Posted 12/22/2010 10:57:00 PM by Douglas

Even as an adolescent, I never understood the Peanuts characters. Were they supposed to be pretentious children or condescending adults. It was never obvious to me, but this guy takes it to a new level.

I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas with my kid, and now I openly loathe it. Who thought this was a good idea to show to young children? Charlie Brown is depressed. Lucy is a bossy cunt. Linus is a head case. Peppermint Patty is like a cocktail party guest who corners you and talks to you until you want to slit your throat from ear to ear. Whenever Snoopy talks, he sounds like a cat being raped. No one smiles. Everyone's complaining or arguing. Horrible slow jazz plays in the background. There isn't a semblance of joy in any of these specials, and anyone who tells you they're classics has been fucking BRAINWASHED, just like I was.

OK, maybe I don't think it's that horrible, but it's still pretty horrible.

Posted 12/15/2010 09:11:00 PM by Douglas

Here it is fans of the Antikythera Mechanism. Here's one that's made out of Legos:

Labels: Antikythera Mechanism

Posted 12/15/2010 08:46:00 PM by Douglas

Hey Mac-tards, want to use your why-phone to turn in any suspicious activity to the appropriate government agency? There's an app for that.

A new iPhone App with the misleading name ‘PatriotApp’ attempts to draw on the power of the patriot movement, turning smartphone users into a gigantic snitch network.

You might think an app with such a patriotic name might have useful functions like a pocket constitution or quotes from our forefathers. But contrary to the services one might expect, this app allows users to report any ‘suspicious’ behavior directly linking them with top government agencies.

Is there an app for looking like an idiot with a blue-tooth headset on all day, or driving down the road while you check your facebook status? There should be.

Posted 12/12/2010 05:29:00 PM by Douglas

I'm still waiting for wikileaks to leak something that anyone outside the Beltway cares about. I think these are a good start.

You might be pondering the legitimacy of the organization. But I'm curious about something else. What about all the stuff that really needs to be leaked that we're never going to hear about?

I've gathered a few stories from various walks of life whose mysteries continue to befuddle me. If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange got a hold of these cables, I'd most certainly support their dissemination.

All good questions.

Posted 12/11/2010 12:47:00 PM by Douglas

Houston, we have cheese:

Before the successful launch, voyage, and recovery of SpaceX's Dragon Spacecraft, the first time in history a commercial company has recovered a spacecraft from orbit, reporters were buzzing with news of a "secret" payload, stowed on board.

It was a payload so secret, SpaceXers made it Top Secret (think Val Kilmer 1984, not official US Government).

Top Secret payload, bolted to the floor of the Dragon spacecraft.

So what was inside the mystery package? Their tribute to Monty Python.

A wheel of cheese.

I was not familiar with this sketch. But to all the nay-sayers that thought commercial space was impossible, here's your cheese:

Posted 12/11/2010 12:10:00 PM by Douglas

I have tried to ignor it, but I just can't figure out why the wikileaks bullshit is such a big deal. I also don't know why no one besides Ron Paul is saying this. He is commonly painted as a cook, but I'd like to hear how anything he says here isn't true:

Labels: Ron Paul

Posted 11/28/2010 09:03:00 PM by Douglas

Leslie Nielsen died? Surely you can't be serious? I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.

Leslie Nielsen, the Canadian-born actor who in middle age tossed aside three decades of credibility in dramatic and romantic roles to make a new, far more successful career as a comic actor in films like “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.



Barbara Billingsley, now Leslie Nielsen?

Labels: Airplane

Posted 11/23/2010 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

I've ranted about the police busting drug runners on I-40 so much that I'm bored with it, but then there's this piece about who really benefits from these drug busts. Spoiler alert: The Baptists and the bootleggers always come down on the same side of any prohibition argument.

"Why the counties are complaining I'm not sure. If they want to get out there on the highway and make those traffic stops and such, then they could have a bigger share of those proceeds from any currencies that were seized."

This article is a rambling diatribe about how they seize money. This is the second part of this story, and I can't seem to find part one, which was more focused on "taking the drugs off the street." You know, because there aren't any illegal drugs anywhere.

But the part that burns up (small 'l') libertarians is what a cash cow this is for poor, rural law enforcement agencies. This flies in the face of the "legalize and tax it" argument that comes from those against the drug war. Is this cash/drug seizure just a tax? I haven't seen a prospectus for one of the Cartels (but I bet they're doing better than my 401(k) right now) but does anyone think they're really suffering when they lose a few million dollars to the County Mounties in Podunk, Texas? It's just the cost of doing business for them.

Labels: I-40 Drug Bust

Posted 11/22/2010 05:40:00 PM by Douglas

I thought we put this one to bed in 2006. For the last time, Pluto is NOT a planet.

Now that Pluto may have regained its status as the largest object in the outer solar system, should astronomers consider giving it back another former title — that of full-fledged planet?

Pluto was demoted to a newly created category, "dwarf planet," in 2006, partly because of the discovery a year earlier of Eris, another icy body from Pluto's neighborhood. Eris was thought to be bigger than Pluto until Nov. 6, when astronomers got a chance to recalculate Eris' size.

Now it appears that Pluto reigns — though only by the slimmest of margins (the numbers are so close as to be nearly indistinguishable, when uncertainties are taken into account).

It's the only "planet" that has an orbit inclined over 10º to the ecliptic. It's also smaller than the moon. Keep Pluto OFF the planet list!

Labels: Pluto

Posted 11/22/2010 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

I've ranted in the past about how corn-derived ethanol is a net loss, thermodynamically. Well, you know it's official when Al Gore comes out and says it's all horseshit.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small."

Wow, and that mistake only cost $40 Billion dollars of our money going to ADM. Yay?

Labels: ethanol

Posted 11/22/2010 05:08:00 PM by Douglas

Hugh Prather, the real life Jack Handy, has died.

Hugh Prather, a self-help author whose first book, “Notes to Myself,” put an aphoristic finger on the pulse of the ’70s, has sold more than five million copies and inspired the long-running “Saturday Night Live” segment “Deep Thoughts,” died on Nov. 15 at his home in Tucson. He was 72.

Mr. Prather died in his hot tub, apparently of a heart attack, his wife, Gayle, said.

What they don't tell you is that EVERYONE in Tucson dies in a hot tub. This has to be my favorite:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Posted 11/19/2010 10:58:00 PM by Douglas

The red light cameras are gone in Houston, and the red light runners are free to run red lights, unabated.

The Southwest Freeway feeder road at Bellaire is one of the busiest traffic spots in the city. More drivers ran the red light than anywhere else in September; a total of 1,600 times -- more than 50 times a day the red light cameras snapped pictures of alleged red-light runners, generating a lot of money for the city.

Two things about this that is monumentally stupid. First, if one camera catches 50 people running the red light each day and sends them a ticket in the mail, the intersection isn't any safer. And also, this:

In September alone, Houston's cameras combined netted $1.1 million, of which $330,000 went to the city.

The city only gets to keep a third of the money? What a sweetheart deal that is, for the company that provides them.

Posted 11/19/2010 10:48:00 PM by Douglas

This story has been told to death, but here's an angle that bears repeating

Bossi was taken to a private room where two female Charlotte TSA agents began what she calls an "aggressive" pat-down.

Bossi said the exam halted when they got around to feeling her right breast - the one where she'd had surgery.

"She put her full hand on my breast and said, 'What is this?' Bossi recalled. "And I said, 'It's my prosthesis because I've had breast cancer.' And she said, 'Well, you'll need to show me that.'"

And here's the real reason for this sudden increase in security. As always, follow the money.

Posted 11/10/2010 06:49:00 PM by Douglas

The first and possibly last page in the atheist hymnal:

Posted 11/09/2010 05:12:00 PM by Douglas

Fortes fortuna adiuvat.

The clearest manifestation of this is the rise of the idea of sustainability. The doctrine of sustainability demands that we don’t take any risks with our future. Taking decisive action to promote progress is seen as far more dangerous than simply staying still. That is why, these days, the ideals of development, progress and economic growth enjoy little cultural valuation. In contrast, just to ‘sustain’ a future of more of the same is represented as a worthwhile objective.

