A Very Good Question

This is what Senatorial grandstanding should look like:

 

You go, girl!  We have an incredibly perverse system where companies can rake in tens of billions of dollars in profit while breaking the law and then pay a few billion in a settlement.  There is zero incentive for a company that has already proven that they will break the law to stop breaking the law.  It’s like telling a kid to go to their room when their room contains a full entertainment center and they spend most of their time there anyway.

Elizabeth Warren is quickly becoming one of the people I would want in my neighborhood.  A list that is sadly bereft of women at the moment.  Shame on me.

Unfortunate Ad Campaign Of The Day

Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius was arrested today for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.  You may remember Oscar as the “Blade Runner”.  He’s the one that had both his legs amputated below the knees when he was a year old and now uses carbon-fiber blades to run.  He shot Reeva Steenkamp four times and claims that he thought she was an intruder.  It turns out there’s no evidence of that being true so away to jail he goes.

Nike, who has Pistorius as a spokesperson, had to quickly pull an ad featuring Pistorius and the tag line, “I am a bullet in the chamber.”  Can’t imagine why.

This should be viewed as an overall win for the the Paralympic community.  Pistorius has broken the stereotype and proven that even athletes with no legs can be dickishly abusive and homicidal.  One small step for man and all that.

Things That Make You Go BOOM!

A very large meteor has streaked across the sky in Russia.  And there are lots of videos!  You want to watch them.  You really do.

There have been reports of many injuries from the sonic boom of the meteor breaking windows all over the place.  If you’ve never heard a sonic boom from a plane before, they are LOUD and will break windows.  This meteor was much bigger than an airplane.  Thus, the shockwave had much more energy.

As Phil Plait says, this has nothing to do with the very large asteroid that’s scheduled to streak by the Earth this weekend.  It’s just a coincidence.

I’ll certainly be keeping up with this story because it is AWESOME!  I’ll post any other cool videos I find.

Highlights From The State Of The Union

Last night’s State of the Union Address was mostly boilerplate Democraty feel good circle-jerky material, but there were some interesting highlights.

  • The announcement of a bipartisan panel to investigate voting irregularities that led to long lines at the polls.  No one should have to wait six hours in line to vote.  Of course, much of this can be tied to Republican governor shenanigans (I’m looking at you, Scott Walker), but there were other issues as well.  It will be interesting to see what comes of the commission.
  • Universal pre-school!  This would be huge if Obama can pull it off.  Kids that age are sponges soaking up everything around them.  Getting them into a learning environment just a year earlier than they are today will have enormous implications to every avenue of social justice.
  • Raising the minimum wage to $9.00.  A somewhat better living wage for all!  People complain that it will cost jobs, but there is zero evidence to show this and some evidence that shows the opposite.  Counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s true.
  • Tying governmental scholarships, in part, to affordability of education.  This is a great idea.  There is some decent evidence that some of the meteoric rise in college tuition is due to the availability of governmental money.  Telling colleges that they have to be affordable is a great way to rein in costs.

I hope all of the above get a vote this year.  They are a good mixture of sound investments in the future and immediate economic gains.

Book Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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: 5/5 stars

There is infinitely more beauty in sadness than in happiness.  Maybe it’s because sadness makes you appreciate the beauty all the more.

There is a Vonnegut-esqueness to Markus Zusak’s writing that made me want to hate this book at the beginning; the short sentence aside that makes Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut.  But the more Zusak utilized it, the more I came to enjoy it.  Reading “The Book Thief” was like digging for gems in a bed of gold.  There were so many single sentences scattered throughout the book that made me stop and smile.  That a person can express so much in so few words is a testament to both Zusak’s ability.

“The Book Thief” is brutally sad.  It also happens to be brutally beautiful.  The book is narrated by Death which at first comes off as annoyingly cheesy until you get into Death’s personality.  If there’s one personality that can find the beauty of the worst of situations, it’s Death, right?  And how much worse can it be than living in Molching on the outskirts of Munich during World War II?  Much worse, it turns out, if you happen to be a Jew.

Continue reading →

Movie Review: Side Effects

Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold even though I will actively avoid any spoilers this time around.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Soooo, you want to be a psychiatrist?  Watch this movie and call me in the morning.  I knew next to nothing about this movie going into it and I suggest you do the same if you are going to see it.  It is worth it.

Continue reading →

The Bridge Over The River Chicago

Hey, Chicagoans!  You know that one CTA bridge that connects about half a million people from home to their jobs downtown?  Yeah, it’s going to be closing in March for repairs.  Let the quest for the newest -mageddon slogan begin!  I’m trademarking commute-mageddon.

Fear not!  The bridge will only be closed for two separate 9 day periods between early March and early May.  How the heck they’re going to swing that is beyond me.  I’m sure we’ll all just have to guess which days the 9 day periods actually fall on within those two months.  It’s time to play “How Long Will My Commute Be Today!”, everyone’s favorite game where contestants vie to see if they can guess what the CTA has closed on their commute to and from work.  Premiering early March 2013.  Check local listings.

It’s Raining Spiders, Hallelujah

It’s a little known fact that the song “It’s Raining Men” was written by Paul Shaffer of David Letterman fame and was originally going to be titled “It’s Raining Spiders” due to Paul Shaffer’s love of all things arachnid.  It was then suggested by co-author Paul Jabara that they change the title to Shaffer’s second love for audience appeal reasons.  Today, for the first time ever, we have found the video for the never recorded “It’s Raining Spiders”.

 

I Slept With Warren Buffett Last Night

More to the point, I dreamt about him.  I really need to get new dreams.

I think I was interviewing to take his place at Berkshire Hathaway.  His secretary brings me into his office.  This wasn’t his normal secretary, but the stereotypical conservatively dressed hot secretary.  Warren Buffett is sitting in a plush lounge chair watching television.  He invites me to sit in another plush lounge chair and I sit down.

He says to me, “I think we can do coffee or tea later, don’t you think?”  And I respond, “That would be fine.”  And then we just…sit there.  The secretary is just standing there looking sexy and waiting for instructions.

An indeterminate, but not insignificant amount of time passes and then Warren asks me, “Would you come with me?  I want to show you something.”  I follow along silently.

He then takes me to his house in Rome, Italy.  This, of course, somehow happens instantly.  He takes me up to the roof of his house which is obviously a heli-pad but disguised nicely by the modern Roman architecture of the building.  The rails along the roof are quite low as a result and Warren shrinks to the size of the rails as he walks along them.

I comment about the wonderful architecture of the few bridges that I see off to one side of the building.  The bridges are quite obviously not Roman bridges.  They were very modern.  Warren then starts asking me about my travels in Rome and I tell him.  Sometime during that telling, I woke up.

I haven’t heard if I got the job yet.