457 - RLSW skills

I thought this was an interesting question and answer in the Ask Marilyn column in Parade magazine today.

----------------------------------------

I understand books about complicated or philosophical subjects, but I struggle for the right words when I’m speaking in conversation. Why is that?
— asked Rick -
- and Marilyn said -
You’re normal. Educators define four categories of vocabulary. Our reading vocabulary is the largest by far, followed by our listening vocabulary. Then comes our speaking vocabulary, which is much smaller, and finally our writing vocabulary, which is smaller still.

Each category gets more challenging. To read, one need only recognize the word and comprehend its meaning in context. To speak, one must recall the particular word without prompting and insert it instantly into the appropriate context. That’s much more difficult.

Link - Ask Marilyn / Parade Magazine

------------------------------------------

So Bilbo's challenge wants us to do the HARDEST communication thing that there is to do. I don't know if I can go through with this!!!!!

456 - Joke and a poke (caught)

It's the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
President Bush is delivering the inaugural speech.
He looks down at his prepared speech, clears his throat,
and says 'Oo! Oo! Oo! Oo! Oo!'
Condi leans over and whispers in his ear, 'Mr President, those are the Olympic rings. Your speech is immediately below that'.


And if you haven't seen this video about the baseball ball girl, you need to watch it. It's one of those "holy cow" moments that don't come along to often.

UPDATE - Well at least it only took me a day to find out this is a fake video. It's a gatoraid commercial. I changed the link to the one that gives credit to the director. I don't know if the video is totally faked or it was a practiced stunt. If it was a stunt it was a good one.

Link - Ball girl
.

455 - Dreams (gone) (ZAP!)

I don't want to compete with Bilbo's cartoon Saturday so I'll just post one. But I'll bet I beat him to the punch on this one.



I think somebody snuck one of these into my house. Every once in a while I hear a ZAP! Like right before the roof starts leaking.

Oh and by the way blogger spell checker - SNUCK - a pp. and pt. of sneak.

Link - Ziggy
.

454 - Cheap computer

Extra post today. If anybody is looking for an extra or just cheap computer (no monitor). Woot sell out has got what your looking for today. I take no responsibility for any computer or phycological problems that may come out of this purchase. You must go into this remembering that computers suck. End of story.

Compaq DC5750 Microtower PC - new (not refurb)
$249.99 + $5 shipping

Link - sellout.woot

Sometimes you have to go through a few links to get to sellout woot.

453 - Cake talk

Got this as an email joke and wondered if it really happened so I checked Snopes. This actually appeared on Jay Leno. And if you go to the link for Snopes for cake talking they have some other examples.

------------------------------------------------------



Okay so imagine how this conversation went:
Walmart Employee: 'Hello 'dis be Walmarts, how can I help you?'
Customer: ' I would like to order a cake for a going away party this week.'
Walmart Employee: 'What you want on the cake?'
Customer: 'Best Wishes Suzanne' and underneath that 'We will miss you'.

-------------------------------------------------------

Link - Cake talk

452 - Super snoopin'

I don't know if anybody's noticed some new widgits down the left side of the page or not. I forget whose site I saw these on but they get you a lot more detail on who's visiting you. That's if you care about statistics and numbers. They are just as easy as any other widgit to install and who knows what the companies are doing with the numbers that they are collecting for me supposedly.

But this information can probably be obtained a thousand other ways. This way just lets me (and you) look at it also. 'Live traffic feed' is pretty basic and displays on this screen. 'Sitemeter' gets into real depth including what browser YOU are using along with versions of YOUR software.

Link - feedjit
Link - sitemeter

451 - Email joke

I've been getting some good email jokes lately.

-------------------------------------------

REMEMBER WHEN YOUR
MOTHER TOLD YOU
NEVER TO TAKE CANDY
FROM A STRANGER....

...THIS IS THE ONE SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!!!!!

450 - Two poopy jokes

A man was seated next to a girl on the airplane when the man turned to her and said, 'Let's talk.' 'I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.'
The girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the man, 'What would you like to talk about?'
'Oh ', said the man, 'How about nuclear power?' 'OK', she said, 'That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first:.... A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat grass, the same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?'
The man thinks about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea.'
To which the girl replies: 'Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?'.

