From Denny: This is so funny, mainly because the lampooning Italians have us accurately nailed to the wall. If you have ever wondered what Americans sound like to others who speak different languages you will laugh at this. An Italian singer decided to write a song with nothing but gibberish to sound like it was intelligible English. Of course, the funniest thing of all is that often today's music sounds unintelligible to us as well! :) But hey, pop music is really all about the beat that makes you want to dance and have fun! ("That's my story and I'm sticking to it!" as the saying goes in America...) I guess Americans can remind themselves of the other saying: "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery." Anyway, you look at it, this little musical spoof is great fun!
*** THANKS for visiting, come back often and please subscribe in a reader or by email!
fav science cartoon
17 January 2010
13 January 2010
5 Funny Quotes About Time
Time? Where are you, you little rascal? I'll go shoot me some Time to keep!
From Denny: Enjoy these funny quotes as a sampling of today's Mind Candy! For more grins at funny photos and quotes, go here: Funny Quotes About Time - Cheeky Quote Day! 13 Jan 2010
Quotes
* When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped. - Marcel Achard
* Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks. - Euripides
* I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours. - Bernard Berenson
* I've been on a calendar, but never on time. - Marilyn Monroe
* Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty. -Robert Frost
: "Play it again, Sam!"*** To enjoy the full post, full of funny photos too:
Funny Quotes About Time - Cheeky Quote Day! 13 Jan 2010
*** THANKS for visiting, come back often, huge hug to current subscribers and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email! :)
09 January 2010
Most Popular Posts 2009 at The Soul Calendar
Check out the most popular posts this year that concentrated on news about the brain and astronomy.
From Denny: Thank you for your support this year! So many interesting articles to write about science news and so little time to produce them... This year it was fascinating to write about the strides science has made in understanding more about the brain. Illusions are always great fun to ponder too. Astronomy is the universe without and the brain is the universe within. :)
Check out these popular posts too: Most Popular Posts 2010 at The Soul Calendar
Here's the most popular posts for 2009:
Fun Cartoon Review: Happy New Year!
Video: How Weird Would Earth Look with Saturns Rings?
Rare Blue Moon Shines on New Years Eve, Origin of 6 Meanings
Check Out Cosmic Generator Producing Energy at Rate of 100K Suns
Slamming Low-Ride Satellite Maps Earths Magnetic Field
Funny Halloween Quotes, Halloween Cartoon
Brain: Free Printable Brain Teasers Are Used In Business As Motivational Tools
10 Funny Quotes, Late Night Show Funnies, Spiritual Thought of the Day, Why Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize
Astronomy: Butterfly Nebula
Fingerprint Science Project for Kids
5 Funny Quotes That Spit on Death
Astronomy: Hand of God Nebula
Just How Do You Store All That Sun Power From the Solar Panels Anyway?
Brain: Relationship of Thinning of Brain's Cortex Linked to Depression
Video: Test Your Moon Trivia, Learn Whats in Your Night Sky
Can You Really Separate the Liars from the Truth-Tellers?
Astronomy: Photo of Our Galactic Center!
How Senator Ted Kennedy Affected Your Life in America
3 Octupi Videos: Escape of the Shapeshifting Octupus
Video: Who Lives in the 11th Dimension?
Millions Watch Solar Eclipse: Awe and Fear
10 Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo Landing
40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing
Video: Nuclear Weapons, Who Has Them and How Much?
CNN: Japanese Fishermen Brace for Giant Jellyfish
Brain: Our Culture Influences How Our Brains Function
Brain: Can Science Rekindle Romantic Flames?
Brain: Synchronized Brain Waves Focus Our Attention
Cool Optical Illusion: Rotating Circles
3 Abstract Optical Illusions
Coming Soon: Photographic Memory in a Pill?
Did an ice age boost human brain size?
