Sunday Funnies 140622

The Sunday Funnies theme of the week is Food For Thought:

1. Now ain't that just swill?

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2. A Miracle (almost as difficult as turning water into wine)

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3. A Very Perceptive Waiter

But he'd better can the sarcasm. They'll all tip the same amount.

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4. Jimmy Becomes A Foodie?

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5. Find the culinary reference.

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6. Paper, Plastic, or Body?

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7. Going Nuts at the SPFic Ocean

Summer arrived yesterday at 10:51. Break out the sunscreen! 

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8. I believe they may be passing a pizza shop.

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9. Welcome, Scott Walker. Welcome, Chris Christie. Welcome...

(obligatory, politically-themed offering)

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10. I hear it's a pretty cheesy story.

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11. Did I mention that summer arrived yesterday at 10:51?

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12. Leftovers

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The Wrong Question

This morning, I found the June 16, 2014 issue of Time in the waiting room of my ophthalmologist's office. I looked at the cover, and immediately thought that the folks at Time needed to see an ophthalmologist more than I did.

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WAS HE WORTH IT? The cost of bringing Sgt. Bergdahl home is simply the wrong question for any American except one with severely impaired vision to be asking at the end of America's longest war. 

Perhaps asking that specific question about the value of a single American soldier's life speaks to the myopia and extreme tunnel vision which currently affilicts a sizable segment of our country.

Better that we should ask:

Was it worth it to hand the reins of government to a group of neoconservative warmongers whose imperialist agenda was spelled out back in 1997 in a document released by the think tank Project for the New American Century?

Were the multi-millions of dollars amassed by the signatories of that document via the wars they started worth the thousands of American lives lost?

How stupid would Americans have to be to return full control of Congress to that same group of self-serving ideologues in November?

In addition to the cover of Time, I came across a group of editorial cartoons, whose creators appear to have much better vision than the folks at Time. They have weighed in on the history and current status of the Middle-East mess handed to Barack Obama in 2009, and they also examine the the chronically impaired vision of those who created it.

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Finally, today's the Wizard of Id comic strip serendipitously illustrates just how out of touch with reality are those who count themselves among the privileged in America and hope to  reinstitute their lucrative, warmongering agenda.

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Sunday Funnies 140615

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is Happy Fathers Day!

All fathers are hereby entitled to sit back and enjoy this week's conic collection. (Now, isn't that better than mowing the lawn?)

1. 5 days to the beginning of Summer. Eh?

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2. That's not the smell of summer in the air. It's just more elephant dung.

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3. Did I ever mention that I love sarcasm?

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4. Perhaps he'll to make a whirlwind tour.

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5. Meanwhile, this couple heard that the Pope was in Kansas.

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6. Brothers under the label: Right-wing Extremists and The Taliban

What's in a name? That which we call a thug by any other name would smell as bad.  (with apologies to William Shakespeare)

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7. It's about time!

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8. Is It Canned Laughter or Music for Folks with Tin Ears?

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9. A Revisionist Historian Sings The Same Old Song

An elephant never forgets. This elephant, however, has no problem forgetting what actually transpired and lip synching to a "report" scripted by FOX "News."

See the previous item to learn the inspiration behind his music.

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10. Question: What exactly is the problem with this scenario?

Answer: She puts them on one leg at a time just like the old, white guys in the other party, and they resent it because they don't have a fly.

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11. The 1% is being served tea under the awning.

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12. The first six are deliberately satiric; the last one is real ... unfortunately.

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Let there be light!

My wife and I have enjoyed the first season of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Last evening we watched the season's final episode, Unafraid of the Dark, which I believe is a must see for anyone who is capable of thought in today's America.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a scientist, who revels in the rush that comes from learning something new. In the Cosmos series, he explores the wonder and majesty of what science has revealed to humans about the workings of the universe and how our understanding of the size and nature of that universe has changed.

A major theme in the series explores the tendency for human beings to reject newly discovered facts about the universe when those facts contradict cherished and long-held beliefs. Tyson does not exempt the scientific community from this tendency. In fact, he discusses instances where famous scientists dismissed or thwarted the acceptance of new discoveries which they feared would undermine their reputations.

