If you were wondering “When’s the next time we get to look at some more weird search strings?” the answer is “Right about now.”

hedge against car depreciation:  Don’t ever drive it. In fact, don’t even buy it.

haggis gummi bears Angry Scotsman:  Well, no wonder he was angry.

flux capacitor tattoo:  Most needle artists don’t have the 1.21 gigawatts it takes to make this design.

By hook or by crook, obtain an IQ of a minimum 75. Advice – go to the library and play some games!  Yeah, that’ll pile on the points in no time.

makeup that stays on during makeout sessions:  You’d think Cover Girl or Revlon or somebody would have addressed this need by now.

unicorn dick tattoos:  Has anyone actually seen one long enough to make a design from it?

He stated that she never once balked at the full-frontal nudity:  At which time the alarm went off and he realized that he’d dreamed the whole thing, from tryouts to trial.

does braums cook hamburgers all day:  Until three minutes before you walk in.

Pedestrian mohel orange county california:  A zoning variance for a drive-through was denied.

i think i’m correct therefore i am correct:  This mantra has kept Paul Ehrlich alive for over thirty years.

“quaaludes government controversies in the 70′s”:  Nothing controversial about ‘ludes. You just pop a couple and … zzzzzzzz …

That’s me in the spotlight, losing my social skills.

(Provoked by Sarah.)

The Dodge Challenger has returned from the dead, and most of them, yes, will have a Hemi. Chevrolet is due to ship actual Camaros any day now. And the Ford Mustang never quite went away. Which means that we have, if not necessarily bona fide muscle cars, certainly worthy pastiches of the obviously well-remembered breed, from the three manufacturers that mattered back then. (I don’t see a revised AMC Javelin on the horizon, but you can’t have everything.)

Certainly there’s some sort of market for new versions of the old: Volkswagen is officially perplexed at our fondness for the New Beetle, but keeps cranking them out, and niche retro models like Chrysler’s PT Cruiser and Chevrolet’s HHR survive still. In fact, there’s one niche retro brand: Mini, which originated in the deep, dark days of 1959.

At some point, though, you have to wonder how far it can go. I saw this over at the Car Lust Blog:

The 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air is an American icon. It may be the single most recognizable American car ever produced. Why isn’t there a 2009 Bel Air in Chevy showrooms, with 1957 styling cues and the new Malibu’s suspension and drive train? GM is foolish not to be doing something like that.

I have my doubts. For one thing, anything with the name “Bel Air” ought to have a small-block V8 engine, and while GM’s Epsilon platform, which underlies the ‘Bu, can probably accommodate a V8, GM Europe, which is in charge of Epsilon development, wouldn’t dream of such a thing.

And what styling cues would work? The General actually showed a Bel Air concept in 2002, and it was restrained, even tasteful, which the ’57 really wasn’t.

Still, “iconic” has a lot to recommend it. I remember seeing several ’56 Chevys in Turkey, of all places, circa 1974, making me wonder if GM had sold the old sheetmetal tooling to the Turks, who otherwise were spinning out recycled Britmobiles with names like “Anadol,” which over here would be a brand name for ibuprofen.

It looks and works pretty much like the old search box in the sidebar, except now it goes through Scroogle’s “scraper” instead of directly to Google, and it uses SSL to encrypt the transmission. If you use it, let me know what you think of it. (On the 404 page, there is also a site-specific search powered by WordPress, but it’s not in the sidebar.)

Recent Woot contest:

Show us a label for a wine marketed by another tech or web company.

I’m not quite sure this met the strictest standards for entry, but it was my favorite:

Although you really should see the whole thing in its full glory.

So I open up this LCD screen and there are maybe three stuck pixels out of … let’s see here … 1680 x 1050 x 3 = 5,292,000.

As I see it, there are three alternatives:

1. Box it up and send it back and hope a replacement is better;
2. Try out one of the dozens of recommended “solutions” which may or may not work;
3. Learn to live with it.

This being me, though, I found an Option 3½: maneuver some icons into position so that they conceal the offending points of light, all of which are located near the very top of the screen. At least one of them now looks like part of the icon that sits over it.

Trini reports spotting a new black-on-black-with-black-accents Nissan GT-R around our fair city over the weekend.

Since it’s probably not too likely that this is one of the Lost Ogle guys on a joyride, I’m going to assume that the owner is on the Thunder roster and has the seat cranked way back. (Unless it’s Earl Watson, who is barely taller than I am.)

Doug Ross presents “Six Easy Steps to President Hillary in 2012,” as conceived by Larwyn.

What’s scary is that it doesn’t require any strain to the Suspension of Disbelief glands.

(Via American Digest.)

Isn’t that always the response?

