Breasts Don't Cause Earthquakes

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/23/boobquake-cleavage-cause-earthquakes/?test=faces

I think this is something everyone can enjoy and get behind.

Manbearpig

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/04/20/website-warns-south-park-creators-face-retribution-depicting-muhammad/?test=latestnews

That would be a great plan of action. No better way to permately turn americans against you than to murder the creators of south park for no reason. In no way that any person could ever take seriously have they ever mock the prohet muhammad. They had him as one of their super best friends (along with jesus/buddah/moses/john smith/etc.) before it became taboo to have images of him on tv. So they now mock the idea that is okay to mock every other religion/religious leader, but not okay to mock muhammad. So they showed all of the other super best friends, but muhammad was only shown as someone inside of giant bear mascot, so you couldn't actually see who it was. I guess even so that was too offensive to muslims. It is unacceptable that a giant bear costume is shown with suggestion that inside is the muhammad. Killing that dutch film maker was one thing, nobody cares about that guy anyway. Making documentary about violence against woman in the muslim world, who cares. Sure i wouldn't consider that a capital offense, but how many people have even heard of the guy. You kill the creators of south park people are going to start saying you know what there really is something wrong with islam and muslims.

I don't think south park could ever beat out the simpsons as an entire series, but in terms of quality of humour it is pretty close, and in terms of satarizing it is got to be the best show of all time. For my money is way better, not really even comparable to family guy, which is moderately entertaining. South park and the simpsons and seinfeld are probably the top 3 comedies of all time. I think i could sit down and watch a couple hours of any of those regardless of how many times i had seen the episode. Anyway if you don't watch much south park, i highly recommend it, also, here's an interview with the creators.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/south-park-at-200-trey-parker-and-matt-stone-apologize-to-no-one/

Would you look at those morons... I paid my taxes over a year ago!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127346/Americans-Split-Whether-Income-Taxes-High.aspx

Ahh, vampire dinosaur, you can't make that stuff up. So the first article where explains that roughly 47% of americans owe no income taxes. That's right half of americans are paying 0, or often less then 0 in income taxes. According to the article the bottom 40% actually make a profit, the government sends them income tax refunds, for money they never paid in income tax, because of various deductions/credits. well okay, if you want to have a society where only 50% of people pay for government services, okay, but here's the kicker the send article is a poll on whether your income taxes are too high, too low, or just right, and as it turns out 48% think their income taxes are too low or just right (45 said just right, 3 said too low.) with another 48% saying theirs is too high. So essentially what these means is that everyone who pays 0 income taxes or in fact gets money from the government, they feel their income tax burden is just right, while everyone who pays income taxes they all feel their burden is too high. I agree, nobody should have to pay income taxes, who wants this stupid government anyway, let's do away with income taxes. Of course the worst part of this is that it turns out the numbers are not even dependent on pay Among those who make 20,000 or less, still 44% of people say they pay too much, while of those who make 75,000 or more 48% say they pay too much, (the lowest is 41% among 20-30 thousand, and the most is 51% at 50-74.) So it's even worse than everyone who pays no taxes thinks their burden is just right, in fact half the people who pay no taxes (or get money from the government) feel their income tax burden is still too high. They should all be getting even more money from their wealthy neighbors as it turns out. It probably turns out they don't know the difference between income taxes/social security taxes/medicare, but frankly anyone who pays no income taxes and claims that their income tax level is too high should be ashamed of themselves. Either because of their ignorance, or even worse if they are not ignorant because they think it's right to live in a society where you are required to contribute nothing, and yet should have the right to demand that others not only pay for everything, but give you money on top of it.

I'm having a little trouble with the government.

