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So. What do you think libertarians do? Me neither! Via Accordion Guy
Previously on Neatorama: 24 Types of Libertarians vs. 24 Types of Authotarians
The world according to Americas
Europe according to Germans
This ain't your grandfather's maps! In the series Mapping Stereotypes, Designer Yanko Tsvetkov of Alpha Designer created maps that lays bare the racists and stereotypical views of a number of nations (us Yanks included): Link
So.
Do you carry reusable bags to shop at the grocery store? Do you sort empty
plastic containers into the correct recycling bin? Did you trade-in your
gas guzzler for a well-worn pair of sneakers?
Do you think that all those enviro-goody-two-shoes things you did matter? Think again.
No hate mail, please! That's what economist Gernot Wagner at the Environmental Defense Fund said. He argued that in order to save the planet, we need much more than environmentalists. Instead, we need smart economic policies.
Here's an interesting interview at Co.Exist:
Co.Exist:What does the average environmentalist get wrong?
Wagner: Environmentalists, all too often, think that the best way to go about solving the problem is to get everyone to do as they--we, I included--do. I don’t eat meat. I don’t drive. But individual do-gooderism won’t solve global warming.
And it may actually be counter-productive, for two reasons. First, there’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon called “single-action bias.” You do one thing, and you move on. You carry your groceries home by foot, in a cotton canvas bag, and you think that single act of environmental kindness makes up for other sins.
Second, you spend all your energy thinking about these tiny things. Should you buy the local apples that have been stored for months in a cool house somewhere, or should you buy the fresh apple flown in from across the world? Or should you not buy apples at all when they are not in season and risk not getting enough vitamins?
You’d go positively crazy trying to figure out what to do, and you’d miss the big picture: That, at the end of the day, none of that really matters.
So what should we do? Read on at Co.Exist: Link
Did
you hear the one about the jokes inscribed on ancient Babylonian tablets?
No, that's no joke: researchers studying a 3,500-year old tablet from ancient Mesopotamia have intepreted riddles and jokes about (surprise!) sex, politics and beer.
Some of the decoded riddles are crude and sexual, while others are complex and metaphorical. One of them reveals what appears to be a bit of political humor, albeit with a dark, violent twist.
He gouged out the eye:
It is not the fate of a dead man.
He cut the throat: A dead man (-Who is it?)The answer is a governor.
"This riddle describes the power of a governor namely to act as a judge who punishes or sentences to death," write Streck and Wasserman in the journal article.
Wasserman has seen examples in other Akkadian texts of people criticizing their leaders. "We have some interesting traces of political criticism, and [I] might say even say political anger," he said. "It could be a kind of political humor expressed in this governor riddle."
While the governor riddle reflects a sort of gallows' humor, others are much lighter.
In(?) your mouth and your teeth (or: your urine)
constantly stared at you
the measuring vessel of your lord (-What is it?)The answer, it appears, is beer.
Previously on Neatorama: World's Oldest Joke Traced to Sumeria in 1900 B.C.
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert is busy highlighting the absurdities of our political election system by participating in it. He is no longer a candidate for president, so he has retaken control of his legally-obtained Super PAC (political Action Committee). He filed a report just after midnight this morning with the Federal Election Commission on the Super PAC’s fundraising, which has exceeded all expectations. The cover letter reads:
Dear Sirs and Sirettes,
Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (ABTT) would like it entered into the record that as of January 30th, 2012, the sum total of our donations was $1,023,121.24.
Stephen Colbert, President of ABTT, has asked that I quote him as saying, ”Yeah! How you like me now, F.E.C? I’m rolling seven digits deep! I got 99 problems but a non-connected independent-expenditure only committee ain’t one!”
I would like it noted for the record that I advised Mr. Colbert against including that quote. Sincerely,
Shauna Polk Treasurer Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Inc.