Two days after a mob of impatient shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart worker to death at a Valley Stream, N.Y., store, a Queens, N.Y.-based lawmaker announced plans to propose a new law aimed at controlling future Black Friday crowds, according to the Chicago Tribune. Long Island officials said they were considering similar measures. New York City Councilman James Gennaro recently held a news conference to announce his plans to craft a “Doorbuster Bill” that would require retailers to enact greater security measures during major sales. The new law was proposed in the wake of the death Friday of Jdimytai Damour, a seasonal employee who was killed after a crowd of 2,000 broke down store doors and ran over him.

Best comment so far, by Techie:

I’d also like a law against icy overpasses, while we’re at it.

Damn straight.

Fashionista and snarkmeister Tavi, twelve, explains how she got to where she is:

The three things that got me interested in fashion are all pretty much the anti-fashion. And I don’t mean in the cool Comme des Garçons way. Seventeen magazine, America’s Next Top Model, and the nu rave trend (aka hipster culture and neon colors) were what sort of kickstarted my curiosity in editorial and runway. I know none of these really have anything to do with fashion — Seventeen is mainly composed of a bunch of BS about “a pop of color!”, ANTM is pretty much centered around Tyra and using the word “fierce”, and big-lettered, neon, Henry Holland knock-off tees that say things about Going Green and Peace and Partying worn by people who don’t know they’re wearing a knock-off speaks for itself.

Aside: Who was it who said, “If Booth Tarkington had written Seventeen today, he’d have had to call it Twelve”? I’m thinking Meredith Willson for some reason.

There’s something a trifle askew about this story, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. What do you think?

I live in Oxford, MS, and my girlfriend and I researched the availability of Plan B in this state. We knew there might some puritanical problems with purchasing it here in Mississippi — we have all kinds of arcane alcohol laws and only one abortion clinic in the state, after all — and from what we could tell, a pharmacist can refuse to sell Plan B to a woman on religious/moral grounds. But otherwise pharmacies do carry it, and it should be available to a woman as long as she can prove she is over age 18. As this is a university town and a top-ranked party school, we supposed it wouldn’t be as hard to get Plan B as in other really small, ultra-conservative rural towns. And we also figured that a corporate pharmacy such as Walgreens would be less troublesome to deal with than a mom-and-pop one.

Well, the other day we decided to be extra-safe and to get the Plan B pill from Walgreens here in town. My girlfriend went and requested Plan B, equipped with the knowledge that it’s a non-prescription drug available with ID. She said the pharmacy worker started asking for proof of insurance in order to get the pill. My girlfriend refused and asked to speak to someone in charge. The pharmacist then came, and my girlfriend told him she simply wanted Plan B and that her ID should be good enough. The pharmacist then went about getting the pill, but they also seem to have a policy, a la abortion clinics, of forcing a waiting period of an hour and giving adoption literature to the person requesting the contraceptive. Now, Plan B is just an additional spermicide, not an abortion pill, but that’s another can of worms. In the end, my girlfriend demanded the Plan B immediately, and she got it, but not without a fair amount of interference on Walgreens’ part. They also insisted on writing down her driver’s license number.

I’m wondering how much trouble other people may have had with Walgreens (or any other pharmacy) over acquiring Plan B. There are several other Red States that make allowances for the pharmacists’ “moral concerns” to get in the way of getting Plan B. What are our rights in getting this pill right away? Walgreens’ website didn’t indicate that they could possibly get all high-and-mighty with her when she went to make the purchase. Could they also get uppity when you buy other kinds of contraception?

One thing jumps out at me: Plan B is not actually a spermicide.

Mississippi is, I understand, one of four states which allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense “emergency contraception” of this sort on moral grounds.

On the other hand, several states, including Oklahoma, routinely jerk you around should you wish to purchase stuff that theoretically could be used in a meth lab. (And I have to show my driver’s license to buy Ambien, fercrissake.)

I’m not quite sure what I think about all this just yet, so I’m throwing it out here. I do, however, have an ongoing policy of avoiding Walgreens on general principle.

Okay, I really don’t. Happy now?

Apparently we had an exceedingly minor earthquake last night, magnitude 2.7, although to me it doesn’t look so damn minor.

The epicenter seems to have been just east of Mercy Health Center. The Oklahoma Geological Survey would like reports from people who noticed it.

Volvo Group is not interested in buying back Volvo Cars from Ford:

Swedish industrial group Volvo is ready to help its former car unit Volvo Cars if current owner Ford goes bankrupt but is not interested in buying it back, Volvo’s chairman told a newspaper Thursday.

