2 months of swine flu vs. 1 month of regular flu

Some reports argue that the earliest case of swine flu originated on March 3rd in Mexico. This chart shows that less than 400 cases have been detected worldwide since then.
This means that in the entire world there are less cases of swine flu in two months than there are cases of normal flu in the Unites States in one month.

Ridiculous media frenzy, anyone?


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If I were President

If I were President, I'd change the dress code. I could never wear a suit all day, every day.

If I were President, my contribution to the White House grounds would be a big vegetable garden, that no one but me would be allowed to touch.

If I were President, one day a week I'd randomly show up at people's doorsteps and ask to eat dinner with them.

If I were President, the White House staff would have Chicago-style deep dish pizza at every possible meeting.

If I were President, I'd start a "Reds vs. Blues" 7 on 7 football game to be played on the White House lawn. My staff could choose to be red or blue. One player would pretend to be Arlen Spector, and be on the "Purple Team"...on both teams...but really on neither.

If I were President, I'd get rid of that clunky 747 that wastes gasoline and downgrade to a new Boeing Dreamliner. Practice what you preach!

If I were President, whenever I met with a foreign diplomat or leader, I'd first demand we participate in a fun activity like bowling or darts or ping pong, depending on the visitor's preference. I'd also remove all alcohol from the White House, except for a keg of Boulevard Wheat, produced by Boulevard Brewery.

If I were President, I'd encourage foreign dignitaries to call me "dude" or "bud" or by my first name. If they called me "Mr. President" I'd interrupt them and say "Whoa stop right there, Mr. President is my dad."

If I were President, I would try to get a law passed that my children were ineligible for the Office. Sons of Presidents don't seem to make good Presidents themselves. Better to save them from the humiliation of an 8 year blunder.

If I were President, I'd keep a Supersoaker watergun in my podium, and if a member of the press corps ever got on my nerves, I'd blast 'em, and diffuse the tense situation through hilarious jokesterism.

If I were President, I'd occasionally call my staffers by different names, to keep them on their toes.

If I were President, I'd ask Hillary Clinton to name what post she'd most like to have, then I'd nominate Bill Clinton for that position. It'd make some great drama.

If I were President, I'd occasionally justify my actions with "because I'm the President, and I can do what I want."

If I were President, the United States would immediately switch to the metric system, and be done with this ridiculous inch pound garbage.

If I were President, I'd use my position to leverage free flights in an F-22.

If I were President, I'd play golf and have the Secret Service "help" my ball find the fairway. I'd dare my opponent to call me a cheater. If they did, I'd say "Stop being such a Hillary. It was a good shot."

If I were President, I'd encourage people to eat less beef, and more buffalo.

If I were President, I'd publish an NCAA bracket that was straight chalk, then pretend like I had actually used reasoning to make the picks. From that day on, it wouldn't be a "straight chalk" bracket, it'd be named after me.

If I were President, I'd never root for North Carolina. I'd never root for Kansas either. I'd probably root for Xavier, but then I'd pretend that I thought it was the school where the X-Men were training.

If I were President, I'd push for a tax on Segways. The tax would be 10,000% the cost of the Segway. I'd then say in a speech "do you hate Segways or do you hate America?"

If I were President, I'd turn the White House into the "Black House" for Halloween, people would be charged admission to walk through the haunted buildings. White House staffers would play zombies, and I'd be dressed as Lincoln, lying "dead" in the Lincoln bedroom.

If I were President, well...that'd be pretty cool.


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A Rare Defense Of Obama - Universal Health Care

In general I don't like progressive agenda because it is actually "expensive agenda" and seems to me that things are best done when the government stays out of it.

But in the case of health care, (forgive me Wellsy) I have to agree with the Administration, and I have to believe that Universal Health Care should be the American policy. The reason is this: kids all over the country are sick and dying because they can't afford health insurance.