Read more details at the New York Times. Link
When you actually believe that The Muppets movie might be pushing some sort of communist, anti-oil agenda on our kids, you’ve got problems, but when you are called out by Kermit and Miss Piggy, two fleece-skinned superstars that aren’t afraid to tell it like it is, your claims start to look like utter hogwash. Watch as my favorite frog (sorry Frogger!) and pig (sorry Babe!) put the commie claims to bed via press conference.
–via Comedy Central
Talk
about preparing kids for the real world. Four public high schools in Detroit
have partnered with Walmart to train 60 students to work at its stores:
Advocates say with Detroit's unofficial unemployment rate nearing 50%, jobs at Walmart are a golden opportunity. Sean Vann, principal of the Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men, has 30 students in the program. He told the Detroit Free Press he's enthusiastic because along with earning money, since the schools are in the suburbs, the students will be around people from different cultures.
Not everyone, however, is convinced that it's such a good idea:
Donna Stern, a representative of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) is outraged. "They're going to train students to be subservient workers. This is not why parents send them to school."
What do you think, Neatoramanauts? Better a crappy job than no job at all?
Link (Photo: GeneralCheese/Wikipedia)
Photo: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte
Russian police does not take kindly to protests, even those carried out by toys and dolls:
Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".
"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."
Link - via Metafilter
This incredibly cool sculpture is brought to you by the twisted mind of Ron English, an artist known for warping iconic figures into ironic statements (see Fat Tony and Dead Mickey), and who previously brought us an Obama-Lincoln mashup that was all the rage a few years back.
This time, Ron has brought us Obama hulking out, as he prepares for the upcoming election by saying “You vote for me or OBAMA SMASH!”
Over
at USA Today, Don Campbell is hoppin' mad about the economic injustice,
nay reverse "ageism" that is the senior citizen discount. He
opines:
... the question is, why should someone who is 50 or 55 and likely to live to 85 or 90 be considered a "senior citizen" worthy of special treatment?
I've now passed all the age benchmarks for senior status, and I'm committed unequivocally to a free market, but I think that such discounts are absurd, illogical, and helping fuel the growing economic divide between struggling younger generations and a self-obsessed, mostly well-to-do, older generation. To me, these "deals" add insult to injury to the very people who are being saddled with trillions of dollars in debt to support entitlement programs for the elderly, such as Medicare and Social Security.
I also find them to be a delightful source of amusement when they pit vanity against financial self-interest as cashiers try to guess your age and customers ponder admitting in public that they're a certain age in order to save a few nickels.
I was in line behind a woman at a grocery checkout in Atlanta a couple of years ago on a Wednesday, the day the store gives people age 60 and over a 5% discount. When the cashier said to the woman, "And are you taking our senior discount today?" the woman exploded: "Don't insult me like that! I'll have you know I'm 54 years old!" (She looked closer to 64 than 54, if you ask me.)
More recently, I was in one of those trendy organic food stores when the checkout clerk said to me with a big smile: "May we offer you our military or wise-man discount?" I had no idea what defined "wise man," so I just smiled back and said, "Ma'am, I am wise beyond my years." (I later found out you became "wise" at 60.)
What do you think? Should senior citizen discounts be banned? Answer after you get off Don's lawn: Link - via Moneyland
Photo: Older Than Dirt T-Shirt from the NeatoShop
When
Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper had an offspring, they decided that their
Baby Sasha should not be influenced by society's prejudices and preconceptions
when it comes to gender:
They referred to their child as "The Infant" and only allowed him to play with "gender-neutral toys" in their television-free home.
For the first five years of his life Sasha alternated between girls' and boys' outfits, leaving friends, playmates and relatives guessing.
But the couple have finally revealed his sex after it became harder to conceal when Sasha started primary school.
Yesterday Miss Laxton, a web editor, said that she thought gender stereotyping was "fundamentally stupid".
"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," she said.
"Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?
