I love the snow in Portland; it’s like winter at home in the midwest, but the downside is pretty big: Oregonians absolutely cannot drive in the stuff even two days after it’s fallen.

Earth’s rotation is slowing, lengthening the day by 2.3 milliseconds “per day per century,” due to “tidal friction.”

…that I stopped watching Heroes when I did:

Because let’s face it, Sylar being all lovey dovey with Veronica Mars makes everyone want to vomit.

My infallible TV Radar once again saves my eyes, in-brain imager, and delicate sensibilities.

Email your representatives. It probably won’t stop it, but let them know you’re angry. They’re about to write a blank check for huge, unwieldy, inefficient, and bloated corporations practically held hostage by the UAW … held hostage in their private jets, that is. This is preposterous. Let your reps know what you think. I just did.

Gib’s wife has had a baby whom the Bean has pronounced up to code. Congratulations, Crosbys!

Good sentiment, bad expression.

An Australian mayor who begged unattractive women to move to his town has been crowned “sexist of the year.”

John Malony pleaded for “ugly ducklings” to migrate to Mount Isa to counter a lack of eligible women.

The mayor of the remote mining town in northwest Queensland state defended his comments, saying he was “telling it like it is.”

Why is this sexist, exactly? Because he didn’t call for ugly gay men as well?

All he had to do was put out a call for women, and then count on them to figure out who benefits the most from packing up their current lives to move to 5-1 Mantown. I mean, even if the women who make the switch are not beauty queens, you’d like them smart, right?

Via Ace’s headlines.

That five bucks in the bucket outside the grocery store today was my last donation to the Salvation Army until they loosen up this junk:

Capt. Johnny Harsh, who has led the Oshkosh Salvation Army for more than three years, has been suspended for disobeying orders and could soon be terminated from the agency.

Harsh, whose wife, Capt. Yalanda “Yoley” Harsh, died unexpectedly in June, said he violated a Salvation Army rule that an officer in the agency may only marry another officer of the organization. Harsh is engaged to a woman who is not affiliated with the Salvation Army. He said they plan to marry in June.

Read on for the other ways in which the organization gets into their officers’ business–no overnight stays in the guest room for this lady because the Salvation Army pays for some of their officer’s housing expenses. I’m of mixed mind about that–the solution seems to be don’t accept funds earmarked for housing from your employer if you don’t want to give them a say in who gets to stay there.

Oh well, the Bean’ll be just as happy if we never poke any bills into the kettle again. He doesn’t yet quite understand how we can give money away and still have some left for ourselves, and though he enjoys the actual act of folding the bill to the appropriate size and turning and twisting it until it slides into the slot, he still decidedly disapproves of the concept. Lighten Up, S.A. I’m now frankly surprised this outfit is still going as strong as it is.

Via Allah, who brings the C-word.

For ABC’s midseason:

Castle: Mondays at 10, starting March 9.

Cupid: Tuesdays at 10, starting March 24.

Lost: Three hours of last season’s conclusion, followed by a three-hour season premiere, followed by three hours of clip/catch-up show from the previous four seasons, followed by an hour and a third of that one plot with the “fish biscuits,” followed by an hour of clips of Charlie marking his knuckles and singing “You all, everybody,” followed by an hour of the new season, wrapped up with every minute of footage involving Jack’s mountain-man beard. Don’t miss it! January 21.

Stupid stunts as the politics of finance.

Of the very thin specifics of Ford’s plan in the linked article, they are all salary cuts or freezes for management. When it comes to what the UAW will sacrifice, there is a vague sentence about “cost cutting.”

No bailout. Email your senators. The Great Depression was caused in part by an administration that pressured industry to keep wages unaffordably high until mass layoffs resulted. The UAW will do the same if given half a chance–except they will milk the government trough for all it’s worth for as long as they can possibly avoid the layoffs. Taxpayers will be paying the artificially high wages of uncompetitive workers. This is not economically sound.

The U.S. auto industry is not competitive with overseas makers. They can either become competitive through realistic cost cuts, including wages, or die.

Witness:

Its turns out that Mrs Clinton’s delay in accepting the president elect’s offer to be his top foreign policy adviser had much to do with her negotiating the terms of the job and insisting on the right to choose her own state department staff and possibly even some of the plumb Ambassador postings.

and this:

Obama will have in his gift the right to appoint Supreme Court justices, possibly as many as five out of the nine: Roe v Wade, which gives a woman the right to an abortion if she chooses, would be safe.

Assignments and posts are plum, as in the good stuff in plum-cake, not plumb, as in straight. And the appointments themselves are what the president can give, not “the right” to appoint. He appoints them himself; he doesn’t gift that right to anybody else.

An Englishman of my acquaintance refers to two languages: English and “an American derivative.” His English appears to be slowly dying on the pages of his own country’s papers.

Links via, where else, Hot Air.

Stupid people/people with authority issues/stupid people vote.

Via Hot Air.

Been going on a long time, this abuse has, and shows no signs of slowing down. I see it in print, in emails, in marketing materials; hear it on TV; hear it in conversation: “People that want to attend …” “A person that went to the party said …” “The youth that went on the trip …”

STOP IT. People are people WHO do things. They are not objects THAT do things. The people who want to attend are people who will not be happy to say that the youth who went on the trip were objectified in the last issue of the newsletter. The team that won, however, or the company that weathered the downturn are all right, even though the team whose mascot was banned or the company whose stock went down are pretty huffy that teams and companies can be both whos and whats. People are not bi-statist. They are always and forever Whos. Don’t grinch them into Whats.

Tough love for Detroit from one of its sons.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. … That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

…

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

…

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

No bailout. Figure it out, UAW. Figure it out, management. It’s very simple economics–you know it’s simple because I can understand it. Do not come crying to the taxpayer, auto workers, when you want execs to bear the full burden of pay & benefits cuts and surprise! they won’t want to any more than you would want to. Figure it out and someday I might actually buy an American car.

Romney’s business sense could be a real asset in the White House after four years of–potentially–socialist-leaning economic policies.

Via Hot Air.