LOL!

(via)

In the future, when there is infinite computing power I will instruct a team of AIs to to recreate - via digital actors and rendering - the old “I Love Lucy” episodes, except Lucy’s husband will be a 1950s Japanese stereotype instead of a 1950s Cuban stereotype.

And his tagline will be “Oh, Rrruuuuucy! You got some explaining to do!”.

(This is, of course, assuming that in the future, we humans own teams of AIs, and not the other way around)

I’m a Hero

You are definetly born to lead. Go find someone inferior to you and boss them around.

Take the Sidekick or Hero? Quiz at HeavyInk.com

1) reboot cable modem
2) reboot router
3) sudo ifdown eth0
4) sudo ifup eth0
…
…
15) notice that the new puppy chewed through the ethernet cable

Mr. Redacted and I were discussing how Obama should be addressed as “Our First Half-White Presidential Candidate”.

I am thinking of renaming Tillie.

The history of the Corcoran/Caruso dog pack, in order of appearance:

1. Strider
2. Cricket (deceased)
3. Cedar (deceased)
4. Ripley (deceased)
5. Cammie
6. Nutmeg
7. Tillie

Because Tillie is the seventh dog, I’m thinking of calling her “Ocho”.

Yes, you get the joke.

…but even if the name itself is a joke, I am serious about maybe using the name.

By the way, I am amused that the top Google hit on “ocho” is Dodgeball.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/scienc…

The fear of tempting fate showed up in further experiments with Cornell students. When told about an applicant to graduate school at Stanford who had been given a Stanford T-shirt by his mother, people assumed he would hurt his chances for admission if he had the hubris to wear it. And they believed that a professor was more likely to call on them in class if they didn’t do the assigned reading.

<TJIC’s dripping scorn> OM*.

I’m reading I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe right now, and it’s reminding me of something I haven’t thought much about in 15 years or so: my complete and utter scorn, during my college years, for the imbecility and immaturity of my … ahem … peers.

Learning that students at Cornell are (still) intellectually lazy superstitious louts brings a second dose of all that back.

(subject line hattips)

P.S. Yes, I failed to close the psuedo-HTML-tag. On purpose.

XKCD delivers again.

If the next one is funny, I’ll have to deliver a “welcome back”.

http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/…

A Long Island man who flipped his finger at a police cruiser and then popped a wheelie on his motorcycle is recovering from injuries after crashing.

Major style points!

He was being held for arraignment Monday. Police did not know if he had an attorney.

There’s one of those 3×5 card comics in here: two sets (one labelled “people who give the cops the finger while popping wheelies”, and another one labelled something like “people with counsel on retainer”).

Depending on exactly how you phrase the description of the second set, they’re either intersecting or not.

“People who need counsel”, though, likely is a superset of both…

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/st…

When it came to bathrooms at the new Chaifetz Arena, the architects thought they were doing the right thing.

They followed the plumbing code. For good measure, bonus toilets and urinals were thrown in. And women wouldn’t be slighted… They’d get 17 more potty spots than men…

despite all that extra porcelain, St. Louis University’s new arena may actually be in violation of state law

Chaifetz - with 120 for women compared with 103 toilets and urinals for men - may have too many.

Yes … plumbing codes, including St. Louis’, call for more water closets … for women. But a 1995 Missouri law says the numbers need to be even-steven.

A potty parity problem may have been unavoidable, given the conflict between St. Louis’ plumbing code and the state law.

Wonderful!

I’ve long thought that the law can / should be expressed in some machine readable fashion, and then consistency checkers can / should be run on it.

Of course, that would undercut most of the purpose of laws: to give legislators something public to sell for private gain.

The law says that at places “for public amusement,” such as auditoriums and sports arenas, “there shall be provided an equal number of water closets for women as there are the number of water closets and urinals provided for men.”

a) mandating outcomes instead of inputs. How wonderfully leftist.

b) No reference to the ratios of men and women attending an event. How wonderfully idiotic.

New York City, for example, requires twice as many places for women to relieve themselves in stadiums, theaters and other venues.

For the legislators, the cost of this is absolutely zero, and the benefit is a photo-op right before an election.

For the public, including the folks who have to pay the rent on these spaces, though, there is an actual price.

“Sometimes ‘potty parity’ isn’t what they mean or necessarily want,” Brubaker said. “They’re actually wanting potty asymmetry.”

Legislators always want asymmetry.

Irene Treppler, the former state legislator who wrote Missouri’s law, was surprised to learn that women have the restroom advantage at Chaifetz.

“You mean they now get more because of the plumbing code?” asked Treppler

Imbecile.

A few years ago, Hugh got interested in history, and has pulled out all the stops.

Now he combines that with movie reviews:

http://pondseeker.blogspot.com/2008/04/w…

At forty-seven seconds the date 1585 appeared on the screen. Then I saw that Spain is the most powerful empire in the world. OK so far. Next the movie informed me that Philip of Spain, a devout Catholic, has plunged Europe into a holy war. “Well that’s a bit one-sided, isn’t it?” I said to myself. I started dredging my memory to see if that sweeping statement was even remotely fair to Philip - of whom admittedly I’m no fan - but my time had run out. At one minute and nineteen seconds the third sentence hit.Only England stands against him.Wow. Now that’s impressive! It took the movie only three sentences spanning thirty two seconds to climb to a height of inaccuracy from which it could proclaim the nonexistence of the Protestant Netherlands…

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_cr…

in 2004, 52 percent of state prisoners were serving time for violence and 21 percent for property crimes, for a combined total over three and a half times that of state drug offenders.

I’ve long thought that non-violent drug users and dealers should not be in prison.

…but if 83% of prisoners are in prison for real crimes, then even if you ignore the drug war, we still rank pretty high in “percent of population incarcerated” standings.