**************************

For those who wish to have a glass of wine.. and those who don't.

As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria. In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or scotch, tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.

449 - Acuraciy - acuoracy - acccu ... whatever

I found a Dilbert cartoon from last month that I cut out with the intention of getting it out here in the blogosphere soon(er)(or later). Since later is here I thought I would just go to Dilbert.com and copy the cartoon and paste it. NOT SO FAST THERE BOY. No picture savin' unless your logged in. So I sign up for Dilbert land and saaaavvveee.... NOPE! Not on my PC anyway.

So how do I beat this system? Well I can email a copy to someone. How about myself?! Yep, that works. And HEY, I can save a copy from my email! Statistics say that 25% of bloggers will figure this out in 34 days after implementation of a 90% effective system.


Link - Dilbert

448 - Phone pun

It's a fun phone pun. Although the kiddies might not get the joke, old people will.

Link - Grimmy

447 - Found one

Found a cartoon for Saturday. Subject is self explanatory.


.
Link - Mike Peters

446 - Habitat

Maybe a post later in the day. I have to get up very early to be at a habitat project and nothing is flowing for the blog right now.

445 - Crappy phone service bitch

The new wireless revolution from Sprint - no minute tracking. I guess every cell phone company will be following suit soon. (If Sprint doesn’t go out of business.)

So cell phones are finally catching up to normal phones. (land lines for the n00bs in life) Now all we have to do is make cell phones good enough that you don’t have to holler into them. HELLO! WHAT?! HEL.. WHAT?

Of course you can always get a VOIP phone. Then you will have all the quality and reliability of your computer and internet connection. Don’t try to call 911. Don’t forget the battery back up that the phone company has been providing for you for 150 years.

This is my crappy phone service bitch for what ever time period has past since the last crappy phone service bitch.

(by the way - 2 day wootoff)
.

444 - I forgot to mention

WOOT OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And they're blowin' through WOOTs like mad. No big wootoff killers yet.

Link - WOOT
.

443 - Most people call it being a smartass

There was a good editorial in the Post-Dispatch today about sarcasm (as if there was such a thing as a good editorial). So I thought I'd share it with you (even though it might be over your head). At the end there's a picture I got recently that goes along with this article. It might insult some people (not that I really care). There's a guy and a girl in the picture. Call them Dick and Jane. I'm not sure who's dumber, Dick or ENAJ.
(not very good sarcasm but I wanted everyone to be able to understand it)
-------------------------------------


AS IF YOU CARE

"She lacks the power of conversation, but not the power of speech."

— George Bernard Shaw


All of us know someone who just doesn't get it. Now we know where they just don't get it.

Specifically, we now know that people lose the ability to perceive sarcasm when a part of a brain called the right parahippocampal gyrus is damaged. But you already knew that, didn't you, Einstein? The information comes courtesy of recent research by Katherine P. Rankin of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California-San Francisco.

Sarcasm is a complicated kind of humor. The message it's meant to convey is the opposite of the language used to convey it. In most cases, sarcasm can't be understood unless you can reasonably predict what other people are thinking.

It's not like this stuff is really important or anything, not like it could be used to help diagnose aging-related brain disorders such as semantic dementia, a progressive disease where people forget the meaning of words. And not like it's rocket science. Dr. Rankin only used cutting-edge magnetic resonance imaging and a new test called Tasit: The Awareness of Social Inference Test. Duh.

Scientists long have associated the left side of the brain with language. But it turns out that there's much more involved in understanding non-literal language like sarcasm, jokes and puns. Before Dr. Rankin's research, the right parahippocampal gyrus was thought only to play a role in detecting background changes in visual tests. Obviously, there's more to it than that.

Most big advances in understanding how disease works engender predictions about possible future treatments. In the case of Dr. Rankin's research, however, the usefulness comes in diagnosing what are called frontotemporal dementias.

Most of us think of dementia, senility and Alzheimer's disease as being different names for the same thing. But there are important differences in the apparent causes and progressions of those diseases. People with Alzheimer's, for example, may lose the ability to recognize old friends and family members, but they can perceive sarcasm as well as anyone else.

