What happens in Mahadanapuram stays in Mahadanapuram

What happens in Mahadanapuram stays in Mahadanapuram

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QT Summer Travel Advisory:
Thirteen days remain until the Aadi Festival in Mahadanapuram, India, during which a temple priest breaks coconuts over the heads of followers.
There is no truth to reports that followers leaving the ceremony can be heard expressing a sudden interest in President Obama’s birth certificate.

News Item: Mitt Romney campaign offers $20 T-shirts to supporters that say: “I built my business, Mr. President.”
And so it seems time for a T-shirt that says:
“And the rest of us built the roads you use to get to your business, you self-satisfied gasbag.”
Or something on that order.




News Item: “Electronic books more than doubled in popularity in 2011, with ebooks outselling hardcover books in adult fiction for the first time.”
Just one of those quick statistical updates that marks a turning point in human history.


+ Donnie Box, a laid-off steelworker, in a pro-Obama Super PAC ad attacking Mitt Romney:
“This was a booming place and Mitt Romney and Bain Capital turned it into a junkyard, just making money and leaving.”
+ Donnie Box when later asked if he intended to vote for President Obama:
“I could really care less about Obama. I think Obama is a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn’t done a goddamn thing that he said he would do.”
Hey.
 It was a 30-second ad.
Can’t fit everything in a 30-second ad.


News Headline: “Romney: Obama doesn’t get free-enterprise system.”
News Headline: “As Bain Capital prepares to ship Illinois jobs to China, workers beg Romney to intervene.”
A lot of people don’t get the free-enterprise system, evidently.




Mark Quinn, a Naperville reader, regarding QT’s wondering if there is any human activity at this point that isn’t a billion-dollar industry, writes:
“Thinking.”
Let’s not be too hard ourselves.
As billionaire Donald Trump was pointing out just the other–
Never mind.




News Headline: “Facebook user satisfaction plummets.”
News Headline: “Facebook users revolt at new Timeline profiles, ads.”
Like.


QT Worldwide Man-Bites-Dog Pinpoint Locator:
July 12 on the 1300 block of Pojoaque Court in Rio Rancho, N.M.
As of the seventeenth dog day of summer, there have been no other reports of a man biting a dog.
There are 22 dog days to go.


News Headline: “Will Penn State take a fourth linebacker in 2013 recruiting class?”
Some sports writers are not easily distracted.

News Headline: “Tea Party group outlines strategy on health care.”
News Headline: “Bystanders walk past dying accident victim to get on bus.”
The two stories seemed to go together, for some reason.




News Headline: “Former Sen. George McGovern turns 90.”
It was McGovern, campaigning for president in 1972, who said:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Then again, what do you expect from a softy liberal–
No. Wait.
Those are the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Sorry.




From the QT Archive of Knowledge:
+ The female anglerfish absorbs her mate during sex.
+ Wyatt Earp was born in Illinois.




News Headline: “First ‘Dark Knight Rises’ reviews: Holy hyperbole, Batman!”
News Headline: “Holy brand integration, Batman! Bruce Wayne trades Lamborghini for Chryster 300?”
News Headline: “Holy speedy divorce, Batman! Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise settle.”
News Headline: “Holy genetically-engineered organisms, Batman! Synthetic biology has a banner month.”
Stop it.
Stop it now.




From Poor QT’s Almanack:
On this day in history 43 years ago an American astronaut became the first man to walk on the moon in yet another example of  government interference in an undertaking that, left properly to free enterprise, would be well on its way to completion any year now.



QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
C.J., a Halifax, Nova Scotia, reader, writes:
“I am writing about this headline: ‘World’s lightest material weighs 75 times less than Styrofoam.’ Shouldn’t it read ‘weighs 1/75th of’?”
You are right. It is an annoying usage.
Yet here is Isaac Newton:
“If the Diameters of the Circles…  be made three times less than before, the Mixture will be also three times less.”
Or maybe he wrote this after the apple fell on his head.
We could now consider another headline from the week:
“Chinese profits down up to 80 percent.”
But we won’t.
The lion’s share of something is all of it, by the way.

Write to QT at qt@wbez.org
QT appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.