Mark's blog
Sporadic blog posts on a wide variety of topics, by Racine, Wisconsin web designer Mark Czerniec.(Also check out my weekly roundups in Another Week.)
Potassium iodide: Thyroid protection from nuclear radiation
Watching coverage of the Japan nuclear meltdown over the last couple of days — as well as the related discussion of the risk of nuclear plant meltdown here in the United States — the distribution of potassium iodide there made me wonder: What does potassium iodide...
Rachel Maddow Show: ‘Shock Doctrine’ used to take over Michigan towns
This segment on last night's Rachel Maddow Show regarding the Shock Doctrine and the governor of Michigan was jaw-dropping. (Read the transcript here.) Apparently, new laws speeding through the Michigan Legislature will empower Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to appoint...
‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ (movie, 2009)
We have heard about "The Continuing Mysteries of Stieg Larsson" — his untimely death at age 50 before the publication of his Millennium Trilogy, and his fourth manuscript, so far unpublished and enveloped in controversy. We are aware that Stieg Larsson's Millennium...
Evolution, Genesis and creation: Snakes’ legs found
Science fans and people who study the Bible will certainly continue to debate evolution vs. creation for years to come, but for me the question is moot. As a syncretist, when I read those Bible verses in Genesis 1, I see them as a very early theory of evolution....
NBC’s Kerry Sanders reporting live while driving
This was a very odd sight today. It's NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders reporting live from Wellington, Florida about the dangers of teens and their "car surfing" (also known as "ghost riding"). For both the intro and outro of the story...
President Obama quit smoking ‘almost a year’ ago
Barack Obama's health initiative is reportedly a success. The president has managed to stop smoking for "almost a year" now, according to First Lady Michelle Obama. Good for him and his family. Quitting smoking has been a struggle for...
Green Bay Packers ownership: A socialist success story
The Green Bay Packers' unique history, hometown, and ownership have been in the spotlight the past few weeks, and last night MSNBC's Rachel Maddow closed her show with an admiring look (video clip above) at the NFL's only remaining old-school team town, and the...
Blizzard of 2011: Snow storm video, Racine, Wisconsin
Here's our YouTube video of the Blizzard of 2011 as we experienced it here in Racine, Wisconsin. 23.5 inches of snow fell here from Tuesday evening until Wednesday morning (February 1st and 2nd), the greatest snowfall anywhere from this storm. If we sound dead tired,...
Blizzard of 2011 – Racine, Wisconsin: First video
Here is our first look at the results of the Blizzard of 2011. (We have since posted a more complete Blizzard of 2011 video.) This clip was shot at about 7:45 this morning from one of our bedroom windows, near Mitchell School in...
Chicago Blizzard of 1967: Snow storm coverage, video
[Monarch]While waiting for Racine to be buried by the Blizzard of 2011, many of us here in southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois are recalling the great Chicago Blizzard of 1967. That storm — on January 26, 1967 — dumped 23 inches of snow on northeast...
‘Spring Forward’ (Liev Schreiber, Ned Beatty movie, 1999)
It's always nice to rent an obscure or "small" movie and have it turn out to be time well spent. This was the case with Spring Forward, a 1999 film by Tom Gilroy starring Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber as a pair of guys working for the parks department in a small...
‘The Beatles Christmas Album’
Among all the John Lennon tributes yesterday, a friend of mine — Stripwax creator Jeff Moody — posted a link to a YouTube video featuring one of the Beatles' wackier departures, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)". This, in turn,...
The Krampus and St. Nicholas in Austria (December 5)
The excitement is palpable in the video above as children await the arrival of visitors in Dienten am Hochkönig, a little mountain village in Austria. Many Americans probably recognize St. Nicholas, whose feast day is December 6. A legendary bringer of gifts on the...
Wisconsin Lottery’s Holiday Countdown: No Mike Schank?
Something seems queasily familiar here, and it's not just the lame imitation of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the Wisconsin Lottery commercial above. It's those 25 windows and the gingerbread house on the Wisconsin Lottery's new...
Online radio streaming: Good work music is hard to find
The hours spent in front of my computer are generally more enjoyable and productive with good work music playing. For this reason, I have a pair of inexpensive but decent little computer speakers sitting on my desk. Thanks to iTunes,...
