New York Times breaks typographic barriers...

...with largest point font, ever.

Sarcastigate.com

This is where the action's at now: http://sarcastigate.com.

"Toxic substance" does not include...

Excerpt from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce Regulation of Industry, Buildings and Safety, Sections 101.58 to 101.599 (The “Employees’ Right to Know Law”):

2. “Toxic substance” does not include:
a. Any article, including but not limited to an item of equip-
ment or hardware, which contains a substance regulated by the
federal occupational safety and health administration under title
29 of the code of federal regulations part 1910, subpart z, if the
substance is present in a solid form which does not cause any acute
or chronic health hazard as a result of being handled by an
employee.
b. Any mixture containing a substance regulated under title
29 of the code of federal regulations part 1910, subpart z, if the
substance is less than one percent, or, if the substance is an impu-
rity, less than 2%, of the product.
c. Any consumer product packaged for distribution to and
used by the general public, for which the employee’s exposure
during use is not significantly greater than the consumer’s expo-
sure occurring during the principal use of the product.
d. Any substance received by an employer in a sealed package
and subsequently sold or transferred in that package, if the seal
remains intact while the substance is in the employer’s workplace.
e. Any waste material regulated under the federal resource
conservation and recovery act, P.L. 94−580.
f. Lutefisk.
(k) “Workplace” means any location where an employee per-
forms a work−related duty in the course of his or her employment,
except a personal residence.

Little Beauties:

I guess the usual reaction to this is to think it's exploitative and deviant, which I do, but I also think it's kind of weak to point to it and suggest that it somehow evinces a deeper cultural psychology. I think this is a fringe practice, and I don't think it was created to please men. Instead, I think it was created to officialize and sanction an obsession with cuteness that is mostly harbored by older women. The sexualization of the girls is, I think, part of the usual topsy-turvy of the cute factor: like a puppy in sunglasses, or a little boy in a suit. Little kids dressing up like or acting like adults has a definite charm.

But, as with dolls and the Uncanny Valley, this charming precocity can spill over into seriously creepy territory.

Sneezing at the sun.

Photic sneeze reflex is a genetic autosomal dominant trait, which causes sneezing when exposed suddenly to bright light, possibly many times consecutively. It is also referred to as photic sneeze response, sun sneezing, photogenic sneezing, the photosternutatory reflex, being photo sensitive, ACHOO syndrome, and "Achooism," with its related backronym Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome. The condition affects 17 to 35 percent of humans.[citation needed]

The first mention of the phenomenon is probably in the later work attributed to Aristotle (Problems, book XXXIII).

Continue reading: Wikipedia

Rote Memorization for Obama!

Barry Sanders.

Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. [...]

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Continue reading at the New York Times.

Obama Mural Madness!

No political messages allowed! Unless, of course, they were purchased.

Street justice.

“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that [Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Bros.] went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I’d have done the same too.”

From the Consumerist.

The lord wants their balls on a platter. Today.

Days after federal officials agreed to an $85 billion bailout of American International Group, the insurance firm spent more than $440,000 for a corporate retreat at a swanky California resort. An invoice from the week-long getaway, a copy of which you'll find below, was obtained by the congressional panel that has been holding hearings this week about Wall Street collapses and executive excess. The late-September AIG gathering at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach cost $443,343, according to the invoice. The six-figure sum covered hotel rooms, banquets, golf fees, and spa services at the resort south of Los Angeles. However, company funds apparently were not spent on exploding cakes or urinating ice statues.

From the Smoking Gun.

My contribution to the meme.

Jack Cafferty is my new hero.

Tina Fey as VPILF.

VPILF reads all of them.

How we discovered our desire for the uncontacted savage.

The photos of grass-roofed shelters and hostile, body-painted Indians brandishing bows and arrows spread like brushfire around the globe. Survival International, an indigenous rights advocacy group, described the group as "uncontacted," summoning celluloid fantasies of lost savages who had never seen civilization. Reporters began to describe them as "Earth's last uncontacted tribe" who reacted violently to the "bird god" in the sky. But then the story collapsed. Meirelles stated in an interview that he had been following the group for two decades. The tribe was neither lost nor undiscovered — the outside world had known of them since 1910. It should have been clear from the beginning; the initial Portuguese reports never claimed the group was "uncontacted." Introduced by sloppy reporting, this error fanned suspicions that the photos were just a hoax.

The crucial issue raised by these photos of a remote group isolated from our society is not whether, in an age of worldwide connectivity, surveillance satellites, and explosive population growth, we might still have undiscovered neighbors on a shrinking globe — we don't. In fact, one of Meirelles's friends first noticed the clearing where the tribe was found while browsing Google Earth. In truth, our reactions to and perceptions of these people reveal far more about us than about them. We easily believe that a band of hostile Indians confronting an airplane from a clearing do so out of ignorance and fear. But the likely truth is harder to face: The tribe might have threatened the observers precisely because they had encountered some of the worst aspects of our culture before, and suffered grievously. These images of a people courageously standing against us are not symbols of their ignorance, but of ours.

Meirelles says he released the photos only because petroleum executives and state authorities in Peru claimed that the forests where they wished to drill for oil were empty. A spokesperson for Peru's state oil company, Petroperu, said that nomadic Indians were a figment of activists' imaginations, "like the Loch Ness Monster," and last year even Peru's President, Alan García, questioned their existence.

The publicity may backfire; global curiosity about the tribes could prove insatiable. Since the release, Meirelles has endured a torrent of media requests and business solicitations; travel agents call him to propose "Savage Tourism." A film team already slipped into an Indian reservation on the Peruvian side this past year, violating their travel permits while scouting locations for a reality television program, "World's Lost Tribes." Shortly afterward, a respiratory infection they may have brought with them killed four Indians.

Continue reading at Seed Magazine.

I've had my passport longer than Sarah Palin.

I counted. There are, as of this morning, at least 36 facebook groups mocking VPILF's only recent acquisition of a passport.

From the New York Times:

"Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States. In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow. She also visited wounded troops in Germany during that trip."

Also, peep VPILF in a one-piece the year I was born:

That's some Erin Brockovich shit.

The Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from the White House and the Pentagon, is poised to rule as early as today that it will not set a drinking water safety standard for perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns, and young children across the nation.

According to a near-final document obtained by the Washington Post, EPA's "preliminary regulatory determination" - which was extensively edited by White House officials - marks the final step in a six-year battle between career EPA scientists who advocate regulating the chemical and White House and Pentagon officials who oppose it. The document estimates that up to 16.6 million Americans are exposed to perchlorate at a level many scientists consider unsafe; independent researchers, using federal and state data, put the number at between 20 million and 40 million.

"They have distorted the science to such an extent that they can justify not regulating" the chemical, said University of Massachusetts professor Robert Zoeller, an endocrinologist who specializes in thyroid hormone and brain development and who has a copy of the EPA proposal. "Infants and children will continue to be damaged, and that damage is significant."

Continue reading.

I kind of want that sweater on the far right.

And how about those crazy leather jackets these kids got on?

Egomania + internet fuckwithery = profound unreliability.

The top rated professor on ratemyprofessors.com, Robert M. Citino, has been receiving suspiciously grammatical (and square) reviews. I don't buy it.

His ratemyprofessers entry. And his wikipedia entry. Who's managing his web image, and since it's likely him, who spends this much time on his wikipedia entry and isn't a likely candidate for futzing with his ratemyprofessors results? Maybe they're unfuckwithable. But I'm just saying: maybe not.

(On a tangentially related note, some clown already has unfuckwithable.com. I just checked godaddy.)


Oh, and here's what he looks like: