Friday, October 12, 2012

Our Wacky World—10/12/2012

Feeling let down after ebay banished ghosts and woo? Fear not, there's a new auction site for that. And it's raining chicken in Assowoman, VA.

Remember all that bad stuff that happened after Obama was elected?:
  • "homosexuals are now given special bonuses for enlisting in military service (to attempt to compensate for past discrimination)"
  • "In mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city."
  • "The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting list for ovarian cancer is 2 years... Because medical resources must be rationed carefully by the government, people older than 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical procedures. Their 'duty' is increasingly thought to be to go home to die"
  • "Gas costs more than $7 per gallon"
No, I don't, either. That last part actually has a chance of happening.  (Love, Joy, Feminism)

Click for more info

So what do card-carrying Republicans really think about Obamacare?:
"Weaver, 52, knows it would be difficult if not impossible to buy insurance on her own because of her disease, but she said she's not worried because she has good insurance through her job as a public school teacher in Dallas, where she's worked for 20 years. 'It's very hard to get rid of teachers,' she said. 'I'm very protective of my job. I document everything I do.'"
Oh the irony. Unions in Texas must be chock full of conservatives. (Crooks & Liars)


Linda McMahon, head honcho of World Wrestling Entertainment, has a fundamental problem with engaging on the issues during a debate:
"She stumbled through an answer in which she affirmed her support for 'America’s same sex marriage law.' There is, of course, no such thing, unless she means DOMA, which is sort of the opposite. And then she just stopped, with probably more than a minute left on her clock... She seemed inexplicably rattled by this benign, predictable and routine question. (This is what happens when you spend your whole campaign dodging the press. You turn into the kind of candidate who can’t improvise.)"
Crooks & Liars


Jerry Sandusky has decided to blame the real victims. This is a true predator's brain at work:
"Jerry and Dottie Sandusky did not ask the judge for mercy. They did not try to extol Jerry's virtues, list good deeds or express regret. Instead, they depicted the boys he sexually assaulted as ungrateful and called them liars... In letters to the judge who would sentence the former coach, the Sanduskys portrayed themselves as virtuous victims of a vast conspiracy. They blamed powerful, image-conscious forces at Penn State University, lying cops, ambitious prosecutors and a scandal-hungry news media."
Up until now there was still that million-to-one shot that Sandusky would admit his guilt or show some empathy. His own words have now clinched the diagnosis of classic psychopath entirely. His wife is, of course, the good enabler. (CNN)


The IRS has come calling with Kent Hovind's final tax bill:
"The main issue was about whipsawing. Mr. and Mrs. Hovind did not file returns. They were both involved in the financial transactions of the enterprises and they lived together. That makes it hard for the IRS to sort out which of them should be taxed on the unreported income. They are married, but filing a joint return is an election. The solution is for the IRS to send a deficiency notice to each of them for 100% of the tax. With interest and penalties the balance for the years 1998 to 2006 is over $3,000,000."
I love the fact that he went to the trouble of explaining who Hovind is, as most of his readers probably never heard of him. Spread the news. (Forbes)

"A teenage girl who had her stomach removed and 'nearly died' after drinking a cocktail containing liquid nitrogen was the victim of a 'irresponsible alcohol industry'"
Mail Online

"A 32-year-old man downed dozens of roaches and worms [probably mealworm larvae] to win a python at a Florida reptile store, then collapsed and died outside minutes later."
CNN

"...Lacks urged his employees to 'vote to improve your standard of living' in a letter notifying them of their sixth bonus in almost three years thanks to the good times his automotive parts company has enjoyed. But Lacks was not about to give Obama any credit for the auto industry’s recovery. He told his employees the Affordable Care Act, which he called Obama Care, will raise his company’s health insurance costs by 2 percent a year."
Michigan Live

"So powerful is the allure of gays...that if society approves that gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. 'People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical... It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they'll take enormous risks, do anything.' 'Martial sex tends toward the boring end...' 'Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does'"
Crommunist

Also:
"The American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson’s legal wing, has fired James Henderson, a senior attorney for the organization and a professor at Regent University law school, after a pair of blogs showed evidence that he was involved in two gay relationships."
Dispatches From The Culture Wars


That New Age sells—and people with more money than brains are buying:
"In his book The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, author and philosopher Andrew Potter alleges that the urge to seek out increasingly alternative ways of living – of being – is the result of a deep-seated discomfort with being a part of society – with conforming. For Potter, the increasingly bizarre social movements, fads, and ‘counter-cultural’ expressions of identity reflect a sort of dissatisfaction with contemporary society, and are the manifestation of a desire to ‘opt out’.
 ✂...
"We tear out our hardwood floors and replace it with Amazonian river mud, or we embrace our new shamanic existence by dropping a few thousand dollars on a spiritual retreat. In short, we declare our rejection of consumer culture by choosing to employ a new pattern of consumption. We consume the trappings and accoutrements of our new alternative lifestyle, and while doing so consume the fantasy that we’ve left consumerism behind."
Crommunist

Meanwhile, Dr. Andrew Weil is still going, poorly:
"Weil stumbled out on stage. He was hobbled over, flabby, and he looked as though he was in pain. He coughed throughout the performance. He was hardly a picture of health for a talk about health, although the talk was an afterthought. Weil waxed freeform about nutrition, healthy aging and breathing. When he stuck to medicine, he made some sense, offering some sensible advice about preventative healthcare, nutrition, and exercise. But the 'devil' mixes lies with truth."
JREF

"...the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case...and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they...asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents."
That'll teach the little bastards. (Arkansas Times)

"The radical Christians have replaced the Apple logo with a cross, claiming that the current Apple logo – well-known around the world and often voted one of the world's most popular logos – symbolises the original sin of Adam and Eve and is generally insulting to the Christian faith."
Don't buy Apple products, then. (The Register)


You might be so jaded at this point that this sentence doesn't even make you want to click the link. Trust me, it gets much wackier:
“We think that the public – even those members of the public who register the lowest scores on the sensitivity index – do not expect their judges to be conducting photo sessions featuring the judicial penis and then to be sending the photos over the electronic airwaves to another person.”
Turley's Blog


I guess I won't be buying a car from this dealer:
"He said his staff erred when they sold the SUV to Sawyer for about $5,600 too little and erred again when they went to police. He said Sawyer should not have been arrested and definitely should not have spent four hours in jail."
Pilot Online


What could possibly go wrong with this?
"In Brazil, a new regulation requires drivers to add radio ID tags to their car windshields, which broadcast 'vehicle year or fabrication, make, model, combustible, engine power and license plate number.' This will be read by checkpoints throughout the country, and centrally processed and retained, in a system called Siniav. The administration claims that this system will be 'confidential and secure' because its contractors will sign confidentiality agreements."
BoingBoing

Shipping shipping

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Our Wacky World—10/4/2012

I'm trying not to bore you with politics this election cycle, but MItt Romney's freefall-at-terminal-velocity of a campaign (by all accounts he did a better job of lying at last night's debate and Obama let him get away with it) is a continuing source of high comedy. Here's how Fox News is handling it:
"Stylistically, the O'Reilly quartet may be on to something new. We've had mainstream journalism, alternative journalism, conservative journalism. This appears to be vaudeville journalism. "
CNN

"'Grassy-knoll' statistics". Remember when Karl Rove said he had the "real numbers?" Heh.
"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem."
Gawker

Apparently Mr. Romney never saw Goldfinger. Some people think he was joking. How can you tell? The man is a $17 bill.
The most important issue
"So how did Romney choose this non-epidemic of a non-illness as an issue? ...he says...he would 'provide local physicians with protection from lawsuits to ensure that they can treat the disease with the aggressive antibiotics that are required.' Two weeks ago Romney spoke with Michael Farris about Lyme. Farris is, among other things, a creationist who founded Patrick Henry College [Purcellville, VA], and who says that his wife and all seven of their children suffer from 'chronic' Lyme disease. The Washington Post has reported that Farris’s wife has received treatment from Dr. Joseph Jemsek. Dr. Jemsek moved his practice to Washington after being disciplined by the North Carolina Medical Board for treating patients with long-term antibiotics."
New Yorker

You'll be glad to know that Virginia Governor Bob McDonell is on-board with Romney on this critical issue. Meanwhile:
"A Virginia man allegedly killed himself and his family earlier this week in part because he was upset by the thought of President Barack Obama being re-elected."
Raw Story


Enough politics—the rest of the world is still full of wackiness:
"But come on, nobody’s going to fall for the old canned air routine, right? Wrong, 'Chen Guangbiao: Nice Guy' air cans were flying off the shelves from the first day they were introduced, and they sold out in a matter of days."
Oddity Central

"A German liquor company called G-Spirits is promising customers that “every drop” of its line of alcoholic beverages has been poured on the naked breasts of a certified model"
NY Daily News

