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GOP Congressman: God Wants the Poor to Starve

Mike Licht — Fri, 24 May 2013 05:26:40 +0000

Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher (R, TN-8) wants to cut $4 billion from the SNAP food subsidy program for the poor. Since Mr. Fincher’s party crashed the economy, 47 million people – one in seven Americans — get this meager food aid, but the Congressman wants them to go hungry. He thinks God does, too. and backs up the assertion by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

Given the record of this obstructive do-nothing Congress, it really sounds like the Bible wants us to shut down dining services in the U.S. House of Representatives.

More:

“GOP Lawmaker Botches Bible to Punish Poor,” Candace Chellew-Hodge, Religion Dispatches

“The Members’ Dining Room,” Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives

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Death By Redesign?

Mike Licht — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:25:56 +0000

Yahoo celebrity CEO Marissa Mayer headlined a Broadway revival of “How to Succeed in Business” the other day, tap-dancing through a Times Square presser marking the $1 Billion acquisition of Tumblr and a new Yahoo NYC HQ. As an afterthought, Ms. Mayer unveiled the evisceration of Flickr , a formerly functional photo sharing platform. Yahoo acquired Flickr eight years ago and then ignored it, but since Yahoo has been an acquisition graveyard, that benign neglect may account for Flickr’s survival. Until now. Yesterday’s “improvements” may kill it off.

A neglected but huge fact: Management and coding didn’t make Flickr valuable; that was done by the 89 million users who contributed their 8 billion photographs. Users are now offered 1 Terabyte of storage for free, but ads will soon infest their accounts. Want to avoid ads? Pay twice the rate of a current Pro Account so you won’t see them. Then there’s the $500 Doublr account.

The Flickr re-do is a marketing triumph and usability disaster. All the marketing blather in the world can’t fix bad design. Images now appear in a previously optional “lightbox” display, a dynamic grid that is visually fatiguing and tough to navigate. Asked to save this photo platform, Marissa Mayer merely turned Flickr into Pinterest.

Tumblr: Watch your back.

More:

“Flickr’s 1TB for photos is great, but how about a smart shoebox?” Danny Sullivan, CNET

Flickr user comment stream (scroll down)

Marissa Mayer’s Flicker account: Only 19 iPhone images since August 2012.

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Hound Dog History

Mike Licht — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:05:07 +0000

(“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) Hound Dog” first became a hit 6o years ago.

“The song was born in the famed Brill Building of New York, written by two Jewish teenagers named Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber. They had intended it, Leiber later recalled, for a female blues singer, and though they had several candidates in mind, it was Willie Mae Thornton who first took it into the studio on August 13, 1952. Big Mama, as she was known, growled that the songwriters were ‘a couple of kids,’ but the great bandleader Johnny Otis put her through her paces with several takes even as she tinkered with the lyrics, threw in a few suggestive howls, and changed the accent to make ‘Hound Dog’ wholly her own.”

– “‘Hound Dog’: An Old Dog That Keeps on Running,” Gregory McNamee, Britannica blog

Related:

“Mama’s Voice: The lasting influence of Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton,” Maureen Mahon, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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Feline Spies

Mike Licht — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:29:52 +0000

“Domestic house cats, it seems, may be alien sentinels—sent to spy on us and report their findings back to the mother ship. Or, as some theorists have put it, they’re like alien camcorders tracking our every move.”

– ”Are Cats Spies Sent by Aliens? A Deep Examination of One of the Internet’s Best Conspiracy Theories,” Austin Considine, Motherboard

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FBI Has Eyes on Bachmann

Mike Licht — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:24:44 +0000

“The FBI is investigating complaints of alleged campaign finance violations in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign.

The FBI joins the Office of Congressional Ethics, the Federal Elections Commission and an Iowa state Senate ethics committee in probing whether Bachmann’s presidential campaign paid an Iowa state senator from her MichelePAC, a fund that should not have been used for campaign expenses, and whether the state senator stole the email list of an Iowa home-school group from another Bachmann staffer, Barbara Hekki, prior to the Iowa caucuses in January, 2012.”