“We would gladly finance joint projects, such as sponsor projects or research projects, and could consider being part of various consortiums without becoming the main owner,” Volvo chairman of the board Finn Johnsson told Swedish financial daily Dagens Industri.

Ford bought Volvo’s car business for $6.45 billion in 1999.

Nor does Johnsson think the Swedish government should take over the company:

“The state knows nothing about the car industry and Volvo needs an owner that can increase sales and cooperate with suppliers on components and development,” he said, suggesting French carmaker Renault as a good owner for the Swedish company.

Compare this to the situation in the States, where every two-bit Congressweasel is suddenly an expert on the car industry.

We will not mention that Renault, with a 20-percent stake, is Volvo Group’s single largest shareholder.

(Via Autoblog.)

For my third Woot Bag O’Crap, this is the take (prices where not known set to arbitrary $5):

1 Lowepro Ridge 10 Digital Camera Bag [$10.00]
4 iGo Universal Auto Power Adapter (not including tips) [$119.96]
1 Wristlinx X33X1F 2-Way Radio Wrist Watch (set of two) [$44.95]
1 Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum Porcelain Hinged Box [$9.99]
1 OEM Dell (by ATI) TV PCI card with DVI and S-Video Output (used, does not include VGA) [$5.00]
1 Mystery auto power cord with 5-female connector [$5.00]
1 Kodak Rechargeable Digital Camera Battery KLIC-7003 [$29.95]

Total $224.85

(Previous crap here and here. More crap revelations at BagsOfCrap.com.)

Maybe it’s just me, but were someone to serve up a batch of fetus-shaped cookies at a baby shower, I wouldn’t be able to make it to the Gift Unwrapping stage.

(Via Megan McArdle.)

I am posting this mostly to get a smile out of Trini, who spent much of yesterday afternoon downgrading improving one of the local PCs:

Some used PCs are being purchased not for the hardware but because people want to get their hands on a copy of Windows XP, according to industry analysts and hardware suppliers.

Which isn’t any surprise, since the most expensive component inside the box is likely to be that copy of Windows, something I noticed way back in 2001.

Besides:

Many consumers and businesses prefer used PCs with Windows XP because they still have older copies of software programs that often don’t run properly on new PCs running Vista, said David Daoud, research manager at IDC. For example, consumers may need to buy used PCs with Windows XP to run older accounting software that is incompatible with Vista.

Although there’s a limit to how far back they’ll go: at the moment there’s no discernible demand for Windows Millennium Edition.

Disclosure: I still have a copy of Lotus SmartSuite for Windows 95. It doesn’t run worth a flying fish on XP no matter how many compatibility settings I twiddle, so you can imagine the amount of enthusiasm I have for Vista. And if you can’t, read this.

Chicago is privatizing its parking meters:

Mayor Richard M. Daley announced on Tuesday that the city has entered into a $1.157 billion, 75-year contract with Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, to privatize the collection of funds from the approximately 3,600 metered spaces on the streets of Chicago.

Right now, it costs $3 per hour to park in the Loop, $1 per hour for the Central Business District outside the Loop — an area bounded roughly by Division Street, Cermak Road, Halsted Street and Lake Michigan. It costs 25 to 75 cents in the neighborhoods outside the downtown area, with higher rates in higher-density neighborhoods, particularly on the north lakefront.

Effective next year, it will cost $3.50 to park in the Loop, $2 to park downtown outside the Loop, and $1 to park in the neighborhoods.

Those rates will go up every year through 2013, at which point it will cost $6.50 per hour to park in the Loop, $4 to park in downtown outside the Loop, and $2 to park in the neighborhoods. After that, rates will be adjusted annually by inflation, the city said.

This is a logical progression for the City of the Big Shoulders, which previously leased out the Chicago Skyway. No word yet on whether the penalties for malparkage will be increased.

(Via Fark.)

So far, this seems to be the oldest lolcat in existence:

This captioned cat picture postcard was found by Tracy Angulo in a Seattle antique store. Tracy tells us that the photograph is from 1905, which would make this officially the oldest cat picture with a caption, AKA lolcat, that we’ve seen.

The differences are clear. Proper grammar and a more formal tone was in vogue back then. But the similarities to modern-day kitten struggles and lolcats are amazing. ALL CAPS is still cool, but most importantly, she also no can has cheezburger. More than a hundred years later, all that’s changed is the spelling.

Win was epic in those days.

The one night that the Thunder manage to summon some serious offense, they fall down on ballhandling: OKC shot 54.5 percent, 63.6 from downtown, but gave up twenty points on turnovers. Add to this double-doubles by Emeka Okafor and Sean May, and it’s probably a good thing Charlotte only won by six, 103-97.

