I like mine rare on the medium side.

Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee

Hey, what do you know, Stephen is the one with the web exclusive 3 part extended interview below with Bill Cosby.

Also the real news and next week’s guests.

So what is “science”?

Well, to put it briefly, science is the study of phenomena characterized by the scientific method of either simply recording results in an objective way (observation)-

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.  You can’t be objective about Nixon.

Or proposing a falsifiable hypothesis (a predictive model of reality that can be disproven by experiment) and devising an experiment to test it that is duplicable (if you perform it rather than I, you will get the same results) or supported by multiple independent observations (Economics is not science, it is a pack of tortise shell rattle shaking shamen).

And let’s not forget Einstein’s definition of insanity-

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That.  Is.  Science.

Also this-

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science Oriented Video!

Science/Tech News

Water vapor and clear skies discovered on Neptune-sized planet

Sarah Gray, Salon

Wednesday, Sep 24, 2014 05:03 PM EST

A major discovery was announced on Wednesday by NASA: Water vapor and clear skies were discovered on a Neptune-sized exoplanet outside of our solar system – 124 lightyears away.

…

The discovery of water vapor may immediately trigger giddy feelings – water is one of the building blocks of life, as we know it. However, the clear skies are just as exciting. Usually thick atmospheres prevent more in-depth study of Neptune-sized exoplanets.

…

Though, HAT-P-11b is not an Earth-sized planet in an habitable zone, this discovery is still furthering the discovery of more exoplanets. Astronomers hope to apply these similar discovery techniques to super-Earths, other exo-Neptunes and more.

• Criticism of Study Detecting Ripples From Big Bang Continues to Expand, By DENNIS OVERBYE, The New York Times
• E.P.A. Unveils Second Phase of Plan to Reverse Great Lakes Damage, By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times
• Obama to create world’s largest protected marine reserve in Pacific Ocean, By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
• On a Shoestring, India Sends Orbiter to Mars on Its First Try, By GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times
• Bash software bug could be bigger threat than Heartbleed, experts warn, by Reuters
• It’s Not Genghis Khan’s Mongolia, By RACHEL NUWER, The New York Times
• Nine out of 10 parents move child out of booster seat too soon, study finds, By Katherine Shaver, Washington Post
• For Polar Bears, a Climate Change Twist, By JAMES GORMAN, The New York Times (autoplay)

Science/Tech Blogs

• CDC Modeling Demonstrates Importance of Intervention in Ebola Outbreak, By Jim White emptywheel
• The Threats Against Emma Watson Were All An Anti-4Chan Campaign, by Timothy Geigner, TechDirt
• Lonely potato syndrome: how I invented a mental disorder, by Dean Burnett, The Guardian
• Consumers are more satisfied with desktop PCs than laptops, tablets, study says, By Konrad Krawczyk, Digital Trends
• Kansas Zombie Preparedness Month is more than just a tourist attention grabber, by Carlo Raphael Diokno, PopTech
• iPhone 6 Bendgate: The End of Tight Jeans?, By Erika Morphy, TechNewsWorld

The Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

Hit me with your best shot.

The Premium Beer at a Popular Price.

The real news and this week’s guests as well as Tony Zinni’s 3 part web exclusive extended interview below.

I feel pretty.  Oh so pretty.

I met the nicest EMT crew.

So who would have thought Jenny Nordberg would get two web exclusive extended interview segments?  Anyway, they’re below as well as real news and this week’s guests.

I know this is a drum I keep banging, but I think that a visceral understanding of this issue is critical to effective political action.

We are governed by morons.

I mean no disrespect to the mentally challenged, moron is a clinical term for people who (assuming they are over 18 years of age which is the cap in these calculations) function with the intellegence of children between 9 and 15.  They are perfectly capable of working under supervised conditions.

The problem is that like a pack of spoiled brats indulged in every fantastic whim and self-indulgent desire by parents who wish for nothing so much as to ignore them and evade responsibility for their disruptive, destructive, and bullying behavior, there is no effective supervision.

Just as you would not trust a 9 year old to make nutritious and wholesome dietary choices (Broccoli yuck!  Oooh, candy!) or a 15 year old behind the wheel of a 4,000 pound death machine, you can’t expect people with limited capabilities like this to behave in a co-operative and productive way without regulation and discipline.

It is our job as voters, and that of our elected representatives as our surrogates, to provide it.  If they do not, then we must replace them, otherwise we are the shirkers who are not doing our duty and fulfilling our obligations to the community.

A couple of pieces have come to my attention that explore this, and to the extent that they despair of democratic action I think they are misguided.  We have reached a tipping point, a place where a critical mass of perfectly ordinary citizens have come to realize that the disconnect between the aspirational lies we’ve been promised and the dismal results we’ve been delivered by the institutions of elitism (looking at you Ivys) are insupportable.

There are many, many more of us than there are of them and if history teaches us anything it’s that disparities this deep are always resolved, either by reform or revolution.  Now one would think that a reasonable accomodation is preferable to pitchforks and torches but remember-

Umm…  we’re not exactly dealing with the brightest bulbs on the tree here.

A Bottom-Up Solution to the Global Democracy Crisis

by Joe Firestone, New Economic Perspectives

Posted on September 21, 2014

Before the “no” vote on Scotland’s independence, The New York Times, carried a post by Neil Irwin in the Upshot making the point that the then upcoming vote “shows a global crisis of the elites.” He argues that the independence drive reflects “. . . a conviction – one not ungrounded in reality – that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades.” He also thinks that this applies to the Eurozone and the United States to varying degrees, and is “. . . a defining feature of our time.”

Irwin then updated his first post last night, expanding it and recognizing the victory of the “no” votes in the referendum. His new post did not add anything essential to his “global crisis of the elites” diagnosis, so the references and quotations below come solely from his pre-vote post. But the points made apply equally well to his update.

Prior to continuing, a few points I found significant from Neil Irwin’s pieces-

Scotland’s Independence Vote Shows a Global Crisis of the Elites

by Neil Irwin, The New York Times

SEPT. 18, 2014

When you get past the details of the Scottish independence referendum Thursday, there is a broader story underway, one that is also playing out in other advanced nations.

It is a crisis of the elites. Scotland’s push for independence is driven by a conviction – one not ungrounded in reality – that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades. The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone. It is, in many ways, a defining feature of our time.

The rise of Catalan would-be secessionists in Spain, the rise of parties of the far right in European countries as diverse as Greece and Sweden, and the Tea Party in the United States are all rooted in a sense that, having been granted vast control over the levers of power, the political elite across the advanced world have made a mess of things.

…

What distinguishes the current moment is that discontent with the way things have been going is so high as to test many people’s tolerance for the governing institutions as they currently exist.

…

It is in continental Europe that the consequences of bungling by mainstream elites are perhaps the most damaging. The decades-long march toward a united continent, led by the parties of the center-right and center-left, created a Western Europe in which there was a single currency and monetary authority but without the political, fiscal and banking union that would make it possible for imbalances between those countries to work themselves out without the benefit of currency fluctuations. When it all came to a head from 2008 to 2012, national leaders were sufficiently alarmed by the risks of budget deficits that they responded by cutting spending and raising taxes.

As such, the imbalances that built up over the years in Europe are now working themselves out through astronomical unemployment and falling wages in countries including Spain and Greece. Even the northern European economies, including Germany, are experiencing little or no growth. As Paul Krugman noted this week, while the Great Depression of the 1930s was a sharper contraction in economic activity initially, the European economy is performing worse six years after the 2008 crisis than it was at the comparable point in the 1930s.

The details of the policy mistakes are different, as are the political movements that have arisen in protest. But together they are a reminder that no matter how entrenched our government institutions may seem, they rest on a bedrock assumption: that the leaders entrusted with power will deliver the goods.

