“OK, Louie. Drop the mop.”

“OK, Louie.  Drop the mop.”  That's my quote of the day, written by Cecil Adams, the self-proclaimed (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) “world's most intelligent human.”  The occasion for this quote is an issue of The Straight Dope, wherein Cecil answers a reader's question:

Why does the label on a bottle of Pine-Sol say, "It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling"? Exactly what uses are unlawful? We'd hate to be sent up the river on a Pine-Sol rap.

You just gotta love Cecil...

Now, this smells like the beginning of an ObamaCare death spiral...

Now, this smells like the beginning of an ObamaCare death spiral...  Dave Carter, writing at Ricochet, leads off with:

"Let me be exactly clear," he said, at which point prudent Americans everywhere reached furtively for their wallets, because clarity to Barack Obama becomes a dismal and dangerous fog of dissimulation for everyone else. The prelude out of the way, the conductor continued:

First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.

In a purely sophistical sense, that last sentence may be correct. They didn't talk about it. They just did it. But the rest of that statement is as blatant a lie as we've heard from any president since Bill Clinton denied using a subordinate as a humidor. And whereas Clinton was exposed, so to speak, as having dallied with one vulnerable young lady, we now face a situation in which the whole country is getting the shaft.

He points out several very public examples of ObamaCare delivering precisely the opposite of what was promised.  California leads the way in ObamaCare-related health insurance cancellations, and for some reason that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Do read the whole thing – like all of Dave Carter's posts, it's good reading and full of information...

First it was kids, now it's animals!

First it was kids, now it's animals!  Philosophers, that is.  Via my mom, who says she couldn't pick a favorite.  Click on any of them to embiggen them all...

Euonymus oxyphyllus...

Euonymus oxyphyllus, aka Korean spindle tree.  Your morning gorgeous, courtesy of BPOD.

This will definitely get your heart started!

This will definitely get your heart started!  The Boogie-Woogie Twins...

Stress reliever...

Stress reliever...  Via reader Jim M., who swears this works great:

In case you are having a rough day, here's a stress management technique recommended in all the latest psychological journals. The funny thing is that it really does work and will make you smile.

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream.

2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.

3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.

4. No one knows your secret place.

5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.

6. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

7. The water is so clear that you can make out the face of the Congressman you are holding underwater.

See it worked. You're smiling. You feel better already.

Jim's right – this works wonderfully!

Something new in storage...

Something new in storage: Seagate's Kinetic Open Storage.

Key/value pairs on a disk whose interface is TCP/IP on Ethernet, with a supporting protocol.  Real “storage in a cloud”, not a disk array and file system wrapped with a cloud interface. 

This smells revolutionary to me.

Seagate appears to be making the entire stack open, in the hope of creating a ubiquitous standard, much like TCP/IP is today.  If they pull that off, this will be revolutionary.

I want to buy one.  Right now.  

Kids say the darndest things...

Kids say the darndest things...  This Reddit thread is full of interesting things that kids said.  Most of them also have lots of comments.  It all makes for fascinating reading.  Here's one thing, just to whet your appetite:

I was on a train with mum when I was maybe 4 or 5. I was facing the direction we were coming from and she was opposite me. Then I said 'It's like I'm looking into the past, and you're looking into the future."

Most transparent administration ever?

Most transparent administration ever?  What a crock!

These people have no shame at all.  None.

Sean Hannity is someone I frequently disagree with, but I think his response to the administration's action was admirable...

The kids finally noticed...

The kids finally noticed ... that the actions of The One's administration are going to royally screw them, and they're starting to fight back.

Good luck with that.  Seriously.

I've done a lot of debugging...

I've done a lot of debugging – but it never involved a device whose failure would create an explosion with a three mile radius of total destruction.  Yikes!

Your morning Beethoven...

Your morning Beethoven...

There are moments...

There are moments ... when I think the human race might be worth fighting to keep.

But they don't come often enough...

Over 8 months...

Over 8 months...  That's how long the average unemployed person has been out of work.  Previous post-1950 recessions were far less severe by this measure.

The longer someone has been out of work, the more severe the financial impact on them and their families.  Prior to my retirement, if I had ever been out of work for that long I'd have had to make some extremely difficult choices – such as whether to keep my house, or keep my retirement savings.  For the many two-income families these days, having one spouse unemployed for that long means a big reduction in income, but perhaps less than ruinous.  For single-income families (like ours), it would be worse...

Yup, that's about right...

Yup, that's about right.  Via my mom:

A Harley Biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the collar of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch.

Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A reporter has watched the whole event.

The reporter addressing the Harley rider says, 'Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I've seen a man do in my whole life.'

The Harley rider replies, 'Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger and acted as I felt right.'

The reporter says, 'Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a journalist, you know, and tomorrow's paper will have this story on the front page... So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'

The biker replies, 'I'm a U.S. Marine and a Republican.'

The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on the front page:

U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

And THAT pretty much sums up the media's approach to the news these days, especially if you are a Conservative Republican.

This makes me want to cry...

This makes me want to cry...  You really need to watch the whole thing.  Then think about the state of education in this country...

A disaster on so many levels...

A disaster on so many levels...  James Taranto has renamed ObamaCare: it's now “Vaporcare”.  As Mr. Taranto puts it:

...ObamaCare isn't just a technical failure. And it isn't just an economically unsustainable scheme. Now it's a rhetorical disaster too. Even by the standards of Obama speeches it was terrible. It was so bad, it was the ObamaCare website of political oratory.

Read the whole thing...

Raise the minimum wage...

Raise the minimum wage, reduce the number of jobs.  CoyoteBlog has an easy-to-understand description of why this is so...

Just 35 diskettes!

Just 35 diskettes!  Though the box says 48 disks, so I'm not sure what's up with that.  But – a full 16 colors, too!  And it even works with your mouse!  It sounds like the installation is about as easy as it gets:

Just fire up MS-DOS, enter ‘A:\>dir *.exe’ into the command line, and then follow the instructions to install the Obamacare batch files—it should only take four or five hours at the most. You can press F1 for help if you run into any problems. And be sure your monitor’s screen resolution is at 320 x 200 or it might not display properly.

President Obama promises a 6 CD-ROM version by 2016, too.

With this kind of cutting-edge technology, how could an aging geek like me not love it?

Via friend and reader Simon M...

Pie Jesu...

Pie Jesu - Fauré's famous aria from the Requiem in D minor.  This is a beautiful performance of it, but what makes it especially notable is that the three guys singing the parts first met just a few days before this performance.  They got connected on the Internet, through one of the many web services springing up to connect musical performers around the world.

Via my lovely bride...