Going smaller has gotten Oklahoma City a few more points in the paint, but rebounding is off as a result: the Bobcats pulled down 35 boards, 11 on offense, versus 28 and 5. (Okafor, all by himself, had more offensive rebounds than the Thunder, not to mention outscoring everyone with 25.) At that level, it didn’t matter that the ‘Cats shot only 47.4 percent.

The Kevin Durant Show was acceptably sparkly: 24 points with three treys. Jeff Green added 18 with two treys of his own. The threes were falling so well, in fact, that Desmond Mason, who hadn’t even tried one in a couple of years, sent one up. (And missed.) We’re seeing the same point-guard pattern as before: Russell Westbrook gets the points (ten), Earl Watson serves up the dimes (11). And Chris Wilcox was a powerhouse again, with 12 points, five boards — and, once more, six fouls.

Certainly no one on this team believes that malarkey about the Eastern Conference being the weak sister of the league: the Thunder haven’t beaten anyone in the East yet. And with Orlando and Miami coming up on this road trip, they probably won’t for a while.

In today’s entry from the Dingus-Embiggener files, the pseudonymous Josefina Hogue tries a (marginally) different approach to selling the product:

Now you can invite a different woman to your bedroom every night.

Hell, I can do that now. I just can’t expect any of them to show up.

She continues:

It will be impossible not to notice all your abilities in bed.

Isn’t this pretty much always the case? I mean, if you’re any good at all, your partner will notice, and if you’re not any good, your partner will notice that too.

Need to disperse a crowd? Give ‘em a dose of this:

The original Mosquito device, launched in 2005, disperses young people by emitting an irritating high-pitched pulse which, at 17 kilohertz, most people aged under 20 can hear but almost nobody over 30 can. Around 9000 of them have been sold around the world by Welsh firm Compound Security Systems as shopkeepers and local authorities seek to ward off loitering youths.

But following demand for a device that would get rid of all undesirables regardless of age, the new Mark 4 version can operate at a lower eight kilohertz frequency that adults can hear too, annoying everyone within earshot.

Although the secret is not in the frequency, says Compound commercial director Simon Morris:

“It’s the type of sound, the tone and how it’s pulsed. Because it’s not a constant tone, your brain can’t ignore it.”

And the downturn in the world economy may actually be a boon to the manufacturer:

“The credit crunch, I think, will be good for us in the long run because the less money people have, the more likely they are to start going out and causing trouble. Usually when the economy turns down, the security industry picks up.”

The Mosquito Mark 4 sells for £495 (about $740 US).

(Via JammieWearingFool.)

Jessika tells the story:

I’m the only woman who works in the team of hardware/tech support of about 5 guys. There are more people in our shop than that, but we work together the closest due to job overlapping. So I’ve spent lots of time around them, even though I don’t share an office with them. For the most part we get along. They are all big Republican supporters, know I’m very liberal, and often joke with me about it. I joke right back. I’m fine with that, considering I live in Oklahoma after all, and there’s not a time when I’m not around Republicans. The problem comes in with a smaller group of 3 guys who hang out, talk, and go to lunch together. More specifically, how one guy makes sexist comments pretty often, and the other two either laugh or agree.

None of these are directed at me, ever. It’s always about how some woman is usually hot or ugly. Like when Palin was picked to be the Republican VP candidate. I had to hear about how good looking she is, and how much better she looked than Hillary.

Having been a guy most of my life, I know how that goes. (It’s said that men will actually vote this way if the ballots permit.)

But the bottom line is this:

I don’t need to be friends with my coworkers, but having people who can be my mentor, or to feel comfortable talking out a work issue I’m having, or even as someone they see as a person they respect and can come to … that would be really impacted. Even though with all the stuff I just talked about, it sure doesn’t seem like he really respects me anyway.

The biggest thing? I’ve been kicking myself over this a little bit. Thinking maybe I’m just being too sensitive and need to grow a thicker skin. Or being too emotional, since before writing this I was literally almost in tears thinking about it all.

A thicker skin is a good thing to have, but she’s kicking the wrong person here: if they’re acting like boorish fratboys, how is it her fault?

Which got me thinking about our own department, three men and one woman, and whether we guys exhibit the same sort of noisome drool. And I don’t think we do, not so much because we’re so terribly enlightened and all — God knows I’m not — but because neither I nor my co-doofuses feel the least bit threatened by her presence. (Now her absence, that would be scary: we’d never be able to catch up with the hardware backlog.) Atavistic and Cro-Magnon as it may seem, there are still guys who quail at the very thought of being outdone by some mere girl (pronounced “GUR-uhl,” with as much feigned indignation as possible). I’d like to think that at least some of us have gotten past that stage.

