Last night while waiting for the Gore concession speech, we were flipping through the channels and came upon some piece of shit show on TBS. There was this "alternative," punk rock dude with the piercings and tattooes and hair who had decided he wanted something "real." So he rigged up this stunt where meathooks were pierced through his back and legs and then was suspended a helicopter that flew over the Hollywood sign. We also got to hear from his dumb-as-dirt girlfriend how proud she was. How lame is that? What a colossal waste of 1) time 2) money 3) air. How do people that stupid exist? I think it's because the mechanisms that worked in pre-civilized times to naturally select only the fittest to procreate have disappeared. Granted, nobody has ever proven that being a loser is an evolutionary disadvantage, but damnit, it should be.

¶ 25 Posted at 02.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I called up CompUSA to check on the availability of Quake3: Team Arena. They wanted my first name and zip code to check the stock of their local store. I didn't think they needed my first name, so I said to the woman, "You don't need it," and gave my zip code. Then she asks, "So what was the item you wanted, You Don't Need It?"

¶ 26 Posted at 11.18 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Modesty says more than any inadequacy does. There's the guy at the urinal, facing the corner because he's not protected from prying eyes by a partition. The woman who arranges her hair to cover her face. The fat guy who sits in the back and won't make eye contact. The artist who paints obsessively but won't let anyone see her work. You're far better off revealing your warts than trying to hide them. If you succeed in hiding them, people's imaginations will make them worse than you possibly could. And if you fail, you'll look even worse for trying to cover up. Just put it out in the open, and see what happens. Chances are, nobody will care one way or another. And that's why I have a web site. Well, one reason. Never trust anyone who thinks one reason is always enough. But that's a totally different subject.

¶ 54 Posted at 01.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

What the hell are they doing weed-whacking at 8:40 in the morning? Don't they know I'm trying to sleep?

¶ 74 Posted at 08.41 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

This is the sort of crap "journalism" I have to deal with living in Texas: 150 lawmakers + 150 psalms = match made in heaven. You'd think the only major newspaper in a large city would at least pretend to be unbiased, but it appears they have no compunction about pushing their Christian, right-wing agenda. I laugh when people call Austin liberal.

I was there: Violence mars Mardi Gras parties in Austin. The police were all in riot gear (helmets, body armor, clubs). Idiots in the crowd were throwing rocks and empty beer bottles at them from time to time. I was at 6th and some cross street (Neches or Red River, I think) near the Black Cat Lounge and those places. We went about a hundred feet off 6th to watch. They had blocked off 6th to the east by the time we'd gotten there because of (apparently) some fighting that had taken place earlier. There was a huge crowd facing them (eastward) on 6th, and a fair number off to the side where we were. Of course, we were far back from the front; we'd found some steps leading up to a side door in one of the buildings . The cops were pepper spraying people who got too close and acting belligerent (insulting the cops, flipping them off, etc.). They had these huge cans of pepper spray that would fire a 10 foot cloud. Every now and then a pocket of people would get spooked or sprayed and start running away from the cops. This went on for probably 20 minutes and then the reinforcements arrived (in the form of about 8 mounted police). After a couple minutes of waiting around, they went marching down 6th with about 15 or so walking troopers. There were still about 8 cops waiting in the intersection. After about 10 minutes they started heading down our way too. I figured (stupidly) since I was sticking by the side and not doing anything, I'd be left alone, but as the line of cops got close, it was made abundantly clear to me that I should get my ass moving. Luckily I'd parked on that side so we didn't have far to go. Of course, if I'd parked at the Post Office like I usually do, I never would have seen this. An interesting night, to say the least.

¶ 98 Posted at 10.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | me )

Russian Mafia hack US banks and e-commerce sites. Or, why hard things shouldn't be made to seem simple.

¶ 108 Posted at 07.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | internet | geek )

I really hate the phone company. I mean, really, really hate them. Really, really, really hate them. My hatred for the phone company is too great to be contained by mere language; when I seek to express this hatred for the phone company in words, my hatred scoffs at these simple constructs of sound and shreds them apart into whimpering phonemes evaporating into mist, so weak are they in the face of the terrible rage that is my hatred for the phone company.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

¶ 130 Posted at 04.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

NY Times: Texas Retooling Criminal Justice in Wake of Furor on Death Penalty. What I want to know is who the hell are those 33% of Texans who think it's ok to execute someone who's mentally retarded? Or the 24% of Texans who think that the possibility of exoneration due to DNA evidence does not justify postponing (not cancelling, but just postponing!) executions. What is going on here? Kill everybody and let God sort it out?

¶ 131 Posted at 10.58 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

Do I really look that stupid? Don't answer. I was stupid enough leave the Windows Messaging service running... Still, who would fall for this?

Mircrosoft?

¶ 155 Posted at 10.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | funny )

Ok, so it's been about two weeks since I last got good and mad. No time like the present to make up for the past. Here you go: Fight terrorism by not buying drugs. I actually watched the Superbowl. Well, it was on in the background while I was cooking dinner. And I saw parts of the second half, which was surprisingly exciting. So anyway, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (like I'm going to link to them) decides to put up these ads during the Big Game equating buying drugs with terrorism. Now, they will claim they're not doing so, that they're just highlighting a connection. Clearly this is not the case. Example (from "I Helped":

Person 1: We just wanted to have a good time Person 2: I helped kill a judge. . . . . Person (say) 11: I just wanted to get high. Person 12: I helped kidnap someone's family and kill his children.