I sit here, firmly entrenched in my cushy, upper-middle-class job, and it'd be easy for me to sneer down and say "health care in this country isn't a problem" because my employer pays 100% of my health care costs. I have to pay a pretty hefty amount to keep Mrs. TAE and T.A.D. insured as well, but still, if either of them was in a terrible accident and needed hundred of thousands of dollars of work, and weeks in a hospital, I'd simply pay my deductible and sit back and request every possible procedure. The truth is, I complain about my monthly insurance premium, but I have it pretty good. I got my teeth cleaned a couple months ago and didn't pay a dime. My wife just got a root canal and it only cost me $138.

But not all (actually hardly any) Americans are so lucky as I. They either have less coverage or no coverage at all. If my family had no dental plan, Mrs. TAE's root canal would have cost us $1,380. There is a reason poor people have less teeth. And it's not just the Mountain Dew.

The reason I think Universal Health Care works for me is because although I am a conservative and I love freedom, I love Jesus even more, and I understand that as a Christian is it not only my duty, but my priviledge, to take a small tax hike in exchange for massively helping the welfare of my underpriviledged fellow Americans. Although I am a conservative and hate fiscal waste, I hate seeing humans suffer needlessly even more.

One might argue that the government could not possibly run health insurance as efficiently as private companies, and I would not disagree. But the government will not run it as a selectively applied, for-profit, greedy empire of deceit that only funds research that proves vaccines are effective, or only covers knee replacements if the patient has a 2-year documented history of pain. The government does not have an annual shareholders meeting, where the CEO must explain why profits are up or down, and government health insurance would be held to a higher standard of equality (and accountability) than privatized health insurance. The government can't lobby itself!

Would universal government health insurance be cheaper? Most likely not. But would more people in the country benefit, and would more Americans be healthier in the long run because of it? Most likely yes.


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Swine Flu isn't even as deadly as the normal flu

The CDC reports that in a normal year, approximately 36,000 Americans die from complications due to the flu. 200,000 Americans are hospitalized because of the flu, and in a normal year 5-20% of Americans get the flu. That means 15 million - 60 million Americans get the flu every year.

So far this year, 1 American has died from the swine flu. There are less than 500 cases nationwide. If one assumes that 200,000 people will get the normal flu this year, then there are 550 new cases every day. Why isn't the WHO declaring a Phase 5 alert for that?!

Yglesias thinks we're all panicking over nothing, but I'll go further: I think we are panicking over less than nothing. Why? Well, evolution, of course. Reports of the symptoms of swine flu are that it is actually less severe than normal flu. This makes sense, if you read my post about evolution pushing highly infectious diseases towards harmlessness. In order for a virus to circulate well, it must not kill its host too quickly. Therefore, viral strains that are less harmful tend to be more infectious. This is what appears to be happening with the current swine flu strain. It is less harmful, but much more infectious, than normal human flu.


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Doctor Shortage

Here, Megan McCardle plagiarizes my argument (just kidding). But she argues, like I did in early March, that universal health care will not work right now because we can't suddenly increase the total number of doctors and nurses in this country by 40%. Further, the number of GP's is decreasing and there appears to be no solution to this problem. I disagree. Megan says:

Second of all, it's actually really, really hard to pay GPs well, at least in the context of cutting overall costs. Note that private insurers, who are presumably not attempting to ingratiate themselves with the AMA, also reimburse procedures, not wellness. That's because procedures can be monitored, and wellness can't.

