Some limb!

David Zaslav of Discovery predicted that a company would sell a package of cable channels via the Internet at some point.

At some point.

Okay, it's just a caption. Maybe there's more context in the article.

Google Chrome is the new Internet Explorer

Remember the irritations of the 1990s, when sites all too often behaved differently when visited with different browsers, and some wouldn't work at all unless you used the increasingly non-standards-compliant browser from the most powerful software company of the day?

Boo hiss for today's Google Doodle:

[ + ]

Dude, I'm using the latest version of Firefox. That IS a modern browser, and this Doodle doesn't do anything in that. And no, I am not going to visit your home page using Chrome.

When you're even pissing off your fanboys, you're doing it wrong.

Huh. All this time, I thought "arse" rhymed with "farce."

British and Australian readers, please advise. Ben Yagoda says:

Arse and ass look different in print. However, in Britain, where non-rhotic (that is, silent r) pronunciation is the standard, they would sound the same.

(Many of his commenters dispute his assertion.)

Bring plenty of popcorn ...

... when you go to read the story of the family feud and consequent beans-spilling about the financial schemes and opulent lifestyle of the Crouch family, founders and owners of TBN, "the world’s largest Christian television network."

[ + ]

But also remember that tidbits like these, from the article and accompanying slide show, …

Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have his-and-her mansions one street apart in a gated community here, provided by the network using viewer donations and tax-free earnings. But Mrs. Crouch, 74, rarely sleeps in the $5.6 million house with tennis court and pool. She mostly lives in a large company house near Orlando, Fla., where she runs a side business, the Holy Land Experience theme park. Mr. Crouch, 78, has an adjacent home there too, but rarely visits. Its occupant is often a security guard who doubles as Mrs. Crouch’s chauffeur.

[...]

Mrs. Crouch with her two Maltese dogs, constant companions. In 2008 and 2009, she rented adjacent rooms in a hotel, one for herself and another for the dogs and her clothes, according to Ms. Koper and Troy Clements, a former executive at the Holy Land Experience. She kept a costly motor home, originally purchased to serve as an office, for two years as an air-conditioned sanctuary for her pets, two former employees said.

[...]

“My job as finance director was to find ways to label extravagant personal spending as ministry expenses,” Ms. Koper [a granddaughter of the Crouches] said. This is one way, she said, the company avoids probing questions from the I.R.S. She said that the absence of outsiders on TBN’s governing board — currently consisting of Paul, Janice and Matthew Crouch — had led to a serious lack of accountability for spending.

Ms. Koper and two former TBN employees also said that dozens of staff members, including Ms. Koper, chauffeurs, sound engineers and others had been ordained as ministers by TBN. This, she said, allowed the network to avoid paying Social Security taxes on their salaries and made it easier to justify providing family members with rent-free houses, sometimes called “parsonages.” Colby May, a lawyer representing TBN, said the network ordained people who felt a true “ministerial call.”

… are a thoroughly unsurprising outcome of allowing "churches" and other "religious activities" to go untaxed.

__________

P.S. The Holy Land Experience theme park charges admission, of course, but if all the preaching of the prosperity gospel makes you feel like the ticket prices just don't soak you enough, you'll be happy to learn that you can help in other ways.

Truth in advertising? Or just a Freudian slip?

Bit by bit, my faith in humanity is restored

"I can cast out either one of your demons, but not both of them." — the XORcist.

↑David Gillen, RTed by Henry Farrell.

(?)

Both Sides Are Just As Bad™®©, continued

Ah, yes. The Heartland Institute. A monument to budding astroturfers everywhere.

Heard about their latest billboard campaign?

In opening the campaign, Heartland had said that Mr. Kaczynski would not be the only persona gazing down on Chicago’s commuters. Among his brethren would be Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee, the institute said.

[...]

The institute chose to feature “some of the world’s most notorious killers” on the billboards “because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the ‘mainstream’ media and liberal politicians say about global warming,” Heartland said at its Web site.

The institute’s site did acknowledge that “not all global warming alarmists are murderers and tyrants.”

So we got that going for us.

Which is nice.

