Nov
23
2008

URLs du Jour

2008-11-23

  • It's that time of year again, good people. By which I mean: time for Dave Barry's Annual Holiday Gift Guide.
    Why do we give gifts during the holiday season?

    We do it for a reason that is as timeless as humanity itself: women. Women have an overpowering biological need to mark pretty much every occasion, including sunset, by wrapping a gift and giving it to somebody, along with a card.

    Why do women do this? We put that question to some leading psychologists, who responded: ``We think maybe they're insane.''

    Pun Salad guarantee: If you do not laugh out loud during your perusal of this article, you will receive double your money back, minus a nominal restocking charge. And we will suggest that maybe you missed reading about the "Gassy Gus Flatulence Game."

  • A local friend who watches the weather in Durham, NH, home to a University Near Here, reports some chilling information:
    We are living through record-breaking cold this week, the coldest daytime highs for this run of days in the Durham record, going back to 1893! These daytime highs would be below normal even for the same days in January, which are climatologically the coldest days in the year!
    In (possibly) related news:
    NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the entire staff of the "Forecast Earth" environmental program during the middle of NBC's "Green Week," as well as several on-camera meteorologists. The layoffs totaled about 10 percent of the workforce, and are among the first major changes made since NBC completed its purchase of the venerable weather network in September.
    We previously noted the efforts of TWC's "Heidi Cullen, Climate Expert" to revoke certification of meteorologists who dared to express skepticism about global warming. The report says that "Cullen's future role at the network is not known." Here's hoping!

  • I was going to blog on the silliness of reactions to Sarah Palin doing a video interview with turkey, um, processing going on in the background. But just go read Captain Ed and pretend I said it, OK?

    But, on a related note, Jarvis DeBarry of the New Orleans Times-Picayune got a little suspicious of a letter-to-the-editor.

    A letter arrived at this newspaper via e-mail last week that bizarrely links the incoming president's improbable rise to the world's most powerful office to the writer's idealistic desire that Americans enjoy a meatless Thanksgiving dinner.

    "Barack Obama has risen from humble beginnings to the power of the Presidency," the letter begins. "But, every one of us has the Presidential power to pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving."

    Some intrepid investigation revealed the letter was fraudulent. If you see the above phraseology in your local paper's letters column, the staff probably got suckered.

  • Yeah, like most sane people, I think I'd rather be Governor of New Mexico than Secretary of Commerce.