Here’s one for the nutty judges file. Depicted s3x with Simpsons characters is deemed child pr0n. I’m pretty sure that this wouldn’t stand up to a SCOTUS challenge, but it happened Down Under.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Pack, Not Herd, Part Two
This sort of thing is the consequence of intentionally disarming ourselves, and frightening people with nonsensical scare stories about guns:
Lt. Mitchell said that, apart from Alandis’ denial that he made any threats, investigators quickly realized that the only gun Alandis had was his cap gun.
“In this day and time, we do not take anything lightly, whether it’s a toy gun or a real weapon, for the safety of the kids and everyone involved, the safety of the school. That’s our main concern.”
Tosha Ford agrees that Alandis should not have brought the toy gun to school, and did not know that he did, but she said the reaction that unfolded was overblown, due to rumors that school children quickly spread.
“Someone heard that Alandis had a toy gun in his bookbag and said, ‘Oh, Alandis is going to bring a gun, he’s going to shoot everybody.’ He [Alandis] was wrong, he should never have taken it to school. And I told him that. And he’s being punished” at home. “But also on the other side of the coin, I think it’s a travesty what’s happened to him…. For them to say that’s he’s made terroristic threats is just ridiculous. We’ve taken it and changed what ‘terroristic threats’ was meant to be for. And with children saying that ‘he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ it’s gotten blown out of proportion…. I don’t think they handled it very well. I know it’s their job, but I think they took it to the extreme.”
I had lots of cap guns when I was a kid, as did most of my friends. I thought that individual caps were too tame, though. I used to like to hit a whole roll on the sidewalk with a hammer for a much more satisfying bang.
I don’t recall whether or not I ever took one to school, but if I had, neither pupils or teachers would have been so clueless and naive as to have confused it with a real gun. And the worst penalty for doing so that I can imagine would have been confiscation by the teacher. Until the end of the school day, that is, at which point it would probably have been returned. The notion that the decision about this kid is whether or not he should be put in juvenile detention, or merely on probation, shows the insane depths of anti-gun (and with butter knives being confiscated and wielders suspended, anti-weapons-in-general) paranoia to which our society has descended.
BCS Declares Germany Winner Of WWII
This is pretty funny.
“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work — including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule — our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”
The US came in fourth, with only two victories — Germany and Japan.
It reminds me of the old joke that college football is the only sport where the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars. Which is why they brought in the computers, I guess.
A Smiley Solar System
Some nice astronomical pictures from Down Under.
Join The Club
It took me a while this morning to confirm a whole bunch more Facebook requests, but now I’m ahead of [Ramesh] with 894!
For the life of me, I still don’t understand what Facebook is for though.
When you figure it out, let me know.
Living On Mars
Some thoughts from Bob Zubrin, who apparently has a new book
out on the subject.
I have to say, though, that when he says:
It’s a common view that Columbus was just interested in finding a spice route to the Indies, and that was his sales pitch to the Spanish courts. But I actually believe that contrary to conventional history, Columbus was looking for unknown continents — he just couldn’t pitch it that way.
I’d be curious to know the basis for that belief, or if it’s just wishful thinking or projection. My reading of the history does not indicate that Columbus was averse to making a buck.
I Don’t Think That Hillary! Will Be Doing This
Condi Rice gave a royal piano performance for the Queen.
Is It Just Me?
Or is Summer Glau looking much more hot in the Sarah Connor Chronicles than she ever did in Firefly?
Maybe she’s just growing up. And has a better makeup crew. And is becoming a better actor.
A Golden Oldie Thanksgiving Recipe
Since I’ve been recycling lately, here’s a post from three years ago on my unique turkey dressing recipe. That one got spammed up, but I’ll repeat it here, if anyone wants to comment.
I don’t know if there’s a Carnival of the Recipes for Thanksgiving, but in response to popular demand [cue sounds of crickets chirping], here’s my unique recipe for corn-bread and wild-rice stuffing. It’s higher protein than most.
- A couple pounds of sausage (I prefer some kind of fancy chicken or turkey sausage–this year I found some chicken/brocolli)
- wild rice (maybe half a cup)
- pine nuts (maybe half a cup)
- a pound or so of exotic mushrooms (oyster, chanterelle, shiitake, etc.)
- one onion, chopped
- a few cloves of garlic, diced
- a few cups of corn bread crumbs, either home made or store-bought stuffing
- a few stalks of celery (if desired–I don’t like it that much, but some people think it’s not
- stuffing without it), chopped
- pomegranate seeds (this is the secret ingredient)
- a couple cups of chicken broth (from bouillion is fine, unless you want to be fancy)
- salt, pepper, sage, thyme to taste
- olive oil
Soak the rice overnight in about twice as much water as it needs to cover. Another good thing to do ahead, while watching teevee, is to divest the pomegranate from its seeds (persnickety work).
In the morning, cut up the sausage into bite-size chunks, and saute in the olive oil (amount depending on the stickiness of your saute pan). Chop the rest of the ingredients and boil the rice for fifteen minutes or so (if you overdo it, it won’t have the crunchiness). Set the meat aside and saute the onions, celery and garlic in the same pan.
Put all the non-liquid ingredients in a big bowl and stir well. Add in the broth and mix thoroughly. If it seems too dry, feel free to add as much water…or booze…as you want. It should be moist throughout, but not soaked. You can also add melted butter to taste and texture if you like that sort of thing, and your arteries can take it. Another option, to be more heart healthy, is to fatten it up with olive or canola oil.
Use it like any other stuffing–either inside the bird, or under the skin, or just bake it in its own dish, or all of the above.
Eat, and enjoy.
Oh, and on this Thanksgiving Eve, let us all bow our heads and give remembrance to the woman who invented Stove Top Stuffing™, who has stuffed her last stove top.
If anyone tries it, or variations, feedback will be appreciated.
We Know What We Like
Lileks has a meditation on modern art:
It’s not the humanism that ruined art, it was humanism that divorced itself from the possibility of transcendence. Which would be bad enough if it hadn’t decided to splash around in the gutters as well.
Ah, but why was it influential? It recontextualized the commonplace and made us see it as Art, a process that continues to this day every time you see a book with a title like “The Art of Bread” or “The Art of Toad Sexing” or whatever else has to be elevated to the status of marble sculpture to make the user feel they’re living a rarified life. It played a joke on the Stuffy Academics, which is something the adolescent temperament never tires of doing. This is not encouraged any more, since the Academics are on the side of Truth and Modernity, however defined today. Although I once knew an architecture student who took perverse and boundless glee in shocking his teacher by putting a pointy roof on the house each student had to design. A pointed roof. In other words, a useful roof, a functional roof that didn’t collect rain water. Everyone else had a flat roof, of course. Machine for Living and all that. This was just around the time Post-Modernism made it okay to quote history, as long as everyone saw you wink, or could understand that your overscaled grotesque excretions were meant ironically.
An instructor might not know what to make of a house with a point roof, but if you called it “House In The Time of Reagan” he’d understand.
Read all.