– ”FBI joins probe of Bachmann’s presidential campaign,” Cyndy Brucato, MinnPost.com

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Congressman Mark Sanford Sworn In

Mike Licht — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:05:04 +0000

Disgraced Former Governor Mark Sanford, noted Republican adulterer, was sworn in as the representative of South Carolina’s First Congressional District on Tuesday. Mr. Defense of Marriage Act was accompanied by his paramour, the lovely María Belén Chapur of Argentina. We recognized her from earlier photos.

Mr. Sanford held the same congressional seat in the past, before he became the Palmetto State’s governor and then secretly ran off to Argentina to join his mistress, telling aides he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Sounds like a good candidate for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Related:

“Mark Sanford’s guide to Washington: Argentinian steaks, hiking and a spot to watch the Super Bowl,” Emily Heil, Washington Post blog

“The Sierra Club helps Mark Sanford find the Appalachian Trail,” Shea Gunther, Mother Nature Network

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Low-Power Powerball

Mike Licht — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:18:55 +0000

“Powerball at an estimated $600 million as jackpot continues to grow,” AP via Fox News

“Got THE ticket for tonight’s big Powerball drawing?,” CNN

Odds of winning: 1 in 175.2 million.

Odds of becoming president: 1 in 43,000,000.

Odds of being struck by lightning this year: 1 in 700,000.

The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, according to Ambrose Bierce, but it’s worse than that. It’s a tax on the hopes and dreams of the poor. The only way lottery corporations get away with it is by giving a kickback to state governments, a small cut of their vast profits.

UPDATE:

“$590M-plus Powerball: 1 winning ticket sold in Florida,” Barbara Rodriguez, AP via Boston Globe

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Cell Phones & High Blood Pressure

Mike Licht — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:44:06 +0000

The highlight of the 28th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension this week was a study suggesting that mobile phone calls may raise your blood pressure. The study, conducted at Northern Italy’s Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, found that subjects talking on their telefonini had a significant rise in blood pressure, from 121/77 to 129/82. Frankly, we wonder if BP rose because subjects were irritated when their phone calls were interrupted by blood pressure tests.

More:

“New research shows what raises and lowers blood pressure: Cell phones, salt and saying om,” EurekaAlert

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Eastern Delights

Mike Licht — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:16:23 +0000

“For six years, Rafat Shororo longed for the taste of a KFC sandwich he had eaten in Egypt. This week, he got his finger lickin’ fix at home in the Gaza Strip after a local delivery company managed to smuggle it from Egypt through underground tunnels.

‘It has been a dream, and this company has made my dream come true,’ says Mr. Shororo, an accountant, as he receives his order from the delivery guy.

The al-Yamama company advertises its unorthodox new fast-food smuggling service on Facebook. It gets tens of orders a week for KFC meals despite having to triple the price to 100 shekels ($30) to cover transportation and smuggling fees. The deliveries go from the fryers at the Al-Arish KFC joint 35 miles away to customers’ doorsteps in about three hours.”

– ”KFC smugglers bring buckets of chicken through Gaza tunnels,” Ahmed Aldabba, Christian Science Monitor

Also:

“Delivering KFC by Tunnel, Not Too Fast but Satisfying,” Fares Akram, New York Times

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Image (“Arabian Delights, after Ludwig Deutsch [detail]”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Newt Gingrich and His Pocket Communicator

Mike Licht — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:28:12 +0000

Newt Gingrich, disgraced former Speaker of the House and future Moon Colony Governor, is baffled by the nomenclature for his … pocket communicator device thingy. It’s a pager, a Personal Digital Assistant, a GPS, a Gameboy, an Email Appliance, a Walkman, a camera, and a ~~can opener~~ telephone, all in one — and it fits in your pocket!

Mr. Gingrich is the leading intellectual of the Republican Party and its chief (perhaps only) Futurist. So what should he call this miraculous machine?

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Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.