This Passes for “Education?”

Filed under:Jerks,Oh Hell No,Politics,Priorities,WTF? — posted by Anwyn on May 20, 2010 @ 6:55 am

[The teacher] planned to base final exams on the Michael Moore film, “Sicko“.

A single conservative student objected and also says that her teacher called her a “teabagger” earlier in the year, during a different controversy. But what manages, incredibly, to bother me even more than the choice of movie and the public insult of a student by her teacher, is this:

…Blessman distributed to students in her Senior Literature and Composition class…

So for a Literature and Composition class, the final was … a movie.

The teacher should have been fired before anybody discovered she was pushing her odious political bias on her students. She should have been fired when it was discovered she is not a teacher of literature and composition. Good luck getting that done now.

Urologist Advises Patients Who Support Obamacare to Seek Care Elsewhere

Filed under:Cool,Heh,Politics,Priorities — posted by Anwyn on April 2, 2010 @ 5:32 pm

Damn. Ballsy. So to speak.

Let’s Go, Apple

Filed under:Cool — posted by Anwyn on March 30, 2010 @ 8:12 am

I’m with His Instaness: iPhone on Verizon and I’m there.

Indiana, Our Indiana

Filed under:Cool,Politics — posted by Anwyn @ 8:09 am

Indiana, we’re proud of you.
We will fight for
The health bill rollback
And the freedom
of me and you.

Never daunted, we cannot falter
In the battle, we’re tried and true
Indiana, our Indiana,
Indiana, we’re proud of you.

Dear National Republican Party

Filed under:It's My Life,Jerks,Politics — posted by Anwyn on March 19, 2010 @ 8:35 pm

As an organization, you are sucking the suck right now. You have called my house every night this week. Being perfectly able to read the words “political call” on my caller ID, I didn’t answer until tonight. Thus the calls got later and later until tonight’s came at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night. So I picked it up just to stop the hounding. I didn’t actually say “Hello?” though. I waited to see if you would say anything. Your computer system is pretty good; it didn’t put a person through to me until I actually said something, to which your witty response was “Uh huh!”

Me: “Who’s calling, please?”

Female drone: “May I please speak to Anwyn?”

Me: “Speaking.”

Female drone: “Mrs. Anwyn, I’m calling on behalf of the Republican Party. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Republican or a Democrat?”

Me: “I’m a Republican.”

Her: “Mrs. Anwyn, I’m very glad to hear that. This is a critical time right now for the blah blah blah Obama blah blah health care–”

Me: “I’m sorry–” This would have been followed by “but are you with the national Republican organization or the local one?” had you not HUNG UP the second the words “I’m sorry” were out of my mouth.

That’s right. YOU called ME and then HUNG UP when I wouldn’t go along with your script. You are not interested in me beyond my money. That’s just reality, but at least learn how to disguise it.

Republican Party, quit relying on idiots to represent you. Stop sucking the suck.

This Is Awesome

Filed under:Cool,Heh,Movies — posted by Anwyn on March 14, 2010 @ 7:11 pm

Watch it now. That is all.

Via Hot Air.

To Quote the Man Himself, “Faster, Please”

Filed under:Cool — posted by Anwyn on March 4, 2010 @ 8:06 am

Instapundit writes up Honda’s new Advanced Light Jet for Popular Mechanics and mentions the likelihood of a new “air taxi” model to replace the airlines:

Although other efforts to build an on-demand air-taxi market at low cost have stalled with the current economic downturn, those efforts faced financial and technological problems that Honda expects to avoid, and by the time the HondaJets are rolling off the line at full speed, there’s a good chance that the economy will have recovered. So the air-taxi model—where you got to a website, enter your destination, and have a small jet swoop down to pick you up, possibly at a small business airport rather than a big one where parking and security hassles are greater—may well have a chance.

Vote for Food Pantry to Get Pepsi Grant

Filed under:Cool — posted by Anwyn on March 2, 2010 @ 10:07 am

The food pantry at my church, named Casey’s Corner for the autistic boy who every week helps his father unload a truck full of food and supplies into the pantry, is a finalist for a $25,000 grant from Pepsi. If the pantry wins the grant, we will use it to install a walk-in cooler/freezer to store meat and other perishables and open the food pantry one more day per week, thus serving up to 1500 more people each year. Bonus: A walk-in will be significantly more energy-efficient than the consumer refrigerators we have in there now, thus saving the church overhead money that can then go directly to the food pantry or similar service ministries.

