Monday, September 26, 2011

Keep It To Yourself, Okay?

F-book correspondent Tracy Knauss posted this image today, along with the following commentary:
Mike Treder, a friend of mine who's the Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in New York sent me this wonderful quote he penned and asked me if I would design an image fitting of his prose. I was glad to accept. Here's what we came up with. Enjoy and share.


Woody likes this plenty; wishes more people would treat their faith like their genitals and not go shoving it in the faces of folks who haven't asked about it.

I mean: There was an image going around the other day of the lower abdomen/upper groin area of a fellow who'd had the face of the Disney character Pinocchio tattooed on him so that his dick was where the puppet's nose should have been.

(*Presumably, he didn't intend to imply that the bigger his dick grew, the more hew was lying, but you never know: it is a remarkably accurate metaphor, imho.)

>So it's the experience of a lot of non-believers that fiercely proselytizing Believers' perform their testimonies of faith very much to resemble the importunings of someone with a Pinocchio-tattoo on his groin, whose dick is where the nose should be, and goes around telling people about it, in great detail, with great enthusiasm, inviting them to take a look and SEE if it isn't the coolest tattoo fucking EVAR!

And then go all huffy about it if you decline the invitation.

There is a "Dicho" to that effect inscribed in the eponymous part of the right-hand margin, below, along with an assortment of others of my rendering.

Friday, September 16, 2011

You Don't Have To "Disprove" Scientific Claims, If...

If you can merely cast doubt upon them. The same tactic is being employed, to great effect, by mostly the same people, today, in the Great Climate Change "debate."

Btw: I am a fierce opponent of tobacco consumption in any form other than soup. I smoked like a fucking chimney for 35 years. Both my parents succumbed to COPD (too young), which was the consequence of their life-long addictions. Some such fate probably awaits me, even though it has been 17 years since my last cigaret/cigar.

I would cheerfully strangle ANY tobacco executive I met.

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

What It Means To Be "Pwned"

If you thought the debt ceiling deal was a compromise, you gotta believe Grant "compromised" with Lee. No suh! That fuckuh was PWNED!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Lee Camp ~~ "A Moment of Clarity.": Ethics/Lightbulbs

And I agree with him, except for the part about there being any such thing as "corporat" or "business" ethics.


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

There Are 630 "Private" Contractors, & 170 "Mercenary" Companies At Work In Iraq

When you outsource your military operations, you cede to CorpoRats the powers that were once the sole province of the People.

Coalition of the Billing: An Interview with Jeremy Scahill from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.



Coalition of the Billing: An Interview with Jeremy Scahill from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

When the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq, it assumed that the war would be short and decisive. Yet by early 2010 the war had already cost over $700 billion, much of which went to corporations that profit from the conflict. Jeremy Scahill, best-selling author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has been a leading voice in opposing the war and in denouncing the radical privatization of the military. According to Scahill, at the time of this interview there were 630 companies on the U.S. government’s payroll in Iraq. More shocking are the 170 mercenary corporations operating in Iraq. Despite repeatedly committing criminal violations, these companies have been immune from prosecution and have repeatedly been rewarded no-bid contracts. Cultures of Resistance sat down for an exclusive interview with Scahill, in which he discusses the most recent stage of the military-industrial complex's evolution.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Dawkins on militant atheism



And besides, nobody ever said atheists couldn't behave like randy assholes.

Friday, July 8, 2011

The Perils of Appearing Prosperous While Being Black

If you patronize Chase Bank (or any of their offshoots), you're participating in this shit, too. The "help" doesn't do what there is not at least tacit permission from the "Top" to do:
Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

It's a Life-And-Death Struggle...



This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

ONS: "Potential School Shooter Gunned Down By Popular Jock"


Potential School Shooter Gunned Down By Popular Jock

Prom king Trevor Wilson pumped three bullets into the quiet loner before he had a chance to think about turning on fellow students.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The GOPhuckkker Campaign, in One Minute, 29 Seconds

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't began predicting the GOPhux' campaign against St. Barry, the Pale, right after the results from '10 came in, would amount to no more MOST of them standing around, shouting "Niqqer, niqqer, niqqer! You CAN'T vote for the Niqqer..."

Kinda like this:

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

An Unholy Alliance

Member-of-the-European-Parliament Tolls The Euro's Bell


British MEP Nigel Farage does not think that another 10 billion euros should be used to bail out Greece a year after it was last done.

"There is always an alternative. A Greek default and the return of the drachma would mean a very substantial devaluation for Greece, and it would mean many of these banks taking serious hits, and it would question the ability of the European Central Bank itself. It is better sometimes in life to face up to the fact that you have done something that is wrong. It is fundamentally out of kilter that the Greek and German economies can ever be together in an economic and monetary union," Farage said. "All we are doing is pouring good money after bad. It is time to face the reality and take the hit," he added.

• Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the EFD Group in the European Parliament (Europe of Freedom and Democracy)
.......................................................
• Video source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/people-greece-protest-bailout/

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Barry Lynn (Americans United) Disposes of Creationism



But the Fucktards object. But who is surprised that the Fucktards don't get it:
The point of the video was to say that people can believe what they want about Noah’s Ark or any other story in the Bible – but that the government shouldn’t take sides on matters of theology. When state officials choose, even indirectly, to offer aid to a project like the “Ark Park” and enthusiastically welcome it to the state, that’s taking sides.

Specifically, it is taking sides in favor of Christian fundamentalism and against modern science.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Cenk Drop-Kicks Glans-State Gub Rick Scott's Egregious Conflicts of Interest

Did you know that Florida doctors prescribed and Florida pharmacies sold more then NINE time the amount of chemical morpheates--Oxycodone, vicodin,Oxycontin, etc--than THE REST OF THE COUNTRY, COMBINED? And Rick Scott's got a financial interest in both selling drugs and 'treating' substance abuse.

He was "cleared" by a State Ethics panel. No, really.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Geogre Carlin: The Male Disease

Raw Emotion!


The Five (or Six) Overlapping Male Subcultures...

Sunday, May 8, 2011

George Carlin Compendium: "Freedom Of Choice? Really?"

Innit really quite wonderful how the audiences get Carlin's "humor," even when the "grey (well, okay, mostly WHITE) eminences start to cringe?

Saturday, May 7, 2011

For My Friends Who, With Me, Find The Obama "Osam" Triumphalism To Be Just A BIT Primitive!

From Jonathan Schwarz' lapidary effort, A Tiny Revolution:
Tao Te Ching, Witter Bynner's translation, chapter 31:

Even the finest arms are an instrument of evil,
A spread of plague,
And the way for a vital man to go is not the way of a soldier.
But in time of war men civilized in peace
Turn from their higher to their lower nature.
Arms are an instrument of evil,
No measure for thoughtful men
Until there fail all other choice
But sad acceptance of it.
Triumph is not beautiful.
He who thinks triumph beautiful
Is one with a will to kill,
And one with a will to kill
Shall never prevail upon the world.
It is a good sign when man's higher nature comes forward,
A bad sign when his lower nature comes forward,
When retainers take charge
And the master stays back
As in the conduct of a funeral.
The death of a multitude is cause for mourning:
Conduct your triumph as a funeral.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at May 3, 2011 03:57 PM
Bynner (1887-1968), a Santa Fean, is one of the overlooked poetic lights of the early and mid 20th Century.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Mr. Deity and the After-Party; and the Ghost

A Two-fer in the Varieties of Religious Experience...The very BEST blasphemy in English, anywhere. I'd thought they'd gotten a little nervous, but "the After-party" is some savage shit.



The Team Expands:

Thursday, April 28, 2011

All You REALLY Need To Know About "ThePrez" Sympathies

For working and less affluent people can be gleaned from the fact that he CHOSE this fucking shitwhistle, Alan Simpson--an staunch and life-long foe of Social Security and Medicare--to lead his fucking Catfood Commission:

Monday, April 25, 2011

Fuck Sandra Day O'Connor: She Got What She Deserved

Even if we didn't.

The fucking bint announced BEFORE Nov, 2000, that she wanted to leave the Court, but didn't want her replacement to be named by a Democrat.

So she provided the swing vote to install SW Bush.

I hope she rues the day til her face locks up in death's rictus smile.

Toobin's WAY too nice to the slag. Fuck O'Connor.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Re, The Economy: Big Mike "Breaks It ALL Down For You!"

This is pretty much it. Even according to conservatard apologists like David Frum: t
he crisis originated in the malfunctioning of an under-regulated financial sector, not in government overspending or government over-generosity to less affluent homebuyers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bad actors, yes, but they could not have capsized the world economy by themselves. It took Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and — maybe above all — Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s to do that.
So there you have it...And now here's Mikey!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

ORGANIZING For Collective Bargaining Rights, Is How!

How the Florida Tomato Industry Went from Being One of the Most Repressive Employers to the Most Progressive?


Last November, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative of agribusinesses that grow the vast majority of Florida tomatoes, signed the Fair Food agreement with the CIW. The CIW had been working since 1993 to improve the lot of farm workers. With a few pen strokes, the Florida tomato industry went from being one of the most repressive employers in the country (nine cases involving abject slavery in Florida fields have been prosecuted in the past 15 years) to being on the road to becoming the most progressive groups in the fruit and vegetable industry.
Just two years ago, it nearly came to war:

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Werner Hertzog & "The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams"

Must SEE!
In 1994, three French cave explorers discovered hundreds of prehistoric paintings and engravings on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in southern France.

