Abortion Statistics: Lies for Life

This post by Tim Worstall (thanks chez) gives the most biased interpretation of an already biased article I've seen in quite some time.

His post entitled "sex education works" quotes two statistics from a long article in the telegraph about UK abortion rates. I'll get to the statistics, but let me first point out that his "point" about sex education and abortion rates is not justified, as there is NOTHING in either of these articles that says anything about the levels of sex education increasing in the UK. Now, maybe there is some big debate that's ongoing that I don't know about, 'cause I don't live in the UK. But inferring a causal relationship without providing ANY evidence (even corralative evidence) is a bit of a jump.

The two statistics he highlights are as follows:

Abortions have reached record levels, and nearly a third of women who have an abortion have had one or more before.

Department of Health statistics reveal that abortions in England and Wales rose by more than 700 in 2005, from 185,713 in 2004 to 186,416
....
Some 31 per cent of women had one or more previous abortions, a figure that rises to 43 per cent among black British women.

Now, me being the analytical mind I am, the first thing I did when i saw this was subtract and divide, and guess what kids, 0.4%, that is the increase we are talking about here. UPDATE! It looks like the population of the UK actually increased by .67% from Mid 2004- Mid 2005. So the growth of the population (which was largely from immigration) could account for the current increase. And also, the average population increase since 2001 has been .4%. So the number of abortions is almost flat when compared to the population increases.

And you can go on whatever pro life rant you want, but that doesn't change the following statistics:

-the total number of abortions was 186,400, compared with 185,700 in 2004, a rise of 0.4%

-the total number of abortions was 185,400, compared with 181,600 in 2003, a rise of 2.1%

-the total number of abortions was 181,600, compared with 175,900 in 2002, a rise of 3.2%

Which % increase do you prefer? So instead of celebarating that the RATE of increase is slowing, we're going to be shocked that it continues to increase at all. Looked at this way, it looks like some progress is being made. And maybe that IS the result of Sex-Education. But I still have no idea where that bit came from.

UPDATE 7/06- I WAS just going to let this post sink into the deep black hole as so many of my posts are wont to do. But now I'm pissed. (surprise) My comment on Tim's post was edited as follows:

That's a .4% increase. Not even half a percentage point. And based on the statistics I've been able to locate this is the smallest increase of the last three years.

This is a clearly biased view of these statistics.

Tim adds: Yup, I am biased. You OK with that?

Well NO Tim, actually I'm NOT okay with that. But I'm sorry it is just asking too much for you to look at evidence for something other than confirmation of your opinions. It took me 10 seconds too google all that UK health information. God forbid you (Or even better, the person from the Telegraph who wrote the uberbiased article) actually do a little research.

Angels

Why don't we have programs like this in the us?

SENDAI--Tohoku University is to dispatch "Science Angels"--female volunteer students from its graduate school--to primary, middle and high schools in Sendai to attract more females into science.

Instead we sit around debating whether women are really good at science. Well Japan seems to think we are

Prof. Motoko Kotani, who is in charge of the program, said, "An analysis of academic performance by 15-year-olds shows that women are not inferior to men in scientific subjects."

The Perfect Crime

Must be nice if you can re write the law AFTER you break it. Too bad Clinton didn't think of this one.

Study: Virginity linked to Obesity

Duh! Too bad I made it up. (That's the Lies part)

I just wanted Dubya's face off the top of my webpage.

Get ready everyone, Friday is Nekkid Blogging day!! (And by that I mean, find hotter blogger to participate in this.)

Bigots II

Remember last week, when I had a bad morning and then very diplomatically called everyone who was opposed to gay marriage bigots?

Funny Story

President George W. Bush is a bigot.

Not of course that we didn't already know that. (I had hoped it was not true, oh fleeting hope) But now, by my definition (which is of course the only important definition) he is a bigot. Andrew Sullivan has an article in the Times Online which discusses Bush's attitude towards gays in more detail, noting that while he is not personally biggoted against him, his policies often are:

What to make of this? On the one hand it’s good to know that these men are not
personally bigoted or intolerant. On the other hand their alliance with elements
that do consistently rail against illegal immigrants, Hispanics and gay people
in ugly rhetorical broadsides is undeniable.

Does their personal
tolerance make their policies less or more distasteful? I’d say more
distasteful, since they know better. A man with a gay daughter in a loving
relationship should not be campaigning on the idea that such relationships
destroy the family. Whose family? Cheney’s?

So perhaps they personally don't really hate gay people, but that doesn't excuse them advocating policies that pander to those who do. As I am not a personal friend of either Bush or Cheney I am unlikely to ever fully grasp their tolerance for gays beyond their policies. Policies which are, unfortunately biggoted.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (Bigot, plus his state is too) makes a good point about this whole gay marriage amendment. It is one of the least worthwhile things that congress could be spending their time on, especially since we already know it is going to fail. As he said in his speech today:

So for me it is clear the reason for this debate is to divide our society, to
pit one against another. This is another one of the President’s efforts to
frighten, to distort, to distract, and to confuse America. It is this
Administration’s way of avoiding the tough, real problems that American citizens
are confronted with each and every day.

Unfortunately, ChrisB made a good point in chat today, "If congress spends all its time debating this useless amendment, then that's just less time they're spending screwing up the country."

Alas, it's funny 'cause it's true.

Gross Generalizations

Tim F. At Balloon Juice has an excellent post that makes many excellent points about how people on the right marginalized opponents to the invasion of Iraq.

I don't really have any more to say about it than what he already said. So yeah.

Bigots

Yesterday Washington Times columnist Greg Pierce claimed
that Howard Dean had "suggested that opponents of homosexual 'marriage' are
bigots." This explosive claim that was immediately trumpeted by Matt Drudge, who inflated
it to state that "Dem Chair Dean Compares Gay Marriage Opponents To Bigots."

You can read about how that is not actually what Dean said over at Brendan Nyhan's. Because it isn't what he said. AT ALL

But-

Who cares if it was? I seem to recall some conservatives like to criticizing the left for being too Politically Correct. Well, here's a major Democrat, not being so PC, how do you like it now? Because you know what, if Howard Dean had called opponents of Gay Marriage bigots, he was RIGHT!

big·ot -
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

Lets be honest here people racists, anti gay people are certain religious activists are bigots. They are intolerant of other groups and of other people's actions. So why don't we call them this? Why do we use nice words, and play nice with people who smear entire groups of people and engender hatred? "white supremacists"= Bigots "Neo-Nazis" = Bigots "Jeff Williams" = Bigot(And pedophile), the list goes on and on. Let's call a spade a spade, and a bigot a bigot.

If you don't want gay people to marry and have equal rights under the law, you, are a bigot. You are being partial agains a group that is different than your own and wanting to deny them rights. (Unless you are gay, and don't want gays to marry, and then well... what?) Be honest with yourself, if you really don't think gays should marry, then you must not like gays, and are therefore a bigot. Feel free to disagree, but in this, I am also a bigot.

I'm a bigot against bigots. I HATE people who can't tolerate others, I am intolerant of intolerant people. And that makes me a hypocrite too, so I guess you can just ignore and marginalize me. Have fun with that.

Obviously!

Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious To Be The First Female President

Oh I'm so silly, why couldn't I have seen it before. That just makes perfect sense.

A Different Way

Jeff at Shape of Days, you may feel like you will lose friends, but you may find that you have more support than you expect. Read It. Via Ilyka

A Modest Proposal

"As Frederick Jackson Turner argued: "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development."

But why only westward? Why not Northward? Perhaps it is time to unleash our restless frontier spirit. Where better than to Canada? And who better to lead us than Vicente Fox?
After all, Canada is virtually empty. There are less than 30 million Canadians in over 3.9 million square miles. It's bigger than the United States and largely undeveloped. Plus, bin Laden doesn't seem to care about Canada. We will no longer be in the bull's eye. Let the Mexican/New Americans deal with him.