Then the ad ends with "Drug money supports terror." Ok, so they're so way, way off here. Let's start:

1. They're equating all drugs. Let's look at the 6 top drugs that they want to address:
   1. Marijuana - Most of the pot smoked in the US is grown in Mexico, Canada, or inside these borders. I don't see many Canadian terrorists on the news.
   2. LSD - Street prices of LSD are cheap. Nobody makes big money off LSD. Nobody can fund a terror campaign on sales of acid.
   3. Ecstasy - The bogeyman of the moment. To hear the anti-drug forces tell it, everyone under 25 is doing this every weekend, selling it on playgrounds on weekdays, and suffering irreversible brain damage that will put them all in a coma in five years. But there's no evidence that terrorists have sold any to get money to kill people. Organized crime? Certainly. But not terrorism. So don't make that connection.
   4. Cocaine - Everyone knows it comes from Columbia. How about terrorists? Well, there are separatists guerillas. They haven't left Columbia. They're fighting a war against the Columbian government, which isn't exactly known for its englightened policies. They sure do sell a lot of cocaine, though. So they're partly right here, but completely wrong when they lump the Columbian guerillas with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Most of the cocaine trade is in the hands of "entrepreneurs" interested only in their own self-aggrandizement.
   5. Speed - From what I read, this comes mainly from Western Europe, Mexico, and American bathtubs. I've seen nothing to indicate a connection here, not even from this site.
   6. Heroin - Ok, finally we come to a connection. Yup, there is evidence that Al Qaeda used heroin moneys. But on there other hand, last year there was a flood of articles like this one. As you may or may not recall, the Taliban banned the growing of opium poppies for religious reasons. Nobody thought it would work, but it turned out that that the Taliban made a big dent in the Afghan exports of opium and heroin. They did so well that the United States government gave the Taliban $43 million in aid to continue their efforts (source). Even more ironically, the Northern Alliance continued to grow opium poppies to finance their war against the Taliban. Once more we have failed to grasp the important of choosing our friends wisely. The mujahedin from whom the Northern Alliance came also supported their war against the Soviets with heroin profits. We gave them Stingers. And lots of other stuff. Oops. Kinda tricky there, isn't it?
   Judge for yourself. Also look at their information pages on each drug. This site that claims to be about the truth:

   Beliefs about MDMA are reminiscent of similar claims made about LSD in the 1950s and 1960s, which proved to be untrue. According to its proponents, MDMA can make people trust each other and can break down barriers between therapists and patients, lovers, and family members.

   You see that nice little trick? The two parts of the first sentence are unrelated, but make it sound like people are imagining the drug's effects. But look how even these propagandists qualify everything: "Beliefs" (which ones?). "Reminiscent" (to whom?). "Similar claims" (like what?). They construct a sentence around vague innuendo and unproven connections to try to convince you that anyone who tells you that Ecstasy does anything might do something even slightly enjoyable is a deluded fool who sure is going to look silly ten years from now when it's discovered (s)he wasn't feeling what (s)he thought (s)he was feeling. Oops. Most of the drug statements have similar biases. This site claims to be about the truth, but their agenda clearly precludes the whole truth. If drugs were as bad as they make them out to seem, then nobody would need persuading because nobody would do any drugs.

   The Ad Council is one of the groups that supports this campaign. You can see some of their supporters here. Notice in the list the purveyors of the two major legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, as well as big pharmaceutical companies. And notice in the list of of drugs any prescription drugs (even commonly abused ones like Xanax or Oxycontin) or alcohol.

2. Another major beef with this ad campaign is that by emphasizing the connection between (some) drug production and (some) terrorism, they gloss over many other connections. For example, the support of fundamentalist Islamic schools of the Wahabi sect by the Saudi government, a sect closely tied with the Taliban. So does that mean that every time you fill up at the gas station, you're supporting terrorism? Seems a much less tenuous connection than the vague mumbles of the anti-drug folks. Then there's Israel. What would you call a nation that assassinates opposition leaders, destroys innocent civilians houses, shoots protestors, and tortures prisoners? Sounds like state-sponsored terrorism to me. Well, not even sponsored, just state terrorism. How do you, the American citizen, support them? Simple. You pay your taxes. America has given billions of dollars a year for the last half century to Israel (source). There's yet another more direct connection between your money and terrorism than this silly drug propaganda.
3. The worst thing about this that their exaggerations cause a serious credibility problem, making it impossible to take anything they say seriously. Heroin's bad, kids. Very bad. You stay away. It wouldn't hurt to stay away from pot, too, but only if you want to be extra careful. Want to know what the lethal dose of marijuana is? So does everyone else. Nobody has ever smoked themselves to death. Plenty of people have drunk themselves to death. Makes you wonder.
4. And then there's the whole thing about equating things with terrorism to try to push a pre-existing agenda (as skewered here in September). Taking what is essentially a social and medical problem and equating it with terrorism magnifies one and diminishes the other, to the detriment of our battles with both. People need some perspective.
5. Finally, there's the complete lack of analysis as to why terrorists might be involved in the illegal drugs trade. Do they sell drugs because it's a way to strike at the weak and infidel West, a way to sap the strength of a corrupt and decadent society, thereby advancing their cause? Yeah right. To state the obvious: (some) terrorists sell (some) drugs because they can get lots of money for them. Same reason lots of other people sell drugs. Do drugs inherently have so much value? As all of us good students of economics know, there's no such thing as inherent value. You match supply with demand and out comes your fair market price. Demand for drugs is a more or less known quantity: there's lots of it. What about supply? There isn't as much as there would be in a truly free market. The government's crusade against narcotics has severely shrunk the supply. Tight supply meets high demand and results in high prices, therefore mucho profits. Let's look at the causal chain: drugs are illegal, but in high demand. Therefore anyone who sells drugs can get a lot of money. Terrorists want a lot of money to finance their activities, and so they sell drugs. Not a hard connection to grasp. If the drugs were legal, at least some of them, there wouldn't be nearly as much money in them. And terrorists wouldn't bother. Nor would other criminals. These people are going after easy money. If anyone can get in on the market, the forces of capitalism will find the optimal price point so that there's a minor profit and no more. The easy money will be gone, leaving criminals of all stripes scrambling to find another source of revenue. Instead, what we're doing is trying to choke off the supply (which doesn't work anyway), which will drive the price even higher, resulting in even more money for those still in the business. And chances are, it's not going to be your friendly neighborhood drug dealer who manages to keep going in that kind of environment, but the guys that you really don't want to mess with. Nor that you want to have millions of dollars. Once again, the drug war will have solved nothing.

¶ 270 Posted at 01.37 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

Buick's new slogan is "It's all good." How dumb is that?

