The Silence Is Deafening. And Telling.

I've seen the following two pictures across Facebook lately, and I know there are many conservative Republicans (even if they don't call themselves that) who I'm friends with or follow, and ... nothing. Not a peep. It's because these are hard - perhaps impossible - to argue against. And yet, evangelical Christians (who, admittedly, I have no friends I know of who define themselves as such) are committed to the Republican party, against helping the poor (it's a choice!) and want more money for the richest among us. Does that make sense?

No. No, it does not.

 

If there's a retort against these, I haven't heard them. The silence ... is telling.

You Are Doing It Wrong

You are supposed to tackle the guy with the OTHER jersey, Eagles...

I think I could watch this all day.

Who is Elizabeth Warren?

Elizabeth Warren is currently running for the Senate in Massachusetts, against Scott Brown in a race I could not really care much less about since I'm 3000 miles away. But she's an interesting person because she long advocated for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, something that President Obama did create after the debacle of 2008. He had planned on recommending her to run it - but the  Republican Congress went to great lengths to ensure this wouldn't happen - in fact, their "we won't go on recess, so you can't make a recess appointment" was at least partially due to this possible appointment.

Forget that for a moment -- because it's statements like this that have Congressional Republicans shaking in their boots. Why? Because it's the truth:

In case that's hard to read, here it is again - and really, how does one argue against this?

“‎There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

This is the kind of person Congressional Republicans are terrified of.

This guy?

 

He's good. He's very, very good. (It's Julio Jones, and it's of course during warmups, but ... holy shnikes, that kid has some talent. No wonder the Falcons traded half their draft for the kid.)

Your Eyes Are Confused

Thanks to Gizmodo, I'm completely blown away by the following optical illusion. Yes, it's a bit nausea inducing. But what's really insane is that ... the blue and green in the below image are the same color.

Here's the mildly convincing reason why:

The reason why we are perceiving one color as different colors is because of the other colors surrounding the stripes. Each eye has six to seven million cones, which are concentrated in a central yellow spot known as the macula (I recently got mine lasered to fix some leaking blood vessels). These cones measure color in different wavelengths, overlapping in some of them. Our brain then compares those signals in an antagonistic manner, measuring differences in wavelengths between them. When some colors are combined, the brain can't process the info from the cones correctly and we simply get confused.

Yep, we see this because our eyes are confused.  That's a bit crazy.

Ready Player One

READY PLAYER ONE is a delightful, engaging novel that will appeal to fans of books like Ender's Game and The Hunger Games. That's largely because of the age of the protagonist (though here, he is slightly older) but also because it is, presumably, a book about games - here, video games. The world is a dystopian future, and most people (like our hero Wade) retreat into OASIS, which is essentially a simulated universe where anything goes. The inventor of OASIS (the richest man in the world) dies and leaves as his will a game to find, within OASIS, three "Easter Eggs" - that is, things he has hidden - and the first person to do it? Well, he or she gets $240 BILLION. So...yeah. This causes more interest than Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket.

Full of great trivia, villians, romance and battles, READY PLAYER ONE may particularly appeal to folks like me who spent their teenage years in the 1980s, as much of the tests and battles recall the inventor (and, presumably, author Ernest Cline) favorite movies and videogames, which are all from the 1980s. (One test involves reciting all of Matthew Broderick's dialogue from War Games, for example.)

If you aren't a fan of videogames, this might not be your favorite book but it's still quite enjoyable. If, on the other hand, you spent a decent amount of time in the 80s playing Tempest, Defender, Joust and other games, you'll truly love READY PLAYER ONE. As a debut novel, it's a great sign of things to come.

Rating: 8.5/10.0

Ryan Braun Falls Down And Goes Boom

You may have seen this before but it's great, and not just because it's funny - nice to see the crowd (including Reggie Miller, of all folks) applauding him good naturedly. If this had happened elsewhere, like Chicago where apparently Braun is absolutely loathed? Not the same reaction.



Good stuff, indeed.

Fellow Brewer teammates did the only thing they could this morning - tape a corpse outline:

Housekeeping...

Eagle eyes will notice some changes around here...they aren't complete and I'm not sure I'm happy with the new layout/template. Do you care? Probably not. But if you do, don't get used to it ...