That’s how House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) described President Obama’s 2012 stump deficit reduction speech this afternoon. And understandably so. Ryan says he was “excited” to received an invitation to the president’s speech, and thought it was a potential “olive branch” to the GOP signaling the start of meaningful negotiations over the deficit. Not so, as we all know. I imagine… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Corner Discovery Date : 13/04/2011 23:13 Number of articles : 4
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That’s how House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) described President Obama’s 2012 stump deficit reduction speech this afternoon. And understandably so. Ryan says he was “excited” to received an invitation to the president’s speech, and thought it was a potential “olive branch” to the GOP signaling the start of meaningful negotiations over the deficit. Not so, as we all know. I imagine… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Corner Discovery Date : 13/04/2011 23:13 Number of articles : 4
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Is it really true that there’s no difference between cheap and expensive wines, or do some people just want to believe it? The “news” yesterday, that people don’t know slosh from sancerre when it comes to judging wine quality created widespread ferment. I contacted Richard Wiseman, the professor at the University of Hertfordshire who made the claims, to discuss them and ask how the tests were conducted. Apparently some 578 lucky visitors to this year’s Edinburgh International Science Festival were given two glasses of wine, told that one of them was cheap and the other expensive, and asked which was which. The findings showed that, with uncanny consistency, around half were right and half wrong for nearly all the wines. Wiseman originally said of these “remarkable” results: “People were unable to tell expensive from inexpensive wines, and so in these times of financial hardship, the message is clear – the inexpensive wines we tested taste the same as their expensive counterparts”. In fact, inasmuch as everybody was choosing between the two wines, precisely nobody was saying they tasted the same, and Wiseman concedes on reflection that that point doesn’t really stand up. One could further argue that what the findings show is that around half the respondents could tell the difference, but Wiseman’s extrapolation is that because 50% is the statistical probability, the same results could have been obtained by tossing a coin. I wondered whether there’s any point in comparing an immature vintage of an expensive claret, as the survey did, with a cheap generic bordeaux. The wine that isn’t ready yet will be rigid with tannin, and tasting hard and raw. Wiseman agreed, but said that most people don’t keep wines to let them mature anyway, which is of course true, but doesn’t in any way license the conclusion that the cheaper wine is the smarter option. It’s only the smarter option if you don’t drink the dearer wine at its best. But these conclusions speak of a more far-reaching cultural proclivity. It is deeply appealing to the British to believe that anything that smells like connoisseurship in matters of food and drink is probably horse poo. And so-called wine experts are the worst offenders of the lot. It can’t be denied that there is still a sediment of rank elitism about the wine business. When single bottles of the wines of Burgundy’s and Bordeaux’s most celebrated estates can sell for more than most people earn in a month, this is not a milieu noted for its inclusiveness. (But then neither is the luxury car market, or designer-label fashion.) A healthy suspicion of pretentiousness is what immunises the British from the rhapsodic flannel with which the French PR industry talks about its own wines. That cynicism, though, on the British side has its fatal weakness, in that it habitually encourages people to settle for mediocrity. There is a kind of dogged joylessness in wanting to believe that anything that claims to be better must be trying to put one over on you. Why pay £10 for a bottle of wine, Wiseman asks, when you won’t enjoy it any more than one that cost half that? Far from being a message of hope, this is a counsel of despair. Its roots reach back to the idol-smashing puritanism of the Cromwellian era, when a righteous hatred of the luxury and entitlement in which the aristocracy lived bred in us a morally tinged distrust of anything seen as a cut above. Class privilege is of course no less grotesque than it was when they lopped off the king’s head, but it has led to a confusion of quality-consciousness with arrogance. It led to the refusal of foreign food as ‘fancy’ in the post-war austerity years, when it was thought that moussaka was just a food snob’s term for shepherd’s pie. And, despite the enormous boom in wine consumption in the past 30 years, it has resulted in a firm belief that people who pay over the odds for a bottle are helpless suckers who can’t see beyond the label. “Alcohol is alcohol,” says one of the commenters on the Guardian’s news story about the Edinburgh survey, the implication being that you may as well settle for any old gut-rot as long as you get the result. There is a heartbreaking defeatism about this that Wiseman’s interpretation of his own findings does nothing to dispel. Wine Food & drink guardian.co.uk
