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Support Our Troops in Garcinia Cambogia

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It’s Somewhere Between Krung Thep and Aguas Calientes

I Think It’s Somewhere Between Krung Thep and Aguas Calientes

It’s all over the internet: You can lose weight, lengthen your dingdong, make the power company mad at you, date luscious Asian women, save money by buying stuff you don’t need, and taking advantage of Obama’s secret super-special refi plan.

The upshot is that, sometime over the last twenty years, we’ve let our brains drain out our ears or accidentally given ourselves lobotomies while on the way to the fridge to get more beer. Bring up any major news website, and you will see links to Motley Fool directing you to a twenty-minute video that purports to (but doesn’t actually) tell you why the Chinese economic miracle is over, or how you can make trillions by investing fifty cents in some odd 3-D printing stock for a company out of Liechtenstein.

Here they all are: everything that everybody really wants. Who cares about ISIS taking Baghdad or the Russian convoy to Ukraine being full of atomic waste? You can never be too rich or too thin—or too sexy, which I guess is a combination of both. (I mean, if an aging, decrepit troll like Donald Sterling can parade around with hot babes, so can you!)

We have become a nation of cheapsters. We don’t care about anything but massaging our pleasure principle, or, better yet, having our pleasure principle massaged by Girls Gone Wild.

What is Garcinia Cambogia anyway? Whatever it is, it sounds as if we should have boots on the ground there.

A Week of Very Very Bad News

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Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Every once in a while, all the bad news seems to clump up at one time. If you spend a lot of time following this news, you will feel very very bad and have to take some pharmaceutical products that are unlikely to do you any good. For those of you who have been consulting a sage on some remote mountaintop over the last seven days, here’s a brief summary of what has been clogging the pipes:

  • That Malaysian plane that was shot down by the Russkis or their BFFs is still in the middle of a battle zone, and investigators have been told the area is now mined. How’s that for hiding evidence?
  • Somebody did something to some Israelis or Hamas members, so the Israelis went and killed a couple thousand Arabs while Hamas still lobs cherry bombs and hammerheads into Israel.
  • Ebola is spreading like wildfire. For the sake of justice, we are bringing some afflicted Americans back to the States, where Donald Trump will be emptying their bedpans and giving them sponge baths.
  • Immigration? Congress does a bunk and gives Boehner another reason for a very public faceplant. Wait a sec, we’re paying those clowns to take apart the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Gummint?
  • Drought-stricken California is in even worse shape, now that the UCLA campus was flooded by several million gallons of water after a water main break. Is there any certainty that USC was not involved?
  • The stock market has taken a giant dump while we still consider investing in such ad-driven media as Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat. Wait, don’t advertising budgets suffer first when the economy goes south?

You can laugh at anything—provided that you concentrate on cultivating your garden rather than bearing the world’s unsolvable ills on your back.

 

It Wasn’t Us, Was It?

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The Red Spot on Jupiter Is Beginning to Disappear

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter Is Beginning to Disappear

What with the glaciers shrinking and the ozone hole growing ever larger, we are dismayed to learn that the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is likewise beginning to shrink. In the late 19th Century, it was estimated to be 25,500 miles wide. Beginning in 2012, it’s less than half that size, now only 10,250 miles across. According to CBS News:

Michael Wong, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Associated Press that the spot is a mystery. Astronomers don’t know why it’s red or shrinking, or what will happen next. If this pace continues, in 17 years the spot could be gone. Or it could stop at a smaller size.

The Great Red Spot is actually a giant storm, perhaps the planetary equivalent of a Polar Vortex. If the storm vanishes, will we be up to our ears in displaced Jupiterians? Will the giant planet wobble out of orbit and come crashing down into our part of the Solar System? Or is it an environmental phenomenon that has nothing to do with us and wouldn’t affect us for the next several million years? No one knows.

Perhaps our space program can enlist some volunteers to land on the harsh ammoniac surface of the planet and suss things out. I know several hundred people in Washington, DC who would be perfect for the job.

 

American Spring No Show

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I Guess the Weather Was Inclement

I Guess the Weather Was Inclement

Today was supposed to be the day. Millions of irate patriotic Americans would descend on Washington to get rid of Barack Obama and his libtard legions. I looked at their Facebook page for clues as to what happened to this massive convergence of right-thinking Americans, and where they could have gone instead. Maybe they’re all seeing the new Godzilla instead, which opens today in Los Angeles. Or else there’s a sale somewhere on military-style assault rifles. In any case, it appears unlikely that the Obama Administration and its Kenyan Communist stooges will be supplanted by something more in line with the thinking of the psychotic masses.

