Tuesday, December 30, 2008

More Penn and Teller

Foul language warning.



You really just can't make this kind of person up, can you? Pure caricatures.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Penn and Teller on Dolphins

Align LeftHave I posted this video on the blog before? It's just too funny.



Howe: "Say Humanoooooiiiiiid. Humanoooooooiiiiiiiiid."

Dolphin: "EEEEEEEEE! ECK!"

Howe: "NNNNNO! Not right!"

Hehe. Be sure to watch parts 2 and 3 as well.


Wednesday, December 24, 2008

That'll teach the little bastard

This is what you get for peeking at your presents.

I haven't watched the video, but I got a good chuckle from the story.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Tax Dollars at work, part II

This from my milkroom supplier: They had been having trouble getting paid by a "government-supported" farmer for supplies that they had given him. The USDA loans money to "farmers" who can't get money from normal sources like banks because, you know, the poor farmer needs help. This fella had been given money not once, but twice, the second time when he couldn't pay back the first. My supplier's partner went to the farm and found the barn locked up and the cows bawling inside. He contacted the local FHA banker and the starving cows were removed that day. The manure in the barn was a couple of feet high.

I'm not an animal lover and I don't think they have any rights. But the thought of a cow chained in a barn and not able to get food makes me ill. And to think that we as a people support "farmers" like this one makes me sicker still.

Tax dollars at work

This is the first of two stories I heard this am within ten minutes of each other. This from my vet: The New Berlin Public Libray is raising $83,000 to install solar panels. To save $2000 a year in electricity bills. And, of course, to "reduce our carbon footprint." To top it off, they'll get $53,000 from New York State. That's a 68 year payback. My vet said, "This is what happens when liberals do math."

It's hopeless.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Whew.

Our link from last year isn't working and I was worried there for a moment-- what would become of Christmas? But it's on YouTube!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Lily the Cat

She gets kind of annoying because she follows me down to the house and scratches the door and meows. I left the house this am and she was there in the driveway walking to the barn with something large in her mouth. It was one of the squirrels that steal from the bird feeder. She could hardly walk with it but she jumped up onto the hay elevator and carried the squirrel all the way up the elevator to the hay mow, where she shared it with her kittens.

Good kitty.

Important Qualities in a (prospective) Spouse

#1. The ability to make a good soup.

In a similar Vein

Radical Chic. Bingo!

Friday, December 12, 2008

Just Watch

The bit with the Chinese man at the end breaks my heart. The guy comes here expecting the land of freedom, and instead he finds more Mao-worshippers everywhere.

The most useless stastitic I heard today...

In an otherwise excellent lecture on animal abuse, the lecturer was talking about a study that compared hundreds of convictions for domestic abuse, looking at what predictors there might have been. She said:

"They found that convictions for animal abuse were a better predictor of future convictions for domestic assault than were convictions for murder, arson, and firearms crimes."

So, what's the big problem with that finding?

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Something I Never Knew

I'm surprised. The word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary.

Learn sumthin' new every day.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Bad News for Whales

I really don't know what to say.

"Blue whales' capacity to communicate has been reduced by 90 percent," she said."

This scares me. Does this person, this "Legal expert for the International Fund for Animal Welfare," know what it means to say, "...has been reduced by 90 percent?" Somehow, I doubt it. If you are dumb, is that what you become? A legal expert for an animal welfare group?

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Luke is 21!

Happy Birthday to the most recent Murphy Grown-up!

Friday, December 05, 2008

"Why Are We Here"

"Plastic, assholes!



While I don't care for his misanthropy, Carlin gets the rest of this right. Above all, he's a terrific performer. It's seven minutes long, but seven minutes of laughs.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

What hard times really mean

Florence Owens Thompson was 32 years old and the mother of seven children when Dorothea Lange photographed her in a camp for migrant workers in California in 1936. The picture became an iconic image of the Great Depression. (Read that again. Look at the lines in her face and the expression in her eyes. She was 32 years old.)

Lange, who was photographing migrant workers at the time for the Resettlement Administration, remembered the photograph this way:

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)."

CNN recently interviewed one of the children in the photograph. Katherine McIntosh was four when the famous photograph was taken. She is now 77. She remembers the migrant camp where the picture was taken. There was no food. "They lived in tents or in a car. Local kids would tease them, telling them to clean up and bathe. 'They'd tell you, "Go home and take a bath." You couldn't very well take a bath when you're out in a car [with] nowhere to go."

She adds, "We'd go home and cry."

Now, she cleans houses for a living. She's proud that she has kept a job and a roof over her head throughout her life. "Even today, when it comes to cleaning, I make sure things are clean. I can't stand dirty things," she says with a laugh.

I wonder what that New York Times mother, the lady who believes that hard times mean postponing the purchase of designer jeans so that she can buy "stuff" for her daughter, would think of Florence Owens Thompson. And even more, I wonder what Florence would think of her.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Similarly




Written by Elvio, a clsssmate of Uncle Don's:




In 1969-70, Don Murphy's mother was shopping in a variety store in Northampton, MA when she saw a jig saw puzzle featuring the CG Academy. She looked more closely at the picture on the box and thought the cadet leading the company in review might be her son. To be safe, she bought two puzzles and upon assembling the puzzle at home confirmed that the Company Commander leading the troops was, in fact, her son. After looking at the assembled puzzle, Don's father also recognized the Executive Officer marching behind his son as Elvio "because he recognized my long nose". The puzzles were assembled and framed with Don's parents keeping one and Don the other. I was not aware of the existence of this puzzle until just recently. Don e-mailed me and explained that his mother was moving into an assisted living facility and didn't have room for the puzzle and would I want it. Of course I did. Don and Judy Murphy stopped by this past Sunday and presented me with one of the puzzles. It's in great shape and I have an empty wall in my den for hanging it. Upon looking closely, I also recognize Tony Alejandro, Ron Mers and Alex Blanton as the Platoon Commanders. As far as I know, this puzzle was not offered for sale in the Cadet Store or other Academy venues. The photo was obviously taken by a professional photographer but why F-troop? Maybe the reputation of "Fabulous Foxtrot" for military bearing and precision was the deciding factor. Why was this puzzle being sold in Don Murphy's home town? Due to Don's Mom chance encounter I think it is a touching story and worthy of "Believe It or Not"