No, dumbass, we're not a high-tax country

So, this is not new information, or a new chart, but it's new to me! This chart, or collection of charts, comes from the Center for American Progress from back in June. I would go on here about how the politicians have been lying, blah, blah, blah, but you already know that. Don't you? Please tell me you already know that.

How to respond to a threatening letter from a lawyer

So, here's a little gem of a letter from 1974 (via Legal Antics). The first image is a letter sent by a lawyer to the Cleveland Browns. The second image is their response. If you ask me, this should be the standard answer to every letter you ever get from a lawyer.

The original letter:

And the response:

The Sith who Stole Christmas

So, as you emerge from your four-day food coma, I'd like to welcome you back with this piece of awesomeosity, which is a well matched mash-up of Boris Karloff and the Boris Karloff of the Star Wars universe.

Enjoy.

How to fix the Miss America Pageant

So, remember last year's Miss America Pageant? Let me remind you. We were treated to Alyse Eady, Miss Arkansas, whose talent was singing "I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart," including the yodeling, through the use of two ventriloquist dummies. AND SHE DIDN"T WIN!

Ventriloquist yodeling, people. Here's the video:



Anyway, the fact that she didn't win obviously points to the deep corruption at the core of our socio-economico-pageanto-political system. However, the fact that she came in second is reason to hope for the future. In the vein of that hope, I humbly suggest that next year's pageant involve a group talent competition. I furthermore suggest, nay, demand, that one of the groups do an act like the one in the next video.

This video features the Warriors of Goja on an Indian talent show and comes here via Kottke.org. Jason Kottke notes:

I've been on the web for 17 years now, I'm a professional link finder, and I have never in my life seen anything like these guys performing on an Indian talent show. They *start off* by biting into fluorescent light bulbs and it just gets more nuts from there.

Note: best viewed with the volume up.



There is no one out there who can honestly say that ten Miss America contestants jumping through columns of fluorescent lightbulbs and hitting each other with sledgehammers would not be the greatest television event in history.

Also, is there someone who can translate what the female judge says to them at the end? Anyone? Tanmoy? Anyone?

Tower of Lego

So, Happy Thanksgiving (belatedly to Canadian readers).

I thought this was awesome. From Robbie and Bobby.

Mitt Romney in his own words

So, you may have heard about Mitt Romney's first paid campaign ad, in which he quotes Obama as saying "If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose."

Of course, in context, what Obama actually said was this: "Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.'"

Well, here's an awesome video of Romney quotes whipped up by the folks at Think Progress, noting that this is Romney in his own words, by his own standards:



via The Atlantic Wire.

Monday Linkasaurolophus: November 21, 2011

So, originally, I had been hoping to write a follow-up post on everything that has happened in the wake of the UC Davis pepper spray incident. However, two things. First, everyone else and their mother has covered the UC Davis thing in far more depth than I would be able to do. Second, xkcd released this epic infographic on money, which makes putting anything else on the internet feel sort of pointless.

Instead, let me just point to a few Occupy UC Davis links:

Over at phylogenomics, Jonathan Eisen has tons of pictures from UC Davis, and has reposted a lot of the open letters that have been written to Chancellor Linda Katehi. He also has an impressive compilation of links on the topic here.

The most moving of the open letters that I have seen is the one written by UC Davis Professor Cynthia Carter Ching addressed to the students. Read the whole thing here. Excerpt:

So, to all of you, my students, I’m so sorry.  I’m sorry we didn’t protect you.  And I’m sorry we left the wrong people in charge.

And to my colleagues, I ask you, no, I implore you, to join with me in rolling up our sleeves, gritting our teeth, and getting back to the business of running this place the way it ought to be run.  Because while our students have been bravely chanting for a while now that it’s their university (and they’re right), it’s also ours.  It’s our university.   And as such, let’s make sure that the inhuman brutality that occurred on this campus last Friday can never happen again.  Not to our students.  And not at our university.

The other must-read piece on the subject is by Alexis Madrigal in the Atlantic. It rightly points out that by focusing too much on the individual cop who did the spraying, we miss everything that is wrong with the system, and the fact that the cops are, in a sense, victims of the same broken system.

Over at Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin had been covering pretty much all of the crucial OWS happenings. If you have any interest in the Occupy movement at all, you should be following her at Boing Boing and on Twitter. For just one example, here is an interview with one of the students who was pepper sprayed.

Also check out Boing Boing's Occupy Lulz photo collection, which features the meme-ified pepper-spraying Lt. John Pike heavily, but not exclusively. Here's the most recent addition at the time of this posting:

For a more exhaustive collection, check out the Pepperspaying Cop Tumblr.