Author Archive

Jun
15

What Welfare Really Buys

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (4)

shadmarsh made a comment to which I started a reply, but it seemed to me that my reply had enough meat on it to warrant a post. So:

shad said, (ironically, of course) “Why do we pay taxes so lazy poor single mothers can collect food stamps and have more poor children?”

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Categories : Economy
Comments (4)
May
15

They Didn’t Listen

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (1)

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He left the world of the living two years ago, but Floyd Red Crow Westerman doesn’t let that stop him from having something to say about the Gulf oil spill.

Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (1)
Apr
28

Memos To Various and Sundry

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (4)

Welcome To Americazona!

Welcome To Americazona!

I’ve been sitting on on this piece for over a week because it starts out humorous and turns sour at the end. But what the hell.

Memo to Dr. Carl Mumpower: Mr. Mumpower, on the 880 The Revolution Local Edge Radio with Blake and Lesley, you have on two previous Mondays trotted out the old conservative insult of saying “Democrat Party” when the correct name ‘s “Democratic Party.” Challenged on this, you blandly asserted, two Mondays in a row, that a Democrat had told you this usage was correct. You must have heard this from some far-right Democrat like Zell Miller. Please note that Old Zeller is only a Democrat on paper, and a flimsy paper at that; meant to be used only once, over porcelain. Preferably in private.
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Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (4)
Mar
29

Food For Thought: Why Explore Space

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (7)
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In which Dr. David Brin, science fiction author and highly savvy dude, drops a chunk of knowing on us. And raises my opinion of President Eisenhower.

Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (7)
Mar
26

Seven League Boots

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (1)

AshevilleGoogleEarth

Soooo…. I put off until the very last night to enter my Google nomination. I admit it: I’m a terrible crasto. But the issue for me was: what could I say that everyone else wasn’t already saying? By definition, the new uses for fat data pipes are just too hard to predict. I could only think of one or two things.

One might be: every music venue gets its own live hi-def internet TV channel if it wants one. Although it’s not completely clear to me how that results in revenue, unless you can convince the couch potatoes that it’s even more fun to be there in meatspace (which it really is, when the mojo is working). But I tendered a different idea, which I’ll reprint here (slightly reworded for this format). Read More→

Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (1)
Feb
16

The Declaration Of Awesomeness

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (31)
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Categories : Uncategorized
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Feb
10

An Open Letter To President Emanuel

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (5)

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President Rahm Emanuel, 10 Seconds After Taking Oath Of Office, Jan. 20, 2009
Thumbing Nose At Everyone To His Left. American Youth Scowls In Dismay.

I wake up some mornings hating me too.
– President Rahm Emanuel

Dear President Emanuel,
Let me begin by saying I’m pleased you’re lucid some mornings. I hope you read this letter on one of those mornings. I hope it awakens you with the cold certainty of a window left open to the blizzard.

Like nearly everyone else, I placed hope in you; it was a cautious hope, a hope borne of knowing no other hope existed. We needed you to be almost perfect, so that you might rescue us from almost perfect ruin. Heck, I even turned my cautious hope into a song. Went a little like this… Soup_And_Songs
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Categories : Democrats, National, Obama
Comments (5)
Feb
09

No Heavy Lifting

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (5)

Weight_Lifting_Hamster

There will be no overriding theme to this post, amigos, except that Here Are Some Things I Like.

The Beast bills itself as The World’s Only Website. This is what logicians refer to as “self-evident truth.” Since 2002 (but skipping 2003) the Beast has published its list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans. The 2009 List includes one jerk in particular who seems to make every year’s Loathsome List:
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Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (5)
Feb
01

Rules and Metarules

Posted by: tombuckner | Comments (13)

seventh-seal-116

“Anything that can be done can be done meta.” – Charles Simonyi

It’s probably not necessary to explain here what “meta” means, but I’ll quote from Wikipedia anyway:

Meta- (from Greek: μετά = “after”, “beyond”, “with”, “adjacent”, “self”), is a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

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Comments (13)

Translation Party is a website that lets you, the intrepid Internet Explorer, type an English phrase into the empty text box (oh, see how empty, how hungry it is, hungry for your words!) Then Translation Party translates your text into Japanese. O, but the magick is only begun! Then it translates that Japanese text back to English, and repeats this process until the translation stops changing: “equilibrium is reached,” as Translation Party puts it. I got the idea to feed it that already controversial nugget of English writing, the Second Amendment.
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Categories : Uncategorized
Comments (9)