QuizMasterChris' Pub Quiz Blog & Infoporium

This week's Subject round topics; change in DH drink specials

2012-01-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 25, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FORMER PLACE NAMES

Thursday, January 26. 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: SCIENCE

FYI there's been a bit of change to the specials at the Draught Horse, once again Magic Hat brewery drafts are on special, but your harder stuff on the cheap is now all Jose Cuervo tequila drinks. Nothing bad has ever come from wide availability of inexpensive tequila so I'm sure everything will be just fine.

Quiz returns to The Draught Horse this week!

2012-01-16T18:32:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 18, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MAGAZINES

Thursday, January 19. 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: 2011: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The quiz returns to Temple U. this week, once again with drink specials from Magic Hat brewery and UV Vodka.

Quiz returns to The Draught Horse January 19

2012-01-09T19:41:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, January 11, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down

9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: BRITISH TV

Thursday, January 12
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ THIS WEEK - SEE YOU JANUARY 19!

Enjoy a family-free, non-holiday related quiz

2012-01-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 4, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down

9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Thursday, January 5
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ - SEE YOU LATER IN JANUARY!

It's time for the annual Year in Review subject round

2011-12-27T20:16:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, December 28, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2011: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Thursday, December 29
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ - SEE YOU IN JANUARY!
The Draught Horse has entered its winter hibernation, during which time it closes early and often. I understand that Temple's upcoming term is another early start and I'll pass along the date of our first quiz as soon as I get it.

Aiming for an audio round this week!

2011-12-20T13:33:00.003-05:00

Wednesday, December 21, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: aiming for AUDIO

New amp and other audio equipment obtained this week. I'm playing around with things - more time for this tomorrow - and if the sound isn't too treble-laden/seizure-causing I'll be doing the first audio round in some time. If not I'll do a round of music questions.

Thursday, December 22
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ - SEE YOU IN JANUARY!
The Draught Horse has entered its winter hibernation, during which time it closes early and often. I understand that Temple's upcoming term is another early start and I'll pass along the date of our first quiz as soon as I get it.

Last Draught Horse quiz of term might happen this Thursday

2011-12-12T16:35:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, December 14, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: NUMBERS

Thursday, December 15, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: GREEK & ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

I had thought given Temple's quite early term beginning and ending this year that last Thursday's quiz was the last of the term. At Friday night's spelling bee event management suggested that people might still be showing up to the bar as late as next week, thus we are tentatively scheduling the new last Draught Horse quiz for 2011 for the usual time on December 15. This is apparently the plan until and unless I hear otherwise (i.e. that the bar has been dead all week therefore no point in attempting to do a quiz). I will update this site immediately if I hear we're calling it off, default expect another quiz on Thursday.

Speaking of the spelling bee... We've now had three of them. I've asked a total of about 320 words and around 20 of those have been spelled correctly. Is that spelling is an impossible task, or just at Temple (this I'm willing to believe; I see your quiz answer sheets every week), or just for the people who drink at Draught Horse on Friday nights?

It's going to be a busy week, I'm doing a couple of holiday office parties during the day, and Friday evening for the fifth consecutive year a quiz at the Union League for one of their Xmas shindigs.

This week's Subject round topics; new Spelling Bee scheduled

2011-12-06T22:23:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, December 7, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE BIBLE

Thursday, December 8, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: CENTRAL AMERICA

Friday, December 9, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
ALCOHOL-RELATED SPELLING BEE

This week's Subject round topics

2011-11-29T23:58:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, November 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: CENTRAL AMERICA

Thursday, November 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

For once this week's photo is one I took. This is about the coolest place in the world and I encourage you to visit - Antigua, Guatemala.

Happy Thanksgiving - no Draught Horse quiz this week

2011-11-23T11:04:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, November 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: COLONIAL AMERICA

Thursday, November 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ - THANKSGIVING

Yahoo article on Slinky snubs Philadelphia, can't get much else correct either

2011-11-20T01:35:00.000-05:00

A recent Yahoo! article by "Mike Smith" (Real person? Who knows!) couldn't get much correct about the Slinky.

First the article claimed it was invented in a Pittsburgh shipyard, when in fact it was invented at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

Next the claim was that the Slinky is between 70-80 feet of wire, when in fact the standard Slinky is 62-63 feet in length, which happens to have been a recent quiz question of mine.

Not content with getting these things incorrect, the article claims that "they're not made from long wires that are rolled into coils, but shaved in a circular pattern from lengths of metal pipe." As another commenter on that article points out, "made from long wires that are rolled into coils" is exactly what happens, and there's YouTube video to prove it for fuck's sake. Does this internet "journalist" not have an internet connection..?

Given what we can't seem to get correct about the damn Slinky, claims on Yahoo about rather more complex topics such as the economy and foreign policy should be taken with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

Your weekly Subject rounds are...

2011-11-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, November 16, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SOUTH ASIA

Thursday, November 17, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: HAUTE CUISINE

The prize bins are still overflowing, thus extra prize rations for non- gift certificate or gift card teams again this week.

Extra prizes awarded this week

2011-11-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, November 9, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BEST PICTURE WINNERS

Thursday, November 10, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: BIG BOX OFFICE LOSERS

The prize bins are overflowing, thus extra prize rations for non- gift certificate or gift card teams this week.

This week's belated Subject round topics

2011-11-02T12:08:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, November 2, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Thursday, November 3, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: HUMAN ANATOMY

Friday, November 4, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
SECOND-EVER ALCOHOL-INTENSIVE SPELLING BEE

This week's Subject round topics

2011-10-25T23:24:00.002-04:00

Wednesday, October 26, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: CARS

Thursday, October 27, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: FOREIGN PHRASES IN ENGLISH

Friday, November 4, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
ALCOHOL-INTENSIVE SPELLING BEE

This week's tasty Subject round topics; new Spelling Bee scheduled

2011-10-19T12:18:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, October 19, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: RIVERS

Thursday, October 20, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: NUMBERS

Friday, November 4, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
ALCOHOL-INTENSIVE SPELLING BEE

Quiz cancelled tonight owing to Phillies playoff game; quiz scheduled as normal tormorrow night

2011-10-05T10:22:00.004-04:00

Wednesday, October 5, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: CANCELLED

Owing to the insatiable greed-lust of MLB, Ted Turner's basic cable channels and their advertisers, we didn't know what time this game was going to be played until this morning. As the game is slated to start at 6pm, and playoff games run long, I'm not going to start this quiz after 9, particularly following what will either be people celebrating moving to the NLCS or worrying about Game 7. Note that the NLCS schedule would knock out one Draught Horse quiz as well.

I'll be watching the Phils, hope you folks have fun doing the same.

Thursday, October 6, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: SOUTHERN EUROPE

In other news the spelling bee went quite well on Friday night and we'll be doing those semi-regularly, about once/month. I will be alerting people to those here and in person at quizzes. We were a little worried about the mechanics of running the thing but it went rather smoothly, in part thanks to the general cooperation of the Draught Horse crowd. It was great to see some quiz regulars there as well!

First Spelling Bee scheduled for this week

2011-09-27T19:34:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, September 28, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SOUTHERN EUROPE

Thursday, September 29, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION - PART DEUX

Thursday, September 30, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
ALCOHOL-INTENSIVE SPELLING BEE

B is for beer, and that's good enough for you. The bee is a team event, and not a quiz at all but a modified spelling bee; expect favorable drink specials and prizes. First of many!

This week's Subject round topics

2011-09-21T10:07:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, September 21, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FAMOUS CRIMES & CRIMINALS

Thursday, September 22, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION
Last week's slap bet was resolved and the parties held up their ends of the bargain admirably. I await the insider team video, post-production, for posting.

First ever slap bet connected to this week's Futurama subject round... not kidding

2011-09-13T20:51:00.001-04:00

This was *NOT* my idea, should the courts become involved. It's just a thing happening near me that I'm not discouraging and will be collecting video to share. But not, for the record, my idea.

A couple of players from the Temple U. upper-tier team of regulars The Nudist Balloonists have each laid claim to being the bigger Futurama expert. Whichever one of them performs more poorly in the 4th round at Draught Horse this Thursday evening will be subject to a slappening. Stay tuned for video - and crucial audio.

While I have a problem with dogfighting, people voluntarily subjecting each other to potential pain and humiliation is fine by me. Whatever floats your proverbial boat.

Wednesday, September 13, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FICTIONAL BOOKS & AUTHORS

Thursday, September 14, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: FUTURAMA

Philadelphia Inquirer confuses Michael Vick with Jesus... and both of them with Moses

2011-09-12T12:06:00.018-04:00

This past Sunday the Inquirer staff saw fit to call Michael Vick "The Anointed One" in a gigantic font on its front page, followed by the worst mixed biblical metaphor I've had the displeasure to be confronted with, this by asking whether or not he would lead the Eagles to "the Promised Land."

Before anyone confuses me with Ned Flanders, my reaction as follows comes despite the fact I am an atheist. I am nevertheless familiar with the basics of Christianity; in fact this is why I'm an atheist, a topic for another time.

Jesus Christ is the Anointed One. (Many of you believed this to be Barack Obama in 2008, but you'll have to follow the links on this; trust me, it's the J-man.) In fact Χριστός (Khristos) means "anointed one", something I've known from a tender age as this is also naturally the source of my given name, one chosen for me shortly after Pope Paul VI bitch-slapped St. Christopher's feast day right off the calendar, and owing to his "pagan" origins called his sainthood into question. Who knew that would popularize the name so much?

Part of the ridiculous hypocrisy in this is of course that Jesus himself is clearly a pagan god-man figure who was often depicted as having 12 followers and is eventually nailed to (in most pre- 34 AD versions) a tree for man's salvation. (I appended that link for convenience but I'd suggest the excellent books Christianity Before Christ by Jackson and The Jesus Mysteries by former Christian theologians Freke and Gandy. I also have an excellent book on the subject by a biblical-era archeologist who wrote under a pseudonym because her colleagues are devout Christians and Jews for the most part and she didn't see her career doing at all well publishing under her own name - this to me not being a ringing endorsement of religion by itself - should I run across the book here at home I'll amend this post with its title, which I forget.)

All of this to illustrate that although I don't even think there was a "historical Jesus", about a billion people in the world do. Beyond this they consider Jesus to have been the Son of Man, God's manifestation on Earth and a being of endless compassion and wisdom. Comparing a felon/football player - one with a history of mammal torturing, lying to his bosses, breaking federal gaming laws, visiting VD clinics while spreading herpes under a name I assume was pulled from a Mexican rum bottle and giving the finger to his own fans - to the Nazerene seems to make anything I have to say on the subject positively polite by comparison.

Says ESPN:

""Vick, Peace and Phillips thought it was funny to watch the pit bull dogs belonging to Bad Newz Kennels injure or kill the other dogs." ... The report also states in mid-April of 2007, Vick, Peace and Phillips hung approximately three dogs who did not perform well in a "rolling session," which indicates the readiness of a dog to fight.

[Editorial note: But wait... I thought dogs "loved" to fight and it's "natural"... right Vick supporters? Isn't this what you cocksucking apologists always say..?]

According to the report, the three men hung the dogs "by placing a nylon cord over a 2 X 4 that was nailed to two trees located next to the big shed. They also drowned approximately three dogs by putting the dogs' heads in a five gallon bucket of water."

Vick initially told authorities "while he assisted Phillips and Peace in the killing of the dogs, he did not actually kill the dogs," but "helped Phillips toss several dogs to the side," according to the report.

However, the report says Vick took back that statement when he failed a polygraph test. "Vick failed the examination as it related to the killing of the dogs in April 2007. Ultimately, Vick recanted his previous statement wherein he said he was not actually involved in the killing of six to eight dogs. ... Vick admitted taking part in the actual hanging of the dogs."

"THAT SOUNDS LIKE JESUS TO ME!" Jesus the Torturing Liar...yes? No..? Of course it sounds more like Roman soldiers whipping Jesus or poking Jesus in the side with a spear, then casting lots [gambling!] to see who gets the clothing. But as an atheist I'm not made of the same strong moral fiber as the American Christian, and as such my ability to discern these finer points of morality is in question.

Maybe a better properly biblical front cover would have been a picture of Vick with the headline "THE ROMAN CENTURION - WILL HE WHIP THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS TO GOLGOTHA AND STAB TOM BRADY BETWEEN THE FUCKIN' RIBS?"

Why isn't there a torrent of the victimization-wrath and threatening bile that America's meek and mild Christian community specializes in raining down currently upon the failing Inquirer already? It's inexplicable! I'm disappointed. Normally the Jesus soldiers march onward at the hint of a Dan Brown poop-fiction debut, and now one of the top ... what it's down to now, 30?... let's say one of the top 30 newspapers in the country calls Michael Vick Jesus and - nothing! (It should be noted that unlike any other newspapers in the country, the Inquirer and Daily News combine their circulation figures to hide how badly they are both tanking.)

