Posted 4/29/2010 06:05:00 PM by Douglas

Every father wants to look nice for his daughter's wedding, but come on, Chelsea, cut bubba some slack. It ain't easy running the free world:

It's no secret that Bill Clinton is waging an ongoing battle with his weight. The former president's affection for greasy fast food has been the punchline of countless jokes since his arrival on the national scene. "Saturday Night Live" writers famously portrayed him as someone who frequents McDonald's to pick burgers and fries off the plates of strangers.

If such indignities weren't enough, Clinton's own daughter, Chelsea, is now taking him to task over his size, demanding that he lose at least 15 pounds in advance of her summer wedding.

Hey Chelsea, here's a great way for him to lose 180 pounds for your wedding: leave your mother in Westchester.

Posted 4/29/2010 05:59:00 PM by Douglas

The "Personal finance" section of blogging is one of the most inanely obvious shit you'll ever find online, but this story really cracked me up. Cpt. Obvious, call your office:

Am I saving too much?

Yeah, that's it. That's what's driving this country hip deep in debt. You're saving too much. Then there's this:

Am I wasting money by carrying debt?

Naw. . . that 17.9% your credit card is charging you for that cute piece of plastic is like a bonus! Keep it up, chump.

SNL sums it up best for you idiots that can't balance a budget:



I can put that on my credit card!!!

Posted 4/28/2010 09:25:00 PM by Douglas

At first glance, this story sound like a judge being a jerk, but after reading what she did, I'm not so sure.

A 19-year-old college freshman missed class Tuesday when a federal judge decided to teach her a civics lesson by ordering federal marshals to haul her in chains from school to court to explain why she shirked jury duty.

Kelsey G** stood in ankle and wrist restraints in court Tuesday afternoon wearing flip flops, a tight white T-shirt, short-shorts and sporting green streaks in her hair. Though she rolled her eyes and looked impatient while waiting for the judge, once U.S. District Judge David Hittner took the bench her tears flowed.

The judge was incensed that the teen had hung up on jury clerks calling to get her to the courthouse.

Ok, that's a bit much. Does everyone get shackled for ditching jury duty? I don't think so. So what happened?

She appeared in federal court one day last week, filled out forms and was told to return this Monday to be on a panel of 60 potential jurors in a health care fraud case. Last week people who wanted out of jury duty were told to state their cases, but G**, who might have gotten a pass as a student, demurred.

When she didn't show up Monday, she told the jury clerk who called that she had a flat tire. When the clerk offered to come pick her up, G** said she wanted to go to class and would not come to court. When clerks called her back later to say the judge wanted her to appear Tuesday to explain herself, she was rude and hung up on them.

OK sounds rude and pretty obvious she's lying about the flat. Definitely worthy of a bench warrant for her to appear, but are the shackles really necessary? For that we gotta hear from her dad:

He said his daughter went to the doctor because her ankles were bleeding and bruised from the ankle restraints and he said he's in shock that a judge would do this to a college freshman.

“Don't treat her like she murdered 25 people along the freeway,” he said. “She's 19, she's ignorant, she's a kid. They don't take anything seriously.”

Ok, now he needs to be shackled. She's 19. She's a legal adult and should be held accountable for her actions. Which she most ceremoniously was.

Next time, click on that box that says "educational exemption" and mail it in, darlin'.

Posted 4/28/2010 09:07:00 PM by Douglas

Hey, got an oil slick looming in the open sea? How 'bout we just set it on fire?

It's a hellish scene: Giant sheets of flame racing across the Gulf of Mexico as thick, black smoke billows high into the sky.

Crews late Wednesday afternoon started a test burn to see how the technique was working. Rig operator BP PLC had planned to continue the oil fires after the test, but as night fell, no more were lit. The burns were not expected to be done at night, and the Coast Guard said crews could resume work Thursday morning if the weather cooperated.

Crews planned to use hand-held flares to set fire to sections of the massive spill. Crews turned to the plan after failing to stop a 1,000-barrel-a-day leak at the spot where a deepwater oil platform exploded and sank.

A chilling vision of things to come.

Posted 4/28/2010 09:03:00 PM by Douglas

I've never really agreed with the airline's industry practice of overselling flight, but turns out when SWA did it too much, they got called on it.

Southwest Airlines, which bumped more passengers than any U.S. carrier last year, has been fined $200,000 for violating rules on kicking passengers off oversold flights.

Federal rules require airlines to first ask for volunteers who will give up their seats in exchange for compensation. After that, airlines can begin to bump passengers. Most of those bumped are entitled to up to $800 in cash.

If you've even been on a flight held up while they beg someone to take a later flight, you really don't give a shit if they fly with a empty seat every once in a while.

