Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

After roe, women are no longer free.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

This really is a full service blog.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Cole is on a roll !

A consequence of cucumbers

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161Comments

  2. 2.

    hildebrand

    I accept the challenge to get the BJ commentariat in gear.

    I am working on a project and have hit a legend about which I cannot determine its origin. Legend has it that Muhammad tells a story that when Satan left the garden of eden, in his footprints onions and garlic grew. The legend is referenced in most folklore about onions and garlic, but nobody, and I mean nobody, gives the source for this legend. I have scoured the Koran and the Hadith – no luck. If anybody happens to know where this legend comes from (and feels like sharing the secret with me), I will be extremely grateful.

  5. 5.

    Keith P

    I slept till 10:30 this morning (a rarity). Beautiful day out, so I’m gonna take a shower, run a couple of errands and then hit up a place in town for a lobster roll.

  6. 6.

    Punchy

    Just what the frick could those Jax jurors ajudicating the jumpy jagoff (who offed a defenseless kid) possibly still be discussing? If this case aint murder, then FL SYG has codified shooting anyone for anything. I figged the deliberations would take 5 mins, not 5 days…

  7. 7.

    hildebrand

    @2liberal: The problem is that no such writing exists. Muhammad, in all of the various collections, never mentions this legend. I have numerous references to the legend, and many attribute it to Muhammad, but no one points to an actual source. We get vague mentions of ‘Muhammad’s writings’ or ‘Islamic legends’ or even ‘Turkish legends’, but no actual citation for a particular source. I am trying to find the source behind all of the references and attributions. Thus far, no luck.

  9. 9.

    the Conster

    How long will it take before someone coming out isn’t news? Why on earth is Ellen Page saying she’s gay on the front page of boston.com? Why the fuck does anyone not Ellen Page give a shit, especially here in Massachusetts?

  11. 11.

    WereBear

    @the Conster: How long will it take before someone coming out isn’t news?

    When the last evangelical Christian buys the last DVD set of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

    In Shilts’ biography of Harvey Milk, he writes of how Milk kept emphasizing that people had to come out of the closet, had to show they were just people, that everyone knew.

    I don’t think we are there yet. Do you?

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    Something to break up the ennui.

    Spanish experts found a sarcophagus containing a 3,600-year-old mummy in the southern city of Luxor, Egypt’s antiquities minister said.

    [snip]

    The discovery was made while excavating the front patio of the tomb of Yehuti, who was supervisor of the storehouses of Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1502 to 1482 B.C. Source

  16. 16.

    Chyron HR

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My guess is that there is one holdout juror and the others are beating him/her about the head and shoulders.

    But he’ll come around and vote not guilty eventually.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @hildebrand:

    Might the story be from the Satanic Verses (not Rushdie’s), passages originally included in the Qur’an and subsequently removed?

  18. 18.

    Amir Khalid

    @the Conster:
    Someday, soon let us hope, no one will care about a person being gay or straight anymore than they care now about the person being right-handed or left-handed. Then there’ll be no such thing as being in or out about one’s sexuality, any more than there is now about one’s handedness. Even more enlightened societies are still in transition towards that stage.

  19. 19.

    JPL

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s what I’m hoping. I just can’t believe that the jury is not going to be able to return a verdict. Fox news would probably spend five minutes on the verdict if he were found not guilty because there is no good news for the gun industry.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I’ve read The Satanic Verses. That story is not original with Salman Rushdie. I assume that it’s just one of many folk tales, some of them maybe of pre-Islamic origin, that got attached to the Prophet’s name by the pious.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @NotMax:

    The mummy was quoted as saying “the service on this patio is appallingly slow, I’m still waiting for my fuckin’ iced tea.”

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Also too:

    A yearlong United Nations investigation is set to conclude that North Korea has committed crimes against humanity, according to a leaked outline of the report, in the most authoritative indictment to date of abuses carried out by Pyongyang’s leaders.

    The U.N. panel will also recommend that the North’s crimes be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to The Associated Press, which obtained an outline of the findings. The report of the three-member Commission of Inquiry will be released Monday.

    [snip]

    Activists and human rights lawyers say the report, at minimum, will bring broader global awareness about the North’s city-sized gulags and systematic abductions of foreigners. But they also say that traditional ally China, which has a permanent seat on the U.N. National Security Council, could block any referral of North Korea’s case to the ICC. Source

  26. 26.

    hildebrand

    @Amir Khalid: That was my thought, as well. My goal now is to try to pin down where the legend comes from, and how (or why) it got attributed to the Prophet.

