You've ceded the moral high-ground to my co-blogger. Never thought that would happen.
It's as if you miss having someone here to bait the unwary with strongly held and wildly swerving opinions.
Has it been determined that it was Krauthammer's own damn fault and not a rogue VC, say, or a clumsy Young American For Freedom who pushed him into that pool?
1: Let's not go overboard. Ogged isn't calling for government action intended to paralyze Krauthammer. It's more of a whimsical celebration of serendipity.
Funnier than the original! I hope future sequels continue to up the ante.
If you met him, you'd love him. Really.
I was serious about 2.
"I could never vote for her because the Clintons' liberal internationalism on display in the 1990s -- the pursuit of paper treaties and the reliance on international institutions -- is naive in theory and feckless in practice. And her domestic policy sees state intervention and expansion as the answer to every human ill from mortgage default to the common cold. Nonetheless, if 2008 is going to be a Democratic year, as it very well could, Hillary would serve the country better than any of her Democratic rivals."
the pursuit of paper treaties
I prefer chasing the ones written on ponies. Naked, foamy ponies.
When you say 'naked' ponies, do you simply mean ponies lacking harness or other tack? Or have we progressed to the full perversity of pony-shaving?
This is the pastry bat-signal, isn't it? It's got to be. ogged, they sell muffins at any coffeeshop.
I would have thought that there would be reams written on the question of whether animals are naked, but a quick google suggests not.
Sam the American Eagle says they are, but I'm not aware of a more authoritative source.
but I'm not aware of a more authoritative source.
Because there isn't a more authortative source. Muppets rule.
So, how 'bout them Red Sox, eh?
Yaz looked old. I know he's like 120, but he bounced the "opening pitch". Ouch.
I'm really disappointed that I can't find the text of "Naked Boys on Naked Ponies" online anywhere.
ogged, they sell muffins at any coffeeshop.
You don't want the muffins ogged brings.
I know he's like 120, but he bounced the "opening pitch".
Yeah, but he can still throw a hell of lot faster than Krauthammer, that's for sure.
Are they some sort of weird-ass chicken salad muffins or does he, you know, defile them?
Let's just say that ogged's muffin recipe involves a cheese grater.
22: Iranians have weird ideas about pastries.
That image has him looking like the malignant dwarf in The Wild, Wild West—the series, not the Will Smith movie. Bring on the steam-powered robots.
So, does anyone know anything about Krauthammer University?
How's the Middle Eastern studies program? What about the school of social work?
We serve all our guests pastries. We are a hospitable people.
21: Knecht R. that was cruel. You ought to be ashamed.
OT: I can't give any details, because it's perfectly possible the friend in question could end up reading comments here sometime, but I have conclusive proof that smoking way too much pot makes you stupid, or at least unaware of very basic facts about the world.
The Greatest Generation wouldn't have stood for a columnist named Krauthammer, I'll tell you that. He would have had to change his name to Liberty Cabbage.
What? The Krauthammer will pulverize the Kraut nails down into the accursed soil whence they sprang! He would be so popular that the Post would have to find another columnist who would change his name to Japscourge.
stupid, or at least unaware of very basic facts about the world
There's some debate about whether this NFL player was kidding or not when he expressed relief when he found out he wouldn't need a translator in England.
30: Jeebus, Apo. What did you do to LB?
malleus germanorum.
but objective or subjective genitive?
LB, I'm pretty sure apostropher reads damn near every comment here.
whether this NFL player was kidding
There are several virtually identical -- and of course, possibly true -- stories about MLB players going to Toronto.
Knecht R. that was cruel. You ought to be ashamed
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
In high school we played football against Tabor http://www.taboracademy.org/. One of my team mates, a fellow from Minnesota, claimed to never having seen the Atlantic. Upon arrival he looked out over the ocean and spotted an island about 1/2 mile offshore. "Is that England?" he asks. I'm pretty sure he was kidding. He is now retired from investment banking.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I say, if you can't beat 'em, toss 'em into an empty swimming pool.
41: And then bean 'em with a hail of baseballs.
Translators in England are all well and good, but they don't compare to Marvin Barnes' time machine.
I routinely had Chinese students ask me "What's the weather like in America?"
I don't think pot was to blame though.
I had a German colleague (menial job) ask me "So, in America, do you ever see Tina Turner out shopping?"
Another colleague punched him and said, "Of course not, you idiot. Tina Turner doesn't shop for herself."
I need subtitles for Mike Leigh movies.
re: 47
Yeah, but that's because they use entirely fake accents in Mike Leigh movies.
No, pot makes you lazy. It can amplify stupid, but you have to start out that way.
No, pot makes you lazy.
Does it amplify lazy, too? Because I was lazy before I started smoking pot.
I was always too lazy to bother smoking pot.
9: "Doesn't she know that treaties are just pieces of paper! Real power comes from Blood and Soil!"
