bake em away toys.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/chicago-police-scrap-entrance-exam-80790827.html

well this seems like a good idea. The point of affirmative action is that there are plenty of qualified african americans who don't get a reasonable shot. If there is something wrong with the test, that discriminates against african americans then re-write the test. But that's not an option because it's not about making sure african americans have a fair shot, it's about making sure we have enough african americans. Northwestern is having a similar problem because smart african americans are so highly coveted, that the vast majority who could make it at northwestern, are already snapped up by harvard/yale/etc. This makes northwestern evil and racist. Never mind that like a quarter of northwestern is asian, they don't count. we've got to have plenty every race/sex in every profession, or else it's racist/sexist.

Might i add, no fat chicks.

How dare you? Now the New York times has gone too far. Feel free to be as biased as you want, that doesn't bother me. It's understood that it's part of the game. If you want to get unbiased news you need to read multiple news sources (so you can counterbalance their biases.) But this is stepping over the line. Now they are criticizing, Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Kate hudson for putting on weight. And as if that was bad enough they are calling Christina Hendricks fat. And it wasn't enough to call her fat, they had distort her picture to try to make their point. This is simply uncalled for. People wonder why girls have self image problems, maybe it's because the NY freaking Times is going around call beautiful actresses fat, and distorting their pictures to get people to their website. After they were called out on it, they replaced the photo and called it an error, yeah right, i believe that, just a coincidence i guess that you accidentally mess up the photo in an article calling her fat, by making her look fatter. I guess I've heard people say that the NY times had no shame before, but i never really appreciated what that meant until now.

http://gothamist.com/2010/01/19/post_131.php

You'll work off that cake in the acid mines!

or for those who watch better off ted instead of the simpsons "What am I supposed to do? Go back to Wisconsin and work in the cheese mines? After I made that speech, threw down my cheese shovel, and stormed out of there?" While as improbable as cheese or acid mines, they think there may actually be oceans of liquid diamonds, with floating diamond icebergs on Uranus and Neptune. It seems like someone should outfit a spacecraft to bring back some of those diamonds. The only problem is that any successful diamond run would crash the price of diamonds, therefore making a successful diamond run unprofitable, and in a delicious catch 22 diamonds will stay very expensive for the forseeible future. They probably would anyway, cause the technology to retreive a diamond iceburg probably doesn't exist, but if it did it would be very expansive, and as such could only be used if the high price of diamonds upon it's return could be used to offset the cost, but as i mentioned the catch 22 would thwart that possibility.

Do i make you horny?

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/miller.cfm

not surprising really. If anything it would seem more weird if men didn't prefer the smell of women who were ovulating (at least if you believe in evolutionary biology.) I hope all my female readers (if any) take note. Of course finding out what makes guys horny is hardly a challenge, let's find out what smell a guy can make to get a girl hot.

You're boss is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly; how does he do it?

He cheats. Here's Ed shulz advocating election fraud.

http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2010/jan/16/ed-schultz-id-cheat-keep-brown-winning/

Why is this allowed in society. This guy hosts a national television show on MSNBC, he is allowed to go advocate election fraud without repercussions. I could be wrong, but i doubt any conservative tv host has ever advocated election fraud (correct me if i'm wrong,) and if rush limbaugh did it it would all over the news (to be fair limbaugh is way bigger than this guy.) Why is he allowed to get away with this. It ought to be a crime, encouraging others to commit voter fraud, and any semi respectable news organization ought to be shocked and embarrassed and immediately suspend somebody for making comments like that. remember according to the white house fox news is not a legitimate news organization, but MSNBC is.

if you lived in any other country in the world, you'd have starved to death long ago.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/lets-take-careful-look-at-what-martha.html

There's no doubt that martha coakely is a tool and if you read up on her time as AG there are some pretty crummy things in there. But the good news is that a woman who is a complete tool has a very good chance of being a senator. I mean nothing is for sure yet, she may be just big enough of a tool, to lose ted kennedy's seat, it's about 50/50 right now. I mean to lose ted kennedy's seat, to a conservative republican, i guess that really says everything you need to know about her tool level. And yet on wednesday she could be in congress. What a great country.

I'm with COCO

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/jimmy_kimmel_represents_team_c.html#comments

I think there are probably other possibly better places to see this, it's Leno interviewing Kimmel, starting half way through when it gets good. Best thing i've seen on tv in a long time. I mean it is just perfect on so many levels. Congrats. I've got to support team Conan for now, but as soon as he's off i'm going to start watching kimmel.

