from the comments
I, too, remember the “Duck and Cover” drills of the cold war days. I remember seeing my father going over plans for the building of a personal bomb shelter–and then not doing that anymore when data about the effect a single five megaton warhead would have on a metropolitan area was released. The lie of civil defense just couldn’t be sustained anymore. This kind of threat, though, seemed huge and general–similar to a great comet streaking toward the Earth that nobody could do anything about. The doom it suggested played into my hedonistic tendencies at the time.
9/11 gave me a sense of a different kind of fragility. It was like a story of a gnat getting into a machine and causing a tiny short that sets off a cascade failure. My sense of the status of apocalyptic fears in play now is that an always present element has become much more powerful: an actual desire for apocalypse–whether it be held by terrorists who think their best shot at long term power would lie in wiping the slate clean, crawling back out, and making a new push for significance, or American religious fundamentalists who see the “next” world as the real one and would be pleased to see god’s great plan expedited (as if his “need” for us to do that is not ironic). I am personally more fearful of the American fundamentalists, since they have become politically viable and this nation has more powers of mass destruction than any other.
spam name
Markita Paustian.
Update: Wonda Haley.
Quote Out of Context
“We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation,” he told the newspaper in justifying his compensation. “We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.”
For Kelsey
Time-lapse video of fog rolling into the Bay Area.
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Graffiti is the Site of an Unregulated Free Market
Strange But Charmed
A lawsuit filed by Walter Wagner in 2008 claiming the LHC would destroy at least Earth was rejected by a Hawaiian court. Wagner’s inevitable appeal fared as poorly:
…A United States District Court Appellate Judge has ruled that Wagner has failed to establish any “credible threat of harm,” writing, “At most, Wagner has alleged that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (the ‘Collider’) have ‘potential adverse consequences.’ Speculative fear of future harm does not constitute an injury in fact sufficient to confer standing.”
And even if he had established a credible threat of harm, the judge noted that the U.S. has no control over the operation of the LHC, which is owned, managed and controller entirely by CERN. “The U.S. government enjoys only observer status on the CERN council, and has no control over CERN or its operations,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the alleged injury, destruction of the Earth, is in no way attributable to the U.S. government’s failure to draft an environmental impact statement.“
(via the Escapist)
from the spam
Genuinely definitely excellent website submit which has received me considering. I by no means looked at this from the stage of look at.
The Cornfield: Bird-Thing Silhouette
It was out in the cornfield, bobbing its crest.
See Bird-Thing and Its Bastard Wing for another view.
Highway 50 | Placerville, CA
This is the second time I’ve seen one of these trucks (the first time was on the way down the mountain after clusterflockstock). Alicia snapped this photo and, after a quick Google, read the following to me as we passed.
Our main focus at Jesus Christ is Lord Travel Center is to present to the world that Jesus Christ is lord not a swear word.
If you notice on our trailers you will see the name of Jesus Christ. Our heart yearns for the world to know that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. Hollywood has portrayed a different image, an image that portrays Jesus Christ as trash as a bad word. The Most Holy, the Most Majestic created our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and our mission is to use trucking to spread the word to America and God willing all the way to England.
My mom was following us up the and, at her first opportunity, said, “Jesus Christ! Did you see that truck?”
a thousand faces, 8
Quote Out of Context
At almost any tea-party meeting you can expect to see some patriot brandishing a copy of the hallowed texts and calling, with trembling voice, for a prodigal America to redeem itself by returning to its “founding principles”. The Washington Post reports that Colonial Williamsburg has been crowded with tea-partiers, asking the actors who play George Washington and his fellow founders for advice on how to cast off a tyrannical government.
from the moderated comments
This is not a truck stop! This location is across the highway from my cousin’s mechanic shop, so I am very familiar with it. It is a wholesale petroleum distributor. The pumps in the foreground are self-serve pumps. The customer has a key to the pump and can fill up at any time with no contact needed with anyone inside the building. The customers are billed once a month for the product they pump. The building is the office for the distributor and has no retail function, not even selling candy bars. This is not typical of truck stops in Texas and your comments leave the wrong impression!
