This is all I ever wanted for Christmas

A Calvin and Hobbes Search Engine
Here's my favorite "research" strip:

2012 google searches

Google's Moving Tribute Video to the Past Year, as Told by Our Searches

Spam

I just deleted more than 3,900 spam comments from the last several months -- I didn't realize I should have been doing this all along.
Anyway, I know its a pain, but I am going to try to use the word verification tool to prevent spammers from posting as much. Hope it will work.

Idle no more

200 in Calgary

500 in Saskatoon  Video here.

Hundreds of First Nations people across the country protested the latest omnibus bill yesterday. Yes, they knew it likely wasn't going to change the minds of any of the Harper Cons, but they did it anyway:

"There’s not a lot we can do about it other than raise our voices, raise our drums"

Yesterday was billed as a National Day of Action and Solidarity, the first of the Idle No More protests.

They died because they were women.

Jonathan Kay, and dozens of his yahoo commenters, can whine to their heart's content about the unfairness of the Montreal Massacre, and they can complain about how Judy Rebick hurts their delicate fee-fees, and they can talk like men are the real victims here.
And they can compare us uppity, angry, ball-busting Canadian feminists to those quiet, well-behaved, non-confrontational, forgiving Amish who would never dream of upsetting nice Canadian men by demanding they do some soul-searching about sexism and misogyny and gun control.
But all their strum und dang will never change this one simple basic fact -- one cold December evening 23 years ago, madman Mark Lepine got himself some guns and killed 14 engineering students because they were women.
(h/t)

Friday night lite

This Mesmerizing Sleight of Hand Routine is Absurdly Amazing:

Yann Frisch, Champion du Monde of the 2012 Beijing International Magic Convention

Call me maybe

I just got a new phone from Rogers -- a samsung galaxy Q with a little slide-out keyboard so I can finally send text messages and all that.
It's my first smart phone! hooray
And the instruction manual is 182 pages long! boooo
Maybe in a month or two I'll have figured out how to use it.

Stupid headline tricks

The winner of this week's Stupid Headline Tricks award is the Globe and Mail: "They love him. They really love him: Why Rob Ford can win again in Toronto".
I don't think so, Tim.
The story quote an Angus Reid poll showing that out of ten people who voted for Ford two years ago, only six would again. In total, 27 per cent would vote for Ford and two-thirds would not.
That's not enough love. G&M.
But at least those 27 per cent Ford voters show that Toronto qualifies for The Crazification Factor too.

What a jerk

So Toronto Mayor and noted loud-mouthed schnook Rob Ford is being kicked out of office for being a loud-mouthed schnook and both he and his equally loud-mouthed brother still think its everyone else's fault but his.
Poetic justice -- he just couldn't shut up.

Yes

The pug that couldn't run

My sister sent this to me. Its great.

Thanks, Philip

One does wish ... - The Globe and Mail:

Not with a bang but a whimper

Krugman notices that Republicans may flirt with truth but they end up parroting the party line:

...it’s true that there are some Republican intellectuals and pundits who seem to be truly open-minded about both economic and social issues. But I worded that carefully: they “seem to be” open-minded; indeed, they’re professional seemers. When it matters, they can always be counted on — after making a big show of stroking their chins and agonizing — to follow the party line, and reject anything that doesn’t go along with the preacher-plutocrat agenda. If they don’t deliver when it counts, they are excommunicated; see Frum, David.

Funny, exactly the same thing happens in Canada, too.
Some Con backbencher or pundit or columnist takes a brief fling with reality -- and then the media go all fluttery with the excitement of somebody maybe actually switching sides or voting against the Harper Conservatives -- until finally the whole thing just quietly collapses, ending not with a bang but a whimper and we all go bouncing off to the next thing...oh, look, let's talk about the War of 1812 again....

Joe Hill

I always wondered about Joe Hill's story -- now I know. Thanks, Eric.

Do the hustle

Awful week at work but I have been enjoying the tangled web that is The Man Called Petraeus [(c)Digby] and his grifter friends. Here's the latest -- The Wonderful World of Jill and Scott Kelley:

At the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Kelley was introduced to New York energy entrepreneur Adam Victor as "a very close friend of Gen. Petraeus," the Los Angeles Times reports. Victor eventually flew Kelley to Hawaii to discuss a coal project with South Korean executives. But then Kelley asked for 2 percent cut of the gross cost of the project -- which would have been $80 million. "It was such an astronomical figure that it suggested she had no experience in negotiating these types of deals," Victor told the Times. "Gen. Petraeus had a lapse in judgment in using his influence to put her in that position."
... in 2007, Kelley and her husband created the Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation, which its tax forms said "shall be operated exclusively to conduct cancer research and to grant wishes to terminally ill adult cancer patients." The charity raised $157,284, and spent half of it on entertaining, meals, cars, phones, and office supplies, the Huffington Post reports. It was bankrupt by the end of 2007.

Sarah Palin must be green with envy.