¶ 284 Posted at 12.59 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

From the "parents who hate their children department:" In my attempts to resolve a finance charge with First USA*, I had occasion to speak with a customer supervisor by the name of Feather Weight.

* Incidentally, if you ever use a 0% interest (or otherwise low) rate balance transfer on a credit card, be aware that when they say "0% interest rate until February 2, 2002," what they really mean is "0% interest rate until the beginning of the billing period including February 2, 2002," which in my case was January 10, 2002. So in spite of claiming 0% interest rate until February 2, it was actually 0% interest rate until January 10, and 13.99% interest rate thereafter. This seems to be an intentionally deceptive practice; I can think of no honest reason to structure their payment schedule this way. I have made a complaint to the FTC, but I expect little to come of it. I've had too many expensive lessons of late; I wish they would stop for a while.

¶ 301 Posted at 12.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news | stupid people )

More stupidity:

Saying that to kids, "this movie is Sept. 11," the producer of the Canadian-produced PBS show Ricky's Room has announced that he will join in a planned protest by family groups of the upcoming Warner Bros. movie Death to Smoochy.

¶ 321 Posted at 12.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | movies )

Oh god, this sounds so insecure: MERit Credit Engine.

¶ 357 Posted at 03.08 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Who's dumb enough to get fooled by an email like this:

Klez.E is the most common world-wide spreading worm.It's very dangerous by corrupting your files. Because of its very smart stealth and anti-anti-virus technic,most common AV software can't detect or clean it. We developed this free immunity tool to defeat the malicious virus. You only need to run this tool once,and then Klez will never come into your PC. NOTE: Because this tool acts as a fake Klez to fool the real worm,some AV monitor maybe cry when you run it. If so,Ignore the warning,and select 'continue'. If you have any question,please mail to me.

I guess I shouldn't ask.

¶ 364 Posted at 12.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

The Apocalypse is surely on its way. The next reality tv show? E! brings us The Anna Nicole Smith Show. Sounds bad, doesn't it? It gets worse. Part of the show will be her hunt for a sperm donor. Apparently she's already reproduced once; she has a 16-year old son.

¶ 368 Posted at 03.54 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | whoa )

Two things that make me think that most people and media don't "get" the Web. One, most documents on the web are still not dated. With magazines and newspapers, there's standard boilerplate, and each edition is pushed out at once. With the web, documents go out when they're done, or at least they should, and there's no way to infer that time by correlating with other dates and times listed elsewhere on that site. Two, most news articles still don't link. Even the most obvious links are generally omitted by most news organizations. That's just pathetic. No doubt it's an editorial decision to keep people from visiting other sites, but that just makes it even dumber. Linking made the web. Putting a news article on the web using HTML formatting is not publishing for the web.*

* On the other hand, I get seriously annoyed by the (Slash)dot-head types that insist on linking everything that could possibly be linked. TODO: formulate a general policy on when documents tangential to the main thrust of a sentence/paragraph/story should be linked and when they shouldn't.

¶ 372 Posted at 09.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | internet )

I'm seeing more and more sites requiring cookies simply to browse the site. For instance, I was looking up locations for a clothing retailer. They used MSN Expedia as a source for their maps. Fair enough. But apparently just to look at the map, I have to allow all sorts of .expedia.msn.com and .msn.com cookies to be set. Just to look at one image. Law.com won't let you read any articles without using cookies. They're somewhat less intelligent about it; they try to set the cookie and then check it in javascript embedded in the page. If you disable javascript, you can view the articles just fine. Or you could download them using a non-graphical client like curl or wget and view it locally. But that ignores the point. I can think of no instance where cookies can be justified on technical grounds. Session management is a solved problem. Now, transparent logins are convenient, but that's it for cookies. Mainly, I think the website programmers are just lazy. Either that or some exec made a bone-headed decision to try to coerce the web-browsing population at large to enable cookies. Of course, I'll just go elsewhere. And when that becomes too difficult, no doubt there will be a plugin for Mozilla that allows you to specify that certain sites get random values for the cookies they set. Trying to coerce users with this sort of strong-arming is stupid and counter-productive. At best, they set off an arms race with those trying to circumvent these measures. At worst, they drive customers away. Why go through all that trouble when they can accomplish 99% of what they want by doing a tiny amount more work (in many cases, most of which they're already doing)? Audiogalaxy still works in Lynx! The whole point of this web business is that anybody can do it. And yet we still find publishers of all shapes and sizes trying to lock users into their own fenced of pieces of the web. Companies who long for the early 90s when the only access was Compuserve or AOL or Prodigy, completely controlled environments. Not only do people not want that, it's obvious that people don't want that. Look at the number of people subscribed to an online service in 1995 and compare it to today. These people don't understand how to serve us, plain and simple.

¶ 375 Posted at 12.38 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | internet | privacy | web )

I've heard a bunch of people justify buying SUVs because they are safe. But they're not. I mean, sure, once you are in an accident, you, as occupant of the SUV, are probably safer than the average car driver. But, that ignores two major things.

If you drive an SUV, you are probably considerably more likely to get into an accident than someone driving a smaller vehicle. Auto manufacturers have done a good job of making the larger vehicles FEEL like cars, but they're still tough to handle. I've driven several. Your visibility is affected. You are more likely to roll over or spin out. Your maneuverability is reduced, but your perception of it remains the same. Your mass is greater, so you are less likely to be able to stop suddenly. Upon impact with, say, a telephone pole, your SUV will probably be damaged considerably more than a smaller car. If you are twice as safe in accidents, but three times as likely to actually get into an accident, you are not safer.

Then there's the other guy. The one you hit. He's probably driving a sensible car. That means that your bumpers are higher, making you more likely to ride up on and over the victim instead of staying on the same level, potentially crushing the cabin. Your SUV has twice the mass, and therefore twice the momentum and kinetic energy. You are also likely to be travelling faster than a car would in the same situation because of your longer braking distance, further increasing your momentum and kinetic energy. You may be marginally safer in your vehicle, but the car you hit is in much greater danger than if you had been a sedan. Even if you hit another SUV (which would solve two problems), the danger to you both is still greater because of the increased momentum.

