Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform
Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post on the lies hypocrisy and childishness of the debate over health care. He's fairly angry, dubbing those who are engaging in this type of action "political terrorists". But other than that it's a fairly clear and concise explanation of what the current plan under consideration is, disappointing as it is.
The Health Insurers Have Already Won
BusinessWeek on how no matter what ends up eventually getting passed, the health care industry will be relatively happy about, having been able to set the terms of the debate and the modes of reform almost from the drop. I know: what a shocker. I think that makes it the 137,897th time in a row that Congress decided to look out for business first instead of the actual people in a case that didn't involve overt poisoning or murder. Even the poisoning/murder ones are a 50/50 proposition in looking out for the public.
Pennsylvania Gunman Used Same Gun Store As Virginia Tech Shooter
I just want all you TB buckaroos out there to remember that if you're a mentally defective loner who is increasingly disturbed by his seeming disconnect from society and wishes to act out his militaristic revenge fantasies with a kill crazy rampage and subsequent suicide, go to TGSCOM Inc. of Green Bay for all your firearm needs.
Kepler Shows Exoplanet Is Unlike Anything in Our Solar System
The Kepler Space Telescope is finally starting up its mission to search for and analyze planetary bodies from solar systems in an attempt to find earth-like planets. The timeline for the project is to find a comparable planet by 2020. What have they found so far? A Jupiter sized planet with huge 1,300 degree temperature variances and a titanium oxide atmosphere. Oooh, so close.
New Radiohead - "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)"
Perhaps in some bid to cleanse themselves of Thom Yorke's voluntary wallowing in the Twilight mudpit, Radiohead has recorded and released a new song in honor of the recently deceased Harry Patch, the UK's last remaining WWI veteran. It's fairly good and all proceeds from the one pound purchase of the song go to the British Legion. Man, Radiohead outdid us again. All we did was use Harry Patch's death to mock education standards.
Showing posts with label harry patch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label harry patch. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Broken News: Britain officially no longer interested in World War I
LONDON--With the passing last week of Harry Patch, the U.K.’s last surviving veteran of World War I, Great Britain has formally declared that it is no longer interested in the "War to End All Wars." While not a constitutional ban, the declaration is intended to limit discussion of, reference to, and glorification of the conflict, which began 95 years ago this week.
"We simply felt the time was right, as World War I has been approaching irrelevancy for years now" said Nigel Covington, Oxford professor of history and adviser to Parliament. "In fact, most British schoolchildren believe that World War I was retroactively invented to sell World War II as a sequel. And now that that codger, Patch, has shuffled off the mortal coil, we won't have to be looking over our shoulders for cranky veterans."
The declaration, cleverly entitled Bye-mar Weimar, calls for popular historical focus to shift to World War II and the ensuing collapse of the British Empire as its far-flung colonies declared independence and set the country on its path to global insignificance. Initial estimates suggest the country will save upwards of £25 million ($1.4 trillion U.S.) in education costs. The elimination of such a large chunk of the history curriculum is also expected to produce impressive gains in standardized test scores.
"Well that's that, then," clapped the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Right Honorable Ed Balls, MP, upon hearing of the death of his country's last surviving World War I veteran. "Finally we can get on with putting all that nasty war business behind us and reclaiming valuable page space in history books that are increasingly failing to educate our children on things they find relevant: wars that have been made into games, miniseries, and blockbuster movies.”
Striking a strident pose, grabbing the lapels of his jacket, and affecting a Churchillian air, Balls continued, “It is in these times that we must be brave enough to jettison what has happened too long ago for us to bother caring about in order to truncate all those bits that seem to repeat and echo other, more exciting parts of history."
Analyst opinion remains divided on this controversial measure, with some decrying the apparent lack of respect for a global conflict that claimed over 15 million lives.
"What utter fucking rubbish," opined Cambridge World War I historian and Professor Emeritus Dr. Roland Wright. "This was the first truly global conflict in all of human history, and one of the deadliest wars ever fought. How in the hell can we collectively ignore it?"
Defenders of the policy point to the fact that, apart from flagging public recognition, many of the war's belligerents no longer even exist.
"Go ahead and tell someone your family is from the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Kingdom of Bulgaria. You'll be laughed out of the bloody room," said Covington. Asked to address the potential savings of striking the conflict from public imagination, he then added, "On the bright side, at the rate our American cousins are dragging us into military conflicts; we'll have enough new, more easily remembered material to be able to drop World War II from the curriculum as early as 2015."
He continued, “Ask any American about the early 20th Century and they’ll just tell you it was the period after the Civil War, when people in grainy film footage moved really fast and rode those bicycles with one large front wheel, just before baseball got interesting.”