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Is it really true that there’s no difference between cheap and expensive wines, or do some people just want to believe it? The “news” yesterday, that people don’t know slosh from sancerre when it comes to judging wine quality created widespread ferment. I contacted Richard Wiseman, the professor at the University of Hertfordshire who made the claims, to discuss them and ask how the tests were conducted. Apparently some 578 lucky visitors to this year’s Edinburgh International Science Festival were given two glasses of wine, told that one of them was cheap and the other expensive, and asked which was which. The findings showed that, with uncanny consistency, around half were right and half wrong for nearly all the wines. Wiseman originally said of these “remarkable” results: “People were unable to tell expensive from inexpensive wines, and so in these times of financial hardship, the message is clear – the inexpensive wines we tested taste the same as their expensive counterparts”. In fact, inasmuch as everybody was choosing between the two wines, precisely nobody was saying they tasted the same, and Wiseman concedes on reflection that that point doesn’t really stand up. One could further argue that what the findings show is that around half the respondents could tell the difference, but Wiseman’s extrapolation is that because 50% is the statistical probability, the same results could have been obtained by tossing a coin. I wondered whether there’s any point in comparing an immature vintage of an expensive claret, as the survey did, with a cheap generic bordeaux. The wine that isn’t ready yet will be rigid with tannin, and tasting hard and raw. Wiseman agreed, but said that most people don’t keep wines to let them mature anyway, which is of course true, but doesn’t in any way license the conclusion that the cheaper wine is the smarter option. It’s only the smarter option if you don’t drink the dearer wine at its best. But these conclusions speak of a more far-reaching cultural proclivity. It is deeply appealing to the British to believe that anything that smells like connoisseurship in matters of food and drink is probably horse poo. And so-called wine experts are the worst offenders of the lot. It can’t be denied that there is still a sediment of rank elitism about the wine business. When single bottles of the wines of Burgundy’s and Bordeaux’s most celebrated estates can sell for more than most people earn in a month, this is not a milieu noted for its inclusiveness. (But then neither is the luxury car market, or designer-label fashion.) A healthy suspicion of pretentiousness is what immunises the British from the rhapsodic flannel with which the French PR industry talks about its own wines. That cynicism, though, on the British side has its fatal weakness, in that it habitually encourages people to settle for mediocrity. There is a kind of dogged joylessness in wanting to believe that anything that claims to be better must be trying to put one over on you. Why pay £10 for a bottle of wine, Wiseman asks, when you won’t enjoy it any more than one that cost half that? Far from being a message of hope, this is a counsel of despair. Its roots reach back to the idol-smashing puritanism of the Cromwellian era, when a righteous hatred of the luxury and entitlement in which the aristocracy lived bred in us a morally tinged distrust of anything seen as a cut above. Class privilege is of course no less grotesque than it was when they lopped off the king’s head, but it has led to a confusion of quality-consciousness with arrogance. It led to the refusal of foreign food as ‘fancy’ in the post-war austerity years, when it was thought that moussaka was just a food snob’s term for shepherd’s pie. And, despite the enormous boom in wine consumption in the past 30 years, it has resulted in a firm belief that people who pay over the odds for a bottle are helpless suckers who can’t see beyond the label. “Alcohol is alcohol,” says one of the commenters on the Guardian’s news story about the Edinburgh survey, the implication being that you may as well settle for any old gut-rot as long as you get the result. There is a heartbreaking defeatism about this that Wiseman’s interpretation of his own findings does nothing to dispel. Wine Food & drink guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Karmic Update: Recall campaign against AZ Senate President Russell Pearce gaining steam
April 15, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media You may remember how Russell Pearce, the Arizona Republican state Senate leader and architect of SB1070, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show a couple of months ago and pushed hard for a recall campaign against Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for daring to opine that extremist right-wing rhetoric played a role in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. (An effort which, last we checked, was going nowhere fast.) Well, karmic payback can be a rhymes-with-witch : What may seem to some as an uphill battle is becoming close to a reality for a non-partisan political group as they gather signatures to recall Senate President Russell Pearce. “I have no doubt we’ll get enough signatures to force the recall campaign,” said Chad Snow, chairman of Citizens for a Better Arizona. The group has two thirds of the signatures needed to force a recall election on the senator they accuse of having an