Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars
Good action. Bad plot. Ugly dialogue.
Om Nom Nom Nom
You know you’ve always wanted to see silly putty eating a magnet. So click on that link!
Ken Cuccinelli Is A Very Bad Man
For those of you who don’t know who Ken Cuccinelli is, he is the current Attorney General of the state of Virginia. He is also currently running for Governor of said state. You will not find a more laughably socially retrograde individual running for a major state office that actually has a chance of winning.
How socially retrograde is Ken Cuccinelli? He is fighting to keep Virginia’s anti-sodomy laws on the books. Anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling. Despite that, Ken “lick a penis, go to jail” Cuccinelli fights on.
Anti-sodomy laws are notoriously just anti-gay laws or anti-prostitution laws. Sure, in theory, they apply to both sexes, but in practice, they have rarely been used to prosecute married couples. Because almost every married couple would be in jail otherwise. Except, I’m sure, Ken Cuccinelli. (Who, by the way, and I am totally not making this up goes by the nickname the Cooch. Thought I’m sure he’d spell it different.)
Ken “only one God sanctioned hole for that to go” Cuccinelli’s anti-sodomy stance is just the tip of the crazy iceberg, though. He’s also gone on a crusade against climate scientist Michael Mann and many others at the University of Virginia, demanding all of their e-mails in an obvious attempt to dig up dirt on the scientists. All this despite the fact that Michael Mann’s data and conclusions had already been proven multiple times to have been honestly come by.
On top of that, he’s pretty boilerplate far Right Republican. Life begins at conception. Abstinence-only sex education. Immigrants bad. Homosexuality bad. Taxes bad. Guns good. He even flirted with birtherism for a while. And, proving that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, he’s very anti-eminent domain when government takes property and then gives it over to private businesses.
The beautiful (or horrible, depending on how things turn out) thing about Ken Cuccinelli’s run for governor is that it’s going to be the only real race that anyone’s going to be watching in this off year election. That means all the Cuccinelli crazy will be front and center for the whole country to see. He will be the man that Republicans put front and center at a time when they’re desperately trying to change their image. Good luck with that.
RIP Roger Ebert
NPR is reporting that Roger Ebert has died. He just recently announced that he was diagnosed with cancer again. I don’t know how I missed him, but he most certainly deserved to be on my ‘people who I would want in my neighborhood‘ list. He has been added posthumously. He was a great writer and by all accounts a wonderful soul. His writing certainly has inspired mine. He will be missed.
Quit Sneezing, You Pervert
So, it turns out that there is a small section of the population that will sneeze when aroused. Also, the sinuses contain erectile tissue. I’m pretty sure that this means that people with sinus problems are just sexually repressed and instead of saying “bless you” or “gesundheit”, we should actually be saying “pervert!”
Fanatical Religious Nutjob Of The Day
The lunatics are in control of the asylum over in North Carolina. Two Republican lawmakers are pushing a resolution declaring that the state/county/city has the authority to establish an official religion and write religious laws. Clearly, these two are crypto-islamo-fascist Muslims hoping to stealthily bring Sharia Law to North Carolina. They must be stopped!
Their laughable claim is that the U.S. Constitution only prevents the establishment of a national religion. Smaller municipalities are free to do as they please in this regard. I guess that means states can restrict speech as much as they want as well. And your county can restrict who you choose to associate with. And your city can prevent you from petitioning the government.
This whole affair stems from a lawsuit filed against a county that starts their commissioners meeting with a prayer. They filed the resolution to show their solidarity with the commissioners. There are many of these lawsuits being filed across the country. The basic argument is that saying a Christian prayer at the beginning of a governmental meeting is establishing a religion and goes against the First Amendment. Most of the lawsuits are fought against vigorously by the local governmental body being sued.
Thanks to these two bumbling lawmakers, though, this is the first one that has hit the national spotlight. And it really gets to the heart of why the prayers are illegal and that fighting the lawsuits is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. They are all but admitting that the prayer is similar to establishing a religion. And there is plenty of precedent showing that the establishment of a religion is illegal no matter how far down the governmental ladder you go. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, North Carolina.
All Hurricane Names Should Begin With The Letter ‘J’
Almost every decision we make is determined, in part, by our cognitive biases. The smart person makes sure that, to the best of their ability, those biases are consciously and honestly analyzed whenever making a decision. It is a shame that we do not learn about known cognitive biases in school at a young age.
That’s all well and good, but how do you defend against biases that are almost impossible to recognize? Take charitable giving, for example. It turns out that people are much more likely to donate money to disaster relief efforts for hurricanes when the first letter of the hurricane name matches our own. Mind blown.
The beautiful thing about cognitive biases, though, is that we all have them and, thus, can manipulate people using them. (Oh, wait, no, that’s the horrible thing about them.) This is why I am proposing that all hurricanes start with the letter ‘J’. ‘J’ is the most common first letter for names in America. This should allow for the maximum of charitable giving to occur. At least until everyone whose name begins with ‘J’ ends up bankrupt because of all of their charitable giving. Then we can move on the hurricanes that begin with ‘M’.
When technology progresses to a point when information from the interwebs is directly fed into our brains, I propose that hurricane names be tailored to the individual. Any news we consume about the hurricane will automatically fill in our name for the hurricane name. Donations will pour in faster than water from the broken levees caused by hurricane <insert your name here>!
How Effed Up Is Healthcare In The United States?
It is absolutely appalling how much we spend for healthcare in the United States. What’s even more appalling is that we have absolutely no idea how much we’re going to spend for even basic health services. It can vary wildly from place to place. Quick, how much do you think an angiogram will cost you? If you answered anywhere between $173 and $2,740, you’d be right! But why the huge disparity and why do we pay so much more for healthcare than other countries. Well, the disparity has to do with how health insurance pays for healthcare. Each individual health group bargains with each individual health insurance company to get the best rate. Two people sleeping in the same hospital room for the same procedure are likely not paying the same price. As for the reason why we pay so much more than other countries, that’s easy. Other countries restrict costs and we don’t.
You might want to argue that the United States pays vastly more because we have better health outcomes. The only problem with that is we don’t. We don’t even come close to the best health outcomes in almost every category you can imagine.
Movie Review: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
This is just a placeholder post to acknowledge that I did, indeed, see this movie. It was completely forgettable in every way. I forgot about it so quickly that I had to be reminded that I saw it to write this review. I can’t even remember enough about it to determine how many stars I should give it.
“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone”, it was a movie that I saw.
Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
An incredibly flawed but immensely fun movie.