Tyson's describes science as "a way to keep from fooling ourselves and each other;" and, in the final episode, he offers the single, most-important assessment of the very real danger we face if we allow science to be trumped by political ideology, misguided religious fervor, and greed.

Can you say, "Denying what we've known for over a century about rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide can lead to the earth becoming uninhabitable?"

I knew you could.

With that in mind, I posted the following to my Facebook page.

Two comments and a link:

1. If you have not watched the new Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey series with Neil deGrasse Tyson, shame on you.
2. If I could make every American watch only one of the episodes, it would be the season finale.

Click the link below to watch it.

Unafraid of the Dark

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It appears as if today is a day to discuss matters of universal important; for shortly thereafter, I discovered that a friend had shared this image on his Facebook page:

The result was a thread of comments between me and a friend, Mark, who happens to be a minister:

Me: Could it be that we're not quite as important as we like to think we are?

Mark: Right on, George! And a closer study of the Bible would show that Christians believe that as well. According the Bible, the universe was created for His pleasure, not ours. Just saying...

Me: And the pleasure to which we are entitled for being part of that universe comes from exercising the freedom to learn everything we can about it.

(at this point I copy/pasted the introduction to today's blog post)

Mark: I've been putting them on DVR. Trying to find the time to sit and watch. My only first impression from the little bit that I've seen is that deGrasse seems to be more focused on pitching the "there's no god" philiosophy than Sagan was. I understand that Sagan was a vehement atheist but when I watched the show he hosted I didn't see that. I saw his simple fascination with the universe and how it works. That doesn't really require a theological position to enjoy. I'm looking forward to catching up with the rest of the new show!

Me: I think you'll like it. Your assessment of Sagan's fascination with the workings of the universe is accurate.

I think that you will find that Tyson's presentation is also based on that same fascination, but it also responds to an anti-science political element in today's America, which is cynically misusing religion to undermine the pursuit of any scientific knowledge which contradicts its ideology.

The following, transcribed from the program, sums up this point:

"It's OK not to know all the answers. It's better to admit our ignorance than to believe answers that might be wrong. Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what's really there."

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Oh! Did I mention this?

1. If you have not watched the new Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddyssey series with Neil deGrasse Tyson, shame on you.

2. If I could make every American watch only one of the episodes, it would be the season finale.

Click the link below to watch it.

http://www.cosmosontv.com/watch/273943107839

Sunday Funnies 140608

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is doughnut:
dough-nut |ˈdōˌnət| (also donut)nouna small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ball or ring.• a ring-shaped object, in particular a vacuum chamber in some types of particle accelerator.

"Why doughnut?" you ask.

It's simple. I like doughnuts; and, unlike last week's tardy submission, this week's selection is freshly fried and glazed to perfection for maximum enjoyment. Coffee is optional.

1. Isn't that just peachy?

Freud would have a field day with rich, white, Republican men who write misogynistic laws while glorifying the phallic firearm.

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2. At The End Of A Recent, Republican Training Session...

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3. What happens in the protective enclave is supposed to stay there.

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4. Mixing Religion and Politics? - no problem in the Sunday Funnies.

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5. Mixing Religion and Sports? - Whoa! No way! That's scary, man!

I always wondered what they were talking about

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6. Mixing Religion with Biology? - Things can get really mixed up.

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7. Grammar Break: "ie" or "ei"? Sometimes it makes a shload of difference.

In German, "ie" is always pronounced like the English letter "E" and "ei" is always pronounced like the English letter "I." 

People who pronounce Leonard Bernstein's last surname as Bernsteen apparently never got the memo.

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8. Memory is not an elephant's problem. Getting him to learn something new is.

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9. Then again, his memory doesn't seem to be quite what it used to be.

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10. You can trust members of Congress. They know all about hot air and wind.

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11. The GOP Support Our Troops Welcoming Committee.

They don't need another former POW. They still have John McCain.

