Sorry, busy most of the day (that Dolores Umbridge is so mean!), but I saw a link from Wonkette and have to disagree with the statement made in reference to me. My guess is that most of the significant discoveries in science came while someone (and not necessarily someone with significant training in a field) was letting the dog do its business or some other menial activity where the mind tends to wander. It’s not like scientists all have their science room where they think their science thoughts. Sure, they have their labs to later try and prove things out, but epiphanies do not come from a linear process of doing lab work.
Then again, I’m an engineer. It’s all a bunch unproven BS to me until I can build something out of it. I really don’t see why Stephen Hawking is so famous for debating with himself whether a black hole does or does not destroy information; it’s not like any of that is going to lead to a better iPhone.

Remember, even though it’s Friday the 13th, you don’t have to be unlucky!
If you’re lucky you might even win prizes!
What’s your prize? Well, if you’re like this kid, you might get a Viagra Bear. Really! This kid is playing the Claw Machine and a Red Robin’s Restaurant and out comes a teddy bear with a little Viagra T-shirt.
They didn’t realize it was a Viagra bear, at first they thought it had a gun in its pocket.
Anyway, the parents complained and now the chain has pull removed the bears from their claw machines.
Satisfied with this action, the parents were able to exchange this prize for a better stuffie – — the Valtrex Hamster.
**
David Beckham arrived in Los Angeles and is ready to play for the Galaxy.
Galaxy: That’s a soccer team.
Soccer: That’s a grown-up sport, or so I’m told at all my kid’s soccer games.
Anyway, it’s amazing. Crowds follow them everywhere they go. Crowds at dinner, while shopping, crowds while walking down the street. They are being smothered. It’s unbelievable.
David is overwhelmed; he can’t wait to get to the one place in America without crowds: Soccer Stadiums.
Some are hoping that he can save soccer and make it as big here as it is overseas. Personally, I have nothing against soccer but see it more as a kid sport.
I think if he can make it work, we should expand this to other ideas:
How about Adult T-Ball?
Locals aren’t used to all this soccer talk.
All around Hollywood, people are asking the ever important question: What exactly is the credit limit on that red card?
At a welcome rally, the Mayor introduced Beckham. David got cheers, the mayor got booed.
The Mayor booed? As you know, Mayor Villaraigosa was in a relationship with another woman, a TV reporter, while married.
You have sex with another woman while married people suspect you of being the ultimate evil: Republican.
(Republicans are always caught in sex scandals and they pay for it)
Mayor really wants to tell his side of the story. He’s hoping some other reporter will pump him for information.
**
Michelle Malkin has a great bit on a new offering. There’s a chain of stores in Dallas called Value Giant. They accept Visa, Mastercard, and the Mexican Peso!
Value Giant will have three checkout lanes: Regular, 10 Items or Less, and Someone Trying To Figure Out How To Make Change.
People are screaming that his country is turning into little Mexico or New Mexico or something.
Relax, it’s just Value Giants’ way of reaching out to different communities.
This isn’t the only foreign currency they accept.
Of example, if you’re a recently released prisoner, you may also pay for your purchase with cigarettes.
I don’t know what the big deal is: I mean, tourist towns always accept foreign currency. Except that tourists at some point — you know — leave.
**
In the world of Commentary, WND has a great article from Tom Tancredo.
Remember when he said that Miami was becoming like a third world country?
He says he would still say it again.
I like a man who stand by his beliefs.
I disagree with Mr. Tancredo. Miami has some of the nicest people, who live in some of the finest homes, many made out of the finest cardboard.
Say what you want about Miami, at least their purchases are paid for in hard American dollars. Or drugs, depending on which side of the transaction you’re on.
**
Here’s a cool story about a lady who runs a water bar. That’s right, she sells gourmet water. Try this one – how about paying $55 for a bottle of water?
I remember when people would laugh and say that that Evian was Naíve spelled backwards. Now people are paying $55 a pop!
The cool thing is that you could be sitting in the store and here that funny famous line: Would you like to smell the bottle cap?
On the plus sides, they have flavors from all over the world.
Try the newest flavor -ffopir
I hope it’s an honest business, I would hate to think they’re taking their water and alcoholing it up.
If you have $100 you can try their top of the line gourmet brand: Yzarc nikcuf ur
I wonder — could I pay in pesos?
**
Did you enjoy today’s roundup? IMAO is like a big soft cuddly Viagra Bear.
Yes,
We’re always happy to see you.

