Posted 5/31/2010 01:17:00 PM by Douglas

P.J. O’Rourke, as usual is crazy. But he's hilarious in the suggestion to newspapers: the pre-obituary.

One bright idea isn’t going to solve the problems of the American newspaper industry, but it’s one bright idea more than the American newspaper industry has had in 40 years. What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certain people aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.

The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer alike that the as-good-as-dead people are still around to have their feelings hurt.

Sounds good to me. I might buy a paper if it contained some of these suggestions:

Jimmy Carter is 85. We must hasten to throw the Camp David Accord in his face before he heads to his eternal camp-out with Anwar el-Sadat. Gore Vidal is 84. There’s no chance he’ll end up in the same place as Bill Buckley. We ought to take up Buckley’s gauntlet and slap Gore’s face here and now. Noam Chomsky is 81. Why should Satan have all the fun? We own pitchforks of fact aplenty with which to prod his living flesh. Norman Lear is 87 and will be married to Maude forever any minute now. (Although Lear may find himself forgiven. He never meant to make Archie Bunker a hero and a role model, but perhaps the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions.) Ed Asner is 80. Put him together with Ben Bradlee (88) and Alan J. Pakula, director of All the President’s Men (died in 1998, darn it), and you have the villains in the tragic tale of the American newspaper’s self-congratulatory ossification. Ross Perot also will be 80 soon. We owe him one Bill Clinton-sized philippic. Ralph Nader is 76. High time that someone, metaphorically, flipped him in a Corvair. And Paul Ehrlich is 78. In these days of the graying workforce, baby bust, and demographic decline, surely he needs a population bomb in his underpants.

But the opportunity missed when Sir Teddy passed last year is priceless:

And then there’s that missed opportunity of all opportunities, Ted Kennedy (1932-2009). One Pre-Obituary hardly would have done the job. Teddy left us with 50 years of unperformed dances upon his future grave. There was the death of his self-respect in 1962 when he was given his brother’s Senate seat the way a child is given a toy to keep him occupied on a long trip. There was the death of his conscience in 1969 when he killed Mary Jo Kopechne. There was the death of his political fortunes in 1980 when he couldn’t wrestle the presidential nomination from even Jimmy Carter. And there was the long, slow death of what little sense he had as he became the Grand Old Moron of the Senate.

Ha!

Labels: P.J. O'Rourke

Posted 5/31/2010 12:53:00 PM by Douglas

So Texas, like every other state, is broke. So they're looking for money, and as usual when a government goes trolling for new people to tax, some people are going to be pissed off about it.

AUSTIN — From car washes to tattoos to bottled water, the list of items and services exempt from the sales tax totals $30 billion in forgone revenue — a tempting target for some lawmakers as the state faces a budget gap as big as $18 billion.

Take aim at a tax exemption, however, and you quickly will find interests circling the wagons to preserve it, plus lawmakers resistant to raising money in a piecemeal fashion or increasing tax revenue at all.

Well that's the trick that makes a good politician a great politician, right? Taxing other people to pay for the shit YOU want. Taxing bottled water because it's trendy and not food is pure genius, but I'm not sure why tattoos and tanning isn't. Every other service I can think of is taxed, what's special about those?

“That's going to really upset me, actually. That will affect me financially,” said Antone Pham, a tattoo artist at the Texas Tattoo Emporium in Houston. “People already complain about how much tattoos cost sometimes. I'm going to tack a tax on to that? That's going to make it harder for me to even make money.”

Wow, what a compelling argument. "My customers don't want to pay it." Who could argue with that salient argument. But it IS a tax increase when you tax something that wasn't previously taxed, right?

“Taking away an exemption from someone who no longer deserves it isn't a tax increase.” he said. “I just don't see how we can, at this point, bind ourselves to being revenue-neutral, when we have not seen the drastic cuts that are going to be required to deal with an $18 billion deficit. I couldn't agree to that now.”

Wow, again, who could argue with that?

I wonder when someone is going to propose eliminating the property tax exemption on churches?

Posted 5/30/2010 11:46:00 AM by Douglas

Incredible website of the paintings in the Sixteenth Chapel. Careful, NSFW [nudity].

I wonder why you never hear about the first Fifteenth chapels? They're not nearly as famous. . .

