Which is a follow-up to “The girl in the locker room”, one I’d never expected to write.

Don’t it seem like kicks just keep getting harder to find?

Maybe a bit too stylish for Rosa Klebb, and maybe not quite ideal for kicking a bear in the balls.

(Via SondraK — hat tip: Jeffro.)

Whenever possible, I try to follow up on questions posed on this site. From nine years ago:

[A] non-landed (by which is meant they don’t own their own facilities) naturist group (this should require no explanation) sends word that they have added to their scheduled offerings clothing-optional bowling. What I want to know is: do they still rent shoes?

This month’s AANR Bulletin has a photo of members of Native Woods Naturists Park, taken at a bowling alley. And every last one of them is wearing shoes, though clearly some of them aren’t rented, since they don’t match the others.

And yes, it is possible to notice shoes, even socks, on a person who is wearing nothing else.

If looking at the contemporary political/cultural scene gives you a sense of déjà vu, there’s a reason for that, says Andrea Harris:

Everywhere you go, everything you encounter, every attitude and platitude and political position, has its roots in the jocks-vs.-nerds, popular-vs.-unwanted, James-Spader-Molly-Ringwald-couples-don’t-exist-in-real-life dichotomy the nation’s citizenry experienced in high school. We are currently experiencing a revenge-of-the-nerds administration — with the sting in the tail being that Obama really isn’t a nerd, he’s just one of those people who would have been a jock but for having no athletic ability. There’s nothing worse than someone who can’t be what he is. We must all pay for his personality dysfunctions.

The one thing policy wonks have in common is, of course, wonkishness.

Contrariwise:

Anyway, Sarah Palin is, obviously, a jock, and so all of us who fancy ourselves intellectuals whether artistic or scientific or both must be up in arms against her commonplace, shallow, brawn-not-brain, “get your nose out of that book and clean up your room!”, boys-who-won’t-play-football-are-fags, scratchy “nice” dress for church no you can’t sleep late, God wants you to stay a virgin! self. Or … do we?

I tell you, if John Hughes had just started making films this year, he’d be hailed as a political satirist. And a better one than Michael Moore, at that.

Kathy Shaidle reproduces an email from Rick McGinnis which details some of the lesser-known disadvantages of cannabis:

1. It makes people think Pink Floyd were a good, even great, band, instead of a sporadically interesting psychedelic artifact who outright sucked by the time they released The Wall.

2. It’s the reason why music stores can lease-to-buy instruments at terms that would make the mafia blanch, because their time-installment purchasers would rather pay ten dollars a month for a hundred years than come up short when it comes time to pay their pot dealer.

3. Because their parents proudly admit to smoking it, it’s deprived the children of boomers of their last chance to reject their parents as high-handed, hysterical, out-of-touch conformists and made regular law-breaking socially acceptable.

4. It’s made British Columbia and its underground economy far too viable; without it (and Chinese real estate speculation), the province would be just another geographic catch-basin for the country’s cranks, flakes and dimwits — like California without either Hollywood or Silicon Valley.

5. Jam bands.

Ten bucks a month for a hundred years is, um, $12,000. This sounds like the terms you’d get from one of those rent-to-own joints, except they won’t stretch your payments out much beyond a hundred weeks.

Bob Keane already used the best title for his book, and since he’s gone now, I have no qualms about using it here.

Before he was Bob Keane, he was Bob Keene, and before that Bob Kuhn; he played clarinet and fronted big bands, to the extent that big bands would permit themselves to be fronted by a kid like Kuhn.

Somewhere around 1957, Keene went to work for John Siamas at Keen Records. (Note the absence of a final E.) Their first signing was a gospel singer named Sam Cook. (Note the absence of a final E.) Cook had been doing gospel sides for Art Rupe at Specialty, and Rupe was apparently fine with Sam doing secular stuff, until he found out that Sam wasn’t trying to reach the same market as Specialty’s other R&B hitmaker, Little Richard. “You Send Me” and other hits by Sam Cooke made a lot of money for Siamas, not so much for Keene, and Keene decided he wanted to own his own label outright.

“Del-Fi” was indeed like the oracle, only in, um, hi-fi. Keene (not yet “Keane”) had been recording Mexican pachuco stuff around L.A., and out in the San Fernando Valley he happened upon a high-school kid named Richard Valenzuela who played a mean guitar. Signed to Del-Fi in 1958, the youngster was dubbed “Ritchie Valens,” and his first single, “Come On Let’s Go,” charted; the second, “Donna,” was a smash — as was the B-side, a reworking of the old Veracruz folk song “La Bamba.”

