Anyone who thinks global warming causes hurricanes should be required to explain in detail: the cause and effect mechanism they believe to be in operation; and what caused hurricanes before global warming. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
What Happened?
According to this review by Piers Morgan, Hillary has narrowed down the list of people and entities responsible for her 2016 election defeat to James Comey, Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and his supporters, Mitch McConnell, the mainstream media, the New York Times, Matt Lauer, Fox News, Jill Stein, men, women, white people, black people, Joe Biden, Anthony Weiner, and the Electoral College. Notably absent from the list: Hillary Clinton and the people she paid to win the election. Read more →
The Perfect Murder?
Realtor Who Vanished During Harvey Found Dead, Ex-Husband Arrested — Yahoo! News That probably seemed like a good plan at the time, murdering your former spouse under cover of a natural disaster. I bet that happens all the time. A woman is discovered drowned . . . who’s to know you actually drowned her in the bathtub ahead of time? I’d like to see ’em prove that in a court of law. That being said, I still think the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to push them off a cliff. Read more →
61% Say It’s Time for Hillary Clinton To Retire
61% Say It’s Time for Hillary Clinton To Retire — Rasmussen Reports I feel like this is something the whole country can agree on. Granted, 61 percent is not 100 percent but you have to take into account that 25 percent of Americans think the sun goes around the earth, nearly 30 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 cannot locate the Pacific Ocean on a map and half the residents of Detroit can’t read. Hillary Clinton has come out of seclusion just as we remember the 16th anniversary of 9/11, and as both Texas and Florida are underwater, and all she wants to talk about is Hillary Clinton. This woman is completely tone-deaf, always has been and apparently always will be . . . Read more →
Convincing
A Fake News Taxonomy: 7 Types of Mis- and Disinformation
First Draft makes an interesting effort to classify different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false), based on the type of content, the motivations of those who create the content and the ways that content is disseminated Here are the categories they came up with, in descending order of intent to deceive: Fabricated Content: New content that is 100% false Manipulated Content: Genuine information or imagery is manipulated Imposter Content: Impersonation of genuine sources False Context: Genuine content is shared with false contextual information Misleading Content: Misleading use of information to frame an issue/individual False Connection: Headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content Satire or Parody: No intention to cause harm but potential to fool We used to have the Five W’s: who, what, when, where and why. Now we have the Eight P’s:… Read more →
Management Tips From the Pros: Put the Best Employees on the Drive-Thru Window
If you manage a fast food restaurant and you’re reading this, I beseech you to put your best employees at the drive-thru window to mitigate problems that wouldn’t arise in a face-to-face transaction. For example, I drove through Del Taco today for lunch . . . after the obligatory “Hi, welcome to Del Taco, would you like to try our new Queso Something-or-other,” I said “No, thank you, I’d like a Spicy Grilled Chicken Burrito and a large Coke Zero.” “Would you like a churro or something sweet for dessert?” “No but thanks for asking.” “OK, your total is . . .” After several seconds of silence, I decided to pull forward, give her some time to work through the math, and get the total at the window. After I’d gone about 10 feet, I heard her say “Wait, you wanted a burrito?” The car behind me hadn’t moved up,… Read more →
De-sensitivity Training?
If we're going to have sensitivity training for the insensitive, will we also have de-sensitivity training for the overly triggered? — James Damore (@JamesADamore) September 6, 2017 Read more →
We’re Dreamers Too
There are lots of people who went to school, worked hard, provided for our families, raised our kids, tried to do the right things . . . no one lionizes us but we’re dreamers too . . . Read more →
Biggest CFB Upset Ever
Walter Becker, 1950-2017
It’s hard times befallen the Soul Survivors She thinks I’m crazy but I’m just growing old RIP Walter Becker Read more →
Don’t Stare At It Directly
A University Professor Suggested Harvey Was Karma for Texas Republicans
Then — he was fired. The tweet, since deleted, from Kenneth L. Storey, formerly of the University of Tampa, read: “I dont believe in instant karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas. Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesnt care about them.” In a follow-up, he said that “good people” in red states like Texas and Florida “need to do more to stop the evil their state pushes.” He continued: “I’m only blaming those who support the GOP there.” Let this hurricane be a lesson to the evil people of Texas: Vote Democrat! Embed from Getty Images If you’re a university professor, left-of-center opinions usually won’t get you fired, but exceptions may occur. Another professor, Kathy Dettwyler, was fired by the University of Delaware in June for writing in a now-deleted Facebook post that Otto Warmbier, who was taken into custody in North Korea, then fell into… Read more →
There’s No Perfect Place to Live
Orange County isn’t in a flood zone like Houston but it may be within range of a North Korean missile . . . Read more →
When You Lose the Mayor of Berkeley, You’ve Lost America
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest. “I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa. — San Francisco Chronicle Read more →
Fighting Fascism With Mob Violence
Here’s how different media outlets covered yesterday’s Berkeley rally . . . USA Today and the Sun-Sentinel, a Florida paper, play it straight up, telling us what happened and who was responsible: Black-clad anarchists stormed the rally, fighting against hate by kicking and punching people until police intervened. Even the Washington Post, the most left-wing, anti-Trump paper in America, which recently informed readers that there is no political violence on the left, got this one right. The Daily Mail uses the same photo as USA Today but reports only that violence broke out between the two sides. If they know any more about who was responsible, they’re not saying. Finally, NPR reports that scattered violence between left and right marred an otherwise peaceful protest. NPR notes that a radio host tried to protect a man he was afraid would be beaten to death by “a group of protestors.” If you… Read more →
Some Things You Never Get Used To
Our whole family has been seeing the same doctor for about 15 years. I had an appointment with her today and she was a nervous wreck. She told me she’s flying to Houston tonight with her son, who’s starting college at Rice University. I’ve already had a child move away for college so she asked, “How did you handle this? I feel like I have a rock on my chest.” “Well, it’s a challenge when you love someone so much and they leave. Maybe prescribe yourself some Xanax.” “What do you do at the end? How do the parents leave? Does everyone just hug and say goodbye?” “You probably have to follow your heart on that. My goal was not to cry in front of the boy and I did accomplish that. I hugged him, I said ‘I love you, I’m proud of you,’ he walked into the dorm and… Read more →
An Insignificant Number of Confused, Poorly Organized Losers
News networks have been running a two-week-long (with no end in sight) infomercial on white supremacists and white nationalists and neo-Nazis as though they represent a powerful force that has to be reckoned with, a vast army of domestic terrorists, which they don’t. The most important thing to know about white supremacists and neo-Nazis is that there are actually not very many of them. The leading white supremacist organization is the Ku Klux Klan. How many members do you think the KKK currently has? Take a guess. Keep in mind we live in a country of more than 320 million people. Estimates of current KKK membership run between 5,000 and 8,000 members. Is that less than you thought? As for neo-Nazis, the New York Times ran an article a few years ago on the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which they identified as the largest neo-Nazi group in the country. Take… Read more →
Pug Photos on Flickr
Things Have Changed
People are crazy, times are strange I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range I used to care, but — things have changed Read more →