The Hammerswing blog may have gone back in the shed, but you can still have high-impact fun with a “name that hammer” quiz. There are photos of 23 types of hammers and you try to name them and guess what they’re used for (and no, “pound things” is not a sufficient answer).
Here’s a photo of something called a Nappan Knocker. I’m not sure I want to knock any Nappans, but it’s a cool-looking tool.
HT: The Lumberjack.
Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
H/T Jifufu
Ciao for now!!!
Oh yeah, and if you click on the category Anorex[st]ics Inaneymous, the comics don’t appear there for some reason. I’ll take it up with the Night Writer.
Okay, guys, how are you coming on your Valentine’s Day plans for your wife or significant other? Have you selected the special, highly personal playlist of songs and burned a CD or uploaded it to her MP3 player? No?
Well have you written her a poem, or a letter, telling her how much she means to you? Thought of something special to say that’s not too many words to memorize?
What, you mean you’re going to rush down to the store, find a hyper-priced bunch of roses or an over-packaged box of chocolates, or buy one of those spa packages that tells your wife, “Honey, I love you, but you need a whole day of people working on you to get beautiful!”? (Or worse, “Honey, I saw this spa ad in the sports section and the woman in the photo looked really hot, draped in this sheet and, uh, yeah, well, and it made me think of you! Yeah, that’s the ticket!”)
You might as well throw yourself on her mercy (she’s probably used to it anyway) or let yourself be led to slaughter on the altar of Hallmark by a couple of those winged FTD guys.
Wait a minute, maybe it’s not too late. Find a nice, romantic poem, type it into your computer, use a frilly font, print it out in color, buy a nice frame at Target. Voilà! What do you mean, all you can think of is “Casey at the Bat?” Okay, here’s a good one by Kenneth Rexroth. It’s been tried, tested and personally guaranteed by me.
“A million trillion here, a million trillion there; pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
— Everett Dirksen
$2 TRILLION?
White House’s $2.5 trillion plan draws criticism over lack of details.By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and STEPHEN LABATON, New York Times
WASHINGTON – The White House plan to rescue the nation’s financial system, announced Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is far bigger than anyone predicted and envisions a far greater government role in markets and banks than at any time since the 1930s.
Administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion — $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.
…
But the initial assessment from the markets, lawmakers and economists was brutally negative, in large part because they expected more details.Basic questions about how the various parts of the program would work — especially those involving the unsellable mortgages that banks are holding and preventing home foreclosures — were left for another day. Some Wall Street experts criticized the plan for relying too heavily on the same vague solutions proposed by the Bush administration.
The stock market, propped up for weeks on the expectation that Washington would finally deliver a comprehensive rescue plan, dipped almost as soon as Geithner began speaking in the morning.
Create your own short and sweet nothings in candy heart form — either as a trio of hearts or as a single heart — using the Candy Heart Generator. Be sappy, be funny, be cruel but, most of all, be brief!
HT: Through the Illusion.
..it’s my birthday! Yay! But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?
So last Saturday I was going to have my birthday party. We were going rock climbing. Everybody shows up, ready to get some rock wall conquering in. We go to Vertical Endeavors, only to find out… you have to have a waiver (can you hear Dad singing in the background, ‘So dangerous you have to sign a waiver…’?). So much for that. We handed out the waivers, telling everyone to have their parents sign the evil sheets of paper, and we would come back tomorrow (Sunday). So the day was spent playing Loaded Questions (best game ever) and Paper Telephone, eating cake, and generally laughing our heads off.
Sunday comes around. Everyone who was invited called and said they were able to come. No one forgot their waivers. We got the gear needed from an incredibly excited guy, and went through the orientation thingy. Unfortunately it was really busy that day. We had to wait a while before one of the walls was open. We had a lot of fun trying to make our way up the walls. I got to the top three or four times. RM made up to the top as well.
Today we’re having family over. I’m baking my own cake. Flour power!!!
Ciao for now.
by the Night Writer
A few years ago I stopped at a local gas station and convenience store to tank up. It was a Saturday and back in the day when you had to go into the store to pay, and it so happened that I was in a hurry. I stood in line while the sole cashier seemed to take his sweet, ever-lovin’ time in handling the transactions of those in front of me. When it was my turn I felt a strong urge to make some cutting comment, or call the guy “Lightning” or something similar. Just as I was about to do that, however, I had an even stronger thought: “What if I say that and this same guy shows up at church tomorrow as a visitor while I’m ushering?”
My fiery-hot comment turned to ashes in my mouth. I swallowed hard, signed my receipt and beat it out of there. I may have lost a few minutes but I probably gained something more.
I still think of this little episode from time to time as I surf my favorite blogs and drop in on their Comment sections. Many of these have their “regulars” who engage in spirited debate, and typically the more spirited it gets the less respectful the tone of the commenters back and forth. There are times, I must confess, when funny, inventive and highly personal and derogatory ripostes have wanted to leap through my flying fingers onto the comment page to symbolically gut not only another person’s argument but his very being. Such is the anonymity and immunity of the internet. I have bitten my tongue, or perhaps my fingernails, however to keep from doing so.
When I write for this blog I often have a picture of a composite reader in my head. Not necessarily anyone in particular but someone who is obviously intelligent and who has good taste or otherwise he or she wouldn’t have stopped by. Having this sense moderates, or modulates, some of what I might type — along with the thought that stuff tends to live forever on the web like so much space junk orbiting the earth. Meanwhile some cosmic gravity will see to it that my least generous, most base and unedifying words will turn up in someone’s Google-search. Therefore my fingernails grow ragged.
Likewise in the various comment sections I always try to remember that there are real people on the other side of those electrons, no matter how cartoon-like their on-screen personas might appear. Therefore, while I may use a clever turn of phrase or pointed observation in responding to their argument, I don’t go personal or suggest that they molest collies. Sometimes I’ll type something inflammatory, take satisfaction from that sparkling eviseration, and then delete it. Whether the person I’m responding to is 5’2″ or 6’5″, if I wouldn’t say it to his/her face, I shouldn’t post it either. Someday I might actually meet that person and if he’s 5’2″ I’ll feel like a heel and if he’s 6’5″ I might get ground under his heel.
And, someday, I just might meet them at church.
H/T Nightwriter.
Caution: Comic bloody and scary images.
And without further ado I present to you (hey, that rhymed!):
You’ll never look at Thursdays the same way again, muahahahahaha.
Ciao for now!
Megan McArdle writing in The Atlantic…
It seems to me that the burden of proof ought naturally to be on the stimulus proponents to satisfy the public that their highly theoretical models are basically sound, especially for the parts of the bill that aren’t tax cuts or transfer payments. Let’s recall that the evidence for this kind of stimulus working in this kind of situation basically rests on a single instance (World War II)–the other two times it was tried (Japan in the 1990s and America in the 1930s) the economy basically rolled along in the doldrums for the rest of the decade.
Proponents say that that’s because there wasn’t enough stimulus, which is possibly true, but not really satisfying, because first, how do we know this package is enough, and second, that leaves us with a belief in the virtues of stimulus that is essentially non-falsifiable. We might as well move macroeconomic policy to the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
Today is the birthday of Ronald Reagan; he would have been 98. We’re also just barely past the 29th anniversary of his first inaugural address. Some highlights:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
…
We are a nation that has a government–not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
…
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work–work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
…
On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, “Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of . . . On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
Amen.