Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.21

Moritz Resl's 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Alan Greenspan and Paul Krugman got into a economic slap fight over the weekend with competing op-eds. Greenspan arguing we need to focus on debt instead of jobs, Krugman arguing jobs instead of debt. Let's see, do we believe the tired old man who sat at the apex of this crisis unable to see what was going on or do anything about it, or do I believe the guy who just won a Nobel and has been horrifyingly right every step of the way. What's that? Unemployment is hovering at 10% and focusing on the debt by cutting spending will kill more jobs? Gee, hard to see who to listen to on this point.

On that point, the Washington Post looks at how our elected betters' myopic concerns over making minuscule "drop in the bucket" dents in the deficit is taking precedent over, you know, fixing the economy and getting people back to work. No worry about the massive state budget crises, the Senate has to make it look like they're listening to the ill-thought out concerns of voters by being fake concerned about the deficit. So a year from now when we're all eating catfood underneath an abandoned freeway, remember to thank them all for they way they knocked down the deficit by $5 bucks.

After 28 years the Bloody Sunday killings were officially ruled unlawful at the conclusion of a 12 year inquiry by Lord Saville. Apparently shooting the Irish under flimsy pretenses and then claiming they all had guns and you were under attack isn't, in the strictest sense, legal. But hey, they finally got to the bottom of it after three decades. See what you have to look forward to in 2038, Israel?

Simon Johnson looks at all the ways in which the soon to pass and soon to be heralded as a "serious fix to the an unforeseeable and unprecedented crisis" Financial Reform bill fails to do any of the shit it needs to do. Who could have foreseen that catering to banks and Wall Street and treating them as if they had credibility left would result in laws that failed to adress the things that caused the last financial collapse or deal with the fallout? But at least it's called "Financial Reform". They can technically say they passed "Financial Reform". There is that.

On the Bright, Shiny, Happy front, one of the men who helped eradicate smallpox has a message to the world: we'll all be dead in a 100 years, thanks for fucking everything up you soon to be extinct shits. There's a myriad of reasons, but mostly overpopulation and the fact that we're ruining the environment and only engaging in half measures -at best- to address those problems. He's 95, so he'll be dead soon. He just wants us to know that we caused it, we refused to fix it, and we should enjoy a hellish decades of existence that will result in our violent painful extinction. Way to depress everyone on your way out.

The Intertubes has found the only way to listen to the inane tweets and proclamations of the Tea Party set: by making them poot out the butt of a colonial soldier. They call it: Tea Farty.

In closing we give you Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age covering "What, What (In the Butt)."

Headline of the day

Pope must not be subjected to vuvuzelas

Although himself an avid football fan, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is worried that the forthcoming Papal visit could be marred by vuvuzelas.

"I have had enough of them already," says the Archbishop of Westminster. "I hope they stay in South Africa."
...
He is concerned that some people have got into the habit of using the plastic horns during the World Cup in South Africa and might not be able to resist using them when Pope Benedict XVI addresses crowds in Britain.

England, Scotland, Wales... I think you have been charged with a holy mission: subject the Pope to vuvuzelas.

I think I can be certain when I state this: God wants you to do it. No... God NEEDS you to do it.

Imagine.....

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanct..."

"BRRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrRRRRR"

Do it.

We've found our scapegoat

The UK papers are going mad over Obama and the entirety of the United States spectacularly hating on BP just because they massively fucked up the Gulf. That is when the papers can spare the time they're spending trying to drive Robert Green to suicide. You see, BP used to be regarded as a safe investment across the pond and as such was viewed as a safe centerpiece for pension investments and the like. Now with BP stock tanking and being rated as worth just barely above junk, that's looking like something that could be disastrous.

Of course to the nationalist press, that's all Obama's fault. They're much like our tea baggers. It's not so much BP spilling all that oil and failing to clean it up that's causing the stock problem, it's that Obama is pointing it out and complaining about it that's causing the problem. We, on the other hand, are giving England a right bollocking as if they were to blame for BP's awful, awful safety record, oil spilling, and attempted media chokehold.

Instead of fighting and misplacing blame on each other, let us place blame where it belongs. No, not a corporation. A scapegoat.

Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean.

