Outrage!

I just heard a story about a beat being chased up a tree by some kittens and or cats. This is an outrage. I will not stand for noble bears being attacked by villainous cats. This is a clear disruption in the great chain of being, and cannot be accepted.

More ham than man

After feasting on ham over easter i remembered something things i meant to write about earlier regarding obesity. I ate so much ham i would have been convinced it would lead to an early heart attack, except that i know ham in fact lowers your cholesterol. It's a secret, like the bottomless peanut bag, and the method to turn water into gasoline.

Item 1: a magazine cover with a heading lose 70 pounds by summer. How many people are there in this country walking thinking man i could really lose 70 pounds. I could understand most people thinking they could afford to lose a few pounds, but 70? If i was so overweight i wanted to lose 70 pounds i certainly wouldn't be taking my advice from a cheap magazine.

Item 2: A man recently lost 400 pounds bringing his weight down to an even 800. He hopes to slim down to a nice 260. Here's my question: How do you get up to 1200 pounds and then decide to go on a diet. If you wanna be an obese sack that's fine with me, i just don't understand how you could get so fat without realizing it wasn't for you. It seems to me once you've passed 400 pounds you've made a decision to be a big fatty. How is it that you hit 1,000 pounds and think well i'm pretty fat but i could still put on some more weight, and then you hit 1200 and you realize i'm too fat.

Item 3: to come.

More Middle School Malfeasance

Now kids are being punished for buying lunch. 29 kids in a New Jersey school were given detention for paying for their school lunches with pennies. The school had recently shortened the lunch period, and upset students paid for their lunches with pennies, which of course took a lot of time. I can see why the school would be upset, but you cannot discipline kids for paying for their lunches with legal tendered. It's simply ridiculous. The principle is clearly an ass on an ego trip who is upset that 7th graders outsmarted him. What he should have done is simply say in the future change will not be accepted as payment for school lunches, but to punish kids for doing something that is not against any rule, and according the the United States governement legal tender for any debt private or public is simply unconscionable. These kids should be commended for their thoughtfulness in non-violent civil protest and instead are being punished because some adults are on a power trip. If i was one of their parents (and i had the money) i would sue them until the end of time for this. I would sue them until after my kids had already graduated from college.

"It's a blood sport," Stensrud said. "It is so antithetical to what we want our young men and women to do, and what we teach them to do."

So there is a group of kids that get together after school and have started a so called fight club. Basically they get together, and if anyone feels like fighting for fun they do. Sounds completely benign to me, and certainly not illegal. But i'd be wrong. They have been arrested under public brawling, and suspicion of public brawling. So now it's illegal for highschool kids to voluntarily engage in fight. If they took karate or boxing lessons, or anything where you pay someone, that's okay, but to just get together and horsearound with each other, that's illegal? Kids can only fight with one another if there is an adult making money off of it. whose idea was this. I used to fight with my best friends in middle school. We would fight on the bus, or whenever, just messing around. But as it turns out, the government has decided that it is bad for kids to engage with one another.

This is just another step in the emasculation of America. Even the police are quoted as saying "They see this as sort of a recreational, spectator-type sport where they just wanted to go out and fight." So if it's a recreational sport than where's the problem? And even though the fights were voluntary, took place after school, and off school property, the principle claims they violate school policy. As a result the school has taken disciplinary action. I'd be interested in knowing what policy that is. The policy where the school is in charge of every aspect of a child's life? Next we'll be hearing about how it's against school policy for kids to watch certain tv shows, or eat certain foods.

This simply could not be more bogus. Nobody was hurt. Nobody did anything against there will. Some 20 students were involved in fighting, and 60 just watched, so clearly there was no peer pressure that everyone had to fight. It's bad enough when the government intrudes on the lives of adults, but now the government won't even let kids be kids. Everyone has to live in some PC world where there is never any violence and men and women all act the same-like women.

To everyone i wish a happy St. Patrick's day, and to all a good brawl.

Could Glass-Steagall come back?

Via Ed Cone, some people attribute the current crisis in the financial markets, and the emergence of financial engineering leading instruments that no one understands, to the deregulation of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999.

I don't see that interstate banking, for example, has provided much benefit for me, though those barriers came down long before 1999.