Video: Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs
Brain: Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER - over at Lite Mind blog that looks for ways to use our minds efficiently
From Denny: Thank you for your support this year! So many interesting articles to write about science news and so little time to produce them... This year it was fascinating to write about the strides science has made in understanding more about the brain. Illusions are always great fun to ponder too. Astronomy is the universe without and the brain is the universe within. :)
Check out these popular posts too: Most Popular Posts 2010 at The Soul Calendar
Here's the most popular posts for 2009:
Fun Cartoon Review: Happy New Year!
Video: How Weird Would Earth Look with Saturns Rings?
Rare Blue Moon Shines on New Years Eve, Origin of 6 Meanings
Check Out Cosmic Generator Producing Energy at Rate of 100K Suns
Slamming Low-Ride Satellite Maps Earths Magnetic Field
Funny Halloween Quotes, Halloween Cartoon
Brain: Free Printable Brain Teasers Are Used In Business As Motivational Tools
10 Funny Quotes, Late Night Show Funnies, Spiritual Thought of the Day, Why Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize
Astronomy: Butterfly Nebula
Fingerprint Science Project for Kids
5 Funny Quotes That Spit on Death
Astronomy: Hand of God Nebula
Just How Do You Store All That Sun Power From the Solar Panels Anyway?
Brain: Relationship of Thinning of Brain's Cortex Linked to Depression
Video: Test Your Moon Trivia, Learn Whats in Your Night Sky
Can You Really Separate the Liars from the Truth-Tellers?
Astronomy: Photo of Our Galactic Center!
How Senator Ted Kennedy Affected Your Life in America
3 Octupi Videos: Escape of the Shapeshifting Octupus
Video: Who Lives in the 11th Dimension?
Millions Watch Solar Eclipse: Awe and Fear
10 Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo Landing
40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing
Video: Nuclear Weapons, Who Has Them and How Much?
CNN: Japanese Fishermen Brace for Giant Jellyfish
Brain: Our Culture Influences How Our Brains Function
Brain: Can Science Rekindle Romantic Flames?
Brain: Synchronized Brain Waves Focus Our Attention
Cool Optical Illusion: Rotating Circles
3 Abstract Optical Illusions
Coming Soon: Photographic Memory in a Pill?
Did an ice age boost human brain size?
Video: Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs
Brain: Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER - over at Lite Mind blog that looks for ways to use our minds efficiently
Funny Editorial Cartoons 9 Jan 2010
From Denny: You knew it was going to come at us full tilt - cartoonists lampooning the airport body scan debate. Tiger Woods got lucky in this week's news cycle. Then there are those retiring politicians on both sides of the aisle like Senator Chris Dodd. People were happy with him until he was an advocate of the odious bailout monies for Wall Street, killing his popularity and trust with the people. He had done a lot of good in his many years of office but this was a serious political miscalculation.
Cartoonists - and the public - are still asking the age old question: Hey, old boys club, where's the change you've been promising the voters? Sure looks like business as usual at Capitol Hill. Yet another athlete disappoints those who were foolish enough to put him on a pedestal in the first place. Wall Street is as cavalier as ever with everyone else but their self-absorbed selves.
Old Rush took another hit for wanting attention so badly he faked a heart attack. Guess his bloated ego just couldn't stand it that the news world tilted to Hawaii while the President was trying to have some semblance of a vacation from the fools in Washington. The CIA took it on the chin, absorbing all the intelligence criticism, when the reality is there are a good deal more agencies involved who did not do their part properly "so easy a caveman could do it." (GEICO ad, how appropos since GEICO started out as a government insurance agency.)
Take a look at this week's funny roundup and enjoy!
