Reading the earnest, petulant defenses of Obama* w/r/t the Suskind book is like taking a vacation in the not-yet-fallen-world of 2008. It's kind of moving, in a way.
* Worse than Stalin and George Lucas combined!
Has anyone ever written a book about a hard-boiled investigator who IS A DRAGON? Because that would be awesome.
I'm not feeling very hopeful about the future. The left is soft and riven with stupid internal dissension, with everyone pulling in half a dozen different directions, and no single coherent message. It's a mishmash of interest groups. The right is unified and has a deep infrastructure of think tanks and lobbying groups, as well as the ability to turn out an army of passionate footsoldiers. We have the numbers, but they have the ability to turn out all of their guys, while we turn out maybe half, provided the weather isn't too shitty.
I predict with a great deal of certainty that in the future I will be annoyed by this thread.
Also, I predict that in the future I will continue to be annoyed by my stats class.
The left is soft and riven with stupid internal dissension
I don't see this, but that's is possibly because I don't consider Obama part of the left.
And there is a serious fissure on the right between the traditional Republicans who want to fuck the poor, and the Tea Party types who want to fuck everybody.
4: My stats class is going well. Are you doing enough logistic regression in yours? That always makes things more interesting.
|| I don't usually enjoy this sort of article, but, well, maybe I could stand reading about Michigan some.|>
2: We should write it to cheer up LB.
10: You can have one of mine.
stepwise, pr(.2): logit assholeness gender race age income_cat realtor paleo naderite ronpaul hamptons southwillrise LA
What's wrong with your stats class?
11: Chapter 1:
When he twitched his last little rattle, clanking like a cheap electrum chain, I was already talons-deep in his saddlebags.
No gold. Shit.
The tin cans think all we want is gold. In my case, they're right.
Suits my complexion.
My name's Grimvyrm. Friends call me Grim. I carry a piece, but they took my badge a long time ago. I got wings, but I don't fly if I have cab fare.
I'm a dragon. But don't put me on your Trapper Keeper, sister.
Has anyone ever written a book about a hard-boiled investigator who IS A DRAGON? Because that would be awesome.
That would be Adam Roberts' "The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo", I think. Roberts is a bad writer but a moderately good writer of parodies, so it's probably an OK read.
People think being a dragon must be so bad-ass. The breathing fire. The lying on a pile of gold.
But try being only three feet tall. As a young dragon I learned you have to make your own way in this world. That was the last thing my father told me before he was murdered. By thieves.
You guessed it. They took his pile of gold.
Now, I solve crimes. It's my way of honoring his memory.
What the fuck, HTML tags. I italicized the whole comment.
What is it with the pile of gold thing, anyway? Do dragons get some tactile pleasure out of it? Is there some reason creatures identified with fire are also associated with cold treasure? Are they all just enormous, fire breathing Scrooge McDucks?
18: you know how cats have litter boxes, right?
Oh dear. Nobody told Flippanter about pooping.
18: My guess? It's the softest incombustible bed they can find. You try sleeping on rocks all day.
You try sleeping on rocks all day.
It's for my back!
Couldn't they sleep on a bed of lead?
24: not with all the fucking alchemists.
Beds of gold and jewels are Veblen goods.
What is it with the pile of gold thing, anyway?
Yeah, don't any dragons have children?
It's like Walt doesn't care about the dragon babies and their developing predatory minds.
That's right! Fuck dragons! I hate those fuckers!
Yeah, don't any dragons have children?
Some do. Single childless dragons excoriate them in their diaries as Smaug Marrieds.
Ponies eaten 15 (bad)
Gold pillaged 1500 gp (v.g.!)
Minutes spent in wordplay with inexplicably invisible burglar 30 (v. bad)
My question is what's with the damsels?
32: Dragons are victims of the patriarchy, just like the rest of us.
18: Nonflippantly, I've been looking and haven't found a good answer (though it must go back at least to classical times what with the Golden Fleece), but one possibility is that it was associated with the belief that metals grew out of the ground. With dragons living in caverns and so forth, it would be easy for them to accumulate it; in one Asian notion, they created it by breathing into the ground.
35: Beowulf certainly has the classic combination of dragon plus fire plus flying plus treasure. The Colchis serpent could neither fly nor breathe fire.
Why do Dragons live in caves with treasure?
