The Atom Ukulele
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Coming to Kindle and Smashwords
November 2013
May 4, 2012
Oh Yeah...................
UK woman refuses to accept speeding ticket
[Video Link] The way this woman tried to talk her way out of a speeding ticket (police video starts at 4:42), reminds me of people who say they don't have a legal obligation to pay taxes. I'm not saying her defense is wrong or right because I don't understand it. I'm posting it because it's interesting to see how patient and polite the UK police officers are. If she would have tried this fancy talk in the US, she would have been maced, tasered, and zip tied in short order
May 3, 2012
Michael Tomasky: The GOP’s Impending Electoral College Meltdown
Only six months till November, and the Electoral College is looking like Barack Obama’s best friend. Has the Republican Party already blown its chances?
not too early to start thinking about the Electoral College map. First of all, the election is just six months away, which provides pundits one of those symbolic but meaningless pivot points to a new phase. But more than that, certain patterns are just starting to emerge. Mitt Romney has been the putative nominee for a month now, ever since his Wisconsin win (if not before). Barack Obama has taken some whacks at him now, and certainly vice versa. We’re in the general-election campaign. So what do we know right now? Chiefly, this great and very amusing irony: that the Electoral College, that bane of good-government liberals for decades (and especially since the 2000 fiasco), is Obama’s best friend. He has the hate-and-anger party to thank for that. But the implications for the fall campaign may be ominous.
At the precise moment that I am writing this sentence—11:45 am on Wednesday—I glance at the new poll “bumpers” or whatever you call them on the home page of Talking Points Memo: little boxes across the top that stay up for a few seconds and then rotate, showing important poll results. The TPM Obama-Romney national average has it Obama 47.1, Romney 45.3, giving Obama a 1.8 percent advantage. That’s no lead at all. Within the margin of error. Real Clear Politics gives Obama a 3.7 percent national lead. Bigger, but still margin-of-error territory. So nationally, it’s a close race.
But when you look at the likely swing states, it is not right now a close race at all. RCP’s Electoral College map gives Obama 227 electoral votes from states that are solidly or pretty clearly leaning in his direction. It gives Romney just 170. It lists 11 toss-up states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. You can then click on all the recent polls in those states. So I did. Here’s what I found.
Obama leads in nine of the 11 states. Romney leads only in two, and he leads in the two whose mere presence on a list of swing states suggests trouble for him—Arizona and Missouri. Romney’s lead in those states is small (3.2 percent in the former, 3.0 in the latter). Of the nine states in which Obama leads, he is ahead by outside your typical three- or four-point margin of error in four: Colorado (9.5 percent), Nevada (6.7 percent), Pennsylvania (6 percent), and Ohio (5.3 percent). Obviously it would be premature to say that Obama is certain to win those states. But given these leads, let’s just give him those states’ 53 combined electoral votes for the sake of argument.
The GOP message in recent years has been: “If you’re gonna let all those brown people and wine-sipping brainiacs into your states, then we don’t want you voting for us anyway!”
As you’ve already figured out, 227 plus 53 equals 280, which means Obama wins (270 needed). Now here’s what’s really interesting about this hypothetical. Look at the list of states Obama does not need to win under this scenario: Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Virginia. That’s 63 electoral votes he can give away, from three states (all of them but Iowa) that political journalists are always insisting are crucial to Obama’s hopes. And from four states he carried in 2008. Just think of it. It’s election night. The cable nets call Virginia for Romney. And North Carolina! Obama is doomed, doomed! Then he wins—and in fact, if he manages to eke out Florida, wins easily, even after dropping those two “must-win” states. Put another way: There appear to be lots of ways for Obama to get to 270 losing either Ohio or Florida. But there appear to be almost no plausible ways for Romney to get to 270 without winning both of them, and one or two major swing states besides, states where he is behind right now.
So, two questions: first, how did the electoral map come to favor Democrats? And second, what are the implications for the kind of race we’re going to see?