http://cbs2chicago.com/investigations/crash.tax.fire.2.1615889.html

This is among the worst things i've ever heard. So hears the story, town needs more money so they decide to charge people for emergency services like if you call 911. That's not necessarily a terrible idea, but then this happens. A guy is in a car accident, which is not his fault. Someone else calls 911, when they were not needed, firetrucks arrive, leave without having done anything, and now this guy gets a bill for their services. What? So just to be clear, this guy never asked for any service, no service was needed or performed, and yet the government feels justified in handing him a bill for showing up. And of course the icing on the cake is that the guy who caused the accident is a town resident so his bill is half. By this logic government officials could show up at your door at anytime and charge you for it. Yeah we got a call that you need an ambulance here. No? Well that will $500 you're welcome. Nobody could possibly think this makes sense. I'm sick i call 911 they take me the hospital they charge some fee for that. Okay that makes sense. My house is on fire, someone else calls 911 they put the fire out, there's some fee for that, okay that makes sense. Even if i didn't want the fire department to show up the burning house poses a real threat to neighbors, and as such must be put out at the owners expense, that's okay. But now someone else called for a service that i don't want, that isn't needed, and that you do not perform, but it is my responsibility to pay for it? If anything the person making the phone call should pay for it, but then people won't make 911 phone calls, so what's the solution, what if i don't know we set up some sort of government, and we all just paid them some sort of tax, and then they used that money to provide us services like firemen. How about we also start charging extra for kids who make use schools? We need more money, it's only fair that people who are using the service pay for it right? Get those kids parents pocketbooks out. People who are robbed should obviously have to pay extra to have police investigate the crimes, plus a big bonus if the police actually solve a case.

p.s. once again extra credit for recognizing the simpsons quote. I just saw said episode recently, so it's fresh in my mind. Full quote below if needed.




: Say, what's going on?
: I'm having a little trouble with the government.
: Oh, those jerks always walking over the small businessman. Don't
get me started about the government.

This is the best part of the week. It's the longest possible time before more churhc.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100412/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_chile_church_abuse

I can't remember the last time i read something coming from the catholic church, and i thought to myself, that makes sense, that's a good point. It is always one travesty after another. Either it's them taking the time to be concerned about witchcraft because of the popularity of harry potter/twilight, or setting up a hot line to call about catholic priests abuses and the system crashes on the very first day because thousands of people call in and they only have the capacity to handle 100. So now we find out that the reason priests are abusing children is because of the evils of homosexuality. That may not be exactly what this guy said, but it was clearly the implication. Celibacy is good and is not related to paedophilia, homosexuality is bad and is related to paedophilia.

First off, nobody would ever suggest that celibacy causes paedophilia. If i had to be celibate for the rest of my life, that wouldn't cause me to start lusting after children, that's simply stupid. But if you are a paedophile, and you are trying to think of a good place to work the church is pretty inviting. Lots of time with children. Parents and children both hold you to be in a position of trust, nobody wonders why you aren't married or dating women. The entire set up works to your benefit. And on the other hand what man would want a life where you cannot have sex and cannot have children. (not to say every single man needs to want to have sex/children, but it is biologically built into human beings and the absence of that desire would imply some sort of You are driving away normal healthy men, and inviting perverts who cannot fulfill their sexual desires anyway so they might as well be priests. And while i don't really give this much credence it is my understanding that it was considered a worse sin to have sex with a woman as a priest than with a child. It was a greater breaker of the vow of celibacy. I think it's unlikely, but not necessarily impossible that some priest had it drilled into them so deeply that it was wrong/evil to be attracted to women that they start to convert their sexual energy to an attraction for women.

As far homosexuality being linked to paedophilia, that may well be true, i don't know. But it's not relevant to the discussion. People aren't upset that paedophilia exists in the world, people are upset that it exists in such great quantities in the catholic church, and that the catholic church allowed it to continue with virtually no attempts to stop it, and worst of all that they have always refuse, and continue to refuse to accept any real responsibility. When the sex scandal first started happening in the US, i remember the european cardinals didn't really want to get involved, or get the catholic church involved because that was just a problem in america, for europe and the rest of the world there was no such problem. And now it is all coming out in europe may well be much worse than the US certainly ireland was. And this discussion of homosexuality is just another responsibility dodge. No there's nothing wrong with us, or celibacy, or the way we conduct church business, it's homosexuality that causes these evils. Really? That's the best you got, you could have at least said it was the one armed man, at least then i might have gotten a chuckle out of it.

Bart, with $10,000 we'd be millionaires.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/89689007.html

Why do people hate math? Only someone who is completely ignorant of math, could possibly think that there is any question of the solvency of this program. You pay 1 dollar to have a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning 5,000. The states expected winnings from every dollar gambled is an enormous 50 cents. The fact that so many people on a single day is obviously an anomaly, a statistical blip. The fact that so many people play similar numbers simply means that they take in way more money than expect on every other number drawn, and those money when the heavily played numbers are drawn, in the long term the numbers all balance out. It's like someone suggesting that because i flipped a quarter and got heads 5 times in a row, it brings into question whether or not flipping a quarter is really a 50/50 prospect. No it doesn't, of course it doesn't, only a complete idiot would think that.