(h/t: KK, via email)

(previously)

Line of the Day: 2012-05-04

One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
    -- Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

Which, y'know, is not news to you. But I found it rather impressive that this appears in a book written by a couple of long-time Beltway insiders, one from the palace of center-rightism and the other from The American Enterprise Institute.

The comedy begins when one of the permanently cowed crowd over at Nice Polite Republicans | Morning Edition, whence the above was obtained, does his tote-baggin' best to make the Both Sides Are Just As Bad argument, since a portion of the book talks about the MSM compounding the problem by pretending that Both Sides Are Just As Bad.

Longer excerpts from It's Even Worse Than It Looks are available here and here. The second link is worth visiting just to see the wingnuts furiously giving it a one-star review.

Happy National Day of Reason!

Okay, a day late. But Pete Stark, Mayor Anthony Foxx of Charlotte, NC and the city council of New Orleans all deserve shoutouts nonetheless.

Even if the phrase "One Nation Under God" is enshrined in the Constitution and the now-annual National Day of Reason was just some sop tossed to a fringe group in 1952, I mean.

Ah, yes. The shining light upon the hill.

[ + ]

I think the teevees are especially spot-on.

As one measure of how the US is seen by many outside its borders, note (by hovering over the thumbnails) the number of non-English language sites where this image appears.

(h/t: Mathis Amicucci/Diaspora)

Van Jones: "Rebuild the Dream"

This talk at Google, which just got posted yesterday, is well worth your time, particularly if you are one of those people whose attitude is more or less Remember what it felt like in 2008? And now …? Meh.

(alt. video link)

You might also have a look at the website RebuildTheDream.com and the book of the same name [Powells | B&N | Amazon].

Predictions are hard, especially about the future

Even for renowned science fiction authors.

Here is John Scalzi speaking at Google on 27 April 2007, just five short years ago. Start listening at 18:28 and let it run for about five minutes.

(alt. video link)

No diss, and I'm sure he's had this pointed out before. I also think he's an insightful guy about a whole lot of things. I just thought this was kind of funny.

If you're paranoid about Zuckerberg, this probably won't help

On the surface, sure, it seems like a good idea.

The company announced a plan on Tuesday morning to encourage everyone on Facebook to start advertising their donor status on their pages, along with their birth dates and schools — a move that it hopes will create peer pressure to nudge more people to add their names to the rolls of registered organ donors.

What about that, Paul Ford? Think Mark wants to resell your kidneys?

A grain of common sense from the NFL? Nah. It's probably just about the money.

There was a brief flurry a few days ago over hints that the National Football League is considering doing away with the Pro Bowl. Do we care? I doubt it. I don't think I've ever watched it. But this picture is definitely worth sharing.

[ + ]

(h/t: Danger Guerrero/Kissing Suzy Kolber)

__________

P.S. If you're wondering how I ended up on a site called "Kissing Suzy Kolber," it was due to Googling and Deadspin, after seeing her heretofore unfamiliar name mentioned, in a more weighty piece about one of my favorite sportswriters, Joe Posnanski.

Rarely is the question asked: is our government officials learning?

Maybe! From an article about a terrorism trial currently underway, in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, NY:

“As you apply a law enforcement model to these cases, people always cooperate,” said Anthony S. Barkow, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in terrorism cases and now works in private practice. “It took a long time in organized crime; it is taking less time with national security.”

[...]

“The federal courts are not just about providing due process and protecting defendants’ rights,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who focuses on national security. “There is an information-producing function that allows the public to see how terrorists act and how the government acts to prosecute these terrorists.”

He added, “That’s something that we lose when we deal with more secretive processes like military commissions.”

Line of the Day: 2012-04-26

Vatican laments Irish dissent, silences priests

What, you want context?

Okay, here's the lede, with a little added emph.:

DUBLIN, IRELAND -- Just weeks after a report from a Vatican inquiry into the Irish church lamented what it described as “fairly widespread” dissent from church teaching, it was revealed that the Vatican has “silenced” Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery.

The Holy See’s move provoked fury among the members of the 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests, which has accused the Vatican of issuing a fatwa against liberal clerics.

As KK says, it's not just the nuns.

(The nuns?)

