Might anyone know the meaning of the first one?
Forward!
And a friendly reminder about the importance of loyalty.
Reader Tips
Tonight’s tips entertainment, a pure pop confection from The Four Seasons, was a number one hit in both the UK and the US. Drummer Jerry Polci takes the lead vocal on this one, with the great Frankie Valli singing the bridge: From 1975, here’s December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).
Honey, I Finished The Internet
The Sound Of Settled Science
@S_Teicher12 @JWSpry @borenbears Latest NASA temperatures are out, and are below Hansen's zero emissions scenario C. pic.twitter.com/jfzREFlM4i
— Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) January 23, 2014
Kiev Burning
If you were in any doubt that #Kiev now out of control, @AP picture says everything! Anarchy in #Ukraine . pic.twitter.com/Gh3DLQ706M
— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) January 22, 2014
More.
Update, from the comments:
Five dead and three hundred wounded as of late evening 22 Jan.
http://www.kyivpost.com/
Most of the “Ukrainians” east of the Dnieper River region of Ukraine have Russian heritage or are Ukrainian by heritage but since the late 1700s have been Russianized. The Ukrainians west of the Dnieper River have always resisted Russian control since the late 1700s, and before that resisted Polish control. Much of today’s western Ukraine (Galicia) was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So western Ukraine wants independence from Russia or anyone else.
So they think the EU will be a better overlord.
We have the makings of a civil war.
Hopefully Nestor Makhno does not resurrect and get into the mix.
Same sex couples sue Utah over the refusal to recognize their marriages.
A Mormon friend of mine, from Utah, recently posted something on Facebook, arguing that the gay marriage push in Utah was a dangerous precedent on increasing Federal powers and taking away States’ Rights. Immediately, some gay friends and family of hers attacked her as homophobic. She is not homophobic.
The US Justice Department has indicated that they will recognize gay marriages in Utah that were performed before the current stay was granted, in spite of the Governor of Utah ruling the marriages invalid pending the court case outcome. This has now happened.
Here is my response to the people who were attacking my friend:
It’s Probably Nothing
The Chinese professional acknowledged that if China asserted control over the disputed islands by attacking Japan, America would have to stand with Japan. And he acknowledged that China did not want to provoke America.
But then he said that many in China believe that China can accomplish its goals — smacking down Japan, demonstrating its military superiority in the region, and establishing full control over the symbolic islands — with a surgical invasion.
In other words, by sending troops onto the islands and planting the flag.
All will depend on the need for distraction.
h/t Harry K, Melinda R.
Forward!
Hope, Change and the Techno-Militarization Of America
The impoverished city of Oakland is spending more than $10 million on a “Domain Awareness Center” surveillance hub for its cops, and cameras that track every license plate they see. Baltimore and NYC track license plates, too. Meanwhile, according to the LA Times, “Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance,” and Motherboard reports: The Border Patrol’s fleet of Predator drones were loaned out 248 times in 2012, to “unnamed sheriff’s departments, the Department of Defense, the DEA, the Texas Rangers, and even the Bureaus of Land Management and Indian Affairs.”
Drones are just the tip of the hardware iceberg. Local police are now, as The Verge mordantly observed, “fighting crime with 18-ton military vehicles.” That’s just one example of the billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment given to police over the last few decades; and “a disproportionate share … has been obtained by police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.”
Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car
Vancouver Sun: Sex assaults on transit jumped 24 per cent in late 2013
The Children Are Our Future
And that’s why we’re reinforcing the root cellar with 12″ of concrete: “There are millions of kids with no assets, no plans, and no purpose, taking out enormous loans to purchase a piece of paper they’ll likely never use.”
Oh, Frack
Your moral and intellectual superiors;
The headline on the AP “Big Story” on January 5 read “Some States Confirm Water Pollution From Drilling”. Not too ominous. But reporter Kevin Begos says in the lead paragraph that “…hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.” Whoa! Lots of water is being contaminated, and drilling companies are lying.
[…]
Complaints? Yes, plenty. And that news comes first. But actually polluted wells? Not many, information that comes much later. And, even while acknowledging that the complaints refer to ALL drilling, Begos nonetheless manages to emphasize the connection to fracking, devoting a couple early paragraphs to the drilling technology that’s stirring up controversy, even going so far as to note that while other sorts of drilling may cause pollution, “Experts say the most common type of pollution involves methane, not chemicals from the drilling process.” Oops, there we go again… confusing complaints and pollution.
Like Dust In A Raindrop
At the center of every iceberg is an “Arctic expedition” – “We were supposed to visit three or four towns in Nunavut before sailing across the Davis Straight to Greenland, but there was fog, and ice, and we couldn’t get to more than two.”
h/t Kevin B
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Reader Tips
“Sir, I will have a (fruitful, productive) career in your (red-hot, successful) company.”
Hey, his English is a lot better than my Hindi.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
CBC Fruit Fly Guy
This is the result of a billion dollar a year media corporation treating the words “scientist” and “narrator” as synonyms: David Suzuki ‘regrets’ claim that another Fukushima disaster would require mass evacuations in North America
h/t Kevin B
Y2Kyoto: ‘WOW F..ing WOW’
The Most Dangerous City In America
The Children Are Our Future
There clearly is a subset of Japanese youth who have withdrawn from dating. Instead, they focus on online porn and games like Nintendo’s Love Plus, in which players conduct a relationship with an anime girlfriend. Hundreds of thousands of young men are known as hikikomori, shut-ins who eschew human contact and spend their days playing video games and reading comics in their parents’ homes.
Related…
h/t Anthony K
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Hear my prayer: The bolt problem first surfaced in March when a third of the 96 rods used to secure seismic braces – known as shear keys – to one section of the bridge cracked when they were tightened down. The problem was traced to the galvanizing process that caused the rods to become overly brittle when they were left standing in rainwater.
h/t Iowa Jim