Sign of the Times

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“Vintage Antiques? Well, honestly I was hoping you had some brand new antiques!”

In Closing: sick and tired; CISPA is back from the dead; “Lack of exercise responsible for twice as many early deaths as obesity”; ok ok, we’ll tell you what the NSA is doing, but we aren’t planning on stopping; institutional sexism; a third of Americans think cops are liars; Target pulling out of Canada; on a living wage.

Skills to Pay the Bills


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It’s important to keep those computer skills up to date! So be sure to check out these super-keen books on cutting edge computer stuff. Just in case you think I’m dragging up old pictures, please note “QuickBooks 2011 for Dummies” right below the far less timely book on Excel 2007. For the record, I took this one a few months ago and forgot about it until I was cleaning out some old pictures.

Harvest Time is Upon Us!

And apparently, nothing says “autumn” to my local store than pumpkins and lots of boxed wine!

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Or perhaps you’d prefer the hard stuff?

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Drink that much Jack, and you’ll need the tombstone!

As the nice lady sang, “Cheers to the freakin weekend! I’ll drink to that.”

In Closing: personality test; Carlin; what could possibly go wrong?; Dave on taxes; die with a t on the end; “Armory? Armory? School districts have armories? Hell, we don’t have enough money for textbooks but we have armories?”; Russian Space Sex Geckos!; Uh, “number 2” is actually #4 by my reckoning (nobody would have recognized 6); not good; and you have got to watch this — a splash mob!

Comics and Fun Stuff

Let’s start with the CDC: “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”

A History Lesson or two.

Is Sovereignty right for you?

Enjoy Juanita’s potpourri.

Oh yeah, and you gotta get your Snowden, Snowden, Snowden, yet more Snowden, privacy, and NSA links someplace! Have a bonus NSA comic.

Just starting to come up for air. Hopefully back to more normal posting next week.

A Couple Follow-Ups

Little Dogs in Big Trouble: Remember this post? The picture was taken in front of the Prince and Princess Puppy Boutique in Las Vegas. Well, there’s been some trouble in the Doggie Kingdom. The owner of the store and her companion are accused of trying to burn the place down with 27 dogs inside. Yeah, if you’re going to try and burn your own business down, you really ought to disable your security cameras first, ya know?

Mystery Solved: Last semester I was confused by this Crosswalk to Nowhere. I figured it was a vestige of some campus roadway plan that never came to pass, but I was very wrong! This week I saw it used for it’s actual purpose. It’s hard to tell in my picture that the “crosswalk” is probably as wide as a 6-lane road. However, remember that there’s no road? This crosswalk is for rehab: a (supervised) patient can learn or relearn to cross a street in the amount of time allowed by a typical crosswalk with no stress and no actual traffic.

Ok, now on to In Closing: NAFTA and TPP (pay attention to TPP and tell your friends!); NSA, DHSprivacy, and NSA; on logic; oh did He? Never heard Jefferson and his crew referred to as “God” before; unexpected; and where is the money coming from??; keep calm and ask a question; economyCPI, and economy; Descartes; “to him, it was science possibility” (Ron McNair was also going to perform the first saxophone solo recorded in space); if Howard Hughes had his way, the west quarter or so of the Las Vegas Valley would be a giant aircraft plant; and I can’t help but notice that the world didn’t end today. I consider that a Good Thing.

Crosswalk to Nowhere

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Yes, apparently you have to push the button to legally walk down the sidewalk here. It’s been driving me nuts all semester.

In Closing: oh come now, we can all use more NSA and privacy links, particularly when it’s starting to garner international outrage; speaking of international laws, looks like America doesn’t care about them too much; well, I guess a good ad campaign can’t hurt; how much of the stock market is made up by computers?; outrage; a little too true; the crooks in Washington are still trying to figure out how to steal your mom’s money; the USPS; spitting in the wind; the only demographic group that doesn’t favor legalizing pot by a majority is people over 65, of whom 45% still think it’s a good idea; this exists; it turns out “the 13 year old tricked me into having sex with him for drugs” is a lousy defense; bad idea, Sheldon; The Grinch is in Washington; and Mike Tyson.

Ides of March

Pi Day is over. Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.  To the best of my knowledge, Caesars Palace is not planning any memorial events. A friend has suggested not celebrating with a salad.

In Closing: three political cartoons (render unto Caesar, eh?); oops, turns out the samples from Lake Vostok were contaminated; Yay! Vegas is not number one!; on the interpretation of study data; grumble; double a small number is still pretty small; wow; comfortable workers work harder (attention, Yahoo); hard to save anything when there’s nothing left; totally bombed; cord cutting; when there is no market, market forces don’t act.