perfidy

It is important to understand English, I suppose. Either that or to get thicker skin:

I had a bunch of Euros I needed to exchange, so I went to the currency exchange window at the local bank.

Just one lady in front of me . . . an Asian lady, who was trying to exchange yen for dollars, and she was a little irritated.

She kept asking the teller, 'Why it change?? Why it change?? Why it change??' Then she continued, 'Yesterday, I get two hunat dolla fo yen. Today I get ony hunat eighty dolla?? Why it change?'

The teller shrugged his shoulders and said, simply and carefully, 'Fluctuations.'

The Asian lady glares at the banker, 'Fluc you white people, too!'

Again.

372 French cars torched over "calm" New Year
Tue Jan 1, 6:51 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - Vandals torched 372 cars as France celebrated the New Year, down on the figure last year after a night the police described as "relatively calm."

Cars are burned fairly regularly in France and the image of vehicles in flames in poor suburbs became symbolic of riots in 2005 when angry youths set fire to thousands of cars.

...

"The night was relatively calm, without notable incident, there were very few direct clashes with the security forces," said a spokesman for the national police.

At 12:00 a.m. EST, the Interior Ministry said 372 vehicles had been burned -- 144 in the Paris region and 228 in the rest of France. That was down from 397 last New Year's Eve.

...

Well, woot! woot! - 25 fewer cars go under the torch! Pat yourselves on the back, lads.

Ignoring for a moment that if my car were burnt, I'd have trouble thinking of the event as anything other than a notable incident, I'm numb enough to the vagaries of stupid people that the story, and its characterizations, don't shock all that much. The world has become accustomed to this uniquely French method of communication, though it hardly seems as though it was done in the language of love.

Here's the part that made me chuckle, while reminding me of Reuters' predilection for "scare quotes": the way Reuters classifies the story, as inferred from the actual link (http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL01382497) makes clear that they don't buy the gendarmes' characterization that this was no big deal.

If such a thing happened in the US, it would be a big deal, and would represent an actual crisis of some degree. Sadly for the French, events like this are neither a big deal nor treated as any sort of crisis. All of which heightens the absurdity of the sometimes-seen French pretense to superiority, it would seem.

And, oh, yeah, only tangentially related - Happy New Year, all.

I know you've all been holding your breath for this one...the Top Ten Best Quotes of 2007. This is your opportunity to play trivia and see if you can remember the circumstances behind each one, so phone the neighbors and wake the kids.

1. "Don't tase me, bro!"

2. "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."

3. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

4. "That's some nappy-headed hos there."

5. "I don't recall."

6. "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

8. "I have a wide stance when going to the bathroom."

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

Find out who said what and why here.

WHERE DID THE WHITE MAN GO WRONG ?

Indian Chief, 'Two Eagles', was asked by a U.S. Government Official, "You have observed the white man for 90 years. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress and his mistakes."

The Chief nodded in agreement.

The Official continued, "Considering all these events, in your opinion, how has the white man done?"

The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute, and then calmly replied. "When white man find land, Indians running it. No taxes. No debt. Plenty buffalo. Plenty beaver. Clean Water. Women did all the work. Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing... all night having sex."

Then, the chief leaned back and smiled: "Only white man dumb enough to think he can improve system like that."

Confounding us with their "words". To western ears it sounds like gibberish, but it must be the language of maskirovka, multi-layered and nefarious.

Never mind the science at stake; the ineffectiveness of the proposed American program against not just weapons currently fielded by the commies, but the ones they could quickly manufacture; or the weakness in Russia that American moves like the missile shield spotlight.

If someone could just square this headline:

Putin warns of new Cuban missile crisis

With the last paragraph:

Mr Putin added: "Thank God, we do not have any Cuban missile crisis now..."

I'll say spassiba.

Cause the communist party in space

The fact that there are now enough Chinese astronauts to make a formal commie party in space is interesting, I guess. I mean, nothing wrong with that if those are your rules for doing things.

This bit was kinda creepy though. From Yang Liwei, first Chinese astronaut in space:

Like foreign astronauts having their beliefs, we believe in communism, which is also a spiritual power

I believe in the holy power of the workers owning the means of production, and I thank His Eminence the Party Chair every day I am chained to this machine turning out fake vomit and Silly Putty. Amen.

[wik] Eh, looks like the linked story is crapping out. Well, it was about Chicoms in space. Until it works again, enjoy this picture of a Cheese Doodle sculpture.

