Easter… I’m over at my daughter’s house…

Both my daughters, Cassandra and Penny, are at Penny’s house for Easter with all my grandsons. So that’s where I am this morning.

I’m on Penny’s Mac and she uses Safari which I can never really get used to (I’m a Firefox guy)… I started on her iPad, but since I use a lot of  Adobe’s Flash on my blog, the Home

Page won’t even come up.  Anyway, here I am stumbling my way through.

We’re all going over to Blue Moon for lunch, then Cassandra, Matthew, and my grandson, Milo, are heading back on the 4-hour drive to Connecticut. Milo has school tomorrow and they need to get back early enough so he gets some sleep tonite.

Elly and I, of course, don’t really celebrate Easter, being certified non-believers, but seeing the kids ransack their Easter baskets is a treat. I grew up in the Easter season when mu father sold Easter baskets in his drugstore and we set up at home for about a month making them… filling them with candy and a big chocolate rabbit in the middle, then putting colored cellophane and a bow on them. What I remember most, heh heh, was sneaking into the dining room where we made the baskets, and taking candies from the stacks and stacks of boxes we got from the distributor. And there was a HUGE box of loose jellybeans… my favorite… to grab a handful from.

I look at that now from my position as an aging diabetic and realize that I’ve gotten my just reward.

I’ll be back later to update the blog.

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Product of the Year! Lunch Bugs!

Did you know that lunch theft is a big problem? Apparently, people at work are finding their sandwiches being stolen from the coffee room refrigerator. Well here’s the solution everyone is waiting for: Lunch Bugs.

Lunch Bugs are sandwich bags with bugs printed on them to help deter lunch theft. They’re basically a variation of the already-existing mold-bags and will run you $7 for a 24-pack. That makes them almost $0.30 apiece. You may find this expensive… but, then again, it’s less expensive than going hungry at lunch time. And NOBODY will ever touch your sandwich!

You can buy them at Archie McPhee of course. I’ve got to get some of these.

Rain or Not, the Earth Day Festival goes on…

I just spent three hours at the Earth Day Festival in Shepherdstown’s Morgan’s Grove Park. Elly and the Sustainable Shepherdstown folks had a booth, as did most of the non-profits and craftsmen in town.

When I walked over to the park from my house (about a quarter mile away) there was a little bit of sun peeking through the clouds… but the weather said we’d have scattered showers and perhaps some thunder storms today, so I checked out the areas with decent coverage.

There was a fabric bandshell at the bottom of the hill from the Pavilion…the big protective area in case of rain… and they were warming up the mikes and checking the sound levels until it was time for the first act: a guy playing wooden wind pipes to recorded background music.

The next group to play was a country singer with an all-girl backup band – Lucas and the Lovelies – and they were pretty good.

Then it started to rain, which made the folks watching the music get under the pavilion so that they could see it without getting wet.

Meanwhile, Elly was selling cookies she baked this morning and Ruth Robertas’s Brownies under their tent top, raising money for Sustainable Shepherdstown and promoting the Community Garden. I watched the booth for a little while (sold some cookies/brownies) while she talked with some of their volunteers and with Peter Corum at the Morgan’s Grove Market Booth .

So I waited till the rain let up, then I walked home to feed the dogs. I think they’ll have a little more time without rain, but i do expect more before they close the booths in a couple of hours. It was fairly well attended, though.

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• Tweet The Earth Well (abridgededition.wordpress.com)
• Earth Day Celebrations Take Place Across NYC Friday (newyork.cbslocal.com)

It’s raining in Shepherdstown for the Earth Day Celebration!

Hooboy! I just woke up to rain here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and I’m wondering how the big Earth Day event in Morgan’s Grove Park is going to go. Oh, there’s a covered pavilion there so the musicians can be dry while they play… but this has got to cut down on people. Or maybe not. Shepherdstowners are a hardy lot.

I’ve got to go to Martinsburg first where they are having a special sale on water barrels (for collecting rainwater for gardening, etc., and composters. Elly has an event of her own to go to, so I’m in charge of the environmental equipment purchases.

I’ll have to get to the blog a little later today. Hope you all have a good one.

The Spam Writers are getting out of hand… I’m sick of them.