On the contrary, it seems to me that universal health care could fix this problem. If we all were beholden to the same standard of health care, and all medical visits, both procedural and wellness (and rehabilitation) are all billed to the same giant coffer of government health insurance, and the are all reimbursed at the same crappy rate, then it actually might encourage doctors to move to GP.
Let me explain: if you had your choice of seeing patients for $88 a visit, and look at their tonsils, check their tummy for swelling, listen to their breathing with a stethoscope, and then send them home with Tylenol (basically a zero risk consultation) or to open up their brain and try to remove a tumor, possibly killing them and getting sued, I think a lot of doctors would choose the former, not the latter. Of course, the brain surgery pays 1,000 times more. The key to universal health care would be to eliminate the ability of specialists to charge $75,000 to put in an artificial knee, or $46,000 to remove a kidney.
In many European countries, the situation is very different. There is not a desperate shortage of doctors. In Germany, for instance, every ambulance that is dispatched has a doctor riding in the back. This ensures the patient has the highest quality care possible from the moment the ambulance arrives until the patient (hopefully) leaves the hospital later. However, German doctors are not making exorbitant amounts of money. In many European countries, the job of a doctor has been reduced in stature by restriction of pay to the level of someone like...an engineer or a scientist. So in these countries, being a doctor is a fair job, but not unlike many others.
If you want to "herd doctors to GP" as Megan puts it, you must either incentivize that trade or de-incentivize specialties enough that people stop flocking there.

The last time I talked about doctors, a commenter argued that the problem with the doctor shortage isn't as much the lock the AMA has on med school enrollment numbers, but rather the shortage of residency spots. That may in fact be true. However, residencies are typically for specialists, not for GP's. Increasing the number of residency positions nationwide simply encourages a larger share of a finite number of new doctors to specialize. Right now, we need GP's more than we need dermatologists.


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How much is $100 million in budget cuts?

Sadly, watch me.


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Pet Engineering

I read this morning that scientists have made puppies that glow in the dark. This follows the glowing fish, pigs, cows and lambs from a few years back in a string of pet experiments that scientists have conducted. It all goes back to my idea that science is at its most bold, but least ethical, when it is primarily motivated by money and not in improving the human condition.

Cloning glowing puppies is clearly a violation of nature. And worse, I see no possible way this could advance the well-being of the human population. Scientists have already proven they could put RFP (red fluorescent protein) and GFP (green fluorescent protein) in several mammals; there really wasn't anything amazing done here.

But the idea that people might pay exorbitant amounts of money for bizarre pets surely must have driven this research. Which leads me to my own bold, unethical science experiment to be done on dogs that would yield millions in revenue: PermaPups

Someone (who understands that I own the intellectual property rights to this idea) should take puppy embryos and genetically engineer them so that when they get to be 10-week-old puppies, they stop growing. Voila! PermaPups, the cutest, cuddliest form of human-friendly life on this planet. So many dog owners buy a cute puppy at the pet store...but a few months later when that adorable little pup has matured into a rebellious young adult, and requires training and patience...the owner stops loving it so much. But what if that same person could have that puppy they love...forever?! Surely they'd treat that puppy wonderfully. And the puppy gets to live in blissful youth forever, free to do all the fun puppy things, never bothered by puberty or going into heat, or getting spayed or neutered. Never cursed with old, bad hips, or a decaying mind.

You might laugh and say that PermaPups are unrealistic. Well consider the glowing puppies of the story above. Was it so unbelievable ten years ago that someone would invent a cadre of glowing dogs, lambs, etc? Scientists simply inserted the RFP gene into the dog embryos and nature did the rest.
So for example take the lobster. Lobsters are basically believed to be immortal. They simply grow and live and grow and live until they are caught by fisherman or eaten by a predator. Some lobsters are believed to be hundreds of years old. Would it be so hard to isolate the gene (or genes) that lobsters use to guarantee their longevity, and place them in the dog gene code in place of the part of the dog gene that causes puberty to start? If that worked, keeping your puppy a puppy forever would (seemingly) be a cinch!

Anyway, what I am proposing, though intriguing, is unethical. It is unethical to force a creature to remain an adolescent forever. It was (is?) unethical for the Catholic Church to castrate boys to keep their vocal chords from maturing. It is unethical to genetically engineer dogs with weird traits, just to prove they could.

Seemingly, our society is confronted more and more with scientists who attempt a thing just to see if they could, not considering if they actually should.


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This fulfills my obligation to say something about the entertainment industry.

