Moron of the Day: Newsweek

Yeah, that Internet thing will never take off. 

Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

...

Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

Hah.  The whole article is similarly hilarious in its complete and utter fail.

(h/t: Slashdot)

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 11:38 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The Conservative Soul

That's the title of one of Excitable Andi's Books. And he should know all about that after one of his "readers" assures him that "If Obama outlasts [conservative critics of his health insurance takeover--ed.] -- if he takes every punch and emerges victorious -- then two key things will happen."

Quoth St. Andrew's reader (who totally isn't one of the voices in his head):

First, the voices on the right advocating opposition will have to account for their failing. Second, Obama will gain more leeway and tolerance from the middle-of-the-road voter, further strengthening his hand. In effect, succeeding grants Obama the right to move even slower in the future, as it suits him. Trust is (re)born.

Riiiiiiiight. If this hugely unpopular bill gets rammed through, everything will be FUCKING AWESOME for Obama and a disaster for the GOP. Because they failed somehow to stop a gigantic, expensive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system. And if the Dems ram this piece of shit through, Obama gets to claim victories when his deadlines expire. Because...um, shut up, that's why.

Oh, and what does the sage of "The Conservative Soul" have to say in response?

Do what you can to get healthcare passed. Yeah. I'm talking to you. Call your congressman and Senator. Organize.

Yeah.

Posted by: Sean M. at 03:13 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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The WIN Is Strong With This One

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hi.

Posted by: alexthechick at 09:25 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Nobody ever tells me anything.

How come nobody's told me about some show called "Beggars and Choosers" that had Christina Hendricks in it?
I shouldn't link this, bastids.

I will warn you it has some NSFW language.
It's also Not Safe For Pants.

Posted by: Veeshir at 09:18 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Rejoice Greenies! Obama Is Set To Push For Your Agenda!

Man, you goofs are are so screwed now.

And in marginally related Green Goofiness, it appears as though "fucking that chicken" will now have a whole new meaning in Switzerland.

Posted by: eddiebear at 05:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Do it. I triple dog dare you.

So. The House wants to get around that whole pesky actually voting on bills thing huh?

The tar, feathers and pitchforks would sure as hell become literal if this happens. 

I must say, it's nice to see the happy happy fun fun mask of democracy get yanked off and the true face of liberal Dem tyranny be revealed. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 03:38 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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How did Megashark knock down that airplane?

It's explained here



There is a bit of controversy about the numbers as shown in the comment by Caldwing

Ok I actually did some calculations on this back when I first saw this incredible movie. I have revisited my calculations and come to some surprising conclusions.

As has been mentioned the true altitude of the aircraft would be about 10000 m, this is the value I used. The mass of the shark has been -woefully- underestimated however. I would agree with the assessment that the shark is about 140 m long. The largest great white ever caught was 6.4 m and about 3300 kg. increasing mass as the cube this gives us a weight of over 34000 kg. This makes sense since the shark is clearly the size of a large ocean going vessel, the likes of which routinely reach this discplacement.

When velocity is calculated in a vacuum however the mass of the shark is of course inconsequential. Using simple acceleration due to gravity the shark would have to be traveling at about 443 m/s, almost 1600 km/h, to reach this height.

Now the real surprise came when I went to try a rudimentary calculation of atmospheric friction. I used the standard drag formula, assuming the cross-sectional diameter of the shark moving head on to be about 30 m, and the area roughly circular. The coefficient of drag for sharks is actually very low, as discovered by my friend. I gave him a Cd of 0.1, allowing that his mouth is open. At sea-level, just as he leaves the water, the force due to air friction would be about 8.4 million Newtons. However, due to the incredible mass of the shark, this translates into only 0.244 m/s of vertical deceleration.

Now, although a true recalculation of required velocity would require more calculus then I care to bother with since the air friction will be constantly changing as altitude increases and velocity decreases, a quick estimate tells us that very little has changed. Even if that level of friction was constant, the deceleration would only increase from 9.81 m/s/s to 10.054 m/s/s, resulting in a final required velocity of about 449 m/s

This seems very counter-intuitive for me, and I still suspect I have gone wrong somewhere, but I cannot see where. I was expecting the air resistance to be totally insurmountable. But even a large increase in the drag coefficient would only bring the required velocity to… oh maybe over 500 m/s. If anyone has any thoughts or can point out obvious errors they would be welcome.

Of course, even getting to this speed underwater in the first place is a whole other ball of wax.

but you get the idea. The best comment has to come from the producer of the movie however:

You forgot to carry the ‘1′, but otherwise the math is solid.