For reasons that are unclear to me, the House's Foreign Affairs Committee has agreed that the Ottoman Empire's treatment of Armenians after Dubya Dubya The First was genocide. Well, close enough to actual (?) genocide so as to be tantamount to genocide. I think.

I'm not sure why this discussion even has to take place today, as opposed to anytime in the intervening 80 years between the events described and, say, the third Sunday in March, but that's where we are with it.

Predictably, the Turks are annoyed by this vote; Turkish PM Gul going so far as to call the decision "unacceptable" and their ambassador saying something about it damaging the Turkish psyche. Now that's pretty good stuff, but I will save discussion of the apparent ease with which a minor foreign government committee can send the entirety of the fragile Turkish consciousness into existential crisis another day.

What I keyed in on was the word "unacceptable", which got me thinking about other things that They have found "unacceptable" about Us. I'll start; feel free to add your own:

-Russia, and our complete Bill of Rights

-France, and our cheeseburgers

-The Entire Muslim World, and our sense of humor

-China, and our hippies

-Canada, and our everything

-England, and our iced tea

-Yemen, and our hot chicks

What the crying hell is wrong with England?

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of “emotional abuse”, even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.

Social services’ recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

Hexham children’s services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services’ request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

And we’re all worried about al Qaeda. How droll.

The New York Times has a remarkable story this week about a photo album that came out of Auschwitz, with an accompanying slideshow that's incredibly arresting. You see, rather than the usual deeply upsetting images of skeletonesque inmates suffering untold miseries, they're pictures of their captors and executioners at rest and play, frolicking, hanging out, mugging for the camera, generally behaving like any people taking a break from the rigors of a job well done would. Except that the same day the pictures were taken, these well-rested and attractive people committed incredibly depraved acts against other humans. In these images, even Dr. Joseph Mengele seems like a shrimpy nebbish, with barely a hint of the maggots roiling behind his smiling eyes.

There's one woman in the pictures, who appears a few times. She's clearly a camp administrator of some kind, and she's young, fresh, and pretty. She's clearly vivacious and strong-willed; it's easy to be attracted to this face from more than sixty years ago and imagine a friendship or a friendly beer. And then I realize that behind that smile and those pretty eyes is a mind completely and totally at ease with sorting families into keepers and corpses every single day, and I want to puke myself dry.

Thank the deity of your choice that such an artifact exists, and is in the hands of the National Holocaust Museum. For the danger, as we all know intellectually but tend to forget in our guts, is not from overt acts of monstrousness, but in the workaday -- yes -- banality of evil.

Back on May 21, 2007, I saw an article that I almost, almost thought worthy enough of derision that it justified a post. For reasons that now escape me, I decided otherwise at the time. However, as sometimes occurs, it's again become current, so I'll revisit.

This, from the Austin American Statesman:

A panic attack move into private equity?

By Robert Elder | Monday, May 21, 2007, 02:07 PM

Writing in the May 18 issue of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, Dallas investor and state of Texas pension official Frederick “Shad” Rowe tees off on the leaders of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas pension fund.

Rowe examines the Texas teacher fund’s recently announced plans to move massive amounts of its holdings into private equity and out of publicly traded stocks. The strategy strikes him as the investment equivalent of a panic attack.

(Rowe notes that the Texas Pension Review board, which he chairs, has no authority over TRS investment strategy and that he’s writing as a private citizen.)

Rowe writes that the teacher fund is trying to juice returns by moving into so-called alternative investments (hedge funds, buyout firms, hard assets such as timber, toll roads) a little late in the game. Maybe even just in time for the private equity bubble to pop and the very stocks the teacher fund is selling to rise in value.

Please ignore for a moment the fact that private equity and hedge funds are not the same thing - Rowe's core point, I think, was that high return comes with high risk. Big shock, that. But it appeared, in May, not to have occurred to the managers of TRS. I don't know whether TRS had gotten around to the absurd reallocation plans they announced at the time, increasing allotment to alternative investments from 3% to 35%. But Mr Rowe had the opportunity to weigh in again on the subject in a story from today's WSJ (subscription):

Pension Managers Rethink

Their Love of Hedge Funds
By CRAIG KARMIN
August 27, 2007; Page C1

Many public pension funds in recent years have become eager to invest in hedge funds. Now, some are getting cold feet.

Pension-fund managers from Louisiana to Ohio are saying they may slow their push into these funds after the recent losses suffered at big hedge funds -- including ones run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and AQR Capital Management -- have reinforced some of the risks.

Indeed, one critic suggests that pensions would be foolish to keep pursuing hedge funds. "It's like planning a vacation to an exotic land, and finding out that there's an outbreak of bubonic plague," says Frederick Rowe, chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which provides oversight of Texas public pension funds.