The sarcastic among us long have dreamed of the day when science could cure the sarcastically challenged. Before that day comes, science must come up with a cure for the common punch in the nose that is sure to follow.


----------------------------

442 - Democracy

I was watching Charlie Rose last night. They were talking about Iraq and up coming elections. Charlie was talking to Vali Nasr from Tufts University. He is obviously from the middle east so he knows the region. He said that in southern Iraq, instead of the Shiites coming together they are splintering apart. There are over 500 political parties signed up for the up coming elections! Way to show them the way to democracy George!

441 - Fox news

I don't know what it is about fox news. I tried watching them do some reporting on the Midwest floods on Yahoo news and I even can't stand to watch them do non-political reporting. Just listening to them talk about anything irritates me.

Link - Mike Peters
.

440 - Cartoons

This isn't to far down the road before it actually starts happening.


Link - Duplex


Pastis pun - (click it to blow it up to readable size)


Link - Pearls
.

439 - Found some jokes

A guy shows up late for work. The boss yells "You should have been here at 8:30!" He replies: "Why? What happened at 8:30?"
------
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
-----
A bear walks into a bar and says "I'd like a beer and ........... a packet of peanuts." The barman says "Why the big pause?"
-----
On his trip to Great Britain, George Bush had a meeting with Queen Elizabeth. His smirk looked more like a grimace as he told her: "I'm in deep doo-doo over 9/11—we’re heading for a Constitutional crisis and treason trials. But you folks over here, you have been running a nice stable monarchy for centuries. How does one manage to run a country so smoothly?"

"That’s easy," she replied, "You surround yourself with intelligent ministers and advisors."

"But how can I tell whether they are intelligent or not?" he inquired.

"You ask them a riddle," she replied, and with that she pressed a button and said, "Would you please send Tony Blair in."

When Blair arrived, the Queen said, "I have a riddle for you to answer for me. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child?”

Blair replied, "That’s easy. The child was me."

"Very good," said the Queen, "You may go, now."

So President Bush went back to Washington and called in his chief of staff, Karl Rove. He said to him, "I have a riddle for you, and the answer is very important. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child?”

Rove replied, "Yes, it is clearly very important that we determine the answer, as no child must be left behind. Can I deliberate on this for a while?"
"Yes," said Bush, "I'll give you four hours to come up with the answer."

So Rove went and called a meeting of the White House Staff, and asked them the riddle. But after much discussion and many suggestions, none of them had a satisfactory answer. So he was quite upset, not knowing what he would tell the President.

As Rove was walking back to the Oval Office, he saw former Secretary of State Colin Powell approaching him. So he said, "Mr. Secretary, can you answer this riddle for me. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was the child?" "That's easy," said Powell, "The child was me."

"Oh thank you," said Rove, "You may just have saved me my job!"

So Rove went in to the Oval Office and said to President Bush, "I think I know the answer to your riddle. The child was Colin Powell!" "No, you idiot!" shouted Bush, "The child was Tony Blair!"
-----
Two nuns are driving their car one day, when suddenly the devil jumps onto the hood of their car.
Nun1: Oh no, sister, what do we do?
Nun2: Quick, show him your cross.
Nun1 leans out of window and yells: “Hey, you f--king idiot, get off our car!”
-----
A guy meets a hooker in a bar. She says, "This is your lucky night. I’ve got a special game for you. I’ll do absolutely anything you want for $300, as long as you can say it in three words." The guy replies, "Hey, why not?" He pulls his wallet out of his pocket, and one at a time lays three one hundred dollar bills on the bar, and says, slowly: "Paint … my … house."
-----
A very orthodox Jewish father was talking to his son. "Father", he said, "I'd like to go to Israel. I have never been and I have been wanting to go for years." The father decided to let his son go. A month later, his son calls and says, "Father, I converted to Christianity and am going to Italy with my friends." The father got extremely upset and went to his best friend, a rabbi, for advice. "David", he asked, "why did my son do this?" The rabbi replied, "You know what? My son did the exact same thing! Next time I am in temple I will ask God." The rabbi went to temple and prayed to God. "God, my son went to Israel and became a Christian. Why did this happen?" God replied, "You know what? My son did the same thing!"
-----
The manager of an office wants to motivate his staff so he puts up a sign saying "THINK" above the basin in the staff restroom. Upon returning he finds a new sign above a dispenser saying "THOAP".
-----
Three kings whose countries border each other finally get sick of constantly being at war, so they agree to each send their best knight to fight it out, may the best man win.

