URLs du Jour

2021-07-27

  • Our Eye Candy du Jour from the great and glorious Remy.

    Raw milk is legal in the LFOD state. Although our local suppliers might be sketchy.


  • Not Raw Milk, But Better. The Bartlett Center folks celebrate the LFOD state getting a tad freer: New Hampshire allows beer (or wine) with your pizza delivery, at last.

    At the start of the COVID-19 shutdown last spring, restaurant customers wanted to order beer and wine with their delivery dinners. There was just one problem. That was illegal.

    New Hampshire’s alcohol laws reserved beer and wine delivery exclusively for other types of businesses. This was such an obvious financial challenge for restaurants during the shutdown that fixing it became a top priority.

    Relief came on March 18 when the governor issued Emergency Order 6, which let restaurants include beer and wine with food deliveries.

    They note that nothing bad happened as a result of this "temporary" loosening, so the ban was repealed altogether earlier this month. But (they wonder) why it was even there in the first place?


  • But Let Us Not Go Crazy With This LFOD Stuff. When Josiah Bartlett provides with good news, he taketh away with bad: New Hampshire is the only New England state not to allow cocktail delivery.

    In an unexpected twist, New Hampshire has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as the only New England state that does not allow delivery cocktails.

    In Boston, Bangor and Burlington, you can order a Cuba Libre with your delivery dinner. But not in Bartlett, or anywhere else in New Hampshire.

    Dozens of states — including the rest of New England — allowed restaurants to include beer, wine and cocktails in delivery orders when COVID-19 emergency orders closed restaurant dining rooms. New Hampshire allowed beer and wine, but not cocktails.

    "Unexpected twist." Ha, get it?

    I have no idea, but do cocktails actually travel well?


  • Speaking of Unexpected Twists… A letter to the editor in my local paper this morn is headlined: A nation of learned and creative citizens. Steve Little's little letter starts this way:

    Simone Biles, the gymnastics super star, was taken in and adopted by relatives and through the fickle chance of good fortune an amazing athlete was discovered. Think about that. How many super stars of undiscovered brilliance are NOT discovered because we […]

    To tell the truth, I really thought the next thing would be: "… because we kill them before they make it out of the womb?"

    Sigh. But instead:

    […] because we do not provide the educational, family or even nutritional needs of our citizens?

    Uh huh. Steve goes on to argue for more government spending on that stuff. Because that will obviously work. Spending more taxpayer money on stuff always works. And (somehow) it's never enough.


  • "False" is a Pretty Binary Thing, Right? The Dispatch fact checker asks: Do the COVID Vaccines Offer 100 Percent Protection From Infection?. Because…

    At a town hall on July 21, in Cincinnati, President Joe Biden, in stressing the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, made the following statement: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.”

    The statement is false.

    Although the COVID-19 vaccines are effective, no single vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection.

    Per the Centers for Disease Control, both mRNA vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer, are over 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. Based on data from clinical trials, Moderna is 94.1% effective and Pfizer is 95% effective, according to the CDC. The Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine is 66.3% effective based on data from clinical trials.

    This is worthwhile information from the Dispatch, presented straight. And Biden should know better than to utter otherwise.

    Amusingly, PolitiFact ranks the same statement from Biden as … are you ready for this? … "Half True".

    President Joe Biden exaggerated when he spoke about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine during a CNN town hall. "You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations," Biden said.

    It is rare for people who are fully vaccinated to contract COVID-19, but it does happen. 

    I'm pretty sure there's a significant epistemological difference between "False" and "Half True".

    Tip for Politifact: a falsehood doesn't become "half true" because it was uttered as an "exaggeration" by a demented old fool that you are (nevertheless) fond of.


  • And Once Again, the Babylon Bee Puts 90% of the Joke in the Headline. Specifically: To Defeat Delta Variant, Experts Recommend Doing All The Things That Didn't Work The First Time.

    Funny because true.