One more single was waxed — an instrumental called “Fast Freight,” listed on some labels as by “Arvee Allens,” before February made us all shiver. Keane continued to issue local L.A. stuff, generally with either surf or vocal-group (the word “doo-wop” was studiously avoided in some circles) acts; one of my favorite obscurities continues to hide out in Del-Fi’s archives.

In 1966, Keane’s Mustang label issued tracks by the Bobby Fuller Four, a passel of Texan expats who sounded like Buddy Holly brought up to date; their biggest single, in fact, was “I Fought the Law,” written by latter-day Cricket Sonny Curtis, and they followed it up with a cover of Holly’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You.” For reasons unknown, Bobby Fuller wound up dead; a year later, so did Del-Fi.

In the middle 1990s, Keane reactivated Del-Fi, and, to the delight of record-collector geeks, he started his new numbering sequence where the old one had left off. About the time he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, he sold the label to Warner Music Group. At this writing, Del-Fi.com has gone dark, perhaps in tribute to Bob, who died Friday at 87.

Buy a mobile home, get a free can of pork and beans:

Expires New Year’s Eve. The offer, I mean.

If you missed the Weezer Snuggie, try here.

BBC angrily pulls shows off air after discovering that producers passed fake scenes off as real, saying that behaviour might be acceptable in climate change research but daytime television has higher standards than that.

(Linked to this.)

It should surprise no one — no one in Illinois, anyway — that Cook County Board president Todd Stroger resisted the idea of reducing the county’s sales tax: governments seldom give up revenue if they can help it. The board voted to reduce the tax; Stroger cast his veto; the board overrode it.

The tax reduction, which will drop the sales tax in most of Chicago to 9.75 percent, goes into effect on — the first of July?

Pending any legal challenge, the reduced tax will go into effect on July 1 — the soonest that the Illinois Department of Revenue, which actually collects the tax, can update its computers.

Excuse my French, but WTF? Oklahoma puts out entirely new updates every quarter, and we’re supposedly just a couple of years into that indoor-plumbing thing.

Must be a runner for the Chicago Way, down there in Springfield.

MartzMimic, commenting before a sea of Ogles, explains why he’s supporting the MAPS 3 package:

In each of the previous proposals — including last year’s vote to improve the Ford Center and build a practice facility for the Thunder — our city leaders have actually delivered what they said they would deliver. Too many people seem to forget what Oklahoma City was like prior to MAPS.

Downtown certainly wasn’t a place a pretty girl could go plaster shark posters in relative safety.

Nick Roberts has a whole Top Ten, from which I single out Number Three:

Embarrass the Stimulus. The Stimulus does not work because people in Washington, DC do not know what needs OKC or any town has. Even if they knew what projects the people in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis supported, here in OKC we got nothing from the Stimulus. Is there a guarantee the Stimulus will work? No, in fact precedent is way against it. Precedent is however in favor of MAPS. If you want to make a political point against government waste and pet projects, vote for MAPS. Let’s prove a powerful point to Washington: special projects are best left to local leaders NOT distant politicians.

Actually, we got a few bucks here and there, inasmuch as most of the funds seem to be spent on state government, and OKC has been the state capital ever since we didn’t actually steal the state seal. But not much of it is going to be spent on stimulating actual private investment, which is the whole point of MAPS. (Okay, “satisfying some people’s Edifice Complex” is up there somewhere, but it’s not at the top.)

I still have issues with the methodology in place around here, but I remain unpersuaded by the opposition.

Somali sea gangs are now selling shares:

In Somalia’s main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate.

It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations — and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.

Said one, um, interested party:

“Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking.

“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”

The really remarkable aspect of all this, if you ask me, is that ACORN didn’t think of it first. Too capitalist-sounding, maybe?

(Via SteveF at Daily Pundit.)

I mean, seriously, what’s the deal? Mistral? “We paid for this font, now we’re gonna use it”? Or is it just that it’s two in the morning (midnight Pacific) and nobody gives a damn?

Not even the presence of Nicole Petallides can compensate for that level of eyestrain. As Jenn says, “You just make it easy for critics to come after you.”

(Okay, who was that who muttered “At least it wasn’t Comic Sans”?)

