Category: Snark

About the Killer Whale Death

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That’s a seal in its mouth

It is clearly a tragedy that a SeaWorld trainer was killed by an Orca.

This is a reminder that when you see someone working with a large predator, whether it is Sigfried and Roy and their tigers, or if it’s SeaWorld’s killer whales, these are still wild animals, and there is danger whenever you interact with a large predator.

The whale, Tilikum, after all, weighs over 6 tons.

One report (at link) has the whale grabbing the trainer, Dawn Brancheau, by pony tail, and the initial coroner’s report lists drowning as the primary cause of death.

That being said, all cetaceans are highly intelligent, social creatures, and it is possible that the death was as a result of a purely social interaction that it did not realize was harmful.

He could simply have been playing the game with a…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

Chum

I am a very bad person.

I Guess the Name Ig Nobel Prize Was Taken

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So instead, the award for the, ” the economist most responsible for causing the Global Financial Crisis, ” is called the “Dynamite Prize in Economics,” and the winner is Alan Greenspan, with Milton Friedman and Larry Summers getting 2nd and 3rd places in the competition:

Dynamite Prize Citations

Alan Greenspan (5,061 votes): As Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan both led the over expansion of money and credit that created the bubble that burst and aggressively promoted the view that financial markets are naturally efficient and in no need of regulation.

Milton Friedman* (3,349 votes): Friedman propagated the delusion, through his misunderstanding of the scientific method, that an economy can be accurately modeled using counterfactual propositions about its nature. This, together with his simplistic model of money, encouraged the development of fantasy-based theories of economics and finance that facilitated the Global Financial Collapse.

Larry Summers (3,023 votes): As US Secretary of the Treasury (formerly an economist at Harvard and the World Bank), Summers worked successfully for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Great Crash of 1929 had kept deposit banking separate from casino banking. He also helped Greenspan and Wall Street torpedo efforts to regulate derivatives.

Greenspan was a shoe-in.

*Full disclosure: While I never met the Milton Friedman, I have met his son, David, and have had a fair number of online discussions with him on our mutual hobby of history and living history.

Please Check My Math

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James Kwak in discussing Barack Obama’s putative deficit reduction panel, which is supposed to seat people from both sides of the aisle to address the deficit, asks the following question, “What if they put Mankiw and Krugman on this commission?”

Well, let us assume that both Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman mass 75 kg.

It’s fair to characterize them as the economic equivalents of anti-matter and matter, so:

  • e=mc2
  • M=75+75=150 kg
  • e=1.35×1019joules
  • According to the wiki, a megaton is 4.184×1015 joules
  • This gives 1.35×1019 joules/4.184×1015 joules/megaton = 3226.5 megatons of energy released.

I think that this places the idea of placing both of them on the same panel as “imprudent”.

Another Failure of Obama’s Antiterror Policy

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They have captured the Taliban’s military chief and 2nd in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi, Pakistan:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

(emphasis mine)

After 911, he was running around for about 6½ years under Bush. Obama got him after only a bit more than 1 year.

<tinfoil hat>I’m beginning to wonder if Bush and His Evil Minions™ made a political decision not to capture bin Laden because it kept people scared, and scared voters are Republican voters.</tinfoil hat>

Another Reason for the Islamic World to Hate Us

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We are trying to poison them.

You see, Vegemite is now Halal:

VEGEMITE has gone halal in a bid by food giant Kraft to make the national “treasure” available to Muslim Australians.

The label on Australia’s most famous spread has changed in recent months to include halal certification in a move some have described as “ridiculous” political correctness.

“Islamic communities are proud Australians and they want to be able to eat our national icon as well,” Kraft spokesman Simon Talbot said.

I think that this qualifies as chemical warfare.

Why I Hate the World

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It makes te Gay, or so it seems

Because the folks at Christwire have put out a blistering screed against the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls” titled, “How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals.” (Their server is slow, so you may have to wait)

It makes me hate the world.

Why does it make me hate the world?

Well, it’s because, highlight the rest for my answer……………

It’s satire, only it took me a couple of hours to confirm this.

It’s what bothers me about The Onion. The parody is spot on, and should be funny, only all to often, I cannot tell the difference between satire and the real world.

The problem is that the real world is just too perverse and weird to be parodied. Truth is indeed stranger than the fiction of satirists.

We live in Bizarro World.

H/t Atrios.

What Do Alan Grayson and Church Lady Have in Common

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Could it be ………… Satan?

Well, first, they are both very funny, and they both present an aggressive take on truth and hypocrisy.

Now we have a 3rd thing, they both think that Satan has something to the darkness at the core of our society:

The Prince of Darkness himself might be best-suited to write the foreword to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s forthcoming book, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) suggested Monday.