Posted 5/30/2010 11:24:00 AM by Douglas

Hahaha! Check out my hawt, emasculated boyfriend that takes gay pictures cleaning to prove that it's not "woman's work!"

What works better than sultry music to put a woman in the mood? The purr of a DustBuster.

New York women swear the secret to a long-lasting relationship is getting their guy in an apron - the same thing a new study by the London School of Economics found.

Geez, what errant, sexist bullshit. Do women think it's hawt when their men make a Brazzilion dollars and hire a maid? That's probably pretty hawt, too. But where's the man's article? I'd like to see corollary article: "Men think it's hot when their girlfriends don't wear underwear and blow them on the way to the movies." Grow up people.

Posted 5/30/2010 10:46:00 AM by Douglas

Here's an innovative method for security improvement. Voluntary searches.

Cars heading to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will see random, voluntary inspections Monday.

Officials say the searches are voluntary and drivers can opt out if they want.

A really great plan to stop really polite terrorists.

Posted 5/30/2010 10:43:00 AM by Douglas

It's that time again. Time for the annual "This year's hurricane season is the worst ever!!" announcement.

The Atlantic storm season may be the most intense since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina killed over a thousand people after crashing through Gulf of Mexico energy facilities, the U.S. government's top climate agency predicted on Thursday.

In its first forecast for the storm season that begins next Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 14 to 23 named storms, with 8 to 14 developing into hurricanes, nearly matching 2005's record of 15.

A chilling vision of things to come. I'm looking for the mid-season "This year isn't as bad as we thought" announcement.

Posted 5/26/2010 05:15:00 PM by Douglas

This pretty much explains the nature in government compromise, all summed up in Rand Paul's comments.

Speaking broadly, modern government moves between two poles, each of which has a seventeenth-century thinker as its champion, and each of which is focused on minimizing a particular form of injustice. On one side is Thomas Hobbes, who defended the creation of an authoritarian government as the only viable means of protecting certain individuals and groups from injustices perpetrated by other individuals and groups. On the other side is John Locke, who advocated a minimal state in order to protect individuals and groups against injustices perpetrated by governments themselves. Taken to an extreme, the Hobbesian pole leads to totalitarianism, while the Lockean pole terminates in the quasi-anarchism of the night watchman state.

So that's where it boils down. If you advocate the government solving everyone's problems, or letting people do their own thing. Neither extreme is very appealing, and most people know which side they sit on, but sadly, the majority of people are close to the middle that it really doesn't make much difference. Republicans funding Medicaid, or Democrats cutting NASA, it's all beets in the same stew.

But the meat in this argument is interesting to me. Who gets to decide when the government power is used to impose the people's will on those that, by gar, just don't want to? The Lefties love it that big brother imposes its will on states that wish to restrict abortion laws, and the Right finds it just fine that their church is given a tax break, and apparently everyone wants grandma to have free health care. So think about the issues and see if they fit into your core beliefs; don't force your beliefs on the issues just because you already agree with it.

Posted 5/26/2010 04:42:00 PM by Douglas

Ever wanted to see a bunch of prime numbers come out of the ass of a cartoon bear? Yeah, me neither, but today, you can! What a glorious time to be alive. . .

Posted 5/24/2010 06:16:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting story on the historical aspect of the life of Jesus. This one didn't go where I thought it was going, the typical "it's in the bible, I believe it, 'nuff said" argument.

Posted 5/24/2010 06:14:00 PM by Douglas

Go on, grow some shit upside down. You know you want to.

Upside-down gardening, primarily of leggy crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, is more common partly because of the ubiquity of Topsy Turvy planters, which are breathlessly advertised on television and have prominent placement at retailers like Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Bed Bath & Beyond. According to the company that licenses the product, Allstar Products Group in Hawthorne, N.Y., sales this year are twice last year’s, with 20 million sold since the planter’s invention in 2005. Not to be outdone, Gardener’s Supply and Plow & Hearth recently began selling rival upside-down planters. “Upside-down gardening is definitely a phenomenon,” said Steve Wagner, senior product manager for Plow & Hearth.

I'll admit, I tried it. It's a great way to get your tomatoes eaten by birds and bats (yes, I saw a bat eat my tomato) instead of bugs on the ground.

Posted 5/24/2010 06:11:00 PM by Douglas

These kids today. Turns out they're leaving high school and community colleges without actually learning anything. I hope this isn't going to be a problem.