I would hope that maybe the elderly boy-rapists over at the Archdiocese and the propagandizing buffoons at the Inquirer could meet for a big rumble somewhere in the few blocks between their respective offices, then go tumbling over some falls like Holmes and Moriarty and leave the decent residents of the area alone once and for all. Yet not a mumble of protest from Team Stigmata.

In any event, any Christian, Jew or Muslim (and I should think any atheist!) can tell you that it was Moses and not Jesus who led the Israelites toward the Promised Land, although he himself dies before getting there, rendering this - astoundingly - an even poorer metaphor. Is the editorial staff at the paper this intellectually limited? It would explain a lot. Which is sillier - that we're to believe it takes 40 years to cross the Sinai or that it's taking more than 50 years for the Eagles to win an NFL championship? At the very least perhaps I could have accepted a Chuck Berry reference.

As long as Vick is being made a multi-millionaire by this gonad-less region and its sports fans of questionable moral fiber, I will continue to cheer for whatever team plays the Eagles, most especially those teams' linebackers and their ability to place a helmet on a knee. As long as the Inquirer and Daily News continue to dribble out their liquid shit and pretend that's journalism I cheer for their demise as well.

Quiz returns to The Draught Horse this week!

2011-09-05T11:10:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, September 7, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION PART TROIS

Thursday, September 8, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: TBA

We'll be starting the fourth year of Temple U. quizzes at the Horse. This year our beer sponsor and special is Magic Hat. I will also be hosting Drunken Spelling Bee at the DH later in the month, scheduled currently to begin September 30, with further details forthcoming.

This week's Subject round topic

2011-08-29T23:58:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, August 30, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: LANGUAGES & LINGUISTICS

Dumb fat racist fuck Joey Vento dies from an overdue heart attack; decent people everywhere rejoice

2011-08-24T01:48:00.002-04:00

Once in a great while Earth gets better by subtracting a human. Racist Joey-come-lately (to Pat's corner) is one such waste of perfectly good carbon.

What can one say about a man who claimed to love America and yet hung the Confederate "Stars and Bars" battle flag in his shop, a flag representing a violent, racist attempt to destroy the federal government... and a deliberate provocation to what few black customers he had. What can one say about a man who claimed to want everyone to speak English, yet had extreme difficulty stringing together a sentence in that or any other language, and whose T-shirts and bumper stickers "promoting" English managed to misuse simple punctuation. What can one say about a man who served food that Mexicans have the good taste to skip and yet posted signs to discourage their business. What can one say about a man who claimed to love Philadelphia but chose not to live here, and in fact couldn't bring himself to reside in Pennsylvania. What can one say about a man who used someone else's name for his business and didn't even spell it correctly. What can one say about a man who made money from tourists from all over the world and yet complained that he had trouble taking their orders. What can one say about a dickhead who loudly decried the immigration which saved the street his business is located upon from becoming an empty, scary ghetto.

Here's what one can say:

Joey "Dumb Fuck" Vento fetishized power as only a bootlicking fascist can. The mind reels at the brutal upbringing that produces such a twisted and limited mind. Joey had a form of necrophilia for dead soldiers and cops which - thanks to a far right wing marketing plan (if we would like to credit this low level of thinking with that title) and the grand surplus of American consumer stupidity - translated itself into more money whenever an American in uniform caught a bullet with their face. I've often said through the years that every time a Philadelphia cop died, Joey's sweatpants became a little tighter and more moist.

Asshole that he was, stupid Joey polluted the local airwaves with his racist tirades in the form of hate ads bought on local right wing talk and affiliated sports talk radio. These semi-literate ramblings were so extreme that one local sports talk host wondered aloud on the air after hearing one how his employers could allow such a thing to be broadcast. (I called WIP a number of times in all seriousness to inquire about how much countering ads would run, and the weasel bastards in the advertising department couldn't be bothered to return any of my phone calls.) Weekends bring regular invasions of wannabe tough guy asswipes on motorcycles from their nests in the white flight suburbs to heed the siren song of these racist ads.

There's something about the motorcycles and the military shit and the flags and badges adorning Joey's shithole and plastered on his local customers which screams "I am a small man frightened of a large world, and need to feel that I am larger and louder than a world I struggle to comprehend. I can't hack it alone, and I need to feel that powers larger than me are providing protection." In their fear and ignorance America's right names this "freedom."

As a long-term resident of South Philadelphia and a lifetime Philadelphian I am embarrassed in the extreme by this piece of shit and fat, illiterate racist fucks who make money from his glorified food cart. May his possessions and heirs fall upon hard times and may his name be scrubbed from history.

My history struggling against Vento's racist bullshit includes kicking the living fuck out of a Vento supporter in a quizzo grudge match to raise money for the Nationalities Service Center, a non-profit at which I volunteered to teach English to immigrants. Vento's supporters are not very bright, and in this case I more than doubled the score of my opponent to win the day. Additionally I wrote directly to Vento via his website to ask if he would be willing to donate either money or food to NSC as we were working with limited resources to, y'know, teach people who wanted to learn English how to order in fucking English.

This is all you need to know about Vento's supposed "generosity" (always loudly given as a means of cheap advertising, not the charity of a gentleman): not only did Vento and his shop not donate a penny, but they could not be bothered to return either email or phone calls with the simple decency of a direct "no." NSC never reported to me that they received one penny from Vento nor from Geno's. Is there anyone out there who still thinks that Vento had any genuine concern about the linguistic proclivities of Philadelphians?

And y'know what else? Joey's cheesesteaks fucking suck. SUCK. If you want some good food on that block I heartily recommend the authentic Pueblan fare of La Lupe. It's far better food at a far better price and the restaurant - which has a fucking bathroom, try adding one of those Geno's - wasn't decorated by Leni Riefenstahl. (I am always amused that because Geno's lacks a bathroom and sufficient table space that Joey's fucktard customers regularly cross into the territory of La Lupe to use both without any particular right to be there. Oh the irony!)

Joey's gone but his bathroomless eyesore of a crap-slinging business is still haunting our city. Decent Philadelphians everywhere should be working to shut the place down by, to coin a phrase, any means necessary. It's divisive and embarrassing. Note that the tool in the upper righthand corner of this site can be used to translate this piece into whatever language you'd like to fucking read it in, which is your right to do and my honor to provide.

Another Visual Identification subject round this week!

2011-08-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, August 17, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION, PART DEUX

This week's Subject round topic

2011-08-17T13:52:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, August 17, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE 1970s

Proper attire required for this week's quiz

2011-08-09T17:57:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, August 10, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FRATERNAL & SECRET SOCIETIES

This week's Subject round topic

2011-08-03T00:15:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, August 3, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: APES

For the first time in a couple of years... a visual ID round!

2011-07-25T13:50:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, July 27, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION ROUND

A very special night is ahead indeed.

The New York Times is still lying on behalf of Gore/Lieberman '00

2011-07-25T13:38:00.002-04:00

This weekend The New York Times, a newspaper which helped lie us into war against the Iraqi population and which on a good day is a scandal sheet dedicated to maintaining upper class power, printed an article about how Ralph Nader managed to get a refund from an airline depsite their usual anti-consumer practices.

It was impossible for the reporter to write this story - which had nothing whatever to do with any election anywhere at any time - without repeating the lie that somehow Nader's 2000 run "cost" Al Gore that election, a widely held belief which can only be held by ignoring simple logic and failing to apply grade school math. As one of the official organs for the dissemination of elite opinion in the US, it seems the Times must necessarily continue to punish any non-corporate-backed candidates for any office for having the temerity to exist in our supposed democracy.

Given a small space in which to reply via "email" (in fact an online form) to the writer, I cobbled together the following:

"Nader had nothing whatever to do with Al Gore losing in '00. The Florida GOP committed fraud before, during and after that election, the Supreme Court handed the election to Bush, Gore was a miserable candidate who lost every southern state including his home state and 10% of registered Florida Democrats voted for GW Bush - many times the total number of Floridians who voted for Nader. This is aside from the fact that no one "owed" Al Gore a vote. Nader's votes did not "belong" to Gore. First the NYT ignores Nader every time he runs and then they lie about the impact of his runs after the fact. The man has a fantastic lifetime of service to the general public and you can't write an article about him without starting it in reference to his alleged impact on a self-serving wanker like Al Gore? The NYT is our News of the World, and I hope you have a similar fate."

There are the plain facts of the matter. This is not a matter of opinion; what gave Florida to Bush was a combination of fraud and, according to exit polling, more than 10% of Florida registered Democrats - about 220,000 voters - voting directly for George W. Bush, presumably for short-term selfish tax reasons. People registered in all parties - this inlcudes a few Republicans - cast a grand total of less than 98,000 votes for Nader statewide.

Not that there would have been much difference between having any corporate, militarist Democrat in the White House as opposed to the equal with an "R" after the name. Anyone with a memory longer than a mayfly might recall that Al Gore - the millionaire son of a Tennessee senator, following in the footsteps of his father in very much the Bush mold, a tobacco farmer with a stake in Occidental Petroleum - cast a deciding vote to invade Iraq the first time around, also based in a series of lies (Kuwaiti babies being torn from incubators, Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi border) some 10 years earlier. He spent his time in Congress voting for nuclear weapons to keep Oak Ridge, TN rolling in taxpayer dough (this is the fellow who wants to "save the Earth" we are to believe), when not advocating for censoring rock and rap along with his born again lunatic wife.

Why this jackass was supposed to have been a much better president than Bush is well beyond me.

It's been evident to me for decades that the Democrats are just the other wing of America's one militarist, corporate party. The difference is that the Dems have tens of millions of people convinced that they are the ones looking out for the little guy, even as they slash social programs, send their children to die in illegal wars and shovel tax credits to corporate criminals. Heck, Joe Lieberman was so stoked to thank his supporters that he quit the damn party.

Me? I've proudly voted for Ralph four times now, beginning as a write-in in '96 after Clinton dicked over every union and environmental group in the country with "fast-track NAFTA." He's probably about the only person in the country who is smart enough for the office and has the best interests of the little guy at heart. He's been incorruptable for half a century and has never backed down from the good fight. We might contrast this with the likes of Democratic (literal) poster boy Barry Obama, who is spending billions on unconstitutional wars against six countries, protecting American torturers and war criminals from prosecution, handed a trillion dollars to his Wall Street pimps and is trying to end Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare as we know it, just as Clinton ended welfare as we know it. Bet on a Democratic president to do the dirtiest work of the Republicans and you'll never lose money. I'll write Nader in a fifth time if I have to. Fuck Obama.

Truncated summer quiz schedule for the week

2011-07-19T16:04:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, July 19, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE BEATLES

See the post immediately below about the El Camino Real quiz demise.

El Camino Real pulls the plug on the quiz... after serving quiz regulars who came out to play it

2011-07-19T15:51:00.002-04:00

The quiz at El Camino Real is done.

After seating about 10 regular players the last time I was there - and after serving them drinks and taking food orders - the acting manager declared that there weren't enough people to warrant holding the quiz that night, and that there wouldn't be one for the rest of the summer, with the possibility of "revisiting" the quiz in the Fall.

Not going to happen. I don't really need to be doing business with people who operate this way.

After some law and grad school graduations in May we lost a lot of regulars and semi-regulars and things had been touch and go in terms of turnout. The decision to drop the quiz for the time being was a rational business decision and not by itself problematic.

El Camino has had a number of managers or acting managers since I started working there; in fact the manager who initially recruited me to quizzes there - they contacted me, not the other way around - was gone by the first night I showed up to do the quiz. There is regular rapid turnover in most other positions and many nights I've had to explain to the staff who I was, what I was doing there with my equipment and that the customers expected prizes and I needed to get paid. I just stopped trying to learn new staff names at some point because people would be gone very soon anyway. It's a minor miracle that more than two years of weekly quizzes happened in this fashion.

A sincere thanks to everyone who played the last 20-some months.

These things are problematic:

- Seating and serving regular customers you know came out for an event and only after telling them that you aren't going to hold it. What a dick move. I think of the quiz players as my customers too and this is no way to treat you folks. This is the second bar that cancelled the quiz after selling all of the quiz regulars a round of drinks. How do people do business this way?

- Not bothering to contact me about this ahead of time. Worse, helping me move a juke box to find a working outlet - the one I usually use was on the fritz - and then after that cancelling the quiz. Whose thought process works this way? No one could think "Hey, maybe we shouldn't be searching for an outlet and moving furniture for an event we're going to cancel..."?

The claim is that no one could find my contact info, which I've given at least 3 or 4 employees at different times with the assurance each time that it was being held somewhere accessable. This doesn't explain not contacting me via the website - which I've announced there about 300 times - or doing a search for me online or even mentioning something to me in a previous week.

- Not bothering to mention the past few weeks after my repeated discussions with management that I would be distributing fliers in the neighborhood, putting listings in the papers and posting on the internet to promote the quiz that it was going to be cancelled "for the summer." Instead I was encouraged in this direction and thanked for the effort.