I would like to see some real NTSB numbers on this. Not simple crash tests, but deeper analysis. Fatality rates of vehicles hit by SUVs versus other kinds of vehicles. Average number of accidents per sedan or compact car versus SUVs. Amount of damage caused to each vehicle (as a percentage of original cost, since comparing a Mercedes S500 to an Expedition is not an apples-to-apples comparison). Numbers on the safety of SUVs in isolation are useless. We need to look at the bigger picture. I'm pretty certain that I am considerably more likely to get injured or killed in an automobile accident by virtue of living in Texas, the most SUV and truck happy state in the Union, and probably in the world.

¶ 441 Posted at 12.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

More reasons SUVs suck.

¶ 482 Posted at 12.21 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Michael Moore was at UT yesterday. He was supposed to give a speech at the LBJ School, but apparently there was enough demand that they moved it to Gregory Gym. I happened to notice a huge crowd of people as I went over for my swim. On my way out, I saw a stretch limo. I asked the driver, who was just standing there, and it turned out it was Moore's. There's a bit of irony for you.

I'm just sick of Michael Moore. His Oscar stunt was clearly a self-aggrandizing publicity move rather than an actual attempt to change opinions. I've read too many things like this and this to trust anything he says. I wanted to see "Bowling for Columbine" at some point, but now I don't want to because I'm afraid of my mind getting polluted by his half-truths and distortions. He's the left-wing's equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter. Their inaccurate, self-serving, and sensationalistic output does a huge amount of damage by distorting facts and polarizing debates. It's hard for me to believe that any of them truly believes in the causes they espouse; they just use the causes to promote themselves. I would very happily launch those three into the sun, given the chance.

¶ 532 Posted at 03.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

There is a circle of hell reserved for people who ride obnoxiously loud motorcycles. Now, I admire a good motorcycle. It sure looks like a lot of fun. But. When you can be heard a half mile away, that is not a good thing. Look. Loud engines are a sign of bad design. Full stop. If it makes noise, it's badly engineered. It is not something to be proud of. It is not something to enjoy. If you want loud, get a stereo. It sounds better and it's cheaper. Good engines are whisper quiet. On the other hand, I can only admire Harley-Davidson's success in marketing what is fundamentally a design flaw to balding idiots with too much gut and too much money. But then, the circle of hell isn't for the manufacturers, but the jerks who buy from them.

¶ 570 Posted at 10.53 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

My sister thought it would be funny to make me choke on my own vomit, so she sent me a compilation of naming suggestions that people have made. Here you go. Has to be read to be believed, but I don't doubt people really made those suggestions.

¶ 587 Posted at 02.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | names )

When my time comes, I would like to be remembered with a billboard behind a Walgreens:

... not. Just give some money to the ACLU or something. Things like this are just tacky. No park benches or bricks, either, no matter what they're building.

¶ 593 Posted at 11.07 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | pictures )

A writer of cookbooks and other books: Crescent Dragonwagon. Yes, that is her real name. Well, it is now. She was born "Ellen Zolotow."

¶ 599 Posted at 10.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | names )

Group plans campaign against gay TV show.

The politically conservative Montana Family Coalition is planning a media campaign against the new television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," claiming that the reality-based show featuring five gay men is "trash" and shouldn't be on TV. ... "To me, that's not a reality show about gay people," said Julie Millam, who said she watched clips from the show. "A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS."

Jesus. "Queer Eye" might be relatively trashy TV, but what kind of hate do you have to have in you to say something like that?

¶ 604 Posted at 02.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Do you read about the Darwin Awards? Do you ever wish that could be you, but it just seems so gosh-darned tough? Are you hoping to exit the world in a spectacularly stupid fashion, but lack the imagination? Well, fret no more, because the answer is here! For all of you who have wanted to do mankind a favor and remove yourselves from the gene pool, you can now purchase a Darwin Award home starter kit! No longer will your laziness cripple your efforts! Operators are standing by, call now!

¶ 640 Posted at 01.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

There is a particular kind of idiocy is embodied in flash intro pages that have the "skip intro" link in the movie itself, rather than the page in which it is embedded.

¶ 667 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | internet )

So, for the last couple of months, I've been fighting with the City of Austin over the final electric/water/waste bill from my apartment. I had written a long post detailing the issue, but then I realized it was really boring. Suffice it to say that a bureaucratic error resulted in my account being active until December, when I explicitly cancelled, even though I moved out in June, my lease was up in July, and a new tenant started living there in August. I was owing to the tune of over $180, and every reason I came up with to explain how it was their mistake and not mine (there were at least 3 solid ones, but they're really boring) was met with a stone wall: "I'm sorry, but the policy is that you are liable."

In the end, it was settled not by me, not by the city, but by the new tenant, who asked to be back-billed to August 1st. That reduced the $180+ to about $4. This person didn't have to do this. As far as the city was concerned, their account started in December, and it was on me to cover everything to that point. Maybe that person realized that. Maybe they didn't. I have no way of knowing. But from where I stand, it looks like this person saw they were riding on my dime, and even though they had zero legal obligation to do so, would fix the situation and pay for their fair share. I'm a little bit awed by this. I don't know that I would have done the same thing, as much as I am impressed with myself and my sense of right and wrong. Having been a beneficiary of this, however, I know that, in the future, I will do the right thing. This kind of thing just gives me the warm fuzzies.

In theory, I'm still mad at the city about the snafus that led to this whole problem in the first place. But my fire is basically gone because of the actions of one good person. I still reserve the right to resurrect my indignation in the future, however.

If you thought that was boring, just imagine what the detailed version was like.

¶ 669 Posted at 11.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I would find homophobes hilarious if they weren't so violent. The anti-gay message is basically rooted in the idea that homosexuality is contagious. I mean, sure, they talk all Sodom and Gomorrah, but it's not hard to see past that. What I find so funny about it is the hypothetical conversation:

Me: So homosexuality is a choice?
Them: Yes.
Me: And homosexual displays of affection, characters on sitcoms, and design shows getting their 15 minutes of fame encourage people to choose homosexuality?
Them: Yes.
Me: So you're saying that they could make YOU gay?
Them: ...

