Monkey Gone to Heaven

When I was a kid I would get anxious, comforted or nonplussed by certain numbers. Some primes particularly scared me, i.e. 13, 23 and 43. Other than the number 3 or 36 I wasn’t all that comfortable with anything involving a 3. Now, I can’t explain how I developed these weird superstitions. Perhaps some of it was absorbed from TV or something. I felt 777 was a good number that bodes well. Lou’s 3 monkeys post combined with the Dow reminds me of a classic I’ve posted here before.



If God is 7 maybe He will save us?
Sherman McCoy (NSFW) doesn’t seem to think so.
I had a Kaluha. And I realized that I… like you, my friends… don’t need no fudge-factor first-order-approximation God no more. He is no use to us. Let us take one step towards the Übermensch and not invoke such silliness in our thoughts any more.

There was a guy
An underwater guy who controlled the sea
Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
From New York and New Jersey

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

The creature in the sky
Got sucked in a hole now
There's a hole in the sky
And the ground's not cold
And if the ground's not cold
Everything is going to burn
We'll all take turns
I'll get mine, too

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

Rock me, Joe!

If man is 5
If man is 5
If man is 5

Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6

And if the devil is 6
Then God is 7
And God is 7
And God is 7

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
12 more Monkeys!


BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Scorched-Earth Monday brought to you by Wagga! Woohoo!

What a Pathetic Political Circus Show!

Shame on you Mr Bush by *kasovitz

Gee, I was so reassured by Bush's speech!

WALNUTS amusement with David Letterman!


In case you missed it, I highly recommend reading this mother of all rip-offs article I mentioned in the comments earlier today.


WALNUTS!

Happy Flippy Fishnet Friday!

NSFW Fishnet Flip via The Money Shot Blog 2.0 as is the following video presentation:



More fishnets to come!

UPDATE: I suspect the Blogger police will block this one as they did Nietzsche Koi, Zillow Book and Zillowed if I post any of these images of Katya via that pomo blog mentioned above.

Hat tip to Ogg for this find:

SFW Halloween fishnets via Sexy Witch:

Chock Full O'Cuties!

Eyeful- Vol.07No.06 June 1951

Thoughts on Billary's supposed concession on Friday...?

Thoughts on foreclosure queen Laura Richardson't big win...?

Thoughts on this post Mitchell brought to our attention...?

A Hello Kitty assault rifle that actually exists

Yet another HK update!!!

Another hat tip to Wagga for Hello Kitty lollipop condoms and Hello Kitty Zone in general.

A Hello Kitty assault rifle that actually exists
Awhile back we were treated to a hilarious Photoshop job called the HK-47--an assault rifle decorated with images of everybody's favorite nonpornographic, nontentacled Japanese import, Hello Kitty. We were sad to learn that it was, well, Photoshopped.

Hat tip to Mitchell for this one!
Currently watching Frontline and highly annoyed again...

UPDATE!
Hat tip to Wagga for this latest Hello Kitty find:
Hello Kitty gets claws into UK electronics
Brand developer Comment Retail Services has signed a deal to bring Hello Kitty into the hands of UK punters by way of mobile phone content and branded electronics, reports licensing.biz.
Hello Kitty is Japanese in origin, but has always been popular in the USA. In the UK the brand already adorns clothing and toys, but not much in the way of electronics, and it's sometimes hard to convey to Europeans just how pervasive the cute cat is in Japan.
Jonathan Ross, the UK TV presenter, even decided to hold his wedding in Hello Kitty land in Japan, a ceremony overseen by an enormous talking tree.
We're looking forward to seeing Hello Kitty phones and MP3 players, though personally we'll pass on the vibrator. Greater presence for the brand will also help answer the long-debated question - which is worse, Hello Kitty or Disney? ®

It's Hello Kitty everywhere!

Channeling M. SINGH

Olbermann To Bush: "This War Is Not About You...Shut The Hell Up!"
Flawed.

You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.

You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, fast.

You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."

You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.

And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense.

The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.

You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as claim was built from "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Wall Street and the War Mongering Monkey

Hat tip to Wagga for this one.
If the linky (F Blogger) doesn't work for you try this: Keating on Wall Street

I thought this was bizarre too.