We Americans could build the malls, golf courses and high-tech corridors that Canadians refuse to build. No civilized people care about technical borders anymore. It's so possessive and stingy. Only fussy Canadian nativists and xenophobes will complain that Canada is theirs. Yeah? You and what National Guard? There are 300 million of us and only 30 million of you. Get used to it. Plus, we already speak your language. Or, technically, we both already speak England's language. "

Read the Whole Thing

Watch what you say on the Internet!

Big brother is Watching!!! (Via Feministe & Pandagon):

When former AT&T technician Mark Klein learned of a secret

room installed in the company's San Francisco internet

switching center, he was certain he had stumbled onto the Total

Information Awareness program, a Defense Department
research project that intended to scour databases across

the country for telltale signs of terrorists.

Here is the full text of the AT&T whistleblower's testimony regarding Secret Rooms in AT&T buildings used to spy on internet messages.

The whistleblower's testimony is based mostly on wiring documents, and also the hardware in the room. One machine called a Narus, is apparently specifically designed to snoop on internet traffic (apparently very popular in the corporate world):

"Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network),

we can record," says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president

of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. "We can reconstruct

all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they

clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol)
calls."

Sooooo why does AT&T need to reroute all their cable through a cabinet, and then into another rooom where one of these machine's resides? And why would no one but NSA cleared staff have access to this room.

I'm a little scared right now. I mean, the phone number storing, fine, but being able to track everything everyone says or looks at on the internet, that is, in my opinion, a clear invasion of privacy. They are indiscriminantly collecting information on individuals without a warrant or any kind of due process and without their knowledge. That has to be at least 2 laws that we are breaking, right?

Which hopefully means that none of the information they collect in this endeavor could be used against an American citizen in a criminal case because it is collected outside the protetcions provided to us. So, what again is the purpose of this program? Besides snooping in a serious way.

Making life easy for predators

Today, as with many days, I was sitting here in the QandO chat room with ChrisB from Texas. All of the other "regulars" were gone for the day. Then our new friend jane1994 dropped in. She greets us, tells us her real name, and she chats breifly with Chris, but I am busy working. Soon she says she has to go, will we be there at 6:30? Of course I say something sarcastic she does not pick up on, and then she GAVE US HER PHONE NUMBER to call her, if we should wish.

I asked her how old she was, and she asked my name, and I told her I don't give my real name out to people on the internet, as they might be stalkers. Chris then posted a google satallite map to her house while I mentioned how EXTREMELY unwise it is to give your phone number out to strangers. And then, for added fun I googled her and found her 4th grade book report. (2003, so yeah) She of course said the phone number was a fake, etc, but I certainly hope she wont be giving out numbers to anyone else anytime soon.

This whole conversation is alarming. If either Chris or I had a strange fascination with 12 year old girls, she could have been at serious risk. But I don't think she had any idea about the kindof information that can be found about a person on the internet. Google makes all of this especially easy, which isn't google's fault, it's job is to help people find information. But this means that everyone should carefully guard what information about them is made publicly available on the internet.

Parents need to talk to their kids about internet safety and explain the idea that anything you put on the internet is available for anyone to get ahold of. Even if parent's don't have the internet in the house, or restrict their access, it is important that kids understand not to give out their real names, phone numbers or other identifying information. If someone asks your name, give them a fake one, they'll never know you're lying, just like you'll never know if they are lying to you.

Darth Vader

Delivers the bad news.

Security

Since 9/11 security has become a huge political issue. Keeping the citizens of the U.S. safe has become Priority #1 (at least in speeches). And how do they ensure our safety? Some of the protections aren't too inconvenient: airport screening takes longer, and occasionally there are more cops around than normal, oh and we've spent a lot of money what else is new.

But some programs like the NSA wiretapping and provisions of the patriot act that allow for certain invasions of privacy have people like me bridling. I don't really want the government to have access to my library records (I mean do they really need to know about my prediliction for bad fantasy novels?). Also,Torture has become a huge hot button issue, and it seems in some circles that if you don't agree with it, it is because you don't want the safety of Americans. Like the quotes I posted here a few days ago, the government has used our fear of another terrorist attack to justify actions that before 9/11 would never have been tolerated.

But there is a counterargument, from John C. Gannon, former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence:

"I believe that the hard-won Constitutional freedoms enjoyed by Americans, along with our unparalleled commitment to civil liberties embedded in law, work against the development of domestic terrorist networks that could be exploited by foreigners."..."This is not an academic point for me. It is an observation from a career of watching the domestic consequences of repressive regimes elsewhere in the world--including US-friendly Islamic governments such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt,"

He has a lot of good things to say, read the whole article, here's what he had to say about the NSA program (emphasis mine):

"The NSA warrantless surveillance program--the details of which are mired in secrecy--should not be seen as a tradeoff between security and civil liberties. But, for this to be true, the program must be bound by law and subject to both judicial review and competent Congressional oversight--the latter now in short supply."

I hope that someone, say the democrats maybe, will take his words and follow through. The American people should not have to sacrifice their freedom to protect it. Protecting our civil liberties is not being soft on terrorism. It is protecting what this country stands for even in the face of the enemy. We have to defy their attempts to cow us by standing strong.

Broken?

Oh Blog Oh blog, wherefore art thou f-ed up?
Deny thy f-ed-up-ness and forsake thy bugs!
Or, if thou wilt not, be but backed up on my hard drive,
And I'll no longer be pissed off.

Update: ahhh, that's better

A Capitalist Approach

to feminism.

Reader's Digest Version: Indian women are in shorter and shorter supply because Indian women are selectively aborting female babies to avoid the financial burden posed by the Dowry's required (and possibly also not to give life to a child who will live a more unpleasant life than her brothers). They want to make this practice illegal. But keeping the practice legal will eventually result in more equality for women, as the supply is limited, and women will have their pick of suitors, it will no longer be the women with the dowrys. Though I think the eventual goal should always be equality, both in numbers and in stature, this seems like a reasonable solution to me. Limit supply to increase demand, right?

Quotes from a friend

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."

• Hermann Goering (1893 - 1946)Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and Hitler's designated successor The second in command of the Third Reich

"These [terrorist] attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible, and this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail…The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

• George W Bush (1946- )

Brass Balls

Stephen Colbert is my hero.

Thank you for saying what we were all thinking to their faces, where they couldn't ignore you.

Video at Crooks and Liars

The Day Without an Immigrant

Thank god, Finally, a day when someone wont mumble in my general direction in spanish. Oh wait, no, You're going to all come downtown and be rowdy while I'm trying, to you know, work. Fabulous, and then I wont be able to get home because You'll be crowding the streets and causing traffic jams. I really wish it WERE a day without an immigrant. If you want to protest your treatment here in America, oh illegal immigrants who are so crucial to our very being, why don't you GO HOME.

Gender Discrimination

I was reading this post earlier via Ilyka regarding women in america, and the claim made by the objectivist is that gender equality has been achieved in the US and therefore feminism is unneccessary. I know it's about a week old but the points that the objectivist made really pissed me off, his claim, as follows:

On campuses, government offices, and courthouses,

there are still endless discussions of glass ceilings and

old boys’ networks. These parables are then used to

justify preferential treatment in government hiring and
contracts, litigation involving claims of sex

discrimination, women’s studies departments

in academia, and year-of-the-woman articles about
politics.

Yup, endless discussions of things that are clearly no longer a problem because some guy wrote a book (which I referenced in an earlier post) claiming the wage gap no longer exists cause some women make more than men. Awesome, so feminism must've worked, quit whining ladies.

Or did it? This afternoon I got an IM from my former boyfriend about his sister. He was looking for information on where to report violations of the Equal Opportunity Employment acts. His little sister it seems had gone to an audio/technology store and requested an application for employment, and the people there laughed at her and informed her that they don't hire women because "its a place for 'grown up guy toys.'" (By the way if anyone (male or female) has similar issues they can report it via the instructions at this site.)

Now I can understand their reluctance to hire a young girl for a technology store, because they may not be confident in her abilities or understanding of the product. But I'm sure not everyone who works there knows everything about stereos when they start, so why not give her the chance to learn. Or if they are only hiring experience employees that is no reason not to give her an app and simply not call her back if she didn't fit their needs. But to make assumptions about her abilities or her ability to learn based soley on gender is so wrong in so many ways.