One mystery about Dragons that has been hard to solve was why some sort of treasure was found in most Dragon's Lairs (caves). The treasure itself would vary from gold, silver, rubies, diamonds, DDs, 8-balls, $.99 double cheese burgers, and sporks. The only explanation we have that makes any sort of sense was given to us by a man who went by Nokard Sore.
His findings while working as a Dragom Ninja (he wasn't, in fact, a ninja but preferred the name as it was a much better title than the given "voyeur of private parts", as Dragon Lairs (caves) were considered an invasion of privacy.) *ahem* were quite intriguing to Dragonosophers.He reported that the treasures found in the caves depended on the Dragon's diet....(meaning Dragons shit treasure). This trait was an odd enough find but when he furthered his studies, he noticed that Dragons would only leave their caves (lairs) to eat or breed (females). Their behavioral traits pointed out that most Dragons suffer from social anxiety disorder (hence the awkward burning of all humanity, and most other species, except cockroaches) and probably urophobia as well.
This thread is unexpectedly light and funny.
He reported that the treasures found in the caves depended on the Dragon's diet....(meaning Dragons shit treasure).
Gold is incredibly chemically unreactive (diamond is also not very reactive). So if a dragon had extremely powerful acids in its stomach contents, then it would digest and absorb the entirety of everybody it ate, with the exception of their pocket change and engagement rings etc, which it would pass as solid waste. So it's not that they choose to collect treasure, they just don't clean up.
It has the added advantage, from the dragon's point of view, of ensuring that a constant supply of fresh food comes to your door in search of treasure. It's like being a grizzly bear that shits six-packs.
38: predicting the future is hard.
I'm now imagining Bolster sharing a celebratory beer with her group after scaring off the grizzly.
It's like being a grizzly bear that shits six-packs.
As are so many things.
29: That's right! Fuck dragons! I hate those fuckers!
The SciFi er, SORRY, the SyFy (SiiiiFEEEE) channel was on Saturday and I was walking by and became entranced. It was a movie about dragon (stupid fucking dragons) apparently facing off against the military in a Large American City. It was so, so very bad. It was kinda cool.
I was thinking, 'Naw, this has like moderately expensive CGI and shit, this can't be one of those awful made-for-SiiiiFeeeeee movie with like the aliens that eat wood conquering Oregon or something. No, this is an actual movie that people apparently paid money to see.'
And it was so very generic in its rehash of depictions of whatever alien dragony entities were running about it was like watching every fantasy movie ever made, all at the same time! It was baffling, because they had actual American tanks and hummers and whatnot in the movie and that must have involved real folding green money, which should imply someone was actual conscious when they typed up whatever used toilet paper they were using for a screenplay. Maybe, I thought, it wasn't as bad as it seemed and everybody had loved this movie when it came out and I just somehow missed it, and was missing it.
And then they brought in a fight between two giant snakes after the dragon army had been wiped out by special runtime-shortening magic. Wow, I thought, this is amazingly bad! Two ginormous cocks fighting it out and somehow our tiny little heroes haven't been crushed, or at least drowned in Astroglide! And then it had an ending, and it ended, badly, oh so badly, and so I ran over to the internet to check out what the hell it was. Sure enough it turned out to be some Korean epic made for zillions of dollars that had not been attended by anyone outside of Korea, so yes, it was, in fact, Power Rangers bad. And reviewers called it the worst movie they'd ever seen and Rotten Tomatoes give it a hideously low rating.
So, everything resumed making sense and all was right in the world.
max
['Wait. You were talking about the Obama administration, weren't you?']
I had, down to the post-movie internet search, the exact same experience as 43.
I had a similar experience when I happened on an airing of Battlefield Earth but my confusion was resolved when Travolta appeared.
42: being me is like being a grizzly bear that shits six-packs, Sifu.
Travolta is like a bear that shits six-packs.
43: Sounds almost as awesome as Sharktopus.
Damn. Too late for the politics.
Had to go to Wikipedia for humanoid dragons, either form changers like Tehanu or something more akin to Blake's power-critters. Quasi-humans of great power. Can't remember where I read it.
The high-level dragons in Angband are the scariest drags, not even counting the dracolichs.