All public colleges offer developmental classes, but about 90 percent of the work in Texas is done at community colleges, which educate 57 percent of the state's college students.

Well over half of community college students are unprepared for college classes — the number approaches 70 percent at Houston Community College — with low-income students more likely to need the additional help than their wealthier peers.

Now community colleges have been told to do a better job with those students, prodded by private foundations and lawmakers weary of excuses.

I think we just put diplomas in the "magic crane" game at HEB.

Posted 5/24/2010 06:06:00 PM by Douglas

Helicopters parents have set the bar on this one.

“I recently received a call from the mother of a Ph.D. student who was applying to jobs on behalf of the daughter and thought there was nothing wrong with it,” he said. “The mother asked for suggestions for what jobs she should apply to on behalf of the daughter and I told her none.”

Rothberg said the mother was surprised at his reaction. “It had never occurred to her that her daughter should be in charge of her own career, especially as she was in her late 20s and looking for a professional position,” he added.

I wonder if these kids wipe their own asses.

Posted 5/22/2010 03:48:00 PM by Douglas

What a horrifying tale of destruction. Won't someone please think of the paper targets?

Witnesses said Woodrich displayed no emotion whatsoever during the 29-minute barrage. Many watched in silence as the gunman unloaded 12 shots at extremely close range into the chest and head of a defenseless target, pausing only to reload. One witness said that the shooter actually exited the gun range with a "look of relief" on his face.

After exhausting his final two clips, Woodrich reportedly fled the premises still carrying the loaded weapon. He was then seen entering a bank, a gas station, and a fried chicken restaurant before returning home and voluntarily disarming himself.

Of course it HAD to be in Texas, right? Haha!! We're all dumb!!

Posted 5/22/2010 01:39:00 PM by Douglas

I'll admit I'm a bit of a nerd, but it's a pet peeve of mine with dumb journalists use ridiculous comparisons to explain large numbers. To extrapolate a vast distance by saying it's "1.7 million football fields" doesn't put it in any clearer terms. So what kind of great description can we put on the gulf oil spill? How bout a new unit of volume, the gymnasium?

Using worst case scenarios calculated by scientists, a month's worth of leaking oil could fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles. That's more than the distance from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. That's just shy of 130 million gallons.

If the government's best case scenario is used — and only 5.25 million gallons have spilled — those milk jugs would cover a bit more than a roundtrip between New York and Washington. But the government is revising that number, with a team of scientists working around the clock to come up with a more realistic and likely higher figure.

Here's another way to think of just how much oil has gushed out since April 20: At worst, it's enough to fill 102 school gymnasiums to the ceiling with oil.

Don't they have to take any science course in journalism school?

Posted 5/22/2010 01:25:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting time-lapse video of space shuttle processing.

Interesting part about lifting the shuttle up so high before it's mated to the rest of the stack. The VAB was built for the Saturn V of Apollo. To make it stand up to Florida hurricanes, it was built with significant lateral structure. To get the Orbiter from one bay to the other, it has to be lifted to the TOP of the VAB where it's mated to the stack and rolled out the door on the other side. It's quite a sight, as the VAB is 525 feet tall, and the orbiter is only 120 feet tall.

Posted 5/22/2010 01:09:00 PM by Douglas

What an effective way to increase interest in Numismatics. What a cool way to pay for a hand job. . . with a coin with a guy gettin' a hand job on it!

Posted 5/22/2010 01:03:00 PM by Douglas

Turns out a dorm at UT has been named, for the last 55 years, after a guy that founded the Klan in Florida about a hundred years go. Queue the PC police.

Simkins Residence Hall is the last all-male dormitory at the University of Texas. Tucked into a quiet corner of campus along Waller Creek, it was the first men's dorm with air conditioning.

It is notable for another reason as well: Simkins is named for a UT law professor who was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

When they rename it, I wonder how they're going to fit "Guevara Chavez King Kennedy Hall" on the new maps.

Posted 5/20/2010 06:55:00 PM by Douglas

The horrible history of a horrible picture.

Kim Phuc, the girl in one of the unforgettable images of the Vietnam War, has been reunited for a BBC radio programme with Christopher Wain, the ITN correspondent who helped save her life 38 years ago.

When Chris last saw Kim, she was lying on a hospital bed with third-degree burns to more than half of her body, after a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack.