The gender of Sasha was finally revealed (he's a boy) when he started school: Link - via Arbroath
So far, three Republican presidential hopefuls have won one state primary or caucus each. Eventually, only one will be selected for the presidential race. Mental_floss looks back into previous election races for today’s Lunchtime Quiz. You will be given ten politicians who ran for president unsuccessfully in the past, and you try to recall whether they ever won a state primary race or not. It’s not easy! I was surprised to score 60%. Link
Oh,
you've got to love gub'ment. Here's a story of how the Environmental Protection
Agency made companies that supply motor fuel pay fines because they failed
to deliver alternative fuels.
The companies did have a good reason, which the EPA rejected, as that kind of fuel actually doesn't exist yet:
When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.
Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times explains: Link (Photo: David Eggen for The New York Times)
In
2012, and Keith Pariat is fighting for equal rights for men in Meghalaya,
India. You read that right: men. See, in that part of the world, women
rule:
Timothy Allen wrote the intriguing article over at the BBC: LinkMr Pariat, who ignored age-old customs by taking his father's surname is adamant that matriliny is breeding generations of Khasi men who fall short of their inherent potential, citing alcoholism and drug abuse among its negative side-effects.
"If you want to know how much the Khasis favour women just take a trip to the labour ward at the hospital," he says.
"If it's a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it's a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that, 'Whatever God gives us is quite all right.'"
Ever
get a headache from smelling someone's overly-strong perfume? Well, then
you'd probably appreciate what New Hampshire state representative Michele
Peckham is trying to do. She has introduced a bill to ban state employees
from wearing perfumes while on the job:
State representative Michele Peckham is sponsoring House Bill 1444 which hopes to ban state employees who work with the public from wearing perfume. Apparently a constituent with extreme allergies approached Peckham with the proposal. "It may seem silly, but it's a health issue," Peckham told the Union Leader. "Many people have violent reactions to strong scents."
Previously on Neatorama: Should Wearing Pajamas in Public Be Banned?
President Obama welcomed Rev. Al Green to a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater in New York yesterday with a few notes of “Let’s Stay Together.” It sounds like this was the result of a dare, but it’s still nice to know our Commander in Chief can carry a tune for at least a short time. Link -via Buzzfeed
Got
vacation days saved up? Not as many as the French workers, that's for
sure: at one hospital in Paris, workers have accumulated over 2 million
days off!
Here's the story of how a law mandating 35-hour work week backfired:
French workers get comped vacation time added to their base five weeks of annual leave if they work longer than the mandated 35-hour work week and apparently even the French can't take all of that time off in a year. Nevertheless, "By law, they must take those days off by the end of this year, but that could mean closing hospitals for months."
Just to put 2 million days into perspective, that's 5,475 years of vacation time. There's no indication of how many employees are sharing that pool of vacation time, but if it were just one, they'd just be finishing a stint of paid time off that started in B.C. 3467, that is just around the time when the Sumerians invented writing and the Sahara started turning into a desert.
Yesterday,
thousands of websites (including Neatorama)
protested against SOPA and PIPA, the two Internet censorhip bills making
their way through the US Congress.
The effect was immediate - the bills quickly lost support in Congress. Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times reported that a growing number of members of Congress announced their opposition:
First, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, took to Facebook, one of the vehicles for promoting opposition, to renounce a bill he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who leads the G.O.P.’s Senate campaign efforts, used Facebook to urge his colleagues to slow the bill down. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina and a Tea Party favorite, announced his opposition on Twitter, which was already boiling over with anti-#SOPA and #PIPA fever.
Then trickle turned to flood — adding Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois and Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Representatives Lee Terry of Nebraska and Ben Quayle of Arizona. At least 10 senators and nearly twice that many House members announced their opposition.
Yay us! Or, as comic Jon Stewart says, "angry nerds." Jon went on to ask whether any of the congressional committees in charge of regulating the Internet actually know what they're talking about (3:30 mark on the video).
