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Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts

Monday, November 12

Signal To Noise At Home (Box Office)

The nature and structure of belief systems is important from the perspective of an informational theorist because beliefs are thought to provide the cognitive foundation of an attitude. In order to change an attitude, then, it is presumably necessary to modify the information on which that attitude rests. It is generally necessary, therefore, to change a person's beliefs, eliminate old beliefs or introduce new beliefs.
Attitudes And Persuasion - Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
Like the novels it adapts, Game of Thrones has a sprawling ensemble cast, which George R.R. Martin estimated to be the largest on television.[6] During the production of the third season, 257 cast names were recorded.[7] The following overview reduces the list of characters in Game of Thrones to those played by the actors credited as part of the main cast.

Sean Bean is Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, head of the Stark family whose members are involved in most of the series's intertwined plot lines. He and his wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) have five children: the eldest, Robb (Richard Madden), the dainty Sansa (Sophie Turner), the tomboy Arya (Maisie Williams), the adventurous Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and the toddler Rickon (Art Parkinson). The family's outsiders are Ned's bastard son Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and Ned's hostage and ward Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen).

Ned's old friend King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) shares a loveless marriage with Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). In defiance of her father, the fabulously wealthy Lord Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), Cersei has taken her twin, the "Kingslayer" Ser Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) as her secret lover. She loathes her younger brother, the clever dwarf Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), who is attended by his mistress Shae (Sibel Kekilli) and the sellsword Bronn (Jerome Flynn). Cersei's oldest child is Prince Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson), who is guarded by the scarfaced warrior Sandor "the Hound" Clegane (Rory McCann). The king's "Small Council" of advisors includes the crafty Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish (Aidan Gillen) and the eunuch spymaster Varys (Conleth Hill).

Signal To Noise At The BBC

Perhaps this explains why American television is constantly ramming British affectations down our ...er um ... throats. [ie: Piers ... and Simon ... and Stuart ... unbelievable]
And so you open Pandora’s box to find the seedy ingredients of British populism. It’s not just names, or performers and acts, it’s an ethos. Why is British light entertainment so often based on the sexualisation of people too young to cope? And why is it that we have a press so keen to feed off it? Is it to cover the fact, via some kind of willed outrage, that the culture itself is largely paedophile in its commercial and entertainment excitements? Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked by journalists cynically feeding the ravenous appetites of three million people who love that stuff, and that’s just the ones who actually bought the News of the World. When Leveson’s findings are duly buried, will we realise that it was the nation’s populist appetites that were on trial all along?

Sunday, October 28

Really? That's The Image You Want to Go With, Huh?

If there was any discussion, it might have gone something like this:
Are you sure this is the look you want for your training program? I realize that the on-line market for students is - well ... distinct from shall we say traditional avenues of appeal, but --

No, no. I don't mean to suggest that there's anything necessarily wrong with this young woman's appearance ... it's just ... the leopard print seems a bit suggestive ... on at least a few levels. Along with the hoop earrings and the general exotic and fairly erotic over-the-shoulder come-hither ...

Yes, of course I realize advertising is all about seduction but ... my problem?

Well, sir. I'm not sure if we're targeting young, middle-eastern women or sexually adventurous western males ... no. Of course there's no reason we can't market to a variety of potential demographics at the same time. I see your point, sir. Yes. Of course.

We'll have it on-line in our next ad-buy. Thank you, sir.

Tuesday, August 21

Just Another “Oral” Fixation

You should not consume "Laura Meets Jeffrey" in one go. It feels a little like eating an entire pizza in a single sitting, except instead of pizza, it's an ass.
Julieanne @ xojane

Saturday, August 11

solicitous and naomi$@?*$

Friday, Aug 10, actually in NYC
naomi$@?*$ 02:44 Hi how you doin?,, I'm naomi and im so wet and horny and looking for some fun. Wanna see me naked on my webcam? I just got out of the shower and still have my towel on with no undies <3
solicitous 02:53 well of course i do!
naomi$@?*$ 02:54 cool ..

Sunday, June 10

Punctuating Wittgentstein's Poker


9Stephen Toulmin - TheUses of Argument
22Marjorie Perloff - Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary
60GeorgeEdward Moore - Principia Ethica
66"...Liberal cabinet minister Charles Masterman, who created Britain's World War I propaganda unit."
74Adolf Loos, architect
75Lev Bronstein, aka: Trotsky
78Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
81"The Wittgenstein house was one of the preeminentmusical salons in the city [Vienna] of Mahler , Schoenberg , Webern . Berg ,and of course, Brahms ."
82"...Richard Strauss played duets with Ludwig's brother Paul, a concert pianistwho lost his right arm in the First World War and for whom,in 1931, Ravelwrote his Piano Concert in D for the Left Hand. (Paul rejected a work for the left hand he had commissioned from Prokofiev: 'I do not understand a note of it and I shall not play it.' Prokofiev retorted that, musically, Paul belonged in the last century.)"
83"The painter Gustav Klimt called [Wittgenstein's father Karl] 'the minister of fine art' ... "
Thomas Bernard - Wittgenstein's Nephew
86Paul Engelmann, architect, Stonborough House

Saturday, June 2

Just Another Day in the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “dead”
So exposing classified national security information is an act of criminal evil when done by a whistleblower to expose high-level error or abuse, or to a court trying to assess the legality of the President’s actions. But it is an act of great nobility when done to venerate the President as a strong and tough warrior. That’s the manipulative, propagandistic game-playing this administration exploits with its secrecy powers and whistleblower prosecutions.

