Boyle's Law As Applied to Society

Boyle's Law states that 'For a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, Pressure and Volume are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases)'. In other words, decrease the volume of the gas and you increase the pressure.

In New York, a muslim principal Debbie Almontaser was recently forced to step down by a combination of special interest groups that were attacking the academy that she founded. Her crime? Being on the board of a Yemeni-American organization that has occasionally let out office space to a group called Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media that created a controversial T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Intifada New York".

That's pretty ephemeral. Xenophobic hysteria, anyone?

The leader of the anti-Almontaser movement is Daniel Pipes, an activist also terribly concerned with:

• Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor;
  
• municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women;
  
• candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam;
  
• banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

Heaven forbid.

What's the Boyle's law connection? By forcing any minority into a smaller and smaller box, you slowly increase the pressure...

Get the point?

The Grimace of Realistic Expectations

Week-old egg salad. Limp lettuce. Mysterious ham-like substances.

Have you ever noticed that everyone who's ever stood in front of a cafeteria 'wheel of death'-style vending machine wears the same expression?

It looks like this:


It's the expression of 'I really don't feel like eating here but I don't want to be distracted by hunger pangs'.

Senate Does the Right Thing; Nation Incredulous

Washington, DC: Sixty-two years ago, Congress voted to withhold veterans benefits from hundreds of thousands of Filipino soldiers who fought in World War II. The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to restore those benefits. After the vote, several senators reportedly grew faint and had to sit down.

Across the nation, US citizens expressed shock and dismay. According to Peoria resident Judy Vimland, "Don't start trying to do the right thing, Senators. You haven't had enough practice."

While some rights groups celebrated news of the pension plan, other activist organizations were subdued, even depressed.

Said lobbyist Jack Arlington, who is advocating US adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, "History tells us that Congress does the right thing once every seven or eight years. We're probably looking at 2015 before we can get a carbon tax and emissions limits in place now."

Are You the Kind of Man Who'll Shoot an Unarmed Man in the Back?

From an NPR article:

"Three undercover detectives were found not guilty Friday in the 2006 police shooting of Sean Bell, a New York case that made national headlines.

Delores Jones-Brown of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice says the case has drawn attention because it's part of a larger pattern of police shooting unarmed suspects."

I don't understand. Of course the cops are shooting unarmed suspects. If they try to shoot armed suspects, the suspects are liable to shoot back.

If George Bush Were in a Famous Heavy Metal Band...

...it would be called the 'Military Industrial Complex',
...he'd be the drummer,
...it would (sigh) be a 'Christian Metal' band,
...George would do coke 'only if you've got it out already',
...4,041 American soldiers would still be alive,
...he'd be just as popular among middle age parents as he is now.

In On The Ground Floor: Rise with the Bubble Before It Bursts

Out with the old...

United States Housing Bubble (wikipedia)

In with the new...

"In financial markets, the retail forex (retail currency trading or retail FX) market is a subset of the larger foreign exchange market. This "market has long been plagued by swindlers preying on the gullible," according to The New York Times. It's commonly thought that about 90% of all retail FX traders lose money."

In Soviet Russia, Memes Spread You!

Best Response to A Lawsuit - EVER

For anyone who's ever been pushed around by a bully, read this.


I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle...I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word.

Personalized License Plates

Tell me, what sort of fellow (driving a BMW I believe) gets BOW DOWN on their license plates?

Somehow I don't see him being Budweiser-and-barbecue material.

Catholic Beneath The Skin

According to a recent survey, more than a quarter of American adults have changed their faith to another religion or no religion.

I had a full Catholic upbringing: parochial school, alter boy, mass twice a week. Soup to nuts. I haven't changed my faith or left it behind; you could say instead that I've put it on a shelf.

Today, I found myself in church for the first time in a long time, attending the first communion of my goddaughter. I am aware of the irony of a nonpracticing Catholic being tasked with the proper religious upbringing of a completely respectable little girl.

