Thus spake Evil Overload October 26, 2008 at 6:25 am
Interviewer asks Joe Biden tough questions about Marxism, Biden gets irritable:
The Obama campaign later sent this message to the station in response to their unfair and un-journalistic hostility:
‘”This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.’
Thus spake Evil Overload October 1, 2008 at 5:47 pm
It’s 11 minutes long and it’s pro-McCain, but it’s entertaining, it was already banned once, and it explains the problem fully and backs it up with facts:
Thus spake Evil Overload April 23, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Not that meddling in the affairs of other nations is anything new, especially speaking as an American, but it is interesting how much more press Chinese maneuvers are getting now that, as the rising global superstar, they are in the spotlight. So: what are they doing in Zimbabwe?
Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday’s ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city’s Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.
One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers.”
This should be a veeeery interesting century. Hell, the remainder of this decade should be plenty entertaining. Link
Thus spake Evil Overload April 15, 2008 at 6:20 am
ZOMG! Diverting food crop production in to fuel production turned out to be Bad! They had to subsidize the hell out of it to make it even remotely economically viable, and now it’s adding to a global food crisis. And, ladies and gentlemen, if you think oil scarcity causes wars, wait until you see what food scarcity does. Time to write your congressbeings on both sides of the aisle and tell them that, while it is good to work toward reducing foreign oil dependence, biofuels are Not The Way. Link
Thus spake Evil Overload April 3, 2008 at 12:41 pm
…we salute you! and beg your indulgence. I just marked as spam 1,108 new comments lovingly handcrafted by ad-bots since Monday. The only way to sort that many comments and not headdesk myself into a coma is to let my eyes go all floaty, trust my instincts, and hope for the best, so odds are good I sent at least a few legitimate comments to be with Jesus. Never fear; I’ll be installing more spam-blockage shortly, so if your comment didn’t make it, do resubmit. We value your feedback as only a group of incurable intellectual show-offs can.
Thus spake Evil Overload September 13, 2007 at 1:35 pm
How to keep yourself sane while working as a consultant:
Yes, you read that right. The Asshole Fee. What, you might ask, is an Asshole Fee? I developed it after I had been consulting for awhile. I will start by saying that 99.9% of my clients are fabulous. But every once in awhile, I work on a large project in which I work with multiple people outside of my regular client pool. And some of these people are assholes.
Thus spake Evil Overload August 21, 2007 at 5:39 am
First dog food, then toys, now pajamas:
The Warehouse, a New Zealand retailer, issued a recall at the weekend for children’s pyjamas made in China after two children were burned when their flannelette nightclothes caught fire.The New Zealand investigation is the first time that the safety of Chinese clothes has been called into question; concerns have been raised over a series of Chinese products in recent months, including toys, food and toothpaste. Last week, Mattel said it was recalling 18.2m toys globally because of hazards such as the use of lead paint.
If this keeps up, our trade deficit with China might be fixing itself shortly. Link
Thus spake Evil Overload August 20, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Aug. 20-27, 2007 - In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.
Does this mean you can bribe your way out of the Wheel of Death and Rebirth? Link
This article details some of the dangers to worldwide finance caused in recent years by overly clever financial wizardry. A fairly recent example of this is the rise of credit derivatives, which provided the financial incentive about five years ago for all the crazy mortgages, many of which are now in foreclosure, bringing about a growing global financial crisis:
The overall problems are structural, and include the greatly varying ratios between corporate debt loads and core earnings, which have grown substantially from four to six times over the past year because there are fewer legal clauses to protect investors from loss. They also keep companies from going bankrupt when they should. As long as interest rates have been low, leveraged loans. With these loans it is possible to buy a company with a very small have been the solution. Because of hedge funds and other financial instruments, there is now a market for incompetent and debt-ridden firms. When the Ford Motor Company announced last month that it was losing over $7bn annually, its bonds actually shot up 20%. The rules once associated with capitalism, such as probity and profit, no longer hold.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think this just goes to show what happens when you make money without adding value.
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.
The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
“The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While “@” is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out — which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta,” or “love him,” to Mandarin speakers.
Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people’s increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions.
Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like “King Osrina.”
Li did not say if officials accepted the “@” name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.
Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).
One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare “rong” character that gave newspaper editors headaches.
“Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who startled his neighbors when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathized with his technical frustrations.
Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a loud crash in the early hours of Saturday.
Officers found the street and pavement covered in electronic parts and discovered who the culprit was.
Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer.
“Who hasn’t felt like doing that?” said a police spokesman.
While escaping any official sanction the man was made to clear up the debris.
In the process of posting this, I realized that the lyrics to the Mickey Mouse Club opening song are the ideal anthem for a socialist regime. Eerie.
