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Of egret tracks and corporate risk aversion

The Swirly Cone of Allah, redux.

I’d write at length about this — particularly about the underlying linguistic assumptions being relied upon here and about how surrendering to those assumptions will only lead to more linguistic tyranny — but honestly, why bother?

I’ve done it before, and nobody much cares to take the steps necessary to regain control over the language. Mostly, it would seem, because it’s cost-prohibitive and potentially dangerous to stand up for principle — and because when all is said and done, they like the idea of empowering themselves as receivers of a message to stake a claim in what it means.

So. Losing more slowly continues apace.

(thanks to dicentra)

98 Replies to “Of egret tracks and corporate risk aversion”

  1. cranky-d says:

    Every swirly line contains His name, infidels!

    They will continue to use our good nature against us until we stop letting them.

  2. leigh says:

    MacDonald’s needs to take a stand. No more hippies in San Francisco telling them they can’t sell Happy Meals. No more muzzies whining about their toys.

    Muslims need to grow up, already. Life is offensive. Deal with it or move back to the desert.

  3. happyfeet says:

    the Power Rangers were invented by a notoriously wealthy and agenda-driven israeli jew, no?

    I think that’s probably at the heart of this

  4. Jeff G. says:

    Did that sneaky agenda-driven Jew make this toy? Or perhaps he had one of his well-placed Jew confederates do it.

  5. happyfeet says:

    I’m not even sure he still owns the Power Rangers anymore but it’s not like logic pertains

  6. Pablo says:

    Muslims need to grow up, already. Life is offensive. Deal with it or move back to the desert.

    Thing is, this is in the desert. These are Saudi Mickey D’s. I’m surprised they let these kuffar in in the first place. I’m guessing they don’t sell McRibs either.

  7. leigh says:

    Huh. I knew they had Mac Donald’s there. They make the women and children eat in their own separate part of the building.

  8. McGehee says:

    They will continue to use our good nature against us

    The joke’s on them; I don’t have one.

  9. Squid says:

    Yeah, but you’re probably a sucker for rule of law and good manners and civilized behavior and all that other baggage that bogs down the unenlightened.

  10. happyfeet says:

    people forget that the rangers of power started off as rather clumsy icons of diversitah

  11. happyfeet says:

    these are the people what were most likely behind the allah-stompers cause of they have the toy account with McDonald’s

    these ones I think are their main competitors

  12. bour3 says:

    I saw Allah written in the clouds, and boy, did that ever make me mad. You had to leave out the other squiggly parts to see it, but there it was, curves and hanging down humps up there like a little w on top of a big W, like two norks, with a side hanging hump and a dot on top of all that and with an extra line on the side of the whole thing, like schwing, l-i-n-e, like a sword, except it goes backwards, sword first, right there among all the other curvy lines and dots up there with the other non blasphemous offensive clouds writing out Allah and marking all clouds with sin, it didn’t last but it was there. Well its a matter of keeping all this rage bottled up or expressing it then innit.

  13. Squid says:

    Cloud never woulda formed like that if the filthy egret hadn’t gone and flapped its filthy wings. Infidel bird.

  14. bour3 says:

    The thing is when you’re writing Arabic with a pencil in your right hand then the palm of your hand smudges the thing that you’ve written as you go along right to left, and it’s even worse with ink that does not dry immediately, which all ink does in the desert, of course, but out here in the world at large where ink does not always reliably dry immediately as civilized people are used to having then you might as well write with your left hand. The squiggle keyboards are a liberating improvement.

  15. bour3 says:

    Wikipedia, font of all wisdom, trusted in all things, says this of the writing on the Saudi Arabian flag, were the word Allah is written twice. You can go to the page scroll down to see it color coded.

    It can be seen in the second flag that the name of Allah (????) is written in a higher position. The name for Allah is written twice in each flag, but the first ?alif (?) is written after the second l?m (?) only once in the first instance of Allah in the second flag (pink), and only once in the second appearance in the flag of Saudi Arabia (green). This overwriting is also visible for the lam of rasul(u) (light blue), but only in the Saudi Arabian flag. The ligature l?m + ?alif (??) is always written the same way in the Saudi Arabian flag, but calligraphy is changed in the case of the second ?? (red) of the second flag at the left.

  16. Ernst Schreiber says:

    OT and apropos of nothing:

    Just got done checking my emails after spending the holiday weekend at the inlaws’ with the wifes’ extended family.

