Posted 11/30/2009 10:08:00 PM by Douglas

Yeah, I know it's almost December and half the word isn't dead from pig-flu yet, but that's no reason to get complacent now.

"We're certainly on the downward slope of the curve," said Thomas Skinner, spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

So it's going down, right? That's good, right?

The level of flu activity across the nation has dropped for the fourth week in a row, federal health officials reported Monday, indicating that the second wave of the swine flu pandemic in the United States had peaked.

This is just getting comical. When they use declining numbers to show increasing pig flu, how could you spot a fleck of reason in any of their hysterical bullshit?

Labels: pig flu

Posted 11/30/2009 10:00:00 PM by Douglas

In case you're looking for an hour or two to kill on Wikipedia, check out these 50 articles. The Russian stuff is fascinating, but I'm surprised Pavlik Morozov and the Stakhanovite movement weren't listed.

I think the more interesting part of this is that of these 50 weird stories, I'd heard about 11 of them.

Posted 11/27/2009 04:55:00 PM by Douglas

What would Thanksgiving be without a news story from somewhere about someone burning their house down frying a turkey? I don't think it's funny that someone burned their house down. I think it's funny that you see this story at least once a year.

Fire officials say oil from a deep-fried Thanksgiving Day turkey sparked a house fire in suburban New York.

There were no injuries reported in Wednesday's fire at the North Babylon home. Firefighters were there for about two hours.

The moral to the story: Don't fry turkeys.

Posted 11/25/2009 06:18:00 PM by Douglas

Worst. Decade. Evar:

Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era.

Don't speak too soon, there are nine more to go this century.

It reads like a typical dead-tree cover story aimed at selling magazines, but still, the decade that still doesn't have a name (the aughts?) kinda sucked. At least we didn't have to suffer through disco.

Posted 11/25/2009 06:11:00 PM by Douglas

Graduate schools have traditionally seen increased admissions when the economy tanks, specifically the job market, so this isn't really much of a surprise. It's just sad, really:

The number of people taking the Law School Admission Test is at an unprecedented high, and the recession is a likely reason. But some are questioning whether bad economic times are a sufficient reason to go to law school.

That's just what the world needs: More attorneys. The economy continues to tank, we owe our collective first born male child to China, and people are flocking to the "money changing" industry instead of producing something tangible. What a waste, and one of our nation's head lawyers agrees.

Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

Strong words from a guy like Scalia, but he's right on the money.

Posted 11/23/2009 09:38:00 PM by Douglas

Hilarious video of an amusing trick for your dog. But what doesn't sound better with Yakety Sax?



It wasn't obvious (to me, anyway) that the toy was tied to Saydee's collar. But that made it even funnier. If I could just figure out a way to get my cat to do that, she wouldn't be such a lard ass, but she probably thinks the same thing about me.

Posted 11/22/2009 04:53:00 PM by Douglas

Have you ever wanted to ride in a helicopter and not sure how you could pull that off? Just get a pit bull and wait for it to eat your wife's face off.

A woman was severely injured Thursday night when she was attacked by her pit bull.

Precinct 5 constables said the woman’s husband heard a commotion in another room, and when he went to investigate, he found his wife on the floor.

The family’s pit bull was on top of her.

The woman was taken via Life Flight to Memorial Hermann.

Beautiful, docile animals.

Labels: pit bull attacks

Posted 11/22/2009 03:43:00 PM by Douglas

With your cheap rewards, your blackmail and your comical rage:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Elvis Costello
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Remember you'll only be my boss as long as you pay my wage.

Posted 11/22/2009 03:21:00 PM by Douglas

Another compelling story to the new professionalism of law enforcement:

A 16-year-old accused of smuggling a loaded handgun in to the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center Guards appears to have a walked through a metal detector that was unplugged, authorities said Tuesday.

What? You mean you have to plug in the metal detector? I had no idea.

Also, how did a 16 year old kid get a gun? Isn't it illegal for anyone under 21 to own a handgun? My stars, I just don't know how something like that could happen. We need a law that keeps kids from getting guns. Oh wait, we already have one.

Posted 11/22/2009 01:03:00 PM by Douglas

Orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour when the only thing standing between your grisly death is a piece of government plastic may be once in a lifetime opportunity, but so is the birth of your first child. So how do you pick? Why not flip a coin?

Astronaut Randolph Bresnik is a new dad again, after launching into space and taking a spacewalk, all for the first time.

He announced the birth of his daughter, Abigail, on Sunday morning on NASA's airwaves.

His wife, Rebecca, gave birth to their second child back home in Houston on Saturday at 11:04 p.m. CST. They have a 3-year-old son, adopted from Ukraine.

At least she has a good attitude about it:

"We don't choose the timing," she said in an interview that was broadcast by NASA following the birth announcement. "He's trained one year for this mission but really he's been here five, almost six years. I'm just really excited for him and excited for us."

What else is she gonna say? He can't stay in orbit forever.

Posted 11/22/2009 12:57:00 PM by Douglas

Police chase a speeder, speeder gets out of car with a gun, police shoot speeder. Nothing really exceptional about that, so why is it when this sort of thing happens in a town of less than 7,000 people, there's always something fishy about it?

He said Brown was going at least 65 mph in a zone where speeds were marked at no more than 40 mph.

