“Are they for the oil companies, or are they for you?” – Hillary Clinton, using her innate powers of economic idiocy to question the patriotism of Senators that won’t vote for her gas tax holiday.
Popularity: 15% [?]
A high school student in Portland just pulled an awesome prank, sending a letter to every parent on school letterhead encouraging them to allow parties with alcohol and sex after the prom. Of course the prank was obvious (at one point if referred to the school, Lincoln High, by it’s nickname “Drinkin’ Lincoln,” and the envelope contained a condom), harmless, and very funny (it could even be argued it was sensible… I see nothing wrong with 18 year-olds having a few beers, especially if they have parental consent). So the administrators chuckled a bit, remembered all the shit they got away with when they were kids, sent a correction letter home and let it go at that.
If you believed that then you haven’t been paying attention. Of course they didn’t blow it off, instead they’re totally wigging out.
Shelby said the school is actively trying to find whoever initiated the scam. “It’s a high school and students talk,” he said. “Given the amount of exposure this has had, I’m fairly confident the school administration will find the source.”
But this joke may have severe consequences. Officials say students involved could face punishment ranging from detention to suspension. And a district policy says that any student who receives disciplinary action such as a suspension within two months of graduation can be barred from participating in the graduation ceremony.
And the kicker:
Additionally, officials are working with authorities to find out if any laws were broken.
Popularity: 19% [?]
At least I’m guessing that’s how Howard Dean punctuated his call for superdelegates to tell him how they voted right now. Rather than wait for the convention. When they actually have to vote. According to Democratic Party rules. You know, the rules that Howard Dean is in charge of.
Dude, you really should have seen this shit coming a mile away, back when you allowed your party to have this ridiculous super-delegate system. Just goes to show… the Democratic Party is teh dumb.
More proof that liberals are stupid, a comment on that article:
FELLOW DEMOCRATS
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
I AM A HILLARY SUPPORTER, HOWEVER I WILL VOTE FOR OBAMA IN THE GE IF HE IS THE NOMINEE.OUR COUNTRY CAN’T STAND ANOTHER BUSH TERM.
Another Bush term? No, we didn’t repeal the 22nd amendment, and no, Jeb ain’t running. Yet.
Even more proof that liberals can’t read good:
Popularity: 16% [?]
The pre-emption doctrine, that the FDA approval process protects companies from liability for bad drugs, is incredibly brazen and dangerous. Johnson & Johnson lied to the FDA, and their customers, about the ingredients in a drug for years… then when they’re found out they try to claim that they’re clean because the FDA should have caught them first.
What’s the solution? Dissolve the FDA completely. Remove the possibility of pre-emption as a legal shield. Make companies liable for their own drugs efficacy and safety, or allow them to hire their own independent review boards, with the power to run their own studies (power the FDA doesn’t have), to take the heat if something goes wrong.
It’s got to work better than the system we have now, what with the slow pace of drug approval (even drugs that have been used for decades in other countries), drugs that are held up for political reasons, and the noisy and expensive lawsuits surrounding FDA approved drugs like Vioxx and Zyprexa.
So why not deregulate?
Popularity: 16% [?]
When I first saw the story about the 1860 audio recording on Reddit I thought it was kinda silly… why would someone build a recording device when there was no complimentary gadget to play back the sound? But after I thought about it it seemed like a pretty difficult chicken and egg problem: How do you either invent a recording device without first knowing how to read the output or build a phonograph without knowing what the input looks like?
Turns out that wasn’t the issue. The phonautograph was never meant to be played back at all, it was just supposed to create visual interpretation of sounds. That makes the work these researchers did even more remarkable.
It also reminded me of an episode of MythBusters I recently saw. In it they busted a myth that sound could have been inadvertently recorded onto pottery that was decorated by dragging a piece of straw across it’s surface (the theory was that the straw could act like a recording stylus, vibrating to the sound and leaving the audio info in the groove). They were unable to recover any sounds using professional audio recovery tools; I’d be interested in seeing if the phonauthograph scientists could find anything. They had to develop some sophisticated new tools to extract audio from visual images and I wonder if those would work better than the Mythbuster’s glass stylus.
Popularity: 4% [?]
I love Cliff May for ripping into Katie Couric and Ramsey Clark.
I hate Fox for cancelling Kitchen Confidential after airing only four episodes.
The hate I feel for the 3.86 million people (a word I use very loosely) that watched a fucking rerun of 7th Heaven last Monday? It cannot be described with mere words. If the baby Jebus is a just God each viewing household shall feel the pain of a hundred hemorrhoids plus a dozen paper cuts for every member of the important 18-to-45 demographic. Amen.