RockMelt browser: Facebook privacy issues?
There's a new Web browser being released today. The RockMelt browser is being financed by Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm. Andreessen, you may recall, co-founded Netscape. Here's today's New York Times story: "Web Browsing Takes a Social Turn." [includeme...
Obama a Keynesian? And Ron Johnson says ‘start digging’
Above is an outrageous Second City Network video from the site of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on Washington D.C.'s National Mall this past weekend. Andy Cobb of The Partisans asks attendees, "Is Obama a Keynesian?" You have to...
Simpsons World: The Ultimate Episode Guide, Seasons 1-20
Simpsons creator Matt Groening was on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday this morning to talk about The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, which — together with all of The Simpsons episodes from the first 20 years of the television...
Time travel: Cell phone used in Charlie Chaplin film?
Okay, I just saw this on the WGN News and it's pretty freaky. It's a very short segment associated with Charlie Chaplin's 1928 silent film The Circus in which a peculiar old woman is caught on film — apparently talking on a cell phone as she walks by. The sequence was...
Eric Holder and Second Amendment, Eric Holder and firearms
The video clip above, regarding Eric Holder's record on guns, from last night's installment of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, is a fantastic thumbnail of this midterm election. Rachel Maddow took her show to Anchorage, Alaska. The demonstrators shown here are...
Al Franken speech: Obama’s car-in-the-ditch metaphor
Sen. Al Franken is not only one of the best guys ever — he is also one of the funniest comedians and writers of our lifetime because he appreciates absurdity and the hard nugget of truth sometimes concealed inside it. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is a pretty sharp truth...
Alejandro Escovedo’s songs of love at Turner Hall
My favorite radio station in the world is Milwaukee Public Radio WUWM, and liking WUWM on Facebook paid off nicely when I won one of their concert ticket contests to see Alejandro Escovedo at Milwaukee's Turner Hall Ballroom this past Thursday night. On the way up, my...
Suryia the Orangutan’s Robitussin commercial
So I'm watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann the other night when I see a commercial which shows an orangutan in a pharmacy aisle using a Droid X smartphone and buying Robitussin® cough medicine. This was a lot to process. My first reaction was concern that the...
J.K. Rowling: Harvard Commencement speech
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey recemtly, and during the hour, Oprah showed brief clips of the Harvard Commencement speech Ms. Rowling gave on June 5, 2008. Those excerpts were intriguing enough to make me want to hear the whole...
‘Death Makes a Holiday’ catalogs culture of Halloween
Because so much of my time is spent in the attention-shattering online world, I hope to restore a little balance, when possible, by getting engrossed in a good old-fashioned book. As a lover of history, mythology, traditions and...
Leaf collection? Mulch leaves into lawn, garden beds
Fall leaf collection is very peculiar here in Racine, Wisconsin. People rake or blow their leaves into rough piles in the street which sit there for days or weeks. At some point, a front-end loader may or may not come by to scoop the leaves into a garbage truck....
H&M ads: Erykah Badu covers Muddy Waters’ ‘Mannish Boy’
There was an H&M commercial for their fall 2010 fashion trends tonight during The Office, and its music was exactly what I thought it was: Erykah Badu covering the blues standard "Mannish Boy," first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1955. Here's another one. The model...
Republican tax cuts cost jobs, hurt grandchildren
After failing for 2 years to put forth any serious alternatives to the ambitious Democratic agenda they obstruct, Republicans today unveiled "A Pledge to America," aimed at repairing their image as the Party of "No." In their Pledge, Republicans say they plan to cut...
Censorship: Nations would outlaw ideas, Twitter as cyber war weapons
After a deep and restful night's sleep, I can usually count on NPR's Morning Edition for a jolt of blood-curdling reality to start my day. Here's the NPR story on censorship that grabbed me today: Seeing The Internet As An...
Financial crisis + 2 years: Obama, the Tea Party, and the US attention span
NPR's Planet Money has been conducting an ongoing case study of a toxic asset, and there was an interesting observation in Friday morning's installment examining the origin of this toxic asset, the housing bubble circa 2005: DAVID KESTENBAUM: How weird would it be to,...