Posted 9:15 PM by Gene

The Newsrag of the Zeitgeist spends 14 pages and 6,985 words to tell us we can't find you-know-who and haven't had a good lead in five years, so forgive us for thinking it's 14 pages and 6,985 words of nothing.

Posted 2:42 PM by Gene

Someday Fidel may die, but that doesn't mean Perez Hilton knows anything.

Posted 12:23 PM by Gene

A warning for the Jack Valenti of Mortgages:

Is tanning addictive?
New studies suggest that people can become obsessed with sunbathing.

Sort of like second mortgages, n'est-ce pas?

Posted 12:03 PM by Gene

Do today's natural disasters seems that much worse because we know so much more about them?

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

It's historical fact that some of America's most brilliant and cutting-edgiest stand-up comedians made liberal use of words and phrases commonly considered verboten. Lenny Bruce was a martyr to free speech, and among those following in his footsteps was the brilliant, madcap Sam Kinison, the comedy equivalent of the first man to walk on the moon -- or maybe relieve himself on it. But the best of the shock comics always had a counterbalancing social relevance. In their hands, obscenity was an artist's tool, masterfully utilized.

Okay Tom, so why is Bob Saget such a dork?

Posted 10:46 AM by Gene

And in further entertainments of the rich and sexy:

THE risqué stage show at The Box early yesterday morning was canceled when dozens of police officers raided the Chrystie Street club and randomly searched some patrons for drugs.

Cameron Diaz, Jay-Z and Cuba Gooding Jr. were among the few who were able to flee during the "classic shutdown," doormen and security men told Page Six.

Diaz's current fling, John Mayer, was spotted holding court a few blocks away at the Bowery Hotel during the chaos....

The 1 a.m. raid forced the club to cancel its second show of the night, a revue featuring scantily clad showgirls, a gender-bending singer and a dancing dwarf.

Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

Who does not take a certain glee in the messy divorces of the rich and sexy?

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

Shucks, "Sys Admin Magazine Ceases Publication", and even the geeks don't care.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Angelo Mozilo is the Jack Valenti of Mortgages.

And no, except in Washington, that is definitely NOT a compliment.

Somebody had better tell Angie to lay off the sun lamp; his face might bring on global warming.

P. s. at 12:08 P.M. Looks as if the Jack Valenti of Mortgages may have outsmarted himself.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Bush to Commemorate Katrina Anniversary

...with another apology?

No! Another apology tour!

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

I like this: Useless News thinks it's cornered the field on disreputable college rankings, so of course its success spawned rank imitators -- like The Washington Monthly, whose own Useless News ratings are damaged by their own crotchets (like how many alumni joined the Peace Corps? In 2007? Puh-LEASE!). No matter how well intended college rankings will always be unreliable because they rank the unrankable.

(Via Stale.com)

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

There may need to be a PBS ombudsman just for Moyers

OUTSTANDING idea!

P. S. Hey Romy, you provided a defective link on that story about the Twin Cities news swamped by the bridge disaster. Do you need an ombudspoop too?

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

Sumner -- er...



Sumner -- jeez...



SUMNER reveals His BEAUTY SECRET!

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

Even before his guilty "plea", one could say Michael Vick's career, if not over, has been chewed up by dogs.

Posted 12:54 PM by Gene

Horny Mark may think he's protecting himself from the Feds by citing "Congressional privilege" (we thought that applied to pork projects), but all he's done is bring his name back from the oblivion it deserved, and reawaken suspicions. (We would have said "arouse" but -- get the drift?)

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in England, too!

Yep, I think you're in worse shape than we thought.

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

NBC is reviving classic competitive series American Gladiators....

Here's proposing we put every hack who uses "classic" in this manner in the middle of an arena -- with a very hungry lion.

And somehow somebody remembered "classic" but not the definite article.

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

Home Depot's wholesaling its wholesale unit!

Let's guess the cause! Nah.

Posted 10:56 AM by Gene

Dancing with glee at Slashdot: Bugmeister's ditching a Web site that poopoos Linux!

I wouldn't dance too hard though. How many people run Linux -- and how many of them aren't geeks?

Posted 10:40 AM by Gene

Boogie Everynight Television is purportedly trying to get its viewers to read a book, and a LALA hack accidentally approximates the truth:

The coarse language is bleeped out when it is broadcast on BET, which is part of Viacom, the owner of CBS, which earlier this year fired shock jock Don Imus for using what he called hip-hop-flavored humor in his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Viacon does NOT own CBS. (It used to, though.) SUMNER does. SUMNER owns Viacon AND CBS through four classes of stock. Get it?



