Archive for December, 2013

sports snort

Wednesday, December 4th, 2013

An interesting story at the beginning of the NBA season.

On the day the NBA season tips off, one of the big stories is tanking. David Stern (and Adam Silver) has to feel just a little nauseous about it.

We all know that the coming 2014 draft is loaded with potential franchise changing talent — Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, Aaron Gordon, Marcus Smart, Dante Exum, Joel Embiid, Jabari Parker — and we know as much as they deny it some teams were putting out their young players to lose a lot of games in an effort to get a better shot at those players in the lottery.

One GM anonymously admits to ESPN that, yep… they’re trying to lose the season.

An interesting story as the NBA season progresses.

The entire NBA Eastern Conference, besides the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat suck.

Hm…  Maybe there’s a whole bunch of teams are tanking this season?

There is such a thing as “Bitcoin Porn”

Wednesday, December 4th, 2013

Or, “Bitcoin Erotica“, if you must.

I don’t know what you want to do with this information.  The premise of the novel … hm.  Guy gets rich after the demise of the dollar and turns a bunch of woman he was horny for when he wasn’t rich into prostitutes.  Or something like that.

Do with it what you must, but one question:  Shouldn’t it be only available for purchase using bitcoins?

wait. who? huh?

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

I can’t quite figure something out about a section of this book, The Cold War Comes to Main Street America in 1950, by Lisle A Rose…

page 150… on the fluctuations of opinion about Joseph McCarthy, and an uptik in opposition which

Except for the Heart and McCormick — Patterson papers, the “vast majority” of the nation’s newspapers — Republican as well as Democratic — remained “highly critical of McCarthy”.

The two publications cited?

In Washington State, Tullius J. Brown, editor of the weekly Grandview Herald, tried calmly and rationally to put the entire anti-Communist campaign in perspective.  “Let’s not condemn everyone as a communist who thinks he sees in the Russian government indications that it is not as bad as it might be,” Brown stated in the first mid century issue.  “Americans merely want assurance that the Russians will not try to remold this country to fit the soviet [sic] pattern.”  Everyone “despise(s) Stalin and his police state,” Brown later wrote, but “there is more phony patriotism wrapped up in anti-communist outbursts than can be imagined.” 
As the first McCarthy investigation continued, Brown became more impatient.  “If someone should demand that we take a loyalty oath we would feel just a little put out by the challenge.”  It would be like asking a horse thief whether he was honest.  The horse thief wouldn’t mind, but the really honest person would rightly believe that the demand was an insult.

Yes.  The common sense “horse sense” folksy colloquialism you would expect from…
… No.  Really.  Why is this book referencing the Grandview Herald?  I suppose there’s a “Playing in Peoria” thing here, but even if we’re surveying small town newspapers, I’d now expect another small town newspaper or two or three to buttress that.  Instead what we get as indication of a brief tide against McCarthy is…

Perhaps most devastating to McCarthy’s crusade was the reaction of Luce.  In early April, Life’s editorial writers urged Americans to reject McCarthy and preoccupation with former policy errors.

Yes.  The Grandview Herald and Life Magazine were the bullwarks against McCarthyism in early 1950.  And then Truman had to ruin things.

McCarthy fought back desperately.  […] But he seemed cornered.  Then, on March 30, Truman inadvertently bailed him out, entering the anti-communist debate again with disastrous results.

And now we’d just to wait a few years for Edward R Murrow.

I may as well mention some odd “even handedness” presented by the ever progressive Tullius J Brown…

“Senator McCarthy and Secretary Acheson call each other bad names,” Brown added at the end of March.  The people just wanted this bickering in high places to end, for the result of such recrimination “is loss of confidence in everybody occupying high government posts.  The Kremlin could ask for nothing better.”  The next week, Brown turned completely against McCarthy.

More interestingly would be if the author of this book surveyed the letters to the editor.

Yes, but is it Art?

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

Oregon Public Broadcasting asked me to sign this waver for (possible) use of footage they filmed of me reading … erm… hm…

“Starting from an early age, I have maintained a nearly complete collection of my toenail clippings…”

And I go on for a little less than two minutes from there.

Curious.  I believe this was originally something I wrote in my (assigned) journal to annoy my 11th grade English teacher.  When I posted it to the Internet, two links came to it — one claiming (facetiously) it was the “most disturbing thing I’ve seen on the Internet”.  (I appreciate an amount of irony with that one).  I emailed both of them to disclaim any reality to this — was cleared with one of them with “I thought so, but one can never tell” — the other linker seemed to want to engage in some trolling with me, which I wasn’t terribly interested in.

I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to be shown on television talking about one’s toenail clippings.