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His noodly appendage, Eastern edition

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 21:19 by John Sinteur in category: Pastafarian News

[Quote]:

It’s not too late to start your observance of Ramendan, “[a] month of sacrifice in which followers eschew all other foodstuffs after sundown, to test their devotion to the almighty noodle.”


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  1. Sue W on August 2nd, 2011 at 4:09:

    Eating His Body is rather gross ya know.
    *slurp*

  2. mysteryweapon on August 2nd, 2011 at 4:20:

    Can his blood be beer? I’m just sayin … :D

America’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To Low Earth Orbit

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 20:25 by Paul Jay in category: Cartoon


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  1. Rob on August 1st, 2011 at 20:41:

    We’ll be back. :)

  2. itspast on August 2nd, 2011 at 2:26:

    Forget it, there isn’t any intelligent life on earth. If we can’t afford money for the poor and elderly, there is no reason to waste it on a black hole.

  3. Mykolas on August 2nd, 2011 at 4:49:

    Rob obviously needs an education in the economics and benefits of space exploration by unmanned missions vs. manned. @itspas – very well said.

  4. Rob on August 2nd, 2011 at 5:28:

    Very well aware of the economics and benefits of unmanned missions, Mykolas, and wish we would do more of them but, as someone once said, “You know what makes these birds go up? Funding. No Bucks, no Buck Rogers”. Americans will not support an exclusively unmanned space program, regardless of the money savings. Every country has poor and elderly, istpast. Not every country has put a man on the moon.

  5. Mykolas on August 2nd, 2011 at 14:28:

    @Rob So putting a man on the moon at a huge expense is better than several unmanned scientific missions with money left over to be applied to better causes, even debt retirement? Wow, if so, that is a very expensive ego trip.

  6. Rob on August 2nd, 2011 at 17:44:

    I’ll never see it that way, Mykolas. It’s a journey of exploration. That was what was next. It made all of the US unmanned missions possible and I can’t wait to see what’s next. I think people who look at our space program the way you do are sad.

  7. Mykolas on August 3rd, 2011 at 5:57:

    @Rob – not sure sad is correct – Manned vs. Unmanned Space Exploration (Part 1). And I leave you with this thought “One of the most obvious disadvantages of unmanned space exploration is that public interest might not be the same as if people were being sent into space. This lack of interest could, in turn, lead to lack of support for the space program,
    which wouldn’t help any form of space exploration.” So perhaps it is about the money after all.

  8. Rob on August 3rd, 2011 at 15:53:

    It’s not entirely about the money, either, Mykolas, but the money plays a part. Everything Rahls says is true and it’s not a new argument. I read a piece in the 80s in Sky&Telescope magazine that said the same thing … almost verbatim. We get much more bang for our buck with unmanned missions and I’m all for them. Even said so earlier in this thread. Scientists, who only see the science, are every bit as vision-impaired as budget hawks, who only see the money. Unmanned missions will not keep the American populace engaged and they won’t keep the budget hawks at bay. We want Buck Rogers. We love our spacemen. Americans have a more romantic vision of space than other countries mainly because of President Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech. That still resonates here. Our space program is more expensive than others but that’s OK. There’s room up there for all sorts of exploration, even ours. :)

Progress

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 17:19 by John Sinteur in category: Quote

“All progress is made by unreasonable people.”

George Bernard Shaw


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Comments:

  1. Rob on August 1st, 2011 at 17:50:

    We do agree on something. :)

  2. John Sinteur on August 1st, 2011 at 17:51:

    We probably agree on quite a lot – but it’s the disagreements that make life interesting.

  3. Jan-Mark on August 2nd, 2011 at 1:12:

    @John: BORING!!! (Meaning, I agree).

  4. Sue W on August 2nd, 2011 at 4:00:

    One should add; but most unreasonable people make no progress at all.

  5. Chris G on August 2nd, 2011 at 8:49:

    A desire to halt progress in reasonable people – requires religion.

