The weather has been really blah. Working in the Garage, cleaning it up, mainly because I ran out of excuses.
NFL Open Thread
Go Broncos!
Open Thread: Jersey Guy
Via Billmon, Digby‘s been mining the Halperin/Heilemann excerpts at Time:
… The vetters were stunned by the garish controversies lurking in the shadows of his record. There was a 2010 Department of Justice inspector general’s investigation of Christie’s spending patterns in his job prior to the governorship, which criticized him for being “the U.S. attorney who most often exceeded the government [travel expense] rate without adequate justification” and for offering “insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification” for stays at swank hotels like the Four Seasons. There was the fact that Christie worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Securities Industry Association at a time when Bernie Madoff was a senior SIA official—and sought an exemption from New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act. There was Christie’s decision to steer hefty government contracts to donors and political allies like former Attorney General John Ashcroft, which sparked a congressional hearing. There was a defamation lawsuit brought against Christie arising out of his successful 1994 run to oust an incumbent in a local Garden State race. Then there was Todd Christie, the Governor’s brother, who in 2008 agreed to a settlement of civil charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he acknowledged making “hundreds of trades in which customers had been systematically overcharged.” (Todd also oversaw a family foundation whose activities and purpose raised eyebrows among the vetters.)….
Digby adds “Sadly, waaaay too many liberal men have told me that they admire Christie for his “honesty.” Strangely, I haven’t met one woman of either party who can stand the guy….”
Just as well for our struggling nation that his Repub primary opponents will be all over Christie’s ethical shortcuts, because too many journamalists and the low-info voters they feed can’t tell a mensch from a momzer.
Open Thread: Happy Diwali / Deepavali !
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MOAR LIGHTS, more fireworks, more sugar — perfect holiday. Please forgive me if I’m jumping the starters’ pistol here…
(CNN) — Fireworks boom, bulbs flash, and flames flicker as tens of millions of people across the globe celebrate the beginning of the Festival of Lights.
Diwali — from the word Deepavali, meaning “row of lights” — is observed by Hindu, Sikh and Jain communities, who celebrate for five days in autumn to mark the victory of light over darkness.
This year, the festival begins on November 3, with splashes of color, lighting displays and blaring parties set to greet Diwali’s arrival.
Celebrated for centuries across much of the Indian subcontinent, Diwali is now exploding: spreading the promise of wealth, knowledge and happiness to new communities across the world…
Fireworks are said to drive away evil spirits and, at this time of year, many Hindus will also clean the house and light small oil-burning lanterns to attract Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth into the home.
But the celebration is anticipated with excitement by many across India — as well as neighboring Sri Lanka and Nepal — regardless of religious beliefs…
From the ‘Dewali in Boston‘ Facebook page
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Friday Night Open Thread
Another day of appointments with doctors and other folks, and still working through my issues, which I know I haven’t talked about much lately, but I will update you when I feel like there is something to say. It’s been a really long couple of months and I just wanted to thank all of you for being good sports in my semi-absence and being so supportive (and that goes double for the front pagers). It’s so weird to be a misanthropic introvert but still appreciate your emails and kind thoughts. One of you folks sent me a pillow, which was super sweet, but unfortunately I never got to use it. Someone else claimed it:
She always knocks all the blankets down and then lies on them like the Princess and the Pea. The pillow was on the other couch, but she apparently decided it needed to be relocated to her own personal bed.
Friday Night Open Thread: Yer Momma Don’t Care About Privacy
While we wait for Cole to drop the latest news from West Virginia. Will Oremus mines an Intel survey for his new #Slatepitch:
… Interestingly, the group most optimistic about technology’s role in their lives is women older than 45 who live in developing countries. In China, seven out of 10 women over 45 believe people don’t use technology enough, and 79 percent say it makes us more human. That figure is 70 percent across all of the emerging-market countries in the survey, including Brazil, India, and Indonesia. But just 22 percent of American women in the same age group agreed.
Bell said she was astonished by the finding at first. But she suspects it stems from women in developing countries having seen technology dramatically improve their quality of life in the past decade or two. Specifically, women in developing countries said they believe technological innovations will improve education, transportation, work, and health care in the years to come. And they’re willing to help: 86 percent said they’d be willing to use software that watches their work habits, and 77 percent were open to the idea of using “smart toilets” to monitor their health.
In short, the Evgeny Morozov school of techno-skepticism seems to be catching on among young people in rich countries who take their gadgets for granted but fear for their privacy. But in countries where “quality of life” means access to basic education, health care, and sanitation, technology is still generally seen as an unalloyed good. To them, it seems, it’s privacy that’s the unnecessary luxury.
Lots of bullshit mining in such a short piece, but here’s my starter:
(1) Apart from the obvious alte kacker jokes, not a big surprise that an old lady would be willing to trade surveillance in return for the safe, indoor toilet facilities she doesn’t have now.
(2) Also not a big surprise that poor, undereducated elderly women will give the young, overenthusiastic young professionals whatever answers those kids are trolling for.
(3) Of course old women in small villages consider privacy a “luxury”; they know just how much that luxury, like most others, has been denied them all their lives. Anybody ever spent time in a community (even a virtual village, like say this blog) can attest that nobody ever forgets, and damn few neighbors forgive.
Friday Night Open Thread: Yer Momma Don’t Care About PrivacyPost + Comments (32)
Friday Evening Open Thread: ‘Asymetric Bias’
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Make of this what you will:
When dogs wag their tails, they can convey not just happiness but a wide array of emotions. As Italian researchers reported in 2007, a wag to the left indicates negative emotions; a wag to the right indicates positive ones.
Now the same team of scientists has found that no one knows this better than other dogs.
In a new study reported in the journal Current Biology, the researchers had dogs watch videos of other dogs wagging their tails. When watching a tail wag to the left, the dogs showed signs of anxiety, like a higher heart rate. When the tail went in the opposite direction, they remained calm…
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What’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?
Friday Evening Open Thread: ‘Asymetric Bias’Post + Comments (132)