Carbon dating has since shown that the depictions of rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears, horses, bison, mammoths and other animals are between 30,000 and 32,000 years old.

That doesn't mean the ancient drawings are any less sophisticated than what artists create today, says filmmaker Werner Herzog.

"Art ... as it bursts on the scene 32,000 years ago, is fully accomplished. It doesn't start with 'primitive scribblings' and first attempts like children would make drawings," Herzog says. "It's absolutely and fully accomplished."

The acclaimed German director, who has produced, written and directed more than 40 films, gained exclusive access to the Chauvet caves. He tells their story and the story of the world's oldest cave paintings in The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3-D documentary film.
Herzog's "Aguirre, Wrath of God" completely redefined the idea of cinema/film for me, as nothing before or since has ever done. Like seeing "Guernica." Here's a short, free-standing bit of his filmic imaginings:

Friday, April 15, 2011

The Charge of the Teahadist Hover-rounds

Susan, who is a very wicked girl and a (quite young, actually) old compAtriot is the source for this wonderful dollop of sarcasm from the Home Aisles, titled:
Hoveround: The Tea Party Death Mobile - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

To all my fellow under-55-ers: If you want to know why we have to fund the over-55-ers’ full Medicare and Social Security benefits, leaving nothing for the rest of us, here’s your answer: All those taxes have to pay for today’s Tea Partiers to ride around on these Hoverounds. That’s right, if there’s one thing Boomers can’t stand, it’s not being able to chase us around the house while hectoring us about fiscal responsibility. Thanks to the Hoveround, there’s no way we can escape from their narcissistic deficit-hawk blather.

Here it is: You can run…you can walk…you can crawl even. But you can’t hide from the Hoveround:

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Soap Bubbles Predict Cellular Life

A lovely, intricate, delicate dissection of the "Intelligent Design" codswallop!~

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Cornell West's Obama "Epiphany": He's NOT With Us!

Poor Cornell. He thought Obama was actually an African-American man.

I can understand his confusion.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Moment of Illumination.

Somebody had this up on the 'Book today, and it's just riveting.
Click on the image to enlarge it, for a fuller effect.

Monday, March 28, 2011

How I Passed Stats, 25 Years Ago...

I never really got the hang of the whole "stats" thing. Instead, I wrote doggerel. The prof was intrigued enough that he passed me in exchange for using the pomes in his (then) new stats text. Thanks, Richard!

Example:
"Them Number-Summers":
How 'BOUT them Numbers-Summers, ain't they hams?
Plottin they frequencies on they histograms?
Them "n-" countin' Number-Summers take PECULIAR pleasures,
Widdey "aspeks of dispersion" an' they deviatin' measures.
Them nomologic Number-summers, ain' they hot?
Keepin all they data in a box-and-whisker plot.
Or: "Them Co-Relators":
How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, it's all just "so..."
Widdey Pearson Product moment and they Spearman Rho.
Them co-efficient Co-relators AIN' ATALL metaphoric,
Study they dichotomies by means tetrachoric.
How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, ain' they fine?
Get they linear relations where they ain' no line?
Or, "Them Skill-Scalers"
How 'BOUT them Skill-Scalers, ain't they strange?
Plottin' YER 'deviation' cross they interquartile range?
Them skew-slopin' Skill-Scalers take they freedom by degrees,
Widdey leptokutrtic samples and they 'double-tail Ts.
Them scatter-plottin' Skill-Scalers, ain' they enigmas,
Gettin' they parentheses around all they Sigmas.

There are 10 of them, which I'll reproduce for anyone who desires 'em.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Everything That's Wrong With the US Chamber

One of those trick images: click on the image, then again on the NEXT image it presents you, to get the most legible shape.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Rall-y "Annoying": The Disposables


The fourth episode in a new animated webseries by award-winning syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall and animator David Essman.
Eps 1-3:

#1:


#2:


#3:

Monday, March 14, 2011

Tales from Facebook: "Begging the Question"

This was the hed, and the description of a vid linked on FB:
The universe is huge
www.youtube.com
The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us. Adapted from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"
6 minutes ago · Like · · Share

This is the vid:

This is what I wrote:
Woody Wiqiliques Konopak Here's a good example of "begging the question/petitio principii": The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us.
Because it has nowhere yet been established the 1) there exists such a being as "God," or that if there were such, that it could "create" this gigantic universe. It assumes that which is to be proven. That's "begging the question" means.
It's always nice when such a perfect case drops into yer lap. The misappropriation of "beg the question" is one of those things that sets my teeth on edge.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

A Letter To My State Senator, On The Passage By the NM Senate Of A Bill Which TOTALLY Sells-Out Teachers, Kids, and Learning



Dear Senator Feldman:

Boy was I surprised!