Power is not a right; it is a responsibility. The choice that the Scots are making on Thursday is about whether the men and women who rule Britain messed things up so badly that they would rather go it alone. And so the results will ripple through world capitals from Athens to Washington: People don’t think the way things are going is good enough, and voters are getting angry enough to want to do something about it.

In Scotland and Beyond, a Crisis of Faith in the Global Elite

by Neil Irwin, The New York Times

SEPT. 20, 2014

There has been an implicit agreement in modern democracies: It is fine for the wealthy and powerful to enjoy private jets and outlandishly expensive homes so long as the mass of people also see steadily rising standards of living. Only the first part of that bargain has been met, and voters are expressing their frustration in ways that vary depending on the country but that have in common a sense that the established order isn’t serving them.

…

But there are always people who have disagreements with the direction of policy in their nation; the whole point of a state is to have an apparatus that channels disparate preferences into one sound set of policy choices. What distinguishes the current moment is that discontent with the way things are going is so high as to test many people’s tolerance for governing institutions as they now exist.

There is simple economic math behind it. Consider the United States, which has had stronger growth than Britain, Japan or Continental Europe since the financial crisis and the deep recession it spawned. The United States economy is now 6.7 percent bigger than it was at the end of 2007.

But that masks what has been a miserable last several years for most working Americans. The Census Bureau said last week that the inflation-adjusted median household income – pay for people at the exact midpoint of the income distribution – was $51,939 in 2013, up just $180 from 2012 and still 8 percent below 2007 levels.

It gets worse. The 2007 peak in real median household income was slightly below the 1999 peak. In other words, a middle-class American family is worse off financially today than it was 15 years ago.

…

The sense that the system isn’t working for most American workers pervades public opinion polling, including a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll. Seventy percent of respondents disapproved of congressional Republicans, but congressional Democrats fared barely better, with 61 percent disapproval. Fifty-three percent disapproved of President Obama’s handling of the economy; similar numbers disapproved of President George W. Bush at this point in his presidency.

Or, instead of polls, you can look at results, where every election seems to have the potential to be a wave election, in which one side makes major gains. The idea of overwhelmingly electing President Obama and congressional Democrats in 2008 and turning around and overwhelmingly favoring Tea Party Republicans in 2010 may not seem consistent, but it’s what you might expect in a world where the political mainstream has delivered consistently mediocre results.

Now to continue with Joe Firestone (op. cit.)

To summarize his argument, for decades now, the elites in major modern, industrial nations have committed leadership blunders and created great discontent among the citizens of their nations, to the point where their polices have contributed to damaging their economies seriously, and the rise of popular resistance embodied in extremist parties and independence movements. Elites have had vast power, but have not lived up to their responsibilities to serve the people of their nations. Discontent with their actions and results is so high that many are questioning the legitimacy of the very governing institutions that claim to serve them, and are exhibiting a greater and greater willingness to do something about these institutions and the policies that they and the elites are generating. Scotland is but one example of that, and his implication is that more examples are in the offing.

It’s significant, some might say even remarkable, that Irwin’s article appeared in The New York Times, since it is a flat out criticism of elite leadership over a number of decades and a warning to elites to improve their performance or deal with the consequences. But I think it still misses the most important question. That question is whether there is a global crisis of elites or a global crisis of democracies? I’m afraid I think that the crisis of elite leadership is only a symptom of the underlying cause of a broader global crisis of democracy.

Think about it. Irwin is describing a situation in which the elites have been failing their citizens for decades now, following neoliberal economic policies that have resulted in increasing inequality and the renewed appearance of extreme economic instability, and doing this while they continuously mislead the public about their poor performance, using the power of the money that supports them and permeates the mass media.

