If you’ve never heard of it, there’s a “law” out there called Poe’s Law which states:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article. (link)
Which brings us to today’s link. Props to Annie who alerted us to this article over twitter.
People are just crazy. It’s unfortunate that so many of them reside in the fundamentalist sector.
I was reading this story today about droughts in Texas. It caught my eye because the first line said “LUBBOCK, Texas” where I used to live.
The fun part about this story is that there’s nothing even close to Lubbock in it! Most of the story focuses on the Hill Country and areas west of San Antonio. That’s about 300 miles away from Lubbock. It would be similar to me decrying the fate of the weather in Louisville, Kentucky as it relates to Atlanta. In other words, not at all alike.
The closest they get to Lubbock is at the very end when they talk about a reservoir near San Angelo which is closer (160 miles) but still not close.
Is it too much to ask that the byline be geographically consonant with the story? This tells me that when I’m reading about areas I’m not familiar with, I’m being misled as to the context of the story. It does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
The items in the title are not linked. They are two things that piqued my interest in this morning’s daily news email from the AJC.
One: They’re using dogs to chase geese away from the City of Atlanta water reservoirs. Cool.
Two: Two trash-collection firms in Gwinnett county are shutting down due to the County opting to take over the trash collection. This is interesting because the companies are charging $23 to each customer for “added costs for closing [their] operations.” The county says that they’re nothing they can do in the “private matter between the citizen and hauler. We really can’t get into giving advice on what they should do.”
I have a suggestion for all Gwinnett county citizens who receive this bill:
Don’t pay it.
I mean, pay for the services you’ve received, but leave off the $23. One thing I’ve learned since owning a house and working as a fee-for-hire consultant is the power of saying “no” and “I’m not paying for that”. It works amazingly well; negotiation tactics 101. Even if you end up agreeing to pay something just to do away with the hassle, realizing that services you contract are negotiable is an important first step in getting good deals. Of course, it doesn’t work as well as I’d like when you’re dealing with official monopolies like Comcast or AT&T, but the selection there is getting better all the time.
The 2009 Tour de Georgia, a multi-part cycling race akin to the Tour de France, has been canceled. It was apparently due to financial considerations.
This is disappointing on a purely selfish level. Watching the race was a lot of fun. Hopefully it will be back in 2010. I want to go up and see them do one of the mountain legs.
Governor Sarah Palin has got to be the recent political world’s biggest scam artist. She has certainly risen to her level of incompetence. For example, I present a quote, concerning the Federal Bailout and her opposition to…something about it (I’m not sure exactly what she’s opposing).
Palin said that a “bigger federal government and more unfunded mandates hurt the economy and our states.”
Now, this quote isn’t directly in reference to the Bailout, but it’s linked closely enough that I feel she’s being evilly disingenuous. Going from the one of the largest government-funded programs in one sentence (signed by a Republican President!) to medicare and her other “unfunded mandates” in the next shows how valueless she is as a national leader.
I fear that we will be seeing more of her, unless she manages to step on her crank so hard that Alaskans decide she’s unworthy. My great hope is that her obvious worthlessness will become obvious to a greater percentage of people over the next few years and that the Republican party will deep-six her in self defense.
If you’re a fan of the Pirates trading card game, I recommend some thinking. WizKids has gone under. What this will mean for their various lines of products? Who knows. But I wouldn’t be willing to bet that any particular game system (like Pirates) will survive. So, you might want to go pick up some game packs.
Doubtless this will be making the rounds, but Newsweek has the inside scoop on the campaigns of both candidates. I’ve only gotten through page one of the first item, but so far it is worth it.
In an exhaustive survey of one polling location, this intrepid researcher notes that the poll worker average age was about half what it was the last few times he voted.
There was an honest-to-god teenager working the poll when I voted this morning. The person who checked my ID was about 30. The person who gave me a computer card and her assistant were both under 40. This was not the usual gray-hair convention that I have become accustomed to.
Rock on, people-who-want-to-be-involved!
If you’re not familiar with the Boston Globe’s Big Picture series of photo essays, you should be.
I’d like to preface this post by saying that I in no way support or endorse the sarcastic nature of the next paragraph. Hurricane Ike did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people. It’s the sort of thing that warrants the occasional moment of silence and deep thought.
However, I still need to say, “They’re doing it wrong“
People don’t pay attention to the weather outside their immediate vicinity unless it’s a catastrophic incident that makes national/international news. Thus we have Tropical Storm Fay, which isn’t bothering me personally at the moment but sure is causing headaches for my neighbors to the south (although I used to live in one of the flooded towns).
What’s interesting about Fay, from a strictly academic standpoint, is the degree to which it has snubbed its nose at the best efforts of forecasters. SciGuy has the lowdown on the latest.
If you don’t want to read about Fay, you can see the evolution of the AT-AT