Geek Chic

Word.

I know we’ve all heard the audio clip from our dearly indicted Senator Ted Stevens where he refers to the Internet as a series of tubes.  But until today I hadn’t heard the entire clip.

Wow.

First of all, I have absolutely no idea what point he’s trying to argue — his thesis is totally lost in all of his elderly technophobic blubbering.  Maybe it’s some anti-spam Senate bill?  Dunno.

It’s similar to what I imagine would happen if I sat my grandparents down and said to them ‘explain to me how you think the internet works and what you think you can do with it.’

This is who runs the federal government. A bunch of rich white guys who are too busy having their decks rebuilt by oil companies to take time to figure out how the internet works.

Good to know that, in the true spirit of America, it’s much more important to have a strong opinion when it comes to technology rahther than have any facts.

The brain is not particularly working on this lazy sunday evening, but I have just enough energy left to cherrypick and re-blog this cute little morsel:

from xkcd : http://xkcd.com/197/

via FFFFound

Wow.  The Huffingtonpost just noted how boneheaded a recent anti-Obama McCain ad was.

Have a look for yourself:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political ad that made me want to vote for the other guy as much as this one does.  It’s hilarious.  The tone is so somber and dull, and the bits in the background (ie. Obama) look pretty damned interesting. And what is their argument exactly?  ‘Don’t vote for this guy.  He’s popular.  And popular people are incapable of making good decisions.’ ?

It’d make me wonder what I was doing following the lame horse.  If I had been doing that in the first place.

Equally vapid was a commercial pointed out by the Daily Show last night where the McCain team makes the point that Obama didn’t visit the troops in Germany.  They drive the point home by showing a video in the background of Obama playing basketball … with the troops. (!!!)

It’s like he’s got The Muppets running his campaign.  Or if not, maybe he shoud try that.  Maybe they’d do a better job.

More commentary on HuffingtonPost

This is pretty amazing — notable draft cards from World War I, including such personalities as Groucho Marx, W. C. Fields, Babe Ruth and T. S. Eliot among many others.

This is Al Capone’s:

via the National Archives

… notice how he lists his occupation as ‘Paper Cutter’ …

For the complete set, visit the National Archives

via Photobasement

This one speaks for itself:

Correction - via photobasement.com

From Photobasement