"Retired New Jersey locksmith Daniel Ferraris, 69, is hawking what he calls a 'firemen’s key ring' — and what a terrorist might call a dream come true. The set consists of five keys that would allow control of virtually any elevator in the city, could knock out power to municipal buildings and skyscrapers, darken city streets, open subway gates and some firehouse doors and provide full access to 1 World Trade Center and other construction sites."
NY Post


Here's an old story that just won't go away; anxiety disorder and OCD run amuck:
Anatomy FAIL (click)
"Several times a day, Barbara Lewis slips off her organic cotton slippers and relaxes on her tidy twin-sized bed. She slides a mask onto her face and turns on a steady stream of oxygen from a nearby tank. 'I have cast iron tanks — not aluminum,' she’s careful to point out. For entertainment, she stuffs a book inside a cellophane bag. (Plastic is strictly forbidden in her small apartment.) 'It blocks out the volatile organic compounds from the ink,' she offers as an explanation for the bag covering her book. It’s a tedious exercise Lewis repeats daily in her ongoing battle to lead a 'clean' life — convinced that nearly everything in the modern world is making her sick."
WFAA

"Workers had picked the highly unstable ordnance off the conveyor lines and stored them in a bucket of water in the basement. The munitions that they did not spot had been first plunged into conditioning tanks with the live clams, passed through steam cookers, and then raked across an industrial shucker that violently shakes the cooked meat from the shells. From there, the ordnance was picked up by Perry Butler, hidden in containers of empty clamshells, who passed them through a grinder that pulverised the shells into gravel before selling the fill on to various downstate residents. That none of the munitions exploded at any point was nothing short of miraculous."
Science Punk

“Fong also told Ho that it's ‘very bad’ for Amber Village to book ‘gay parties’ and that big groups of ‘gay partyers’ are especially bad for feng shui.”
NY Daily News


Here's a really excellent article:
"A pedophile...is someone adept not just at preying on children but at confusing, deceiving, and charming the adults responsible for those children—which is something to keep in mind in the case of the scandal at Penn State and the conviction, earlier this year, of the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on child-molestation charges."
New Yorker

"This is a clear conflict of interest. The worse the platform performs, the more advertisers need to use Sponsored Stories. In a way, it means that Facebook is broken, on purpose, in order to extract more money from users. In the case of Sponsored Stories, it has meant raking in nearly $1M a day."
Observer

"Gary Rossington, the only original member left in the band, told CNN that Lynyrd Skynyrd will stop using the Confederate flag as a stage decoration because it could be misconstrued as racist."
No shit. (Salon)

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Our Wacky World—9/15/2012

Creationists are boosting Dr. Pepper sales. "Airplane" is now oficially the funniest movie of all time. Speaking of comedy...

*Special election coverage* (skip this section if you're bored already)

The entire world has been baffled by Clint Eastwood's speech at the RNC (right before Romney's acceptance speech). Leave it to film critic Roger Ebert to give the best review:
Click to enlarge
"Two days later, not a word of Romney's acceptance speech has entered the public discourse. But Eastwood's dialog with a chair has entered forever into political legend, and it's amusing to read reports that his viewers from around the world were mystified. Iranian Facebook pages 'treated it with suspicious befuddlement,' an Atlantic blog reports, and in China the speech is being used to teach English on a web site. The headline says, 'Gelivable English Langauge Teaching: Exchange Cooperation Model Innovation,' says the Atlantic's Max Fisher, who adds: 'I don't know what that means, either.'"
Roger Ebert

The inevitable chorus of losers turn up in the comments. The first thing I thought of was how pissed they all were after the Eastwood's Superbowl commercial. Amnesia is an amazing thing to watch.
"They gave him a time limit and flashed a blinking red light that told him his time was up. He ignored both. The actor’s decision to use a chair as a prop was last-minute, and his own.... 'The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,' a baffled senior aide said on Thursday night."
Dispatches From The Culture Wars

Can't make this stuff up
Then the Democrats had their convention. This review by Peggy Noonan reveals a great deal about how it was perceived by Beltway Insiders™:
"The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am too old to get pregnant old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one."
Shit
Really? This is the first time that, at your advanced age, you've ever seen it happen? It's never happened to, say, Republicans? Never? Not Once? The Tea Party perhaps? How about "intelligent" design?

