Dad, do I have to brush my teeth? No, but at least rinse your mouth out with soda.

Shocking Who would have ever thought diet soda was bad for you? Oh i don't know maybe everybody. Those fake sugars are worse for you than normal natural sugar. "I think prudence would dictate drinking water." How about you just drink soda on occasion as a treat, instead of chugging it down. I don't drink much soda, it's too sweet for me, (I also cut all my juices with water) but for those who like it there's nothing wrong with soda or juice any more than there is something wrong with ice cream or bacon or candy. Just don't make it your primary nutritional source. It's like that movie supersize me. The idea of eating nothing but McDonalds is just so completely bizzare, but if you want to do it, eat it in moderation don't stuff yourself stupid (as we saw in all the replies to supersize me where people eat nothing but McDonalds and lost weight because excersized and didn't eat 5,000 calories a day.) Or you can eat like crazy just excersize it off, like Phelps

You can stand there finding fault, or you can knit me some seatbelts.

For any of my readers who like to ride bicycles (aras.) “There’s as much penis inside the body as outside,” probably more if you've got a small penis. I don't ride bicycles anymore, but if i did i would certainly take a look at this. Seems like pretty clear evidence that you are doing something to your penis, it may not be permanent damage, but who wants to risk it. If you were a professional cyclist maybe the risk would be worthwhile, but for a normal person, not way. Plus i suspect that cyclist don't actually gain any advantage from the penis crusher. They are used to riding a certain way and indeed they use some muscles that they couldn't with these other seats, but these other seats would probably allow them to use more ass muscles or something, balancing it out if you were used to it.

What is it with you kids and that word? I'm going to shave you bald, young man, until you learn that hair is not a right: it's a privilege!

So a court has ruled that principals can't punish students for making fun of them online. What? How was this ever an issue? Who thinks it's a good idea for principals to have the power to punish kids for what they do at home? I suppose principals should also be allowed to punish kids for not eating all their vegetables, or playing violent video games. This is just crazy. And the worse part is that they had to have this ruling because the 3rd circuit ruled in 2 different ways, so one group of judges actually ruled that the principal should be allowed to suspend a student for making fun of him on facebook. So they got everyone from the 3rd circuit together and decided by the slimmest possible margin (8-6) that was crazy. Who are these 6 judges who think that public school officials should have the right to get involved in a students personal life. Once a kid leaves school anything he does is his/his parents own business (or maybe the police if there is a crime involved, but in these cases there wasn't.) This is part of the continuing mistreatment of children that goes on in this country because they can't vote. Because children can't vote nobody minds trampling their rights. The fact that they are citizens and entitled to the same rights as adults is meaningless because they can't vote to punish those who would ignore those rights.

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

I'm not going to link the article because the link is like 5 lines long, but "the average Chicago household now owes a staggering $63,525 to cover local government debt, according to Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas." Well that's good news. Now that's just the local city government mind you. Then you've got State debt on top of that (and in Illinois, that is substancial) plus federal debt which is 45,000 per person, 130,000 per tax payer (and that's only money that's already been spent, that doesn't count promises made to social security/medicare/pensions/etc.) If you figure 1.5 tax payers per household than that's 195,000 plus the local debt is 260,000 plus it's got to be at least 40,000 for the state, which brings the total to over 300,000. Plus all the money that has been promised out in future payments. Now take a second and think. Where is all this money going to come from. People in greece are now outraged saying why should my taxes be raised, why should my pension be cut, i didn't do anything wrong, i didn't steal any money. This is that money. Everyone in this whole country has stolen this money, or at least allowed politicians to steal it on their behalf. this money has all been stolen from the future and your children and your children's children will all be paying it off unfortunately for much more than 3 months. This money has to come from somewhere eventually. And nobody is going to accept any tears when the bill comes due, just like greece's bill came due. When all these numbers are thrown around in billions and trillions i understand it can be hard to follow, but this is how much you personally, your household owes. Can you pay that kind of money? You are already on the hook for that, its been spent. Your drunk friend the government already bought shots of 100 year old scotch from everybody and the bill is coming. the only thing you can do now is keep them from ordering another round (which senate democrats have just asked for by the way.)

If I didn't have this gun, the King of England could just walk in here any time he wants, and start shoving you around. Do you want that? Huh? Do you?

