A good sub-question is, what language is it?
It turns out that "Auld Lang Syne" is an extremely old Scottish song that was first written down in the 1700s. Robert Burns is the person whose transcription got the most attention, so the song is associated with him.
According to this page, a good translation of the words "auld lang syne" is "times gone by." So (incorporating a couple of other translations) when we sing this song, we are saying, "We'll drink a cup of kindness yet for times gone by."
The sending of a Christmas greeting by Chip Saltsman to the members of the Republican National Committee that includes a recording of the so-called parody, "Barack the Magic Negro" is not only offensive, it is shocking and saddening in the extreme. It flies in the face of America's deeply held hope for a new era in which common ground and mutual respect characterize the exchanges between our national leaders.
I and my co-writer of "Puff," Lenny Lipton, have been eagerly awaiting an end to the mean-spiritedness, outright disrespect and bigotry that was commonplace prior to this last presidential election. What might have been wearily accepted as "the way it was" in the campaign, is now unacceptable. Obama is not a candidate. He is the President-Elect, and this song insults the office of the Presidency, the people who voted for him, as well as those who did not -- and taking a children's song and twisting it in such vulgar, mean-spirited way, is a slur to our entire country and our common agreement to move beyond racism.
It is almost unimaginable to me that Chip Saltzman who sent the CD, would seriously be considered for the top post of the Republican National Committee. Puff, himself, if asked, would certainly agree.
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But...but...it's all in fun, right? Isn't it? Maybe not.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Relatives of those who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93 want the Bush administration to seize the land needed for a memorial where the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa., in the 9/11 attacks.
Patrick White, vice president of the group Families of Flight 93, said Saturday the group sent a letter in December asking President George W. Bush to empower the Secretary of the Interior to take the land.
The group says ground must be broken early next year in time for a memorial to be build for the 10th anniversary of the crash in 2011.
Svonavec Inc. owns one of the last large chunks of land needed for the 2,200-acre memorial, including the area where the plane crashed Sept. 11, 2001.
Friday, December 26, 2008 BOULDER, Colo. — A new Boulder County district attorney plans to take a new look at one of the country's most high-profile cold cases — the slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.
Incoming District Attorney Stan Garnett said he'll decide what to do with the investigation in his first 30 days on the job, which he starts Jan. 13. His predecessor, Mary Lacy, publicly exonerated the Ramsey family this year in the Dec. 26, 1996, murder.
"I want to look very closely at the resources of the DA's Office and make a careful decision about what resources to continue to expend on the case," Garnett said.
He said he is thinking of sending the case back to the police. The DA's office took over the investigation in 2002 because of concerns about the police department's handling of it.
Garnett said the police department likely has more resources now and is better equipped to handle the investigation.
Last July, Lacy cleared the Ramseys in the slaying and said new DNA tests pointed to an unknown outsider. Investigators hope to one day match crime scene DNA to a suspect in a growing national DNA registry.
Lacy couldn't run again because of term limits.
Denver defense attorney Larry Pozner said he believes turning the investigation back to the Boulder police is a bad idea.
"The Boulder police were neither fair, nor accurate, in their initial investigation, and there's no reason to think they should be trusted again," said Pozner, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Scott Robinson, a Denver defense attorney who has followed the case, said the Boulder Police Department is far different from more than a decade ago.
Robinson, though, said he's not sure there's much anyone can do in the absence of new DNA evidence or a verifiable confession from the killer.
"The case is as cold as cold can be," he said.
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The Mother did it and the Father helped cover it up.
By Liz Todd Last updated at 3:10 PM on 23rd December 2008
Scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins has admitted he does celebrate Christmas - and enjoys singing traditional Christmas carols each festive season.
The writer and evolutionary biologist told singer Jarvis Cocker that he happily wishes everyone a Merry Christmas - and used to have a tree when his daughter was younger.
Dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, was interviewed by Sheffield born Cocker when he stepped in as a Christmas guest editor on Radio Four's Today programme.