If your idea of great basketball is seeing a three-point shot go down, you’d have loved this game: the Thunder put up 24 of them and made 12, while the 76ers got 14 of 23. But while the shooting was about equally effective on both sides, Oklahoma City did some serious board control, outrebounding Philadelphia 43-29 — 18 off the offensive glass, yet — and the Thunder posted their tenth win in eighteen games, 117-106 over a Philly squad that led at halftime and stayed close through most of the third quarter.

Much of the Sixers’ offense was provided by A.I., and that means Andre Igoudala. (Allen Iverson has signed with Philadelphia, but likely won’t see action until next week.) Igoudala was good for 28 points; fellow forward Thaddeus Young contributed 20; Elton Brand, playing sixth man these days, got 13. Rookie point guard Jrue Holiday scored 15, his career high.

The Thunder had five players in double figures, including the much-missed Nick Collison, who returned from a knee ailment with an 18-point, seven-rebound performance in 21 minutes off the bench. Also returning from an injury — and then developing a new one — was Nenad Krstić, who dropped in 12 points. Thabo Sefolosha also had 12; Jeff Green knocked down 19. Russell Westbrook managed only seven points, but served up 15 assists, a personal record. The Durantula finished with a slightly-above-average 33 points.

Two more games in this homestand: the Celtics will be here Friday night, the Warriors on Monday. Boston will of course be tough; then again, the Thunder somehow are 6-1 against teams from the East. And when Golden State arrives, expect another shotfest: that’s what they do.

Generations Healthcare, it says in the paper, is offering free informational seminars this month on the subject of Medicare. In an effort to make attendees health-conscious, they’ve selected the locations carefully:

Dec. 4 — Panera Bread, 10600 S Pennsylvania.
Dec. 9 — Starbucks, 3616 N May.
Dec. 10 — Krispy Kreme, 1024 SW 74th.
Dec. 17 — Denny’s, 1617 W I-240 Service Road.
Dec. 22 — Krispy Kreme, 1024 SW 74th.
Dec. 29 — Krispy Kreme, 13500 N Pennsylvania.
Dec. 30 — Dunkin’ Donuts, 1600 S Sunnylane.
Dec. 31 — Starbucks, 3616 N May.

Each session starts at 9:30 am and will run for approximately one hour.

But I could never reach this level of productivity:

I did my own self-imposed sprints that were more conducive to my schedule, but I think this actually helped me increase the number of words I got in an hour (along with a little typing game that I had started playing). Where in previous years I averaged about one thousand words for each hour, this year I cut that time in half. There were even times when I wrote more than one thousand words in thirty minutes. This also resulted in chapters that were twice as long as the ones in previous years.

None of this would matter, of course, if those words weren’t worth reading.

Having read several of her previous works, though, I’m confident that they will be.

I can feel a venti coming on:

We have decided to open our own business. A coffee shop. With strippers. For now we’re calling it “Java ‘N Jugs.”

But we’re not going to be like those Seattle bikini-clad coffee-slingers. Our baristas (which will be us to start) will be dressed like Dita Von Teese: classic red lipstick, pin curls, silk stockings, 1930s styling. Put a tip in the tin and we take a little off. Eventually we’re in our knickers, a-makin’ coffee. We’re strip-tistas! But classy ones. And also ones that don’t get naked because I’m pretty sure that being naked behind the counter would be a violation of health codes.

Besides, if they got to the point of being topless, some nimrod would probably burn down the place.

Rob O’Hara spots an unfortunate example of auto-truncation:

At least, we’re assuming that this was unintentional.

Someone had the audacity (not the audio-editing software) to ask this at Yahoo! Answers:

I am interested in finding a blog response tool that will automatically post comments to relevant blog topics to help promote our business/products (ie. someone blogs about one of our products, then our automatic response posts a comment with a link/promotional code to buy that product).

Does anyone know if a tool like this exists?

In other words, he would like to spam, and he’d like our assistance in getting started.

Let’s see. There’s “No,” and then there’s “Hell, no.” What’s next?

The Secret Service didn’t catch Tareq and Michaele Salahi, says martial artist Stephen W. Browne, because the couple didn’t appear to be up to anything sneaky:

Presidential security, any security organization charged with protecting life and property, is trained to perceive and deal with threats. A threat, to bodyguards, is most often a person or persons nearby with the intent to do harm. That intent creates in an aggressor, certain subtle patterns of behavior that people with experience and competent use-of-force training learn to recognize.

