Dec
7
2008

URLs du Jour

2008-12-07

  • Tom Smith at the Right Coast gets the coveted Pun Salad Read the Whole Thing Award for the day. Right here. Go.

  • At OpenMarket.org, Ryan Young tells a current events joke based on Obama's recently-annouced fiscal stimulus/jobs creation schemes:

    President-elect Obama has a plan to create 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.

    One of his ideas is to install energy-efficient light bulbs in federal office buildings.

    In other words, we're about to find out exactly how many federal employees it takes to screw in a light bulb.

    My guess: a lot.

    Heh. Mine too. Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen is less amused, but equally negative:

    When it comes to fiscal policy, many projects are not very good. Most projects take a long time to come on-line. The fiscal stimulus should, most of all, be directed at an effective marginal incentive scheme to keep up state and local spending. I am still enthusiastic about Obama's economic team, but I am starting to worry a little. How many of these expenditures actually help needy people? How many actually will help the economy? In fairness to Obama this was a radio address, and thus hardly the setting for meaty analysis, but still I am a little underwhelmed.

    I predict the underwhelming will continue, especially among those who expect government to do what it has never shown any particular skill at doing: restoring prosperity via taxation, spending, regulation, and subsidy.

  • I've loved The Who for (gulp!) slightly over forty years. The two surviving members are among the recipients of this year's Kennedy Center Honors in Washington tonight "for their lifetime contributions to American culture."

    Yeah, they're Brits. So?

    Anyway, the Washington Post has a big story on them today, interviewing Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, and Who fans will not want to miss it. There is nobody like Townshend for yammering on endlessly, being simultaneously funny, iconoclastic, pretentious, self-deprecating, interesting, and off-the-wall. Here he is, allegedly about Tommy:

    If it had a [expletive] ending it wouldn't work. This isn't [expletive] Don Giovanni. This is rock, this is about creating something that will last 1,000 years. This is poetry, this is high [expletive] art.

    "Oh, you're an artist now, are you? An artist, pretentious [anatomical reference]."

    The Mona Lisa isn't a great painting at all. It's just iconic. When we see the Mona Lisa, that's a picture you know, everybody knows. Why? Why do you think it is? Because we don't know what the [heck] it's about. We don't know who she is. We want to? We don't want to? Is it us? What is it about her? It's just a [expletive] face for [expletive's] sake. You know, most of us can't even get close enough to it to see the [expletive] brush work. It mustn't have a raison d'etre. Or its raison d'etre can't be something that can be defined on the spur of the moment.

    Compare and contrast Roger Daltrey, on The Who:

    Good band, in'nit? Pound for pound.

  • I never got around to figuring out my TV's V-chip, but I really like the public service ads for it. Here, via YouTube magic, is a collection of four of them, my two favorites at the beginning:

    In the PSA spirit, here's theTVboss.org.


Last Modified 2012-10-09 8:23 AM EDT