    *shudder*

    Anyhoo, I get this email from Amazon full of recommended reading and bargain books galore. Amazon recommends something called Fifty Shades of Gray for beach reading. My sister-in-law loves reading, and the beach, and reading at the beach. Should I send her a copy? I owe her a peace offering after smoking cigars all weekend with her husband (she hates that!).

  17. happyfeet says:

    Fifty Shades of Gray is porn Mr. Ernst

  18. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Well, that would explain why I see it prominently displayed in grocery stores and discount retailers (Target, Wal-Mart etc.) then.

    blatant gender discrimination!

  19. McGehee says:

    Yeah, but you’re probably a sucker for rule of law and good manners and civilized behavior and all that other baggage that bogs down the unenlightened.

    Law, good manners and civilized behavior exist for the sole purpose of helping good people avoid getting killed. That makes them good as a general policy.

    The devil is in the details.

  20. newrouter says:

    I owe her a peace offering

    how about your autograph on a baseball

  21. palaeomerus says:

    “the Power Rangers were invented by a notoriously wealthy and agenda-driven israeli jew, no?”

    They were just licensed translations of series of Sentai shows from Japan, some of which go back to the 70’s.

  22. McGehee says:

    Somehow I’m getting the feeling the golf course isn’t the only place Obama’s been coming into contact with grass lately.

  23. leigh says:

    Power Rangers were the rage after the sun set on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Then it was Yu-gi-oh (sp?) and Pokeman all the way.

    Obviously, we are stealing from the Japanese. Or they are our overlords.

  24. motionview says:

    Imagine your results indicate

    A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens.

    That’s not very helpful. How’s this sound?

    For ordinary citizens, the reward for acquiring greater scientific knowledge and more reliable technical-reasoning capacities is a greater facility to discover and use—or explain away—evidence relating to their groups’ positions. Even if cultural cognition serves the personal interests of individuals, this form of reasoning can have a highly negative impact on collective decision making. What guides individual risk perception, on this account, is not the truth of those beliefs but rather their congruence with individuals’ cultural commitments. As a result, if beliefs about a societal risk such as climate change come to bear meanings congenial to some cultural outlooks but hostile to others, individuals motivated to adopt culturally congruent risk perceptions will fail to converge, or at least fail to converge as rapidly as they should, on scientific information essential to their common interests in health and prosperity. Although it is effectively costless for any individual to form a perception of climate-change risk that is wrong but culturally congenial, it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way

  25. Ernst Schreiber says:

    substitute “political” for “cultural” and that makes sense, mv.

  26. Crawford says:

    For ordinary citizens, the reward for acquiring greater scientific knowledge and more reliable technical-reasoning capacities is a greater facility to discover and use—or explain away—evidence relating to their groups’ positions.

    That explains the eco-nuts screeching that we’re all “educated beyond sustainability”.

    They really do want us to be ignorant peasants — at least the ones they let live.

  27. newrouter says:

    ideological might work too

  28. motionview says:

    What this country really needs is a new formally recognized grievance tribe.

  29. motionview says:

    And a quicky for you nr.

  30. dicentra says:

    Muslims need to grow up, already. Life is offensive. Deal with it or move back to the desert.

    Shame-based societies think that they are “dealing with it” by forcing provocateurs to back down from (or pay for) their offenses, real or imagined or concocted.

    They won’t grow up until they stop molesting their children.

  31. Swen says:

    You could never tell from the tracks, but a snowy egret’s feet are bright yellow. I didn’t know that until I saw one a few days ago. I’m pretty sure they must be meant to send a message of some sort, but not being a snowy egret I didn’t catch it….

  32. leigh says:

    Shame-based societies are comprised of whiny cry-babies (in this case, blood-thirsty, whiny cry-babies). We, the Western world, need to man up and frog-march them into the 21st century.

  33. newrouter says:

    mv that means nothing to most americans unless they knew this link thank you mbm.

  34. dicentra says:

    this form of reasoning can have a highly negative impact on collective decision making.

    Collective decision-making, the weird obsession of left-wing nutjobs everywhere, seems to conflict with their command-and-control impulses.

    But then you remember that dictators always imagine themselves to be the embodiment of The People’s Will, and therefore no longer need actual input from the actual people. Besides, dissenters are just “wreckers” who possess false consciousness and must be reeducated or disposed of.

  35. leigh says:

    It’s Oh-fficial, Outlaws. Mitt Romney is the nominee.

  36. dicentra says:

    a snowy egret’s feet are bright yellow

    Snowy egrets often stand with one foot in the mud and the other hanging loose in the water. The feesh can’t see that the yellow thing is connected to the egret’s black leg, so they mistake it for noms.