Body Scans and airport security
See Cartoons by Cartoon by David Fitzsimmons - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon
Yet another athlete
Politics and retiring politicians
The economy and lack of job satisfaction in America
*** Also: Funny New Years Resolutions Cartoons
*** THANKS for visiting!
06 January 2010
4 of 10 Top Quotes of 2009
*** Thought you might enjoy a teaser of Cheeky Quote Day! This is an excerpt from the full post over at The Social Poets:
Political Cats!From Denny: Some of the cheekiest - most irreverent or most odd - quotes were uttered in the year of 2009 in America. There are times when I wonder if there are regions of the country with lead in the water, sounding as bizarre as ancient Rome did right before they destroyed their empire. The ancient Romans poisoned themselves with lead in their wine, unknowingly, that also sterilized them, dropping the population of the ruling aristocracy. Their increasing bizarre behavior is well documented historically and, of course, Hollywood celebrated it with many a movie. After all, villains are great story grist! :)
I knew there was a verbal bridge somewhere in here... more like a teetering wood suspension bridge in the Amazon... 2009 has been a very bizarre year for quotes from politicians in particular and a few celebrities too. Notice that Tiger Woods is noticeably silent. Maybe he's saving his quotes for 2010. Stay tuned...
1. "Do ya think?" he's: Holding Back
"He deserves my silence."
— George W. Bush, former President, refusing to criticize President Barack Obama during a speech in March, his first address since leaving office. Yet the Republicans didn't waste any time later in the year, propelling Bush out in front to take the fire for complaining about Obama's job performance and handling of terrorism issues.
Hmmmm... yes, Obama still deserves his silence. The man was a hack in the Presidency so what real advice could he offer? The majority of the time he never watched nor read the news, depending upon filtered information from jealous coveting-the-power aides like Rove.
Photo by Ross D. Franklin/Getty
2. Obama's Persistent Peanut Gallery (OPPG) throwing rotten tomatoes:
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."
— Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, rambling all over the place on her Facebook page, whiner lying about a provision of the proposed health care bill that called for Medicare to reimburse doctors for counseling patients on end-of-life-care issues such as living wills and hospice availability. Somehow, she had reading comprehension problems and started screaming death panels are in the bill when clearly they are not.
3. Perilously Close on the Heels of Republican Retreads
"I'm happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that's what part of the election in November was all about."
— President Obama, during his first official press conference, on 9 Feb 2009. What's annoying is when you follow such a disastrous act like Bush and Cheney who basically broke several world governments, is that you are forced to continue some of the same policies until you can stabilize a region, beginning new policies to repair all the damage.
So it goes in American politics for decades: Republicans like to blow up the world and Democrats come in behind them to clean up their mess. Then the public gets angry it takes too long to clean up the mess and choose Republicans again, thinking the economy will pick up. There is a real disconnect of the American voter with an understanding of just how long it takes to repair a mess and then gin up the economy.
4. The Commies Are Coming! The Commies Are Coming! Stay safe; hide under your school desk when the nukes hit. (Now there's a plan.)
"I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. My question for you is, What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created according to the Constitution?"
— Katy Abram, a Pennsylvania mother, speaking at a health care town hall moderated by Senator Arlen Specter in August in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. If this woman knew what she was talking about, understood economics, international diplomacy and common sense, and actually cared if women got equal pay for the same job, well, she would never have voted Republican in the first place. These guys are the ones who sent our country careening out of control financially for decades starting with President Reagan and his paranoid Star Wars concept.
*** For the full post and quotes 5 - 10: including Michael Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Berlusconi, David Letterman and con man Madoff, visit The Social Poets, go here.
*** THANKS for visiting!
Political Cats!From Denny: Some of the cheekiest - most irreverent or most odd - quotes were uttered in the year of 2009 in America. There are times when I wonder if there are regions of the country with lead in the water, sounding as bizarre as ancient Rome did right before they destroyed their empire. The ancient Romans poisoned themselves with lead in their wine, unknowingly, that also sterilized them, dropping the population of the ruling aristocracy. Their increasing bizarre behavior is well documented historically and, of course, Hollywood celebrated it with many a movie. After all, villains are great story grist! :)I knew there was a verbal bridge somewhere in here... more like a teetering wood suspension bridge in the Amazon... 2009 has been a very bizarre year for quotes from politicians in particular and a few celebrities too. Notice that Tiger Woods is noticeably silent. Maybe he's saving his quotes for 2010. Stay tuned...