You could really help us by voting once a day between now and the end of March. There are at least a couple hundred finalists, so it’s not like we’re down to the top five or something, and we need every vote. Pepsi is doing a good thing–help us make it worth their while so that they will keep on. Please vote!

Update: Pepsi has a registration process attached to the means of voting, but it’s fairly painless and it looks like they won’t force emails on you. Hey, they have to get something out of it or they wouldn’t be doing it, right?

Update: If you don’t want to register with Pepsi and you have a Facebook account, you can vote through the Facebook account. Easy! Also, Casey’s Corner has already jumped from 169th in the running to 91st, which is awesome, but we need sustained voting over the month to put us in the top ten–the top ten will get the grants. Please do vote as often as it occurs to you. Thanks!

Nerd Nirvana

Filed under:Cool,Television — posted by Anwyn on February 22, 2010 @ 12:52 pm

How many can fit in the Nerd Herder?

Early Billy Joel

Filed under:Ew,Music,Oh Hell No — posted by Anwyn @ 12:47 pm

Pre-prefrontal-cortex Billy Joel, by the description:

Yes, that is Billy Joel, wearing fur pelts and posing with Small in a meat locker. And while such packaging might seem at best laughable, you ain’t experienced nuthin’ ’til you’ve heard the thing.

“Wonder Woman” kicks off the record, and we should be able to tell we’re in trouble, right from the get-go. A swirl of amplified wah-wah noise greets us, like a haze of pot smoke from an open van door. Out come the fur pelt-wearin’ Long Island Huns—Jon Small flailing around, beating anything he can find with his manly drum-clubs, and Joel coaxing noises from his organ rig, just like Jimi Hendrix, only without the sexiness or melodic intent. “Wonder Woman with your skin so fair!” Joel shouts. “Wonder Woman with your long, red hair! You have the velvet touch! You have what I want so much! My love is burnin’ fire! My need is my desire!”

It gets a lot worse from there. The prefrontal cortex, by the way, is “implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior.[citation needed] The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.” Goals such as creating a hit record and correct social behavior such as … none of what’s described in that album. The prosecution rests.

I also didn’t know that Billy Joel’s first wife was poached from his bandmate. Apparently he never really was any more normal than other Hollyweirds. Sigh.

H/t Daddyman.

Seven Wonders of the Internet World

Filed under:Cool — posted by Anwyn on January 30, 2010 @ 9:21 pm

Ever play this game? Seven Wonders of the Internet World–go:

1. Amazon
2. IMDb
3. Google
4. Facebook
5. Fark
6. Wikipedia
7. Youtube

Got different ones?

Gonna Have a Heart Attack and Die from Not-Surprise

Filed under:Politics — posted by Anwyn on January 29, 2010 @ 6:59 pm

Handheld cell phone bans do not affect crash rates.

Next up: They will try to ban phones while driving altogether, handheld or hands-free.

Via The Daily Caller.

First They Came for the Toilets

Filed under:Not Cool,Politics — posted by Anwyn on January 28, 2010 @ 8:00 pm

…and mandated them all to low-flow, and I said nothing because I didn’t care. I just flushed a few more times … although others took a different approach. At some point they mandated the wine bottles, and I said nothing, because as long as they still have a hole in the top it doesn’t affect me.

Now they’re coming for the light bulbs, and most people seem completely insensible to the danger.

Yet about 75 percent said they are not aware of the impending federal requirement for greater energy efficiency that will lead to the phaseout of less efficient lighting.

“Less efficient” by a standard of raw energy consumed, perhaps. “Less efficient” by a standard of, you know, actually lighting things to a visible spectrum and being safe to handle around your toddler, not so much: Incandescents are far more efficient than flourescents on both counts. And there’s this ill-considered boilerplate from GE:

“We’re not sensing a rush by consumers to comply with the looming federal standards,” Kathy Sterio, GE Lighting’s general manager of consumer marketing said in a prepared statement.

“There’s a major shift to CFLs but it’s clearly is a matter of educated consumers choosing CFLs for their strengths,” she said. “Our marketing, advertising and packaging have espoused the value of energy-efficient CFLs for over a decade.”

Such a charming implication, that those of us who still prefer incandescents are uneducated yokels.

H/t J.


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image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace