I wish this was allowed in Manitoba. In Louisiana, you can’t serve open liquor to someone in a car. So they’ll sell you the drinks in a sealed jug, the glasses and the straws separately. Wink.
Fun article here, but I’ve added the video below:
Yup, it’s Fat Tuesday! Let’s all call in sick to work, drink absinthe, listen to jazz and read “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
Oh, you can’t? Well, try on this for size: archival video from New Orleans’s Mardi Gras in 1941. No beads, no boobs, no sound. But in colour!
(Thanks, BB)
Do you know who Andrei Amalrik is? See, my point exactly. He successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. He was off by just half a decade. That was another valuable lesson for me, which is why I will not give you an exact date when USA will turn into FUSA (“F” is for “Former”). But even if someone could choreograph the whole event, it still wouldn’t make for much of a career, because once it all starts falling apart, people have far more important things to attend to than marveling at the wonderful predictive abilities of some Cassandra-like person.
… says the guy who is predicting that the US as we know it will collapse. He’s got a book, but most of what you need to know is in this loooooong blogpost (the text of a speech he gave). Many interesting comments, too.
Read it when you have two hours.
He does sort of skim over the hows and whys in his talk (maybe he gets more into it in the book) but his essential point is that the US is going to collapse for the same reasons that the USSR did: “a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget, and ballooning foreign debt.”
Much of the talk, though, is how to survive — even thrive? — in a post-collapse world.
Not that I think, necessarily that this will happen, but you did hear that California’s going bankrupt, right? Things are not what they used to be.
(PS. This guy is (probably) not a crackpot. His theories were also somewhat shared by prominent Canadian thinker Gwynne Dyer.
Discussion question: Does the election of Obama change theories like these?
So, uh, Abraham Lincoln was gay?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that — it would just be surprising:
Lincoln and Speed shared a double bed in Speed’s store for four years (for two of those years, two other young men shared the room, though not the bed). More important than the sleeping arrangements was the tone of their friendship. Lincoln’s letters to Speed before and after Speed’s wedding in 1842 are as fretful as those of a general before a dubious engagement. Several of them are signed ”Yours forever.” By contrast, Lincoln’s relations with women are either problematic or distant.
Turns out maybe not, though.
Wow, this recession is hitting restaurants hard. Because in some places its legal to pay servers less than minimum wage (on the assumption that tips make up the difference, some restaurants are laying off minimum-wage-earning busboys so they can keep on cheaper servers to clear tables.
Or, so says the Wall Street Journal.
However, the story goes on to note that the current economic downtown may have a shiny side — at least for cutlery manufacturers. The WSJ’s story implies that lazy or rebellious servers are throwing out spoons, leading to restaurant-wide shortages:
With the busboys gone, Ms. Baker noticed something odd: Spoons started disappearing. So many were missing that the restaurant sometimes ran out of clean ones during peak times.
Mr. Harris asked managers at other Bob Evanses and learned it was happening at their locations too. “Was this an act of rebellion because we have to do this now?” he asked. One manager suggested putting magnets inside trash-can lids to capture any spoons.
At Bob Evans Farms Inc. headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, management had to increase the number of new spoons it bought companywide during the first three months after bussers were cut. Mr. Hicks says Bob Evans restaurants historically have gone through more spoons than other utensils, though it isn’t clear why so many vanished with the change. The most likely explanation, employees said, is that servers and dish washers were simply throwing out silverware in their haste to scrape dishes clean; spoons get thrown away more easily than forks or knives because, the theory goes, they are lighter.
Talk about a ridiculous economic indicator. “ZOMG! We’re out of spoons! How will The Tick save us now??!?!”
I do have some sympathy for overworked servers, though. Hey, you try being a waitress!
Want to know what a year’s worth of junk mail looks like? It looks like art!
At least it does if you’re in Texas! (That’s two Texas posts in a row — dare I attempt the trifecta?)
One woman collected all her junk mail and stacked it on a shelf. In other contexts, that would be hoarding behaviour — symptomatic of a proto-cat-lady, perhaps. But in Texas, that gets you a gallery show — and the Dallas Museum of Art will buy just one month’s worth — for $10,000!
Takeaway trivia to impress your friends: The average postal carrier will move 18 tons of junk mail every year!
Bonus: the “Cowboy Harley-Davidson” ad that you have to watch to see the news report.
Wrong way to go, Mr. Harper. Why are we always trying to switch places with the Americans? They want to raise consumption taxes while adding public health insurance. As an aside, the GST has it's own website???
Rick Mercer mocked Americans by finding the most ignorant of them, feeding them plausible lies, and recording them for broadcast on Canadian TV. Maybe he had it backwards. Maybe some ignorance is the natural state of affairs, and it is we Canadians who are unhealthily obsessed with our southern neighbours.
What interests me is how often the US and Canada seem to be trying to switch places with each other.
The classic example is how Canadians want more private health care options (well, Alberta politicians do), but Americans want to move to a public health care system — Canadian style.
Now, though, I read that Americans are exploring the idea of a carbon tax — seriously — just after Canadians resoundingly rejected one. I love a carbon tax, for the record, but the sales job was poor.
And, when it comes to stimulus, Harper and his cronies want more tax cuts — including a suspension of the GST for up to six months, according to one suggestion. America’s thoughts when it comes to sales taxes? They’d be good for the economy and they should introduce a national one!
How can we be so at odds? Our economies are similar, our situations are similar, our goals are similar — but our prescriptions are at complete odds with each other? It’s ridiculous.
What’s the word? Cutting? Barbed? Ascerbic? Scathing? Caustic? Spot-on? From the New York Times:
Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina)…. This is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements.
Al Franken
He’s good enough and he’s smart enough, and who cares if the Republicans don’t like him. Yup, Al Franken is expected to be declared winner of the Minnesota senate race — but don’t worry, it’s almost assured that his opponent will launch a bunch of lawsuits over ballot minutiae.
Mind you, that’s exactly the sort of minutiae that got us through the recount in the first place, and if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that Minnesota has a damn good electoral procedure.
How much you wanna bet that it was a bunch of policy wonks in a room that came up with all of these rules and regulations, and every “ordinary person” in every coffee shop in the state probably thought it was a giant waste of money and time, and just a bunch of eggheads doing stupid political things that would never matter.
Me, on the other hand, I love the byzantine pathways that we have to go down, when we find out that, hey, this contingency actually was planned for!
Great site on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, by the way, for checking out actual scans of all the disputed ballots: (link)
My favourite was one that was challenged as spoiled, even though it was filled out perfectly, just because the voter had written across the bottom: “Thank you for counting my vote.”
This is another interesting tale:
“I’m an election judge,” said [Shirley] Graham, of Duluth. “I expected to be the last person whose ballot wouldn’t be counted.”
Surely you’re kidding! (And don’t call her Shirley!) (Wait, you can call her Shirley, that’s her name.)
As always, great commentary and analysis on FiveThirtyEight.com here and here.
Up next: the Roland Burris fight! Yay Blago!