Obviously it wouldn't actually go that way. But the obvious response is so flimsy that they may as well be. "Well, not ME, but you know, other people." I think it's a very illustrative example of the rareness of the ability to think critically, to look at a concept and figure out what it actually means.

Pretty nearly the same thing is going on in the opposition to gay marriage. In addition to the homophobia, the argument is that it "weakens marriage." Uh, right. Bob and Bob from Provincetown calling each other "husband" will make me divorce Jessica. Or beat her. Or cheat on her. Riiight. I don't feel strongly about the issue, but I definitely know that the efforts to "defend marriage" are silly. And the Constitutional amendment idea is downright stupid.

I also like how these busy-bodies trot out research on how marriage correlates with better homes for children (here's an example for you). I don't disagree, mind you, I just find it strange that conservatives want the government to tell you what to do. It's revealing to me how the Republican party is behaving now that they control Congress and the Presidency. All that talk of "states' rights" and keeping the government out of people's lives is out the window. I'm making no claims as to how the Democrats would behave were the situation reversed, but I can't think of any instance where Democrats so thoroughly rejected their previous platforms once they were in position to grab power for themselves. If nothing else, they're just not that organized :-).

¶ 670 Posted at 05.22 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | politics )

I used to think that even bad musicians generally had good taste in music. I guess I was wrong. There are several choice quotes from Alice Cooper, Michael Stipe, and Avril Lavigne.

¶ 758 Posted at 02.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( music | stupid people )

Austin is currently having some kind of motorcycle fan shindig. I've made my feelings clear on loud motorcycles, but this latest invasion has riled me up again. Too many old, saggy people riding big, stupid, obnoxious machines. Nothing says poser like a Harley-Davidson. I need to put that on a bumper sticker.

¶ 768 Posted at 08.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | stupid people )

Malcolm Gladwell on SUVs. An excerpt:

internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.

¶ 777 Posted at 03.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Have a look at some awful plastic surgery. This one in particular will freak you out; most of them are more subtle. I don't know much about plastic surgery and whether the site's claims are realistic, but man... it sure explains the subtly freakish-looking trend in Hollywood over the last decade or so. For some reason, it didn't register with me, but now it's like I'm seeing these people for the first time. Probably not safe for work, although I guess I don't really know what kind of a job you have.

¶ 822 Posted at 05.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I missed this story the first time around, what with being on my honeymoon and all. No wonder we have such stupid anti-terrorism policies; the country is full of idiots. Start here: Annie Jacobsen freaks out because brown, swarthy men are on her flight (note how she keeps saying Middle Eastern because use of "Arab" would sound racist). Then there are a bunch of morons who jump on it: stupid, stupid, stupid... well, that'll do, though there are many more out there. One of the comments from that last:

The fact of the matter is, nothing beats a well-informed and proactive traveling public. It wasn't someone on the federal dole who sounded the war cry of our American folk that resounds from September 11th onward, but a regular Joe who gave us the immortal phrase, "Let's roll".

You're not well-informed, fella. That you buy into this crap is proof enough. You're attempting to use terrorism to make yourself feel important. Another comment:

that means that their behavior was at best, to purposely to psychologically manipulate/terrify the plane, and at worst, do more.

Listen, buddy: your fear is your fear. Nobody else is responsible for that. Blaming it on someone else cloaked behind grandiose terms like "psychologically manipulate" doesn't make you any less of a wimp.

It seems like the stupid people have perfect memory for September 11th, but no memory for all of the times they are wrong; how many times did Fox News declare WMDs had been found Iraq and all of these webloggers jump onto it? And then it turns out that it was actually something completely innocuous but they've already moved on to the next thing. Then finally, some reason.

Oh, and we (sort of) have some actual facts from the air marshals themselves (source referred to is no longer online and archives apparently are unavailable [ditto for Google cache and Wayback; it's important to find the primary sources, after all]). Apparently the danger they saw was the hysteria of this foolish woman.

With that kind of idiocy, I'm amazed that I haven't been detained on flights. Brown, swarthy, doesn't smile at people... I'm up to something. And that shaven head is surely some kind of extremist fundamentalist thing. And Jessica could be a brainwashed American woman I'm using for cover. And I could have a poison needle in my class ring. And I'm going to build a nuclear bomb out of my laptop and a bag of salted peanuts.

So what's the moral of the story? You can make up lots of scary scenarios. You can connect unrelated dots. If you go looking for something, you will find it. It's easy to spook yourself without any basis in fact or reason whatsoever. And that kind of hysteria is exactly the point of terrorism. They seek to cause fear because fearful people can be manipulated. The only weapon against fear is reason. Annie Jacobsen should have taken a step back and realized that a group of Arab men who apparently know each other and are carrying musical instruments might actually be (drumroll)... a band. She should have applied a little bit of skepticism and realized that the odds of terrorists hijacking a plane are tiny. She should have realized that, even if she was 100% correct, there was nothing that she could possibly do to help the situation: these "Middle-Eastern men," like all the passengers, had been searched. If they really were hijackers, the whole plane would instantly mobilize against them. If there were air marshals on board, they were smarter, more perceptive, and better-equipped than her. And there's the very strong possibility that she's wrong.

Hysterical people will defend their reaction by invoking all manner of weak appeals to vague possibilities, but they're just ghost stories. Any evaluation of a situation like this demands that it be placed in the proper context. What reasonable explanations are there for this behavior? What might I be missing? What are the odds of an actual terrorist attack? Unfortunately, people don't seem to be very good at this kind of critical thinking and so let themselves be swayed by fear, refusing to accept that the fear is unjustified and itself has a cost. The goal of terrorists is to make us afraid, because fear makes us weak and stupid. As much as it pains me to invoke that tired and abused expression, this stupidity means the terrorists are winning.

¶ 852 Posted at 12.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( terrorism | stupid people )

You know the "low carb" train is off the rails when they start selling "low carb" chocolate candy.

