Wonkette
Comical Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s War on Gorillas intensified earlier today when he threatened to force poor, overworked clerks to read the entire 900-page Waxman-Markey energy bill aloud in committee, including his 450 obnoxious amendments about kicking Henry Waxman in the penis. Waxman responded by traveling to the seedy underbelly of Satan’s Hell to contract this secret Hessian mercenary, a “speed-reader,” on retainer, just in case Barton’s jackassery came to fruition. The speed-reader is clearly a muslin terrorist, and it is offensive to Dick Cheney for the liberals to allow him inside the United States Capitol. [TPM]
What is it that these clowns do for a living again?
Joe Barton looks like Benny Hill on a 3-day bender. He’s not fit to run a goddamned Orange Julius for chrissakes.
“Honey? Cancel Comedy Central and teh HBO! These queers on see-span are FUNNY!”
Tommmcatt: Provide us with a cool creamy greasless Brass Rail buttfuck? And no kiss after.
They’re enthralled with this guy. It’s like watching Ambassador Duke unwrapping a Luger on Christmas morning.
Doug Wilder’s got into a new line of work. And a new skin color; maybe that happened when he got the facelift. It’s still a big comedown from being governor of Virginia.
90 people simultaneously reading ten pages. Seems do-able to me.
I’ve tried to find media outlets in Joe Barton’s district but it’s next to impossible to email them his entertaining diatribes. Aside from small parts of Arlington & Fort Worth his constituents live in small towns where the newspapers are owned by a small chain without contact info and have a smattering of small radio stations that also can’t be emailed.
In Joe’s case ignorance is bliss. His voters’ fears are most likely gun control, atheist gays as teachers, and higher taxes on beer.
politics is funny stuff. i wanna speed reader to read the 911 commission report. hilarity will ensue.
This footage will soon be used and manipulated for the purposes of stronger ‘drug laws.’ Just keep the ritalin and adderall available with an easily obtained doctor’s prescription, please?
Dear Harry Reid,
This is what you call “outsmarting your opponent” as well as “having balls.” Please take note.
Yours truly,
Hooray for Anything
MICRO MACHINES RULE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABqye5BPAOk&feature=related
dear christ waxman.
Why did they get a speed-reader to read 3 paragraphs? Is going up in front of the Senate like the Craigslist job section? If so, it’s totally not worth shit in this economy.
x111e7thst: Greaseless? You could butter the popcorn in half of Texas’s theatres with Barton’s slippery doo.
Hooray For Anything: Easy there. Harry Reid is about to propose a bill that will outlaw speed reading because he does not want terrorists to move to Nevada.
Wow!!!! I had NO fucking idea it was May 21st!! Thank god for C-span.
what makes it funny is that no one in congress reads the bills/amendments they vote on. haha!
Come on people. This guy clearly was a policy debater in high school, you shouldn’t be surprised that many people have the ability to “spead read” only debaters call it “spreading”
Custerwolf: Expression from my college days. More or less meant the sort of thing you could be talked into when drunk and horny then regretted with much regretting on the next morn.
horses - found pix
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/ShGcxYwV99I/AAAAAAAAAuk/9eHZRQzFGCY/s1600-h/P1010094.JPG
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bHJsS0yY2Hk/ShGcxe-f4cI/AAAAAAAAAuc/8yfe3-7aamY/s1600-h/DSCN2041.JPG
Custerwolf: OT, but I’m just guessing you’ve read Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf?
“I want him to read in a Texas accent.” Way to handicap him Joe.
chascates: Most books I read as a kid, I read at least a dozen times - including that one. I love Farley Mowat. Have you read “Born Naked”?
x111e7thst: Goddammit. They purtier than mine. I knew it would be worth the wait. Absolutely noble creatures. Sooooo who are the equestrians????
Hooray For Anything: Good point. Harry Reid has to go.
MrsNateSilver:
Micro Machines guy was faster… and dressed better than this foppish d’bag.
I even remember the first line of a children’s book that my father gave me (the only thing he gave me aside from 1/2 his DNA).
