Pro-jec-tion! (duh-dum dum) Projection!

Maybe the reason they're so eager to impute hatred to everybody else is because it occupies such a major part in their own lives.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 12:39:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Saving a Nazi resort

First built for the master race as part of the Nazi "Strength Through Joy" programme, the hulking dormitories of Prora, stretching over three miles of pristine Baltic coast, were intended to house 20,000 people at a time...

Eight housing blocks were built by the time Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, but the grandiose plans for a huge banqueting hall and twin swimming pools with wave machines were never completed. -- The Telegraph [bolding mine - o.g.]

Now the German Youth Hostel Association hope to restore and use it for environmentally-conscious holidaying.

Many examples of grandiose Nazi architecture were either destroyed or subsequently modified into unrecognizability. The scale of this site, which remains much as it was in 1939, is a reminder of just how formidable, and megalomaniac, Nazi Germany was.
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LATER:  Historic and contemporary photos and drawings of the Prora resort at Geoff Walden's site.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:28:10 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Legal quiz

Ron married Melinda.  Things didn't work out, so they divorced, and he agreed to pay her alimony. Before the alimony agreement was official, Melinda entered into a state-registered domestic partnership with her girlfriend, even going so far as changing her last name to her domestic partner's name. So Ron's asking the court to invalidate the alimony agreement because his former spouse has, in effect, "remarried." The state's domestic partnership law instructs courts to treat domestic partnerships, for all intents and purposes, as valid marriages.

If you were the judge, how would you rule?  Easy, huh?

Wrong:  It's in California.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:55:10 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yah know, if you start something, you really should follow through

Must have seemed like a good idea at the time: Ask a bunch of editorial cartoonists to submit cartoons that had been spiked by their editors. Put 'em all in a book. Make a point about editorial cowardice. Take the high moral ground. But...

When you publish a book called Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression, the whole point would seem to be that you're speaking up for unfettered satire. Apparently not. The publishers of Killed Cartoons ... killed one of the cartoons!
 -- Joe Bob Briggs

Any guesses about the subject of the cartoon that got killed?   It was a cartoon drawn for the Tallahassee Democrat by the late Doug Marlette.  Spiked by the Democrat's editor in 2002, and again by W.W. Norton (the publisher) when the book was being assembled, it was captioned: "What Would Mohammed Drive?" See it here.
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HT Tim Blair, who invokes the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:54:44 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Who said: "Who hasn't felt like doing that?"

Answer:  A member of the German police, who'd been investigating a report of a Hanover man hurling a computer out the window of his upper-story apartment.  Tale here.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:35:48 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Back-door gun control deferred

They got caught, and now they're back-pedalling:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it will significantly revise a recent proposal for new “explosives safety” regulations that caused serious concern among gun owners. OSHA had originally set out to update workplace safety regulations, but the proposed rules included restrictions that very few gun shops, sporting goods stores, shippers, or ammunition dealers could comply with.

Gun owners had filed a blizzard of negative comments urged by the NRA, and just a week ago, OSHA had already issued one extension for its public comment period at the request of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. After continued publicity through NRA alerts and the outdoor media, and after dozens of Members of Congress expressed concern about its impact, OSHA has wisely decided to go back to the drawing board. -- NRA-ILA site

We'll see...

LATER (070718): Kim Dutoit says we're engaged in a "holding action." (via DP.)
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Link and extract via Instapundit, as telia.net is dropping packets in Chicago, making the NRA-ILA site unreachable from here today.
Previously: More back-door gun control (July 9, 2007)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:50:57 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sony goes for the Louis Renault award

They're shocked, shocked to find that they were selling CDs that included rootkit software!

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is suing a company that developed antipiracy software for CDs, claiming the technology was defective and cost the record company millions of dollars to settle consumer complaints and government investigations.

Sony BMG filed a summons in a New York state court against The Amergence Group Inc., formerly SunnComm International, which developed the MediaMax CD copy-protection technology.
...
[Sony BMG] began including MediaMax on some of its compact discs in August 2003 and shipped about 4 million CDs equipped with the technology in 2005.
...
The fallout over the copy-protected CDs sparked lawsuits and investigations.

Last fall, [Sony BMG] agreed to pay a total of $5.75 million to settle the litigation and resolve investigations by officials in several states.
-- Hollywood Reporter

Interesting how the loss of a few million dollars can change attitudes.
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Via Slashdot.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:19:47 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Same song, another verse

Another group of actors experiences Hollywood “accounting.”

On May 30, 15 LOTR actors from New Zealand filed a complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court, stating New Line hasn’t made good on its promise to pay the thesps 5 percent of the net revenue from the sales of merchandise bearing their characters’ likenesses.

According to the complaint, the standard contract the actors signed stated, “The company has the right to merchandise the contractor’s character for payment of 5 percent of net merchandising revenue…. This includes but is not limited to the right to use the contractor’s likeness as portrayed in the film and video games.”

But after reportedly reaping $100 million in merchandising revenue, New Line has yet to pay the 15 actors a penny from that revenue.
-- Backstage.com, July 6

Repeat after me:
In Hollywood, there never is a “net.”
In Hollywood, there never is a “net.”
(Just ask a host of others.)
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via Colleen

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:40:20 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The WSJ notices something

Scan of pullquote in the op-ed "What About Muslim Moderates" (R. James Woolsey and Nina Shea) in Tuesday's [July 10th] Wall Street Journal:

I don't recall seeing the words "extremist" and "Saudis" in this close proximity in any MSM article since 9/11, let alone in a pullquote.

Do you suppose it's possible that somebody is finally noticing?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:56:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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What eleven months of love will do

July 2006.

June 2007 (scroll to last picture).

He's available for adoption, too. Anybody live near Spencer, NY and have room for a(nother) cat?
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 20:31:51 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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