In the Life of The Wire
Recapping a slew of new books pondering the implications — economic, political and cultural — of The Wire, Lorrie Moore has put together a pretty great article on the show for the NY Review of Books:
In exposing the nerves, fallout, and sealed fates caused by a remorseless breed of capitalism and its writing-off of whole swathes of the populace, and by insisting on its universality as a subject, The Wire has much in common with great political drama everywhere; the plays of George Bernard Shaw (in which rich and poor are both given language) come to mind. The newly elected mayor of Reykjavik will not allow anyone in his political party unless they have watched all five seasons. The mayor of Newark is also a fan. So is Barack Obama, whose favorite character is the gay, drug dealer–robbing gunslinger Omar Little—a new hero in queer studies, one of the few characters in the show who honors “a code,” and the only one whose ongoing motivation is love for another person.
sad sac
Is masturbating to Christine O’Donnell a political act?
Update: Dan Savage beat me to it.
He said the officers did have to replace their uniforms
A Wyoming man believed if he covered himself in latex paint police would be heistant to taser him on account of it was water-based and you know how electricity goes through water and all it would kill him.
The officers continued to demand his surrender and explained that the paint would not affect a Taser’s capability nor would it cause his death if used.
(thanks, Aaron)
Image Out of Context
Brilliant Ad from LEGO
Growing up, LEGO was my toy of choice, absorbing hours of my everyday as I lost myself to the limitless possibilities of these building blocks. I learned about architectural structure and load-bearing walls by using LEGOs — my mother thought I would become an architect. That being said, this ad made me more than a little nostalgic.
(via)
Dear Clusterflock
Prompted by this post at Snarkmarket by Tim Carmody, I’ve been pondering the differences and similarities between the U.S. post-9/11 and the U.S. during the uncertainties of the Cold War. I’m curious if our more-seasoned Flockers who grew up in that environment might speak to this comparison?
Is the threat of terrorism less rational than the threat of nuclear war or Soviet aggression? Are they both irrational? As we continue to demonize and scapegoat our perceived enemies, are we doomed to repeat electoral and cultural history? What has been gained and what has been lost?
Quote Out of Context
The situation has repeatedly been called Kafkaesque, reflecting, perhaps, the strangeness of the idea that Kafka can be anyone’s private property. Isn’t that what Brod demonstrated, when he disregarded Kafka’s last testament: that Kafka’s works weren’t even Kafka’s private property but, rather, belonged to humanity?
The Economics of Prop 19
Ryan Grim has an interesting write-up on the growing political opposition to Prop 19 by special interest groups. The two key players thus far? Beer distributers and law enforcement:
The California Beer & Beverage Distributors is spending money in the state to oppose a marijuana legalization proposition on the ballot in November, according to records filed with the California Secretary of State. The beer sellers are the first competitors of marijuana to officially enter the debate; backers of the initiative are closely watching liquor and wine dealers and the pharmaceutical industry to see if they enter the debate in the remaining weeks.
[...]
The CBBD did not return calls for comment; it donated $10,000 to Public Safety First, a committee organized to oppose the proposition, on Sept. 7, 2010, though the contribution was only recently made public. The alcohol industry has long seen illicit drugs as a threat to sales, as consumers may substitute pot for booze. A night spent on the couch smoking marijuana and watching television is a night not spent at the bar.
Public Safety First is largely funded by a different industry whose interests are threatened by the legalization of marijuana: law enforcement. Police forces are entitled to keep property seized as part of drug raids and the revenue stream that comes from waging the drug war has become a significant source of support for local law enforcement. Federal and state funding of the drug war is also a significant supplement to local forces’ budgets.
I often forget about the many financial interests with stakes in prohibition.
This Is a Metaphor for Something
(via)
from the spam
How long have you been achieving this?
Dear Clusterflock
What’s the duration of the longest friendship you still have going?
Me (Walt) first… I’m still in very close contact with a guy I met in grade two. That was 1972. He was best man at my wedding, and vice versa.
I’m not gloating about this, or posting this to make all your friendships pale in comparison. It’s just that him and I were talking tonight, and we both marveled at the length of time we’ve been friends, and we realize that we’re probably pretty rare as friends go.
Breaking Bad
Damn. We just watched the first episode of season one of Breaking Bad. That’s the way you put together an opening episode.
Rain
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him ……. A super calloused fragile … mystic hexed by halitosis.
Rain Chacon, March 5th, 1972–September 22nd, 2010. RIP.