And not in a nice way, either, when upon happening to glance at the local TV news, I saw a story about the NM Senate passing and sending to the House "for approval" (really? that simple?) that bill which--well, I'll spare you the graphic description, but it does UNSPEAKABLE things to teachers, students, and pretty much the whole IDEA of education.

So I scurried over to the machine to ask you, Dede--we were on first-name terms when I met you at (a mutual friend)'s CD 'party' at the Flying Star--how?

How did that happen? How COULD that happen?

I never expected to make any "progress" with that puta Tejana, that tea-bagging slag, in the Mansion; but I really didn't expect to LOSE, and to lose so much, so soon and, apparently, so easily.

You may or may not know--or care--that I hold a Ph.d. in education (LSU, '89), and that I am perhaps more familiar than most with the vicissitudes of the craft, having myself been a secondary teacher as well as a scholar, and being one in a family of teachers. This is such an egregious insult, and such a calculated indignity: I would under no circumstances ever council anyone to become a teacher under this regime; would indeed actively discourage volunteers--because the kinds of teachers we--and especially the kids-- need will suffer (and probably be expelled, eventually, anyway), and the kinds we don't want will thrive.

It's ALMOST enough to make an observant person suspect Foucaultian epistemic skulduggery, GB Shaw's aphorism about 'cynicism'--"The power of careful observation is often called cynicism by those who haven't got it."--notwithstanding.

If you would feel so inclined, I would be interested in what were the machinations and motivations which brought this about.
Regards,
Y'r Ob'd't S'v't.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A Double Dose of Deity:

Consecutive Episodes of Season 4. Though these shows normally stand alone, these make more sense viewed together. The blasphemy is as gratuitous as ever, never fear, and they've added the last element of the fatal Abrahamic triangle. Plus, the begging is PRICELESS!

Mr Deity & The Matter


Mr. Deity & The Showroom

Mr. Deity & the Signs: "Tide Come In, Tide Goes Out..."

Episode I, Season IV of the smartest, funniest blasphemy you have EVER seen, now with a gratuitous jab at the fucknozzle of Fux News, Bill O'Reilly!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Faith of Desperation

Via Wiki:
Rick Roderick (1949–2002) was born in Abilene, Texas, son of (by his own description[1]) a "con-man" and a "beautician". He was a teacher of philosophy at several universities, where he was much revered by many students for a socratic style of teaching combined with a brash and often humorous approach. His breakthrough into wider circles came with his engagement with The Teaching Company where he recorded several memorable lecture series. Rick Roderick died in 2002 from a congestive heart condition.







Thursday, March 3, 2011

Nope. Capitalists Won't Pony Up For Job-Providing Infrastructure. Nagahapun!

There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.
There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Stewart Lee: "Political Correctness Has Gone Mad!":

The quest for the accurate naming of dead women.
I like this fellow's demeanor....

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Somebody, Please, Debunk The Reagan Mythology

Woody was not the first to notice that Raygun was the very first, official, "figure-head," public relations, corpoRat/statist sock-puppet pseudo-President. Raygun's cabal set in motion EVERY ill that besets the country to this day.

Ronnie's "legacy" is a fictional narrative created in retrospect by the media the corpoRat consolidation of which his regime deregulated and encouraged.

Friday, February 18, 2011

A Rep. Who Endured One Schools Some Male/Pig Puke On Abortion

Woody always wonders if the women, who are somehow attached to men who accuse all women of thoughtlessly, or carelessly, or frivolously having abortions, know--do they actually comprehend, in the front of their brains--the utter, unspeakable contemptwith which their men regard them, to be able to accuse ALL women of such irresponsibilities.

He doubts it, somehow.

And wonders if the delivery of such news to the home/spouse, somehow, might induce changes in "domestic" policies. For example, I wonder if Mrs. Mr. Smith from New Jersey knows her ever-loving hubby regards her as a potential, mindless, serial killer?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The "Beeb" Speaks! Bieber Reveals "Thoughts"


Well he DID. (How's that Hed for "Google-Bait?")

Still, Woody fails to understand why opinions on matters of substance and importance (abortion, politics) should be solicited from, and reported about, people whose opinions are so supremely irrelevant to any possible debate about such matters as those of the Beeb, or Miley Cyrus, or any 16-year-old middle-school drop-out/nail-polish pimp??
Bieber Lets His Pro-Life and Pro-Canada Freak Flags Fly

Justin Bieber, mop-topped wunderkind of the wooded north, fell into a political booby trap at the hands of Rolling Stone, declaring himself pro-life and pro-Canada: "You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world." Uh oh.