I feel that while some people are still evaluated based on superficial characteristics like gender or race that activists like the radical feminists still need to exist. One incident like this is one too many.

What Happen's in Vegas....

Is freaking amazing.

I spent last weekend in Vegas for a bachelorette party. We didn't see strippers, we saw Avenue Q and Zumanity which were boht completely amazing shows. We drank a lot and didn't sleep much. I can't even believe I'm at work today, I think I am still hungover.

I was going to write a long post about how stupid people are. But it turns out that I'm too fucking tired.

Work's been crazy sorry for the postlessness.

I'm In the Money

Turns out my occupation is one of 38 identified by an author where women make more than men. Mine is actually the occupation with the second largest pay gap (I'm a Statistician), where the median salary for a woman is 35% higher than the median salary for a man. The occupation with the largest gap, Sales Engineer.

As I look through these occupations I'm finding two distinct catagorizations I would make, without any actual data to back me up, so this is merely conjecture. I see jobs like, statistician, Aerospace engineers, financial Analysts, Tool and Die Makers. These jobs, not jobs one really expects to see a lot of women in. And then I see the reverse Library technicians, Library assistants, clerical, Telephone operators, jobs were one might expect to see a lot of women.

This makes sense, as we're looking at jobs where women make more money, so in jobs where women are rare, they might pay women higher salaries to attract them. (like mine, I make 10K more than the median male in my job, I don't know if that is awesome or disgusting, maybe the men are just mostly government employees ;-) )And in feilds with more women women may move up faster due to bias or their may just be more women at higher levels in the feild.

The information that I want to have about this chart is the percentage of men versus women in each group. And maybe even the mean salary for each gender, to see how it compares to the median. The median is probably a good idea in this instance, because the data is probably skewed. But at the same time it could be affected heavily by sample size. So I'd want to see more information about this analysis because I don't completely trust it given the agenda of the author.

On a more political and less analytical note, while part of me is glad that women are might be getting more recognition in some fields, another part of me is not glad that we are getting MORE recognition than men. The of the game is Equality, I don't want to make more than men (okay, I want to make more than everyone, but still) I want to be payed the same amount for the same job. We're hiring at my company for another one of me, and I sureif we hire a guy he'll get payed the exact same as I did starting, or whatever is fair considering his experience.

Will Ferrell, RIP?

My coworker just forwarded this to me:

Los Angeles -- Actor Will Ferrell accidentally died in

a freak para-gliding accident yesterday in Torey Pines,

Southern California. The accident apparently happened

somewhere near the famed paragliding site after a freak

wind gush basically blew Ferrell and his companion

towards a wooded area where they lost control before

crashing into the dense foilage.

I can't find any other mentions of it anywhere. Hoax? What's going on? One would think the MSM would be all over this were it true. I hope Will Ferrell is not dead, but who knows.

UPDATE: The story is no longer on the above link. Clearly a fake. Jerks.

He LIVES!

A Proposal

Okay, go watch this brilliant video.

Brilliant right? Totally going for it.

Okay, so now we all no every time anything bad happens some group of people, typically the muslims, burn some shit, or blow some shit up or all kinds of badness.

Well in response to these protests:

Palestinian protestors set fire to the British Council offices

in Gaza city after Britain was accused of colluding in an

Israeli raid on a jail.

The angry demonstrators, chanting "death to the

Americans, death to the British," set the Council office

ablaze and stormed the EU Commission office.

The protests came after Israeli forces smashed their way

into a prison in Jericho, following the withdrawal of

British and American guards from their posts.

I propose that the Brits should put aside their politeness for a while and burn down some vaguely palestinian related things there in the UK. storm the streets, Death to the Palestinians.

Maybe if we violently protest their violent protest they'll get an idea of how silly they look.

Evil after all- UPDATE

Google has become everyone's favorite tool. I would be lying if I said I wasn't enamored of google, gmail, google talk etc. Because I am.

And when google went to China and began it's censorship, supporting the regime there I tried to be optimistic, at least now the chinese have access to some information, if not all of it. And google might as well get into this market. I googled "Google Censorship" and I yahooed it too, I found some information about government related censorship, like the unavailablility of abu ghraib photos via the image search, or other sites that have been censored at government request. Fine, government, I get it.

But, I'd really really like to know the reasoning behind censoring a random blog. The People's Cube has been removed from google's cache, completely. See their post here.

They have a number of ideas as to why. But have not gotten a response from google with their reasons.

So now my trust in you google is gone. I once relied on your lovely searches, enjoyed your clever graphics and funny responses to the ocasional query. But if I can't rely on you to present an unbiased uncensored view of the internet, then I'm just going to have to cheat on you. That's right, you betrayed my trust, and now I'm going to betray yours, I'll be with Jeeves if you feel like apologizing!

Update: Brendan Nyhan, also Missing from Google- I yahooed it and found This bboard post with a possible explaination from Wail:

This is a known phenomena right now. Sites are blipping in and out of
Google's index. If you know you've kept your nose clean and haven't been
spamming then I would sit tight.You do show the symptoms of this; no 'site:'
search information but a 'cache:' result. There have been seo forums and seo
companies effected by this and therefore drama. I would wait a week and see what
happens. I certainly wouldn't panic yet.

Commentor DeanT at Nyhan's blog said:

The Peoples Cube web site recently complained of a similar problem.
In their
case the issue was hidden spam text. Not spam that a user would notice, but spam
that would normally fool the google robot into giving the site more links than
the visible text justified. (see the link below for
details)
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-check-your-own-site/

So maybe it is their own fault after all. Oh sweet google, I am so happy to have evidence of your nonevilitude, but our relationship will just never be the same.

Freudian?

From ChrisB this photo was on Yahoo:

WHAT!?

The only time I will EVER care about the NCAA championship.

My Blogcation

I sortof took an impromptu vacation from Blogging cause I was starting to get fed up with all the stupid shit. There just seems to be far too much of it. But I plan to be back soon. I refuse to quit cause I know I will just come back in a few months anyway.

A Laughing Matter

Lately Humor has been a huge political hot button. The Tom Toles Cartoon has everyone in an uproar, especially the state department who is trying to censor him. Muslims are protesting portrayals of the prophet in Danish Cartoons (which have been re printed in a huge F-U by the French ). The US has apparently sided with the Muslims in this case, soooooooo the first amendment is a no then, cool.

And then today the Instapundit's Wife Dr. Helen posted on what she felt is overly partisan/anti American humor on the show Will and Grace.

On this one, Grace mentions the "uppity Canadians, what with their free
health care and gay rights." The message? Americans refuse healthcare to
many and are hung up on homophobia. And the digs about homophobia continue
in another scene, while at a resort of some sort, Jack tells his son not to
hug him on a street corner since one corner is named Murder and the other
Homophobia.

She takes a very measured view of things, observing that this might be the reason there are fewer viewers of prime time. Personally I just think it is because people are tired of scheduling their lives around TV. But that's a whole different topic

The same series however is mentioned on CNN in an article about Britney Spears and religious groups protesting an episode involving a cooking show called "Cruci Fixins" hosted by Britney Spears as a Christian and Jack which... Is freaking hilarious, and if they can't see that, I feel bad for them.

Obviously humor is frequently political in nature, but being overly sensitive about it is silly. The point of making jokes is so we can laugh and make certain situations less painful, to make the situation less serious so we can look at it in a different way. We do this by exaggerating, or understating a situation, making the situation funny, so we can laugh about it.

Sometimes, like the Tom Toles cartoon, we might go a little far. The situation in Iraq is painful, but by exaggerating it, and then understating the perceived reaction we get kindof a funny dichotomy. Right now though this situation may be too serious to joke about. Tom Toles was attempting to make a statement about the treatment of soldiers by the state department, and use humor. But it went a little far. That doesn't justify censorship however, he has a right to make that point, even if the situation isn't really funny.

The same goes for the aforementioned Will and Grace incidents, they are exaggerating when they talk about Murder and Homophobia. Let's face it, there ARE places in this country where gays are not welcome. So why not laugh about that and move on? Or we can get all uptight that they are makin digs at America. Maybe they are, but it's funny! And it is political too, because it is unfortunate that there are still places where gays aren't welcome. But we can at least laugh about it if we can't change their minds.

