If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a lie. It means the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in the depths that I don't even want to think about. It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored.
All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering
ESPN is taking on water and fired 100 people. Mostly on air talent. The on air talent that was spouting politically correct garbage. They didn't fire any conservatives or populists because none of them remain at that network. So many people cut cable that they are hemorrhaging subscribers. Recently I was reviewing my old cable bills. I was paying nine dollars a month as a sports surcharge. Now I didn't have any special packages like MLB or the NFL. So why should I have to pay nine clams a month to subsidize ESPN?
ESPN has totally alienated a huge segment of it's viewers. Most sports fans are lunch pail blue collar guys. Not millennials. Not tofu eating social justice warriors. Shot and a beer guys who like a bratwurst or a meatball hero. They spit in our eyes. So we cut the cord. I know I did.
What is funny is all the tweets that these guys are sending out. Their whole gig is telling us that this guys should get cut and that coach should get fired. Now it's their turn.
"Mexico's foreign relations secretary on Tuesday called U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall not only a "bad idea" but an "unfriendly, hostile" act and said he didn't think a barrier would accomplish anything."
And while Trump has repeatedly asserted that he will get the U.S.'s neighbor to pay for building the wall, Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray repeated in a meeting with legislators that Mexico's won't pay a cent for it.
Trump had requested that Congress provide U.S. funds to begin the wall, but he signaled Monday that he would not insist on it, saying he might be willing to wait until September for the funding.
Videgaray also said Mexico's government would consider reducing security cooperation with the United States if talks on immigration and trade issues don't go well.
"If the negotiation on other themes — immigration, the border, trade — isn't satisfactory to Mexico's interests, we will have to review our existing cooperation," Videgaray said. "This would be especially in the security areas ... and that involves the national immigration agency, the federal police and of course, the armed forces."
Mexico at present cooperates with the United States in fighting drug cartels and other forms of transnational crime.
Via Reddit: A chemistry professor in Florida has just found a way to trigger the process of photosynthesis in a synthetic material, turning greenhouse gases into clean air and producing energy all at the same time.
The process has great potential for creating a technology that could significantly reduce greenhouse gases linked to climate change, while also creating a clean way to produce energy.
"This work is a breakthrough," said UCF Assistant Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo. "Tailoring materials that will absorb a specific color of light is very difficult from the scientific point of view, but from the societal point of view we are contributing to the development of a technology that can help reduce greenhouse gases."
The findings of his research are published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Uribe-Romo and his team of students created a way to trigger a chemical reaction in a synthetic material called metal-organic frameworks (MOF) that breaks down carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials. Think of it as an artificial photosynthesis process similar to the way plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight into food. But instead of producing food, Uribe-Romo's method produces solar fuel.
Jeb Bush and Derek Jeter have won the auction to buy the Florida Marlins. They paid 1.3 billion to get the South Florida team. That's right. 1.3 billion. Where did they get all that money.
I bet Jeter is window dressing. There have to be a lot of big money guys involved. Jeter must think he can run the baseball end of things. Big mistake.
Jeb has said he will be the controlling force. But I don't think so. The will be a big money guy who will call the tune. They just used Jeb and Jeter as a front.
It was the same deal when the Boss bought the Yankees. Mike Burke thought he was running things and Lee MacPhail thought he would do the baseball decisions. Just like this set up. Instead the Boss took over everything. I bet that is what is going to happen here.
Jeter is making a big mistake because he is going to tarnish his image by being involved in the management of another team. He needed to go off and enjoy his life outside of baseball. He could have been an icon like Mantle and DiMaggio were back in the day. Instead he is a hack connected to a another team. Big mistake.
They should stick with what they are famous for in real life. Jeb for asking people to clap for him in his hapless run for President. Jeter for giving celebrity bitches the clap. It is hilarious that if you go to a celebrity social disease site every one says "Derek Jeter gave her herpes."
Now he is giving it to the National League. What would Ricky Branch say?
It is always fun to watch classic TV and see how the world has changed. The clothes. The cars. The way people talk. The events in the news that they decide to rip off. It is hilarious.