On the first question, we know all about the demographic changes of recent years, identified most comprehensively by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis. But there’s more to the story than that. Demography didn’t have to be destiny. If the Republican Party of the last few years hadn’t done everything it could possibly imagine do to alienate Latinos, “new-economy” professionals, and young people, the party would have remained competitive in Colorado (which, by the way, doesn’t really seem like much of a swing state to me) and some Great Lakes-Rust Belt states. That party would have easily maintained its historic advantage in Virginia and North Carolina. But the Republicans chose not to be that party. They decided to be the hate-and-anger party, and they veritably shoved states like those I just mentioned into the Democratic column. The GOP message has been: “If you’re gonna let all those funny-talking brown people and wine-sipping brainiacs in your states, then we don’t want you voting for us anyway!”
And as to the kind of campaign we can expect: I’d say the most negative in history. Barring some huge catastrophe, the only way a not-well-liked candidate like Romney can make up five to seven points in expensive-market states is through massive doses of attack ads, both from his campaign and from the various Super PACs, which may spend a combined $600 million or more—solely on negative ads and chiefly in six or eight states. Hate and anger aren’t going anywhere.
TWO NOTES: First, The American Prospect, the liberal opinion journal I once edited, remains in danger of closing its doors; please read this and think about how you can help.
Second, I suppose it’s time to announce that I’m starting a blog next Monday. I’ll continue to write the three longer pieces a week that I do now. But in addition to that you’ll now have even more Tomasky to kick around in the form of a few posts a day, flogging the usual dead horses and a few others besides.
DEA forgot about man they put in holding cell for 5 days without food or water
[Video Link] The DEA promises "a full review" for forgetting that they had locked a man in a dark 5 x 5 x 10 holding cell for five days without food or water. The man survived by drinking his own urine.
Arthur van Poppel Builds Elaborate Art Pieces For Unique Musical Act
Dutch entertainer Arthur van Poppel, aka ‘The Music Artist’, not only plays music but builds elaborate art pieces to accompany him as part of his act. He has a Nautilus One-Man-Band, a Jet Fighter, a Music Car, and a Music Bike.
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Bodypaintings by Gesine Marwedel
photo by Thomas van de Wall
German artist Gesine Marwedel uses the human body as a canvas for her beautiful bodypaintings. Prints are available on her site
May 2, 2012
Pharmacy Herbs, Glowing Grass Installation Highlights Light Pollution
To highlight the problem of light pollution in Madrid, art collective Luzinterruptus installed grass-like glowing “pharmacy herbs” near some of the city’s bright green pharmacy signs
May 1, 2012
need it....Toastabags, Reusable Sleeves to Make Pop-up Toaster Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Dutch company Boska has designed Toastabags, reusable sleeves to make mess-free grilled cheese sandwiches in a pop-up toaster. They are available to purchase online at Wayfair.
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7' fire-breathing, flying dragon built by RC airplane hobbyist
Franceso sez, "Rick Hamel, an American RC airplanes builder, created the Mythical Beast, a radio controlled fire-breathing dragon. It's powered by a Jetcat P80 Kerostart turbine, is over 7 feet long and has a wing span of 9 feet. Beside flying, this scratchbuilt dragon is able to breath fire thanks to a liquid propane and a stun gun circuit. Mythical Beast won Best of Show at the Weak Signal event held in Toledo a few weeks ago." Apr 28, 2012
Apr 27, 2012
god bless.....
Photo grid of famous athiests
From top left: Mark Twain, Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Keira Knightley, Stephen Hawking, Bill Maher, John Lennon, Ricky Gervais, Julianne Moore, Keanu Reeves, Bill Shatner, Johnny Depp, Janeane Garofalo, James Cameron, Billy Joel, Jack Nicholson, John Malkovich, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Ian McKellan, Albert Einstein, Brad Pitt, Daniel Radcliffe, Jodie Foster, Hugh Laurie, Lance Armstrong, George Carlin, Morgan Freeman, Fred Armisen, Angelina Jolie, Gene Wilder, Penn Jillette, Teller, Dylan Moran, Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Norm MacDonald, Eddie Izzard, Cillian Murphy, Jeremy Clarkson, and George Clooney.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Testicle Squeezing In Street Fight Causes Man's Death
The Huffington Post | By Hilary Tuttle Posted: 04/26/2012 7:28 pm Updated: 04/26/2012 7:28 pm
A Chinese man was reportedly killed last week when a woman squeezed his testicles until he collapsed during a fight over a parking space.
