Friday, November 11, 2005

I'll bet Bill just wants to watch

Ironically there is no mention that Clinton was obviously a pudge in his day. It wouldn't surprise me to learn this was sponsored by McDonalds.

Clinton teams with Nickelodeon to fight obesity

NEW YORK - Bill Clinton is teaming with SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer in a campaign to nudge kids to eat healthy foods and to get up off the couch and move...

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Surprise me

Sometimes a story just won't die. I've highlighted the salient parts.

David Crowder Says Pastor Electrocuted after Prayer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A popular Christian band is mourning the loss of its pastor, who was electrocuted in front of his Texas congregation last Sunday as he prepared to perform a baptism.

The David Crowder band was on the road when it happened, but Crowder says he learned that 10 minutes before the Reverend Kyle Lake suffered the fatal shock, worshipers at University Baptist Church of Waco had said a prayer together aloud: "Surprise me, God."

He says the assistant pastor who led that prayer remarked later, "If I could just take that back." But Crowder is quick to add that they are not blaming God for the accident.

He says that the 33-year-old Lake was his best friend, and provided guidance for the band's new CD, which begins with the lyric, "Everybody wants to go to
heaven, but nobody wants to die."

Cow Tipping

Interestingly I found the following two items on the appropriately named Huffington Post on the same day:

'White House in Chaos' & Other Utter Horse****

and

Cow-tipping myth hasn't got a leg to stand on

Somehow they seem related. Of the first article, it might be said that a liberal just glimpsed that arrogance is expensive. Politics about money? Say it ain't so, Joe. Makes you wonder what they thought it was about. It's about big cigars, and...uh, well, maybe Bill wasn't quite as naive as the rest. They're pretty angry. I guess I would be angry too if I had this nagging suspicion I'd been had by someone I've equated to Alfred E. Neuman. "Get your hands off of me you damn, dirty ape."

Speaking of, the latter article makes one wonder what science is about:


Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, and her student Tracy Boechler have conducted a study on the physics of cow-tipping.

Ms Boechler, now a trainee forensics analyst for the Royal Canadian Mounted Corps, concluded in her initial report that a cow standing with its legs straight would require five people to exert the required force to bowl it over.

You would think science would have more important questions to answer, like how it's going to remain in the public school curriculum. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Thankfully in this instance its the Canadians hard earned tax dollars at work. We don't have Mounted Corps in the good ol' US of A. Just the general public.

Like recipes for explosives and schematics for nuclear bombs, I worry about such material being made so freely available by modern technology. Knowledge can be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. Fortunately only three bubbas fit in the cab of most pickups. On the other hand, who says they're all riding up front?

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Is the bowl half full, or half empty?

Well, apparently there was some value to church camp. I learned never to use an unexamined public toilet. Serves the heathen right.

CNN -- Glued to toilet, man sues Home Depot

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Home Depot was sued by a shopper from a Colorado store who claims he got stuck to a restroom toilet seat because a prankster had smeared it with glue. Bob Dougherty, 57, accused employees of ignoring his cries for help for about 15 minutes because they thought he was kidding.

"They left me there, going through all that stress," Dougherty told The Daily Camera, of Boulder. "They just let me rot." ...

Paramedics unbolted the toilet seat, and Dougherty, "frightened and humiliated," passed out as they wheeled him out of the store, court papers said. The toilet seat separated from his skin, leaving abrasions.

15 minutes? You gotta be joking me. The horror...the horror. 15 minutes on a toilet is trauma? Some would call that heaven. Its not like no one was ever going to enter that public restroom again. At Home Depot he's lucky some 320 pound Bubba didn't tear the door off the hinges and rip him off his throne for spending 15 minutes there.

Besides, if it were me I would have panicked for about two minutes before ripping the damn seat off myself, walking out of the restroom with the seat glued to my ass and my pants around my ankles and announcing to the first shocked customers I encountered: "Never can find a clerk when you need one, huh?". How often does life present an opportunity to do something like that without getting arrested?

I say the bowl is half full...