1. "Do ya think?" he's: Holding Back
"He deserves my silence."
— George W. Bush, former President, refusing to criticize President Barack Obama during a speech in March, his first address since leaving office. Yet the Republicans didn't waste any time later in the year, propelling Bush out in front to take the fire for complaining about Obama's job performance and handling of terrorism issues.
Hmmmm... yes, Obama still deserves his silence. The man was a hack in the Presidency so what real advice could he offer? The majority of the time he never watched nor read the news, depending upon filtered information from jealous coveting-the-power aides like Rove.
Photo by Ross D. Franklin/Getty
2. Obama's Persistent Peanut Gallery (OPPG) throwing rotten tomatoes:
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."
— Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, rambling all over the place on her Facebook page, whiner lying about a provision of the proposed health care bill that called for Medicare to reimburse doctors for counseling patients on end-of-life-care issues such as living wills and hospice availability. Somehow, she had reading comprehension problems and started screaming death panels are in the bill when clearly they are not.
3. Perilously Close on the Heels of Republican Retreads
"I'm happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that's what part of the election in November was all about."
— President Obama, during his first official press conference, on 9 Feb 2009. What's annoying is when you follow such a disastrous act like Bush and Cheney who basically broke several world governments, is that you are forced to continue some of the same policies until you can stabilize a region, beginning new policies to repair all the damage.
So it goes in American politics for decades: Republicans like to blow up the world and Democrats come in behind them to clean up their mess. Then the public gets angry it takes too long to clean up the mess and choose Republicans again, thinking the economy will pick up. There is a real disconnect of the American voter with an understanding of just how long it takes to repair a mess and then gin up the economy.
4. The Commies Are Coming! The Commies Are Coming! Stay safe; hide under your school desk when the nukes hit. (Now there's a plan.)
"I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. My question for you is, What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created according to the Constitution?"
— Katy Abram, a Pennsylvania mother, speaking at a health care town hall moderated by Senator Arlen Specter in August in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. If this woman knew what she was talking about, understood economics, international diplomacy and common sense, and actually cared if women got equal pay for the same job, well, she would never have voted Republican in the first place. These guys are the ones who sent our country careening out of control financially for decades starting with President Reagan and his paranoid Star Wars concept.
*** For the full post and quotes 5 - 10: including Michael Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Berlusconi, David Letterman and con man Madoff, visit The Social Poets, go here.
*** THANKS for visiting!
04 January 2010
How Funny! 10 Banned Overused Buzzwords of 2009
From Denny: That's the thing about buzzwords. First they are cool because they are a clever reference or manipulation of other words and then everyone starts using them. Our minds so crave something clever and unusual.
Then those same cool words get overused and suddenly people turn on them, like a rabid dog bites its once loved owner, declaring them now uncool. I can only imagine the confusion of someone trying to learn the English language. The occasional idioms are one thing but popular current language is a real mind-bender at times. I'm a native speaker and even I scratch my head sometimes, going, "Huh?" :)
Well, lucky you, these words and phrases are on their way "out" of our everyday language for 2010. Of course, who in the heck declares what's "in" or "out" anyway? Some fairy godmother waving her wand over the globe? Well, on to new magic in the New Year!
Photo by Betsie Van Der Meer/Corbis
1. Sexting = sex + texting - Parents are horrified, kids snicker, while someone gets slapped with pornography charges for dirty dialing on the phone. Not too funny when the law comes calling and empties your wallet for the deed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid photo by Nicholas Kamm/Getty
2. Public option - Health care reform bill reference to a government run health care plan that is actually affordable. The popular idea is it would compete with private plans to force the insurance companies to keep their prices in line "or else" the public has a cheaper alternative with the government. Works for me. Seems to me the only ones that want to ban this phrase are the insurance companies because it means less billion dollar profits to the CEOs.
