Westboro Baptist Church
I say we lock them in a room with PETA, a chainsaw, and a bucket of KFC.
But then, I’ve always leaned towards practical solutions.
Update – perhaps there’s a place for PETA in this issue after all. It’s not often we witness a Dawg subjected to a beating like this. (Well, ok. It does happen pretty often.)
Tough Times For Cloud Dwellers
Vincent Laforet is a freelance photographer based in New York;
As some of you may know, I left my staff job at The New York Times a little over two years ago. At the time many people were shocked. One colleague actually called me “stupid.” I saw some of the writing on the wall back then – I saw all of these different forces converging down on the mainstream media and thought it was time for me to diversify. If found a way to continue to work with the newspaper and its staff that I love by going on contract with them, and that in turn allowed me to do some commercial work, to work with companies such as Apple and Canon in helping them develop new software and cool toys, and work on a number of other projects. What it allowed me to do was to DIVERSIFY – which I think is key to survival in this market.
At the time people thought I was reckless for leaving such a coveted staff job. The NYT job was a union job – with incredible benefits, a staff car, and company gear and it was often described as a “guaranteed job for life.” Unless you committed a felony, or broke an important ethical rule, “they can’t fire you,” I was repeatedly told.
A few weeks ago I was at The Times to judge the Sports Shooter Student Portfolio of the Year and when I came out there was a strange feel around the newsroom. That day was the day that The New York Times was having it’s first layoffs in the newspaper’s history, that’s right until then, there had never been a single layoff at The New York Times. People were being called in the editors’ offices and being told they were being let go – this after not enough people had opted to take a series of buyouts. This was fundamental change in what we were taught to believe in – what ever happened to that “job for life.” Well that dream, that comfortable “cloud” and the idea of a staff job, is becoming a distant memory these days – no one is immune – not even The NY Times.
(h/t to Sean McCormick)
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Thursday night wild-card show, here is Les Paul with guest Chet Atkins performing Birth of the Blues (3:42).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Game Two
Today is the day the Calgary Stampeders get to make the choice about their season. They can start to compete in the West or they can decide that their only real goal is to win Labour Day.
Which Burris will step up? Back-foot or 400 yards? Will any of the bobsled team step up and lead? The biggest question:
Calgary’s discipline has improved in 2008 but it’s still not at a satisfactory level. The Stamps have been flagged 61 times for 481 yards, which projects to 183 penalties (sixth in CFL) for 1,443 yards (seventh).
Stampeders Game Notes (PDF)
Now, the question on the Side of Angels is “who’s at receiver and when are the try-outs?” With a bye week coming up, the Riders have to just make it through the game. We’ll need our players for the home and home against Winnipeg. The win last week guaranteed that the Riders are going to make the play-offs in the West, it’s just a question of in what place.
6 The Saskatchewan Roughriders have started their season 6-0 for the first time since 1934. The team has never started a season 7-0 since their inception in 1910.
Riders Game Notes (PDF)
What the Riders must do: Pressure! Pressure! Pressure! I love it when TSN zooms in on Back-foot’s wild-looking deer eyes. Get him moving and your defence will get two picks.
What the Stampeders have to do: Stop Cates. Period, end of story. If they don’t they will lose.
Riders by a TD. You can not under-estimate the home-town fans, especially when the home team are the Riders and Mosaic Stadium is sold out.
Cheers,
lance
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
Jonathan Kay laments the grim future facing mainstream print media – “You’ll miss us when we’re gone”.
With media stocks plummeting, a noisy army of pundits is predicting the imminent extinction of print newspapers and magazines. […] Where, exactly, are these stories going to come from when The Gray Lady is laid to rest?
Jonathan, the title of this series is “Not Waiting For The Asteroid” –
The New York Times:
“In the culmination of a racially fraught Congressional campaign in Memphis, a black candidate is linking her liberal-leaning white primary opponent in Thursday’s contest, Representative Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan in a television advertisement. . . “
Read the whole thing — 662 words and “Democrat” is not one of them.
(More here).
If the New York Times truly hopes to survive, they might first of all stop with the suicide attempts.
Or not. Whatever.
CWB: It’s What They Pay Them The Big Bonuses For
A goverment monopoly staffed with federal bureaucrats isn’t the best way to market a commodity? How can that be?
A new study by one of the world’s top agronomics firms, Informa Economics, though, suggests the CWB isn’t so mighty after all. Commissioned by the Alberta government and released the same day as Mr. Hill’s announcement, it concluded the board succeeds no better than your average schmo when it comes to grain marketing. More damning, it calculates that growers would have gotten richer over the past several years from the open market, rather than being forced to sell to the board.
| Flashback – CWB “premium pricing” from the fall of ’07… |
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Related – The CWB opposes the proposed removal spending restrictions on third-party advertising during Canadian Wheat Board director elections. Oddly enough!
Salim Hamdan
“Watch for the motion picture version of his life: “Driving, Missed Daisy Cutter”.
Gorillas In The Missed
What would we do without experts?
A census by the Wildlife Conservation Society raised the estimate for gorillas in the Congo jungle from between 50,000 and 100,000 to around 200,000…
Grant-dependent gorilla counters are concerned!
While the news was well received, scientists gathered at the 22nd International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh warned against celebrating too soon.