"We were short of film and my cameraman, the late, great Alan Downes, was worried that I was asking him to waste precious film shooting horrific pictures which were too awful to use. My attitude was that we needed to show what it was like, and to their lasting credit, ITN ran the shots."

One result was that everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl.

Her story is quite interesting:

In 1992, Phúc and Toan married and went on their honeymoon. During a refuelling stop in Gander, Newfoundland, they left the plane and asked for political asylum in Canada. It was granted. The couple now live in Ajax, Ontario, and have two children. In 1996, Phúc met the surgeons who had saved her life. The following year, she passed the Canadian Citizenship Test with a perfect score and became a Canadian citizen.

What a way to become a Canadian. Be careful where you refuel, commies! Back to the picture:

"I wanted to escape the picture because the more famous it got, the more it cost me my private life. It seemed to me that my picture would not let me go," she says.

Good lord, how could it ever?

Posted 5/20/2010 06:40:00 PM by Douglas

Even birds, that don't have to pay more at Whole Foods just to feel better about themselves, realize the whole "organic food" bullshit is just that.

A three-year study by Newcastle University has found that wild birds are not swayed by the organic label, but instead prefer the more protein-rich, conventional food that will help them to survive the winter.

Is there any way we can tell the birds that their organic food costs more? I'm sure they'd appreciate it then.

Posted 5/20/2010 06:03:00 PM by Douglas

The paradox of creativity. Largely bullshit, save these three:

• Create many ideas yet most of them are useless
• Desire success but learn how to fail
• Look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different

The last, of course, being the most important.

Posted 5/20/2010 05:14:00 PM by Douglas

I'm glad the Beaumont FBI doesn't have anything better to do than investigate the activities of bored high school kids.

Police are investigating after some letters on a sign outside the Beaumont Independent School District administration building were rearranged allegedly to spell a racial slur.

Beaumont ISD Police Chief Clydell Duncan says the incident borders on a hate crime and the FBI will be contacted.

The spelling change was discovered Wednesday on a sign that says normally says "recognized," the district's Texas Education Agency rating.

Several letters were changed, to begin a word with the letter "n."

I find it doubly ironic that they tried to mess with the "recognized" status of their school. I wonder what it was recognized for/as. Who knows what trouble these kids could get into if their school was "exemplary." Something tells me we don't need to worry about that word jumble.

Posted 5/19/2010 06:18:00 PM by Douglas

Are you like me? Have you been wondering all week how much water is in the ocean? Well sit back, enthaltards, I'm gonna school ya like a herd of mackerels.

A group of scientists used satellite measurements to get new estimates of these values, which turned out to be 0.3 billion cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers) for the volume of the oceans and 12,080.7 feet (3,682.2 meters) for the average ocean depth

Write that down, morons, there's gonna be a test later. And I know for a fact that some of you are still using 0.28 billion cubic miles of water in all you calculations. Wise up suckers. But how deep is it?

The depth estimate of 2.3 miles is about 69 to 167 feet (21 to 51 meters) less than previous estimates. (Some areas of the ocean, such as the Mariana Trench (at nearly 7 miles or 11 km deep) are of course much deeper than the average, while other areas, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are shallower.)

Focus up. 2.3 miles is an average depth. Got it? It's not 2.3 miles deep everywhere, although it would make building sandcastles at the beach more interesting and bankrupt the waders industry.

But how good are these numbers? Can we trust them?

"If you want to know the water volume on the planet, you Google it and you get five different numbers, most of them 30- or 40-year-old values."

Dear god, it's worse than I thought. You can't just google something and believe the first thing it tells you? Quick, let's write a proposal to get some grant money to get the most accurate figure wasting other people's money can buy!

As long ago as 1888, for example, John Murray dangled lead weights from a rope off a ship to calculate an ocean volume - the product of ocean area and mean ocean depth - just 1.2 percent greater than the figure reported by Charette and his colleague Walter H.F. Smith, a geophysicist at the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Wow, what a truly miraculous time to be alive! 130 years and several million in government grants and we're now an astounding 1.2% better than a Victorian fisherman with some string. Glory be to technology! But is this new number good enough? What if we wanted, nay, needed to echosound the entire ocean floor. I wonder how long that would take?

It would take a single ship 200 years (or 10 ships 20 years) to measure all the ocean-floor depths with an echsounder, according to published U.S. Navy estimates.

