thatbob

Recent Actions

• Commented on Bow hunting for carp
  Tiny correction: the $3 million poisoning was of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, not the Chicago River. The Chicago River is the one we dye green (even though it's already green) and the Canal is the one we poison...
• Commented on Sing-Along <i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i>
  70 comments in, and still no love for Murray Head? Ok, I'll say it: this rock opera is all about Judas, as performed on the "brown" record by Murray Head (interestingly, the brother of Anthony Stewart Head, aka Rupert Giles...
• Commented on Obama ecstasy tablets
  "giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the Wall Street criminals who ruined our economy" That unsavory reality is exactly what we mean when we say that "(by every serious economist's account) [he's] prevented it from getting exponentially worse"; as...
• Commented on Obama's Afghanistan escalation speech: now *here's* a response video
  I distinctly recall Obama's foreign policy platform during the 2008 primaries and general election: his position then was that the war against Iraq, a nation state that did not attack us, was a mistake and a drain on the real...
• Commented on EZ Cracker egg cracker
  I will never, ever buy a newfangled TV infomercial product if the oldfangled way of doing it wrong is not presented in old-timey black & white (sepia tone also accepted)....
• Commented on Goldwag: I Was A Teenaged Straussian
  I think if you're going to go throwing around a term like "Straussian," you should just take a moment to define what you're talking about. For example, although I consider myself fairly well read, I had no idea that listening...
• Commented on Brand New discusses our logo
  They're both so awful that they're awesome. 'Before' is so busy, busy, busy that they look less like letters and more like the buildings and houses bouncing up and down to the music in a Betty Boop cartoon. 'After' substitutes...
• Commented on Put This On: web video series for dudes on "dressing like a grownup"
  For me, "denimpunk" is when the band rocks so hard that I throw up in my lap....
• Commented on Snow kite boarder gets carried away by kite
  This video lends credence to "The Kite," a Patricia Highsmith story I read last week her Selected Stories. In it, a lonely 10-12 y.o. boy buries his sorrows in a kite building hobby. Eventually he concocts a monster kite, 6'...
• Commented on Boing Boing: The World's Greatest Neurozine!
  THANK YOU for bringing Maggie Koerth-Baker aboard full time! Her guest stint earlier this year was one of the most magical weeks in my love affair with The Internet. I am enraptured by this news....
• Commented on Woman gives birth in pool with dolphin, internet gives birth to meme.
  You know, just because it appears to have been included in a 2007 French "documentary" does not conclusively prove that this scene is "real" or "verite". To me it still looks staged or, in another word, not real. I'm very...
• Commented on Tiny bug could wipe out California's citrus trees
  A big organic farm family of 8? Chez Panisse and The Moosewood? The city block on which I live? The Royal Navy? Pirates? When you think about it, who DOESN'T need a gallon of OJ?...
• Commented on SWAT team raids orchid grower for fudging import paperwork
  Actually, I am thankful for the strict regulations governing wildlife imports, and I'm not willing to let the libertarian right wing's procurement of a sympathetic "victim" (lawbreaker) undermine the need of those laws. That said, I would like to see...
• Commented on Report: Woman paralyzed by E. coli-tainted hamburger
  From religious food doctrine, to diet fads of the last three centuries, to the now trendy local/organic debate, it seems that food consumption is one area where very smart, very reasonable people allow themselves, again and again, to subscribe to...
• Commented on Urban Dictionary: Boing-Boinged!
  ...and in either case i thought it was just "getting boinged."...
• Commented on Possible B.O. ban in Honolulu
  It's not every day that I get to see a public librarian get scolded for not-being-socialist-enough....
• Commented on Interactive map of Manhattan in 1609
  Whenever I see a bear and a wolf hangin' out together, I think Mowgli must be nearby. But that's neither here nor there - can all y'all search all the ports and settlements and see if Henry Hudson is in...
• Commented on Smash-and-grab robbers clean out Apple store in 31 seconds
  If someone I know, and a bunch of people I've read about, can track and reclaim their stolen Apple products soon after the thieves begin using them, then i'm thinking Apple can, too. My theoretical wager is that they fence...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  maybe someone should turn on the rain, duh! (hope this helps!)...
• Commented on The Los Angeles fires
  Nice video of the smoke you guys - now get in there and get some video of the FIRE! (just kidding)...
• Commented on Flooded Louisville Free Public Library needs your help
  While most "public libraries" in the United States are now free to, at minimum, their tax-or-levy-paying constituents, the answer to #5 is No, historically and globally, neither have most public libraries been free, nor have most free libraries been public....
• Commented on Bees swarm under bike seat: the thrilling conclusion
  Capture and release?!? "Thrilling conclusion" my ass! I was gonna ride that sweet Bee Beard Bike around in my apiarist suit commanding my Bee Army to wreck havoc across LA! Or at least to score me some Hostess Twinkies, man!...
• Commented on Ray Charles covers Johnny Cash
  You know i don't even think that piano is plugged in!...
• Commented on Tim and Eric: New "Awesome Show" DVD, new music video dir. by Eric Wareheim, and Vanity Fair interview
  I'm completely serious when I say that I love the influences from Toni Basil and Neil Cicierega that I find in this video. (And, for the record, I'm referring to her video work, and his animutations - not, say, her...
• Commented on ATM to guy depositing California state IOU: "Come back without a [registered] warrant."
  California's economy is/was around the 6th largest in the world - and probably still is. It's only the state government that is going broke - only a small portion of the overall economy. (I'm sorry to quibble, but this misinformation...
• Commented on Cheap Trick releases an album on 8-Track
  "Who actually has an 8-track player?" All kinds of hipsters, tech geeks, nostalgiacs, and music snobs have working 8 track players - and the combined interest among them in buying a new release is probably greater than the combined interest...
• Commented on Compact marble machine
  Let's show some love to George Rhoads, who has been building this kind of thing on a monumental scale in malls and children's hospitals for pretty much my entire life....
• Commented on Philly's Homegrown Saint
  Am not a believer, but was raised in the Catholic flavor, so can help explain. Some Protestants (Jack Chick, for example) like to deride the Catholics for "worshipping" saints, relics, and Marian apparitions in pretty clear violation of the first...
• Commented on Michael Geist explains Canada's screwed-up Internet to the Canadian Senate
  Huh? One quarter of Canada's population exists on Grand Theft Auto? Wowz....
• Commented on Laura Ling Interview from 2005
  What we presume has been happening to hundreds or thousands of North Korean citizens and journalists for 50 years or more, suddenly happens to two pretty, young American journalists caught muckraking at the border, and... what? We're supposed to be...