A Grinch? Really?

Imagine you're the parent of a little girl, four years old, who's been diagnosed with leukemia – then treated, gone into remission, and has no traces of the disease left.  Then suppose you're contacted by the Make-A-Wish foundation – a charity that gives dreams-come-true trips or experiences to children with life-threatening illnesses, especially when those families can't afford to do it themselves.  What do you do?

This is exactly what happened to William May and his daughter McKenna.  Mr. May decided to block the gift from Make-A-Wish, so the money could be available for a child who was actually sick.  McKenna's mother is unhappy about this decision, and is now collecting donations on her own to fund the trip.  And now the New York Post has weighed in, calling Mr. May a “Grinch”.

I have several reactions to this story.  The first one is to admire Mr. May's honesty and morality, and to applaud him for the wonderful lesson he's teaching his daughter.  The second is to wonder what on earth this story is doing in the public domain – it seems to me that this is the family's business alone, and the Post should butt out...

Obama's Opaque “Transparency”...

Via my mom:

The Wisdom of Mothers...

Via reader Jim M.:

No matter our age, we can probably all relate to this one:


I Owe My Mother .....

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside.. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My mother taught me LOGIC.
"Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My mother taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS .
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM..
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10.My mother taught me about STAMINA ..
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11.My mother taught me about WEATHER.
"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12.My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13.My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.."

14.My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"

15.My mother taught me about ENVY.
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16.My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home."

17.My mother taught me about RECEIVING*.
"You are going to get it when you get home!"

18.My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

19.My mother taught me ESP.
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20.My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21.My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22.My mother taught me GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."

23.My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24.My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25.My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!"

Boudreaux Gets a Job...

Via reader Jim M.:

Down in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, Boudreaux gets a job with BP helping with the cleanup.

He reports for work and is told to speak to a supervisor about his assignment.

He finds the man and asks, "What it is I suppose to do?"

The supervisor tells him to go to the animal shelter and clean the pelicans.

Two hours later, Boudreaux comes up to the supervisor and says, "Okay. Dey all cleaned. You want I should cook some rice to go wid em?"

Views from Space...

A time-lapse movie made entirely of single-frame photos taken from the ISS:

I Built That...

Scott Brown isn't most conservative's (or libertarian's) idea of a perfect politician.  But he does get some things right:

Oh, Great...

The Obama administration wants to make it easier for those who owe money on student loans to avoid repayment.  Guess who would be on the hook for them?  Yep.  You and me, and all the other tax-payers.

Remember this when you vote in November, would you, please?

Walk or Run?

If you get caught in the rain without an umbrella, is it better to walk or run to a dry place?

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer – but physicists have finally done it.

It's About Time!

It looks like scientific publishing is about to undergo a revolution, and it will probably look a lot like what arXiv has done to physics...

Starting Early...

One of the Cornett boys, from Leatherwood, Kentucky in 1964. 

One hopes this is not happening today, especially in America...

Via Shorpy...

I Built This...

I don't think Obama has heard the end of this...

Just Sayin'...

Woman.

Driving.

New Jersey.

Just sayin'...

Apollo 11 in Photos...

Those of us who have reached a certain age are likely to remember one thing about the eventful summer of 1969 above all others: Apollo 11.

I was nearly 17 that summer, and for the days (which seemed like months!) of the mission, I was completely consumed with it.  There was no Internet back then, and the TV news only had an hour or so per day of actual content.  My best source was the BBC News from London, which I picked up on a ham radio receiver.  The BBC had a flock of reporters on the story, all over the world; they did an amazing job of in-depth reporting, making the American news look just plain amateur by comparison.

For me, the most tension-filled moment of the mission is the one captured in the image above: the Lunar Module's ascent and rendezvous with the Command Module in lunar orbit.  Three men, a quarter million miles from home, meeting up in the unbelievable vastness of outer space.  It seemed such an unlikely feat, and yet they not only pulled it off, they made it look easy.

By the way, there was a slide rule along on that mission – and it was used :-)

The Atlantic has a nice collection of Apollo 11 photos...

Hoorah!

Via reader and colleague Doug S., this little story about the Marine Corps' response to PETA demonstrations outside the Marine base at Camp Pendleton (just north of San Diego).  PETA is protesting the Marine's use of the terms “leatherneck” and “wooly-pully”.  Most of us would just shake our heads in amusement at PETA's antics – and hope the demonstration would escalate to one of PETA's trademark nude protests.  The Marines, however, responded in a slightly different manner:

PETA protesters turned to what they called their only defense. Using out-of-tune acoustic guitars, the crowd sang songs of animal triumph over human oppression.

Both civilian and military police worked together to break up the melee because no one could stand the horrible PETA music any longer.