Posted 4/28/2010 08:57:00 PM by Douglas

Houston, you have a problem. Trouble is, no one really realizes how bad it's going to get, but today's visit sums it up. Check out the sixth bullet point below:

Contractors will bear the brunt of the proposed changes to NASA. (my note: This includes about 7,000 contractor positions at risk in the Houston area).

It's time to stop blaming Bush's NASA trouble and come forth with a vision. Guess who does the majority of the work at JSC? Yep, contractors, and you just told 7,000 who have been the driving force behind the manned spaceflight program to go find another job.

I'm still at a loss as to what is "bold" and "courageous" about telling the people behind every manned mission since Gemini to get another job. But guess what? That's what they'll do.

Posted 4/27/2010 08:26:00 PM by Douglas

I don't care who says it, mold infested corn is NOT food. I think Steve settled this a long time ago. Steve, sum it up for us:

Before I even got the whole can open, I detected a vague aroma of sweet corn, along with what I can only describe as a deep musky funk. Put 'em together and it smells like corn that forgot to wipe.

Yes it does, Steve.

Posted 4/27/2010 08:12:00 PM by Douglas

It may be too late for this one.

Posted 4/26/2010 08:33:00 PM by Douglas

Sony has finally decided to stop making 3.5" floppy disks. In other news, Sony still makes floppy disks?

Sony, which boasts 70 percent of the anemic market, announced Friday that it would end Japanese sales of the ancient storage medium in March 2011, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily newspaper.

The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format.

However, as the size of files and programs grew, the floppy disk was pushed aside by inexpensive and larger-format storage medium. Thanks to the creation of storage methods such as CDs, DVDs, Zip, and USB drives, Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009.

12 million in 2009, and 47 million in 2002? Wow, that's about 46.7 million more than I thought they made.

Posted 4/25/2010 06:10:00 PM by Douglas

I guess since canceling the manned space program, they've got some extra walkin' 'round money on their hands. How to spend it? How 'bout a new logo? A horrible, horrible new logo. . .

he Space Age has gone stale. How did this come to be? On April 15, as President Obama spoke at the Kennedy Space Center about the future of America’s space program, there were 13 human beings floating in zero gravity, some 200 miles above the earth’s surface. Six of them were living there, in space, full-time, on the International Space Station; the rest had flown up to visit on the space shuttle Discovery, our reusable spaceship.

Yet nobody much cared. When Discovery returned to Earth on April 20, the technophile world was in a hubbub because someone had apparently left a prototype of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone in a bar. Half a dozen people, remember, were still living in space — are still living in space right now. This is the future we inhabit day to day: one where the most important thing is the possibility of buying a slightly better version of a mobile phone people already have. Our attention and our technological marvels have turned inward.

Who wants a manned spaceflight program when we could get a new iPhone that's slightly better than the one we have now!

Posted 4/25/2010 05:50:00 PM by Douglas

It was bound to happen, but it seems like the Earth tried to shake Alice off the map.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports that a 4.0-magnitude earthquake hit an area near Alice, about 50 miles west of Corpus Christi, around 9:10 p.m. Saturday. No damage or injuries have been reported.

Alternate headline: "Earthquake hits South Texas: Tens of thousands in improvements reported."

Posted 4/22/2010 07:11:00 PM by Douglas

Happy Earth Day, suckers. And as I never tire of pointing out, it's also Lennin's birthday and no, it's not by coincidence. The Green tree has Red roots. But my how the movement has changed since Lennin's 100th birthday celebration in 1970 (the fist Earth Day) and today. Like most communists that rail against wanton consumerism, they've realized it's good as long it's their consumerism. The New York Times (who else) explains.

While the momentum for the first Earth Day came from the grass roots, many corporations say that it is often the business community that now leads the way in environmental innovation — and they want to get their customers interested. In an era when the population is more divided on the importance of environmental issues than it was four decades ago, the April event offers a rare window, they say, when customers are game to learn about the environmentally friendly changes the companies have made.

Little did the hippies know that when protesting about all the money those evil companies were making while raping the earth, there actually was lots of money to be made. Who'd a thunk it?

But if you just have to spend twice what a product is worth just to assuage your liberal ego, why not some recycled paper clips?

Posted 4/18/2010 02:35:00 PM by Douglas

Remember when the governor thought it was a great idea to turn down that government money because he's so principled? Well apparently it's bad when Obama deprives Texas of some government money.

President Barack Obama “has put a target on Texas’ back” and illustrated it by not mentioning NASA’s sprawling Johnson Space Center in Houston while announcing new space agency initiatives in Florida, Gov. Rick Perry said Saturday.

“The message there was, ‘You’re from Texas. We don’t care about you,’” Perry said. “I tell people this president has put a target on Texas’ back. Whether it’s programs that he’s talked about from the standpoint of making Texas an example, if you will. And I don’t appreciate it.”

I guess it's good to see Perry is a NASA supporter, but I don't understand how some free money is good and other free money is bad.

