Where Can you Get a Free Krampus Greeting Card? Well, it’s Free-ish right here.

October 25th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Humor and Fun | Religion - (1 Comments)

Yep, a Free Krampus Card, all yours, one per person.

Well, Free-ish. I hate it when people leave the fine print to the last, so let me say upfront you gotta pay shipping and sales tax, which is slightly bogus, but this is the best deal we could get with our distributor…

Krampusnacht Card: Krampus is the reason for the season. Free to you through November 24, 2011

… but that said, hey, want a Krampus Card for the holiday season? J. Clifford drew up this doozy of a Krampusnacht design and you can get it free on a card (not including shipping and handling, yeah, I know, sheesh). Here’s how.

Step 1. Visit the Krampus Card page here and add it to your shopping cart.

Step 2. use the coupon code KWTAHJFOVOWK at checkout.

That’s it! One one card is free per person, and the offer is good through November 24 2011. Get it now so you can send an endearment (or perhaps a birch switch) to your love in time for the Krampuslauf.

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Liberal Media? In DC Free Papers, the Bias is Conservative

July 9th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Media - (4 Comments)

While people talk airily about the “liberal media,” the reality on the ground is different.

DC Free Newspapers: Politico, The Hill, The Washington Examiner and Human Events. Two inside-ball publications, two conservative rags. No liberal news outlet.

Take Washington DC, an interesting news market for the presence of free papers, most of them distributed outside major Metro stations, most of them available when Congress is in session. Policymakers are these papers’ major target. Two of these, The Hill and Politico, report on the process of policymaking from an insider’s point of view, taking an at least ostensibly neutral position on the merits of policies. The other two free papers, the Washington Examiner and Human Events, are written from an unabashed conservative, pro-corporate point of view. This week’s edition of Human Events describes itself as presenting “conservative news” with “the Right’s most influential voices.” Its Editor in Chief is also Vice Chairman of the American Conservative Union and Treasurer of the Conservative Victory Fund. The Washington Examiner is owned by billionaire and heavy Republican contributor Philip Anschutz, and the Examiner building out of which it is run also plays host to a number of conservative advocacy organizations, including the Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, the Hudson Institute, Concerned Women for America and the The Trinity Forum.

Where are the liberal free DC papers? There aren’t any. That’s not where the money is.

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EcoFreek Offers Consolidated Free Stuff

January 3rd, 2011 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Economy | Liberal Links - (1 Comments)

Got hard times? Maybe you can’t shop at the high end stores that offer eco fair trade local products, but you might not have to go to a big box discount store either.

Try EcoFreek. It’s a metasearch engine with a particular specialty: Helping people look at multiple sources for things that are available either for free or for a swap.

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Contest: Find the First “What Global Warming?” Cartoon to Win a Free Button

October 19th, 2010 | Posted by Jim Cook in Buttons | Environment - (3 Comments)

It’s that time of year again when temperatures around one half of the globe begin to climb downward. You and I call it the seasons of autumn and winter, but every year some cockamamie conservative political cartoonist decides to call this seasonal change a refutation of global warming. Last year, astonished that it got cold in winter, half-cocked cartoonists John Cole and Lisa Benson (among many others) penned comics for the newspapers in which they declared global warming to be debunked, debunked, debunked! Why, you had to be a loopy hippy to believe in global warming, they declared: time to burn the Al Gore books for heat! Hardy har har.

Thing was, last winter was actually the second warmest winter on record.

I’m not going to call John Cole or Lisa Benson stupid. No, I’m pretty sure they know that it gets cold in winter and that last winter was pretty warm. I’d actually call John Cole and Lisa Benson smart, if amoral. They have a job to do, and they’re good at their job. Their job is to sell papers and satisfy their corporate bosses, not tell the truth. If they can sell papers and/or satisfy their corporate bosses with counterfactual cartoons making fun of hippies and scientists, they’ll do it, truth be damned.

Global Warming is Real, GOP Denial is Fake graphicThat’s why I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that this year, we’ll see the same sort of political cartoons all over again in the newspapers’ op-ed pages. As it gets colder during winter (shocking!), we’ll see some political cartoonist declaring yet again, contrary to the facts, that global warming is debunked, disproven, a sham, a hoax.

Let’s make it a contest: the first person to post a link to a new “winter is cold, so global warming is a myth” political cartoon appearing in a newspaper wins a free button — this “Global Warming is Real, GOP Denial is Fake” pin. Be on the lookout, and when you see the first one, let me know!

