sixdoublefive321 and Vonnegut On Chronology

sixdoublefive321

If you watch the movie `Jaws' backwards, it's a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach. (self.reddit.com)

kerbuffel

He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for the wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the plans. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut

Tracy Clark-Flory on All Hallows Eve

Slut-o-ween -- or as Mary Elizabeth Williams put it, "International Dress Like a Fetish Porn Star Day."

Gonzalo Lira on Teaser Economists

Delong, Krugman, Broder are not fluffers; their aim isn't to tickle each other, at least not publicly. They are more like what are called 'Teaser Horses' in the thoroughbred breeding business. Teasers are docile male horses, usually old and past prime with undesirable genes, who set up aggressive just off-the-track mares to be bred by the wild testosterone crazed prize stallions whose only job is to deliver the goods, which they do.

Handlers use the teasers to see if the mares are ready and receptive to be bred; if not, the mares get vicious and the no-value teasers (instead of the studs who earn $300k per live foal) get savaged and kicked. If the mare is ready, the teaser is whicked away and the hard action commences. These hack pundits are the teasers. They are seeing if we're ready to be bred - do we lift tail and spread 'em, or fight? Never getting any of their own action, teasers like Brad/Paul/Dave help their handlers gauge sentiment to minimize the risk to the elites of kick-back when the citizens are mounted.

Cindy Laughing at Antonio

[Here] is the horrible Antonio Margarito after going 12 rounds with Manny Pacquiao. In the words of one observer, "watching the 10th on was like watching a live cow being ground into chuck."

Churchill Suffered Lifelong Depression

“Think of all these people, decent, educated, the story of the past laid out before them – What to avoid – what to do, etc…. – trying their utmost – What a ghastly muddle they made of it! Unteachable from infancy to tomb – There is the first and main characteristic of mankind.”

Winston S. Churchill, Discussing World War I, 1928

DavidTC on Libertarianism

Re:The evil "American Right"...yup (Score:5, Insightful)

No, just evil people who grab and increase their power over us because we are dumb enough to let them. We've even let them destroy the language -- liberal used to mean something a lot more like "libertarian"

No it didn't. The libertarian position is one that honestly did not exist in politics until about 50 years ago.

I know, in conservative mythos, the founding fathers were libertarians, but they were not. Liberal, in that day, was basically anti-classism and anti-crown, a position that really doesn't exist anymore in modern politics.

Once the crown was gone, it continued to be anti-special-rules-for-the-ruling class, a position it still holds, at least in theory. (As we don't actually have any liberal political party, it doesn't really hold any position anymore.) All liberal fights, though the entire history of this country and back to John Locke, are to stop one group of withholding power-sharing from another group, with the groups being the crown, nobles, slaveowners, the superrich, the corporate owners, the whites, the straights...and, apparently, the superrich again. Except now the superrich have intelligently bought both parties.

(Please note when I say 'liberals', I am, indeed, aware that liberals used to be on the right, and flopped to the left around when I said 'the whites')

Libertarianism is not classical liberalism, it is neo-classical liberalism. It reinvents the idea that the problem is 'the crown'. Which, frankly, would be a rather strange idea to various classical liberal thinkers, whose biggest problem with the government is the fact that it often failed to enforce laws equally, and not that those laws existed at all!

and "conservative" used to mean, you know, look before you leap, spend less than you make, stuff like that. Or even "not all change is for the better, so examine it first before deciding".

Here, you're right. Conservatives, to paraphrase something David Brin wrote on the topic, used to be the serious guys in suits at NASA who did the math. The guys running around in the background monitoring stuff that seemed entirely pointless (Until it was wrong, then they calmly and efficiently saved everyone's life.), and wasn't glamorous, and they went home to their family and read the paper each evening. Whereas liberals were the astronauts and the sci-fi writers and the dreamers, and got all the credit, but without the guys in suits, wouldn't know how to do what they were trying to do. There's the guys who try to do everything, and the guys who figure out what can and can't happen and managed to get some of it done, while otherwise raining on the parade.

But that ended about two decades ago, when it was decided that the best way to rule the country is not to point out the parts of the left's plans that can't work, and invent better ways...but to simply assert, very loudly, that anything the left wants is wrong. Morally wrong, politically wrong, won't work, every single possible objection.

Even stuff like cap and trade or the public mandate for health insurance, both of which were conservative alternatives to the left's previous plan. Or stuff like bills attempting to stop child 'marriage', which the Republicans shot down for absurd reasons two week ago. (Apparently, educating women that it is not acceptable for them to be sold to older men when they're 13 as his 'wife' is...um...pro-abortion.)

McLemee On "The Fiery Trial"

Foner is too serious a historian to editorialize about how Lincoln was a racist. Sure he was; the point is cheaply made. But as ex-slaves throw themselves into combat against the Confederacy -- and the need to destroy the old system, root and branch, becomes inescapable -- Lincoln begins to develop a conception of African-American citizenship with implications that can only be called radical.

This is a powerful book, confirming the point that C.L.R. James often made: A leader, however farsighted, may unleash forces that then push him further than he ever imagined going.

Lefty on Taxes

If the Clinton tax rates had remained in effect, the entire national debt would have been paid off by 2012.

Joanne Chang On Flaky

The most common example of the importance of chilling ingredients is making flaky pie dough. Most recipes instruct you to start with butter that is straight from the refrigerator. Be honest now: Do you do that? You will once you understand why. To make pie dough, you mix butter into flour and then add liquid. If the butter is from-the-fridge-cold, it won't completely mix into the flour and some will remain in pieces, ideally the size of grapes. As you roll out your dough, these grape-sized pieces of butter get elongated by the rolling pin and you end up with long flat sheets of butter within your dough.

Most butter contains about 15 to 17 percent water. When the pie dough goes into the oven, the water turns to steam, which is what helps create layers in your dough. In other words, it is the sheets of butter that make your pie dough flaky. If your butter is somewhat warm, then you end up with something that is more like cookie dough than flaky pie dough. Not the end of the world by any means—and a tender, crumbly pie dough is still a good dough—but for a pie crust that flakes and shatters and impresses with its many layers, keep your butter cold, cold, cold.

Alsadius On Texting

Alsadius 2 days ago in reply to HugeEuge

I text in complete, properly-spelled, properly punctuated sentences(though not properly capitalized, that's a pain on my phone). Most of my friends do the same. It's not much harder, and it's a lot easier to read.

30 people liked this. Like Reply

• HugeEuge 2 days ago in reply to Alsadius

  Do you really have 5 thumbs on each hand?

  1 person liked this. Like Reply

• Alsadius 2 days ago in reply to HugeEuge

  I only type with 2 fingers even when I have a full keyboard at my disposal. If I ever got a QWERTY phone, I'd probably take to it like a duck to water. With T9 though, I use one thumb, it's too weird adjusting to the keyboard for me to go any faster. But because it recognizes words, spelling properly is really easy.

  2 people liked this. Like Reply

• dmcgregor 2 days ago in reply to Alsadius

  I'll one up you. I spell everything out fully with capitalization and on a phone that doesn't offer any kind of predictive text. Of course it takes me 20 minutes to write a simple message, so I tend to only write 2-3 per month.

  4 people liked this. Like Reply

• Alsadius 2 days ago in reply to dmcgregor

  I only write 2-3 per month, but that's mostly because I generally find MSN and Facebook to be better communication tools, and I'm not away from my computer too much.

  Like Reply

• wbj 2 days ago in reply to dmcgregor

  I think I'm in love...