Being married makes you deaf

Scott "Dilbert" Adams says "being married is a lot like being deaf":

As I'm sure you've learned, it's impossible to speak to a spouse if he or she is near running water, or using power equipment, or concentrating on something else, or eating something crunchy, or wondering if the squeak in the distance is the cat dying, or there is a child within a hundred yards. Amazingly, that covers 90% of every conversation you might attempt at home.
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I have the added disadvantage of being a serial mumbler. In my head, everything I say is clear and loud, sort of like Prince Charles. But I have been told that my actual sound is more like a corpse farting in a rolled up carpet.

It's probably not only married couples. After 29 years with Chas and 18 years with Andy, the same thing is happening to me. Just ask them. Or maybe it's just that I'm getting old and everyone - especially Prince Charles - is starting to sound "like a corpse farting in a rolled up carpet."

This blog is now banned in Canada

Dire Straits song banned in Canada.

It was No. 1 in 1985, but it’s unacceptable for Canadian eyes and ears today.

The Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” was ruled by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to be “extremely offensive” and thus inappropriate for airing on radio or television because it uses an anti-gay slur.

The decision against St. John’s radio station CHOZ-FM in Newfoundland was released Wednesday. In it, the panel ruled that the word “faggot” “contravened the Human Rights Clauses” and its ethics code and is “no longer” permitted “even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days.”

Ron Cohen, the CBSC’s national chairman, told The Washington Times on Thursday that the decision effectively sets a “nationwide” precedent binding on all private license holders for TV, cable-TV and radio broadcasting. It does not cover the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corp. or “community and university” stations.

Oh boy! Canada seems to have been taken over by a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing vegan lesbians - of both sexes.

Gun fair organizer acquitted in boy's death

When I first read about this case last month, I was hoping that sanity would prevail. It did.

The organizer of a gun fair in which an 8-year-old boy accidently killed himself with an Uzi submachine gun was acquitted by a jury in Springfield, Mass., on Friday.

Here's background on the case from Associated Press:

Jurors heard testimony over seven days during the trial of Edward Fleury, the former police chief in Pelham, Mass. His company co-sponsored the machine gun expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club where Christopher Bizilj of Ashford, Conn., fired a 9 mm micro Uzi submachine gun that kicked back and shot him in the head. The boy's father, emergency room Dr. Charles Bizilj, recorded a graphic video of the accident that was shown to the jury.

Fleury had faced up to 20 years in prison on an involuntary manslaughter count, and up to 10 years in prison for each of three counts of furnishing machine guns to minors.

Fleury's lawyer, Rosemary Curran Scapicchio, asked the jury in her closing argument why Fleury was being made a scapecoat in the boy's death. She said Fleury was taking $5 from patrons at the gate and wasn't supervising the firing line or picking out weapons for children.

"Where is the reckless and wanton conduct? There is none," Scapicchio said.

She said Fleury thought everything at the event was legal and safe, and he had checked with the local police department beforehand. The event had run seven years without incident. Scapicchio noted that there were several police officers at the machine gun expo who saw children shooting machine guns and did nothing to stop them.
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She said there were safety officers on the firing lines. She said parents decided whether their children could shoot automatic weapons. Scapicchio also said Charles Bizilj was responsible for allowing his son to shoot the Uzi.

"He's got some parental responsibility here," she said. "If you think it's a dangerous activity, don't do it."

She noted the testimony of Michael Spano, who supervised Christopher at the time of the accident. Spano said he told Charles Bizilj twice that he didn't think it was a good idea for Christopher and his then-11-year-old brother, Colin, to fire the guns because of their strong kickback and rapid fire.

But prosecutor William Bennett said it was Fleury who made it possible for Christopher to fire the Uzi that day. Bennett said Fleury recklessly organized the event.

"Dr. Charles Bizilj recorded a graphic video of the accident." I understand that the father is grieving his son's accidental death but - excuse me - he was video-taping it instead of advising his son not to do it.

Asstrology - Oh fuck us! - er, Ophiuchus

Thanks to Earth's wobble, astrological signs are bunk:

Astrological signs are determined by the position of the sun relative to certain constellations on a person's day of birth. The problem is, the positions were determined more than 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, the stars have shifted in the night sky so much that horoscope signs are nearly a month off.

The shift is caused by precession, the wobble in the Earth's axis caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon to the Earth's equator.
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So here are the "real" dates of astrological signs, according to astronomers:

* Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.
* Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.
* Pisces: March 11-April 18.
* Aries: April 18-May 13.
* Taurus: May 13-June 21.
* Gemini: June 21-July 20.
* Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.
* Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.
* Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.
* Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.
* Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.
* Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.
* Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

The list includes Ophiuchus, a formation the ancient Babylonians discarded because they wanted 12 star signs, not 13. That's yet another example of how astrologers cherry-pick and ignore astronomical observation.

Actually that's really old news but it's being recycled lately.

Loughner's "conscience dreaming"

Of course he meant conscious dreaming - but who am I to argue with such a prodigal who imagines that "the government controls us through grammar."

I just said this in an email to my son:

We tried to watch "Inception" but I stopped watching after 20 minutes not only because the "music" was horrendously loud and demonic but because the writing was so goddamn clunky - like the tawdry fantasies of a 14 yo chronic masturbator surfing for free internet porn - or worse: a video game. Ugh! Or like that Tucson killer nut who believes in "conscious dreaming" and had probably watched "Inception" too many times.

I would not be surprised to find that the sophomoric plot of "Inception" inspired Loughner's "conscience dreaming".

Premonitions or predictions?

Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC:

"For example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action."

Actually there are consequences to what we think and say.