(“You’re not nearly that bad,” said Trini, reading over my shoulder, although in fairness I must point out that “not that bad” does not equal “good.”)

At least some of MGA Entertainment’s Bratz dolls have been found to infringe Mattel copyrights:

U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson in Riverside, California, yesterday granted Mattel’s request to stop MGA from making most of its multiethnic fashion dolls that have contributed to a drop in Barbie sales since being first sold in 2001. A jury earlier found that a Mattel designer came up with the Bratz name and characters and secretly took the idea to MGA.

“Mattel has established its exclusive rights to the Bratz drawings, and the court has found that hundreds of the MGA parties’ products, including all the currently available core female fashion dolls Mattel was able to locate in the marketplace, infringe those rights,” Larson said in his ruling.

Mattel did not get everything it wanted, however: damages awarded were $100 million, well short of the $2 billion sought, and some of the MGA dolls (mostly of the younger-sister variety) were ruled not to have infringed on Mattel’s intellectual property. Designer Carter Bryant and Mattel reached a settlement earlier this year.

Forbes reports that the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise is worth $300 million, 24th in the NBA, up 12 percent from last year.

It’s obviously too early to tell whether generally higher attendance here in the Big Breezy will be enough to offset the $9.4 million the team lost last season in Seattle; revenues last year were $82 million, lowest in the league. (Still, the decidedly-wealthier teams in Dallas and Denver lost more, due largely to higher payroll costs: both the Mavs and the Nuggets got hit with the luxury tax two years running.)

And the $300-million valuation remains short of what Clay Bennett and friends paid for the franchise, not including various payments to escape the Pacific Northwest. A money machine this isn’t — yet.

Michele remembers the Archies, and not on vinyl, either:

It was cardboard and it came on a cereal box. You had to punch it out of the back of the box and I remember being so surprised that you could actually play this thing like a real record. It was all the rage back then (late 60s, early 70s) and all the cool bands were doing it: The Banana Splits, the Monkees, The Jackson 5 and even (sigh) Bobby Sherman.

No one would let me play it on their stereo. Not my parents, not my cousins, not even the next door neighbor. No one would dare let their precious needle touch a piece of cardboard pretending to be a record. I suspect now that it wasn’t so much the cardboard as it was the Archies themselves.

I broke down and played it on my Fisher Price record player. I thought of this as a toy more or less, one which played nothing but novelty records and damn it, the Archies were not novelty. They were real.

If only she could have been there the first time “Sugar, Sugar” was sung live, in person, in public, by the original artists.

In, um, 2002.

Subprime lenders: wicked, evil, nasty predators, right? Not necessarily:

Community-development banks, credit unions and other [community-development financial institutions] — a mixture of faith-based and secular, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations — constitute what might be called the “ethical subprime lending” industry. Even amid the worst housing crisis since the 1930s, many of these institutions sport healthy payback rates. They haven’t bankrupted their customers or their shareholders. Nor have they rushed to Washington begging for bailouts. Their numbers include tiny startups and veterans like Chicago’s ShoreBank, founded in 1973, which now sports $2.3 billion in assets, 418 employees and branches in Detroit and Cleveland. Cliff Rosenthal, CEO of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, notes that for his organization’s 200 members, which serve predominantly low-income communities, “delinquent loans are about 3.1 percent of assets.” In the second quarter, by contrast, the national delinquency rate on subprime loans was 18.7 percent.

Of course, they’re not in it just for the potential returns:

What sets the “good” subprime lenders apart is that they never bought into all the perverse incentives and “innovations” of the late subprime lending system — the fees paid to mortgage brokers, fancy offices and the reliance on securitization. Like a bunch of present-day George Baileys, ethical subprime lenders evaluate applications carefully, don’t pay brokers big fees to rope customers into high-interest loans and mostly hold onto the loans they make rather than reselling them. They focus less on quantity than on quality.

I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t exactly a “prime” customer when I went loan-shopping in ’03, but I did manage to nail down some financing with a statewide bank, at a reasonable rate. And they haven’t resold my loan, either: I’m still dealing with the same folks. (In fact, I still get birthday cards from the loan officer.)

I checked in with Central Oklahoma Habitat for Humanity, a faith-based group that has built hundreds of homes around town. They quote their default rate as “approximately 3%.”

Of course, Oklahoma was never a hotbed of “creative” home financing, which explains why the market hasn’t quite gone to hell here, though builders with lots of inventory may beg to differ.

(Found by Moxie.)

Almost everyone has bought a used CD at one time or another, and inasmuch as CDs don’t become used all by themselves, you have to assume that someone sold that disc back to the store at some point. The record industry doesn’t like this much, but the record industry doesn’t like much of anything these days; as a matter of fact, they didn’t like it back when people were trading actual records.

