Happy 236th Birthday to the Marine Corps!

In my fourth annual traditional United States Marine Corps birthday celebration, here is this year's Marine Corps joke, found in the humor section of MarineDevilDog.Com (a determinedly state-of-the-art-as-of-1998 web site!):

A crusty old Marine Corps Colonel found himself at a gala event downtown, hosted by a local liberal arts college. There was no shortage of extremely young, idealistic ladies in attendance, one of whom approached the colonel for conversation.

She said, "Excuse me, sir, but you seem to be a very serious man. Are you this way all the time, or is something bothering you?"

"No," the colonel said, "I'm just serious by nature."

The young lady looked at his awards and decorations and said, "It looks like you have seen a lot of action."

The colonel's short reply was "Yep, a lot of action."

The young lady, tiring of trying to start up a conversation, said, "You know, you should lighten up a little - relax and enjoy yourself."

The colonel just stared at her in his serious manner.

Finally the young lady said, "You know, l hope you don't take this the wrong way, but when is the last time you had sex?"

The colonel looked at her and replied, "1955."

She said, "Well, there you go; you really need to chill out and quit taking everything so seriously - I mean, no sex since 1955, isn't that a little extreme?"

The colonel, glancing at his watch, said in his matter-of-fact voice, "Oh, I don't know. It's only 2130 now!"

Semper Fi!!! (And if you don't get it...)
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Worst Academic Press Catalog Cover Image Ever

So there I was, looking for publisher information about a certain book a professor thought was representative of the type of academic press where he might try to place the book he is working on, when I’m confronted with what may be the worst choice ever for a book catalog cover (image after jump):




What the hell is that thing? I’m going to have nightmares for weeks. Turns out its from the cover of Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination and - Oh my God! its not just an illustration, but a sculpture from the exhibit for which this book serves as a catalog. The artist is Patrician Piccinini and that specific work is here.

The giant mutant sea lion thing is weird enough, but some of her other work, conveniently listed here on another site, is even more disturbing. But the more you look at it, the more compelling the pieces are.

Still, a strange choice for the Vandy press catalog cover. Why couldn’t they have used this cover image instead:



From the description:

Embodied Resistance engages the rich and complex range of society's contemporary "body outlaws"--people from many social locations who violate norms about the private, the repellent, or the forbidden. This collection ventures beyond the conventional focus on the "disciplined body" and instead, examines conformity from the perspective of resisters. By balancing accessibly written original ethnographic research with personal narratives, Embodied Resistance provides a window into the everyday lives of those who defy or violate socially constructed body rules and conventions.

That’s actually a book I would want to read.

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Occupy Wall Street and Vague Statistics

Besides the white-washing of the more unsavory aspects of the Occupy Wall Street kids (including public masturbation in Madison, rape and sexual assault in NYC, and a guy caught on camera defecating on a NYPD patrol car), as well as the fact that the movement is more astro-turfed than their media sympathizers will acknowledge, the protesters’ grievances and demands are still vague.

One chart related to the OWS’s “cause” that I’ve seen on-line in various places concerns the non-story about the ratio of corporate executive’s salaries to the salaries of average workers:


I saw that and thought a little research was called for and made my own chart in response:


As indicated, I got the statistics for the Global 500 Corporations and the Per Capita GDP from reliable sources(CNN/Forbes and the IMF, respectively), but I’ve never see a source for those CEO:Worker salary ratios. I wouldn’t even know how to start finding that information. Does somebody compile average CEO salaries by country? That’s a task for some slow day at the reference desk.

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Bored Headline Writers

Some headline writer at the Times-Picayune must be a bored Who fan.

A routine story about local restaurants composting their food scraps had this headline in today's paper:


Though its not the first time, by far, the same pun has been made.


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RIP Steve Jobs

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
- Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005


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