Bacon & Other News Stories

Okay, this isn't really a news story. Some guy on his blog (I've heard he was on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but am too lazy to check), declared that he would eat nothing but bacon for the entire month of February. Slacker. Why don't you pick the shortest month of the year? I guess I could search the site to see if he made it, but I understand where he's coming from. Bacon is one of the greatest foods ever. Everything goes better with bacon. You notice which comes first in "bacon and eggs"? Without bacon, a club sandwich is just a turkey sandwich with cheese. A London Broil is just a piece of non-premium beef until you wrap the bacon around it. This guy is a true American hero. Sure, he may grow tired of bacon and might possibly be severely constipated at the end of the month, but I salute the effort.

Ah, bacon. Something that should be fed to all Muslim terrorists. Here's an interesting bit of news about Gitmo. A review by the Obama administration has found that Gitmo meets the standards of the Geneva Convention. My guess is they wanted to find that since (as noted by me) Obama might keep it open once he realizes he doesn't know what to do with them. Gives him some cover. There were a few things I found issue with. One suggestion is they "be allowed more communal recreation and prayer time." Gee, I wonder if there could be a problem with that. I wonder what people accused of plotting terrorist acts might talk about if they get to hang out together. As for prayer time, I might point out that they used their religion as the basis for their actions. Someone (who I can't remember at this time) made the point before that giving Islamic terrorists the Koran is equivalent to giving Nazi prisoners copies of Mein Kampf to read. Now, you can say that they became terrorists not because of Islam but because of their false beliefs about Islam. In that case, who gives a crap about their religious sensitivities? Another thing I disagree with is the contention that force feeding these prisoners is legal. I say if they don't want to eat, don't make them. In fact, if they later decide they do want to eat, go with their original request not to be fed.

Thomas Friedman had an interesting take on a story out of India. Muslims in India are refusing to bury the Mumbai terrorists in their cemeteries. He thinks it's a sign that moderate Muslim communities are standing up to terrorism. I think it's something else. Hindu Nationalists in India have been known to riot and kill Muslims over incidents in the past. They bury those terrorists in their cemeteries, they know full and well that they'll be lucky if just a handful of graves get desecrated. More likely the whole cemetery and probably the Muslim section of that town are going to get it.

Here's a cute story from Eurabia.... I mean England. A police force there has made the hijab (Muslim dress scarf for women) an option for the police uniform so they can get more women to join. I'm sure Muslim women working will go over well with the more radical Islamists there. I must say I like the comment by some dork on the street that it will "change people's attitudes to Muslim people." Not sure seeing a headscarf on a policewoman will change that especially since the hijab is usually associated with the hardcore Muslim cultures which also produced the immigrants who planted bombs in the London subways and tried to drive jeeps with gasoline bombs into British airport terminals. Hey, maybe stopping that would do more for changing attitudes towards Muslims.

Another cute story out of England. A silly study found that men look at sexy calendars and use the part of their brain that gets used when looking at objects. So, therefore men see the women as objects. Gee, maybe they see it as an object because it's a piece of paper with a picture and some dates on it. By definition, an object. Even better, they don't use the part of their brain that tunes into the "thoughts and feelings" of another person. Right. Are you kidding me? I'm supposed to worry about what a model in a calendar is thinking about? It's probably meth and throwing up her lunch. Oh, and this is the best. Women are different because they look at "age and bank balance" when viewing men. Glad they aren't superficial. Wait. Aren't cash machines an object?

Two 16 year olds in Arizona just got busted for getting their schoolmates to become prostitutes. I saw the picture and figured out why. Being that ugly, those two weren't going to make much money prostituting themselves.

Got to love taxes. The state of Washington is trying to boost their porn tax. Bastards. It's like I pointed out with other sin taxes, you think you're going to get more than you will as people find other ways (there's this internet thing with free porn all over it) to get their fix. And running out tax paying businesses isn't the brightest idea. Even if you have moral objections, strip bars do pay alcohol taxes.