In what news commentator Rachel Maddow calls “a big nutball day in Washington and Bunkerville,” confused hordes will gather to enforce American Spring’s aims, which include “Restoration of Constitutional government, rule of law, freedom, liberty ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ from despotic and tyrannical federal leadership.”  I guess Bunkerville, Nevada is where Cliven Bundy is holed up with his militia followers waiting to pounce on anyone who shows up to collect grazing fees on land his family has worked since the 7th century A.D.

The self-proclaimed official website of American Spring laid out their plans in full:

Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.

Phase 2 – One million or more of the assembled 10 million must be prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.
Consistent with the US Constitution, as required, the U.S. Congress will take appropriate action, execute appropriate legislation, deal with vacancies, or U.S. States will appoint replacements for positions vacated consistent with established constitutional requirements.

Phase 3 – Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President.

At the end, there is this reassuring footnote: “*All actions in Phase 2 & 3 will be consistent with the U.S. Constitution.” Boy, that’s good to know. I was worried there for a while.

Click here to see what the Twitterati are saying about the big event.

 

It’s the Miracle Food!!!

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You Must Eat Three Pounds of Kale a Day to Thrive

You Must Eat Seven Pounds of Kale a Day in Order to Survive!

Okay, so I lied, both in the title of this posting and the caption to the photo above. I’m sure kale is as good for you as any number of other greens which have tended to be ignored. And, to my mind, kale is by no means the tastiest of the bunch. If I had my druthers, I would select Swiss chard which I use in most of my soup recipes. It’s not as bitter as kale, and probably just as good.

In fact, I used NutritionData.Com to do a comparative analysis of 1 cup of cooked, boiled, drained, without salt kale and Swiss chard. Click on either of these and you will learn more than you ever needed or wanted to know. The important thing to remember is this: Kale is not a miracle food, but like all greens is good for you.

Kale is now riding the high horse of newspaper-sanctioned prosperity, until such time as the media discovers that it causes cancer, beri-beri, pellagra, dengue, and leprosy. In the meantime, I suppose you could continue to eat your seven pounds of kale daily, not neglecting all the other vitamins and minerals your body needs to function.

I am sure that, any day now, I will see kale capsules available on the nutritional supplements shelf of your local pharmacy. Each 1,000 MG capsule will run you $3.95; and you should take three a day, one with each meal. Or you’ll be able to get kale oil. Feel free to rub it all over your skin and see how it changes your coloration to dark green. And how healthy is that?

 

 

As Likely As Any Other Theory

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A Painting of Neptune by an Indian Artist

A Painting of Neptune by an Indian Artist

Since most of the news about Malaysian Flight 370—or just about anything else—is so preposterous of late, I have decided to float some of my own theories. My theory is that Neptune (a.k.a. Poseidon), the Roman God of the Sea has hijacked Flight 370 and taken the Boeing down to his undersea palace a thousand miles west of Perth, Australia, where the passengers will be fêted on tea and cakes until he allows them to take off again.

As for Vladimir Putin’s recent takeover of Crimea, it is my firm belief that my friend Bill Korn has it right on his blog. Mr. Putin is trying to put together a new Greater Teabagistan now that the old Soviet Empire has run out of steam. And who better to rule as the new Czar of Teabagistan than Putin himself. I understand he is even thinking of taking Transdniester away from the Republic of Moldova because he feels they are not pronouncing it right. (Our Vladi is a stickler for correct pronunciation.)

In the United States, with the McCutcheon vs. FEH (not FEC as reported) decision, the U.S. Supreme Court is on the point of granting full freedom of speech and all other First Amendment rights to corporations, and then embarking upon the next step: Declaring human beings to be a carbon unit infestation that has arrogated too many rights to itself.

The real reason for David Letterman’s upcoming retirement from CBS is that he wants to become the new Stephen Colbert, while Colbert takes over his helm at CBS. Talk about a Chinese fire drill!

Perhaps I should apply to the news stations to come up with theories for their breaking news stories. If anyone can break the news, look no further than yours truly.

