fuck yeah!

Alan Grayson shows how it's done. We need more representatives like this.

animal house

With CGI rapidly approaching the point at which it may finally be climbing up the far side of the uncanny valley, these two brief clips of a distinctly lower-tech approach to anthropomorphism are somehow, to me at least, kind of disturbing. But in a fascinating way.

(via Constant Siege)

apparently not a lie after all

(via this isn't happiness)

bonus post

So yeah, this has been pretty much everywhere for the last week or so, but in light of the post below, I figure you just can't watch it too many times.

the politics of death

The man pictured to the left is Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), the current House minority leader. It's his job to lead the Republicans in the House of Representatives in the accomplishment of their goal of totally undermining the Obama presidency by blocking any and all reform, no matter how inconsequential, proposed by the Democrats. No matter how much that reform may have the support of their constituents. (Of course, that statement is based on the incredibly naive assumption that their "constituents" are the people in their home districts who voted for them, as opposed to the corporations, banks, and insurance companies that pour millions of dollars into their campaign coffers and actually own our government.)

Last Friday, Boehner was interviewed on NPR. In the story on the NRP website (headlined, "Boehner: Slow Down Health Overhaul Negotiations") he bemoaned what he saw as the lack of "bipartisanship" in the health care reform negotiations. (Just to be clear, to the Republicans, "bipartisanship" means, "Despite the electorate having overwhelming rebuked pretty much everything we stand for, you can't pass anything we (and our corporate overlords) don't like.") Specifically, the fact that there is still some small chance that the Democrats may actually put forward a bill that includes a public option, an element of health care reform overwhelmingly favored by the American people (and therefore rabidly opposed by the Republicans), led Boehner to tell the NPR interviewer that it's a mistake for Obama to continue on his current path. According to Boehner, "it's time for the president to hit the reset button. Let's just stop all of this."

The young woman pictured to the left is Kimberly 'Kimi' Young. As a native of Wayne, Ohio, she is one of John Boehner's constituents. She graduated from college last December with a double major in international studies and fine arts photography and was an active member of the Students for Peace and Justice and the Association of Latin American Students. For the last three or four years, she had been working at two jobs, one at a coffee house, and another at a local deli.

About two weeks ago, Kimberly began feeling ill with flu symptoms, but didn’t seek medical care because she didn’t have health insurance and was worried about the cost, according to Brent Mowery, a friend and former roommate. She continued feeling worse, and eventually went to an urgent care facility in Hamilton, Ohio where she was given pain medication and then sent home.

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, her condition suddenly worsened and her roommate drove her to McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, where she was flown in critical condition to University Hospital in Cincinnati. She died there that night.

“That’s the most tragic part about it. If she had insurance, she would have gone to the doctor,” Mowery said.

She was 22.

So fuck John Boehner. Fuck the Republicans. Fuck the Blue Dog Democrats. Fuck everyone in this government who is acting on the assumption that their job is to protect record insurance company profits and obscene CEO bonuses at the potential cost of the lives of the people they're supposedly elected to represent.

Fuck them all.

america's finest news source

Once again, you can count on The Onion to get it right. From Twitter:

BREAKING: Democrats Hoping To Take Control Of Congress From Republican Minority In 2010

the stork is a lie

(If this doesn't make any sense to you, look here.)

(via Wonderland)

brave new world

Via Clayton Cubitt, here's an interesting comparison of the future as depicted in George Orwell's 1984 and the future of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”

Sound familiar? And while it would be easy to assume that this was written as a response to our current internet culture, with it's almost unimaginable information and distraction overload, it was, in fact, written in 1985 by Neil Postman in his seminal book of media criticism and analysis, Amusing Ourselves to Death. That's years before the web even existed and a decade and a half before Facebook, Twitter, Perez Hilton, World of Warcraft, MySpace, YouTube, lolcats, Drudge, Blogger, Tumblr, Gawker, etc., etc., etc.

The actual object of Mr. Postman's concern was the cultural impact of television on public discourse. In the context of today, that seems almost quaint.

picture of the day

Posted without comment.

(via Ed Brayton)

mary

Peter, Paul & Mary at an United Farm Workers rally in Watsonville, Calif., on Thursday, March 19, 1998.

(Paul Sakuma/Associated Press)