…

And the overwhelming popular discontent with both the political elites and political institutions has not yet served to generate movements that are powerful enough to dislodge them at the polls; even though the claimed signal advantage of democracy over other forms of government is the ability of people in democracies to replace political elites who won’t serve the people’s interests with leaders who will – without bloodshed and in an orderly fashion.

The failure of democratic institutions is the reason why we have elites that commit blunder after blunder, but are never replaced by more competent leaders who do respect the popular will. It’s the reason for Irwin’s global elite crisis. There would be no such crisis if badly performing elites could be easily replaced. But they can’t. Top leaders may come and go in modern nations, but slightly lower level officials, advisers, and consultants, still at the commanding heights of power, remain the same.

Deliver the government to one party or another and leadership at the top changes, but the same or people with very similar views are still called upon to staff the government or advise it. They survive government after government. They move to the non-profits. They move to the international organizations. They go into large corporations for awhile. But they are never retired from the elite circles of governance, even when it seems that they appear to be near senility.

And regardless of past failures, they keep getting appointed to serve new governments on grounds that they have valuable experience or have learned lessons from their previous bad experiences. In present day democracies, past failures provide the qualifications they need for future failures. And yesterday’s failed leader is preferred to today’s new leader with new ideas.

So, the inescapable conclusion is that there is something wrong with modern democracies: namely, that their institutions are no longer effective at performing their essential function of replacing “bad or incompetent rulers” bloodlessly, when that needs to be done.

Firestone thinks democracy needs to be re-invented.  I don’t think we are yet at that point provided we use it.  In any event as Einstein is reputed to have said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  We have 40 years of failure.  How much evidence do you need?

CIA’s John Brennan Refuses To Tell Senate Who Okayed Spying On The Senate

by Mike Masnick, TechDirt

Mon, Sep 15th 2014

As you may recall, over the past few months, there’s been a rather big story brewing, concerning how the CIA spied on Senate staffers. Specifically, after having explicitly promised not to do so, the CIA snooped on a private network of Senate staffers who were putting together the giant $40 million report on the CIA’s torture program. The CIA tried to spin the story, claiming that they only spied on that network after realizing that those staffers had a document that the CIA thought it had not handed over to the staffers (they had), believing that perhaps there had been a security breach. However, when read carefully, the CIA’s spin actually confirmed the original story: the CIA, against basically all of its mandates and the basic concept of the Constitutional separation of powers, had spied on the Senate. While both the Senate and the CIA asked the DOJ to investigate, eventually the DOJ said the matter was closed and there would be no prosecutions.

At the end of July, the CIA finally came out and admitted that it had spied on the Senate, and effectively admitted that CIA boss John Brennan had flat out lied about it back in March. The CIA’s inspector general then revealed that the spying went even further than people had originally believed. This raised even more questions, but with Brennan “apologizing” and Senator Dianne Feinstein saying that she was satisfied with the apology, it seemed like this unfortunate incident may have been over and done with.

Apparently not. Last week, in the latest meeting concerning the torture report redactions, apparently some Senators asked Brennan to reveal who authorized the spying on the Senate staffers, and Brennan refused to tell them, leading to a bunch of very angry Senators — which may create some further issues, given that the Senators are supposed to oversee the CIA.

…

The McClatchy report suggests that in the meeting, Brennan “raised his voice at Feinstein.” Senator Levin noted that the CIA’s response to this whole thing is bogus, because even if there is an independent investigation (set up by the CIA) going on, it doesn’t mean that Brennan himself gets to shirk his responsibility to answer questions coming from the Senate committees that oversee his activities.

…

Of course, the big question is, what will the Senate do about this other than make a lot of noise? Brennan seems to be banking on “absolutely nothing,” and he may be right.

Clapper changes his story on false statements to Congress on bulk collection

By Meredith Clark, NBC News

09/18/14 11:33 AM

It’s a problem when the director of National Intelligence can’t seem to get his story straight.

Speaking Thursday at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington, D.C., James Clapper said that the intelligence community has not willfully violated the law, an assertion which documents and information from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden contradict.

