Archive of entries posted on September 2019

365 Birthday Parties Each Year

Posted by on

It seems to be going around the Internet again about ice cream for breakfast being a good thing. And, it is. Well, it tastes good. I doubt it’s good for you. But I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.

Anyway, this first started two years ago. No, three years ago. Whatever. A few years ago. There were reports that some Japanese scientists reported that ice cream was good for you. Naturally, all the reports I saw were all saying the same thing, but none actually linked to an actual source. The ones that did link to something were to dead links.

So, fake news, right? Well, not really. Some of the stuff said in the news stories was true, but some was complete B.S. So, let’s call it half true.

Switching gears slightly — we’ll come back in a minute, trust me on this — there was a report in 2012 that eating chocolate cake for breakfast was good for you.

I remember when that story came out. It reminded me of a comedy routine by Bill Cosby. This was back when Bill Cosby was good, as far as anyone knew. I knew there was something wrong with Bill Cosby when he was making commercials for New Coke.

Anyway, chocolate cake for breakfast was supposed to be good for you. And, like the Cosby routine, it’s full of half-truths.

Did you catch that?

No? Let’s do some math.

Chocolate cake being good for breakfast is a half-truth.

Ice cream being good for breakfast is a half-truth.

Okay, students, what’s one-half plus one-half? That’s right. It’s one. It’s a whole. And, that means that chocolate cake PLUS ice cream for breakfast is two half-truths, which makes one whole truth.

So, enjoy your breakfast! I will enjoy mine.

IMAO Time Machine: I Love Global Warming

Posted by on

Here’s one from 2013 from Lactose The Intolerant. Oh, we so miss him. — The Editors

I just read that the next bad thing about Global Warming is that it will increase prostitution.  But wait, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  My AGW model predicts the following positive benefits from increased prostitution.

  • Increased supply and competition will bring the prices down.  You won’t need to be a highly paid politician to afford Ashley Dupre.
  • With the increased supply, Democratic lawmakers will be too busy to bother governing anymore, which is good for everybody.
  • Menendez will no longer have to waste tax payer money flying to the third world to get cheap prostitutes.
  • Barney Frank will finally be able to expand his prostitution ring to include women.
  • Increased heroin and meth demand to supply the new gaggles of prostitutes will cause an economic boom in Mexico creating jobs that will draw illegal immigrants back to their homeland.
  • More prostitutes mean more pimps, which will create new jobs in the dilapidated inner cities.
  • With the new crop of second tier, less attractive escorts, the paper bag industry will thrive like never before.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Is there nothing Global Warming doesn’t make better?  Here’s to increasing carbon emissions until the globe is once more a tropical paradise from pole to pole.

[Cross posted at nuking Politics]

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Posted by on

If this news item isn’t custom-made for Harumph Day, I don’t know what is.

Sheriff: Woman Bites Camel To Escape Attack in Enclosure at Louisiana Truck Stop
WAFB | Sept. 22, 2019 | Danae Leake

On Thursday evening, a couple at the I-10 truck stop in Grosse Tete was chasing after their deaf dog ran away from them, Sheriff Brett Stassi said. The dog, according to Stassi, ran under the double barbed wire fencing that fenced off the enclosure of the camel.

The couple chased after the dog into the enclosure, meeting an agitated camel, who is named Caspar. Sheriff Stassi said, somehow, the camel sat on the woman. The woman, possibly out of self-defense, bit the camel’s testicles.

Random Thoughts: Canadians and Impeachment

Posted by on

I don’t want people who participate in cancel culture to get fired for their old bad tweets, but a few moments of introspection would be pretty awesome.

It’s Fall Ball. Once again I have three kids to get to different practices/games plus Winchester along to spectate.

If I thought gun confiscation was going to pass, I’d feel it was my duty to finally buy an AR-15 just to not turn it in.
Knowing my luck, though, I’d immediately lose it in a tragic boating accident.