    #HelpfulBirdTipOfTheDay

  37. happyfeet says:

    with Mitt Romney we beat this Obama like the bitch and make the good fortune economic!

  38. LBascom says:

    Muslims need to grow up, already. Life is offensive. Deal with it or move back to the desert.

    Americans need to grow up too.

  39. LBascom says:

    Obama alienates Poland

    Yeah, I bet the world can’t wait to get rid of Obama as POTUS. Then they can spend the next 4 years telling us how great he was.

  40. RichardCranium says:

    It’s Oh-fficial, Outlaws. Mitt Romney is the nominee.

    Not due to my vote. He won’t get it during the election, either.

    President Obama will also not get my vote, in case anyone gives a fsck.

  41. RichardCranium says:

    I just hit the Texas Secretary of State web page. There’s only ~20% of the vote in, but they are calling it for Romney?

    I’ll just let the dark thoughts burble in my mind, thankyouverymuch.

  42. RichardCranium says:

    My district’s rep has been in DC for 18 years, now. I voted against him in the primary since I believe he’s been at the trough a little too long now. YMMV.

  43. motionview says:

    So Obama gives those Medal of Freedom vignettes off the cuff? No TOTUS?

  44. leigh says:

    Nope. He had notes and he screwed up, too.

  45. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I bet the world can’t wait to get rid of Obama as POTUS. Then they can spend the next 4 years telling us how great he was.

    The world calls that a win-win.

    By the way, we have or had that particular happy-meal toy lying around here somewhere.

    Nobody tell that Kimberlin sonofabitch, I wouldn’t want to be swatted for gratuitously insulting muslims, like Aaron “everybody draw Mohammed” Worthing, or anything like that.

  46. leigh says:

    I think Obama is destined to be held in high regard like Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon.

  47. palaeomerus says:

    David Dewhurst just ended up in a run off with Cruz. He only got 46% of the primary vote for the US Senate. He needed 50+ to get the nomination. Go TEAm

  48. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Maybe. But only after he’s first held in high regard like Jimmy Carter leigh.

  49. palaeomerus says:

    “Then it was Yu-gi-oh (sp?) and Pokeman all the way.”

    Yeah. Yugioh was rough. I had to keep telling my young cousins that I honestly had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what they were trying to tell me about this card game with a weird dealer shuffler thing that people wear on their arm. And their Moms were saying “Oh, but I thought you were a nerd “. It’s pretty humiliating to realize that being a nerd just means that you have every Blue Oyster Cult CD, owned most of them on tape before that, and that you know too much about Batman, Star Trek, Alien, Terminator, and Starwars. It doesn’t help you at all with under standing weird card games for kids that look like maybe they combine tarot cards with math and dominos or something.

  50. palaeomerus says:

    “Maybe. But only after he’s first held in high regard like Jimmy Carter leigh.”

    He hit the Carter level with his goofy tire gauge comment as a solution to energy prices.

  51. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Bestest ex-President evah! And he’s got the nobel peace prize to prove it!

  52. Pablo says:

    Yeah, a Nobel Peace Prize and a kill list.

  53. leigh says:

    Kill list and an enemies list, Pablo. Dude is a multi-tasker.

  54. SteveG says:

    It’s not even Allah… it is a second tier prophet.
    It’s like me getting all upset because my swirly cone looks like Elijah, or maybe Ulysses Grant (old version). Jesus Christ already, get a trademark on some agreed image of him… Mohammed I mean.
    If I’m out running on the beach near my house and I take a piss in the sand and wow… the outline…it looks like a guy with a turban… so I snap a photo with my Android. INFIDEL!!!

    You know what? Fuck you. It’s an image I pissed into the sand that interested me. If Mohammed has any power and gives a shit, I’d be dead. Same goes for Jesus and stuff like piss christ… obviously if he’s the Son of God it isn’t that big of a deal in the here and now so it is not my problem.
    But these dumbass rigid Muslims like to think that God is telling them to avenge the abomination of a swirly cone that looks more like a smudge… what a very small god they worship

  55. RichardCranium says:

    you have every Blue Oyster Cult CD

    Up to and including Curse of the Hidden Mirror?

    “Stone of Love” rang a bell with me (still does, for that matter); my wife and I had terminated our Trisomy-18 baby around the time that song came out.

