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.

Posted 7/15/2010 06:43:00 PM by Douglas

I saw this posted over at NASAWatch.com this morning, and it had its intended results: Screw you, Government Motors. That's a pretty ballsy stance for one of the world's biggest company of the 20th century that was managed into the ground and survived by the skin of it's dick and a dumptruck full of federal money. NASA has always been a government program, and they still make rockets, some with less help from the government that it takes you to build a god damned car.

Posted 7/15/2010 06:33:00 PM by Douglas

For those of you out there thinking of joining the priesthood, but were afraid they'd throw you out after you molested a kid, never fear: the church chose not to adopt a "rape one child and you're out" policy.

The Vatican issued a new set of norms Thursday to respond to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal, cracking down on priests who rape and molest minors and the mentally disabled.

The norms extend from 10 to 20 years the statute of limitations on priestly abuse and also codify for the first time that possessing or distributing child pornography is a canonical crime.

But the document made no mention of the need for bishops to report abuse to police and doesn't include any "one-strike and you're out" policy as demanded by some victims' groups.

Sounds fair. I mean let's face it. You can't throw 'em all out just because they raped one kid. If you did that, who would make the trains run on time. Who hasn't been working late on a Tuesday night, or maybe had a couple of beers on Saturday, and you decide to rape a kid. It's completely understandable. Let's not go nuts here. Let's just issue them a sternly worded letter for their personnel file which may or may not be included in their transfer paperwork when they get moved to another church. You know, moved to another church for raping a kid.

But fear not, those of you that think the church is taking too soft a stance on this. It's still the same old church you know and love:

The document also listed the attempted ordination of a woman as a "grave crime" to be handled by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just as sex abuse is.

Look, women, if god wanted to make you a priest, he'd have given you a penis. He didn't. Can't you get over that part? So find some other way to serve the church that god does approve of, and leave the priesting and the raping of children to the menfolk.

Posted 7/11/2010 04:20:00 PM by Douglas

I wonder if any of those heralding the success of the laughable modern drug war have any perspective to the last time the country tried such a failed policy.

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

So why are we still dealing with the "war on drugs" that, to this day, receives more federal money than NASA, yet any person in the country is no more than three phone calls from any illegal drugs they so desire? Because as with the tide in 1920, the Baptists and the Bootleggers still vote for the same guys.

Posted 7/10/2010 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Fourth of July pix:

Fun with sparklers and slow shutter speeds.

Posted 7/10/2010 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

This is my favorite feminist joke:

Q:How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny.

I just don't have it in me to address the rampant stupidity of this article and it's assessment of the sexual assault in Back to the Future.

Having not read anything there before, I honestly can't tell if this is on the level or not. Is this just troll fodder to increase traffic? Maybe, and if so, I'm sorry for contributing to it.

Second, I never miss an opportunity to make fun of idiots that talk like valley girls and use the word "like" every other word. So it's especially frustrating to see people that write like idiots talk. Reading this article, I was like, wow, this is hella dumb.

Finally, and not unique to this palaver, the comment section is relentlessly dumb. Suggesting jail time for Robert Zemeckis? Seriously, what's wrong with these people.

Posted 7/10/2010 02:49:00 PM by Douglas

The oil spill isn't only an ecological disaster, but it's racist, too.

The NAACP has sent a letter to BP expressing concerns that minorities helping to clean up after the massive oil spill tend to be assigned tougher, lower paying jobs than whites.

NAACP president, Ben Jealous, says in the letter dated Friday that he wants to meet with BP's chief executive officer. E-mail messages left with several BP spokespeople were not immediately returned.

Reminds me of the old joke about the "suggested" headline in The New York Times?

World to end Friday; women, minorities hardest hit.

Posted 7/10/2010 02:37:00 PM by Douglas

Some people in Austin don't think the state's draconian drunk driving laws are strong enough.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo testified Thursday in favor of temporary sobriety checkpoints and mandatory blood tests for alleged violators. About half of Austin's traffic fatalities each year are alcohol related, according to Acevedo.

"We are waiting way too long to intervene," said Acevedo. "If we can't intervene in people's lives, we can't change their behavior. It has to start with the first arrest."

Bill Lewis, with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said innocent citizens already are subjected to random searches, such as when they enter the airport and, more recently, at the Texas Capitol.

"I've never tried to sneak a gun through the Capitol or an airport, but I have to go through a checkpoint," said Lewis.

Wow. So I'm sure she'd be happy with every road being shut down so the cops can check everyone to see if everyone on the road has been drinking. The only thing this story is missing is a "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about" bullshit.

Posted 7/10/2010 02:13:00 PM by Douglas

This is hysterical. I'm going to have to ad this to the sidebar. Also, I think the tequila bottle in the crib is an excellent idea.

Posted 7/10/2010 02:09:00 PM by Douglas

Stray pets are a problem in San Francisco, so hey, let's ban them!