  28. 28.

    CaseyL

    @NotMax:

    The discovery was made while excavating the front patio of the tomb of Yehuti…

    A patio? Did it have a barbecue pit?

    … who was supervisor of the storehouses of Queen Hatshepsut

    Yes; yes it did have a barbecue pit! Gotta smoke the Queen’s meats somewhere, even in the afterlife. (That sounds a lot dirtier than I meant it to.)

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The mummy was quoted as saying “the service on this patio is appallingly slow, I’m still waiting for my fuckin’ iced tea.”

    Maybe he was waiting for the charcoal to light. Yehuti, in the sarcophagus, with a tong and fork crossed over his chest.

  30. 30.

    ranchandsyrup

    Haircut then lunch with family (daughter picked red robin). Afterwards we’re heading to the beach. Mid 70s today. If we are not going to have a winter/rainy season, may as well enjoy it.

  31. 31.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hildebrand:

    Probably for the same reason that things are attributed to Jesus or the Bible: because prejudices often seek reinforcement from some sort of divine imprimatur.

    See fundagelicalism and slavery, for example.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @ruemara:

    Not sure where to explore in NoHo. So I think I’ll just start walking.

    Instead, you should hop on the Red Line and go down into Hollywood proper, where there’s lots of interesting stuff.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Upon re-reading your comment, I guess I really should have read it more carefully. As for those Satanic Verses, they were destroyed 14 centuries ago; who knows what’s really in them?

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Punchy: I had no clue what your comment was about, but when omnes seemed to know what you were talking about, I figured maybe you hadn’t just put random words together.

    I’ve got to give it up for google. I searched for “Jax jury” and it brought up the dunn story. That’s when I figured out what you were referring to.

    I’m already depressed about the union vote in TN, please please please universe, do not let these people set this murdering racist free.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid: It’s at least 20 years since I read Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and I don’t remember details, certainly nothing about the garlic. I was referring to those writings of the same collective title (Rushdie’s inspiration) which, as I understand it, were originally part of the Qur’an but later removed and became part of the uncanonical traditions. But I’m as far from being an expert as a person can be.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @the Conster:

    How long will it take before someone coming out isn’t news? Why on earth is Ellen Page saying she’s gay on the front page of boston.com? Why the fuck does anyone not Ellen Page give a shit, especially here in Massachusetts?

    Why did she come out publicly?
    They explain in the story that she is making this announcement because she hopes it will make it easier for other people to be able to be who they are.

    Why does anyone give a shit?
    I’m guessing that a lot of people who are LGBT give a shit, because it makes it easier to be who you are when it becomes more acceptable in the mainstream. And the more people who come out, the more people see that gay people are just people.

  37. 37.

    srv

    Jury is really looking for an out for white guy firing into an SUV of unarmed thugs who had the bass too loud

    Within half an hour of resuming deliberations Saturday in the case against Michael Dunn, accused of shooting and killing an unarmed teenager in Florida after he had asked him to turn down the music in the SUV he and three other youths were in, jurors submitted a list of three questions to the judge.

    “They’re struggling, obviously, but it’s not for want of trying to reconcile all of this,” Judge Russell L. Healey told the courtroom early Saturday, after the jurors had spent some 20 hours in deliberation and before he called them back to the courtroom to answer the questions. “I think we’ve got some analytical people in there who are trying to do just that — trying to analyze this from every possible angle.”

  38. 38.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @srv:

    Exactly. They’re obviously struggling to find a way to let this murdering racist shitstain go free.

    No doubt some of them want to give him a high five for “living the dream” of gun fetishists everywhere…finally dealing with those thugs in the proper way, by emptying a magazine in their general direction.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Because as far as I’m concerned, this is an absolute no brainer if the kids in question were white. They wouldn’t hesitate to put the guy away.

    (It’s a no brainer regardless, but this is the north of Florida, which is culturally the most southern part of the state).

  42. 42.

    The Dangerman

    @the Conster:

    Why on earth is Ellen Page saying she’s gay on the front page of boston.com?

    Does she have a movie coming out? Nothing like a little free publicity.

    I can see Sam getting a front page (first NFLer, potentially); really, someone in Hollywood is gay? Well, damn, there’s a shocker.