Hey, someone else just pointed out that Obama is bragging about cutting taxes on people who don't pay taxes. Which means that any refund they get above the taxes they paid in isn't a refund. It's welfare. I wonder if anyone pointed that out before. Maybe back in August.

I know some people who think Obama is taking a chance with his stimulus package, but I point out to them that Obama is luckier than shit. Recessions are part of the business cycle. He's got four years to wait this one out. We come out in spite of his ridiculous spending bill, he takes the credit. With the spending package, the budget problems are long term. That's someone else's problem. And as one pundit points out, Obama has started by saying he'll "create or save" a bunch of jobs, but that's impossible to prove. You can't prove how many jobs would have been lost without that crappy ass spending bill. If you make an unmeasurable metric the sign of success, you can always claim victory.

Gosh, our college professors are so overworked. The University of Florida actually asked a professor to increase her teaching schedule. From one to three. The horror. How can you ask a college professor who makes almost $100K to teach three classes in a year? No wonder higher education is getting more expensive and less productive. You're paying someone to teach and not making them teach. Oh, wait. She's in Women's Studies. Who cares? That's a waste of time anyway.

This website came up with a list of strange college courses. I would have used the term retarded just to get my point across. Women's Studies at Wisconsin had a course on soap operas. Centre College here in the great state of Kentucky had one on walking (at least Centre isn't publicly funded). I'm not saying these classes are inherently wasteful, but they are. But even if they have some valid educational value, why aren't they part of a normal class? Why would you need a whole class on philosophy based on The Simpsons when you could probably just spend a week on it in a regular Philosophy class? Now, I like this blog entry. Not because it includes interesting but stupid classes I can make fun of. They had a pretty big picture of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I think she was my first bon............I mean crush.

Speaking of Wonder Woman, Joss Whedon was writing a screenplay for a Wonder Woman movie that got yanked. So, he made an interesting argument that Marvel Comics do better in movies than DC ones. Now, I'm a fan of a lot of his work, but kind of ass backwards. I liked the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie, but not the show. I did like Angel and Firefly. It's an interesting theory. He thinks that Marvel movies do better because besides Batman, DC characters are godlike while Marvel ones are human. Superman versus Spider-Man and Iron Man. Well, the original Superman movie was huge. The remake sucked. I think it has to do with the actors. People saw Christopher Reeve as Superman. That's why it could survive the ridiculous Superman II to make a couple of more crappy (but money making) sequels. Offhand, I can't tell you who played Superman in Superman Returns. But Spider-Man and Iron Man had a good (Tobey Maguire) and a great (Robert Downey Jr) actor in the lead roles. Even the Fantastic Four had eye candy Jessica Alba. Look at Batman. The most recent ones had quality actors so they did well. The original had Michael Keaton who I like but can't see as Batman, but it did have Jack Nicholson as the Joker. The series almost died when they put George Clooney in the costume. He's a pretty boy with a lot of female fans, but he sucks as an actor. I don't think it's the character as much as who plays it.

But enough geek stuff. Let's look at teenage pregnancy. In England, a 15 year old girl gave birth to a child with her 13 year old boyfriend named Alfie. Subtract a year to see how old they were at conception. It was a big scandal that such a young man could father a child. The fact that he looks about 9 years old made it even bigger. Then it got even stranger. Two other teenagers have claimed that they are the real father and not the 13 year old. Oh wait. That was rather old news. We're now up to eight other teenagers claiming to be daddy. The original stories focused on the 13 year old "father", but why isn't anyone looking at the girl? How bad is her rep that no one seems to be taking up for her and saying she wouldn't sleep around like that? And what about the families? Apparently, they were allowed to sleep together. Here's a thought. If you don't want to be a national scandal, at least make an effort to keep them from fornicating. And has irrelevant celebrity gotten to the point that a bunch of teenagers want a piece of the action by claiming they knocked up a 12 year old's girlfriend? Look at the statement by the second boy to claim he's the real father. He says he's "really worried I could be the father." If you're worried, keep your mouth shut and let Alfie's family pay for it (or more likely the government dole). I'm just waiting for Maury Povich to get involved. DNA tests are his specialty.