I am continuing my Kojack binge and I got to episode 3 of Season 1. It is a convoluted rip off of the shooting of Joe Colombo at the Columbus Day Rally of the Italian American Civil Rights league. Of course they changed everything. They made it at a street fair. The Don being shot wore a vest and wasn't hurt. Instead of the Gallo's trying to kill Colombo to get his turf it was this own Mafia guy setting himself up to blame a rival. They only kept one element. A black guy shot the Mafia guy.
But that was not what was really fun. It was the language.
At the beginning of the episode Captain McNeil goes to Kojack "What do expect from these schvartzers." Hilarious. The Yiddish epithet for blacks like Moolie in Italian. He just comes out and says it on a prime time TV show. Funny shit.
Later they roust a bunch of black guys. One of them runs and Stravos grabs him and goes "Where you going Wille? Calm down Willie. Take it easy Willie." I laughed my ass off.
You see Willie is what the cops and the fireman of the 1960's and 1970's called black guys. Universally that is how they referred to them. Whenever we would be in a bar and the older guys would tell a story it was all Willie did this or Willie did that. I think it was sort of a back handed compliment to Willie Mays.
Man this episode took me back. Bell bottoms. Long Hair. Willie.
Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop — much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus — but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.
It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.
Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.
In the first legal test of an executive order Trump issued five days after taking office, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco said the president was exceeding his constitutional authority by trying to punish local governments that disagreed with his immigration policies, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Orrick’s decision followed a hearing April 14 in federal court over San Francisco’s and Santa Clara County’s request for an injunction that would stop enforcement of Trump’s order, the paper’s website reported.
The two jurisdictions argued that the order threatened billions of dollars in federal funding.
But an attorney for the Justice Department, Chad Readler, said at a recent court hearing that it applied to a limited set of grants.
Federal law doesn’t define “sanctuary cities,” and the Trump administration has given differing descriptions of the policies it’s going after.
But more than 300 cities and counties nationwide have placed limits on how far their law enforcement agencies are allowed to cooperate with federal immigration officials looking to detain and deport immigrants for crimes or illegal entry.
President Trump signaled to a gathering of conservative media on Monday that he may be open to a delay in funding for his proposed border wall.
He said, according to tweets from conservative media at the gathering, that his administration could get the funding for the wall this week or could come back to it in September.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., seized on the remarks, saying in a statement Monday evening, "It's good for the country that President Trump is taking the wall off the table in these negotiations. Now the bipartisan and bicameral negotiators can continue working on the outstanding issues."
Via tweet: Top Trump administration officials will hold a rare briefing Wednesday at the White House for the entire U.S. Senate on the situation in North Korea, senior Senate aides said Monday.
All 100 senators have been asked to the White House for the briefing by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aides said.
While top administration officials routinely travel to Capitol Hill to address members of Congress on foreign policy and national security matters, it is unusual for the entire 100-member Senate to go to such an event at the White House, and for those four top officials to be involved.
U.S. officials have expressed mounting concern over North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, and its threats to attack the United States and its Asian allies.
I wanted to find a Kids in the Hall sketch where two of the guys walk together along what appears to be a small town and they're speaking as some kind of designers that have the magical power to eliminate whatever in the scene they don't like as they pass it. One character points out an object in the scene and both would say affectedly,
"Ha-a-a-t-e-d i-t!"
And the object would disappear, flowers, fences, lawn furniture, shutters, lawns, driveway, people, and so on as they go. They actually like very little.
But I cannot find it.
They did the characters a couple of times that I saw but apparently the skits never took hold as other skits have enough to have them uploaded to YouTube. Never took hold enough to be chosen among the fan favorites.
I watched this video because it promised a discussion of skits at the end. I hoped they'd discuss the "hated it" sketches. But they do not. It's a dead end.
[sidebar] Your Honor, I like the Buddy Cole character but this sketch isn't funny. Skip to 4:38 for the discussion. But if you do choose to bear with it, do you notice how similar this Buddy Cole character is to the comedic urbane Milo Yiannopoulos character?
This is the skit they are talking about.
They were right the first time. It's not funny.
And yet the commenters on YouTube consider this to be a Kids in the Hall classic. The original cast critique is right, the whole thing is a string of clichés and like the cast I don't understand why the audience elevates this above all their other truly imaginative skits.
But then that all together spread out over time to the end with the post mortem interview with the cast finally coming around to accepting the public's verdict as funny when they, the moderators of what is and isn't funny, deemed otherwise and with solid comedic reasoning, really is hilarious.