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”
Can you guess the book?
Custerwolf: No. I have read the Boat that Wouldn’t Float. Also some Gerald Durrell.
Is it going too far to remind everyone that while these fuckbags are tooling around, having a grand ol’ time with their speedreader, especially Congressman IHateScience, millions of unemployed people and millions of foreclosed upon or about to be foreclosed upon Americans are fucking miserable, scared, possibly hungry and feeling increasingly hopeless because their government is comprised partially of useless asshats like these? Fuck protocol and tradition, how about dispensing with Happy Fun Time, getting off your asses and doing something to actually help people, you self-satisfied rump rangers?
JoeBartonpleasegofuckyourselfalso.
chascates: Born Naked is his autobigraphy. Came out in the mid 90’s, I think. I’ve read some of Gerald Durrell as well. Also a great read - because it’s nice and gory - is The Night of The Grizzlies (’70?)by Jack Olsen. True story of 2 girls killed 20 miles apart, hours apart, by 2 different grizzlies in Glacier Park in the 60’s. The odds of it happening were a gajillion to one - which is roughly about the same chances a grizzly has of winning the lottery.
Here’s a link to one of the park ranger’s webpages.
http://gildartphoto.com/weblog/2007/06/24/killer-bears-in-glacier-national-park
Custerwolf: That’s just because of the anti-grizzly sentiment that pervades our nation. If we paid the grizzlies decent wages and didn’t treat them like third-class citizens, they’d buy a lot more lottery tickets. After all, you can’t win if you don’t play.
Custerwolf: They guy riding is me. (I’m not sure why I had that goofy grin.)
The young lady is my friend A.
Custerwolf: I always thought weird the suggestion to wear bells to warn the bears you were around. It seems like it might just be the day that the bears were sick and tired of hearing those damned bells and decided to do something about it.
I need to find out who the original artist is I plagerized this from.
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/oo336/brontie2/cart.jpg
Think how much better our response to 9/11 would have been if this guy had been available to read The Pet Goat.
x111e7thst: You look like a complete sweetheart. How do you manage to pull that off?
chascates: I used to live at a fish hatchery and one day I walked up on a yearling bear cub sitting in a tree eating salmon carcasess that the hatchery had dumped in a pit (hundreds). That little bastard was so goddamned cute laying there on a limb with his legs hanging to either side, casting annoyed glances at the ravens who were also partaking. I watched him for about a half hour, then he climbed down and ambled away. I walked up on another adult bear who didn’t see me and I watched him as he sprawled frog-legged munching on fresh grass. Suddenly his nose shot up - he took one whiff and seemed to disappear without ever getting to his feet. People like to kill them around here, that’s why.
RabidHamster: Damned straight.
OT: But meet your new editor of Teablogging.net starting May 28.
Fuck ya.
shortsshortsshorts: You are the new editor of Teablogging.net? What of the original Shorts brand?
chascates: ShortsandPants isn’t going anywhere. I just need to develop a meth addiction or something so I don’t fall over at my desk everyday.
shortsshortsshorts: So as well as the hilariously witty http://www.shortsshortsshorts.com we’ll be treated to more political bon mots on http://teablogging.net?
Misterspeedreadingiskindacute, Ihopeheisnotsofastinthesack. Thatsaid, theseasshatsarewastingyourtaxdollars, theyarewastingthemthisfast: zoomzoomzoomyourtaxmunniesaregonekthanxbi.
Oh FUCK ME.
Fire all of them, including whoever dressed the clerk.
I think he was actually auditioning for that British Theater group that does very short Shakespeare or whatever–you know, Shakespeare in two hours. I once saw them do American History in one evening. Pretty good, but they talk fast. So, this is nothing but a particularly desperate audition tape.
A Better American Than YOU: BTW–You have my favorite name and avatar. Kudos for being sacrilegious and mocking patriotism at once.
Yourtaxdollarsatwork.
brassbear: moreisexpectedfromthefrycookatyourlocalmcdonalds.
I’d hit that.
