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The Ridiculous Art of White Power Milk

Not too long ago, we addressed the question of whether art could be quantified. What I would like to consider is if all we need to do to consider something art is to merely apply the label art to it. Having already seen the curious art of Caleb Larsen, I thought I had seen it all when it came to art that didn’t really seem like art to me. I was ill prepared for the shock I would receive when I came across a web site created by Nate Hill called White Power Milk.

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Stuffing City Coffers by Increasing Traffic Citations

Recently, a person who shall remain nameless, was visiting her family in the Midwest.  She was out driving with her mother and was subsequently pulled over by a police offer three blocks from her mother’s house.  The alleged offender was given a $200.00USD traffic citation for not yielding to a school bus. Now, not yielding to a school bus is a serious violation, but the only problem is that neither she, nor her mother, ever saw a school bus!  Was there ever a school bus?  Or was this a virtual stickup with a badge and a ticket book?

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An Anti-Semitic Encounter in Kew Gardens

The history of anti-Semitism stretches back many years and has existed more or less just as long as the Jewish people have existed. Our own holy scriptures are replete with stories of our people being persecuted for attempting to live their lives as Jews and it is a story that has repeated itself over and over again — year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Empire after empire, regime after regime have attempted to annihilate the entirety of the Jewish people and failed miserably in their efforts.

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The Times on Torture

The Bush administration’s love and support of torture in the wake of 9/11 will become their indelible legacy long after all the Bush cronies are dead in the ground.  Bush couldn’t get away with a torture policy all on his own, though.  Bush had to have help.  He had a lot of help from the mainstream media, including perennial “liberal bogeyman” for “The Hard Right” — The New York Times — who played coy with using the word “torture” in their reporting even though torture is precisely what the Bush administration was doing. Why hide the word? Why not call torture torture?  Who and what were the New York Times protecting, and why?

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Why Did MSFT Buy Skype?

Why did Microsoft drop $8.5 billion on Skype?  Are they that terrified of Google Voice that they’ll drop major change on an acquisition they don’t really need?  The deal is ridiculous and upside down and backward.  What was Ballmer thinking?  Is MSFT really going to embed Skype in their products, or was this a proactive buy that leads to a mercy killing?

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Berkshire Hathaway Loses its Moral Value

Berkshire Hathaway has a problem.  No, it isn’t their “Official Home Page” website that looks like it was designed by a third-grader in 1991 — note the ubiquitous link to Geico insurance in the footer; and no, it isn’t the choice of using standard “visited links” color as the active “UN-visited links” color default, either — the Berkshire Hathaway problem is actually one of moral decay in the falsely avuncular personality and faked “Aw, shucks” leadership style of Warren Buffet.

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Broken Families and Half-Brothers and Whole-Sisters

I was born in a time when being a child from a “broken family” meant your mother and father were divorced and you were irretrievably marked in the marketplace of social commerce as damaged goods.  Today, there’s slightly less stigma of being from a broken family — because there are so many more of them now — but that broken label is still hard to shake even if you never let it directly affect you.

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What Do You Want From Me?

Today, I recall a certain discussion I recently had with old friend and long time mentor, Dr. Howard Stein.  Howard was sharing a story about a former student who, frustrated with her progress at the end of the semester, confronted Howard after class at his lectern and asked in a loud voice that the rest of the class could hear, “What do you want from me?!”

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Experiencing The Mountain Goats Live

When I first started listening to The Mountain Goats in 2009, my co-worker who introduced me to their music would play a live recording of theirs, in part to introduce me to what it would be like to go and see them live. The recordings intimidated me because many of the songs had fans singing along with the songs, sometimes singing just as loudly as chief singer John Darnielle. I asked him if it was a regular occurrence to have everyone in the audience singing like that — he said that it was. I couldn’t help but think it would be awkward to be one of the few people in the audience to not be able to sing along like that and he assured me that it would not be an issue.

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Pronouncing the Year

There’s nothing more annoying than having people mispronounce the year.  It started in 2010 when people actually said out loud, “Two Thousand and Ten” to identify the year.  It’s even worse this year when people say, “Two Thousand and Eleven.”  Here is the correct way to pronounce those years:  “Twenty Ten” and “Twenty Eleven.”  This “proper year pronunciation” is such a big problem that fellow WordPress.com-er Gus Pearcy created a blog — SAY Twenty Eleven — just to set people right; and I have borrowed one of Gus’ images to help spread the appropriate learning meme:

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