Friday, September 16

Friday Olio: We're Arguing About What's Truly Fake Now? Edition

• No surprise that Slate rises to the defense of Poor Sarah Palin So Unfairly Attacked By Joe McGinniss, since subtracting "double reverse surprise contrarianism with a backward twist" from both sides of the equation yields "defending really stupid shit". As usual, this blog refuses to make "poking fun at The XX Factor, and Rachael Larimore in particular" anything more than a semi-annual fungo shag, but, c'mon:
Unfortunately, whatever meritorious reporting there might be on Troopergate or legislation she worked on as governor or her expertise or lackthereof on energy issues, it has to compete with [McGinniss'] anonymously sourced musings on Palin’s parenting skills and his sympathy for Levi Johnston’s mother.

1) How many Hillary Clinton books are there, again? 2) Palin and her brood have now been artificially-colored, may-contain-nuts media products for twice as long as she was governor of Alaskahoma. Th' fuck should a Sarah Palin book be about? Her contributions to the language? and 3) "lacktherof"?

Weigel, at least, is smart enough to term some of the Prairie Snooki stories "outrageous" without explaining which direction the outrage is supposed to be coming from, but then he has a vested interest in Palin staying out of the race so Michele Bachmann can continue to impress.

• SAT scores plummet to their lowest level in forty years, which, since the test was dumbed down in 1995, essentially means lowest level ever.

This is after fifteen years of school reform, and a decade of high-stakes testing designed to focus 90% of school-day energies precisely on those subjects the SATs evaluate.

Once again: how long does this reform shit get to fail before we focus on its failures?

CERN: Higgs boson 'God particle' likely does not exist. So it's exactly like God.

• NASA brainiacs nickname planet with two suns "Tatooine". And we're talking about de-funding the Post Office?

• Finally, a reason to own a teevee: Fred Dumbo Thompson, shilling a reverse mortgage plan when he should be planning his re-election campaign, emphasizes that reverse mortgages are government insured.

11 comments:

  1. This is after fifteen years of school reform, and a decade of high-stakes testing designed to focus 90% of school-day energies precisely on those subjects the SATs evaluate.

    So, just as successful as the Wars on Terror and Drugs?

    Answer: forever (and by that, I mean until we succeed in eliminating our species from the planet).

    USA! USA! USA!
    ~

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  2. I think you should feel free to fungo shag The XX Factor as often as you like.

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  3. • CERN: Higgs boson 'God particle' likely does not exist. So it's exactly like God.

    Winning the internets for at least the decade.

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  4. Well, NASA had to name the planet something! I suppose during the BushCo Admin they'd have named it "Freedom Planet" or some such thing.

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  5. Dean Booth7:02 PM EDT

    I read the CERN post, thanks.

    But why are most of the comments over there loony tunes?

    There are 6 hour 4 Quarter day..why it is only 666(The called it the Number of the Beast..In Islam we agreed with god Book(Kitab) send by Angel Gabriel to the Prophet is 4...it is Taurat,Zabur,Injil and Quran...So the Number is 6666... Mean 6 X 4 is 24 hour a day... 4 Double U. Is W W W W is XXXX mean 6666 4 Sigma...

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  6. I await the discovery of planet MacMurray.

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  7. perhaps NASA could name the planets after corporations -for a fee. Then it would be Planet GE, or Planet Halliburton, Planet Newscorp. Ug.

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  8. Love the phrase "fungo shag". If there hadn't been pictures of baseball players right there, I would have thought it meant something else entirely.

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  9. Anonymous11:37 AM EDT

    The CERN post is overhyped. Follow the link in the post for a more realistic assessment.

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  10. "Winning the internets for at least the decade."

    Maybe the century!

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  11. But why are most of the comments over there loony tunes?

    Because quantum shit always brings all the cranks to the yard.

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