Custerwolf: Okay, you losers. Times up. It was ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ Too bad, $100 would have gone to the winner.
Custerwolf: Crap, I didn’t even realize there was a contest. But once I saw the clue I guessed “Barbara Bush Gets a C-Section.” Oh, and that’s wrong — damn.
SayItWithWookies: You do get an ‘A’ for effort, my little teacher’s pet.
Custerwolf: Okay, Mr.SayItWithWookies - as a science buff you should have caught the error in this comment.
Custerwolf: In case I fall asleep before you get back here….My father gave me ALL of his DNA - I just took half of it.
Custerwolf: This is really embarrassing, but I’m sitting here trying to remember how babies are made. Okay, let me see if I have this right: sperm + egg = fertilized egg. Okay, so - WHAT is a fertilized egg?
Anyone.
This confusion could also be due to the fact that I’m stoned.
Joe Barton: Lemme see if I got this straight: theres folks out there that can read, and do it fast??
Custerwolf: Human fertilization, sweetie. Read it & weep.
Custerwolf: A zygote, is the word I think you’re looking for.
I was off listening to Dick Cheney’s rebuttal of Facts, Law, Reason, Sanity and Hope, which I hadn’t heard in its entirety yet. The dude is nothing if not tenacious. And wheezing. Not sure which is going to win, though.
Custerwolf: Oh, that’s a semantic difference I wouldn’t have quibbled with. You would never have ended up with all of it. That constrains the definition of “gave” to what a reasonable person would expect of it (there are zillions of definitions of give in the OED, so I’d better have a way of differentiating). Thus, no real trouble.
I was leaning towards the distinction that since the Y chromosome is so much smaller than the X chromosome, that your father gave you slightly more than 50% of his DNA. Either one I’d give a pass to (even sober, probably) since we’re all talking at a certain level of approximation. It would be ferociously dull to be perfectly clear all the time about everything we were saying. We’d sound much like John Kerry in the early days of the 2004 campaign.
Mr. No Chin is a rad speed reader. Seriously, I’m impressed.
I propose a bill that Congress shall pass no bill which is longer than 2 pages long, A4, 10 point type, single spaced. That is total, including amendments.
SayItWithWookies: I’m still thinking about this even as I get up in the middle of the night to pee. So WHAT exactly IS a zygote? The egg absorbs the head of the sperm which is basically lots of mitochondria and protein - right? So, speaking from an “identity” standpoint, is this combined creature a “smeg”? Is it more female than male or all female - and if so - what happened to the male? I know we all “begin” as females (should have tipped christians off the story of Adam and Eve was bullshit, making the rest of the story suspect), and that the ‘Y’ chromosome turns the “smeg” into a male, but I’m having a complete brain fade (sober even) - do TWO separate cells from two seperate human beings actually become ONE? Thanks for your patience and understanding.
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……..
If people spoke like that in Texas, they would be much more like NY
So why did this guy get free advertising time? Is this a new stimulus?
I love this. Someone put Waxman in charge of the Senate. I don’t care how.
He’s just a collegiate policy debater working on the hill. This is the sort of stuff I teach to high schoolers for drinking money in the summer (though he’s faster than I ever was).
lemprika: whoop whoop. I thought there would be more (ex)debaters in this place.
chascates:
They live in small towns, but are watching the TV stations from D/FW, Waco, or Houston depending on which section of that gerrymandered mess Barton calls a district they live in.
He came to speak at a graduate policy class I took years ago at Texas A&M in College Station. I guess he was expecting a cuddle fest because when we started asking real questions, his hands started to shake and I swear I thought he was going to cry.
Custerwolf: I think you’re overthinking this. The sperm and egg are both haploid, of course — they’re created through a process of cell division that stops the nuclei from recombining into complete sets, so they have all 23 chromosomes, but only one member of each instead of a pair of each. So the daddy’s 23rd chromosome is represented by either his X or his Y chromosome, not both.
When the egg and sperm combine, the appropriate chromosomes pair up and combine, and the sex of the offspring is determined at that point, barring some anomaly like getting an XXY baby or something.
