URLs du Jour — 2014-08-08

  • So, completely out of the blue, I found myself wondering: Why do the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wear masks?

    It's not as if they have secret identities to protect. If you see one without his mask, you're pretty much going to know it's one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's actually easier to identify them with the masks on! (Blue ⇒ Leonardo, etc.)

    One of the downsides of the Googlable Web: it's depressingly easy to learn that your brilliant original thought has already been thought and in fact there's a Reddit thread devoted to the answer to your question.

    In other news, apparently the new movie sucks.

  • You can read the NYT Magazine article ("Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?"). But Kevin D. Williamson read it for you, and I think you might find his take more interesting and amusing. His response to the question posed by the article title:

    What that means politically is unknowable. We could save ourselves some time and argument by noting that the American electorate gives relatively little indication that it is on the verge of a “libertarian moment,” or any other sort of philosophical moment. Psephological experience and current polling data both very strongly reiterate what any sentient person knows: The American people are incoherent and inconsistent when it comes to public policy, and they seem to have long been driven, in the main, by wishful thinking.

    A quick grep tells me this is the first time the word "psephological" has been used at Pun Salad. Perhaps the last.

  • A few items picked from the never-ending stream that demonstrates how Your Federal Government is wisely handling your tax dollar:

    • " A government website intended to make federal spending more transparent was missing at least $619 billion from 302 federal programs, a government audit has found."

    • "High-speed rail was supposed to be President Obama’s signature transportation project, but despite the administration spending nearly $11 billion since 2009 to develop faster passenger trains, the projects have gone mostly nowhere and the United States still lags far behind Europe and China."

    • "Fortunately, nobody held their breath waiting on this. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration published a proposed rule to regulate the labels on breath mints, changing a 1993 standard. Now, in 2014, the FDA is withdrawing that proposal as outdated. And they’re issuing a new one, a 145-page regulation on how to label breath mints. "

    If your local Congresscritter or Senator tries to tell you that the Federal Government needs more revenue to accomplish its lofty goals, you have my permission to call him or her a blithering idiot or a despicable liar. Or both. "Both" is a real possibility, especially in my state.

  • James Taranto retweets from 2012:

    Helluva job, Barry.


Last Modified 2019-01-09 7:04 AM EDT