The hardest part of maintaining a blog, aside from writing, posting and promoting articles to various search engines, has got to be keeping spam out of the Comments. I use a great piece of software called Akismet which does a very good job of sending all spam comments to a page where I can review them (occasionally, about .005% of the time, it makes an error and labels a perfectly good comment as spam, and I have to reclaim it) and then, in one pass, I delete them all without really reading them.

My list of potential removables that I have primed Akismet for are any comments which are really not concerned with the post being commented on, but which are actually pieces of advertising in disguise… tricks to get people to go to their web sites for commercial reasons. These try to look like real comments, but, oddly enough, the texts of each one is a copy of another I’ve already seen… it’s like one robot is writing all these in quantity to my site and, I would imagine, many others.

Here are a couple of samples:

I was incredibly pleased to derive this website. I wanted to thanks for your time for this great read!! I as a matter of fact enjoying every small bit of it and I have you bookmarked to take a look at new stuff you blog post.

—

Thanks for honestly using permissible grammar. Approximately all sites were absolute gibberish. Astounding website & writing skills. You my friend have Talent! I just StumbledUpon this. Not bad. I’ll give it a thumbs up.

—

I enjoy reading a post that makes people think. Some genuinely exquisite posts on this internet site , thanks for contribution. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!

—

I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I right on enjoying every limited bit of it. I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.

That last one is my favorite. “Every limited bit of it.”

One of the things the spam blocking software does is show you the URL you would go to if you happened to click on the comment to see more from the person who is “incredibly pleased to derive this website.” The sites they would take you to sell all kinds of things: motorcycles, South American real estate, jewelry… and penis enlargement programs!

Today I eliminated over 60 spam messages which led to penis enlargement programs… at least half of them to the same user’s site, posted at comments on virtually every post I’ve put on this blog in the past two years. Some were even comments on ILLUSTRATIONS within posts (like the Web Poppers that I use in articles like this.)

While I am happy that these are kept away from my readers, I am very tired of seeing them pop up for elimination. I imagine other bloggers have similar problems. I could avoid much of this by limiting comments to approved subscribers… or by eliminating comments all together. Neither of these things do I want to do. I have always enjoyed the on line “conversations” one gets into with legitimate readers and I don’t want to change my policy.

It would be much better if these creeps heeded the anti-spam warnings I put near the top of my right column. Or maybe they would realize that their post like “Your well thought out ideas upon new approaches on this subject matter were insightful and an excellent help to us. Thank you for having time to write down these things as well as sharing your ideas” never shows up on Under The LobsterScope.

But they persist.

If any of them are reading this post, LAY OFF! Go comment on someone else’s page… perhaps one of those dating sites or a nice religion post. Or maybe a politician’s campaign website. You won’t get posted here.

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OK, I’ve Changed the Look of Under The LobsterScope

It has been a year and I had gotten tired of the previous design, so I’ve made a change in the look of Under The LobsterScope. It still has the same kind of commentary… you won’t miss Cartoon(s) of the Week or any of the Quotes… it’s just going to look different. And I hope nicer.

For you WordPress users, I’ve adapted a theme called “Mystique,” which I spent time on today. I chose the two column version and had to adapt my old three-column stuff to the new format. I wanted to make the space for articles wider and more prominent.

Anyway, let me know what you think… just click on the mailbox and send me a note.

– Bill

Al Franken vs. Steve Jobs: Why are you tracking our locations?

Your iPhone may be tracking your every move and Senator Al Franken, with Congressman Ed Markey, has set out to do something about it.

From HuffPo:

Researchers found that iPhones and iPads track and record users’ locations by latitude and longitude, sometimes hundreds of times a day, for up to a year, storing the file in an unencrypted format on the device.

Franken highlights some of the potential dangers of this system, noting someone in possession of a stolen iPhone or iPad could “easily download and map out a customer’s precise movements for months at a time.” The senator also points out that there’s no indication the software can tell the difference between minors and adults meaning that “the millions of children and teenagers who use iPhone or iPad devices also risk having their location collected and compromised.”