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    I was on a jury in may of last year. Did I think the guy was guilty as sin? Absolutely.

    What mattered to me, though, was that I could be confident that the evidence proved he was guilty BEFORE I voted in a way that would imprison someone for the rest of his life. And before I could do that, I needed to review the evidence.

    Some people want to do their due diligence in matters like this.

    Or, it could be one holdout who thinks it’s okay for the scary black guy to be murdered because, well, he’s a scary black guy. But I’m with omnes, let’s wait and see what comes out.

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack

    Finally emerged from my snow-encrusted lair to take a spin around the neighborhood a while ago. Rocked the car past its snow-plow embankment without too much trouble. I had intended to go to the grocery, but apparently everyone else did too, so I got lunch at a sandwich place and came home. Nestled into a less-snowy parking place closer to my apartment. Now watching Manchester City up 1–0 over Chelsea in the F.A. Cup. End of story.

  46. 46.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: Because it makes for less lively blog reading/responding outrage? Though I’d be preparing to drink heavily were I that prosecutor. It should be a slam dunk, as VDE notes. But it’s Florida so it isn’t.

    And like anyone who’s ever tried a case, I’ve won cases I should have lost and lost cases I should have won. Juries are full of people, and people make puzzling decisions.

  47. 47.

    Cassidy

    For a piece of local flavor, most of the news coverage down here has made sure to play the video of the thug hippity hop music the thugs were offensively listening to in their car.

  48. 48.

    jacy

    Help — what is the name of that game where you string a bunch of similar/related names together? Used to be an old Johnny Carson bit too. i.e. Carrol Merrill, Meryl Streep, Merlin Olson, Al Jolsen, Al Molinaro…. etcetera, etcetera. I know that it has a funky name and I can’t for the life of me think of it or find it on the net.

  49. 49.

    Soonergrunt

    @Amir Khalid: “Someday, soon let us hope, no one will care about a person being gay or straight anymore than they care now about the person being right-handed or left-handed.”

    Speak for yourself. There’s a reason the left hand was the sinister. And I don’t know for certain, but I’ll bet a lot of left handed people dress up as clowns.
    Clowns scare me.

  50. 50.

    JPL

    @Omnes Omnibus: So the jury had questions this morning..
    Just after 9:30 a.m. the jury presented Judge Healey additional questions:

    Is the defense of self-defense separate for each person and each count?
    Are we determining if deadly force is justified against each person in each count?
    If we determine deadly force is justified against one person, is it justified for the others?
    Judge Healey answered questions one and two with a simple “yes.” However question three prompted a discussion between Healey, State Attorney Angela Corey and Dunn’s Attorney Cory Strolla. Healey’s response to the jury was, No self-defense and justifiable use of deadly force applies separately to each count. After receiving answers from Healey, jurors returned to the jury room to continue deliberations.

    How many counts was he charged with? Geez he killed someone.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    Here are the charges against Michael Dunn

    Dunn faces charges of first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree attempted murder, and one count of shooting or throwing a deadly missile. Jurors can also consider lesser charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, second-degree attempted murder and attempted manslaughter.

    If they are looking at each of the issues, I can’t believe they’d find guilty of one and not all of them. Dunn didn’t really care who he killed.

  56. 56.

    ? Martin

    @JPL:

    Is the defense of self-defense separate for each person and each count?
    Are we determining if deadly force is justified against each person in each count?

    They’re headed pretty much where I figured. The black kid that yelled at him (and who was killed) will be deemed self defense, because Dunn was a racist and assumed the black kid would kill him with his blackness and we can’t discriminate against racists because that would mean discriminating against most Floridians, so he’s cool. But Dunn ‘accidentally’ shot some of the other kids in the car who weren’t yelling at him, and so he’ll get some kind of reckless endangerment charge because up-armed citizens aren’t supposed to shoot like stormtroopers. Florida has standards, you know.

  58. 58.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    How many counts was he charged with? Geez he killed someone.

    He shot at a car full of people, so I would expect him to be charged with murder (and lesser included charges) for the one he killed and attempted murder (and lesser included charges) for the other people in the car. I’m a layman, but the questions make it sound as if the jury is thinking about splitting the difference, considering shooting justified for the one kid he claims he saw grabbing a gun but not justified for the other kids in the car, or maybe considering it reasonable that he shot when the car was just sitting there but not when it was driving away. They certainly wouldn’t be asking those questions if they didn’t buy his story at all.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: Sometimes having too many options can be overwhelming.