A friend of mine was a Grateful Dead fan for years while he was smoking pot. Once he stopped, he couldn't stand them.
I routinely had Chinese students ask me "What's the weather like in America?"
I passed a group of prospective freshmen with a upperclassman giving a tour, and one of the PFs said, "What's the weather like in Heebie U. Town?"
So I assumed they had travelled some distance to get here.
The older student said, "About the same as San Antonio," and the PF nodded, clearly being from San Antonio. I almost burst out laughing, because we're about 30 minutes outside of San Antonio.
I don't think this scenario translated very well, but at the time I thought it was really funny.
40: heh! Your pseud is ever more appropriate. At least you didn't play golf against them.
I'm curious, though, TLL: collar popped or no?
53: Quitting drugs can do damage, sure.
4: Has it been determined that it was Krauthammer's own damn fault and not a rogue VC
I know that getting angel funding these days is cutthroat, but this is ridiculous!
Plus, since when is Krauthammer forming a Web 2.0 startup?
A friend of mine was a Grateful Dead fan for years while he was smoking pot. Once he stopped, he couldn't stand them.
Gawd, that's perfect. It explains so much.
collar popped or no?
Arriviste. Collar not popped if worn alone, popped if worn under your Brooks Brothers button- down.
58: Hence the old joke about what a Deadhead says when they're caught at a show without any acid.
On my first visit to the US, someone said to me, "I think Ireland is great, but why do you have to kill all those poor whales?"
That one took me a couple of seconds to figure out. Hey, it's only one letter off.
One does get some pretty amazing questions. Someone once asked my mom if there are any hospitals in Iran.
A little later during the same visit (I'm not making this up) someone complimented me for speaking English so well.
64: I believe you. I once received the same compliment. And I'm only from north of the border.
One of the sadder moments of my life was sitting on a plane from Japan to Fiji, next to a very nice Finnish journalist. He introduced himself, and as soon as he realized I was American started explaining what and where Finland was. And he wasn't even being condescending -- he was putting in a lot of effort into conveying that of course I couldn't be expected to have heard of Finland, after all, who has? I think I muttered something about how I'd heard of the place before, you're the ones with the reindeer and the cell phones.
Snark grew up in a town in Maryland called Columbia. People who are from the DC/Baltimore area, or who have lived there for a while, can generally be counted upon to have heard of it, but other people, naturally, cannot. This has led to several amusing episodes where someone asked him where he was from, he answered, and the other person expressed great amazement at his excellent accent. His Jewish/Norwegian coloring is just plausible enough to make it work.
OT: But why do you take your dead dog to the vet in the first place?
69: And why didn't Yoffe ask the vet to euthanize her poor damn cat?
I suppose, but then why do you say yes to trying CPR? Mostly I was just trying to be a little snarky about the idea that pet owners have no agency when the vet guilts them into paying for unnecessary services.
Unexpectedly on-topic, but did anyone already link to this?
... a fellow named Charles Krauthammer who writes particularly obnoxious neo-conservative trash for the New Republic and other rightwing journals. His special line is that a mature power must understand the vital need for an imperial policy and for unfettered executive secrecy in the conduct of foreign affairs. He argues this line with boundless self-righteousness and sublime ignorance of American history... The puzzle is that there are people who take Krauthammer seriously as a deep thinker.
"and other rightwing journals" is especially wonderful. And sad.
And for fuck's sake, why hasn't she gotten her daughter an echocardiogram?
Disposal
I had a dog that was hit by a car. (The gardener had let her out of the yard by accident). I took the body to the vet for disposal. Later I got a bill stating "services for (pet name)." I was so touched that they had had a ceremony. Upon further reflection I realized they hadn't wanted to write "thrown in dumpster" and expect to get paid.
The first time my mother met shivbunny nearly every conversational exchange about mundane things was punctuated with 'do you have that in Canada?', to the general amusement of all. She didn't want to assume anything, but it was pretty entertaining.
pet owners have no agency when the vet guilts them into paying for unnecessary services
My upbringing is fairly atypical, but I was influenced by how my father would confer with the vet over some sick livestock and coldly calculate whether a $45 dose of antibiotics was worth it measured against the profit he could expect if the animal lived and the risk that the animal would die anyway.
Fast forward to the present. The local vet in my tony suburb is clearly not accustomed to one of his customers asking probing questions about the cost-benefit analysis of treating a cat for diabetes and heart murmurs. "Statistically speaking, how long will this extend her life? If we just put her down now, how much would that cost?"
The local vet in my tony suburb is clearly not accustomed to one of his customers asking probing questions about the cost-benefit analysis of treating a cat for diabetes and heart murmurs.
Ha, I just went through this the day before yesterday: brought one of the cats in to the vet and was told that his concatenation of symptoms over the last year suggested hyperthyroidism or kidney disease.