On Political Parties:
"I'm not sure about the parties. But whatever they have in Korea, that's bad." [Ed: So, no tour of North Korea?]


On American vs. Canadian Health Care:
You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard's baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby's premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.


On Abortion:
"I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby?" How about in cases of rape? "Um. Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

It's almost unfair to ask these questions to a kid who dropped out of middle school to be a full-time tween heartbreaker and nail polish pimp. "Whatever they have in Korea, that's bad" isn't really a political opinion (Is he aware there are two Korean nations?) and he doesn't seem to understand what abortion even is. If anything, this interview is a document of the woeful deficits of child stars' minds, much like the revelation that Jessica Simpson spent her entire childhood thinking Chicken of the Sea was poultry.

Kudos to Grigoriadis, though, for finding the one topic Bieber has never before been asked about: His opinion on things that actually matter. [Rolling Stone]

Send an email to Maureen O'Connor, the author of this post, at maureen@gawker.com.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Meta-Cogitating About Meta-Cognition

For some reason, in no small part stemming from conversations with my gal in NYC, Trish, of Menopausal Stoners and other venues, from her nest in the Upper West Side, from whither she ventures out to teach neo-nates how to begin to navigate this sordid, tawdry existence, Meta-cognition has been on my mind a bit lately. Meta-cognition is that function of the Mind of the learner which knows itself as a knowing self. Operational awareness, and practical manipulation, of this capacity is a crucial accomplishment for successful learning: Knowing that you can learn--are learning--is essential to actually learning. It is not a trivial competence.

Which reminded me of Howard Gardner's "varieties" of intelligence.

Gardner has derived a non-hierarchical taxonomy by which he characterizes what we now regard often as mere "talents" as actually consisting of discrete kinds of intelligence, including complex strategic capabilities and abilities for successfully inhabiting and navigating the life-world. That is what ANY 'intelligence' is: a collection of skills, abilities, predispositions, and competences which enable us to survive and thrive in our worlds.

Gardner started with seven, and has since expanded it to eight, and is allegedly weighing data for one or two more. The Original Seven were:
  • Literary/textual,
  • Mathematico-deductive,
  • Kinesthetic,
  • Plastic/spatial ('artistic/sculptural'),
  • Musical,
  • Meditative/contemplative, and
  • Personally interactive.
He added 'naturalistic,' later.

Gardner theorized that in everyone, there were latent capacities for operating in any of these universes--that we all had some of all those capacities--but that in all of us, one predominated.

In me it is the literal/textual. I have little mathematico-deductive (linear) aptitude; I dont think that way. I was never an accomplished athlete, but I could perform in almost any physical activity I wanted to learn. I fenced, surfed, skied, played tennis and racquetball, along with the basic three American "Ball-sports." I am no kinda artist, but I sing pretty not badly, for being untrained. I am reflective, but not meditative; and I know how to work a room pretty good,.

That each "kind" of intelligence indeed creates its own life world becomes totally clearly when one interacts with others whose skills (and this is where we get back to meta-cognition) the person is intimately aware of possessing and learning from. I was a sort of academic coach for some guys on the LSU track team in the late 80s, and I had a chance to talk about learning with their bodies with Olympic-class athletes, and I can assure you, they know the world on VERY different terms than does a middle-aged profesor. You know someone who has "musical" intelligence if that person ALWAYS has song or a tune in their heads or on their fingers. And THEY know the world in uniquely "musical ways."

We 'privilege' the literary/textual (the domain of metaphor, interestingly) and the mathematico-deductive because those are the two facets upon which commerce and business depend. School caters to those, because school serves to sort, first, and then to train workers for fodder for the Elite machinery. The others kinds are often regarded as extraneous or expendable by the CorpoRats and paper-pushers, acceptable only as adjuncts which might turn a marginal profit someday, somewhere.


Monday, February 14, 2011

"He Is The Very Model Of A Modern US President..."

"Although he's black, Joe Biden says he's clean and quite articulate..."

Saturday, February 12, 2011

You Might Be A Geezer IF (YMBAGI) You Remember This


...how you crawled under your desk and pulled a thick book over your head and wondered if you were going to die, when you heard the civil defense warning; or
  • you remember reciting the Pledge without God in it;
  • you BOUGHT 20 cent/gallon gasoline and cigarets for a quarter/pack;
  • you rode on a steam-propelled, interstate passenger train;
  • you listened to Sputnik, and felt bad for Laika;
  • you do remember exactly where you were Nov. 22, 1963;
  • you watched the Black Power salute from the Olympics (and were flabbergasted by Bob Beamon's leap) on tv;
Feel free to add your own...

Friday, February 11, 2011

How "Marxist-like" In Belief In "Democracy" Are We Murkins, Really??

