Tom Scudder

Two people on my friends list have already posted this

2009-07-16T14:39:03Z

Borowitz Report: Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

Noted

2009-07-13T19:58:30Z

Prepress Arcana, a page of What Not To Do if you're trying to get something professionally printed.

Wikipedia: not yet flawless

2009-06-23T18:51:32Z

Check out the entry for Target Date Funds (article behind the cut for posterity's sake)

A Target date fund - also known as a lifecycle or age-based fund - is a collective investment scheme, usually a mutual fund, designed to provide a simple investment solution through a portfolio whose asset mix becomes more conservative as the target date (usually retirement) approaches.

History

Lifecycle funds were first introduced in the early 1990s with Wells Fargo and BGI being the first major institutions to offer such products. Their popularity has increased significantly in recent years due in part to the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

This para is totally wrong

These funds are aimed at people planning for retirement and have appeal because they provide a guaranteed value at a specific time. For instance, a 2020 target dated fund provides exposure to some form of growth security (US equities, international equities) while guaranteeing the original investment provided the fund is held to maturity.

...

And yes, the bitchy header is in the original.

On Iran

2009-06-19T15:28:14Z

Doug Muir has some good analysis of what kinds of governments fall to popular protests, and what kinds don't, as applied to the case of Iran. Short version: if the Iranian government still has the loyalty of its armed forces, to the point that they will be willing to fire on civilians, itwill remain in power. And it appears that it does retain that loyalty.

Also ganked from nihilistic-kid

2009-06-18T17:22:14Z

Find the slight error in this work of non-fiction:

Dickens himself took a swing at the mystery genre with his 1870 novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and perhaps laid the groundwork for some of our greatest film mysteries, particularly some of the open-ended films of Alfred Hitchcock. Drood, you see, is left unresolved, the case unfinished, allowing (perhaps forcing) readers to imagine the ending, constructing a resolution that fits the facts as they interpreted them. It was a risky literary trick and few save Dickens could have pulled it off.

(hint)

From this thread, which contains much of hilarity.

Uighur Guantanamo detainees to go to Palau

2009-06-10T14:11:21Z

New York Times:

The United States has won an agreement to transfer up to 17 Chinese Muslims from the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Palau, a sparsely populated archipelago in the North Pacific, according to a statement released by Palau to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The president of Palau, Johnson Toribiong, said his government had “agreed to accommodate the United States of America’s request” to “temporarily resettle” the detainees, members of the Uighur ethnic group, “subject to periodic review.” Palau, the president said, would be “honored and proud” to take them in a “humanitarian gesture.”

Given that nobody actually thinks they'd done anything wrong, I'd rather have seen them resettled in the US, but at least we aren't holding them prisoner any more for being politically inconvenient.

james_nicoll is right.

2009-06-08T14:16:39Z

This is evil. Not "killing 6 million Jews" evil, but still - people are going to be unneccesarily scared by this, and all as a marketing stunt.

So, peoples: Don't go see 2012. (There was no way in hell I'd ever go see it anyway, so this is a pretty empty gesture. But still.)

I like fake-media stuff like this, normally. I loved the fake Galaxy Quest fan page and the Watchmen clips, and so on. But none of them were going to cause anyone who believed they were real pain beyond mild embarassment at finding out they'd been fooled.

Grilled Cheese

2009-06-05T13:38:55Z

G-rated relationship advice. Via unfogged.

Jughead

2009-05-29T19:15:20Z

That is all.

Teh Funny

2009-05-21T21:22:06Z

Star Trek - Virtual Girlfriend Edition

Basically, it's an edition of the Star Trek DVD box set where as well as the usual commmentary track extras, you can select an option where a female voice periodically asks "Who's that? Why is he a baddie this time?...

Blast from the past

2009-05-20T12:37:35Z

Can you find the Spam?

tomscud @ 2009-05-11T15:15:00

2009-05-11T20:17:05Z

via tx_cronopio: right-wing protestors taking PR lessons from PETA, protest Obama commencement speech at Notre Dame with foetus and lynching photos.

Also

2009-05-08T21:14:20Z

Be careful when googling for people's photos that you get the right one. Particularly if you run a major newspaper.

Extra-particularly if you're illustrating a story about a wanted murderer.

Freaky

2009-05-08T20:06:00Z

(sings: "There once was a fellow named Oedipus Rex / you might have heard about his odd complex...")

Why I won't ever transition to dreamwidth

2009-05-08T19:38:51Z

Blocked at work, in the way facebook is, but livejournal isn't.

