The Rat
Friday, October 31, 2008
      ( 8:42 PM ) The Rat  
STRUGGLING LOWER CLASS STILL UNSURE HOW BEST TO FUCK SELVES WITH VOTE.

As election day nears, millions of the nation's poorest voters have reportedly yet to settle on the most profound and enduring way to completely fuck themselves over when they head to the polls this year.

"On the one hand, I'm pretty sure Barack Obama will undermine my best interests by maintaining the same centrist, pro-corporate policies of previous Democratic administrations," said Jim Estey, 34, a recently laid-off assembly-line worker. "Conversely, I agree with McCain and Palin on abortion, which might just balance out the fact that they'll further marginalize people like me by supporting deregulation and slashing social programs. So it's pretty much a toss-up at this point"...


# Posted by The Rat @ 8:42 PM


      ( 7:52 PM ) The Rat  
CONFESS YOUR SHOPPING SINS WITH SPENDSTER.

# Posted by The Rat @ 7:52 PM



Monday, October 27, 2008
      ( 8:49 PM ) The Rat  
YAY!

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:49 PM


      ( 1:44 PM ) The Rat  
MOST EXPENSIVE COLLEGES FOR 2008-2009.

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:44 PM



Saturday, October 25, 2008
      ( 10:39 AM ) The Rat  
AREA MAN SADDENED TO REALIZE SHORT JEWISH WOMEN WITH AN INTEREST IN THEATER HIS TYPE. At least read the ending.

"I always just thought I liked brunettes, or was, you know, a 'breasts' man," Simms said. "It definitely explains why that thing with the Asian chemist never worked out, or why when I was in high school I had a huge crush on Rhea Perlman."

Unable to deny his physical attraction to them any longer, Simms said that all a woman needed to turn him on was to be a member of God's chosen people and struggle to reach her kitchen cupboards. In addition, Simms said that women capable of discussing Death Of A Salesman in a thick Brooklyn accent always made him lose his mind.

Simms, who has dated three nasally ushers in the past nine months and once made out with a stocky divorcée at a kosher deli, said that despite his recent realization, he would still be open to giving a whole spectrum of different women a chance. As long as his date is at least half-Jewish, appreciates some form of live performance, and can be picked up off the ground with relative ease, Simms said, he would be willing to see where things go...

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:39 AM



Friday, October 24, 2008
      ( 4:48 PM ) The Rat  
AM I THE ONLY ONE to whom this has a certain... Fallopian look about it?

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:48 PM



Wednesday, October 22, 2008
      ( 3:07 AM ) The Rat  
After all, the stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise.
—Peter Ustinov, introduction to Great Operatic Disasters

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:07 AM



Sunday, October 19, 2008
      ( 8:17 AM ) The Rat  
PH.D. COMICS nails it again.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:17 AM



Friday, October 17, 2008
      ( 8:17 PM ) The Rat  
DANCE YOUR PH.D. Via GV.

The rules were simple: Using no words or images, interpret your Ph.D. thesis in dance form. Entrants were divided into three categories—graduate student, postdoc, and professor—and the prize for each was a year's subscription to Science...

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:17 PM



Thursday, October 16, 2008
      ( 1:53 AM ) The Rat  
[German agent—who is unaware both that Garbo is a double agent, and that the 27 spies (!!!) from whom he purports to send intelligence, are entirely imaginary—writing at Christmas 1944:] I know, my dear friend, that it is not possible to recompense materially all that you and your organization are doing, nevertheless I wish very sincerely that all your colleagues should have the possibility of being able to do something during the days of Christmas which will remind them that our thoughts are with you. Were it possible, I would send from here something to each of them as a small token. In view of the circumstances, I have no alternative but to confine myself to money which, I trust, they will be able to accept as an expression of personal attention. I should be grateful to you, therefore, if you would take the necessary measures to effect this and I leave it to your judgment to decide the amount which should be given to each of them in accordance with your knowledge of the various friends. I think that maybe the equivalent of a month's payment might be suitable, but as I have already said, you have absolute freedom to take the decision in this connection.