SUMNER.

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

Meantime the government says new home sales "rose" 2.8 percent, but because it's a guess and the margin of error is so high it means they didn't rise 2.8 percent.

P. S. at 1:55 p.m. Which has not prevented the Wall Street casino's dealers from fantasizing.

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

"House Prices Look Even More Overvalued than [sic] We Thought."

NOW you tell us.

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

News hacks are busily and showily scratching their heads today wondering why Mother Teresa had doubts. Religious people aren't supposed to have doubts. They're supposed to know everything! Thus the defensive reasoning of people who don't have doubts and do know everything -- and don't even have to go in a church! I'd say Mother Teresa was a little more human than most news hacks.

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Meantime going on six years and there are still other Osama-created eyesores in lower Manhattan. It's not all puny little government bean counters. Do we have zero pride in ourselves?

We must.

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Incompetence does not seem word enough to describe what's going on re the Deutsche Bank hulk.

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

The ASSPress proves you don't need to be Perfesser Thompson to BE Perfesser Thompson!

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD and a FREE BIG MAC to ASHLEY!

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

For a problem that so many have repeatedly said is of little import an awful lot of people are asking somebody to do something.

And the something, often enough, involves Uncle Sucker. We're not going to be Amity or Andrew Mellon about it but why does our Uncle have to bail out every doofus who made a stupid investment or got in over his head? Or does the present crisis involve so many doofuses that our Uncle may have no choice?

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

For the umpteenth time, who cares who wrote Dubya's "speeches"?

Especially as most were not speeches or writing.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Somebody is high-tech super-expensively NUTS.

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

National NAACP head says Vick must be held responsible

The only reason we won't accuse this grand old organization of speaking with forked tongue is because it's using at least two mouths.

Posted 3:00 PM by Gene

Outstanding U.S. commercial paper fell 4.23 percent, the biggest weekly drop in almost seven years, as investors fled asset-backed debt and opted for the safety of Treasuries.

Is this supposed to be good news?

Posted 2:50 PM by Gene

Here's a news-hack let's-prop-our-feet-on-the-desk-and-have-some-cheery-nostalgia moment: George Wallace's would-be assassin is being released. After Arthur Bremer shot Wallace in 1972 it quickly emerged from his "diaries" that he was a fan of A Clockwork Orange and what he called "that good old ultra-violence." At least one liberal JERNALISM REVUE or political rag quoted him approvingly. Alas for the hacks, Wallace continued to serve as governor. Moreover

[his son] told [the Mobile Press-Register] that the shooting had a "purifying" effect on his father, who became more religious and sought forgiveness for his support for segregation. The shooting also shortened his life, his son said.

Alas for us, things like Wallace's shooting and the smug relief of news hacks that followed had more like a poisoning effect, the first step in our complete detestation of politics in general and the JERNALISM racket in particular.

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

Meantime the idiotic Manhattan real-estate boom has hit a sudden patch of brains. Again, is all this soothing talk about Countrywide on purpose?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

On-WARD Slash-DOT sollllllllldierrrrrrrrrrrs:

An anonymous reader notes an article up at IEEE Spectrum outlining the history and dangers of the accelerating tendency of music producers to increase the loudness and reduce the dynamic range of CDs.

"The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudness thanks to advances in digital technology. The 'war' refers to the competition among record companies to make louder and louder albums by compressing the dynamic range. But the loudness war could be doing more than simply pumping up the volume and angering aficionados — it could be responsible for halting technological advances in sound quality for years to come... From the mid 1980s to now, the average loudness of CDs increased by a factor of 10, and the peaks of songs are now one-tenth of what they used to be."

I haven't the foggiest idea what the geeks are up to now, but it sounds like another of their tiresome defenses of vinyl, and is it really that important that the junk they feed into their ears all day is (gadzooks!) compressed? Compressed or no, it's still JUNK.

P. S. The kind of CDs most likely to be compressed are the same ones most likely to be augmented with ROOTKITS.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

England's going down the rathole of history and its PM is "shocked" by a vicious crime?



And here come the flowers -- just like Di.

(Via BloomyLite)

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Let's hope this sudden Wall Street rah-rah for Countrywide is genuine and not a fanny-covering prelude to the usual sucker punch that takes our economy down for the count.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Speaking of stunts, we'd bet Bill Murray's little tour in a golf cart was probably funnier than most of his movies.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

Sen. Barack Obama's sexiest fan respects the presidential candidate more than ever now that he has knocked her Web video, "I Got a Crush on Obama."But [SIC] "Obama Girl"actually [SIC] may vote for Hillary Clinton.