I'm not certain which is more admirable - consistency, correctness, or the fact he avoided doing an overt Icky Shuffle and rubbing their nose in it. But in any event, Mr Rowe was stating the obvious back in May, all the while not claiming there was anything inherently wrong with hedge funds or their doppelgangers in the alternative investment universe, just that the TRS was clearly not thinking things through in their sudden mania for the flavor of the month.

Good for him, and, I guess, good for the teachers covered by the TRS. I have no dog in the race, but I hope the managers of the TRS paid attention back in May, for the sake of their beneficiaries.

We come to the end of our educational series, “Alternate State Mottoes for Stupid States” with a state that is last on many lists, no matter how ordered, Wyoming. There is surprisingly much to say about a state that 99.83% of America’s population has wisely chosen not to live in:

• Come dig a hole in Wyoming!
• The Cowboy State. Other Village People not allowed
• WyOMFG!
• ET’s Summer Home
• Cedant arma togae
• First to make the tactical error of allowing women to vote
• Less is more. But more is more, too
• Square, but fun
• Rodeo riding is not gay
• Don’t Feed Grizzly Bears. They Eat People.
• Don’t Feed Cowboys. They Eat People.
• The other square state
• Home of the majestic jackalope
• Largely Balrog Free
• Woefully underdeveloped and tragically cowboyified
• Come for the arid emptiness, stay for the arid emptiness
• Save a horse, ride a Wyomingite
• Yogi lives in Jellystone Park, fucko
• Got Geothermal Activity?
• Join the Dick Cheney Memorial Hunt Club and bag a lawyer!
• No limit on lawyers!
• It’s Wyoming, Baby
• It takes decades of training to become a competent cowpoker
• Brokeback Mountain is in Faggotty Colorado
• In Bauxite, the Future
• Rocky Mountain Oysters, it's what's for dinner
• We Love Our Congressman
• The Diversity State, if by Diversity you mean lots of white folk in jeans and cowboy hats
• Land of a perverse number of mountains
• Like No Place on Earth. That’s not a good thing.
• Not Much, And Lots Of It
• Land of Wary Glances
• Big Fats
• A Rocky Mountain New Jersey
• The Suffering State
• With this few people, you’d think it’d be harder to find assholes
• Flat Is Where It's At
• Say “Wynot?” and I’ll pop a cap in your ass
• The Dwarrodelf
• Jackson Hole isn't as bad as it sounds
• I Live In Wyoming. Please Kill Me.
• Proving You Don't Need A City To Be A State
• Where men are lonely and sheep are scared
• 48% Government Owned
• Alice doesn’t live here anymore
• Gateway to Utah

[wik] Don't worry, your alternate motto fun is not completely dead - there are plans in the works to attack Puerto Rico and our Nation's capitol, and our crack team of researchers is looking into new and innovative ways to ridicule Europeans.

Sweden struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants.

Here's an interesting thing: a map of the United States with the names of the states replaced with the names of countries that have equivalent GNP's. It seems that my home state of Ohio is, economically, a brother to Australia. Cool. Take a look. Thanks to Rocket Jones for the link.

C'mon....I couldn't let this pass without saying something.

Actually, I think the pic they used for the story is right before the scene when the blades pop out and the thing flies straight into his eyes:

Apparently Israeli nuclear tests shattered the Phantom Zone carnival-mirror prison these guys inhabited.

If there is an Islamic analogue to Superman (II), he needs to get his caped ass to Gaza and get it done. 
 

Wisconsin: a manure soaked, cow-infested corner of the world inhabited by crap-beer-sozzled, squishy socialist, Scandinavian refugees. Given that they have so little to be proud of, why should we ridicule them? Silly question. Because we can.

