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Music
The Difference Between Economics And Politics
…explained in one page.
J. Wilbur Wolfingham instructs the gentle reader in the art of politicism
Originally from “The Sale of The Century” by Craig Boldman, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Bob Oksner. They don’t make comics like that anymore, sadly.
Cover by Howard Bender and Murphy Anderson. Click to embiggen
Going for the obvious finish to this post…
She’s Been Living In Her BitCoin World
Like her transactions, I’m anonymous.
Look at her reading the Economist’s
Analysis
H/T Cafe Hayek, who gets all the cool digital-currency music videos.
Questions With No Answers
Some stuff I’ve been pondering….
Can someone point me to an explanation of Neoreaction? One that is geared toward the layman and not 30 pages long? I’m not very inclined to buy into it, but I would at least like to know what it is I’m not buying into so I can explain why I’m not buying into it.
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I recently asked two questions regarding the Hobby Lobby case. Since no one answered, I’m asking again. First, how much does birth control cost out-of-pocket? Is it really that expensive? It would seem to be rather affordable given how many women use it, and that mass production lowers costs. But I’ve never bought it, so I can’t say for sure. Second, I’ve seen comments claiming women often need birth control for medical reasons other than actual contraception. Do abortifacients provide any kind of medical benefit the way, say, birth control pills do?
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Proponents of population control are saying most people are nothing more than consumers, and will deplete the world’s resources. So why do they push for a welfare state, which is primarily a population of consumers who don’t produce?
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Have any of the very rich politicians or entertainers who complain loudly about income inequality ever just issued some poorer people a check?
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Will the Falco Tribute Band destroy civilization… or save it?
Title is from here. Mickey explains it’s historical significance. Although you should watch the original first or this one won’t make much sense to you.
Leftist Turn At Albuquerque
It started with this post, and led to an argument on CNN about white gay males stealing the culture of black women.
It’s amusing to me how gender is a social construct, and can be changed and transformed at will from one to another (or to made-up ones) but culture and political orientation are hardwired by biology. This neatly sidesteps the issue of whether cultural behaviors can have bad effects, since one can only act according to the culture defined by their color. Anyone imitating a culture outside their race is inauthentic at best and mocking at worst.
I don’t seem to remember Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, or Gloria Gaynor(!) being too upset about gay males buying their albums. Diana Ross even did a song, “I’m Coming Out,” written for her gay fanbase.
Makes ya wonder if Notorious B.I.G., P. Diddy, and Ma$e knew they were sampling a “gay song” when they released “”Mo Money Mo Problems,” or just wanted a catchy beat. Speaking of which, Diddy and Ma$e sure looked like they were borrowing from white culture in the opening of that song’s video. Were they mocking white culture? Or does Diddy just like playing golf?
Ma$e appropriated white culture in his video for “Welcome Back,” borrowing from “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and using a sample of the theme song from “Welcome Back Kotter.” Ma$e and Diddy also sampled Latin music culture with “Feel So Good” which used the chorus from Miami Sound Machine’s “Bad Boy.” The song also brags of taking “hits from the 80s.” I think the 80s should sue.
This rabbit hole has no bottom. Where does the line get drawn? Is Eminem a cultural criminal for his plan – in his own words – “To do black music so selfishly / And use it to get myself wealthy”? Dr. Dre didn’t seem to mind too much. What about black rappers who sampled white music? Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq sampled the white boys of Steely Dan (badly) for their song “Déjà Vu (Uptown Baby).” But Steely Dan was influenced by black jazz musicians. Are the black session players who tour with The Dan race traitors? Tariq and Gunz crossed the Latin border when they sampled, in the same song listed above, Latin performer Jerry Rivera’s song “Amores Como El Nuestro” And isn’t “Peter Gunz” a riff on the old TV show with a legendary theme written by a white dude?
I told my wife about the dustup that led off this post. Her response was “Oh, minority victim war.” There are far worse problems facing the black female community than whether Miley Cyrus or gay males are twerking. But that doesn’t get you on CNN.
H/T to Andrew Klavan
Weapon Of Choice
Allamagoosa tweeted this…
To my left is my computer. An indispensable tool and weapon in any apocalypse. And it’s where Christopher Walken lives.
If anything can distract zombies long enough to destroy them (or at least make an escape), it’s dancing Christopher Walken.
Rock’s Rules For The Road
You must be licensed before performing trumpet solos while driving.
Also, children should not play backseat drums without a seat belt.
Wednesday Golf Outing
Some more in the style of Hal Gurnee’s Network Time Killers…
– A woman gave birth to twins… six months apart. Doctor blames it on an “incompetent cervix.”