I’m going to reproduce Franken’s letter to Apple Chairman Steve Jobs here:

Mr. Steve Jobs
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 90514

Dear Mr. Jobs, 

Sen. Al Franken

I read with concern a recent report by security researchers that Apple’s iOS 4 operating system is secretly compiling its customers’ location data in a file stored on iPhones, 3G iPads, and every computer that users used to “sync” their devices. According to the researchers, this file contains consumers’ latitude and longitude for every day they used an iPhone or 3G iPad running the iOS 4 operating system-sometimes logging their precise geo-location up to 100 times a day. The researchers who discovered this file found that it contained up to a year’s worth of data, starting from the day they installed the iOS 4 operating system. What is even more worrisome is that this file is stored in an unencrypted format on customers’ iPads, iPhones, and every computer a customer has used to back up his or her information. See Alasdair Allen & Pete Warden, Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is Recording Your Moves (Apr. 20, 2011), available at http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/apple-location-tracking.html. 

The existence of this information stored in an unencrypted format-raises serious privacy concerns. The researchers who uncovered this file speculated that it generated location based on cell phone triangulation technology. If that is indeed the case, the location available in this file is likely accurate to 50 meters or less. See Testimony of Michael Amarosa, Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, June 24, 2010 at page 7 available at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Amarosa100624.pdf. Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user’s home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken-over the past months or even a year. Cf: People v. Weaver, 909 N.E.2d 1195, 1199- 1200 (N.Y. 2009) (“What this technology yields and records with breathtaking quality and quantity is a highly detailed profile, not simply of where we go, but by easy inference, of our associations … and of the pattern of our professional and avocational pursuits.”). 

Moreover, because this data is stored in multiple locations in an unencrypted format, there are various ways that third parties could gain access to this file. Anyone who finds a lost or stolen iPhone or iPad or who has access to any computer used to sync one of these devices could easily download and map out a customer’s precise movements for months at a time. It is also entirely conceivable that malicious persons may create viruses to access this data from customers’ iPhones, iPads, and desktop and laptop computers. There are numerous ways in which this information could be abused by criminals and bad actors. Furthermore, there is no indication that this file is any different for underage iPhone or iPad users, meaning that the millions of children and teenagers who use iPhone or iPad devices also risk having their locationcollected and compromised. An estimated 13% of the 108 million iPhones and 19 million iPad devices sold are used by individuals under the age of 18, although some of these devices may not have been upgraded to iOS4. See AdMob, Admob Mobile Metrics Report at 5 (Jan. 2010), available at htt://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Jan-10.pdf; Complaint of Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics CV-11-1846 at 4-5 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 2011).

These developments raise several questions:

1. Why does Apple collect and compile this location data? Why did Apple choose to initiate tracking this data in its iOS 4 operating system?
2. Does Apple collect and compile this location data for laptops?
3. How is this data generated? (GPS, cell tower triangulation, WiFi triangulation, etc.)
4. How frequently is a user’s location recorded? What triggers the creation of a record of someone’s location?
5. How precise is this location data? Can it track a user’s location to 50 meters, 100 meter, etc.?
6. Why is this data not encrypted? What steps will Apple take to encrypt this data?
7. Why were Apple consumers never affiamtely informed of the collection and retention of their location data in this manner? Why did Apple not seek affirmative consent before doing so?
8. Does Apple believe that this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy? See Apple Privacy Policy at “Location-based Services” (accessed on April 20, 2011), available at www.apple.com/privacy.
9. To whom, if anyone, including Apple, has this data been disclosed. When and why were these disclosures made?

I would appreciate your prompt response to these questions and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Al Franken

United States Senator

So the next time you make a call on your iPhone or bring up the web on your iPad, you should realize that you are not alone. And, by the way, if you thought you were beating the location cache problem by buying an Android device, you should be aware that they have been found to cache location data in a similar manner.

Gotcha!

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• Congressmen Press Steve Jobs On iPhone Tracking (huffingtonpost.com)
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Went to Green Drinks in Harper’s Ferry…

Green Drinks is a group that gets together once a month so that people with interests in conservation, green energy and related subjects can interact with each other. Elly has been going to this since it relates to Sustainable Shepherdstown. Tonite I went along with her.

There was a speaker this evening, something I’m told doesn’t usually happen at these events. His name is John Amos and his company is SkyTruth. This is an organization which uses satellite and aerial photography to evaluate the effects of oil drilling and shale fracking and other destructive things that people do to the earth. He has been especially involved with viewing BP’s oil leak history in the Gulf.

Amos gave a slide presentation with amazing pictures that got us all worked up and had us considering what we could do to help correct the situation… not an easy thing to do.

More on the solutions later.

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How to identify Genetically Modified foods at Whole Foods…

 Whole Foods Market admits it sells genetically modified foods:

“The reality is that no grocery store in the United States, no matter what size or type of business, can claim they are GE-free. … we are not going to mislead our customers with an inaccurate claim…”

Whole Foods Market
Internal Company Memo 1/30/2011

Activists with the Organic Consumers Association‘s Millions Against Monsanto campaign went to Whole Foods Market in San Francisco to try to identify which foods are genetically engineered, but couldn’t get any help from store employees.

Check Out This Video courtesy of the Organic Consumer Association:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvU2yH4IpBo

For more information, go to: http://www.millionsagainstmonsanto.org

(also posted at Panhandle Vegan)

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Pennsylvania Fracking Emergency Update…

I just got off the phone (live on the air) with John Case on Winners and Losers at WSHC, since he has another candidate for WV governor coming in this morning and I wanted to make sure that fracking was addressed. John said he’d cover it… so I’m switching between him and WNEP in Bradford County, PA, getting updates on yesterday’s giant leak of toxic fluid into the water supply. This is from their morning coverage:

Officials said thousands of gallons of fluid leaked over farm land and into a creek from a natural gas well in Bradford County.

Chesapeake Energy officials said Wednesday night the leak had been contained and the situation was stable..

The rupture near Canton happened late Tuesday night, contaminating nearby land and creeks.

Chesapeake Energy officials said a piece of equipment on the well failed.
A major response was launched to stop the leak of frack fluid and get control of the well.

Water gushed from the earth at the Chesapeake well pad for hours Wednesday.  It was all hands on deck to put a stop to the leak of fracking fluid that, according to company officials, spilled thousands and thousands of gallons into nearby land and waterways. Company officials stressed no gas leaked. (No…just fracking fluid! – BT)

“We’ve been able to limit the flow. We’re still doing additional work to regain full control,” said Brian Grove of Chesapeake Energy. He added there is no telling yet how much of that extremely salty water mixed with chemicals and sand has impacted the nearby Towanda Creek, but no gas has escaped into the air.

“The biggest thing is the footprint on the environment. Well obviously this is a big footprint,” said neighbor Ted Tomlinson. “It’s one of those things that happens. Gotta live with it, I guess.  Here to stay.”

His concern is for his drinking water well just several football fields away from the blownout gas well.
—-

Officials with DEP said the flow of frack fluid has stopped flowing into the nearby creek and its tributary.

Public safety officials in Bradford County said they, along with DEP, will continue to monitor the Towanda Creek which empties into the Susquehanna River. According to officials with Chesapeake Energy, the fluids that spilled all over farm land and into the creek have a very high salt content and contain numerous chemicals used to fracture the rock below.

“We’ve got our best crews out here working on it and we’ll keep at it until we get the situation resolved,” Grove added.

Officials have not said how long they expect to get the well under control.

OK… John has candidate Mark Sorsea (sp?), Republican primary candidate, on a telephone interview now… so I think I’ll listen.

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• Spill reported at Marcellus Shale drilling site in Bradford County (pennlive.com)
• Fracking Blowout Causes Massive Spill In Pennsylvania (huffingtonpost.com)
• Report: Drilling fluid spilled at Pa. gas well (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Major Fracking Accident in Pennsylvania…

I’ve posted before on the dangers of Fracking (the horizontal drilling in the Marcellus Shale for natural gas using toxic fluids called “hydrofracturing”) and have been questioning the gubernatorial primary candidates in WV, where fracking is about to expand from where it now stands, asking what they are going to do to protect citizens.

If you have seen the film “Gasland” then you know what the real dangers are… and no one seems to have solutions to protect our water and air.

This from WNEP in Bradford County, PA (not far from us  West Virginians):

Officials said thousands of gallons of fluid leaked over farm land and into a creek from a natural gas well in Bradford County.

Now there is a massive operation underway to contain the spill of drilling fluids.

The rupture near Canton happened late Tuesday night, contaminating nearby land and creeks.

The blowout happened on the Morse family farm in LeRoy Township outside Canton, a farming community.