• Badgers?! We don't need no stinkin' badgers
• You're Among Cows
• We put the "sin" in Wisconsin!
• The Carnation Coffee-Mate Non-Dairy Creamer® State
• Not just cow farmers, progressivecow farmers
• My own private Sweden
• Come see the Radiant Progressive Future in Wisconsin!
• Land of funny accents
• Familiarity breeds contempt, which is why we are so self-loathing
• We gave D&D to the world, please don’t hate us
• Eat Cheese or Die
• Cow Pie Paradise
• The State of Mustardly Love
• Wisconsin: Minty Fresh
• Forward - always forward, never straight
• A cheesy motto for a cheesy state
• We had a thin guy who lived here, but he was eaten
• More boviny goodness than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick
• Not so boring if you're drunk
• The Seasonal Affective Disorder State
• Look, jerky, I don't need to talk to you!
• Pinko commie, but in a nice Swedish way, not a bloodthirsty Russian way
• I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay
• Milwaukie’s Best: the cause of, and solution to, all life’s problems
• Say "Cheeeese" and I'll slit your throat, fucko
• Milky Lickers
• We’ll provide the beer, cheese & bratwurst – you bring the air freshener
• Come Cut Our Cheese
• Wisconsin is like its beer: fucking close to water
• Badger Badger Badger Badger
• Western Outer New Jersey
• You’ve got a vaguely Scandinavian friend in Wisconsin
• The Cheesy, Cupric, Milky Badger State
• The best place to see a tractor on the road
• Spicy lamby nipple chops with minty pickle sour sauce!
• Out drinking your state since 1848
• Fargo’s in North Dakota, jackass
• Gateway to Michigan’s Fantabulous Upper Peninsula
• Stay Just a Little Bit Longer! Does that sound needy? Be honest.

So check this out: a young Chinese government censor let a memorial to the victims of theTiananmen Square massacre slip past her into the paper she censors, because having grown up with censored news, she'd never heard of it.

Haw!

On the subject of the 2012 olympic logo and its relative quality, I am told by the whole internets that the prevailing opinion is "it looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob."

Why yes... yes it does.

London must stand firm. They MUST NOT bow to pressure to abandon this hilarious and utterly appropriate logo! If this logo goes, the terrorists win.
 

West Virginia is second only to New Jersey in the abuse leveled at it from the decent states. And just like not everyone can be thick-headed, rude Mafioso-wannabes living in a pestilential, polluted industrial nightmare; not everyone can be inbred, uncultured rednecks living in abject poverty amidst the wreckage of a once beautiful landscape. There is, thank heaven, only one West Virginia.

• America’s Dip Cup
• The Robert E. Byrd Memorial State
• The Mountainish State
• It seemed like a good idea at the time
• Got Teeth?
• My other car is West Virginia
• The State of Brotherly, and Sisterly, Love
• Almost Poland
• Not Just Strip Mines and Rednecks Any More. Well, Okay, Still Just Strip Mines And Rednecks.
• Because somebody has to make Virginia look good
• The Manhandle State
• Oh, honestly, people. We have a world-class orchestra. We have a university.
• Where Senator Robert E. Byrd Sends Your Federal Tax Money
• Come see our new paved roads! You paid for them!
• Now with electicity
• Where girls and grizzly bears both lick their paws
• We Figured There Was Enuff "Norths" and "News”
• Fighting Never Proved Anything, Except Who’s Better
• Where "family values" has a slightly different meaning
• One Big Happy Family
• Why’d we have to throw out the good part of the state?
• That’s “Appalachian-American” to you, fucko
• We... hey, Joe-Bob, pass me the chewin' tobakky, willya?
• New Jersey is down on its knees before Almighty God giving thanks that we are in the union
• Deliverance was filmed in South Carolina; Indeed, Our Rate of Murderous Inbred Banjoists Is Well Below That of Massachusetts
• Where cars up on blocks outnumber cars that run 3-1
• West Virginia: Better When You’re Drunk
• The non-wealthy, non-slave-ownin’, white trash Virginia
• Hateful, Talentless, War-Lovin’ Trailer Trash
• Yes, you can live in a trailer on a 45 degree slope. Why?
• Duct tape is the new chrome
• It's All Relative in West Virginia
• New Jersey is the West Virginia of the North
• Hey, we’re an oppressed minority, too
• West Virginia is the Best Virginia
• Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and Route 77 to Cleveland
• West Virginia is Bigger than France
• West Virginia Bathes More than France
• Ain’t No Lovin’ Like West Virginia Lovin’
• The Hillbilly Rape State
• Montani semper leperi
• Weird, Woebegone, West Virginia
• Semper Redneckius
• Almost Heaven, for very generous values of “almost”
• We know God hates us, ‘cause coal is so much cheaper than oil
• Just think if we was rich like them ay-rab shakes. Damitalltohell.
• The fightenest, drinkenest state in the Union
• The Moonshine State
• You ain’t a revenoor, is ya?
• The Commonwealth of Byrd
• Byrdania
• The People’s Republic of Kleegle-Byrd
• Byrdmark
• Byrdland
• Byrdatopia
• Byrdania
• Die Grosser Byrdreich

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource. The category tag. In this, of course, he is completely wrong. Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags. And I would have been right. But that wasn't the point. I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye.

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have. And, when I have a free moment, I'll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.