And the Marshall Islands, a maze of tiny atolls, many smaller than the ill-fated oil rig, outsourced many of its responsibilities to private companies.
...
Under International law, offshore oil rigs like the Deepwater Horizon are treated as ships, and companies are allowed to "register" them in unlikely places such as the Marshall Islands, Panama and Liberia — reducing the U.S. government's role in inspecting and enforcing safety and other standards.
...
Different types of rigs are classified differently, and the Marshall Islands assigned the Deepwater Horizon to a category that permitted lower staffing levels.

OOOOH! MARSHALL ISLANDS!!! YOU ARE AT FAULT!!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!! THIS IS AN ATTACK ON US!!! Look UK, you hold the Marshall Island's arms and we'll punch them in the gut! Lax standards, loopholes, insufficient regulatory structure, uncomfortable closeness with and industry they're supposed to regulate... who do you think you are, Marshall Islands... us? A tiny country in the Pacific should regulate Gulf oil rigs better. For shame.

So world, if you're looking for the country to blame, it isn't the US or UK and it certainly isn't BP. Don't hate the player, hate the game. And a small collection of atolls with a population that could fit in an NFL stadium concocted the rules of the game and reffed it poorly. It's their fault. J'accuse.

To the women of England

Thank Jozy Altidore for hitting that post in the second half. Otherwise.....

The World Cup can be a time of fear and worry for victims of domestic abuse as heightened emotions fuelled by alcohol come into play and instances of domestic violence attacks increase. Figures from the Home Office report that during the 2006 Football World Cup there was a 25% average increase in domestic violence on the five England match days in the tournament.

See, we're nice to you England, even though you fucked up the Gulf. You got a point and there's less of an excuse for your drunken, grotty menfolk to hit you. People that look like Robert Green on the other hand...

RIGHT OFF HIS FUCKING HANDS!!! HA!

That kicky, footy, sport thing

I'll say this for ESPN, while their inevitable coverage of the World Cup will invariably include chortling studio nitwits poorly analyzing games and bad American commentators who don't really understand the sport calling the games, they do know how to set up a good video series promoting the World Cup. That series would be I Scored a Goal In the FIFA World Cup Final, in which both winners and losers from World Cup Final matches talk about what the sport means to them, what the experience was like, and what it felt like to score both at the time and after. It's quite well done.

Embedded below are the parts that revolve around Martin Peters 1966 goal for England and Paul Breitner's 1974 goal for West Germany. Breitner seems pretty pissed, but he actually won. And scored. He's just really German.

Give the whole series a look. Sure it's mostly Brazilians, Argentinians, and Italians being interviewed, but someday they'll be interviewing an American about what it was like to score in a cup final. That day will be whenever it is most of the good soccer nations are felled by a mysterious disease in the week before a World Cup starts. God willing, it'll be this year. USA! USA! USA!

Comic of the day

Among my many anti-science pet peeves is the seemingly increasing ignorant din over getting kids immunized. Or should I say, not getting kids immunized. So the story goes that in order to protect kids, they should not be vaccinated. Why? Because they'll get The Autism. So ironically in communities where this kind of thinking takes hold, vaccination rates drop, herd immunity is weakened, and kids start dying of easily preventable diseases.

The anti-vaccine nonsense stems almost entirely from a fraudulent study from a British doctor by the name of Andrew Wakefield. A man named Darryl Cunningham decided to tell the tale of Wakefield in comic form. Here is the first panel of the epic strip. Go check the rest out.

I'll note that the story has a happy ending. Last week Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and of acting in a "dishonest", "misleading" and "irresponsible" manner by the General Medical Council of England. He was struck off the GMC register, which is essentially the British medical equivalent of being disbarred.

On the negative side, he's still allowed to spout his nonsense, having retreated to Texas (obviously) to set up his base of operations for what he calls "educating" but is more like "getting kids killed from easily preventable diseases." And he's still making appearances on TV as an "expert", hitting NBC Today on Monday. Yay America.

Mascottery

We all love the Olympics. The pomp, the circumstance, the athletes, the competition. But when you ask people "what do the Olympics need to add" you get one clear answer. The answer you used to get was "A tightly regimented, visually appealing opening ceremony performance from an oppressive communist country." But since Beijing, those wishes have subsided. Now the first thing people say is "Olympic mascots that not only look like giant penises with arms, but seem to be wholly conceived as a reference to a slang term for the penis."

London 2012 gives you Wenlock and Mandeville... the one eyed monsters.


No, no, it all makes sense. See:

The mascots have been given a back story, created by acclaimed author and former children’s laureate Michael Morpurgo, based around the idea that they were formed from the last drops of steel left over from girders made for the Olympic Stadium.