Humor is achieved through exaggeration, through understatement and through reactions to certain situations. It isn't easy, and sometimes you make a joke, and it isn't funny. Sometimes a joke you make will be funny for some people, and go too far for others. This obviously has to do with an individual threshold. But that doesn't change the intent of the joke, to make you laugh!

And we need to laugh, Why? This quote from this WaPo article about a DC area children's entertainer is an interesting take on laughter:

Even before they respond to a tickle, most babies will laugh at peekaboo.It's
their first "joke." They are reacting to a sequence of events that begins with
the presence of a familiar, comforting face. Then, suddenly, the face
disappears, and you can read in the baby's expression momentary puzzlement
and alarm. When the face suddenly reappears, everything isorderly in the
baby's world again. Anxiety is banished, and the baby reacts with her very
first laugh.

At its heart, laughter is a tool to triumph over fear. As
we grow older,our senses of humor become more demanding and refined, but
that basic, hard-wired reflex remains. We need it, because life is scary.
Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are
inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Israel has set an amazing example in embracing a production of The Producers which features heavily a musical entitled "Springtime for Hitler" and makes light of the holocaust. This might still touch tender areas for some, but for others laughing about it is probably a welcome relief from the pain.

I know for some groups, and some people it is too soon to laugh, the world is still turned upside down, they are scared or upset. But other people need it. They need to be able to express their relief or cope with their terror through laughing. And it is their right to do so in a free society. If you don't think it is funny, fine, then don't laugh, but don't take the opportunity for laughter away from someone else.

As final note I will refer you to the Bill of no Rights, (via Chez):

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country
was based upon freedom, and that means freedom for everyone-not just you! You
may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but
the world is full of dolts, and probably always will be.

Happy Belated Blogday to Me

My blog is 1 year old as of last Tuesday! So now it is one year and one week old.

woot

Thanks to all the people who stop by to read my rantings. I know that content has varied wildly in quality quantity and topic. I appreciate you tolerating me and not posting mean things about what a psycho I am.

Hamas Catches Car

Dilbert blog draws an interesting parallel with this whole Hamas election victory. (h/t ChrisB)

You know the old joke about the dog that chases cars – “What would he do if he caught one?” I was reminded of that when I read that Hamas won an election victory.

Well if Hamas is the dog, the answer to the question is quite simple. Hamas catches the car, and then it blows it up.

Well Darn

Apparently men don't like women who are funny. (Via Ace) Tragic. I'm really crushed.

This explains why the head of my department is an asshole to me every time I make a joke. I'm supposed to laugh at HIS jokes, not make my own. Got it.

Not that my jokes are actually funny anyway. So I don't see what the problem is.

Calling All Browncoats!

The Firefly Season 2 Project:Captain Mal and the crew of Serenity need your
help to stay flying.

We are looking to push the envelope of episodic television by
offering Season Two of Firefly in a groundbreaking new format. Each episode (or
the entire season) would be made available for purchase in Standard or
Hi-Definition.

It's possible that subscribers may choose one of three playback options;
monthly DVD deliveries, TV On-Demand using your cable or satellite provider, or
computer viewing via Streaming Download.

It's also possible that a box set of DVD's would be available at the end of
the season. In order for our plan to be successful, we need to take stock of the
browncoat recruits that support our cause. It will only take a minute, is
strictly confidential, and each profile will take us one step closer to
victory

Sign up here to tell Firefly how they should deliver Season 2 to us. (Via Balloon Juice)


Three cheers for on demand content! And Independance from the Network Alliance!

UPDATE: Anonymous pointed me to a couple of websites indicating this might not be on the up and up. But all the info in that form is optional if you want to fill it out still. Alas, wishful thinking.

Good Advice

Not that many "trolling for girlies" types read my blog (god, at least I hope not) but recently I have been the victim of far to many poor attempts at gaining my affection by trying to impress me, in manner of trying to be witty without actually being interesting. Usually there is a lot of treating me like some doe eyed girl just waiting to be overawed by some wonderful man so he can take me away to a fairy land where I can look pretty and be a warmer, significantly more skilled version of a Real Doll.

And while all of that sounds tempting, the Advice Goddess has some good advice for men looking to "score" that will probably be much more effective.

The Horror!

Harassment, or flirting?

Researchers found that 62 percent of college students experienced sexual
harassment, and 32 percent of college students said they were victims of
physical harassment.

"The primary form of harassment that we're seeing is actually non-contact: it tends to be remarks, gestures and jokes," Elena Silva, the report's co-author, said in a telephone interview. "But the fact that one-third of college students are experiencing some form of physical harassment is certainly a concern."

Now I hate to be insensitive to the feelings of others. But... to me... this sounds like flirting. How sensitive can society possibly be when people touching others or making sexual jokes is a form of harassment. Sex is all around us, and if you want to get a date chances are you flirt a ltitle, engage in some innuendo and occasionally do outlandish things.

But as long as the people doing this harassment are not people who can, hire, fire or determine your grades, don't be such a fucking wuss.

Also, everyone is drunk, it is college, come ON!

Or you can just sit in your dorm room and cry because people think you are sexually attractive. Oh god, the horror.

RPG

>GO HERE

You read something funny.

House Leaders

Some bloggers interviewed the three candidates for House Majority Leader today via conference call. The first two interviews with rep Shadegg and Boehner are posted at QandO and you can listen to the audio. They were both interesting and I think you should listen if you care.

Dale at QandO has posted a response to the Blunt interview:

And then there was Roy Blunt.
After spending a half hour listening to him, I
think...let's see...how do I
put this...

I would rather lick
fire ants off a stick than see Roy Blunt as Majority
Leader. I'm not at the
point of making a firm endorsement of either Reps.
Shaddeg or Boehner, but
the sun will set in a blazing red sky to the east of
Casablanca before I'd
want Roy Blunt as Majority leader.

Excellent! (Emphasis his)

He goes on to describe how Con. Blunt clearly has no understanding of how the blogosphere works, or rather what NOT to do in the blogosphere. This is a sharp contrast to Shadegg who was extremely complimentary to the bloggers on the phone and aknowledged their contribution.

At least now that Shadegg is in the race the republicans can choose something more dignified than a Boner or a Blunt. Though I think in places beyond the house of representatives neither of those are necessarily bad things.

The Gay Agenda

Finally it is out in the open. Check it.

Some girls just need....

There was a recent hubub at Feministe over some offensive bboard posting regarding the appearance of one of their posters. It was pretty ridiculous, and I think that they were if anything overly mild in how they handled this.

But NOW our Secretary of State is facing a similar slander. This is why women get pissed when their bodies are judged instead of their minds.

Some people can still say and mean things like this:

Speaking with Pravda this week, Zhirinovsky chastised Rice for calling on Russia to "act responsibly" in supplying natural gas to Ukraine.
The fascistic pol attributed that "coarse anti-Russian statement" to Rice being "a single woman who has no children."

"If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear," Zhirinovsky ranted on. "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied."

And this isn't the girl down the street or the chick in the office. This is the Secretary of State of the United States of America. And if she were a man, there is NO WAY that the leader of another country would come out and say that she was saying these things because she basically "Just needs some deep dicking" (well really... who doesn't?) But that's not the point, whether or not she might enjoy getting laid has NOTHING to do with her policies on Russia.

"Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention," he added. "Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'

"Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though."

What a cock. I'm so angry I can't even form rational sentances. Whew...

This is the reason feminism isn't dead,a nd is still needed. Because there are still some people who feel they can dismiss strong women by saying they are crazy or critisizing them for not having kids. If she were a mother I'm sure he'd have a whole other set of criticism involving her being a puppet of her husband. These personal attacks are way below the belt, would he say things like this about her if she were a man? Or would he criticize her policies instead?

I know I shouldn't dignify this with a response. But I am so mad. Feministe was much more politic about it.