Chesapeake Energy officials said a piece of equipment on the well failed.
Now a major response is underway to stop the leak of frack fluid and get control of the well.

Water is gushing from the earth at the Chesapeake well pad.  It has been all hands on deck to put a stop to the leak of fracking fluid that, according to company officials, spilled thousands and thousands of gallons into nearby land and waterways.

“We’ve been able to limit the flow. We’re still doing additional work to regain full control,” said Brian Grove of Chesapeake Energy. He added there is no telling yet how much of that extremely salty water mixed with chemicals and sand has impacted the nearby Towanda Creek, but no gas has escaped into the air.

“The biggest thing is the footprint on the environment. Well obviously this is a big footprint,” said neighbor Ted Tomlinson. “It’s one of those things that happens. Gotta live with it, I guess.  Here to stay.”

Neighbors like him were asked to leave their homes as a precaution. Some did, and some did not.  “Our family’s been on this corner a long time and expect to stay and expect a good-faith effort from Chesapeake so that we can live here,” Tomlinson added.

His concern is for his drinking water well just several football fields away from the blownout gas well.

“That’s typically everyone’s concern in the area, is well water,” Tomlinson added. We don’t want all that other stuff. We want to keep on drinking it.”

Keep your eyes on this one and see when we get the politicians AND corporations in lying mode.

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• More Bad News For Natural Gas: An Accident In Pennsylvania Is Pouring Toxic Fracking Fluid Into A River (CHK) (businessinsider.com)
• Report: Drilling fluid spilled at Pa. gas well (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Thank-you, Tom Corbett, may I have another (jcwinnie.biz)
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Oil Spill Anniversary Celebration… Let’s Hear It For BP…

HuffPo rightly points out,it is the one-year anniversary of the Gulf Oil Spill and, so far, Congress has passed no oil spill bills. None. Nada. No Siree.

They have held at least 60 hearings. 150 or so bills have been introduced, then no action was taken. And, of course, oil lobbyists have swelled the balances of their American Express cards lunching with our lawmakers as they defend the people that John Boehner said would pay every dime of the cleanup costs in the Gulf. They haven’t.

Of course, what is the importance of protecting our coastal citizens from the dangers of offshore drilling when you can be working hard on destroying health care, eliminating taxes for multi-millionaires or getting control of women’s bodies? Especially when, by ignoring the oil spill situation, you can help fund your campaigns.

BP, for instance, has now given out $29,000.00 to various Federal campaigns… and while more has gone to Republicans, they have not left Democrats out, either.

From HuffPo:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee each received $5,000 from BP last month.

Indiana Democratic Rep. Pete Visclosky got $3,000, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) bagged $1,000.

…and this is probably just the start of it. BP, on average, donates $200,000.00 to influence elections each round.

There was a comment in HuffPo that asked if there was any difference between these kind of payments and those of Mexican drug cartels to Mexican politicians to keep hands off the thriving drug business. Frankly, I don’t see it.

This is just another example of corporate control of the government and another triumph of American Capitalism.

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• Nungesser: One year since Gulf spill, ‘Who’s in charge?’ – CNN (news.google.com)
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• Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf oil spill – the key questions answered (guardian.co.uk)
• The B.P. Oil Spill, One Year Later (bigthink.com)
• Obama on oil spill: Progress but ‘job isn’t done’ (cnn.com)
• One Year After Oil Spill, Admiral Reflects on Continued Impacts (npr.org)
• Gulf Oil Spill Sickness? ABC Investigates (abcnews.go.com)
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• ‘I Know What You Spilled Last Summer’ Parodies Oil Spill For Counterspill.org Launch (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mitsui’s Moex Blames Partner BP for Gulf of Mexico Rig Blow-Out, Oil Spill – Bloomberg (news.google.com)

Addendum to yesterday’s Bob & Ray Post…

I neglected to mention in yesterday’s piece on Bob & Ray their contribution to advertising and marketing. Beginning in the late 1950s with their Piels Beer ads, where they played the voices to animated characters Bert and Harry Piel, the two became involved in radio and television commercials for a wide range of products and services.

The Bert & Harry Piel ads (only seen in the Northeast) were created by Young and Rubicam and were animated by the very creative studio UPA (famous for the Gerald McBoingBoing cartoons and others.) Here is what I believe was the first one:

Bert and Harry were so popular that they’d be included in the TV listings, so people could tune in just to see them. The ad campaign was changed though, when Piels realized that, although people loved the commercials, beer sales showed that they weren’t attracting any new customers.