Posted 4/18/2010 01:45:00 PM by Douglas

I'm really sick of hearing about government bailout and "too big to fail" bullshit. Especially now that the facts are starting to fallout. Take Goldman Sachs for example. They got $10 Billion from TARP and now the details of how they got there. Check out the details on page seven of this bad boy:

"More and more leverage in the system, The whole building is about to collapse anytime now…Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre]…standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities!!!"

Not to defend the fabulous Fab, but he's clearly being prepped to be the sacrificial lamb. But still, how can the organization say they didn't see it coming, and how can they take the money with a straight face.

Posted 4/17/2010 05:02:00 PM by Douglas

If you can't put your finger on exactly what benefits will come from exploration, it's probably best not to try. [Thanks long-time reader!]

King Ferdinand: “ My fellow countrymen. We stand on the shores of a new frontier, one that will open vast new stores of knowledge for our people and the other peoples of the world. Exploration has always been in our blood. But we must weigh that inquisitiveness against practicality. We’ve just endured a number of conflicts that burdened our treasury and need to think of the future of our current citizens.
Considering all aspects is difficult. What riches lay across that uncharted gulf we don’t know. We do know we must provide for our people and businesses.
Our old world is being depleted of resources resulting in loss of employment, higher taxes and in some towns, religious and political strife.

Pretty good. I sure hope that works out for them. . .

Posted 4/14/2010 05:23:00 PM by Douglas

Funny news for NASA today. Turns out the present administration doesn't want to cancel the Constellation program, except. . except, oh shit, just read it.

President Barack Obama is reviving the NASA crew capsule concept that he had canceled with the rest of the moon program earlier this year, in a move that will mean more jobs and less reliance on the Russians, officials said Tuesday.

The space capsule, called Orion, still won't go to the moon. It will go unmanned to the International Space Station to stand by as an emergency vehicle to return astronauts home, officials said.

Am I missing something? It can bring people home, but will be launched unmanned? So how is that going to reduce reliance on Russian launch vehicles? Is there a space escalator in development we don't know about?

So there's still no way to get to the ISS, no lunar option, yet NASA's getting $6 billion more over the next 5 years. With no discernable mission or plan for a mission, this isn't about a jobs program in (key swing state) Florida, is it? Oh yeah, I guess it is. I fail to see what is so "Bold" about these things:

• Leads to more than 2,500 additional jobs in Florida’s Kennedy Space Center area by 2012, as compared to the prior path.
• Invests in Florida, adding $3 billion more for the Kennedy Space Center to manage – a 60 percent increase.

With no mission, where is this "heavy lift" vehicle going, and what is it lifting? Without a goal, as misguided as it may be, there's really no point to any of it.

One note, Keith, it's not just old people that are sad to see the manned program go. Come to Clear Lake and see the yard signs and other protests about the disapproval of the end to NASA as we've known it for the last 50 years.

Posted 4/14/2010 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

This is so absurd and vitriolic, I don't know where to begin. I hate to give this kind of crap more attention than it deserves, which isn't any, but like any trainwrecks, I just can't turn away.

If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?

Wow, that's crazy. But hold on:

Even if you're a relative of one of the 9/11 hijackers, that man was an out-and-out terrorist, and nothing you can say will change that. And if your great-great-great-granddaddy was a Confederate who stood up for Southern ideals, he too was a terrorist.

Like most insane rants, there's a shred of truth there, but as usual, this shred gets pooped on to make the point the author already intended to make. The South was evil, case closed.

No one wants to hear the North did this, and the South did that to point out who is more responsible for the half a million men that died, nor does anyone wish to point out every single developed country on the planet got rid of African slavery without such bloodshed.

So if you want to believe the South was the true embodiment of the liberties (for some) espoused in the Constitution, or if you believe the were domestic terrorists, it's doubtful anything is going to change your mind.

Posted 4/09/2010 10:14:00 PM by Douglas

Colbert weighs in on the NASA decision.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Final Final Frontier
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Posted 4/08/2010 08:58:00 PM by Douglas

What if after your week long Caribbean cruise you found out the company jacked up your price so they could give a free ride to nearly half of the other cruisers on board? Would you pay for the same trip next year? Probably not, yet chances are, that's what you do, every single year, when you pay your taxes.

Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

I'm not advocating the privilege of paying taxes as being more American, but paying NO taxes, when other people are paying for services and privledges you enjoy every day, is definitely UN-American.

Being American ain't free, and I don't care if you are totally subsisting on government programs, you should have to kick back a portion of that to the IRS, just like everyone else. Hell, I don't even care if we have to give them more in handouts to get them to the same level. Everyone should know that all this freedom ain't free, and everyone should have to feel a little heat on April 15th.

Posted 4/08/2010 07:09:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting and impassioned speech by Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Obama space plan.



