We command no worship, do we?

From a story about Chicago courts dismissing most tickets issued to cab drivers in 2011…

Most tickets for the 28 cabdrivers were heard in the Daley Center, in one of seven white-walled courtrooms decorated only by the words “In God We Trust” on one side.

Um…why? Why do courtrooms have the words “In God We Trust” on their walls? I don’t trust in god, and if I don’t think judges or lawyers should be trusting god either, any more than pilots or surgeons or engineers should.

Oh yeah? So why aren’t we doing it that way then?

Ben Jonson would have ratted him out so fast

Oh yay, Amanda Marcotte has a poke in the eye for the people who think Shakespeare was just the front guy for the Earl of Oxford or some other more aristocratic type because how could a nobody from the provinces possibly be Shakespeare?

Newsweek has a surprisingly sympathetic piece about Shakespeare truthers, republished here at Raw Story, and I just have to take some time to point out that, like with other conspiracy theories and denialist obsessions, there’s more going on here than some kind of legitimate dispute over the facts. For those who are unaware, Shakespeare truthers are people who believe that William Shakespeare was just a half-literate actor who was the cover story for some no doubt wealthy nobleman who secretly wrote the plays and didn’t want credit because, as we all know from our fairy tales, wealthy noblemen are noble, honorable creatures who have small egos and little desire for respect and adulation.* [Read more…]

And matching plaid bras

And another such chain of girls-showing-tits drinking and dining establishments, courtesy of Orac commenting on the last one. This one is called, winsomely, Tilted Kilt. I thought it must be the flipped version, with male servers in kilts and nothing else. How silly can you be? Of course it’s not.

While the Tilted Kilt concept has its roots deep in the rousing tradition of Scottish, Irish and English Pubs, it actually first came to life in America’s own sin city, Las Vegas. The brainchild of successful restaurateur Mark DiMartino, Tilted Kilt was conceived to be a contemporary, Celtic-themed sports Pub staffed with beautiful servers in sexy plaid kilts and matching plaid bras.

[Read more…]

Life suddenly made sense to him

So this is something I didn’t know about – a chain of “sports bars” called Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill. “Bikinis” isn’t the name of the owner but what the servers – all women, of course – wear.

How “America’s Only Breastaurant®” got started…

It all started back in the winter of 2001. Weary of the technology world, and discouraged by the “dot-com” implosion that was happening all around him, Doug Guller packed his bags and headed to Australia for a much needed vacation.

While sitting at a bar on the Australian coast, watching some rugby on a small TV nearby, an attractive server approached and asked, “Wanna beer, mate?” [Read more…]

Jean-Pierre Biemlfdlkk

Gawker has an entry in the Brand Names News category.

On Friday, The New York Times profiled some of the Chinese companies that have taken nonsensical branding to its postmodern conclusion, selling products under Western-inspired names like “Biemlfdlkk” and “Marisfrolg.”

Other brands mentioned in the article:

  • Frognie Zila
  • Helen Keller (a sunglasses maker)
  • Chrisdien Deny
  • Adidos
  • Orgee
  • Cnoverse
  • Fuma
  • Johnnie Worker Red Labial Whiskey

With ginger ale!

Of course, giving your company a meaningless, foreign-sounding name can present unique challenges when dealing with journalists.

A Biemlfdlkk saleswoman in the southern city of Guangzhou explained, “It’s a German name.” An employee at another Biemlfdlkk shop had a different explanation: “It’s the name of a French designer.”

Ah yes, Jean-Pierre Biemlfdlkk.

Non. C’est Jean-Claude.

 

Even when we think about temperature

A Fox “News” personality wondered on live tv if it might be the metric system that caused the AirAsia flight to go missing.

Fox News host Anna Kooiman speculated on Sunday that an AirAsia flight could have gone missing because international pilots were trained using the metric system.

During breaking coverage of missing Flight QZ8501, Kooiman asked former FAA spokesperson Scott Brenner if the “real reason” the plane had disappeared was because of the “different way other countries train their pilots.” [Read more…]

Somebody has to do the managing

One more good point, this one from Mychal Denzel Smith.

The rhetoric Lynch, Giuliani and others employ only reinforces the message protesters have been trying to get across. Lynch and Giuliani can see the tragedy of Liu and Ramos’s deaths, but do not extend that same sympathy to the families of those killed by police officers. The lives of officers Liu and Ramos are held up as more valuable than the lives of Garner, Brown and so on. That’s the reason the protests must continue, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s call for them to be suspended.

But also, you’d have a hard time convincing me that the reason Lynch and Giuliani mourn Liu and Ramos is because of their humanity. [Read more…]

No use of force by the police can ever seem too excessive

Patricia Williams, of The Nation’s Diary of a Mad Law Professor column, also makes a useful point.

…given clear evidence that Ismaaiyl Brinsley was mentally unsound, it is remarkable that the media could assign direct cause-and-effect to the atmospherics of news. If Brinsley had tweeted that William Shakespeare made him do it, would Fox & Friends be blaming teachers’ unions for troubling the waters?

It is its own kind of madness to blame these murders on those who do no more than debate the proper use of force by police, as Fox and others have done. [Read more…]

The occupying-force mentality

The editors of The Nation are also disgusted at the police grandstanding and defiance of civilian rule.

Police-union leaders and their allies, however, chose this moment to talk not of peace but war. “The mayors hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words actions and policies and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly,” declared a now-infamous memo attributed to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. [Read more…]