And the Salahis didn’t exhibit any of those patterns:

The Secret Service fell asleep on this one precisely because [the] Salahis weren’t assassins, spies, or saboteurs. They weren’t on a mission — they were on a lark.

The Salahis were completely without malice, and thus failed to alarm the trained “instincts” of the President’s bodyguards.

Apparently this is a job for the likes of Sherlock Holmes, who is attentive enough to note when a dog fails to bark.

For that matter, so can you, without a great deal of effort:

Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

And it’s not like you’re going to be dipping into the eggnog in April, fercrissake.

The most sensible commentary on Allen Iverson I’ve yet seen, from Sixers blog Depressed Fan (and isn’t that a great name?):

I’m on the record against this move from pretty much every basketball angle imaginable, but now that it’s happened I just have to move on.

I’m truly glad Iverson accepted the non-guaranteed contract, to me it says he’s serious about wanting to play basketball, he’s got something to prove and essentially he ceded the control of the team back to the three Eds, for better or worse. Iverson is essentially on double-secret probation until January 10th (or until he lights up the scoreboard and it would be financial suicide to cut him). Missed practices, explosions in the press, chasing his wife around naked waving a gun, any episodes like this could end his NBA career abruptly, so hopefully he’ll keep his nose clean for the time being.

You have to figure that A.I. is not known for humility — not now, not ever — but if he wants to play, he’s going to have to toe the line.

And where does this leave rookie Jrue Holiday? When the Sixers were here in OKC, Jrue basically made life miserable for Russell Westbrook; Iverson can’t defend against a Skee-Ball machine.

Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche is claiming its new experimental once-a-week oral medication for type-2 diabetes works better than Merck’s hotly-hyped daily Januvia.

The stuff is known as taspoglutide — no cute brand name yet — and it has a certain appeal to those of us who pop six tablets a day.

On t’other hand, those ancient remedies I take run around $20 a month; it’s a safe bet Roche will be asking a lot more than that for their new pill. And inasmuch as my glucose levels aren’t off the scale, I probably don’t need the higher tech. (Last reading: 128 mg/dl, which isn’t praiseworthy, but which isn’t going to cause a Death Panel to be convened on my, um, behalf.)

The death of former Miss Argentina Solange Magnano of complications from a botched gluteal implant prompted this musing from Stacy McCain:

She died trying to get a bigger butt? I’m sorry, but why didn’t someone tell her about the miraculous American butt-growth formula known as bacon double cheeseburger?

You may be sure my kids know about this formula. Then again, they were reared correctly from the start.

Automobile Magazine (January) attempts to rate the states according to these criteria:

We gathered a raft of data from all fifty states [DC doesn't count, for the obvious reason] and ran it through a special formula to help quantify the pain. This produced scores in three general areas: Cost, Aggravation, and Harassment. Adding the three together gave us a Total Driver Misery Index, which rates each state on the hostility it shows toward motorists.

You might think that this would map neatly from red to blue, and indeed Wyoming comes in at the top (an Index of a mere 24) while California sinks to the cellar (a whopping 93), but that oversimplifies the case: decidedly blue zones like Minnesota and Oregon are on par with, or better than, stand-on-it places like Oklahoma and Kansas.

“Cost” includes vehicle sales tax and registration fees, price of a driver’s license, gas tax, and whether you’re likely to be hit with tolls. Apart from the gas tax, which is merely moderate, Oregon’s costs are among the lowest. (In fact, the only state lower is Alaska, whose gas tax can fairly be described as “nominal.”) Indiana (humongous toll road, very high registration fees) and California (it’s California, dammit) cost the most.

“Harassment” is figured by speed limit, points and whether you can get rid of them, membership in a driver’s license compact (so that your misdeeds at Point B are reported back to your home at Point A), the presence or absence of cameras in lieu of police work, and by actual police work (officers per highway mile). Kansas excels here by a small margin. Absolute worst: Delaware, which has a lowish 65-mph speed limit and approximately one black-and-white per mile. Virginia, the only state to ban radar detectors, runs mid-pack otherwise.

“Aggravation” is a mixture of mild stuff — how often you have to renew your license, whether you have emissions tests or not, the presence or absence of a front plate — and more annoying stuff that’s presumably weighted more heavily. New Jersey’s horrendous traffic — 97.7 cars per mile — and high percentage of substandard roads won it the dubious award for Most Aggravating, though Hawaii and California are close behind. Lowest aggravation was to be found in Montana, which has relatively good roads and almost no traffic; Kentucky has more traffic but even better roads.