Radio for Charity

Today is friday, and today AccuRadio has said that they will donate a percentage of Friday's Revenue to charity today. The percentage that they donate will be based on the increase in listeners they have today. So go listen!

I personally like AccuBroadway, (I know, I know) but they also have jazz, and rock stations and some electronica stations. Mostly commercial free, and you can skip songs you don't like. Check it out and do something good for charity.

How Annoying

It is now illegal to annoy people via the internet, especially if you use an assumed name.

(I'm screwed)

The Ultimate

Massive battles for your weekend entertainment. (Via my flatmate)

Debt and Taxes

A monthish ago I posted regarding Congress's tax cuts and expressed my displeasure that they would go and cut taxes after we just barely managed to push through some budget cuts. I expressed my displeasure that Congress would do something to unbalance a budget that was so recently pushed in the general direction of balanced. But others commented (not inaccurately) that these tax cuts might in fact create more revenue. Which can be justified using the Laffer Curve, depending on what side of it one thinks that we are on.

The New York Times discusses paper put out by the Congressional Budget Office that examines the effects of tax cuts

The recent analysis by Mr. Page at the Congressional Budget Office
dismisses the idea that tax cuts may actually improve the government's fiscal
situation. Even in his most generous scenario, only 28 percent of lost tax
revenue is recouped over a 10-year period. The United States, it seems, is
firmly planted on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

Recent experience corroborates this prediction. In the second quarter
of 2001, just before the first of President Bush's tax cuts took effect, federal
receipts from personal taxes accounted for 10.3 percent of the economy. By the
end of the post-recession slump, receipts had dropped to 6.4 percent. But in the
third quarter of 2005, with the economy booming, they were still under 7.5
percent - an enormous difference. In dollar terms, federal receipts from
personal income taxes, at $802 billion in 2004, are still lower than they were
in 1998 ($826 billion) and much lower than in 2001 ($994 billion).

Jon Henke at QandO has a post that makes the important point that while from a big picture perspective the whole US might be on the left of the laffer curve, certain sectors may not be, and so cutting their taxes might actually increase revenue more than across the board cuts. And well, taxes are bad, so I can get behind that.

I just hope our politicians think about the importance of a balanced budget today and seek to acheive that without blindly hoping that we are on the right side of the laffer curve, because there is a 50% chance that we aren't.

Flip Flopping?

The Agitator dug up some info on Bush's medical marajuana policies while he was Texas Governor. (h/t Jon Henke)

Gov. George Bush said he backs a state's right to decide whether to allow
medical use of marijuana, a position that puts him sharply at odds with
Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Clearly someone stole his bong not long after this article was written (1999) and now he's using the SWAT teams to help him find it. Good luck George, Man, that's gotta be rough.

But of course, this flip flop only matters to the evil denizens of society (cancer and glaucoma patients). Much better that he follow the crowd, eh?

SHOCKING News!

Chic blogger who defines the Stereotype publishes Stereotypical Chick Book

Rich white guys can be friends! Even when they don't have anything in common. (oh, except being rich white politicians... yeah... but nothing else in common, they are sooooo different)

Bush Signs torture amendment and then states that he's going to ignore it.

Reality needs to be Censored so that innocent 13 year olds can be protected.

Online Gender

So I started a post yesterday at work about the media reporting of this PEW research study, looking at how men and women us the internet, and then I got busy. (stupid actually having work to do) Echidne has finished it for me, here and here.

The study focuses on the differences between men and women, so obviously that's what we're hearing about. But the differences are being reported seriously out of proportion to what is actually going on. It is absolutely disgusting. This is an example of how sensationalized reporting completely blows scientific research out of proportion. And now it will become "common wisdom" that men and women use the internet different, because women are touchy feely and into relationships and men like to use ebay and check investments. (Although only 20% of men look at porn? YEAH RIGHT! And 5% of women? Sad, come on people, just be honest no one is going to judge you....Much. )

Some amazing headlines:

Men log on for news, women for the viewsTimes of India, India - 22 hours agoSAN FRANCISCO: Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks, sports and pornography while more women look for ...

Men want facts, women seek relations on Web - surveyReuters.uk, UK - Dec 28, 2005By Eric Auchard. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks ...

Gender gap alive and well onlineBBC News, UK - Dec 28, 2005Gender divisions persist online but it is no longer about whether more men or women use the net, research shows. A study by the ...

Men and women even do things differently onlineabc13.com, TX - 15 hours ago(12/29/05 - NEW YORK) - Anyone who's spent any time seeing men and women interact on any level would agree there are differences between the way the two ... (VOMIT!)

Men surf sleaze, women eye heavenFinancial Express, India - Dec 29, 2005The study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to be released on Thursday finds men are slightly more intense users of the Web. ...

I think this (partially stolen from Echidne's Post) really points out the absurdity of the headlines and sensationalized reporting:

The only one of those that I find really compelling is the 32% more men looking up sport statistics. But really, I am Shinobi's complete lack of surprise. And supporting health information. But a 10% difference is hardly compelling evidence of a gender gap.

Non Sucky Headline Award Goes to:

Online, genders differ only slightlySan Jose Mercury News, USA - 22 hours agoBy Anick Jesdanun. NEW YORK - Women are now as likely to use the Internet as men -- about two-thirds of both genders do -- yet a ...

But they still used the AP's amazingly sucky article underneath it. At least the headline was right.

:-(

Hubris is quitting.

Hubris's blog was the first blog I started reading after Spinsanity and Cabal, and it was where I took my blogging baby steps. Now that I'm in my blogging adolesence as it were I know just barely enough to be sullenly grateful to the people who are indirectly responsible for this blog's existance. So Thanks Hubris.

I think I'm going to stick with denial for now and leave him in my blogroll and hope he changes his mind or starts posting at INDC again. The first stages of grief and all.

Holidays

Home with the family, my sanity is slowly draining away, actually.... quickly.

Gotta love the holidays.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukah. Also I hope your winter Solstice was good and that your Kwanzaa will be meaningful and awesome. Any holidays I missed, happy that one too.

Intelligent Design

Declared unconstitutional By the US District Court.

There IS a God!

Said the judge: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." -CNN

heh, indeed

Update: Bill at INDC has a good analysis

Piercing

I got my nipples peirced this weekend. I don't really know what else to say about it. I think the worst part of the whole thing was waiting for the peircer to be not busy, because I seriously almost chickened out. Though partial nakedness in front of a total stranger wasn't too fun either.

I went to The Alley. They did an awesome job, and are very knowledgable. Their website is www.chicagopiercing.com. If you are considering getting anything peirced I would HIGHLY recommend that you go there an no where else. It is a little more expensive but they use all titanium jewlery and have very good sanitation standards. Also they are a free hand shop so they don't use clamps which can cause more pain. Both the peircers I have spoken to there are full of useful information and are very very nice. And they both have enough holes and tatoos to ensure confidence ;-)

The peircing itself wasn't that bad. Though I did forget to finish breathing out on the second one, oops. They hurt more now than they did after I got them peirced, this morning my cat jumped on top of me, that was interesting for her as she found herself flying through the air.

Thanks to E and her boy for going with me and buying me ice cream after.

"Right Now"

CQ has a post on the new poll that shows the numbers Senator Murtha used when calling for withdrawl from Iraq may have been sliiiightly inaccurate. But I have to question this as polls are involved.

Captain's Quarter's :

Another point also demonstrates the lies that Democrats have used in trying to
scare the American public into losing the war. It turns out that 80% of Iraqis
don't want the Americans out "right now", but only 26%. (emphasis mine)

Murtha's Quote: (Via WP)

"I'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all. . . . Until we
turn it over to the Iraqis, we're going to continue to do the fighting. . . .
They'll have to work this out themselves. . . . We have become the enemy; 80
percent of the people in Iraq want us out of there; 45 percent say it's
justified to attack Americans. It's time to change direction." (emphasis mine)

Where does Murtha say "Right Now"? I don't see it? Maybe they cut it out. Or MAAAYBE it was never in there in the first place. I'm not going to go the "evil republican spin" route, but the addition of those two words" Right Now" really changes the meaning of that statistic.

