First!!!

Heh heh, got a bust signal on my first try though, what’s up with that?

i think for once i’ll actually trust the shorter.

And so at the end of 2009, we find ourselves inhabiting a world dominated by Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging, emails, Internet sites and TV snippets on everything from cable news to entertainment channels.

I can think of one simple step the potential author of an article on a website might take to reduce this pernicious electronic traffic.

On a similar theme, The Corner wonders where that wonderful America of 1835 went.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDU5M2I4ZDk1ZGEzMmFjNzM0ZGNjZWFkN2U4YmE2NWY=

All this clutter has done more than just fragment our social interactions. It may have started to condition us to be more easily controlled by outside, institutional forces, such as government.

So always question your government!

Except when the government prepares an airtight case for WMDs in Iraq, or why telecoms need to listen to everything, or why we need to strengthen bankrupcy laws to protect the victim banks against the rampaging irresponsible public, or when……

Read the link and it is more insipid than even the shorter would indicate. Classic ‘old man yells at cloud’ with Democratic Big Brother paranoia.

But, hey, what do you do when you look like that sleazy asshole Charles Keating.

It may have started to condition us to be more easily controlled by outside, institutional forces, such as government. Most kids today rarely touch a newspaper or watch TV news.

With exceptions, of course, there are now too many young and even middle-age Americans that absorb important information about the world from various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled.

If young people aren’t all fed the same diet of corporate news propoganda from a handful of media conglomerates, they may succumb to group-think.

HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YOU DON’T EAT YOUR MEAT???

With exceptions, of course, there are now too many young and even middle-age Americans that absorb important information about the world from various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled. Life starts to look like a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces that no one is bothering to assemble into a coherent picture.

People should be spoon-fed coordinated wingnut-approved pablum from bullshit sources like TownFail.

No, I don’t blame this on the Democrats only — even though it’s they who are unhesitatingly leading us to unprecedented levels of government intrusion, with their calls for national health care and other expansions of government intrusion into our lives.

Republicans wanted access to all your online information, from every account you hold to every action you took, calling it “Total Information Awareness,” wanted to be able to spy on you without warrants or judicial review, etc, but it’s DEMOCRATS “who are unhesitatingly leading us to unprecedented levels of government intrusion.” And his readers probably believe him… no wonder he’s not in favor of people getting uncoordinated and unapproved information.

1) Various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled.

2) ???

3) Easily controlled by outside, institutional forces, such as government!

Heh heh, got a bust signal on my first try though, what’s up with that?

You know, I have NEVER gotten that, even when posting a correction right after a botched post?

Most kids today rarely touch a newspaper or watch TV news.
And do they pay any attention to the advice of their elders and betters? Do they bogroll. Also their music stinks. And they don’t stand up on busses.

I’ll go ahead and not click through. Instead I’ll content myself with giggling at teh funny picture and all your comments.

btw, I’m pretty sure its pronounced moops.

As we head into 2010, it looks like the best chance America has for a stable and prosperous future is for all of us to ignore the distracting “call waiting” prompt our electronic culture so rudely thrusts upon us.

FUCK THE FREE MARKET!!!

“All this clutter has done more than just fragment our social interactions. It may have started to condition us to be more easily controlled by outside, institutional forces, such as government the corporations that purvey the clutter and use it to push advertising campaigns.”

Fix-ed.

“…our electronic culture so rudely thrusts upon us.”
Emailed PENIS reference.

And so at ye end of 1779, we find ourselveſ inhabiting a world dominated by vulgar broadsheetſ, idle coffee-shoppe conversation, and gossip hawked by ye likeſ of Mrs Migginſ at ye pie shoppe.

The fact is, lately all the neighbors’ cats have disappeared.

With exceptions, of course, there are now too many young and even middle-age Americans that absorb important information about the world from various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled.

Those exceptions, of course, watch FOX News, which offers one, very focused viewpoint.

And so at the end of 2009, we find ourselves inhabiting a world dominated by Twitter, Facebook(…)

You mean like how a woman who holds no elected office is effectively running the GOP from her Twitter account and Facebook page? DAMN LOONY LIBS!

On a similar theme, The Corner wonders where that wonderful America of 1835 went. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDU5M2I4ZDk1ZGEzMmFjNzM0ZGNjZWFkN2U4YmE2NWY=

Oh, Christ.

I cannot think of any anti-government protest on this scale in the United States since the eruption against the Tariff of Abominations in 1828.

How does a person remember an antecedent of the Civil War, yet forget the war itself?

John C. Calhoun strongly opposed the tariff, anonymously authoring a pamphlet in December 1828 titled: The South Carolina Exposition and Protest in which he urged nullification of the tariff within South Carolina. The South Carolina legislature, although it printed and distributed 5,000 copies of the pamphlet, took none of the legislative action that the pamphlet urged.