Peace talks have started, with top Marine brass explaining that leather hasn’t been used around the neck of a Marines uniform since long before PETA existed. Former CENTCOM Commander General James Mattis also joined in the discussion, saying that the protestors “should just go fuck themselves.”

We San Diegans are very fond of our Marines, for many reasons. One of those reasons is the Marines propensity for straight talking.

You tell 'em, General Mattis!

Fire Information – UPDATED...

It's time for my annual fire information page update.

Cameras are a primary source for ground truth when there's a local and active fire.  We learned the hard way in 2007 that local news sources are, for the most part, completely useless for “tactical” needs – if you're trying to find out about current fire location, current road closures, current escape routes, etc., these sources are just too slow.  Fortunately for us here in San Diego County, UCSD's HPWREN system has a network of cameras at over a dozen sites.  The images from these cameras are updated every two minutes, and they've got date/time stamps right in them – so you can be certain that the information you're viewing is current.  The main HPWREN camera site and a mirror site are both available.  I recommend getting familiar with the cameras most relevant to your location (for example, for us it's the cameras on Lyons Peak), and familiar with tools like Google Earth that will help you identify the landmarks you see in the HPWREN images.  During the 2007 fires, we found these cameras to be the single best tool available to us – we used them to plan our evacuation route, and we used them to track the fire's approach to our home (which, thankfully, it never reached).

There are other very useful web sites as well.  Here are three that I found useful during the 2007 fires:

California Department of Forestry: CAL FIRE Incidents

U.S. Deparment of the Interior/Department of Agriculture: GeoMAC

U.S. Department of Agriculture: Fire Data Web Services

If any of you know about other useful web sites, tools, or information sources, please let me know about them so I can share them with everyone...

UPDATED: There's a small fire (at least for now) over near Sycuan Casino, last reported at 20 acres and good progress being made controlling it.  In the course of researching this, I came across a new resource:

CAL FIRE twitter  (who knew?)

Also, here's the CAL FIRE San Diego County fire information number (only active duing major incidents): 619/590-3160

The IRS and the Black Market...

Suppose you inherited something that was once worth a lot of money, but now cannot be legally sold.  How should the IRS assess inheritance tax on that?

Well, the new owners say (of course!) that since it cannot be sold, it's fair market value is zero, so there is no tax.

The IRS says “Give us $29 million, right now!”

The whole story...

This is going to court, of course.  Care to bet on who wins?

I think most people would agree that here is a clear-cut case of theft (well, attempted theft, for the moment) disguised as taxes.  So far as I'm concerned, all taxation is theft if I didn't agree to it, but when I say things like that people just look at me like I'm crazy :-)

The Two-Egg Problem...

Examined in detail in a most geekly fashion.  Great geekly stuff!

Don't Take That Tone With Me, Fat Boy...

It's really, really hard to excerpt one of Iowahawk's satirical masterpieces.  This one – You Didn't Build That – is easier than most:

Then the economy heard the sound of the Lord Govt returning from vay-cay with the demigovts Osha and Tarp and Irs. It was the cool of the day, and they were hiding their profits from the Lord Govt among the trees of the garden. 26 But the Lord Govt called to the manufacturer, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, so I sought a tax shelter.”

And Govt said, “Who told you that your profits were yours? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”

The man said, “The retailer made me —she has a thing for serpents.”

Then the Lord Govt said to the retailer, “What is this you have done?”

And she said to the Lord Govt, “Don't take that tone with me, fat boy. And why should I give you my profits?”

Iowahawk made my morning. Go read the whole thing; it's not that long...

Explaining Physics to Turnips...

The inimitable Rachel Lucas, on the Italian press' reaction to the Aurora shootings.  Great stuff, as always...

I Certainly Could Do That...

Today's Dilbert strip is one that just about any corporate software developer will find wryly amusing:

My search for relevance marches on...

Amongst Scott Adams many talents is a gift for staying in touch with the geekdom he no longer is immersed in...

I'll Bet He's Still Laughing!

A Parable...

Via my mom:

Once there was a little boy who lived in the country.

The family had to use an outhouse, and the little boy hated it because it was so hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter and stank all the time.

The outhouse was sitting on the bank of a creek and the boy was determined that one day he would push that old outhouse straight into the creek.

One day after a spring rain, the creek was swollen so the little boy decided today was the day to push the outhouse into the creek.

He found a large stick and started pushing. Finally, the outhouse toppled into the creek and floated away.

That night his dad told him they were going to the woodshed after supper. Knowing that meant a spanking, the little boy asked why. The dad replied, "Someone pushed the outhouse into the creek today.It was you, wasn't it son?" The boy answered it was.

Then he thought a moment and said, "Dad, I read in school today that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and didn't get into trouble because he told the truth."

The dad replied, "Well, son, George Washington's father wasn't in the cherry tree..."

Well, That's Different...

Opening scene from HBO's new series The Newsroom. It's not exactly parroting the usual “Progressive” narrative:

Even Worse Than We Thought...