People wouldn't pay attention to these publicity mongers but for the hacks' obsession to constantly fill their space with the most mind-numbing content possible. We would bet the imbeciles have devoted more space to YouTube "campaigning" stunts than to the issues. That's okay; so long as we can make the public so uninformed that we justify our existence all the more.

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

Well at least Jerome Bettis faked an injury (so he says) rather than fake playing, as so many professional athuhletes do.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

There is a ci-ne-ma fes-TEE-val in Toronto, and the ahteests are hanging their heads to around their navels, which they're staring at intensely:

“The world has changed, and the kind of films coming out have changed to a certain degree,” said Barry Avrich, a member of the festival’s governing board, speaking of the lineup in a telephone interview. “I think the festival is recognizing its role as a communicator.”

TRANSLATION: We're here to hector the public, and salve our consciences. Not one work of AHT in this glorious fes-TEE-val will live without the help of the crrrri-TICS -- and half the crrrri-TICal STAHF of THE PAPER OF RE-CORD is there already.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

In more grinding of the teeth over JERNALISTIC ETHICS, the whole TV "news" profession is in a royal snit because SLIME is airing a "reality" show in which a mannequin anchors a local broadcast. That mannequins male and female have anchored the local news for some time seems not to have occurred to our latter-day Murrows. But then for these imbeciles to claim what they extrude nightly is "news", of course, is as credible as the "news" they extrude.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

College kids stopped dressing up a long time ago. It's no accident that standards went down the tubes at the same time decent clothing did. Needless to say our perennially brightest generation would bristle at a dress code, but it would be much nicer, say, to see the young ladies in a pleasing contouring dress than in their flab-exhibiting much-too-low-to-the-waist shmatas.

And given that some of the youngsters at Illinois State's College of Business are actually for this, there's hope.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

And speaking of blatant PR:

Vick Charges Shouldn't Result in NFL Lifetime Ban, NAACP Says

Who said anything about a lifetime ban? Possibly this doddering irrelevant organization did so first to pump up its morale. No one has proposed a lifetime ban on anybody. For one thing, no one's been sentenced yet. Let's give the legal system a chance first, crusading clods.

How did this go from a shameful crime against animals to another R-Card game?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

Clinton the favorite neighbor for older set

Well, here's a new way to measure the popularity of presidential candidates: Which candidate would you most like as a next-door neighbor?

ERA Real Estate asked that question as part of its fourth annual survey of people 50 and older across the country....

Why did you waste my time, O Lord God Pinch?

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

The easy part in global warming is the platitudinizing. Whether these noble endeavors will ever get as far as the illegalization of smoking (!) depends on how much pain governments can inflict on the peasants for a noble cause, and how many politicians lose their jobs as a result.

TRANSLATION: This is more hot air and cow flatulence.

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Wait! Walter Jones? He's one of the good guys! He's a man every Republican should be -- for opposing the war! And reaching out to the other side!* And he's "paying the price" for it? No! It can't be! Such a Profile in Courage?

*And Congresspoop Kook IS the other side.

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

A North American political superstate is almost inevitable, seeing how the Europeans have formed one -- and Russia and China seem prone to do likewise.

Whether EU-style overregulations are palatable is another question.

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

Okay, birdbrains of your neighborhood, on the count of three, everyone give the chant -- one, two, three:

NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANYBODY OUT THERE?

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

Figures Forbeslist would find the good in Leona.

Why hasn't GEKKO KUDLOW written a eulogy?

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

Harvard endowment has 7-year best, hits $34.9b

And it's not public yet?

Posted 10:49 AM by Gene

We were going to use a picture of Lenny Dykstra chewing tobacco or maybe a hideous oral cancer lesion to celebrate Marlboro's new snuff, but we decided against it.

Posted 8:53 AM by Gene

YouTube Videos to Have 'Overlay' Ads

Now G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE can pay for Its copyright infringements!

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

If the people who write the foreground Muzak for Branson East's attractions are so enamored of Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Arlen et al, why can't they make better foreground Muzak?

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

MORE CALAMITOUS NEWS IN THE J-TRADE: Mort Zuck is axing our favorite TV ad-blurbist David "PLATINUM" Bianculli because he wanted more PLATINUM, and now (as a suitably anonymous "source" says) "[t]hey'll probably replace him with some blogger who sits around in his pajamas" -- and who may write better.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

One can't help thinking Noo Yawk's authorities blew a fuse over that awful Ground Zero fire because of their own negligence.