Warm to the touch professional dancer and singer Julianne Hough and boyfriend Chuck Wicks got eliminated last night on Dancing With The Stars. TAE is not an avid watcher of this show, but does stay on top of the latest news. Having seen the early episodes of this season (and the female dancers in particular) let me just say this.
Watching Dancing With The Stars without Julianne Hough is kinda like trying to eat a bowl of ice cream without a spoon. It's still ice cream, and it still tastes good, but if you have to shovel it into your mouth with your fingers...it just loses something intangible.


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Predicting the future

Back in 1792, Thomas Jefferson was fed up. The Federalists, led by (tastefully named) Alexander Hamilton, were trying to pass legislation to establish a national bank, to shore up the Federal governments primacy over the states, and to establish a treaty with Britain (who was at war with France).
Jefferson retaliated by forming the "Democratic-Republican" party. For simplicity they were called "the republicans". From 1800-1824 this party held the majority in both the House and Senate, and eventually became so large that party unity dissolved and the party split into the Jefferson loyalists: "the democrats" and several other groups. None of those groups was the modern Republican party as we know it today; that party formed in 1854 as an anti-slavery party.

Anyway, the point is, in 1820 James Monroe ran under the party's banner for President and was elected almost unanimously in the electoral college. Four years later the party fractured.

Is this the future of the Democratic Party? With Specter now entrenched in the Democratic party, but still claiming to be at least moderate, and with the possibility that the Dems might gain more Senate and House seats in the 2010 election, I have to wonder if the Democratic party is on its way to utter dominance...and then utter collapse.

Could the Democratic party soon get so big and broad-ranged in political attitudes that it fractures? Ask the Blue Dogs.


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Adventures in ridiculous hypocrisy

Sen. Arlen Specter in March 2009: "To eliminate any doubt, I am a Republican. I am running for reelection in 2010 as a Republican on the Republican ticket."

Sen. Arlen Specter in April 2009: "I have decided to run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat. I find my political philosophy is now more in line with the Democratic party."

My guess would be that Sen. Specter's campaign advisors told him the Pennsylvania Republican ticket will be very unpopular this November. Specter does not care about political philosophy, he cares about doing whatever it takes to retain his position of power.


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Evolutionary Pressure on Viruses to be Wimpy

If you were a neat new virus, would you want to be deadly, or harmless?

Many evolutionists agree, viruses tend to mutate towards harmlessness. The thought goes like this: deadly viruses kill their hosts before they can spread. The less deadly the virus, the more likely the host is to survive at least until the virus is spread to a new host. So viruses tend overall to mutate away from deadly.

This should be good news to anyone fearing a global kill off of all humans by a new supervirus or superbacteria; any bug that wants to live most probably must sacrifice its own virulence for the sake of its own infectiousness.


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Global Swine-o-caust

Swine flu cases have now been confirmed in the Middle East, Spain, New Zealand, and Asia. This means that swine flu, which is believed to have originated in Mexico, has spread in less than a month to 3 separate continents and is officially "on" every landmass except Antarctica. Although for developed countries swine flu is laughably curable, and in fact not even a dangerous disease, the high death toll in Mexico shows that weaker immune systems typically associated with peoples in poorer countries are more dangerously effected. And so we find ourselves facing a pandemic.

I have two thoughts, and I have to keep them short because I am swamped here at work.

First, we need to use this less than awful disease to test and evaluate models for isolating and stopping the spread of pandemics. Here we have a gift: a disease that is easy to survive if given care and nutrition, but spreads vigorously from person to person. We can watch and learn how the typical spreading patterns emerge. All of the cases outside Mexico involve someone who traveled to Mexico, got the disease and brought it home and started spreading it; we should look at our local quarantine methods, and figure out how to quickly seal off borders if needed. Someday, it might not be an innocuous flu spreading from Mexico, it could be a killer virus.

Second, we have a real opportunity here to highlight the fact that people in third world countries need our help. By and large, only people from destitute areas are dying from swine flu, and the affluent are spared via health and nutrition. Shouldn't we be doing all we can to help the poor?