Many California state parks were permanently closed this year because there was no money in the budget to fund them.  Really what that means is that some politician decided that other things (say, the high-speed train to nowhere) was a more important priority.  This kind of brain-diseased budget prioritization is reason enough to leave California for some saner locale.

But today we learned that it's even worse than we thought.  The state parks system was sitting on $54 million in surplus funds while they were closing parks.  We also learned that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a secret vacation buyout program.

Bureaucrats.
Tree.
Rope.
Some assembly required.

Self-Extincting Ideologies...

I have nothing to add to the discussion on the terribly sad events in Aurora, Colorado yesterday.  I will make one observation, though, on a related phenomenon that just floors me.  Every time there is an act of mass violence carried out using guns, there are (loud) cries from the Progressives of the world (Mayor “Nanny” Bloomberg, I'm looking at you!) for gun control.  Usually they mean that in an absolutist sense: they would like to completely remove the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms.  In other words, their reaction to the illegal use of guns is to outlaw guns altogether.

There are two parts of this reaction that I have trouble wrapping my brain around.

The first part is this: if someone is already willing to do something as vile (not to mention illegal) as murder, why on earth does anyone in their right mind think that making the purchase of guns illegal would deter them?  There is much evidence that it would not, starting with the many murders with guns committed in areas where guns are illegal (both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.).

The second part is this: how could anyone believe that we're better off – by any measure at all – having our citizens be disarmed in the face of those willing to commit violence? 

Ideologies that promote gun control are, I think, self-extincting.  If they ever come to power, those with (illegal) guns will make sure that doesn't last long...

The Gathering Storm...

Feral Communists...

Another excellent Afterburner from Bill Whittle.  It contains the phrase in the title, which tickled my fancy :-)

Crypto vs. Rubber Hose...

Hristo Bojinov of Stanford has come up with a way to thwart a “rubber hose” attack that tries to force an individual to give up a password.  No, it's not training in pain tolerance – it's a different way to authenticate.

The basic idea is that you can learn subconciously (in fact, this is the way we learn most things), without even realizing that you've learned something.  Passwords are not like this; those we very conciously learn (memorize). 

The new technique involves learning how to play a special game.  In the process of doing this, you learn – subconciously – a 30 character password made up of just six characters.  This is a very secure password.  If someone asked you to recite it, you wouldn't be able to do it – not even if they gave you the rubber hose treatment, and not even if you wanted to give them the password.  You are not concious of it at all.  To actually authenticate yourself to a computer, you have to play a round of their game.  In doing so, you demonstrate to the computer that subconciously you really do know the password.

You might ask yourself (I certainly did) “But how does this help with the rubber hose attack?  The trained authenticator could still be forced to play the little game!”  The authors of the paper assert that there must be a “liveness test” – in other words, you can't use their method for remote authentication, but rather only for authentication when physically present at the system you're trying to authenticate to.  Presumably someone would then notice if you were being beaten with the rubber hose.  There are some problems with that, as there are ways to coerce people that don't require the coercer to be physically present with the coerced (for example, your spouse or child could be held hostage until you authenticate).  Worse, I think, is that if you subject a password authentication system to a liveness test, then its security is enhanced in the same way.  In other words, it seems to me that a large part of the benefit of this new system is derived from the liveness test, rather than the method itself. 

But all that carping aside, there are some genuinely interesting security ideas in here.  How practical they are is another matter altogether, but the general notion of using subconcious memory strikes me as worth exploring.

Authentication to a computer system is a really tough problem, far harder than most people realize.  It's the basis for many of the kinds of computer security that average people run into every day (like, say, access to your bank account) – and yet we are still lacking good, secure, reliable solutions.  Passwords are by far the most common approach, and they are demonstrably feeble.  Biometric authentication (fingerprints, iris patterns, etc.) are stronger, but are defeatable and less reliable than most people consider acceptable.  So I'm always interested in anything that might improve the situation...

This Is Just Wrong...

The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) zealously protects its use of the word “Olympic” – if it finds another business trying to associate itself with the Olympic Games without having paid a license fee, it goes after them for trademark infringement.  That's fine, as stated.  The problem here is this: the word “Olympic” has multiple meanings.  It's the name of several mountains or mountain ranges around the world, and it's closely associated with many things Greek.

Now the USOC has successfully forced the owner of the Olympic Gyros to change the name of his business – 30 years after the business was founded, and despite the rather obvious fact that the “Olympic” in “Olympic Gryos” refers to things Greek, and not the Olympic Games.

For shame, USOC, for shame – for even trying to do this.  And what the hell has happened to our legal system that the USOC could prevail in this travesty?

Fun With “You Didn't Build That!”

