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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Jazz Ruining Girls

This makes me smile. And giggle. And stuff.

From an Illinois Vigilance Association report printed in 1922:

JAZZ RUINING GIRLS, DECLARES REFORMER
Chicago, January 21st

Moral disaster is coming to hundreds of young American girls through the pathological, nerve-irritating, sex-exciting music of jazz orchestras, according to the Illinois Vigilance Association.

In Chicago alone, the association’s representatives have traced the fall of 1,000 girls in the last two years to jazz music.

Girls in small towns, as well as the big cities, in poor homes and rich homes, are victims of the weird, insidious, neurotic music that accompanies modern dancing.

The degrading music is common not only to disorderly places, but often to high-school affairs, to expensive hotels and so-called society circles, declares Rev. Richard Yarrow, superintendent of the Vigilance Association.

The report says that the vigilance society has no desire to abolish dancing, but seeks to awaken the public conscience to the present danger and future consequences of jazz music.

That the weird, neurotic, sex stimulating strains of so-called jazz music result in a 'feeble-minded morality' is indicated in a study recently completed by the Illinois Vigilance Association....

"Mid the distracting notes of the saxophone and the weird beat of the tom-tom was witnessed conduct not hitherto seen outside the old red light district.

"In full view of the audience, which included many boys and girls apparently still in their teens, couples on the floor gave way to almost every form of indecency. Dancers violently threw their arms about each other, frequently assuming immoral postures.

"Lights were lowered, and to the strains of syncopated music action that are indescribable took place. This is the full flowering - the fruition of modern erotic music, which has so crazed and befuddled the moral make-up of young people...."

Friday, May 26, 2006

DP

Does it make you feel uncomfortable when people refer to Dr Pepper as, “DP?”  

Cuz, well, you know…

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

U.N. Top 10, etc.

Today’s entertaining stuff I stole off the internet.

IMAO’s Top 10 U.N. Slogans:

10. If an impotent, bloated bureaucracy can’t solve it, then it’s best left festering.
9. You can’t spell “unethical” without the U.N.
8. Genocidal dictators, beware our non-binding resolutions.
7. Bringing Peace to your world (actual results may vary).
6. Tomorrow’s corruption, today.
5. Raising pointless squabbling to an art form.
4. We take bribes so you don’t have to.
3. Try our world famous cheesy fries.
2. If troubles abound, we’ll be nearby doing nothing.
1. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial America.

Get the shirt! (And many others, including this gem, at www.thoseshirts.com!)


Jokes:

I hear Vicente Fox is in Utah speaking out against fences on the borders. And then he went in front of a nearby Home Depot and spoke about how great a day laborer he is. He's now making four bucks an hour working on some guy's yard and there is no indication he's going back to Mexico.

So are all the jobs taken in Mexico, or are there jobs that Mexicans won't do which they give to low-paid Guatemalans?

LOL! (Stolen from here.)

The Internet

Ah, the beauty of the web and Google News; allowing ordinary, non-globe trotting individuals to absorb news from all over the world from the (relative) comfort of their own computer.

Through reading news from "worldly" sources, such as the BBC (England), and The Age (Australia), I have noticed that credit is often given to the countrymen of the particular news source ahead of a foreigner, especially when it serves their purpose (or "advances the story line," as some people say). While this may not always give the reader the most accurate information, the practice is understandable. It’s also entertaining.

The foremost example that comes to mind is the invention of the Internet. And no, I’m not referring to Al Gore.
The invention of Internet is commonly credited to Vint Cerf and his team of scientists at UCLA with their work on ARPANET in 1969. However, Dr. Leonard Kleinrock created the basic principles of packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet, while a graduate student at MIT a decade earlier. The first TCP/IP wide area network was in use by 1 January 1983, when the National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a backbone of university networks that would later become the NSFNet. Some people regard this as the actual invention of the Internet, not the sending of the first email in 1969 at UCLA.

Therefore, most references to the invention of the Internet, especially in America, mention Vint Cerf.

This is where it gets a little bit complicated. Contrary to popular belief, the Internet and the World Wide Web (notice how they are always capitalized) are not the same thing. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computers, tied together with copper wires, glass fibers, and satellite connections; while the World Wide Web is a collection of interconnected documents joined by hyperlinks and URLs that is accessible over the Internet.

The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (a Briton) in 1989 at CERN in Switzerland after he constructed the precursor ENQUIRE in 1980. The World Wide Web became available to the public 6 August 1996 when he published the first ever "Web site" at http://info.cern.ch/, which apparently no longer exists. [Personally, I would think that they would have maintained that page as a kind of legacy, or something. But that’s just me.]

And as a result, when a European story is written about “the Web,” they refer to Tim Berners-Lee: "When the web was invented in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, nobody could have predicted the way it has pervaded all areas of life." (BBC)

So, that ended up more as a weird history lesson then anything else, but I hope it was a little bit entertaining. The concept remains the same, news stories are written for a local audience, even when they are published world wide. On the Web. Over the Internet. And stuff.

**UPDATE: For those of you who care about what Al Gore actually did, you can go here: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp. (1:29 p.m.)

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Three Jewels

Compassion, moderation, and humility.


Compassion leads to courage;

Moderation leads to generosity;

Humility leads to leadership.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Complicated Ideas

Do people who use big, complicated words when explaining a difficult, abstract, concept to someone who obviously does not understand or has very limited knowledge of the subject truly know what they are talking about?  Or are they just using the big words as a way of exhibiting their supposed intellectual superiority over the less knowledgeable or informed person, when in fact they themselves do not fully grasp the topic, and thus cannot break it down and explain it to a normal person?

There are obviously cases to support both sides of this argument, but I feel that the truly brilliant people are those who can convey a complicated idea to an average person without them lapsing into a coma.  

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Politics Test

You are a

Social Conservative
(31% permissive)

and an...

Economic Conservative
(76% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Republican










Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Friday, May 05, 2006

Skinny Jeans?


In this New York Times article, A New Size for Denim: Extra Tight, the (male) writer reviews what appears to be the new, hot trend in fashion: Skinny Jeans. As I read him describe these "tight fitting" and "high waisted" new styles, I could not keep visions of the 1987 Jordache Ass-Back Series III infamy out of my head. But these skinny, stretchy jeans are not only for women. Oh no, my friend, these Keith-Richards-meets-Iggy-Pop styles are for men.

Men who would wear spandex bicycle pants out on the town, if only they had pockets.

But I'm afraid that you could read the date off of a dime if you did put anything in these pockets

But with prices reaching the $500+ range, the pocket where your wallet goes won't have anything to hold anyway.

As a relatively skinny person, and therefore not really having an ass to speak of, there is a chance these jeans could finally give me a chance to show off what I've got. But more likely, they would just be an embar-ass-ing reminder that I'm not a ridiculously good looking male model. (Pose.)

The article goes on to say that this currently New York / Paris trend will sweep the whole country by the fall of 2006, and that it will last around two years.

This, I am not looking forward to. As I have just recently found some of the apparently now out of style boot-cut jeans that I like and that fit me OK, I don't think that I will be making the jump to the "skinny jeans" any time soon. Unless, of course, I'm wearing a cowboy hat and there's a Skoal ring in the back pocket. ;)

Plus, none of the dudes in the picture have belts on.