Hold on, I need to log onto a supercomputer at NORAD to do that calculation. Yep, 200 years for one ship is roughly equal to 20 years for 10 ships (I've truncated the rounding error). If my calculations are correct, and I pray to god they are, it would take almost a whole year if they had 198 or 199 echosounding ships. But I can't be sure until NASA sends the results back.

Posted 5/18/2010 06:25:00 PM by Douglas

If you're going to be a sanctimonious congressman that opposes gay marriage and goes on record in an interview in support of abstinence-only education, it's only fitting that you resign in shame for have hot buttered sex with. . . . . wait for it. . . . your staffer in the abstinence-only video you produced. Where was this during the writer's strike? This shit just writes itself. . .

Posted 5/18/2010 06:20:00 PM by Douglas

Of all the topics our ADHD media picks up on (hey look, something shiny!) Miss USA is probably one of the biggest ones that I could not care less about. So when pictures of the new Arab-American from Michigan surfaced doing a pole dancing routine in a strip club, I had a few questions.

• Why do so many Middle Eastern immigrants chose to live in Michigan? Do burned out building remind them of home?
• Why would anyone chose to live in Michigan?
• What strip club lets you bring in a camera?

So many questions. . . .

Posted 5/18/2010 06:15:00 PM by Douglas

You think health insurance is expensive now, just wait 'till it's free!

Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.

Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.

“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association.

Yeah, well, get in line. We're out of money, folks. LBJ's "Great Society" was a whole lot greater when there was more young people to pay for it.

Posted 5/18/2010 06:14:00 PM by Douglas

A nice sunny little optimistic piece on the dissolution of the American government.

Often, one carefully articulated analogy can succinctly convey a very complex idea. In our case, that analogy is addiction. Over the past hundred years, we have slowly allowed a monstrous system of dependence to develop until nearly every citizen relies upon government money, and thus is an addict. This has come about because the hard logic of the Founders has been replaced by the seductive ease of emotional arguments. All too often, the debate is over not if government should do something, but what it should do. This almost imperceptible shift in our national philosophy is a manifestation of our addiction.

If Republicans take control of the House and Senate, and if they repeal the health care bill, then they will not be able (or likely even try) to reform Medicare or Social Security. These programs alone will bankrupt our nation.

Well that's all fun and all, Debby Downer, but what does that say about the two party system? American politicians (and they didn't invent it) have been bribing its citizens with its own money for a long, long time. To say the Republicans are any better (or worse!) at it than Democrats is an insult to anyone paying attention to where Republicans blow your money.

Posted 5/18/2010 06:10:00 PM by Douglas

Jonah Goldberg may be a neo-con hack (he's got a point in this article) but it's the beginning to this one that got my attention.

We are taught to believe that ideology is the enemy of free thought. But that's not right. Ideology is a mere checklist of principles and priorities. The real enemy of clear thinking is the script. We think the world is supposed to go by a familiar plot. And when the facts conflict with the script, we edit the facts.

Man, how true. People generally don't want to tell you how what they believe is a perfect example to how what's going on is right or wrong, but rather how what's going wrong is a perfect example of what they believe (and generally, it's because they're right and everyone else is wrong). Such is the case with the so-called "dueling rallies" to save save NASA. Focus, people.

Posted 5/16/2010 09:09:00 PM by Douglas

Went down to The Orange Show today. It's one of those unique things that makes people ask, "hey, what's The Orange Show." I went there and I don't think I know the answer to that. This might answer a few questions, but it really has to be seen to be described.

"The Orange Show." It sure is:

And here's the main arena. I'm trying to imagine what kind of spectacles were put on in such a venue, but if Ren and Stimpy needed a place for their wedding reception, this would be it.

This guy really loved oranges.

And the part of The Orange Show foundation that gets the most attention is the art car parade. This thing is a freakin' work of art:

Posted 5/16/2010 02:25:00 PM by Douglas

Who needs space travel when you can just sit around and blame Obama. Or Bush. Whatever.

The Galveston County Democratic Party teamed with labor unions for its rally that officials said was focused on positive lobbying in support of the space center. Members of local tea party groups and Republican activists pledged the only way to support manned space flight was to bounce President Barack Obama and Democrats who hold the congressional majority from office.

While pledging more money for NASA overall, the president’s proposed budget includes a major dismantling of the Constellation program that was to have returned man to the moon and set up future missions to Mars. Thousands of jobs in this region are tied to that program and the soon-to-be ended space shuttle program.

