brainrow

A retro-style campaign ad, via Bob Geiger:

You know we’ve let them take the test too long.
They’ve gotten all the answers wrong.

What you gotta do, see, is make sure you’re the guy defining the words. Via Boing Boing:

Via Boing Boing: Last week a Texas man asked his daughter’s school district to drop Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s novel about a future world where “firemen” don’t fight fires, but burn books.

“It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read “Fahrenheit 451.” “The words don’t need to be brought out in class. I want to get the book taken out of the class.”

Last week, you may recall, was the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. How much do you suppose the ALA had to pay Mr. Verm to illustrate the problem so effectively?

This is not an ad. I haven’t bought anything from this vendor. I just like this sticker from Progressive Passion, that’s all.

I’m still thinking Nixon, but Bush keeps moving up.

How will the “moral values” Republicans talk their way out of the Mark Foley scandal and cover-up? How will they avoid charges of hypocrisy? Over on Fox News, the O’Reilly Factor has the answer: just label Foley as a Democrat. Quick. Easy. Almost subliminal.

But nobody tops Rush Limbaugh:

There are things that will offend liberals. Or are there? ’Cause I continue to ask, are they really offended by this? How many of them wish that they were in on the action?

Notice how blissfully free of content Limbaugh is. He doesn’t have to offer any evidence that any liberals “wish they were in on the action,” because he never actually says they do. He just “continues to ask,” that’s all.

Last night, MSNBC’s Countdown without Keith Olbermann brought together a lot of Republican talking points:

Update: I thought Fox labeling Foley a Democrat was a simple slip-up, but maybe not. It’s never smart to give Fox the benefit of the doubt.

From CNET, this quote of the day:

At a public hearing in Los Angeles Tuesday before the Federal Communications Commission, consumer groups, civil rights leaders, independent content producers, journalists and the like argued that media consolidation is killing creativity and diversity.

“Homogenization is good for milk,” said Patric Verrone, president of Writers Guild of America, West. “But it’s bad for ideas.”

Surely everybody agrees with that.

I need this:

Sharp has produced a 64-inch LCD monitor that provides screen resolution four times that of normal high-definition screens. Normal HD screens have 2 million pixel points. The new Sharp monitor, which is on display at the Ceatec technology trade show here this week, sports 4,096-by-2,160 pixel-line resolution — double the number of vertical and horizontal pixel lines offered by a normal HD screen. This comes out to nearly 9 million pixel points.

…

The screen, still in the development phase, will be targeted at film and television producers as well as medical researchers, a Sharp representative said. The exhibit is one of the more popular at the weeklong trade show taking place outside Tokyo. But eventually, these technologies trickle down to the consumer market.

Now! Now! Now! Now! NOW!

Other prototypes being shown include a screen with a technology Sharp calls Mega Contrast. The screen has a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio. Typical HD LCD screens sport a 1,200-to-1 contrast ratio.

I hate technology. It brings out the worst in me.

Let me get this straight: No plan for victory. Detailed plan for victory celebration?

Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.