“You got to leave your heart on, so you won’t get hurt!”
Author: Muttrox
Worst Rapping. Just the Worst.
This has to be the least artful metaphor I have heard in my life.
If I was an old school, fifty pound boombox (remember them?)
Would you hold me on your shoulder, wherever you walk?
Would you turn my volume up in front of the cops
And crank it higher every time they told you to stop
And all I ask is that you don’t get mad at me
When you have to purchase mad D batteries
Appreciate every mixtape your friends make
You never know we come and go like on the interstate
Congratulations Gym Class Heroes and Travis McCoy. And a special shout-out to Adam Levine, continuing to milk his talents for the last drop of mediocrity. Lord, it’s just awful.
Fourteen Reasons Why This is the Worst Congress Ever
Written by Ezra Klein. Wonderful collection, and dead on.
Links o’ Interest
How we die, 1900 – 2010.
Go to Google. Search on “askew”. Neat! You can also type “do a barrel roll” and here are some other tricks.
Darth Vader and Son. Cute.
21 unexplainable things found on dating sites
I’m a bus!
Paul McCartney and David Gilmour at a Led Zep show.
Color pictures of Russia 100 years ago. Truly another world.
The best part about this is that my kids don’t even understand what I’m looking at.
This is how a real Boston accent sounds.
From Love to Bingo. An amazing compilation movie of stock photos.
Jeremy, have some confidence
20 smartass replies to notes
Movie recreations in Lego
The answer was yes.
Here’s Holly with the weather. Giggle.
I miss Arrested Development
Photographs that shatter your image of famous people
Beastie Boys tribute
Personalised Insults. Suprisingly sophisticated engine
Just try not to laugh
Clever pictures with the moon
Some belated Isn’t it Ironic commentary
Debts, Deficits, and Spending: Yes, Obama has Reduced Spending.
There’s an argument whether Obama has reduced spending or not. The answer is yes. This answer seems counter-intuitive to many, so let’s run through it. There are two main points of dispute.
1) What years count? In particular, do you count 2009 towards Obama or Bush? Some try to put it under the Obama category, since he was President for almost all of that year (sworn in January 20th). However, the budget was set under Bush. Most reasonable people would categorize it under Bush.*
2) Spending is not the same as the debt. Go check out this chart from Wikipedia. Go ahead, click there now. I’ll wait. Are you back yet?
The basic issue is the confusion between spending and debt. Obama (or his mouthpieces) have never claimed that debt decreased or slowed. They claimed that spending did. Under Obama spending went down 2.4% in 2010. That’s the answer right there.
But at the same time the debt has increased massively. How can this happen? It happens because tax revenue was been extremely low. Debt = Revenue – Spending, right? If revenue goes down significantly, the debt grows. Tax revenue has been very low, primarily because of the Bush tax cuts and the economic recession. Next time someone brings up the debt, ask them “Since we are already reducing spending, do you support tax increases to reduce it?” Watch their heads explode.
To finish the educational portion of this post, the deficit is the accumulation of debt over time. Understanding the basic math of revenue, spending, debt, and deficit is essential to have an informed opinion about governmental priorities. It doesn’t hurt to understand your own personal finance either.
* What about the stimulus package? Most of it passed under Bush, but Obama added another $140 billion or so. If you add that in, you get the below chart:
I would welcome any 2011 numbers under the same methodologies to extend this out. The only reference I can easily find suggests that spending went wwwaayyy up in 2011.
Here’s another way of looking at this. Most people would like the US to have more of a “Tax Less, Spend Less” philosophy. Democrats are still perceived as “Tax and Spend”. To whatever degree that is true, the corrollary is the Republicans are the party of “Don’t Tax, and Still Spend”. Which is better?
Stop Saying “Happy 4th”
The holiday is Independence Day, not July 4th. It commemorates England’s colony deciding to secede, not an arbitrary calendar day. You don’t say “Happy 25th” on Christmas, do you? You don’t say “Happy 1st” on New Years Day, do you? You shouldn’t say it on Independence Day either.
Massachusetts is Wicked Pissa
This is a nice ode to how great Massachusetts is. As a proud product of a public school that seems superior to just about every private school graduate I’ve ever met (yeah, that’s us winning the nations 2012 Science Bowl), I heartily agree with this:
First up is education, the foundation of America’s meritocratic values and the key to whatever success the country will find in a globalized, knowledge-based economy. Massachusetts is renowned for its higher-education institutions. Less well known, though, is that the home of the original Tea Party also has the best schools in the country. On the most basic measures of educational achievement—fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading skills—Massachusetts tops the nation.
Education Week’s Quality Counts 2012 report expands on this success. On their overall index, Massachusetts ranks second, to Maryland. But on two of the index’s most important measures of results—a lifetime educational Chance for Success index, and a K-12 Achievement index that bundles metrics such as test results, year-on-year improvement, and the gap between poor and wealthier kids (perhaps the truest test of our fabled meritocracy)—the Bay State again leads the nation.