Knight #1 turns up and his squire is amazingly busy all through the night, polishing armor, sharpening swords, cooking dinner, and so forth, while the knight rests up for the big day tomorrow.

Knight #2 arrives and keeps his squire frantic, what with checking the saddle over and cooking him up a lavish spread. That squire also is hard at work until daybreak.

Knight #3 slouches in around three in the morning. His squire doesn't bother with polishing anything. His only acts are to heave a rope over a tree branch, form a noose at the end, attach a big cauldron to the noose, chuck a random assortment of veggies and chunks of meat in to make a stew, and hoist that sucker way up high before building a fire under it. Breakfast will be ready in the morning, and the squire calls it good and goes to sleep. The other squires take this in with considerable envy, but tell themselves that any knight with such a rotten squire will at least be easy for their knights to beat.

Come the morning, and the battle begins. To everyone's surprise, within 3 minutes, the knight with the lazy squire has beaten the snot out of the other two. Well, you know - the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to both of the squires of the opposing sides.
-----
"How long do I have to live, doctor?"
"I'd say ten...."
"Ten what? Weeks, months, years?"
"....Nine...."

-----
Link - The source and the rest
.

438 - Yesterday and today

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. An unlucky day for some. Lucky for others. When I worked at the phone company in one department there was a running joke about which day Friday the 13th was on for a particular month. When it is actually on Friday it's easy to remember to watchful. It's when Friday the 13th is on another day of the week that it can sneak up on you.

With all this in mind I set about one Friday to test the Friday the 13th theory by ignoring every bad thing that happened that day. Only focus on the good things, dismiss the bad things. It was a great day. Then came Saturday the 14th. I didn't purposely focus on the good or bad. Yet somehow the bad stuck out. Saturday the 14th was a miserable day. I now dread Saturday the 14th. And now it is that day! So back to post 433 for some advise from Pearls.

437 - Some things have never changed

Here's some parts of a wikipedia article on John Adams. My wife and I are watching an HBO series about him. But the wiki article pointed out what I think are some humorous things about politics in general. Keep in mind these things happened in the 1790's.

----------------------------

During the presidential campaign of 1796 Adams was the presidential candidate of the Federalist Party and Thomas Pinckney, the Governor of South Carolina, his running mate. The federalists wanted Adams as their presidential candidate to crush Thomas Jefferson's bid. Most federalists would have preferred Hamilton to be a candidate. Although Hamilton and his followers supported Adams, they also held a grudge against him. They did consider him to be the lesser of the two evils.
********
They cracked down on political immigrants and domestic opponents with the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed by Adams in 1798.

These Acts were composed of four separate and distinct units:

The Naturalization Act, passed on June 18
The Alien Act, passed on June 24
The Alien Enemies Act, passed on July 6
The Sedition Act, passed on July 14
These 4 acts were brought about to suppress Republican opposition. The Naturalization Act doubled the period required to naturalize the foreign born to American citizenship to 14 years. Since most immigrants voted republican they thought by initiating this act it would decrease the proportion of people who voted republican. The Alien Friends Act and the Alien Enemies Act allowed the president to deport any foreigner that he thought was dangerous to the country. The Sedition Act criminalized anyone who publicly criticized the federal government.
.
Link - John Adams article

436 - Chinese hackers

I'd better put this out here before it gets to old. It's a link to a news item about Chinese hackers stealing Red Cross money. The article has a good Eddie Murphy quote at the end of it the really tops off the article.

Link - Hackers
.

435 - Mandelbrot sets

If you want to see some cool video go to the "Ultimate Fractal Video Project" and be prepared to download some huge files. The picture above is from 'universe 3'. Universe 3 is the longest running video. I'd explain Mandelbrot sets here but it's easier to go to wikipedia.