…

But last year, in an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, Clapper took a different approach to his tense March 2013 exchange with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. When Wyden, a Democrat, asked if the NSA gathers “any type of data at all on millions of Americans,” Clapper responded “No,” and “not wittingly.” After a Guardian report contradicted that statement, Clapper said he gave the “least untruthful” response to a complicated question.

Wyden’s office confirmed that not only had Clapper received Wyden’s questions in advance, but that he had been offered the chance to amend his answer after the public hearing, but did not do so. Wyden has been a leader in legislative efforts to reign in NSA spying.

Clapper Denies Lying, Announces New Ethics Policy

By Dan Froomkin, The Intercept

9/18/14

An unapologetic James Clapper bristled at accusations of misconduct in front of a trade group today, announced that he intends to continue serving as national intelligence director through the rest of the Obama presidency, and released a new “National Intelligence Strategy” (.PDF) that includes a “Code of Ethics” that seems disconnected from the reality of intelligence collection as revealed by Edward Snowden.

Speaking in public, but in a friendly setting, Clapper mocked the notion of intelligence collection without risk, the potential for embarrassment or invasion of privacy. He snidely called it “Immaculate Collection.” (see NBC video.)

…

“While we’ve made mistakes, to be clear, the IC [intelligence community] never willfully violated the law,” he insisted.

And he complained bitterly of being “accused of lying to Congress.”

Clapper flat-out lied to Sen. Ron Wyden during a Senate hearing in March when he said the NSA does not wittingly “collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Clapper has previously said he “responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.”

On Thursday, he said he had been falsely accused of lying “because of a mistake and trying to answer on the spot a question about a specific classified program in an unclassified setting.”

His audience was made up mostly of contractors who do, or want to do, business with the intelligence community. One question from the audience: “You have a very supportive private sector in front of you. What is your most pressing need?”

Clapper said his people have failed to come up with ways to continue accessing critical intelligence without the sort of bulk data collection that was disclosed by Snowden.

“If you have ideas of how we can find the needles without having the haystacks, I’m all ears,” he said.

And I’ll lie again.

Farewell.  We hardly used you.

Who needs therapy?

The real news, as well as the 4 (!) part web exclusive extended interview with the Big Dog and this week’s guests below.

Singapore under the lights which means I have to get up at the relatively sane hour of 7:30 am.

Relative to what?  Have you met my relatives?

At least they’re not as crazy as Uncle Bernie who was all for banning radio between the pit and the drivers until he was all for it again.  Personally I think it a particularly daft bit of madness because as Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost says, “The changes are absolutely not necessary. For us of course it’s a big disadvantage because the more inexperienced the driver is, there’s more information you have to give him.”  

Pat Symonds, chief technical officer for Williams, added: “The whole thing has been handled hastily. It’s a team sport. I don’t see any difference between an engineer advising a driver how to drive and a caddie helping a golfer choose an iron. Golf is not a team sport but that is perfectly permissible. Racing is a team sport. Should drivers get out and change the tyres during a pitstop?”

He added: “We want personalities in the sport and if the personalities are engineers and not just drivers what’s wrong with that? I think the banter between the engineer and a driver is a good thing.”

As for the FIA, the race director, Charlie Whiting, admits there will be problems policing coded radio messages. He said: “I agree it won’t be straightforward.” Chaos and confusion vie for pole in Singapore.

And then there’s the issue of new, unreliable, and complicated engines and energy recovery systems and batteries which don’t just drive the car forward but also assist in braking and substantially effect fuel consumption.

In short I think it’s entirely contrary to my position which is that the struggling teams need more practice and development time to perfect their cars and train their drivers than the teams that are oozing with money, not less.  It’s a false economy.