Woody doesn't see what this fucktard is complaining about.
It is PRECISELY that "Absolute Faith In Democracy" (lately largely misplaced)which permits the likes of the GOP to hijack popular discontent to fuel their ideological attacks on citizens' civil liberties, the corpoRat despoliation of shared commons, and the corrupting of the liberal values upon which the Constitution is founded, the oligarchic tendencies of the founders notwithstanding.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Cunt-Hair Clancy Thomas: Impeach, Indict, Imprison, Impale? DILLIGAF?

Clarence ("Cunt-hair Clancy") Thomas has been lately prominent in the news in consequence of the revelations that his wife is now and has for several years been in the pay of lobbying and business interests which had business before the Court. He and his "mentor" and mouth-piece/puppeteer, Antonin ("Uncle Vafanculo") Scalia (who tails around his own trail of sticky, viscous, criminal slime from his excta-curricular associations with the Busheviks) have been active participants and propaganda centerpieces in Right-wing conferences, workshops, and other events of highly partisan and ideological nature. This is purest Tihadist shit, not your average Federalist Society corruption.

All of which suggests that Ol' Curly Clarence has overstepped the normal bounds of judicial temperance and gone over to the "darker" side. And some of this has been noticed by various Congresscritters, in particular the vocal and voluble Rep. Anthony Weiner (D.-NY), who is making early, gentle noises about perhaps, just maybe, POSSIBLY holding "C-h Clancy" to the judicial standards which apply to the REST of the judiciary. (Oh, NO, you gasp! I know. His temerity stunned me too.)

Now, (Yr'Ob'd'tC's'p't) didn't just lately topple off the turnip truck, so he KNOWS it's NAGAHAPUN but, in any system in which the "Rule of Law" actually was a meaningful utterance, every decision in which Clancy ("Short & Curly") Thomas has been part of a 5-4 majority opinion, at LEAST since Bush V. Gore, should be vacated and the case re-argued withOUT being ol' Cunt-Hair being permitted to vote again.

But recusal is, for me, to mild a remedy for corruption THIS concentrated, this corrosive, this contemptible. I want MORE. I want the "dream team" of the (mocha) President and the (beige) AG to get together, using all the resources that, for instance Karl Rove would have marshalled and, using ALL the power of the State, drive tht lurking, lurching, dour, dreary dunce from the Bench, entirely.

Impeachment must begin in the HoR, which is (conveniently) recently fallen back into the hands of Cunt-hair Clancy's natural constituency, the conservotard/fucktard/Wackloon right, to whom Ol' Curly's feculent spouse has sold her services--all unnoticed, apparently--for at LEAST the last decade. So it is extremely UNlikely that impeachment proceedings will begin anytime soon.

So this is where the "Justice" department should enter the picture, by bringing CRIMINAL proceedings against the drooling, leering dunce. Neither O'Bama nor Holder need feel the least hesitance to prosecute the "black" justice. They owe him NOTHING in consideration of their shared rcial heritage. Cunt-hair Clancy was ONLY chosen for his position by GHWBush as a calculated insult to the memory of Thurgood Marshall and to the social activists who regarded Marshall's seat as a talisman. It was as though Poppy Bush thought: "Well, these skeevy Negroes demand a Black Justice? Okay. Here's Cunt-hair Clancy, the dumbest, meanest, most self-loathing, lowest, shittiest crappiest fucking Oreo/jurist in the whole GOP. Suck on THIS, Jesse Fucking Jackson."

So there is NO reason for the "first Black President" or his "First BLack" Attorney General to cut the Cunt-hair any slack. Indict him. Then run him the fuck outta town.

To repeat: Every decision in which Clancy Cunt-hair has been in the majority SHOULD be vacated and re-heard, after Curly Clarence has been arrested, indicted, convicted, imprisoned and most importantly REPLACED.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A Letter To The President

To: Hon. Barack H. Obama, J.D., President, United States of America
From: Woody P Konopelli, Ph.D., Citizen, United States of America

Sir:
I and many of my friends, correspondents, and colleagues agree: During the campaign, we all heard you say, at various times and in various ways, words to the effect that you were OPPOSED to, and would would "DO SOMETHING" about the PATRIOT ACT, the worst legislative outrage ever perpetrated by the State upon its People, their liberties and freedoms (the Alien & Sedition Act notwithstanding).

Little did we know, and less could we then imagine, standing hopefully on the brink of change, that by "doing something," what you meant was strengthening and extending it, not once but already twice.

Haha. I guess the joke's on us, pretty good. huh? Haha.

But you know the old saying: "Fool me once...?
Well, that was it; that was the "once." I know you now.

Sincerely,

Woody

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Robert Parry/Consortium News: Reagan Was "Atrocious!"