Interesting paradigm, considering the 21st century's pussification of humanity.

Posted 11/04/2010 05:39:00 PM by Douglas

Red-light cameras defeated in the City of Houston.

Houstonians rejected the city's red light camera program in a hard-fought ballot contest, delivering an immediate $10 million hit to an already dire budget situation at City Hall.

With all votes counted, 53.2 percent of voters demanded a decisive end to the use of the devices, which had been used to issue more than 800,000 tickets and collected $44 million in fines since 2006.

I know those figures don't include all those that don't pay, but that's $55 a ticket. But it's not about the money. Except that it is. I don't generally read the opinion page of the Hearst-on Chronicle, but this is a bit much:

The city of Houston, its police department, area trauma centers and the contractor managing the cameras receive millions of dollars in revenue generated by the red-light citations. Since the city installed the system in 2006, nearly 800,000 tickets have been issued with $43.7 million collected.

On the other hand, the financial heft and organization behind the camera opponents comes largely from traffic-court attorneys, including Paul Kubosh, who make their living helping motorists fight tickets. Kubosh claims the city's motive for installing traffic cameras is profit rather than public safety. In his case, it's a pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation.

You can't rebut the "it's all about the money" argument for the cameras with "they want money, too." It's such a stupid argument.

I don't think anyone thinks running red lights is a good idea, nor do I really think that most reasonable people think it's an effective attempt to enforce criminal law. But here's the rub that I don't see how either side can refute: In four years they've issued over 800,000 tickets. One thing is very clear. The cameras do not stop people running red lights.

Posted 11/01/2010 08:13:00 PM by Douglas

The headline is all you need from this one:

Texas Democrats fear a stormy Tuesday

I guess only Democrats don't like to get rained on?

Posted 11/01/2010 07:56:00 PM by Douglas

Pretty funny video from the rally this weekend. Remember, liberals, it's the other side that's dumb, right?



I don't think "The Man Show" version of this is online, it's almost as funny as the fight to end women's suffrage.

Posted 10/31/2010 03:46:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a great T-shirt for all you Greg Davis fans. Both of them.

Posted 10/31/2010 03:36:00 PM by Douglas

Some signs from the Stewert/Colbert Rally yesterday. This one sums up how I feel about people and their signs:

Posted 10/27/2010 05:16:00 PM by Douglas

It even works on a Prius!



Bumpter stickers are stupid.

Posted 10/24/2010 06:50:00 PM by Douglas

Finally, a solution for that fat baby! Because it's way to early for lipo.



I don't know who makes Tabby Spanks, but I could really use one of those.

Posted 10/24/2010 01:04:00 PM by Douglas

Only one company in the United States makes sodium thiopental, and we desperately need it to execute people. So if there's a shortage, what can we do? Buy cheap Chinese knockoff drugs, of course.

In the midst of a drug shortage that has already forced postponement of lethal injection executions across the United States, some states say they now have the drug in hand but are refusing to disclose its origin.

The unprecedented situation has been compounded by an inmate scheduled to die Tuesday but who is suing to stop his own execution, arguing that the drug which the state of Arizona intends to use may be counterfeit or unsafe.

Unsafe? What's it going to do, kill them? And how sad is it when the production capacity of the entire country doesn't produce enough juice needed to kill people.

Some states like Texas and Ohio have enough thiopental to carry on with their execution schedules, but others like Kentucky have been forced to put capital punishment on hold.

Well that's a relief, Texas. I'm sure Texas gets it from the manufacturer in rail cars. But what if you run out?

The central state of Oklahoma has borrowed doses of the drug from its neighbor Arkansas.

That's got to be an awkward call. I'm sure the Okies called Texas, too, but they probably didn't answer the phone.

At a recent hearing, an Arizona judge sounded puzzled about the need for FDA approval for the drug.

"What difference does that make?" judge Andrew Hurwitz asked.

"It strikes me as strange that the FDA law was meant to regulate executions... These are drugs that are going to be used to kill somebody."

If it's OK to shoot people, then the judge has a point.

Posted 10/24/2010 12:45:00 PM by Douglas

P. J. O'Rourke doesn't like democrats. Turns out it's mostly mutual.

Do Democrats have a mad infatuation with the political system, an unhealthy obsession with an idealized body politic? Do they dream of capturing and ravishing representational democracy? Are they crazed stalkers of our constitutional republic?

No. It’s worse than that. Democrats aren’t just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love.

I'd like to agree with him if I thought the Republicans were any better. They're not. But I think he knows that.

Labels: P.J. O'Rourke

Posted 10/24/2010 12:05:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a video from David Zucker making fun of Barbara Boxer's ego. Senator Barbara Boxer.

Posted 10/23/2010 10:09:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a really funny time lapse video of a baby in the floor. It makes me tired just watching him:

Posted 10/23/2010 09:53:00 PM by Douglas

Ya know, this would make a great movie.

A STOWAWAY crocodile on a flight escaped from its carrier bag and sparked an onboard stampede that caused the flight to crash, killing 19 passengers and crew.

The croc had been hidden in a passenger's sports bag - allegedly with plans to sell it - but it tore loose and ran amok, sparking panic

I have had it with these motherfucking crocodiles on this motherfucking plane!

Posted 10/19/2010 08:03:00 PM by Douglas

The world of anti-bullying is way out of control, but now it's getting some help by childish idiots as dumb as the bullies.

A new iPhone app called the "Ugly Meter" is just what cyberbullies -- including elementary school kids -- need to target easy marks, online security experts told FoxNews.com.

The 99-cent app, now available for iPhone users on Apple's iTunes Store, uses facial recognition software that measures symmetry and other features. Downloaded more than 20,000 times and designed for users ages 9 and above, the app scans a snapshot and then submits a score of 1 to 10.

"For impressionable young teens and tweens, it could potentially be quite damaging," he said. "It could be used in cyberbullying."

My phone said I was ugly and I'm pretty sure my microwave has been talking about me behind my back. I think I'm going to go kill myself.

Posted 10/19/2010 07:57:00 PM by Douglas

Nothing fires up a French riot like having to work. The good news is they got the afternoon off to go riot. Thank god it happened when it did instead of one of their four week vacations. I'm not coming back early just to riot.

The protesters are trying to prevent the French parliament from approving a bill that would raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 to help prevent the pension system from going bankrupt. Many workers feel the change would be a dangerous step in eroding France's social benefits -- which include long vacations, contracts that make it hard for employers to lay off workers and a state-subsidized health care system -- in favor of "American-style capitalism."

Sarkozy's conservative government points out that 62 is among the lowest retirement ages in the world, the French are living much longer than they used to and the pension system is losing money. The workers say the government could find pension savings elsewhere, such as by raising contributions from employers.

Don't worry 30 year old rioters. It's all going to be gone by the time you're 60 anyway. Go enjoy some wine and dirty sex with one of your mistresses and quit thinking about it.

Posted 10/19/2010 07:51:00 PM by Douglas

I'm not going to get in the habit of defending her, but this little faketraversy gets on my nerves:

"Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked while Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.

She interrupted to say, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"

The phrase "separation of church and state" has been such a rallying cry from those on the left that wish to demonize religion, the mere notion that "separation of church and state" isn't sacred is, as stated, laughable. Other than being right, she should know better than to split such a hair of con-law with her English Lit degree from this academic powerhouse.

Posted 10/16/2010 08:59:00 PM by Douglas

Barbara Billingsley, the actress most famed as June Cleaver, had died.

Barbara Billingsley, who as June Cleaver on the television series “Leave It to Beaver” personified a Hollywood postwar family ideal of the ever-sweet, ever-helpful suburban stay-at-home mom, died Saturday. She was 94.

But that's not what I know her for:



Shiiiiii!

And here she is talking about her experience learning jive for her Airplane! role:



RIP, classy lady!

Labels: Airplane

Posted 10/15/2010 10:37:00 PM by Douglas

No one is going to revel in someone losing their home. Foreclosure is horrible, but it's also horrible that the mortgage brokers gave home loans to people with no credit checks or verifiable employment. So it shouldn't be that much of a surprise to think that they're going to cut corners when it's time to foreclose.

