Go-Go-Gadget Democracy!
Did you vote, fellow U.S. fools?! Better do it.
In the spirit of reminiscing about elections past, I bring you this:
Also, here’s some good ol’ Capitol Steps. Because Capitol Steps is awesome.
Jajaja
Oh, politics. Politics, politics, politics.
“My dog is on the roof! My dog is on the roof!”
I freaking lost it.
This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I’ve read in awhile
Oh man. This is fantastic.
“The Swedish Chef does not speak any known language, and the fact that his nonsense words are so widely interpreted as Swedish-sounding is bewildering and annoying to Swedes.”
“Riad, one of 18 members of the prestigious Swedish Academy, which determines who wins the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote an article in the Swedish language magazine Spraktidningen titled “Börk Börk Börk. Ehula Hule de Chokolad Muus.””
““There are three things that people talk to Swedes about pretty uniformly: the Swedish Chef, Abba, and Ikea.””
Hahahaha. Gotta love the Swedes.
Olympics!
Get your medal count sheets ready, it’s Olympics time!
Opening Ceremony comments: I didn’t watch the whole thing, I confess. I watched from the beginning to when they had the nurses and doctors swing dancing amongst the children’s beds. But I really, really liked the first part of the ceremony, where they showed the progression of British history from pre-Industrial Revolution, through the Revolution, and into modern times. I thought the way that was done was fantastic and the way they forged one of the five Olympic rings and then brought it together with the other four was a really creative way to tie the “history lesson” to the Games.
Also, Tubular Bells FTW.
And at least they didn’t pull a Vancouver and break the Olympic cauldron.
Apart from the US, I’m rooting for Sweden. Because dude…it’s Sweden.
Onward!
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? More like Loonie for…uh…um…just read the blog.
I had no idea about this until I watched a DVR’ed episode of The Colbert Report tonight, but Iceland is looking to adopt the Canadian dollar as their currency.
WHAT.
Apparently when Iceland’s economy bit it in 2008, their krona lost about 60% of its value. It has yet to recover, causing the country to fall in favor as far as foreign investors go.
To solve this, Iceland is looking outside its borders for solutions; namely, replacing the broken krona with a more stable foreign currency. The currency of choice? Canada’s!
First of all, there are way too many currency-related puns that can come out of this.
I mean, I’ll be Franc…is Iceland’s Yen for Canadian currency Loonie, or do they just have a Nakfa creating close relationships with other northern countries? Even if that’s the case, adopting another country’s currency could present a Rial problem. But assuming that Iceland goes into this with all their heart and Sol, perhaps there won’t be any major issues.
Second of all…another country with a Loonie? But Loonies are so…Canadian! What’s next, geyser-adjacent Tim Hortons? Shark-infused poutine? Rapid acquisition of excess “eh”’s in Icelandic speech?
Interesting stuff. We’ll have to stay updated to see if Canada allows its Loonie to migrate to Iceland.
Canada’s Common Cents
(HA, get it?)
So it turns out Canada’s smarter than us and is going to start phasing out their penny. According to Time, the Canadian government released its 2012 budget without any money allotted for penny creation. Which is a smart thing to do, seeing as how a single Canadian penny costs 1.6 cents to produce (a US penny costs even more—2.4 cents).
Canada is slated to stop producing pennies this month, and while products will still be charged to the cent when debit or credit cards are used, the government is suggesting that retailers round their prices to the nearest nickel (which could have interesting consequences…imagine the guides that’ll pop up telling people what things are cheaper to buy using debit/credit and which are cheaper using cash).
Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting news. It makes me think about Canada’s switch from paper $1 and $2 to coin versions. Are the coins cheaper to produce than the bills? Also, were the bills called loonies and toonies, or is that just the coins? I don’t remember if the bills had loons on them. SO MANY QUESTIONS, CANADA, JEEZ.
BOOBIES!
Now that I have your attention: POLITICS! Same thing, right?
This afternoon I discovered VotingAid.com, on which there is a little quiz thingy you can use to determine which Republican candidate aligns best with your values. I decided to give it a shot.
Some of the questions were easy for me to answer; for example:
While others I was quite unsure of:
But regardless, it looks like I’m a Gingrich girl.
Huntsman was a close second at 64.6%, Romney was third at 55.8%. Santorum was last. Looks like most people get Huntsman.
Who’s your best match?
Politickin’
Well here’s something I’d never thought I’d say: I have respect for a Republican politician.
Today I had nothing going on but TA-ing Logic for an hour in the afternoon, so I spent the morning and afternoon watching CNN. I happened to catch New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s speech announcing that he wasn’t going to make a run for the President of the U.S.
I don’t know much background about Governor Christie, but I have to say that I was impressed by his speech and his overall presence at the news conference. He’s a very eloquent speaker and, though he disagrees with Obama and gives him a few jabs, I don’t think he ever went out of line when criticizing the President. I also think he handled the barrage of “are you SURE you’re not running?” questions the reporters kept throwing at him very well. He didn’t get too frustrated and actually had some fun with a few of the reporters.
Anyway. This was the first time I’d actually been impressed by a politician in awhile, though that is probably in no small part due to the fact that I don’t follow politics in general. Governor Christie’s poise and lack of scumballness impressed me.
Haha, okay, that’s all.
30-Day Meme – Day 4: Your favorite book.
As much love as I have for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and, more recently, Nobokov’s freakishly enchanting and incredibly well-written Lolita, my favorite book still has to be Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. For a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, I’m shocked at how few people have even heard of it. The Caine Mutiny tells of a fictitious mutiny on the USS Caine, a minesweeper/destroyer deployed during WWII. Wouk paints the drama of the mutiny with a palette of quirky characters whose interactions with each other seem simultaneously forced (after all, the crew of the Caine is dealing with a mentally unstable captain) and completely natural. The mutiny itself, the way it’s written, will make you speed read through it as you’re carried along by the drama. The fact that Wouk has several lines of “wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” and “whooooooooooooooooosssssssssssshhhh!” to simulate the storm the Caine gets caught in makes the book that much more enjoyable. Haha, it’s hard to explain exactly why this book rocks my socks, but it does.
So go read it.
10 Years
It happened before Facebook. It happened before YouTube. It happened before the iPhone. It happened before Wi-Fi became widespread.
But the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center spread across the country probably faster than any of us could have imagined.
I remember waking up that morning to go to school. My mom already had the news on. It was shortly after the first tower had been hit, and as such there was still a great amount of confusion amongst the news reporters about what exactly had happened. Yes, the tower had been hit by a plane, but there was still speculation regarding whether it was an accident.
I personally remember thinking that’s all it was as I packed up my stuff to walk to school (8th grade). I think my most distinct memory of the day was when I first got on campus a little bit later. Students were rushing into the building, parents exiting the parking lot quickly. I saw my friend Amy, also in a hurry, pass me on her bike.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The second tower just got hit,” she said. “Big news. Everyone’s talking about it.”
I really don’t remember much else from that day. School didn’t happen, that’s for sure; every TV in every classroom was on, every pair of eyes in every grade watching silently as the events unfolded.
School didn’t happen for the rest of the week, either.
I think if I had been a few years older I would have remembered more. I actually remember September 11, 2002 more vividly because of how afraid everyone was about a similar even occurring on the one-year anniversary.
I guess there’s really not much I can say that hasn’t been said by anyone else today. I hope all those killed (yes, ALL those killed), both on that day and from events resulting from that day, rest in peace.
That is all.
Uh…
Look at the top headline.
Then read the rest of the headlines.
Um…