Ahh,that's why they look like giant dancing cocks. Sure beats the pants of Atlanta 1996's Izzy... the dancing blue sperm in sneakers.

So thank you London for allowing what is evidently some large scale prank by giggling teenagers to slip by the 80 year-old Lords, Sirs, and Barons who were probably running this thing. Much thanks to the 20 and 30 year-olds who never spoke up to point this out.

We know you weren't going to wow us with the opening ceremonies, as 30 Rock explained... you don't have control over your people like that. But thanks for giving us the next best thing: two penis shaped "one-eyed monsters... *wink*" as mascots. The world thanks you and eagerly awaits the London games.

Things I learned about the British today

In case you haven't heard, the UK has a new Prime Minister. His name is David Cameron, he's a Tory, and he is the head of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats following an election that resulted in a hung parliament and was notable for how all three major British parties managed to lose.

Cameron and his cabinet replaces Labour's Gordon Brown (who may be replaced as Labour leader by a man named Ed Balls. Joy of joys!!) as the second new guy you won't bother to learn or know about since Tony Blair left. Tony Blair of course being the guy that Michael Sheen always plays when he isn't on 30 Rock or playing David Frost. Speaking of...

Anyway, in learning all of that information I was also taught an interesting tidbit about the British electoral process by a handy BBC guide.

WHY ARE ELECTIONS HELD ON THURSDAYS?

They do not have to be - it is just a convention. One theory about its origins is that people were not paid until Fridays and so holding polls on Thursdays ensured they were not too drunk to vote.

Their process was put together to avoid drunks at the polls, ours was put together to account for travel by mule and to avoid offending God. Well done. Good that we still keep these traditions going today.

I'd just like to suggest one change for America taking into account this information about the UK: mandatory drunk voting. You can't enter the voting booth unless you've consumed a requisite amount of gin; enough to make you tipsy and gregarious/violent. Why? Because there's no possible way we could pick worse leaders, so why not give this one a shot? Plus, if enough people try to fornicate with the voting robots, we might go back to a less shady form of vote tabulating, like pen and paper.

Picture of the day

Via Talking Points Memo and the Big Picture Blog comes a look at the 2nd eruption in the last month of Iceland's Fimmvorduhals volcano, located beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier. The subsequent ash spewing has shut down flights all around Europe and sealed off the UK in Icelandic death dust.

Click to embiggen.

Things you need to know

• Whether or not Smithers picked Mr. Burns the most statistically dominant team of the era to play softball for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant team. Perhaps he should have added Mordecai Three Finger Brown and scoured the Negro leagues a little harder, because that Steve Sax pick looks unforgivable even taking into account he was responsible for all the unsolved murders in New York.


• DJ Shadow has an internet radio station.


• Any street with the world Grape in it was probably a notorious road for prostitution and had it's name previously changed from the more advertising savvy and branding accurate Gropecunt Lane. Yes, the Middle Ages did entail a better class of street names.


• Birds are poisonous now. Possibly all birds, but definitely the Variable Pitohui, which secretes a poison similar to the Poison Dart Frog. And you thought the only danger from birds was them all going crazy and attacking Tippi Hedren. No, they can surreptitiously poison you now. DON'T TRUST BIRDS.


• The Director of Media Technology for the Penguins, Chris DeVivio, has a blog. As if I needed to tell you more than that, I will. It's called Backteching and goes into the process of the building of the new Consol Energy Arena and the kinds of technology and technological decisions that goes into building a modern sports complex.


• This is the kind of thing that would get your movie banned and you branded a purveyor of filth and lewdness in the 20's. Warning: there are female ankles... on full display.

I'm sure this won't result in some sort of rash of falling deaths

Maybe some of you readers have been to Paris. Tell me, wasn't the first thing you thought when you saw the Eiffel Tower "Boy, I sure wish this durned thing was red and twisty and that any idiot with a sixpack of Natural Ice in him could climb up it if he or she wished to"? Sure, we all say that. The lack of a climable metal piece of artwork is Paris' greatest flaw. Plus, it would be better if Eiffel also built it in a place that spoke English; either the King's or Americanese.

Well London, the UK Olympic Committee, London mayor Boris Johnson, and architect Anish Kapoor heard your clarion call. Climbable red twisty Eiffel Tower!