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How to get your free Atheist bumper sticker from the Media Research Center

August 1st, 2010 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama - (14 Comments)

Hey, atheists! Here’s an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up.

If you fill out a very simple form over here, the Media Research Center and Newsbusters (really just two names for the same conservative media creature) will promise to waste their budget sending you letters about the latest Jesus this and theocratic that and kill-the-Muslims other thing. Over a year or so, it’ll negate a John Bircher’s donation to the group, and you’ll get more than a few yuks from your mail. (Did you know Barack Obama’s secret Muslim cabal has plans to turn the Washington Monument into a Minaret from which he will proclaim the new Islamic Caliphate of Dee Cee?????)

But wait, there’s more! If you sign up today (or, okay, tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that too), you will get, absolutely free, your very own highly sassy atheist bumper sticker!

No, it doesn’t actually come to you that way. When you get it in the mail, it’ll look like this:

I don't believe the liberal media bumper sticker

But through the magic of scissors, you can make it look like this:

I Don't Believe Atheist Bumper Sticker

An defiant atheist bumper sticker in Swiss-ish red and white? Gratis? Hey, thanks, Media Research Center!

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On Election Day, VOTE to Name the FBI’s Not-Spying Spying Program

November 3rd, 2009 | Posted by Jim Cook in Buttons | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty | Questions - (4 Comments)

The New York Times reported last week on the existence of a newly expanded FBI program of surveillance in which their agents spy, often covertly, on people and groups in America when there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. These people and groups are targeted by the FBI for surveillance on the basis of their political opinions, their religion, and/or their race. They’re going into unsuspected and unsuspecting churches and other places of religious worship for purposes of “assessment.”

But in the midst of all this subterfuge and skullduggery, there’s one thing the FBI would like to make perfectly clear. Now that they’ve had to admit that this program exists, they insist that we not call it “spying,” because then we’d get upset, and they don’t want us to be upset. They want us to call it something else, but they don’t suggest what.

Well, alrighty then! If we can’t be straightforward and call it the FBI Domestic Spying Program, we’ll have to call it something else, and we’ll have to give it our own name.

To get this process underway, Irregular Times has declared a contest to name the FBI’s non-spying spy program. Last week we asked you to submit your suggestions for the program name, and now it’s time for voting to begin.

What Should We Call The FBI Domestic Not-Spying Spying Program?

  • BITE ME: Best Improved Terrorist Employee Monitoring Effort (22%, 5 Votes)
  • The Medium Sized Brother Program (17%, 4 Votes)
  • The Anti-Surveillance Surveillance Program (13%, 3 Votes)
  • VOYEUR: Vision On Your Every Unexpected Response (13%, 3 Votes)
  • The Definitely Not Spying On You Program (13%, 3 Votes)
  • Operation Clear View (13%, 3 Votes)
  • The Fluffy Bunny Protection Program (4%, 1 Votes)
  • FB-EYE ON USA (4%, 1 Votes)
  • Rhinestone Cowabunga (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Pit Bull in Every Pot Project (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Keeping America Safe Safety Program (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Inside Out Terrorist Prevention Program (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Friends Under Cover Keep Your Organizations Untouched (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Failing Drug-War Surveillance Program (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Anti-Spying Surveillance Program (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The Anti-Surveillance Spying Program (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Eye Candy (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Walls Have Cameras (1%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 23

Loading ... Loading ...

So come on now, get out that twitchy Election Day finger and vote for your favorite! The person whose suggestion proves most popular will win a free 4th Amendment button to be shipped to their home or any other address in the U.S., including 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Then it will be up to you and me to make the FBI program’s new name stick.

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Contest: What Do We Call The FBI Domestic Not-Spying Spying Program?

October 29th, 2009 | Posted by Jim Cook in Buttons | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty | Politics - (15 Comments)

The New York Times reports today that the FBI has instituted a newly expanded program in which their agents spy, often covertly, on American people and groups who are suspected of no crime whatsoever. Rather, people are targeted by the FBI for surveillance on the basis of their political opinions, their religion, and/or their race. But the FBI insists that we not call it “spying,” because the idea that our government spies on us will upset us, and the dears at the FBI don’t want us to be upset. As FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni put it after admitting the existence of this program:

I don’t like to think of us as a spy agency because that makes me really nervous. We don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them. That’s an oppressive environment to live in and we don’t want to live that way.