Bacon, is there anything it can't do.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1240932/Bacon-eggs-help-pregnant-women-boost-babys-intelligence.html?ITO=1490

This comes as no surprise to me. Also i think probably everyone who would read this blog has already seen jim gaffigan's stand up about bacon, but if you haven't find it and watch it (and any of his other stuff.)

More pointless chatter from politicians.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/75459-dem-congressman-introduced-50-tax-on-bonuses

I don't know if politicians really think this could accomplish something, or they are just doing this so they can say it to the american people later on. If you start putting some sort of super taxes on bonuses, than companies will just start rewriting contracts to have much bigger base salaries and much smaller bonuses. They will have more stock options, or some other way to pay these people without having to pay extra taxes. You should be happy that they receive such large amounts of their pay through bonuses which they receive if they perform well. I'm not saying that the system is flawless, obviosuly the question of how good a performance was in impossible to calculate in the short term of a year. But the system is what it is, and these guys are going to get paid. You don't get into investment banking because your dumb, these guys are all incredibly smart. That doesn't mean everything they've done has always been smart, but they will figure out a way to get paid, and if they don't they will move to another industry, leaving stupider people in charge of the financial sector (you also don't go into investment banking if you don't care about money.)

How much was your last speeding ticket?

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/01/12/from-each-according-to-his-ability-progressive-pricing-coming-soon-to-a-nation-near-you/

So i guess it's now somewhat normal in europe to peg speeding tickets to income. This is the story of a guy who got a 290,000 dollar ticket. He's so rich they figured a normal speeding ticket wouldn't mean anything to him, so they had to multiply it by 130. This post is highly critical of idea, suggesting this is just another step towards communism. I don't think it's necessarily that bad. The question is what is the purpose of the fine. If the purpose is to prevent someone from speeding, than obviously a fine is meaningless to a millionaire. So if you're goal is prevent crime through financial disincentives then you have to have a sliding scale. But if that's what you want to do, it has to go both ways. Someone like plexico burress, or michael vick were vastly over punished. Because beyond a standard jail sentence (i actually believe they got more than a standard jail sentence, but lets presume it was standard) they are missing out on making millions of dollars. And they can't make that money later on, vick lost out on a 100,000,000 dollar contract. So similarly his punishment should be scaled way back because he is already being punished a 100 times worse than anyone else ever convicted of dog fighting. Of course those who advocate higher speeding tickets for the rich, would never advocate less jail time for someone who stands to lose a lot of money. Even a small jail term can be a great punishment to someone who works in a white collar industry because they might never get a similar job again. So a short jail sentence for such a person, could easily be more of punishment than a long jail sentence for someone who is unemployed, or a drug dealer. They can go back to doing what they were doing before, they lose nothing but time. But once again nobody calling for larger speeding tickets would call for shorter prison terms for well educated highly paid people just because they are already receiving a massive punishment just by having a conviction to their name.

The other obvious problem with this is that falls apart in any practical way. Cash strapped cities will start telling officers to target expensive cars. Don't bother pulling over a beat up car, that's just going to be 100 bucks. Wait for the Mercedes going 20 over so we can make the city 100,000 dollars. Cities all over the US are already installing speed cameras with the express purpose of raising revenue. So you will end up doing less to stop speeding, by not bothering with people driving crummy cars (of which there are a lot more of than really expensive cars.) Giving them the power to then give out ultra fines would lead to no end of trouble. The real solution is just to have some other punishment, docking points against your license that is equally harmful to people of any income level. And the reasonably safe conclusion is that the government's real interest is not in preventing rich people from speeding, just like they don't have any real interest in stopping people from smoking. They just want to make money off them. And that i cannot condone. Just another excuse to redistribute wealth.

La...tex con...dom. boy i'd like to live in one of those.

http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-carrying-three-condoms-in-d.c.-makes-you-a-prostitute/

For cereal? Now it's illegal to carry condoms. Well done government. You think the government can't come up with any more inane ideas. But that's the great thing about the government, no matter how low your expectations, they always manage to limbo under them. There are probably too many reasons to list for this being dumb, so i'll just list the first 2 that come to mind.

1. By what logic is carrying a legal product construed as intent to commit an illegal act? By this logic police should be allowed to arrest anyone carrying/wearing a ski mask because they are obviously going to use it to rob a bank (same for pantyhose.) Obviously a law abiding citizen could never use a legally obtained product for it's legal use.