Instead I will just point out that maybe 80% of Iraqi's wanting us to leave eventually isn't sucha far fetched number when compared to the ABC poll numbers. In fact, according to CQ 26% want us out right now and 52% want us out when their security forces are trained, well that's 78% total wanting us out, and I'd bet that's within the margin of error of that 80% number. (usually 2.5%, but I don't know what it is in this case)

Conversely, I found the theoretical source of Murtha's numbers(via media matters), this secret UK military poll. I don't see 80% wanting us to withdraw in there, the only even remotely comparable number from that article is 82% opposed to the presence of coalition troops, which is not the same as calling for immediate withdrawl. (If someone asked me if I was opposed to foreign guys with guns in my country, I'd probably say yes too, so this could have a lot to do with how questiosn were asked.) So it is possible Murtha misused/misspoke the statistic when he spoke, or that there is a more detailed report I don't have access too.

But it seems that neither side is really looking at the numbers carefully or critically in this case.

It Happens.

I stole this from a bboard.

AND THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS....
In the Beginning was The Plan
And then came the Assumptions.
And the Assumptions were without form
And the Plan was completely without substance.
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers.
And they spoke among themseves, saying "It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth, "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the Directors spoke amongst themselves, saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them, "It promotes growth and is exceedingly powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth onto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of this Company, and these Areas in particular." And the President looked upon The Plan, And saw that it was good, and The Plan became Policy.
And this is how Shit happens.

Debt? what Debt?

Remember Porkbusters? And all the budget cuts that were passed through congress recently?

Well guess what, now they are cutting TAXES! What a GREAT IDEA! Why didn't WE think of that. I mean it makes perfect sense, if you cut back on how much you are spending that you cut back on how much you take in, right? Especially when you're already spending on a huge deficit.

I had to read this article (thanks mark) twice to make sure it said what I thought it said.

Maybe we need to get some non rich people into congress that understand what a budget is, and how it is supposed to balance, and how when you have a debt you should be paying it off, not making it bigger.

I'm going to go shopping on my credit card now, I've got at least a grand left before it maxes out, after reading that, I need new shoes. And maybe some jewlery.

Update: Brendan Nyhan debunks an editorial in the WSJ claiming that the tax cuts will generate revenue.

Female Bisexuality

Ryan at Feministe has an article today on the idea of Inherent Female Bisexuality. This is a popular idea at Frat parties where they try to get two straight girls to make out.

As an actual female bisexual (I know, national coming out day was last month, whatever) I find it kindof offensive when others imply that all women are bisexual. Women are no more bisexual than men are. Even though women are generally more attractive than men IMHO that is MY perception and I certainly don't think all women in the world agree with me. (Hence the Society for Future Housewives etc.)

Anyway, I'll be reading these articles, and maybe I will have more to opine on at a later date.

A War I agree with

War has been declared, on Christmas!

Finally a war I can really get behind. Come on people, support the troops, don't let them down by questioning the validity of this mission.

And by the troops, I mean mean me.

And by mission, I mean throwing the radio in the cube next to me out of the window.

And by validity I mean TURN OFF THE FUCKING CHRISTMAS MUSIC!

How many different people can sing the same 10 songs, seriously. This is eating my soul.

Corruption

Jon Henke has an amazing post at QandO about corruption in both parties and how neither party is really doing anything to stop it.

Good call Jon.

WOO South Africa

This is me celebrating the legalization of same sex marriage in South Africa, YAY!

perfectly reasonable reasoning:

Heterosexual married couples in South Africa have numerous rights that are
denied to gay couples, including the ability to make decisions on each other's
behalf in medical emergencies and inheritance rights if a partner dies without a
will.

Judge Albie Sachs, who delivered Thursday's ruling, said laws defining
marriage as a union between a man and a woman are inconsistent with sections of
the constitution "to the extent that they make no provision for same-sex couples
to enjoy the status, entitlements and responsibilities they accord to
heterosexual couples.

"The court instructed Parliament to extend the definitions of marriage
within a year, or else the words "or spouse" would automatically be added by the
courts, the South African Press Association reported.

In the only dissenting opinion, Judge Kate O'Regan argued the 11-member
court should effect the changes immediately, a view shared by gay rights
groups.

Finally some people with their priorities in order. I still don't understand this whole destruction of marriage the homophobes are ranting about. I'm glad South Africa has some sense in this regard.

NRF Shopping Numbers

The Mystery Pollster debunks and looks at the NRF's methodology for their Black weekend shopping numbers.

This is probably only of interest to me because I have been fielding questiosn all week about why my company's numbers are so much lower.

Since the press release is out - We're showing a 0.4% increase in spending over the entire weekend and a 0.9% decrease for Black Friday based on traffic figures and monthly estimates.

Update, here is our mention in the WSJ. Woo hoo:

The most bearish estimate came from ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago
market-research company with about 40,000 cameras in retail locations,
mostly shopping malls. (For more on the company's methods, see this print
Journal article12 from December 2004.) By counting foot traffic from the camera images and converting that into sales figures, the company reported a sales decrease of 0.9% on Friday, and an increase for the weekend of just 0.4%. As NRF and others have pointed out, ShopperTrak doesn't have cameras in the big
standalone retailers that opened early Friday and offered the biggest
discounts (like Wal-Mart), and therefore may have missed much of the sales
increases. But Bill Martin, ShopperTrak's co-founder and executive vice
president of sales, stood behind his company's estimates, and said that it
has proprietary methods to extrapolate from camera data to the entire retail
industry. He declined to provide details. In response to the NRF estimate,
Mr. Martin told me, "Double-digit increases are beyond any test of reason
that we can see in the marketplace."

Sorry for not posting about anything besides this, but work is eating up my life. Hopefully after the holidays I will have more time for posts about actually interesting things.

Black Friday Shopping

The numbers for this weekend are in (I should know I spent all weekend writing them up.)

Sales figures are down or up depending on who you talk to, the NRF is posting a gain in sales of 22% this year based on national survey data. (4,000 responders or so)

ShopperTrak is showing a 0.5% decline in sales for the total weekend based on traffic and other econometric data. They also reported a 1.4% decline in national retail traffic. This is based on counts of traffic and other econometric data. (full disclosure, I work there)

The NRF numbers are very optimistic, so far however the numbers in their release don't add up. There must be some interesting factoid I am not privy to to make these numbers work. (thanks to my boss for some of this analysis and the press release which I can't find a link to online)

Their press release says we should have seen 145 million shoppers over the weekend, but their numbers don't add up.

60 million on Friday (estimated)
52.8 million on Saturday (estimated)
22 million on Sunday (same as in '04)
Total = 134.8 million.
That is a difference of 10.2 million shoppers (145 million - 134.8 million).

And then their sales figure is 27.1 Billion dollars, and they are saying on average that consumers spent 302.81. But if 134.8 million people spent 302.81 dollars that would put us at 40.8 billion dollars. Which is a big difference. Their is clearly some other factor they look at when calculating spending, I wonder what it is.

Also they seem very high and it is likely that consumers overstated their purchases in the survey. Surveys as I may have mentioned before, are not the best measuring tools available. (Uhh they suck)

It will be interesting to see how the numbers are revised over the week.

Since when is wanting a reasonable work week a women's issue? I guess it is one of the major things frequently brought up when discussing why there are fewer female senior executives. Women want (Horror of Horrors) a family, and a life, and that is just unreasonable if you want to be successful.

But Fortune has an article today that points out that shockingly men would actually like to have lives too:

Our new survey of senior FORTUNE 500 male executives offers surprising
answers. Fully 84% say they'd like job options that let them realize their
professional aspirations while having more time for things outside work; 55% say
they're willing to sacrifice income. Half say they wonder if the sacrifices
they've made for their careers are worth it. In addition, 73% believe it's
possible to restructure senior management jobs in ways that would both increase
productivity and make more time available for life outside the office. And 87%
believe that companies that enable such changes will have a competitive
advantage in attracting talent. Other interviews suggest that the younger a male
executive is, the more likely he is to say he cares about all of this.

Of course there's a roadblock to reform: fear. FORTUNE's survey found
that even though most senior-level men want better options, nearly half believe
that for an executive to take up the matter with his boss will hurt his
career.