Honestly, I think you spent more time on this chart then we did making the movie. But this was the best site yet on our little film. AWESOME!!!

Mega Thanks,
David
(Producer, MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS)

Obviously he has never read DPUD.

Posted by: chad98036 at 12:20 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Let's see if I have this right

Walmart offers sale price on black Barbie.

Black liberal advocacy groups cry raaaaaaaaacist, black Barbie should cost as much as white Barbie!

Walmart apologizes and says, by all means, let me mark up those Barbie prices for you!

Liberal advocacy group cries Excess Profits!  Raaaaaacist!  Capitalist Greed!

Walmart says, fuck you, I'm Walmart, then visits People of Walmart for shits and giggles.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:05 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Sean Penn Supports A Murderous Thug And Anti Semitic Enabler

Fuck you, Spicoli. Fuck you and your bizzare obsession with anal diseases and arresting peoplewith whom you disagree. Fuck you and your fucking rump-fed addlepated fuckbacked puttockpuckingly Anti-Semitic peckerpicker enabling ass with the hell fucked leaden apes of fuckedupedness and towelfucking.

Who the fuck are you to tell me that I cannot criticize and mock a foreign thug on my home fucking soil? Who the fuck are you to wish a horrible disease on me because of a political disagreement? And who the fuck fuck fuckity fuckballoon of fuckfisting are you to condemn my views while you allow this shit to go on in the land of your hero?

The point is, Venezuela's Jewish community is facing an existential threat, all due to the policies and actions of that "great man" Hugo Chavez.  Many have already fled the country for the USA, Israel, and other countries across the hemisphere.  Those that remain face ongoing harassment and outright antisemitism from agents of the Chavez government.  Until Chavez's ascent to power, Venezuela was one of the few countries where there was no real anti-semitic tradition or legacy.  Jews were active in Venezuelan life, and achieved success in that society's highest levels, interacting with Catholics and Muslims in all facets of civil society.  Now, the community has nothing to look forward other than a bleak future

Yeah, how the fuck can you stay silent there, fuckhead? How the fuck can you claim Chavez is a great man while he enables violence against a religious minority? And how the fuck can you dare fucking tell me to shut up when voices need to be raised in awareness of what Chavez is doing?

Fuck you, Sean Penn. Fuck you forever with the specter of the people your words condemn to a life of misery. And fucking catch rectal cnacer yourself, you fucking dickhead.

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:03 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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President of the without a clue club?

In response to the common educational standards being proposed by governors and state education chiefs:

One critic said the proposal appeared to have unstoppable momentum.

"I think it's a done deal because Obama attached all this money," said Susan Ohanian, a former English teacher and education policy blogger who lives in Vermont.

She said standards deny teachers the ability to judge what should be taught and when. "If we don't trust teachers to do that, then we have no business leaving them in the classroom," she said.

The standards project was funded by the governors and state schools chiefs. Along with the Gates Foundation, it has backing from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and others. Drafters included experts affiliated with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Reviewers included university professors and other educators.

Others are more positive:

The 70-page math proposal seeks to bring coherence, rigor and focus to instruction, said William Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor of education and statistics who reviewed it. In many states, he said, math standards are "a mile wide and an inch deep," in contrast to standards in countries that have outpaced the United States in achievement in recent years.

 

The 60-page English language-arts proposal, plus three appendices, seeks to build skills and knowledge in reading, writing, speaking and listening, with special focus on grammar, usage and vocabulary. E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of "Cultural Literacy," said the proposed emphasis on science and history texts would give students a stronger base of knowledge for reading.

Chester Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute praised the examples of suggested texts from ancient Greece (Homer) to modern times (Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri). "It's full of terrific stuff, high quality, content-rich, the kind of thing you want your kids or grandkids to read in school," he said.

I'm sure that somewhere someone (Glenn Beck I am looking at you Glenn Beck) will find some hidden communist agenda in this but for right now I am mildly optimistic

Here is a list of the recommended reading for the proposed standards.

Here is an excerpt of some of the standards

Update: I sent a copy of the reading list to my parents, my sister and my brother so that they could take a look at what may be recommended (required?) for my nieces and nephews along with the following suggested additions to the list:

If it was me I would add a few things, the entire Constitution and the amendments, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The 9/11 Commission Report, The Road to Serfdom, A Brief History of Time, Selected Feynman Lectures, 1984, The Gulag Archipelago, Atlas Shrugged, A Tour of the Calculus, Wealth of Nations, Two Treatises on Government, maybe Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, Treasure Island, and the Three Musketeers

Update 2: One of the Washington Post writers has some criticism of the standards.