'I am perfectly happy on Christmas day to say Merry Christmas to everybody,' Dawkins said. 'I might sing Christmas carols - once I was privileged to be invited to Kings College, Cambridge, for their Christmas carols and loved it.
'I actually love most of the genuine Christmas carols. I can't bear Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and you might think from that that I was religious, that I can't bear the ones that make no mention of religion. But I just think they are dreadful tunes and even more dreadful words. I like the traditional Christmas carols.'
Cocker, the former frontman for Britpop band Pulp, said he was also a fan of Christmas traditions.
'I am the same in a way,' he told Dawkins. 'I really like the kind of peripheral things about Christmas. I like the smell of tangerines and the smell of the tree and to pull crackers.'
Dawkins said his family had a typical Christmas celebration each year like so many others.
'We are not kill joys, we are not scrooges,' he said. 'We give each other presents and when my daughter was a bit younger we would have a tree. We don't now.
'We go to my sister's house for Christmas lunch which is a lovely big family occasion. Everybody thoroughly enjoys it. No church of course.
Dawkins, who pulled a cracker with Cocker on Tuesday's Today program, said he drew the line at dressing up as Father Christmas.
And he said even as a child his questioning mind made him unpopular with other parents.
'My very first Christmas, maybe my second Christmas, there was a man called Sam who apparently dressed up as Father Christmas,' he said. 'All the children loved it, all completely fooled by Father Christmas being there.
'Eventually he said: 'Ho ho ho, it's time for me to go,' back to Greenland or wherever he comes from, so he left. Then I, the youngest of all of them, said: 'Sam's gone' and completely gave the game away to all the other children.'
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
Netflix's subscription rental service makes it easy to get nearly any DVD delivered to your doorstep, but have you ever wondered how much you're actually paying per movie or whether you're getting your money's worth?
Web site FeedFlix aims to answer that question. It does so by tapping into Netflix's API and analyzing your usage habits. Once it does so, you can see how much each rental costs you and keep track of the average time you keep your DVDs. If you don't like what you see, FeedFlix can create alerts that will send reminder emails when you've kept a movie for too long. FeedFlix even takes Watch Instantly movies into account to give you a more accurate picture of your viewing habits.
FeedFlix is a great tool to help determine if your Netflix subscription is worth the money you're paying. If it's not, you can save the cash by canceling your account or let FeedFlix help you stay on top of your rentals so you're making the most of your account.
Posted Dec 21st 2008 3:20PM by TMZ Staff
If you planned on taking a chair or a stroller to Obama's swearing-in on Jan. 20 -- think again.
Officials are saying "safety first" as thermoses, coolers, backpacks and signs also won't be allowed along the parade route -- but it's the chairs and strollers that are causing a big fuss.
On the bright side -- there won't be a lot of babies crying when the oath is administered.====================
Mistake #2. Yes, I'm counting.
Ingredients: 1 Part Kahlua, 1 Part Irish Cream Liqueur, 2 Parts Vodka, 2 Parts Milk or Cream, ice cubes.
Method: Pour the Kahlua, Irish Cream and Vodka over a short glass with ice. Top with Cream or full-cream milk. Serve.
====================WASHINGTON -- Aretha Franklin will sing, the Rev. Rick Warren will pray and more than 11,000 U.S. troops will be watching over inauguration ceremonies in case of an attack during President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in on Jan. 20.
But not everyone is pleased with the president-elect's selection of Rev. Warren.
Joe Solomnese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, sent a blistering letter to the president-elect, accusing him of delivering a "genuine blow" to the gay community in choosing the reverend to give the formal invocation at next month's inauguration.
"[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination," he wrote.
Andrew Sullivan wrote on the Atlantic Web site, "[It's] shrewd politics, but if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now."
Liberal groups criticized the inclusion of Warren, whose "Purpose Driven Life" books and lectures have made his church among the largest in the country. People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert said Warren's support for California Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, should have blocked his invitation.
"It's a huge mistake," said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs the state's Courage Campaign. "He's really the wrong person to lead the president into office."
