KGB Report by Kevin G. Barkes

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(July 2000 and earlier)

Saturday, January 26, 2008
posted by KGB at 10:13 AM (permalink)

Politics was a lot simpler in the 60s...

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posted by KGB at 4:55 AM (permalink)

He'll make a great G.O.P. candidate...

He apparently will be the front guy, with a mystery voice behind the scenes pulling the strings.

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posted by KGB at 2:23 AM (permalink)

Another reason to patronize locally-owned businesses:

They're honest:

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posted by KGB at 12:25 AM (permalink)

The KGB Report's Most Significant Discovery of the Week

Tony's Pizzas are on sale at Giant Eagle through February 6.

5 for $10.

Yowza. Talk about your economic stimuli...

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Friday, January 25, 2008
posted by KGB at 2:32 PM (permalink)

The REAL Mars picture the government doesn't want you to see...

Has anyone seen my Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator? Hmmmm??

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posted by KGB at 8:30 AM (permalink)

Why is television news so dishonest?

We in the press are often accused of hyperbole. Hype for short. We try to avoid it at all costs.
-Peter Jennings

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posted by KGB at 8:20 AM (permalink)

Online comment of the day

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posted by KGB at 8:12 AM (permalink)

Bearding the lion...

The taping of an internally produced and distributed AT&T talk show is halted when the guest talks about AT&T's intention to read everyone's email and instant messages instead of nifty gadgets.

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posted by KGB at 6:36 AM (permalink)

Executive Intelligence Summary

"None of us is as smart as all of us?" Isn't that the whole problem?
The Covert Comic

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posted by KGB at 6:11 AM (permalink)

Birthday quotes of the day

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.

-Virginia Woolfe, (1/25/1882-3/28/1941)

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Thursday, January 24, 2008
posted by KGB at 2:37 AM (permalink)

Ambiguous signage of the day

One way or another, you can bet some form of cheese will be involved.

Totally unsolicited plug: Don't miss Soul Village at The Baltimore House in Pleasant Hills on Saturday February 1 starting at 9:30pm, and on Valentine's Day (Thursday, February 14) from 7 to 11. Sugar Ray Morrison and his band are incredible- the best funk/Motown you'll hear anywhere. We never miss them. And the crab legs aren't bad. Tell Rosie I sent you.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
posted by KGB at 5:41 PM (permalink)

Ok Steve, I take it back...

Several senior executives at Apple took home 2007 cash bonuses that doubled their salaries, but Chief Executive Steve Jobs maintained his annual pay of $1 and took no additional compensation, the company said Wednesday.

"In fiscal year 2007, Mr. Jobs' entire compensation consisted of his $1 annual salary," Apple said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Because Mr. Jobs' continued leadership is critical to the company, the Compensation Committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him," the maker of the iPod said.
-via ZDNet

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posted by KGB at 3:42 PM (permalink)

Aha! It's Steve Jobs' fault!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off more than 200 points in early-afternoon trade. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 3%. "The Apple news spooked some people, who expected consumer spending to hold up," said Charles Rotblut, senior market analyst at Zacks.com. In its earnings call late yesterday, Apple said U.S. iPod sales last quarter were flat with year-earlier levels. That's despite redesigning its Touch and Nano handhelds, noted analyst Shaw Wu, of American Tech Research.
-The Wall Street Journal

I feel so guilty about not buying that iPhone. Sniff.

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posted by KGB at 4:24 AM (permalink)

Remembering Johnny

John William "Johnny" Carson (10/23/1925-1/23/2005)

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posted by KGB at 4:12 AM (permalink)

Happy Birthday, Ernie

Mr. Kovacs was way ahead of his time.

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posted by KGB at 12:01 AM (permalink)

Humorous quantum superposition-related photo of the day

Schrödinger's LOLcat, from Icanhascheezburger.
(I was once almost ejected from a high school physics class after suggesting a theoretical third state for Schrödinger's feline: really, really pissed.)

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
posted by KGB at 4:27 PM (permalink)

A 34 minute sound bite.