An unidentified 41-year-old woman in China's Haiku City in the Hainan Province rode into town on her scooter to pick her child up from school. The woman tried to park in front of a local store, but the store owner, the 42-year-old victim, refused to allow it, China News 24 reported.
The resulting fight escalated, leading the woman to call her husband and brother, who in turn got into a more violent fist fight with the shopkeeper, according to the website. At some point in the fracas, the woman grabbed the man's testicles and squeezed them until he collapsed. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and later died.Parking disputes can get ugly just about anywhere. On March 26, Louisiana resident Shawntay Brown, 19, was arrested for biting a 15-year-old's breast during a brawl in Monroe.
An affidavit in the case included a police officer's statement that the 15 year old "showed me the bite mark."
A video is said to show Brown running after the younger girl and biting her on a tender spot, the Smoking Gun reported.
Brown contends that the other girl bit her first
scare the sh** out of you....
Glass floor in bathroom has illuminated view of 15-level elevator shaft
The glass floor in the bathroom of this house in Mexico looks down an unused 15-floor elevator shaft. so cool......
Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" performed on traditional Chinese instruments
Fairmariner from the band Matteo writes, "Our band has been invited to go to China for 6 weeks as musicians-in-residence at Sichuan University! We still can't quite believe this is happening to us. We're going to record an EP while we're there, and we have a Kickstarter for that project.
Apr 26, 2012
no Sh**...
MEDIA FAIL: Why Is It OK For Ted Nugent To Say It, But Not The Dixie Chicks?!?
ORIGINAL: Found on Being Liberal's Facebook page and Americans Against The Tea Party's Facebook page by Eric Farone
uhhh...yeah.......
Woman Goes On Sunlight Diet, Unsurprisingly Dies of Starvation
People will do almost anything to lose weight, although admittedly, things like the Twinkie diet don’t sound that bad. A sunshine diet, on the other hand, sounds absolutely horrible, but that’s not going to keep some people from trying it. Then again, when was the last time you saw a fat plant, right? Taking that last bit into consideration, a woman from Switzerland decided to give this diet a shot. Did she lose weight? Definitely. Is she still, you know, alive to enjoy her svelte new physique? Unsurprisingly, no.The unnamed Swiss woman got the idea from an Austrian documentary about an Indian guru who claims to have lived for a whopping 70 years on the diet. It seems that he knew something that she didn’t, however, because “living” on the diet didn’t work particularly well for her. According to the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, the woman was found in her home in Wolfhalden, having died of starvation. Turns out photosynthesis is hard to do.
Chances are the impulse to go on this sunlight diet were more spiritual than weight-loss focused, but that doesn’t make it any less of an moronic decision. What’s more, Tages-Anzeiger reports there have been similar cases in Germany, Britain, and Australia. Of course, while it’s easy to be awed at the idoicy of such a decision, one should also take the opportunity to be awed at the willpower of this woman, idiotically applied though it may have been. The next time you can’t put down that Klondike bar, remember: This woman dieted herself to death. You can probably eat a little more salad and come out relatively unscathed
Apr 25, 2012
hooray!!!!!! Pizza Cupcakes
Pizza Cupcakes
By on April 25, 2012
San Diego-based food blog Kirbie’s Cravings has concocted Pizza Cupcakes, a recipe for savory pizza-like cupcakes (technically, muffins) that are filled and topped with tiny pepperonis and cheese
Exclusive: See Mondo’s Captain America Character Poster for The Avengers
Mondo and Marvel's Captain America character poster will go on sale Thursday with three others from The Avengers.
Image: Phantom City Creative (click to enlarge)
Image: Phantom City Creative (click to enlarge)
Captain America stands stoic and strong behind his red, white and blue shield in the latest Avengers character poster from Mondo and Marvel.
The image, by Toronto-based indie
f**k.....
Girl swallowed by pavement
mark frauenfelder
My art prints are for sale! Follow me on Twitter.[Video Link] A kindly hack came to her aid.