All of this is largely because Mr. Cox realized almost immediately that Mrs. Bradbury's foreclosure file did not look right. The documents from the lender, GMAC Mortgage, were approved by an employee whose title was "limited signing officer," an indication to the lawyer that his knowledge of the case was effectively nonexistent.

This is a sticky situation. The laws of eviction are complicated, but have to be followed. But before that happens, you have to stop paying your mortgage. So then what? What if the bank doesn't cross every i and dot every t?

"When Stephan says in an affidavit that he has personal knowledge of the facts stated in his affidavits, he doesn't. When he says that he has custody and control of the loan documents, he doesn't. When he says that he is attaching 'a true and accurate' copy of a note or a mortgage, he has no idea if that is so, because he does not look at the exhibits. When he makes any other statement of fact, he has no idea if it is true. When the notary says that Stephan appeared before him or her, he didn't."

Well that's just stupid. I don't blame the homeowners for crying foul when it's not done right, but you're still in default on your property. You don't get to keep what you can't pay for just because the foreclosure didn't have the right form. But here's where I lose my lunch:

GMAC, which began as the financing arm of General Motors, has received $17 billion from taxpayers in an effort to keep it from failing and is now majority-owned by the federal government.

Let me see if I follow this. GMAC (and a lot of other banks) make billions in bad mortgages, then cry "we're too big to fail" and receive billions more in taxpayer bailouts to stay solvent. To stay solvent because the bad loans they made are going teats up. OK, we did that. So if they got $17 Billion from taxpayers because homeowners defaulted on their loans, how do they get to seize the homes now? The homeowners defaulted, but the banks got their money back in the form of a bailout. How do they get to double-dip in the bailhand-out and get to foreclose on property the taxpayers have already reimbursed them for?

Posted 10/15/2010 09:40:00 PM by Douglas

This next story is replete with things that piss me off. So let's get started, shall we?

So Coberly couldn’t help but laugh this week when a hostess at Wolfgang Puck’s Five Sixty restaurant told him and five other war veterans they didn’t look good enough to visit the high-end downtown Dallas eatery -- a rotating dining room atop Reunion Tower, 560 feet above the city.

She said the men’s unit baseball caps, POW T-shirts and shorts did not meet the restaurant’s “business casual” dress code.

“I figure if I spent two years in a POW camp, I could have handled the privilege of sitting in that fancy restaurant a few minutes,” said Coberly, a member of the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association and a bombardier with the decorated 8th Army Air Force, known as the Mighty 8th.

Well, not really. You got bounced because you showed up at a 5-star restaurant wearing shorts, t-shirts and ball caps. If they'd wanted to go to an icehouse for a beer or the cracker barrel for a chicken fried steak, they would have served them 'till closing time. That didn't happen, and that's where this story should have ended. It didn't.

“We weren’t dressed like hobos. We were just dressed comfortably,” said Coberly, a graduate of the Wharton School of business and a retired hospital administrator from Maryland.

Your status as a veteran, your graduate school or even your opinion of your attire has exactly no bearing on this situation.

But the men’s wives and children didn’t take the snub so lightly.

They confronted the hostess, reminding her of the military men’s service and sacrifice.

“Do you realize these veterans fought for your freedom and your way of life and you can’t see your way clear to let them up to get a view of the city?” said Michelle Northrop, Coberly’s daughter. “I mean, we weren’t going to be there longer than 45 minutes.”

Really? The Germans never invaded America, nor could they have, so save the "fought for your freedoms" bullshit. The country and especially can be proud of his service, but that doesn't give him the right to do whatever the hell he wants to.

“My honest opinion is she was too young to be able to think on her feet,” said Northrop. “She was doing her job, she was professionally dressed and she was not being obnoxious. She was trained well, but this was not an empowered young woman. I’m not sure it ever occurred to her to say, ‘Let me go talk to my manager.’ “

No, that's exactly wrong. She did her job. People go to fancy restaurants explicitly because they don't want to see people in shorts, t-shirts and ball caps. Also, no self-respecting man would wear a hat in a restaurant, and I'd especially expect men of this age to know better. But that's another story. If the hostess had seated these guys and someone had complained about their attire, someone who was adhering to the dress code, she would have been fired. Immediately. So what does the restaurant have to say?

“If they had explained who they were and what they were doing, it would not have happened,” she said. “It was a mistake and we’re apologetic.”

So, you have whatever rules you want to establish the clientele you want, but you have to throw it out the window anytime a whiney veteran starts jawin' at you and your policy?

Posted 10/15/2010 08:23:00 PM by Douglas

So a guy gets arrested for robbing a band with a big collar around his neck. He swears he was forced into it and that the collar is a bomb. While in custody, his head blows off. Then it gets weird.

Diehl-Armstrong's trial marks the widest window yet into a bizarre plot that captivated northwestern Pennsylvania in the waning days of summer in 2003. The other people allegedly involved in the case are either dead or have pleaded guilty.

On Aug. 28, 2003, Wells walked into a bank with a bomb strapped to his neck and walked out with $8,702. He was stopped by police nearby and was sitting on the ground in handcuffs when the bomb went off, killing him, as officers waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

So you need to get money to kill your father, so you kidnap the pizza guy with a collar bomb. Makes sense. This reads like a Law & Order script written by Faulkner.

Posted 10/10/2010 07:10:00 PM by Douglas

Happy 10/10/10 day! That's 42 in binary, which I can only assume some Douglas Adams nerd thinks is significant. I think we'd be better off with a Rin Tin Tin day.

Tomorrow will be 46!

Posted 10/06/2010 05:25:00 PM by Douglas

The classic example of how absurd Libertarian "pay as you go" government services was the lighthouse that charged a toll after it protected the ship from the rocks below. But this real-life example from Tennessee may become the next textbook example of what services people "deserve" and what you "pay for."

Here's the short version of what happened: In rural Obion County, homeowners must pay $75 annually for fire protection services from the nearby city of South Fulton. If they don't pay the fee and their home catches fire, tough luck -- even if firefighters are positioned just outside the home with hoses at the ready.

When Cranick's house caught fire last week, and he couldn't contain the blaze with garden hoses, he called 911. During the emergency call, he offered to pay all expenses related to the Fire Department's defense of his home, but the South Fulton firefighters refused to do anything.

They did, however, come out when Cranick's neighbor -- who'd already paid the fee -- called 911 because he worried that the fire might spread to his property. Once they arrived, members of the South Fulton department stood by and watched Cranick's home burn; they sprang into action only when the fire reached the neighbor's property.

We'll there's some commitment from the firefighters. Would it be fair to everyone that did pay their fire protection bill to put out this fire? Probably not, just like it's not fair to insure houses in the path of a hurricane only when it turns cloudy.

Posted 10/05/2010 09:42:00 PM by Douglas

Sounds like Amarillo got their Wrangler's in a bunch over something printed in The Houston Chronicle. Their response is just adorable.

Well, I never in all my born days. I suppose this is the point where I return serve. This is when I should bring up Sweat City, the most humid place on the planet, an area where even shoes get drenched in sweat. But why bother?

Or I could mention some hot days we had last month, when I was running at noon when it was 88 degrees and 50 percent humidity. We call that summer. You call it Christmas morning. But I'm not going there.

Well ya kinda did go there, didn't ya? Also, news flash. Houston is hot and humid. Amarillo is hot and dry. We get it. This is the big difference you want to run with?

Like I said, Houston, I come with an olive branch. And, really, why work up any anger when I don't think about Houston any more than apparently Houston thinks about Amarillo. Except on occasions like Sunday when the Cowboys really needed a win. Thanks, Houston, you're a great city.

Oh that's right, the Amarillo Cowboys, that world famous NFL franchise. Oh wait, they're in Dallas. But you probably didn't know that.

Posted 10/05/2010 09:06:00 PM by Douglas

You know who I think is a witch? People who start out a sentence with the phrase "I'm not a witch." But that's not the creepiest part of this video:



That's creepy! Ok, first of all, you're not me. For the past decade, I've had a job and paid my mortgage. I also have an opinion of Constitutional Originalisim that didn't come from things I read off Glenn Beck's chalk board.

