From Mike Lester:

Is PETA still being taken seriously by anybody?

From Mike Lester (click for larger version):

From Chuck Asay:

“Gee, I’ll vote to get some of that wealth spread to me.”  Welcome to the 21st century.

From Chuck Asay:

"Devil Is in Bailout’s Details" – Wall Street Journal

Shire Network News #135 has been released. This week we continue with Part 2 of our interview with journalist Bill Bishop, author of "The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart".  He says America is increasingly divided, not just politically, but by basic, fundamental world views. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary segment this week.

Shire Network News #129 has been released. The feature interview is with Patti Patton-Bader, founder of Soldiers Angels, which organizes a surprisingly vast array of methods by which you, the ordinary civilian at home, can show real support for the troops. Whether it be by sending care packages, baked goods, blankets and cards, providing practical assistance for soldiers families, assisting chaplains with their work, or even organizing voice-activated laptop computers for wounded soldiers, Soldiers Angels can help you to help the troops. Go visit www.soldiersangels.org. You will also find news there of the Mom of the Year award that Patti received on Mother’s day in the US.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.  (OK, not so serious this week.)

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

We have a full-blown international crisis on our hands.  The world does not know how or why this situation continues to get progressively worse, nor does it have any satisfactory solution to the problem.  Scientists from across the globe have put their heads together and come up with precious little to solve something that primarily affects them, but its ripples can be felt throughout our everyday lives.

I speak, of course, of the plight of the Kilogram.  More precisely, the question of, "What is a kilogram, exactly?"  The story in The Los Angeles Times detailing this conundrum starts out like a James Bond novel.

Forty feet underground, secured in a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault here, lies Kilogram No. 20.
It’s an espresso-shot-sized, platinum-iridium cylinder that is the perfect embodiment of the kilogram — almost perfect.

In the more than a century since No. 20 and dozens of other exact copies were crafted in France to serve as the world’s standards of the kilogram, their masses have been mysteriously drifting apart.

The article goes on to say that some kilograms have been apparently sneaking out at night and hitting the Taco Bell drive-through and thus gaining weight, while others have apparently been watching their carbs.  The fluctuations have sent the scientific world into chaos.  "In essence," says the Times, getting to the heart of the matter, "no one really knows today what a kilogram is."

I thought that the Metric System was (allegedly) supposed to make everything so much simpler.  And yet here we are now, totally unaware of what a kilogram is!  It’s a unit of weight, for goodness sake!  I’m sorry, but if it’s that easy to forget what a kilogram is, I’d say that’s a good argument for bringing back the English system, or, as England has pretty much abandoned the English system, the American system.

That’s right, once again, America is going to have to come to the rescue of the world.  The military will have to be deployed, bringing gallons, yards and ounces back to a world gone mad.  Once again, people can extract their pound of flesh, give an inch and take a mile, rename the two-and-a-half-centimeter-worm, and stop having to sing,

You gotta have heart
Kilometers and kilometers and kilometers of heart

And since everybody knows that a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead, there’s never any question as to how much a pound is.  As difficult as it may be to have to change so drastically, and as much as I know many countries loathe American intervention, I know you’ll thank us someday.

As for England, we’ll let you call it the "English System" again.  It’s only fair since you have, in at least one respect, stuck with those good old measurements.  Instead of the Euro, you still pay your bills in pounds.

Consider that.

Shire Network News #124 has been released. This week we have a deep and meaningful discussion that ranges across the political spectrum. Douglas Murray and Nick Cohenjoin Tom Paine to discuss the failures on both Left and Right to come to terms with a Jihadi threat. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to “Consider This”.Last week in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama was speaking to a crowd about some of his political positions, including abstinence-only education. During that speech, he said this:

I’ve got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby….

Children are a punishment, eh? I’m sure your kids are proud to hear that, Senator.

Oh, you mean just unwanted, unplanned babies are a punishment? From whom? From God, perhaps? The God who put life into that baby? The God who said, in the Bible you hold dear:

Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.

From That Guy?

Obama’s context was that all the information should be made available to kids (presumably in public school, safely out of earshot from those inconvenient parents), but it’s one thing to be concerned about curriculum, and another thing entirely to consider unplanned children “punishment” and worthy of disposal.

But considering this, and through our super secret backchannels in the Obama campaign, here, from the home office in Camillus, NY, are the top 9 other punishments Barack Obama wouldn’t wish on anyone.

9. Have their newly-washed car located underneath a flock of flying penguins. (Yes, I know it’s an April Fool’s joke.)

8. Listen to “You’re a Grand Old Flag Pin”.

7. Get their own money back from a >shudder< tax cut.

6. Not allow them to find out who the final human-looking Cylon is on “Battlestar Galactica”.

5. Get interviewed by Tom Paine. (He asks those tough questions.)

4. Spend a few years at the “Hanoi Hilton”. (Oh, sorry, that’s a punishment John McCain wouldn’t wish on anyone.)

3. Sit through an entire Michael Moore movie. (Hey, some things we can all can agree on.)

2. Be the unlucky superdelegate that suggests to Bill Clinton that he needs to “chill out”.

And the number one punishment Barack Obama wouldn’t wish on anyone:

Listen to Obama himself decide whether he’s for or against gun control, for or against decriminalizing marijuana, for or against mandatory minimum sentences, for or against…well, you get the idea.

Consider that.

The reindeer are out, the fake evergreens are going up, and that jolly old man dressed in red is almost here. That can only mean one thing.

It’s almost Halloween.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Halloween

Bruce Eckel wrote an article about how bad he thinks RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is as a tool for finding out what’s new on the net. In “RSS: The Wrong Solution to a Broken Internet”, he writes:

What are you, the consumer, trying to accomplish? You want to be notified when something happens. We have a well-known pattern for that problem. It’s called publish-subscribe. The publisher keeps a pointer to the subscriber, and when something happens tells the subscriber about it. Maximally efficient.

Why doesn’t it work? Because the internet is anonymous. People can behave badly because nobody knows who they really are, and enough people do behave badly that you can’t risk giving out a pointer to yourself. So we don’t. Instead, we need RSS where our readers are constantly, stupidly asking, “did it change yet?” “Did it change yet?” “Now has it changed?” “Now?”

And indeed that can be a problem, especially for RSS readers that poll far too frequently. Bruce makes the case for a less anonymous Internet, and I can agree with him on a number of points.

What gave me a chuckle was this bit at the end of the article, which, I imagine, is added to any article on the site.

RSS Feed

If you’d like to be notified whenever Bruce Eckel adds a new entry to his weblog, subscribe to his RSS feed.

With “RSS Feed” in big type. I know, gotta use the tools that currently exist, even if you think they’re broken, but it got my day off to a good start.

Technorati Tags: Bruce Eckel, RSS, Internet, humor