Freedom of Information requests show that UK copyright consultation was a stitch-up; Internet disconnection rules are a foregone conclusion

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 17:06 by John Sinteur in category: Intellectual Property

[Quote]:

Last year, the UK government held consultation into its proposed Digital Economy Act, an extremist copyright proposal created by the unelected Business Secretary Peter Mandelson. The process that followed was as dirty as any I’d ever seen (for example, the then-head of the BPI wrote an amendment proposing a national censorship regime that a LibDem Lord then introduced on his behalf. But it turns out that there was much more sleaze below the surface.

Documents released in response Freedom of Information requests show that Mandelson had already made up his mind from the start about the Act’s most controversial section: the rules that said that users would have their Internet connections terminated if enough unsubstantiated infringement claims were made against their households. The “compromise” that the Act made was to suspend this measure initially, and bring it into force if the other measures in the Act failed to substantially reduce infringement. Critics called it the sham it was, saying that a 70 percent reduction in file-sharing was a delusional target, and the FOI documents show that the Act’s supporters agreed — they only intended the compromise as a means of smuggling in France-style disconnections.

Which is to say that the whole business was a sham: the Business Secretary and his pals in the record industry had stitched the whole thing up from the start, and the thousands upon thousands of Britons who wrote in never had a hope of changing things. That’s why the Act was crammed through Parliament without debate in the “wash-up,” hours before Labour dissolved the government.


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  1. Irene on August 2nd, 2011 at 1:49:

    Pales into insignificance almost, when compared to the shenanigans involved in New Zealand (and a few other countries as well). You should see the underhandedness going on in Europe atm. and specifically Spain, for example.

Norwegian v American justice: Plush and unusual punishment

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 14:18 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Quote]:

So Americans should just shut up and watch. It could do us some good to see how a civilised society handles such a horrifying crime.


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Comments:

  1. Rob on August 1st, 2011 at 18:05:

    I am doing exactly that. We in the US surely don’t have the answers on dealing with horrific crimes.

  2. Sue W on August 2nd, 2011 at 3:57:

    Al Jazeera reported yesterday that the Iranian woman blinded with acid by a fellow student male “admirer” has at the last moment “forgiven” her attacker, thus preventing his punishment of blinding from taking place.

The professor at war with the prince

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 14:10 by John Sinteur in category: News

[Quote]:

Edzard Ernst keeps a stack of hate mail as a souvenir. Two months after the world’s first professor of complementary medicine took early retirement from his post at Exeter university after 18 years, the letters are still coming. An email from a chiropractor denouncing him landed in his inbox a few days ago, while Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted earlier this week that for his latest attack on Prince Charles he should be locked up in the Tower of London.

[..]

This week Ernst showed how little his critics have dented his confidence. At a press conference to mark his retirement he joined in the name-calling, agreeing with a Daily Mail reporter’s suggestion that the Prince of Wales is a “snake-oil salesman”. In the living room of his house in Suffolk he unpacks the label with the precision on which he prides himself. “He’s a man, he owns a firm that sells this stuff, and I have no qualms at all defending the notion that a tincture of dandelion and artichoke [Duchy Herbals detox remedy] doesn’t do anything to detoxify your body and therefore it is a snake oil.” Far from regretting the choice of words and the controversy it has generated, he appears to relish it.

Little do these critics know, that as the hatemail percentage of that Professor’s inbox becomes larger, the effect of the hatemail actually becomes weaker.

To strengthen the effect of the hatemail, you have to dilute the inbox with regular emails asking about his life and how his kids are doing.


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  1. porpentine on August 1st, 2011 at 15:23:

    Excellent wit, John. Others adding comments might look and learn.

  2. KC on August 1st, 2011 at 15:57:

    My first thought was that he can pay with what he has, and start ‘donating’ his organs to the victims that require them for survival. Harvested humanly for humanity. It would probably be more expensive to sustain him, but at least he would have made some sort of contribution to life.

Wal*Mart raised its low prices!

Posted on August 1st, 2011 at 14:07 by John Sinteur in category: Great Picture


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  1. Dickon Whitehead on August 1st, 2011 at 19:05:

    Now that’s what I call a drop shadow.