But let's we give her the benefit of the doubt. What if she is you, or, to a lesser extent me? Is it considered masturbation if you want to have sex with her, because it is when you have sex with you. Which she is. I mean witch she is.

Posted 9/23/2010 09:18:00 PM by Douglas

Staying married is hard enough, but imagine how hard it would be if you had to keep up your divorce insurance every month?

WedLock, as it's coyly named, is a new type of casualty insurance that gives the unhappily married policyholder a payout after he or she is unhitched. It costs about $16 a month for every $1,250 of coverage. But to discourage people from signing up just prior to their divorce, policyholders must ante up for four years before the policy will pay out. It adds a premium of $250 per unit for every year the marriage survives beyond four. So if a policyholder who bought 10 units got divorced after 10 years, he or she would have handed over $19,188 and would receive a payout of $27,500.

Wow, what an abhorrent concept. And a crappy investment. That $160 a month would buy a lot of arsenic for his/her coffee.

Posted 9/23/2010 09:09:00 PM by Douglas

Most famous, and yet most anonymous gym teacher of all time, died.

Leonard Skinner, arguably the most influential high school gym teacher in American popular culture, whose enforcement of a draconian classroom policy against long hair inspired some of his students to name their Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, has died, The Florida Times-Union reported.

Everyone gets their 15 minutes. But I like this part. I just hope someone says something this nice about me someday:

“They were good, talented, hard-working boys,” Mr. Skinner said. “They worked hard, lived hard and boozed hard.”

Posted 9/19/2010 06:36:00 PM by Douglas

This story says it came form The Onion, but I'm not so sure. Sound quite reasonable.

After weeks of debates, concessions, and committee hearings, the U.S. Senate finally passed legislation Tuesday to rent the 1989 action-comedy Tango & Cash.

The bill, known as H.R. 5806, or the Kagen-Delahunt Tango & Cash Rental Act, allocated $3, plus a further 17 cents for local sales tax, to rent a VHS tape of the Sylvester Stallone–Kurt Russell buddy vehicle from the Capitol Video off Dupont Circle.

The two main things wrong with this is that I didn't think congress acted on such pressing issues, and they actually got it passed. Other than that, it's completely fiesable. But where's the rider?

According to sources on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats were only able to garner the votes necessary to send the bill to the president's desk after a series of backroom deals. One of the staunchest Republican holdouts, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), finally put aside his objections to the film when a $37 million rider to overhaul Tennessee's municipal parking garages was attached to the bill, giving it a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

THERE it is. It's all coming together now.

Posted 9/14/2010 08:20:00 PM by Douglas

Do you have an uppity Western woman that wants to sleep in the car during road trips, yet she feels like she's too liberated to wear a burka? Finally, a compromise, the SnazzyNapper! It's also a plus that you look like an idiot.

Posted 9/13/2010 08:07:00 PM by Douglas

The book burning in Amarillo was narrowly averted.

A planned Quran burning Saturday in Amarillo was thwarted by a 23-year-old carrying a skateboard and wearing a T-shirt with "I'm in Repent Amarillo No Joke" scrawled by hand on the back.

Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham's Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book.

Wow. I honestly thought that this couldn't get any dumber. I was wrong. Be sure and check out the video here. thanks, long-time reader

Posted 9/13/2010 08:03:00 PM by Douglas

Great video of the 787 crosswind landing test in Iceland. That's one hellofa crab angle.

Posted 9/12/2010 12:54:00 PM by Douglas

I rarely find myself agreeing with Michale Moore. Ok, besides fast food and big t-shirts, I never agree with Michael Moore. But this piece says it all. It's not about a "ground zero mosque." It's neither a mosque nor at ground zero. No, the issue is about America, not Islam.

Because I believe in an America that protects those who are the victims of hate and prejudice. I believe in an America that says you have the right to worship whatever God you have, wherever you want to worship. And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you.

When popular opinion decides who can build their church and where they can put it, we all lose. This is kinda funny, too:

There is a McDonald's two blocks from Ground Zero. Trust me, McDonald's has killed far more people than the terrorists.

Posted 9/12/2010 12:45:00 PM by Douglas

When they say "part of a balanced breakfast," this probably isn't what they meant when they said you needed eggs with your cereal.

An Upson County couple is suing a grocery store chain in federal court, claiming that the husband found a used tampon in his bowl of cereal. According to the complaint, __ said they bought a box of Chocolate Chip Crunch cereal from the Save-A-Lot store in Thomaston in October 2008. A day after buying the cereal, __ said he discovered the tampon in his bowl after taking a bite of the cereal.

It wouldn't have been a big deal if it'd been cooked properly.

Posted 9/11/2010 03:52:00 PM by Douglas

So it looks like the attention-whoring "pastor" in Florida has called off his Korean burning festivities this evening. Why anyone would want to burn some Koreans is completely beyond me, but we all know how wacky those Floridians are. The most disturbing part of this story? Look at how many microphones are in front of him in this picture. Some red-neck from a no-name church in gator-fart, Florida getting international media coverage for being an idiot. Mission accomplished, CNN.

The pastor of a Florida church says his congregation has decided to call off the burning of the Quran that was to be held Saturday -- the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States by the al Qaeda terror network.

Ass Pimple arrived in New York late Friday night and was working to set up a meeting with the imam in charge of the Islamic center planned near ground zero. The planned meeting, Pimple had said, helped persuade him to halt the burning.
Name changed to prevent this mouth breathing attention whore from getting any googley goodness on my account

But if you simply must get your 9/11 book burnin' on, you just have to go as far as Amarillo to find some knuckle-dragging troglodytes doing something stupid for some media attention.

The leader of a controversial Amarillo faith group plans to burn copies of the Quran today at Sam Houston Park.

"We want to show that Islam is not a religion of peace," Phartbreath said.

Right. And burning a book over a billion people find holy is going to do that?

I think the whole 'book burning' thing is completely overblown. Hell, a shrewd, Islamic bookseller would LOVE to get the Quran supplying rights to these knuckleheads. As Ann summed up quite perfectly, all you're saying, in a completely moronic and inflammatory way, is "I don't like this book."

Posted 9/11/2010 03:33:00 PM by Douglas

Wondering about the safety of the nation's nuclear bombs? Don't worry, the guys in the machine shop in PanTex are on it.

The Pantex Plant has created a specialized tooling system to help dismantle the B83 bomb, a Cold War-era nuclear weapon that weighs more than 2 tons.

The new tooling system is expected to reduce by half the number of facilities needed to dismantle a B83 and reduce the time it takes to process each weapon. The B83 is an air-dropped weapon once carried on U.S. bombers.

The new tooling provides a safe, controlled method of handling a 2,500-pound assembly in a single operating area without the need for hoisting or rigging equipment.

Well that's good, I guess. I can't imagine it being that much more difficult to disassemble such a device but maybe these guys didn't keep the receipt.

This story was also picked up here, which I'm posting just for the comments:

AnonomousIdiot wrote:
Gosh, AP did you think the Muslim terrorists had forgotten where the nuclear weapons were stored and you had to remind them with this no nothing article?

Yeah, because before that, no one knew where America's nuke plants where. It's just good they're being carefull. What's the worst that could happen?

A watchdog group charges a nuclear warhead nearly exploded in Texas when it was being dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo. The Project on Government Oversight says it has been told by knowledgeable experts that the warhead nearly detonated in 2005 because an unsafe amount of pressure was applied while it was being disassembled.

Sleep tight, Amarillo!

Posted 9/09/2010 07:43:00 PM by Douglas

It's funny when a man claims he was sexually harassed by a woman. It's even funnier when the woman is Britney Spears.

According to papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Mr Flores alleges that Spears made repeated, unwanted sexual advances and summoned him to her room to expose her naked body.

There's only three possible ways a nekkid woman's sexual advances is harassment. If she's too fat, if he's too drunk to notice, or notice how fat she is, or if he didn't realize the hour was already up.

Posted 9/09/2010 06:59:00 PM by Douglas

I couldn't decide which headline to go with on this one, so you'll just have to pick one.

• If you don't quit reading that magazine you're going to go blind!
• I guess these guys really do read it for the articles!
• Did you hear the set of juggs on Miss October?
• Wow, even when read by a woman, that interview with Lorne Michaels is really boring.
• Our Unabashed Dictionary lists "Braille porn" as 'bumping your rocks off.'

