It’s the time of year when sales reps for various travel vendors bring treats and meals in, and the time of year when some people start to trot out their holiday decorations, and the time of year when people are selling crap for fundraisers. For example, right now we have one of the most annoying types of salespeople evarrrr in our break room. In order to pump up enthusiasm for his hotels’ breakfast-pizza-and-sales peptalk, he bellows “welcome to the break room! yeah!” and claps his hands enthusiastically EVERY TIME SOMEONE WALKS IN. Also, they’ve got a boom box playing bad…
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It means “a society without children.” Supposedly it means economic disaster. A former prime minister who is in charge of the governing party’s committee on population famously told women to stay at home and breed. Fightin’ words, dude. Your economy would be better served by more working-age adults in the workplace, not by sending half of them home to make babies and letting the other half stay out til all hours “working” (actually, drinking with their cow-orkers).
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A Southern Utah bank failed because they put too much faith in their neighbors’ ability to pay back loans. Turns out their neighbors had no intention of making good on their financial committments, because they expected either the world to end, or to move lock, stock, and barrel to Texas. The Bank of Ephraim had profited for many years from higher-interest loans to the sect, whose members live in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City astride the Utah-Arizona state line. But eventually the bank “got in too deep,” investing heavily in increasingly risky ventures with sect members who…
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I always knew my old school was just a little cooler than the other places I considered for my not-so-brilliant college career. They just bought 250,000 scifi “zines” from a long-time collector. As it happens, a good deal of my time at UO was spent reading science fiction… probably one reason why my academic career wasn’t so brilliant. Via BoingBoing
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Friday wasn’t such a great time. We went to the holiday party for David’s company, and it seemed to start off well – lots of people, nice wine to drink, and they didn’t have the creepy, smarmy DJ that they’ve had in years past. They started things off with a fun trivia contest that got everyone at our table laughing and chatting more than in previous years (the employees yak just fine, but the spice tend to sit there trying to make conversation). And then they served dinner, and then I got sick. Sort of. It was really weird –…
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New images of prisoner torture by US forces in Iraq have surfaced after the AP released images they purchased from an online photo-sharing service after Googling for them. The date-stamping shows they were taken much earlier than the notorious Abu Ghraib images, which date from months later. The site has since password-protected the pages, but the images are still apparently in Google’s image cache. The BoingBoing post is here; they are asking for help from “133t” readers in Googling more images, or finding the original cache. The photo-link leads to a Spanish newspaper site: the first caption reads “New images…
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I had noticed, in that vague not-noticing way, that there seemed to be a strip of green grass showing in the back yard, right along the drainage line when I glanced out the kitchen window this morning. It was ruler-straight, which I assumed was because it followed the line of drainage. Water, least resistance, and so on. About half an hour ago, after a half-day off spent blogging and so on in the Lair o’ Computers, I again looked out the kitchen window and noticed that there are tire tracks visible in the bare strip of lawn (in this area,…
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We’re a nation of violent lawless gun-crazy psychos, that’s why. And we’re the leaders of the Free World. The news story reads like a classic British police-procedural crime novel, except more violent than most (more in the tradition of P.D. James). An ordinary American ex-Marine with a shady past is pulled over in a routine traffic stop, and shoots the police officers, killing one point-blank as he plead for his life. A second officer was saved when a shot meant for him hit his radio instead. It happened in Leeds on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas, and a family…
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Tuesday night as I left work, it was raining, then it was sleeting, then it started snowing. I toddled off late to choir practice and found the usual suspects had only just arrived; my favorite two British choir ladies (they are sisters) were dressed in identical lavender sprigged jumpers (translation: flowered pullovers in a thermal knit). Yes, winter has officially arrived, as my ladies are very particular in matters of dress. Had it been snowing any harder, they wouldn’t have been there. They are darlings. The next morning when I went to work, the snow had thawed, then frozen solid…
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But when straight people feel the need to flaunt their lifestyle choice in front of God and everybody, I simply have to draw the line! Heterosexuality tends to lead to excessive breeding and higher rates of divorce, neither of which I think ought to be encouraged. Why can’t they just be happy comprising roughly 96% of the population, and leave the rest of us to live our simple lives, unencumbered by the burden of birth control?? Is that so wrong?? (That last line ought to be read in the voice of Harvey Fierstein.) Song: Judy Garland: “You’ll Never Walk Alone”…