Update: I also love craaaazy NFL plays. Michael Vick just went in motion as a receiver, the ball was snapped to Warrick Dunn then tossed to Vick, who launched it down the field to Roddy White. He looked to be covered but the Saints defenders, Josh Bullocks and Dwight Smith, got tangled up. White caught the ball and stumbled for ten yards… touchdown.
Popularity: 2% [?]
I oppose the Miers nomination. She doesn’t have the background in constitutional law, the conservative judicial philosophy, or (judging by the leaks coming out of Senatorial offices) even the knowledge of legal precedent to be the nominee of a Republican president. We can’t even count on her as a reliable conservative vote (which would be the wrong reason to support her nomination, regardless) because we just don’t know if she’d be that reliable, or even on which issues she’s a conservative. A few days ago Glenn Reynolds linked to a description of Miers as liberal on economic issues and conservative on social ones (she’s some kind of anti-libertarian, evidently), which is precisely backwards from what I, personally, want in a public official.
Maybe those truly are her views, maybe not. Maybe she’ll call on some hidden reservoirs of constitutional knowledge and become a great justice, mabye not. We just don’t know. All we do know is that she was chosen because George Bush knows her well, and that he thinks we should trust his choice. But now is not the time for limp-wristed, easy cronyism, and I frankly don’t trust the President on domestic issues. He is, after the, the same President that signed McCain-Feingold into law and supported the protection of marriage amendment.
Miers should withdraw, be withdrawn, or be voted down by the Senate.
(If you’d like to be counted in NZ Bear’s poll of blogger opinion follow the directions posted here. Not sure if TBOTCOTW will be listed… I get an error every time I try to add the blog to the Ecosystem.)
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tamiflu resistant avian influenza? That’s bad news. Another Rocky movie? That’s even worse news.
My initial reaction: “There’s already been five Rocky movies? Five?!”
Popularity: 4% [?]
Here’s the most succinct summary of the economics of “price gouging” I’ve ever read. An excerpt:
Suppose a hotel room rented for $79 a night prior to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Based on that price, an evacuating family of four might rent two adjoining rooms. When they arrive at the hotel, they find the rooms rent for $200; they decide to make do with one room. In my book, that’s wonderful. The family voluntarily opted to make a room available for another family who had to evacuate or whose home was destroyed. Demagogues will call this price-gouging, but I ask you, which is preferable: a room available at $200 or a room unavailable at $79? Rising prices get people to voluntarily economize on goods and services rendered scarcer by the disaster.
I’ve made a similar argument in the past, but it required a chart showing the relative tiredness of drivers and the assumption (a reasonable one, I think) that hotel rooms will get progressively cheaper as one gets farther from an evacuated area. This one is much simpler.
It seems cruel when a hotel raises its prices just when people in tragic circumstances need the rooms the most. Perversly, though, it’s actually the best thing for all involved. Rising prices help ensure that supply doesn’t run out entirely during the crunch, and high profit margins encourage new suppliers to enter the market as quickly as possible, helping to meet the new demand.
Meanwhile, Hawaii’s gas cap laws may soon start having (how surprising!) adverse effects on supply. Colorado, thank Jebus, has no laws against gouging, and it seems doubtful that any local politicians would seriously suggest capping the price of gas. It’s nice to live in a (somewhat) sane place.
(Links via Matt Welch at Hit and Run)
Popularity: 2% [?]
Colby Cosh lays out the best (that I’ve read) libertarian response to the Katrina disaster in one long paragraph (plus a couple sentences). Particularly insightful was the end of the last sentence:
…the 49% of Americans who have been complaining for five years about George W. Bush being a dictator are now vexed to the point of utter incoherence because for the last fortnight he has failed to do a sufficiently convincing impression of a dictator.
Add those forty-four words to the tally of, “Things Colby Cosh has written that Matt Moore wishes he’d thought of.” They perfectly pull together all the disparate thoughts I had when I read the mind-boggingly stupid (or brilliantly parodic?) comments that Wadard dumped all over several threads at protein wisdom. They’re hilarious, managing to be loaded with Castro infatuation and calls to impeach Bush (and Wadard’s not even an American) without any hint of awareness that that’s a contradiction.
Cosh also recommends that we turn government over to Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. I had a similar thought this weekend when I read this article about Wal-Mart’s effective efforts to coordinate the delivery of supplies to victims. I won’t go as far as Cosh, but I do think we should consider outsourcing control of FEMA. I seriously believe that Wal-Mart (or a similarly well-run company with lots of trucks, like UPS or FedEX) could manage disaster relief much better than the bureaucrats, and they’d turn a tidy profit while doing it.
Popularity: 2% [?]