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TAE's Trademarked Phrases

As the inventor of the phrase "whatev" I've always been looking for what's hip in linguistics so I can take credit for it.

One of my greatest linguistic inventions (actually mine) was the word "godzillion" which basically means a huge, massive amount of money equal to the amount of funds you'd need to fund a research lab that could create Godzilla. I'm sure that'd be an expensive project. It might be cheaper to just detonate nukes at the ocean floor, like the Japanese did, I don't know. In some circles, the word godzillion is becoming wildly popular. The radius of said circles is not up for discussion.

Anyway, whenever government corruption gets en vogue, I always hear the phrase "who will watch the Watchmen?" This phrase has been especially popular given the recent release of the movie "The Watchmen" which is about a bunch of illegal vigilantes.

So now the phrase "who will watch the watchmen?" has gotten a little skewed and the meaning gets derailed. So leave it to me to come up with a new phrase!

Here it is:

"Who will police the policymakers?"

Once again, I've outdone myself.

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Why some people need to shut up.

Ace Ventura crackled onto the screen in 1995, featuring Jim Carrey who, among other things, spent 5 minutes of the movie standing in his own shower trying to pump his stomach using a household plunger after he realized he had jokingly kissed a cross-dressing man earlier in the movie. It debuted Jim Carrey's trademark style of spastic humor, which he used again later that year in Dumb and Dumber and The Mask.

Of course, Carrey's comedic debut was really (and ironically) as a man dressed in women's clothing as Vera de Milo on In Living Color in early 90's.

Anyway, when I think "expert on vaccination safety" I usually think of medical doctors, immunologists, scientists, and various other experts in the field. I do not think someone who's trademark phrase is "La-who-sa-her'!" qualifies as a credible expert in the field.

But then I remembered that Jim Carrey is dating Jenny McCarthy, who has a son with autism, and that McCarthy claims her son was completely normal until he had his MMR vaccine.

"My girlfriend told me vaccines are to blame for her son's disease, as well as her divorce, so they must be really bad."


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The Big Blue Marble

Sometimes I forget how beautiful it is.


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Corn Ethanol...still bad

Ages ago, I wrote a post about cellulosic ethanol, that is, ethanol derived from grass. That post was also written in opposition to corn-based ethanol, which has a much lower energy yield per acre.

Scientists have discovered that corn-based ethanol requires three times as much water as previously thought to be produced. So not only is corn-based ethanol inefficient at producing energy, it's also a water hog. Did I mention that native prairie grasses (which are used in cellulosic ethanol production) require little or no irrigation?

Hmm...


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Science on the edge of insanity

Nanobiotechnologist 1:"And then I was like, dude, you know what'd be totally bad-ass? Let's take nanoparticles and cover them in scorpion venom, then insert the nanoparticles into tumor cells!"

Nanobiotechnologist 2:"Dude, sweet!"

NBT1: "Totally."

NBT2: "We'll either kill the tumor cells or create a wicked supertumor - part tumor, part scorpion, all awesome."

And so they did.


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The reason trial lawyers love Democrats

As reported here, Rep. Peter J Visclosky, D-Ind, has asked the Federal Elections Committee for permission to use campaign funds to pay for lawyers hired to represent him in an ongoing fundraising investigation.
That's right, he wants to use the very illegal money he shouldn't have to pay for lawyers who will help him keep that illegal money.

Of course, this is the latest trend: last week, awesome human being and inspiration to us all, Rod Blagoyevich asked permission to use the very funds he is indicted for obtaining illegally to pay for his legal defense that he didn't obtain those funds illegally.

The equivalent of this, in engineering terms, would be to ask your thermodynamics professor for the answer to the exam, so you can take the test and prove you are good at thermodynamics. "Without the answers to the test, how can I possibly prove I know the answers to the test?!"