John Lennon had premonitions that he would be shot:

He even stated that his fear of murder caused the Beatles to break up. "We were not bored," he said "and certainly did not run out of songs. I was paranoid about somebody trying to bump us off." When he heard that the Beatles's former road manager had been shot dead by Los Angeles police, he said over and over again, "I'm next, I know it."

Just 3 months before his own death, John Lennon, spoke about pacifists dying violent deaths in an interview with Playboy.

Lennon was quoted as saying, “Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic non-violents who died violently, I can never work that out. We’re pacifists, but I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot.”

A paranoid describes his mental illness

Guess who:

The interesting question is not whether inflammatory rhetoric can influence action, that question has been settled a thousand times by a thousand demagogues in just about every place in the world. The relevant issue is why the individuals engaging in this rhetoric (now mostly from the right, but not long ago in this country from the left, for example, The Weather Undergound) cling to the rhetoric as if their very identity and existence depends upon its validity.

The defensive posture of the right speaks directly to their existential crisis. Theirs appears a reactionary, reflexive narcissism, lashing out at the world that refuses to bend itself to their ideological demands. Unfortunately there is no psychotherapy or drug therapy available for our culture. The fear is that the craziness spins out of control and before devouring itself (for the appetite of paranoia is never satisfied) it will eat the rest of us. That "inflammatory rhetoric can influence action, that question has been settled a thousand times by a thousand demagogues in just about every place in the world."

What crap! The only thing that's settled is that psychos don't need "inflammatory rhetoric" to be homicidal maniacs or suicidal terrorists. That's as stupid an excuse as "the dog ate my homework."

This particular paranoid seems to fear being eaten. I hope he's got a gun - or some steak sauce.

Eek! It's Palin's fault - she was photographed with a gun!

So was Giffords. She used to be a Republican but switched to Democrat because she is pro-abortion. But she's still pro-gun - or at least she was before that nut shot her.

Jared Loughner is a product of Sheriff Dupnik’s office

This is the report that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been dreading since the tragic event on Saturday January 8:

The sheriff has been editorializing and politicizing the event since he took the podium to report on the incident. His blaming of radio personalities and bloggers is a pre-emptive strike because Mr. Dupnik knows this tragedy lays at his feet and his office.
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Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation.
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The Pima County Sheriff’s Department was aware of his violent nature and they failed to act appropriately. This tragedy leads right back to Sherriff Dupnik and all the spin in the world is not going to change that fact.

Individuality vs the "the pool of gay men"

Ann Althouse:

"All the gay websites couldn't figure out why I was such a jerk that I wouldn't talk about it," said the ice skater Johnny Weir (who people have long assumed is gay, even though he wouldn't say it):

"But pressure is the last thing that would make me want to 'join' a community... The massive backlash against me in the gay media and community only made me dig my 'closeted' heels in further."

So, what do we learn from this? Possible lessons:
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Just because you're gay doesn't mean you like other gay people and want to join their team. Heterosexuals don't naturally love all the other heterosexuals. Gay men may need to look for their sexual partners in the pool of gay men,* but there's no reason why you have to like everyone in your category of potential sexual partners, and, indeed, it's a good idea to reject the vast majority of potential sexual partners. You only need one (at most). You're entitled to think that most of them are jerks.

And then she posted this video, saying: "By the way, this is the pool of gay men."

Dambisa Moyo: "without change US will almost certainly become a socialist nation"

Dambisa Moyo is that rare type of person – an economist who makes waves:

Her first book, Dead Aid, angered many in the charity sector by arguing that foreign aid has harmed Africa and should be phased out.

Her second, which is published in London on Thursday, accuses America and other Western powers of squandering their world economic dominance through a sustained catalogue of fundamentally flawed policies.

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead goes so far as to predict that the US will be a “bona fide socialist welfare state” by the latter part of this century.

“Indeed, if nothing else changes it from its current path,” writes Moyo, “it is almost certain that America will move from a fully-fledged capitalist society of entrepreneurs to a socialist nation in just a few decades.

“The trouble is, it won’t be just any socialist welfare state... the US is on a path to creating the worst and most venal form of welfare state [poorly developed and designed] – one born of desperation from many years of flawed economic policies and a society that rapaciously feeds on itself.”
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Zambian-born Moyo, 41, is not afraid of being a pioneer. The London-based former Goldman Sachs economist is arguably one of the most powerful women in British business, sitting on the boards of FTSE 100 constituents Barclays and brewing giant SAB Miller.
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Moyo says the idea of unintended consequences is a running theme in both Dead Aid and How the West Was Lost, with policies that Western populations have rallied around as great ideas turning out to produce detrimental results.

In this way, she says, Western governments have implemented laudable notions like the idea that everyone should have a roof over their head, receive access to food and be supported in old age by pensions. These have led to unfortunate outcomes in terms of capital, labour and productivity, the key ingredients for economic growth.
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In Dead Aid she argued that more than $1 trillion of development aid from Western governments to Africa over the past 50 years has not helped Africa but has ruined it, with millions of people poorer because of aid.Destroying the myth that aid works, she said, means making charity history.
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Born and raised in Lusaka, Moyo achieved a chemistry degree and MBA at Washington DC’s American University, a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and a masters from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government before working as a consultant at the World Bank and then for nearly a decade at Goldman.

China builds world's longest bridge

It's 26.4 miles long:

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge would easily cross the English Channel and is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in the American state of Louisiana.
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The vast structure links the centre of the booming port city of Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong Province with the suburb of Huangdao, spanning the wide blue waters of Jiaozhou Bay.

Built in just four years at a cost of £5.5 billion, the sheer scale of the bridge reveals the advances made by Chinese engineers in recent years.