Ron suggested another open thread, and his wish is, as always, my demand. Post whatever you like here, discuss what you want, give yourself a little hug. Self-link love is like skiing down a cool Alpine slope. Swoosh! Swoosh!
I’ll start by linking to one of my favorite websites: Shorpy. Shorpy is an amazing internet archive of historic U.S. photos, and if you click through they have really big photos!
That’s a photo from Michigan around 1890. Which is neat. My favorites are the ones where you can really see the faces, though, like this 1920s cooking class:
Click through to see the posts on Shorpy (where you can click through for the large images).
In a senate hearing today, the Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, said that it’s time to re-examine the army’s policy about women in combat positions. The bulk of questions were on different topics, but that did strike me as interesting.
I haven’t felt that sorry for a horse since I watched Neverending Story as a kid.
Anyhow, I finally read Dave Sim’s “High Society”… I can see why Sim get’s so much respect for that work. Holy crap, the man was a genius. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comic that so perfectly uses the black-and-white medium.
That, and I love Astoria… which is why it’s just mind-boggling to know where Sim goes with his work and his beliefs. I mean, I skimmed his tangent essays and got pretty well creeped out… and to think that the same guy wrote High Society surprised me. I mean, he writes this brilliant and grim hardass, and comes out as a complete misogynist? What???
Ron suggested another open thread, and his wish is, as always, my demand.
I’m going to put THIS in my bookmarks, for sure.
Those are neat pictures. They better put another 2 horses on that hitch at least. That’s first growth wood. Any one of those larger logs may weigh a ton, I’ll have to look up the density of wood and do the math. But I’ve cut a few large trees down in my time and I know that’s pretty heavy.
Forgive me, then, if I repost my last post in the old open thread:
You all may remember that Keith Olbermann (and others) castigated the Tea Party Movement for the apparent lack of blacks, Hispanics, etc. at their functions. Well, here’s some Dallas Tea Party movement folks not only answering him, but taking a close look at who’s asking the question.
I’d seriously consider buying a ticket to Dallas if he takes them up on their invitation.
Ok, I know my Spanish isn’t so hot, but am I wrong in saying that that the Spanish-speaking woman isn’t saying what the sub-title would imply?
Edit: Yeah, just checked with my spanish-speaking SO. She’s saying “What is Keith Oberman, stupid?” while the sup-title reads “Of course Hispanics are upset about the auto industry takeover”
Hi folks,
I just illustrated a children’s book called
Sky Whales. The author and I self published the first round of soft cover books and we are spreading the word. Please have a look at the link and let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Eva
Eva, I hope it’s unrelated to the made-me-weep-as-a-child animation Skywhales. Ack! :c
With very little photoshopping, that picture of the 1920s cooking class could become a picture showing the Stepford wives ready to take their REVENGE! The creepy smiles on some, the zombified looks of others…maybe it’s just the effect of posing for pictures before digital cameras (or even decent film) but I don’t think I’d want to eat what people who looked like that made…And I’m so glad to be living in the early 21st century not the early 20th.
Mayday – Totally unrelated! Ack is right!
Dianne – you can’t see much because of the aprons, but look at that fashionable dropped waist on the dress of the third standing woman from the left! And all their bobbed hair – so cheeky!
My new band: Mohammed Atta’s Harmonica Quartet.
I like how money is speech when it’s corporations
buyingsupporting politicians, and thus cannot be restricted, but money is not speech, nor is speech speech, when it’s providing support to terrorists… even, say, teaching them how to petition for recognition of violations of human rights before the UN so they don’t *have* to resort to violent means to get those violations acknowledged. Or, you know, teaching them to play harmonica.Well, it looks like there’s be a forth Seth MacFarlane show in the works. And it’s about, you guessed it, a FAMILY…with a TALKING PET!
Although this time, the focus is on a female character…
Boy, the NYTimes really knows how to set up the big straight right with 2 jabs. A rangefinder, followed by a short stiff one, and then comes the power punch and kapow!– the opponent hits the canvas.
Impressive performance indeed.
Elusis, I have an observation and a question.
The observation is that here in Illinois at the State level corporations have for years had the same right that the Supreme Court just recognized that corporations have at the Federal level. None of the things that people have raised the alarm about have come to pass. In fact, here in Illinois corporations are NOT flooding the airwaves with propaganda and electioneering. I speculate it’s because getting identified with a particular political issue is going to anger 1/2 of their potential customers, which is a higher risk than the reward they might get by getting some candidates elected. But the facts are the facts.
Now the question. I have an opinion on a political issue that I want to exercise my right to free speech on so as to try to convince my fellow citizens to vote a certain way. I of course can speak and blog on it, but I can’t afford to buy radio or television time to reach the biggest audience. However, if I band together with a number of like-minded people we could collectively afford that. So we get together and form a corporation to collect the money and contract with the TV and radio stations. Why should we not have the right to do that? Why should the right to do that be limited to media corporations such as CNN or Fox News when they run their editorials and support commentators such as Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann? Why are not my rights equal to those of the owners/operators of CNN and Fox?
Ron – I don’t understand why you’d have to form a for-profit corporation to do that.
He doesn’t. The ruling doesn’t say anything about for-profit; it just says corporate entities. That includes unions, co-ops, communes, right-wing fundamentalist enclaves…anybody who formalizes their corporate arrangement via the state.
Problems Arising From the Use Of Shopping Bags For Recycling:
Today, I took my trash to the dump.
On the way, I stopped and picked up flour and baking powder so I could make pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.
When I returned home, I realized that I had gotten to the dump and (as my truck was fully of shopping bags of recycling) thrown away or recycled my shopping.
Sigh.
Sailorman, I feel your pain. I hope you got to have your pancakes just the same.
Here’s a thought – keep using shopping bags for recycling until you don’t have any left and use cloth bags or distinct bags of your own choosing for shopping, so you never get garbage and groceries mixed up again. When you run out of shopping bags to put your recycling in get a couple sturdy recycling bins, making garbage/recycling and groceries even more distinct! It’s a bit of work to get into the habit of having bins/bags at the ready, but since you’re already in the habit of recycling I ken you’re up to the task!
Regards, Eva
I like getting shopping bags; we use them for everything from fire starting to hats to masks to dog poop cleanup to recycling. I could go resuable, certainly, but I’d probably end up buying bags anyway.
most of my stuff already goes in bins, but the newspapers HAVE to be recycled in paper shopping bags.
Robert – I thought there were entities (some numeric thing like 501(c)3 but not that, obviously, as they can’t lobby) one could form to do things like run issue/advocacy ads within the previous structure of campaign finance.
And I still don’t understand why one needs a corporate structure of any kind to pool your money and buy an ad, if that’s what you want to do.
Elusis – I dunno. Maybe. AFAIK everybody other than the press was subject to the restraints of McCain-Feingold.
As for “why a corporation” – credibility. I can raise a lot more money for Save The Manatees, Inc., with a PO box and a secretary of state’s certification letter and the whole bang, than I can for “me and some of my friends really like manatees, could ya send us a donation”.
Sailorman, ah, paper bags. Yes, of course. Very re-usable. Now I understand. And it’s true a lot of recycling depots require newspapers bundled in paper bags. My mistake. I thought you were writing about plastic shopping bags, which also have their uses, but not as many, unless you want to weave them into rugs, and they are not especially biodegradable.