Ask a nerd? What a great idea!. They should ask a nerd, so we can tell them how bad SOPA and PIPA are. The precursor to the current version of SOPA was actually even worse. It has a provision that require changes to the Internet's domain name system to "blacklist" rogue websites. That, according to web experts would break the web.
Here's the story by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries of The Wall Street Journal of how the controversial DNS-based blacklisting scheme got dropped in the rise of "nerd lobby" in Washington, D.C.:
Late last fall, a select group met in the White House Situation Room to discuss U.S. Internet security and how it might falter if two anti-piracy bills being debated in Congress were to pass.
The attendees included veteran Washington policymakers and cyberdefense experts. But one person – an engineer named Dan Kaminsky who specializes in an arcane set of rules governing how people connect to the Internet – stood out.
“I’ve never seen anyone in the Situation Room without a tie before,” said one of the Washington policymakers who was there.
Welcome to the world of the nerd lobbyist.
In his defense, Kaminsky said "he didn’t wear a tie because he didn’t know that the meetings would be taking place in the 'actual White House.'"
Working on the web is hard, which is why Fark has decided to take a brave stand, going against the grain to support SOPA and PIPA. This way, if the site gets shut down under the ridiculous censorship bills, the company won’t have to do any more hard work.
While a bunch of other sites are going “dark” to protest SOPA/PIPA, we’re over the moon about the whole thing. Why? Honestly, we’ve been bringing you the latest news happening across the internet for 12 years, and we’re tired. And SOPA/PIPA is the perfect excuse to quit.
While SOPA might be “almost dead,” it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down. And thank God, cause we’re about ready to crack under the strain of being on top of the news all the time.
The post isn’t up anymore because the blackout day is over, but you can read about it over at the link from The Consumerist.
Blogging regulations require that we post this notice about how the great state of Florida now requires vending machines to have this self-referential notice.
Kudos to the bureaucrats of Florida, who came up with such ingenious plan to create regulations, seemingly for regulations' sake. On another note, how would people know who to call to report a missing notice, if the phone number is on the notice itself? Link - via The Agitator and Metafilter
By now, I’m sure you have all heard about SOPA and PIPA being as how every blog in the world has been talking about them as of late. Even those that are usually apolitical (like Neatorama) have taken a stand against the legislation, but despite all the talk and Wikipedia’s many messages warning about their upcoming blackout, some people still didn’t get the memo.
That’s where Herpderpedia comes in… chronicling the Tweets of people freaking out over the Wikipedia blackout despite the many warnings on the site and the fact that its blackout message clearly describes what’s going on.
Sure the Twitter account will only have one good day, but it’s certain to bring endless enjoyment for the internet snobs around the country.
Link Via Laughing Squid
A song from LaughPong about the SOPA and PIPA bills now before congress. While many sites have simply gone down for today in protest, Consumerist has a list of posts about the bills you can access to catch up on how the bills came about, why the internet is protesting, and what you can do. Link -video via The Cheezburger Network
Do
you like to go about town wearing comfy pajama pants? Not in Shreveport,
Louisiana, you won't ... if a local parish commissioner has his way!
Caddo Parish District 3 Commission Michael Williams said it was an incident at a local Walmart that offended him and some elderly customers that spurred him to push for an ordinance that would prohibit wearing pajama pants in public.
"I saw a group of young men wearing pajama pants and house shoes," he said. "At the part where there should have been underwear," his private parts were showing through the fabric. [...]
"Pajamas are designed to be worn in the bedroom at night," Williams said. "If you can't (wear pajamas) at the Boardwalk or courthouse, why are you going to do it in a restaurant or in public? Today it's pajamas," Williams said. "Tomorrow it's underwear. Where does it stop?"
Don't worry people, there's always Pajama Jeans!