Forgive me, but before even agreeing to tests, I rather clinically asked for the cost of treatment should the tests show positive; and for a run-down of how he'd, er, deteriorate and pass on should he receive no treatment.
The vet wasn't fazed at all. Though. She seemed almost to appreciate walking through my little decision tree.
I did feel the need to remind everyone in the room that the cat is 16 years old.
If we just put her down now, how much would that cost?"
Cats are small. Trash bag and an exhaust pipe.
One does get some pretty amazing questions
My former next-door neighbor here once asked where I was from. I said 'Vermont,' and then seeing his puzzled look, added, 'you know, in New England.' The next day he took me aside and said, 'Hey J&mdash, let me ask you something. What made you decide to move to this country?'
As you might expect, that sort of thing happens all the time when you're from New Mexico.
I don't know whether it's a farm kid thing or just hard-heartedness, but I have no difficulty at all distinguishing between pets and people. We spend absurd amounts on low-allergen cat food and boarding the little snot when we go out of town so she doesn't get lonely and piss all over everything, but eventually she will get old, and there comes a point when one says "eh, .22 shells are cheap."
Could well be a farm kid thing; my grandmother grew up on a farm, and she was never at all sentimental about pets.
As you might expect, that sort of thing happens all the time when you're from New Mexico.
This is why New Mexico is the only state to add "USA" to their license plates, as can be seen here. So many of its residents driving to some other part of the country would get pulled over and have their passports demanded of them that they just went and added it.
Yup. There's also a regular feature in New Mexico Magazine called "One of Our Fifty is Missing" that contains stories about people encountering this problem.
I thought we had decided, over several vigorous dissents, that America is not hopeless.
Slate, of all places, actually had a pretty good article about the pet thing. Including the unknown-to-me veterinary axiom "Sick Sheep Seldom Survive".
Wow. That was 3 2/3 innings of devastating pitching.
As you were.
83: Could also be a hard-heartedness thing, as I certainly don't have the farm kid excuse. I like my cat, but she's not a person. Which is good, because if a person had spent an hour today staring at the red laser pointer dot on the wall, we'd worry. (Please do not to ask who was holding the laser pointer.)
Which is good, because if a person had spent an hour today staring at the red laser pointer dot on the wall, we'd worry.
What you got against apo, now?
Could also be a hard-heartedness thing, as I certainly don't have the farm kid excuse.
Yeah, me neither.
78. Our 16-year-old cat is hyperthyroidal as well, currently on transdermal methimazole.
96: oh you made those words up. "Attention Captain Swift! Activate the Hyperthyroidal Methimazolean Transdermazine!"
Yeah, right.
H-L is working on turning Unfogged into a medical drama.
*eyeroll*
Transdermal = you sneak up on the cat and smear some gel in her ear rather than try to get her to take a pill.
Methimazole = blame the pharm industry for that one, not me.
(Since I try to give the cat the theoretically-daily medication at the same time as I take my own medication, and since that's first thing in the morning, I find myself in underwear or less brandishing a syringe while keeping a close eye on the cat to see if she's going to bolt. While I cop to being a pervert, this really isn't my perversion of choice.)
Are the mountains here really that color, or do they sandblast them?
-- Elderly Tourist to CC, standing near here.
It isn't hardheadedness to balk at spending obscence amounts of money to buy an animal another year or two at most of painful existence; putting them down painlessly and gently is the merciful option. I love my cats, but when treatments start to cost serious money, it's time to think what's best for the animal as well; let them die with dignity.
The Krauthammer debate: hang him or shoot him? As Class War used to say about the monarchy..
let them die with dignity
Yeah, the Dutch are known to have a pretty lax attitude about euthnasia. Would be odd if the pets got treated any differently from the old folks, right?
The Krauthammer debate: hang him or shoot him?
In its creative deliberations, the mineshaft did not limit itself to this narrow solution set. Thinking outside the box, you know?
Emerson had just about worked himself up to a rhetorical crescendo about "when the last neocon is strangled with the entrails of the last Christian fundamentalist" when the thread got diverted off topic.
Ignoring the boorish provocation (KR has yet to learn that civility is important) , I'll just mention that the Finnish reindeer played a heroic role in Finland's war against the USSR, as draft animals for the snow troops.
And say that, all modesty aside, Invisible Adjunct really is very articulate for a Canadian. A credit to her people.
And that my first visit to Canada passed through an impoverished wilderness border area (Sioux Narrows, I think) where they didn't have flush toilets.
The Canadians have recently discovered steel, and are converting all their quaint wooden bridges to real bridges. The Sioux Narrows bridge was the Golden Gate Bridge of wooden bridges.
KR has yet to learn that civility is important
Hey, I said I was only concerned with physical suffering, and we all know that Emerson is immune to the sting of harsh words, ergo, no suffering.