3. Autotune - Refers to a software program to correct imperfect musical pitch. After rapper T-pain made good use of it the late night comedians picked it up and applied it weirdly to news clips. T-pain released his own iPhone app that has been downloaded to the tune of 10,000 a day. Bet he doesn't care if he becomes a cliche with that kind of money rolling in daily at $3 an app. Whew!
Photo by Christy Bowe/Corbis
4. Wise Latina - Came from Sotomayor's first Latina nomination to the Supreme Court. This is the much maligned and repeated line from her 2001 speech the racists tried to use against her: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." What's funny is that her term of a wise Latina became a rallying cry in the Hispanic community where people proudly displayed it on T-shirts, coffee mugs, baby bibs and banners. Isn't it great fun when the mean-spirited people get backfired?! :)
Republican Senator Grassley photo by Alex Wong/Getty
5. Death Panel - Senator Grassley from Iowa declared for sure that Obama's health care plan would "pull the plug on Grandma." This is the same guy who was crafting the bill, had read it supposedly and yet still claimed this to be true. The 1,000 page bill had no mention of committees that were set up to execute the infirm or the old. Dementia or just plain stupidity here?
Alaska's weird Governor Palin shrieked from a Facebook message: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society, whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." Uh... Governor, can you read?
6. Birther - Speaking of shriekers, Orly Tait from California, peddled a huge fat lie that Obama was secretly smuggled into Hawaii just after his birth so he could qualify as an American citizen. What drugs was this guy on? This stuff is so incredulous you can't make it up: he did. Now what mother who just gave birth is going to get on a plane with a day old baby and fly all the way from Kenya to America? Are you nuts or just not female? Worse, who is actually brain dead enough to believe any of this warped nonsense?
Obama was born in Hawaii, complete with birth certificate and birth announcement in a local paper. Yet the Birther crowd still demands to see the original document. Yeah, like I'm going to show a bunch of crazed folks my social security number and other personal data as a sitting President. Yeah, right.
Photo by Juice Images/Corbis
7. Opposite Marriage - It's supposed to mean a marriage between a man and a woman but Miss California, Carrie Prejean, bungled her rambling answer to a question and it fumbled into this phrase. The question: Do you think gay marriage should be legalized in every state of the union? Answer: "Um, we live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there." As you can guess there were some angry folks and a shouting match.
Michael Jackson Photo by Paul Richards/Getty
8. Summer of Death - A number of high profile notable celebrities passed away this year: singer Michael Jackson, actor Ed McMahon, actress Farrah Fawcett, newsman Walter Cronkite, actor and dancer Patrick Swayze, John Hughes and even beloved Taco Bell spokes-puppy Gidget the Chihuahua. Most of the deaths occurred from May to August of 2009.
From the New York Times: "No more celebrities had died than in past summers ... this summer could come to be known as the summer when baby boomers began to turn to the obituary pages first, to face not merely their own mortality or ponder their legacies, but to witness the passing of legends who defined them as a tribe, bequeathing through music, culture, news and politics a kind of generational badge that has begun to fray."
Photo by Pete Souza/White House/Getty
9. Beer Summit - Prez Obama met with black Harvard professor Henry Gates, Jr. and white police officer Sergeant James Crowley to defuse a racial incident between them. The local police badly handled a call from one of Gates' neighbors who thought someone was breaking into Gates' house: it was Gates fumbling with his keys at the door.
The police got angry when Gates got angry and the whole thing blew up out of proportion, taking on racial overtones and a national controversy. Obama made public comments about the incident when he really should have remained above the fray.
Police profiling of minorities is a sticking point in America even after electing the first African-American President. Obama successfully sat down with the men over shared beers to lay to rest the overblown sensitive issue. Of course, the photographers had never seen an American President do such a thing and went wild in the Rose Garden snapping a piece of history.