Indeed – at the current rate of non-extinction, the big apes may soon be competing with the undwindling polar bear population for habitat.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Wednesday night comedy show, here is the How’s the Environment? sketch from Yes Minister (3:01).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Now – Fire. Them. All.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission took only 900 days to grant their approval of a magazine publisher’s choice of news content;
“Look at his rationale for acquitting me: because the Western Standard met Gundara’s home-made tests of reasonableness. We published the cartoons in “context”; we published letters that “criticized” them; and my favourite, the cartoons weren’t “simply stuck in the middle” of the magazine. Gundara must have thought for ten whole minutes to come up with that list of journalistic do’s and don’t’s. And – phew! – he likes me. He really likes me!
Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.”
(Editor’s Note: The above image is reproduced here for the sole purpose of offending. No editorial value or news worthiness is intended. No letters of criticism will be published. Thank you.)
Continue reading…
Y2Kyoto: The B-S One
Big Al prepares for the ocean’s rise;
The boat is a custom-built Fantasy Yacht built specifically for Gore by Bill Austin of Sparta, Tennessee.
According to Austin, the engines are bio-diesel fueled and Gore can expect to use about two gallons an hour to cruise Center Hill Lake. With a 500 gallon capacity Austin says Gore won’t need a refill for “two or three years” though he admits having “no clue” about where Gore could get bio-diesel at the lake. The Hurricane Marina dock doesn’t sell it.
Complete with Jet Ski.
And The Racist Is… Then Again, Maybe Not
Spanking John Ibbotson at the Globe And Mail;
The Bull from Canada writes: Do you see the irony of these statements, back to back?:
“Sadly, Mr. Obama’s race could also be a factor among these voters.”
“The turnout of both young and African-American voters is traditionally less than their actual percentage of the population. But both groups are powerfully committed to Mr. Obama.”
hmmmmm.
Why didn’t he say, “Sadly, African-Americans are powerfully committed to Mr. Obama.”
Why not, indeed?
Oh My, Omar
Brian Lilley lays out the problems for the hand-wringers who want to bring their child terrorist “home”. First among them – this ain’t home.
Truth be told, Omar Khadr is a Canadian of convenience. Although born in Toronto in 1986, Omar’s parents, both immigrants to Canada, had decided to raise their family elsewhere to escape a culture they viewed as having a corrupting influence on their young and growing family. The family was living overseas in locales such as Bahrain and Pakistan, returning for brief spells in 1985 and 1986 only for Omar and his older brother Ibrahim to be born or receive medical care from Canada’s state medical system. Omar left Canada for Pakistan’s Peshawar district when he was only months old, spending the rest of his life going between Pakistan, Afghanistan and when the family needed medical treatment, Canada.
Read the rest.
You know my position on this – “[Khadr’s] father might have been dispatched by the Pakistanis, which would have spared everyone a great deal of trouble, were it not for the meddling of Chretien. We made that mistake once – we need not make it again.”
Related – Bin Laden’s driver convicted in Guantanamo trial.
Y2Kyoto: The Great Biofuels Con
[A] 2006 report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) had already suggested that for the EU to meet its 10 per cent target from home-grown biofuels would require a staggering 70 per cent of arable land to be taken out of food production… Yet, in attempting to show that enough acreage would be available to meet the new biofuels target, the officials indulged in “Enron accounting”, using the same areas of land three times.
(h/t to reader Harry B.)
Skinniness
It’s the new black!
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night vintage music show, here is Gordon MacRae performing Oh What A Beautiful Morning from the musical Oklahoma! (1955, 1:43).
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Now, how much would you pay for that? But wait, there’s more! Yes, here for its bonus comedic value is the world premier of SDA LNR’s very own DJ Vitruvius singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning (1:07, MP3, a few years ago).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
“I’m Paris Hilton”
“And I approve this message”.
Heh. “Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.”
Y2Kyoto: Will Someone Please Shut Ralph Up
Before we all end up freezing to death?
“There will always be skeptics, like President George W. Bush, who simply deny every problem, but the hard evidence is compelling.”
And here’s some of that hard evidence, courtesy of the deniers at the Canadian Wheat Board (June 12)
A cool spring, with temperatures three to five degrees below normal, has also caused concern over crop development, elevating the importance of receiving normal or above-normal heat this summer. Wheat, durum and barley crops are currently one to two weeks behind normal due to the cold weather. “A continuation of cool weather could lead to delayed development and increased risk of frost damage this fall,” Burnett said.
… and there’s no end in sight.
The Canadian Wheat Board issued an updated forecast Thursday that shows the dip in July temperatures has delayed crop development by two to three weeks over last season. […] “We need warmer weather in August to ensure crops can mature before the first fall frost,” said wheat board CEO Ian White.
Not even the hot air from Wascana is having much effect.
Here’s an idea. How about we begin demanding our provincial politicians represent Saskatchewan’s interests in this debate for a change? And I’m not talking about carbon sequestration or clean coal technology. Saskatchewan could use a few more frost free growing days each season. If they really believe that rising C02 results in “greenhouse warming”, then that’s to our net benefit. The elected representatives in this province need to sit down and ask themselves just who the Hell it is they think they’re working for?
From the comments – Global warming detours around BC fruit growers. I blame Gordon Campbell.
To Kill A Mockingbird – Updated for 2008
Uppity blacks lusting after white women because of their legendary phalluses.
A Harper Lee novel? Nope, just the way Barack Obama supporters view the world.
Where have you gone, Atticus Finch?