In Canada's 2008 seal slaughter news check out Daily Koi.

Bloody Sunday

I am not a big fan of sending my $ to the United State of Exxon, Halliburton, et al. so paying taxes has been an extraordinarily annoying process over the past few years. While I’ve worked and re-worked various options, deductions are clearly not keeping up with inflation and paying off one’s mortgage principal due to economic concerns sure bites one in the ass. Why is it that irresponsible POS like Casey Serin or evil mofos like Dick Cheney get by just fine while responsible people in the middle are f-ed up the ass?
Overall, I’ve had a pretty shitty day, but I was hoping to get over it and blow off some steam by going on a long uphill walk with Akubi and Tanuki. We discovered some interesting things on the way up, questionable issues at the top and more annoying crap on the way down. Somewhere between nearing the top and the destination we felt OK.
This area attracts a ton of birds and there were more ravens than usual on the tree in the photo yet they flew elsewhere before we arrived and I could locate my crappy camera.

While the boys caught their breath and we watched the already setting sun, I realized my f-ing sunglasses were gone. I have been wearing those f-ing sunglasses for at least 5 years and spent more on them than any others and they survived longer than any others, but were now gone. Panic set in yet I hoped they may be found in some other pocket of my overstuffed backpack when we got home. On the way downhill there was this shaved-head guy walking uphill with 2 very large dogs in attack mode that he clearly could not manage. Despite the fact that they freaked out my exhausted little dogs, he didn’t bother to apologize for his dogs’ behavior. Having grown up with big dogs like German Shepherds, Alaskan Malamutes, etc I have found it is rather important to learn to control them if they are much bigger than you. I’ll probably never have a yard big enough for the sort of dog I grew up with, so I have Pomeranians and find them far more puzzling. Despite their size they seem to believe they are very big dogs.


And guess what? If my boys weren’t exhausted they could have kicked the shaved-head guy’s big hostile dogs’ ass! Nonetheless that guy was a jerk.

Surprisingly non-ideological policies

Obama Color by ~timmywheeler

I thought this article about the influence of behavioral economics on the Obama campaign's policies was quite interesting and worth a read.
...
As it happens, Thaler is revered by the leading wonks on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Though he has no formal role, Thaler presides as a kind of in-house intellectual guru, consulting regularly with Obama's top economic adviser, a fellow University of Chicago professor named Austan Goolsbee. "My main role has been to harass Austan, who has an office down the hall from mine, " Thaler recently told me. "I give him as much grief as possible." You can find subtle evidence of this influence across numerous Obama proposals. For example, one key behavioral finding is that people often fail to set aside money for retirement even when their employers offer generous 401(k) plans. If, on the other hand, you automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s but allow them to opt out, most stick with it. Obama's savings plan exploits this so-called "status quo" bias.

And, yet, it's not just the details of Obama's policies that suggest a behavioral approach. In some respects, the sensibility behind the behaviorist critique of economics is one shared by all the Obama wonks, whether they're domestic policy nerds or grizzled foreign policy hands. Despite Obama's reputation for grandiose rhetoric and utopian hope-mongering, the Obamanauts aren't radicals--far from it. They're pragmatists--people who, when an existing paradigm clashes with reality, opt to tweak that paradigm rather than replace it wholesale. As Thaler puts it, "Physics with friction is not as beautiful. But you need it to get rockets off the ground." It might as well be the motto for Obama's entire policy shop.

Sociologically, the Obamanauts have a lot in common with the last gang of Democratic outsiders to make a credible run at the White House. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama's campaign boasts a cadre of credentialed achievers. Intellectually, however, the Obamanauts couldn't be more different. Clinton delighted in surrounding himself with big-think public intellectuals--like economics commentator Robert Reich and political philosopher Bill Galston. You'd be hard-pressed to find a political philosopher in Obama's inner wonk-dom. His is dominated by a group of first-rate economists, beginning with Goolsbee, one of the profession's most respected tax experts. A Harvard economist named Jeff Liebman has been influential in helping Obama think through budget and retirement issues; another, David Cutler, helped shape his views on health care. Goolsbee, in particular, is an almost unprecedented figure in Democratic politics: an academic economist with a top campaign position and the candidate's ear.
...