Is Beto right that you can get an AR-15 for $350? One of the reasons I don’t own one is I thought they were like a $1000.
Also, the ammo looked expensive to shoot.

Trump is a pretty embarrassing leader of our country except compared to leaders of other countries.

The libertarian in me feels the need to point out that when I say “leader of country” I really just mean “head of national government” and nothing more.

Sometimes it takes 6 or 7 times until you learn blackface is bad.

“Yes, I used to put on blackface. But now I know that’s wrong. You see, I’ve grown a lot as a person since…”
*new photo emerges*
“…yesterday.”

The new Rambo movie kind of sounds like “Taken, but with Rambo” which is actually a great pitch.
Did you know that Taken is rotten on RottenTomatoes? Who doesn’t like Taken? The “I told you I’d find you” scene is one of the all time greatest movie scenes.

I think the big problem with the Bill de Blasio campaign is that absolutely no one liked him and everyone was just kind of baffled he thought anyone would want him to be president.

I enjoy The Crown. It feels educational. Like watching a documentary.

Canada has guns?

*bang*
“Sorry.”
*bang*
“Sorry.”

If the Dems actually think the world is going to end, shouldn’t they be making big compromises with with Republicans to stop that?
“We’ll give you all free AR-15s in exchange for a carbon tax!”

So does having kids say things work to convince people? If so, I’m going to read my 4yo Economics in One Lesson and get her to lecture people on it.

“Do we want dangerous people like this getting their hands on military-style assault weapons?”
*Trudeau holds up a picture of himself in black face*

For those waiting on the Hellbender audiobook (which should be anyone who listens to audiobooks), it’s just waiting on Audible QA. Should be available to purchase in the next week or two.

They’re called “fire” ants because that’s what you want to kill them with.

If Trump is convicted and sent to prison, that might be good for him. I think he’d be a much better president with a guard watching him at all times.

*kids rally for action on climate change*
“We will not give up until action is taken to save this planet!”
“How about we give you some free Fortnite character skins instead?”
“Deal.”

In 2nd season of Halt & Catch Fire, and all the Commodore 64s are giving me such nostalgia. About the time this is supposed to be taking place, I was in first grade and we had a computer lab full of them where you could go instead of recess. Guess where I always was.

Was at the ball field Saturday from 11am to 5pm for three games (for three different kids) in 96 degree heat with high humidity. Nearly killed me. Only one still in good spirits is little Winchester. He did get scared, though, during some of the cheering.
My kids did great though! I don’t expect them to be great athletes—they have my genes—but I like to see them try.

Man, the not caring about partisan politics is sweet. If Trump is re-elected or if Trump is impeached and sent to prison, I’ll just be like “Whatever” and roll with it.
And probably crack a few jokes as I am wont to do.

Everyone always says to me, “Frank, how can I not care about things and be cool like you?” and I always says, “You can’t. Because you can’t help caring about things LIKE AN IDIOT.”

My unpopular opinions:
The Beatles were very talented
Coke > Pepsi
The Princess Bride was a great movie
Bacon is tasty
The Empire Strikes Back is perhaps the best Star Wars movie
Slavery is bad

I don’t care for Sophia the First and her catch phrase “Get away from me, commoners!”
I love how the king in the show has the most actively bland voice that it almost seems like a parody. Just keeping up the Disney tradition of the male royalty being people you can’t pick out of lineup.
I do wonder what all this Disney monarchy propaganda is doing to our daughters. Maybe it’s why libertarians skew male.

When you wake up at 3am and turn to see someone standing next to your bed staring at you, you’re going to freak out for a moment. True no matter how long you’ve had kids.

Dak Prescott + Kellen Moore seems like a pretty formidable combination. And it’s like the first half is just warm up.

I wonder what’s the world’s deadliest butterfly? I don’t think a butterfly has ever killed anyone, but one has to have come closest.