Don't know much about this survey, but it isn't exactly a revolutionary concept that people would want time for friends family and extracurriculars. Even Men, The workhorse of the human race don't salivate a the idea of spending 47% of their life (an 80 hour work week) at their job.

But seriously, I am glad that there is a push for a more humane work week. Fortunately I am in touch with my own laziness and would never try for a job that required more than say 50 hours per week. Sadly not all people are so lucky. What's the point of making money, if you never have time to spend it?

It is good to see that Fortune is trying to push the 40 hour week off of the "women's issue" table. Though it is sortof surprising that it was on our table in the first place.

Not just a City in China

MSNBC has this Oh so helpful filler article on tipping today.

I thought I would add some wisdom that I accrued over the weekend via my roommate. The tip for a lap-dance is typically between 10 and 20 dollars.

No wonder stripping is such a popular occupation.

The Irony is that they called it Intelligence

Kevin Drum posts about the Intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and how dissent against this intelligence was suppressed. Whether or not it was intentionally suppressed remains to be seen.

But IMHO whether the suppression of dissenting voices was intentional or not is irrellevent. The evidence as shown in Kevin's post points to a deep seated problem within the White House and the surrounding Intelligence community. This problem is the same problem that is has been studied and identified as being responsible for the Challenger Disaster as well as The Bay of Pigs Invasion during the Kennedy administration. It is called Group Think, and has already been identified as a problem within the Intelligence Community at large.

The question that should be asked is how much of the suppression of intelligence and groupthink leading up to the Iraq war was a symptom of attitudes within the White House. Regardless of intentionality intelligence was suppressed and I think there should be a push from outside the White House to show that not only are they making actual improvements to the intelligence community but also to the culture within the White House.

Unfortunately recent events such as the lack of Federal response to Hurricane Katrina did little to alleviate my fears about the level of incompetancy within this administration. So maybe it isn't REALLY their job, but when one of my coworkers doesn't do their job, I do it for them for the good of the company. (And then I point out to my boss that it wasn't really my job.....) And lets not even mention the Harriet Miers debacle. (Though some would argue it was a political move, and it may well have been.)

When it comes down to it, the President is an employee of the citizens of the United States, and he has a responsibility to show that he is doing his job to the best of his ability. We should not be criticized for criticizing him. We hired him to do a job, and he should take pride in doing it well, and showing us what a good job he's doing. And if he isn't doing a good job, well, he should thank his lucky stars it is a contract position.

Shinobi v. Mono

It was a long and arduous battle, but I have emerged, scarred, exhausted, victorious.

My attention span is still too short to blog. I'm back in the office today. I long for sleep.

Holy Crap!

AMAZING New Family Guy Episode.

The episode is all about mocking the FCC. There are no words. This epsidode makes up for the existance of American Dad.

OW

This message has been brought to you by Halls Defense, citrus flavored.

How is it possible for me to feel this crappy and still not be running a fever? I didn't know that I actually had this many lymph nodes that could swell, this is ridiculous.

I don't actually have anything of value to say at the moment, but the non drowsy sudafed I took wont let me sleep, so I just wanted to share my misery with someone who isn't my roomate cause I'm sure he will be sharing my misery here within a week or so. I wonder how well sudafed mixes with tylenol PM, I'll do some research and get back to you.

Update 3:41AM: Does this mean I'm live blogging my illness? Cause that is sad. The Tylenol PM Sudafed coctail has not worked. I am wide fucking awake and in serious pain. WOO HOOOOOOOO. I don't know how I'm going to go to work tomorrow.

Update 8:07AM: Not actually going to work. Wooooooooooo. Time to go back to sleep. I might actually post something of substance later.

Update Day 2 1:30PM: The doctor is testing me for mono and they gave me painkillers. You can actually see my lymph nodes without even trying to look for them.

Update Day 2 9:16PM: Picked up my laptop from work. I asked the doc if I could work and she said "uhhh... not with people you like." So I'm working from home which will be a new experience for me. I just took my first awesomely cool bright Pink pain pill which my med student friend informs me is also a muscle relaxer. I haven't eaten anything solid in 24 hours so this should be a fun night.

Update Day 3 8:30PM: Officially Mono. Pain pills are amazing.

On Schooling's Failure And Journalism's Doom

Tall Dark and Mysterious posted aboutme to this article from a University Newspaper yesterday. Rather than quote the whole thing here before I expound on its ridiculousness I will request that you go read and then come back. Are you back? Good. Take a deep breath, it will be okay.

So, the problem this fine young writer seems to have with the education system is that it is forcing her to take classes in things unrelated to her career. Her career in journalism. The thing that confuses me about this, is that Journalism isn't really a topic, so much as a set of skills that give one the ability to report information effectively to ones audience. So, if you think about it, is anything REALLY unrelated to journalism? What if you have to write a peice about the guy who won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Wouldn't it behoove you to have at least a HighSchool level grasp of physics? Or Statistics! Which she even mentions in her post. Everyone hates Statistics, I know this, but if you don't understand it how can you effectively report on polls? (Or in her case the wildly innaccurate surveys that people send in to the magazines.)

You can't. I truly think that an effective journalist has to understand their subject matter as well as possible in order to explain it well to the reader. Fortunately since all Stacey with an e y wants is to work at Glamour magazine the most complex concept she will need to grasp is what color eyeshadow looks good on what skin tones. Sadly though I don't think it is uncommon for journalists to become journalists because they are too lazy to learn other subjects and this is reflected in the quality of the reporting we are generally exposed to. (Though there are some truly exceptional reporters out there, unfortunately I think they are a minority.) Thank god the age of the blogger is begining.

But what about non journalists who feel this way about the subjects they are being forced to learn? Well I can relate, sometimes you have to learn stuff in school that is boring. Really boring. Like that class they made me take on writing. I hated it, but I did my best and tried to learn, even though it brought down my GPA. And now I try to remember what I learned in that class every day when I write my blog, and as you can see, I don't. Though it might not be fun to learn some things, I have never really wished I hadn't bothered to learn a thing, though I have frequently wished the opposite.

So while Stacy's desire not to learn stuff is understandable, it isn't really a problem with school as she seems to think it is. It is in fact her own fault for being too lazy to learn things just because she isn't interested in them. Sometimes in life you have to do things you don't want to do, and just trust that someone older and wiser than you thinks you should know this stuff. At the very least it will help you learn how to learn boring stuff, and who knows you might even find it interesting.

Edumucation

To continue with todays apparent Morality theme. Moon has an interesting post discussing the two issues of Creationism and Sex Education in schools. (I will attempt to sum up his points here, but you should really read his post to get the nuance.)

While parents seek to have creationism taught in the (science) classroom based upon their claimed right to have their convictions reinforced at school, manifesting their belief that it's not enough to instil principles of faith outside of school but that their children's godliness requires never being exposed to any competing account of life's origin without immediate strident opposition, so do other parents seek to have (full and candid; perhaps encouraging abstinence, but not turning a blind eye to its widespread eschewal by children) sexual education taught in schools for the same reason, to have what they deem important reinforced in the classroom.

I tend to disagree with Moon on this. Though I think his mind is in the right place. I think the fundemental problem with his argument lies in the fact that we are talking about two different types of education. One type of education presents a student with a series of facts, other types of information and allows the student to use these facts to accomplish goals. (math is like this, 1+1=2, 2+2=?) The other type of education is presenting something and stating that it is true and then the students like good little foot soldiers will believe this until told otherwise.

Sex education is not about indoctrinating students for sex, but about giving them tools to make informed decisions when the time comes.

Creationism on the other hand, if taught well would be a good excersize for students on understanding how the scientific method does not work. (For instance, starting with a conclusion and finding data to back it up, rejecting all other information.) Otherwise it will just be a confusing peice of information that those who go on to college will have to unlearn (There are already SO many of those) and that those who don't go on to college probably wont remember anyway.