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. The American Conservative, July 1, 2010

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12. Makes A Lot Of Sense

Sure, you're up to your eyeballs in dung, but the health care plan, the perks, and the pension make it all worthwhile. And when you leave, there's always lobbying for the companies your committee was supposed to regulate.

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13. ...and to make it a baker's dozen, this just in from Afghanistan:

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Sunday Funnies 140601

The Sunday Funnies theme of the week is makeup.

No, this is not a cosmetic post. I'm making up for my failure to post these comics on June 1.

1. This seems like a good one to start off the makeup edition.

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2. Here's one for readers who want to lecture me about my tardiness.

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3. An Old Joke (from the olfactory, of course)

Q: Why do farts stink?

A: So deaf people can also enjoy them. 

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4. Multiple Personality Disorder - Starbucks Style

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5. Let's all sing a chorus of Under The CFL!

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6. The Price Of Self Governance - American Style

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7. Organic Baggage?

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8. Fill in your own example.

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9. A Polarizing Array of Professional Symbols (The last one is the wurst.)

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10. Discord among the conservative minions?

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11. Radiation Therapy- Capitalism Style

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12. When scientific facts don't fit the ideology...

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Bikes Trump Blogs

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted anything since Sunday Funnies 140525, it's because I've been two tired. That's a pun, not a typo.

For the past two weeks, my wife, Pat, her brother Bob, and I have been having a great time riding bicycles, first along the Allegheny Gap Bike Trail in Pennsylvania and then on various rail trails in Ohio.

I'll probably get around to posting last week's Sunday Funnies in a day or two; but, for now, I'll share how bikes trump blogs.

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But Nobody Took Any Pictures

Riding the Little Miami Bike Trail last week provided an adventure we hadn't planned on. Our plan was to ride from Morrow to Corwin and back on Friday, stay overnight in the area, and ride from Loveland to Morrow and back on Saturday. That's upstream (and uphill) outbound and downstream (downhill) on the way back. We're not dummies. 

We might have had lunch in Loveland at the end of our ride if we had been able to start after breakfast as planned, but we got a late start. Pat’s bike had a problem. It was either come up with a fix; or, cancel the Saturday ride, pack up the bikes, and head home. As it turned out, I was able to fix Pat’s bike, but it delayed our starting time by about two hours.

The set screw that holds the 3-speed Shimano shifter on the rear hub of Pat’s bike had stripped the threads in the housing, and it fell off of the hub Friday with three miles left in our return to Morrow from Corwin. Luckily, Pat's brother, Bob, discovered that a screw holding a bike bag on one of the other bikes was just big and long enough to hold the unit on the hub until we got back to Morrow, where the shifter fell off again.

Montgomery Cyclery in Loveland sells and services the Electra Townie bike Pat rides, so we went there to see if they could fix the shifter. It’s a fantastic shop with a huge selection of bikes and a large repair area. Unfortunately, they had no replacement 3-speed unit and nothing that would fix the problem. The young man who helped us and I looked all through the shop's box of spare parts for a screw big enough to grab inside the housing but came up empty.

Plan B was for me to either fix the darned thing or split the cast aluminum housing with a larger, self-tapping screw to rethread the hole.

Now, I needed a hardware store.

Luckily, Loveland Hardware is a stone’s throw away from Montgomery Cyclery.

The manager of the store and I looked, but all of their self-tapping screws were either too small, too short, or too large. Then I found a metric, hex-head bolt that was slightly larger than the original and also the right length, but with a more coarse threading. The manager, whose name I neglected to get, let me turn it into a self-tapping screw. She took me into the workroom in the back of the store, where, with a hacksaw and a vise, I cut an angled groove into the end of the threads to create a tapping edge.

One hand-made self-tapping screw, a 91 cent hex wrench, a bit of elbow grease and sweat produced the desired result. The handmade self-tapping bolt threaded the housing and held the unit securely on the hub.

Pat’s bike was fixed, and we set off for Morrow a few minutes after noon.

FYI: Plan C involved buying a roll of duct tape and...