Paying dead farmers not to farm....

Not such a silly idea AFTER ALL!

Quote of the day

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

- Rich Cook

The bowels of goofy translations....

Apparently, the Russians have a word like our "bowels of the earth" that sounds odd in translation:

The main task of the public energy policy in this sphere is the reproduction of the mineral-raw base of hydrocarbon and other fuel-energy resources and rational use of Russian bowels for providing the stable economic development of the country.

The original post has a link to a sort of top ten list of hideous translation errors.

Most impressive inauguration picture ever!

Here.

HT Coyote.

Where does she find this stuff?

McArdle points out a site for "Dating A Banker Anonymous", which has posts like God, You are so 24.

A heartbreaking story, beginning with the ominous:

Charles treats me just as well as, if not better than, many of the unmarried bankers I’ve dated in the past. I would call myself his “girlfriend” in the sense that I receive constant attention via text messages, emails and phone calls, fabulous vacations while he is on “business trips” and a never ending supply of gifts, gourmet meals and affection. I get all this AND I get to leisurely continue to date in search of my own Mr. Right. Win-win, don’t you think? I certainly did… until the mortgage meltdown.

Quote of the day

You know "that look" women get when they want sex? Me neither.

--Steve Martin

My best man once discussed the song Woman, Woman (as performed by Gary Puckett) with me, and pointed out he didn't quite agree "A woman gets a certain look when she is on the move, and a man can always tell what's on her mind." Or maybe he was COULD tell what's on her mind, but hadn't been around women on the move. Yup...me, neither!

Quote of the day

A hacker on a roll may be able to produce, in a period of a few months, something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more.
- Peter Seebach

Just in case you think it's only the right wing....

...that goes off the deep end, here is an example where a liberal would approve of an act of war against the UK.

OK, my friends in those British Isles, I really don't think that just because a country relies "on the Royal Navy for protection" that means it is OK to invade it.

Quote of the day

"I suppose counsel have a penumbral constitutional right to regard each other as schmucks, but I know of no principle that justifies litigation pollution. … This case makes me lament the demise of dueling. I cannot order a duel, and thus achieve a salubrious reduction in the number of counsel to put up with."

- U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley

Rules to blog by....

I'm not sure whether this guy is from the right or from the left (no hat tip because I forgot how I got there), but these rules would make anybody's political writing more palatable.

Is that rape included in the price?

OK, this question does not rank high in the annals of good taste, but I really did wonder about it while reading the article "Alien World" in Reason magazine, about a theme park that let you try out the experience of being a Mexican immigrant trying to make it across the US border.

Women and children are tossed into Border Patrol vehicles and driven off into the night. M-80s stand in for shotgun fire. Then there are the female screams in the distance, a soundtrack of rape.

Reassuringly (I suppose), actual rape does not take place in the theme park as part of the regularly scheduled entertainment. A couple of pages later, the article explains how it is done:

Then there are the screams that come from behind the bushes. During quiet lulls in the walk, female park employees periodically issue blood-curdling cries that echo through the mountains. It is not an overly histrionic touch. Rape has become so endemic to the border crossing experience that women often start taking birth control before making the trip, expecting abuse from coyotes or the bandits that travel with them.

Note that "coyotes" refer to the "businessmen" whose job it is to smuggle immigrants across the border. I guess you've got to really want to be an American!

Quote of the day

Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.
--Billy Crystal

Education and Tea Leaves....

Megan McArdle chimes in with her thoughts on wasted education dollars and hours...in this case her own. This one focuses on Sallie Mae, which makes education loans that in many cases are never paid off, for an education that never benefits those who work to get it.

Who benefits? Unscrupulous schools, especially those taking advantage of dreamers:

I don't know how I ended up at Career Blazers (yes, I cringe myself at the name). It was like one of those plucky, poor-but-honest people you read about in Victorian novels--everything clean, freshly painted, and nonetheless falling apart. But I was too desperate to get out of that secretary's chair to be picky. I gave them something like $5,000, in 1995, to teach me to be a Certified Netware Engineer--an administrator of Novell's corporate networking software.