If this is homicide there's guilt enough on both sides.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Oh goody:

The reality is that, for Paulson and the Treasury Department, there are relatively few tools that would allow this or any administration to manage the ups and downs of financial markets, according to economists and economic policymakers of both parties.

Does that mean we're no better off than the last time Wall Street's tricksters plunged us into a depression?

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

Today is Romy's day: 1. He copies an "EXCLUSIVE!!!!!" saying our city's lead Fred Flintstone and ESPN presence Mr. Smith has been STRIPPED of his column and now has to do lousy sports reporting -- because the Philadelphia Daily Babbitt's executive editor figured he wasn't getting enough for his MONEY! Well we think we know Steve's response: Da-da-DUT! Da-da-DUT!

And in more tragic news, the AMERICAN JERNALISM REVIEW is leaking dough, despite a staff of one, which will come when you try to say how wonderful your business is while pretending not to.

P. S. at 5:25 p. m. Now the COLUMBIA JERNALISM REVIEW is boasting of a surplus, meaning even self-righteousness can't get in the way of one-upmanship.

Posted 7:09 PM by Gene

Almost a year ago I sneered about "the supremely hermetic group that combines the two deadly traits of musical 'eclecticism' and obsessive record collecting" so inescapable in pop cultyure, and on the Web. So I must confess these last two days I've been glued to WFMU.org's blog, and if any psychobabblers wish to claim the Internet an addiction they must point their keyboards here. As a fount of show-biz trivia and obscurities seeking it is unmatched. I have just spent the last half hour scanning this astonishing essay on Hanna-Barbera Records, a small but hyperactive outfit from the mid-sixties owned by those notorious kings of limited animation; it defined eclectic long before the term could be soiled by cultists, recording everything from kiddie albums to soundtracks to surf to jazz to soul; yet despite CBS Records distribution it seems to have gone almost unnoticed at the time, and Bill and Joe did not know what they were doing, and with rare exceptions its stuff is fodder for Goldmine maniacs and YouTube phreaks.

Which underlines an inescapable fact about these pop-cultist sites, vastly pleasing though the best are (and WFMU.org is indisputably the best): they engage in industrial-strength copyright infringement. Yet it's obvious the microscopic following for most of what's infringed can't justify commercial redistribution; merely to revive such material puts it in the red. But this detritus can't remain safely stowed underground; it is part of our national heritage. Our media superiors should look upon such occasional innocent stealing as flattery. More to the matter, when it comes to control of their property, they aren't losing; they've already lost.

P. S. He does get Hoyt Curtin's name wrong, though. Does that make me a geek too?

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

The unprecedentedly exciting field of presidential candidates is making unprecedented gaffes, and

[i]t is happening so often, "you'd think it's deliberate!" quipped G. Terry Madonna, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

Given who's running, we do.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

It may be a bent saber, but Belly Kisser is rattling it.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

IF PELOSI PERSISTS IN HER IMPERIOUS, MEAN-SPIRITED, AND MYOPIC THINKING IN DISREGARD OF HER OATH TO SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION, MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE SHOULD REPLACE HER WITH MAJORITY LEADER STENY HOYER, D-MD!!!!!!!!!! [Angry overemphasis added]

This being Stale.com we figured this might be satire, or at least its patented heavy-handed irony, but alas, it isn't. The clock took impeachment off the table far more readily than Speaker Babs, and so did the fear of being a one-term speaker. Even the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL RASPUTIN could not have dreamed that up.

Posted 3:33 PM by Gene

EXCITING NEWS:

The deadline for SAE International's inaugural Commercial Vehicle Excellence in Media Awards is fast approaching -- only 10 days away! Entries need to be received by Aug. 31, 2007.

Get those facts 'n' figures rolling!

Posted 3:11 PM by Gene

Report: CIA Director Unprepared for al-Qaeda Threat

Wasn't that his job?

Posted 3:03 PM by Gene

In other relocations, one of professional college football's leading franchises (and home of recidivists) is leaving a decrepit city-run stadium, and the "university" president professes to be sad -- and no, we will not again quote Liberace's line.

Posted 2:13 PM by Gene

Our Daily Babbitt is selling its Tower of Babble, and

[t]he company also is soliciting in the memorandum ideas for where to put the 950 journalists, ad people, executives, computer technicians, clerks and others who now work in the building, company officials said.