¶ 873 Posted at 03.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Every time I hear the name or see a picture of Paris Hilton, I lose brain cells. She is like an icepick in my brain. Anyone who fans her "celebrity" is an idiot. It's obvious exactly what happened: spoiled, rich girl wanted to be a star. Her indulgent parents threw bushels of money at Hollywood publicists and said, "make it happen." Everything about her is so obviously calculated and manufactured. I rarely have this visceral of a reaction, but she is everywhere. I am going to stop now, because hating her is still attention, and I'd rather not collapse in a twitching ball on the floor.

¶ 899 Posted at 03.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

The NY Times has an article about the Texas Board of Education's decision to avoid using words like "partner" instead of "husband" or "wife." Just to make sure I'm understanding this, conservatives want to change the language of a book so that it doesn't offend them. Isn't that, um, political correctness? More seriously, though, I've just decided that I am going to read all of my kids' textbooks.

¶ 948 Posted at 09.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I don't do New Year's resolutions. If some change in your behavior is a good thing, why wait until the New Year? Why not start doing it now? Calling it a New Year's resolution just makes it easier to break it, because that's what everyone does. You might as well give up before you start. The "Christmas spirit" is the same thing. People try extra hard to be nice to each other "because it's Christmas." That's just one of those things I don't get. If it's good to be nice to people, shouldn't you do it all the time? Is it ok to be an ass for July 4th? It just doesn't make sense. Of course, the cynic in me isn't actually confused by this. People don't actually want to improve their behavior. People don't actually want to be nice. They just want to feel good about themselves and then go right back to doing the same self-destructive things they've always done. It's an extended form of denial. So do yourself a favor this year. Skip the New Year's resolutions. If there's something you want to do, start now. Otherwise, be content with the way you are because you won't change if you don't want to.

¶ 992 Posted at 03.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

More hate? Okey dokey... Some insurance company put out a "humorous" press release about the different types of parkers. It wasn't nearly judgmental enough. There are exactly two acceptable strategies. Either you go straight to the empty spaces far away, or you swing by the spaces near the front once on your way to the empty spaces far away. I don't know how many times (a day) I see people waiting for someone to leave a particular space when there's an empty one just 4 spots down, blocking people behind them. If there's room, I go around, park wherever I find a space. More often than not, on my way to the store, I'll pass that same person still waiting for that same space. Hey, maybe you wouldn't be such a fat ass if you walked an extra 50 feet every now and then. I'm as lazy as (lazier than) the next guy, but I try to maintain some semblance of dignity. Time and quality of that time are the only currencies we have. Everything can be expressed in those terms. While you're sitting in your car waiting for a space, you are losing both. You could be getting to the store faster. You could be spending that time accomplishing something instead of just waiting. You wouldn't be burning gas that you have to pay for with money (time). You're getting in other people's way, wasting their time. In short, you are a stupid, despicable individual. Unless it's cold. Or you have a pregnant wife. Or a baby. I'd better see a @#$% diaper bag.

¶ 993 Posted at 06.39 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that a majority of Americans (56%) now think that the invasion of and subsequent war in Iraq were not worth the cost in lives and money. A substantial number of people have shifted over the last two years.

I want to find these people and smack them silly. What the hell were you expecting would happen? How does this quagmire come as a surprise to you? You probably think I shouldn't be mad because people are seeing the light, but I don't really think they're seeing the light. This is one bad decision that they're realizing was bad, but I seriously doubt they're realizing their whole decision-making process is wrong.

They might come around on this one issue, but the next time there's some serious decision to be made, they're going to make the same mistake again. They're ignorant of the world. They confuse patriotism with nationalism. They're willing to trust politicians who say things that are patently false if they're repeated often enough. They think decisiveness is a virtue and hesitation a sin. None of that has changed. People aren't learning, they're becoming cautious of war, and those are two entirely different things.

If, five years from now, there's a legitimate war that needs to be fought, these people will oppose it because they don't understand anything beyond the superficial. It's better than them denying reality, but I can't take much comfort from people belatedly realizing what was obvious 2 years ago. I can't take much comfort from the realization that only actual disaster will make these people realize they were wrong, and that they will never actually understand how and why they were wrong. So they'll keep on making bad decisions over and over, except they'll be different bad decisions. And they'll drag the rest of us along with them, until we finally evolve and get on the spaceships out of here.

¶ 999 Posted at 12.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( iraq | stupid people )

This email I got from "web@fbi.gov" is hilarious:

Dear Sir/Madam,

we have logged your IP-address on more than 40 illegal Websites.

Important: Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.


Yours faithfully,
M. John Stellford



++-++ Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
++-++ 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 2130
++-++ Washington, DC 20535
++-++ (202) 324-3000



*-* Attachment: No Virus found
*-* "KETAN" Anti-Virus Service
*-* http://www.ketan.org

Attached is the file text-indictment_cit1470.zip, which my ISP (ketan.org) has already scanned for me and found to be free of viruses. I'm so helpful. Additionally, it appears that the entire FBI fits in a single room.

¶ 1029 Posted at 10.04 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I got a piece of HTML spam. The plain-text version of the message said:

Get a capable html e-mailer

... so you can read this spam. It's tough enough being a spammer without me making things harder.

¶ 1050 Posted at 12.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

So, this whole Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes thing... People keep asking what he sees in her, whether she's worthy, etc. Nobody's said why he is such a catch. Ok, sure, he's good-looking, but there are a lot of good-looking guys in Hollywood. And he's rich, but there are a lot of rich guys who'd be happy to date her. Is that it? Is he funny? Is he smart? He's a Scientologist, so he believes in some odd things, to put it mildly 1 . Plus, he's 42 this year. What's so great about Tom?

Because I have to have an opinion about everything.

¶ 1097 Posted at 02.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Will people please stop referring to George W. Bush as "our commander-in-chief?"

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

Presumably, Congress has extended that to cover the Coast Guard and Air Force as well, but it certainly does not extend to civilians. If you are not a member of the military, he is not your commander-in-chief. Even if you are, he's not in command of anything except your military duties.

¶ 1135 Posted at 10.25 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

The state of Oregon is concerned about losing gasoline tax revenues due to efficient automobiles and is investigating a tax on miles driven. What a monumentally stupid idea, especially since it solves a problem that is thus far only hypothetical in nature. Why would you want to discourage efficiency? Did it occur to these people that they could make up the lost revenues by increasing the existing gasoline tax?