But with MP3s and such largely supplanting CDs these days — no, wait, don’t even think it:

Bopaboo is a music download service that offers DRM-free music at far lower prices than you’ll find elsewhere — as low as 25c per song in fact. How do they do this? Because the music is second hand. Yep, you read it right.

Someone has decided that people are going to want to sell MP3s that they’ve already listened to or, don’t want anymore, to other people. That’s if, of course, other people are going to be willing to buy them.

Used MP3s! Wonder if they’ll be graded for quality the way used records are.

Perhaps thinking about the weather, Andrew Ian Dodge has described this week’s Carnival of the Vanities as “grey.”

This is not to be confused with “Beyond the Gray Sky,” from 311′s album Evolver.

Advice to the Republican Party, by Robert Stacy McCain:

At some basic level, politics is about popularity. When the other guys nominate Will Smith and you nominate Mister Magoo, no grand ideological theory or demographic trend is necessary to explain why you got your ass kicked.

Not even Betty Rubble could have saved that ticket.

You may remember Donald Thompson from the following lojinks:

Attorney General Drew Edmondson has filed an official complaint against Judge Thompson, charging him with, um, banging his gavel, so to speak.

Or this:

Thompson came under fire for sending Johnson up for a long stretch, so to speak, and gave up his bench; he has entered a plea of Not Guilty to three counts of indecent exposure.

Or this:

Former judge Donald Thompson, who resigned from office after charges of manually-operated sexual misconduct were brought against him, is facing new charges: improper use (or, more precisely, non-use) of briefs during trials, and storage of inappropriate materials on his office computer.

I guess the man truly loves the limelight:

A former Creek County judge convicted of indecent exposure was arrested early this morning on a drunken driving complaint.

Donald Thompson, 62, was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper about 3 a.m. on a complaint of driving under the influence of alcohol. He was taken to the Tulsa County jail.

Thompson served two years in prison for indecent exposure for using a penis pump while he was on the bench during court proceedings. Thompson lost his law license by [order of] the Oklahoma Supreme Court earlier this year.

I suppose it’s a good thing he actually had pants on for once.

One more incident, though, and I’ll probably have to give Thompson his own farging category.

The stuff I take for hypertension costs me $2 per tab, once a day. (Were I blowing off my insurance coverage, it would be somewhere between $2 and $3.) Needless to say, it’s a name-brand drug, and it will be on patent at least through 2011, so I can hardly wait for it to show up in generic form at Target for $4 for thirty tabs.

Then again, maybe not:

I am aghast at the latest headline spin insisting that generic drugs are just as good as the more expensive brands.

Why? Because the study cited doesn’t “prove” that at all. The “survey” was not a survey of actual drugs taken randomly from your local pharmacy, but a “survey” of articles that examined generic versus brand name medicines.

The problem? This means that “headsup” articles, where medications were caught being a problem and were taken off the market, aren’t included.

Nor is that the only problem:

[D]o your generics come from a long established company, that would face lawsuits, loss of their good name, and even bankruptcy for peddling fake ingredients, or does the generic come from a “fly by night” company whose owners can take the money and run?

Of course, with globalization, even well known drug companies in the US and Europe are using ingredients or using factories in third world countries.

I looked to see who’d gotten approval for the generic version of my antihypertensive, and that firm (there’s only the one, so far) has been around nearly as long as I have, which suggests that maybe I’m not running that big a risk by trying to save $56 a month.

Okay, who picks the tunes?

When I was studying for my GCSEs, I remember hearing someone on the local radio station discussing the merits of listening to music during revision sessions. I needed no further reason to whack up the volume on OK Computer and The Fat Of The Land (have you guessed the year yet?), and since then I’ve always played music while I worked.

It’s fine when you get to choose the tunes yourself, but what if you’re one of many in a workspace? The factory I worked at in school holidays would never budge from the local dance music station, and subsequent offices have kept strictly to one channel, usually the one with five ever-repeating tunes.

We maintain a music server at 42nd and Treadmill, with a surprisingly-wide variety of stuff, though people who have access to it are generally expected to keep it to themselves, dammit. I occasionally raid it for single tracks, often at Trini’s suggestion, but in general, what plays in my office is my iTunes install, currently closing in on 4000 songs, mostly ripped from my own Stacks O’ Wax.

Then again, I spent 99 cents yesterday for Leo Kottke’s “Up Tempo,” from his eponymous 1976 album, mostly because I hadn’t heard it in a long time and I figured it would be a while before I got around to ripping that LP. At 1:41, that’s almost one cent per second, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t download, say, Quadrophenia.

