Update: I’ve recently argued that if women ruled the world there would be a lot less high-risk stuff done (Panama Canal, Boulder Dam, rail guns, etc.) but I have to say there’d also be a lot less stuff like these… jet powered… well, everything. Totally ridonkulous, IMHO, because they didn’t include a tiny go-kart version of a jetboat.
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Another plug for Stephan Pastis – may people give his books as gifts this Christmas until supplies just plain run out. There’s this endearing quality to his work. There’s less meanness in it even though Rat is evil and the crocs want to eat everyone – especially “Zeeba” (they can’t pronounce “Zebra”).
Cruel Wife says I am Rat because of my sarcasm. And I did a Goat once where I raved about cordless shades like the ones shown. What can I say? I’m complicated.
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Why do so many First Ladies feel the need to horn in on the President’s job? Cruel Wife feels no need to jump in where I work. Nor would anyone give her the time of day because they hired me, not her. As it should be. Her company isn’t interested in me, either.
Military leaders … tell us that when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight,” the first lady says in the prepared remarks, “childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well. – Michell Obama, telling us how it is
Can you gimme hallellujah?
But when our kids spend so much of their time each day in school, and when many children get up to half their daily calories from school meals, it’s clear that we as a nation have a responsibility to meet as well. We can’t just leave it up to the parents. – Michelle Obama, taking our responsibility upon herself, unasked for
Actually you should leave it up to the parents – that’s why parents are supposed to be involved in local schools. We don’t need you, Michelle, just butt out.
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Supposedly Global Warming leads to colder winters. With that statement in mind, read the following from the Christian Science Monitor:
Last winter, the US reported snow coverage in nearly all 50 states in December. That anomaly led to unusual January freezes in the South and several “Snowmageddon” events in the mid-Atlantic, all of which Accuweather meteoreologist Joe Bastardi likened to “the great winters of the ’60s and ’70s.”
Mr. Bastardi predicted earlier this fall that the East Coast will “be granted a reprieve” from the kind of major storms that buffeted the region last winter. In fact, he noted that a fast start to winter in the East could lead to a major thaw in January.
Meteorologists have also predicted greater-than-normal swings between the season’s coldest and hottest days, creating what Mr. Bastardi dubbed “The Wintry Battle Zone.”
But the pre-Christmas “snow blitz” in the upper Midwest, added to the near-zero wind chills in the South, continue to confound atmospheric scientists like Mr. Martin, who is not keen to make a call on how the Winter of 2011 will pan out.
“Given our level of ignorance about what’s going on, we don’t want to compound that with a level of arrogance by saying we know what’s going to happen in a month,” he says.
If we don’t want a certain level of arrogance associated with claiming that we know what will happen in a month, how are we able to predict dire circumstances as a result of AGW?
There. Fixed it for ya’, Mr. Martin.
Exactly what I was thinking, B.C., but did not say – I have a severe rectal-cranial inversion today. Thank you.
LK, sounds like the FLOTUS figured out how to solve two problems at once, but was too dense to realize it: If school kids are getting fat, and simultaneously, school kids are getting half of their calories from school meals, why don’t we just kill the school meal programs. Save the $$$ and the kids get their caloric intake cut in half! Voila! I’m a genius!
Now, what other earth-shattering problems can I solve…
As for jet-propelled hardware. Jet engines are a solution looking for a problem. Like bacon, a flavor looking for a food to enhance.
The food idea sounds like a gr… wait, FLOTUS? Oh that is awesome. Just freakin’ awesome.
Ok, the food idea sounds like a great idea. No more expensive fat schoolkids running around. And, chronically underfed people have lower energy levels so they’ll get in less trouble after school. Brilliant.
Bacon grease would make a bumper-hitch taste good. Bacon-enhanced bumper hitches with blue cheese and a sprinkle of walnuts. Oh yeah.
I can tell what you’re going to say next: Jet-powered bacon-enhanced bumper hitches with blue cheese and walnuts.
Am I right or am I right?