    There is a chain that I have worn
    And on the chain a thorn is hung
    There is a pain forever borne
    That sings a song forever sung
    The song is but a stone
    Stone of love
    Stone of love
    Stone of love
    Stone of love

    Sleep well, my only daughter. Your father failed you.

  56. SteveG says:

    I was brought up with stories of a God that delivered Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Not some god that is so small that instead of delivering His people… he outsources his defense of divine reputation to scimitar wielding sand dune hillbillies. What? I can’t say fuck you for your dumbass faux sanctimony? without doing jail time in the UK or Canada? (or soon here) Fuck you.
    My image insulted your sensibilities… get over yourself and stop letting your personal bs leak out on me.

  57. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Yeah, a Nobel Peace Prize and a kill list.

    I was talking about Carter, who couldn’t kill a rabid bunny.

    But yeah, those Nobel assholes would have egg all over their faces,

    if Obama’s award was about Obama instead of Bush.

  58. Pablo says:

    Oh yeah. No matter. We’ll have black Jimmah soon enough.

  59. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I accomplished a personal first today:

    kinked the blade of a bow saw whilst trying to cut a maple branch up into garbage-can sized pieces.

    yay me

  60. dicentra says:

    just means that you have every Blue Oyster Cult CD

    Erratum: “every” refers to a plural entity. You should use “the”.

  61. cranky-d says:

    The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a completely American creation.

  62. palaeomerus says:

    To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

  63. cranky-d says:

    I wish I were wise enough to see that purpose, palaeomerus.

  64. geoffb says:

    My kid liked TMNT and then Power Rangers. I got him into Urusei Yatsura, Tenchi Muyo and Evangelion which he still likes but Dragonball hooked him and there I wouldn’t go.

  65. Ernst Schreiber says:

    My boy likes batman, and the Green Lantern. And this time on Batman: The Brave and the Bold when Batman got to be a Green Lantern. That was the coolest thing ever.

    Except for maybe lightsabers.

  66. thors mommy says:

    Hello Jeffery, dear. I apologize for my absence. I hope the lttle thor/ meya douchette hasn’t been around and I want to make a donation. Please advise of how we can get some shoot wrestling and other MA videos from you so we can help the cause as well as help me explain to my partner as to where the money goes. (formerly thors mom and . . . I shan’t say before that but it was while I was broke and in school) Oh, how do we get the delightful picture posted next to our name?

  67. cranky-d says:

    The Batman in “Batman, the Animated Series” is, to me, THE Batman. That show was well drawn and very well written.

    Accept no substitutes.

  68. McGehee says:

    SteveG says May 29, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    <fist bump>

  69. jdw says:

    Another speculative floater

    Balance the GOP presidential ticket? Nah! That’s Democrat stuff. Mitt Romney has the chance to a make a powerful statement with his V.P. choice. Governor Scott Walker — a boring white guy’s white guy — is about to make a very powerful statement in Wisconsin. A thumbs-up by Wisconsin voters for Walker in next Tuesday’s recall election would be a huge victory for bold governmental reform.

    A Walker victory establishes that Republicans can enact significant reforms and survive onslaughts by public-sector labor unions, the left, and the dependent classes. For conservative reformers, a Walker recall win is the modern equivalent of the “shot heard around the world.”

    By picking Scott Walker as his running mate, Romney would signal that his administration is about fundamental reform. Not Mickey Mouse, nibble-at-the-edges reform. But historic, fork-in-the-road change. A Walker pick would show a lot of confidence on Romney’s part and would rock liberals and the main stream media back on their heels.

    Sarah Palin sans a moose?

  70. McGehee says:

    Oh, how do we get the delightful picture posted next to our name?

    Sign up here and upload your pic.

  71. McGehee says:

    If I were Scott Walker and I’d just survived a recall election, I’d be inclined to stick around and keep getting some actual work done.

    After 2008, I think Republican presidential nominees should just keep choosing Dick Cheney. The Kimberlin-style lawfare the moonbats unleashed on Palin only tickles him.

  72. Slartibartfast says:

    Obama Confuses NAACP With NCAA At Medal Of Freedom Ceremony

    Obama alienates Poland by referring to “Polish death camps”

    Hours after the ceremony, the US Secret Service reportedly had to pry POTUS’ hands from a Costco-sized back of Doritos, which were mostly gone. Various other materials were found on Mr. Obama’s person, which the Secret Service smoked with a couple of DC hookersdisposed of secretly but responsibly.

  73. Car in says:

    Ironically, right now I’m doodling what is obviously Mohammad’s name all over a picture of a man fucking a goat.

