More 2012

From Failblog: There’s not going to be an Apocalypse, now finish those TPS reports:

Priorities

You know what is truly stupid? In this story on how the feds replaced two artistically significant Canadian paintings with a routine portrait of the Queen just before Bill and Cathy Cambridge's visit last June, we find out just how the minister John Baird, the deputy minister, staff in the minister's office, and a batch of other bureaucrats at Foreign Affairs have been spending their time -- worrying about the appearance of the lobby of the Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa.

With about ten days' notice last June, bureaucrats were instructed by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's office to put up a portrait of the Queen in the lobby of the Lester B. Pearson building in downtown Ottawa.
. . . "There was a lot of discussion between the Minister and Deputy Minister on Friday, and despite other recommendations, they want to go with the idea in their message at the very end of this," said one facilities manager, referring to an email by Baird's adviser to "take the red portraits down."

Glad to see we have our priorities straight in Canada's "Harper Government".

And I'll bet they've also spent more than a few hours trying to figure out how they can change the building's name.

Great line of the day

From the commenters to Sarah's Please don’t throw me into the santorum:

Santorum could easily come from behind.

New links

Some new links over on the right -- I'm increasingly interested in longer reads, and so I collected a batch of sites that post lengthier and depthier articles.
Plus Charles Pierce now that the American election season is heating up.
And Mark Bittman for the recipies. I got his How to Cook Everything cookbook for Christmas and am enjoying it -- great pancakes.

Great line of the day

The Gazetteer on the results of the Iowa Caucus:

fully 75% of the Heartland's GOP have now officially bought their tickets to take a ride on the crazy train.

2012 redux

xkcd noticed the Mayan connection as well:

The most popular song in the world

30 million views and counting.

A great song in any language, but the mixture of English and Tamil shows something about where our worldwide culture is going and how quickly we are getting there.

2012 at last

And I'm so not looking forward to this.

No, its not 2012 itself that's the problem -- it's all this Mayan calendar stuff that we'll be hearing about all year long, until next Dec. 22.

Minimizing the horror

Remember how the right-wing had to mock and demonize the 9/11 widows to try to cover the Bush-Cheney malfeasance that lead to 9/11?
Now that the Harper Cons have dismantled the gun registry, will we see their supporters give the Montreal Massacre the same treatment? Fern Hill writes:

Despite what Kady O'Malley tweeted yesterday, I do think [Chris Jones] deserves to be known forever as 'That Guy Who Heartlessly Mocked The Montreal Massacre In A Sports Column'.Or at least as a prime example of 'Wot? Me Worry?'
(Predictably, the comments on the Globe story are full of 'honest mistake, get over it, lefty wimps', etc.)

What could possibly go wrong?

Another news story in the "What could possibly go wrong?" category -- WHO "deeply concerned" by mutated birdflu research:

The World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.
The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

Shorter

Shorter Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission:

Hearings? We don't need no stinking hearings! Uranium is MUCH safer than liquid chlorine -- what could possibly go wrong?

Happy belated Festivus

Christmas, Calvin-style

(h/t)

And we're back

Good trip, great to be home.

And we're off!

We're travelling until next Wednesday (Dec. 21) so I'm not sure how much blogging I will be able to do. In the meantime, enjoy these:
Creepy Christmas Carols for a Less Cheerful Holiday
When 5 cents is too high a price: 26 destructive fictional therapists
The challenge of English pronunciation and other grammatical fritinancy (ht Nancy Nall)
And don't miss this response to the homophobic Troy mayor -- Jack Layton was so right, wasn't he -- love is better than anger, hope is better than fear.

See you next week.