The expectation of the tariff’s opponents was that with the election of Jackson in 1828, the tariff would be significantly reduced.[5][6][7] When the Jackson administration failed to address its concerns, the most radical faction in South Carolina began to advocate that the state itself declare the tariff null and void within South Carolina.

Yup, a radical fringe of ignorant nutjobs is happily exploited by the political class, yet thoroughly ignored, even in their geographical base. Since they can’t win legally, they decide to call Calvinball and take the Constitution into their own hands. Eventually they succeed in bringing about the most devastating war in US history and the total devastation of their own land.

Let’s do that again, please please please? It worked so well the first time.

1) Various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled.

3) Easily controlled by outside, institutional forces, such as government!

The best way to assure a non-tractable populace is to tell them what to believe and not allow them the means to question what they are told.

Apparently this fellow’s rhetorical device is to bore the piss out of his readers and after they’ve passed out, he will go ahead and wisely implement his preferred, not-specified political policies.

Also:

As with actual jigsaw puzzles, all the pieces look too much the same.

Uh, wha?

As with actual jigsaw puzzles, all the pieces look too much the same.

Uh, wha?

I hope his family reads the article and has not yet done any Xmas shopping.

As with actual jigsaw puzzles, all the pieces look too much the same.

Psssst. It’s easier if you flip them face-up.

Smut Clyde gets 200 bonus internet points for the “Mrs. Miggins’ Pie Shop” Blackadder reference.

I didn’t trust the shorter, and I found this gem in the comments:

“Operators had no accents. My Mom’s first job ever was as an operator. Being Andalusian she spoke only Spanish till she was 10 years old but had NO accent when on the phone with customers. WHY can’t we get service like that now.”

Well, WHY would be because your heroes, the Big Corporate fuckstains, decided it’d be better for their fat profit margins to cut the operator and phone support jobs from the barely-above-poverty-wage Americans in their US offices and port the jobs over the ocean to Mumbai.

They love free trade so much, the fuckin slugpublicans, they ought not bitch about it when it works like it’s supposed to. Free But Not At All Fair. Stupid fucks.

Apparently I’m Roast Beek now, since I can’t type so well when the cat sits on the desk in front of my keyboard.

[Insert obligatory Grampa Simpson reference here.]

Someone told them they were in a race to the bottom, and they decided to run faster…and bring shovels.

How does a person remember an antecedent of the Civil War, yet forget the war itself?

Moronicity.

Or possibly moronitude.

I cannot think of any anti-government protest on this scale in the United States since the eruption against the Tariff of Abominations in 1828.

I can’t actually find any information about this large-scale “eruption” of “anti-government protest.” There were newspaper articles written in protest, speeches at town meetings, and an act of nullification by the South Carolina state government, but I can’t find anything like what we would call a protest, nothing even close to like the Million Pound March.

How does a person remember an antecedent of the Civil War, yet forget the war itself?

I’m not sure, but it’s a bigger instance of the principle that allows them to say there were no terrorist attacks during Bush’s terms.

Here we go: “In July 1831 the States Rights and Free Trade Association was formed in Charleston and expanded throughout the state. Unlike state political organizations in the past that were led by the South Carolina aristocracy, this group specifically targeted all segments of the population including non-slaveholder farmers, small slaveholders, and the Charleston non-agricultural class. Governor Hamilton was instrumental in seeing that the association, which was both a political and a social organization, expanded throughout the state, and in the winter of 1831 and spring of 1832 Hamilton held conventions and rallies throughout the state to mobilize the nullification movement.”

So there were some rallies in SC, sponsored by the governor.

So there were some rallies in SC, sponsored by the governor.

Travel to Argentina was more difficult in those days.

Travel to Argentina was more difficult in those days.

It took me the longest time to get that, yet I worked so hard on it.

I never trust the shorter, but all I got out of the article itself was that Towery is really bad at jigsaw puzzles. Did I miss something? Does he try making a point somewhere? And, God forbid, supporting that point with facts?

It took me the longest time to get that, yet I worked so hard on it.

Stealth jokes. They don’t show up on any radar, and yet I spend more than every other country in the world combined on them.

And what’s with these newfangled “books”? In my day we sat around the evening fire and our elders told us what had happened.

Try to get a bunch of teens to indulge in a little oral tradition these days and they call the police on their dang eyefones and then twat about it on the intertubes! Ooo! I done got so mad the onion fell of my belt!

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-

Always trust the fucking shorter.

And what’s with these newfangled “books”?

You had books!?

Luxury!

Or…

You had fire!?

Luxury!

Typing and eating, bad.