Kids, calm down. You’re not going to die from mass shootings or climate change. Learn to be more skeptical like when we Gen Xers were much more superior kids. Our “whatever” attitude now makes us look as wise as Solomon.

A passenger boarding the United plane I’m on just stopped in front of me, punched my shoulder, and started to say something, but I punched him in the face. My shoulder isn’t my weak spot, idiot. You’re going to have to try harder than that to take me down.

The whole Greta Thunberg thing feels like they’ve given up trying to convince anyone and are so frustrated they’re just trolling now. The whole exploiting a kid to do it is creepy, though.

I’ll be believe the world is ending when the climate change activists use the one thing in their arsenal they seemed to have vowed to never touch: humility.

“I know we’ve made a lot of mistakes and we’ve been dismissive of your concerns, and we’re sorry. We’re too arrogant to admit when we don’t really know things, but we want to change. We’re really worried about what’s happening and we want you on board.”
“Okay. Now I’m sacred.”

Is there any evidence Greta Thunberg is convincing anyone who didn’t already side with her, or am I missing the point?

It’s hard to take the UK seriously as a modern civilization when they’re worried about knives. I thought we got past the “Sharpened objects are going to kill us all!” panic thousands of years ago.

Don’t criticize kids? I’m a parent. It’s like 90% of what I do.

Little Winchester has a cold. This morning, both his eyes were sealed shut with eye crusties (he’s had some tear duct problems before as part of DS). Still, didn’t make him sad. Even though he couldn’t see me, as soon as he heard my voice, he smiled. He’s now 8 months old.
I think as part of being a parent, you can’t be a pessimist about the future. You don’t have that luxury.

Impeach him on one count of being a Trump and Pence on accessory to being a Trump.

If we don’t do something major about climate change, the world only has 7 years, 9 months, 16 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes, and 23 seconds left.

Man, when I was a kids, we were worried about the world ending because of nuclear war with the Soviets. That makes today’s concerns look asinine in comparison.

Man, I was just thinking how much that would mess up 16yo me if I had a bunch of adults all over the world calling me the smartest and the greatest. A big part of moving from adolescence to adulthood is overcoming one’s own hubris.
And the thing is, I probably was the smartest, greatest teenager ever, just judging from all the other teenagers I met.

We have to stop the billionaires before they billionaire us with all their billions.

“Serial Killer Dad, all I ever wanted to do growing up was play catch with you, but you were too busy killing. Serially.”
“Let me out of prison and we can play catch and I promise not to kill anymore.”
“I’m not falling for that again!”
-from FOX’s new show, Serial Killer Dad

The thought of us getting to the end of the Trump presidency without at least one impeachment hearing seems crazy.

*I show up to an impeachment inquiry in tshirt and jeans*
“This is a formal impeachment inquiry!”
“D’oh!”

Is a formal impeachment inquiry what the Marshal of the Supreme Court was waiting on?

The thing is, everyone is really dumb and impeachment is really dumb so it seems like the thing everyone should be doing.
Impeachment will accomplish nothing, but it will accomplish nothing in a much more entertaining way than just doing nothing.

Near the end of the second season of Halt & Catch Fire, and it’s starting to feel like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in regards to the Clarks’ kids in that they’re never around but you’re not supposed to worry about them.

Housekeeping: Rating Posts & Comments

Posted by on

We’ve made a few changes here recently, things we’ve had to do. We’ve run into some plugin compatibility issues, and we’ve had to find other solutions.

You may or may not know this, but WordPress, like many software applications, allows functions to be added, modified, or extended though plugins. That’s little software packages that can be added to the existing software.

WordPress will release updates and fixes to their software from time-to-time, and we made a small update recently. And, there’s another update coming, but not just yet.

Ahead of the update, we went through and checked our plugins, and found that some were not compatible with the upcoming update. The people that develop these plugins sometimes don’t update them when that’s needed. When that happens, we have three choices:

  1. Remove the plugin entirely, abandoning that functionality.
  2. Replace the plugin with another plugin that does the same thing, though it may act a little different.
  3. Leave the plugin in place and hope for the best.