Ever think about how we could easily obliterate any country in the Middle East and they could do absolutely nothing to stop it? If it were the other way around, and America’s existence rested on the goodwill of Islamic governments, what chance do you think we’d have?
It seems strange we have such power backed up by the world’s greatest military and yet we have trouble convincing countries such as Iran to at least not actively work towards killing our people. That’s because as soon as we commit militarily, a good portion of the country starts questioning everything. Some think it’s a mark of our civility, but that seems to be making a virtue of spinelessness. If we don’t even have the moral courage to know our right to defend ourselves as a country, how can anyone take us seriously? It doesn’t matter how skillful and committed our military is; the enemy just has to target the weakest link — the average American’s will to see through the mess of war — and they win.
What can make us serious again? Another huge attack against us, but it shouldn’t have to take that. Also, the longer it takes for us to strike back, the worse it will be for everyone — us and the enemy — when we’re finally dragged kicking and screaming to do something.
That’s where a leader is supposed to come in. Everyone is eventually going to lose focus in a large conflict and not prioritize correctly, and the job of a leader is to keep pushing us back to focusing on what’s important. The whines of the spineless can be loud, but a good leader should easily be able to speak over them easily and distinguish himself from the noise.
Leadership is the most important quality we need in a president right now. We will strike back when struck again, but that’s reacting, not leading. A leader will give us the courage to take on our enemies now before more lives our lost. Are any of the presidential candidates prepared to be that leader? Because, if not, eventually a lot of people are going to die.

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Be honorable, ronin.

I was taking the dog out last night and I started thinking about how predictions of environmental doomsday is little more than soothsaying despite whatever science is behind because we don’t even know all the possible factors that characterize the climate right now and thus its pure folly to try and predict from that incomplete knowledge what the climate will be like years from now. I know they have computer models, but it’s like how the world is modeled in a first person shooter game. You person walks onto a beach and footprints will appear in the sand, but there’s just images of a footprint placed on images of sand which is good enough for the game but not completely accurate. To be more accurate, each individual grain of sand would have to be modeled against the pressure of the ridges of the bottom of the boot leaving the impression. But, even if you accurately modeled each individual grain of sand, it’s still not a completely accurate model of real sand because real sand also has the gravitational effects of absolutely everything in this universe that has any mass.
Wait; is that true? Because some galaxies are red-shifting near the speed of light in relation to us; does there gravity still affect us? Does the speed of the bodies have any effect on gravity, because what is the speed of gravity?
Holy crap… what is the speed of gravity?
In all my years of reading bits and pieces of scientific articles, I don’t recall the propagation speed of gravity coming up. Like, I know that, if the sun suddenly disappeared, it would take about eight minutes for us to see the light go out, but how long would it take for the gravitational change on the earth’s orbit to take effect? My first guess would be it would take the same amount of time as light, but there’s no reason gravity would move at the speed of light since it has no direct relation to a light wave (that I know of). Then again, the only other answer that made sense would be that the gravity propagates instantaneously, but then that would mean you could somehow twiddle with the gravity of something lightyears away and then someone here on earth could use some sort of gravity measurement device to read those changes and convert it to data thus allowing superluminal communication — which I’m pretty sure breaks a law of some sort (a scientific one; not an important one).
Anyway, when I got to my computer, I had to look all that up right away. I googled “speed of gravity,” but what I found only confused me all the more. Apparently, scientists think it could be both infinite and limited by the speed of light at the same time (that’s relativity for you), though some measurements have shown it slower and some faster than light, and, somewhat recently, some scientists think they measured it to be exactly the speed of light, though many are disputing it.
So they don’t know. Is it ever disturbing to you that the science in science fiction often makes more sense than real science? Scientists could just be making all this stuff up (poorly) for all we know. I wouldn’t be that surprised if one day scientists realize that the earth has been sitting on a giant turtle all this time, and all their theories about waves and particles are actually explained by movements of the turtle. And then they’ll all be like, “Wow. We sure wasted our time. And how did we miss seeing that giant turtle? Well, in the future, now we know that, before trying to prove things by measuring fluctuations in pulsars, first look for a turtle.”
That isn’t that probable, but, then again, it is just as probable as whatever actually is… which itself is so improbable that any reasonable man would have to dismiss the possibility of it.