    It’s why I can’t shop for clothes at TJ Maxx. There are just too many hangers crowded together and my eyes kind of glaze over.

    Hoping this racist murderer doesn’t go free because there are too many mix and match options for the jurors to get their heads around. Or to agree on.

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:
    And there are straight people in WeHo, but that’s not the place you go looking for them. There may be interesting places in NoHo, but the density is higher further down the Red Line.

  64. 64.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @ruemara:
    @Roger Moore:

    I was already typing to suggest Bond street between Lafayette and Bowery to see a building with sculptures on it, another ugly but interesting building, and the Montreal-style Mile End Smoked Meat shop for lunch.

    Might be a bit of a walk though, now that I realize where you are, oops.

    I lived in both cities but I don’t think anyone called that one NoHo when I was there (pre cambrian explosion).

  67. 67.

    Yatsuno

    @hildebrand: Dunno if it helps, but certain sects of Hinduism don’t allow for the eating of onions or garlic. We know there has been a shit ton of cross-pollination of ideas all over that region of the world, but it would make more sense if onions and garlic were haram. I dunno, it’s just the first thing I could think of, and it’s a pretty big reach I admit.

  73. 73.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jacy: I remember Carson doing that, in his “Carnac” schtick, I thought of it as just a sort of internal rhyme gimmick, never knew there was a name for it.

    Edit: Now that I think about it I think it was his Mr Movie Reviewer gag (Art Fern?), he’d list the actors in a movie that way.

  74. 74.

    The Dangerman

    @Yatsuno:

    …plus mochi…

    Um …. YUMMM! Good stuff.

    If you are talking LA stuff for visitors, stay away from the Westside!! NB 405 through Sepulveda Pass is closed same weekend as the PGA plays at Riviera. That should be a complete clusterfuck.

  79. 79.

    Origuy

    Isn’t the Magic Castle in North Hollywood? Not that you can get past the front desk without membership or a pass from a member, but it’s a neat old building and there are a few interesting things to see at the entrance. It’s a private club for stage magicians and supporters. I went there once with someone whose wife was a magician member. She took magic lessons and had to pass an audition to join. You can just pay a fee and join as a regular member, but you don’t get access to the library.
    When you go there for a meal, it includes the shows. There are several performance spaces of different sizes. You have to dress up for dinner. If you ever get the opportunity to go, grab it.

  84. 84.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Kind of amazing how much the whole world, and by world I mean the Internet, is accelerating. Googling the onions and garlic question just out of curiosity, fourth reference returned is this:

    “Legend has it that Muhammad tells a story that when Satan left the garden of eden, in his footprints onions and garlic grew. The legend is …”

    At a glance looked like it might be promising, then saw that it was headed with:

    Open Thread » Balloon Juice
    http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/02/15/open-thread-1777/‎

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    A different Valentine’s Day story.

    Red roses lurk hidden in flower shop back rooms and heart-shaped chocolates are sold under the counter, but Saudis still manage to buy Valentine’s gifts and defy the religious police. Source

  88. 88.

    dmsilev

    This is shaping up to be an annoying afternoon. Chore dumped on me by colleague: “Hey, that paper we have coming out next week is really cool. Why don’t you draft a press release about it? Oh, and we’ll need a snazzy graphic to go with the release.”

    Sigh.

  93. 93.

    MikeJ

    @JPL:

    If they are looking at each of the issues, I can’t believe they’d find guilty of one and not all of them.

    I think the reasoning will be that he shouldn’t face something as serious as murder just for killing a black guy, but they don’t want to let walk. They’ll say he felt legitimately threatened by the guy he killed and convict him for injuring the others. Had he finished them off they would let go.

  94. 94.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Steeplejack: Yeah I had Googled it to verify and left the question mark in but when I came back BJ or FYWP had broken, listed me as “undefined”, and when it fixed itself my edit was toast.

  97. 97.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @dmsilev: That would be a fun kind of Google, one that only returns things you yourself said. Wait, fun, no I meant nightmarish.

  98. 98.

    Roger Moore

    @Yatsuno:

    I still say you’ll get a kick out of Little Tokyo. Lots of neat little trinkets plus mochi.

