from the study, showing that the tone of some news outlets is negative in as many as 98% of reports: I’ve noticed that even our local news station is about 90-10 negative on Trump coverage. We have to look at the way the media handled Trump before he was elected. How many newspapers in the entire country endorsed Trump for president? I don’t think the number is zero but it has to be very close to zero. Some newspapers — The Washington Post and New York Times come to mind — were virulently anti-Trump on the editorial page, which bled over into the news coverage. Every news network except Fox was anti-Trump, the only positive news being that he was most definitely not going to be elected. Well, actually it was that… Read more →
Anything Bothering You?
“Anything new?” the dental hygienist asks. “Anything bothering you?” “Oh my god yes,” I reply. “The media coverage of Trump, for one thing.” “I meant with your teeth,” she says. “Oh my teeth are fine.” Read more →
I’m a Winner!
I’ve been doing the daily challenges at CodeFights for quite a while and yesterday’s challenge is the first time I got first place! (CodeFights ranks solutions by fewest number of characters, with solution time as the tiebreaker.) Read more →
Voltaire and Me
According to LibraryThing, Voltaire’s library and my library have three books in common, even though Voltaire died almost 200 years before I was born. The three books are: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne I also have in my library one book — Candide — written by Voltaire. Read more →
Homophobic Slurs
Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf fined $10,000 for using homophobic slur against a ref in Game 4 — SBNation.com I thought he must have called the ref a faggot. That’s the one that usually gets you in trouble. Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 a few years ago for calling a ref a faggot, but $10,000 is the maximum allowable fine under the NHL’s CBA. But in watching the video, it looks like (there’s no audio) Getzlaf yells “Wake up” at the ref on the rink, then when he gets back to the Ducks bench, says “fucking cocksucker” to nobody in particular. I don’t see “cocksucker” as being “homophobic.” Cocksucking is a respected activity of long standing. Women do it, men do it . . . I’m not aware of anyone in hockey or other sports being fined for slurs like “cunt,” “pussy” or “motherfucker” that might be disrespectful to women and/or… Read more →
Why Are Black Americans Against School Choice?
Most or all of the people booing Betsy DeVos know little or nothing about her except that they’re expected to dislike her for reasons that they may know are related to her views on public schools and school choice. But why are black Americans against school choice? I don’t want to overgeneralize — my son went to public schools and got a good education — but it’s all on the kids and their families to make it happen. Again, not to overgeneralize, but most public schools in black neighborhoods suck big time . Without school choice, public schools don’t have the right incentives. People running public schools aren’t paid by customers who voluntarily send their kids to those schools and who could choose to send their kids to another school if they wanted to. Public schools are paid for by taxing citizens who may or may not have kids in… Read more →
Justice
Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him. — Thomas Aquinas (@AquinasQuotes) May 11, 2017 Read more →
The Blindness and the Wretchedness of Man
hen I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and, as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island, and should awake without knowing where he is, and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair. I see other persons around me in conditions of a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed than I am. They tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and lost beings, having looked around them, and seen… Read more →
The Myth of Fingerprints
Over the mountain Down in the valley Lives a former talk-show host Everybody knows his name He says, “There’s no doubt about it It was the myth of fingerprints I’ve seen them all and, man, They’re all the same” — Paul Simon, “All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints” Read more →