By the way, the above illustration of Neptune is by Indian artist Shakti Prasad Srichandan.

 

Getting the Joke 55 Years Later

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Tenniel’s White Queen in Through the Looking Glass

Tenniel’s White Queen in Through the Looking Glass

I was a mere fourteen years old, a Freshman in Latin 1 at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio. My instructor was the Rev. Seamus MacEnri, S.M., from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. One day, he archly drew the following on the chalkboard:

Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today

Our reaction was a uniform, “Whaaa?” But then, we were all a bunch of hayseed kids from the southeastern suburbs of Cleveland and didn’t have Father MacEnri’s breadth of experience. It took quite a while before the whole joke became clear to me. Today, in this post, I will analyze the joke, effectively forestalling any laughter or snickers.

First, let’s take a look at this from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the [White] Queen said. “Two pence a week, and jam every other day.”

Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, “I don’t want you to hire me – and I don’t care for jam.”

“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.

“Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.”

“You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.”

“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day’,” Alice objected.

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”

And so were we all confused. Now, why would a teacher of Latin spring this rather arcane joke on a bunch of high school freshmen. It took a while to swirl around in my mind before I got the picture. It all comes down to something that Medieval copyists started doing in the 13th century:

Sometimes one will see a “j” in Latin. Technically Latin has no letter J. It was introduced in the 13th century or thereabouts to differentiate between the vowel i and the consonant i. The consonantal i is like our y. “Major” in Latin is pronounced as MAH-yor. Until this last century, most printed Latin texts used the j to indicate the different sounds. Today the j’s are usually replaced with the more classical i’s.

That’s why we have words like juvenile and justice, which come from the Latin iuvenilis and iustitia respectively.

Now, what does jam—or should I say iam?—mean in Latin? It means nothing less than now. Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam now.

Well, Father MacEnri, I finally got the joke—and damned near killed it, too.

Oh, No, Another Bill Nye Debate?!

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Look, Bill, Your Heart’s in the Right Place, but ...

Look, Bill, Your Heart’s in the Right Place, but …

Today, my blog is written by Juan Cole. I thought it was really funny, so here it is in its entirety:

David Gregory’s Meet the Press today hosted a debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on whether gravity is just a theory.

“Sure,” Gohmert said, “things fall down all the time. But that doesn’t mean gravity is a law. Look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s still there after hundreds of years. Things don’t always fall down.”

Nye pointed out that Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity in the 17th century and it is settled science.

Gohmert challenged Nye’s certainty. “The cultists who tout science always speak as though we know for sure that scientific discoveries are true. Gravity has only been theorized for a couple hundred years. It’s too early to tell. How much money do they want us to waste on suspension bridges and other expensive technology aimed at keeping things from falling down, on the basis of a theory?”

Nye tore off his bow-tie and began chewing on it in frustration.

“Wasn’t it an apple that hit Newton on the head?” Gohmert asked. “Well, I’ve read the Bible and I know that an apple was used to tempt Eve. Maybe the Serpent was just tempting Newton with a secular humanist theory.”

Nye said, “What?”

“Besides,” Gohmert went on, “we all saw that movie ‘Gravity.’ Obviously there’s no gravity in outer space. So if the theory doesn’t work everywhere, there must be something wrong with it.”

“The law of gravity says,” Nye replied, “that ‘any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.’ Gravity works in deep outer space, it is just that bodies there are distant from the earth. And in ‘Gravity’ they were just falling around the earth, in the grip of its gravity.”

Moderator David Gregory smirked. “That’s a lot of verbiage there, Bill. If you can’t explain something clearly, maybe it’s because there’s something wrong with the theory.”

Gohmert angrily interrupted Gregory. “Besides, we all know that Muslims believe in gravity. That should make you suspicious of it, right there.”

Nye turned to Gregory. “How can you call yourself a journalist? This is a carnival with a bearded lady exhibit!”

Gregory shrugged. “Next you’ll be saying Glenn Greenwald is a journalist. I am not an activist. I don’t know whether gravity is universal. I let both sides tell their story.”

“That’s not a ‘side’! He’s just mouthing nonsense! It doesn’t even make any sense.”

Gohmert pounded the table. “This whole gravity thing is just a way for scientists to get taxpayers’ hard-won money away from them. NASA wouldn’t get all that funding for rocket fuel if people realized that ‘gravity’ is just a theory.”

