Okay, this shouldn’t make me laugh like it does

English is a funny, funny language sometimes:

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”

Boehner said congressional Republicans are also concerned about the size of the package.

Pancakes!

I couldn’t find this, even though I was sure I’d typed it in before. This recipe is adapted from the 1958 Auburn cookbook, when my dad went to college. I have fond memories of him cooking these to the tune of the Johnny Cash prison albums before we ate them and I watched Saturday Morning cartoons afterward.

How I make them:

1 3/4 Cup Self-Rising Flour
(If you use All-Purpose Flour, you must add Salt and Baking Soda. I’m unsure of the amounts, though.)
1 Tablespoon Sugar.
(or Splenda)
1 Cup Milk.
2 Tablespoons Canola oil.
(Or Butter. Or Margarine.)
1 egg, beaten well.

Mix the dry ingredients together.

Beat the egg using a whisk or a fork, pour the milk in, then add the Oil.

Make a “well” in the center of the dry ingredients. Slowly add the wet ingredients into the well as you mix them into the dry ingredients.

Stir well until there are no clumps.

Heat a griddle up to Medium High or 375 Fahrenheit degrees. Use a drop of water to test the sizzle.

Using a large spoon, dip out a circle of the pancake batter you just made. Wait until the top stop bubbling and the edge look a little dry, then flip over. I usually make about 2 at a time.

When cooked, put on plate and put pads of butter or margarine between the pancakes.

Add your favorite syrup and enjoy.

You could also include your favorite fruit as well, or instead of the syrup.

This recipe is perfect for about four people, or two very hungry ones.

They’re light and fluffy and I love them better than any I’ve ever gotten from a restaurant.

#T-Crafts~_TX_CookingRecipes

Fantastic and Informative Interview about how copyright is broken.

How Copyright Restrictions Suppress Art: An Interview With Nina Paley About “Sita Sings The Blues”

http://ping.fm/gpIVg

Goodbye Bettie Page

I found out about her through Dave Stevens’ beautiful Rocketeer comicbook work, and loved her style since.

http://ping.fm/qekfL

OCLC trying to use its EULA to hold freely given catolog data hostage.

I see this as a real problem.

OCLC shouldn’t own or license public documents.

Provide a service, but a not a service with a horrible EULA.

“As one AUTOCAT poster wrote:
“I find it hard to believe OCLC would attempt to assert an intellectual property right over things such as LC cataloging, which by statute is in the public domain.”

Unfortunately, this conception confuses two areas of law. By crafting the Policy as a license, which is perpetual, retroactive and viral, OCLC can effect a sort of ownership–US citizens still own it, but the don’t have a right to get it (except, if the qualify, with an OCLC license around it).

Thus, OCLC transforms an expensive service–access to a repository of data that, even OCLC employees admit, would fit on an iPod, with room for 5,000 songs!–into effective ownership. This state of affairs obtains even when all the cataloging and editing was done by other Federal agencies and employees. It is only broken when the library in question itself did the original cataloging. As we shall see, that doesn’t help much.”

http://ping.fm/7cznz

Blog title…

So I’m thinking it would be great if this new administration can avoid the horror movie Massacre at Central High‘s problem. For some of you folks, that would be the comedy filmHeathers‘s problem. That last film was 19 years ago, any current equivalents?

Quiz on knowledge (Hat tip to Seamusmoon)

There Are 0 Gaps in Your Knowledge

Where you have gaps in your knowledge: No Gaps! Where you don’t have gaps in your knowledge: Philosophy Religion Economics Literature History Science Art

Do You Have Gaps in Your Knowledge?

Watch this (From Mark Evaniers blog www.newsfromme.com

Ramblings on my relations with religion

So two Sundays ago, my wife got me to go to Willowbrook Baptist church with her, since a co-worker of hers went there and their commercials are decent. I was kind of irritated that the police were directing traffic to the megachurches on Bailey Cove, but I got over it.

I hate dressing up in suits and ties and nice shirts and slacks. I like to be comfortable. Yet I love costumes. Go figure. So I went with a nice shirt and slacks to appease the loved one.

Anyone who knows me, knows I prefer disorganized religion over organized religion. Organized religion seems too much like indoctrination and brainwashing to me. Like everyone’s there to have the answer given to them instead of questioning and challenging themselves to get to their deeper faith. That always irritated me. More spiritual than religious, I guess.

I never feel farther away from the God I believe in than when I am in a church, Protestant or Catholic. I feel closest to the God I believe in when I’m in the middle of nature, hardly anyone around.

So for a Baptist church and Sunday school, it was better than most. I still hate church, though. Sunday school was okay, nice people, but not really my bag, you dig?

The sermon was one I’d already heard. He had actual pictures from the Holy Land, but I had heard the exact sermon from about 1980 when I lived in Monterey, Mexico from the Pastor (from Mentone, AL originally) at the non-denominational English speaking church. I always knew he was good, and now I realize that his performances and sermons pretty much said it all for me, and anything after that has been pale repetitions that have little to no effect on me, other than irritation that this isn’t anything new to me. My readings of religiuous texts, and yes, the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar did more for me in understanding my own faith and what I believed.

My wife liked it okay, and I felt she really was missing that sense of community one gets from a church.

Then they started calling. 4 times since Monday. That was a real turn off for her.

She asked me if we found another church if I would go with her. I had to honestly reply, “Probably not. But that shouldn’t keep you from going wherever you want to. You can keep asking, but the answer is probably always going to be no. Sorry. This is just one of the things we’re going to have to disagree on.”

So, there ya go. My ramblings on my relations (no, not that kind!) with religion.

Vehicle collision that killed bicyclist last Sep.

I haven’t talked about this because I never knew the whole story. I still don’t, so keep in mind these are my opinions, okay?

I decided to do some investigation myself. I went by the intersection of Wynn and Technology Dr. the other day. I went all four ways by car first, then all four ways later by bicycle. There is no way that bicyclist should have been killed in that collision if she was bicycling legally and safely on the road like she was supposed to. The person driving had to have been not only been going quite a bit over the speed limit for that hill to cause any visibility problems, and had to have not been paying any attention to the road at all to not slow down and brake properly, even if the cyclist actually “swerved” (very doubtful) in front of them. Clear cut case of criminal negligence, if not manslaughter, to me, if the bicyclist was biking legally and not wildly and badly (and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t from other accounts of how she bicycled). Accidents are unavoidable. This was completely avoidable. It was a collision that killed a bicyclist for no damn reason other than someone being in a hurry and not paying attention.

So, please, slow down, pay attention and ask yourselves what you’re in such a hurry for? Leave just a little bit earlier and drive safer. Please.

I was about to post more, but the last paragraph of this post summed up what I was going to write:

http://ping.fm/WxibW

http://ping.fm/iSRbd

I pretty much have to disagree with the police on their conclusions on this. As anyone who know me knows, we’ve had disagreements before.