Ultimate Fractal Video Project - click and start scrolling.
Link - UFVP

Snippets of the Ultimate Fractal Video Project on Youtube.
Link - Youtube

An explanation of Mandelbrot sets. Let me know when you understand this so you can explain it to me.
Link - wikipedia
.

434 - Geeky thingys

Here's some geek button sayings I found on a site Brad told me about.

Preliminary operational tests were inconclusive (the damn thing blew up).
Real Programmers Don't Document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
The ozone layer or cheese in a spray can. Don’t make me choose.
You know you're an engineer if you have no life & can prove it mathematically.
Press any key... NO, NO, NO, not THAT one!
We have enough youth. How about a fountain of SMART?

They are somewhere on this site. Good luck finding them. (think of it as a treasure hunt)
.
Link - Think Geek

433 - It's Monday

This is a good idea for everyday of the week.


Because this is how your day will go.


Links - Pearls and Speedbump

432 - Sunday extra

The drug Monkey has a good smartass rant today about health care.

Link - Health plan
.

431 - Bumper sticker

Short one today. I saw this bumper sticker last night. If you want one just put it in google. A lot of sites are selling it.

At Least The War On The Environment Is Going Well

.

430 - Topys

Looking over my lsat post I fuond anuther topy. Topys drive my nuts. I can reed over and ovr agian and stil misss some of the simplest topy misteaks. I gues once you have on your head whatt someting is suposed to say, u keep rereeding the same thin. BUt I find it hadr to let somethng sit long enuff to proff reed it. So eye just let it looose. Oh whel, such is life.


So much for that. Here's some quotes from some unknown quotists. They are unknown because I didn't take the time to look the quote up on the net. Such is life also.

"Give me ambiguity or give me something else."
"Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep until noon."
"If the going gets easy you may be going downhill."
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"
"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first."

429 - Bottling Up Emotions

Here's another article from LiveScience. It contradicts the old thinking about 'getting it out of your system'. Again with LiveScience articles if you go to the original article there are more links in the article itself.

Study: Bottling Up Emotions Can Be Better.

Score one for resilient types who keep things to themselves. Contrary to popular notions about what is normal or healthy, new research has found that it is OK not to express one's thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma, such as a school shooting or terrorist attack. In fact, people who choose not to express their feelings after such an event may be better off than those who do talk about their feelings, said University at Buffalo psychologist Mark Seery, lead author of the study detailed in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Seery investigated the mental and physical effects of collective traumas on people who are exposed to a tragedy but who do not experience a direct loss of a friend or family member. He focused on people's responses to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "To the extent that other collective traumas are similar to 9/11 in that many people are exposed though intense media coverage, even if they do not experience direct loss, there is reason to think these results could generalize to other events," Seery told LiveScience.

The findings have implications for expectations of how people should respond in the face of a collective trauma affecting a whole community or even an entire nation.
Seery says the results should not be interpreted to mean that expressing one's thoughts and feelings is harmful or that if someone wants to express their emotions they should not do so. "It's important to remember that not everyone copes with events in the same way, and in the immediate aftermath of a collective trauma, it is perfectly healthy to not want to express one's thoughts and feelings," he said.

Assumption that talking is better

Seery points out that immediately after last year's tragic shootings at Virginia Tech University there were many "talking head" psychiatrists in the media describing how important it was to get the students expressing their feelings.
"This perfectly exemplifies the assumption in popular culture, and even in clinical practice, that people need to talk in order to overcome a collective trauma," Seery said. "Instead, we should be telling people there is likely nothing wrong if they do not want to express their thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma," he said. "In fact, they can cope quite successfully and, according to our results, are likely to be better off than someone who does want to express his or her feelings."

Surprise on who was better off

Seery and co-researchers tested people's responses to the terrorist attacks, beginning immediately after the event and continuing for the following two years. Respondents were given the chance to express their thoughts and feelings on that day and a few days afterward. The analysis drew in part from 1,559 responses to an open-ended question about one's "thoughts on the shocking events of today" emailed on Sept. 11, 2001, to a large randomly generated national sample. The researchers then compared people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings versus those who chose not to express, focusing on such measures as whether they had any post-traumatic stress symptoms, their physical health and generalized distress.

