Can someone tell me where the “Jesus Rode Dinosaurs” meme came from? I get that there is a contingent of people that think humans and dinosaurs co-existed (we’ve seen the dino tracks with human tracks inside them, don’t you know), but I’m pretty sure that I’ve never met anyone that believes that they survived up until the first century AD.
But the Jesus on a Dinosaur meme is all over the place right now. I see it a few times a week. When did this happen? Do people really believe this?
Women who are deficient in vitamin D at the time they are diagnosed with breast cancer are nearly 75 percent more likely to die from the disease than women with sufficient vitamin D levels, and their cancer is twice as likely to spread to other parts of the body.
Vitamin D is produced when we go out into the sun, and almost everyone is deficient: only about 25% of Americans have sufficient levels of Vitamin D. I take about 4,000 IU per day, though obviously for other reasons.
The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down.
“Voluntary supervision.” That translates to “promise to be good, and we’ll ignore whatever you do. And allow the economy to collapse.” At least they’re starting to realize that this was a huge, terrible, awful mistake.
McCain managed to pull himself away from his busy schedule of doing nothing to help the bailout negotiations to try and convince the American people that he’s worth electing President of the United States. Obama likewise took the stage, managing to pull himself away from the siren’s song of the basketball court, but only agreed to do so if there was a treadmill behind his podium, so that he could keep his heart rate elevated.
Time Magazine gives McCain a B- overall, calling his answers “hard to follow,” as well as “cluttered, jumpy, and often muddled,” but also calling him “evocative, intense, and at times emotional.”
Time gives Obama an A- overall, calling him “manifestly immersed in the past, present, and future details of policy, and eager to express his views,” as well as “polished, confident, focused,” but taking him to task for avoiding “nitty-gritty details of policy positions in favor of broad principles,” which “some voters are waiting to hear from him.”
On the economy, 58 percent of respondents said that Obama would do a better job, while 37 percent said McCain would.
On the War on Terror, one of McCain’s best issues, 49 percent said that McCain would do a better job, while 45 percent said Obama would. This is within the poll’s 4.5 percent margin for error.
On Iraq, 52 percent of people believed Obama would do a better job, while 47 percent believed McCain would. This is also within the margin of error.
CNN Polling Director Keating Holland suggests that John Kerry saw a similar bump in his numbers following his debates with George Bush, although Kerry eventually lost that election.
Perhaps most importantly, undecided voters believed Obama won the debate by a margin of 40 percent to 22 percent.
Holy crap, that number is so big I don’t even know how to pronounce it. My brain shuts off somewhere after the 8th ‘0′. I think it’s some kind of a defense mechanism. I’m just going to call it a scamtillion. Henry Paulson is asking the United States Congress to give him seven scamtillion dollars.
Okay, so I did some Googling, and it turns out that this number is seven hundred billion dollars. Seven. Hundred. Billion. He claims that this money must be given to him immediately, or the entire US economy will collapse.
What does he plan to do with that money? Here’s a helpful guide to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan. No, wait, I’m sorry, that’s the entire plan itself. This guy wants the Congress to give him seven hundred billion dollars, by the end of the week, and his entire proposal, the thing he wants passed into law, is three pages long.
This is one of my favorite parts:
The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time
This is not a blank check, no sir! We require a paltry seven hundred billion dollars in order to fix the mess that we helped create!
But the best – the absolute best – section is right here:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Go back and read that again, slowly.
“What I do with this money, what I, Henry Paulson, do with seven hundred billion dollars of the taxpayer’s money, cannot be reviewed by Congress, cannot be reviewed by any investigative or regulatory agency, and cannot be reviewed by a court of law. You just have to trust me.”
He is asking for a hundred billion dollar check, and free reign to do with it as he will. His actions, should this “bill” pass, would be unreviewable, by law. If he decided that the best way to fix the economy would be to blow it on hookers and coke, that decision could not be questioned, by law.
But let’s take a more realistic scenario. Let’s say Paulson decides that the best way to fix the economy is to give a whole lot of money to some personal friends on Wall Street. Yeah, the other firms might get a share, but the focus of the relief would be on those firms owned by Paulson’s friends. If that’s what Paulson decided, there would be nothing anybody could do about it, by law.
Or, let’s say some lower-level bureaucrat decides to do something similar. Whatever portion of the seven hundred billion dollars this hypothetical individual is given charge of gets diverted to his friends. Again, there is nothing anybody can do.
Henry Paulson is asking for seven hundred billion dollars, and no accountability. There is no way, no possible way, that something like that can happen in a democracy. The two concepts are antithetical.
Look, folks. The people that got us into this mess are probably not the best people to get us out of it. And I know for sure that the best idea is not to give one man seven hundred billion dollars and look the other way.
You may have heard of Twilight, the trashy emo-teen vampire romance novels written by Stephenie Meyer (hillariously lampooned here, here, here, and here). These books fall solidly in the “guilty pleasure” category. I honestly shouldn’t like them. Edward, the protagonist’s sparkly vampire love interest, is a controlling, manipulative jerk, Bella, said protagonist, is basically the anti-feminist, and the plot, such that it is, practically bleeds Author Wish Fulfillment. And Mormonism. These books are pretty much designed to hold no appeal to me.
And I can’t get enough of them.
