Tonight, as we get ready for tomorrow’s festivities, we listen to the dulcet tones of Midwestern boy Andy Williams as he performs an effortlessly stylish version of Frank Loesser’s romantic 1947 composition What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain. The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.
Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel Creme: Customer reviews
h/t GaryinWpg
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
The toxic left’s furbaby wing loses a big one;
A circus producer said Friday that an animal rights group has paid it $9.3 million to settle two federal court cases claiming elephant abuse.
Feld Entertainment, Inc., trumpeted the settlement with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) as a victory for its Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
“These defendants attempted to destroy our family-owned business with a hired plaintiff who made statements that the court did not believe,” said Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, in a statement.
“Animal activists have been attacking our family, our company, and our employees for decades because they oppose animals in circuses,” Feld said. “This settlement is a vindication not just for the company but also for the dedicated men and women who spend their lives working and caring for all the animals with Ringling Brothers in the face of such targeted, malicious rhetoric.”
Just In: Train Derailment At Casselton, ND
More: North Dakota Department of Emergency Services spokesperson Cecily Fong said it appears that a train carrying grain derailed and was hit by the train carrying oil at about 2:30 p.m. She said about a dozen train cars are on fire and that at least one of the trains is operated by BNSF Railway.
Global Test
Iran has installed 1,000 second generation (IR-2m) centrifuges in one of its nuclear enrichment sites, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) of Iran Ali-Akbar Salehi said Sunday. (h/t peterj)
Y2Kyoto: Caught In The Icy Grip Of Irony
Global Warming Science Boat May Be Trapped For Years In Non-Existent Ice
Update! Antarctic ship passengers to be evacuated by Chinese helicopter
The Tolerant Left
The panelists start laughing the moment the photo is on the screen, because obviously. Then the first response is Pia Glenn off-camera sing-songing “one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same” and the rest of the panel chuckles along. It’s funny because Romney is white and his grandson isn’t, which is obviously hilarious. Because as everyone knows, the races should not mix.
Video at the link.
Forward!
Why Volgograd?
With the Winter Olympics less than six weeks away, the security spotlight has been focused on host city Sochi, nestled uncomfortably close to Russia’s volatile North Caucasus republics and their ongoing Islamic insurgency.
But Andrei Soldatov, the editor of agentura.ru, a Russian site dedicated to terrorism and intelligence, says the Volgograd attacks — which took place 650 kilometers northeast of Sochi — throw such planning into disarray.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
•Chevrolet Spark EV. The little electric is projected to be worth 28% of its $28,305 list price in five years, while a comparable conventional version of the same car will retain 40% of its value.
•Ford Focus Electric. The compact will be worth 20% of its initial $35,995 list price, while a well-outfitted conventional Focus Titanium with an automatic transmission will still command 36%.
•Nissan Leaf. Even the best-selling pure electric car is projected at having a residual value of 15% for the 2013 model. A similar Nissan Sentra SL compact would retain 36%.
Reader Tips
Forward!
SPIEGEL published two pieces this morning about the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division, aka premier hacking ninja squad. According to Snowden documents, TAO has a catalog of all the commercial equipment that carries NSA backdoors. And it’s a who’s who of a list. Storage products from Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung have backdoors in their firmware, firewalls from Juniper Networks have been compromised, plus networking equipment from Cisco and Huawei, and even unspecified products from Dell. TAO actually intercepts online orders of these and other electronics to bug them.
I have stood on the top of the bottom of the world.
It was the most amazing experience of my life.
Antarctica, what did I know about it before going there? Only that it is ice covered and surrounds the south pole. I had no idea how mountainous it would be. Who knew that Antarctica is Earth’s highest continent? Not me. Who knew that Antarctica is a desert? Again, not me. The windiest continent? I had no clue.
Other Peoples’ Money
Wash, rinse, repeat;
French President Francois Hollande received approval from the country’s constitutional court to proceed with his plan to tax salaries above 1 million euros at 75 percent for this year and next.
Under Hollande’s proposal, companies will have to pay a 50 percent duty on wages above 1 million euros ($1.4 million). In combination with other taxes and social charges, the rate will amount to 75 percent of salaries above the threshold, the court wrote in a decision published today
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
Start by disclosing the names of all the politically connected they’ve slept with: [The Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery] handbook has 36 sections covering everything from its history to scrums to parking privileges. But, surprisingly, it has almost nothing to say on ethics.
Baby Boomers
Via BCF: Children in Syrian town of Ras al-Ayn play “Behead the Enemy”
Reader Tips
Tonight we attempt to reheat our frozen plosives with Desmond Dekker’s memorable 1968 hit Israelites.
The comments thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Off the Rails
In Britain, some very serious transportation issues are finally being addressed:
Thomas the Tank Engine is setting a poor example to children and needs more female engines to encourage girls to become train drivers, Labour’s shadow transport secretary has said. Mary Creagh described the lack of female train drivers in Britain as a “national scandal” and said that children’s television shows and “negative stereotypes” are partly to blame.
Creagh gave a qualified thumbs-up to a another animated series in which the senior train is female, and one of the main characters, Circle, is a self-professed “laid back hippy chick”:
“Underground Ernie is wonderful, and there are some female trains in that. But again it is called Underground Ernie, not Underground Rosie.”
Great point. Hopefully the issue will now be put to res…
Mrs Creagh also said that mechanical comprehension tests taken by prospective train drivers could discriminate against women.
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
Females in the Marine Corps currently are not required to do even a single pull-up, and a deadline mandating that by Jan. 1, 2014, they be able to do at least 3 pull-ups as part of their training has been delayed for at least a year, the Corps quietly announced on social media.
Unlike their female counterparts, male Marines have long been required to do at least 3 pullups as part of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT).
We Don’t Need No….
Clean energy stagnation: Despite the rhetoric around the rise of renewable energy, this stagnation suggests how policies employed to accelerate rates of decarbonization of the global economy have been largely ineffective.