This led, however, to the formation of their marketing company, Goulding Elliot Greybar (so named because their offices were in the Greybar Building in NYC). Among the projects they were known for was a series of testimonial ads for the radio industry, encouraging people to keep a transistor radio handy for emergencies. They also did ads for Underwood Deviled Ham, Interwoven Socks, Alcoa Aluminum, Glidden Paints and Cumuloft Carpets. These were added to by the parodies they did of radio ads which were sometimes hard to distinguish from the real things.

I got to thinking about Bob & Ray after yesterday’s post about Ernie Kovacs…

Ray Goulding and Bob Elliot in 1955

Bob and Ray were to radio what Ernie Kovacs was to television (although the famous radio team, who met as announcers at Boston’s WHDH in 1946, also did television, film and live performances on Broadway in their 43-year career), and were as influential on generations of comedians as Kovacs was, if not more so.

Performing right up to the late 80s when Ray was too ill to work (he died in 1990), Bob Elliot & Ray Goulding developed many characters who became treasured and respected names among listeners: Wally Ballou, Mary McGoon, Webley Webster, the McBeebe brothers, Biff Burns and so many others.

I often think that the reason their characters seemed so real over time was that Bob & Ray believed they WERE real… that there really was a radio soap opera producer named O. Leo Leahy (who they often put in their credit list after a show) or that Wally Ballou really was out on the street interviewing ordinary people and always being upcut by the broadcast engineer. I suppose when you perform the same characters for decades in so many different situations they DO become real.

Their comedy was performed without a single bad word or objectionable situation. They were rarely political (although the one exception may be the poke they gave to Senator Joe McCarthy on their soap opera parody “Mary Backstayge Noble Wife” in the late 50s) and never offensive, but remained much funnier than most of their competition.

Here’s a Wally Ballou interview sample (this is from “Bob and Ray, The Two and Only”, their Carnegie Hall performance in the 1980s):

I played that last piece because it is one of my favorites and so typical of their work… which they talked about in this interview with a very young David Letterman, who was very much influenced by them:

Letterman, of course, gave a major career start to Bob’s son Chris Elliot… and Chris’ daughter, Abby Elliot is now on Saturday Night Live, making Bob Elliot, 88 years old this year, the head of three generations of funny people.

Fortunately there is a large quantity of recordings of Bob & Ray’s work going back to the late 40s available on CDs, cassette tapes and DVDs. YouTube has a nice collection as well. These are certainly worth your time whenever you are feeling down… they never cease to provide a laugh.

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My favorite publishing atheist, P Z Myers, addressed the Global Atheist Convention in Australia last year…

… Myers, whose Pharyngula blog is one I read regularly (both for his comments on atheism and for his science posts where I’ve learned more about the octopus than I ever thought I would), addressed the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne last year (the recent convention, A Celebration Of Reason, was held last weekend).

Here’s the video of his speech which was just released by Myers:

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What is going on with the Republican presidential choices?

From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Republicans Don’t Like Their Candidates

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds just 43% of Republicans are satisfied with their choices in the 2012 presidential field, far below the 65% who said the same at this time in the 2008 race.

The Fix: “Put Simply: The opportunity is ripe for someone with the fiscally conservative focus of an Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels or, less likely, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to get into the race and immediately begin winning over Republicans dissatisfied with their current options.”

And what is even more interesting, the leading candidate, with around 26% of the Republican’s approval, is Donald Trump. Trump is entertaining the Press with statements pertaining to the “Birther” movement, demanding Obama’s birth certificate and spreading misinformation about his birth location, citizenship, education, etc. At the same time he is attacking  both Democrats AND Republicans, tearing down Mitt Romney last week by insulting his professional business record, his gross income, and, of course, his Massachusetts health plan which has a great similarity to our Affordable Health Care plan passed last year. I won’t even get into the statements he made this week about foreign policy.

–

The Donald

How someone like Trump can have such a lead in the polls is either because they are polling Democrats who are masquerading as Republicans and would dearly love to have Trump running against Obama (perhaps with Michelle Bachman as the VP candidate), or Republicans are using this as a front to lure out someone like Mitch Daniels that they would really like to have running. It is hard to believe that Republicans are that unconcerned with the stability of this country to really want someone like the Donald as our National Leader.