The Disgraced Former Speaker of the House: an update

From the Department of Hate To Say I Told You So, But I Frickin' Told You So:

Newt Gingrich is preparing to make the transition from forgotten-but-not-gone to gone-and-hopefully-forgotten by dropping his presidential campaign next week. And he’s doing it in good Reagan-and-Bush-era Republican fashion – carrying on about fiscal responsibility while piling up a nice fat budget deficit.

Mr. Gingrich currently has $4.3 million in debt, according to TPM Muckraker – about 20 percent of his Gross Campaign Product, which puts him in Greece territory. He has more debt than any other failed Republican presidential candidate since 1992.

Emph. added. Not that you needed it.

[Added] Interesting tidbit from the quoted TPM Muckraker link:

Tim Pawlenty closed out with $435,542 in debts which was paid off by Mitt Romney affiliates.

Hmmm! There aren't many people blander than ol' Wonder Bread Willard, but that guy who is known only for having a mullet longer than anyone else on the planet, who (Some would say) was scared out of the race by whispers that Mr. Mitch Charisma Daniels might jump in, is certainly on the short list.

Developing ...

Gearhead

A four-minute clip from Mechanical Principles, a 1930 film by Ralph Steiner, excerpted and set to some new music by VertikalDesign.

(alt. video link)

The music is "Little Boy," by 3 Liquid Hz.

(h/t: Don McArthur)

A startup I'd love to work for [Updated]

Planetary Resources, Inc. (website | Twitter | Google+ | YouTube | Facebook) will be making a public announcement today at 10:30 am PDT, which will stream live on Spacevidcast.

While you're waiting, here's an article about them in the NYT.

[Update] The live broadcast was recorded and posted to YouTube. I watched it live. It's pretty exciting in parts, if you're of a mind like mine when it comes to this sort of thing.

"American electoral politics: a brief introduction"

An oldish Bérubé piece that I somehow missed when it came out a year and a half ago. But! Nothing has changed!

Hard to believe Jonah Goldberg is only ...

... sixth runner-up on Atrios's list of Wankers of the Decade. Ah, well, Pareene didn't think very little of him, either.

Thanks to hat-tippee Henry Farrell, who also gave me a bonus: I now know that there is (should be) a Krauthammer Unit! Which sort of gives away the winner, doesn't it?

Women care about Rick Santorum! They really, really do!

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd

Swiped from Veracity Stew.

ALEC goes mainstream!

Not to make this all about me (because who would stand for such a thing, on a blog?), but in less than a month, ALEC has gone from an organization I'd never heard of to the front page of the New York Times.

Not that I can imagine a scenario where you'd ever want to, but ...

... just in case:

(h/t: Belinda Del Pesco, via email. And I'm pretty sure she sent it because she knew the improper letter casing would really grind my gears.)

Gmail has had enough of my switching back to the old look

Some time in the past hour, I guess they ran out of patience. The new look showed up, and this time, there was no option to switch back. Oh, well. At least they added a settings switch for text labels on the buttons.

Space-nerd porn!

360° panorama of a space shuttle cockpit. In addition to allowing you to spin all around, it's amazingly zoomable, too.

(Controls are in the upper left corner. The + and - weren't immediately obvious to me when I first got there.)

(h/t: FlightAware)

Bipolar

(h/t: your new Wonkette)

Anyone want "12 weeks of complimentary digital access" to the NYT?

First come, first served.* Send me an email or DM. New subscribers only, it sez. And remember that you already get free access if you're getting home delivery of the paper paper.

[Update] Sorry if you wanted it. Already claimed.

*(Unless I don't like you.)

Senior moment

So, while I'm driving to the grocery store, I'm got the Mavs-Lakers game on. Pull into the lot, get momentarily distracted by someone bent on T-boning me, hear the announcer say, "… and West makes the shot!"

For one brief, terrifying moment, I thought he meant Jerry.

Sorry about that, Delonte.

Make it stop

Bad moment at the grocery store (click to make it more obese):

[ + ]

So, how many people are just going to be cramming handfuls of these, figuring they're Doing The Right Thing?

"Attractive winter promotion!"

Just got a piece of spam with that in the subject line. No doubt some Republican will see this as an opportunity to bash the USPS.