Sense and Nonsense

Proud of My Congressman

Go, Barney!

And here is a sensible comment on Barney's riposte.

"Scholars of Confusion"

Also from the Times "Education" supplement today, see this short piece by Walter Kirn, which illuminates what is wrong with so much of what passes for "scholarship" and education in contemporary universities.

Anointed with Oil

Good lord.   The world is full of lunatics.
Take a look at the blessing of the Big Three SUVs in Detroit.

Olympian Swimmer

by Patrick Moberg

Word Clouds

You've seen "word clouds," which represent visually the importance or weight given to different words or terms in a text, so that more frequently used words appear larger in the cloud.

Here's a website that creates word clouds out of text you provide. 

Write your sweetie a love letter and then attach a word cloud, proving that it's not a myth that you use the word   "earlobe" altogether too often.   

Write George Bush a letter and then attach a word cloud of the letter's text, showing him how big the word "asshole" is in the word cloud.

(Let's distort the outcome here: Bush asshole Bush asshole Bush asshole Bush asshole.)

Here's what the text above looks like as a word cloud:

Better Than You

Much.

Get your Script Now

I've got my prescription, but I haven't started taking it yet.  Duh.

Bush's EPA Throws in the Towel

This is an older news item from The Onion, but the message is timeless (or, at least, it's timely for as long as Bush is in office).

WASHINGTON, DC—Days after unveiling new power-plant pollution regulations that rely on an industry-favored market-trading approach to cutting mercury emissions, EPA Acting Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that the agency will remove the "E" and "P" from its name. "We're not really 'environmental' anymore, and we certainly aren't 'protecting' anything," Johnson said. "'The Agency' is a name that reflects our current agenda and encapsulates our new function as a government-funded body devoted to handling documents, scheduling meetings, and fielding phone calls." The change comes on the heels of the Department of Health and Human Services' January decision to shorten its name to the Department of Services.

Get Yourself a Gardener

This may not come as a news flash to you, but to me it's a revelation.  Apparently, there's just no end to the joy you can feel when you find people to do pleasurable things in your stead. For example, here's a great article that explains the enjoyment you can get from having a gardener.  Need convincing?  Well, here's a taste:

• Spending time in the garden has really changed my outlook on life. Seeing a fellow human come into such commune with the delicacies of nature, hour after hour, day after day, just to grow flowers to make the view from your window slightly prettier to look at—well, it really makes you enjoy looking out that window that much more.

Of course, there are drawbacks and difficulties.

• Getting decent help is never easy, and trying to cultivate a good gardener can be a nightmare. It never ends! And once you finally get your gardener just the way you want him, there's still all that actual gardening work left to watch being done by him.

But, ultimately, the pleasures are worth the effort.  Truly.

• There's just nothing like the feeling of working with your hands, gesturing this way and that, ordering a gardener around in the great gated outdoors. I've even grown to appreciate that clichéd summer drink, ice-cold lemonade. You can never truly realize how refreshing it is until you've spent a long, hot day watching someone get dirt under their fingernails.

Cocker at Woodstock

For those of you old enough to remember Joe Cocker, here's a very funny video that adds subtitles to his performance at Woodstock in 1969.  [Sue thinks the funniest thing about this is the way it verifies her sense that he always looked so spastic when he performed.]

Enjoy.