If America is unable or, less-likely, unwilling to create enough new wars to fill sufficient paragraph space, the Labor Government has begun preliminary talks with William Shatner to license his TekWar series of novels and opened negotiations with Lucasfilm Ltd. to acquire the teaching rights to the Star Wars saga.
“It says there right in the beginning: ‘A long time ago...' That means it's history,” said Secretary Balls, MP, confident this gambit would hold up against legal challenges by the more "fact-obsessed" sectors of the British populace. “Frankly, laser swords and lessons about ancient trade disputes within the Galactic Senate are more interesting than Frenchmen shitting in their own bunkers during the fighting of what children refer to as ‘the war they haven’t made any video games about.’ As for licensing TekWar, isn’t learning about the future one of the most integral parts of history education?”
Education officials for the Ministry for Children, Schools, and Families plan to have the requisite pages ripped out of the over 8 million history textbooks spread around over 25,000 schools in time for the new school term. For the 2010-2011 school year they hope to have received order on new course books where the period from 1900-1923 is addressed with the phrase “And nothing much of interest happened during this time.”
"We simply felt the time was right, as World War I has been approaching irrelevancy for years now" said Nigel Covington, Oxford professor of history and adviser to Parliament. "In fact, most British schoolchildren believe that World War I was retroactively invented to sell World War II as a sequel. And now that that codger, Patch, has shuffled off the mortal coil, we won't have to be looking over our shoulders for cranky veterans."
The declaration, cleverly entitled Bye-mar Weimar, calls for popular historical focus to shift to World War II and the ensuing collapse of the British Empire as its far-flung colonies declared independence and set the country on its path to global insignificance. Initial estimates suggest the country will save upwards of £25 million ($1.4 trillion U.S.) in education costs. The elimination of such a large chunk of the history curriculum is also expected to produce impressive gains in standardized test scores.
"Well that's that, then," clapped the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Right Honorable Ed Balls, MP, upon hearing of the death of his country's last surviving World War I veteran. "Finally we can get on with putting all that nasty war business behind us and reclaiming valuable page space in history books that are increasingly failing to educate our children on things they find relevant: wars that have been made into games, miniseries, and blockbuster movies.”
Striking a strident pose, grabbing the lapels of his jacket, and affecting a Churchillian air, Balls continued, “It is in these times that we must be brave enough to jettison what has happened too long ago for us to bother caring about in order to truncate all those bits that seem to repeat and echo other, more exciting parts of history."
Analyst opinion remains divided on this controversial measure, with some decrying the apparent lack of respect for a global conflict that claimed over 15 million lives.
"What utter fucking rubbish," opined Cambridge World War I historian and Professor Emeritus Dr. Roland Wright. "This was the first truly global conflict in all of human history, and one of the deadliest wars ever fought. How in the hell can we collectively ignore it?"
Defenders of the policy point to the fact that, apart from flagging public recognition, many of the war's belligerents no longer even exist.
"Go ahead and tell someone your family is from the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Kingdom of Bulgaria. You'll be laughed out of the bloody room," said Covington. Asked to address the potential savings of striking the conflict from public imagination, he then added, "On the bright side, at the rate our American cousins are dragging us into military conflicts; we'll have enough new, more easily remembered material to be able to drop World War II from the curriculum as early as 2015."
He continued, “Ask any American about the early 20th Century and they’ll just tell you it was the period after the Civil War, when people in grainy film footage moved really fast and rode those bicycles with one large front wheel, just before baseball got interesting.”
If America is unable or, less-likely, unwilling to create enough new wars to fill sufficient paragraph space, the Labor Government has begun preliminary talks with William Shatner to license his TekWar series of novels and opened negotiations with Lucasfilm Ltd. to acquire the teaching rights to the Star Wars saga.
“It says there right in the beginning: ‘A long time ago...' That means it's history,” said Secretary Balls, MP, confident this gambit would hold up against legal challenges by the more "fact-obsessed" sectors of the British populace. “Frankly, laser swords and lessons about ancient trade disputes within the Galactic Senate are more interesting than Frenchmen shitting in their own bunkers during the fighting of what children refer to as ‘the war they haven’t made any video games about.’ As for licensing TekWar, isn’t learning about the future one of the most integral parts of history education?”
Education officials for the Ministry for Children, Schools, and Families plan to have the requisite pages ripped out of the over 8 million history textbooks spread around over 25,000 schools in time for the new school term. For the 2010-2011 school year they hope to have received order on new course books where the period from 1900-1923 is addressed with the phrase “And nothing much of interest happened during this time.”
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