Great chart by California Forward showing inflation adjusted, per-capita spending for the formerly Golden State:
If only we could party like it was 1999, we’d reduce per-person spending almost 20%. And 1999 wasn’t so bad, was it?
British bride-to-be Haylie Hocking, 27, was set for her dream wedding until…
a friend spotted her other half, personal trainer Jason Brake, 30, in a porn movie.
The friend is said to have been looking for a male stripper online for Miss Hocking’s hen night when she spotted a movie clip with Mr Brake in it.
The couple met in 2008 at the garage where she worked and Miss Hocking described him as romantic and a “passionate lover”.
He moved into her flat after dating for six months and later proposed, buying her a diamond engagement ring.
Mr Brake, who had often gone away for weekends saying he was holding training sessions with clients, admitted he had been making a living from porn but said it was “only acting” and that he would have given up his career if she’d asked.
Brake noted that he “would be honest with women in future relationships.”
Source: ITN/Yahoo
Not sure the Chinese word for child abuse but when I learn it I’ll re-title this post.
h/t: Yadog
Browsing the UCLA extension catalog I found a course on Lactation Education Training. Doesn’t lactation occur kind of naturally? Do women really have to be taught how to lactate?
Oh well just one more thing I don’t understand about the modern world.
(I am thinking about signing up for the course. First - it’s an excuse to look at boobs, Second - how many guys can put Lactation Education Trainer on their business card, Third - I want to watch UCLA try and tell me I can’t.)
and his mom knew and approved of the relationship because she thought the teacher was a good influence.
God must really like this kid.
Maria Guzman Hernandez, 32, was a sixth-grade teacher at Our Lady of Charity in Hialeah. She was charged with sexual battery on a teenager just hours after she and the boy returned from a trip to Disney World over the weekend.
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Hernandez is estranged from her husband and has two children of her own who attend the religious school. Police say they were surprised to learn that the boy’s mother knew of his sexual relationship with the teacher and approved of it.
I suppose next week he will win the lottery and his pecker will grow 10 inches. That would fit the pattern of his life right now.
Let me start out by saying I am not a Trek purist. I don’t engage in the who was the better Captain wars (although it was Kirk), I am not fanatical about Rodenberry’s vision of the future, I just liked the show. Next generation not so much, Voyager had potential but ended up stuuuuupid, the later seasons of DS9 were pretty good and the few episodes of Enterprise I watched I enjoyed.
That said I really hated this movie. I had suspected I would since seeing the trailers, but I really did try and give it a fair chance.
Being fair it had some good parts. The opening scene was awesome, and the effects were excellent. Not just the effects I thought the visual design was superb too.
The two things that just grated on me though were:
a. The story - It was just a retard story. Yes it gave the backdrop for the series reboot but there were other ways to accomplish that. It was just an excuse to have Kirk running around acting impulsive and not very Kirk like.
b. The characters. The actors didn’t fit the characters they were playing. Not only that but there was no chemistry between them. It was painful to watch them try and recreate the banter from the original series. especially McCoy’s character. I was actually gritting my teeth as the actor delivered the lines. The one exception - Simon Pegg as Scotty. He was great. No James Doohan of course but he fit the role well.
Anyway that’s my take on it.
One last thing the girl who plays the green alien chick also plays Scarlett in the upcoming GI Joe movie. She is hot even painted green.
You must click to see the full image and the reason for tagging this WTF. Seriously, WTF?
h/t: Nashville Bill
Source: Twitpic
I don’t like to laugh at other people’s misery but the guy posted it on YouTube so presumably he doesn’t mind:
Many things to like about this but my favorite is “Dad, what the F**K is going on?”.
Update: If this guy (Casy Nunez) is still alive and not arrested perhaps he’ll be able to repost his video somewhere. Since you can’t see it, I’ll describe what happened. Apparently some guy lent the password for his work website (a New Orleans tour site called Crescent City Tours) to a guy named “Jason” who was doing some light HTML work for him (if you look at the site it looks like a bad GeoCities site. Somehow Jason had access to a porno that our hero had (”banging some chick” as he said). Jason posted the porno on the public tour site and hilarity ensued.) Our friend gets calls, emails and a visit from his boss. He’s then sent home where he responds to Jason in a 6 or so minute video outburst. It’s pretty friggin’ funny and one of those things where you go glad it’s happening to someone else (much like the CiscoFatty story).
That title has been claimed by Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, but that was before the awesomeness that is
t’s the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner.
Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911 Shatner, Singer Shatner, Shakespearean Shatner, Twilight Zone Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Esperanto Shatner, Priceline Shatner, SNL Shatner, and - of course - William Shatner!
No costumed con-goer will be spared in their wave of destruction, no redshirt will make it out alive, and not even the Klingons will be able to stand up to a deranged Captain Kirk with a lightsaber. But these Shatner-clones are about to learn a hard lesson…that the real William Shatner doesn’t take crap from anybody. Not even himself.
It’s Shatnertastic!