If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct — that failing to express one's feelings indicates some harmful repression or other pathology — then people who chose not to express should have been more likely to experience negative mental and physical health symptoms over time, the researchers said. "However, we found exactly the opposite: people who chose not to express were better off than people who did choose to express," Seery said.

Moreover, when the researchers looked only at people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings, and tested the length of their responses, they found a similar pattern. People who expressed more were worse off than people who expressed less. "We assessed various alternative explanations in secondary analyses, but nothing else accounts for this effect," Seery said.

Link - Orig article
.

428 - A bunch of stuff

Welcome back to blogging Jerome. Jerome is the person that got me started blogging. He dropped out for a while but has come back. He draws his own cartoons so he has to put a little effort into his blogs and didn't have time for a while. I'm glad he's back. His cartoons are sometimes a little to local even for me. A recent one was about a local graffiti artist that died. I had to look the guys name up on google to find out who he was but when I did the cartoon made perfect sense.
Jerome is a shirttail relative of mine. He's my mother's daughter's husband's sister's son. Go visit Jerome.
Link - The Daily Jerome

I haven't visited another relative of mine for a while, Mike Peters (second cousin). Go to his editorial site and go back through his cartoons for the last month. He's got some good one's.
Link - Mike's editorials

And this one's for John.
Magic explained

427 - Trashy post

Here's a link to the LA Times that has some videos and pictures on the plastic trash that's circulating in the Pacific ocean. The site is a flash site so it takes a few seconds to load but the videos are informing. (thanks Brad)

Link - Trash flash

(this post should have been a car post but that's the way it goes)
.

426 - Plates - (License)

I got the following in an email. This could be a new "urban legend" but it's worth thinking about. If the crooks aren't doing this yet they will be now because all those crazy people out there are spreading this rumor. No not me! I'm just reporting on a new possible trend!

------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye on your license plate. A woman said her son found his license plate missing so he called the police to file a report.

They told him people were stealing the plates to get free gas, by pumping and running. Given the rise in gas prices, people have taken to stealing license plates, putting them on their car, then getting gas and running. The gas station will have "your" license plate # and you could be in trouble for "pump and run".

Check your car periodically to be sure you still have a plate. If you should find it missing, file a report immediately!!! Keep an eye on your license plate! Make sure you always know it's there! When the license plate is reported as the "drive off vehicle", it's YOU they contact! Be aware!!!! Be aware of your license plates, most of us never look to see if the plates are there or not.

425 - Something else to worry about

As if we don't have enough to worry about. My wife and I both got one of these letters. Not hackers but bunglers have lost our personal information. So we get free credit monitoring for a year. Whoopee. I'd rather they find the lost tapes. And if you haven't called the three credit reporting bureau's to get your free yearly reports, their numbers are in this document.
So how long before you get YOUR letter saying your information is gone. I'll bet you can't wait!

Click on the document to make it bigger and more readable.

424 - Flags

I got a post card with an offer to buy American flags. Here's the front of the post card. Notice the how they say that their flags "exceed government specifications".

Here's the back of the card. Notice the size of the flags they are selling. 3'x5', 4'x6', 5'x8', 6'x10'.

Are you still with me? Hang in there. Now here's the list of official flag sizes from the U.S. Flag code.

.............................................. Dimensions of Flag
...................................................Hoist..Fly
................................................(width)(length)
..................................................Feet...Feet
(1)............................................. 20.00 38.00
(2)............................................. 10.00 19.00
(3)............................................. 8.95 17.00
(4)............................................. 7.00 11.00
(5)............................................. 5.00 9.50
(6)............................................. 4.33 5.50
(7)............................................. 3.50 6.65
(8)............................................. 3.00 4.00
(9)............................................. 3.00 5.70
(10)............................................ 2.37 4.50
(11)............................................ 1.32 2.50

Do you see any of the sizes they're selling? Nope. And unless it's one of the above sizes, it's not an American flag. Of the two links below, the first one takes you to the complete Title 4 flag code.

The next one muddies up the flag issue even more. Did you ever walk into a room that had an American looking flag with yellow fringe around it? Did you know you just left the United States and walked into a foreign country? No really. Trust me. It's on the internet. It must be true.

Link - Title 4
Link - Gold fringe