Password
May 22, 2008We played the Password home game from 1963 with friends the other night.
In the cartoon on the box, George is definitely drunk.
I don’t think you can do that anymore.
Put it on the box, I mean.
2 down, 48 to go — with an ugly chaser
May 17, 2008OK, you’ve heard that the California Supremes have ruled that you can’t ban gay marriage under the CA state constitution, making California the second state to have real, no second-tier “civil union” marriage for gay people. And the Governator, no big supporter of gay marriage, has said he won’t be opposing the ruling, but fully backing it as the law of the land. So good for California, and good for Arnold.
Of course, the down side is that this Ruling May Revive Gay Marriage as Issue in a presidential campaign already destined to be full of bigotry and half spoken fears and resentments; one where ‘Publican operatives will go out spreading vicious racial hatred that faux-maverick McCain can publicly condemn while simultaneously benefiting from it. It’s gonna be ugly no matter what; and the amplification of the gay marriage issue is only going to turn the hatred knob up to 11.
I’m still in favor of the ruling. But I am dreading where the fall campaign is likely to go.
Buridan’s ass’ mom
May 16, 2008Background: We’re often on Oz about not drinking enough. He doesn’t like a big variety of drinks, and now that it’s getting warmer again, we have to work a bit against his getting dehydrated (or as he says, in that joke by an 8-year-old way, “de-hyphenated”).
So: Recently, I was having a little moment with Oz where I was telling him about Buridan’s ass (because, you know, he’s a kid, and sometimes just can’t decide, and as his dad, I’m supposed to use the wisdom of the ages to help him flourish, or whatever). Turns out, he knew about it from somewhere (maybe me, I’m old and forgetful now), in the version where the ass is between water on the one side and food on the other. So he says, “Too bad the donkey’s mom wasn’t there!” I asked why that was, and he said “because she would tell him: drink, drink, drink!”
The moral of Buridan’s ass then is apparently not “sometimes you just have to pick, even if there’s no good reason to prefer one over the other”, but “always bring your mom, because she’ll know what to do”.
(Yeah, it’s been forever. Tough end-of-Spring period. But the end is here.)
Yo
March 30, 2008I was at a social gathering last night where it seems I was they only one who’d caught a whiff of the “Is ‘yo’ the the gender-neutral pronoun?” talk that’s swirling around in popular linguistics, so I point to the issue at Language Log here: Yo. (Oh, come on; it was a room of literate and geeky people — somebody else might have heard about it.)
As I’ve noted before (in the “Ron’s Recently Viewed and Commented News and Links” list to the right), I think we already have a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun in American English: it’s “they”. We always use it in actual speech when we don’t know the gender of the person already: “Somebody drove my car, and they left the mirrors all screwed up.”
Too old to rock ‘n roll, too young to die
March 30, 2008I’ve been hearing a bit lately from some old band-mates from the mid-late 20th century, which has been pretty cool. In honor of that, I share this video, which captures some small sliver of the joy of playing in a band.
You know the old chestnut: What do you call a somebody who hangs out with musicians? A drummer.
NPR or The Onion?
March 22, 2008I subscribe to podcasts and listen in the car or in bed at night. Two that I get regularly are “The Onion Radio News” (from the awesome people at The Onion) and “NPR: Story of the Day”. What’s scary is that there are way too many times when I can’t tell from the title which is which. Case in point: A recent story with the title “Alabama Beer Drinkers Fight for Stronger Brews”. Onion or NPR?
NPR.
There’s a party game in there somewhere.
That’s a good dog
March 20, 2008Totally awesome video of a big walking “dog” robot with some serious balance and recovery abilities; the Boston Dynamics “Big Dog”.
UPDATE: Here’s the Big Dog home page.
Apparitions of Jesus
March 13, 2008
Just for fun, my favorite apparition of Jesus story/image ever: Jesus image appears on dog anus.
Want more? How about Jesus appears in Romanian wardrobe, Woman feels blessed that image of Jesus appears in her tree, Jesus Appears in Dental X-Ray, Jesus Appears On CarWindscreen, Jesus appears in water stain on shower wall, Jesus appears in Samsung Flash memory chip, Jesus Appears On Pancake, Jesus appears in plant root, Jesus Appears on Kitchen Cabinet.
He’s everywhere.
Now with 200% as many sins!
March 11, 2008
More wackiness from the world’s biggest cult: A doubling in the number of deadly sins, from 7 to 14! (Fewer confessions and new sins)
Added to the old favorites of Pride, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Anger, Sloth, and Greed, we have the new collection for the 21st century: genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy, taking drugs.
Although the spokesperson for the Church noted that “he thought the most dangerous areas for committing new types of sins lay in the fields of bio-ethics and ecology”, he named abortion and paedophilia as “two of the greatest sins of our times” — although preistly paedophilia gets more of a pass, as “exaggerations by the mass media aimed at discrediting the Church”.
Governor John
March 11, 2008Shit. We get a guy who looks like a take-no-prisoners kick-ass Dem in as NY Governor, and he gets taken down by spending $5K a pop on prostitutes: Spitzer Is Linked to a Sex Ring as Client.
And he’s not even going to get the piggish guy sympathy, because his wife is, you know, pretty milfy.
I personally don’t care who he fucks. But how could you think that as the nationally recognizable Governor of NYS you could actually sneak around on trains and hotel rooms and not get caught? Makes Bill’s cigar-playtime in the Oval Office seem downright discreet by comparison.
And then there’s the whole part where it’s illegal and all that. (Hey, HuffPo has some screenshots from the prostitution ring’s web site.)
What a freakin’ maroon.