Also in The New Republic: Even white supremacists don't hate Obama
Yet, far from railing at Obama's rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, "don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton--or, for that matter, John McCain."

I’ve heard they’re a big pain to maintain

Completely unrelated (other than being annoying/disturbing) gold nuggets from Ogg and Wagga...
At David’s company, management wasn’t a big fan of the whole check-in/re-compile/re-deploy process. They felt that it had too many steps and took far too long to complete. Their organization needed to adapt to software changes - especially bug fixes - much faster. So, to address this problem, they thoroughly analyzed the development process and carefully tweaked it for efficiency. I’m just kidding. Actually, their solution was to pioneer a new methodology called “SQL Sentences”.
...
All told, these changes required developers to modifiy their code to look like this...

string sql;
// @SQLSentence=0x02f0
if ((bool)(Configuration.GetValue("UseHardcodedSQL")))
{
sql = "SELECT cust_name, cust_phone, cust_addr " +
" FROM customers WHERE cust_type='Active'";
}
else
{
sql = DataConnector.GetSQLSentence(0x02f0);
}
... and, of course, add that same query to the sql_sentences table. And, should there ever be a change to the query, maintain it in both the code and the gigantic script created the sql_sentences table and the production database.
Though David wasn't around when these changes were implemented, when he came onboard and heard the story he asked the Lead Developer if he'd ever heard of a Stored Procedure before.
“Yeah,” he replied, “but I’ve heard they’re a big pain to maintain.”

Money makes me feel dirty II by ~penguine145

U.S. banks said "quietly" borrowing $50 billion from Fed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing "massive amounts" from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.

The newspaper said the use of the Fed’s Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of their assets, saw borrowing of nearly $50 billion (25.6 billion pounds) of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.
The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks’ growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.

Also, Centipede has suggested a 6 Degrees of ExxonMobil game. Thoughts?

Oh, one other thing - Wagga has suggested this blog's name to be changed to b aab³ or B aab³ or something along those lines. Thoughts?

Nearly Fishnet Friday

I love this painting: Simple Boy by Mari Yamagiwa

In other weird bug news, WTF? K, I'll eat avocado before scorpions and crickets.

Down with kitchen slavery! Let there be new household life!

Breaking (and unrelated) News Flash!
New Au revoir post from Stephanie J.!


Down with kitchen slavery! Let there be new household life!
G. Shegal, 1931

In 1917 the majority of laws of Russian Empire were repealed. Instead the first Soviet Constitution of 1918 declared full rights of women in divorcements, private property, children wardship, work and profession opportunities, choosing of place of living, education and suffrage. A decree which was stating the equal payment for men and women was also issued that year. Finally woman has got the same rights as men. The flip side of the coin was that woman had to work as hard as men as well.

At the same time the reforms of the economy were hampered no only by the Civil War but also by the runaway inflation. To give payment to the workers the Government had to print more money, which only made the situation worse. So the commodity-money relations were partly abolished: instead of wages workers were receiving rations, necessities, canteen coupons. Rent and transport fares were cancelled as well as payments for other public utilities. Free trade of food and goods was prohibited. The state was mobilizing the workers and was giving them full allowance (sort of).

... Excerpted from A Soviet Poster A Day, a blog well worth checking out.

Bizarre poster, isn't it?

Angry Dreamer

Dreaming Clouds by `serpentinekiss

This post is reserved for commentary unrelated to 6 Degrees of Casey Serin to The Cat in the Hat

Is there a subtitled version of Bubble Fiction, an intriguing film Tokyomango mentioned today?
She writes:
How do you make failed economic policy into a funny, futuristic comedy? Bubble Fiction, a new movie by Yasuo Baba, does it with a fake funeral, a time machine, and a cast of silly happy characters. In 1990, the Ministry of Finance announced a new fiscal policy that led to the infamous bubble burst that drove Japan into a long recession. 17 years later, research reveals that things are getting to bad that the country will be driven into the ground within two years. Not good!


This space reserved for 6 Degrees of Casey Serin to The Cat in the Hat entries.