Here’s a theory: perhaps, given an American population with a certain propensity to offend because of culture or other reasons (inner city blacks robbing stores; Appalachian rednecks robbing convenience stores; etc - this is a race-blind point), then incarcerating a large percent of our criminals is not shameful in the least, but is a luxury - Americans are finally so rich that we can afford to make our streets safe by both trying and imprisoning our malefactors.

Sure, it would be great if the average trailer park redneck, the average barrio cholo, and the average inner city gangbanger were as unlikely to offend as a Swiss watchmaker, a German BMW engineer, or a Polish plumber … but if we keep that knob set constant (both for the sake of conversation, and because that knob has, in fact, been constant for decades), then a North American gulag archipelago is an infrastructure luxury like the Eisenhower interstate that makes life nicer for everyone.

Some states are poorer, and can’t afford it.

Other states have innate differences in population or culture and don’t need it.

Oh well.

Megan Mcardle:

Who will reap the benefits of a gas tax holiday?

commenter Rob Lyman:

Based on the EPH (Efficient Pandering hypothesis), I think we may confidently say the answer is: politicians.

Wow. This is something.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/son-…

It’s never fun calling dad after crashing his car - but when you’ve just wrecked his prized Ferrari you can bet you’re in for an earful.

A Melbourne man had to make that call on Saturday night…

The front of the red sports car, which police said had been speeding, finished wrapped around a pole in the spectacular accident…

The car is an F360 Challenge Stradale, one of just 16 imported into Australia and New Zealand in 2004, with a price tag [ of more than ] $400,000

It was a very limited production version of the Ferrari F360 that was designed as a track car but could also be used on the road. The standard F360 F1 at the time was $396,000, and the Stradale was more than that and built to order.

Television news crews filmed the apparently unhurt driver of the Ferrari ringing home as the car’s male passenger was taken to hospital with minor injuries, police said.

Wow.

I think the proper way to handle this is to leave a note, and then run off and join the French Foreign Legion.

When your enlistment ends in 10 years, you might be able to broach the topic face to face.

(subject line hattip)

Advice from PJ O’Rourke:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-o…

I am here to advocate for unfairness. I’ve got a 10-year-old at home. She’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says this, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.” What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger income disparity gap.

Go read the whole thing.

(via)

conversation with a four year old:

Wyatt: < crying >

TJIC (trying to distract him): What’s more fun - dogs or cats?

Wyatt (upset, disinterested): I don’t know.

TJIC: What’s yummier - pizza or icecream ?

Wyatt (even more upset, and even more disinterested): I don’t know!

TJIC: What’s more fun - guns or swords?

Wyatt (suddenly perking up): Guns!

TJIC: Really? OK, cool! Ummm…why?

Wyatt: Because swords are sharp, and they’re not for kids. Guns are OK.

TJIC: Wow. … OK!

conversation with a seven year old:

Jenny: Do you have the new “Dirty Jobs” on your Tivo?

TJIC: Ummm…I don’t know. Maybe. Use the remote and find out.

Jenny: You do have it! Can we watch it?

TJIC: sure.

< we watch an episode of “Dirty Jobs”, where Mike Rowe helps inseminate cows, deliver calves, etc. - all gruesome, quite organic stuff.>

Jenny: This is gross!

TJIC: It sure is.

Jenny: Oh, this part is really gross!

TJIC: It sure is.

Jenny: Oh, man, this is so gross.

TJIC: Yep.

Jenny: Now I know why my mom wouldn’t let me watch it.

TJIC: < blink >

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24468147/

NASHUA, N.H. - A 43-year-old Nashua, N.H. woman faces murder charges after a man she’s accused of running down during the weekend died.

Witnesses say the incident was sparked by an argument between Red Sox and Yankees fans at a Nashua bar early Friday morning.

Ivonne Hernandez is accused of killing 29-year-old _________ _______, and injuring his friend, 21-year-old ________ ________, by running them down with her car.

What do you call one less participant in the imbecilic rivalry between two crowds of Neanderthals escaping their small useless lives by living vicariously through the equally useless actions of others ?

A good start!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/radleybal…

According to USA Today governments at all levels in the U.S. added 78,600 jobs in the first three months of 2008. The private sector lost 286,000 jobs over the same period.

Make of that what you will.

This contradicts other data I’ve read on job creation, but none-the-less, it’s a fascinating point.

When I’m Dictator For Life, you can be sure that there will be massive layoffs in government.

…except for the DoD and the newly formed Department of Excruciation.

http://www.slate.com/id/2190378/

Orwell’s 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier is an account of his travels to England’s industrial North, to the towns of Barnsley, Sheffield, and Wigan. Orwell - once a scholarship student at Eton - wrote of everything from conditions in the coal mines to the homes, diets, and health of desperately poor miners. He himself was a socialist who could also turn a critical eye on the British left, and in the middle of the book, he devoted a chapter to the failure of socialism to gain a foothold among the very citizens who would have seemed to benefit most from its rise. Substitute liberal or progressive for socialist, and the text often reads as though Orwell were covering American politics today.

Substitute the word “socialist” back in, and then the text often reads as though Orwell were covering American politics … with out euphemisms.

“Everyone who uses his brain knows that Socialism, is a way out [of the worldwide depression,]” Orwell writes. “It would at least ensure our getting enough to eat, even if it deprived us of everything else.

Enough to eat.

Ha!

“As with the Christian religion,” he writes, “the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”

…and the second worst advertisement for Socialism is the philosophy.

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.”

He forgot the “New” in “New England”…

For Democrats at the moment, it is no doubt exasperating to watch working-class voters choose candidates whose economic tastes run to comforting the comfortable.

Democrats prefer policies that claim to comfort the afflicted, but in fact, afflict everyone.