The Ubiquitous Grammar Cop

For the last two weeks, everyone in the mainstream corporate media has been bleating about the dire straits our economy is presently in as if it's a big surprise that it's come down to this. For some people who actually follow such things, this present crisis is simply the culmination of several things that has happened over the last thirty to forty years of plutocratic policies wearing a fiscally conservative mask. Our government, egged on by lobbyists who abuse the power afforded them by the First Amendment, allowed the deregulation of the rules that oversee the activities of corporations (trading, speculation, et cetera). They removed our currency from the gold standard, weakening the dollar against other currencies. One of the first things they did, possibly under the notion that it was no longer needed, was remove the 0.25% tax on all stocks and commodities bought and sold in our markets in the 1960s. For example, if I purchased $10,000 in Apple Computer stock, I would pa

I read with fascination the attempt by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to appeal to the makers of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream , a company that already adheres to environmentally sound practices in the production of their dessert treats. (Phish Food is my personal favorite.) . There are so many questions that this notion raises. For example: 1) How would Ben & Jerry make ice cream made from breast milk economically viable? How much milk would they have to collect from willing nursing mothers to make batches of "Mother's Milk Vanilla" for example? 2) Knowing full well I cannot nurse, I still wonder how some women will react, if asked by PETA, that they should produce the milk for Ben & Jerry's Mother's Milk Vanilla. 3) If PETA does find a group of willing participants (personally repugnant to me), how will Ben & Jerry, under PETA's watchful eye, maintain the quality and taste of the breast milk? I am under the impression the ta

Watching a Cialis™ commercial recently made me inwardly ask, "What's romantic about sitting in separate bathtubs on a secluded beach somewhere?"

Why do dyed-in-the-wool capitalists, who generally decry socialism in any form, prefer socialism when they fall on hard times?

Is it possible to say, "I never tasted your snickerdoodles," to a young woman without it sounding like a double entendre?

The Invisible Hand of Adam Smith should not resemble Thing from The Addams Family .

I watched with morbid curiosity Governor Sarah Palin's (R-AK) Vice Presidential candidacy acceptance speech on Wednesday evening. Needless to say I was not terribly surprised in the content and tone of her speech. (I could say since she graduated with a BA in communications that she controlled the content of her words, but who am I kidding?) She managed to hit her opponents (Barack Obama and Joe Biden) hard, once or twice with fair criticism but mostly with hyperbole, misdirection, and exaggeration of easily researched evidence to her claims. For what she needed to do, since the role of the VP candidate should be to attack the opposition, she did it well. When I thought about how Obama and Biden should counter her efforts, I thought of basketball. During my undergrad years at the University of Illinois in Urbana, I needed to fill two credit hours in my schedule. Since I enjoyed playing basketball, I signed up for a Kinesiology class that taught the fundamentals of basketball: an e