Sometimes, we need to simply remove a plugin. If it doesn’t bring any value, it’s just taking up resources. We did that on a couple, mostly behind the scenes.

Sometimes, we leave the plugin in place and hope for the best. I’m not fan of this approach, but if we really want the functionality, we do this until we can find a replacement plugin.

Sometimes we replace the plugin with another.

Our ratings plugins, the Stars and Likes buttons, were not compatible with the upcoming version, so we needed to do something. We tried a few things, such as the WordPress “Like” button. However, some users reported it didn’t work correctly, either doing nothing, or requiring a login. Well, that’s totally unacceptable, so we decided to not rely on that. It’s now gone.

We wanted to be able to have comment ratings, which the “Likes” plugin did. But it placed the “Likes” on both comments and posts, meaning we had two post ratings systems. We kept that for a while, but some of you used one, and others used the other. And some of you used both.

We finally decided to go with the “Likes” alone, but we still needed to find a replacement.

Well, we finally found one. It’s very similar, but since it’s a different plugin from a different developer, the old ratings don’t transfer over. And I really don’t like that. I cannot express how much I do not like that.

The good news is the developer is the same company that makes WordPress, so we won’t have compatibility issues going forward.

We have a new ratings system in place. It seems to work, and it seems to work well. So, I’d like you to give it a shot. No, I’m not asking for likes on this post. This is just a notice about things, not something you come here to enjoy. Oppo or Frank J. or someone will be along shortly with that. This is a request that you take a minute from time to time and think about the new “Likes” functionality, and ratings for posts and comments in general.

If you want to go back and rate some of your favorites, that would be great. If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions about the ratings for posts and comments, let us know.

UPDATE: We’re dropping back to the old “Likes” plug-in for now but that’s gonna go away in a future update. We won’t have a choice in the matter. The plug-in isn’t being updated, and won’t work with newer versions. We’re going to conduct additional testing to find a replacement that works, or a configuration setting of the new standard one to find a wat to make it work.

IMAO Time Machine: The Next Way To Space

Posted by on

Here’s one from 2005 by SpaceMonkey. Or Spacemonkey. Or Space Monkey. We’re not really sure. — The Editors

Warning!!!! (Mostly) Non-Political Humor Ahead.

What will be the next way to space?

Rockets? We’re using those now so ‘next’ doesn’t exactly apply. But since I brought them up, they are too expensive and too dangerous. And they are inconvenient, you have to endure all those gut-wrenching G forces,

“Hello lunch. Its… been a while.”

Then there’s the [sigh] fire. All these years have passed and humans are still using FIRE to get to space? Fire is something you yell for fun in a crowded theater, its not for exploring the final frontier.

Space Elevator? Electric, better than fire. But listening to elevator music for over 6 hours is enough to make just about anybody completely Dean out.

“Hmmm, was that the 23rd or the 24th time I’ve heard ‘New York, New York?”

“Do I care?”

“Why do I keep asking myself questions?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ack! Now I’m answering!”

duh duh dada dada DUH – Start spreading….the news…..-

“Yeaarrrrgh!”

And everybody dies.

And can you imagine standing, waiting, watching the floor indicator for that long either? No amount of small talk can fill a 6 hour elevator ride.

“Nice weather we’re having.”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if the weather will be nice up at the space station.”

“Umm, There’s no weather in space.”

“But what about solar flares and coronal mass ejections?”

“Listen PSYCHO, I’ve got MACE and you are FOUR hours from a drinking fountain. Back off and keep any…mass ejections… to yourself!”

And somebody dies.

People go insane having to wait like that. For many of us, in an enclosed room, insane arrives in MUCH less than six hours. So the unbuilt, scary, space elevator is out.

The next way to space and you heard it here first or possibly elsewhere, is the….

Continue reading ‘IMAO Time Machine: The Next Way To Space’ »