So I apologize deeply for the cancellation if you've showed up; this was as much a surprise to me as to you. Please send me some contact info if you were there for the quiz. I'm trying to at least get paid for showing up that evening and bringing in people who spent money on food and drink. They think because they cancelled with negative 5 minutes' notice that I'm somehow not owed any money. It's been more than 8 days since I left phone and email messages for the ownership and no one has bothered recontacting me.

Just all-around terrible behavior over there. Treating me this way is one thing, but your own customers too?

Incidentally I'm putting "for the summer" in quotes because A) I don't know how sincere that offer was and B) I don't have reason to expect anyone making such a statement will still be working there in the Fall if history is a guide.

Come September we're discussing options up at The Draught Horse and I might well end up there twice/week. Stay tuned.

A gift from the Internet Gods... in other news, Scotland still not a country

2011-07-19T14:33:00.009-04:00

Once in a great while the Internet Gods drop a gift in one's lap.

It appears that my cowardly internet stalker Lisa of quiz team Group W fame had her email account hijacked by a spammer while I was away on vacation. It was one of those non-blind CC attacks in which email addresses from one's contact list and/or recent sent emails is used as a spam list.

On Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 12:13 AM I received in both my personal and quiz-related email inboxes spam from Lisa's AOL account which also drew the email addresses associated with the parody blog aimed at this one out of her contacts list. Lisa claims she has nothing to do with that blog. But look at that gun smoke. By my estimation that's enough evidence to decide a civil case, what with the more-llikely-than-not standard of proof. This is good reason for Lisa not to give me cause to file one.

Part of the frustration involved in arguing with a person who hides behind multiple internet identities in multiple forums to attack me has been a base level of intellectual and other dishonesty. At least on the pages on her crappy TV show blog, where she has two whole pages devoted to calling me an "asshole," she must de facto admit that she is responsible for the content. The continuing lies and changing stories about which wilting comments she has made about me in which forums (including this one until I banned her comments for sockpuppetry) are immature and tiring.

In initially arguing the Scotland question while having several people yelling at me in a bar I made what is a social mistake pretty much only in the anti-intellectual United States; I pointed out that I knew the answer to a straightforward boolean status of a place being a country or not because I spent four years in a program for Comparative and Developmental Politics, and had the toolkit as it were for examining the question readily at hand.

Similarly if someone were arguing with a doctor about whether or not some bodily structure is a bone or not, I would expect that person to eventually point out that, hey, I went to frickin' medical school, so, uh, maybe I know this one. This isn't a substitute for explaining why that is - I have in fact wasted hours and days of my life patiently explaining to the extent that people will patiently listen the hows and whys of this fact on this site and at least three others, usually arguing with Lisa and her sockpuppets- and claiming that my mention of 10 years' experience in education and as a professional in geography education (!) is all just an "appeal to authority" argument is just more intellectual dishonesty on her end.

Lisa having dropped out of 10th grade, this seems to have hit a nerve, a large one connected to the lizard brain, and has sent her into enough of a fit to attack my quiz blog through a series of fake names, attack my internet sales venue, create a parody blog of this one (which she disowns) and two pages of direct attacks on me on another unrelated blog (which she really can't disown).

Coming from a working class background myself I get where some of the venom comes from, but honestly I wouldn't accept withering attacks on my education and intelligence from a Harvard professor - especially not Harvard, egad! - let alone someone whose formal education stopped in their early teens. (Coming from a working class background myself I should also point out that I'm not going to let an underachiever piss on my self-attained educational accomplishments and an income stream of mine in order to boost her self-esteem.)

I did at one point misstate that Lisa earned a GED; as she points out on the "asshole" page she did not. Had she done so she would have actually taken a series of high school classes to which most Americans are now exposed, and perhaps be vaguely familiar with the use of reference materials, standards of proof and maybe even social norms when discussing a topic. Lisa did take a "three-Rs" basic skills test to be declared whatever the State of New York considers minimally educated to enter the world, and so far as I know has escaped well into adulthood without encountering actual classes in the sciences, math and social studies beyond the 10th grade level. So thanks for the opportunity to set the record straight, Lisa, since we have you in print on this website and others giving your opinion of what my education prepares me to understand and explain.

Life lesson: People who live in the basement of someone else's house (owing to a lifetime of reduced socioeconomic standing based in a lack of educational achievement) shouldn't throw stones.

Lisa's wearying little pseudo-intellectual parlor trick is to switch between at least three mutually contradictory "methods" of determining what a country is in a hamfisted shell game. Whenever anyone tries to box her into one failed position and stick with it through a logic train in hopes of arriving somewhere, she'll drop one argument completely and run to another. If even one of them held water this might not be so pathetic.

1) A country is an area that was formerly independent, even if it isn't now. No, it isn't. Are Hawaii, Texas, Vermont, California, Bavaria, Sicily and Andalusia "countries" these days? Does anyone say that, ever? Would anyone like me to start accepting Vermont as an answer to Speed round questions requiring countries? Also Lisa claims repeatedly that "Northern Ireland is a country", even though that isn't even all of Ulster, and was never independent. So she's not actually using this standard all of the time even within the UK while making her other arguments.

Beyond this Lisa and others have started pretty much every argument with me by claiming that Scotland has country trappings now, such as a parliamentary body (Pennsylvania has two of those) or a land border (Maine, anyone?) or distributed paper [but not coin] currency that is graphically different (as do the 12 Federal Reserve Bank regions). Anyone who truly believed that "country" is a function of what used to be would not argue these points in their favor, let alone begin an argument there.

2) "The" dictionary says Scotland is a country. Well, there isn't one dictionary, is there? For every sloppy private publisher - we know that there isn't any body that regulates and coordinates these things, yes? - who claims that there are "four countries" in the UK another will define the UK as one country with "four territories" or something other. Because dictionaries contradict each other (assuming you want to read these entries the way that a religious fundamentalist reads a religious text, a problem by itself), even from one entry to the next, certainly from one edition to the next, all written by different people, Lisa selects dictionaries that, quoted out of context, support her and ignores all the ones which do not. Other people and I have asked her dozens of times how she determines which dictionary is then "correct", forsaking all others, and get no answer. She doesn't seem to have considered that there is more than one form of English in the world with different published reference works, and certainly has no answer for why this is a determination made in the English language and no other. Does she imagine that the global community discusses whether or not to recognize a country based in English dictionary definitions?

In any event in my Speed round quiz question I asked for 14 European countries meeting certain requirements on a list that included Spain, France, Portugal and so forth. That number 14 is important as it should in the mind of any sane person remove any doubt that there are too many subdivisions of actual countries for me to have expected their parts and not the whole as answers, and that only independent political entities were expected as answers. Even Lisa's team understood this and answered "UK" and not any parts thereof at the time. Any time she makes any fizzling arguments about supposed ambiguities in the term she takes special care to avoid this context while proclaiming loudly for three years that I was wrongly applying context. This isn't about the accuracy of my quizzes, it's about Lisa having psychological issues to work out with me as her inflatable punchy clown.

I maintain a geography reference work is preferable to a/any/some general dictionary/ies for answering a geography question. Silly me. In the United States, the official, federal government reference for these things is the CIA World Factbook, which clearly lists the United Kingdom as a "country" and Scotland as a "first-order subdivision." Likewise Pennsylvania and Ontario are "first-order subdivisions." There would be dramatic real-world consequences attached to the federal government also calling parts of other countries countries themselves.

God forbid I bring up the fact that I worked for a number of years in geography education and in fact for a stint even for the US Department of State.

3) The common person in a bar/ the listener determines what a country is. Somehow Lisa takes both sides of a series of ongoing modern and post-modern debates in linguistics and philosophy as to how meaning is determined. I don't think this is a conscious process on her part, I'm just describing what happens. Sometimes, after spending paragraphs or pages promoting the idea that the dictionary provides a proscriptive, definitive definition of what a country is, Lisa will then reverse herself 180 degrees and begin arguing that each individual listener creates the meaning of a word.

Why I'm the only one not allowed to be "the listener" in this situation and do the damn quiz job by marking the papers by one standard is left unstated, and likely unconsidered.

Lisa also like to use out of context quotes from political science articles that she Googles selectively to try and prove me "wrong." Sometimes this results in almost humorous misreadings of the text if one consults the original. Interestingly none of these sources mention the UK or Scotland directly, they are usually concerned with the appropriateness of the new recognition of nascent states. For all the Googling, she seems to have trouble finding anyone, anywhere who claims that Scotland belongs on a list with Spain and France. (You'll note too that these are issues of present and potential future, whereas argument #1 is that Scotland is a country because it was one in the past!)

Most pathetically, Lisa will quote varied lists that there could be said to be 19X or 20X countries in the world. What's astounding about this is that all of those lists display the United Kingdom and not Scotland nor any other part thereof as "countries." This is easily understood as no body is currently representing itself to the world as the government-in-exile of a country called Scotland and there is therefore no international debate on the issue.

I believe we learned not to present directly contradictory evidence to our arguments the first day of 11th grade.

I'm on vacation; just a 12 Steps Down quiz next week

2011-07-07T00:23:00.000-04:00

Quizmaster John will be filling in for me at 12 Steps while I'm away. I'll be back the following week. Think of it as John 7/13*. Stay cool, folks.

Wednesday, July 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: I don't know, ask John...

* I had to look that one up once I typed it. How unfortunate!

This week's Subject round topics

2011-07-05T11:02:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, July 5, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: MASSACHUSETTS

Wednesday, July 6, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: CANADA

Yes, you can watch Phillies-Red Sox games and play the quiz simultaneously

2011-06-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

... in fact that's what I'll be trying to do in between questions and rounds. Both bars have baseball on multiple screens.

Tuesday, June 28, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FRUITS & VEGETABLES

Wednesday, June 29, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MASSACHUSETTS

My first game created on Sporcle - Can you name the world's 100 Largest Metro Areas?

2011-06-22T10:52:00.003-04:00

Anyone who has played my quizzes knows what a geography enthusiast I am. Thus it should be no surprise that my first Sporcle creation is a sort of demented geography mega-Speed Round, naming the world's 100 Largest Metro Areas (not merely cities within their boundaries) in 15 minutes.

When I tried to do this timing myself by writing down answers before looking up a source, I could come up with no more than 87. Back when I had my global socioeconomic data job I think I would have hit a few more. I'd love to know how you did, what you think of the game and of my publication of these games (if registered with Sporcle feel free to comment either here or there) and so forth. If people enjoy this there will be more to come. If you've published games yourself, do let me know.

And don't think a shorter version of this won't be an upcoming Speed round in the quiz! Not this week, but soon my pretties, soon...

A very mature, highly refined set of weekly Subject rounds

2011-06-20T23:53:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, June 21, 9pm

El Camino Real

1040 N. 2nd St.

(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)

Subject Round: CARTOON SIT-COMS

Wednesday, June 22, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE MUPPETS

Your weekly Subject rounds are...

2011-06-14T00:01:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, June 14, 9pm
El Camino Real

1040 N. 2nd St.

(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)

Subject Round: 1990s MOVIES

Wednesday, June 15, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: WASHINGTON DC

Do not adjust your set; switching last week's Subject rounds

2011-05-31T10:59:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, May 31, 9pm
El Camino Real

1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SIT-COMS

Wednesday, June 1, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: NEVADA

This week's schedule

2011-05-24T10:55:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, May 24, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: NEVADA

Wednesday, May 25, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SIT-COMS

This week's schedule; Quizmaster John filling in at El Camino Real

2011-05-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, May 10, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: ?

QUIZMASTER JOHN FILLING IN & WRITING HIS OWN QUIZ IN MY FORMAT; PLEASE BE KIND! I SHALL RETURN NEXT WEEK.

Wednesday, May 11, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BLUES

Thursday
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.

Draught Horse quizzes are finished for the term. The possibility exists that some events will take place during the summer, and I will be back for the Fall term. Watch this site for more info! Thank you Temple U. community for another strong year of quizzing!

This week's schedule

2011-05-10T16:09:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, May 10, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: VISUAL ARTS

Wednesday, May 11, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MUSICALS

The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.

Draught Horse quizzes are finished for the term. The possibility exists that some events will take place during the summer, and I will be back for the Fall term. Watch this site for more info! Thank you Temple U. community for another strong year of quizzing!

Tournament finale schedule

2011-05-03T09:39:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, May 3, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SEINFELD

Wednesday, May 4, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: NAME THAT DISEASE

Thursday, May 5, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: VACATIONS

2011 Tournament standings Week 4

2011-05-03T00:24:00.000-04:00

This is quickly becoming a non-contest. I've whittled the scores down to the leader board.

Teams are color-coded by bar:

El Camino Real

12 Steps Down

The Draught Horse

Lil' Roy Rogers Hornsby 560

Anpan Man 486

Nudist Balloonists 481

Westboro Baptist Church 371
LadySnark 363

Send Shane Back to San Diego (For Real) 383

Dudes Abide 336
Magna Farta 305
Bunnies Are Coot! 280

Greetings Amazon sellers

2011-05-02T00:52:00.008-04:00

Hi -

One of your number hates me because I corrected her on a quiz question she got very wrong. Not content with that alone, she had to go on to critique my education and professional experience from behind a number of sockpuppets and trolls.