extreme agenda. Now, there are lots of reasons to recall Russell Pearce along these lines (or better yet, never elect him in the first damned place). There’s the recent spate of Tentherism in which he seemingly urged people to declare themselves sovereign citizens. Or the long-established record of playing footsie with the local neo-Nazis . Or, if you like, he might be recalled for the corruption that’s surfaced in Pearce’s dealings and his intimate involvement in that monumentally embarrassing Fiesta Bowl scandal. No, but what really has people torqued at Pearce is what you might expect from ultimately pragmatic voters: He has fiddled incessantly with his pet immigration fetish while Arizona has burned to a crisp economically. No wonder he’s in trouble. “We feel that Russell Pearce has completely thrown Arizona’s economy under the bus so he could pursue one issue,” said Snow. That issue is immigration. Pearce sponsored the controversial SB1070 and even though the law has gained negative national attention, polls show an overwhelming amount of Arizonans support it. But Snow told us Pearce has neglected what Arizonans really care about. “He’s done nothing for education, jobs or the economy. Instead he focuses on only immigration and gun control.” Then there have been stunts he’s been involved in that have exposed the seamy underbelly of Pearce’s fetish, like the racist letter read on the floor of the Senate (at Pearce’s behest): Citizens for a Better Arizona needs to collect over 7,700 signatures by May 31st to force a recall election, but Snow is confident they will get more, claiming the Senate President’s actions are helping their efforts. “He’s had racist letters read on the Senate floor, he’s been reported to have accepted thousands of dollars of gifts from the Fiesta Bowl that he didn’t report as required by law. He feels he’s above the law and doesn’t represent the best interest of Arizona and he’s unfit for public office,” said Snow. Oh, and let’s not forget the Arizona Senate’s latest achievement: A Birther bill that accepts the features of a presidential candidate’s penis as evidence of his citizenship . The citizens of Mesa must be so proud.
Continue reading …Karmic Update: Recall campaign against AZ Senate President Russell Pearce gaining steam
April 15, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media You may remember how Russell Pearce, the Arizona Republican state Senate leader and architect of SB1070, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show a couple of months ago and pushed hard for a recall campaign against Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for daring to opine that extremist right-wing rhetoric played a role in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. (An effort which, last we checked, was going nowhere fast.) Well, karmic payback can be a rhymes-with-witch : What may seem to some as an uphill battle is becoming close to a reality for a non-partisan political group as they gather signatures to recall Senate President Russell Pearce. “I have no doubt we’ll get enough signatures to force the recall campaign,” said Chad Snow, chairman of Citizens for a Better Arizona. The group has two thirds of the signatures needed to force a recall election on the senator they accuse of having an extreme agenda. Now, there are lots of reasons to recall Russell Pearce along these lines (or better yet, never elect him in the first damned place). There’s the recent spate of Tentherism in which he seemingly urged people to declare themselves sovereign citizens. Or the long-established record of playing footsie with the local neo-Nazis . Or, if you like, he might be recalled for the corruption that’s surfaced in Pearce’s dealings and his intimate involvement in that monumentally embarrassing Fiesta Bowl scandal. No, but what really has people torqued at Pearce is what you might expect from ultimately pragmatic voters: He has fiddled incessantly with his pet immigration fetish while Arizona has burned to a crisp economically. No wonder he’s in trouble. “We feel that Russell Pearce has completely thrown Arizona’s economy under the bus so he could pursue one issue,” said Snow. That issue is immigration. Pearce sponsored the controversial SB1070 and even though the law has gained negative national attention, polls show an overwhelming amount of Arizonans support it. But Snow told us Pearce has neglected what Arizonans really care about. “He’s done nothing for education, jobs or the economy. Instead he focuses on only immigration and gun control.” Then there have been stunts he’s been involved in that have exposed the seamy underbelly of Pearce’s fetish, like the racist letter read on the floor of the Senate (at Pearce’s behest): Citizens for a Better Arizona needs to collect over 7,700 signatures by May 31st to force a recall election, but Snow is confident they will get more, claiming the Senate President’s actions are helping their efforts. “He’s had racist letters read on the Senate floor, he’s been reported to have accepted thousands of dollars of gifts from the Fiesta Bowl that he didn’t report as required by law. He feels he’s above the law and doesn’t represent the best interest of Arizona and he’s unfit for public office,” said Snow. Oh, and let’s not forget the Arizona Senate’s latest achievement: A Birther bill that accepts the features of a presidential candidate’s penis as evidence of his citizenship . The citizens of Mesa must be so proud.
