The “Occupiers” have taken down some more major corporations. Stick it to the man, comrades!
SoCal Street Cart Vendors Hurting After ‘Occupy’ Group Splatters Blood, Urine
A hot dog cart and a coffee cart provided free food to protestors in San Diego. But when the freebies stopped, the fleabaggers vandalized the carts (with blood and urine, no less) and threatened death upon the cart owners.
Remember this next time you see a politician agree with them or express solidarity with their cause.
A 2004 “Obama for Senate” propaganda video lays out his philosophies. The highlight, IMO:
“We all have a set of mutual obligations towards each other — we are our brother’s keeper, we are our sister’s keeper — and that those mutual obligations have to express themselves through government policies”
[youtube b91nsPDQFUk]
Faith-based politics.
When many (most??) people think of “the Bible,” I bet they think of the King James version. Depending on how you look at it, it was written either between 3500 (or so) and 1900 (or so) years ago, or 400 years ago (when King James I of England ordered it put together). In any event, that’s a long, long time ago… long enough that it’s obvious that it’s in the public domain.
Ooops.
The Bible lives forever, even if the KJV is copyrighted
In honor of the KJV’s 400th anniversary, London’s newly reconstituted Globe Theater—Shakespeare’s old home stage—scheduled a series of actors to recite the entire King James Bible from the stage between Palm Sunday and Easter of 2011. But a few days before the presentation, the director received a bill for payment of a substantial royalty fee for the privilege of reading it publicly. The British Crown actually owns the copyright to the King James Bible, which has been renewed upon the accession of each succeeding monarch since King James himself. So the queen, through the auspices of Cambridge University Press, was sending him a bill, according to BBC Music Magazine.
Huh.
In other words, in a few years the Bible as it’s known to a whole lot of millions of people will belong to this feller:
The question is… how enforceable is this copyright? Apparently if you’re in Britain, they can come and get you for quoting the Bible. But I’d be interested to see what would happen if some American or – better – Chinese publisher put out their own copy of the KJV Bible without paying fees to the British crown.
Copyright is a wonderful and vital thing. But maintaining copyright for four hundred years seems massively inappropriate.
You read that right.
Back in my college days, I had my share of run-ins with the campus “embrace diversity or else, damnit” cops over cartoons posted to my door. Such radical bits of far-right racist propaganda as Calvin and Hobbes caused all kinds of ruckus, and got me some fun meetings with people who, in a rational world, would have been unemployed. Shrug. Well, it seems that things have *not* improved:
Short form: a professor stuck a poster on his door showing Captain Mal Reynolds from “Firefly” with the quote “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” And so the local sensitivity gestapo came along, stole the poster, and threatened the professor with *criminal* charges. The professor did the proper thing, and put up a new poster:
And so the same events play out… poster stolen, threats of legal action made. Professor repo0rted to the university “threat assessment team.”
Sigh.
I just wish that *another* Mal Reynolds quote was the one that actually started this: “You’ve got the right same as anyone to live and try to kill people.”
Texas Congressman blasts N.Y. plan for shuttle
Short form: The shuttle Enterprise was supposed to go to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York and was to be located on a specially-built berth next to the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier. Well, that ain’t gonna happen. The museum now wants to put the Enterprise in a parking lot.
They envision converting the lot, which is surrounded by a bagel bakery, a car wash, storage warehouses and a strip club
Oddly, some people are upset about this. Not only the Congressman mentioned in the title, but the Seattle Museum of Flight. They wanted a Shuttle but were locked out; in order to get a shuttle, they went to the bother of building an $11 million facility to house one. The New Yorkers apparently did squadoo, but still managed to score a shuttle.
As the Fark headline puts it:
This (68 megabyte ZIP folder of jpg images) package contains diagrams to be used in the construction of accurate display models of the B-47. Includes:
1) Boeing drawing 23-2305, “Boeing B-47E Model Drawings 1/100 Scale,” 9000X5432 pixels, dated 1956
2) Boeing drawing 14-5068, “Boeing XB-47 Stratojet Model Drawing,” 13408X8412 pixels, dated 1947
Also included are halfsize and quartersize version for easier viewing and printing.
Air Drawing 57 can be downloaded for $$4.50.
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May 26, 2010: President Obama gives a speech at the Fremont, CA, Solyndra, Inc. solar panel factory, declaring the $700 million facility “is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. ”
Obama was there to celebrate $535,000,000 in loan guarantees from the DoE to Solyndra.
And today?
Solyndra to Declare Bankruptcy
Awesome. 1,000 workers have been invited to explore exciting new opportunities in not getting another paycheck from this shining example of the Federal Stimulus At Work.
It’s always fun to learn a new word. Today’s word: the Irish/Yiddish “shemozzle.” Definition: a brawl. How it’s used:
Damn the torpedoes: Defence’s $600m blunder
The Defence Force’s long-delayed $600 million purchase of anti-submarine torpedoes has suffered another humiliating setback.
The Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) is now tendering for translators at a reported cost of around $110,000 after it was discovered the technical documentation for the European-designed weapons are written only in Italian and French.
The situation has been described as a “shemozzle” by a top defence strategist.
For some reason, a few people are irritated that the Martin Luther King Jr. statue recently unveiled in Washington, D.C. (just in time for The Most Important News Story Of 2011) was made of Chinese granite, carved by a Chinese artist and assembled by Chinese workers. Huh.
Martin Luther King memorial made in China
…there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei’s rendering.
Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.
More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.
Interesting resume the artist has: Mao, MLK and Obama. Hmmmm…
(Pictured: rumored early maquette for the MLK memorial)