A normal person might learn from this error and move on. The fellow seller in question is not a normal person.

She has spent more than a year signing into various forums under assumed names attacking me and driving angry traffic to my blog and elsewhere. Within the last week she signed me up for hundreds of spam emails from Christian marketers, thinking this to be very clever indeed. She maintains a parody blog of this one. That's how sick we're talking.

In short, she is obsessed and is cyberstalking me. Being overweight and torpid, this is the only stalking that she gets around to, seeing as actually getting up and walking somewhere would be a challenge. I have the world's laziest stalker.

The latest attack is her signing in with a new Amazon seller's forum account - she probably has several, and is likely sockpuppeting any number of threads over there as this is her style - to make one post sending you here. Do not feed the troll.

Lisa - get help. Seek professional assistance. If this continues I'm contacting a lawyer, and any other authorities that can deal with you.

Thank you.

Schedule for Week 4 of tournament

2011-04-26T11:19:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 26, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: THE 1960s

Wednesday, April 27, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE 1970s

Thursday, April 28, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: THE 1980s

All points earned this week will be entered automatically into the five-week tournament.

Schedule for Week 3 of tournament

2011-04-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 19, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: THE 1930s

Wednesday, April 20, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE 1940s

Thursday, April 21, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: THE 1950s

All points earned this week will be entered automatically into the five-week tournament.

2011 Tournament standings Week 2

2011-04-16T19:38:00.000-04:00

A smaller than normal turnout and relatively low scores in Week 1 mean that your squad still stands a good chance in the five-week tourney even having missed a game, or from a purely mathematical standpoint two games. Urban Homestead had the highest overall score in a tough Week 2 quiz with an impressive 153, but didn't play Week 1. Luckily for most of you as well I'm not so sure that Anpan Man will get in all 5 weeks... possibly not even 4.

I'm going to keep team scores up until people drop out of possible contention in absolute terms, no matter how low they are present. In fairness some teams at the bottom of the list arrived late or went home / gave up early.

Teams are color-coded by bar:

El Camino Real

12 Steps Down

The Draught Horse

Lil' Roy Rogers Hornsby 283

Send Shane Back to San Diego (For Real) 267
Anpan Man 260

Nudist Balloonists 254

Westboro Baptist Church 235

LadySnark 186

Dudes Abide 166

Urban Homestead 153

Bunnies Are Coot! 143

El 129

The Golden Jeedz 121

Magna Farta 107

Michael Thinks... 101

Buddy Bunbar 100

No Means Anal 92

Team Canada 85

Thelma & Ruiz 80

Perplexed Erection 79

Run for It, Marty, It's the Libyans! 74

Tiger Blood 73

El Guapo 67
Team Scola 67
We're Trying But We're Old 67
Anita Dickinme 66

The Corner Couple 65

Itchy Itchy Elbow 63

The Clap 59
(Not) Focused 57
Team Dignity 53

Dixie Wrecked 51
S & M 50
TU Nation 45

Number One 44

Phuk You 42
Jo & Ace 37
Green Apple Splatters 32

Disinformation's ... um... disinformation ... they create an involuntary Facebook account for you... plus how to delete a Facebook account

2011-04-14T02:24:00.004-04:00

Earlier this week I stumbled across the Disinfo.com site, which has a number of interesting stories attached to it. Disinformation published a series of eyebrow-raising books, including Everything You Know Is Wrong and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know.

I wanted to comment on a piece, which required registration. No biggie, right? We all know the drill. Enter your name, email address and a little blurb about yourself if you like and you've got a comment account and can leave a comment. Some sites require you to visit your email first to confirm.

I did the usual, entering a minimal amount of personal information, and BANG! automatically found myself on Facebook having just started an account. At no point in the registration process for Disinfo.com commenting was it made clear that registering to leave a comment was an agreement to open a Facebook account, which is at the very least a serious breach of netiquette. (It is possible that somewhere in the fine print of the site's bowels this information is available, but it most certainly is not made evident in the registration process that you are opening a Facebook and not just a Disinfo account; it dumps you into right into Facebook proper after entering your email address and name.)

Some of us can't stand Facebook (this could be the subject of a whole other post), and are aware of the difficulties in ending a Facebook account. I was happy to have come this far without any of my email addresses linked to a site that I consider one of the Great Satans of the modern age, and there's some irony in the fact that a website that claims to be against "the Man" and in favor of the open flow of information is what tricked me into opening an account.

This would be in the same league as trying to post a comment on Wikileaks and finding out that you entered your name with the local draft board.

When attempting to use the Help page on Facebook to learn how to delete an account, one is confronted with bullshit messages that Facebook Help "can't find" what you're looking for, even if/when clicking on the phrase "How can I delete my Facebook account?" Clearly we're dealing with a shady organization.

Fortunately one can use an independent search engine to find out what to do. Ironically the top reference is on a guy's Facebook page, a Catch-22 which will become evident in a moment.

The link is http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Also:

"Click "Submit" and follow the instructions.

Your account will be deactivated for two weeks, and if you DO NOT USE FACEBOOK IN ANY WAY during that period, your account is permanently deleted.
I REPEAT: Your profile isn't deleted right away! You must NOT log in to, or interact in any other way with Facebook for at least two weeks, as it will cancel the deletion request. That includes NOT logging in to Facebook using any client (like the iPhone app or IM:s like Pidgin), NOT clicking embedded Like-buttons on other websites, NOT logging in to other services using Facebook Connect (like Digg) etc etc.
Hey, while your're at it, delete all your browsing/forms history and cookies as well, to minimize the risk of accidentally using your account!
If you want out - stay out, mmmkay? ;)"

The tricky bit here is that, like Disinfo, one has to wonder how many sites directly link to Facebook without letting the user know in any obvious way.

I used to have some respect for the Disinfo people, but this stunt really makes them come off like assholes. I sent a form in telling them as much, lord knows if that will have any effect.

Philadelphia drinking water mildly (?) radioactive

2011-04-11T18:41:00.001-04:00

"EPA: New Radiation Highs in Little Rock Milk, Philadelphia Drinking Water"

Milk from Little Rock and drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday.

The Philadelphia sample is below the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for iodine-131, but the Little Rock sample is almost three times higher.

Nonetheless, the EPA does not consider the milk dangerous because the MCL is set for long-term exposure, and the iodine-131 from Japan’s Fukushima-Daichi nuclear accident is expected to be temporary and deteriorate rapidly. ...

Three drinking water samples collected in Philadelphia on April 4 contained Iodine-131, according to Saturday’s data release:

A sample from the city’s Queen Lane Treatment Plant showed 2.2 picoCuries per liter—the highest concentration in EPA’s drinking water data so far.
Water collected at the Belmont Treatment Plant contained 1.3 picocuries, and
Water collected at the Baxter Treatment Plant contained 0.46 picocuries.

Philadelphia becomes the 14th US city with radioactive fallout detected in its drinking water.

Iodine-131 has a half life of eight days: every eight days, half of its mass decays into a non-radioactive isotope of xenon."

... and if it doesn't deteriorate rapidly..?

Schedule for Week 2 of tournament

2011-04-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 12, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: BRITISH SLANG

Wednesday, April 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: PHILOSOPHY

Thursday, April 14, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: CHEMISTRY

All points earned this week will be entered automatically into the five-week tournament.

Tournament standings after Week 1

2011-04-10T21:58:00.003-04:00

A smaller than normal turnout and relatively low scores in Week 1 mean that your squad still stands a good chance in the five-week tourney even having missed a game.

Teams are color-coded by bar.

El Camino Real

12 Steps Down

The Draught Horse

Lil' Roy Rogers Hornsby 134

Send Shane Back to San Diego (For Real) 131

Westboro Baptist Church 121

Anpan Man 119

Nudist Balloonists 119

Buddy Bunbar 100

The Dudes Abide 94

No Means Anal 92

LadySnark 91
Team Canada 85

Bunnies Are Coot! 83

Thelma & Ruiz 80

Perplexed Erection 79

Run for It, Marty, It's the Libyans! 74

Tiger Blood 73

El Guapo 67

The Corner Couple 65

Itchy Itchy Elbow 63

The Clap 59

Dixie Wrecked 51
TU Nation 45

Number One 44

Phuk You 42

Michael Thinks... 39

Tournament starts this week; note 12 Steps Down quiz has later start this week only

2011-04-05T13:27:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 5, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: BASEBALL I

Wednesday, April 6, 8:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BASEBALL II
I have something I need to do Wednesday which will be pushing the quiz back roughly one hour this week only. My apologies.

Thursday, April 7, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: BASEBALL III

All points earned this week will be entered automatically into the five-week tournament.

Can't fool all of the people all of the time

2011-04-01T12:31:00.004-04:00

See also this video from a former nuclear plant executive. This looks worse than Chernobyl.

Announcing the Second Annual Spring QuizmasterChris All-Quiz Tournament

2011-03-30T17:44:00.002-04:00

These ladies are excited because they just learned that the Second Annual Spring Quizmaster Chris All-Quiz Tournament is well nigh upon us.

This will be run same as last year, when Nation of Quizlam of The Draught Horse crushed everyone and walked away with the Prize Package of nerdy books and games plus a signed Chris Pronger NHL Winter Classic hockey stick.

It's pretty simple, folks. Your team plays once/week at any combination of the venues I host and the team with the highest cumulative score over the next five weeks wins this year's Prize Package. No one need do anything special to enter; you might want to at least note if you change team names who you were in a previous week to ensure points are tallied correctly.

The usual weekly prizes apply at all venues; this is in addition to those.

I will put up a running tally of the standings on the blog weekly as I did last year, with teams color-coded by bar. All teams will be posted weekly unless they are mathematically eliminated from the possibility of winning.

Good quizzing!

Weekly quiz schedule

2011-03-27T22:51:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, March 29, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: THE 1970s

Wednesday, March 30, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ONE HIT WONDERS

Thursday, March 31, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Z

Quiz returns to the Draught Horse this week!

2011-03-21T16:37:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, March 22, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Wednesday, March 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: GEOLOGY

Thursday, March 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Q

WWJC - Who Would Jesus Cheat?

2011-03-21T13:53:00.007-04:00

For a combination of sanctimonious BS, unwarranted hubris and plain old meanness it's hard to beat the American evangelical movement. I've had a couple of run-ins with them lately worth sharing.

A few of the many thrift stores I'm constantly in are run by an evangelical group which raises money for actual charity and what appears to be "charity." (I make two categories here - actually helping people meet their physical needs and proselytizing to people, the latter a unique form of harm inflicted on the stupid by the evil when it works as intended. A good deal of the many hundreds of billions in charitable giving by the American public is for the latter, without which the world would be a better place.)

Why keep shopping there, you ask? In a country in which this is true:

"Half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels, one-fifth say they've heard God speak to them, one-quarter say they have witnessed miraculous healings, 16 percent say they've received one and 8 percent say they pray in tongues, according to a survey released Thursday by Baylor University."

... if I started shopping only at places run and staffed by secular humanists I wouldn't be able to buy much of anything any longer. And if I stopped buying from people with wretched political opinions on top of that, I'm not sure I could even feed myself any longer. On top of this I've visited and worked in a number of religious nut places around the world, and my money has no doubt supported all manner of holy charlatans and bigots. It's damn near unavoidable. At least the places are clean and the staff largely polite.

So I bear the constant Michael W. Smith - apparently God is a mighty God, as opposed to one of those weak ones, and this Jesus fellow likes constant praise - playing in the background while doing my thirft shopping and bite my tongue a lot. Besides, people who have religious monomania are seldom interested in anything else (Christopher Hitchens derides the religious for proudly proclaiming they only have use for one book) and therefore sometimes let cool stuff go for low prices because they don't know what anything secular is.

The flipside of this dynamic is that they sometimes think that things of absolutely no value are quite valuable, and have the same ease in convincing their born again customers of this that they had in convincing them of the reality of miracles and the necessity of tithing, which is how the money really comes in. This plays out mainly via silent auctions, in which people bid objects beyond any reasonable value they actually have, in part I'm convinced because an overtly Christian organization has set them aside in display cases so as to add context that implies greater value.

I've bid on only one or two objects out of the hundreds in silent auctions, mainly because to me almost all of the items are self-evidently crap that isn't worth a fraction of even the opening bid.

Over a month ago at one store I noted in the auction binder what was described as a "signed Dali print." Dali toward the end of his life cranked out a lot of signed prints of generally low quality and there are a lot of them out there, so this seemed a realistic donation for someone to make to the store.

Looking at the item, however, it was easy to determine in a few seconds that this was just a reproduction in a nice frame and not signed by any human. In fact I was stunned that any adult would not realize that the "signature" on the piece was in fact the signature in the original painting. We're not talking about needing to call in an art expert - it was like realizing that the Mona Lisa wasn't actually for sale, but that a photo of the Mona Lisa was for sale.

