Briefly Noted, April 2011 edition
Selected April 2011 FaceBook Burblings, for those of you who don’t have Facebook.
Many people own vehicles that can run on E85, and don’t even know it, because the dealer or seller never pointed it out. E85 is now cheaper than gasoline in some areas. You can visit the DOE for a list of models, and you can visit e85prices.com for a list of E85 vendors in your area.
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I highly recommend the film The Baader Meinhof Complex. And I even more highly recommend you skip the first 2 minutes and 11 seconds of it, which are both irrelevant to the entire movie and in gratuitously bad taste, especially compared with the rest. The movie was bankrolled by the German government no less, and apparently that’s a valid excuse.
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I managed to miss the new Atlas Shrugged film. I have never read Ayn Rand, nor have I read any significant amount of fiction. I watched the trailer and was less than intrigued. Anthony Daniels has an article about her at the New Criterion, but it’s behind their paywall, so in its absence, here’s Buckley instead. For a more “secular conservative” take on it, Christopher Hitchens also has some insight to add.
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Take Comfort Fellow Weirdos! Hey let’s secure for ourselves some kind of patronizing yet glorifying medical diagnosis that snags us some kind of public funding and maybe blue star tattoos on our abdomens to distinguish ourselves from the Plain-Bellied Sneets. Separately, it’s comforting to see that Tarquin Fin Tim Lin Bin Whin Bim Lim Bus Stop Ftang Ftang Olé Biscuit Barrel has found new beginnings in an art career.
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The county I just moved into can’t manage its money. They could start by firing the useless county attorney who sued montieth twice over his truck.
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I finished watching the entire series of The Tudors and love it despite its main glaring flaw: the obligatory gratuitous puerile Showtime soft-porn scenes. In spite of that, the score is great, the costumes and set are mesmerizing, and the occasional calligraphy shots are drool-inducing. And I love watching Joanne King and Natalie Dormer make faces. I could watch it all over again eventually.
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Sir, you don't understand. If you could show me how to operate this vehicle, I could rule my ENTIRE SPECIES. You could have all the feathers and eggs you could ever dream of. NAME YOUR PRICE!
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“This model is known as a ‘Gleague GS’. The ‘full shotgun blast to the face’ look was definitely trending in Shanghai.” -Top Gear
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Thank you for calling AT&T. Due to unusually high call volume HELLO? HAVE YOU FIXED MY DSL YET? IT’S BEEN SEVEN DAYS. NO, I’M NOT SHOUTING. YOU MUST JUST BE EXPERIENCING UNUSUALLY HIGH CALL VOLUME. HELLO?
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One knows one needs to go grocery shopping when one finds oneself reduced to “drinking” bread crumbs straight out of the can.
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If China keeps imposing sound fiscal discipline in an authoritarian manner faster than Western banks and regulators adopt it voluntarily, it may eventually reach a point where it has the luxury of simply Flipping the Freedom Switch and letting its citizens do as they please, while we in the West keep digging our way out of past debts.
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Apple and Google phones track your every move. O rly? Ya rly. Yawn. Never saw that coming.
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Financial stocks reported record profits this past Monday morning from windfalls taken from cashing in post-OrgyCon hangover futures. Porcelain God Energy Partners is now EBITDA-positive following its first major orders of vomit-based fuel cells by the Belgian government.
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Ford posts its highest earnings since 1998 on sales of fuel-efficient autos. And yet they’re still killing off the 29mpg Ford Ranger, the smallest and most fuel efficient pickup available in the US. Grrrr. I filled mine up tonight after wringing 333.4 miles out of one tank.
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Sikorsky moves one step closer to Airwolf. Quick! Gather DNA from Jan-Michael Vincent, Ernest Borgnine and Michelle Scarabelli before it’s too late!
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John Cleese discovers conservatism at 71. John Cleese and John Derbyshire are gradually converging towards being indistinguishable. At one point I thought Derb rather Ec-cleese-iastic. But now I find Cleese rather Derb-ish.
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William Briggs charts inflation-adjusted federal government outlay per capita. Note the logarithmic scale on the y-axis.
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I congratulate Donald Trump on his dazzling achievement. In honor of The Donald, I have shaved my head and purchased a toupee in the shape of the Lorenz attractor.
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Currently, FB comments slagging off the royal wedding outnumber FB comments enthused about the royal wedding by about 3 to 1. And now a brief automotive interlude.