The broader issue is what it indicates about the nature of specific taxation. Once you tax a specific thing, you become dependent on taxing that specific thing, so you make bad decisions. Sin taxes are an excellent example. Ignore that the government shouldn't be telling you what to do like that. Suppose your state taxes cigarettes heavily. At some point, it becomes in their best interest to encourage smoking. The dependency on that revenue stream warps their thinking. That's part of why I believe that all consumption taxes should be the same 1 .

Distinguishing between different kinds of consumption based on external considerations just creates artificial incentives and disincentives, artificially distorting what people would naturally do, and creating an overall inefficiency. In other words, calling some things "good" and other things "bad" is usually subjective. You don't want to tax bad things, because then you're motivated to encourage them, and you don't want to tax good things, because then you discourage them. Then there are the grey areas; something might be somewhat good, but giving it preferential treatment makes it cost more than the benefit derived. The easiest and best thing to do is to just tax everything equally, except where there is provable harm, in which case you tax only as much as it costs to remedy that harm. Anything else is unnecessary, oppressive, and inefficient.

¶ 1146 Posted at 06.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | issues )

The NY Times also had an article recently about waiting for medical care. I have had my frustrated moments as well. As far as I can tell, it is a combination of complacency and arrogance and a system that fails to correct either. There is no good reason to keep patients waiting if you've been practicing medicine for a month. And yet... Few things make me angrier than having my time wasted. Minutes and hours of my life just spent waiting, with nothing to show for it. It's not even like they get anything out of it. And it's easier for me, too, because I have health insurance and can schedule things more at my convenience. People who are poor have to wait even more.

¶ 1152 Posted at 10.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I have to wonder what geniuses think slats are a good design choice for cribs. It seems like not a day goes by that Uma doesn't get an arm or leg stuck and holler for help. It's not that Uma is an especially trap-happy baby, either; we know other people who have the same problem (like an adorable almost-2-year-old who yells "Andrew stuck!" when it happens to him). They even sell bumpers that (among other things) prevent this from happening. Sell the disease, then sell the cure. It's pretty clear to me that some kind of mesh would be superior, or perhaps the Lucite of a high-tech movie prison. Anything but those stupid slats. Let that be a lesson to you if you find yourself crib shopping.

¶ 1169 Posted at 12.33 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | babies )

Ok, this time the stupid is me. I was holding Uma overhead sitting in the office, occasionally swooping down on Jessica in her own chair. At some point, I swooped a little too far and the chair tipped over. Down came Humpty. I banged my head on the desk, my leg on something, and landed with all my weight on my hip on the arm rest of the chair. Ouch. But! What saves this from being (merely) an embarassing tale of my own clumsiness is that I held Uma aloft the whole time. She never came near to getting hurt. I could have used my arms to arrest my fall, but they were holding my baby girl.

¶ 1178 Posted at 08.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | me )

One of the stupidest things I have seen on the Internet. In 6 steps, a "proof" of the existence of God and the human, and the impossibility of evolution and artificial intelligence.

¶ 1247 Posted at 03.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Summary of a conversation:

Her: Are you from India?
Me: I'm from Vermont. My parents are from India.
Her: That's what I meant.

I get this all the time. The more common form is:

Other: Where are you from?
Me: I'm from Vermont.
Other: No, where are you really from?

More polite people may ask, "What is your ancestry?" but it's the same thing in nicer form. It drives me nuts. Jessica put her finger on why it's insulting (or even offensive ;-). It says that I can't be a real American. When people ask Jessica where she's from, her answer of "Connecticut" is perfectly satisfactory. She's white. She looks like a "real American." She doesn't have to tell them German, Irish, and Welsh. It's not enough for me to have been born and spent much of my life in Vermont. I don't look like a real American.

It's not even that these are people I know, or that I've been talking to them for a while. It's usually the third question of the conversation. "Hi." "How are you?" "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" Asked of anyone who "looks American," it's just an idle bit of uninteresting trivia where their ancestors come, so idle and uninteresting that it is rarely asked. Not with me. It is so important to people that they establish what I "really am" that it's one of the first facts about me they seek. Other people are just people, but I am an Indian people. Well, screw that. I am what I am. My background is irrelevant. You can find plenty of reasons to dislike me, you'll just have to work a little harder.

¶ 1252 Posted at 11.51 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | stupid people )

A NY Times article on household budgets or somesuch has this incredible quote:

"We went from totally believing in Bush to really having our doubts," said Wayne Toomey... "It comes down to his lack of care about gas prices."

Of all the reasons to turn against Bush, they chose such a relatively small issue in the face of so many wonderful and compelling ones, an issue that Bush has little control over and certainly isn't his responsibility anyway. Also:

And then there is the story of gasoline, which in Florida now averages $3 to $3.45 a gallon.
...
"It is 60 miles round trip to visit my family," Ms. Meicher said. "It costs me a half a tank of gas and maybe $15 when it used to be $8. I give it a second thought now when the family says, 'Let's do this or that.' We are real close, but now I feel like I am saying 'yes' maybe two out of every three times these days."

You think maybe your problems have something to do with getting less than 14 mpg?

¶ 1267 Posted at 11.43 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | stupid people )

A letter to the advice column in the Austin-American Statesman included the following:

I recently heard that the Citgo company is owned by Venezuela or interests in Venezuela. If Citgo is indeed owned by Venezuelan interests, it is my intention to cease using Citgo gasoline.

There is so much that is stupid about that. One, I doubt the writer really knows why he/she dislikes Venezuela. It's like the France thing a few years back. Two, if the goal is to only buy oil from "nice guy" nations, well, good luck with that. Of the top 14 oil-exporting nations, only Norway, Mexico, and maybe Algeria qualify, exporting a paltry 1/6 of the total exports from that group. Finally, both oil and gasoline are commodities, so it doesn't really matter who you buy from. As long as that seller has enough available buyers for its supply, the invisible hand of the market will keep the money flowing no matter how many people boycott them.