    Mochi ice cream from Mikawaya, who invented it. Sweets from Fugetsu-do, who are LA’s claimant to having invented the fortune cookie. Real ramen. Not to mention the Geffen Contemporary, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Go For Broke monument.

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Origuy:

    Nope, it’s in regular Hollywood (though on the north end of it, to make it extra confusing). There’s Hollywood, which is part of the city of Los Angeles and in the Los Angeles basin; North Hollywood, which is in the San Fernando Valley but is also part of the city of Los Angeles; and West Hollywood, which is in the Los Angeles basin but incorporated as an independent city. Confused yet? ;-)

  101. 101.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Soonergrunt: FWIW I have an aunt who is flamingly left handed and an uncle who bats right and catches right. My family has learned to be tolerant.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My brother-in-law is gay and left-handed. We tease him that he’s 10 percent of 10 percent of the population.

    ETA: Also, my (step)brother is right-handed and bats left, while I’m left-handed but bat right. Apparently it has more to do with your eyesight than your handedness per se.

  103. 103.

    Roger Moore

    @Origuy:

    Isn’t the Magic Castle in North Hollywood?

    That’s in Hollywood, not North Hollywood; it’s only a block from Hollywood Boulevard. North Hollywood is actually north of Studio City on the other side of the Hollywood Hills.

  110. 110.

    Roger Moore

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That should have been “bats right and catches left.”

    Does he catch left or throw left? Baseball players are generally described in terms of their throwing hand (dominant), not their catching hand (non-dominant).

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    I eat and write left-handed but play sports right-handed. Sort of like a fiddler crab: small claw for fine work, big claw for rough work.

    ETA: Although when I worked construction for a while back in the dark ages (before nail guns) I discovered through fatigue and boredom that I am ambidextrous with a hammer.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Arclite

    Reticent to admit have no idea who Ellen Page is (and can’t recall coming across her name anywhere other than when it was mentioned here). Presumably a celebrity of some stripe.

    Now Bettie Page (pic), that’s another matter entirely…

  118. 118.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    It’s funny, I have a Bacon number of 3, and when I tried the calculator all the actors I tried (I got a three about four different ways) who had twos were because of the same movie. It almost seems as if the entire game is based on his having been in “Starting Over” in 1979, along with so many other people in Hollywood that everyone was either in it or in something with someone who was.

    And no I don’t know if getting a three about four different ways is the same thing as throwing right and batting left or swinging both ways or whatever, but now I’m not even sure if anything exists outside Google and Balloon Juice anyway. This thread has shaken my belief in pretty much everything.

  121. 121.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Steeplejack:

    OK, if it’s 1 based, then my Bacon number is 3. A friend of mine sat right behind Tim Matheson at a Mariners game once, they had a nice chat.

  122. 122.

    ? Martin

    @Bill E Pilgrim: My wife has a Bacon number of 2 – I think two different ways, and IIRC that movie is why.

    I have an Erdös number of 3, but no Bacon number. I could probably arrange for a Hopper number of 2, but that would require effort on my part.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Thanks. Haven’t seen it.

    Last time I paid more than passing attention to the Oscars I think Carson was hosting them. Last time I bothered tuning in was to see Charlie Chaplin get his honorary award.

  127. 127.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Villago Delenda Est: I thought you had to be in a movie with someone?

    It rests in the assumption that any individual involved in the Hollywood, California, film industry can be linked through his or her film roles to Kevin Bacon within six steps.

  131. 131.

    smintheus

    There’s that number (give or take) again:

    A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation. …To the question “Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth,” 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    The classic game is only actors to actors, but it’s expanded out to behind the camera folks, too. And I feel I get to claim my Bacon number honestly since the actor in question was an actual friend of my FIL and not just someone he had a chat with one time.

    (And by “actual friend” I mean my FIL used to stay in his apartment in Santa Monica.)

  136. 136.

    NotMax

    @smintheus

    Periodically over at least the past fifty years some pollster asks that same question and the incorrect response rate has consistently been somewhere between 21% and 32%.

  141. 141.

    WaterGirl

    @? Martin: Definitely something to feel good about.

    That was a ton of kids! I found myself wondering at one point whether we were seeing any repeats or if, indeed, that many kids really were involved. Kind of like seeing the old westerns and realizing the same indian had fallen off his horse about a dozen times in the same battle scene.

    It looked to me like the kids could self-identify and kind of choose which part they were involved with, did I get that right? Pretty darn cool that they brought everybody together. Good stuff.