Oklahoma placed a bit better than average, coming in 19th; the major dings were a ridiculous number of toll roads and generally lousy road conditions.

Well, not just any port, I suppose:

I sound like I’m coughing up a lung. I’ve probably got the swine.

So tonight I’m trying a new strategy: port wine.

I’ve had two glasses — so far — and it seems to be working. And if it doesn’t, well, who cares?

Probably less expensive than NyQuil, too.

Today is Tyra Banks’ 36th birthday, but this picture is from a third of a lifetime ago: in 1997, when she was sporting the Victoria’s Secret “Fantasy Bra,” street value $3 million.

For comparison, here she is in the 2004 version, ostensibly worth $10 million.

Disclosure: When I pulled that picture out of the archives, I had no idea Tyra was wearing something hyperexpensive. Then again, I’ve always believed that expensive lingerie is good for show, not so good in actual use.

Further disclosure: Edited to fix date.

Smitty, interviewed at American Glob (as noted here), not only connects the dots but tracks the vectors:

It’s interesting that analysis of an engineering system, from a control standpoint, involves discovering where the state is kept. The same word, “state”, which we use in a political context. Where are the gazinatas and gazoutas? Where does potential and kinetic energy store itself internally? Given a transfer function that models something, what signals would be required to drive the system to a different operating point? To put the elevator on another floor of the building in a way that is quick, but does not have the passengers going ballistic. All useful feedback is negative: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” — John 15:2

In fact, that could be a slogan for the blogosphere: “All useful feedback is negative.” In the rare instance that [fill in name of politician] is doing something right … but never mind, we’ll cover that when we get into fiction generally.

The surprise, I have to conclude, is not so much that the Celtics have won 16 of 20 games, but that they somehow managed to lose four; they dominated and then some tonight, dispatching the Thunder 105-87 with seeming ease.

Telling statistic: both teams put up 17 three-point shots, but Boston connected on 9, OKC making only 3. (A difference of, um, 18 points.) Then again, it wasn’t just the long ball: the Celtics outrebounded the Thunder, 40-30, and moved the ball like crazy, recording 24 assists, versus 11 dimes from OKC. All five Boston starters, plus two reserves, landed in double figures; the Thunder managed only two, though Kevin Durant had a stirring 36 points. With Nenad Krstić sidelined again, Nick Collison started in the middle, but got into foul trouble quickly. And when the starters all disappeared halfway through the fourth quarter, we got to see Shaun Livingston again: he didn’t put up a shot, but did retrieve a couple of rebounds.

Meanwhile, Kevin Garnett missed exactly one shot all night, out of 11, racking up 23 points in less than 26 minutes. It was this sort of ruthless efficiency, both with the ball and defending, that got the Celtics off to an 11-point lead in the first quarter, which held up through halftime and then widened.

Through four games of this homestand, the Weather Phenomena are 2-2; the finale comes Monday against the Warriors. If they’re going to have a chance, they’re going to have to hit a whole lot of treys.

My garage was built in 1951, three years after the rest of the house; the garage-door opener is clearly newer than that, but it’s pretty much an antique just the same. After six years, the aftermarket remote control failed — a new battery did not restore it to health — and I ordered a new one, same brand, pretty much the same model.

Now if you remember these old village-smithy openers, the actual remote code is set by a bank full of DIP switches, extremely easy to work but presumably very difficult, or at least very expensive, to duplicate in miniature.

And if you remember old IDE drives, they came with a couple of jumpers, which you had to set with a pair of needle-nose pliers to identify which drive was which to the controller. A genuine pain in the neck, but generally you only had to do it once.

Now copy that pain, paste it to the size of a remote control for a garage-door opener, and multiply it past all understanding: there are fourteen jumpers, each of which can be set in one of two positions. I wound up having to move eight of them and discard two others to get it to work. A genuine pain in the neck. I hope I never have to do this again. Then again, this opener’s days are probably already numbered: the guy who works on my door has warned me that parts supplies have long since dried up. (We’re talking seriously obsolete here.)