¶ 1268 Posted at 11.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

I'm kind of a martinet when it comes to stealing bandwidth. I discovered just now that someone embedded the picture of Cyclone Graham that I posted about in a forum. They didn't link to the post, nor did they copy the image to their own web space. Surely the etiquette about this is well-known and obvious. If not, maybe the replacement image will properly educate this person:

Maybe I'm not such a nice guy after all.

¶ 1279 Posted at 02.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

From the registration-encumbered Chicago Tribune (bugmenot is your friend):

"GM on Tuesday announced a promotion that caps gas at $1.99 a gallon for one year for buyers of certain full-size sport-utility vehicles and midsize cars in California and Florida.

Consumers will receive a monthly credit to a pre-paid fuel card for the difference between $1.99 and the average price of premium gas in their state."

Over 10,000 miles in a year for a 16 mpg SUV with an average $1/gallon subsidy, that works out to be $625 paid out by GM, which doesn't have the money, the buyer would have to fork over $1250 for the rest, which is more than they'd pay without a subsidy in a sensible car. That's without counting the premium just for buying a full-sized SUV in the first place, as well as the remaining life of the vehicle after the first year. GM is stupid to do this, and anyone swayed by this is even more so.

The perfect quote was provided by a Sierra Club director: "I have never heard of an addict getting off their addiction by having someone subsidize their fix."

¶ 1286 Posted at 02.33 PM ⇒ No Comments ( oil | stupid people )

I'd like to see Brent Bozell's Parents' Television Council file 200,000+ complaints to the FCC to protest CNN broadcasting George W. Bush saying "shit" into an open mic.

¶ 1324 Posted at 02.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | stupid people )

Respecting other people's beliefs sounds nice in theory, but what if their beliefs are stupid?

¶ 1331 Posted at 04.41 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

It's absolutely nuts how issues that were long since settled have crept up again. Teaching Creationism in schools? Freaking out because Janet Jackson showed a nipple on TV? Eavesdropping without warrants? Racial profiling (discrimination)? Arresting people who say things you don't like? Arresting people without charges? Disappearing people into the black abyss of secret prisons? A divinely chosen and inspired leader? Torture for crying out loud?!?!

All this stuff was settled. There were memos. There were meetings and conventions and zines and flamewars. Hell, there were at least a dozen real wars. We figured out the right answer ages ago. So what is happening with people going on TV with perfectly straight faces rolling the clock back on centuries of progress like it never happened, like years and years of blood and fire and pain and destruction didn't teach us all exactly what was wrong with all of that, and people take them seriously? How did this happen so easily and so quickly? Is the veneer of civilization really that thin?

If all that stuff's back on the table, how is anything off-limits? Am I going to see Sean Hannity expounding at great length about the benefits of child labor? Maybe Bill O'Reilly will tell us all what a good thing it would be to bring back debtors' prisons. Will Rush Limbaugh tell us that women don't really need the vote? Are we going to see Khalid Sheikh Muhammed subjected to trial by ordeal? "He drowned, so he's innocent!" Forced conversions? Religious taxes? Slavery!?!? It took so little to regress these last 5 years. Where will they stop?

¶ 1363 Posted at 08.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | stupid people )

Among the 88 Precepts of neo-Nazi white nationalist David Lane you will find number 11: "Truth requires little explanation. Therefore, beware of verbose doctrines. The great principles are revealed in brevity." 88 precepts, mind you.

¶ 1421 Posted at 02.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny | stupid people )

Old people lose money buying commemorative coins. The short of it is that one of those late night television advertisers told a bunch of seniors that these commemorative coins would appreciate in value and were a good investment. After buying them, the buyers discovered that the coins' market value was much less than they had thought.

Now, I don't want to sound heartless. Nobody wants to see anyone impoverished, especially not the elderly. But come on:

Harold Tice of Austin pulled the money out of his 401(k), his home equity and trust funds meant for his grandsons' college education to invest in the coins...

And:

"I'm 75 years old, and that's all the money I have, and I can't afford to lose it..."

There's a whole lot wrong here. First off, though, did the coin sellers deceive the customers? Maybe, it's not clear. The only explicit claims that they made were that the coins would appreciate significantly, which is true, given enough time. They mentioned how supposedly during the Great Depression that the only currency worth anything was gold. I'm not sure about that argument. It's certainly true that a lot of sensible people invest in precious metals to protect themselves against economic shocks during all economic conditions.

Even if the sellers did lie, the buyers were irresponsible (to put it nicely). Did any of them get a second opinion from someone about whether this was a good idea? Did they do any comparison shopping to see if they could find cheaper coins? What were they doing speculating with money they couldn't afford to lose? Six people lost $420,000 total. That's $70,000 each on average. If you're draining your 401(k), your home equity, and your grandsons' trust funds to buy any one thing, be it US Treasury bonds or tulip bulbs, you're making a big mistake. Don't get me wrong, the coin dealers are probably jerks. That doesn't matter. Even if they were swell guys with only your best interests at heart, it's a stupid thing to do.

This also hits upon a market fundamental. Coins are just like anything else: what they're worth is what someone is willing to pay. I have a 1993 Toyota Corolla worth about $1300, according to the Kelley Blue Book. If I ask you to pay $5000 for it, and you do, well, good for me. You didn't get taken, robbed, conned, or anything else. It's entirely your choice whether to pay $5000 for it. If you then try to sell it for more, but nobody is offering more than $1300, is that really my fault? You gave me the money willingly. If you're really looking for someone to blame, go after all the people who won't pay you more than $1300 for the car. There's no such thing as intrinsic value, and thus there's no such thing as an unfair price. There's just the price you're unwilling to pay or unable to get.

¶ 1440 Posted at 01.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | freedom )

According to the LA Times, a publicist said of her difficulty obtaining an iPhone for Cher, "Doesn't winning Oscars, Grammys and Emmys entitle her to move to the front of the line?" No comment necessary, I think.

¶ 1502 Posted at 03.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

Back in 2005, Alaska (of course) Representative Don Young changed the contents of a bill after the House and Senate had passed it. How is this even possible? Every single job I've had has had a system for preventing exactly that kind of thing, even when it was just a music web site.

¶ 1546 Posted at 02.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | stupid people )