Grayson, during an appearance on MSNBC, blasted the former Republican vice president for having attacked President Barack Obama’s handling of defending the U.S. from terrorist attacks.

Cheney’s attacks, Grayson argued, were only a tactic to gin up sales for his memoir, which is expected to be released this year.

“I wonder who’s doing the introduction to his book?” Grayson said. “Maybe it’s Mephistopheles; maybe it’s Satan.“

Somehow I doubt that Satan would want to be associated with Dick Cheney, it would be bad for his image, but Grayson’s underlying point, that the Republicans used security as political theater, rather than making a good faith attempt to keep us safe, is valid.

One note to the morons who compare Grayson to people like Michelle Bachman: There is a difference.

Grayson uses hyperbole to make his point, and he knows it, while when Bachmann says, for example, that US Census data will be used for Kommie Koncentration Kamps™, she actually really believes it.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

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Richard is a friend of my son, and he was playing with Charlie today, and they wanted to play on the computer.

I was in the middle of doing my Sarah Palin book ad on my blog post, and they were asking why I was doing a screen shot of the image, and I explained how the ads paid me a few bucks, but they did weird stuff like this all the time.

Well, Charlie has been thoroughly indoctrinated by me and Uncle Keith (Olbermann), so he started ragging on Palin and the book, and Richard, who has similarly proper parenting joined in, and then he let fly the best review ever on Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue

The book will probably fall apart, just like the Captain Underpants ones do.

–Richard S. Age 9

While I have no knowledge of the quality of the printing and binding, this is almost certainly accurate about the book so many levels.

I think that I hurt myself laughing.

The kid has a future in stand-up comedy.

God Bless the Onion

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Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be:

…..

“Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: ‘one nation under God,'” said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. “Well, there’s a reason they put that right at the top.”

“Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation,” continued Mortensen, referring to the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. “The words on the page speak for themselves.”

…..

Brilliant.

Is Pop Musician Bryan Adams Being Investigated For His Involvement in a Child Prostitution Ring?

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Of course not. The only crime of Bryan Adams is that he makes crappy music. From a quick look at the Wiki, it appears that he does charity, though I think that his support of PETA is misguided, and so I have no hostility to him, though if one of his song’s comes on, I will change the station.

In perusing his Wiki page, I also discovered that he also does photography, and appears to be pretty good at this, having won some awards.

So, why do I post this? Because Lindsay Beyerstein, aka Majikthise, had a post on the Runners’ World photos of Sarah Palin that ended up in Newsweek, and in her initial post, she named listed the prographer of record as Bryan Adams, when the photographer was actually Brian Adams.

It’s not surprising that she got a complaint from Mr. Adams’ representatives, after all that’s their job, but their threats were over the top:

Maybe Palin didn’t realize that the photographer, Brian Adams, was depicting her this way. If so, he totally fucked her over. But I think she was on board with the concept. If Palin had assailed Runner’s World for making fun of her, I might now take her complaint about Newsweek seriously. She liked the Runner’s World spread, though. She thought it was appropriate. [NB: In an earlier version of this post, I misspelled Brian Adams’ name “Bryan Adams.” Today, I got an email from a firm called Web Sheriff telling me that they’d take legal action if I didn’t apologize to the rock star Bryan Adams and ACI for any injury I might have caused to his reputation. So, I sincerely apologize to Bryan Adams. I wouldn’t want my name associated with these ridiculous pictures either.]

(emphasis original)

Take legal action? What the f$#@ is wrong with these folks?

Needless to say, when folks like this (Web Sheriff, not Mr. Adams) engage in dick swinging like this, they deserve all the satire that they receive.

As to Mr. Adams, I would suggest that you retain someone with a clue to protect your reputation on line, though the best way to improve your reputation would be to stop making record albums.

BTW, it appears that Web Sheriff is a British firm, and Britain’s nutzo libel laws might very well be behind WS’s attitude.

God Bless the Onion

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Click for full size

Luis Miguel Salvador Aguila Dominguez, alias “Lou Dobbs,” is escorted by DHS agents to the airport to be sent back to Mexico.

Brilliant!

U.S. Deports Lou Dobbs

WANTAGE, NJ—Acting on anonymous tips from within the Hispanic-American community, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Wednesday deported Luis Miguel Salvador Aguila Dominguez, who for the last 48 years had been living illegally in the United States under the name Lou Dobbs.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents stormed the undocumented immigrant’s home in an evening raid just hours after the 64-year-old newscaster suddenly announced that he was resigning from CNN, and immediately placed him on an Aeromexico flight departing from Newark Liberty Airport.

Just go and read the whole thing.