“Despite its scientific pretensions, economics still remains more of an art than a science” - Robert Kuttner

“The right to speak and the right to print, without the right to know, are pretty empty.â€

-Harold Cross, the father of the Freedom of Information Act

I’m not sure where this is from orginally, but I got it from Liberal Symmetry.

This is short but totally worth watching kerry destroy mccain. And damn, looks like kerry has a good plastic surgeon.

:::Via Reader (THANKS!):::

Christian Phillips, 18 years old, is suspected of delivering baskets LSD-laced cookies to about a dozen police departments in Texas. “Our officers took a good whiff and thought they smelled like marijuana,†McGuire said, adding that preliminary tests instead detected traces of LSD. In Fort Worth, at least three officers got sick after eating some cookies and candy from a basket delivered to that police station Monday night, authorities said. Investigators found that Phillips had a list of about two dozen police departments in north Texas, with 13 checked off!

: Hilarity Ensues via AP wire :

An overview of some really important (and interesting) psychology studies.  I’ve listed some of the excerpts from the site. If you want to learn more about said phenomenon, then click on the link above, and you can find the relevant entry. Yay for learning! and the Internet.

6. Why We All Stink as Intuitive Psychologists: The False Consensus Bias

Many people quite naturally believe they are good ‘intuitive psychologists’, thinking it is relatively easy to predict other people’s attitudes and behaviours. We each have information built up from countless previous experiences involving both ourselves and others so surely we should have solid insights? No such luck.

7. Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily: Social Identity Theory

People’s behaviour in groups is fascinating and frequently disturbing. As soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups.

9. Why We Don’t Help Others: Bystander Apathy

In social psychology the ‘bystander effect’ is the surprising finding that the mere presence of other people inhibits our own helping behaviours in an emergency. John Darley and Bibb Latane were inspired to investigate emergency helping behaviours after the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964.

Product also includes some well known favorites, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.

And now for something completely different:

This is a section of an IMAX documentary about helicopters called Straight Up. Music selection on this is masterful. Trying to figure out who it is….

So there’s this website called freerice.com, you go, answer vocabulary questions and they donate 10 grains of rice for every question you answer correctly. That’s not even a spoonful by the way. I make a policy of going there and clicking until I get bored every time someone forwards me the link. Tonight, with the aid of a heady beer buzz, I’ve been able to sustain a personal record of donating 250 grains of rice in one sitting. I’ve now totaled over 1000 grains in several sittings (and achieved the highest vocabulary score thank you very fucking much). buuuuuut, I have some reservations.

first, vocab is pretty boring (and by that I mean it ambuscades fascination, you philistine), they should expand to general trivia and lsat questions. People should be able to pick what kind of trivia they get.

internet research* ™ reveals that there are
-at least 29,000 grains of rice in a pound of rice (src that bitches)
-given my current record of 250 grains/5 minutes I can donate 3000 grains of rice per hour.
-it would take 8-9 hours of constant vernacularization** on freerice.com to donate a pound of rice
-a pound of rice costs around 3 dollars…retail (prices may vary depending on stuff).
-25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children

25,000 people?!? that’s total bullshit! so rather than fucking around on freerice.com I decided to just donate to the UN World Food Program Directly!

You should too, because we’re all pretty serious ballers compared to people who are like, starving to death (fuck my phone costs more than a lot of people on earth make in an entire goddamn year!). seriously, no one reading this can’t spare three dollars. so do it, do it now, that way you can have a clear conscience when you’re stuffing your face with pie.

and look, just in case you’ve been feeling shitty about the whole genocide thing you can donate directly to darfur fugees!

come on, just do it.

* all calculations and research are done under the aegis of a half bottle of wine, at least 2 but no more than 4 shots of scotch and 5ish beers. all of which are worth about 600,000 grains of rice.

** you can put that in your lexicon and smoke it!

ps You’re not allowed to comment on the blog ever again unless you donate. and you know I’m going to say/do something stupid so you better just kick down to preserve your commenting privs.