But I think there's a larger issue here: we could be looking at the next great idea for making money. Here's how it works: take money from dubious (and legally troubled) sources via blackmail, bribes, corporate theft, tax evasion, or whatever methods are necessary (and legally grey), then use part of that money to pay slick lawyers to make the whole thing go away. Then, you can use your money as capital to entertain (read: coerce) new investors to give you even more money, which you'll then use to pay more lawyers to bury in the courts, etc etc and so on and so forth.

Maybe I should take a look at J.D. programs around here...


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Here, I am. Send me.

So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:

“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”

Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”


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Earthquake expected any day now in Iran.

Seismologists have predicted a late April earthquake in Iran on the order of 5.0-6.0. Their method involves watching unusual cloud formations. Electromagnetic forces, caused by the nearly-earthquake forces in the rocks, is thought to disrupt cloud formations in the atmosphere. These cloud formations should be detectable via satellite.

In similar news, an Italian seismologist correctly predicted the recent Italian earthquake that killed over 200 people. However, he was forced by Italian authorities to remove his findings from the internet, over fears he would spread a panic.


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Dick Cheney Justifies Torture With Results

Dick Cheney:

"Since the U.S. provides most leadership in the world, I don't think we have much to apologize for," said Cheney. Since his departure from the White House, Cheney says he's been concerned over the way the U.S. has been presented overseas and finds Obama's apologies to various countries "disturbing." He also feels Obama's "coziness" with America's opponents like Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez is not "helpful." "It's important the U.S. that we don't come off as arrogant -- but also important to not come across as weak, indecisive and apologetic," said Cheney.

For some reason, Cheney and Obama remind me of Chet and Wyatt from the 1985 movie Weird Science. Wyatt, constantly apologizing to everyone for Chet's violent, reckless behavior, and Chet constantly making fun of Wyatt for being a pathetic weakling.

Anyway, I'm just recycling what others have already said: it's disturbing when people start thinking that the ends justify the means. Of course, having said that, I wonder about my own hypocrisy, because I support Truman's bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...


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Bear Grylls faces impending unemployment

Above is a pictorial representation of how remote places on earth are. The darker they are, the longer it would take someone there to travel to a city of 50,000. Most of earth is now less than 24 hours from the nearest major city, and this does not include towns and villages along the way. Frankly, its getting harder and harder to disappear.
Anyway, after the research was done, it was found that there are almost no places on earth that are 3 full days away from a major city. Think you're safely lost in the Amazon? Well thanks to rapidly expanding river traffic, you're found as soon as you find water. Thanks to an expansive highway system, much of China is now quite developed.

In fact, based on the image below, the only place on earth left to disappear is Nepal.

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Banking Math Fail?

I read today that Bank of America posted a profit. But their stock dropped 20% because they realized over 8 billion in losses.

*scratches head*

They made a profit, but lost $8 billion? Obviously math like this is what got us into this mess.

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SCIENCE POST!!!

Remember a couple weeks ago when I made fun of the scientists (more specifically, the state of California for the funding) who were going to beam energy from space?

Apparently it has come to light that those same scientists plan to use their space solar beam to "kill" hurricanes.

"Not only can we send a high-precision microwave beam from space to Earth without harming anyone or the atmosphere, but it turns out we can turn that beam on the atmosphere itself to control weather."

I'm sorry, what? I guess the theory is that by heating up the inner portions of the hurricane they can weaken it to the point that it won't cause damage when it hits land. The problem arises when you realise that a solar array designed to power California cannot possibly send power to California while on duty as a hurricane deflector ray. Are they now suggesting we launch two orbital solar arrays? And if they are right, and their microwave emittor can burn up hurricanes, what's to stop it from burning up other things? And how exactly doesn't it burn up the atmosphere when it transmits its energy beam to the grid-thing in the California desert?

As an engineer well-versed in Murphy's Law, let me tell you: this will never work.

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Scott Parks Condones Waterboarding

Below is the text of an email I just sent to the Shanin and Parks program, based in Kansas City:

Scott Parks: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be waterboarded every day for the rest of his life."