We could say something, but instead, we mourn at what the news biz has become, for the Tower of Babble (along with its neighborhood) was a warren of activity; it is hard not to see Ring Lardners and Damon Runyons clattering away on their typewriters and screaming into their telephones, and an impenetrable haze of cigar smoke and words permeating everything, and the boss running the city's politics from upstairs -- but now it is oh so sedate, upper-class, and omnipotently right, which is why newspapers are downsizing, and abandoning such symbolic edifices.

The Babbitt who owns the Daily Babbitt thinks he can turn it into condos, meaning he probably will not become an ambassador anytime soon.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 2:01 PM by Gene

Despite this being the BEEB (or given its performance lately, the FEEB), it does remind us why we refer to the GREATEST MEDIA BARON OF ALL as SLIME.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 1:51 PM by Gene

We are glad to see the Orbiting Jalopy landed safely, which still makes us think it's gone up often enough.

Posted 11:30 AM by Gene

ANOTHER AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

CHICAGO (AP) -- Tribune Co. shareholders have given their approval - as expected - to an $8.2 billion buyout of the media conglomerate. The deal still requires financing, however.

Good luck! Pffh-hh-hh!

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

The U.S. Must Act in Darfur--RIGHT NOW! [Home-page link; overemphasis added]

So let's pull ALL our soldiers out of Iraq, and then....

Fortunately TNR's editors don't mention in Iraq. We should do something about Darfur, although truth be told if we had to send our soldiers where we should do good we'd need a draft ten times over. But you know with liberals and Darfur there's a quid pro quo. There has to be, when we can do so much good in Darfur and are doing so much evil in Iraq.

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in one of America's leading export industries:

Good taste is the first fatality in this gonzo thrill-seeker....

Since when has a movie had GOOD TASTE?

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

That eBay co-founder who put his guilt -- er, GILT into movie harangues is about to unleash one about JIMMAH.

HOLD YOUR NOSES!!!!!

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

• China says car ban has improved air quality [Home-page squib]

So let's do our part for global warming and make it permanent!

Pffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 10:58 AM by Gene

"We will certainly surpass $4 billion and probably be around $4.1 billion. I also think we will be at 600 million tickets sold, which we haven't seen in a few years."

When we saw this squib in ArtsJournal, how did we know without clicking on the link the I was the ever-irritating PAUL DRECK?

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

A top Iranian judiciary official says the detained Iranian-U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari will be released from prison on bail within hours.

Now what are they up to?

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

"Idiot savants brought to industrial proportion" have helped screw up the Wall Street casino lately.

We smile at their hubris.

"It became increasingly transparent that many of the highly sophisticated quant funds employed similar investment approaches and held similar core holdings," Thomson Financial wrote in an analysis of the role of the 25 largest quant funds in the market meltdown. "This resulted in the funds selling similar long stocks and covering similar short positions."

Surprise: the casino has a herd mentality. What does one expect of bulls?

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

What is with these meek and mild Congresspoops? First that professional Milquetoast Mr. Shays annoys a member of the Hill police, and now Mr. Filner shoves an airline worker? Have they got their inner man going?

Or are they merely better than the people as usual?

(Via USAOKAY!!!!!.com's On Deadline, which quotes from Congresspoop Filner's Web site:

"Bob is a fearless fighter and always insists that the needs of the people must come first."

Especially when a people wants his luggage!)

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Does hi-def DVD really need THE CONSPIRACY's help to be irrelevant?

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

The only difference between Leona Helmsley and Anna is real estate, pills, and ugly.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

So the housing bust won't affect banks, huh GEKKO KUDLOW?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Does anyone expect the same consumer-products firms that finance anything and everything media to give a damn about the Chinese?

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Pamela Larsen, 41, a mother of two young girls, in Mt. Hood, Ore., gets a stomachache every time she looks up at the volcano nearby: the glaciers at its peak have definitely been receding over the years. As the mountainside gets browner and browner — evidence of climate change — the knot in Larsen's gut tightens.

Psychologists now have a name for Larsen's condition: eco-anxiety, the overwhelming and sometimes debilitating concern for the worsening state of the environment.

1. Is this our way of getting back at the Newsrag of the Zeitgeist? 2. Does this mirror the condition in which news hacks fear for their jobs because they must inundate us with THE TRUTH about subjects like global warming?

