barackobama:

Federal spending, taxes, and the annual budget deficit are all lower now than when President Obama first took office. Facts! (via ThinkProgress)

barackobama:

Federal spending, taxes, and the annual budget deficit are all lower now than when President Obama first took office. Facts! (via ThinkProgress)

Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.

Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.

In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.

“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”

Fathers like … Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.

What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.

I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.

But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.

wilwheaton:

sparksmcgeeadventures:

I felt that Sparks McGee was lacking in the world outside the internet so I designed this T-shirt and got it custom made for me :) I don’t know the first thing about mass production and retail of clothing though so this is the only one in existence. Perhaps if it’s awesome enough Wheaton can convince his shirt making buddies to make this a thing ;)

wilwheaton:

sparksmcgeeadventures:

I felt that Sparks McGee was lacking in the world outside the internet so I designed this T-shirt and got it custom made for me :) I don’t know the first thing about mass production and retail of clothing though so this is the only one in existence. Perhaps if it’s awesome enough Wheaton can convince his shirt making buddies to make this a thing ;)

futurescope:

Nanotech coating keeps out the water, but not the air

Spanish nanotech company TECNAN is offering a nanoparticle-based coating that repels liquid, yet still allows the underlying material to breathe.

The hydrophobic coating, known as TECNADIS, is made by suspending nanoparticles in a liquid carrier – the identity of those particles is a trade secret, although by altering their concentration, the properties of the coating can be fine-tuned for different applications. When applied to materials such as concrete, ceramic, brick, stone or wood, TECNADIS causes any liquid subsequently applied to them to bead up and roll off instead of soaking in. It doesn’t completely seal their pores, however, so air can still pass in and out of them, minimizing moisture retention-related problems such as mold.

The coating is completely transparent, and reportedly won’t change the color or surface texture of materials. It stands up to regular cleaning methods, along with UV light exposure, and is said to remain effective for over ten years.

[read more] [TECNAN]

(via emergentfutures)