The words and the rites all came back to me. I stated the confession of faith word for word with the rest of the parishioners, although if you'd asked me two seconds prior how it went I would have been at a loss for words. I knew when to genuflect and when to stand.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to my central point. I was talking to a friend once about something completely unrelated to religion when he interrupted me, asking "you're Catholic, aren't you?"

We can leave our faiths behind, but that doesn't mean that our faiths leave us behind.

Religion, and other ideas too I suppose, change us in profound and unpredictable ways. Can we ever fully understand the scope of their influence?

Global Warming A Threat To Nation's Beer Supply

According to doctor Jim Salinger, "a warmer, drier climate could cause a significant decline in malting barley production, a key ingredient in beer".

... Perfect.

How better to bring millions of people over to the idea of a carbon tax?

"Bob: the Suburban or the Budweiser, it's up to you."

The Sexual Component of the Hula Hoop

All right. I'm sure we've all done this: while wandering the highways and byways of this wonderful interweb, you suddenly come to a screeching halt somewhere you never would have anticipated.

Thus, "The Sexual Component of the Hula Hoop".

But like a driver at the scene of a particularly eye catching wreck, I couldn't help but slow down enough to take a gander.

What, you think Americans bought the Hula Hoop for entertainment reasons? On the surface, perhaps. Subconsciously, we bought the Hula Hoop to unlock our sexual hips. The Hula Hoop was a subliminal sex toy.

Huh. Well, there you go.

Beer + Superstition = Grimm's Fairy Tales

"In medieval England the normal monastic allowance was one gallon of good ale per day, often supplemented by a second gallon of weak ale. The daily ration for the Black Monks of Battle Abbey in Sussex was one gallon of wine a day, more if the monk was sick.

English peasants were regular consumers of ale. For example, the maintenance agreement for Margaretatte Green of Girton in 1291 included in her pension enough barley to provide her with 2.6 pints of ale a day."

The above passage explains the "magical slumbers", wicked stepmothers and ogres found in medieval fairy tales. Squint a bit and it probably reveals the goblins, imps, pixies, nixies, sprites and fairies too. And don't even get me started on Joan...

Have You Ever Twinked Your Main?

...And that is to say nothing about PvP and Battlegrounds. The only other online games I've ever bothered to get into are Quake2 and Quake3. There is something irresistible about CTF and the other battlegrounds games. But to kick ass, you need a twink, which obviates the need for your main to spend all kinds of time grinding to fund your twink.

Then there is arena, where you attempt to twink your main, basically...

If Hedgehogs Are Outlawed...

...then only outlaws will have hedgehogs?

From a BBC story:

"A man in New Zealand has been charged with using a hedgehog as a weapon, the New Zealand Herald has reported. Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy. "It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane."

Please sir, next time use a rock, or a bat or something. There's no need to bring an innocent hedgehog into your fight. After all, the other guy might grab a wallaby.

Regarding the Toyota Scion

Do you think people buy them in spite of or because of the fact that they are the boxiest, ugliest automotive monstrosities on the road today?

Hitler Youth Had Nothing On Hamas

Here's what the militant Palestinian movement Hamas teaches its children. From a nytimes article:

A "children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” has become infamous for its puppet characters — a kind of Mickey Mouse, a bee and a rabbit — who speak, like Assud the rabbit, of conquering the Jews to the young hostess, Saraa Barhoum, 11."

"The mouse, Farfour, was murdered by an Israeli interrogator and replaced by Nahoul, the bee, who died “a martyr’s death” from lack of health care because of Gaza’s closed borders. He has been supplanted by Assud, the rabbit, who vows “to get rid of the Jews, God willing..."

Sorry folks. Normally I'd try and toss a joke in here but this is sickening.

Remember this when you read about President XYZ pressuring Israel to sit down with Hamas. Not that Israel has clean hands here, but how do you make peace with people like that?