Oh well:

Each week, for an hour, Hanks snuggles close to a microphone in a tiny soundproof closet, reading — and describing in great detail — portions of the latest Playboy issue for the blind.

"I don't have to try to read it sexy," laughs Hanks, one of about 200 volunteers at Houston-based Taping For The Blind, Inc. "I just read it, and I'm a woman, and that's pretty much sexy."

Hanks, a tall, blonde California native whose regular job is reading the news for a classic rock station in Houston, declined to disclose her age, but said she once "chickened out" of an offer to pose for Playboy for a feature on women in radio.

Well god bless 'em for showing up. Then there's this:

Hanks examines in great detail the magazine's trademark monthly centerfold subject. The picture becomes clear.

She is a "Latina, brunette with dark chocolate brown eyes. She has long curly brown hair. ... She is in the first photo sitting in the ocean.

"She has a very large grin on her face, pink lipstick. She has a small tattoo right over the small of her back over the dimple area that appears to be maybe some sort of tribal design. It is red. ... Her legs are kind of crossed. She is sitting in the water.

"Behind her shoulder, down past her arm, you can see her breast peeking out. ... There are no tan lines at all. She is not wearing any nail polish or jewelry or bathing suit or anything."

Asked later why she mentions nail polish, she replied: "Sometimes it's all they have on."

Ha! Still, I think it's funnier when SNL did this with Moses almost 20 years ago:

Posted 9/08/2010 07:50:00 PM by Douglas

What a pisser. No more light bulbs.

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

More jobs are going to China, while the fed dictates that everyone's home looks like this:

Posted 9/06/2010 05:51:00 PM by Douglas

Hey, guess what, Pravda? We don't need you to point out that our country is rotting. We can do that just find by ourselves.

Posted 9/06/2010 05:48:00 PM by Douglas

New racetrack in Texas, and it's in Austin! Who'd a thunk it?

The organizers of the United States Grand Prix have unveiled the design of the all-new track in Austin, Texas. The Formula 1 circuit will host the USGP beginning in 2012 and is scheduled to continue until 2021.

The new purpose-built race course is 3.4 miles long with more than 20 turns winding through a 900-acre site about 5 miles south of the Austin airport. The facility will also include all the usual Formula 1 amenities like grandstands, natural seating along sections of the course, media center, and of course a state-of-the-art paddock and, we’re guessing, luxury boxes for those who want to avoid the Texas heat.

F1 Racing in America, and it's in Texas! Let's go!

Posted 9/04/2010 11:55:00 AM by Douglas

I've long held the belief that TV weather's only job is to scare old people, but this article pretty much confirms it:

In May, before the current Atlantic hurricane season began, forecasts were for Armageddon. This year’s hurricane season could be “very active” (Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) or “very very active” (CNN) or “a hell of a year” with “quite high” numbers of intense storms (William Gray, head of the hurricane prediction center at Colorado State University).

What has actually happened so far? A below-average season of two hurricanes, neither one intense.

What’s going on here? Wasn’t global warming supposed to spawn ultra-monster hurricanes? That’s what Al Gore started claiming five years ago. Similar assertions have been heard from other quarters, too.

Well, duh. But the breakdown pretty much sums up what I've been thinking all along.

• The media loves predictions of deadly hurricanes
• The media loves hurricanes, period
• Predictions are worthless
• Predictions get attention anyway
• The sillier the prediction, the better
• Hurricanes have been awful long before artificial global warming
• Hurricanes don’t show any pattern clearly linked to greenhouse gases
• But you should still worry

Always, never forget to panic.

Posted 9/02/2010 05:44:00 PM by Douglas

Happy September 2nd, 2010, or as they call it in Beverly Hills, 90210.

Posted 8/31/2010 08:09:00 PM by Douglas

Barry's getting some new furniture.

While President Obama was on vacation, his West Wing office got a bit of a face lift, complete with a new rug, fresh wallpaper and paint, and new furniture -- all done at no taxpayer expense, the White House says.

It's about time. They hadn't changed the upholstery on the couch since Clinton was in office, and there were some interesting stains on the cushions, and he just flipped them over.

Posted 8/31/2010 08:04:00 PM by Douglas

I've never really liked the highly overrated movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. It didn't make the sad story of a prostitute in New York any more palatable because she looked like Audrey Hepburn. It's still a sad tale.

The witless dawning in the film of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by contrast, is that you are ready to be an East Side prostitute if you can look, and dress, and sing like Audrey. And Audrey, for all her charms, was not just a virgin, she was a Crackerjack virgin, done in life-like plastic, but engravable. She was about as real as Shirley Temple, and as huggable as Lassie.

Lassie wasn't the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the movie, but I get where this is going.

But Mickey Rooney got not so much as a sniff for his hideous rendering of a Japanese character upstairs. Wasson makes it clear that George Axelrod was horrified by Rooney’s caricature. It was director Blake Edwards who liked it. Afterwards, no one was happy. Rooney’s performance remains a startling revelation of American attitudes in the “hip” Kennedy era, and a disgrace. But the film’s treatment of the whore character, and of women in general, is only a little less vulgar and deluded.

I never read the book. I never will read the book. That character is forever claimed by Audrey Hepburn's dazzling beauty, no matter how ugly the story is.

Posted 8/30/2010 08:24:00 PM by Douglas

Web comics are even worse then normal comics, but this one made me laugh, literally, out loud.

Posted 8/29/2010 05:25:00 PM by Douglas

I can remember Jack Horkheimer on PBS from the mid 80s. He had a passion for the skies like no one you've ever seen on TV. When the web came along, he had to change the name of his show from "Star Hustler" to "Star Gazer" because they got tired of people landing on their website and complaining about the lack of porn. Well Jack is no longer with us. You will be missed.



Keep looking up!

Posted 8/29/2010 12:58:00 PM by Douglas

Another marginally interesting demonstration of the enormity of big numbers. I like this one better, because it uses money instead of the metric system.

Posted 8/28/2010 01:44:00 PM by Douglas

The saga with the strippers and the church continues. I guess they're both not done drumming up business for one another, since this has been going on for quite a time

Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.

The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work.

Thus spoketh the lord, "lo, ye that be fueled by Cheetos and nicotine shall be cast into the lake of fire!"

Laura M____ — known as Lola, stage age 36 but really 42 — hid behind a sign proclaiming, "Jesus loves the children of the world!" as the preacher extended his hand for a shake.

I know strippers have stage names, but a "stage age?" Don't all women have a "stage age?"

Also, and I don't want to be mean to these girls, but don't strip bars in Ohio have weight limits? I think I know where all the Cheetos went.

As with most stripping jobs, I'm sure it's temporary.

Posted 8/28/2010 10:57:00 AM by Douglas

I love it when life imitates Office Space:

A worker was paid for 12 years without ever showing up for work at a Norfolk, Virginia, agency funded by federal, state and local money, officials say.

On behalf of the city attorney's office, Norfolk city spokeswoman Terry Bishirjian referred to a statement released on Wednesday that said, "The city attorney's office, with the approval of Womack, took appropriate steps to prevent any further payments to the employee and the employee was terminated."

Turns out, he was terminated 12 years ago, but through a glitch in payroll, he kept getting a check. So they "fixed the glitch."

Posted 8/26/2010 08:22:00 PM by Douglas

There is a large social stimga in this country against lazy, sell-centered assholes:


In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

Posted 8/26/2010 07:15:00 PM by Douglas

NASA has used music to wake up the crew on-orbit since the last days of the Gemini program. Since then, the dorks in the Mission Control Center have picked some of the most horrible music, usually an inside joke with one of the crewmembers, to annoy the rest of the crew and engineers in the MCC. As the shuttle program winds down, they're asking you, the ambivalent public, to pick from their self-culled Top 40, two songs to be played on the last shuttle flight. The horrible list can be found here, but if you want to upload your own submission, go here. But please, even if you don't care (and you don't) please vote for anything to keep those star trek nerds from getting the top spot. As long as it's not the worst band of the 20^th century, Rush. Can we put them in orbit?