That’s the best turn of phrase I’ve heard all day. All week, even. It definitely deserves to attain idiom status somehow. I’m thinking – to take the easy route – that it would be a great name for a progressive-acoustic feminist wannabe-ironic hipster band.
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A raging AngerSad has erupted over the Hobby Lobby court decision on the Byrne Robotics board. I have a couple question about the decision myself. First, how much does birth control cost out-of-pocket? Is it really that expensive? Considering how prevalent birth control seems to be, it would seem to be rather affordable, given how many women use it, and that mass production lowers costs . But I’ve never bought it, so I can’t say for sure. Second, I’ve seen comments claiming women often need birth control for medical reasons other than actual contraception (which HL still provides). Hobby Lobby only refuses to provide 4 out of 20 birth control methods. The 4 types they won’t cover are abortifacients. Do abortifacients provide any kind of medical benefit the way, say, birth control pills do?
I’m not even going to get into all the issues about the government telling a privately-owned company what it can and can’t pay for, or how HL employees are free to work where the employers will pay for all forms of birth control, etc.
Getting back to the B.R. thread…. a commenter wrote “A single-payer system would have many problems, but it seems to work pretty well for Congress and our veterans.” Hasn’t said system and said veterans been much in the news of late? The commenter does link to a poll claiming most veterans are satisfied with the care they get, but I’m not inclined to trust the Veterans Affairs site’s reporting. As for Congress… drawing on the combined taxes of the entire country to support the health care of 535 people should work spectacularly well. It’s scaling it up to paying for 318 million people that’s the problem.
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Digging down into the internet vaults…. The Comics Curmudgeon examines(!) Rex Morgan M.D. (guest-starring LBJ. Or a lookalike from the same place Hal Gurnee found the Kenny Rogers clone) –
FORE!
I don’t know if they went golfing, but it sounds like someone scored a hole-in-one…
I don’t want to know if there were penalty strokes.
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Somehow I’ve ended up featuring Kenny Rogers twice in relatively rapid succession. I’ve got nothing against Kenny – “Coward of the County” and “The Gambler” are good tunes – but let’s spin another track from that same era and see how many people run screaming.
The guys look like they’re going to, uh, play golf when the ladies suddenly show up.
Random Static: Phoning It In
Allamagoosa recently got a new phone.
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Even though I was aware of the song, somehow it escaped my notice (or just as likely slipped what remains of my mind) that Kenny Rogers used to be a psychedelic rocker.
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Discovered this guy last weekend. He’s posted over one thousand videos of (mostly) acoustic guitar or piano covers of classic rock songs and oldies, like the Beatles, Elvis, Burt Bacharach, Frankie Valli, even some Steely Dan. And of course the Monkees.
He’s also taken requests for songs outside his normal sphere, which results in unusual coolness…
He did songs by Human League and Daft Punk just for the heck of it. There’s a Death Cab For Cutie piano cover in there somewhere. And his voice sounds almost dead on like the singer from Right Said Fred.
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I don’t recall if I posted this before or not… this guy is the greatest drummer in the world.
The host blathers until about the 40 second point, but the real show starts around 1:00.
I can offer no explanation about the toilet seat.
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I would apologize for the ultra awful Data joke at the top, but I would be lying.
Happy Paws
…as Steve Martin never said.
Clap your paws if you have
A tennis ball between your teeth
Clap your paws if you like
Running up and down the beach
Cheerfully and shamelessly swiped from Vodkapundit.
Boombox Superblast Mixtape
All kinds of science in the news right now. From Gizmodo – the 185 terabyte casette tape.
Stupid hipster 80s fetishism notwithstanding, cassette tapes don’t get much love. That’s a shame, because magnetic tape is still a surprisingly robust way to back up data. Especially now: Sony just unveiled tape that holds a whopping 148 GB per square inch, meaning a cassette could hold 185 TB of data. Prepare for the mixtape to end all mixtapes.
Sony’s technique, which will be discussed at today’s International Magnetics Conference in Dresden, uses a vacuum-forming technique called sputter deposition to create a layer of magnetic crystals by shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate. The crystals, measuring just 7.7 nanometers on average, pack together more densely than any other previous method.
The result: three Blu-Rays’ worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony’s new wonder-tape.
John Hayward immediately sees the possibilities, lamenting that such a technology was not available in bygone days…
Shooting argon ions into a polymer substrate? It seems so obvious in retrospect. Why weren’t we doing that back when Flock of Seagulls was big? We could have made one mix tape that would sit in our car stereos until it melted.
But there are downsides. As one commenter put it, “I can’t imagine REWINDING 185 TB of data.”
I would have loved to have HD cassette tapes back in the days before CD burning was an option. And imagine the street cred of having a boombox capable of playing around 61,697,500-song mixtapes. Epic rap battles would erupt among DJ street fighters.
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