r0×0rzl33t.com

I think someone better explain the difference to the Huffington Post between Correlation and causation.  I’m no McCain fan, but that’s a pretty serious charge.

I was just thinking that evolution is fairly inefficient because otherwise,  I should be able to crush a bowling ball with my jaw by now.  But, then again, if it were too efficient, everything else on the planet would have died out.  So it’s a win-lose situation.

Maury: “Now, Science, you say your 3 month old baby boy, modern genetics, is the child of Greg, who is back stage right now.”
Science: “Ya, that’s right Maury, LOOK AT HIM, THEY LOOK THE SAME!! *%#$ #$%^.
Maury: “Let’s bring him out! Greg!”
%$#^ #$%#$%&*
….
Maury: “Gregor Mendel….You ARE the father of modern genetics!”

Maybe that joke wasn’t worth it, but I would have watched it.

An interesting topic has come up in the House of Representatives; Offshore Drilling.  In the midst of mind-boggling high prices, America begged for a scapegoat, and the conservative talk show hosts were more than willing to oblige.  The problem is that we don’t drill enough off of the US coasts!  Forget the fact that refineries are already working at capacity, so shoving more oil into them won’t help.  Not that the democratic plan of “Shut your eyes, spin around 3 times, and hope it goes away” is working much better either.

Anyway, the Republicans decided that perhaps the Democrats did know a thing or two about the public opinion involved in drilling in National Wildlife Rescues, so they pulled a magnificent feat of political expediency.  They needed a good way to look like they cared enough to act, without risking any action being taken.  This happens very frequently in Congress, and both parties are so good at it that nothing ever gets done.  The republicans planned to call for a vote on lifting the Off-shore drilling ban about a week ago.  However, they waited until Friday, August 1.  Why?  Because that’s when Congress was scheduled to take its Scheduled Summer Work Break.  So, the Repubs call for it right before Congress is supposed to leave for a month.  They can look like they tried, but in a month the public won’t remember this at all.  Quite brilliant, really.  It’s akin to going into your parent’s room at 2 am on christmas morning and trying to change what you wanted for Christmas.

So, Pelosi, being the bitter woman she is, called for a motion to adjourn the Congress for the break.  You can find the results of the vote here:
http://www.opencongress.org/roll_call/show/4967

The most interesting thing to notice here is that it required a 50% “ayes” to pass, and they only got 49%, but the House still adjourned.  Either dishonest or bad math, I’m unsure.

Either way, Pelosi got played like a cheap violin.  If she had thought it was a dumb idea, the democrats would have voted the idea down.  However, if she adjourned early because she thought it would have passed, then that just seems dishonest.

Another fantastic political manuever designed to get absolutely nothing accomplished in the longest possible amount of time.

The republicans stayed in the chambers to protest the adjourning.  So pelosi had CSPAN removed from the chambers and shut off the lights and the mics.  Like throwing a temper tantrum.  The republicans replied in childish kind by drawing pictures of the democrats energy plan in a mocking fashion, and then marching around the aisles (yes this really happened).  Of course nothing happened in the end, but it sure was funny.

Fox News Front Page.

Just wow.

Also awesome: While I was in Nebraska I saw a license plate that I’m fairly certain wasn’t custom, but still read

“OMG 486″

Sometimes I really hate Congress. If you don’t already know how little Congress works, you should check Uncle Jay’s explanation of it, he does a good job.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/26b0d09397

Anyway, even though they work so little, we still only hear about 1 bill per month. Surely, they can do more than that. Well, a while ago, I stumbled upon OpenCongress. A web 2.0 site that tracks stuff that goes on in the house and the senate. And I go there every now and again to see whats popular there. It turns out that the house and the senate are constantly passing bills and resolutions! They are doing real work all the time. Let’s take a look at some recent things they’ve done.

H. J. RES. 15
Sounds fancy. They passed this one in January to “recognize the contributions of the Christmas tree industry to the United States economy.” That’s not all. This bill also extended a hearty thank you to all those Christmas tree growers and people who work with live Christmas trees.