2. As the article points out this is going to make prostitutes lives much worse. If the goal of banning prostitution is to protect women, and prevent them from being forced to degrade themselves by turning to prostitution than how does this help that goal. This will lead to more unsafe sex, which means more sexual disease for both prostitutes and their clients, as well as unwanted pregnancies that are likely to lead to back alley abortions, once again threatening the life the mother.

3. The real reason this law was enacted was to allow cops to harass people without needing any probable cause. Now a cop can arrest a woman they think looks like a prostitute and not worry about actually having any proof. This should be unconstitutional as they are clearly trying to circumvent the justice system. (NY is doing the same with their gun laws which is plexico burress is in jail.) With no evidence other than "suspision" officers are allowed to arrest people (which i assume means take them to prison and hold them there until a judge sees them. There's a word for that, it's called kidnapping. If you want to arrest a citizen of the united states you need to have evidence that they have committed a crime.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/weird/-Granny-Falsely-Arrested-for-Prostitution-80991097.html

maybe they are just afraid of more cops being sued for being incompitent/lying to try to justify their false arrests. They should just make it legal for cops to do anything they want, then they want have to worry about all these annoying lawsuits.

teacher, mother, secret lover.

So, a couple things i've seen on tv recently. We'll start with the lightest and move forward. First just briefly, tonight was the simpsons 20th anniversary special. It was okay, nothing breathtaking. I did think the commercial for it, in which they played part of cold play's yellow was nice. It's so obvious they don't get extra credit for the connection, but it was still nice. the first episode of the simpsons was in 1989. For anyone at studentu, think about how many people were born in the 90s. They have never lived in a world without the simpsons. The simpsons was around before the fall of the berlin wall, before the Independence of lietuva. I think even for people who aren't big time simpsons fans you have to acknowledge the achievement.

Moving forward. For anyone who watched any of the football games this weekend, and watched a commercial, you probably so the pepsi commercials. They were reasonably well done. All year the AFC has been wearing retro jerseys, and now pepsi is coming out with retro pepsi in their honor. That's all well and good, and the commercials were well done, but at the end was a little tidbit, that retro pepsi available for a limited time only, would be made with real sugar. I guess that was the original formula for pepsi, but it seems to me awfully embarrassing to have to say in your own advertisements that pepsi will be available with real sugar for a limited time only. Not that it's really pepsi's fault, sugar has been made illegal in the united states by the corn industry. Not technically illegal, but so expensive that nobody can afford to use it. That's when you know the system is messed up, when the corn industry is petitioning for (and getting) giant tariffs on sugar to prevent cheap sugar from being imported into the US. The reason of course is so we have to eat corn syrup in all our foods. I don't have any actual basis for this, but i feel like plain sugar has got to be healthier for you than corn syrup. With all the recent attention about health care etc. what if you just let companies put sugar in their products instead having corn syrup in everything we eat.

And finally we get serious, so stop reading at your own discretion. the awful thing i saw was a story on dateline (i think) or some equivalent. The basic story goes as follows, beautiful girl moves to the city to become a model is on tv/home shopping network, working her way up the ladder and starts going out with some guy. Meets said guy in a hotel room. then the guy beats her up rapes her, and threatens to kill her. She goes home doesn't leave the house, for 3 days. Finally he convinces her to go to an internet cafe to read some email he's written her promising never to contact her again. She leaves the house, and some guy he's paid off throws sulfuric acid into her face. It's not made clear, but i presume it was meant to kill her. Either that or scare her into never talking to the police. Anyway the rest of the story is about how she managed to cope with her disfigurement, the 20+ surgeries she had to go through, etc. And in general it was nice that she was able to move on with her life. But glossed over (as if it was great news) the guy who through the acid in her face was sentenced to life in prison, which we are told means 12 years. The guy who raped her and ordered the attack, was sentenced to 2 life sentences, which means 16 years. what? i think i missed something. How is 2 life sentences 16 years. obviously this is some new version of english that i am unfamiliar with. presumably those numbers are the minimums, and these guys may end up serving more, but who could possibly think that these men should ever be allowed to go free. Obviously they should not even be allowed to live. they should have sulphuric acid poured on them until they melt to death. I understand that theory of human rights, and we should treat even criminal humans with dignity. But it seems clear to me that these 2 men have demonstrated that they are in fact not human. When you commit a crime of this awfulness you forfeit your human card, and are no longer entitled to any of the benefits/rights that come with being a human citizen. Ditto for sexual slavery crimes/torturing innocent people crimes etc. If you're in the mafia and muder/torture other mafia members, well you're a criminal and should be arrested, but at least those who get it know what the deal is. When you commit a horrible crime like torturing a child to death, or throwing sulphuric acid in a women's face, i cannot possibly consider you a member of the human race any longer.