There are other names for the zygote, depending on where it is in its development. It can also be called a blastula, which I think is just a clump of cells, the original sperm and egg having combined to form a complete (or diploid) cell and then recombining. The blastula gradually forms an invagination which turns into the blastocoel, or hollow middle of the ball of cells. From there, cell differentiation starts, and the cells on the inside end up with an entirely separate fate than the ones on the outside — though my recollection gets fuzzy about what each one does at this point. Hope that helps.
Terry: He also happens to represent the one area of Texas that contributes more to the air pollution of the greater Dallas-Ft.Worth area than the kajillion cars on DFW roads. Barton is an old pro at legitimizing energy companies’ shenanigans.
I tried to watch the whole clip but kept getting distracted by the sheer amount of fugly. I mean, Waxman may be the best thing since cinammon pain perdu, but he is not so easy on the eyes. And Joe Barton and the fashion-impaired speed reader both look as though they’re the beastial product of a K-Lo/Joe Isuzu pairing.
SayItWithWookies: So the reason two sex cells from two different people can combine is because they’re haploid, whereas two somatic cells cannot because they’re diploid?
“When the egg and sperm combine, the appropriate chromosomes pair up and combine, and the sex of the offspring is determined at that point”
I’m still having trouble getting that, so I’ll have to get out my old biology textbook and work on it - there’s also something about hormones in sex determination isn’t there - like the testosterone halts the formation of female characteristics? I’m just thinking this all has to make sense to me before I can even think of trying to get a christian to understand it. We don’t need to know how political systems work - we need to know how WE work. Since everything else is just a by-product of our basic human biological nature.
Custerwolf: You got it. When a cell normally divides asexually, its chromatin (which is normally just jumbled up in the nucleus) goes through this elaborate dance where it congeals into the 23 pairs. They mostly look like Xs at this point, and they line up with their centers along one line. Then each pair splits off (at the structure at the middle of the X) and the two groups draw away from each other, and the nucleus and cell divide in two, creating two identical cells. That’s mitosis.
Meiosis involves mitosis and then an additional process of division (which I don’t remember well enough to describe) that causes the sex cells to be haploid. Primitive animals such as jellyfish practiced alternation of generations, in which a diploid animal gave birth to a haploid animal that was completely independent and reproduced sexually to create another diploid generation. Our haploid generation is now completely subsumed into our bodies as our sex cells, but they’ve done the same thing since sexual reproduction existed.
In placental mammals the sex is completely determined by the chromosomes, although the endocrine system, the interactions of which are pretty damn complex and sensitive, can affect the outward expression. In other animals it’s not necessarily the same. For instance, temperature at egg gestation determines the sex of alligators, and factors such as stress, temperature and food supply can determine the sex of birds and fish and reptiles, so there’s no one determining factor for all animals.
I’ve read a few good books that go through some of the essentials of the reproductive process, but I’m not sure what would be good for your Christian friend if he/she is just starting to grasp this. I would, though, recommend Steve Jones’ excellent book Darwin’s Ghost if you want to catch up on some of the latest confusing and fascinating developments in genetics — although even that’s a little out-of-date now. But it features a new tree of life based entirely on DNA analysis that’s vastly different from the Animal/Plant/Fungus taxonomy we all learned in school. The three basic kingdoms are now Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes and Archaeans, I think. Anyway, worth a peek.
SayItWithWookies: That’s why I love studying science because it’s an ever-changing dynamic body of knowledge. I’ll check out that book for sure… I just ordered 2 textbooks on the immune processes in domestic animals, so my brain is looking to get a real workout. I should work on aquiring at least a rudimentary understanding of genetics first though. Thanks!
Custerwolf: You’re very welcome — it’s nice to know I’ve retained at least some of that stuff. There are some decent sites online too — I can’t look through them right now, but this looks interesting: DNA from the Beginning: http://www.dnaftb.org/
SayItWithWookies: Custerwolf: Jeez, get a room you two!
I’m glad to see that despite all of the recent crises, members of congress can still take time to be hapless, do-nothing doucheknuckles.