As for the recto-cranial inversion…
I had an AF Basic Flight Engineer Instructor who drew a car key on the board at the beginning of the class session. He said that was for the tractor in the parking lot outside. If we were having a particular problem with learning the mechanics of flight, we were welcome to borrow the key and use the tractor to extract our cranium from our posterior. Though he didn’t use quite those words.
My dad never said it directly but when he meant that very thing he would tell me the story of one of the sergeants who would say “Lemur Sr., I want you to take a deep breath, get a firm grip on your shoulders, and pull your head out of your ass.”
Dad has always been really really good at saying things without really saying them. Heard a lot of Samuel Clemens quotes growing up.
Yum, bacon-wrapped trailer hitches. Get your annual dose of iron in one meal. And if its jet-powered, its a new concept in “fast food”! Yeah!
Hey, recognize this? “What can you say about chocolate-covered manhole covers”.
I can’t claim the FLOTUS, saw it somewhere else. But great anyway, ya think?
Oh, and if the kids in school aren’t eating as many calories, they won’t get the “afternoon nods” in class, and think of the reduction in diabetes! Hah!
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend as much quality time with my dad. Mom and he were divorced when I was young, and stepdad was good, but not great. You were lucky, sounds like. I’m trying to make it up, but Dad is a WWII vet. Very mobile, but I don’t know how much longer. And we live a fair distance away. Double-sigh.
My dad passed on his workaholic gene so “quality time” probably wasn’t as much as you might think. When the comments weren’t snarky/snide, yes, they were great quotes.
FLOTUS and flatus blend so well with the evolution of diet thing that I keep snickering.
Now where have I seen the choco-covers thing…?
Yeah, I love Pearls Before Swine. Great stuff. His website is damned funny too.
Hm. 9 comments and no word on LK’s one-time raving of the cordless honeycombed window shades (particularly the ones where the shades are inside a double-paned window, so they never get dirty). Interesting…
Don’t you have like a job or something you could be doing?
Oh, I’ve seen those! They are cool. BTW, your package should arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday.
OUCH! LK, if Cruel Wife is posting the above, sounds like a BIG HINT!
The in-window blinds sound like a great idea, but what happens if they break? An Alton Brown single-purpose kitchen-tool type solution?
Nah, if she wanted that, she’d have said it. She really was referring to the windowshades I came home raving about once. That’s why she sent me the PBS cartoon in the first place, both because of my windowshade ravings and my sarcasm.
Very direct, that CW. And she expects direct speech herself. Actually she’s blind to indirect speech. Or deaf. Whatever. If I try to be my subtle-on-three-layers-of-shaded-meaning self it usually just ends up being frustrating for me.
And proving that we are complements to each other, she can say something very plainly and I’ll take the most convoluted condense-fact-from-the-vapors-of-nuance interpretation, which makes me absolutely useless in some situations.
Amazingly, we’re still married – all thirty years of it has been sheer bliss. Well, it only seems like thirty. Probably half that.
I like the FLOTUS/flatus comparison. Like Prius/pious.
The choco-covers was used in Pournelle/Niven’s Fallen Angels, but predates it by a long shot. Appeared in an earlier work, maybe a Con somewhere.
BTW, Fallen Angels is a good read if you haven’t. Depressing and motivating. Another prescient view of the Green movement and how NASA has fallen in stature.
Yes, the choco-covers was in a short story Niven wrote sometime back in the 60 – 70’s I think. It was about an odd intelligence test and its relation to human evolution. Good story, but I’ve always loved his short fiction. Pity he doesn’t seem to write those much anymore.
Mitchell, I remember reading the story, but can’t pin it down yet. Time to dig up some old books.
Niven and Pournelle are getting up in years. Pournelle had brain cancer several years ago, but was successfully treated. You’re right, Niven has done some stuff, but not a lot recently.
Nowadays, I try to keep up with the Monster Hunter stuff by Larry Correia.
Note: The manhole-cover is part of Niven’s N-Space collection of stories. The title is: What Can You Say about Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?
Now, to find the story itself.
Pournelle still has his web site up, and appears to be commenting there on at least a semi-regular basis. The last book of his (and Niven) that I recall coming out was the sequel to “Inferno”, called “Escape From Hell”. Came out last year, and not a bad read at all.