Huh-huh, huh-huh, he said "pen".

2009-05-08T14:01:08Z

First off, I heartily denounce this firing of US Army Arabic linguists for being gay. That said, this sentence made me laugh, and probably not the way the quoted person intended:

According to Belkin, a soon-to-be-released study by a group of experts in military law will show that “President Obama does, in fact, have stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges.”

Vanilla Thunder watch

2009-05-06T16:03:48Z

Richard Dawkins on the value of naked contempt as a conversational gambit.

Awesome

2009-05-06T14:48:13Z

Ron Paul's son is named Rand.

RIP Dom DeLuise.

2009-05-05T18:02:43Z

Bizarre part of my job - I end up going to legacy.com a fair amount to check for obituaries of recently deceased Elks, and so I see their front page with notable recent obits. And so I now know that Dom DeLuise <kibology>(famous for his role as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McKoy on Star Trek)</kibology> just died. How sad.

Upcoming nuptials

2009-05-02T15:34:46Z

Right, so I'm getting married on Sept. 5, barring catastrophe.

Presidential throw-down

2009-04-30T19:41:54Z

More fun from comment sections, this one from this Unfogged thread: a rap throw-down between FDR and Abe Lincoln over who was the best president. I can hardly wait for George W. to show up and school both of them.

One term, two terms, three terms, four
You may be tall Abe, but your skills are subpar
My legs may be limp, but my words slap like pimps
I'll blow your ass up like the Hindenberg blimp
You'll scream "oh the humanity!"
Lace your words with profanity
But I'll just shoot you down
And demolish your vanity
Your lyrics? They're not worth a five dollar bill
And like Korematsu you've lost your appeal
And while you may not care if Jimmy cracks corn
I'll make you regret that you ever were born
But fear itself isn't all you should dread
If you think you can win there's a hole in your head
You defeated some crackers, but I beat the Nazis
Not to mention those infamous wack kamikazes
In for a penny? No you're in for a pounding
Don't give me that old tired "this hallowed ground" thing
You're the rail splitter, but I'm the rhyme spitter
You can try to debate, but it's clear that I'm fitter
Like whales against lions, your situation is hopeless
Even with an amendment I'll still keep you voteless
So run back to your cabin
Cause face it, you're doomed
Like when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd
I'll ensure my ascendance
With skills so enormous
Then ask Mary Todd how she liked the performance.

Posted by: F/D/R | Link to this comment | 04-30-09 12:06 PM

You can fool some of the people all of the time
But you can't fool anyone with your lame-ass rhymes
You had fireside chats on radio stations
I freed the slaves and saved the nation
Stalin beat Hitler and then you piled on
It was just me vs. Lee and I beat him like a drum
You beat Japan with fancy miracle weapons
I had old-style rifles to teach the rebels a lesson
Amity Shlaes proved you couldn't even end the Depression
I singlehandedly brought an end to secession
you held back capitalist greed for just a few decades
150 years after I died, do you see any slaves?
better push that wheelchair away really fast
insult my wife again and I'll return from the grave to kick your ass

Posted by: Abe Lincoln | Link to this comment | 04-30-09 12:50 PM

Giving the devil his Due

2009-04-28T14:17:10Z

Wow. Via a discussion of Crooked Timber, I just read about the background to this claim:

... the ridiculousness of suspecting that the military and security infrastructure of a G7 country might have been co-opted by a single Masonic lodge (something which has definitely happened). The Freemasons! Controlling the secret police! Carrying out acts of domestic terrorism as a pretext for jailing their political enemies! Well it happened, and thirty years later, a member of that same lodge was elected Head of State Government on an anti-corruption ticket.

Which is a reference to Propaganda Due, a secret Masonic lodge whose members at one point included the heads of all three Italian secret services, as well as Sylvio Berlusconi. (And a short-term dictator of Argentina, for good measure).

This casts Foucault's Pendulum in a whole new light -- I need to go back and give the book a re-read.

Google search of the indeterminate period

2009-04-27T20:09:55Z

Results 1 - 10 of about 30,300 for "swine flu" madagascar

I heartily endorse this proposal

2009-04-22T16:14:51Z

james_nicoll wonders if fail has passed its sell-by date as a suffix. I'd propose that the word be retired entirely, at least in its 21st-century usage, or at least given a six-month vacation.

Turkey photos

2009-04-14T02:11:39Z

All taken by Eve, because my camera crapped out on me again. (Same camera that crapped out on me in Morocco, never replaced on account of me being broke and all until just recently):

Turkey Photos!