What I especially worry about is a stepping up of what we have already seen happen with curriculum in the NCLB era. The “push down” effect has essentially pushed into lower grades the things kids are supposed to be able to do and know.

Once, schools gave youngsters a chance to learn how to read according to their own development. Now, a child who still can’t read by the end of first grade is in deep trouble from which it can be hard to emerge.

...

Telling teachers that they must teach certain things to each child in a specific grade ignores this notion of individual development.

Another concern about the new standards is that they are only for math and English. The emphasis on those subjects in No Child Left Behind's assessment scheme led to a dangerous narrowing of curriculum in public schools; the arts disappeared in many systems, science and history and physical education took a back seat too.

...

There is a common notion in American education reform circles that we are falling behind other countries with high-achieving school systems in large part because we don’t have national standards.

But in her new book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,” Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as Barack Obama’s chief education adviser duringn the presidential transition, makes clear that this isn’t the case.

She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards.

It “shifted to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around very lean national standards,” she wrote. All assessments are school-based, designed by teachers, rather than standardized.

Valid criticisms and they echo the concern of commenter car in in the comments. My responses would be:

Push down is a concern but from what I can see these are not grade specific standards, but a set of outcomes that all students should be able to achieve by graduation. Maybe there are proposed grade specific standards coming, if so they would need further evaluation. Finland is used as an example of a case against national standards:

She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards.

But in reality this is comparing apples and oranges. Finland is a culturally homogenous country with 1/60th the population in 1/30th the area of the United States and about half the population is located in 6 cities in one geographic region. Unless the standards from city to city vary wildly the local standards are in effect national standards. Even if that wasn't the case what Professor Hammond advocates (lean national standards implemented at the local level) is what is being proposed

The entire set of reading standards consists of 18 items of this nature:

Determine both what the text says explicitly and what can be inferred logically from the text.

If that is to detailed we really have problems.   Math standards are more detailed but again it is only a set of measurable outcomes for graduation not specifics on how to get there. 

Posted by: chad98036 at 03:38 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Imitation is the sincerest form or jackassery

So, a huge group of citizens are pissed off about the statist overreach of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, and the Tea Party movement emerges.

So, after that happens, a bunch of lefties, led by Obamaton Annabel Park form the Coffee Party movement.

And, now, the malcontents on the troofer fringe have decided that the latter isn't good enough (no link to the lunatic Alex Jones' prisonplanet site) and are forming the Real Coffee Party:

The fact that the Coffee Party was originally proposed as a reaction to the infiltration of the Tea Party by Alex Jones listeners and Ron Paul supporters weeks before the emergence of the establishment front Coffee Party led by Obama campaign operative Annabel Park goes to show once again that our efforts to form a non-partisan resistance movement against the big government agenda is under constant assault from a system desperate to uphold the integrity of the phony left-right paradigm.

Oh, and the Alex Jones people are suggesting that the Tea Party has been subverted by the "neocons."  Shocking, I know.  Furthermore, the Tea Parties were originally about abolishing the Federal Reserve and getting our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And helping Ron Paul. Yes, really.
 
I'm disinclined to believe anything that comes out of the Alex Jones camp, but if the Coffee Party idea came from them in the first place, it's even more ridiculous. And fun.

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The Greatest Movie Ever? Greatest Movie Ever!

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Man arrested for putting his caulk in womens' asses

The latest black market cosmetic surgeon.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 12:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Semi-lame but I lIke it

Posted by: chad98036 at 09:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's probably old, I don't care.

I don't know if he's the coolest guy in the world, but I've always felt cool when I was doing that stuff.


Speaking of conceited,
h/t iOwnTheWorld

Posted by: Veeshir at 07:28 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Great Moments in Bad Timing

Back in around '03 or '04 a French restaurant opened in Crystal City (part of Arlington) maybe a week or two after the House voted on "Freedom Fries".
At the time, that part of Crystal City was full of the Patent office and lots of military personnel.

I've always held that up as a Great Moment in Bad Timing (stolen from Mad Magazine circa 1980).


I have a new standard bearer
more...

Posted by: Veeshir at 03:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Are you gonna get deputized and join the Citizens' Posse?

Some dude from the Foo Fighters who isn't Dave Grohl,

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:16 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Set Phasers to Annihilate

The USS Enterprise encounters a threat to humanity and deals with it in the only logical way.

Posted by: chad98036 at 01:11 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Obama To Hammer Fishermen And The Fishing Industry?

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.

"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

 

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:37 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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