Posted 8/26/2010 06:58:00 PM by Douglas

At the end of the 20^th century, CEOs of the world's biggest companies wielded more power, money, and control over people's fate than the men that controlled small to medium sized countries. "Management" became the buzzword that meant you made it in business, and the MBA diploma-mills churned 'em out by the thousands, while the billboards on the side of the road begged for even more. The 21^st century, primarily the internet, has changed all that in less than 20 years. Will the business world learn in time?

The reasons for this are clear enough. Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.

Until they have to, or someone comes along and figures out how to do it better than you can. RIAA, GM, print media. I'm looking in your direction. The ability to collaborate on the net is astounding, but:

Even the most starry-eyed techno-enthusiasts have a hard time imagining, say, a Boeing 787 built by "mass collaboration." Still, the trends here are big and undeniable. Change is rapidly accelerating. Transaction costs are rapidly diminishing. And as a result, everything we learned in the last century about managing large corporations is in need of a serious rethink. We have both a need and an opportunity to devise a new form of economic organization, and a new science of management, that can deal with the breakneck realities of 21st century change.

At the end of the day, we have to make something, for gawd's sake. Wall Street can't just keep sweeping up the crumbs of other people's production without creating anything. The world's "Financial" center shifted from London to New York when the UK decided to become a "service economy." It won't take the bloodsucking beancounters very long to figure out they didn't move far enough east when the United States has resigned itself to swapping it's own socks with one another.

Posted 8/25/2010 09:07:00 PM by Douglas

I'd have a much more favorable view of "moral naturalists" if so damn many of them didn't get it wrong all the damn time:

People who behave morally don’t generally do it because they have greater knowledge; they do it because they have a greater sensitivity to other people’s points of view. Hauser reported on research showing that bullies are surprisingly sophisticated at reading other people’s intentions, but they’re not good at anticipating and feeling other people’s pain.

There sure are a helluva lot more people trying to convince others that they way they lie, cheat, or steal is OK that there are trying to convince people that salt doesn't taste salty. Some things just aren't relative. Or shouldn't be.

Posted 8/25/2010 08:48:00 PM by Douglas

"Our daughter isn't a selfish brat; Your son just hasn't read Atlas Shrugged:

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.

You see, that Elmo ball was Johanna's reward for consistently using the potty this past week. She wasn't given the ball simply because she'd demonstrated an exceptional need for it—she earned it. And from the way Aiden's pants sagged as he tried in vain to run away from our daughter, it was clear that he wasn't anywhere close to deserving that kind of remuneration. By so much as allowing Johanna to share her toy with him, we'd be undermining her appreciation of one of life's most important lessons: You should never feel guilty about your abilities. Including your ability to repeatedly peg a fellow toddler with your Elmo ball as he sobs for mercy.


Look, imagine what would happen if we were to enact some sort of potty training Equalization of Opportunity Act in which we regularized the distribution all of Johanna's and Aiden's potty chart stickers. Suddenly it would seem as if Aiden had earned the right to wear big-boy underpants, and within minutes you'd have a Taggart Tunnel-esque catastrophe on your hands, if you follow me.

Oh, I follow you. That's hillarious.

Posted 8/25/2010 07:12:00 PM by Douglas

It's a tough thing to remake a song, especially one people like. Most artists try to "make it their own" by singing it as it was never intended to be sung. That's why, with these exceptions:

• I will survive: Cake
• Mrs. Robinson: Lemonheads
• Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight: Michelle Shocked

Most remakes suck. Such is the case with Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence:

While this account can’t be completely authenticated, DM’s chief songwriter Martin Gore allegedly wanted the song to be much slower and balled-esque—and to primarily feature his vocals. Fortunately for us, Gore was convinced by keyboardist Alan Wilder and producer Mark “Flood” Ellis to mold the track into its now infamous sound, which in addition to lead singer Dave Gahan at the forefront features a guitar line Gore wrote that will forever be proof that musical genius often takes the simplest forms.

Today, what really gets me is that the album is now 20 years old. The same time has passed since Violator as had passed between that time and the release of Led Zeppelin III.

Posted 8/19/2010 08:35:00 PM by Douglas

It's been a sweet year, Neptune, but we're richer for having known you.

The planet Neptune will be in opposition — when the sun, Earth, and a planet fall in a straight line on Aug. 20. The planet will be exactly opposite the sun in the sky, being highest in the sky at local midnight. Usually this is also the point where the planet is closest to the Earth.

This opposition is special because Neptune will be returning close to the spot where it was discovered in 1846, marking its first complete trip around the sun since its discovery. Neptune is close, but still not quite at the finish line of its first orbit since being discovered yet. That will occur in 2011, according to NASA.

This is significant because the discovery of Neptune is a true story of scientific discovery:

The planet Uranus was discovered more or less by accident in 1781 by Sir William Herschel, in the course of his search for deep sky objects. As time went by, Uranus' position wasn't quite what astronomer's predicted, and mathematical astronomers began to suspect that there was another planet out there whose gravity was influencing Uranus' motion.

In the mid-1840s an Englishman named John Couch Adams and a Frenchman named Urbain Le Verrier independently calculated where this new planet would have to be located to have the observed effect on Uranus, but both had trouble getting observational astronomers interested in looking for it.

Finally the German astronomer Johann Galle actually looked at the predicted location and discovered the tiny blue-green disk of the planet that eventually came to be known as Neptune. The date was Sept. 23, 1846.

The numbers don't add up, so point your telescopes. . . there. . . and you'll find another planet. That's a lot of complicated calculations, when the best calculator was a slide rule.

Oh yeah, suck it Pluto. You're still just a fart in the wind.

Posted 8/15/2010 01:54:00 PM by Douglas

It's not a concert unless someone is flinging feces at the stage:

A sheriff says reality TV actress Tila Tequila complained that audience members pelted her with stones and feces during an outdoor music festival in southern Illinois.

Hardin County Sheriff Tom Seiner told a Carterville TV station it happened early Saturday at the Gathering of the Juggalos. That's a weekend festival based around the band Insane Clown Posse and other groups from Psychopathic Records.

Who would have ever guessed an Insane Clown Posse gig would have got out of hand. I wonder if it was something like this:

Posted 8/10/2010 09:46:00 PM by Douglas

So puberty starts earlier in girls nowdays, even earlier than it did 10 years ago. Ok, I can see a downside to that, but let's have an article that was written to idiots to explain that fact. Can we?

More common than you might think. Fifteen percent of the 1,239 girls studied between 2004 and 2006 showed signs of breast development at age 7, including 23 percent of African American girls, and 10 percent of Caucasians (up from just 5 percent in a landmark 1997 study).

Ok, I'm scared now. Why?

Early puberty is also simply confusing, increasing the odds that girls will develop low self-esteem, eating disorders, and depression — which, in turn, can trigger premature sexual activity.

And that's where you lost me. The problems with millions of girls hitting puberty before they're ready is a problem but because it leads to low self-esteem, eating disorders, depression and sexual activity? I had not idea that's what caused it. I also are all women a few mg/L of estrogen from a low self-esteem eating disorder, or blowing a guy in the alley? This article would have me believe that they are. It's good that men generally hold the decorum in society:

Beyond that, make sure you talk to your daughter about how to deal with advances from older boys or even grown men. "They don't necessarily think, oh, here is an 8-year-old girl," says Walker. "They say oh, look... she has breasts, she's old enough."

Oh right, we don't. Men just walk around all day looking for things to cram their wieners in, regardless of age. As long as there are boobs. Depressed, low self-esteem, eating disordered boobs.

Posted 8/10/2010 09:30:00 PM by Douglas

Churches protest strip clubs all the time. Fine. Now a strip club protests a church.

Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.

Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed 'do in place.

Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee's worshippers wore polyester and pearls.

Outside, George's strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.

Both men agree it is classic sinners vs. saints. But George says it is up to America to decide which is which and who is who.

One thing's for sure, this phony controversy is good for the bottom line of both of them.

Posted 8/09/2010 06:19:00 PM by Douglas

Let's see, for lunch, I think I'll try the doughnut burger with cheese, add the bacon, and a small side of fried butter. Oh yeah, and a diet Coke!