Worse, even though I could see this thing selling for $50 or so as a nice framed repro, bidding was fast and furious on the item and up over $450. Obviously a lot of the credulous customers thought they were making an art investment for their families, not buying a piece of generic wall art.

I brought the fact that this was a repro up to the cash register girl, who directed me to the store manager. What I thought was going to happen was that I was going to walk him over to the piece and point out as patiently as possible that an error had been made and a repro was being sold as a signed original.

What actually happened is that a Xian alpha male type who is likely used to "having authority" over his terrified wife and children in his retro household began arguing with me that the fine print of the auctions state that the thrift store could not be held responsible for any specific claims, and that since we couldn't 100% prove that the print was not signed by Dali that he felt he could make claims in that direction. (Having looked things up later, this is not valid contract language as even fraud through genuine ignorance of the nature of the item is still prosecutable as fraud. This aside from the print not having been signed by any human hand...) I argued in return that they had a severe ethical problem and that I would be contacting the police to investigate their fraudulent behavior, as it became clear that the manager was fully well aware of what he was doing, fleecing the flock.

I did call the suburban police force with jurisdiction once I got home, and they indicated that they would only investigate if I filed a claim in person, which was highly inconvenient. This was on a weekend, so on Monday morning I called the executive offices of the small chain of thrifts and had what turned into a fairly fruitful conversation after I noted that my next steps if they continued to claim they were selling a signed print would be to contact the Better Business Bureau, follow through with local police and with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, as well as sending a note to whatever PA agency grants them a non-profit tax status.

I don't much like a George W. Bush-supporting Jesus freak laughing at me in public about assuming that he's going to get away with fraud, and that there isn't anything I can do about it.

Within a day I got a call back stating that the claim that the print was signed was removed and that the most recent bidders were called and told the print wasn't signed after all.

This, I learned today, did not stop one woman from submitting a winning bid for over $500 for the piece. Lord knows (pun intended) what she thought she was buying, or what its retail value was. Surely a Christian organization wouldn't screw her... would they?

I was also told that the managers of the stores were being instructed on how to phrase the descriptions of the items so as not to be committing fraud. (How about this - how about not bearing false witness - maybe we could chisel that into a stone tablet or something so that people could remember..?)

Everything seemed hunky-dory and I thought this sort of thing was unlikely to happen again.

Until this weekend. At another store, they are silent auctioning (I believe this is ongoing as I type) what are self-evidently (to me) reproduction Confederate paper bills in a cheap frame which thrifts generally sell for $1-2. I'd hope that an adult with decent vision could immediately tell that 3 notes that were supposed to have been printed in three different states and have been circulated in the 1860s would not be A) in perfect condition, B) the exact same size (this varied by bill and by state or city of issuance) and C) all the same color, that being sepia. A lot of actual old bills have real human signatures from bank officers on them, but these look photocopied. I have no idea what the reverses look like since they were in a glass case, but for all I know they might be blank.

According to the link above, in the 1960s alone Cheerios all by itself put out more Confederate money than the CSA itself did as a cereal box prize. There are also dozens of companies which print repros for reenactments and to sell to children at historic sites. Until the 1980s no one was required to print something like "VOID" on fake money, so there are billions of dollars of worthless bills out there. It's as if they were auctioning off Monopoly money.

The bidding sheet in the binder reads "CONFEDERATE MONEY."

As of Saturday afternoon bidding was up to about $30 and climbing. Some well-meaning person will no doubt end up buying these for over $100 as an "investment" for the grandkids.

I called the same woman back on this that I did on the Dali print this morning and this time my reception was a little hostile. I was pushing for the inclusion of the word "REPRODUCTION" on the sheet as this would put the onus on the buyer.

I was informed that they might decide to do that, but with the tone of voice suggesting that that wasn't going to happen. The claims were then made that A) the fine print once again stated that no claims of authenticity were being made (although clearly the opposite is true and the fine print as covered above is legally void) and B) some customer added the word "CONFEDERATE."

The second point, I argued, was silly for three reasons. The first is that I saw the handwriting myself and the same person wrote both words on the page. Someone is lying already. I pointed out that the problem was actually the claim that this was "MONEY", the issue was not who issued it, but that's it's fake to begin with. The bills are not "MONEY." Third, the store is legally and ethically responsible for the bidding regardless of who wrote "CONFEDERATE" on the page, and I'm not sure why they would think otherwise.

This is what you get logic-wise from people only interested in reading one book.

I was passed to the CEO and founder, who went off about how Jesus came into his heart and changed his life and how he isn't growing rich from the store, is doing a lot of good (as per above, how much of that is doing material good and how much is just financing missionaries?), etc. He also had a laugh about how people bid worthless items up in a silent auctions, most recently a steel penny worth less than $1 on eBay selling for over $12.

I largely held my tongue to press for adding the word "REPRODUCTION" to the sheet to put things in the legal and ethical clear. He seemed possibly open to this, but I don't think it will happen. I repeatedly asked what the problem would be for Christians to add one honest word to a product description and never got a good answer. At one point I made reference to the "Christian angle" of the marketing of the store,and the constant playing of praise music in them, and how that might suggest that minimal levels of legal acceptability should not be their ethical target in product descriptions. Apparently offense was taken to my use of the word "angle" and that was the end of the phone call.

For me the placement of the items in an auction context along with willful omission of pertinent facts is at best shaky ground. So you can make up your own mind as to how to spend your hard-earned, non-CSA, actual dollar, these are the stores in question. Caveat emptor.

I honestly don't think these people think that they're doing anything wrong (one exception being the store manager with the Dali; that bastard knew exactly what he did). Religion makes all manner of crime holy if the plunder at least in part goes to promote the religion itself. And that's the problem. The people shooting abortion doctors and launching cruise missiles all over the Middle East think they're doing Jesus' own work too. Who will save us from the saved?

No Draught Horse quiz this week; Green beer served and green puke mopped up instead

2011-03-15T03:20:00.002-04:00

Wednesday, March 15, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Z

Wednesday, March 16, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH Q

Thursday, March 17, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ THIS WEEK - St. Patrick's Day, I will be hiding in the basement not going near a bar, which is my sacred tradition.

In the drift

2011-03-15T02:45:00.010-04:00

The ongoing Japanese disaster (link to donate to the Red Cross) gets a person to thinking.

A few years back my buddy Dave and his family picked up stakes from South Philly and moved to the Austin, TX area for greener pastures, literally and figuratively. He gave me some cool books and records from his personal collection to lighten the moving load, one of which was Michael Swanick's In the Drift.

Surely, as a Philadelphian who he knew darn well could name the first several actors to portray the Doctor in Doctor Who, I knew the book? I didn't; he was stunned.

The book, only just science fiction and not a history, was written in the '80s, and is set in a slightly alternative universe in which the Three Mile Island accident was more serious, and the natural eastward drift of contamination rendered the Philadelphia area a depopulated dead zone from which surviving irradiated residents could not leave.

Socially speaking, having lived on Two Street for a dozen years, I can say the book is also just this side of being fiction and not a documentary, with the South Philly population reverting in tribal fashion to Mummers clubs as a unit of social organization.

As it turns out, the TMI disaster was far worse than we are generally led to believe. The federal government and Pennsylvania have been hiding and refusing to recognize the true magnitude of the radiation released and the human health toll as a result, with only careful epidemiology and related work unravelling the truth, in spots, decades later. Never mind if many of the birds in the area died on the spot and people came home to their dead dogs and cats having puked everywhere and gone blind while doing it. Never mind the leukemia and the infant mortality spikes. "No one died at Three Mile Island" is the daily lie.

As the link above notes, TMI and the other nuke plants were rushed out to the general public in the '70s in a campaign - well-financed by private industry who make a killing (no pun intended) on contracts - that this "clean" technology would "reduce dependence on foreign oil," with OPEC and later the Iranian revolution as the bugaboo of the day. The reactor that failed had been in operation only 3 months before the accident happened, and of course was - and amazingly is - still described as being "state of the art" and bearing any number of "fail safes", which kept things from getting "bad."

(As always, I wonder how "bad" things need to get for the average person/machine cog to take note that even their most narrow self-interests are threatened by a system gone mad, and take evasive action if only for self-preservation. How much propaganda must one swallow eagerly to go down with the ship, or die from radiation poisoning as the case may be, insisting with the last puking breath that "tolerable" radiation levels - nothing more than a sunburn or a chest X-ray, really - are what's making our skin peel off?)

As Japanese government and industry have lied about the safety and stability of their monumentally-stupidly-placed reactors, so too has the multi-hundred-billion American nuke industry, and their wholly owned spokespeople in the Obama administration, lied for a few days, in preemptive fashion, at us about the safety of our nuke plants. You get what you pay for.

"Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.

The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."

Exelon owns PECO incidentally. They also own my congressman, and probably yours.

Today I watched Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesbabblers dodge and duck questions as to what condition our reactors are in, if they could withstand the sort of punishment the Japanese ones have had, and how prepared the US is in the event - and when you think about it it's when and not if - the next nuke disaster gets crammed down the collective gullet. Crammed, it's worth adding, by corporate people and amoral scientists fractionally as wise and in control of the natural order as they think they are.

Most amusing were the simultaneous claims that American plants are better designed than Japanese, along with an inability to name any specific element - even one - which made the two differ, a glaring omission from any honest answer which the neutered and obedient White House press corps failed to ask any follow up questions about. (This is one of the many times when not pressing the powerful to answer a direct question is anything other than maintaining a semblence of professional neutrality.) This aside from the fact that CNN has at least once noted that the plant which is currently on fire and has suffered a few explosions in the past few days was designed by General Electric, surely the last time I checked an American corporation which has naturally also designed many of our own plants.

Watching the American nuke weasels back the Japanese nuke weasels out of a sense of pure preemptive self-preservation - with the federal funding necessary for their expansion plans soon up for approval - is a stunning sight. If Satan ever needs a few one-liners to warm up the crowd at the top of The Nightly Lie Show, I'd put these guys on retainer.

The fact is that nuke plants are inherently dangerous, beginning with the fact that should one have the extreme luck to not have any serious accident for hundreds or thousands of years while the fuel is still radioactive, one is left with the known problem of how to "dispose of" (i.e. tuck away for a time) the profoundly toxic waste generated by the process in the best case scenario.

This little mindfuck is food for thought: scientists are having trouble coming up with symbols that will still warn people in 10,000 years where nuke waste is, because it will still be deadly long after anyone can understand what we're saying or doing as a civilization.

Nuke plants are dangerous enough that they can't be built without government backing, seeing as the private sector will not insure them. (Once again I ask this question: How many right wing Americans actually believe in anything resembling a "free market" for industry..?)

Against this backdrop the Obama Administration is all hot and bothered to fund the building of 20 or more nuke plants in the US. Note the supportive quote from an Exelon spokesperson. Not that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they've spent on Barry to get him to this point has anything to do with anything. No sir, those A-rabs and Iranians once again have the temerity to think that their oil belongs to them, thus for "energy independence" we must once again split our friend the atom and spin the magic radioactivity wheel, hoping for Big Dollars and No Whammies.

One wonders how much fuel we spend daily in Afghanistan and Iraq, at $400 per gallon.

There is an almost comical series of timings for Obama's energy policy shilling on behalf of the corporations which own him. First he supports offshore drilling beyond the wildest wet dreams of the Bushies weeks before BP shat all over the Gulf of Mexico. Then he rolls out a plan to sink big federal money into nuke plants right before Japan starts glowing. If he weren't being such a vicious corporate tool dickwad, crapping all over the dreams of the little people who elected what they thought was an agent for change, I would almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

Of course no one in this semi-literate 'tarded heir to the Roman Empire seems to give a hoot about the Gulf of Mexico any longer, so it's possible that Obama will be allowed to skate on both issues in 2012, by which point most Americans will have spotted a pretty color or a shiny object, and be sufficiently distracted from anything meaningful.

We can and likely will plod stupidly forward to collective doom, left in the drift. Or we could go Carbon Free and Nuclear Free, if only someone well-versed on energy issues would only take the time to bang out a detailed plan point by point. But what are the odds of anyone doing that?

Frack you

2011-03-08T16:05:00.001-05:00

This is being submitted by yours truly today to the National Park Service during their public comment period on the plans to frack the living hell out of PA upriver from our drinking water. You can add your comments to the public record here.

Public Comment on Marcellus Shale Activities Upriver from Philadelphia March 8, 2011

My name is [QuizmasterChris] and I am a lifelong Philadelphia resident. Little needs to be added from my end on the destructive and potentially hazardous activity of fracking in Pennsylvania. The plain fact of the matter, however, is that Philadelphia's government has no jurisdiction over the rest of Pennsylvania, and there is likely little more than symbolic opposition that can be registered from that quarter.

The sad fact of the matter is that Philadelphia's top ranking Democrat, Congressman and city Party Chairman Bob Brady, receives many thousands of dollars annually directly from the industries which promote and profit from Pennsylvania fracking, and at the federal level, where it counts, he has rewarded the industry with legislation and millions of taxpayer dollars which enable natural gas to be more cheaply transported and processed in and around Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional District. (That is to say that the industry is receiving subsidy which makes things cheaper for them, but the taxpayer pays multiple times, through subsidy via borrowed money, the opportunity costs of how that federal funding could otherwise be spent, and any risks associated with living alongside, downriver or downwind from these projects.)