Reporting from the House of the Dead

“Dog! You have desecrated the Spirit of the Lamp!

RT's Capital Account for May 30, 2012.

See also: Zero Hedge

Friday, June 1

Supplication in the House of the Dead

Depends on what you mean by “reach-around”
When I visited the office of a noted Wall Street gray eminence the day after Paulson accepted the job as treasury secretary, my host said to me, "There’s been a lot of talk about why he did it, and the best explanation I have heard is that he and a lot of the guys he is close to Worry about potential market disruptions that could be big problems if the right guy is not in there with his hand on the tiller. I think he feels like he can really add some value and that he may really be needed? (The mortgage crisis later suggested there may have been some merit to this thesis.)

It is remarkable that there has been a relatively low level of outcry about the steady flow of executives from 55 Broad Street to offices inside the Washington beltway. Vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International Bob Hormats, himself a former senior official, said, "It is fairly unusual. . . I think it is because it has been demonstrated that when Goldman Sachs people get into these jobs, they give no preference to Goldman Sachs. There is no shred of evidence that they use any of[133]their influence on behalf of Goldman Sachs. If there were, just once, given the remarkable activity of Goldman Sachs in the private sector, it would be over. There would be an incredible hue and cry."

Friday, May 18

The Joy of Inquiry

circa 1911 & 2007
And I knew, too, that in science if you put potassium chlorate into a retort and heat it over a Bunsen burner, oxygen is disengaged and may be collected over water, whereas in real life if you do anything of the sort the vessel cracks with a loud report, the potassium chlorate descends sizzling upon the flame, the experimenter says "Oh! Damn!" with astonishing heartiness and distinctness, and a lady student in the back seats gets up and leaves the room.
H. G. Wells - The New Machiavelli - 1911

Tuesday, May 8

“Fun-house” Mirrors of History

The deployment of the B-17s [in the Philippines] and the hopes vested in them revealed American attitudes on the brink of war and during it: a chronic underestimation, rooted in part in racial stereotypes, of Japanese military abilities and a persistent overestimation of American technology. In turn, so opinion polls showed, most Americans seemed to view war with Japan—though not with Germany—eagerly, almost cavalierly. "U.S. Cheerfully Faces War with Japan," Life claimed on the eve of Pearl Harbor. Americans felt, "rightly or wrongly, that the Japs were pushovers," a schoolboy’s word congruent with [Magaret] Mead’s metaphor of a nation placing a chip on its shoulder.98 The hope of unleashing its bombers against Japan, perhaps in a surprise attack, also accounted for much of the indignation felt about Japan’s act of "infamy" (as FDR called it) on December 7. What galled American leaders was not simply Japan’s treachery but their frustration at having it occur before the United States could mount its own surprise.
p. 62
98. On polls and Life, see O’Neill, Democracy at War, 73.

Wednesday, April 4

“catalogue of swindles and perversions”

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.

Monday, February 20

Mish Math i

Shed's (Disability Fraud) Spread

Series
Mish Math i (Scale)
Size
Period ƒ(x)
1 LNU00074597Population with a Disability *4 SolidM Thousands of Persons
2 GDPGross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal 2 SolidQ % Chg fYA
3 U6RATETotal unemployed, plus 4 SolidM %
4 UNRATENSACivilian Unemployment Rate 4 SolidM %
5 UNRATENSA * 1.377Mish-timated Unemp. Rate with 25% Fraud5 DottedM % * 1.377
6 UNRATENSA * 1.125Mish-timated Unemp. Rate with 10% Fraud5 DashedM % * 1.125
* Civilian Noninstitutional, 16 years and over
all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons

WFKATGWOT

“... the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism ...”

Furthermore, acting on behalf of the United States, the president exercises this supposed right without warning, without regard to claims of national sovereignty, without Congressional authorization, and without consulting anyone other than Michael Vickers and a few other members of the national security apparatus. The role allotted to the American people is to applaud, if and when notified that a successful assassination has occurred. And applaud we do, for example, when a daring raid by members in SEAL Team Six secretly enter Pakistan to dispatch Osama bin Laden with two neatly placed kill shots. Vengeance long deferred making it unnecessary to consider what second-order political complications might ensue.

But, it's all good, because there is a "bipartisan" group of senators who agree that Assad is a monster and because John McCain, World Leader, is in Cairo, using his well-known diplomatic talents to smooth over relations with another of our important allies in "the war on terror," a phrase that one day is going to send historians spiraling into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

“War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.”

via Juan Cole's Informed Comment

Ring of Iranian Bases Threatens US
US Interventions in the World since WW II

& via Tom Dispatch

So... “what's on the television, then?