The Canadians have recently discovered steel
When I was a kid, books would proudly show the Quebec bridge, a two-truss cantilever, was longer than the Firth of Forth, which is a three-truss, and was in fact the longest cantilever in the world. Robert Donat never led a beautiful young woman off a stopped train on the Quebec, though.
Henry Petroski argues somewhere that those things are grossly overbuild, without being particularly strong, for essentially psychological reasons; they look strong.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge that collapsed ("Galloping Gertie") was state-of-the-art at the time it was built. And an important lesson about harmonics was learned from its collapse, at the cost of only one cocker spaniel and one car lost. Had the cautious naysayers been listened to, we never would have learned that important lesson.
When I was a kid, my geography textbook informed me that "Canada is a land rich in natural resources." Apart from hockey, this is the one true source of national pride. We have no history to speak of, but we have oil and minerals and lumber and water.
Hey, IDP, do you remember those Who's Who in the Hinterland ads?
The beaver.
112:I do not, although Xinejc of Alif Sikkiin and her commentaters were remembering them with nostalgia a few months ago. I'm too old for Schoolhouse Rock too.
The project, or the educational notions behind it, are longstanding in Canada, though. In the early sixties, a weekly radio program would be piped into our classroom featuring the encounter of a boy and girl and their all-knowing rustic grandpa with some example of Canadian megafauna. Those kids got around.
My dad could recite from memory a florid poem about the Great Horned Owl from his reader that he must have been made to memorize in the early twenties.
84: Though there was a time when my home state felt it necessary to emphasize LoUSiAna. So that it wouldn't be mistaken for a banana republic, presumably. This was pre-GWB of course, since which time the problem has become more widespread.
The site linked claims to have 50 license plates, but includes Puerto Rico and DC, so something's wrong. Also, it captures a DC tag before "Taxation without Representation" became the slogan on the tags.
And today, Krauthammer says, "What are you talking about? The Republican presidential field is fantabulous!"
And an important lesson about harmonics was learned from its collapse
I work with a bunch of Canadian engineers, from whom I learned about the signet ring that the Canadian engineering society (or whatever it is called) confers on newly inducted members.
As a degreed engineer in Canada, you get a ring made from the metal of some catastrophic engineering failure: collapsed bridge, sunken ship, exploded boiler, or similar. The ring is to be worn on the little finger of the writing hand, so that when you sign off on design documents, the first thing that hits the paper is the metal representing the failure of an engineer to exercise due care.
All the engineers I know can tell you what disaster their particular rings originated with.
Okay, that is flat-out awesome. I'll have to mention it to my dad who, as a Canadian engineer, totally deserves to get one of these. He didn't get an engineering degree or work as an engineer in Canada, so maybe that's why he doesn't have one. My Grandad is a Canadian mining engineer---where's his? If I'd known about this tradition, I'd've taken the pressure to become an engineer with a lot more grace.
Engineers at my undergrad received steel rings for the little finger, too, but I don't know if they also had the 'from a disaster' mythos built into it, too.
117: I think the tradition might be newer than your Grandfathers degree. They give them at a sooper sekret ceremony around (undergrate) convocation time, so that's why your dad wouldn't have one.
I'm pretty sure it originated in a localized way from a bridge collapse.
117: It might be for civil engineers only.
Huh. Apparently Rudyard Kipling wrote the ceremony.
Mining engineers get to pick one finger to be buried under tons of rock.
120: no, it's for all engineers.
and by `engineers' I mean anyone with an undergrad degree, not the more restrictive sense.
Mining Engineers get rock hammers. My sister who, as a ecologist, is the closest thing the third generation has to a miner had finally to accept Grandad's nasty, dessicated old rock hammer with slightly less than good grace.
87: And from my kid the vet: Never, ever, name a dog or cat "Lucky".
126: meet my dogs, Wormless and Carproof.
The caution of the Canadian engineers is why they didn't invent the wheel or anything.
Never, ever, name a dog or cat "Lucky".
The caution of the Canadian engineers is why they didn't invent the wheel or anything
Still, they are inordinately proud of that robotic arm in the space shuttle.
today, Krauthammer says, "What are you talking about? The Republican presidential field is fantabulous!"
Krauthammer never met a Republican he didn't look up to.
The ring is to be worn on the little finger of the writing hand, so that when you sign off on design documents, the first thing that hits the paper is the metal representing the failure of an engineer to exercise due care.
Memorizing The Tay Bridge Disaster should be a requirement, too.
Krauthammer never met a Republican he didn't look up to
Onna counta him bein' in a wheelchair and all.
Memorizing The Tay Bridge Disaster should be a requirement, too
Interestingly, standard operating procedure on the railroad today during major windstorms (e.g. hurricanes) is to park a heavy train like a coal train on top of bridges to keep them from blowing down.