I purposely have not dealt with service matters in this letter. This I shall do when I have received your personal letter which, I hope, will give me details about your plan for escaping which I asked for by message, which will able
[sic] me, forthwith, to reply regarding all the possibilities in this connection.

I enclose, with this letter, a remittance of $3,000.

With our most cordial regards and a firm handshake.


The $3,000 brought the total paid to GARBO's network up to $20,000*, enough to finance most of MI5's other double agents. As usual, the money was paid to a Spanish fruit merchant in pesetas in Madrid. He then made the dollar equivalent available to GARBO at his London office. The scheme had been code-named, appropriately, plan DREAM by MI5...

Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II

*about $250,000 today, according to this calculator

# Posted by The Rat @ 1:53 AM



Tuesday, October 14, 2008
      ( 12:52 AM ) The Rat  
GMAIL OFFERS GOOGLE GOGGLES TO AVOID LATE-NIGHT DRUNKEN EMAILS. Hee!

Users of Gmail, Google's email system, can now activate a new feature called Mail Goggles.

It requires an emailer to solve a few easy maths problems quickly before hitting the "send" button. The service is set by default to come into force only on weekend nights, although the settings can be changed.

Google's theory is that if your mental faculties are sufficiently intact to answer the questions, you will have been composed enough to be aware of the consequences of whatever you have just typed...

# Posted by The Rat @ 12:52 AM



Monday, October 13, 2008
      ( 5:14 PM ) The Rat  
HEH!

# Posted by The Rat @ 5:14 PM


      ( 3:09 PM ) The Rat  
The torture of the dog is described twice, once by Nelly who sees it hanging, almost dead, and releases it just in time to save its life; and once by Heathcliff, who describes the little dog's vulnerability, Isabella's pleading for it and then doing nothing to save it, because she inferred that Heathcliff wanted to hang "'every being belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself.'" The exception, of course, was Cathy, Edgar's wife. But for this emotional nothing, this inferred regard for her as an exception to his general hatred of her family and friends, she could watch her dog tortured, slowly killed for all she knew, since she did not rescue it. This is a moral bankruptcy familiar to women in love, who will give up everything to be the exception.
—Andrea Dworkin, "Wuthering Heights"

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:09 PM



Sunday, October 12, 2008
      ( 4:25 PM ) The Rat  
I have stumbled across dictatorships all too often during my life, albeit with different characteristics and aims; it almost seems as though they were following me around.
Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II*

*more on the awesomeness of Agent Garbo here

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:25 PM



Saturday, October 11, 2008
      ( 3:11 PM ) The Rat  
AM I THE ONLY ONE who was horrified to see this article among today's Yahoo "Top Stories"? Not that it's a bad article, but... there were people out there who didn't know these things?! And those people get to vote?!?

Whether you're a stock broker or Joe Six-pack, if you have a 401(k), a mutual fund or a college savings plan, tumbling stock markets and sagging home prices mean you've lost a whole lot of the money that was right there on your account statements just a few months ago.

But if you no longer have that money, who does? The fat cats on Wall Street? Some oil baron in Saudi Arabia? The government of China?

Or is it just—gone?

If you're looking to track down your missing money—figure out who has it now, maybe ask to have it back—you might be disappointed to learn that is was never really money in the first place.

Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, puts it bluntly: The notion that you lose a pile of money whenever the stock market tanks is a "fallacy." He says the price of a stock has never been the same thing as money—it's simply the "best guess" of what the stock is worth...


# Posted by The Rat @ 3:11 PM



Thursday, October 09, 2008
      ( 9:26 PM ) The Rat  
HEE!

Unlike Goldilocks, a man who stumbled into the wrong suburban Washington, D.C., home after drinking too much found the bed there just right.