–

You would think that the Press would ignore all this and focus on the real news in the world – there’s plenty of it that we should talk about and understand how to respond as a people. You’d think so, but between this garbage about Trump and the Royal Wedding, a whole lot of our broadcast news not worth turning on.

–

Thank goodness for the internet.

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Wasn’t Yesterday Nice? A family get together.

Bud and Rachel

Yesterday, Elly and I drove down to Leesburg, VA, which was in the midst of an outdoor flower festival… packed with people… where we met our son, Bud, and his fiancee, Rachel, plus My daughter Penny, her three boys and Rachel’s son (and Penny’s mother) to have lunch at Lightfoot.

Penny and 4 boys!

Lightfoot is a favorite restaurant of both Bud and Penny… Elly and I ate there once before (with Bud, I think).

The weather was lovely… the rain is gone for awhile after soaking our Saturday down, and it was warm. On the Courthouse lawn there was music and kids playing Frisbee and other older people (like me) just sitting around.

N. King Street, which is one of the main drags of Leesburg, was filled with tents and merchants an shoppers and people just walking and having a good time.

However, today is Monday and the regular world starts up again.

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Ernie Kovacs Invented Television Comedy…

Ernie Kovacs

Salon did a very nice article on the late Ernie Kovacs this morning because his widow, Edie Adams, has just released a complete set in DVD form of Kovacs’ kinescopes from the fifties and very early sixties (Kovacs died in an automobile accident in January of 1962… something I remember clearly as a prep school student who kept a copy of his obituary tucked into a copy of Show Business Illustrated with an article on the great man. I still have it.)

From the article:
Some of TV’s most innovative people and programs drew inspiration from Kovacs: Rowan and Martin, the Smothers Brothers, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, SCTV, the “Saturday Night Live” casts, every host of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” and all the talk shows modeled on “Tonight.” Morning shows raided him, too: Kovacs’ 1951 program “Three to Get Ready,” broadcast live on Philadelphia’s WPTV, was the first morning program anywhere, and was supposedly the inspiration for NBC’s “Today.”

Go over and take a look at the whole piece… it is loaded with YouTube videos of Kovacs kinescopes. Meanwhile, here’s one of my favorites (I don’t think it’s in the Salon post) of the Kovacs character, poet Percy Dovetonsils:

Boy, it’s been 50 years and I still miss Ernie Kovacs.

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And a Quote for The Evening…

… from Jason Linkins in the Huffington Post, commenting on Face The Nation this morning:

“Today we’ll have Paul Ryan, thin-skinned creator of a plan to eliminate affordable care for old people, undermine the social safety net, raise taxes on most Americans and give money away to banks. You have to call this “courageous” or Ryan will weep on teevee and complain how everyone is mean to him. Hopefully, Mark Warner will find a way to make Ryan feel like a special snowflake, even if he has mild disagreements with Ryan.

—

“Remember: the people who say things like “everything should be on the table,” are the first to get shirty when you put something on the table that they don’t like. This whole idea that people are willing to have an “adult conversation” is basically bunk.“

Curious? The rest of the article is HERE.

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Cartoon(s) of the Week – Budgets and Taxes

Ben Sargent in the Austin American-Statesman:

Republicans favor the Rich and their Budget reflects that case…

– and –

Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle:

… and they want to replace Medicaid with a new Block Grant program… after all: No Pain, No Gain…

– and –

Chip Bok at Bokbluster.com:

… but wait until Tax Day and see who really has the Pain and who really makes the Gain…

– and –

John Sherffius in the Boulder Daily Camera:

… but don’t take my word for it. It’s all written down in black and white.

Let’s hear it for Ben Stein…

Ben Stein

I was surprised this morning to hear Ben Stein on CBS Sunday Morning, who I know is a conservative and who has talked about the need for budget cuts before, speak this morning on the ratio of the Deficit to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Surprised because:

1. he had good things to say about Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who left office giving us a surplus… and
2.  he stated that the Republicans would have to agree to raising taxes…especially on the Rich Americans who, he said, there are plenty of and they CAN afford it.