The Ancient multi-hued dragon (Red 'D') === Num:462 Lev:43 Rar:1 Spd:+10 Hp:1848 Ac:100 Exp:13000 A huge draconic form. Many colours ripple down its massive frame. Few live to see another. This evil dragon is normally found at depths of 2150 feet (level 43), and moves quickly. It may carry up to 6 objects. It can bash down doors and push past weaker monsters. It resists acid, lightning, fire, cold, poison, bright light, and rock remover, and cannot be confused or slept. It pays little attention to intruders, which it may notice from 250 feet. It may breathe acid (616), lightning (616), fire (616), frost (616), or poison (616), and may cast spells intelligently which terrify, blind, or confuse; 1 time in 5. It can claw to attack with damage 4d10, claw to attack with damage 4d10, and bite to attack with damage 7d10. (Angband 3.1.2v2)
"It breathes. You die."
"It may carry up to 6 objects."
It lacks only a shopping bag to be invincible.
Back when I used to play Moria (the predecessor to Angband), whenever I would see a "d" character, and realize it was an ancient multihued dragon, my heart would start to pound. I feel a little tense just thinking about it.
[I]n one Asian notion, they created it by breathing into the ground.
I feel that Asian dragons set a poor example for dragon youth: they're always slacking around the heavens, tailing that freaking giant pearl up and down the clouds like a hackey sack, "making it rain," if you know what I mean and I think you do. Meanwhile, European dragons are hoarding treasure, eating maidens fair, roasting knights in their armor: getting things done!
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JSTOR bleg: if someone with access would be so kind as to send me this, my gratitude, while finite, would be huge.
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56: Surely not those who misuse the objective case.
Hell, people (idiots) are running with this, trying to discredit Suskind..Anita Dunn to Valerie Jarrett:
If it weren't for the president, this place would be in court for a hostile workplace, because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women...
Ron Suskind:
"This place would be in court for a hostile workplace," Dunn is quoted as saying in Suskind's book. "Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."
Naughty, naughty, Ron. That's not how you quote. ...
Okay hell, yeah Ken Lay knew nothing at Enron, Nixon was ignorant of Watergater, Reagan was not involved in Iran/Contra, and Cheney ran the Bush administration.
One clause is a lie. Either Obama created a very woman-supportive atmosphere that what hundreds of Cossacks (including near the very top) blatantly ignored and contradicted, or the first clause " If it weren't for the president" is the kind of President/Presidency protecting ass-covering future employment protecting bullshit I have been seeing for 45 fucking years.
60: Thanks, but it didn't come through. Instead, I got linked to the terms and conditions page, which basically scolded me for my attempted thievery. Way to make me feel like an asshole.
I've just noticed that historysgreatestmonster.org is available (although the .com is taken).
58: There has never been a shortage of reasons for not loving me.
(breaks down weeping into the keyboard)
66: No one cares about your crazy Gnostic re-interpretations, Elaine Pagels!
67: Good one, Flip!
I suppose everyone here has heard the joke about Mary and the first stone.
Did I just see the word "stepwise" in the context of a statistics class?
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Hey, remember when heebie was talking about how she didn't have a schedule because she liked to be flexible, and a couple of us kinda jumped on that, and she said "dude, there's a book. We go through the book, in order" and we were sort of mollified maybe? Well, I'm taking this stats class, and not only is there no schedule, there's no book that is being taught out of, information about such topics as the location of the syllabus, the time and location of office hours, whether or not we would have problem sets, grading policies for the course and the location of the lab have been sort of dribbling out over the first few weeks (with no particular written documentation of any of them). Other information, such as the dates of the midterms, the relevant chapters in the (optional) books, grading policies for problem sets and midterms and the mathematical basis of the material we are "learning", has not yet been revealed. But I'm sure some of it will be!
Also, the slides are only halfway translated from a foreign language.
Gaaaaaah.
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74: You'd rather see it in line dancing?
Haha, and hey, it turns out today we're jumping in 3/4 of the way through the slides from 2 weeks ago, with no introduction to that fact. Whee!
78: yes, but they don't let us look at them.
When in doubt, p = .078.
I'm in doubt whenever I think p is less than 0.78.
That stats class sounds like at some point it should cover the concept of "regression to be mean."
On the other hand, the way the instructor pronounces "variables" is hilarious.
If it's "valiabers" that's totally racist.
I bought almonds for a snack instead of candy and now I'm competely out of energy. No wonder cavemen got killed by all the people who would grow wheat.
Did you eat enough bacon this morning? About a pound should do.
Would anyone care to calculate the odds that I will muster up the motivation to get some work done today?
And I only have $.98, so I need to go clear to the ATM to have money to buy candy.