My bucket-list is excremental. I want to take a copious, runny shit on Reagan's grave and in George W. Bush's mouth. I shall die a fulfilled and happy man if I should manage EITHER:
When you’re listening to the many tributes to President Ronald Reagan, often for his talent making Americans feel better about themselves, you might want to spend a minute thinking about the many atrocities in Latin America and elsewhere that Reagan aided, covered up or shrugged off in his inimitable "aw shucks" manner.

"...even as the United States celebrates Reagan’s centennial birthday and lavishes praise on his supposed accomplishments, very little time has been spent reflecting on the unnecessary bloodbaths that Reagan enabled in many parts of the world.

Those grisly deaths and ugly tortures get whisked away as if they were just small necessities in Reagan’s larger success “winning the Cold War” – even though the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was already winding down before Reagan arrived on the national scene. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Myth.”]

Yet, Reagan’s Cold War obsessions helped unleash right-wing “death squads” and murderous militaries on the common people in many parts of the Third World, but nowhere worse than in Latin America.
The blood of several hundred THOUSAND Central Americans--in Nicaragua, Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--drips from Reagan's dead fingers and taints us all with murderous guilt.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

O'Bama's Last Chance With Me: Indict "Cunt-hair" Clarence Thomas


To me, there is now, finally, a way for O'Bama to redeem his bona fides with the Left, and that is to hound Justice Clancy "Cunt-Hair on a Can Lid" Thomas OFF the Court.

Then appoint even a CorpoRat/Centrist like Kagan, and break the grip of the Opus Deists.

He's the only one who could; and there is ammunition, if not for impeachment, then for indictment for high, judicial misdemeanors.

A "White" president couldn't move to impeach or indict "Pubes-On-The-Can-Lid" Clarence, no matter WHAT he'd done.

And Clancy already played the lynching card at his confirmation; so there is no doubt he'd play it again if he were attacked for his crimes and misdemeanors.

But the "first BLACK President" could move a criminal indictment through the Justice Department (impeachment would have to start in the GOPuke House). There is plenty of suggestion, at least, of serious improprieties if not out-right crimes involving conflicts of interest, financial shenanigans involving his wife and her political activities, and his 'availability' to provide advice to interests with causes which would appear before him on the Court. Ol' "Cunt-hair" Clancy is DEEEEEEPLY corrupt.

So, "Si, se puedes!"

If Prez. Shamwow had ANY fucking spine at all...

ADDENDUM:
Let's not forget that Thomas's nomination was GHWBush's slap in the face to every civil rights group, every constituency of color or need in the country.
"Oh," sez Poppy, "you wanna NOTHER "black" Justice?
"Okay! Here's Cunt-hair Clancy, the dumbest fucking Oreo we could find.
"Suck on it..."

Thursday, February 3, 2011

"Come Sit By Me..."

If you cannot say anything nice about the "Austrian" school of economics...
The irrepressible economist, Max Keiser, and co-host, Stacy Herbert (RT), talk about French President Nicolas Sarkozy going postal on JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and about (how) the US Drug Enforcement Agency goes Village People with their big lipped rubber ducky for sale. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Sandeep Jaitly of Bullionbasis.com about a gold standard, backwardization and the Austrian school of economics.

Monday, January 31, 2011

This Would Be a "Shaggy Fart" Story.

My elder sister, whose sense of humor is usually dry, albeit a bit prudish, sent this. It's funny:

When I bought my Blackberry I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and ev ery other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-u-lating." You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn instead. Well, it was not a good relationship.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look.
I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot."

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Purpose of School

The following is the text of a FaceBook exchange earlier today which encapsulates in precis my view of the current state and status of the Academy:
Forest Taber (the son of a friend of mine in meat-space):
College .. as needlessly expensive as it is complicated. What a racket..
26 minutes ago via Android · Like · Comment

Kenneth Gervais (a friend of Forest): Amen.
23 minutes ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak (Me): It's the consequence of the commodification of knowledge and the credentialization (they call it "professionalization," but that's bullshit) of employment. It amounts to the creation of artificial stratifications after the "natural" ones--race and gender, mainly--broke down...
9 minutes ago · Like

Forest Taber: And this coming from a Dr .. Man, the world sure seems broken to me
8 minutes ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: I'm as disgusted about it as you are...
There is of course, the other side of the coin, which is that, overwhelmingly (in my 15 years teaching in university), students come there looking for nothing resembling 'education,' but rather (only!) to have their prejudices ratified and their tickets to the middle-class stamped.

It is extremely difficult, unto impossible, to stress--to impress-- upon them that they are not at the University to GET an education; they are there to learn how to MAKE their education.