Scott, I have been listening to you guys for a few years now and that is the most offensive thing you have ever said. When you said that I was simply dumbstruck. Normally I nod along as you guys broadcast, but when you said that, I sat there for a second, and then turned you off.
I do not know you, but based on your website claiming you attend Knox Presbyterian Church I suspect you consider yourself a Christian, and if so, you should think long and hard about what Jesus said about your neighbor and what the responsibilities you have as a Christian man with a voice heard by thousands over the radio. You have a real opportunity to show that although you do not like terrorists, and what they do is a vile, vile thing, you are a Christian human being and you will treat the terrorists as fellow human beings.
I am not asking you, or any American, to forgive them, and I believe justice should be swift. But torturing them not just through waterboarding, but through electric shocks, forced physical strain, and various other techniques is heinous and wrong and the Bush Administration has done serious harm to our international stature and it will take years to repair it. I find it sadly ironic that most of the people who are claiming waterboarding is AOK (because, you know, it gets results) are people like you that call themselves Christians, and the cries of foul about the torture have been largely from secular sources.
Christians that do not act the faith they preach are why more than 40% of Americans between age 16-29 say that they "like Jesus, but hate Christians for their hypocrisy" based on a recent Pew study.

I am turning my radio to 97.3 (the local version of KLOVE) for a while, your hypocrisy has lost me as a listener.

Signed, TAE

I encourage any of my readers to email something similar to Scott Parks here, or simply tell anyone you see that Scott Parks is a jackass.


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Gun Control vs. Obama?

In the comments to my post, regular reader Adam says:

I think that TAE's argument was that Obama would not stop the movement and would just let it happen, sign the bill, and be fine with it.

Basically yes, what I am concerned with is that Obama will act as a willing bystander, maybe not signing the legislation, but instead just letting it sit on his desk sans veto, thereby letting it ratify anyway. This would be the politically neutral way for him to allow enhanced gun control without actually endorsing it.

TPI rebuts (also in the comments):

If you're worried about mass gun confiscation, don't--there's no way it will happen.

I don't think most politically informed conservatives are actually concerned with gun confiscation in the near future, 2nd Amendment intepretation lately have been very pro-gun and pro-ownership. But I believe the concern from people in the know is that the Democratic party (possibly, though doubtfully minus the Blue Dogs) is attempting to circumvent the 2nd Amendment by going after ammo instead of guns. Already (within the first 75 days of Obama Administration) the DOD tried to end the decades-long practice of selling spent cases to private ammo manufacturers, which would have put a stranglehold on, or bankrupted, many ammo manufacturers nationwide. Although I am against banning ammo, I can't help but smile at the cleverness of the tact.

However, if the first amendment is the right to free speech and free press, heavy restrictions on, or outright bans of ammunition seems to me like telling journalists to write whatever they want...but pens and laptops are hereby illegal.


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Girl Talk

Megan McCardle and I agree (in the comments) on what is good in music.


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Adventures in linguistics

Did I already post about this? I got kinda busy last week and lost track of the latest entertainment news, but apparently TV Land started a show last Wednesday titled "The Cougar" which is sort of a bachelorette show with the twist being that the woman is 40 and the men are all in their 20's.

Now I hate to argue semantics here, but after looking at a few pictures of the Cougar, Stacey Anderson, and hearing that she's only 40 (with 4 kids), my conclusion is that the show is getting it all wrong. She isn't a Cougar at all. She's a Milf!

The definition of a Cougar is an old lady who is hunting at clubs for a quick kill from a young man...she'll feed, then go back for more. A Cougar is supposed to have plastic surgery to the point that she looks like a wind tunnel victim. She's supposed to be soulless, horny, and looking for young men willing to do anything.
Stacey, in this show, isn't looking for a cheap lay, which is the object of a Cougar. Stacey is looking for a boyfriend or love or whatever. So all things being equal, this show really isn't about women's lib. It's about fulfilling men's fantasies of getting their hands on a Milf.


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