You know, this just might work:

Start at the age you wish to remain for all time. This is your “desired age” or “DA.” Then every year, subtract the number of years since you started the lie from your current “DA” to arrive at your “Adjusted Age Related to Personhood” or “AARP.” To avoid confusion, it’s easier to just call this number your “age.” Like climate “sceintists,” you will likely find that as your “actual age” diverges from your “desired age” it is necessary to make certain “adjustments” (e.g. face lift, lips suction, etc…) to reconcile your “actual appearance” with the effects of facts: adjust for time and decompensation. Eventually, you can hire a democrat working at the Bureau of Vital Records as a “consultant” to destroy your birth certificate and claim it was lost. Of course, then you will need to kill anyone in your immediate family and friends who knows your actual age, but hey, that’s what SEIU is for. Hope this helps, and Merry Festivus.

(Found in this thread by Joan of Argghh!)

New York’s The Cut managed to come up with a headline of vast snarkiness: “Michelle Obama Wore Clothes to Light the Christmas Tree,” which spawned rather a lot of variations on the theme of “Well, I should hope so.” (For example, this from Suzette: “Heaven protect us and save us all from the day when she makes headlines for doing something without wearing clothes.” And I, of course, weighed in with a tweet, noting in follow-ups that it’s December, after all.)

This isn’t the outfit she wore for the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony on Thursday — that would be here — but it’s still pretty sweet: understated, cut to something resembling proper proportions, and utterly lacking in wacky accessories.

(Spotted by Lawren; photo by Olivier Douliery/Abaca.)

Actually, it’s a fairly new game, though based on old (un)principles, and Shell, despite the attribution, is not involved. Received in email this morning:

Dear Funds Beneficiary,

This is to notify you that you have been officially chosen by the Board of Trustees of the Foundation International (NGO NETHERLANDS) as one of the final recipients of a cash Grant/Donation for SHELL Economic Growth and a Poverty Alleviation Scheme via your email. You are therefore advice to view the attached file and fill the official payment processing form and send it to the approved payment Finance firm for immediately processing and release of your lucky grant.

Regards,
MANAGEMENT
FOR Royal Dutch Shell

Whatever this scheme is, I’m reasonably certain it’s not going to alleviate my poverty. The two attachments are an ostensible Word file called “Shell Foundation Development.doc” and something called “CLAIMS PAYMENT APPLICATION FORM.zip” which I declined to unzip.

Interestingly, the email address given was from a service in India, though the mail itself, if the headers are to be believed, jumped from the Netherlands to Taiwan before reaching the States.

An experiment, as it were:

Imagine that we had a global test to find the most brilliant person in the world and the point of this was that we would give this person the power to be the leader of the free world. After an exhaustive survey, we found a man who understood particle physics, spoke 12 languages, could do cube roots in his head, played classical piano, and ran the marathon in 2:15.

He decides to be Pope.

So my question is now that it can be proven without a doubt that the smartest man in the world is head of the Catholic Church, do you convert? How does it make you feel about your willingness to follow Catholic dogma?

Evidently one of those twelve languages was Latin.

Cobb came up with this Gedanken experiment to explain something about Sarah Palin, which tells me that on this scale, he ought to be at least a Cardinal by now.

If you didn’t like that experiment, you will certainly not enjoy:

Suppose everyone whose IQ was below, say, 80 was to be transported to colonies on the moon Titan. After a few generations the Bell Curve would re-establish itself. There would at that point arise a new mean, and a new set of IQs below that dividing line.

Now: would that new mean be the equivalent of an Earth 80, or will it have shifted substantially? And if so, in which direction? Flynn suggests upward, but conditions on Titan are clearly not identical to those on Earth. (At least, not outside.)

But here’s the catch:

Many racists have historically chosen that train of thought because they are in economic competition with other races. Their IQ isn’t going to be very high either. If this process continues, how sure can you be that your IQ would not make you subhuman?

Actually, I think that if I’m to be declared a nonperson, it’s going to be for reasons other than (approximately) measured intelligence, although I’m quite certain that “the good of society” will be cited as the official explanation, as it always is.

Is this really a girl’s best friend? Maybe not:

Besides, there’s this:

I never got the expensive jewelry thing. I would feel terrified to wear something that was worth more than the vehicle I drive.

In this lifetime, I’ve bought exactly one engagement ring. I have no idea where it is. (Neither does the recipient; it was stolen during a burglary about 30 years ago.) This doesn’t exactly discourage me from doing it again — at least, not as much as there being a total lack of potential recipients — but it’s disheartening at the very least.

And what’s that they say? “Two months’ salary?” If Kelley Blue Book is to be believed, that’s worth more than the vehicle I drive.