These gifts have included working to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for dredging the Delaware River largely on behalf of the petroleum industry and the shipping corporations which service them.

Although there is no stated plan at present to move Marcellus Shale gas through Philadelphia, there is no particular reason to believe that if the region actually does end up producing 20 years of gas, or anything near that, that a set of politicians on this side of the river would not be happy to continue to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the form of pipeline subsidies to see that happen. (Another alternative is apparently to move gas as CNG, which could also be moved through our port.) As is painfully familiar this would be sold as a jobs initiative, as if government monies could not be spent to create more, better and safer jobs in any other fashion. This is the line we're sold on river dregding, military contracts, and too many other similar boondoggles to name here comprehensively.

Until the quid pro quo between extractive industries and Congressman Brady, Governor Corbett and others is confronted by local politicians and activists, events such as this (public comment period) one are rendered moot.

I am appending the relevant URLs of news stories and other data to this statement should anyone wish to fact-check.

I draw your attention to an article from the Philadelphia Business Journal dated Thursday, June 10, 2010 in which it is announced that Sunoco Logistics and MarkWest Energy Partners are partnering to pipeline and ship 50,000 barrels of Marcellus Shale gas per day through the Sunoco facility at Delmont, PA.
http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2010/05/31/daily26.html

I draw your attention to the fact that Congressman Brady, who rarely produces any form of legislation beyond renaming post offices or commemorating anniversaries, is a House Sponsor of:

Bill H.R.6524: To authorize issuance of certificates of documentation authorizing certain vessels to engage in coastwise trade in the carriage of natural gas, and for other purposes.

There was only one other cosponsor of this bill in the House, Alaska Republican Donald Young, a wholly owned pawn of the oil industry. Introduced in December 2010, this bill, which has not yet become law, would instruct the Coast Guard to authorize the vessels LNG Gemini, LNG Leo and LNG Virgo to do coastal trade in natural gas in ports such as ours. LNG of course is Liquid Natural Gas, and the three vessels, steam turbine ships built back in the late 1970s and registered in Majuro, Marshall Islands (no doubt to avoid various regulatory responsibilities), are all operated by the Pronav Ship Management corporation. The apparent proximal purpose of clearing these vessels is to bring LNG into the Port of Philadelphia, but one wonders how long that would be economically viable should Pennsylvania become a major net exporter of gas, with a Sunoco processing facility a couple of hundred miles away, all within one state whose politicians have been purchased. The industry thinks several steps ahead on these issues and we should as well.

If Philadelphia's population could count on the congressman to work this hard to derive LIHEAP fuel from his friends in the extractive industries instead of using our funds to subsidize their business we'd all be much better off for it. The natural gas industry has given over $2.8 million to Pennsylvania politicians recently, Republicans and Democrats alike. The Marcellus Shale Coalition employs Tom Ridge outright, gave over $84,000 to Ed Rendell, over $360,000 to Tom Corbett and over $60,000 to Dan Onorato. That was our choice in the gubernatorial election, vote for the guy who is bought off by Marcellus Shale or the guy who is bought off by Marcellus Shale six times as much.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marcellus_Shale_Coalition

At least at the state level there were two candidates, which is more that can be said for the 1st Congressional District.

Congressman Brady in the last election cycle alone received $5,500 from Sunoco, $6000 from Sunoco in the 2008 election cycle before that, $5000 in the 2006 cycle, $2000 in the 2004 cycle and so on and so forth. These tens of thousands of dollars alone, not mentioning other funds received from Chevron and other actors in the petroleum and shipping arena, are all part of the millions in campaign funding received and curiously spent by the congressman over the past decade despite facing no primary nor any general election challenger in most races. http://www.opensecrets.org/races/contrib.php?cycle=2010&id=PA01

In 2010 Brady raised $904,748 and spent $747,603 dollars with some $701,831 still in his campaign fund. Why does a man who is the only candidate on the ballot, receiving over 99.9% of the vote in a Soviet-style election take in and spend three-quarters of a million dollars in reelection campaign funds? How much of this money comes from polluting industries such as Sunoco, Chevron, Exelon and so forth, and what do they get in return? Why does no elected official in this city take note of or speak out about this arrangement?

Until the elected officials and activists of Philadelphia confront this corrupt process, including members of their own parties who are clearly not on the people's side, but on industry's side, and at the federal and state level where real jurisdiction exists and where much of the real damage is done, one wonders what good non-binding events such as this will have at the city level. We are all downriver not only from the pollution of Marcellus Shale but also from a corrupt and malignant party politics which sells out the people of Philadelphia and of Pennsylvania to the whims of business interests.

Thank you for your time.

Note no Draught Horse quiz this week owing to Spring Break

2011-03-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, March 8, 9pm

El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: BREAKFAST CEREAL

Wednesday, March 9, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FARMING

Thursday, March 10, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
NO QUIZ THIS WEEK - ENJOY SPRING BREAK!

This week's schedule

2011-03-01T01:11:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, March 1, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: MARCH

Wednesday, March 2, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MADNESS

Thursday, March 3, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: MARCH MADNESS

Wisconsin leads the way

2011-02-24T14:10:00.000-05:00

I told you so ... Obama the asshole

2011-02-22T14:22:00.002-05:00

Via CounterPunch:

The Vanishing President

Obama to Teachers: "Drop Dead"

By MIKE WHITNEY

Teachers. These are the people who put Obama in office. They handed out the pamphlets, went from door to door, stuffed the envelopes, and manned the phone banks. They buttonholed people outside grocery stores, waved posters atop freeway overpasses, and organized neighborhood get-togethers. They spread the word, attended the rallies and drew whatever they could from their meager paychecks to support the man who promised change and inspired hope. They did everything a candidate could ask of his supporters and more. And what have they gotten in return? A bigger war in Afghanistan, a renewal of the Patriot Act, a porno-scanning system at the airports, more blank checks for Wall Street, and a lot of empty posturing about Guantanamo.

And when their pay and pensions and their jobs were on the line, Obama was nowhere to be found.

Poof! The vanishing president.

Name one thing that Obama has done for working people?

Health care? That fetid trillion dollar giveaway to big pharma?

That just doesn't cut it.

Obama has called for a spending freeze government workers pay for the next 5 years while renewing the $700 billion Bush tax cuts at the same time. That's a feat that even Reagan couldn't have managed without igniting a revolt in the ranks. But smooth-talking Obama pulled it off without a hitch. In fact, his devotees are more ga-ga over him than ever.

Two weeks ago, Obama wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal promising to reduce "burdensome" regulations for his friends in big finance. He figured that the trillions they'd already been given wasn't quite enough to keep them happy, so he decided he'd find more rules that he could eliminate.

Then he slithered over to the Chamber of Commerce to assure them that he'd do whatever he could to "change the tone" at the White House to help them increase profitability. Just days later, Obama delivered an entirely different message to striking Wisconsin teachers. He told them that everyone would have to "make sacrifices" to make up for state budget shortfalls. Everyone except his rich friends, that is.

Recently, Obama appointed bank tycoon William Daley as his new chief of staff, and GE's "outsourcing" Jeffrey Immelt to lead his new jobs creation program. Then he finished off the month by throwing his support behind the latest labor-crushing free trade bill, this time with South Korea. According to the Oakland Business Journal: "The proposed trade deal with South Korea would cost 159,000 U.S. jobs over seven years and hurt some of the highest paying industries in the U.S., including motor vehicles and parts, electronics equipment and metal products, according to the Economic Policy Institute." Big labor is against the bill. Obama is for it. What a surprise?

Obama's new budget calls for big cuts to government subsidies for home heating oil for needy families, but allocates $5 million to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela via the State Department. What makes this so ironic, is that Hugo Chavez has been providing hundreds of thousands of gallons of free heating oil to needy American families across the US. So, while the president of Venezuela is trying to make sure that poor people in America don't freeze to death in the dark, Obama is doing whatever he can to make sure that they do.

Obama has abandoned any effort to reduce unemployment, lower tuition costs, increase welfare, minimize foreclosures, or decrease homelessness. If you are part of the growing number of working-poor in America, don't except help from the Obama team. You're outta luck.

This is from the World Socialist Web Site:

"Two and half years since the eruption of the financial crisis, more than 26 million workers cannot find a full-time job. State governments, under both Democrats and Republicans, are responding to budget deficits by closing schools, libraries, clinics and other public facilities, and carrying out attacks on state and municipal employees.

Meanwhile, Wall Street share values have fully recovered since the crash of 2008 and the corporations and their top executives are richer than ever. President Obama has refused to provide a penny of relief to workers losing their jobs, homes and life savings. Instead he has outlined plans to slash a trillion dollars from vitally needed social services, to pay for the bailout of Wall Street, the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the rich and the Pentagon war machine. And this is only the beginning....

(In Wisconsin) workers are fighting for their very livelihoods. They cannot live with what amounts to a 20 percent pay cut and devastating cuts in public education and state universities for their children." ("The struggle of Wisconsin workers enters a new stage", World Socialist Web Site)

The strike has entered its second week and still no sign of Obama. Thousands of workers and students from across the state have braved the freezing temperatures and joined in the demonstrations while closing down much of the school system.

The entire country is watching. Many people are wondering how the GOP crackdown will affect their own jobs. They're worried about their future and the future of the country.

Obama could simply fly into Madison, deliver a few words of support for the strikers, and assure himself of a landslide victory in 2012. But he won't do that, because he's not the man that people thought he was. He won't lift a finger to help his friends even when they're embroiled in the biggest fight of their lives. He won't support the people who supported him.

Obama's message to the teachers, "Drop dead!"

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state.

Subject rounds for this week's three quizzes

2011-02-22T02:05:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, February 22, 9pm

El Camino Real

1040 N. 2nd St.

(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)

Subject Round: GAMES

Wednesday, February 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: NON-FICTION AUTHORS

Thursday, February 24, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: 2000s TV

Shortened quiz schedule this week

2011-02-15T12:39:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, February 8, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: OSCARS

Wednesday, February 9, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: NEWSPAPERS

Thursday, February 10, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
No quiz this week owing to home Temple basketball game. See you next week!

A quiz is the perfect antidote to cabin fever

2011-02-07T01:25:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, February 8, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SCI-FI

Wednesday, February 9, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Thursday, February 10, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: 2000's TV

Last decade, that is. It's over and I still don't know what to call it.

Stay warm and dry - play a quiz

2011-01-30T22:09:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, February 1, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FEBRUARY

Wednesday, February 2, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ICE & SNOW

Thursday, February 3, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

This week's schedule

2011-01-24T11:24:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, January 15th, 9pm

El Camino Real

1040 N. 2nd St.

(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)

Subject Round: HISTORY OF RECORDED MUSIC

Wednesday, January 26th, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down

9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: PEOPLE WHO SHOULD PROBABLY BE MORE FAMOUS

Thursday, January 27th, 9pm

The Draught Horse

Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.

Subject Round: JANUARY

Check out a cool new music blog

2011-01-17T18:11:00.000-05:00

A little birdie told me that cool, rare vinyl-ripped tunes might be available via the new music blog St. Vitus' Dancehall. Fans of '60s garage, psych, glam, punk and so forth might want to bookmark that one and check in upon it from time to time.

Quiz returns to the Draught Horse this week!

2011-01-17T11:08:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, January 18th, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: 1968

Wednesday, October 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 1990s MOVIES

Thursday, October 14, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

Yes, I'm going to ask you trivia questions about your own damn university. I could've chosen anywhere; I chose Temple.

Everyone's a critic

2011-01-17T03:34:00.016-05:00

Your author appears to have been the recent target of a couple of internet critics of late, one sane and one frighteningly unhinged.

Evidently one of the ways that Johnny Goodtimes likes to fill blog space is by reading my blog and linking to it with broad criticism. Generally I don't mind this one bit as it serves as a reminder that people can come play my quizzes on the same weeknights he does his. The claim from some media relations people is that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Send as much traffic as you like.

Not having read Goodtimes' blog with regularity the past couple of years, I note once every few months while checking out the blog traffic stats that one or two posts from his blog are in the top 20 or so drivers to this one. Those posts I do feel compelled to check in upon.

What was exceptionally odd in the stats I reviewed this evening was that a Goodtimes post was the #4 driver of traffic here within the last three months, despite the fact that I did almost no updating of this blog of any sort in that period. What could the hubbub have been?

JG apparently finds it amusing that I've had trouble seating myself for an elective office. He wants, or "they want" (as Johnny uses the royal "we" in the post), to watch the fray with some popcorn. I suggest the large; this might take a while if anyone wants a proper explanation.

Some background: Unlike my critics alluded to here, I am a native of Philadelphia, with multiple generations of my family having resided here since getting off of the proverbial and literal boat. I have lived here almost 40 years, and in that time there have been over 1,200 charges filed against corrupt Philadelphia politicians, those only being the charges prosecutors thought they could make stick.