I didn’t go so far as to attend the Barnes & Noble Midnight Sale when the fourth book, Breaking Dawn went on sale – that would have been awkward: a room full of fourteen year old girls, their equally obsessed mothers, and me, a two-hundred-twenty pound powerlifter with a shaved head – but I did pick it up the next day. It was Twilight that got me through the Epic Failure that was Baltimore.
They also ensured that Stephanie Meyer will never have to work another day in her life, and convinced me that I need to write my own trashy emo-teen vampire romance novel. All you need is a handful of stock characters, a whisper of plot, and a thesaurus with lots of entries under “beautiful,” and the money just rolls in.
Anyway, Twilight the novel has become Twilight the movie, opening November 21st.
Allow me to introduce you to Alice Cullen. No, not the Scottish Politician (seriously), but the Physic Vampire. (Seriously).
Ignore the giant elbow. He, er, it’s irrelevant to the discussion. Although I do want to know what he does to make his forearms that big. Anyway, Alice is Edward’s adoptive sister, a yellow Porsche stealing, lavish party throwing, extensive wardrobe having, stock market playing, day saving, ballet dancing, humorously literal vampire that can also fight Edward, one of the greatest tacticians playing the game, to a standstill because she can see the freaking future, including that punch you were going to throw at her, you silly little boy. She’s fast enough to outrun a car, and strong enough to pick the thing up when she catches it, and if she likes you, she can make you immortal. Also, great hair, and a cute nose. I think Veronica Mars just got some competition.
Detective Skills
Veronica uses her observant nature and finely-honed deductive skills, plus a large dash of personal manipulation, to ferret out the bad guy, time after time.
Alice sees the bad guy commit the crime before it happens, and can be waiting there for them to show up.
Advantage: Alice.
Fluent in Sarcasm
Veronica basically defined this trope.
Alice isn’t particularly sarcastic; her humor stems more from being intensely literal in everything she says. For example, this little bit of banter:
Alice: Why don’t we play Rock, Paper, Scissors? Edward: (Sighs) Why don’t you just tell me who wins? Alice: I do. Excellent. So…
Advantage: I find both adorable. This one is a tie.
Distressed Damsel That Saves the Day
As I’ve said before, Veronica splits her time just about equally between saving the day and being saved, making her a feminist icon, but still allowing for moments of male heroism.
Alice is, well, not going to need your help any time soon. She’s just this side of indestructible, and even if you’re one of the, say, five things on the bloody planet that can kill her, she’ll still know you’re coming, and either not be there, or be very ready for you.
Advantage: Veronica.
I Can Turn You Into A Superhero
Veronica can help you study for your Private Investigator’s license.
Alice can turn you into an immortal, indestructible killing machine with inhuman beauty and grace, Eidetic memory, and no need to sleep, ever. Also, she’ll help you dress yourself.
Advantage: Alice.
This one is going to be close, friends. Truly a battle for our generation.
One of the things I love about FaceBook is that it too two great ideas – email and whitelists – and combined them into something even better.
Email is, well, email, and a whitelist is a list of people who are allowed to do something. In this case, only people on the whitelist are allowed to send me an email. What makes FaceBook so great is that it makes whiteliting automatic: if I don’t friend you, you can’t send me a message or write on my wall. And since there are so many people on FaceBook, this isn’t even an onerous restriction. What this means is that pretty much every wall post and message I get on FaceBook is both real and worth my time. Compare that to my email, most of which gets deleted unread.
But it isn’t all roses and song. Twice this week, I’ve gotten messages that were obviously automatically generated – one saying “Hey Thomas, check out this great app,” and the other that was probably some sort of porn – in my FaceBook inbox.
FaceBook spam.
Oh no. Oh bloody hell no. I don’t know if they intended to allow apps to write messages and wall posts, but it was a mistake. That ability needs to be taken away, or that security hole plugged. I get enough requests to “Super Hug,” “Mega Poke,” “Ultra Tickle,” “Giga Drink,” and “Trademark Infringe Hasbro” as it is. I do not want to have to start ignoring my inbox and wall the same way.
I was happy, however, that I was actually warned that the sites were malicious. I was surprised, however, that it was FaceBook that did the warning: they caught it before Firefox did. That was pretty slick.
Speaking of Firefox… please, please, can someone write a web browser that doesn’t suck? Just one?
Firefox on Mac has a memory issue somewhere, and after about a day of use, it will suddenly stop loading style sheets and images, then start dropping entire pages, then the menus stop responding, and then it just kind of dies a quiet, meaningless death.
On the Windows side, the bookmark manager works flawlessly… until you restart your browser, at which time it promptly deletes all of the changes you’ve made or imported, and reverts you back to some arbitrary point in the past. Thanks for that.
And don’t get me started on Mozilla Weave. That thing was crafted from distilled fail and processed suck. Woven from uselessness, one might say.
Google Chrome. Built on Windows, using a Windows specific toolkit. Guys, it doesn’t matter how “open source” your browser is if it will only run on Windows. Also, when I go into “Preferences” and select “Internet Connection,” I want to change how Chrome connects to the internet. Opening the Windows Internet Setup Wizard is not helpful.
Opera. Nice browser. I don’t know why they sort bookmarks alphabetically by default, but that was easy enough to change. The fact that I could get flashblock working was nice, But your lack of SOCKS 5 tunneling makes you useless to me.
Every Browser That Isn’t Firefox or Opera: FLASHBLOCK. Download this plugin, and copy the crap out of it. Steal the code if you have to. But stop showing me that frigging “Shock the Monkey” ad.