WSJ

And it's Sandra Fluke who's a narcissist. Right. This coming from a professional operative who lives to hear the sound of her own voice. Speaking of which, Sarah Palin didn't get mentioned at the RNC so she's complaining about being mentioned at the DNC:

Crooks & Liars

*End Politics*

Enough politics, here's an excerpt from one of the finest pieces of science writing I've seen in ages:
“Who gave you the right to control my life? 
“You've got it the wrong way round. You gave the right to control your life away. You're the one who chose to ignore the way the world works.” 
“Hah!” said Sacha. “The way the world works! Bloody scientists. You think the world is all numbers and machines and levers. You don't understand anything about the soul or spirit.” 
“Of course I do,” said James. “I've been happily married for 20 years. I have two children that I love. I play the piano, I enjoy reading. It's just that I have additional ways of looking at things.”
Nature

"The Wet Cell Battery is mentioned in over 600 Edgar Cayce readings as a system to enhance the body's natural healing tendencies. This level of current, according to Cayce, seems to imitate the "electrical conditions" in the body. Passing this current through various "healing" solutions enhances the benefits of the Baar Wet Cell therapy. Even though Cayce first described this unit and process over 60 years ago, it appears to tap into much of the healing wisdom current vibrational medicine researchers are discovering. 
"This system is offered for those researching the Edgar Cayce readings that reference "M.S." [i.e., it's for people who have M.S.] We offer this system for personal research, only and do not make medical claims for its application. This system is not intended to replace qualified medical care."
"Price: $584.35"
They have variations of the exact same product for a variety of other ills so if you're so unlucky as to not be suffering from M.S., you're not out of luck.
Barr Products [not to be confused with Barr Engineering]

"So when he started talking about boobs I didn't really care. When he started showing me pictures of boobs of girls at the party that he had taken I thought 'okay that's weird whatever maybe he asked beforehand.' At some point he raised a concern about being Asian and women not wanting him cause of some stereotypical view of penis size, and I was like "most women will agree size doesn't matter" and went back to my phone... Then he grabbed my free wrist and put it on his crotch and asked 'Is this big enough?'"
Exploded Soda


No, no, Margaret Thatcher said it was the hooligans:
"British police and medics whose failures contributed to the deaths of 96 soccer fans in the country's worst sports disaster unfairly blamed the dead for the 1989 tragedy and sought to cover up their actions, newly disclosed documents revealed Wednesday. 
"The documents vindicated efforts by the victims' families, who had spent 23 years demanding a full accounting of the events at Hillsborough stadium that killed fans of the Liverpool soccer team. Most of the victims were crushed and suffocated in a standing-only section after they were herded there by police."
SeattlePi

"Jeffrey LaPorta traveled more than a quarter of a mile through multiple storm sewer pipes, at times completely submerged water, before finding enough breathing room to await rescue. He was eventually pulled out of the sewer in less than an hour, with only scrapes and bruises."
MSNBC


See kids, it really does happen:
"A Northern California mixed-martial artist accused of ripping out his friend's heart and removing his tongue while the two were on hallucinogenic drugs has pleaded guilty to murder and mayhem charges."
MSNBC

I'll take one in 2X, please. Love the sleeves.
"A debate continues about how much damage will ultimately result from the ill-conceived use of vaccinators by the CIA. Pakistan's leading vaccine expert, Zulfiqar Bhutta, has tried to remain optimistic about polio elimination in Pakistan. And the World Health Organization, whose polio campaign in Nigeria encountered many years of opposition from religious fundamentalists, remains uncertain about just how long the setback in Pakistan will last and whether it will spread to other countries."
Journal of Public Health Policy

"An unlicensed acupuncturist and self-proclaimed 'healer' in Switzerland is being accused of intentionally infecting 16 people with the HIV virus in cases going back for more than a decade"
Medical Daily

Along similar lines:
"Nelson knew that she had exceeded the limits of her expertise and that Maine needed advice from another practitioner, but she did not appropriately communicate that or discontinue her treatment, and she gave Maine information which accentuated the woman's fear of conventional treatment."
Stuff

Also:
"A Sydney doctor who is a member of the Exclusive Brethren Christian sect has been banned from practising as a GP after he prescribed chemical castration to a young man who sought a ''cure'' for homosexuality."
Sydney Morning Herald

"The Todd Akin thing was so blown out of proportion -- it's a joke," Jackson said at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., when interviewed for my SiriusXM OutQ radio program. "How many times do people get pregnant from rape? It's point zero zero one percent. It's a joke. I read lots of articles. I know people, because I'm 53. I've know a lot of people, and I've actually never known anyone who got pregnant from being raped."
Huffinton Post

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