I have been sickened by both of this city's political parties and their filth troughs, and the resultant decline of living standards that has brought for most Philadelphians to the advantage of a handful of others, unusually high percentages of the former living beneath the poverty line, with little or no substantive education that would allow them to begin to fight City Hall in effective ways when appropriate.

For 12 years I voted at the same South Philly polling place. For most of those 12 years - over 20 times - the Judge of Elections and other polling place officials would coach voters on how to cast their ballots, and would attempt the same with me. Apparently I was the only person ever to complain about this, and the officials were shocked that I would feel it necessary to lodge any complaint over this blatantly illegal activity. Nothing ever happened when I would attempt to report this behavior to any authority.

I should also point out that I was, in my previous professional life, in charge of a polling station in a Bosnian town as an international coordinator and observer. (A normal response from an intelligent, sane person to this fact might range from casual indifference to maybe being slightly impressed... instead my second critic we'll get to below finds this for some reason to be proof that I'm some form of loser.) In other words I have a better grounding in how these things should be done than most, not that the fact that elections officials pushing a candidate or issue as illegal should be anything other than obvious to anyone.

In November 2008 I noticed that no one was running for Minority Inspector of Elections, a polling position that a Democrat can't legally hold according to the City Charter as they are the majority party. Every polling place should have one in order to avoid election day shenanigans. In many divisions the Republicans are too lazy to bother running anyone for the position, and if they decide to fill them - and note these are compensated - the party gets lawyers in the run-up to election time to get court orders to dole out the seats as political favors to party foot soldiers.

Minority Inspectors have the right to assign unfilled Clerk positions to anyone they like. Clerks aren't really necessary truth be told (I believe the Committee of 70 is advocating doing away with the position), and this becomes another way for party loyalists to screw the taxpayer, by getting a relative to sit at a table all day and collect a city check.

As I am registered independently I realized I was eligible for the position, and that I could vote for myself and have the legal right from an elected position to 1) block any Clerk from being appointed and 2) tell any elections official trying to railroad voters to shut their fucking mouth, this time as another elected official who has the specific duty of keeping an eye on them.

At this point, again, a sane and intelligent person might conclude that I'm being a good citizen, trying to clean up one little corner of a dirty city in one fashion. I'm doing it as an individual and I'm trying to save the city and the taxpayer a little bit of money, and maybe lead by example so that other people decide to do the same in their divisions.

When one person does this it's a little difficult quite honestly, and I'm dealing with a lot of people who aren't used to any form of citizen activism forcing them to question the way they do things. Certainly no one is in any way used to someone being elected to this position and taking all of its duties seriously, or for that matter even fully understanding the role. A few dozen more of me doing this for a year or two and the whole culture of (at least this small aspect) of city politics could be turned around permanently.

Instead of this reaction we get a largely inaccurate partial reportage of events, with a few snide comments. At the very least one would think a good word could be put in for either being clever enough to give myself a legal right to be in the room, or brave enough to face a roomful of hostile people with a court order and zero police protection multiple times on two different days. (Contrary to what one poster said the police have not been particularly helpful... they are rarely present for any of this for starters, and have actually confiscated a judge's court order from me instead of reading it... one which in fact called for them to enforce my taking the position.)

The claim is made that Goodtimes really wants to know the scoop on what's happening. One way to do that would have been to contact me, seeing as he has ready access to this blog, to my email and my phone number, as well as to people who know me socially. It's not as if I were JD Salinger. Thus the rational person concludes that there was no real desire to do anything other than a drive-by mocking.

For the record, there have been two attempts to dislodge me from an elected position through extralegal means by both of the major parties. One is pissed off that I want to keep a real eye on election activity and the other is pissed off that I'm taking two taxpayer-supported drone jobs away from them when they feel they have a traditional "right" to turn this elected slot into an appointed one.

To this point the city has paid 3 different people who had no right to any position I've described several hundred of your dollars... just at this one polling place. Multiply this nonsense by a thousand and consider that elections are scheduled twice per year. This needs to be cleaned up city-wide. I would like to nail some folks to the legal wall for this behavior as a warning to others.

Multiple times I have faced a roomful of screaming people who are furious that I insist on the ones who belong there doing their jobs, and the ones who have no legal right to be in the room leaving. I have at any given time usually 2 or 3 sheets of paper and a cell phone as back-up. I have received physical threats and although I hold my ground I have never been "eager" to start any violence.

One newspaper reporter and one TV reporter covering this story told me that they pushed it as seemingly important to their editors, who in both cases refused to run with it precisely because no actual violence has yet occured, and this fails to make the story sufficiently sexy for sales and ratings.

I am working with the Committee of 70 (which, for those who just fell off the turnip truck, is a decades-old non-governmental political watchdog group) right now on making sure this doesn't happen again. They are taking the issue seriously, so maybe, if you don't know any details, you should too. There is also follow-up in motion through the DA's office and with the Pennsylvania Bar (certain lawyers are behaving badly in order to allow this to continue), and I'm hoping to score some real change through these channels. In fact for these reasons I'd just as soon not share certain details on a couple of trivia blogs; what I've said to this point should not harm any process.

Just keep gurgling away all you like about how much fun it is to watch me struggle to do something useful in a city that resists it, and by all means keep doing so from the security of a fake name. It isn't going to slow me down, and it isn't going to amuse anyone worth amusing.

Far more troubling is the case of one of the commenters/cyberstalkers on that post, who is troubled enough to have created a parody site of this blog, solely for the purpose of bitterly mocking me. I assume this is not time taken out of what could be described as a busy social schedule.

This is clearly the work of Lisa from star quiz team Group W, who I'm sad to say spent a year signing into this and other blogs under a variety of names (i.e. sockpuppetry as web geeks know it) to attempt to 'prove' that I am wrong about Scotland not being a country.

There is a surface driver of this and a more disturbing, deeper driver of this. The surface driver is that after months of wondering why angry Scots were drawn to my blog to argue a simple point with me, I finally figured out that she was signing into Scotland.com under one of her identities to drive angry nationalist traffic to my blog.

Anyone who would like to see her side of this argument comprehensively thrashed once I went to meet her "cyber upstream" can do so here. It seems that right around the hundredth time the lass was found contradicting herself, dodging direct questions, or signing in under a new identity, the parody blog started. She started that thread with one identity to be inflammatory, and then signed in under a couple of other identities in order to back herself up.

The deeper driver for this is the fact that she clearly resents the fact that I have had a professional career and education in this field, and she has not has had a professional career and education in any field, and my defense of all of that when same was attacked by her as irrelevant (leading to long general screeds against formal education) seems to have triggered a mental condition that has precious little to do with me, nor with Scotland.

As prize-winning geography instructor Matt Rosenberg points out, a lot of the rest of my problem on this front is simply delusional Scottish nationalists. (Interestingly my strongest supporters on this are also Scottish nationalists... ones who are troubled by the consequences of no longer having a country.)

Lisa is so far gone that I suspect that she's both the poster BlizzmasterPilch and the poster FeatherRuffler on the Goodtimes thread... which is sicker than it appears as both make reference to a poster on Philly.com who I suspect is also Lisa.

It should be pointed out that Lisa is also not from here and I am not aware of any civic improvements that she has spearheaded, although there is abundant time in her day to mock me anonymously. A particularly repugnant detail is the ripping of my links to Haitian relief efforts, still needed in an ongoing humanitarian crisis. What sort of person uses that to score cheap larfs?

If I ever get shot in the head Arizona-style, this should be the first and only suspect for the authorities.

This week's schedule

2011-01-11T01:01:00.003-05:00

Tuesday, January 11, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: 2010: YEAR IN REVIEW

Wednesday, January 12, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2011: YEAR IN REVIEW

Note the Draught Horse quizzes will resume on Thursday night, January 20, at 9pm!

Thanks to those of you who helpfully pointed out last week my inability to tell one month from the next. Those are the wages of the lazy and poorly performed cut'n'paste instead of typing out these posts out from scratch.

Somehow I also forgot that with the new year I traditionally do a Subject round that's a year-end review and another that reviews what little has thus far happened in the new year. Enjoy that.

The early Tuesday night quizzes just weren't a draw last term at the Draught Horse although the later Thursday night ones were a success. Thus I'm back next week at the DH at 9pm Thursday.

Happy New Year folks; first few weeks of the year there won't be Draught Horse quizzes

2011-01-03T13:02:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, October 12, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Wednesday, October 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ROME

Sports-themed quizzes begin the week

2010-11-09T12:25:00.004-05:00

Tuesday, October 12, 7ish pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: ALL FIVE ROUNDS ARE SPORTS

This quiz will immediately follow a Philadelphia Eagles-sponsored charity water pong event at the bar. The quiz is sports-related in conjunction with that.

Tuesday, October 12, 9ish pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: GUESS WHAT ... SPORTS

Wednesday, October 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ASIA

Thursday, October 14, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: THE 1970s

No Draught Horse Tuesday night quiz this week; remaining schedule as normal

2010-11-01T21:36:00.004-04:00

Owing to my minor elective post I have to have a good 13 hours of argument with the other officials at a polling place on Tuesday.

This means the early Tuesday quiz is off for this week but I'll still be doing the late quiz at El Camino Real. Not sure yet what the subject round will be for that, but hopefully I'll be updating this post on Wednesday with the info for the following two nights' quizzes, which will be held as normal.

Tuesday, October 19, CANCELLED, GO HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE... OR NOT, WHATEVER
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.

Tuesday, October 19, beginning roughly 9-9:15pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: TBA

Only Tuesday night quizzes this week owing to Phillies' playoff run

2010-10-19T12:02:00.004-04:00

Tuesday, October 19, AFTER BASEBALL GAME ENDS
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: TBA

Tuesday, October 19, POSSIBLY BUMPED BACK A BIT OWING TO BASEBALL
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: TBA

Because the Phillies made quick work of the Reds, the quiz schedule is unaffected

2010-10-12T13:53:00.006-04:00

Tuesday, October 12, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: CHEMICAL ELEMENTS, US STATES, OSCARS, DAIRY PRODUCTS, SCANDINAVIA

Tuesday, October 12, 9:10pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: CHEMICAL ELEMENTS

Wednesday, October 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: US STATES

Thursday, October 14, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: MAGIC

Quiz schedule not too disrupted by Phils' playoff schedule... yet

2010-10-04T20:52:00.005-04:00

Tuesday, October 5, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: SIT-COMS, TREES, FAMOUS AUTHORS & BOOKS, MONEY, WORLD RELIGIONS

Tuesday, October 5, 9:10pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FAMOUS AUTHORS & BOOKS

Wednesday, October 6, ?pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BASEBALL

UPDATE: The quiz is going to happen immediately following the Phillies game, likely in the 8pm range. Go Phils!

Thursday, October 7, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: WORLD RELIGIONS

What to do with your evenings

2010-09-27T16:11:00.006-04:00

FYI, with the Phillies making the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year, any evening of a Phils' game will be a likely be a night without a quiz at any given venue. More detail as details emerge.

Tuesday, September 28, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: POPULAR WEBSITES, SERIAL KILLERS, PENNSYLVANIA, GAME SHOWS, COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

I promise this time 'round to stick to that menu!

Tuesday, September 28, 9:15pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: POPULAR WEBSITES

Wednesday, September 29, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: GAME SHOWS

Thursday, September 30, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: MEXICO

Upcoming quiz rounds

2010-09-20T00:14:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, September 21, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Rounds: BASEBALL, POPULAR WEBSITES, ROMANTIC COMEDIES, SOUTH AMERICA, REALITY TV

Tuesday, September 21, 9:15pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: POPULAR WEBSITES

Wednesday, September 22, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ROMANTIC COMEDIES

Thursday, September 23, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: NAME THAT ACTRESS

Your Subject rounds for this week

2010-09-13T21:55:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, September 7, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject: There will be 5 subjects, different ones for each round - let's try that. No one in the room cared about Cartoon Network programming last week, a true shock to me. I thought that's all college age kids did these days...

Tuesday, September 7, 9:15pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: ASTRONOMY

Wednesday, September 8, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ???

Note: I will be doing a corporate event 9/15/10 so Quizmaster John will have the reins for this evening. He is writing his own quiz in the usual format.

Thursday, September 9, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: PRIMATES

Twice-weekly Draught Horse quizzes begin now!

2010-09-06T12:32:00.000-04:00

"Double your pleasure, double your fun." September begins the 7pm Tuesday quiz at the Draught Horse up at Temple U.'s campus. What's the same, what changes?

Nothing changes Wednesday and Thursday nights at 12 Steps Down and the Draught Horse. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, same Bat-format. The Thursday night quiz will be in the standard format and will have a completely different set of questions than Tuesday, thus you can play there twice/week if you like. Please do.

Tuesday night at El Camino Real does not really change except for the fact that I might get there a tad after 9pm these first couple of weeks doing the 7pm as we hack out the format and I work my way down to Northern Liberties.