And so forth. So Obama increased funding, but cut the program. Bush gave NASA a program, but no money. You'd think there'd be a way to work this out. But I like this assessment of the current NASA path:

“The only way I could accurately describe it is, you remember that Christmas when you were promised a bicycle and instead you got a sweater?” he said. “Don’t let this administration give us the sweater.”

At least it wasn't a big puffy pink bunny suit. Ralphie agrees:

Posted 5/15/2010 07:13:00 PM by Douglas

I don't make a habit out of agreeing with Roger Ebert, but when it comes to his loathing of 3-D movies, he's spot on.

Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for.

It's been annoying people since the 50s, but other than being a cute little trick, it's not been taken seriously. I saw Jaws 3-D and I just remember it being a distraction. But I seriously doubt there will be a serious movie made with 3-D anytime soon. But not to be left behind jumping the 3-D shark,
Playboy.

Hefner explained it like this to the AP: "This particular picture is one example of how books and magazines are different (than computer images). You can hold [them] in your hands, save them, and as Dad used to, put them under the mattress."

3-D? More like 34-C.

Posted 5/15/2010 03:30:00 PM by Douglas

Here's some great pictures of the "beginning of the end" of the American manned space-flight program. Keep that "hope and change" coming, Barry.

Posted 5/15/2010 03:23:00 PM by Douglas

This video is getting a lot of attention. It's a great example of how to whore out your little girl. I think it's every parent's dream to have their little girl griding like a stripper while dressed like a Vegas streetwalker.

Posted 5/13/2010 05:41:00 PM by Douglas

Some astronauts aren't as happy as other about Obama's new lack of a plan for space exploration.

Armstrong, who took man's first steps on the moon in 1969, and Cernan, who took the last steps in 1972, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that President Barack Obama's plans to end shuttle flights and shift responsibility for building manned spacecraft to commercial companies was a risky strategy that reflected a predilection for developing commercial spacecraft industry at all costs.

“A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the president that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program,” Armstrong testified. “I believe the president was poorly advised.”

Come on, Barry, you're going to let some hack like Neil Armstrong tell you about space? What does he know? Meanwhile, back in Houston, Bolden has some kind words for the contractors that do all the heavy lifting at JSC

Our contractor workforce stands to bear the brunt of the adverse impacts that will result from this trajectory change in the road ahead, but we will stand by them and help in every way we can to ease the pain of employees needing to transition to other areas of the aerospace industry or even out of our industry. As I have said to all of you before, I can’t possibly know how you feel right now because I don’t have kids still at home trying to get out of high school or college, but I can empathize with your situation and do all in my power to compassionately help you deal with your personal situations.

I wonder if his phone is going to ring when daddy needs a new pair of shoes? But to further express the softer side of Charley Bolden, he is sympathetic to lip hair:

RNASA Gag - "Mission Mustache" from Miles O'Brien on Vimeo.

Posted 5/12/2010 06:31:00 PM by Douglas

I don't care if it's from 1978, P.J. O'Rourke is still friggin' hilarious Thanks, long-time reader

I used to know this girl who weighed about eighty pounds and dressed in skirts that didn't even cover her underwear, when she wore any. I had this beat-up old Mercedes, and we were off someplace about fifty miles from nowhere on Christmas Eve in a horrible sleetstorm. The road was really a mess, all curves and big ditches, and I was blotto, and the car kept slipping off the pavement and sliding sideways. And just when I'd hit a big patch of glare ice and was frantically spinning the wheel trying to stay out of the oncoming traffic, she said, "I shaved my crotch today – wanna feel?"

That's really true. And then about half an hour later the head gasket blew up, and we had to spend I don't know how long in this dirtball motel although the girl walked all the way to the liquor store through about a mile of slush and got all kinds of wine and did weird stuff with the bottlenecks later. So it was sort of okay, except that the garage where I left the Mercedes burned down and I used the insurance money to buy a motorcycle.

But the most important part:

Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods – you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can't always get it back – but that's not your problem, is it?

Drive it like it's rented! But if you don't?

It's hard to face the truth, but I suppose you yourself realize that if you'd had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now. No such luck.

Labels: P.J. O'Rourke

Posted 5/10/2010 05:19:00 PM by Douglas

I was wondering why my disability claim hasn't come through yet. It's because of a huge backlog of people that don't want to work.