Photo by Simon Marcus/Corbis
10. Green Shoots - What's the first thing you think of when you hear this phrase? Yep! Spring time and vibrant green plant shoots rocketing out of the ground at record pace. Turns out this phrase has been around about twenty years now. It really caught on this year when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in a 60 Minutes interview, used it to describe his optimism for this year's economic growth.
Of course, since then depressed and disappointed analysts - and desperate journalists - jumped on the bandwagon and wore it out trying to use it as a soothing effect on their audiences. From Slate's Daniel Gross: "Economists are now walking around, eyes fixed on the ground like French rustics hunting for truffles, searching for verdant signs of growth."
I have to admit it was truly bizarre to hear modern day crusty personality business journalists using the phrase "verdant signs of growth" like they had just popped in from a 19th century luncheon with Sherlock Holmes at a poetry slam. I'll have to keep my eye on these guys in 2010 just to make sure they aren't suffering from buzzword dementia... :)
*** THANKS for visiting!
Then those same cool words get overused and suddenly people turn on them, like a rabid dog bites its once loved owner, declaring them now uncool. I can only imagine the confusion of someone trying to learn the English language. The occasional idioms are one thing but popular current language is a real mind-bender at times. I'm a native speaker and even I scratch my head sometimes, going, "Huh?" :)
Well, lucky you, these words and phrases are on their way "out" of our everyday language for 2010. Of course, who in the heck declares what's "in" or "out" anyway? Some fairy godmother waving her wand over the globe? Well, on to new magic in the New Year!
Photo by Betsie Van Der Meer/Corbis
1. Sexting = sex + texting - Parents are horrified, kids snicker, while someone gets slapped with pornography charges for dirty dialing on the phone. Not too funny when the law comes calling and empties your wallet for the deed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid photo by Nicholas Kamm/Getty
2. Public option - Health care reform bill reference to a government run health care plan that is actually affordable. The popular idea is it would compete with private plans to force the insurance companies to keep their prices in line "or else" the public has a cheaper alternative with the government. Works for me. Seems to me the only ones that want to ban this phrase are the insurance companies because it means less billion dollar profits to the CEOs.
3. Autotune - Refers to a software program to correct imperfect musical pitch. After rapper T-pain made good use of it the late night comedians picked it up and applied it weirdly to news clips. T-pain released his own iPhone app that has been downloaded to the tune of 10,000 a day. Bet he doesn't care if he becomes a cliche with that kind of money rolling in daily at $3 an app. Whew!
Photo by Christy Bowe/Corbis
4. Wise Latina - Came from Sotomayor's first Latina nomination to the Supreme Court. This is the much maligned and repeated line from her 2001 speech the racists tried to use against her: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." What's funny is that her term of a wise Latina became a rallying cry in the Hispanic community where people proudly displayed it on T-shirts, coffee mugs, baby bibs and banners. Isn't it great fun when the mean-spirited people get backfired?! :)
Republican Senator Grassley photo by Alex Wong/Getty
5. Death Panel - Senator Grassley from Iowa declared for sure that Obama's health care plan would "pull the plug on Grandma." This is the same guy who was crafting the bill, had read it supposedly and yet still claimed this to be true. The 1,000 page bill had no mention of committees that were set up to execute the infirm or the old. Dementia or just plain stupidity here?
Alaska's weird Governor Palin shrieked from a Facebook message: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society, whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." Uh... Governor, can you read?
6. Birther - Speaking of shriekers, Orly Tait from California, peddled a huge fat lie that Obama was secretly smuggled into Hawaii just after his birth so he could qualify as an American citizen. What drugs was this guy on? This stuff is so incredulous you can't make it up: he did. Now what mother who just gave birth is going to get on a plane with a day old baby and fly all the way from Kenya to America? Are you nuts or just not female? Worse, who is actually brain dead enough to believe any of this warped nonsense?
Obama was born in Hawaii, complete with birth certificate and birth announcement in a local paper. Yet the Birther crowd still demands to see the original document. Yeah, like I'm going to show a bunch of crazed folks my social security number and other personal data as a sitting President. Yeah, right.
