Category Archives: WTF?!

media, NADA, WTF?!

As a Constitutional Scholar, Harrison Schmitt is a Bang-up Engineer

New Mexicans should read Tom Cole’s quotations from Harrison Schmitt, Martinez’s proposed head of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. I’ll start with the end of Cole’s column.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words

In one posting, he says a "philosophical wedge" has been driven between the government and its citizens, creating a divide that is wider than at any other time since just before the Civil War.

        It seems to me that Schmitt has been doing some of the hammering on that wedge.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words

Schmitt on Anthropogenic Global Climate Change:

"There exists no true concern … about the true effects of climate change — only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society."

Classic conservative paranoia: It’s all part of the totalitarian movement of the Left. (Just like the “Patriot” Act and DOMA.) I think Climate Change Deniers are part of a power grab by corporations that will destroy anything and everything for profit. Schmitt also supports endless corporate welfare in the form of “Cold War II” with China.

One more quote from Schmitt, who believes the Minimum Wage and Social Security numbers are unconstitutional:

"The Government violates constitutional equal protection most generally by restricting the land-related economic and recreational activities of residents of Western States when no comparable restrictions are possible in most Eastern States. …”

Yup, Western wilderness is unconstitutional because there aren’t comparable Eastern wildernesses. Apparently, engineers make lousy constitutional scholars. (BTW: I’m all for creating equally large wildernesses in the East. It’s only fair.)

A tangent regarding the endless ways in which abqjournal.com frustrates its users. When you select text to quote from the site, text is appended to that quote, such as this:

Read more: ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words http://www.abqjournal.com/upfront/12215407746upfront01-12-11.htm#ixzz1AphNqDcA
Subscribe Now Albuquerque Journal

Kudos to the Web designer who is so clueless about interface yet able to hack some JavaScript. Now, I know that some media sources object to the common practice among bloggers of quoting from those sources, even though every media source quotes other media sources – somehow, it’s wrong when bloggers do it. Like almost every blogger, I cite the sites I quote from. Still, abqjournal.com insists on tacking on this ugly bit of code. (Note the hideous URL.) I’ll bet this got the coder a pat on the head.

WTF?!

From the Occasional Series: Science WTF?!

I find it impossible to believe that anything human beings can communicate in one language can’t be communicated in another, except when widely divergent cultures meet for the very first time (ie, two languages that overlap the same culture can describe the same things). What this study actually “proves” is that translation is imperfect and suspect – it really says nothing about metaphor.

Sign languages help us understand the nature of metaphors

But quite often, when trying to translate metaphors from a spoken language to a sign language, we find that it is impossible to use the same words.

Sign languages help us understand the nature of metaphors

Call me a fussy literalist, but I think by definition it is impossible to use “the same words” in translation. Equivalent words, maybe, although the very flaw in the concept of translation is that words aren’t really equivalent.

The single example cited in the study, that “time flies” *cannot* be translated literally into (Israeli) sign language, is maddening. Who is to say I don’t imagine wings when I hear the expression. In fact, if analog clocks have hands, the sign for flying might be a richer metaphor than the spoke word. Now, if I say I am throwing up my hands at this example, that might be tricky to translate.

WTF?!

The New and Improved (?) Facebook Profiles

Periodically, Facebook releases an update. These updates usually involve trying to fix its leaking, labyrinthine privacy settings while still providing all the data marketers demand. Other updates are designed to serve advertisers more directly. Any change invariably produces howls of protest from somebody – there’s just no pleasing 500 million people. I want to say BFD to the latest change: Yawn. (Before and After below.)

fb profile old

fb profile new

Notice that the new profile photo is smaller. And one’s current status does not appear at the top of the page. Yawn.

media, WTF?!

Wishing for Destruction Says More About “Conservatives” than About Reality – but what do they know about reality

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Hear Us Roar!

Obama Is Indeed Miracle Worker
        OBAMA MAY NOT be the Messiah, but he certainly is a miracle worker. He’s caused (1) the destruction of the Democrat Party, (2) the reformation of the Republican Party, and (3) the Journal to endorse conservative candidates.
        And, while the ocean levels may have not dropped, hell has frozen over.
        WILLIAM NAEGELE
        Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Hear Us Roar!

Funny. Two years ago, we said something similar about DUHbya: He destroyed all Republican prospects just two years after Karl Rove declared a generation of Republican dominance. By “reformation,” Naegele can’t intend the implication of reform as in make better (not bitter), because the Republican Party is no better than before. To their long-time one-note of Taxed Enough Already, they have added stopping Obama at all costs. Reformed? Hell, they aren’t even re-formed, just badgered into shape by the lunatic fringe. But that’s “conservatives” for you: They fanatically yearn for the past without actually remember how it really was. But why should their hindsight be any better than their foresight.

As for #3: LOL. Naegele, and Belen’s Christiansen, are favorites at Abqjournal because they are the only people who think Abqjournal is the least bit liberal. Snort. Yeah, it was a shock – a shock, I tell you – that Abqjournal endorsed the Republican.

NADA, WTF?!

This Week’s WTF?!

2 Comments

Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down

[In Obion County, Tennessee], Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground:

Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. That’s exactly what happened to a local family tonight. A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck. […]

We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception. “Anybody that’s not in the city of South Fulton, it’s a service we offer, either they accept it or they don’t,” Mayor David Crocker said.

The fire reportedly continued for hours “because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond” — only because the neighbor had paid the fee.

A local newspaper further pressed Mayor Crocker about the city’s policy, which has been in place since 1990. Crocker, a Republican who was elected in 2008 and serves with a county commission where every seat is also filled by a Republican, likened the policy to buying auto insurance. [mjh: Except that the police don’t let you die trapped in your car because you don’t have auto insurance – yet.] The paper said he told them that, after all, “if an auto owner allowed their vehicle insurance to lapse, they would not expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected vehicle after it was wrecked.”

Ironically, in the county commission’s latest report on its fire services, which outlines which parts of the municipal area will receive fire services only through subscriptions, the commissioners and fire service officials brag that the county is “very progressive.” [mjh: Double-plus good newspeak!]

Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down

NADA, WTF?!

OMG, This Week’s LOL+WTF?!

This photo is priceless. The guy looks like a member of Draco’s clan – the one who embarrasses them all. Geert must have been made up by a Hollywood hack with the intent of making fascists look bad. What a jackass. A ‘political tool,’ indeed.

Think Progress » Gingrich, Bolton, Breitbart Team Up With Far-Right Muslim-Basher Geert Wilders For 9/11 Rally

[Photo of] the far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. “Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology,” Wilders told the Guardian in 2009, “the ideology of a retarded culture.”

In the past, Wilders’ extremism has been condemned by conservatives such as Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and even Glenn Beck, who called Wilders “fascist.” It’s a clear sign of how far the Republicans have shifted to the right and embraced Islamophobia as a political tool that movement figures like Gingrich, Bolton, and Breitbart now have no problem sharing a stage with Wilders.

Think Progress » Gingrich, Bolton, Breitbart Team Up With Far-Right Muslim-Basher Geert Wilders For 9/11 Rally

NADA, WTF?!

The Asshat of History

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool – or racist – than to speak and remove all doubt. The following quote shows how callous and ignorant the speaker is.

NAACP, Tea Party Volley Over Racism Claims : NPR

"You’re dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history," Mark Williams, a national spokesman for the Tea Party Express, said.

NAACP, Tea Party Volley Over Racism Claims : NPR