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/King-Co-requires-life-vests-for-swimmers-1432255.php

Well this makes sense. Obviously people could never be trusted to make their own decisions on whether or not they know how to swim. Also we should have laws requiring tooth brushing. I bet people in that state don't even brush their teeth every night. Lets assign police officers to go door to door and do teeth brushing inspections. In fact, better yet, lets just have the government monitor every actions of every person to make sure they never do anything silly or stupid. It will be like the truman show, only instead of watching for entertainment, government employees will watch to find actions that can be fined, and make money for the government by sending out fines to everyone. Or you know we could just agree to live in a country where the government doesn't have the right to tell you how to run your own life, but i guess people have gotten tired of that. After a few hundred years it gets old and people long for the good old days when the king could make you do anything he wanted to on whim, just because he was the king. Can't have a king today so we'll just have a committee that fulfills the same purpose.

It's funny. Their clothes are different from my clothes.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,769329,00.html

I haven't read this whole article yet, (it's 5 pages so be aware before you get started.) It's about the problems the Euro is facing, and the problems European unity in general is facing with the collapse of the Euro. Seems kind of like the idea was a group of friends wanted to go into business together because they thought it would bring them all closer together, and it worked for a while. But then it turns out a couple of the friends have been misusing company funds, and/or creating all kinds of shit where ever they go. And now if they can't get it all together the business is going to split up, and they will all end up worse off friendship wise than ever. It will be interesting to see what LT does is the Euro is disbanded. Will they tie their currency to the dollar again, or tie it to some stable european currency like the mark or the pound, or just let it float freely? It might be good for them if the litas depreciated a little because it was tied to the dollar while the dollar was going up, and then they decoupled and attached to the euro just before it started going up with the result that the currency has appreciated quite a bit.

To the book depository

http://www.baen.com/HeinleinQuiz.asp

For anybody who considers themselves a Heinlein fan. I got 8 of the 20 wrong. which is not great. There are some books they ask about that i have never read, and there are a lot of personal questions that i really just had to guess on. So, give it a shot.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

http://www.space.com/11960-fading-sunspots-slower-solar-activity-solar-cycle.html

This isn't exactly a new story. Anecdotal evidence of decreasing sunspots has been going on for years. But this is the first i've seen of scientific explanation of what forces/changes on the sun may be responsible for the changing sunspots. The article doesn't specify, but in case anybody is not aware, the maunder minimum coincided with what is known as the mini ice age. Whether those 2 events are directly linked, or just coincidental is up for debate, but i seems pretty reasonable to assume that any changes in the sun that are important enough to significantly reduce sunspots, could be significant enough to effect the temperature on earth. So it is a reasonable leap to make that if we are in fact facing another maunder minimum we are likely to see significantly lower temperature in the near features. (there may also be debate about whether the mini ice age was world wide, or just northern hemisphere, but in either case europe/north america seem likely to be on the docket for big chills.)

How is education supposed to make me feel smarter?

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/06/university-administrators-will.html

Quick and easy explanation for why higher education has gotten so expensive. It's no longer about education. The big money isn't spent on educators, but on administrators to navigate legal issues, and assist various minority student groups on campus. Alcohol awareness programs, and other nonsense. At northwestern a kid drank himself to death, so northwestern ended up paying his parents 2 million dollars, and agreeing to a whole host of stupid anti alcohol policies for which they will need to hire a bunch more administrators. The education part isn't that expensive, it's the baby sitting that is so pricey.

Lamentably, no. My gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/1447/saturday-night-live-taco-town

I was just internetting, and came across some list of foods that sound made up, but are real (like the bacon explosion) and it reminded me of this. One of the better fake commercials, because it taco bell really was doing that with all their commercials, layering one taco onto another, and another. Hilarious.

That's not a job, it's a waste of time. What can poor people pay you? Nothing! What satisfaction you get from helping them? None!

Who wants to help poor people anyway? Nobody!

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-homeless-feedings-arrests-20110601,0,7226362.story

It's clear that these people were intentionally breaking the law, after that law was upheld in court. So i can't exactly blame the cops for arresting them. But why is there a law against feeding people. Who does this law help. Whose going around saying, "you know what's wrong with society. All these people going around feeding the homeless. We need to put a stop to that." This is just stupid. Why do we have these laws preventing consenting adults from interacting with each other. I realize you need to have laws against giving away bad food. If for example some people put exlax in some food and then fed it homeless people because they thought it was a funny joke, i could see that as being a problem. But assuming there are no complaints about the food, who is being hurt? Any activity that doesn't hurt anybody should not be illegal.

Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394945/The-green-killer-Scores-protected-golden-eagles-dying-colliding-wind-turbines.html

The law of unintended consequences strikes again. People always have the best intentions when they come up with their various ideas, the problem always is that they don't foresee all the consequences of their ideas. Of course if global warming is really going to destroy the planet, than causing the extinction of the golden eagle, and or the condor is a small price to pay. But i highly doubt that the advocates of these wind farms realized or would have admitted that killing of these bird species was a possibility. If someone wants to drill for oil someplace and there's a chance that the drilling could be harmful to an endangered species, the EPA blocks the drilling. But now that it's a green friendly energy system that is harming an endangered species. Oh well, that's too bad. We'll try to use it less during heavy migration times.

Jimmy Carter? He's history's greatest monster.

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/national/yearbook-causes-controversy-afer-it-names-george-w-bush-in-list-of-worst-people-of-all-time

Really? Listing a former US president and vice president on the same list of worst people hitler osama bin laden and charles manson has upset people? That is shocking. What i don't understand about this story is how that list ever got into the year book in the first place. Obviously nobody wants to accept responsibility so everybody has ducked the question, but somebody had to put it in there. It didn't just appear on its own. Either a teacher or a student took the initiative to put it in there. I would hope it was a student because a teacher ought to know better. Of course some teachers is supposed to oversee it i'm sure, but if there is some goody two shoes student who was in charge of putting it together, and the teacher only skimmed it because they figured the it was a good student i guess i can understand. Meanwhile said student is probably a hyperliberal who has actually been raised to believe that bush is evil and thought nothing of it.

As was just listening to wicked today and was thinking about how this is what's wrong with politics today. Too many people jump to the conclusion that somebody they don't agree with is evil or terrible. That's not to say there aren't any politicians who i think are truly terrible politicians, and also bad people, but the majority of them are doing what they think is good for the country. But if you only listen to one side (as happens in wicked when everyone listens to the wizard's PR director) then you are likely to conclude that the people on the other side are evil and intentionally ruing the country, and then you don't feel bad about demonizing and spitting all kinds of bile about them, and then you start to think that anybody who could support this vile evil politician must be a terrible person too, and pretty soon the whole country ends up hating each other. Take a lesson from wicked, or from the dragon lance book the doom brigade and realize life isn't all black and white. people aren't all good or evil, and those who try to paint people as good and evil are doing it for their own purposes.

Of course, this is just a television poll which is not legally binding. Unless proposition 304 passes, and we all pray it will.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20067591-503544.html

Poor media. They are just trying to do their duty as journalists, and that mean old sarah palin won't tell them where she's going. CBS singing a sob story for it's poor reporters who can't keep track of palin is among the most off putting things i can read about it. As if these CBS people are mother teresa just trying to educate the american public about the politics of the day and Sarah palin is viciously and without cause blocking their every attempt. They should feel like paparazzi, because that is exactly what they are. They are not covering politics, sarah palin is make any political speeches, or giving her opinions about the pressing matters of the day. They are just covering a star and tracking her every move to get people to read the dirt they dig up on her. I'm no big sarah palin fan, but anybody who can get under the mass media's skin like this, is okay by me.

I like my tv loud, my beer cold, and my homosexuals flaming.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-Gay-Student-Crowned-Prom-Queen-at-Va-High-School-122872164.html

I'm sure some will feel like this progress for gay rights, that this gay boy was accepted in his community and voted prom queen. That is completely backwards. This is a man. As far as the article says there is no suggestions that he is a transexual and is planning to have a sex change operation to being a girl. What might be progress is if a gay man were voted prom king. Instead, this simply promotes stereotypes about gays as being effeminate and not masculine. And certainly many people in america claim that the male dominated society treats women as being less than men. I'm not sure i agree with that, but for anybody who does it should be pointed out that this lowers the value of a gay man, as not actually being a man, but being closer to a woman. For reasons that are entirely unclear to me this idea of the extremely effeminate and even predatory gay kid who secretly lusts after straight kids (which seems like it should be the height of offensive) has been accepted by the gay community as being a positive image of gayness, as portrayed by the gay character on glee. What if instead we just had a gay person who was not particularly different from the american norm, except that instead of being attracted to women he was attracted to men.