"(Brown) subsequently stopped and exited the vehicle and was armed with a handgun," Bowen said. "At some point during the confrontation the officers felt threatened."

Bowen wouldn't comment on what spurred Brown's actions, citing the ongoing investigation. He also wouldn't reveal if Brown pointed the handgun at officers.

The officers asked Brown to drop his weapon at least once, Bowen said.

"I refuse to comment on an open investigation" is the phrase that pays for most guilty politicians, so there's strike one. But it gets better:

Bowen said a patrol vehicle camera was running but didn't capture the episode. The audio recorders weren't working and didn't record the exchange, he said.

And there's strike two and three. You have dashboard mounted video cameras that somehow didn't catch the event, and audio recorders that, gosh darnit, just weren't working when a city employee killed a man?

Posted 11/22/2009 12:29:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting animation of the progression of unemployment over the last two years. Did anyone ever work in Michigan or Mississippi?

Posted 11/18/2009 05:58:00 PM by Douglas

I've been trying to avoid a comment about the self-created Palin-hype, because it's gone on way past its self life, but I got my Newsweek the other day with this pict staring me in the face (thanks mom) and I thought I'd weigh in:

I read last week that Althouse weighed in pretty negatively, but I'd have to agree with this:

Apparently, they were afraid you were not ready, and they were right, so why didn't you trust them or at least accept that you owed them control over the presidential campaign? You agreed to take the subordinate position, and you had to know that their reasons for picking you had to do with image and style. If you weren't prepared to do it their way, you should not have accepted the part. At the very least, you should not have been mystified about the way they were treating you. You should have been looking at the campaign strategy from every angle and building your sophistication, not just aching to burst free and expose yourself to the world — which, as you soon learned, did not go well.

It seems that Sarah Palin wasn't able or didn't want to bother to analyze whether she was ready to debut on the big media stage, and she wasn't large-minded enough to think beyond herself to what it would mean for the whole campaign. That is, she was dumb. She was too dumb to handle campaign responsibilities properly, so she was clearly too dumb to step into the role of President of the United States.

Althouse has taken a reaming, mainly by trolls questioning her feminist status, but I think she's right. You want to run with the big kids, but you can't stand up to Katie Courick or John McCain campaign advisor? That bullshit may fly in Wasilla, but now Washington.

Now, according to her facebook page, she's steamed about the Newsweek cover:

"The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this "news" magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner's World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness -- a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention -- even if out of context.

What? A photo used to pepper up the lede? Oh my god, stop the presses!

Come on, Caribou Barbie, you can't have your cheesecake shot and eat it, too. Your photo shoot showcasing your "physical fitness" has just as much context showing what a beauty queen you are as pictures of you shooting a moose does have with the anti-gun crowd. You can't have it both ways.

Posted 11/14/2009 02:02:00 PM by Douglas

Spitty-fountain at the Hearst Castle:

Posted 11/14/2009 01:52:00 PM by Douglas

There's an age-old argument in politics: Does the government benefit the people by taxing the shit out of them just to (poorly) spend the money on government services? Here's a fascinating look at two states: Texas with relatively low taxes doing a shitty job of providing services versus California, with high taxes doing a shitty job of providing services. What really amazes me is that there are people that are genuinely surprised by this:

It’s not surprising, then, that an intense debate rages over which model is more satisfactory and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes. Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor. For evidence, look to the two largest states in the nation, which are fine representatives of the liberal and conservative alternatives.

Well, duh. That's one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives, back when we still had fiscal conservatives.

The high-benefit, high-tax model can work, but only if the high taxes actually purchase high benefits—that is, public goods that far surpass the quality of those available to people who pay low taxes.

And here, California is decidedly lacking.

I'm sure there are examples I'm not aware of, but are there any places where people just love the government services their high taxes buy them? The only people that want the government to give them crappy services are those with no money to provide them for themselves.

But, I hope no one reads this article, especially people in California. That's just what Texas needs, more idiots from California that think a two and a half hour commute and $350,000 for a 1,400 square foot house is a great deal.

Posted 11/11/2009 09:54:00 PM by Douglas

Poor commies. It's a shame what all that freedom did to the worker's paradise of the GDR

Of course, unification brought with it the freedom to travel the world and, for some, more material wealth, but it also brought social breakdown, widespread unemployment, blacklisting, a crass materialism and an "elbow society" as well as a demonisation of the country I lived in and helped shape. Despite the advantages, for many it was more a disaster than a celebratory event.

[. . . ]

Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine "social achievements" they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidised rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities. Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and "state socialism" came shortly before the collapse of the "free market" system in the west.

Give me a freakin' break. You want you state-mandated job/graveyard back? Suck it up and quit whining. Freedom is never free, douchebag.

Posted 11/04/2009 09:03:00 PM by Douglas

Somedays, it's just not working out for you. Have you ever thought that it was YOU from the future that's fucking it up for you so you don't do it right the first time? These guys have.

In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the "God particle," the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.

The scientists say their math proves nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Is John Connor involved?

Posted 11/04/2009 08:59:00 PM by Douglas

It's the end of the world and they got it wrong.

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.

Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.

Sometimes I think I need to get a funny haircut and tell people that the end of the world is coming. 10% of the income of the idiots I can convince it's real? Beats working.