Consultation with Raphey confirms that The Noise was, in fact, coyotes. Although he volunteered that they sound more like “a pack of evil howler monkeys.” He first heard the noise with Vince (or possibly G-Mo) while they were out in the horse pasture and remarked that it is a totally amazing feeling to fear for your life as a full grown adult. He also described the noise as evoking a fear buried in our genes for 100,000 years. seriously!

:: Via Email {thanks the meerkat!} ::

When will companies realize that naming their entire product lines using an externally random* string of numbers and letters is not a good idea.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just look at printers (or anything!)

• HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer
• Canon Pixma Pro9500
• HP Officejet Pro K5400dtn Color Printer
• Xerox Phaser 6360DN
• Canon Pixma Pro9000

TOP SELLERS:

1. Hewlett Packard LaserJet 1018 Printer
2. Canon PIXMAâ„¢ MP600 All-In-One InkJet Printer

*externally random is a term that I made up. It refers to something that seems to make no sense from an outside perspective. A good and annoyingly frequent example is using acronyms without defining what they refer to first. these acronyms *have* a meaning but to the outside observer they are as good as random. in short: not effective.

I just love it when libertarians pull some bullshit about abolishing the IRS or the Federal Reserve. I encourage those people to move to afghanistan as often as possible. It’s a great place to “Let the Market Decide” because there is so much opportunity for private business. But the libertarians just whine.

wahhhh wahhh wahhh it’s dangerous. wahhhh wahhh wahhh there’s no roads. wahh waahhh wahhh there’s no freedom.

ohhh shit, all of a sudden *somebody* likes big government. Infrastructure is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

Dear Extreme Libertarians,

I’d like to encourage you to abandon your idiotic belief structure. It’s time for you to move beyond the childlike bitterness that emerges when the internal revenue service “steals” your money. Actually, you should be fucking excited that your taxes pay for roads, schools, the goddamn internet, things like the national institute of standards and technology and people who will try to keep your house from burning down. I swear that I’m going to slap the next person who says “free market” because it’s not free. Markets are regulated by the government so that we can have things like 8 hour workdays and weekends. I understand and sympathize with the urge for less bureaucracy and I even agree that in some situations market competition supported by regulations and legal systems can create a lot of prosperity but seriously, shut the fuck up about abolishing the IRS already.

Best,
TitaniumDreads

ps I hope all your brains explode when the US finally gets it’s shit together and institutes a national healthcare system.

::: Seriously! via NYTimes :::

There is life after your 20s…
Chill…

::: Seriously via Cafe Pergolesi :::

Has everyone forgotten that our vice president is named DICK cheney?!?! is that so fucking weird or what? it’s like what if the first lady was named clitoris bush or the press secretary was named buttcheeks snow?

That’s just amazing. (Click For Improved Readability)

– mrgordon

Update: I got a scholarship to do research in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ostensibly, Im supposed to be interviewing people about their feelings on government legitimacy and the current trials against the military. However, my real reason for coming is to learn Spanish. Which is sort of working.

So, Buenos Aires is really weird. Like, it seems very cosmopolitan, but deep down inside, its pretty insidiously sexist. Its been bothering me a lot recently. Its subtle: when you go into a restaurant, the guy you’re with is expected to taste the wine; in my classes we did this exercise where we were supposed to list what men wanted from women; guys think its OK to say youre pretty while in youre drunk in the taxi. OK, so maybe its not so insidious, but its definitely hard to deal with.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the title of this post. So, here’s my story.

Interestingly enough, TD wanted to take me to a swingers club back in Colorado. For various reasons, it ended up not happening. And I was a little relieved. However, last night, I got to see the real deal out here in BA.

How it happened: A friend of my roommate is a freelance journalist. He lives the sweetest fucking life. He came over last night, and we had some wine. He was telling us (me, my roommate and her nonboyfriend) how he has to write a story about monkeys for Natl Geo. I dont know exactly how the sex club got worked into the conversation, but it did. He was telling us how he now had a “semi professional” reason to go to this place. And his previous attempt was unsuccessful because he wasn’t wearing the right kind of shoes.