Gopherit: “Jeez, get a room you two!”
Would a cell be okay?
Custerwolf: I hear the islets of Langerhans are nice this time of year.
SayItWithWookies: Perfect!! I’ve been wondering where to find good animation on line. Being entirely self-taught, this is a HUGE plus for me since I can’t ask anyone questions - except of course on Wonkette, from my buddy SIWW.
I did notice at one point in the video someone tried to restore order and maturity to the conversation. I wish there were a way to give him credit, thus rewarding productivity and determined focus, instead of gushing over some goddamned speed reader who gave them all Evelyn Wood.
SayItWithWookies: Oh you.
Custerwolf: Well I’m a sucker for a good geek-out session, as you can see. And if this thread drops off the front page and I lose track of it, I’ll catch you on another one.
SayItWithWookies: I’m really hoping for a quantum discovery to break through in physics/chemistry/biology in my lifetime. I just get this feeling we are on the brink of something.
Custerwolf: I kinda think it would be funny if the Large Hadron Collider experiments turned out to show that the Higgs boson didn’t exist. Unlikely, but it would blow some minds and force the entire rethinking of quantum physics. Something big is going to come out of it, though.
I don’t know that something equally earth-shattering will happen in chemistry or physics. But fusion power would be cool.
SayItWithWookies: Whatever is discovered - whether in particle physics or somewhere else - I believe it will effect all fields of scientific study.
Interesting side note - because I also love neurobiology. I taped a very interesting German neuroscience professor giving a lecture airing on UCtv (back when I had a teevee). It was called “Being No One”, and explained how the brain forms the sensation of “I-ness.” I’ll have to dig it out of my video collection (along with some Brian Greene vids). I e-mailed him in Germany to say how fascinating I thought his ideas were and how much I admired his work and he was very gracious, but he seemed surprised that I had seen it on satellite tv from UCDavis. I hope he didn’t pull the plug on it, claiming intellectual property rights. At least I have my copy.
Custerwolf: Oh neat. I wonder if it’s online. Have you ever read “The Mind’s I” by Douglas Hofstatder? That has a bunch of really interesting essays about the I and our concept of self and how they’re formed. I think he edited that book, but he also wrote a very cool follow-up called “I Am a Strange Loop” that expands on those ideas. And yes, just about any topic will remind me of a book, one way or another.
SayItWithWookies: Hofstadter. Here it is on Amazon (and also available in paperback, but the hardcover page had a picture.)
http://www.amazon.com/Minds-I-Fantasies-Reflections-Self/dp/0465030912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243018899&sr=1-1
SayItWithWookies: Swear to god I was going to ask if you read that one yesterday, but I suddenly couldn’t remember if that was the right title. I gave away hundreds and hundreds of books to the library (making up for all the ones I stole as a kid) and Goodwill because I had no room to keep them - which now sucks. I’ll try to think of some other good titles…I haven’t read any Rupert Sheldrake in awhile. Ever read any of his stuff? Fred Alan Wolff has some interesting ideas as well.
SayItWithWookies: Just looked at Amazon and he (Thomas Metzinger) has a book (I guess he’s actually a philosopher?)”Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity.”
Custerwolf: Cancel the Sheldrake. I just wiki’d him and apparently he is no longer considered a scientist, he’s a “parapsychologist” whatever the hell that is! Plus he’s Anglican.
Custerwolf: Yeah, Sheldrake’s an idiot. He’s got a book called “The Sense of Being Stared At” or reasonably close to that (I swear I am not making this up) wherein he conducts all kinds of ridiculous experiments in order to prove that humans and other animals know when someone is looking at them from behind and that this is some sort of as-yet-undiscovered psychic sense. I bought this book on the advice of a self-described psychic/alien abuctee friend of mine and found it vastly entertaining — probably not the result my friend intended. I then annoyed him with a recitation of potential follow-ups, like “The Sense Of Knowing What Flavor Ice Cream The Person In Front Of You Is Going To Order.”
I will definitely check out the Metzinger though. That sounds cool.