As a side note for every dollar gambled playing a game in las vegas, like craps for example, the casinos expected winnings is in the neighborhood of 3 cents. I don't remember the details, i had to work them out as a math problem once, but you have roughly a 48.5 percent chance of winning. So for every dollars you bet, you would get roughly 97 cents (doubling your money 48.5 percent of the time, 48.5X2=97) Similarly for roulette, the odds are made so that you have an even chance of getting your money back except for the green 0 and possibly green 00 (i can't remember if tables have both, or not.) If there's only 1 green 0 than the vegas profit is roughly 1 out of 37, a little less than 3%, and if there's both greens, then the profit soars to almost 5 percent as your chances of winning have fallen to 47.4% (assuming you bet red/black, but similar numbers for any of the other bets.) If las vegas can make the billions they do off 3 cents on the dollar, i think even the government ought to be okay when they make 50 cents on the dollar.

Can i be a booze hound. Not till your 15.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/03/15-year-old-girl-kills-herself-and-9-of.html

So here's the story, some girl committed suicide, after which the police decided to to charge 9 students at the high school with various felonies for bullying her. This is completely bogus. Something bad happened so now we have to find someone to blame. This reminds me of the Northwestern case, someone drank himself to death so the cops decided to charge the person who brought alcohol to the party with manslaughter, or some other such preposterous charge. He ended up pleading guilty to something lesser that involved no jail time, but only afters years of court. The problem here is that you are not punishing people for what they are doing, you are punishing them for what someone else is doing. People who are underage drink all the time in the united states, i would venture to guess that at most college campuses in america 95% of the students drink before they turn 21. They are all being provided alcohol by older college kids, but none of those kids is ever charged with a serious crime. But then some freshman who doesn't know what he's doing drinks too much and dies from, and so now we have to punish the kid who brought the alcohol. It's like you're driving 75 down the highway and drunk falls in front of you, and you run him over and kill him. Now the cops want to charge you with manslaughter cause you were speeding and so are responsible for his death. No matter that the guy in front of you was doing 75, and the guy behind you was doing 75, you were the guy who the drunk fell in front of so you get to go to prison. The suicide case is not a perfect analogy, but the point is that if these crimes are serious enough to prosecute, then they should be prosecuted regardless of the actions of other people. Until you are ready to hand out jail time to everyone who provides minors with alcohol, don't send one guy to jail just because he drew the short straw of bringing the alcohol to the party where some numb nuts drank himself to death. If this girl was being bullied so seriously, then these kids should have been charged before she hung herself, not as a reaction to her hanging herself. It's only a serious crime if something bad happens, because then we need to find someone to blame. Of course the worst part about the suicide case is that it says teacher were aware of the bullying but did nothing. But for some reason they can't be charged with anything. And although the article fails to specify i'm willing to bet they won't lose their jobs, or even be in any way reprimanded for the gross failure to act. It is the responsibility of teachers to maintain a safe environment at school, and to prevent the type of bullying that led to this suicide. It would have been failure worthy of firing if the teachers had simply not been paying enough attention to be aware of the problem. But far worse to be aware to the problem and consciously decide who cares, not my problem, i'm a tenured teacher anyway, i get my paycheck, and i can't be fired, and so i can't be bothered to actually do something about the situation. I'm not saying kids shouldn't be arrested and put in prison for abusive bullying, but how many kids in Mass. have been charged with felonies over bullying, i'm willing to bet very few. If the bullying is bad, it is bad regardless of whether the girl kills herself. Until you are prepared to charge bullies with felonies as standard procedure, don't single out people because there was a tragedy and you need a scapegoat. That doesn't help anybody.

As an aside i'm not exactly sure how this works, but basically if you commit a felony, and as a consequence of that felony a person dies, that constitutes felony murder. That is to say you are robbing a bank, a guard shoots at you but instead kills someone else, you are now guilty of murder. As such if these 9 kids are guilty of felonies, they are all also guilty of murder because their felonies led to her suicide.

Springfield Historical Society Where The Dead Come Alive! (Metaphorically)

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2009/12/shutting-the-stable-door.html

The photo at the time of this article is priceless. The article itself isn't of much use, but the fact that someone would go through all the time/energy/money to create a sign like that is emblematic of what is wrong with society. No need for personal responsibility for your own well being, everyone else is responsible for it. Be it the government with their various programs, are big corporations that have to warn you that your coffee is too hot.