Oh not to worry says crazy Uncle Bernie, we’ll just have less teams and give them more cars on the track because that’s what the people want to see- Mercedes or Red Bull or Ferrari all driving away in a pack from everyone else and grabbing first, second, AND third except for those that get purposely bashed out of the race by their team mates and heaven forfend that an engineer someplace reminds them that this hardware is expensive and all comes out of the same wallet.

Sure, that will help.

In other “big” news the suits at Fiat have finally won and the last Formula One program trained executive at Scuderia Marlboro has been shoved to the curb and replaced by a pencil pushing accountant, not that he had a record of anything except failure but that belongs to the Team as a whole and will not be improved by the replacement of a single individual.

The Marina Bay street circuit is the second slowest track after Monaco and due to the number of turns (23), heat and humidity (even at night), and counter-clockwise layout is one of the most demanding despite being the shortest and having 2 DRS zones.  Tire strategy is going to make a huge difference, on offer are Softs and Super-Softs.  The Super-Softs are 2 to 2.5 seconds faster per lap but will only last between 13 and 14 laps before they start to go off.  In a 61 lap race that might mean frequent changes, but you also have to factor in the mandatory two compound rule and the fact they only have 3 sets total and most Teams have used 1 or 2 sets in Qualifying.

• Singapore Grand Prix
• Marina Bay
• Interactive Track

Pretty tables below.

I’ve often opined that “classical” music (also called “art” music to distinguish it from the time period) is the “rock” music of it’s age.  You have the dysfunctional artists (why do you think they call them divas?), the groupies, and-

a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

Just as in contemporary times there are works that feature the talents of a small group and those that highlight a virtuoso individual performer.

And that is the difference between a Sonata and a Concerto.  A Sonata is a piece of several movements composed for one or two instruments as an ensemble.  A Concerto is a piece of several movements featuring a soloist accompanied by an orchestra or band.  The Sonata is the older form and originally meant a work without a vocal component (as opposed to a Cantata which means, literally, “to sing”).

The essential component here is several movements.  In Baroque music there were two types of Sonata- Sonata da Chiesa, which is one suitable for Church and always consists of several movements, “a slow introduction, a loosely fugued allegro, a cantabile slow movement, and a lively finale in some binary form suggesting affinity with the dance-tunes of the suite“, and a Sonata da Camera which was used at Court and basically a Prelude and then a Medley of popular dance tunes.

Rock, what am I telling you?

Gradually the form of the Chiesa came to predominate along with the content of the Camera so that during what we can properly call the Classical era the format of a Sonata evolved to 4 movements rather than 3 (or 2) including an Allegro with exposition, development, and recapitulation; a slow movement, an Andante, an Adagio or a Largo; a dance movement, usually a Minuet or a Scherzo featuring a trio; and a big windup, often a Rondo.  Because it was “art” music, melodies and rhythms were frequently repeated with variations in tempo and key and sometimes inverted and reversed notation.  Think of it as “sampling” especially as most of it was stolen from whatever people were grooving to at the moment.

As noted the Sonata is mostly scored for very small groups, typically a piano or harpsicord and the featured intrument.  So it’s like hiring the local garage band (keyboard, guitar, drums?) to play your backyard party.

A little aside-

I was studying (hah!) in Syracuse and my next door neighbor needed a ride to his buddy’s down in Binghamton where they were having a big blow out.  I already had plans for that day but I had some time so I said sure.  I got him there and helped the band set up and looked at my watch and said- “Woops, gotta go.”

What?!  You’re not going to stay for the party?

I have another party.  I’ll pick you up tomorrow.

Anyway I come back the next day and as I thought the party is still happening and other than having to pick my way through the beer cans and mud I didn’t miss a thing.  He, on the other hand, was totally impressed.

So, like that in wigs and frock coats.

A Concerto is an entirely big deal, like tickets for Springsteen.  There’s Bruce, and then there’s the band.

