The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

Can't you just do brick veneer?

[The Larch]

[Jacob]

If I was going to build a house I would try and get it made out of brick.

Except that I doubt you'd be able to find a builder who would know how.

Being from Denmark, I've also long thought that a proper house is built from bricks.

However, living in Vancouver I'm reconciled to wood buildings. They're better in an earthquake, for one.

Wood-framed buildings clad in bricks are stupid, however.

[jimmy olsen]

Brick houses are ugly.

[Eddie Teach]

/bobs head to side like a windshield wiper

[CountDeMoney]

I just email bombed that one to my sister, who despises that meme 

[CountDeMoney]

I just email bombed that one to my sister, who despises that meme 

And she promptly replies: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OUT OF THE HOUSE

[Barrister]

Brick houses are ugly.

You, sir, are crazy.

[CountDeMoney]

Brick houses are ugly.

You, sir, are crazy.

When I was looking at houses a year ago (my, how times change), I was definitely enamored with some of the older houses from the late 50s and early 60s;  those brick babies were built to fucking last, man. 

I would definitely pull the trigger on brick in a heartbeat.

[Razgovory]

They're not so good against Earthquakes.  They do hold up well against tornadoes though.  I live in a brick house.  Well mostly brick.  The basement is concrete.

[Josquius]

Brick houses are ugly.

You, sir, are crazy.

Indeed.
Trumps concrete anyday.
And wood houses...I don't fancy living in a glorified shed.

[The Larch]

XIXth century LOLcats:

http://io9.com/5900334/even-in-the-1870s-humans-were-obsessed-with-ridiculous-photos-of-cats

[CountDeMoney]

They're not so good against Earthquakes.  They do hold up well against tornadoes though.  I live in a brick house.  Well mostly brick.  The basement is concrete.

I'll roll the dice on better energy insulation efficiency versus the occasional once-every-150-years earthquake and rarely-seen tornadoes.

[CountDeMoney]

XIXth century LOLcats:

http://io9.com/5900334/even-in-the-1870s-humans-were-obsessed-with-ridiculous-photos-of-cats

I want to find and wood carvings of LOLcats from the Enlightenment.

[CountDeMoney]

Your WashPost slap-of-reality chart of the day.

The most amazing Supreme Court chart. Maybe ever.

While browsing around the Pew polling site this morning — and, yes, we do a fair amount of that — we came across a chart on the Supreme Court that reminded us, for the billionth time, that assuming the average person follows the back and forth of Washington as closely as we do is a major mistake.



So, yeah. A majority of people don't know the name of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. More frightening? Eight percent named Thurgood Marshall, who not only was never the Chief Justice but also died in 1993. And let's not even talk about the four percent who think Harry Reid, a Senator not a member of the Supreme Court, is the Chief Justice.

Yes, the data is from the summer of 2010, which is almost two years ago now. And yes, with the Court more front and center in the news — Citizens United, health care — of late, it's possible those able to name John Roberts as the Chief Justice may be slightly higher today. But, only slightly.

What the above chart proves is that analysis about how what the Court does — whether it's what they have already done on Citizens United or what they might do with the Affordable Care Act — will impact the political landscape amounts to something close to a guessing game.

Regular people are simply not engaged — they don't know or care — about the intricacies of the government in a way that people who live inside the Beltway and spend their lives in politics are.

It's a lesson we have to re-learn constantly.