  74. leigh says:

    Sounds timely, Carin, and right on topic.

  75. Car in says:

    Anyhoo, I get this email from Amazon full of recommended reading and bargain books galore. Amazon recommends something called Fifty Shades of Gray for beach reading. My sister-in-law loves reading, and the beach, and reading at the beach. Should I send her a copy? I

    Umh. no.

    I’ve been told I have a stick up my ass for refusing to read this book.

    Whatever.

  76. Car in says:

    I try to make my first comment, in a thread, somewhat on-topic.

  77. Slartibartfast says:

    right now I’m doodling what is obviously Mohammad’s name all over a picture of a man fucking a goat

    As long as he’s not sticking it in past the circumcision scar, he’s doing it right
    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

  78. Slartibartfast says:

    I’ve been told I have a stick up my ass for refusing to read this book.

    You may as well go whole-hog and go directly for Ann Rice’s erotica. Ann goes right for the S&M without much in the way of a preamble.

  79. Car in says:

    I’m not opposed to sex in my books, but I usually prefer that there is some story and decent writing accompanying my porn.

    Otherwise, why not just go straight to the Penthouse letters?

  80. EBL says:

    McDonalds will not take a principled stand on this. They will go into damage mode and hope it blows over.

  81. Slartibartfast says:

    Penthouse letters were kind of fun in that they were pretty predictable & formulaic. Needless to say.

  82. Car in says:

    that they were pretty predictable & formulaic.

    *****

    that there describes most woman’s soft/hard porn fiction.

    And an overabundant use of the words swollen and member.

    No thanks.

  83. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The only thing I know about the book is some what does it all mean? bit of speculative fluff that I read in Newsweak. The cleverest comment in the piece was something about how the sex scenes must be really really good for people to put up with the turgid prose linking them together.

  84. Car in says:

    What I know about the book is that is being read by a LOT of “moms” I know. @@.

    My facebook group of moms … I tried to steer them away. All but a couple have read it.

  85. Car in says:

    Also – I was told it started out as fan-lit. I believe based on the Twighlight series. Not positive.

    So, pornographic crap, based on crap.

  86. Slartibartfast says:

    I had no idea so many moms were into the whole whips n chains scene. Ima hafta ask the wife if she’s got a secret thang.

    I seriously doubt it. That kind of thing reads a lot better than it acts out, for most people.

  87. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I was going to make some crack about naked house keeping, objectification and what women really want.

    But it’t too easy.

  88. Slartibartfast says:

    Twilight is painfully bad prose. Just horrible. If I’d have had a pistol, I would have shot it to put it out of its own misery.

  89. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Not having read any of the Twilight crap, I’d guess that painfully bad prose is the least of Stephanie Meyer’s crimes against fiction.

  90. leigh says:

    A few years ago, all of the middle school girls were gaga over the “Twilight” books. Me (being an instigator) bought my middle school aged son a tee-shirt that read “And Then Buffy Staked Edward. The End”.

  91. dicentra says:

    I was told it started out as fan-lit. I believe based on the Twilight series.

    Fanfic is about the worst it can get. It can be a useful exercise in using someone else’s fictional world and characters to practice writing, but 99% of the time it’s tawdry slash erotica and other limbic-system braindumps.

  92. Car in says:

    Leigh – I have that shirt.

  93. McGehee says:

    If I’d have had a pistol, I would have shot it to put it out of its own misery.

    With a silver bullet dipped in garlic and carved with a cross on the nose, I hope.

  94. leigh says:

    *fistbump*– Carin.

  95. mojo says:

    “So be offended, see if I care.”

  96. Sarah Rolph says:

    On the topic of books, I recently read The Marriage Plot and enjoyed it. Nice old-fashioned novel in the guise of a modern novel. Author got the Pulitzer for his last book, which might win you some points…

    I also recently got a big kick out of the correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell (“What There Is to Say We Have Said”); I think that would be nice at the beach. (Now I am reading William Maxwell, who I didn’t even know about and who is well worth discovering–So Long, See You Tomorrow is a perfect novel, but it’s too short for optimal beach reading!)

    The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is very good, as are her stories; but that has been out for a while, so your relative may have read it. (Features Indian Americans; dots, not feathers.) Possibly not long enough for truly ideal beach reading.

    A classic I only discovered recently is The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin. Protagonist is a quirky but seriously heroic priest… great writing, seriously beautiful, a desert-island book for sure.

    Stephen L. Carter’s novels are really good. The Emperor of Ocean Park, etc. Great writing.

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