Tuesday evening at the Draught Horse, however, will be riding the psychedelic pserpent through Crazyville at first for many of you who are accustomed to the normal Quizmasterchris format. The quiz will be a bridge between Happy Hour and other, later-night events and is designed to hook some new folks and add a new twist for people stuck up at campus who might want to play twice/week. (You're welcome!)

For one thing, the weekly annoucement of a Subject, as per below, applies to the entire quiz, not just one round. All of the 4-5 rounds of the quiz will be on the same subject. We will likely be giving prizes for the highest score per round, as well as perhaps a cumulative prize as normal for the whole evening. Let's see how this works.

Most radically... are you seated? You'll want to be seated for this. This is seismic in this little quiz world.

We're going to try a bit of a wagering system for points. None of this random jokering you get at some quizzes however. The answer sheet for each round of ten questions will have a space for a Primary Answer and a Secondary Answer. If your Primary Answer to a question is correct, and you write no Secondary Answer, you get 3 points for that answer. If you write both and the Primary Answer is correct, you get 2 points. If your Secondary Answer is correct, one point. Zero points for two wrong answers.

Let the games begin!

Tuesday, September 7, 7pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject: ADULT SWIM CARTOONS

Tuesday, September 7, 9:15pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FURNITURE

Wednesday, September 8, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: '70s KIDS' SHOWS

Thursday, September 9, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: CANADA

This week marks the return to Temple U. quizzing; You could have chosen any quiz, you chose QuizmasterChris

2010-08-31T15:19:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, August 31, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: ALL THINGS JAPANESE

Wednesday, September 1, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: HATS

Thursday, September 2, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Subject Round: THE SIMPSONS

Your Subject rounds for this week

2010-08-23T23:37:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, August 24, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: BIOLOGY

Wednesday, August 25, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FAMOUS CATS

Get ready for the next term with a quiz

2010-08-15T11:20:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, August 17, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: WORLD WAR II

Wednesday, August 18, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

September 2 will bring return of Thursday night quiz to the Draught Horse

2010-08-09T19:49:00.003-04:00

Keep 9pm Thursday nights open as my quiz officially returns to Temple U.'s own Draught Horse for the third consecutive year this September 2nd.

If and when I have Earth-shattering news about further quizzing in that time-space continuum vicinity you, dear readers, will be the first to know.

Cool stuff given away once again at this week's quizzes

2010-08-09T19:38:00.003-04:00

One of the fabulous first prizes up for grabs this week at one of the quizzes - haven't decided which yet - in addition to a gift certificate will be an ultra-cool copy of this The Lady Is Afraid 1950 Dell "Mapback" mystery paperback by George Harmon Coxe. Why would I give such wonders away? As is the case with much of the stuff I give to winners, I already own a copy.

Tuesday, August 10, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SO YOU THINK YOU CAN ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT DANCING

Wednesday, August 11, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MAGAZINES

This week's upcoming fourth round subjects

2010-08-03T12:01:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, August 3, 9pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FAST FOOD

Wednesday, August 4, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BONES

This week's upcoming fourth round subjects

2010-07-27T00:49:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, July 27, 9:00pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO'VE DIED RECENTLY

Wednesday, July 28, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BONES

Back home, this week's quiz schedule

2010-07-19T10:07:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, July 20, 9:00pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: PORTUGAL

Wednesday, July 21, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MOROCCO

Hello all, good to be back and hosting quizzes after a belated honeymoon to Portugal and Morocco. There will be plenty of photos etc. to share over the coming weeks. In the meantime just know that I will be asking you about both countries this week in the Subject rounds, seeing as this is my quiz world and you're competing in it.

Hopefully all went well in my absence. Hopefully not too well; I prefer to think of myself as indispensible regardless of reality.

Full coverage for all quizzes while I'm away - all quizzes will be held sticking to the normal schedule!

2010-06-27T12:27:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that while I'm overseas for the next three quiz cycles, all six normally scheduled quizzes will take place as usual, save for my presence.

Quizmaster Fox from the Kensington Hookers Against Cockfighting team, frequent El Camino Real winners, will take both quizzes week one. Quizmaster John from all-time-high score holders and frequent 12 Steps Down champs Lil' Roy will do the other four over the second and third weeks.

Both fellows are brighter than they look and I expect youse to treat them with the same casual derision you would treat me. They're writing their own material, some was run by me and it has my Seal of Approval. Times, prizes etc. are all as normal.

Have fun and have a great early summer - I'll see you again past the mid-point of July.

Talking back to the local Fox propaganda branch

2010-06-25T23:15:00.006-04:00

Weekday evenings I pretty regularly catch the Fox 29 local news before the nightly airing of The Simpsons. I watch not so much to learn anything about the world - a person who doesn't view at all is more likely to have some idea of what's going on, their head not filled with distortion and lies - but to keep tabs on what a lot of the public is being fed about what's going on.

The broadcasts are cartoonish distortions of the worst of modern American local news from which Kent Brockman himself would resign. Each evening there's a full 90 minutes of emptyheaded narcissist talking heads speeding through a confusing mix of edutaining half-factoids, garbled together in a dumbed-down stew of rightist elitism disguised as populism.

In between the daily jabs at government waste (the private sector is presumably efficient and honest) and a xenophobic tone against anything or anyone the slightest bit different, there is a clear and persistent attack on unionized workers, most regularly public sector workers. This regularly manifests itself in attacks on teachers, who are uniformly depicted as greedy, incompetent and criminal social deviants who bankrupt state and municipal government.

The obvious reason that public sector employees are targeted is that the vast majority of American private sector employees have had no real rights to organize since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in the late 1940s, and almost all of the private sector union jobs have disappeared. I imagine Fox 29 would also attack local Leni Lenape for all of Philadelphia's problems if there were more than a handful of those people left. Fox lets no weakened social actor go unmolested, the consumate bully.

I am not exaggerating. Hardly a broadcast goes by in which unionized teachers especially are not villified in the manner of "commies" in the 1950s blacklisting days. This is the constant drumbeat of any of the many media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch throughout the world, and has been on four continents for decades. If you want to work even in local news for Fox, you have to take cheap shots at honest working people every single day. In a just world these jackholes would be driving themselves to honor-salvaging suicides.

This evening they ran a piece titled "THE WORLD IS BROKE" with it's own big, scary red-bold-lettered graphic as the third of fourth "news story." Why is the world broke? Because Pennsylvania and New Jersey teachers won't take a pay cut below the wages guaranteed in their current contracts. Of course! This was stated as fact, with no opposing viewpoint, with no suggestion that cutting teachers' wages and benefits was anything other than the only way to balance state budgets.

I wrote an email to the two anchors of this travesty of a news show immediately following its broadcast, pasted below. I'll let everyone know if I hear anything back from these cowardly cheap shot artists. Fuck them.

----

I watched your commentary - certainly not a news piece but an opinion piece disguised as news - under the rubric of "The World Is Broke" this evening. It's difficult to say where to begin, but if you submitted that work in a freshman economics class I doubt you would pass the course. The piece did nothing to explain any actual budget troubles and solutions, but did much to continue your incessant biased drumbeat against union employees, particularly ones in the public sector.

This is to be expected from any Rupert Murdoch-related propaganda outlet. What amazes me is the lack of any attempt to disguise your hate for a living wage and decent benefits, and your advocacy of state governments breaking binding legal contracts with their employees. A more effective propaganda machine might even have some token opposition, preferrably an ugly individual with a poor speaking voice and foreign-sounding name. Astoundingly your "fair and balanced" coverage can't be bothered with even a token word of opposition, even taken out of context. Mr. Murdoch must be a demanding person for whom to work.

I'm left wondering both how you're allowed to continue to hold an FCC license and how you sleep at night.

Your collective ignorance of economic concepts and realities is immense, but I expect little from Communications majors. We don't have enough time to educate you fully, but consider a few bullet points:

- The statement "The World Is Broke" taken by itself has not even internal logic. If there are debtors there are also creditors. Perhaps you mean to state "The World's Wealth Is Inequitably Distributed" or something similar. I long for the day when daily news broadcasts point out that usury has bankrupted our ability to meet the needs of our citizens.

Some 2 billion people on the planet face food insecurity on a daily basis, in large part because of austerity measures imposed to collect on national debts and transfer public wealth to commercial banks, because of cheap food commodity dumping by the richer nations and because of a lack of fair compensation for work. Somehow "The World Is Broke" was not about them.

Some 10% of the able-bodied American workforce is idle (these are official figures; reality is worse) because of an ecomony wrecked by Wall Street casino losses, offshored jobs and low wages. Somehow "The World Is Broke" was not about them.

Tens of millions of Americans have one or more jobs but still live in poverty (low wages) and/or face bankruptcy (#1 cause: healthcare bills). Somehow "The World Is Broke" was not about them.

No, your piece focused on state budget battles. PA, NJ and DE state governments are "The World."

- Given that last point, we could see a number of ways to balancing state budgets. One way would be to collect taxes from corporations and richer citizens at the higher rates they were collected decades ago, when government deficits were not what they are now. Another method might be to cut corporate welfare spending. Another might be a small transactional tax on risky commodity trades of the sort that imperil most people's economic well-being. Another option would be for the federal government to fund its state mandates, which it could easily do by cutting the war budget (half of discretionary spending all by itself) and/or by collecting taxes from the 60% of domestic and 70% of foreign corporations who pay none, or even receive rebates.

You suggest none of this.

No, your world is broke and the primary cause is that public sector union workers have the temerity to get paid a day's pay for a day's work, and expect to receive the pensions they've been paying into their entire working lives. Worse, these people expect to receive the pay and benefits they've already negotiated for and have received a contract to do. "Shame on them!"

I wouldn't write this as parody because it's not believable in fiction as a depth to which a "news" organization might stoop. I'll add I've never held a public sector position, union or otherwise. I just can't believe how vicious, how hamfisted and cartoonish your attacks on those people are. You don't even shill well.

- Deficit spending has always been considered a legitimate means of economic pump-priming by government. This is why FDR is generally lionized by historians and why the Hoover years are generally recalled like a bad case of acne. I would suggest looking up the name "John Maynard Keynes." He was the most influential 20th century economist, and you've basically turned everything he had to say on its head. In short, government can spend some cash in temporary deficit to employ people, create growth, and eventually make the money back through taxation. Do you think when the government spends money that it disappears down some hole, never to be circulated again? This has the side effect of keeping people from starving and rioting, which many of us regard as positive.

I assume some of you are actually aware of these ideas and reject them because of deeply held (if not in fact deeply thought-out) right wing beliefs. In the end it doesn't matter if you've arrived at this position through honest stupidity or willing ignorance, either way you are poisoning the public discussion and you need to stop.

- You have a fantastic ignorance of the wealth and health of societies with strong unionized labor in the public sector. Scandinavia as an obvious example has far more unionized workers as a % in both the public and private sectors than do we. Their public debts are lower compared to GDP than ours. They have healthy citizens, low crime rates and a longer life expectancy. They have higher wages and more benefits. Clearly paying a day's pay for a day's work bankrupts neither the individual nor the government.

The Third World has almost nothing in the way of public or private sector unionization. They have low wages and often no benefits... and high ratios of public debt. Clearly tearing union labor to shreds is not the path to economic recovery. It is, in fact, the road to ruin.

Forty years ago roughly 30% of the American labor force was unionized. Wages were higher, unemployment was lower, national debt was lower and state debts were not problematic. Certainly no austerity measures were imposed on public sector workforces.

Obviously these facts have no place in your fantasy broadcasts, which are unfair (as in "not fair") and imbalanced (as in "crazed.")

When, if ever, are you going to be running a one-sided screed in favor of state governments honoring current labor contracts, especially as a means of keeping our societies out of the toilet?

Yours,

[signed with contact info]

---

I'll let everyone know if I hear anything back. Fuckers.

Slade provides your World Cup soundtrack

2010-06-23T09:06:00.000-04:00

Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama coast

2010-06-22T00:04:00.005-04:00

Toxicity + oxygen depletion = dead Gulf of Mexico. Why is an Alabama newspaper able to get this out there but the major networks "can't"?

Your pre-vacation quiz schedule

2010-06-21T22:04:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, June 22, 9:00pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SOCCER

Wednesday, June 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FISH

Folks, note that I'll be taking a couple of weeks' vacation the first two weeks in July. I haven't otherwise missed a regularly scheduled quiz in more than two years and this is very necessary. At least one of those weeks will have an understudy to fill the gap, but there might be a week without a quiz. I'll be updating you in person and on this site as detail develops.

RIP Manute Bol

2010-06-21T00:04:00.002-04:00

He was a big man in more ways than one. This ESPN video has embedding disabled, but I highly recommend clicking over to YouTube for a couple of minutes to see what one guy really trying to make a difference looks like. What a life!

Quiz schedule back to semi-normal this week

2010-06-15T15:31:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, June 15, 9:00pm
El Camino Real
1040 N. 2nd St.
(2nd St. below Girard Ave.)
Subject Round: SCI-FI

Wednesday, June 16, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: AFRICA

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