Have you ever heard of anyone being inspired by tax code and dreaming of becoming an IRS agent when they grow up?

Posted 4/07/2010 08:57:00 PM by Douglas

Addiction is a horrible thing, and I don't want to belittle her plight, but geez, lady, get some meth or somthing. . . .

A woman accused of huffing aerosol hair spray in her vehicle while two children were in the back seat has pleaded guilty to two counts of endangering a child.

Police said she was inhaling the fumes from a towel. The two children, though exposed, were uninjured, police said.

I loves me some aqua net!

Posted 4/07/2010 08:54:00 PM by Douglas

Don't want to pay for someone else's financial irresponsibility? tough.

Why, some asked on The New York Times Web site, should we have to pay for the mistakes of homeowners who lived far beyond their means when credit was easy to get? Shouldn’t they pay for their own mistakes?

Surprising, you'd think the lefties over at The New York Times would be a little more receptive to the whole redistribution of wealth concept. I guess not when it's their wealth getting redistributed.

Posted 4/07/2010 08:50:00 PM by Douglas

Here it is, folks, this year's annual "this year's hurricane season is going to be worse than normal" story.

Colorado State University's hurricane forecast team is predicting an above-average season for the Atlantic basin in 2010, which includes all tropical storms and hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

The forecast calls for 15 named tropical storms, of which eight will become hurricanes. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its sustained wind speeds surpass 74 mph. Of those eight, four are expected to develop into major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5) with maximum wind speeds of 111 mph or greater.

I wonder if anyone in the hurricane predicting business knows what the word "average" means?

See ya later this year when we get the "boy, we screwed up" updated prediction in mid-summer, followed by the late fall "we made all that up" update.

Posted 4/05/2010 09:26:00 PM by Douglas

Did you know that the Caduceus, the winged staff helically entwined with two serpents has misrepresented the medical profession since the Army misused it in 1856? Yeah, it's true. The one you're thinking of is the Rod of Asclepius. Who knew? Besides every first year medical student.

Posted 4/04/2010 03:33:00 PM by Douglas

Here it is, MacTards, the big day. Hope the sliver of market between your iphone and your ibook is filled with your new lack of $500.

In New York, San Francisco and Seattle, customers waited for hours to purchase the dream machine, which some analysts believe could be every bit as revolutionary as Apple's iPhone and iPod have been.

Still, the mood was less frenzied than during the release of the iPhone.

At Memorial City, for instance, about 100 shoppers had lined up by the time the Apple store opened Saturday.

And I never get tired of this one:

Posted 4/04/2010 03:19:00 PM by Douglas

The CERN supercollider in Switzerland hits 3.5 trillion electron volts last week.

On Friday morning, the machine created two beams of protons, each with an energy of 3.5 trillion electron volts.

The effort breaks the prior record, set by the LHC in December, of just over a trillion electron volts in each beam.

The LHC will now aim to smash those two beams together, hoping to create new particles that give insight into the most fundamental workings of physics.

What does any of this mean? I have no idea, but what pisses me off about this story is that this research isn't happening in Texas. For the astronomical price tag of $12 Billion, the construction of the Superconducting Supercollider outside of Waxahachie was sandbagged. Instead, the federal government needed to give $800 billion to bad banks, another $800 billion for other bad investments, and another $100 Billion for car companies that can't make cars.

So what kind of discoveries will fall out of such a research facility? I don't think anyone knows yet. But Pierre and Marie Curie didn't know what they were going to find when they started distilling pitchblende, either. Look what they discovered before they knew what they were looking for. Guess what you find when you don't go looking for it? Nothing. Just good to know that these discoveries will be made in Europe and NOT in Texas. That $12 Billion is much better spent supporting an already inflated housing market.

Posted 4/02/2010 10:03:00 PM by Douglas

This sounds like someone lost his house to hurricane Ike and the only DVD he saved was Strange Brew.

He grabbed a Tecate Light out of his fridge and began to sip. But, Johnston said, something didn't taste quite right. He said his wife looked in the bottle and noticed a rat's head floating inside.

Johnston filed a lawsuit recently in Galveston County against FEMSA Cerveza (CCM), the Mexican maker of Tecate, and Heineken, which distributes the beer in the United States, among other defendants. He's citing the severe psychological damage he says he has sustained.

See what you gotta do is start with a baby moouse in the bottle. . .

Posted 4/01/2010 09:01:00 PM by Douglas

This year's winning peeps diorama.

Posted 4/01/2010 08:57:00 PM by Douglas

April Fool's day once again. Google really disapointed with the Topeka bullshit. I liked the wiki page, but only because I'm not sure which ones were fake. How Stuff Works had a good one with Twapler. Then, proving nerds don't have a good sense of humor, here's NASA's photo of the day. 2005 was funnier. But here's a list of some pranks with balls.