Gregory turned to the camera and smiled. “There you have it, folks. Next week on ‘Meet the Press:’ A quarter of Americans think the sun goes around the earth. Could they be right? To explain, we’ll be joined by a homeless man who says he is possessed by the spirit of the ancient astronomer Ptolemy.”

 

 

Potrzebie and Axolotl

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With Proust, A Cookie Did the Trick

With Proust, A Cookie Did the Trick

There we were on Saturday evening at my friend Bill Korn’s hacienda in the mountain fastness of Altadena. All of a sudden, Bill threw a word at me that unlocked my childhood in all its tawdriness. The word? It was potrzebie. Is there such a thing? Apparently, but not in our language:

No, This Isn’t It ...

No, This Isn’t It …

Apparently, it’s a word in Polish, as we see below:

Don’t Ask Me What This Means!

In Polish, Potrzebie Means “A Need”

If you were ever a computer programmer, you know who Donald E. Knuth is. He is the author of the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming. In the early 1970s, I dutifully purchased the first three volumes in the series: Fundamental Algorithms, Seminumerical Algorithms, and Sorting and Searching. I don’t recall reading much of it because it was intense, full of mathematical thingies of great penetration and impenetrability. So I eventually sold them.

Aside from writing books I couldn’t wrap my head around, Knuth also defined a potrzebie as being the thickness in millimeters of Mad Magazine’s Issue #26. For those of you who need to know, that amounts to 2.263348517438173216473 millimeters, as shown in the following illustration from Mad:

The System in All Its Glory

The System in All Its Glory

But potrzebie came to mean ever so much more than that, because the editors of Mad fell in love with the word, as did Geoffrey Chaucer:

Whon thot Aprille swithin potrzebie,
The burgid prillie gives one heebie-jeebie.

It joined such terms as axolotl (the critter illustrated at top of article), veeblefetzer, furshlugginer (a word I occasionally use to this day), and hoohah. As it happens, I am now way too sophisticated to read Mad, but half a century ago, it was my meat and drink. It was also my introduction to Yiddish, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I had forgotten these words over the years, but now they are like the zahir of Jorge Luis Borges in the story of the same name. The zahir was a coin which, if one ever saw it, one could think of nothing else.

So, all I could say now is hoo-hah!

 

 

 

 

War on Xmas Begins in Earnest

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Papa Bear Told Us This Would Happen

Papa Bear Warned Us This Would Happen

Just as Bill O’Reilly predicted, the War on Christmas has begun in earnest. Guantanamo is being stripped of terrorist chauffeurs and brothers-in-law to make room for the Clauses and their adherents, including a particularly sinister lot of elves. Breaking news has reported the death of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, whose bleeding carcass was last seen draped over the front of a Humvee, and of the Little Drummer Boy, who took a load of PAHRUPPAPUMMPUMM between the eyes. Grim, sooty smoke spiraled up from stacks of burning greeting cards and gift wrapping paper. Creches were attacked with anti-tank weapons and blown to smithereens.

People who voted in Obama over Mitt Romney in November 2012 are shaking their heads in dismay. Even losing candidate Mitt Romney commented: “Look, fellas, I may be a Mormon; but we’re all Christians here, aren’t we? Aren’t we?”

You wouldn’t think so if you saw the forces arraigned to fight The Former Holiday, as it’s now being called in the news media. In a brave show of resistance, the Faux News Channel began calling itself The Christmas Station until the Federal Communications Commission threatened to shut them down with an attack column headed toward their broadcast headquarters. With many of its pundits under arrest, including O’Reilly, for promoting Christian values, the channel has turned mostly to agricultural reports and generic ethical sermonizing until the situation is clarified.

According to General Mohammed al Scroogey, the Pentagon spokesman, “We have made contact with the forces of Christmas and, on a large scale, torn down their flocked trees and ripped out their strings of lights. Our aim is to confiscate all Santas, elves, sleighs, bells, snowflakes, and other holiday paraphernalia until all that remains is devoid of religious or other celebratory intent.”

All radios played martial music while the brave heroes of the attack brigades wipe out every trace of the despised holiday. President Barack Hussein Obama offered prayers to Allah for the speedy success of what has come to be known as Operation Grinch.