Continue reading …Karmic Update: Recall campaign against AZ Senate President Russell Pearce gaining steam
April 15, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media You may remember how Russell Pearce, the Arizona Republican state Senate leader and architect of SB1070, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show a couple of months ago and pushed hard for a recall campaign against Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for daring to opine that extremist right-wing rhetoric played a role in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. (An effort which, last we checked, was going nowhere fast.) Well, karmic payback can be a rhymes-with-witch : What may seem to some as an uphill battle is becoming close to a reality for a non-partisan political group as they gather signatures to recall Senate President Russell Pearce. “I have no doubt we’ll get enough signatures to force the recall campaign,” said Chad Snow, chairman of Citizens for a Better Arizona. The group has two thirds of the signatures needed to force a recall election on the senator they accuse of having an extreme agenda. Now, there are lots of reasons to recall Russell Pearce along these lines (or better yet, never elect him in the first damned place). There’s the recent spate of Tentherism in which he seemingly urged people to declare themselves sovereign citizens. Or the long-established record of playing footsie with the local neo-Nazis . Or, if you like, he might be recalled for the corruption that’s surfaced in Pearce’s dealings and his intimate involvement in that monumentally embarrassing Fiesta Bowl scandal. No, but what really has people torqued at Pearce is what you might expect from ultimately pragmatic voters: He has fiddled incessantly with his pet immigration fetish while Arizona has burned to a crisp economically. No wonder he’s in trouble. “We feel that Russell Pearce has completely thrown Arizona’s economy under the bus so he could pursue one issue,” said Snow. That issue is immigration. Pearce sponsored the controversial SB1070 and even though the law has gained negative national attention, polls show an overwhelming amount of Arizonans support it. But Snow told us Pearce has neglected what Arizonans really care about. “He’s done nothing for education, jobs or the economy. Instead he focuses on only immigration and gun control.” Then there have been stunts he’s been involved in that have exposed the seamy underbelly of Pearce’s fetish, like the racist letter read on the floor of the Senate (at Pearce’s behest): Citizens for a Better Arizona needs to collect over 7,700 signatures by May 31st to force a recall election, but Snow is confident they will get more, claiming the Senate President’s actions are helping their efforts. “He’s had racist letters read on the Senate floor, he’s been reported to have accepted thousands of dollars of gifts from the Fiesta Bowl that he didn’t report as required by law. He feels he’s above the law and doesn’t represent the best interest of Arizona and he’s unfit for public office,” said Snow. Oh, and let’s not forget the Arizona Senate’s latest achievement: A Birther bill that accepts the features of a presidential candidate’s penis as evidence of his citizenship . The citizens of Mesa must be so proud.