Washington Blade editor, Kevin Naff, called the selection "Obama's first big mistake."
 | The T-shirt design (right) could "subject Bambu to criticism and scorn" if people take it to depict the future president smoking marijuana, the Bambu rolling paper company wrote in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan about it's design (left). |
NEW YORK - A prominent cigarette paper maker with drug-culture cachet is accusing a T-shirt company of stealing its distinctive style for a design celebrating President-elect Barack Obama's victory.
Bambu Sales Inc. — a 244-year-old firm that proudly notes its products' inclusion in such films as "Totally Baked: A Pot-u-mentary" and the "Cheech and Chong" series — filed a federal trademark-infringement lawsuit Friday against Love Fatigues LLC. The suit says Love Fatigues copied the curvy script and beige-and-white striped background used on Bambu's packages and its own T-shirts.
Love Fatigues' shirts say "Obama" in Bambu-like type. Some feature a version of the Panama-hat-clad smoker found in some Bambu logos — but with Obama's face.
The design could "subject Bambu to criticism and scorn" if people take it to depict the future president smoking marijuana, the company wrote in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.
Making matters worse, Bambu complained, Love Fatigues advertised its gear in a Bambu standby: High Times magazine.
Love Fatigues is "capitalizing on and profiting from Bambu's stellar reputation," the Westbury-based company complained.
But Love Fatigues owner and Obama supporter Seamus McGovern said the design is an artistic twist on a familiar symbol — not commercial copycatting.
 |
www.lovefatigues.com Obama 'Presidential Papers' T-shirts come in four styles and sell for $22 at lovefatigues.com. The rolling paper company seeks to have the shirts destroyed. |
"I feel very confident I'm not in any copyright infringement" with the Bambu-related image, McGovern said in an interview. "They're coming out and just trying to stop a form of expression, the need for change."
He said the Obama shirts were inspired by the Bambu lettering — not by the Democrat's on-and-off cigarette smoking habit, which he has said he has tried to quit.
Bambu wants a judge to award it the T-shirts' profits, as well as unspecified damages. It also wants the T-shirts turned over to be destroyed.
Obama representatives did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiry late Friday.
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It sure looks like copyright infringement to me.
Here is a bit of zipper history. The "clasp locker" as it was called, was invented in 1891 by Whitcomb L. Judson. The clasp locker was an assemblage of hooks and eyes that Judson thought would save people time and sore backs fastening their shoes with one hand. Later, in 1913, Gideon Sundback of Sweden developed the predecessor of today's zipper that used metal teeth, and patented it in 1917. Sundback's design was the first design that saw practical use. Sundback's "separable fastener" had more fasteners per inch than the earlier clasp locker. Later, the B.F. Goodrich Co. used the separable fastener in some rubber boots and came up with the name "zipper" because the boots could be fastened with one hand. Today, zippers are also made of plastic as well.
Founded in Japan in 1934, YKK was called Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, but 60 years later the company changed its company name to match its brand name. The privately held YKK Co. is headquartered in Japan and is made up of 80 companies at 206 facilities in 52 countries. YKK makes the entire zipper including the dyed cloth and the brass used to make the zipper.
 Photo courtesy of Midwest Trim Inc. |
YKK zippers are found in:
A YKK factory site in Macon, Ga., produces 7 million zippers a day, in a total of 1,500 styles in more than 427 standard colors. It's the largest zipper factory in the world. The Macon site produces its own brass to make the teeth and slider parts of a zipper. The same factory also produces and dyes the yarn that is woven into the fabric portion of a zipper. And YKK also produces the machines that make the zippers! YKK has leveraged its knowledge of working with metals to form an aluminum building products division that now accounts for two-thirds of YKK's worldwide sales.
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And there is your bit of trivia for the day.
Mobile phone text-message abbreviations and simplifications are not ruining our spelling, but they do take much longer to read and understand than conventional English, a small Australian study has shown.
University of Tasmania lecturer Nenagh Kemp asked 55 undergraduate students to compose, and then to read aloud, text messages in English and in "textese."
