DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking: June 2007

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Here, read these

There are times when I see an article or link that I feel like writing about, but then I realize that I'm lazy and I'm not going to have time for a lunch break. This is one of those times.

- I've only been to four of these events, and I'm ashamed to admit that the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships is not one of them. [101 things all sports fans must experience before they die] from the World Wide Leader

- Doesn't have a chance. The only thing that scares border state conservatives more than brown people is brown people with expanded labor rights. [Hitting a wall on immigration] from Salon.com

- And here I thought Hitchens was Rage Boy. [Look forward to anger] from Slate.com

- Prepare for the necropalyspse! [The Last Stand] from Free Web Arcade

- I don't really have a joke for this, but a list of all the bad things the C.I.A. was up to in 1973 is pretty sweet. Only 700 pages though? Ok, maybe a little joke. Good stuff starts on about page 5 after clicking the 'Family Jewels' link. [CIA 'Family Jewels'] link from BBC on-line

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posted by DC Viking at 1:01 PM 1 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, June 25, 2007

Won't someone think of the children?

This Washington Post Op-Ed decrying the scare tactics of environmentalists trying to raise awareness about global warming was written by Emily Yoffe. As near as I can tell, her environmental research qualifications are limited to having written the Dear Prudence advice column for Slate.com. I had a hard time pinning down the actual opinion she is supporting, but she made the following points in her Op-Ed:

- Al Gore believes that the threat we face from global warming is very serious.
- So many people agree with Gore that according to Yoffe, "An Inconvenient Truth is going to be shown in schools...a children's television show is planned...[and] Live Earth concerts on July 7th are expected to raise millions.
- Yoffe agrees that it may be getting warmer and that changes to our environmental habits are 'commendable'.
- We shouldn't scare children by discussing these issues in the public arena or, presumably, in schools.

Alright, so the last point is technically an opinion, but she does a poor job of supporting it. Also, it's an idiotic opinion. Yoffe seems to believe that the best way to avoid terrifying kids is to pretend that whatever they are afraid of doesn't exist, or to sugarcoat the root cause of their fear to the point where they aren't afraid of it anymore. While this may be a bang-up strategy when dealing with the boogey-man, I don't think that making sure your feet are not hanging off the edge of the bed is going to keep the ice caps from melting.

Here's a novel idea, why don't we tell our kids that global warming is real and can have real consequences. That way when you spend the money for that trip to Disney World on a big screen TV you can tell the kids that you're only trying to reduce green house emissions by not flying. It's win/win. You get a TV and the kids get to believe they won't burst into flames at the park.

Since I don't own any children myself, I was wondering what all of you breeders out there thought about this. Am I wrong? Should we, in the words of W, be concerned about what are children is learning about global warming?

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posted by DC Viking at 3:26 PM 0 people of discerning taste are saying

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Music Recomendation: The Rumble Strips














Sounds like: The sweet sentiment of Bishop Allen mixed with the punk rhythms of The Exploding Hearts and the poppy horns and creative keyboards of Beulah.

Makes me want to: Steal an old VW Carmengia and work it out on a curvy, tree-lined stretch of road.

I grabbed three of their free MP3s at Obscure Sound and they’ve been in heavy rotation for the last week or so.

Their first full length, Girls and Weather, hasn’t been released yet, but the freebies are great, fun, summer tracks. I can’t wait for the LP. If you like your hooks without a lot of production, you'll like The Rumble Strips.

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posted by DC Viking at 1:43 PM 4 people of discerning taste are saying

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Problem Solved

While watching the only slightly over-rated “Letters from Iwo Jima” a few nights ago, I had a sudden insight about the way our government is fighting the war in Iraq. It was so simple and fair that I was amazed it hadn't been thought of already*. The U.S. government should be issuing war bonds! Instead of allowing future generations of Americans to pay for the war in Iraq (plus interest) in the form of the national debt, we should be paying for this war as we go.

The administration misses no opportunity to compare the current war to World War II, and it’s nothing short of a complete marketing blunder to miss this crucial product tie-in. Instead of patriotic Americans spending $2.99 on a yellow-ribbon car magnet to demonstrate their patriotism and support for our fighting men and women, they could purchase genuine %100 authentic U.S. War Bonds. With easy-to-manage-on-any-budget minimum denominations of $1,000, I’m sure that the %30 of the country that supports George Bush would buy as many as 6 or 7 of these things.

Consider the myriad ways that money could be spent. With $7,000 the frugal bargain hunters at the Pentagon could buy any of the following…

- 2 M-16s

- Personal Body Armor (partial set)

- 10 pairs of combat boots

- 20 MREs

- 30 gallons of gas

And so on…

I read a fairly broad cross section of news and politics, including quite a few conservative blog summaries, and it really surprises me that I haven’t seen more outcry from conservative news sources and blogs asking the federal government to issue war bonds. Of course, in order for war bonds to make fiscal sense these bonds would have to produce extremely low yields, but buyers would be investing in America and supporting the war at the same time. What god-fearing, patriotic, conservative American wouldn’t jump at the chance to do that?

So let me be the first to sound the call. We need War Bonds. Once all of the patriotic Americans like Sean Hannity, Michell Malkin, and Ann Coulter have put their money wear their mouths are, there will be no need for the President to request another supplemental funding bill.

*My apologies if some patriotic conservative is already advocating this. Is it you Ollie North? I'll be it is.

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posted by DC Viking at 3:06 PM 2 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, June 11, 2007

My Reader Missed Me

I’m a little bit rusty here. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but I won’t go into some kind of self-reflective exercise about the meaning of blogging and why I haven’t written anything for a while. This whole thing is for kicks and ego and I don’t think that anyone reading takes what I write seriously enough to need or want an explanation for the absence of new content. To be honest, I haven’t written anything because I didn’t feel like it. I probably wouldn’t have ever picked this blog up again if it weren’t for a few people from Minneapolis mentioning that they still check the site to see if I’ve written anything new. It turns out that vanity is a powerful motivating force.

Right now I feel like writing, so please forgive me if I’m a bit off the mark, not having exercised my writing muscles. It turns out they atrophy, just like any other muscle group.

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posted by DC Viking at 2:00 PM 2 people of discerning taste are saying