Their newest offering? A burger served between two Krispy Kremes, known simply as the doughnut burger.

Customer Danny Shields, 22, Indianapolis, said the burger was well worth the price. He got one with bacon and egg, which can be added for an extra cost.

At the deep-fried butter stand, twin sisters Rayanna Bibbs and Rachel Bibbs, 18, and their friend Rachel Endres, 16, all from Indianapolis, quizzed operator Blake Reas about the concoction. He said he picked up the idea from a vendor at the State Fair of Texas last year.

"When they say deep-fried butter, you think a butter stick," said Rachel Bibbs.

But that's not what it is. Blake Reas freezes the butter and covers it in cinnamon before cutting it into cubes and frying it in something that's been at the fair for years: funnel cake batter.

I wonder if you can get a punch-card for a free angioplasty?

Posted 8/09/2010 12:34:00 PM by Douglas

What a great day this was. I hope everyone celebrated at 12:34:56.7, this 8/9/10. It was a magical tenth of a second

Posted 8/08/2010 04:10:00 PM by Douglas

360-Panaramoic of a P-51 Mustang.

Posted 8/08/2010 03:47:00 PM by Douglas

Great color photos from the 30s and 40s. One thing's for sure, life was hard on a lot of folks back then. But things are rough all over. Like when you forget to put a Diet Coke in the fridge, and then you want a Diet Coke and there's not one that's cold. That's horrible.

Posted 8/08/2010 03:39:00 PM by Douglas

I think this is a joke. I hope this is a joke:



This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the fat guy's testimonial:



I wonder how this brilliant idea was pitched to the venture capitalists that fronted the money for development. "Hey, I got this great idea. It's a stick you put toilet paper on to wipe your ass. Whadya think?"

Posted 8/05/2010 06:20:00 PM by Douglas

I don't know why I find this collateral damage of our ridiculous "war on drugs" so hilarious, but I just do. Imagine taking a stroll on the beach and finding a huge bale of illegal drugs, washed ashore after smugglers ditched their cargo.

At least a dozen times in the last year, small fortunes in illegal narcotics washed up on Texas beaches after being lost by seaborne smugglers scrambling for new ways into the United States, according to federal officials.

The drugs, wrapped in plastic and potentially worth millions of dollars on the streets, were turned in by beachcombers, fishermen, park rangers and deputies. The lost loads popped up all along the coast — mostly cocaine, followed by marijuana and methamphetamine.

About 800 pounds of marijuana washed up on South Padre Island in one shot, 24 kilograms of cocaine in Jefferson County, and another similar-sized load of cocaine near a remote beach of High Island, according to Houston's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a coalition of law-enforcement agencies here and in coastal counties.

The latest known Texas find came in May, when a woman strolling near Galveston found a barnacled black bag with 37 pounds of cocaine pressed into bricks.

I'm sure they all get turned in, right? Right. Moronic law enforcement official, could you make an asinine statement about how this quantity of drugs might someone be significant, and not represent a drop in the bucket of the illegal drugs that are smuggled into the country, each and every day:

"Somebody is hurting over those kilos of cocaine," said Sgt. Joaquin Cantu of the Kleberg County Sheriff's Office. "I'd say the runners would be in a bit of hot water, especially if word got back to where they came from that they'd lost a load."

Hear that, America? We're out of drugs because a smuggler had to dump his load in the Gulf. No more drugs. Yay?!?

Posted 8/05/2010 06:08:00 PM by Douglas

The foundation of any successful democracy is tricking other people into paying for your shit. Enter Jerrold Nadler (D-uMB) and this masterpiece:

In other words, the various tax brackets would apply to residents in certain regions at higher income levels versus other parts of the country. A family with an income of $50,000 or even $1 million in Manhattan would pay less federal income tax than a family with the same earnings in Omaha. The bill is called the Tax Equity Act, but a more accurate title would be the Blue State Tax Preference Act.

Bravo, Mr. Nadler, bravo. Way to tax the shit out of someone else's constituents in order to subsidize your constituent's base.

Posted 8/05/2010 06:01:00 PM by Douglas

I've seen The Breakfast Club more times than I care to count, and I probably did notice most of these things before, but what stands out is the last, unnumbered thing we were supposed to notice:

During the opening montage we see Bender's locker with the phrase "Touch this locker...and you die, FAG!!!" in permanent marker. Tell the principal he raids Barry Manilow's wardrobe, you're punished. Write one of the most offensive words to gay people on a locker in plain view of anyone walking down the hall, and it's totally cool

What that tells me is that we're raising a generation of complete pussies. Ok, bullying is wrong, I get it. You're not supposed call people names. But life gets substantially harder after high school, and crying because someone calls you a name is really, really gay.

Posted 8/05/2010 05:55:00 PM by Douglas

So the supreme court has three chicks now. I really don't find that too terribly remarkable that she's a woman, but that she's one of the four out of nine that are from New York City.

"The four are a portrait of the city, each carrying distinct New York traits to Washington. 'Kagan is so Manhattan, Scalia is so Queens, Ginsburg is so Brooklyn and Sotomayor is so Bronx,' said Joan Biskupic, the author of a biography of Justice Antonin Scalia."

Anyone see an anti-Staten Island bias here?

Fuck Staten Island, what about the rest-of-us-bias?

But even more disturbing is that she's one of the eight of nine that are Roman Catholic.

Posted 8/04/2010 06:23:00 PM by Douglas

That fancy computer you carry around in your pocket can also make phone calls, although pretty soon, you won't want it to.

We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly stark among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all. I was recently hanging out with a twentysomething entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial someone.

This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.

All things considered, it is a fairly invasive form of communications considering how passive texts and emails are. Considering just about everyone can get texts and emails on their phone, why bother calling if you just have a quick message?

Posted 8/04/2010 06:17:00 PM by Douglas

Nice flow-chart, but it's not going to help me with the order of the lyrics to Hey Jude!

Posted 8/03/2010 08:40:00 PM by Douglas

So the sun is exploding:

Night owls take note: A spectacular sky show of rippling auroras may be on tap for late Tuesday through early Wednesday, according to astrophysicists, and the phenomenon may be more widely visible than normal.

On Sunday cameras aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an eruption on the sun's surface that hurled tons of plasma—charged gas—directly toward our planet in an event called a coronal mass ejection.

If you had a space station, it would sure be a bad time to lose cooling, would it?

NASA says it needs more time to prepare before sending two astronauts on a spacewalk to replace a broken pump on the station's cooling system. The pump failed over the weekend and knocked out half of the space station's cooling system, which keeps electronic equipment from overheating.

Managers had been hoping to do the first spacewalk on Thursday but decided workers on the ground needed more time to work on the repair plan. A second spacewalk will be conducted a few days later to complete the repairs.

Should be an interesting EVA. Should go something like this:

Posted 7/28/2010 05:09:00 PM by Douglas

Maybe it's just me, but when I think of terms like "transferring wealth to the rich," I think it conjures up images of the proletariat oppressing the bourgeoisie in the eternal clash of class struggle. What I don't think of is my rewards credit card.

Credit card fees and rewards programs exacerbate income inequality by acting as a transfer of wealth from poor to rich, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study released Monday.

The researchers argue that reducing card rewards and merchant fees "would likely increase consumer welfare."

Merchants usually don't charge different prices for card users to recover the costs of fees and rewards, but instead, mark up the prices for all consumers.

As a result, people who pay cash -- and who are more likely to be lower income -- end up subsidizing those who pay by credit card.

Hold the phone, flip-flop. Merchants mark up everything by 3% to pay for the credit card transaction. That's pretty stupid, but guess who pays it? Everyone! How does this benefit the rich?

U.S. consumer finance data shows that people on a low income are less likely to have a credit card, and those who do, spend less a month on average, than higher earners. High-income consumers are also 20 percentage points more likely to receive credit card rewards -- be they frequent flier miles, cash back or other enticements.

So because poor people are apparently incapable of using a credit card to extrapolate rewards from credit cards, this counts as "redistribution of wealth?" And since someone making $150k a year has just as much opportunity to get in over their heads (and end up paying credit card interest) as those that make $30k, it follows that their opportunity to reap the rewards are the same, too. Let's not forget that the $150K house pays around 30% in federal income tax, while the $30k house pays closer to 0% in federal income tax.