I think the underpants bomb guy should also be put to death, but at least i am willing to recognize him as a human. Misguided in my view, but understandable. I mean, say what you will about the tenets of radical islam, dude, at least it's an ethos. He should be put to death because that was his goal anyway. He tried to kill himself, and unless he has some use to us as a source of information, i think it's perfectly proper to finish the job for him. The idea that we are going to spend millions of dollars on a trial and imprisonment of the guy seems completely gooftastic to me. Unless you believe that the government/media is so powerful it could manufacture this entire story to frame an innocent man (in which case nothing we do matters anyway because the government/media is simply too powerful.) everyone in the world knows this guy is innocent. There's no possible interpretation of facts. He burned off his crotch in an airplane. But at least he believed in something and was willing to give his life for his cause. that is an admirable trait, even if i consider his attempted murder of hundreds of people despicable. But what you can read about in the news sometimes. Like an idiot i started watching a horror movie on netflix to be different. Luckily for me i stopped watching before even reaching the halfway point, but it is based on this real life story which i read about in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Likens (read at your own discretion, it is horrible.) Or if you ever watch law and order SVU, which is a fictional show, but i'm sure based on realistic cases. I just don't see anyway how anyone capable of committing acts like those can possibly be classified as human. They should have a trial in case they are innocent, but if they are determined to have committed said acts immediate execution and eternity in hell, would be far too kind a fate for them.

Sweet maiden of the spit, grant now my boon, that I might sup on suckling pig this noon

http://www.runleiarun.com/lebowski/

You remember when you used to read shakespeare in highschool, and on one side would be what he wrote, and on the other side a translation into todays language. Well i guess some people thought it would be funny to translate something in reverse. So here's the big lebowski in shakespearian english, or at least so they claim. I only read the opening scene, but i thought it was funny, and will probably go back to read some more later.

Let the bears pay the bear tax, i pay the homer tax

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/07/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6068825.shtml

I am so tired of the government trying to legislate through taxes. This is possibly the best reason not to have any government funded health care. Because if the government doesn't pay for anyone's health care, then they have to right to butt into what i decide to put into my own body. Stop taxing cigarettes, stop taxing booze and stop taxes food. If i want to live an unhealthy lifestyle that's up to me and my insurance provider if i choose to pay for insurance. If an insurance company wants to charge a huge premium based on how much you weigh/smoke/drink, that's up them, you don't like it don't buy insurance from them (or stop eating/smoking/drinking). But if the government starts doing it then you've got no choice. by what possible logic can the people of america demand payment from me if i decide to eat a bag of chips, or drink a coke. We are going to end up in demolition man future where anything that is bad for you is illegal. (for anyone who didn't see the movie, it certainly isn't classic cinema, but it has a few funny parts.)

As a sidenote the dumbest part of all of this is the diet soda's which are actually worse for you would be exempt from proposed taxes because they have the word diet on them.

Note to self: stop doing anything

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/sunshine-vitamin-d-and-death-by-scientific-consensus/

Very interesting article about the benefits of vitamin D. I'm not sure i believe it. As the article itself admits virtually everything we have ever been told is supposed to be good and bad for you has turned out to be wrong. Vitamin supplements in particular have been proven to detrimental to health recently. But it's certainly something worth reading up on. And it makes perfect sense that a species the evolved spending it's entire day outside would suffer some negative consequences from spending their entire day inside.

Well of course, everything looks bad if you remember it.

http://www.breitbart.tv/the-c-span-lie-did-obama-really-promise-televised-healthcare-negotiations/

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/c-span-congress-let-us

There are also multiple general promises by pelosi about being open and transparent etc. but those were general claims. Obama repeatedly spoke about healthcare specifically, and the need to open up discussion to all parties, and in particular to the public so they could know what was going on. As it turns out it's not that important for the public to know the details. Government will do what is best for the people whether they like it or not. I don't know why politicians feel like they can treat the voting public like children. Americans have made it very clear they don't like the way this health care bill is being handled, and yet it is being forced upon the american people against their will.

(side note, if bush had repeatedly made a promise like that and so blatantly gone back on it, it would be all over the NY times, etc.)