What a smelly glob of goop.

The internet is bringing people of amazingly different backgrounds and viewpoints together. Sure, it is fragmented and shallow, NOW; but Internet is still in It’s infancy. (I, personally, am waiting for the moment the Internet becomes Self-Aware and takes over the World; now that’ll be fun)

Where was I? Oh yeah, Mr. Goopy! He’s anxious and indignant because he thinks the old insular, tiered system, where he was close to the “Top” was the bestest system ever. Nowadays, anyone can talk to, well- anyone! Scary.

I never trust the shorter, but all I got out of the article itself was that Towery is really bad at jigsaw puzzles. Did I miss something? Does he try making a point somewhere? And, God forbid, supporting that point with facts?

As far as I can tell, you didn’t miss anything. That is the weakest “argument” I’ve ever seen. It’s “blah blah twitter blah blah call waiting blah blah cell phones Hey look, an airplane! insupportable government intrusion into our lives”.

What the first has to do with the other, he never explains. All across the country, students are constructing better arguments in essays written in the hallway minutes before class.

All across the country, students are constructing better arguments in essays written in the hallway minutes before class downloaded from the Internet.

bust signal

Best I can find. Second best.

No, I don’t blame this on the Democrats only — even though it’s they who are unhesitatingly leading us to unprecedented levels of government intrusion, with their calls for national health care and other expansions of government intrusion into our lives.

Hey, you might disagree with the wingnut’s ideas, but you gotta admire the solid research and airtight logic that went into formulating them. I mean how can you dispute his trenchant observation that the Dems are increasing government intrusion into our lives by expanding government intrusion into our lives? Reminds me of a high school essay I wrote that asserted that Ahab’s obsession with the whale was caused by “all-consuming obsessive forces within, or as the French term it, an idee fixe.” (Scored a solid C- for that shit!)

Oh but wait, we’re getting national healthcare? Did I miss Obama’s executive order on Thanksgiving or something?

He’s anxious and indignant because he thinks the old insular, tiered system, where he was close to the “Top”

I went to check his bio, believing the quality of his writing and thinking pointed to somewhat less lofty antecedents and then I’d have posted something snarky about it, but holy fucking fuck, he really was.

I am anonymous. Although I guess I can’t be anonymous if I’m identifying myself, right? Life is such a damn jigsaw puzzle sometimes, ain’t it?

This is off topic but too hilarious not to share.

Farting pig sparks gas emergency
Agence France-Presse

A flatulent pig sparked a gas emergency in southern Australia on Thursday when a farmer mistook its odours for a leaking pipe, officials said.

Fifteen firefighters and two trucks were called to a property at Axedale in central Victoria state after reports of a gas leak, the Country Fire Service said.

“When we got there, as we drove up the driveway, there was this huge sow, about a 120-odd kilo sow, and it was very obvious where the gas was coming from,” said fire Capt. Peter Harkins, adding they could also hear it.

The fact is, lately all the neighbors’ cats have disappeared.

Answer my point, Libs!!

Farting pig sparks gas emergency
Agence France-Presse

The fact is, Al-gore is fat.

Gary pulls one out of his arse-nal. haha.

Try to get a bunch of teens to indulge in a little oral tradition these days…

Bless their hards, the Repubs keep on tryin’ to get behind the new teen traditions, but they always fail, because they’re basically doin’ it wrong!

Hint: brown is not a color of the rainbow.

What with it being black Friday and all, I figure it’s time to help everyone get in the proper frame of mind for the just-inaugurated Holiday Season 2009™.

Jumping on Jenn’s band-wagon, another musical X-mess treat, w/ special crizzmus blog-pimpin’. (Too lazy to link.)

Hi, sadlies.

It’s my birthday. Come say hi.

Hi!

N.C., N.C., go over to g’s place and say hi there. You will be glad you did because there are nice birthday photos.

Oh, and hi, also.

Pontificating troll pontificates:

With exceptions, of course, there are now too many young and even middle-age Americans that absorb important information about the world from various uncoordinated sources that, together, offer a viewpoint that is abbreviated and jumbled.

So does a supercollider. Yet those wacky scientists keep blowing buku crazy buttloads of money on building & running them.

Professor Von Arselicher here needs to look into beginning a regular regime of cranial enemas.

Yeah, it’s all been going to hell with the youngs since 400 BC or so, alright. These Athenian youth, so ignorant & dissipated with no Persians to fight – it’s a cryin’ shame, I tell ya!

Try to get a bunch of teens to indulge in a little oral tradition these days

Can’t say the Goopers haven’t done their part there, eh? Now if only they could just keep it out of the news & the courts, the poor poor things.

PS: remember, kids, never trust a guy whose head is growing out of his collarbone.