Designs for what will be Britain's biggest piece of public art, a 120 metres tall looping tower by the artist Anish Kapoor that people will be able to climb, giving spectacular views of London, were unveiled today by Boris Johnson, mayor of London.

Kapoor's Orbit, a vast, snaking steel structure, will dominate the 2012 Olympic park. It is being hailed as London's answer to the Eiffel tower and is part of an ambition to make the Olympics site a permanent visitor attraction.

Kapoor won the commission from a shortlist of bidders believed to include the artist Antony Gormley and the architects Caruso St John. Johnson said of Kapoor: "He has taken the idea of a tower and transformed it into a piece of modern British art. It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel."

Hmm, I think you're overselling it a bit, Boris. Still one does appreciate the verve with which you're opening up English citizens and tourists from all around the world to violent falling deaths from a distance of up to 120 meters. Truly your commitment to the Olympic tradition of building immensely ludicrous structures is not constrained by base notions of architectural eyesores and public safety. Well done, sirs.

Climategate officially gets the gate removed

What if I were to tell you that the whole Climategate controversy and furor that "disproved" "global warming", in fact did no such thing. Sure, most people who take the time to look at these things knew that already. I meant in an official "government inquiry" sense. And not by our shitty government either, but by the UK Parliament where they seem to take things like facts and investigations somewhat more seriously. I know, I know, noted climate scientist Dr. Sarah Palin said Climategate proved that science doesn't exist or something, but she's busy in a Twitter feud with LL Cool J over the dishonesty of her new FOX News TV show.

So I guess that mean we can officially put "Climategate" in sarcastic quotes. Done and done.

The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming – two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.

In their report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."
...
In a briefing to journalists ahead of the report's release, Willis said the controversy would ultimately help buttress the case for global warming by forcing the University of East Anglia – and other research institutions – to stop hoarding their data.

"The winner in the end will be climate science itself," he said.

Sorry Mr. Willis, climate science will never win against skeptics unless climate science invents some sort of laser wielding robot with a chainsaw hand that is able to force people to consider the merits of reason, evidence, and fact. For that is science's inherent contradiction: it cannot teach those who are unwilling to learn... unless giant robots are involved.

Plus how do you combat the immense feelings of pride dumb Americans feel by proclaiming that they know better than scientists with their fancy PhD's and that they're just using "common sense", something that fatty fat fat fat Al Gore oughtta try sometime? You can't, especially when there's an entire political party, media establishment, and industry committed to making people think that they're smart for ignoring smart people.

Sure, smart talking Brits can say stuff like "There was no evidence to challenge the "scientific consensus" that global warming is induced by human activities", "The balance of evidence "patently" failed to support the view that the phrases "trick" and "hide the decline" used by Jones in one email were part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not support his view", and "On peer review, "the evidence we have seen does not suggest that Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process"", but who is going to listen? The people who aren't listening to science already?

Sorry science, you lose again. Even when you actually win. Perhaps there's an equation you can work up to explain how that happens. Maybe it'll make you feel better.

Compare/Contrast

Via Matthew Yglesias comes these first two little nuggets.

The founding principles of the Conservative Party of Canada, who just so happen to rule America's Hat:

A belief that all Canadians should have reasonable access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay;

The policy agenda of the the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, who is soon going to rule in Brittania:

Over three years ago David Cameron spelled out his priorities in three letters – NHS. Since then, we have consistently fought to protect the values the NHS stands for and have campaigned to defend the NHS from Labour’s cuts and reorganisations.

As the party of the NHS, we will never change the idea at the heart of our NHS – that healthcare in this country is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay.

And from the Republican Party's House Minority John Boehner comes the GOP's governing principles:

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama has signed away another share of Americans' freedom. We will take it back.

The US got hosed when God was doling out conservatives to all the countries.

I'm sure this won't result in some sort of declaration of jihad

British satirist Chris Morris, whose work you really should familiarize yourself with, has decided to write and direct a comedy based on an idea he had: wouldn't it be funny to do a slapstick comedy of errors about four dimwitted Islamic jihadists? I think it would be and the first trailer seems to bear that out.



Morris is famous for his highly controversial satire, pranks on public officials and the newsmedia, and some of the best British comedies around. He spent a lot of time working with Armando Iannucci who released the great In the Loop last year. If you're interested you should check out the Daily Show precursors On The Hour and The Day Today, I'm Alan Partridge with Steve Coogan, Blue Jam, and the great Brass Eye. You know, before he's exploded for this film.