Bob and Joanne Breiner returned home from a night out to find a man with a white beard nestled in their bed, sound asleep. Once police showed up and the drunken stranger realized what had happened, he apologized profusely and complimented the couple on their comfortable bed...

# Posted by The Rat @ 9:26 PM


      ( 8:47 PM ) The Rat  
THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE FROM AN ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE, via Arts & Letters Daily.

I don't agree with absolutely everything on this list, but you have to admit, "Sully Prudhomme vs. Tolstoy" = a bitch slap if there ever was one.

I've read 31 people from the real list, and 72 from the "alternative" one, so at least the writers on the latter have won at the box office, sort of.

# Posted by The Rat @ 8:47 PM



Wednesday, October 08, 2008
      ( 3:43 PM ) The Rat  
WHAT OBAMA AND MCCAIN WON'T TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR MONEY. Pretty basic stuff, but useful.

# Posted by The Rat @ 3:43 PM



Monday, October 06, 2008
      ( 11:25 PM ) The Rat  
5 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS EVEN DUMBER THAN THIS ONE.

Finally, in what has to be the least subtle negative ad technique in history, Adams' people distributed flyers that said, "Jackson is to be President, and you will be HANGED." It's true! Jackson is running for president on a platform of Murdering Everyone. That he even got the nomination in the first place is just a shocking oversight on everybody's part...

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:25 PM


      ( 10:58 PM ) The Rat  
THE 6 MOST HORRIFYING WAYS ANYONE EVER GOT RICH. This is fun.

Later Crassus went off to war in Parthia (modern day Iran). His soldiers demanded he parley with the Parthians who had offered to meet him. At the meeting Crassus was seized, tortured and had molten silver poured down his throat to sate his thirst for wealth.

And that, Mr. Obama, is why you don't negotiate with Iran.


# Posted by The Rat @ 10:58 PM


      ( 4:10 PM ) The Rat  
TODAY, RATTY gave her first lecture gained a new appreciation for every teacher whose class she's ever attended in her entire life. (It was a lot of fun, actually—I just somehow doubt my captives audience were quite as excited about Wuthering Heights as proto-modernist text, as I was...)

# Posted by The Rat @ 4:10 PM



Saturday, October 04, 2008
      ( 10:37 PM ) The Rat  
THE SEMAPHORE VERSION OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS. (Hey, I need some relief from prepping my first undergraduate lecture...)

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:37 PM



Wednesday, October 01, 2008
      ( 11:55 PM ) The Rat  
CHINA LAUNCHES FIRST WILLING MANNED MISSION INTO SPACE, via the Onion.

# Posted by The Rat @ 11:55 PM


      ( 10:55 PM ) The Rat  
LEAVE IT TO PREMJI. Damn.

If you happen to be flying economy on one of India's wonderful, efficient new airlines, you might find yourself sitting next to a dignified gentleman with a trim mustache and swept-back snow-white hair. A university dean, you might think, or a high-court judge. In fact, this is Azim Premji, chairman of the IT outsourcing giant Wipro.

Premji is worth about $17 billion, making him India's fifth-richest man, so he doesn't need to fly coach. He does it to make a point. The point isn't that he's a man of the people. A soft-spoken, cerebral man of 63, he's far from folksy. The point is that Wipro, as Premji puts it, is "a middle-class company."

By that he means honest, hard-working, disciplined and modest—extravagant in nothing except its ambition to serve customers and become a better company. If that sounds a bit preachy, it's because Premji is on a mission: to turn Wipro, and by extension all of corporate India, into an ultralean competitor whose management practices are among the most advanced in the world.

The stereotypical emerging-economy billionaire is a bumptious wheeler-dealer who gets ahead by exploiting his government connections or his country's cheap labour. Premji shatters that mould. Methodical, precise, quietly driven, he is building a company that is as smart, professional and modern as any in the West—perhaps more so...

# Posted by The Rat @ 10:55 PM




A page I'm starting to get the overlords at EveTushnet.com to stop $#@! bugging me


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