But truly, if parents are so concerned about the education of their children then they should educate them. There is nothing preventing any parent from giving their children literature on creationism, or talking about it at the dinner table. Just as there is nothing preventing any parent from discussing sex and its dangers with their kids. In the end, the real problem is that parents want to outsource their jobs to teachers. And if you outsource it, it just never seems to get done right.

Morality

Jody over at PolySciFi has a post about the Kansas State Court and its ruling that punishing homosexual coduct more than heterosexual conduct was wrong.

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts, saying "moral disapproval" of such conduct is not enough to justify the different treatment.

While I would prefer a law that treated sex as sex, it appears to me that the KSC is effectively saying that morals cannot be considered a basis for law. This would represent a serious challenge to my legal philosophy and I dare say Kansans' legal philosophies as well as most of our readership's legal philosophies.

I understand that many people in this country have a strict moral code by which they lead their lives. And I would be lying if I said that I was not one of those people. But my moral code is probably quite different from Jody's moral code. Just as Hitler's moral code was different from Ghandi's. (You might disagree with this, and if you do then I will refer you to Pyrrho's post on Moral relativism and the subsequent debate. It is not a topic I intend to address here in any depth, I will leave that to the wise philosophers.)

While morals will always play some part in the laws of any country, it is important that the courts and the legislature not attempt to force morality onto a free society, because then that society will no longer be free. It is my opinion that the laws of a country exist to protect its citizens from harm, not to force them to be "good" people by someone's standard. Many laws serve important purposes without touching on morality, such as laws that protect individuals from physical harm, (such as laws against dueling or murder) or protect those who cannot protect themselves (such as laws against bestiality or pedophilia). But to base a system of law and judgement on what one group of people considers "moral" is to base it on a moving foundation.

Society has its own way of punishing what it sees as immorality. Gays are still subject to extreme predijuce and hate in some parts of the country. Extra legal persecution of them for their supposedly more immoral actions is unnecessary.

(Also For the Record: I oppose the Miers nomination. Not that anyone will be surprised or even care.)

Yeah!

Charles at Obsidian Wings has a post about what conservatives should be doing. It is good and stuff.

To quote the bum on the corner outside my office building:

"Happy Friday Everybody!"

Miers

I haven't posted much on Miers because I am so disgusted I don't even have the energy to be outraged.

But today Progress For America sent me this little jewel. I have no idea how I got on their mailing list. They were hoping to convince me that Harriet Miers is just as good as John Marshall, Byron White, Clarence Thomas and William Renquist by writing her name next to theirs a bunch of times and showing how similar they are.

Gee. I was sooooo wrong. How could I not have been convinced by their mindless propaganda before this.

(Unrelated Note: Fuck the Astros, Go SOX!)

Back to Busch Stadium

My Hero:













Go CARDS!!!!!!

Would Hil be better off without Bill?

Digby pointed out some amazing journalism today. Apparently there is some matrimonal fracas in the Clinton household. Really Shocking.

But it made me wonder, would Hillary have a better chance in 2008 without Bill? I am torn on this, because Pres. Clinton is clearly very popular with Dems and so he might be a useful face on the campaign trail. On the other side of the coin some right wingers hate him with the fire of a thousand suns, and some might equate a vote for Hillary as a vote for another term with Bill as president. (Which may or may not be a good thing depending on who you talk to)Would ridding herself of her hubby give her a better chance to ingratiate herself with the center right? And would it destroy her chances with Value Voters and Clinton lovers?

Also, does a single woman have a better chance at the presidency than a married one? Harriet Miers is unmarried, and Condi Rice's bio says nothing about a husband (does she have one? anybody?). Arguably the reason Miers and (possibly) Rice aren't married could be because they chose to focus on career instead of family. But Mrs. Clinton already has a family, though her daughter is now fully grown. Would splitting up absolutely ruin her chances? Or would she gain some respect for striking out on her own from her filandering husband? Also would being sans-man help the American public deal with the pesky "she's a woman" issue without having to tackle the whole "First Gentleman" issue?

I have no idea. But it is interesting to think about.

Hillary Clinton v. Condi Rice race in 2008: the closest political pundits will ever get to a real catfight. Heh.

Quality:Advertising::

Theory: The quality of anything in inversely proportional to the amount of advertising for that thing.

Proof in progress: Elizabethtown

If I could go one day without seeing an ad for this movie, I'd be happy. The first time I saw the preview I was vaguely interested in a "both of those people are attractive enough to distract me for 1.5 hours" kind of way. But after 2 weeks of constant innundation I know there is no way this movie can be good.

Also further proof this movie sucks arrived when every time I tried to close a browser window and brought my mouse too close to my IM window a big picture of Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst swooning at eachother appeared. And if there is an advert for it on my IM, then I KNOW it isn't going to be good. (See Also: America's Next Top Model)

The sad thing is that advertising like this works, I am so brainwashed by this point I will probably go see this stupid movie just so I can say "THAT MOVIE SUCKED" every time I see an ad for it. (which will no doubt be ever 5 minutes for the next week at least, and then every 2 minutes when the DVD comes out in a month)

Milky Statistics

2% approval among black people? 2% is how much fat I like in my milk, not how many black people like the president.

Mystery Pollster debunks this number today with his usual deftness. Apparently the 2% number is based on a sub sample of only 89 African-Americans. Which might actually be a weighted number, meaning they really interviewed less than 89 people and then gave them extra weight so that the sample was consistant with the population of the US. So we might actually be talking about 2% of 40 people. Not exactly compelling evidence that this is representative of of the opinion of the entire population of African-Americans.

His post is worth a read, especially at the end where he points out stupidity at HuffPo. (As if they have anything else there.)

Silence

Sorry for the sporadic bloggyness.

I am having trouble feeling like posting about things because I mostly don't care. And the stuff I do care about other people are already doing a better job of posting on. So I figure I'll leave it to the experts.

If I stop posting long enough will the number of people reading this blog go negative?

Hopefully we wont find out.

GO!!!!

In the unlikely event that you are a reader of this blog and you have not already seen Serenity. here is the first 10 minutes (via Bill at INDC).

Now, Go f-ing see it. It is one of the best movies I've seen in ages, especially of the science fiction variety.

And if you don't go see it, and they don't make the sequels because of you, I'm going to hunt you down and use big swords on you.

Fuck Stanford

We'll get em next year!

Interesting Photo Choice

It is entitled subway.top.turban.ap. Nice one CNN.
Only on the front page.

Now I get it!

I've never really understood the appeal of pundits like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. I don't really see the point in dissmissing out of hand the opinions of anyone who doesn't agree with you. Or saying things like "The essence of being a liberal: “The absolute conviction that there is one set of rules for you, and another, completely different set of rules for everyone else.” Really... no. But if you want to believe that, i'm not going to stop you because you must be an idiot and therefore not worth my time.

But today I finally get it, it is so nice to have sharp wit and rhetoric turned against someone you dislike:

I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush
wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.

I expect this will be the only time Ann Coulter is quoted on this blog or that I actually utter her name. Because truly, she is evil. But I give her props for standing up and not drinking the kool-aid on this one. And she managed to not make blanket accusations against liberals too, wow. I'll bet some people are pissed.

Phoning it in

Bill at INDC is forced to put up a defense of someone else's hilarious yet apparently offensive blog post. Now who would post something that offensive? Hmmmm.

Echidne points to an absolutely ridiculous law. Aren't republicans supposed to be trying to reduce the power of our government?

Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity fame (where my introduction to blogging began, thanks Brendan) has a link to an important story about the Bush administration's covert use of Propaganda. As if the overt propaganda wasn't enough.

And really, here is the most important news story of the day. Clearly vital to our nation's survival.

Hate

I hate it when I start to write a post and realize the point I was going to make is actually quite stupid. Lame.

Instead of my not that insightful post I will post my political test results, which change drastically every time I take the test.

You are a Social Liberal (68% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (55% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

BALETED!

Because blogger LIED to me when it said there was an error. It is evil and manipulative.

/grumbles

Ow

I thought the most painful part of the day was going to be the bruises I managed to aquire while falling flat on my drunk ass face in front of a bar on Saturday.

Turns out, I couldn't be more wrong.

Hurbris sums up my thoughts on this subject perfectly.