While students were significantly faster using textese, it took almost half the number of students twice as long to read these messages aloud than messages written in proper English.
The students also made more errors reading the textese messages compared to the ones written in English.
"It's quicker to write in textisms, but when you go on to read it, it took people longer. As skilled adult readers, we're used to reading full words and sentences, so it is harder for us to decipher," Kemp, a psychology lecturer who specializes in language use, told Reuters.
Kemp said her research showed that despite the popular belief that textese is ruining spelling, it actually does not reflect literary skills, at least in adults.
She said that an awareness of sound structure and grammar was significantly linked to the ability to decipher some textese.
"It's fine to use textese on a mobile phone, as it saves you time, but you have to make sure your reader understands it," she added. "And don't let it creep into your emails, student essays or job applications. Keep the boundaries."
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Wrong! Sorry, but I believe that nonsense like that IS ruining spelling abilities. Just take a look at just about ANY Internet forum that consists mainly of teenagers. The grammar and spelling skills of the participants are absolutely appalling!
The TwoDaLoo is billed as the world's first toilet two people can use at the same time (it's actually two toilets joined together). I'm not sure why anybody would what to sit so close to somebody whilst having a dump.
This website that is selling the toilet says that the there is a premium version which includes a 7-inch TV and iPod dock and could 'save rocky marriages'.
In "Leverage", Oscar® winner Timothy Hutton stars as Nate Ford, an insurance investigator who once specialized in recovering stolen goods worth millions. But after his former company denied his son's insurance claims and allowed the boy to die, Nate now heads up a team of thieves, hackers and grifters who take revenge against those who use power and wealth to victimize others. Together, they execute scams, con games and double crosses in the name of justice.NEW YORK (CNN) -- Paul Nawrocki says he's beyond the point where he cares about humiliation.
That's why he weekly takes a 90-minute train ride to New York, where he walks the streets wearing a sandwich board that advertises his plight: The former toy-industry executive needs a job.
"Almost homeless," reads the sign. "Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager."
Wearing a suit and tie under the sign, Nawrocki -- who was in the toy industry 36 years before being laid off in February -- stands on Manhattan corners for hours, hoping to pass resumes to interested passers-by.
"When you're out of work and you face having nothing -- I mean, having no income -- pride doesn't mean anything," Nawrocki said. "You need to find work."
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This will be me any day now.
Earlier in this case, at a bail hearing, I asked — said — to Mr. Simpson I didn't know if he was arrogant or ignorant or both. And during the trial and through this proceeding, I got this answer, and it was both.
At the time — not after you've been locked up for 64 days at the time of this event — and at the time I saw you at the bail hearing, it was clear to the court that you believed you could do in Las Vegas what you couldn't do elsewhere. You could get your stuff back.
Now there's still questions about whose stuff it is. I think that's still in dispute. You thought it was yours. Your counsel said that over and over again to me during the trial, and now during the sentencing, as well as you. The tapes, however, in this case indicated to me when I listened that you didn't want all of those items to fall into the hands of the Goldmans. And you were heard on the tape making reference to them as the gold diggers. That was then, this is now.
So you put your group together and you went to the Palace Station to get those items back. And what you didn't know, and also you, Mr. Stewart, didn't know, was the planning was taped, the event was taped, phone calls were taped, conversations were taped. They had videotape of you going in and videotape of you going out, and the party afterwards were (cq) taped. Everything in the case was on tape.
And it's your own words, Mr. Simpson, your own words that can be heard throughout those events that have brought you here to this seat in my courtroom. 'Cause we heard it all. And what came out on the tapes said to me, and obviously to the jury, that the evidence in this case was overwhelming. It was overwhelming.
How often as a judge do I sit and listen to a trial and hear everything laid out for me to be able to hear? It's very rare.
Now, the event in question, in the room at the Palace Station where ... I went to that room, and it was a little bitty room, and there were a lot of you big guys in that little bitty room. And when I heard the tape, that was not a "Oh, just give me my stuff back, I want my stuff." That was, "Nobody leave the room."