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posted by KGB at 2:43 PM (permalink)

It has a good beat, I'd give it a 3.14159265358979323846....

https://pi.ytmnd.com/

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posted by KGB at 7:38 AM (permalink)

The guy is just shameless

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posted by KGB at 7:05 AM (permalink)

Cartoon caption of the day

You know things are bad when the credit card applications stop coming.
(The Wall Street Journal)

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posted by KGB at 6:34 AM (permalink)

Woof. Woof.

"Hungarian scientists are working on computer software analyzing dog barks that could allow people to better recognize dogs' basic emotions, Hungarian ethologist Csaba Molnar said."

I guess it takes a while for the news to get to Hungary, not that it really matters.

If you have dogs, you're sharing your home with highly social mammals who really have very little difficulty expressing themselves. I'd wager most married couples would readily admit that it's often much easier to communicate with their canines than with their spouses.

And let's be honest. Sometimes technology just doesn't deliver:

(The Far Side® by Gary Larson)

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Monday, January 21, 2008
posted by KGB at 4:06 PM (permalink)

Bizarro World

Why is the only insightful, accurate reporting of the Presidential campaign available only from "fake news" outlets?

Trust me on this. Avoid the commercial news outlets. If you really want to know what's going on, watch The Daily Show. Once you see Stewart in action, you'll never watch Couric/Williams/Gibson again.

In the words of Geoff Miller, "Come, let us peel back the foreskin of misconception and apply the wire brush of enlightenment..."

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posted by KGB at 7:56 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to... is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.
-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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posted by KGB at 4:16 AM (permalink)

Speaking of Values...

The values with which citizens should be most concerned are those contained in our Constitution- which, it appears, no one bothers to read. As a public service, the news media- which frequently reminds us that Romney is a Mormon, that Kennedy was a Catholic, that Obama has been accused of being a Muslim- should precede every article dealing with a candidate's religious beliefs with the applicable portion of our law of the land, from Article VI, Section 3:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

The emphasis was added by me for a reason: It is the only occurrence word "ever" within in the Constitution. The Founders may have provided interpretive wiggle room in other places, intentionally or otherwise, but they were absolutely adamant in this case.

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posted by KGB at 3:51 AM (permalink)

I got yer wind chill right here, pally...

As I've said before...

The surface temperature of an object will never be lower than the actual air temperature. If it's 0°F and the wind is 20 mph, your automobile radiator's temperature will be 0°F, not -22° (the calculated wind chill temperature).

If it's windy, and the temperature is freezing, your skin will freeze faster, since the wind will cool off your skin more rapidly than your body can heat it. Sort of like blowing on your soup to cool it.

NOAA redid the formula for wind chill calculation a few years ago, making the numbers less scary. The media didn't like that, since it made their Storm Team Severe Weather Apocalypse Now forecasts less scary. Be that as it may, the new formula for calculating wind chill is:

WCT = 35.74 + .6215T - 35.75(V^.16) + .4275T(V^.16)
WCT = Wind Chill Temperature.
T = Temperature (F).
V=Windspeed (miles per hour)

Wind chill is of primary concern to bald nudists and morons. If it's below freezing, cover exposed skin or your skin will freeze.

The real question of the day, though, is why 72,740 idiots would actually pay for the privilege of watching millionaire mercenaries play with their balls in sub-freezing weather.

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Sunday, January 20, 2008
posted by KGB at 6:03 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

People only pretend to read the Bible. Their eyes glaze over, and they remember a couple of passages that they ignore when they feel like ignoring, like "Turn the other cheek." And, then they, when they don't like somebody, they go flipping through this massive book, full of ancient desert prejudices, looking for something to justify it. Just like they justified slavery using the Bible, because there are passages in the Bible that justify slavery, including passages that justify selling your daughters into sex slavery. Right there, that's Biblical, those are Biblical family values. And so, we have this selective sort of reading problem with the Bible. If we're going to enforce it all, stone the gay people, but, you know, stoning the adulterers first starting with Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain... by the time it's my turn, they'll be out of rocks.
-Dan Savage

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Copyright © 1987-2024 by Kevin G. Barkes
All rights reserved.
Violators will be prosecuted.
So there.
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...