THE JOYS OF NONSTICK REYNOLDS WRAP. I use it all the time, and it’s great. Alas, I’m not one of those Reynoldses, though.
Archive for 2010
October 9, 2010
ACTUALLY, I THINK IT’S TRUE FOR MEN, TOO: Why Sex (for Women) Gets Better After 40.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: The Liu Xiaobo Peace Prize. “How do we square this year’s Nobel choice of a truly praiseworthy man with the parade of so many previous laureates flush with puffery, sleaze or worse?”
WHY DOESN’T THE PRESS IGNORE FRED PHELPS? From the comments, this answer: “The media plays up Phelps to smear the non-left by association. The media gives Phelps publicity because they find doing so to be politically useful. Period.”
UPDATE: Dave Foulk emails: “The Phelps clan is like a really bad poot in church — even if you ignore it, the smell is still there.”
SENSE OF HUMOR FAILS AT AGE 52? I dunno, I’ve only got a few years left then, but I seem to be laughing more than ever. But then, this study didn’t allow for the effects of Joe Biden.
VIRGINIA POSTREL ON the Bike Helmet Wars.
JAMES SWANSON ON WRITING ABOUT BLOODY HISTORY.
YOUR FRIEND, the S Corporation.
THE DEADLIEST JOB in America. It’s not fireman, or cop.
A NIGHT IN A DETROIT TRAUMA WARD. “A man was shot through the ankle with a high-caliber rifle, the foot holding tenuously by a flap of skin. The victim owed the dope man money and the bullet was a ‘friendly reminder’ that the bill had come due. A man who had been stabbed in the chest with a knife was being discharged to his girlfriend that evening. As it happened, the man admitted it was the girlfriend who had stabbed him in the chest with a knife.”
JOBS THAT WILL BE FADING AWAY OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS. At this rate, isn’t that most of ’em?
CHEVY VOLT UPDATE: GM’s Affordable Wall Charger Costs A Lot To Install. “For the record, the Chevy Volt can plug into any old 120 volt wall socket and be fully charged in ten hours. Those looking for a bit more efficiency might opt for the wall charger, which alone costs just $490. So if you’re a skilled electrician and have the certification, you can install it yourself and you’re ready to go. For the rest of us, installation will cost around $1,475, bringing total costs closer to $2,000. Yikes! And this is for a car that goes just 25 to 50 miles on an electric charge.”
Related: Alan Boyle: Ride Along With The Chevy Volt. “Until recently, Chevrolet said the Volt should be able to stay in all-electric mode for the first 40 miles of travel — a range that covers most of the trips the typical driver makes in the course of a day. Now those figures have been revised to a 25- to 50-mile all-electric range, depending on driving conditions and driver behavior.”
NEW YORK TIMES: Obama’s “foreign money” claims are bogus. They’re also pretty rich, considering how his 2008 campaign handled foreign credit cards. From that National Journal story: “The lack of a computerized address-verification system would allow the Obama campaign’s computers to accept online donations from U.S. citizens above legal limits, and to accept donations from foreigners who are barred by law from contributing at all.” Perhaps its time to remind people of that issue again. Oh, wait, I just did!
Here’s more on that from 2008: “A breakdown of controls has enabled foreign and other unaccountable funds to pour into the Obama campaign — and it’s not an accident.”
Plus, from the Washington Post: Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations. “Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.”
More here. “Then there’s the question of whether foreign nationals are contributing to the Obama campaign. There is more than enough evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation by the Federal Election Commission, including the $32,332.19 that appears to have come from two brothers living in a Hamas-controlled Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah, GA (that’s Gaza, not Georgia). The brothers’ cash is part of a flood of illegal foreign contributions accepted by the Obama campaign.”
You know, I’d kind of forgotten this scandal until Obama brought this stuff up. It didn’t get much attention then, but it may get more this time around.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Shouldn’t Obama be pushing for Comprehensive Undocumented Donation Reform instead of this xenophobic demagogy? Asking every contributor to produce ‘their papers’ just reeks of Nazi Germany.” Good point!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader suggests that this explains how Obama managed to vastly outspend McCain: “Does anyone really think that that much money came from the little people sending their contributions via the Internet, and a few big—REALLY big—donors like labor unions? Surely a good bit of that money was illegally donated. Perhaps the new congress will have enough gumption to investigate the source of those rivers of dollars. Certainly the DOJ can’t be trusted to look into it.” It does bear looking into.
MORE: Reader Harrison Colter writes: “If they take the House, there are a lot of things the Rs might want to investigate, and things their whacko supporters will scream to have investigated, but the one thing that they absolutely should investigate is the Obama campaign finance practices from 2008. Not only would it be targeted to an area of legitimate concern, but they might actually learn something that could be used to fix existing statutes.
Plus, because it will involve one of the Left’s holiest canons, campaign finance reform, what with all the other fights likely to be going on next year, won’t it be nice to have at least one investigation that is fully supported by the Ds? They will support it, won’t they? I mean, won’t they fall all over themselves saying ‘It is about time the Rs got on board here’? Of course they will.” Indubitably.
ANTI-ANXIETY TREATMENT: Nissan Considering Offering Leaf Buyers A Week In A Gas-Powered Car. “Given the range of 80 to 120 miles, and a charging time of up to 21 hours on a normal 110v plug, the Leaf isn’t the best choice for cross-country touring.”
MARY KATE CARY: Obama’s Rolling Stone Interview Proves He’s Out of Touch. “In it, President Obama proves why he’s one of the most polarizing figures in politics today, and how deep his disconnect is with voters.”
Related: John Kass: Hopium Shortage Threatens Midterms For Obama.
IN THE MAIL: From Larry Correia, Monster Hunter Vendetta.
ROGER SIMON: Will All My Facebook Friends Come To My Funeral?
STUFFING THE VIRTUAL BALLOT BOX. “Can you say contempt for the American voter?”
IVY LEAGUE AND ROTC: Not everyone is AWOL.
EUGENE VOLOKH: What Burden of Proof Is Constitutionally Required for Denying Gun Rights to the Allegedly Dangerous and Mentally Infirm? Treat it like voting. . . .
BABY-SNATCHING IS HILARIOUS when it happens to people with incorrect politics.
UPDATE: From the comments: “A shining example of how the 10:10 exploding kids video got made without anyone questioning it. And why they were completely shocked when people were disgusted by it.”
IMPORTANT FASHION ADVICE FOR MEN: “The younger you are, the less of your pocket square should show. If you’re in your twenties, you haven’t yet earned the right to be cavalier. Conversely, the older you, the freer you can be with showing silk. Once you’re past sixty, the pocket square can practically erupt from its home. This adds character.”
MIDDLE-CLASS SLAMS BRAKES ON SPENDING.