I’m even more surprised because, just before the 2010 elections, he did a Sunday Morning piece complaining that, as a rich guy, he was paying too much in taxes and didn’t want taxes on the rich raised. Something has changed his mind… which means other conservatives can change their minds as well. Whether this applies to Tea Party types is your guess.

Now, he did also say that the Democrats were going to have to agree to budget cuts, but they should be able to look at the military and some of the other areas we are not looking at now (I assume he was talking about oil subsidies and their related entities.)

You know, I felt pretty good about Ben Stein this morning… I usually haven’t felt good about him since he stopped doing a comedy quiz show with Jimmy Kimmel. But this morning I’ll give him the benefit of my appreciation for his ilttle editorial… and I hope some of these politicians heard it.

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The World of Political Absurdity: Arizona legislature passes circumcision law…

How crazy this country has become… we can add this to all the Birther beliefs that, I’m told, 40% of Americanshave. Maybe Trump will get behind this one.Here’s an idea, add a penis check to the Airport Patdown to avoid allowing non-American terrorists onto Arizona planes.

There’s more at care2.com:

clipped from www.care2.com Arizona Law Says Lack of Foreskin Acceptable Proof of Citizenship Part of the controversial Arizona birther bill passed on Wednesday makes a certificate of circumcision (given to parent of a Jewish child after the religiously significant procedure is performed) acceptable proof of American citizenship for presidential candidates. While candidates won’t be asked to “whip it out” in the State House, a documented circumcision will join a verified Christian baptism, postpartum hospital records and long-form birth certificates as proof that candidates are indeed Americans. Governor Brewer of Arizona has not taken a public stand on the bill, and will now have five days to sign or veto it before the law is automatically enacted. One might question if the radical birthers are now not only trying to shape the definition of who makes a viable U.S. president, but also what makes an American penis. Sign the petition for Governor Brewer to veto this bill here.

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U.S. Ranks Dead Last In Overall Social Spending

Here’s a clip from an article by Ray Madeiros that you should read at politicususa.com:

clipped from www.politicususa.com This report from the OECD and The Business Insider, could not have come at a more crucial time in our national debate regarding the federal budget and the course the Republicans have chosen to take. The conservative pundits are trying to frame this debate along the lines that the deficit and debt of the United States was created by the liberal, nanny state programs. This is an outright lie they have drummed into the heads of the American people. Unfortunately, some of the pundits are trusted sources of information for millions of people. The United States currently ranks thirty-fourth(34th) out of the thirty-four(34) members of the OECD in regards to spending on social programs, DEAD LAST. The amount the United States spends is currently only 7.2% of our gross domestic product on programs that make up our social contract with the American people.

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This seems to be more than just Hopeful…

Steve Israel

Nothing would make me happier than Republicans, and by that I mean The Tea Party (or the Koch Brothers Front) losing control of the House next year.

Steve Israel (see below) is right on the money here, and if those uncompromising righties don’t sign along with the rest of us to restore taxes on the Top 1%, then they will guarantee the loss of control.

Picked this up at Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

clipped from politicalwire.com Top Democrat Says Vote Will Cost GOP House Control DCCC chair Steve Israel (D-NY) predicted to Greg Sargent that today’s vote to pass Rep. Paul Ryan‘s (R-WI) budget blueprint would ultimately cost Republicans control of the House Said Israel: “When we win back the majority, people will look back at this vote as a defining one that secured the majority for Democrats.” “Israel said that Dems plan to use the Medicare vote today to go on the offensive against Republicans from now all the way until Election Day 2012. Crucially, Israel said it would be used in every district, even ones that are marginal or conservative — suggesting that on Medicare at least, Dems are hoping to maintain a united national front, rather than letting the messsage be watered down in conservative districts that may be more receptive to GOP messages about fiscal conservatism.”

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Upcoming in Shepherdstown Next Week…

Saturday the 23d is Earth Day and Shepherdstown is having a big affair at Morgan’s Grove Park (which, of course, is right next door to the Community Garden that Sustainable Shepherdstown is setting up and the location for the new Morgan’s Grove Market which opens in May.)

Here is the poster:

Looks like great music… walk there if you can (I’m a lucky neighbor) or bicycle… cars pay $10.00 to park (which helps the Men’s Club maintain Morgan’s Grove.)

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