Nearly 2 million people are waiting to find out if they qualify for Social Security disability benefits. It will be a long wait for most, even if they eventually win their cases.

The Social Security system is so overwhelmed by applications for disability benefits that many people are waiting more than two years for their first payment. In Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and other states, the wait can be even longer.

My disability? I suffer from work-a-phobia.

Posted 5/08/2010 11:53:00 AM by Douglas

From the same brilliant, crazy guy that did the Star Wars review, here he is dishing on Avatar. Now it makes sense why it was so beloved by craying, tree hugging man-babies.



I liked the first two Terminator movies, but on the whole, James Cameron makes movies I have absolutely no interest in. And I vowed 13 years ago that I would leave this earth without every sitting through this steaming pile.

Posted 5/04/2010 08:36:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting results from a color survey. Yes, "gay" is a color.

Posted 5/04/2010 08:27:00 PM by Douglas

I whined a while back about people in over their heads with student loans and how the mean old banks won't let them walk away from them, even if they declare bankruptcy. Well help is on the way, and sadly, it's not debtor's prison.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who fall behind in their bills and seek refuge by filing for bankruptcy get a distressing surprise: If they are willing to ruin their credit for years, they can walk away from their houses, turn in their cars, and wipe out their credit card bills, but they typically can't erase a penny of their student debts.

Is this the problem, or the solution? To get a mortgage, car note, or hell, even a credit card with a $500 limit, you have to show some sense of financial responsibility. They're not just going to give you the money if you could just walk away from it. Student loans aren't so. Anyone with a pulse can get several thousand (sometimes hundreds of thousands) in student loans. If you're going to give a 19 year old kid more than your median Texas home price for nothing more than their signature, shouldn't they come with a few more strings attached?

The government reports that 6.7 percent of those who took federal student loans in 2007 have already defaulted, up from 4.6 percent in 2005. And many analysts predict more Americans will have trouble paying their student loan bills in the coming months.

Wow, what a groundswell of defaults. Up over 2 whole percent during the worst economy since the great depression. If only we had a liberal senator talking about "this economy" and offering some help with other people's money. Al Franken?

"In this economy, we want to be encouraging people to invest in their education and their future," Franken said in a press release. "That's why it is more important than ever for people to be able to get a fresh start."

Great. Tell every 18 year old they can borrow as much as they want and get a fresh start after bankruptcy. What a great way to invest in your education.

Except it won't work that way. The only reason this money is so easy to get in the first place is because you can't default on it. Let kids just walk away, and banks will have no choice but to turn off the tap. So instead of it being available and forcing people to go to school and get a job to pay back their student loans, you've made it impossible for them to get the money. Bravo, douchebag. But how did this law come about?

When people with private loans found themselves in financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy, judges lumped those with other private debts such as credit cards, and often wiped the slate clean.

That changed in 2005, when an anonymous Congressman--no one has publicly claimed credit yet--slipped an amendment into a bankruptcy reform bill that made all private student loans, even those already made, as inescapable as federal student loans.

An anonymous Congressman? Can anyone slip language into Congressional bills? Maybe it was the janitor? What can we do about it?

TICAS president Lauren Asher noted that lenders can wipe their own books clean of bad debts by simply writing them off.

Well shit, why didn't I think of that?!? Just write it off. I wonder if the TICAS president even knows what that means. This is all sounding like a bad Seinfeld routine:



Just write it off!

Posted 5/04/2010 06:43:00 PM by Douglas

When "Round-up" ready crops aren't. Really blows a huge hole in Monsanto's plan since they lost the patent on Glyphosate and started patenting Glyphosate resistant seeds:

Roundup — originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate — has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.

Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.

Now, Roundup-resistant weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned.

This is the biggest kink in the armor to modern farming since the invention of the steel plow.

Posted 5/02/2010 06:10:00 PM by Douglas

I'm not sure if this is funny or not.

Posted 5/02/2010 01:59:00 PM by Douglas

Some pictures from the oil spill in the gulf. Wow, what a mess. I don't think it's Barry's fault, but this is kinda ironic. Also, the VP of a large multi-national petroleum company got his arse handed to him on the tele.

Posted 5/01/2010 01:07:00 PM by Douglas

Fark photoshops the new NASA logo. One of the better ones: