How the airlines hate you

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James Fallows has a post over at the Atlantic noting how often a “mileage award” seat was available from each of several airlines.

The clear winner? Southwest, at 99.3%. Continental didn’t do TOO badly at 71.4% (they’re also the highest ranked major/traditional US carrier); United is right behind them at 68.6%. American notches 57.9%, and at the bottom, we find Delta with 12.9% and USAir with 10.7%.

“At some point you have to wonder, is it even possible to be too shameless for cable news?”

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Radley “The Agitator” Balko points out just how little fact-checking happens on cable TV, and how brazen and shameless one can be in exploiting this fact. Wendy Murphy has made a career of being absurdly, obnoxiously wrong in ways that cannot be accidental — and yet she continues to get invited onto shows where she can spew her bullshit. And she doesn’t care. And she’s not alone.

Mieville on Abrams

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This seems just about right to me:

I’ve never met [JJ Abrams]. I am not a member of his fan club or anti-fan club. I disliked Cloverfield a very great deal. I disliked Star Trek intensely. I thought it was terrible. And I think part of my problem is that I feel like the relationship between JJ Abrams’ projects and geek culture is one of relatively unloving repackaging – sort of cynical. I taste contempt in the air. Now I’m not a child – I know that all big scifi projects are suffused with the contempt of big money for its own target audience. But there’s something about [JJ’s projects] that makes me particularly uncomfortable. As compared to somebody like Joss Whedon, who – even when there are misfires – I feel likes me and loves me and is on some cultural level my brother and comrade. And I don’t feel that way about JJ Abrams.

Daddy, Where Did Madden Come From?

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I’m glad you asked. This long-form history of the game franchise that made EA is well worth your time.

Some gems from late in the article:

When Madden left the Raiders, he took a job at the University of California, offering a course called “Football For Fans.” Three decades later, he’s still teaching. In a way, so is his game. Current Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris told game producers that playing “Madden” has influenced the way he runs his team. Before scoring a game-winning touchdown last season, Denver Broncos receiver Brandon Stokley killed clock by running parallel to the goal line, an unconventional move familiar only to anyone who has ever picked up a control pad. Years ago, Madden wanted his namesake to resemble a television broadcast; by the late 1990s, network producers were flipping the script, deploying skycams and electronic first-down markers, peddling their own brand of hyperreal entertainment. Life imitating art.

[…]

Talk turns back to real football. The Super Bowl. Indianapolis versus New Orleans. In the first half, Saints coach Sean Payton went for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal, eschewing a “gimme” field goal. He opened the second half with an onside kick. Madden watched the whole thing from his California studio, incredulous and oddly transfixed. Even now, two months later, the old coach knows exactly what he was seeing.

“I was thinking, ‘S—,'” Madden marveled, “‘this guy is playing a video game!'”

Oh, Right-wing nutjobs, you never disappoint

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Some of you are probably already aware of Conservapedia, the Schlafly-backed counterpoint to the supposed “liberal bias” of Wikipedia.

Obviously, such an undertaking — especially by folks who think the King James Bible needs to be retranslated to purge liberal bias — is bound to be chock full of hilarity, but nothing I’ve seen there so far prepared me for their new crusade: Insisting that General and Special Relativity are Liberal Conspiracies.

I Am Not Making This Up.

A Word On Pending Comments

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I’ve been away for 2 weeks, and took a definite break on comment management during that time. I’ve just approved a big batch of comments, but I won’t be leaping back and rejoining any of those threads. I’m sure my antagonists will find something new to argue with me about in the near term. ;)

This is what happens when we keep hiring ignorant, useless fucks as security guards and cops

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Assaulted by penny-ante Miami rentacops. Fortunately, this photographer had the good sense to have OTHER photographers on site.

We walked through the parking lot of the Douglas Road Metrorail Station and purchased tickets. Dobbs and I then walked inside through the turnstile with me holding up my Canon TX1. The rest of the news crew remained outside.

Within seconds, I was accosted by the female security guard as well as the male security guard wearing a black beret and a single latex glove who knocked the camera from my hand.

I demanded my camera but he refused to give it back.

Then I remembered I had my iPhone, so I started shooting video with that, which prompted the female security to get in my face.

She even lifted her fist up a couple of times as if she was going to strike me.

The male guard then came after me and I also tried walking away from him while videotaping.

But when he struck me, I struck back instinctively.

He then pulled out a metal baton and came after me with it.

I stepped outside the station and he sat down to tend to his lip.

Miami-Dade detectives who arrived on the scene were considering charging me with battery until they saw the footage shot by the news crew.

After two hours of talking to cops, my camera was returned to me, minus a battery that somehow got lost.

If you wear a badge of any kind and abuse your authority, real or imaginary (as is the case with these doofuses), some criminal multiplier must apply.

There is no part of this that isn’t AWESOME

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Radioactive Boars Rampaging Through Germany.

Boars are a fucking menace even without radioactivity. I once put three .30-30 rounds into a sow and still saw her run off. They root around, destroy trees and crops, and are actually one of the only dangerous mammals still left in southern forests. Adding radioactivity — and, no doubt, the superpowers that this creates — can only mean certain doom for all mankind.

FBI? Meet the law.

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The FBI is apparently trying to keep Wikipedia from using its seal in the article for same, and are blatantly misconstruing the relevant laws in their saber-rattling letter to the Foundation.

Fortunately, it turns out that the Foundation has actual, learned attorneys onstaff, who told the Feds to get stuffed.

Other organizations might simply back down. But Wikipedia sent back a politely feisty response, stating that the bureau’s lawyers had misquoted the law. “While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version” that the F.B.I. had provided.

Translation: “What you wish the law was has no bearing here.”

Michael Godwin, the general counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote, “we are prepared to argue our view in court.” He signed off, “with all appropriate respect.”

Translation: “DIAF”.

It gets even cooler when you realize who wrote the Wikimedia Foundation’s response.

This is delightful

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In the 70s, [James Williamson][1] played guitar and shared songwriting duties with Iggy and the Stooges, most notably on on the seminal Raw Power record. The band subsequently broke up, despite the success of Raw Power, and Williamson went back to school before, eventually, joining Sony for the bulk of his electrical engineering career.

Last year, Sony was issuing early retirements, and Williamson took one. The Stooges had of course reformed around 2003, but when Williamson couldn’t rejoin them they’d used their original guitarist Ron Asheton — who died suddenly around the same time Williamson retired, and all of a sudden a former Sony VP was back playing punk rock again (Video link, but short and worth it).

The Stupid! It Burns!

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The vaccination rate is low enough in some place to produce whooping cough epidemics.

A statewide whooping cough epidemic has not changed how Danielle Lawson of San Anselmo feels about vaccinating her 5-1/2-month-old daughter.

Lawson has declined almost all of the standard vaccines recommended for infants, including DTaP, which protects against whooping cough.

“I haven’t categorically ruled them out,” she said. “But I just think at this point she’s too young, and her immune system is still developing. Nothing goes into my baby right now, except for breast milk, so I don’t feel comfortable injecting her with strange chemicals.”

[…]

Unfortunately, public health advocates say, the consequences of rejecting vaccination are not strictly personal. Widespread vaccinations not only make disease outbreaks less likely, but they also help protect vulnerable populations like newborns who are too young to get shots.

“Anything that leaves people unimmunized and unprotected, thereby reducing the overall rate of protection in the community, would be a contributing factor when you have an outbreak,” said Dr. Fred Schwartz, Marin County’s public health officer.

Parents who do have their children vaccinated are troubled by others opting out, fearing outbreaks of disease.

“This is the first one to hit us, but how long until we have a chicken pox outbreak, or mumps or polio?” said Sara Sonnet of San Rafael, a mother of two young girls who are both fully immunized. “We take it for granted.”

The article concludes with this winner: “Others remain unconvinced. Lawson now avoids taking her daughter to the pediatrician, taking her to see a chiropractor instead.”

More on Sherrod

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Rachel Maddow pretty much destroys Fox and their embrace of the Sherrod controversy, and subsequent (and ongoing) blatant hypocrisy.

When the Brietbart injected this bullshit into the mediasphere, Fox couldn’t contain their glee, and led the charge to get Sherrod dismissed. Their full court press was positively frothy. But we shouldn’t be surprised that, once the whole thing blew up, and people saw the whole, unedited tape, and it became clear that Sherrod’s speech was in no way racist, Fox changed their tune — this time, tut-tutting that the Obama Administration had jumped the gun in firing Sherrod, and expressing outrage at anyone would rush to judgement without getting the facts straight.

We’ve been through years of this with the doofuses at Fox, but it still astonishes me that they are so craven and so clearly uninterested in actual journalism.

Squirrel or Stoat?

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Um:

Twelve bottles of The End Of History ale have been made and placed inside seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare.

And at 55 per cent volume, its makers claim it is the world’s strongest beer.

More here and at the manufacturer’s site, where we find this:

This 55% beer should be drank in small servings whilst exuding an endearing pseudo vigilance and reverence for Mr Stoat. This is to be enjoyed with a weather eye on the horizon for inflatable alcohol industry Nazis, judgemental washed up neo-prohibitionists or any grandiloquent, ostentatious foxes.

What better way to say “I have given up?”

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How about a wine glass that holds a full bottle? Check out the first Amazon review:

I am the third trimester of my pregnancy and I have put myself on bed rest. Any little convenience that helps with repetitive movement is a blessing, as staying in a relaxed state is critical to the well being of both mommy and baby. So having a large glass that negates the need for repetitive pouring of a wine bottle is one of those tiny little aids that helps add up to a state of relaxation. The only thing that could have improved this would have been the inclusion of a very long straw.

Excellent.

Dear Lt. Gov. Dewhurst: You’re an Idiot.

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Last month, Texas Lt. Gov. Dewhurst insisted publicly that Phoenix, Arizona was second only to Mexico City in kidnappings.

Some journalists investigated, and found that (as expected) this was horseshit, and then said so, which irked Dewhurst.

“This is regrettably a new low for the Austin American-Statesman and for this particular group,” Dewhurst told NPR. “It shouldn’t be in the newspaper. It should be on the editorial page. I mean, for heaven’s sake.”

No, buddy, I don’t think so. Fact-checking politicians is exactly what belongs on the FRONT page, right where the American-Stateman put it. We live in a world where it’s astonishingly easy to do basic research; maybe you should try that before you go shooting your mouth off for political gain.

Undercover Karaoke

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Funny Or Die isn’t always funny, but that’s kind of clear in the name, right? Anyway, this is one of those times. Precis: What would happen if a famous singer put on a disguise and sand their own songs at karaoke? Jewel finds out. It sounds hokey, but it’s sort of delightful.