H. RES. 635
I’m pretty sure they use numbers so they aren’t as obvious what they are doing. This bill, which was actually voted on and passed by the Congress of the united states, “acknowledged the onset of Ramadan.” Are you kidding? You really needed to vote on that. You couldn’t have just written it down or something?

H. CON. RES. 254
This one recognizes that Oklahoma has been a state for 100 years.

S. CON. RES. 57
I’m seeing a pattern of recognition. This one recognizes the good to society that Surveyors bring. Yes, professional surveyors. They aren’t volunteers or anything. This one had 54 co-sponsors to the bill.

H. RES. 816
Rockies lost the world series. Better recognize that, they tried their best. Don’t give them a phone call, just pass a bill that acknowledges it. Hell, maybe all sports statistics should just be recorded in this fashion. To be fair, that is about as easy as filling out one of those baseball scorecards.

S. CON. RES. 58
Welcoming the Prime Minister of Ireland to America. No, he wasn’t present, and they didn’t tell him about it. Just go to the damn airport!

As a final note, none of these are particular bad bills, of which there have been plenty. These are wasteful bills, the congress doesn’t need to do all this crap. Most people would be pretty pissed if they found out that 70% of bills passed are like this. They just pass this kind of stuff because its the only things no one objects to.

Generally I refrain from just straight up talking about what I did during a certain day, but I like to mention things that happen that are in someway intriguing or distasteful. So, I woke up early and drove to KC with Adam and his fianceé Rachael. He managed to convince her that the song “Oh come, Oh come Emmanuel” was an England family tradition for Wedding ceremonies. She was mad at Adam for most of the trip for this joke.

Anyway, we went to KC, and we traveled to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. The first exhibit outside is a fake liberty bell with a painted crack in it, and next to it is a sundial which is constantly in the shade of a tree. Sundials are mostly for show anyway. Feasibly, this was a Treedial.

Inside was mostly historical stuff (I touched all the stuff that siad “Don’t touch”, including two cars and a grand piano). But there were two instances of note. The intro film we watched told about how he won the senate

Narrator: They were farmers. He was a farmer. And he talked to them about farming. And they believed him.

That was my favorite line, like the movie was accusing him of making shit up or something. Like he really tricked those stupid farmers.

The second thing was an exhibit called “Decision making” which was a short film except it asked us questions that were either yes(blue) or no(red), and the audience voted. Well, anyway there were some hillbillies behind us who kept voting for increased surveillance, including wiretaps, eliminating free speech and every other conservative viewpoints in homeland surveillance. And so the tape would be like “Most of you believe that freedom of speech must be limited in war time.” and crap like this. Anyway, in between votes were little blurbs about Truman. Well, finally, the last question was whether the government should have the right to read your personal e-mail without your consent. We managed to win this vote and it said, “Most of you said it was not OK for the government to read your e-mail. In times of war, it is important that the government be able to find out information in order to fight threats like terrorism.” I looked at Luke and said “Did the movie just tell us we were wrong?” Basically, the whole booth was a War on Terrorism propaganda plan, except because of the crazy guys behind us we hadn’t realized it until the very end.

 I kind of realized that the Hubble space telescope is more than likely some sort of device to ward off alien invasions.  It emits a high pitched squeal that keeps away Neptunians and certain birds.

Go here. 

Ryan and I got in an argument and about software, Ryan said he was better than me, I wanted peace for all of mankind, Ryan disagreed. Anyway, I ended up collecting a list of my software and decided I would put it on here (technically I just used Belarc Advisor and then added titles)