Stamps of the day

The Royal Mail, in celebration of the 350th Anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, put out a series of stamps commemorating the science and scientists who broke ground on some of the most important concepts and theories of our time. Why did the Royal Mail do this? Because the Queen was tired of putting herself on stamps and no one could agree what God looked like so they could put His picture on a stamp.





What is the US doing to celebrate science? Well, 40% of us now believe in creationism, are swelling the ranks of places like Liberty university to learn about creationism instead of actual science, and leaving ourselves open to televised mocking from foreign news agencies.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 03.04

Fox News Can’t Upset Murdoch’s Saudi Prince
We all know the basic rules Fox news operates under. 1.) Warp the meanings of fairness and balance to such a degree that it would cause George Orwell to hork on his Froot Loops. 2.) Hire any raving street corner maniac and give him an afternoon or evening opinion show, provided he of course decries liberals and praises Reagan in between fights with imaginary dragons and cardboard box defecations. 3.) Don't upset the Saudi Prince that bankrolls large sections of the Fox media empire with nasty mentions of the Saudi roll in funding terrorist actions worldwide. Actually that third one is a bit of a surprise. Who knew that such a jingoistic "fear the browns" network would find itself so beholden to Saudi sheiks. This seems like something that should have already fueled 12 ill though out chalkboard scribbling segments with a weeping Glenn Beck. Until then, you'll just have to make due with Joe Trento's take.

Our world may be a giant hologram
Did that headline just blow your mind? If it didn't, go get high and then re-read it. The entirety of existence might just be a 3-D hologram projection of a 2-D universe.... which may or may not be foil stamped onto the back of an even larger universal baseball card. Yes, that's exactly as weird as it sounds. And it's coming from the director of director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics based on the theories of Stephen Hawking. You know, crackpots. If all of this sounds surprising to you, you need to read more Warren Ellis comics. Every other page mentions "3-D hologram of a 2-D universe" this or "Zero-point energy" that. You could be ahead of the scientific curve if you just read more superhero picture books.

NHS money 'wasted' on homeopathy
In a victory for science and common sense, the UK decided that paying out money to homeopathic doctors and hospitals on the groundbreaking belief that handing out millions to people who sold magic water as a "cure" was a ludicrous idea. I'd like to take this as a sign that the world is becoming smarter, but we're over here paying out millions to abstinence only education, have state legislature passing measure to decry climate science, and we can't even seem to get a functioning health care system. Still, baby steps.

Ultra-Precise Quantum-Logic Clock Trumps Old Atomic Clock
Now that we have evidence that the mole people are causing earthquakes in order to steal seconds off our clock and throw the earth off its axis (SCIENCE FACT!!!!!!), we are in need of two things. 1.) A bloody, violent, merciless and ceaseless war against the underverse. 2.) More accurate clocks. Since we all know that atomic clocks are prone to creating irradiated scientists and are unreliable if you need time calculated down to the exact second every 3.7 billion year period, scientists have luckily devised a quantum logic clock that monitors the energy state of an aluminum ion. Sadly this has not become the global time standard yet, so as such if one of us is to become a near ageless Godlike being, our watches are going to be off by a second or two every couple of billion years. Such is life.

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory
Physicist Sean Carroll is attempting to once and for all finally answer what time is. Easy, it's that stuff that watches emit and is then eaten by our jobs, friends, and family so that you are not allowed to enjoy it. Or, if you want to be a science dick about it, there's probably some sort of equation that explains it with more physics and less bitterness. Whatever. In an interview with Wired, Carroll tries to explain what he's trying to do and just what time is from a physics standpoint.

Picture of the day

The Big Picture Blog closes it's look at the 2010 Vancouver Games. It was a spirited two weeks of luge death, event and pageantry malfunctions, puff pieces, pillorying NBC for it's coverage, Bob Costas' patented smugness, beloved Pittsburgh athletes betraying America in the name of Canada, and some athletes competing or something.

Up next is the 2012 London Summer Games followed by the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Apparently Sochi is a Russian city of 300,000 near the Black Sea on the Georgian border. I doubt that it is a real city or even an actual place, because I sure as hell haven't heard of it. I do recall hearing something about a London though.

As always, click to embiggen.

Why the UK is better than us: Example 1273b

Oh Brittania, how I envy thee. You have a right wing that fights to preserve and improve your universal, cheap, socialist health care. You are rife with charming top hatted street urchins who sing jaunty tunes and perform enjoyable dance numbers while they pickpocket and steal to get by. Your government seems to be able to function. Stephen Fry.