Entertainment Weekly, listing the 100 Greatest Whatever of the last ten years, mentions Twitter at #65:

Limiting yourself to 140 characters—the maximum for messages on this diabolically addictive social-networking tool—is easy once you get the

Which, if I’ve counted correctly, is 139 characters. (Actually, I didn’t count; I dumped it into TweetDeck. Full disclosure, y’know.) Doesn’t quite kill the joke, but you knew someone had to check this out, right?

Possible defense: Due to the interaction between column width and right-justification of text, “yourself,” as it appeared in the magazine (page 81, issue #1079-1080), was broken between two lines, and was duly hyphenated; maybe that accounts for the 140th character.

Then again, if you’re gonna pick nits, you might as well go for the nittiest.

Bruce Bartlett floats this notion in Forbes:

History shows that wars financed heavily by higher taxes, such as the Korean War and the first Gulf War, end quickly, while those financed largely by deficits, such as the Vietnam War and current Middle East conflicts, tend to drag on indefinitely.

However, Chris Lawrence says that history doesn’t show any such thing:

How about a more plausible explanation: Korea and Gulf War I were conflicts against state actors that fought using traditional military tactics, while Vietnam and the Middle Eastern conflicts (particularly in Afghanistan) were/are conflicts mostly involving indigenous, non-state resistance movements or terrorist cells with some degree of local popular support (the Viet Cong, Iraqi Shiite and Sunni extremists and al-Qaeda, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda, respectively) that are engaged in unconventional warfare. The mode of funding would seem to have little to do with conflict length. Particularly since World Wars I and II were also funded by massive deficit spending, yet U.S. involvement in both conflicts was comparatively brief (although not on the order of Gulf War I).

“History,” in some circles, apparently means “that period including the events we want you to notice, and not including the events we prefer you not to notice.”

With regard to Vietnam specifically, there is a fiscal factor, though not the one Bartlett thinks. Dr Lawrence continues:

[T]he Johnson-Nixon era’s massive expansion of the deficit-financed American welfare state would be a serious conflating factor in attributing Vietnam’s success or failure to its funding approach, much as the effects of the Bush tax cuts likely dwarfed Iraq and Afghanistan spending as a source of the increased budget deficit over the past eight years and change; the liberal CBPP think-tank attributes the effects of one year (2004) of the Bush tax cuts as being $276 billion in reduced tax revenues (and thus increased debt), far more than the annualized cost to the Treasury of both conflicts combined even based on the most pessimistic estimates.

Which is not, however, an argument for extended periods of war on the basis that they really don’t cost all that much: as the phrase goes, there is a price you can’t state in dollars.

This, however, is. Bartlett again:

As Boston University historian Robert Dallek told Obama at a White House meeting earlier this year, “war kills off great reform movements.” He cited the impact of World War I in ending the Progressive Era, World War II in killing the New Deal, the Korean War in terminating Harry Truman’s Fair Deal program and the Vietnam War in crushing Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Too late to inform Edwin Starr, I suppose.

“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

“And there were in the same country imperial stormtroopers abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

(Not precisely Luke 2:7-8)

Before you ask: I expect to be doing these things for quite a while, inasmuch as I don’t have a defined exit strategy.

green shoes with orange dress:  And thank you for coming by, Mrs Obama.

george w bush coitus with a Ford Mustang:  I’ve heard people say they’d been screwed by Dubya, but I’ve never heard that from a car.

most beautiful in the ward:  Which is why she got moved to a private room shortly thereafter.

I have icons that are replicating:  Perhaps you should keep them farther apart on the desktop.

my legs are ugly and crooked:  Four out of five fashionistas recommend pants.

dreams that involve freon:  Now banned by the EPA, lest you have nightmares about the ozone layer.

how to ban zombies from vent:  Fill it up with Congressmen. The zombies will quickly starve to, well, not death exactly, but something.

the question do transmissions work comes up occasionally:  Usually right about the time you’re writing a large check.

“…I don’t do this sort of thing” ayn rand:  Neither did Dominique Francon, at least at first.

chuck berry naked pics:  You must be playing with your own ding-a-ling.

“dicky fallin”:  Maybe Chuck Berry can help.

uranus hazards:  Oh, please. You’re not even trying anymore.

Obligatory Rule 34 item: trailing fudge nuts.

And we don’t have to tell you what it is, either.