I hear Columbia is altering their Core Curriculum replacing selected readings from the Old Testament with
and that Mortimer Adler is rushing out a new edition of The Great Books of the Western World with one whole volume dedicated to
. Yes, He is rising from the dead so great is the power of
SINGAPORE — After starting the day with prayers and songs in honor of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, the students at the Madrasa Al Irsyad Al Islamiah here in Singapore turned to the secular. An all-girls chemistry class grappled with compounds and acids while other students focused on English, math and other subjects from the national curriculum.
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Two madrasas in Indonesia have already adopted Al Irsyad’s curriculum and management, attracted to what they say is a progressive model of Islamic education in tune with the modern world. For them, Al Irsyad is the counterpoint to many traditional madrasas that emphasize religious studies at the expense of everything else. Instead of preaching radicalism, the school’s in-house textbooks praise globalization and international organizations like the United Nations.
Of course the change wasn’t entirely voluntary. Apparently madrasa students were doing so poorly on mandatory exams that the government was on the verge of closing them. For some reason they didn’t find Koran quoting suicide bomber a viable career option. Still improvement is improvement and if it decreases some of the radicalism coming out of these school then hurray.
Exhibit A: Simola Halep
No, she is not a product of the Women’s U.S. Collegiate System but if we are going to grow our own versions then we need to insure proper funding. For that you need to see Exhibit B: Allison Stokke
Apparently when you try and pay a credit card off you can’t unless you specifically call the credit card company and tell them you want to pay it off.
The reason - Daily accrued interest. The amount that is reported on your statement and when you call in to make a payment don’t show that amount. The customer service rep has to pull it up. So you make a payment thinking that you have paid the card off and the company is continuing to charge you interest on that little bit that you missed. And heaven forbid that thinking you dont have a balance you dont look at the bill one month and you miss making you payment, all of a sudden you are paying whatever fantastical rate they decide to charge you.
Neat, huh?
I only found out about this because my banks automated bill pay was down and when i called in I happened to say the magic words paid in full. The customer service rep then told me about how the system worked. When I told her this verged on dishonesty she started to agree but had to pull back.
and if you haven’t you should have because apparently they look a lot like Valentina Ligouri.
I anxiously await ESPN coverage.
(I took the liberty of obscuring the annoying guy in her background.)
More below the fold:
How are we supposed to judge her qualifications?
AKRON, Ohio - A 52-year-old woman was attacked on her first day as an exotic dancer by a jealous co-worker wielding a stiletto heel, police said.
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The woman was treated at a hospital and received seven staples. She has declined to press charges against her assailant.
Video courtesy of a tip from ClevelandSteamer
My first impression is the customers lucked out.
One of Rush’s main talking points is that the GOP only wins when they become more conservative not less. That sounds good on radio but is it true? Last night I came across a snippet of information about a guy named Anthony Downs who supposedly used game theory to prove that in a stable democracy with a large degree of ideological consensus winning candidates all eventually move towards the political center:
In chapter eight of the book, Downs explains how the concept of ideology is central to his theory. Depending on the ideological distribution of voters in a given political community, electoral outcomes can be stable and peaceful or wildly varied and even result in violent revolution. The likely number of political parties can also be identified if one also considers the electoral structure. If the ideological positions of voters are displayed in the form of a graph and if that graph shows a single peak, then a median voter can be identified and in a representative democracy, the choice of candidates and the choice of policies will gravitate toward the positions of the median voter. Conversely, if the graph of ideological distribution is double-peaked, indicating that most voters are either extremely liberal or extremely conservative, the tendency toward political consensus or political equilibrium is difficult to attain because legislators representing each mode are penalized by voters for attempting to achieve consensus with the other side by supporting policies representative of a middle position. Here is a list of the key propositions Downs attempts to prove in chapter eight:
- A two-party democracy cannot provide stable and effective government unless there is a large measure of ideological consensus among its citizens.
- Parties in a two-party system deliberately change their platforms so that they resemble one another; whereas parties in a multi-party system try to remain as ideologically distinct from each other as possible.
- If the distribution of ideologies in a society’s citizenry remains constant, its political system will move toward a position of equilibrium in which the number of parties and their ideological positions are stable over time.
- New parties can be most successfully launched immediately after some significant change in the distribution of ideological views among eligible voters.
- In a two-party system, it is rational for each party to encourage voters to be irrational by making its platform vague and ambiguous.
The conditions under which his theory prevails are outlined in chapter two. Many of these conditions have been challenged by later scholarship. In anticipation of such criticism, Downs quotes Milton Friedman in chapter two that: “Theoretical models should be tested primarily by the accuracy of their predictions rather than by the reality of their assumptions” (Friedman, 1953).
Here is an example. According to at least one report 55% of Americans support at least some right to abortion, that would be a single peak on a graph of attitudes among the populace. According to Downs theory, at least as I understand it, the GOP should strike a middle ground on this issue. Other examples of single or double peaked issues can be found. (Gun Control, Taxes, etc.)
I am not saying that Downs is correct, his work has been challenged, or that Rush is wrong just that it is an interesting question. I would like to see a sample platform put together off of his work. That could then be compared to the actual GOP platform and a decision made about whether or not to modify the position or engage in a more aggressive voter education program.