Here in the Colonies, we have a cottage industry of mouth breathing idiots who lie. slowly degrade our country, and dumb down the populace, all the while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves. We call them right wing talk radio pundits. Whereas here they thrive, prosper, multiply, and be nourished by our corporate culture, you seem to deal with them in a different, better way.

Today, Color of Change and StopBeck.com announced that the United Kingdom has forcefully rejected Fox News host Glenn Beck. In fact, the UK broadcast of his show “was forced to run without any advertisements” for five days in a row as of yesterday. Additionally, 103 companies have agreed to stop their ads from appearing on his program.

And since that report was made the count now stands at 116 dropped sponsors and six, verging on seven, days without UK advertisers. Oh, to live in a country that rejects Glenn Beck. No, I live in the one that nourishes, and rewards his deranged conspiracy theories, race baiting, semi-retarded (RAHM~!) camera mugging, sub-morning show DJ personality, and weepy chalkboard diatribes with millions of avid listeners and millions of dollars.

Now I realize that all of this is because Beck's special brand of hysterical crazy doesn't tap into whatever the British equivalent of decades of poor, white, southern rage is, his pedantic critiques and conspiracies ring hollow with distance, and his protestations of the socialist menace ring hollow to people who see real benefit and are noticeably better off than Americans thanks to the icy, black hand of socialism. I don't care.

You've done yourself a great service, UK. You've walled the loony into his own asylum and are not allowing him to infect your country with a plague of madness. Unfortunately for me the asylum you walled him in is the country I live in, but we were going down anyway. Save yourselves.

0.05

This is a video by Bill Nighy and Richard Curtis making a short film to kick off a campaign in support of something they're trying to get done in England, the Robin Hood tax, which levies a 0.05% tax on bank transactions in order to raise money to tackle several problems, most notably poverty and climate change. It would ostensibly raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year from banks and financial giants that were bailed out by the public sector during the crisis to help support programs and policies that have taken a severe hit during the financial crisis. There are dozens of charities in support of it, most notably Oxfam, the Salvation Army, and Unicef, and Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Andrea Merkel have expressed support for it.

That's just one of the things the UK is trying to do in addition to all the stuff they've already done. Us? We're still dicking around with proposed language and imagined theoreticals for a financial reform bill, language that will have to be considerably weakened in order to finally pass. Our President has now switched into a "Hey, those banker guys are just hard working joes who earned those big bonuses" mode. In fact, I think the closet we're going to get to a comprehensive reform package is one that requires us to not make eye contact or small talk with the banks after we're forced to put our money on the nightstand after they've had their way with us. You know, if anything passes at all.

I'm not sure, which way is better?

Staggering achievements in the massive technological advancement of the human race

Ladies and gentlemen, we sit on the precipice of a new world, a new future. The old way of doing things is dead and buried and we will now have to come to grips with The New Way and Our New Life. You can take your rocket boots and your HDTV's and your medical achievements and all your other shallow means of measuring societal advancement and I'll use mine: we're getting new ketchup packets!!!!!


That's right, no longer will we have to tear small corners off ketchup packets with our hands, or more likely our mouths, in order to gain the sweet tomatoey sustenance inside that we need to slather onto our fries of freedom, our burgers, and the collection of raccoon assholes, horse lips, and excess beaver tails that make up our hot dogs. You can dip or squeeze these new kind, people. DIP OR SQUEEZE!! This might even herald the end of the pump ketchup and paper cup station. Must I explain what this means to this country, nay the world, or are your minds already blown out the back of your asses?

Well then you better sit down Sally, because the world's bold leap into the 23rd century isn't done yet. Might you be interested in... unbreakable pint glasses?


No longer will a dropped beer necessarily going to result in the loss of the entire contents of the glass. No longer will you be forced to profusely apologize to the poor barmaid who has to clean up after your staggeringly intoxicated ass as you vainly try to apologize to her and lament the fact that if it weren't for this incident, you totally would have had a shot with her. On the negative side: pint glasses as weapons are out. But isn't this the more Utopian ideal of a less violent, or at least more creatively violent, society that we all aspire to? I think it is.

Take heed, dear readers: the future is here. You can dip french fries into your ketchup packets while dropping as many pints of beer as you like. I just hope you're ready for our new way of life.