Kashi Rules the World of Granola Cereals
- The American economy is crumbling. Western countries are moving to protest the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. One of the closest presidential primaries is taking place. People are starving. People are being murdered. However, I just went to CNN to discover that they have billed two turkeys fighting on a Maine highway as Breaking news. Breaking News: Wild animals following their instincts. I would expect this from Fox News. But et tu CNN?
I love how this is the news pattern, and every now and then they'll do a piece on the dumbing down of the country. I wonder why. It seems like the Washington Post is the only legit American news source now.
- I'm a UNC fan. So the Final Four was a disappointment for me. However, I did enjoy watching UCLA, because Kevin Love is built like an 80s wrestler. You don't see that much in basketball these days.
Which one is Kevin Love, and which is Greg "The Hammer" Valentine? I can't tell. Wrestling needs to bring back nicknames like The Hammer. They must be at a point where they'll have to start making fun of themselves. I used to watch in college, but had to stop because it got ridiculous. There was a group of girls called Hot Lesbian Action. They would go to the ring and make out. They were for the demographic that doesn't have the Internet. I'll start watching again when they have wrestlers with names like The Dorian Troll or Monster McGee.
- As a kid, my go-to Halloween costumes were always He-Man or Dracula. But every year, at least one kid in my class would be dressed as a hobo. I never realized how fucked up that is. That must make the poor kids in the class feel horrible. What are you supposed to be? "I'm pretending to be poor, like Jason, who can't afford a costume. Look! We're wearing the same thing. Isn't that funny?!" Then Jason goes on to not graduate from high school, and statutate a girl at a neighbor's party that he wasn't invited to in the first place. All because of a costume.
Maybe it's the jargon that prevents the stigma. If we were up-front and said the costume was a poor or homeless person, instead of a hobo, then people would stop doing it. But hobos don't even sound real anymore. Who hops trains in 2008? Hobos are almost like pixies now, minus the magic.
- I have a new favorite world leader: Vladimir Putin.
Backstory - I wrote about West-To-London, an adventure my friends and I plan to embark upon, a year ago. Read it here before continuing. A few months after writing that blog, the planning hit a road block. The idea for West-To-London was inspired by an episode of Extreme Engineering, in which a bridge that spans the Berring Strait is being built. Jim and I didn't finish the episode, because his girlfriend wanted to watch a remodeling show on TLC. How is that on The Learning Channel? Shouldn't it be on Lifetime or Oxygen? Another question for another day. Once we changed the channel, we opened up Google Earth and started planning our route. All systems were go. Then the same episode came on a few months later. I watched it, thinking it would get me more excited for the voyage. Wrong. It killed the plan, because it revealed that the bridge was only theoretical. It was Extreme "Theoretical" Engineering. It was the worst news I'd heard in a while.
This is where Putin comes in. He is proposing a tunnel that spans the Berring Strait. Before this, he was my most-hated world leader (other than the REALLY bad ones). If this tunnel is built, I will forgive him for his cronyism, running his country like the mob, and setting the country back years. In fact, I might start naming things Vladimir. Other peoples' pets, kids, refrigerator, whatever. It's called Vladimir now.
- And now, it's time for links.
This is a great story about a survey of 109 historians on the legacy of the Bush presidency. Since they're famous historians, they know everything about every president. I figured they would place Bush somewhere in the bottom 5-10. But it appears that historians think he's even worse than the general public does. Only two out of 109 rate the presidency favorably. All of the others hate him like they're members of Code Pink. One historian even drops an F-bomb in his explanation.
“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”
Seriously, read it.
-And a great read on particle physics. It's not as nerdy as it sounds. It's about the soon to be discovered, Higgs Boson particle, which has been hypothesized as that which gives matter its mass. It's been dubbed the "God Particle." The only way the Higgs boson field can be observed is when the energy is astronomical. So, a particle accelerator has been built outside Geneva that will force particles to collide at 99.9999% the speed of light. This is essentially recreating the Big Bang. Somehow it's only in a British paper. And CNN is covering turkey fights.
-Awesome video of bioluminescent fish and shape shifting octopi. An octopus completely changes its color, shape and texture, to look like coral. It's incredible.
-A PBS documentary called Bush's War. It can be viewed online.
-An article about an overwhelming majority of doctors supporting single-payer universal health care. The main argument against it, which is really just propaganda from the insurance industry, is that quality of care will decline. I've written about this before. Quality of care will not and cannot go down by covering more people. It absolutely can't. It's a slap in the face of the medical community to suggest that. The other argument is that doctors' pay will drop. It probably would drop a little. But doctors don't get into their field for money. Some may, but I bet it's less than 5%. This survey backs that up.
-A Christopher Hitchens essay on Hillary Clinton lying, I'm sorry, "mis-speaking," about being under attack in Bosnia, after the war was over. I don't understand how this hasn't been a bigger story. Republicans aren't touching it yet, because if she gets the nomination, she will be branded a pathological liar right out of the gate. She won't be able to refute it. It's sad. If you haven't seen the video yet, look it up. If anyone is on the fence between her and Obama, this issue of integrity should settle the score.
