Silflay Hraka

Once again the Ocracoke ponies are safe for three to five minute viewings by hot, distracted children.

We need a Duke brew like this.

Bud Light, an abbey beer.

Aimed at the 25-to 34-year-old market, Bud Light is being brewed at St Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny where an Anheuser-Busch brewmaster will oversee every step of the process.

“God dammit! When I say add 10 gallons of horse piss, I mean 10 gallons!”

The video itself isn’t all that but the women in it do some things with their bodies that are seriously, disturbingly wrong.

I mean, I can’t even touch my toes.

Link via Defense Tech

Ga. mother seeks Harry Potter ban

ATLANTA – A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban
Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series is an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Another misguided soul is attempting to have the Harry Potter novels banned. The best part is that this particular soul hasn’t bothered to read the novels herself. She just assumes they are negative and “evil” because the subject matter is a little fantastical.

I’ve read the Potter novels and seen the movies and mostly what they promote is good over evil the belief that we are defined by the choices we make in life. They also point out in no uncertain terms that there is evil afoot in the world and we either sit on the sidelines or confront it head on. Besides that, they are also highly entertaining.

I did my level best to find the woman’s email address so I could email her my thoughts on her ignorant behavior but I couldn’t find it. Free no-prize to whomever can come up with it and posts it here.

Welcome to the 211th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities! There were a lot of great entries this week and I was really impressed by the quality of most of them. Some of them, however, I feel don’t necessarily belong in the CoTV.

I attempted to provide some kind of editorial control in last weeks edition. I attempted to separate those posts I deemed to be overtly or covertly “commercial” from those that were purely…bloggy. The posts I deemed either commercial or questionable were simply listed at the end of the Carnival without any commentary. Understandably, there were some who disagreed with my decision. Usually the people who disagreed were the people who’d submitted those posts. Only one person truly took offense, however, and the reactions that weren’t positive were at least civil and I appreciate that.

The whole episode got me thinking about what belongs in the Carnival of the Vanities and what doesn’t. Some people might say that everything submitted should be posted but I think that’s part of what’s been ailing the Carnival for a while now. People have been submitting anything and everything and, since the Carny has been sans editor, the average quality of the posts dropped to the point at which the Carnival was becoming irrelevant.

All this begs the question as to what makes a good CoTV post and what doesn’t? I think the answer lies in the original concept of the Carnival. From Bigwig’s original vision:

How many times have you published a really good post, something that you thought was a finely crafted model of trenchant wit and amusing scholarly insight, only to have it sink into the vast waters of the blogosphere with barely a ripple? How many times have you thought that here at last is something that will get me a bit of recognition from the blogerati, only to be wrong? I think that this happens to almost all bloggers, big and small. Sometimes it’s just timing. If you put up a really good post about your kid or some arcane bit of knowledge on the same day that Britney Spears assassinates Yasser Arafat, it’s not to get the attention it would have otherwise deserved. Sometimes there is no good explanation, as the child of your mind sits there, ignored, a wallflower at the school dance, while everyone around you dances with the popular kids…So I have a request, one that I think might go a ways towards solving both problems. If you think you have a good post, e-mail me the link. I’ll read it, and once a week, I’ll link to the ones I’ve gotten. It’ll be an index of what you and other bloggers think is their best stuff.

If you look at the points I’ve emphasized, you’ll get an idea of what I think the Carnival is all about. It’s about exposing your best stuff to the rest of the blogosphere. With that in mind, the editorial clipping for the Carnival shouldn’t begin with me. It should begin with you. I only have to edit the Carnival if and when people fail to edit themselves. It’s pretty easy to tell who is using the Carnival to drive traffic to their blog and who is using the Carnival to provide exposure to truly good writing. The people who do the first, while claiming to support CoTV, have slowly been poisoning it instead. Readers don’t have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff and assume most of what appears in the Carnival is poor.

If you have trouble deciding whether a post you’ve written is Carnival worthy or not, ask yourself a few questions. First off, how much effort did it take you to write? That’s probably the most accurate barometer of Carnival-worthiness. If it took you three to five minutes, that’s probably an indicator that it’s not your best stuff and it probably doesn’t belong in CoTV. As far as content is concerned, ask yourself if it is well-written, witty, insightful, thought-provoking, entertaining, creative, enlightening and informational. Meeting one of those criteria is good but probably not enough for CoTV inclusion. Meeting several is probably a good sign.

Lastly, a good post answers questions but a great post asks more. The best posts are the ones that get into your head and stick with you and get you to ask and answer questions of your own.

If your posts meet these kinds of criteria, they’ll probably make it into future installments of CoTV. If they don’t, don’t expect to see them in this space just because you’ve submitted them. They might make it up or they might not. They might even make it up as examples of what not to do. In the end, my editing will only serve to help those hoping to gain exposure from the Carnival. Putting your best foot forward is never bad policy. That’s how you turn readers into fans. Putting forth a mediocre effort will only serve to make readers ambivalent about your writing and it also hurts this Carnival.

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With all that said, let’s get this Carny started.

As I sat down to read the entries last night, I was really impressed by the quality of some of the material. I was especially impressed with Francois Tremblay’s commentary on Sound Bite Morality. I have often wanted to comment on the level of propaganda directed at us in the media every day and I’ve often though ethics and morality are topics that aren’t addressed well in our educational system. Francois addresses both topics capably but I find myself wishing he were a little less general and a little more specific in relating the material to our modern s

If the shad can’t make it over the dam, then the obvious solution is to deflate the dam.

Want to be a success in life? Well, you should have started drinking earlier.

“Ultimately, among males employed at age 26, the wages of those who binge drank 10 years previously are about 6 per cent higher than those of their non-binging peers,” says the paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Other studies show employees who currently drink are likely to earn more than those who do not.