Apparently nothing short of earth-moving equipment can stop Dwight Howard. I mean, the man had a double-double in twelve minutes. For the full 39 minutes he played, he had 21 points and 23 rebounds, and blocked six shots. And he didn’t even have a single trey. If he had, it would have been worse for Oklahoma City: the rest of the Magic hit 10 of 16 from beyond the arc in the second half and shot down the Thunder, 98-89.

The big news in Orlando, though, was the return of Jameer Nelson, who played 28 minutes and knocked down 15 points, including three treys. I’d say he’s healthy.

This wasn’t quite as bad as the shellacking the Thunder got earlier this season from the Magic — they stayed within striking distance most of the game, and actually led by two a couple of times — but it was the long ball that killed them: OKC got only three 3-pointers out of 9 attempts, versus 13 of 27 for Orlando. Russell Westbrook had an exceptional night, with 19 points and 9 rebounds; Kevin Durant got the double-double with 16/10. And Johan Petro, unglued from the bench, scored 15 in a mere 19 minutes. The Thunder didn’t do that much wrong tonight; they just didn’t do enough right.

More Florida to come: tomorrow at Miami. Then it’s back home to await the arrival of the Warriors on Monday.

Jennifer’s list of things she wants President Obama to consider:

1. The auto industry is directly or indirectly responsible for 1 in 10 American jobs. We need the industry, and we need it healthy. But I wish the Big Three would be encouraged and even forced to enter bankruptcy proceedings, which would in turn encourage and even force the Michigan faction to make fundamental changes designed to save itself. Man up, Detroit.

2. I wish he would offer Nancy Pelosi a nice appointment to some harmless outpost of government that she can’t refuse, but where she can first do no harm. It’s a win-win all the way around. And speaking of doing no harm, please find someone besides RFK Jr. to lead the EPA. I treasure our planet as much as anyone, but his brand of activism is better suited to the private sector. It would be deadly as policy.

3. And lastly, I wish Obama’s DOJ would take steps to eliminate the death penalty in our country, once and for all. Period.

I’m definitely in favor of the first two. As for the third, well, this is what I told Norm Geras last summer:

I keep changing my mind on the death penalty. At the moment, I favour it, but this is subject to change.

I don’t think the DOJ has the authority to pull off such a thing, but surely there’s some sort of leadership, or inspiration, or something, they can provide, should the Administration be so inclined.

Forry Ackerman has died:

Forrest J Ackerman, who influenced a generation of young horror-movie fans with Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and spent a lifetime amassing what has been called the world’s largest personal collection of science-fiction and fantasy memorabilia, has died. He was 92.

Ackerman, a writer, editor and literary agent who has been credited with coining the term “sci-fi” in the 1950s, died Thursday of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, said John Sasser, a friend who is making a documentary on Ackerman.

Over the years, that collection diminished along with Ackerman’s health; at its peak, it might have been worth $10 million.

But more valuable than the ephemera, I suspect, was the guidance Ackerman provided as Sort Of Godfather to what used to be something of a disreputable literary genre. And he was that rarest of creatures, an incorrigible punster (don’t incorrige him) who could raid seemingly any cubbyhole in the culture for material: he once knocked out a vampire story with the highly-Chestertonian title “The Man Who Was Thirsty.”

The ongoing woes in Detroit for some reason got me thinking about the Edsel, which debuted for the 1958 model year and which was gone after 1960. It wasn’t entirely Ford’s fault — there was a recession in ’58, knocking car sales down by nearly a third from ’57 — but even then, there was such a thing as Too Many Brands, and there wasn’t enough room between Ford and Lincoln for Mercury, let alone for both Mercury and Edsel. (You’re right: nothing’s changed.)

Still, Dearborn dressed up its (400-)million-dollar baby, and a glance through some Edsel brochures revealed some stuff that’s still at least semi-neat. On the ’58 dash, for instance, you might find this little gizmo:

This speed warning light is a valuable safety accessory. It casts a red glow over the speedometer if you exceed your pre-set miles-per-hour limit. Installed at a nominal price on any Edsel, the speed warning light may be set by turning a simple calibrated dial just below the speedometer.

What makes this nifty is the fact that the ’58 had a drum-type speedo, the numbers passing in front of you along a horizontal axis, so when the thing suddenly turned red, you’d have a Roger Corman special effect right in front of you, and you’d wonder just when the reactor was going to melt down.

The calibration of the “simple calibrated dial” seems to end around 75, making it ideal for those nimrods who think no one should ever drive faster than that.

The ’58 Edsel also could be had with a low-fuel light, which was supposed to come on when you were down to your last four gallons, worth about a buck in those days. And seat belts were optional; Ford had been offering seat belts since ’55, but there hadn’t been all that many takers.