Timothy Ferris on the Voyager probes' "Golden Record
In 1977, NASA mounted copies of the above record album on the Voyager I and Voyager II space probes and launched them into the depths of space. Each album contained recordings of Earth, greetings in 55 languages, music, analog-encoded photographs, and a marvelous etching depicting a man, a woman, and our address in space. The Golden Record was produced by science journalist and Rolling Stone editor Timothy Ferris, astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, science writer Ann Druyan, and artists Linda Sagan and Jon Lomberg. Tim Ferris was my mentor in graduate school at UC Berkeley and I occasionally peppered him with questions about that amazing task of creating an album meant to represent life on Earth for any extraterrestrials that might, well, have access to a record player. In the new Smithsonian, Tim wrote about the two Voyager probes that in the next three years will likely pop through the "heliospheric bubble" into interstellar space. To complement Tim's beautiful piece, the magazine tells the story of the Golden Record. From Smithsonian:
Apr 24, 2012
more things change, the more they remain the same...
Lincoln's idiot bodyguard got drunk in the same bar as John Wilkes Booth the night of the assassination
Marilyn sez, "With all this brouhaha about Secret Service agents misbehaving in Cartagena, I remembered this story in Smithsonian magazine two years ago about the unreliable presidential bodyguard who was supposed to be protecting Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater the night he got shot. The story is by Paul Martin (my former boss), who is researching unknown people who've changed the course of U.S. history. His first volume, on forgotten heroes, is just out, and he's working on the forgotten villains, which will no doubt include this one.
I have a chronic need for this (get it? chronic?)
The Orange County Register is reporting that medical marijuana can now be legally dispensed through a fully automated vending machine called the Autospense. The promotional video shows how easily this dispensary machine works with a medical marijuana card, a thumbprint scan and payment. AutoSpense’s founder, Joe DeRobbio of Dispense Labs, is quoted as saying “What goes in, what comes out, it’s documented and there’s no way to subvert that.” The Dispensary Store in Santa Ana, California is the first place to host one of these machines
Apr 21, 2012
no pickle?
Tokyo reporter orders 2.7kg bacon Whopper with 1050 slices of bacon
When the Tokyo Burger King stores announced a "15 strips of bacon on your burger for ¥100 (~$1.25)" promotion, Mr Sato, a reporter for Rocket News 24 ordered 105 slices of bacon on his burger. Apparently, Mr Sato ate the "grotesque agglomeration of ketchup-soaked meat about 3 times the size of the regular whopper" and then rushed home to recuperat
Apr 19, 2012
dig crumb.....
Paul Gravett interviews R. Crumb
Amy Crehore says: "There's a great new interview with R. Crumb by Paul Gravett. Crumb with be the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France opening April 13, 2012."
You
have been living in France since 1993. Do you feel remote from America
and US pop culture, which were such an important part of your infuences,
your creative mulch? Is that a problem?
I don’t feel remote from it, because in the modern world you can get anything, any movie, any book, music, any comic, you can read English language newspapers and magazines. The only thing I am remote from is the day-to-day life of the United States and when I lived in America, a lot of my work is a reaction to day-to-day life there. So that’s not there anymore and I don’t know what effect that has. When I got back there - I go back once or twice a year - after I’m there for a couple of weeks, the old contempt and disgust with America comes back over me again, probably even stronger than when I lived there. I can have contempt and disgust in France too! But in America, it’s so strong, it’s sick or something!
What do you dislike about France?
It’s a general disgust with humanity. I’m in Paris right now and we just came back from going on the Metro and you look at humanity and it’s just appalling, appalling out there! (Laughter) I’m no better, I don’t think I’m superior or anything. If I look in the mirror, I have the same reaction.
At least the French respect artists and creators a bit better?
No, the French have such a bullshit attitude about art. The bullshit is so thick here, it’s ridiculous. The French government supports art, there are a lot of art subventions, I don’t know why, they give a lot of money. Lots of people get on this bandwagon and make such terrible, terrible art, all over France.
What do you think of comics-inspired French fine artists like Herve Di Rosa?
Yeah, kinda interesting. And the other guy, Robert Combas. But there’s not enough nutrients in it for me. Guys like that are jockeying for position in the art world. Outsider artists, who aren’t looking for a place in galleries, to me are much more authentic and genuine, crazy people, working in isolation, that to me is much more interesting. In the world of comics where I come from, ninety-nine per cent of it is uninteresting to me, it’s vacuous and slick
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