That's the law under consideration by San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. If the commission approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country's first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.

That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.

Wow, that's just stupid. But what's the real problem?

The real problem, staff said, is hamsters.

People buy the high-strung, nocturnal rodents because they're under the temporary impression that hamsters are cute and cuddly. But the new owners quickly learn that hamsters are, in fact, prone to biting, gnawing through expensive wiring and maniacally racing on their exercise wheels at 2 a.m.

So the animals end up at the shelter. Just about every species has its own rescue group in San Francisco, but no one seems to want hamsters. Hamsters are the No. 1 animal euthanized at the city's shelter, said San Francisco Animal Care and Control director Rebecca Katz.

A hamster problem? In San Fran? Why don't they just declaw them and take them to Castro?

Posted 7/08/2010 08:34:00 PM by Douglas

The U.S. Cyber Command goes full spook with secret code in their logo.

The newly formed U.S. Cyber Command is supposed to centralize and focus the military's ability to wage war over the Internet, but so far it's basically famous for brainteasers. The command's fancy logo contains a super-secret code in its inner gold ring: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a. Though some people noticed the code late last month, Wired's Threat Level Danger Room blog picked it up Wednesday morning and announced a contest, with a free T-shirt (or a ticket to the International Spy Museum) going to the first reader to crack the code.

Crack the CIA's secret code, win a T-shirt! I'm sure the C.I.A. appreciates that. But, it is an obsolete cipher. I think that's a good word to describe any cipher that you can crack with a web-ap. That being said:

62d1d0d66cc5284e2474b256f133f806

This one works better. I also think the story of their statue is pretty freakin' crazy, too.

Posted 7/07/2010 09:05:00 PM by Douglas

Attention whore/college student strives to make dumb word even dumber metric prefix.

Now the 20-year-old physics major at UC Davis uses "hella" often — and he's trying to get scientists from Boise to Beijing to do the same. Sendek, who was forced to use "hecka" as a child, has petitioned an international scientific body to make "hella" the name for the hitherto nameless, unimaginably huge, seldom-cited quantity of 10 to the 27th power — or 1 followed by 27 zeros.

News flash. Who the hell cares what the next big number is going to be next? If we could make this quantify soccer, it would all be complete.

Posted 7/07/2010 08:54:00 PM by Douglas

Vietnamese acupuncturist comes up with a virginity test so accurate, it's used in court.

A female acupuncturist has gained celebrity status in Vietnam for founding a new and literally unbelievable medical procedure: the ear-based "virginity test."

Traditional medicine practitioner Pham Thi Hong claims she can tell whether or not someone is a virgin by examining the spots on their ears and taking their pulse rate.

If your ear is full of dirt and you're wearing a "No Fat Chicks" T-shirt, you're probably a virgin.

Posted 7/07/2010 08:49:00 PM by Douglas

Remember that crappy car Chrysler came out with a few years ago that got some attention for nothing more than not looking exactly like an Accord/Camry/Taurus? Yeah, turns out that underpowered piece of crap has been put out to four-cylinder pasture.

Ten years ago, the new Chrysler PT Cruiser was one of the hottest cars out of Detroit.

The PT Cruiser was unveiled during the SUV craze, but its quirky styling and useful interior made it a sensation. It helped establish Chrysler as a design leader, sold far beyond the automaker's expectations and became one of the rare American small cars that was an undisputed hit.

They were made in Mexico.

Posted 7/07/2010 08:44:00 PM by Douglas

You never know when you meet a nice looking squirrel whether or not you're going to get the plague.

The Los Alamos Campground in the Angeles National Forest will be closed for the next eight days as officials investigate a case of a squirrel testing positive for the plague.

The animal was captured two weeks ago. While the park is closed, squirrel burrows will be dusted for fleas, which can spread the bacterial disease.

The freakin' plague.

Posted 7/07/2010 08:28:00 PM by Douglas

Hey Gallagher, if I want to hear some nut-case rant against the government, I'll go to my home town.

"Hey, President Obama," he spits out the name like a mouthful of burning hair. "You ain't black. I don't care what you say—you're a latte. You're half whole-milk. It could be goat milk—you could be a terrorist!" I am too busy losing my mind to catch the next joke, which is about Ted Kennedy's brain cancer. Aaaaand we're off.

I can hear this at any coffee shop in West Texas. For free.

Posted 7/07/2010 08:13:00 PM by Douglas

NASA's new vision is making the rounds lately. Of all the things Charlie has said, this one really doesn't bother me that much. It's stupid, but so what?

"When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things," NASA head Charles Bolden said in a recent interview with the Middle Eastern news network al-Jazeera. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

Fine, whatever. What I find alarming is that with NASA's future in the biggest pickle it has been in since its inception, what the hell is Charlie doing talking to al-Jazeera? I'm a big fan of the march to obsolescence, but do you have to run at it? Also, I'm not one to read Malkin without throwing up, but these logos made me laugh for a bit.