Here's also a news flash that does NOT count as redistribution of wealth: People that borrow money pay interest; people that have money earn interest. Anyone that has a problem with that should stop looking at banking laws and start looking at storming the Bastille.

Posted 7/28/2010 04:55:00 PM by Douglas

When I buy underwear (and I said when), I don't want to see pictures of guys in underwear. That's just inappropriate.

Frank Boren, pastor of New Hope Christian Center Church of God in the Springhill community, said he noticed the questionable underwear package while shopping at the store in May.

“I was in there shopping for some underwear one day, and looked at the men’s pictures on the packaging,” he said. “On a few of the packages they were very pornographic in the way they were dressed, in skimpy underwear, so I went to the manager and asked her if she thought it was inappropriate to be displayed.”

After filing a few more complaints in the following weeks, Boren said the questionable packaging eventually disappeared from the store’s shelves.

Also banned were bananas, donuts, stock footage of trains going into tunnels, and the Georgia O'Keefe placemats.

Posted 7/28/2010 04:49:00 PM by Douglas

And here's the other story in Houston that won't go away. The firefighter's wife that may or may not be his wife because she may or may not be a woman. legally.

The transgender widow at the center of a court battle focusing on her late firefighter husband's estate apologized Tuesday for her appearance on a tabloid talk show 15 years ago during which she surprised a man who once kissed her with the news that she was born a boy.

Nikki Araguz, 35, expressed deep regret for not telling the man the truth about her gender history upfront and for surprising him with the news during her appearance on the Jerry Springer TV show on Feb. 13, 1995, calling it a mistake she made as an inexperienced teenager. She confirmed her appearance on the show after being questioned by the Chronicle.

"It was a horrible experience for everyone involved," Araguz said Tuesday of the TV show.

How horrible was it? It was so horrible. . .

Araguz said she appeared on four other TV talk shows — two more episodes of Jerry Springer, once on Maury Povich and once on Sally Jessy Raphael — in 1994 and 1995, all focusing on gender issues. Her mother appeared with her on two of the shows.

Wow, so horrible she had to do Jerry two more times, along with Maury and Sally. That must have been horrible.

Posted 7/25/2010 02:52:00 PM by Douglas

This story just won't go away in Houston, so here the scoop. There's a huge flower that's named after a giant, misshapen penis and it smells like dead animals when it blooms. Well, it finally bloomed.

Lois, Houston's shy corpse flower at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, is showing signs of coming out of her shell this morning.

Here's time-lapse video of her opening up. And if you want to see Lois sitting there doing nothing while a bunch of slack-jawed gawkers wave at the webcam, go here.

Posted 7/25/2010 02:27:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting way to simulate the different f-stop and shutter speeds on your camera.

Posted 7/25/2010 01:17:00 PM by Douglas

From the "she was asking for it" department, turns out you can be groped by a herd of horny drunk guys and wind up on video and there's nothing you can do about it.

STLToday reports that the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was dancing in at the former Rum Jungle bar in 2004 when someone reached up and pulled her tank top down, exposing her breasts to the "Girls Gone Wild" camera. Jane Doe, who was 20 at the time the tape was made, is now living in Missouri with her husband and two children. She only found out about the video in 2008, when a friend of her husband's saw the "Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy" video and recognized her face. He called up her husband, and in what has got to be the most awkward conversation ever, informed him that his wife's breasts were kinda famous.

The woman sued Girls Gone Wild for $5 million in damages. After deliberating for just 90 minutes on Thursday, the St. Louis jury came back with a verdict in favor of the smut peddlers. Patrick O'Brien, the jury foreman, explained later to reporters that they figured if she was willing to dance in front of the photographer, she was probably cool with having her breasts on film. They said she gave implicit consent by being at the bar, and by participating in the filming - though she never signed a consent form, and she can be heard on camera saying "no, no" when asked to show her breasts.

Unbelievable. I wonder if this is the whole story. It's hard to believe that a jury thought walking into a bar was sufficient consent to make a smut film.

Posted 7/23/2010 06:53:00 PM by Douglas

No one would ever confuse me for a fashionista, but this really cracks me up. Not the girl. No, if some Manhattan trust fund baby wants to dress like a poor, hungry boy from Appalachia, I don't really care. But the comments are really funny. Anyone that thinks that "look" is "amazing," "fresh," or god forbid, "brilliant" needs to take a bridge and/or tunnel once in a while and discover that she's spending a lot of money to look really, really poor.

Posted 7/23/2010 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

Are you like me? Do you like a frosty beer just about as much as you enjoy a dead rodent? Do you enjoy the beady, moribund eye balls of a dead rat staring you in the face as you take a pull off some really expensive beer? Then boy howdy do I have a beer for you.

The dead animals which were used to create the beers' unusual appearance were four squirrels, seven weasels and a hare. All were roadkill, James Watt, co-founder of BrewDog, told msnbc.com.

The name of the blond Belgian ale is taken from the title of a book by philosopher Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History and the Last Man" which the company said had been chosen to imply "this is to beer what democracy is to history."

Did democracy make history 10 times stronger than it needs to be and wrap it with a dead-rat coozie? I missed that day in my American History class.

Asked about animal rights concerns, Watt said: "It was all roadkill we got from a taxidermist. They are all animals that were dead anyway. We think to use dead animals in this way is much better than for them to be left to rot on the roadside."

Perfect. I was just going to let that roadkill become maggot food, but then I thought it would make great insulation for my beer.

Does your beer taste a little skunky, or is it just mine?

Posted 7/23/2010 06:26:00 PM by Douglas

Are you worried that Wal-Mart is tracking your underwear? Well you might not be crazy.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to roll out sophisticated electronic ID tags to track individual pairs of jeans and underwear, the first step in a system that advocates say better controls inventory but some critics say raises privacy concerns.

Starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on individual garments that can be read by a hand-held scanner. Wal-Mart workers will be able to quickly learn, for instance, which size of Wrangler jeans is missing, with the aim of ensuring shelves are optimally stocked and inventory tightly watched. If successful, the radio-frequency ID tags will be rolled out on other products at Wal-Mart's more than 3,750 U.S. stores.

We've been hearing about this for years. Wal-Mart has been dying for the price of the RFID tag to get below 1¢ a unit so they could put them on everything. Imagine how quick it would be to check out when you've got a basket full of cheap, imported Chinese shit and you drive it under a sensor and it says BEEP, $89.34. What's wrong with that? I would still get behind the idiot that wanted to write a check, get $10 back and needs a book of stamps.

Posted 7/23/2010 06:20:00 PM by Douglas

OMG! The InterToobes is full!

But, according to statements from prominent internet thinkers this week, we may run out of internet protocol -- or IP -- addresses in less than a year.

Only 4 billion internet addresses are possible under the current system, and those will all be exhausted in less than a year, John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, told ReadWriteWeb.

I would hate not getting connecting to the net when SkyNet becomes aware.

Posted 7/17/2010 02:48:00 PM by Douglas

Fifty years and 30 million copies later, To Kill a Mockingbird continues to be the scourge of the sophomore English Lit class all over this great land of ours. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only that's not on board with its worship.

In all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained. One hundred years from now, critics will still be arguing about the real nature of the relationship between Tom and Huck, or why Gatsby gazed at that green light at the end of the dock across the harbor. There is no ambiguity in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad. As Thomas Mallon wrote in a 2006 story in The New Yorker, the book acts as "an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious."

It's time to stop pretending that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in "Jurassic Park."

Racism is bad, we get it. Maybe it wasn't that obvious in 1960 when first published, but I fail to understand the book's ability to resonate with readers in the age of affirmative action and a black president. But then there's the ridicule of America's favorite idiot, the Southern. Lee, knowingly or not, gave Hollywood and every 10th grade English Lit class reason to hate the South. See how dumb they are? Southerns are racist idiots. Got that?

Harper Lee's contemporary and fellow Southerner Flannery O'Connor (and a far worthier subject for high-school reading lists) once made a killing observation about "To Kill a Mockingbird": "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

That about sums is all up.