Operating System - Windows XP SP2
Media(Music) - Quintessential Player 4.51
Media(Video) - ALShow 1.5
Archives - iZarc 3.7
Browser - Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.7
Mail - Thunderbird 2.0.0.6
Calendar - Sunbird 0.5
IM - Trillian 3.1
VoIP - Skype 3.5
Media(Converting) - dBpowerAMP Converter
Media(Burning) - dBpowerAMP CD Writer
Text file editing - Crimson Editor 3.70
Productivity Suite - OpenOffice 2.2
Media(Codecs) - K-Lite Codec Pack
Video Editing - Jahshaka 2.0
Music Editing - Audacity 1.2.6
Spyware - Ad-Aware, Spybot, SpywareBlaster
Virus Scan - McAfee VirusScan 8.0i
P2P Client - Gnucleus 1.8.6.0
Torrent Manager - uTorrent 1.7.5
PDF Reader - Foxit Reader 2.1
FTP Client - FileZilla 3.01
Image Editing - Photoshop CS2

All of these except Photoshop and Windows are 100% free.
Other necessary freebies: Hamachi, TuneBite, Launchy

A couple issues in tolerance have come up in the last few days. First, Bill O’Reilly is in some trouble because he went to a restaurant in Harlem and was genuinely surprised that it was similar to restaurants run by black people. If you actually listen to the segment, its really funny, because he acts like he’s doing them a big favor by showing what normal people they are, but turns out looking like a real idiot because he thought all black people acted exactly like Tech N9ne.

The second issue deals with something I saw on the democratic debate. John Edwards was talking about how much gays are discriminated against in today’s society. And I figured that this was probably true, but only because they are a fairly significant minority. So, you make gays more populous and everyone will be used to them, and discrimination becomes a thing of the past. The way to do this isn’t to turn people gay, just to make more people LOOK gay. It doesn’t really matter what anyone does in their personal life, I’m all about tolerance. In order to shore up the numbers, The following acts are now considered gay:
Eating at any restaurant with the word “Cafe” in the name
Carrying anything that isn’t a weapon or booze.
Listening to Barry Manilow
Talking in full sentences

I think that should do it.

You know who isn’t very tolerant? Wild animals. They’re complete jerks. You see on movies that animals learn to “be afraid” of humans, because we’re so damn evil and disruptive (Lost World, The Last Adventure of Pylar Beck) Anyway, I was thinking about this, isn’t it more likely that animals are just jerks. They run from EVERYTHING anyway. It turns out people who think animals run from humans because we’re evil, are just pompous and self-centered. “That animal isn’t running because of some instinct, it’s because it has known many bad men in its day.” Wow, get ahold of yourself. Animals are jerks, case closed.

More politics:
You should REALLY read this.  It’s a good article.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1663424,00.html?cnn=yes

So, the last few of my posts have been political, so I decided to make this one about everyone’s favorite subject: Celebrities.  I’m going to assume that Celebrities aren’t as smart as I am, so I’ve decided to put out a few suggestions for how they could avoid trouble.

Martha Stewart:  She played her cards right for awhile, insider trading can be quite lucrative.  But eventually she went to jail for lying to investigators.  She should have sold out her partners in 2 seconds flat, and made a deal for herself.  Loyalty is no substitute for fat stacks of cash.

Barry Bonds:  Ok, so he’s considered one of the best baseball players of all time, kind of like Deep Blue is one of the best chess players of all time.  They’re like, well, sure he’s good, because he’s mostly steroid.  The solution is to stop taking steroids and switch to Spinach, as we all know from Popeye, will give you super human strength.

Britney Spears: So what? So she took an immense amount of drugs for 4 years, smoked 3 packs a day, drank 1/5 of scotch every 12 hours, and had sex with lots of dudes, had multiple children, in and out of rehab, shaved her head, forgot underwear in public and showed her…..You know what, there’s no way to save this one.

Al Gore’s Son - Stopped by the police with alcohol and drugs in his car.  This caused extreme embarrassment for his family, who easily could have blamed it on global warming.  (The UV rays heated up the leather seats, converting it to cocaine).

Michael Vick:  Many people say that Vick was simply immature and stupid.  This is true, but only because he was doing DOG fights.  Everyone likes dogs.  Other animal fights are easily as fun, and cause less outrage.  Solution? Walrus fights.