If the FBI wants to spy on innocent people on the basis of their political opinions or religion or race, but they don’t want Americans to think of it as a “spying” program, then let’s be upfront: they’re going to need all the public relations help they can get.

The key thing, I think we all can agree from recent history, is for the FBI not-spying spying program to have a really distracting name. There was the USA Patriot Act, for instance — a great way of selling the gutting of the Bill of Rights. There was the Clear Skies Act to reduce pollution caps. And then there was the Terrorist Surveillance Program the National Security Agency used to record and share the phone sex talk American soldiers overseas had with their spouses back home.

We need something like that to describe the FBI’s un-warranted spying without suspicion program here in the USA. It needs a catchy name to help keep us from thinking that the spying program is actually a spying program.

We here at Irregular Times are such good government-supporting patriots that we’re holding a contest to help name this newly-expanded FBI surveillance program. Here’s the rules:

1. Suggest a new name for the FBI Domestic Not-Spying Spying Program by adding a comment to this post. Submission deadline: Tuesday November 3rd at 9 AM.

2. After all the suggestions for the FBI Not-Spying Spying Program’s new name have come in, we’ll start up an online poll so that people can vote for their favorite.

Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Text on a Metal Pinback Button3. The person who makes the new-name suggestion getting the most votes will win this design on a sturdy metal pinback button. We will ship this 4th Amendment button for free (no shipping charges, no handling charges, no data mining charges) to any address in the United States whatsoever. We’ll send it to you. We’ll send it to your brother. We’ll send it to Aunt Gertie in Wichita. We’ll send it to your Representative or Senator for you. We’ll send it to the President if you like.

I’m going to put only one-name off limits for your submission, and that’s because I’ve thought of it already:

The Fluffy Bunny Protection Program.

Got a better idea for the FBI’s newly expanded surveillance program? Share it in the comments. Even though we’re all on the losing end of the FBI’s Not-Spying program, you still could be a winnah!

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SportyPal Tracks Hikes From Your Smart Phone For Free

October 21st, 2009 | Posted by Jim Cook in Reviews | Tech - (2 Comments)

The above is a map of my hike this morning up and down Ragged Mountain in Maine. It’s been automatically generated through a combination of my HTC Ozone, a smart phone running on a Windows Mobile operating system, and SportyPal, a piece of software (called an “app” by those in the know because somewhere along the line non-geeks learned what “software” meant) I’ve installed for free onto the Ozone. The HTC Ozone has a GPS unit inside it which supplies the information to the SportyPal software.

If you play with the buttons along the top of that map, you can find out exactly where Ragged Mountain is in Maine by zooming in and out and scrolling around. You also can see how fast I was going at different times, and what velocities I’d reached. A run up Mount Olympus this wasn’t: more like a meander through the woods followed by a hike up and down a ski run. This map is roughly accurate in capturing the details of my hike, losing the detail of my twisting and turning on a bike trail but never getting more than 25 feet or so off of my actual location at any time. It’s certainly enough for you to get the idea of where I went.

If you’re interested in tracking your own exercise habits over space and time, SportyPal not only saves the maps of your hikes, bikes, runs and walks, but keeps track of and ranks distance covered, speed attained and estimated calories burned. If you want, you can upload this data to an account on the website sportypal.com, although you don’t have to. If you want, you can share this data in various forms with others, although again you don’t have to. All of these services are free.

On Ragged Mountain in Maine, October 21 2009Even a person who didn’t really want to share exercise data could find SportyPal useful. If I were a travel blogger, for instance, and I wanted to share my experience walking through Venice or on a section of the Appalachian Trail, the ability to generate a map of my location over time would help to provide visual context to my written description of what I encountered. While using the SportyPal program, I was also able to take photographs like the one you see to the right with my HTC Ozone, and to do so within the SportyPal program so that I didn’t have to worry that the logging of my hike would be interrupted. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the photographs themselves are geotagged, so I can’t tell you exactly where this spot is. If a future iteration of the SportyPal program could manage this, I’d be very impressed indeed.

SportyPal is freely available not only for Windows Mobile smartphones, but for Google Android phones, Apple iPhones, Blackberry phones and Nokia models as well. This software comes with my enthusiastic recommendation.

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