Light

winter solstice

[for reference]

health care reform presentation, covers various viewpoints, including the stupid [do these people really believe that we consume health care the way we consume groceries!??!?!?!?]

also includes a brief presentation by a member of pnhp.

The sun'll come back tomorrow

until then, there's puppies.

......................

Got to admire the old guys who can keep it up

I would go out and buy an iPhone tomorrow

if I thought this were really true.



This is the other app I'd get.

Becaue I like Dan Gelber

I'll post his latest plea for donations.

Friends-

Over the last two weeks, the Legislature was called into a Special Session to settle critical issues regarding mass transit throughout our state. The legislature bans fundraising during Session, but a loophole exists for “prescheduled” fundraisers. Because I felt it was only right to put my entire focus on my job as a legislator, I decided not to avail myself of the loophole and canceled all my fundraisers during the Special Session. I was the only candidate in this race to do so, and now I really need to make up for lost ground.

If you haven’t contributed to the campaign yet, I could really use your support now.

Fundraising is not a virtue, but in a state as large as Florida it is a necessity. Sorry for the hard sell but I’m proud of the way my campaign is conducting itself, and hope you are to. We need leadership that is not business as usual – and I hope you’ll support me because you believe that I will be different.

If you have already contributed please consider helping out again and passing this on to your friends and family.

Thanks again and have a terrific holiday season.

Dan

Continuing the theme

of cars and birds and toasty warm backsides...



I haven't won the lottery yet, so no heated seats for me yet, and besides, for less than $500 I got new brakes, a new battery, and the transmission fixed. Cheapskate that I am, no way can I bring myself to get rid of a car that both starts and stops on command, even if it closing in on a quarter million miles.

My inner cryptobiologist lol'd at this one

This one might come in handy someday

You decide

This was either the smartest thing I've ever done, petwise, or the stupidest.

I bought a bag of the beef liver PureBites dog treats and offered some to everybody. Instant hit, far more than the tripe.

Now I've got cats nibbling my fingers and licking the keyboard as I type, and the littlest cat grabbed the bag of treats and ran off with it. Cute, especially as she carried it over to the cat feeding station, dropped it into the food bowl, and only then started ripping into the bag.

If the camera had been handy, I would have tried to get you a picture, but I figured I'd better rescue the treats instead. Once I track down the camera though, I don't expect to have any trouble recreating the scene.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'll say one thing for the NY Times

they have way cool interactive maps.

Here's one showing the foreign-born population by county. The years go back to 1880, and you can set the filter to look at just one country of origin.

Just in case you were wondering, Miami-Dade and Queens are each approximately 50% foreign-born and in each the predominant group is from Latin America.

h/t Global Sociology Blog, where you can also find maps of corruption and government spending around the world.