Then there’s this:

This was the climate control, which included, if you ponied up the extra cash, actual air conditioning. I don’t claim to understand it, but then I can barely comprehend the climate control in my own car, and it’s one of those set-and-forget jobs.

The big knock on the Edsel, though, was its exterior appearance, especially the weird vertical grille that would have scared Eve Ensler. By 1960, they’d cleaned up the look so much that it wasn’t distinctive anymore. (The new split grille was pure Pontiac, and by all accounts pure coincidence.)

And the one thing I dearly love about the Edsel, apart from its lost-cause aura — to which I instinctively relate — is this: almost all of its series names reappeared on later vehicles, including some equally doomed. The top-line Edsel was the Citation, a name you saw on a Chevrolet front-drive compact, born 1980, died 1985; second from the bottom was the Pacer, later the AMC fishbowl on wheels (1975-80). Edsel’s price leader was the Ranger, later a Ford truck; Edsel also offered a Villager wagon, a name seen on subsequent Mercury wagons and ultimately on a Nissan minivan rebadged as a Mercury.

Dogette explains how computer viruses and such are spread:

The Dumbshit virus sends an email to a Moron, who must then click on every link in the email because the email says they will receive a million dollars per click if they do. Moron then visits several badly-designed websites where everything is flashing and scrolling like crazy and the screen periodically goes black. Each of these flashing scrolling exciting websites asks Moron to “please be download teh latest version of your free INFECTION,” which is, of course, version 666. A .wav file plays a diabolical laugh while they page is being viewed (“Mwahaha!”) and a creepy computerized voice abruptly asks, “Are you SURE you want to download this?” A devil face appears on the Moron’s screen, flashing off and on in bright red. The voice then says, “Disable your virus protection software NOW and ignore any warnings about the download being EVIL!!! It is a LIE designed to keep you from claiming your millions!” A Flash presentation depicts snippets of disasters from world history in rapid succession while the download proceeds.

Moron still suspects nothing because this virus is extremely hard to detect. When the UNSUSPECTING Moron downloads INFECTION 666, his computer is immediately infected. INFECTION 666 grabs all of Moron’s personal data off his hard drive and sends it back to hackers in Germany. The hackers then try to use Moron’s data for personal financial gain, and identity theft, but they quickly learn that Moron has no money and no one wants to steal a stupid identity anyway.

See? A happy ending after all.

So we have Thunder and Heat, an odd combination for December from the meteorological standpoint, and something of a mismatch basketballwise, Miami having regained much of its mojo with Dwyane Wade back up to speed, and Oklahoma City still trying to put it all together. It was still pretty close, with the Heat leading by 15 after three quarters, the Thunder making up the difference in six or seven minutes, and Miami eventually prevailing, 105-99.

Besides, how do you defend against Wade? “Seal him in the locker room” seems to be the only thing that might actually work. We’re talking 38 points, and it’s only that few because he unaccountably managed to miss five free throws. Add to that double-doubles on both sides of the frontcourt — both Shawn Marion and Udonis Haslem had 15 points each and 26 rebounds between them — and you wonder why the windblown Thunder bothered to show up.

The answer, of course, is that they’re not quite ready to roll over and die. Russell Westbrook had never had a 20-point game in the pros, and he still hasn’t; but tonight he had a 30-point game, plus two steals and three assists and seven boards. (Once again, Earl Watson did the assist part of the point-guard game, serving up 12 dimes while scoring three points.) The Kevin Durant Show started out slow but peaked in the fourth quarter, right where you’d want it to: he finished with 18 points. Jeff Green pulled down nine boards and scored 21. And the question of who’s in the middle still hasn’t been resolved: Chris Wilcox started, but Nick Collison did most of the dirty work, putting in 27 minutes and scoring 14. Johan Petro was seen, albeit briefly.

Still, a 1-3 road trip is probably better than this club had any right to expect, and while “Tastes great / Sucks less” isn’t much of a cry for a rally, it’s a start.

“Now here’s how you fix the American auto industry: you bring all those Honda and Toyota and Hyundai workers into the UAW. Problem solved.”

(Via Fark. First reference to Rush’s “The Trees” in comment #3.)

Courtesy of the DADA Server:

Your secret name is Stubbed Toe.
The animal which symbolizes you is Beer Thirty.
The color of your soul is Round.
The celebrity you most resemble is Nutmeg.
Your special pain or illness is Hans.
Your most important time of day is platypus.
The shape of your life is twighlight.
And the flavor which identifies you most is hitler.

Possibly even “hitlest.”

On a related subject: how many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? [Answer: The bicycle's broken.]

(Suggested by Scribal Terror.)