Archive
Cornell Gangnam Style Flash Mob Dance Party
This is literally my fourth Gangnam Style post. It’s so damn catchy.
–
I miss upstate New York.
WTF Wednesday: Turtle Attack/Bronx Zoo Tiger Pit Jumper
I completely forgot about WTF Wednesday this week. Sorry, guys.
In my humble apologies, I offer a turtle eating a shrimp:
–
In other news, everyone has heard about the Bronx Zoo guy that jumped off the monorail into the tiger pit.
It was unclear from the initial reports whether he was suicidal, crazy, or on drugs. Detective reports now suggest crazy.
Before his now-infamous tangle with a Bronx Zoo tiger, David Villalobos adorned his Facebook page with New Age odes to Mother Earth and affirmations like, “Be love and fearless.”
Police said Saturday that Villalobos had told detectives that it was without fear that he leaped from an elevated train into the animal’s den. His reason, they said, was that “he wanted to be one with the tiger.”
–
Also, I got a pingback on my last post from Alan.com, which is Alan Colmes’s blog. (You know, the liberal half of Blank and Hannity.) So that was pretty sweet. Thanks, Alan, or guy responsible for posting on his blog.
Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney’s “47% Percent” Gaffe
–
Paul Krugman discusses the “dependent upon government” citizens that Romney refers to in the now viral Mother Jones video inside a private donor meeting:
Actually, if you look at the facts, you learn that the great bulk of those who pay no income tax pay other taxes; also, many of the people in the no-income-tax category are (a) elderly (b) students or (c) having a bad year, having lost a job — that is, they’re people who have paid income taxes in the past and/or will pay income taxes in the future.
↓By the way, I don’t control WordAds content, so I’m sorry if you get finance investment firm ads.
Mitt Romney on Bain: “I insisted on having almost dictatorial powers.”
The ethical problem with Bain in a nutshell.
There’s apparently a few ways of taking over a company. The most common ways of doing it with the intent to bankrupt it are a hostile takeover or buying off its executives.
Mitt Romney chose buying off the executives with bonuses.
In business deals called leveraged buyouts, Bain would borrow money to buy troubled companies and then force the companies to pay back Bain’s loans. By moving the loans plus interest payments onto the troubled companies’ already deficit-heavy banksheets, this formula guaranteed the failure of the companies.
The result: All the CEOs and Bain Capital profited on the way out, while the average worker lost his or her job.
This is what happened with Ampad, a pad and paper company bought by Bain in 1992. Bain paid $5 million upfront for the company and profited more than $100 million in debt and management fees before Ampad filed Chapter 11 in 2000 and was resold in 2003.
Randy Johnson, an Ampad factory worker affected by the takeover, once wrote Romney a handwritten letter asking him to intervene and save an Indiana factory. Romney wrote back him saying that he wanted to help but his lawyers advised him not to get involved.
–
Green and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital quotes Mitt Romney regarding Bain: “I insisted on having almost dictatorial powers.”
So much for a man who doesn’t want to get involved.
Clantily Scad Comment of the Year Award 2012
Clantily Scad’s Comment of the Year Award, which I just made up even though the year isn’t over, goes to RM for his or her comment on my post “Pugs are Ugly Motherfuckers.”
RM:
I had to google “pugs are fucking ugly” just to see how many people shared my sentiments. Dishearteningly and unfathomably, it seems that people mostly refer to pugs as “cute”, or at worst “cute in an ugly way”.
I’m not sure whether the people are near blind, semi retarded or a combination of the two… But I am sure that pugs are the ugliest, nastiest, most grotesque and vile little balls of shit in the entire animal kingdom… And this is coming from a vegetarian who wouldn’t even hurt a fly. In fact, I have an easier time encompassing cockroaches into my circle of compassion than even attempting to scrape together an iota of love, or even tolerance for the horrific monstrosity that is the pug.
Now I’m not a completely cynical bastard, so I’ll try to end on a positive note. For a very, very brief time when pugs are puppies, there is the tiniest (and I mean tiniest) hint of cuteness in their faces. But as I said, this is only for an extremely brief time. The moment they age beyond 3 weeks, they start going downhill… Fast. It’s not long at all before they look like a cross between Gollum and a wart infested anus. Complete with a pair of absolutely terrifying, arse ugly, yet comically hilarious “googly eyeballs”.
Finally, as if their ghastly appearance wasn’t enough… Their habits are putrid. 99% of their wretched lives consist of making obnoxious, stomach turning slurping, grunting and snorting sounds.
Down with pugs. Foul beasts.
I need to go Youtube some Welsh Corgi videos to get those images of Pugs out of my head.
Congrats, RM! You win absolutely nothing except a nod of approval.
WTF Wednesday: Shots Shots Shots Shots!
Webcomic Wednesday, 45 minutes late for me. But still on time on the West Coast.
–
I work in a pharmacy.
I got my flu shot today. My arm is a little sore. My boss thought it was awesome that I didn’t wince and fist bumped me after it was done.
Some people claim they get sick after the shot, but these people are crazy and don’t understand how inactivated viruses work. Science is pretty.
–
Yaz (Drospirenone) Birth Control Danger Fact Check
New article of mine up on Suite101. Finally. It’s amazing how full-time jobs kill creative endeavors.
This article is a derivative of my post Planned Parenthood is a Pussy About Litigation, except less use of pussy puns and more statistical analysis:
The Truth About Yaz (Drospirenone) Birth Control Dangers
“To put the risk of developing a blood clot from a birth control pill into perspective: The risk of blood clots is higher when using any birth control pills than not using them, but still remains lower than the risk of developing blood clots in pregnancy and in the postpartum period… For example: If 10,000 women who are not pregnant and do not use birth control pills are followed for one year, between 1 and 5 of these women will develop a blood clot.”
According to that statistic, the chance of a woman having a blot clot while not on the pill is between 0.0001% and 0.0005%. Hard figures for an increase in risk don’t exist because of conflicting data. But even if you multiply it by a conservative factor of seven, the risk remains well below 1 in 1,000.
Is it a statistically significant increase? If it were, wouldn’t the FDA simply recall the drug and pull it from pharmacy shelves?
Read more at Suite101: The Truth About Yaz (Drospirenone) Birth Control Dangers | Suite101.com
The FDA report was actually like over 50 pages long, and had a lot of extraneous information about what birth control is. I read mostly the parts about the two FDA-funded studies, and there was info about seven other medical studies involving drospirenone. It was a long and tedious task. You’re welcome, women.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