And most of the world. According to a 2011 Harvard study, while reading proficiency in Mississippi is comparable to Russia or Bulgaria, Massachusetts performs more like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea. Often better: Massachusetts students rank fifth in the world in reading, lapping Singapore and Japan, and needless to say, every state in the union. In math, Massachusetts slots in a global ninth, ahead of Japan and Germany. (Some international educational studies rank Shanghai and Hong Kong as separate countries; if this wasn’t done,
The Great Walt Disney World Loophole: Or How I Learned to Love the Rider Switch
If you have a child the right age, the child swap ticket (officially known as the rider switch) is amazing. You get on so many rides and skip so many lines, it’s like cheating.
Here’s how it works. You walk up to the line, children in tow. You show the worker that you have one little kid, so a parent has to stay behind and watch them. The worker will hand you a rider switch ticket. The idea is that since you had to wait, you get to skip the line later.
Why is the child swap ticket so good?
- It is good for up to three riders. Our family has two boys and a young girl. One parent would go with the boys, then the other parent would go with the boys via the child swap ticket. We would get six total rides, off of a five person family.
- It doesn’t count towards your Fastpasses. The above transaction only took three tickets. Our other two tickets can continue to accrue Fastpasses at the same time.
- It can be cashed any time that day. Whereas a Fastpass has a specific time window of when it can be redeemed, the child swap ticket is good throughout the entire day. This means that you cans skip merrily through the lines even at peak hours.
Get to the park early. Start getting your Fastpasses. Start using them. Each time through the line (whether regular or Fastpass), get a rider switch ticket. Within two hours, you should easily be able to (1) get on the busiest and best rides a few times, (2) have a standard stack of Fastpasses, and (3) have a stack of rider switch tickets. Between the rider switch and Fastpass tickets, your are sitting pretty.
Links o’ Interest
Texts from Hillary. Hilarious. She is cool about it. Her husband does not inspire the same reaction, but c’mon Obama, did you have to take it out on Stephen. But ya gotta love him, 218 reasons to vote for Obama, from Forbes.
O no! Tony!
Harry Potter, with the save
Honest t-shirt
Let me get that for you
Automobile polo, from the good ol’ days
Scare yourself every day – 365 days of doing something that scares you.
That’s not snow. That’s spiderwebs.
Honestly false advertising
Truth is laid on Batman
Texts from dog. Brilliant.
Ethan Albright’s letter to John Madden
Links o’ Interest
Krusty the Clown as a child
How to piss off a frog
(Not) understanding Miles Per Hour. I imagine they broke up soon after.
Rock and Roll map
Incredible pic of the Southern Lights from the International Space Station
Batman cruising in Maryland
The man who broke Atlantic City
Links o’ Interest
218 reasons to vote for Obama, from Forbes
Anger Issues
Harry Potter, with the save
Honest t-shirt
Let me get that for you
There’s the guy Daddy!
Automobile polo, from the good ol’ days
Scare yourself every day – 365 days of doing something that scares you.
The end of the world
TSA body scanners are worthless. Just paint contraband black.
That’s not snow. That’s spiderwebs.
Honestly false advertising
Truth is laid on Batman
Ethan Albright’s letter to John Madden
Book Reccomendations
Nurture Shock:: What is the latest science saying about parenting? A lot. And you don’t know most of it. How does language acquisition actually work? You know sleep is important, but how important. Having your kids lie to you can be a good thing. Each chapter takes a slice and educates you. The only bad part about this book is the realization of how many things you are doing wrong because you didn’t know any better.
Catch me if You Can: You’ve seen the movie. The book is better.
Theodore Roosevelt: It is impossible to convey how interesting a man Theodore Roosevelt was. A man who started the national parks, started anti-trusts, was an active combatant in the Spanish-American war and can make a reasonable claim to having personally won it, Nobel Peace Prize winner, tracked down smugglers through the wastelands of Dakota, had the highest approval ratings ever recorded (above 90%), built America’s Navy into a world power, a professional historian and naturalist, and was easily our sexiest president. And more. Yes, all that and more. I linked to one book of the Edmund Morris trilogy, but all three should be read.
I Love you Beth Cooper: I never stopped laughing. Easily one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.
The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. A comprehensive look at Cancer throughout human history, and the attempts to treat it. A seemingly boring topic is anything but, as the struggle has been going on for hundreds of years, and pits all of humanities cleverness against a wily and implacable adversary. As time goes on, treatments become less about the person than about their cels and genes. Because of this, the last third of the book is more dry and scientific, and harder to understand. (Except for Mrs. Muttrox, who was making corrections in the margins.)