Photo by Juice Images/Corbis
7. Opposite Marriage - It's supposed to mean a marriage between a man and a woman but Miss California, Carrie Prejean, bungled her rambling answer to a question and it fumbled into this phrase. The question: Do you think gay marriage should be legalized in every state of the union? Answer: "Um, we live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there." As you can guess there were some angry folks and a shouting match.
Michael Jackson Photo by Paul Richards/Getty
8. Summer of Death - A number of high profile notable celebrities passed away this year: singer Michael Jackson, actor Ed McMahon, actress Farrah Fawcett, newsman Walter Cronkite, actor and dancer Patrick Swayze, John Hughes and even beloved Taco Bell spokes-puppy Gidget the Chihuahua. Most of the deaths occurred from May to August of 2009.
From the New York Times: "No more celebrities had died than in past summers ... this summer could come to be known as the summer when baby boomers began to turn to the obituary pages first, to face not merely their own mortality or ponder their legacies, but to witness the passing of legends who defined them as a tribe, bequeathing through music, culture, news and politics a kind of generational badge that has begun to fray."
Photo by Pete Souza/White House/Getty
9. Beer Summit - Prez Obama met with black Harvard professor Henry Gates, Jr. and white police officer Sergeant James Crowley to defuse a racial incident between them. The local police badly handled a call from one of Gates' neighbors who thought someone was breaking into Gates' house: it was Gates fumbling with his keys at the door.
The police got angry when Gates got angry and the whole thing blew up out of proportion, taking on racial overtones and a national controversy. Obama made public comments about the incident when he really should have remained above the fray.
Police profiling of minorities is a sticking point in America even after electing the first African-American President. Obama successfully sat down with the men over shared beers to lay to rest the overblown sensitive issue. Of course, the photographers had never seen an American President do such a thing and went wild in the Rose Garden snapping a piece of history.
Photo by Simon Marcus/Corbis
10. Green Shoots - What's the first thing you think of when you hear this phrase? Yep! Spring time and vibrant green plant shoots rocketing out of the ground at record pace. Turns out this phrase has been around about twenty years now. It really caught on this year when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in a 60 Minutes interview, used it to describe his optimism for this year's economic growth.
Of course, since then depressed and disappointed analysts - and desperate journalists - jumped on the bandwagon and wore it out trying to use it as a soothing effect on their audiences. From Slate's Daniel Gross: "Economists are now walking around, eyes fixed on the ground like French rustics hunting for truffles, searching for verdant signs of growth."
I have to admit it was truly bizarre to hear modern day crusty personality business journalists using the phrase "verdant signs of growth" like they had just popped in from a 19th century luncheon with Sherlock Holmes at a poetry slam. I'll have to keep my eye on these guys in 2010 just to make sure they aren't suffering from buzzword dementia... :)
*** THANKS for visiting!
02 January 2010
Editorial Cartoons 2 Jan 2010
From Denny: Here's a sampling of editorial cartoonists' opinions, love 'em or hate 'em, as to the news and the year and decade that was and what the New Year might bring us:
A short video of a few of the New Years fireworks worldwide:
It's the big ugly fact that if government does not spend the economy will crash down upon our ears. As it is, the banks are still not lending much for car loans and demanding 20% down for houses, creating a shaky economy:
See Cartoons by Cartoon by David Fitzsimmons - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon
*** For the full post, full of more grinners, over at The Social Poets, go here.
*** THANKS for visiting and have a great weekend!
A short video of a few of the New Years fireworks worldwide:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
It's the big ugly fact that if government does not spend the economy will crash down upon our ears. As it is, the banks are still not lending much for car loans and demanding 20% down for houses, creating a shaky economy:
See Cartoons by Cartoon by David Fitzsimmons - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon
*** For the full post, full of more grinners, over at The Social Poets, go here.
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