Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.29

Revolving Door Spins Ex-Hill Aides Into Lobbyists
I know this is something you probably didn't need to be told, but it seems that out of the 2,737 vultures swarming Washington on behalf of the health care and pharmaceutical industries trying to convince our unelected betters to forgo the pleasantries of lube when they screw us, 52% or 1,418 are former government employees/elected representatives. Duh! Do you really think a Senator wants to take corporate contributions and marching orders from a stranger?

Keeping Iran honest
One of those smug assholes who had the politically debilitating misfortune of being right about Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, has decided to stick his big nose and his "I know things about the Middle East and weapons" attitude into this whole Iran mess. Apparently this ass thinks that by calmly stating what is going on, explicitly explaining the international laws involved, and cogently using his knowledge of weapons systems and manufacturing capacity to tamp down fears of Iranian nukes, that he can somehow enlighten people and clam them down over what is happening. Hopefully we'll ignore this jerk-off before his dirty facts taint our precious "start a war or start a nuclear war" debate.

Four-Winged Fossil Bridges Bird-Dinosaur Gap
Listen, I know I caused a controversy yesterday when I, perhaps too hastily as it turns out, suggested that Jurassic Park was not as accurate a documentary as we all thought. It turns out I was wrong. It seems that, as Dr. Alan Grant postulated, that the thunder lizards just up and became birds. And now there's a fossil record. Of a transitional evolutionary species. That sound you heard was Kirk Cameron shrieking as Darwin planted a size 11 Timberland right in his groin. That's the scientific theories of Darwin/Jurassic Park - 1, the scientific theories of Growing Pains - 0.

Girl Talk, Working Memory and Creativity
One man takes a recent GQ profile of Pittsburgh musician and mash-up artist Greg "Girl Talk" Gillis and takes it as a jumping off point for how memory works in relation to music and specifically mash-up music. It turns out there's a little more to it than "Wu-Tang and Boston were always meant to be together."

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on
That's right, the Oxford English Dictionary re-opened its killing fields for another year and this time no hyphen was spared. Ice-cream is now icecream. Test-tube is now test tube. And both Sean and I are nervously awaiting the rulings on fuck-face and jerk-off for a piece on Glenn Beck. Who's to blame? The interwebs and all it's various assorted hyphen hating tubes combined with a populace that is just to damned lazy to use them. Don't worry about all those hyphens...*sniff*...they're with Jesus now.