Continue reading …NPR Finds GOP In Major Disarray, and ‘Most Republicans’ Don’t Want to Touch Medicare
April 15, 2011 No Comment
On Thursday’s Morning Edition , NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook said most Republicans don’t like the Paul Ryan Budget (except the “far right”) and “most Republicans like Medicare, and they don’t even want to tinker with it around the edges.” Then anchor Steve Inskeep played up Charlie Cook suggesting Republicans have a “death wish” if they want to try and reform Medicare spending. STEVE INSKEEP: What exactly is it that some Republicans don't like? ANDREA SEABROOK: Well, one of the main ways the Ryan budget saves money over the coming decades is by shifting the Medicare into a private program with commercial insurance companies – in essence, ending the Medicare program as we know it today, as Mara was just talking about. That's OK with a lot of the far-right social conservatives and Tea Party-backed Republicans. But for those middle-of-the-road people, the moderate Republicans, and especially, Steve, the ones in districts with a lot of seniors, they are unhappy about this…. INSKEEP: Is this partly a function of polls that have come out since Ryan announced his plan? SEABROOK: Absolutely. There are polls that show that the majority of Americans like Medicare. In fact, most Republicans like Medicare, and they don't want to even tinker with it around the edges. They would like it just to stay the way it is, and that's making this whole plan a lot harder to swallow. Seabrook added that the conservatives are seething mad at Ryan over his vote for Project Labor Agreements: INSKEEP: How do Republicans like having Paul Ryan as, effectively, their leader on this very important issue? SEABROOK: Well, let me tell you a little story about Paul Ryan, Steve. A lot of Republicans are really, really angry with him right now. It has to do with a vote he made about a month ago that kept an anti-union bill from passing. It was about federal construction sites, and Ryan's vote is the one that made this fail. Later, a reporter [ Quin Hillyer at the Washington Times ] asked Ryan: Why did you vote for the unions? And he said oh, no, no. That was a mistake. I didn't mean to make that vote. And it looks a lot like duck and cover to those other Republicans who voted for it, the ones in states like Michigan and Wisconsin where all the union upset is. And then the Tea Party is angry at Ryan and the Republican leadership for letting the anti-union bill just die. They're looking like what they call RINOs, Republicans In Name Only, and a lot of Republicans are getting attacked on this. INSKEEP: And, of course, none of that has to do very much with the deficit, but it's a reminder that politics is a personal business, as well as a policy business. Will Republicans have the votes to pass Paul Ryan's plan? SEABROOK: Well, it has to do with that. I mean, a lot of those Republicans are asking themselves: Are we going to follow this guy off the plank for a bill that would cut Medicare, upset a lot of Americans after he ducks and covers from a vote he made? It really is personal, Steve. I mean, it comes down to that and the fact that this is such an unpopular idea. Seabrook portrayed the GOP in dramatic disarray, and Inskeep underlined that they may have a “death wish,” according to pundit Charlie Cook: INSKEEP: Well, let me ask one other question, Andrea Seabrook. Charlie Cook, the noted political analyst, was one of the first who said that Democrats looked like they were going to face trouble in 2010. He said that more than a year in advance, I believe. And now he is questioning the early signs for Republicans in 2012. He even uses the phrase death wish in a recent column. He asks if they have a death wish. How much are the politicians thinking about next year's election in all of their maneuvering now? SEABROOK: A lot. Steve, I've never seen Republicans act so much like Democrats. I mean, they're fractioned. They voted for leaders who are the old institution after an anti-institutional wave. They're just in disarray right now. They're still in disarray at the same time that they're pretending they've got it all together, and they're in serious negotiations with the president. Cook's “death
Continue reading …Apple patent application reveals more projector possiblities, including a projector-equipped laptop
April 15, 2011 No Comment
We’ve already seen a few patent applications that suggest Apple is at least mulling over the idea of using projectors for one purpose or another, and another newly published one has now offered a bit more fodder for speculation. Described as a “display system having coherent and incoherent light sources,” the patent application suggests that the projector would be laser-based, and be both cheaper and more power efficient than conventional light projectors, while also overcoming the so-called “speckle” problem sometimes seen with laser projectors. What’s perhaps most interesting, however, is that the patent application also suggests the projector could be integrated into other devices — in fact, one of the claims specifically mentions a laptop with an integrated projector, as artfully illustrated above. Apple patent application reveals more projector possiblities, including a projector-equipped laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Flashback Funny: Obama Says He Will Cut the Deficit in Half – It’s Important (Video)
April 15, 2011 No Comment
Well, you’re sure not going to see this replayed by the state-run media. In February 2009 President Obama told a crowd of willing dupes that he was going to cut the deficit in half. It was important. Fast forward two … Continue reading → Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 13/04/2011 18:18 Number of articles : 4
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