  142. 142.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: A description of L.A. that was in The Late Great State of California was “26 suburbs in search of a city.” I found that it described the situation quite well.

    How close to Olivera Street is Little Tokyo? I seem to remember a friend and I walked through Olivera Street, before going to Little Tokyo for lunch, a kendo demonstration and the Japan Day parade. (This being 1976, the parade’s grand marshall was George Takei.)

  143. 143.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Steeplejack:

    Yeah, I guess on the more commonly accepted scale, yes. I thought 0 was “you’ve actually met the person” and it went from there, but it can be so confoozleing sometimes.

    She handed me a nanosecond, I guess that makes me a 1.

  145. 145.

    PaulW

    I think everybody’s gone off celebrating our nation’s shoot-out victory in hockey over the USSR uh Putin’s Hockey Team.

  146. 146.

    Steeplejack

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Some languages’ arrays are 0-based (C), some are 1-based (Pascal).

    Jeez, I miss Turbo Pascal. And I haven’t thought of that in years. If only it had had the ability to create (large) EXE files.

    I guess the mention of COBOL above jogged my memory on that. Back in the early ’80s the guy in the office next to mine—yes, we had actual offices, not just cubes!—had an ongoing hobby project developing a COBOL program to analyze and beat the lines on NFL games. He ran it under MP/M on an Altos computer. Good times.

  147. 147.

    ? Martin

    @WaterGirl:

    It looked to me like the kids could self-identify and kind of choose which part they were involved with, did I get that right? Pretty darn cool that they brought everybody together. Good stuff.

    Yeah, I’d say 75% of the school was there. The marching band was all out there (about 250 kids). The 50 or so cheerleaders were there. The sports teams were there. That was the new principal on the golf cart. Kids could decide where to represent – some of the marching band kids were in other parts of the video representing clubs, yearbook, etc. There’s a strong academic drive there and it’s not too terribly cliquish (certainly less than my high school). It’s a pretty tight community for being a decent sized city (250K people).

    We didn’t see any repeats until they come out of the classroom near the end where everyone congregates.

  152. 152.

    ruemara

    Close, but no cigar. Here in Korea Town, chugging decaf and writing a synopsis in my head. Turns out my host is a craft services contractor and actress. She’s all, “why not just move to L.A.”. Duh, that’s what my car is for. Heading to the museum or something. Or I can stay seated for a bit an get some writing done. The tourist fashions are… fabulous.

  154. 154.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:

    It’s pretty close — Olvera Street is across from Union Station and down a couple of blocks, and it’s an easy walk to Little Tokyo from there. Maybe a mile or so?

  155. 155.

    hildebrand

    @Yatsuno: The whole bit of folklore surrounding onions and garlic is fascinating – and essentially is spread across every Asian, Middle Eastern, North African, and European group, religious and non.

    What continues to perplex me is the striking absence of any reference to a specific source for the Satan leaving the Garden of Eden legend. So many people reference it, but I think it is all circular referencing. I am now committed to finding the source. Weird what we get obsessive about.

  156. 156.

    ? Martin

    BTW, Bacon number is based on sharing credit in a film/tv show. Not just meeting people. Erdös is based on published papers. I’d assume Hopper number is also based on paper publication. My wife is a 2 because she was credited in a tv show along with an actor (a 1) that was credited in a film with Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon is 0. I’m an Erdös 3 because I co-authored with my advisor (a 2) who previously coauthored with another colleague (a 1) who co-authored with Erdös (0).

    I’m not sure how you’d do numbers for presidents. Zillions of people would be 1s in that scenario. I have a 2 rating for every president since Eisenhower by virtue of having lunch with Helen Thomas while in college. I think the standard has to be higher than ‘meeting with’.

  157. 157.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    Ahem — “K-Town.”

    Also, don’t forget to roll your eyes when you say your friends want to meet in the Valley tonight. In Burbank, of all the uncool places.

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    So I am now able to watch True Detective. Is this a watch as many episodes as I can kind of show, so I can catch up? Or is it more of a watch one and let it rattle around in your head awhile before you watch another one kind of show?

  161. 161.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @the Conster:

    I don’t know. If you watch the speach, she was pretty clearly scared to death. She did it as part of a speech at the HRC and specifically talked about societal gender expectations and such.

    It’s a damn moving speech.

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