I love how this is the news pattern, and every now and then they'll do a piece on the dumbing down of the country. I wonder why. It seems like the Washington Post is the only legit American news source now.
- I'm a UNC fan. So the Final Four was a disappointment for me. However, I did enjoy watching UCLA, because Kevin Love is built like an 80s wrestler. You don't see that much in basketball these days.
Which one is Kevin Love, and which is Greg "The Hammer" Valentine? I can't tell. Wrestling needs to bring back nicknames like The Hammer. They must be at a point where they'll have to start making fun of themselves. I used to watch in college, but had to stop because it got ridiculous. There was a group of girls called Hot Lesbian Action. They would go to the ring and make out. They were for the demographic that doesn't have the Internet. I'll start watching again when they have wrestlers with names like The Dorian Troll or Monster McGee.
- As a kid, my go-to Halloween costumes were always He-Man or Dracula. But every year, at least one kid in my class would be dressed as a hobo. I never realized how fucked up that is. That must make the poor kids in the class feel horrible. What are you supposed to be? "I'm pretending to be poor, like Jason, who can't afford a costume. Look! We're wearing the same thing. Isn't that funny?!" Then Jason goes on to not graduate from high school, and statutate a girl at a neighbor's party that he wasn't invited to in the first place. All because of a costume.
Maybe it's the jargon that prevents the stigma. If we were up-front and said the costume was a poor or homeless person, instead of a hobo, then people would stop doing it. But hobos don't even sound real anymore. Who hops trains in 2008? Hobos are almost like pixies now, minus the magic.
- I have a new favorite world leader: Vladimir Putin.
Backstory - I wrote about West-To-London, an adventure my friends and I plan to embark upon, a year ago. Read it here before continuing. A few months after writing that blog, the planning hit a road block. The idea for West-To-London was inspired by an episode of Extreme Engineering, in which a bridge that spans the Berring Strait is being built. Jim and I didn't finish the episode, because his girlfriend wanted to watch a remodeling show on TLC. How is that on The Learning Channel? Shouldn't it be on Lifetime or Oxygen? Another question for another day. Once we changed the channel, we opened up Google Earth and started planning our route. All systems were go. Then the same episode came on a few months later. I watched it, thinking it would get me more excited for the voyage. Wrong. It killed the plan, because it revealed that the bridge was only theoretical. It was Extreme "Theoretical" Engineering. It was the worst news I'd heard in a while.
This is where Putin comes in. He is proposing a tunnel that spans the Berring Strait. Before this, he was my most-hated world leader (other than the REALLY bad ones). If this tunnel is built, I will forgive him for his cronyism, running his country like the mob, and setting the country back years. In fact, I might start naming things Vladimir. Other peoples' pets, kids, refrigerator, whatever. It's called Vladimir now.
- And now, it's time for links.
This is a great story about a survey of 109 historians on the legacy of the Bush presidency. Since they're famous historians, they know everything about every president. I figured they would place Bush somewhere in the bottom 5-10. But it appears that historians think he's even worse than the general public does. Only two out of 109 rate the presidency favorably. All of the others hate him like they're members of Code Pink. One historian even drops an F-bomb in his explanation.
“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”
Seriously, read it.
-And a great read on particle physics. It's not as nerdy as it sounds. It's about the soon to be discovered, Higgs Boson particle, which has been hypothesized as that which gives matter its mass. It's been dubbed the "God Particle." The only way the Higgs boson field can be observed is when the energy is astronomical. So, a particle accelerator has been built outside Geneva that will force particles to collide at 99.9999% the speed of light. This is essentially recreating the Big Bang. Somehow it's only in a British paper. And CNN is covering turkey fights.
-Awesome video of bioluminescent fish and shape shifting octopi. An octopus completely changes its color, shape and texture, to look like coral. It's incredible.
-A PBS documentary called Bush's War. It can be viewed online.
-An article about an overwhelming majority of doctors supporting single-payer universal health care. The main argument against it, which is really just propaganda from the insurance industry, is that quality of care will decline. I've written about this before. Quality of care will not and cannot go down by covering more people. It absolutely can't. It's a slap in the face of the medical community to suggest that. The other argument is that doctors' pay will drop. It probably would drop a little. But doctors don't get into their field for money. Some may, but I bet it's less than 5%. This survey backs that up.
-A Christopher Hitchens essay on Hillary Clinton lying, I'm sorry, "mis-speaking," about being under attack in Bosnia, after the war was over. I don't understand how this hasn't been a bigger story. Republicans aren't touching it yet, because if she gets the nomination, she will be branded a pathological liar right out of the gate. She won't be able to refute it. It's sad. If you haven't seen the video yet, look it up. If anyone is on the fence between her and Obama, this issue of integrity should settle the score.
posted by ryanconnercomedy at 12:05 PM
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