So, what do you think, Neatoramanauts? Should wearing pajamas in public be banned? The Shreveport Times covered this important issue: Link (Photo: Mike Silva/The Shreveport Times) - via The Maddow Blow
Previously on Neatorama: In Pajamas? No Tesco For You! | Planet Shanghai
Italy (basil, pasta, and tomatoes)
To promote the Sydney International Food Festival, ad agency WHYBIN created a neat series of flags made from the countries' traditional food. Some examples:
Australia (meat pie)
Brazil (banana leaf, limes, pineapple, and passion fruit)
India (curries, rice, and a pappadum wafer)
South Korea (kimbap and sauces)
Lebanon (lavash, fattoush, and a herb sprig)
More at The Kitchn blog: Link - via Good
What do you think your country's food flag should be made out of? The American flag's red stripes should definitely be made out of bacon!
Not if you're a member of Congress, they won't!
No surprise there - politicians haven't been highly regarded for their honesty and ethics by John Q. Public for decades, but the 7% ratings in this recent poll by Gallup is a new low.
The most honest professions? Nurses and pharmacists topped the poll.
That, Neatoramanauts, is the 2,065 miles-long border fence between India and Pakistan:
A striking feature is the line of lights, with a distinctly orange hue, snaking across the center of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible).
The photo was taken by the crew at the International Space Station: Link - via TYWKIWDBI
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President Obama, Mitt Romney, and the other politicians you see every day aren’t the only ones running for president in 2012. Vermin Supreme is one of the candidates who appeared at the Lesser-Known Democratic Candidates Presidential Forum held at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on December 19th. -via The Daily What
You probably already know that China has a one child per couple policy, but you might not know how it is enforced or who is granted exceptions to the rule. The answers to these questions can be found over at Mental Floss and they are simply fascinating.
Provincial governments are responsible for enforcing the policy and do so through a mix of rewards and punishments doled out by local officials. In most provinces, having a an extra child gets you a fine, the amount of which varies across provinces. In some places, the fine is a set amount (usually in the thousands of dollars), and in others it’s based on a percentage of the violator’s annual income. In some provinces, policy violators can also have their property and/or belongings confiscated and lose their jobs.
Who knew they even can fire you from your job for having an extra baby?
I think the Cold War may have kept this game from arriving in America, either that or the manufacturer didn’t feel like the reference to Mikhail Gorbachev would help sell copies in the U.S.
Whatever the reason, Gorby’s Pipeline never made its way to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and that’s too bad because it looks like it would have given Tetris and Dr. Mario a run for their money! Anyone remember the old school video game Pipe Dream?
–via Kotaku
Danger Room tells us of a claim made by Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings, a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling government agents, that President Obama was part of a CIA mission to explore Mars beginning in 1980. They say he was teleported to the red planet.
Obama wasn’t the only one making the otherworldly voyage. As “Barry Soetero,” the 19-year-old Obama was one of 10 youths selected to secretly teleport to and from Mars, forming a band of interplanetary Teen Titans. Regina Dugan, the director of Darpa, was another member.
Between 1981 and 1983, Obama is supposed to have visited Mars twice, by way of a teleportation chamber called a “jump room.” Basiago, a fellow chrononaut, told the website Exopolitics that he saw Obama “walk back to the jump room from across the Martian terrain.” To acknowledge his comrade, Obama is said to have told Basiago, “We’re here” — apparently, “with some sense of fatalism.”
It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health care, perhaps? Building a birth-certificate printing press?) His mission was a perilous one, according to Basiago and Stillings. The CIA wished to “establish a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space” as well as a legal claim to “territorial sovereignty,” making Obama something of a Martian conquistador. Presumably, Obama’s CIA handlers needed him to “acclimate Martian humanoids and animals to their presence” in order to secure the U.S.-Martian alliance. (We’ll bet you weren’t even aware of Martian animals.)
“Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten,” an elder chrononaut, retired Army Maj. Ed Dames, is alleged to have told a young Obama.
A spokesman for the National Security Council says that Obama has never been to Mars. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Arikia Millikan)