Paleo man wouldn't need sufficient change to get his candy.
Would anyone care to calculate the odds that I will muster up the motivation to get some work done today?
.78
Let me know if that's high or low, and I'll adjust the answer.
If the curves don't fit, you must logit.
83: I had a prof who pronounced it "worry-ables" which sort of makes sense.
88: That's not math, that's class warfare.
96: I knew it would never last.
Pah. You just need the mental discipline to picture them all as independent musicians.
96: In Soviet Union While you're asleep R.E.M. masturbates you.
It is kind of hilarious to hear brilliant math professors with thick Texan or southern accents.
I don't see anything creepy about masturbating to a band that's broken up. All the members of the band are still alive. I don't understand the taboo.
I'm also not entirely sure I even know what it means to masturbate to a band, as distinct from masturbating to the collection of human individuals that comprise the band. Maybe this means I'm sexually unimaginative, I dunno.
What I'm trying to say is that you want me to stop masturbating to R.E.M., you'll have to pry my cock from my cold, dead hands.
A band, like cleavage, is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gold is incredibly chemically unreactive (diamond is also not very reactive). So if a dragon had extremely powerful acids in its stomach contents,
86 et al.: I've been feeling unusually lazy for the past week or more. I've been blaming it on the the shortening day; there's noticeably less light in the morning than there was even a month ago. However, I hope that either I adapt quickly or there's secretly some other cause, because I really don't want this to last for the next six months.
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I can't even handle making a post of Grandma's latest stories, because it involves injury to a baby, and backstory involving death of two of her own children. I'm feeling slightly sick to my stomach contemplating what she has gone through.
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87: Did you eat enough bacon this morning? About a pound should do.
I had tempura-fried bacon this week. A little was a lot.
107: If aqua regia is your idea of an easy way to dissolve things, I really shudder to think of the corrosive things you deal with.
It's like being a grizzly bear that shits six-packs.
I bet being a basilisk is like being a chicken-lizard that craps pot.
107: OK, maybe not that powerful. I did know that, having read Richard Rhodes, and also Pigeon Post - the killer bit in the latter being when the kids think they've found gold and test it and think "hooray!" because it dissolves in aqua regia and they know gold dissolves in aqua regia; the point being that everything dissolves in aqua regia, but gold doesn't dissolve in anything else.
I should probably go to sleep so I can have enough energy to SELL SOME MOTHERFUCKING FURNITURE tomorrow. I am going to ROCK those sales, baby. it hurts my knees, but I have to wear heels. I sell better in heels and a push-up bra. this is perhaps not surprising, but kind of is, since the women are usually the decision makers in straight couples buying, and the gay male customers (who are our best) presumable don't give a shit about my boobs. so it's a mystery.
It makes perfect sense -- they're not dazzled into making bad buying decisions because they're lusting after you, they're aspiring to be like you. If they buy a coffee table from you, they will be as attractive and well-put together as you. The hotter you look, the better it works.
I pass a couple of expensive-looking furniture stores most days. The only people ever within seem to be thin, expensive-looking young women.
ooooh, ok, that actually makes sense. and the gay guys just have good taste already. I also give free beer to the bored aussie husbands who have been dragged out shopping and let them just sit down somewhere and listen to the clash.
I also give free beer to the bored aussie husbands who have been dragged out shopping and let them just sit down somewhere and listen to the clash.
I picture puzzled Australian wives going "I don't understand, Bob. You say you want to go furniture shopping again today?"
It is no coincidence that my wife's shop [selling expensive shoes and handbags, mostly to women] is staffed by attractive, well-put-together women.
the gay guys just have good taste already
I would guess that they're influenced by your level of stylishness as well -- that they wouldn't buy from you frumpy. It's not a simple as wanting to be you, exactly, for gay men, but still wanting to be someone as stylish as you.
It's like being a grizzly bear that shits six-packs.
Almost. Griz eat hucks, and, when they're ripe, shit big purple piles. People love hucks, and are willing to walk around big purple piles of bear shit to get them.
You have to tap firmly on the surface of the bear and listen for a hollow sound to be sure. Unfortunately, people rarely survive this step.
If you thump a grizzly on the top of the head and it sounds hollow, it's ripe. Unripe grizzlies will have a tighter, metallic ringing sound.
Does it help if I tell you that doing that is one of the few pleasures in an otherwise bleak and depressing working day?
Pwning: the shitting a six-pack of the internet.