Once you have a background in the forms I expect I’ll be reduced to 17th to 19th century gossip and calumny which suits me just fine.  CT stands for COMPLETELY TRUE! (also Connecticut where we’re happy to sell you a chunk of wood and call it Nutmeg).  Today I’ll highlight 4 pieces, a Sonata and Concerto by Vivaldi from the Baroque period when the form was developing, and a Sonata and Concerto by Mozart which represents the Classical era archtype.

Vivaldi Sonata for Bassoon and Harp in A minor

Vivaldi Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor

Mozart Violin Sonata No 32 in B flat major

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major

Oblgatories, News, and Blogs below.

Ahoy mateys.  It be Cap’n Hank Bloodbeard hijacking your blog ag’in.  Since the establishin’ of International Talk Like a Pirate Day in 1995, the number of Pirates has increased gratifyin’ly thereby proving the success of our Pastafarian Pirate Recruitin’ Program and confirmin’ the link between increased piracy and declinin’ Global Warmin’.

But wait ye say, Global Warmin’ has gotten worse and Pastafarianism is a made up religion contrived out of equal measures of ennui, ignorance and Rum!

WHY IS THERE NEVER ANY RUM!  Oh, that’s why.

Ye scurvy dog, them be fightin’ wards.  Ye’ll walk the plank. I’ll keelhaul ye.  I’ll see your black hearted soul in Davey Jones Locker (the one ‘e shares w’ Peter Toth).

We used to worry about that too until we took up w’ a crew o’ Freshwater Pirates from the Chicago School who explained that it doesn’t matter how consistently and thoroughly wrong ye are if ye suck up to rich people enough and parrot their prejudices, beat down the po’ folk until morale improves, and kiss their ass long and hard.  Take what ye can, give nothin’ back, yo ho.

Polly want a grant?

E’en on these shores Cap’n Bloodbeard (aside from really enjoyin’ referin’ to hisself in the thard person) be known for ‘is trail of terror and carnage and really bad puns.

• 2007 DocuDharma

• 2008 DocuDharma
• 2008 Daily Kos

• 2010 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2011 DocuDharma
• 2011 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2012 DocuDharma
• 2012 The Stars Hollow Gazette

• 2013 DocuDharma
• 2013 The Stars Hollow Gazette

I generally celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day by telling the 3 Pirate Jokes.  There are only 3, all the others are just variations.  As Cap’n Slappy says:

Thar be only three pirate jokes in the world. The biggest one is the one that ends with someone usin’ “Arrr” in the punchline. Oh, sure, thar be plenty o’ these, but they’re all the same damn joke.

“What’s the pirate movie rated? – Arrr!” “What kind o’ socks does a pirate wear? – Arrrrgyle!” “What’s the problem with the way a pirate speaks? – Arrrrticulation!” …and so forth.

The second joke is the one wear the pirate walks into the bar with a ships wheel attached to the front o’ his trousers. The bartender asks, “What the hell is that ships wheel for?” The pirate says, “I don’t know, but it’s drivin’ me nuts!”

And finally. A little boy is trick or treatin’ on Halloween by himself. He is dressed as a pirate. At one house, a friendly man asks him, “Where are your buccaneers?” The little boy responds, “On either side o’ me ‘buccan’ head!”

And there ye have it. A symposium on pirate humor that’ll last ye a lifetime – so long as life is violent and short.

If ye steer a course to the official website of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye may wish to read the FAQ, to help ye splice the mainbrace proper like.  Then ye’ll be ready to talk like a pirate.

Talking like a pirate, however, doesn’t just mean running through the hallways yelling “yarr!” at everyone. To get more in touch with one’s inner pirate, here is a short list of useful terms that may help readers throughout their day of pillaging and searching for buried treasure.

I also spend this day in Worship at Church and emulate the manners, customs, and language o’ me Pirate forbearers (I have the good fortune to be 1/4 full blooded Pirate through my Viking ancestors, indeed Viking is a verb which means ‘Pirate’) and singing some Pirate Carols.

There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.

I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.