And directly into his ass.

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.

We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control. They bother my goat.

Whelps today not like when Thag whelp. Spend all time looking cave paintings. Always with own fire. Never stare at fire in sky. They poop in hole not wherever happen to be. Thag think Thag’s society go down hill.

“Back then we still had government ambition, as with President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” social engineering. But at least then we had time to taste big notions like that one before we were told to swallow them. “

Ahhh… such a good wing-nut, he likes to taste it and give a little tongue before he swallows. I’m sure it is appreciated by his superiors.

….and if you bother a goat…

If you give a goat a blowjob, he’ll probably want a cigarette.

…..just look out for the Thag-o-mizer. (link not provided)

If you give a goat a blowjob,…

Dude, that was one of my favorite books as a child.

Did someone say “give a goat a blowjob”?

he’ll probably want a cigarette.

Bass-ackwards. The blower will most want a cleansing smoke afterward.

Addreƒƒ my broadƒheet, libƒ!

Hey Mickey Kaus,

You certainly have a way with words. Wink wink; Starbursts!

My lawn is currently goat-mown. We originally planned to have brother limpets do the cropping, but there were problems with oxygen metabolism and lack of salinity.

Also, limpets tended to cut the blades too close to the bone of Ma Earth.

Bone of Ma Earth? Veiled stalagmite reference?

Leave your perverse encrustaceans out of this, Sheesh.

“It starts to get easier to persuade people that concepts like individual liberty, free enterprise and political independence — ideas that created and have sustained America — are no longer important.”

This idiot and his individual liberty would have wandered out into the woods at Plymouth Colony and been eaten by wolves before the first Thanksgiving.

Gawd but Towery is a buffoon:

“Life starts to look like a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces that no one is bothering to assemble into a coherent picture.”

In other words, “Nobody is listening to me anymore!”

On a serious note, Matt Towely has some fabulous hair.

You can tell that he likes it to be just so.

The fact is, you liberals are afraid that a real straight talking real American like Sarah Palin will be the next President. She will clean house of all the Dem corruption and bias in the media, and expand freedom and free markets, also.

Back in the old days, an article like that one wouldn’t have already been done ten thousand times.

It starts to get easier to persuade people that concepts like individual liberty, free enterprise and political independence — ideas that created and have sustained America — are no longer important.”

This reminds me of the guy Substance linked bemoaning how much we’d changed since de Tocqueville’s tour while forgetting most of what happened in US history and some of de T’s own opinions, if wiki is to be trusted: “As critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating, the coming together of people for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active political society and a vibrant civil society functioning independently from the state.” Heh heh heh.

Sarah Palin will be the next President. She will clean house of … bias in the media,

So government control of the press, right?

I like where this thread’s going, Itellyawhut!

Hey, kids, get offa my phone!

As with actual jigsaw puzzles, all the pieces look too much the same.

Jackson Pollock jigsaw puzzles!

Operators had no accents. My Mom’s first job ever was as an operator. Being Andalusian she spoke only Spanish till she was 10 years old but had NO accent when on the phone with customers.

Uhh… dude, just because you can’t perceive the accent, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Dumbest comment ever?

Trivially speaking, yes.

Longer answer, no.

You ever notice how young children speak clearly and with good diction? (Well, except for the ones who use baby talk or who have speech impediments or who suffer from ASD or other speech disorders.) The goal of the national operator or newscaster or emergency announcer is to speak with the same clarity and diction as that child, with inflections that are essentially a kind of average across regional accents but also conform to some extent to an ideal form–ie, many English speakers drop or elide t’s, but the operator must pronounce them clearly.

As people become adults they tend to adopt a sort of shorthand kind of speech and regional accent will determine which syllables get whispered, elided, and dropped.

There actually is a standard for no-accent American English. You don’t hear it often because it costs money to learn. (And I don’t count voicemail because the inflection used in that industry is simply bizarre. Nor do I think it maximizes comprehension.) There’s also one for Spanish–you’ll hear Columbian Spanish held up as the standard for least accent and maximum ease of comprehension across Spanish-speakers. (Mexican’s acknowledged as one of the worst.) The British situation is more confusing because of the elitism in that society–you’ve got an idea of the Oxford accent or the BBC accent, so while clarity was very important, so was branding. (The idea of looking to newscasters in the US is also somewhat problematic. NPR, for example, very definitely has its own accent.)

A purely regional operator can, of course, speak completely in some sort of regional patois and be completely intelligible to the intended audience unless there are some recent in-migrants in the mix. But I think even in that context, the listeners know and understand that to be their native accent (which they respond positively to) as opposed to the accent of another region (which they may dislike or simply find hard to understand) or to neutral English.