The technies in the audience are wincing, and believe me, I am too. As I found out after I'd wasted thousands of dollars and three months, a CNE was a necessary, but not sufficient, credential to get a job in IT. The minute anyone tells you that he has one (or an MCSE, the Microsoft equivalent), any seasoned professional will bar that person from touching his equipment. Anyone who would actually mention his CNE is definitionally too ignorant to be useful, and just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. Of course anyone competent usually had the credentials--but all the credentials proved, by themselves, was that you could breathe and answer a multiple choice test.

Bad Boyfriend Bonus

Professor Drezner comments that Obama will be benefiting from a phenomenon apparently oft witnessed on Sex & the City (never seen the show myself): the boyfriend after a really bad one gets an extra dose of benefit of doubt.

Never trust a live Jedi

It always amuses me when something as frivolous as Star Wars is treated with mock seriousness. This item does a marvelous job of that.

So much for that newspaper theory. In "Another Roadside Attraction", Marx Marvelous chooses his name to be the most loathsome possible, and

What do they most loathe? The answer I arrived at was Communism and homosexuality. Communists and homosexuals are the targets of the majority of the normal male's fear-honed barbs. Thus you can see how I in my rebellion selected the given name of 'Marx'. The surname was more difficult. Obviously, I couldn't ccall myself Marx Homosexual or Marx Queer or even Marx Fag. But I remembered having read in a syndicated newspaper column that the one word no red-blooded he-man would ever ever utter was 'marvelous.'

Since I am the epitome of the red-blooded he-man, don't trust syndicated newspaper columns any more than you would trust a Jedi!

Most repulsive gift ever?

About a week after Christmas, I came home, and there was a package on the front step, in the snow.....marked "Open immediately - live". My wife thought maybe somebody sent you lobster. I thought, maybe poisonous snakes! There was no indication of origin on it, other than the name of the company that sent it, so I opened up VERY carefully.

It was filled with mostly moist straw, and some paperwork. About 5 gallons of moist straw, which was, according to the manual, impregnated with fungal spores. It was a "grow your own mushrooms" kit, mushrooms of the kind you find growing on dead, decaying logs. The manual showed pictures of what, with proper moisture and care, I could hope for.....the bag of straw, with holes in the plastic, would grow tumor-like bulges......

Possibly the most repulsive present I have ever received, but kind of fascinating nevertheless. I still have no idea who sent it...to the best of my knowledge, I have no serious enemies.

Believe it or not, I made the required "humidity tent" from clothes hangers and the enclosed plastic sheeting.....it is in my basement, only about 10 feet from where I blog. The bottom of the straw is in a bowl of water I boiled and cooled for the purpose (to remove any chlorine that might be in the tap water)....I have been using a spray bottle of the same stuff to periodically "mist" it inside the moisture tent.

Less than a week after I started the process, I had this (moisture bag removed to make picture):


By today, I had this:


With the moisture bag removed, and the wife giving the shroomie a kiss (for scale), this is what it looked like:


(Note: this was the wife making a sacrifice to please her husband. Don't get the idea she has some kind of mushroom smooching fetish)

To sample the goods, and to be able to get the moisture tent back on, I harvested the largest of my mushrooms and boiled it up. Subtle flavor, a bit like crab. Believe it or not, it looks beautiful to me now. My family, however, still finds it repulsive (although they did sample the simple soup).

Thinking of calling in sick?

Perhaps nobody at your work place has called in with the hockogrockles before!

Health care costs...

Coyote has a blog post which discusses health care plans and prices.

One interesting item I had not known is that price increases have been smallest (lower than inflation) in cosmetic surgery - which is generally not covered by insurance.

Style and Condoms

I don't know whether this really is the "best condom commercial ever", but it has got to be the most stylish

Stupid human tricks

Trying to see what you can get past airport security.

I'll stick with amusements less likely to lead to an enthusiastic cavity search. Not that there's anything wrong with you if you like that sort of thing.