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

Economic reforms and soaring rates of home ownership have coined a new moniker for the tribe of youth struggling to pay off home loans in traditionally debt-wary China: "fang nu," or "house slaves".

Don't tell me -- they have a problem too?

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

It looks as though our friends in Mountain View have turned off our access to Next Blog. Honest, we're tired of playing Pavlov, looking for hits. There's no joy in blogging if your only hits are mechanical.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

On further news of sciENCE, we're no defenders of broadcasters, but we wonder if sometimes the doctors scream too much. At least these obese people showed some spirit in wanting to lose weight, and if ESPNCorp is to be believed (difficult, to be sure), they mostly succeeded. And on obesity the doctors' screaming has not prevented us from marching in reverse -- or rather lazing in reverse in a La-Z-Boy.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Why does every damned scientist yearn to be Mustapha Mond?

Posted 4:43 PM by Gene

Gee Whiz! Romney's slang is stuck in the '50s
The face that Mitt Romney presents for public consumption could be right out of "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver." (Today's Globe)

And what pray tell, o blithering Pinchians, you of the Devil-inspired profession that insists on mating words like raunchy and sweet, is wrong with that? Why does it offend your consciences so?

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

Analysis: Who's the Dems [SIC] Goldilocks?

You mean which one gets chased out of the house by the three bears?

By that standard mightn't they all be eligible?

News hacks have ZERO sense.

Posted 1:06 PM by Gene

One of the GREATEST PLAYWRIGHTS in the HISTORY of the UNIVERSE showed love and care for his fourth child.

We would be surprised if this hurts his rep.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily)

Posted 12:58 PM by Gene

OUR EINSTEIN CRIME OF THE MONTH:

Two employees at a Chinese bank dream of getting rich quick. The only two with the keys to the vault, they steal a few thousand dollars to see whether anyone notices. No one does. So they take more. In the course of a month, they walk away with $6.6 million.

Instead of running away with their mountains of cash, the two do something seemingly illogical.

They buy lottery tickets.

Posted 12:09 PM by Gene

JFK LINCOLN sez, "I don't know what I'm doing -- which must mean I know what I'm doing!"

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Oops! Another masterpiece slides Friday-to-Saturday -- and this the GREATEST COMING-OF-AGE COMEDY OF ALL TIME! What will PAUL DRECK do? Break wind as usual.

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

I smell...an ETHICS SCANDAL!

Where's Romy when you need him?

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

We will not call Amity the Ann Coulter of economics but dammit she tries. In her latest scribble she suggests something entirely near and dear to her heart: that GUVMENT, and ONLY GUVMENT, caused the Great Depression.

Well then who brought on the Crash? Was GUVMENT investing in stocks? Did it decide it wanted to take profits? And if it was all GUVMENT's fault what prompted GUVMENT to do what it did in the first place? And Ben and his theorizing -- does that make him a socialist crank?

I HATE knee-jerks of any stripe, and Amity/Ann is at the top of the list.

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

Comforting: our current Wizard of Oz is "a self-described Great Depression buff." Let's hope he hasn't learned the wrong lesson.

[H]e theorized that ``the financial crisis of 1930-33 affected the macroeconomy by reducing the quality of certain financial services, primarily credit intermediation.''

Translation: Many commercial banks, considered efficient at allocating credit (they have a knack for differentiating ``good'' from ``bad'' credits), failed. The ones that remained solvent wanted to hold liquid assets or, if they were willing to make loans, charged a higher rate of interest....

``It was reported that the extraordinary rate of default on residential mortgages forced banks and life insurance companies to 'practically stop making mortgage loans, except for renewals,''' Bernanke said, citing the work of the late economist A.G. Hart.

Sound familiar?

NO COMMENT.

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in the land of the upraised arm midst the potted palms and the Poland Spring, the Daily Babbitt is attempting to make another LEGENDARY WELCH out of that guy here who wants to franchise his university. What makes newspapers do favors? Why is their first goal to anoint people who seem to share their extremely narrow world view as friends?

At the same time, Drexel has yet to crack the top 100 on U.S. News & World Report's college rankings. It placed 108 this year, far below its fifth-ranked neighbor, the University of Pennsylvania.

This is worse than a shame; it is a -- disaster!

When's the IPO, Taki?

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

For firefighters, the blaze in the former Deutsche Bank office building added to a tragic toll, taking the lives of two members of a firehouse that had lost 11 in the World Trade Center disaster. [Emphasis added]

News hacks don't have to be told to sieg heil to sieg heil, and that's why their business is unreformable.