This makes me smile.
Posted February 1, 2010 at 2:38pm
How I prepared one Worfeus
- Preheat Photoshop to 350º
- Mix 1 part Morpheus with 1 part Worf
- Blend 1 Starfleet regulation phaser rifle with 1 Heckler & Koch MP5K
- Add 2 pinches of Nerd for flavor
- Stir vigorously
- Bake for 3 hours
- Let cool for 10 minutes
- Serve with Klingon Gagh
This is effin’ awesome. Also - and I could be wrong here - Worf is the most-aired principal in the Star Trek universe, having appeared in seven seasons of The Next Generation, four seasons of Deep Space Nine, and four TNG movies! Michael Dorn also played a descendant of Worf’s - Colonel Worf in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Badass!!!
Didn’t the Joker wear that purple suit in The Dark Knight?
Dec. 19, 2009 “Snowball in hand, the President chases Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on the White House Colonnade. To escape, Rahm ran through the Rose Garden, which unfortunately for him, was knee-deep in snow.”
Sen. Snowe could not be reached for comment but was apparently unharmed.
Thanks for the heads up, Rebecca!
Perhaps nowhere is this new wave more striking than at Columbia, which more than any other Ivy League institution has thrown out a welcome mat for returning servicemen and women. There are 210 veterans across the university, integrating a campus whose image-defining moment in the past half-century was of violent protests against the Vietnam War.
— With New G.I. Bill, More March From Battlefield to College - NYTimes.com
You know, despite all the things that the University frequently sucks at, this is something that makes me immensely proud of Columbia.
You know, despite all the things that the University frequently sucks at, this is something that makes me immensely proud of Columbia.
Posted January 9, 2010 at 2:03pm
National per capita healthcare spending Vs. Life expectancy Vs. Number of doctor visits per year
Click to enlarge. I’m no economist, but, to my understanding, this is what happens when you allow private health insurance companies to disconnect between product and profit—they choose maximize profit. A proper governmental response would be to either rigorously control the quality of the product (regulation) or to remove profit from the equation altogether by making healthcare a government service (the much-discussed “public option”), but either way, it’s clear that a more active governmental approach is necessary. A responsible modern government simply cannot allow the free market to dictate the quality and cost of healthcare for its citizens.
This is going to be big as the House and Senate reconcile their approved versions of the healthcare reform legislation, especially considering whether or not the final product will include the Senate’s public option. The final bill will, of course, make use of a number of methods for helping the system, mixing regulation of the private sector with government-run services with direct funding to certain problem areas in need of support. The real question will be how these different pieces are balanced; will we be seeing reform that continues to rely on private insurance companies, albeit with (hopefully) more active governmental oversight, or will we see a shift towards federally-administered healthcare for Americans under the age of 65? Yes, it’s all shades of gray here, but that doesn’t mean the hue doesn’t matter.
Just some food for thought: the overhead for American private health insurance companies runs usually averages between 12 and 14 percent, and sometimes goes even higher than 30 percent (usually in the cases of individuals seeking insurance on their own rather than through an employer), which, as with the above graph, explains why Americans are paying the highest premiums in exchange for a below-average product; American insurance companies spend huge amounts of time, manpower, and paper on making sure their customers jump through all the hoops before receiving their service, and then pay for those operating costs by passing them on to those same consumers. That’s right—you’re paying your insurance company to find ways to deny you service. As for Medicare, the country’s only federally-run universal (among seniors, that is) healthcare program? An average overhead of 3 percent. Think about it.
What is the most clever insult involving your name that you’ve heard?
Well I’m pretty jaded over last name related insults because I’ve heard them all, but in 7th grade a boy told me he wanted to dock his boat in my marina. I thought it was pretty creative to avoid the obvious joke and take things to a whole new traumatizing level.
Well I’m pretty jaded over last name related insults because I’ve heard them all, but in 7th grade a boy told me he wanted to dock his boat in my marina. I thought it was pretty creative to avoid the obvious joke and take things to a whole new traumatizing level.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
Posted December 29, 2009 at 2:07am
I don’t want to die on an airplane. I don’t want to die in my home while eating an organic bagel infested with parasites that lay eggs on my liver. I don’t want to die from starvation or bad water or a thousand other things that I pay our government to monitor and regulate.
But I also don’t expect the government to protect from the literally endless possibilities and threats that could occur at any point to end my life or the life of the few I love. It’s been nearly a decade since terrorists used airplanes to attack our country, and last week’s attempt makes it clear that the lack of terrorist attacks have nothing to do with the increasing gauntlet of whirring machines, friskings, and arbitrary bureaucratic provisions, but simply that for the most part, there just aren’t that many terrorists trying to blow up planes. Because god knows if there were, the TSA isn’t capable of stopping them.
But I also don’t expect the government to protect from the literally endless possibilities and threats that could occur at any point to end my life or the life of the few I love. It’s been nearly a decade since terrorists used airplanes to attack our country, and last week’s attempt makes it clear that the lack of terrorist attacks have nothing to do with the increasing gauntlet of whirring machines, friskings, and arbitrary bureaucratic provisions, but simply that for the most part, there just aren’t that many terrorists trying to blow up planes. Because god knows if there were, the TSA isn’t capable of stopping them.
Posted December 29, 2009 at 1:57am
There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.
![thedailywhat:
Tweet of the Day: #tsaslogans.
[@PosterchildPITH.]
And there it is.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kvdegqKGCc1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
My girlfriend is a Scrabble savant. During our most recent game, the progression of which is charted above, I’ll admit to feeling pretty self-assured after those first three rounds. Then she dropped the hammer with “sequoia” and combined its seven-letter-word bonus with a double-word score to put up a whopping 80 points in her fourth move. Apparently, when it comes to word games, my method is the safe layup—Laura goes for the backhand reverse jam.
Which is why, with the rout already on, I responded with a respectable 32-point “tine,” and then resigned myself to the ruthless bludgeoning that eventually concludes every game we play together. And you know what? I’m more than okay with that. After all, things would probably be worse if we were playing Boggle instead.
I want your handwriting.
Have you ever considered how strange it is that handwriting fonts have come to convey a kind of folksy authenticity in the design lexicon of our age? It’s disingenuous. Handwriting fonts - especially the ones you see everywhere (Comic Sans, Papyrus, Lucida Handwriting) - are mechanically reproduced and manipulated into a kind of cloying, fake, plastic perfection.
Penmanship is mostly a lost art - it is (rightfully) taught less and less in school, and the opportunities for people to see your handwriting are few and far between. As a result, modern handwriting looks really cool. What’s authentic and charming and inviting about real handwriting are the little imperfections that prove it came from a real person.
SO - I have decided to become a collector of handwriting.
Here’s how it works:
- You reblog this or email/Facebook me
- I’ll arrange for you to pick up a template
- You’ll fill it out
- I will create a TrueType font from your handwriting and send it to you
As I collect handwriting, I will periodically post things rendered in the handwriting of the donor - things they have taught me, important aspects of our relationship, jokes they have told me… we’ll see.
Please donate today.
This is more than a little awesome.