In the whirlwind of talking about the sex club, we all end up deciding to actually go. I was under the impression we were going to go later. Maybe for the weekend or something, but no. We were going tonight, RIGHT NOW. So, the journalist tells us to get dressed up nice. I put on a miniskirt (finally! somewhere I can wear it). Btw, its like 3 am. Thats how the Argentines roll.

We hop a cab to the journalists apt. to get some cash and the proper footwear. I do most of his blow.

We get to the sex club and they tell us its going to close soon because there’s not a lot of people there. My roommate gets a little irritated.The journalist and I decide to go on up and see whats there, and report back.

What its like: When we get up there, they ask if we have cameras or anything. We say no (interesting story, I normally have camera, but my purse was stolen last weekend. So no more camera, passport or debit card). Im told to check my purse. We get a drink.

There’s small dancefloor, and some middle aged fat couples standing around the bar. The music is really bad. Like, 70s porn music. The journalist decides this is fine and goes back downstairs to get my roommate and her man. As Im waiting, a couple starts getting dirty on the dancefloor (no sex, just some mad groping and kissing)…But they’re pretty unattractive, so I look away.

The journalist brings everyone else upstairs, and he was incredibly excited. “Theres two really hot chicks over there! Im not a pervert. This is part of my job.” We move to go get more drinks, and in the process some old guy tries to get with me. He was passing by the group, and slithers his arm across my waist. I freak out and run away. I bitch to the journalist about someone touching me. He says, “Youre in a sex club. Lighen up.” I hiss, “I am not here to have sex.”

We finish our drinks, and decide to have a look around. I didnt realize that people went somewhere else to have sex. But apparently, theres other parts of the club. The dancefloor is solely for dancing. So we venture upstairs, and theres a little cubby area at the top of the flight of stairs, and some curtains. Youre allowed to pull the curtain and watch the couple inside going at it. It was pretty intense and not at all sexy. I freak out a little bit.

We go downstairs and theres another area where people are getting freaky. We walk into this dark room, and the first thing we see is this girl bent over a couch and this fat guy doing her from behind. On the couch, another couple is going at it. Theres a doorway behind them, and we walk over there. Theres some showers, and we see a couple putting their clothes back on. The guy says something to us, but I didnt quite catch it.

We move back to the place with the couches, and the journalist is like “Well, I should watch this, because Ive never seen it before. This is what I came to see.” So we sit down, and Im finding none of this very interesting. The fat guy and the girl move to the couch. We leave to get another drink and then come back. Theres a couple behind us, sort of hidding away, and they are having some pretty wild sex. We all sit and watch them, and Im reminded how I havent had sex in a really long time (but my boyfriend is coming to visit on Tues). I get slightly jealous. But not horny.

Something about watching real people have sex is just not appealing. At all.

While we’re all watching this couple, the staff tells us (and the couple) that its closing time and we have to leave. So we get up, go downstairs, and hail a cab back. The journalist is fairly drunk (as they are), and insists on going back to our apartment. He’s going through a bit of a lonely time. We talk, and he takes his clothes off. This might sound sort of sketchy, but for those that know TD drunk, its really not. The journalist taking his clothes off in a drunken stupor was much like TD. I get awoken at 11 in the morning because the journalist left his clothes in my room, and fell asleep naked on the couch.

Good times!

+++ Note: This is a blog post from Kimpossible ++
Usernames will be posted as soon as I get the new design up :) -TitaniumDreads

You may be familiar with the widely advanced theory that Democracies do not go to war with eachother, which therefore justifies starting wars to spread democracy…. This notion is frequently expressed by the mustachio’d little twatburger Thomas Friedman in his gushingly pedantic artices in the NYTimes. Here Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope delivers a trenchant repudiation!

The rest of the article is quite good too.