Month: August 2015

Tweet of the Day, You Should Start Taking @CarlyFiorina Seriously If You’re Not Already edition.

Where the hell was this Carly Fiorina during the 2010 California Senate race?

Don’t get me wrong: that would have been an uphill battle even with this New, Improved, And Frankly Relentless Carly Fiorina in the race. But damned if it wouldn’t have also been more fun. Seriously, if you’re not taking Carly seriously as a candidate at this point, start. I’m not endorsing her for the primary, but I will be a little upset if she doesn’t have some official role in the new administration…

Former President Jimmy Carter has the Bad Cancer.

Well, this sucks.

Former President Jimmy Carter announced Wednesday that he has cancer, and will be undergoing treatment in his home state of Georgia.

“Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body,” he said. “I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare.”

I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy. Especially the kind that’s metastasized, which is what it sounds like it’s done here. So you should probably pray for the man and his loved ones, if you haven’t already. I have.

Via Instapundit.

Violence in Times Square! …Wait, I saw this movie. It was called ‘The Seventies.’

This will not end well.

I know that that sounds a little weird, but it’s an actual problem: or at least one of two problems. Basically, the combination of over-aggressive picture vendors and the way that former mayor Bloomberg has made the area a lot less motor vehicle-friendly is allegedly making Times Square’s highest-status office tenants reconsider staying in the area once their leases expire. It’s a little less dire than the article makes it out to be – companies HATE moving, especially at this level – but it can happen, and if it does the city will take a hit.

For that matter, so will Times Square. Which is a plus for some people, bizarrely enough: believe it or not, there are those who are nostalgic for the days when walking through Times Square meant getting accosted by pimps on a regular basis. I swear to God: save us all from the people who seem to think that cities should be demented, dystopian theme parks…

Book of the Week: “The High Crusade.”

How to describe Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade? Well. Do you like books where alien invaders discover why it’s not a good idea to mess with a 14th Century English baron who has a complete set of longbowmen with him?

…The answer to that should be ‘yes,’ by the way. Not that I’m judging you if it’s not.  Well, not too much.

And so, adieu to Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation.

Continue reading Book of the Week: “The High Crusade.”

So, it turns out that that EPA ecological disaster hit the Navajos.

Of course it did. The EPA worries about coastal urban liberals, first and foremost. Native American tribes? Not so much – well, not until EPA incompetence turns a river a color that I normally associate with melted Velveeta. Then they kind of get on the stick. Eventually…

The spill happened Friday when a team of Environmental Protection Agency workers accidentally released 3 million gallons of wastewater containing heavy metals, including lead and arsenic, from the Gold King Mine in Silverton, Colorado, the agency said.

[snip]

Though EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said at a news conference today that the agency’s slow response was out of caution, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said the slow response is frustrating the Navajo people, who are “weeping every day” and in “dire need of clean water,” not only for drinking, but also to sustain their organic farms and ranches.

Continue reading So, it turns out that that EPA ecological disaster hit the Navajos.

What *not* to do when reality interferes with your story.

So. Let’s say that you sat down to write a story on the topic of… oh, say, how infuriated gay people are that Chick-fil-A is opening its first site in Manhattan*.  You write about forty percent of it, and then you think OK. Time to get all the outrageous outrage.  Only… it turns out that the the LGBTAlphabetSoup community is reacting sanely to the marvelous, wonderful news that Chick-fil-A is gonna be in Manhattan: which is to say, they’ve thanked God and marked the day down in their calendars.   Continue reading What *not* to do when reality interferes with your story.

Probe of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal enveloping top aides.

Well, isn’t this a Maalox moment for the Democratic party leadership.

As pressure builds on Hillary Clinton to explain her official use of personal email while serving as secretary of state, she faced new complications Tuesday. It was disclosed her top aides are being drawn into a burgeoning federal inquiry and that two emails on her private account have been classified as “Top Secret.”

The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications – more sensitive than previously known.

Continue reading Probe of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal enveloping top aides.

‘How to remove a door knob with no visible screws.’ An excellent how-to video.

Be damned if this isn’t an almost perfect how-to video:

No wasting my time with a five minute introduction to explain the history of doorknobs and what a screwdriver is, easy-to-follow directions, details visible even on the screen of an Amazon Fire Phone. I had the old knob off in two minutes with no fuss whatsoever. Knowing my usual habits, I was half-expecting to break the door.

Do how-to videos this way, please.