That was actually a very violent event. And I don't care what Beardsley says now, or what Fromong says now. I know what Beardsley says immediately afterwards when he called the police. We heard that too. And that was a violent event. Guns were brought. Gun — at least one gun was drawn. The potential for harm to occur in that room was tremendous. And I don't know — I don't know how fortunate you consider yourself to be at this moment — but really, truly, if the gun had gone off and bullets started flying, not only could one in the room have been hurt, but some poor tourists walking down the hallway or worker at that hotel could have been hurt. That is why we have rules in the state of Nevada that say you can't take back your own property by force, anybody else's property by force. You can't do it. There's no self-help. You cannot do it. But you did.
Now, I hear Mr. Galanter. He says Mr. Simpson was just stupid, he didn't really mean to do anything wrong. That is not really evidenced by what transpired here. When you take a gun with you and you take men with you to show in a show of force, that's not just a hey, give me my stuff back. That's something else. And that's what went on here. And that's why we are all here because this is not behavior that we can just say, oops, it's OK, no problem, don't worry. No harm, no foul.
Then after the event, all of a sudden the realization hits and there are phone calls made. There was no gun, there was no gun, there was no gun. Mr. Simpson made those phone calls. There was no gun. Well, why in the heck would he be calling anybody to say there was no gun? Except the fact that he realized there was a gun, and oops, I might be in some trouble. And then at the party, at the party, the laughter, the joking, Did you see the look on his face? Ha-ha-ha. Isn't this funny? You knew what was going on there. You knew.
And Mr. Stewart, you got caught up in something. I'm not sure how much you knew, but clearly Mr. Simpson knew.
I actually am surprised that I heard from you, Mr. Simpson. I believed there wasn't going to be a statement from you, and I was going to be concerned about your lack of responsibility for this action. And it's kind of a fine line in what you said to me. I hear what you said and what Mr. Galanter said, which is I didn't intend to do anything wrong, so I must not have done something wrong, so there was no criminal intent, it was just all stupidity. I have to tell you now, it was much more than stupidity. And it's rare that I have somebody talking to me at a sentencing about mens rea (legal term for "guilty mind") and criminal intent. It doesn't matter. You went to the room, and you took guns — meaning you and the group. You used force. You took property, whether it was yours or somebody else's. And in this state, that amounts to robbery, with use of a deadly weapon. Whether it's you having the gun, or Mr. McClinton having the gun, or Mr. Alexander having the gun.
And when I first started this trial and I talked to the jury when we had the whole panel in, I stated to the group that if this was — if they were here because they wanted to punish Mr. Simpson for what happened previously, then this was not the case for them. And I meant that. As the judge in this case, I'm not here to sentence Mr. Simpson for what has happened in his life previously in the criminal justice system. As a judge who presides in this courtroom every day and over trials — hundreds of trials during the six years I have been here, I have great respect for the criminal justice system. I am part of it. And as a judge who has taken jury verdicts for years, I respect the verdicts of my juries. I have to respect what happened in the case 13 years ago with Mr. Simpson. The jury decided. There are many people that disagreed with that verdict, but that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that the state brought charges, a trial was conducted, and evidence was heard, testimony received, the jury deliberated. They reached a verdict. And I have to respect that verdict as well. There is nothing more that's going to happen here, other than a sentence for you, Mr. Stewart, and a sentence for you, Mr. Simpson, based on the evidence that occurred in this case. I'm not here to try and cause any retribution or any payback for anything else. I want that to be perfectly clear to everybody. Because if I did, then I wouldn't be doing my job as a judge who presides over a courtroom in this jurisdiction.
OK. The problem is that I can't ignore that the behavior at the time on September 13th was reckless. It disregarded the law, the law was broken, force was used, guns were used — or at least a gun was used — there was another gun there. The potential for harm was great. You're fortunate nothing happened. Property was stolen. The jury convicted you, and now I'll sentence you.
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Feel free to rot in jail, Orenthal James. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving individual.