School doesn't--is not SUPPOSED to--teach you WHAT to know.
School IS supposed to teach you how to LEARN what you NEED to know.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Did O'Bama's New Jobs Czar Boost GE Profits By Off-Shoring USer Jobs?

I "understand" at a certain level that this is, after all, what I've accused it of being for 30 years: A kabuki performance. Still, you'd wish they were still at least trying a LITTLE bit to disguise it. Or is this primitive level of performance enough to "satisfy" the current demands of th audience for "political theater?"

Via HuffPost:
Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric Co. tapped (--without any apparent irony at all~~W) by President Barack Obama as his next top outside economic adviser, will be asked to guide the White House as it attempts to (appear to care about actually doing anything to~~) jump-start lackluster job creation and spur a muddled recovery.

Immelt's firm stands as Exhibit A of a successful and profitable corporate America standing at the forefront of the recovery. It also represents the archetypal company that's (taken its successes from the hides of itw workers while~~W) hoarding cash, sending jobs overseas, relying on taxpayer bailouts and paying less taxes than envisioned.

The move is the latest salvo in the White House's continued aggressive and very public outreach ("outreach" = obvious cave-in, capitulation to, and fellation of ~~W)to corporate America. Earlier this month, Obama appointed a top (notoriously CorpoRat/corrupt Chicago fixer and former~~W) executive at JPMorgan Chase as his chief of staff, and this week he granted a longtime wish of business interests by (ass-fucking the environment, consumers, and the rest of the citizenry by~~W) promising to review federal regulations perceived as onerous.

Immelt's appointment raises fresh questions (they're not fucking fresh to me~~W) about Obama's courtship and future policy proposals. (People like Immelt who have spoken for~~W) Firms like GE say good jobs will come from lower taxes and less regulation. Immelt told analysts Friday that he'll focus on tax policy and regulation, among other topics.

"A clear problem in the recovery is that it's been a much stronger recovery for business in terms of their profit and earnings than for those folks who work and earn a living in the U.S.," said Gary Burtless, a former Labor Department economist and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research and policy organization in Washington.

Burtless said Immelt was likely hired to reassure corporate America. Political opponents have cast the Obama administration as unfriendly to business interests, and the administration has had difficulty rebutting that theme. Immelt's hiring was yet another step in that direction.
Follow the link to the rest. It's depressing. Another case of O'Bama bending over to the Bosses and Massas...

Friday, January 21, 2011

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Dept. of Getting All UP In Their Grille: Health Care Hypocrisy Division

The GOPigs in the House "symbolically" voted to repeal the very modest, inadequate, stop-gap reforms universally now known as Obama-care, yesterday. Digby, and some others in the left/lib B'osphere are getting together some resources to slip a knife into the GOPocrits who voted to undo even the tiny advances that O'care portended for the mass of folks while selfishly, and often self-righteously, claiming their own tax-payer-funded medical insurance/care to be exempt.

If you gotta buck, send it to' em (me? hah.)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Pan-Spermia! That Freaky One-Percent

I cannot tellya how I admire this dude; just wish he were a little more decisive on Climate Change.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Imagine: Dawkins Foundation's Censored Fund Raiser

Stop The Madness" by StBarthelemy1572 ; Special thanks to McTash ; Richard Dawkins Foundation: Support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering.

javascript:void(0)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Monday, January 3, 2011

A Polite Discourse


The conversation may not yet be complete. I only posted my last remarks within the past hour. T"The New Mexico Fan Page" may yet reply; indeed may ban me for illegitimately "politicizing" the page.

DILLIGAF?
Woody Wiqiliques Konopak >>> The New Mexico Fan Page
The Railrunner, if the GOPukes under Tex Martinez don't run it into the ground, will turn out to be the best thing for New Mexico since snow...But since it is a public expenditure, I expect 'em to screw it up, defund it, let it decay, so they then can point to it and can say what a terrible idea it was.
So enjoy it while you can...
Friday at 4:26pm · Like · Comment
Diego Arreola likes this.


The New Mexico Fan Page We are sad that you take such a pessimistic view on the situation. With a new year beginning, we like to be optimistic about the future of this great state. Hopefully the new administration will work to better serve it's concerned citizens like yourself!
4 minutes ago · Like ·


Woody Wiqiliques Konopak How much you wanna bet?
The best thing the "new administration" could do for citizens like myself--hell, for ALL the citizens-- would be to shag her carpetbagging, valero-greased butt back to Texas, where empty-headed tea-baggery, anti-worker reactionism, and fear-mongering anti-intellectualism are normal.
a few seconds ago · Like
An Addendum appeared after my last post:
Jolene Lilley: So sorry you are so bitter. Wow!! I personally am so excited for this new administration to get going and make this GREAT state even better!!! God Bless our new gov. and the rest of our leaders.
43 minutes ago · Like ·