Obama's epic gaffe has already provided the fodder for a lot of humor.  From the inimitable Iowahawk (at right), to a mocking web site, to user-provided mocking, to the definitive poster collection, the Intertubes have really gotten into the spirit of this.

Then of course there's the oh-so-revealing epic gaffe itself, here for your admiration and cherishing (about 1:40 into the video)...

It's Going to be an Interesting Election Season...

Quite possibly the best Romney ad yet:

Hope and Change, Proverb Edition...

Via Jim M.  Old, obsolete proverb:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and … you feed him for a lifetime.

New proverb, inspired by Obama's hope and change:

Give a man a welfare check, a cell phone, food stamps, section 8 housing, Medicaid, 100 weeks of unemployment checks, a 40-ounce malt liquor, needles, drugs, contraceptives, and designer Air Jordan shoes … and he will vote Democrat for a lifetime.

Some Political Cartoons for Your Morning...

Via my lovely bride:

Awesome Photos...

Via my mom and reader Simi L., on the same day!  Lots more at the link.

A Hole in Mars...

Via APOD, of course.  Follow the link to get more explanation, but the short story is that there's some kind of a cavity at the bottom of this crater.  Reminds me of an antlion's trap – but that hole at the bottom is over 100' across, so that would be one heck of an antlion!

Geek Help Wanted...

Here's a flood-fill algorithm, implemented on canvas in JavaScript, that exhibits behavior the author can't explain.  He's looking for help understanding why his algorithm behaves as it does.  Any takers?  I haven't looked at it yet myself, but I'm fascinated by the visible behavior – it looks quite organic...

Prime Patterns...

Here's an interesting algorithmically-generated graphical pattern that highlights prime numbers.  I'd love to see this expanded to larger numbers, to see what the pattern looks like...

LOST Goes Down to Defeat...

To my delight – and suprise – the Law Of the Sea Treaty (LOST) went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate yesterday.  John Yoo celebrates:

But those interested in national sovereignty were a bit more concerned about the rules of navigation, where it is really the power of the U.S. Navy, rather than parchment barriers, that keep the sea lanes open to all. Conservatives also opposed the treaty's creation of a new international bureaucracy that would give out property rights to the seabed, collect taxes, and redistribute income (and technology) to poorer countries. It was a welfare state for the oceans.

Read the whole thing...

How Far Will They Go?

After viewing this video, I can only think of two explanations.  Either:
1) Those treats are really, really good
– or –
2) The fact that Australians spend their lives upside-down really does have significant negative effects on brain function

You decide:

Obama Is Driving Her Insane...

Rachel Lucas, on Obama's fatuous and progressive (but I repeat myself) tax comments:

Also throughout the speech, Obama kept talking about how maintaining the current tax rates for the rich would “cost” the government money. This idiotic verbal and rhetorical construction drives me insane. It is like my teenage niece saying it is “costing” her money if I don’t send cash on her birthday. But, she’d never say that or even think that, because she doesn’t feel entitled to my money since I am not her mommy. Amazing how a 15-year-old girl can see reality more clearly than 50% of the American electorate.

Also, she continues her Paul Ryan crush...

Quote of the Day...

Today's quote is from an unnamed “senior Democrat” on the topic of the coming “tax cliff” – the expiration at the end of 2012 of the Bush tax cuts.  Recall that last year the Democrats and the Republicans passed yet another funding extension bill, but this one included an incentive for the two to compromise on a real funding bill: the “sequestration” that would automatically impose big cuts in defense and other discretionary spending if the two sides didn't agree.

They did not agree.  Sequestration is looming (at the end of this year).

There's the context.  Here's the quote from our unnamed “senior Democrat”:

“We structured the sequester in a way that would be more comfortable for us than for Republicans.”

The Democrats are expecting that the Republicans will just roll over and give up when threatened with across-the-board cuts to the Defense Department's budget.

And they may be right.

It's things like this that bring on the doom mood...

What He Said...

Yesterday I watched with dismay and disgust Obama's comments dismissing the achievements of entrepreneurs.  Today I read about Paul Ryan's reaction, including this excerpt:

His comments seem to derive from a naive vision of a government-centered society and a government-directed economy. It stems from an idea that the nucleus of society and the economy is government not the people. … It is antithetical to the American idea. We believe in free communities, and this is a statist attack on free communities. … As all of his big government spending programs fail to restore jobs and growth.

I couldn't find a complete transcript or video of the talk this excerpt was taken from.  But he's speaking for me here...

How Obamacare Will Screw You...

Why does this have the ring of truth about it???

Hope and Change in Foreign Policy...

Our Secretary of State visited Egypt this weekend, where she was greeted by crowds chanting “Monica, Monica”, and tossing rotten tomatoes.  The so-called Arab Spring has resulted in a freely-elected Islamist government, unresolved tension between the elected government and the corruptocratic military government, and now ... open mocking of our official government representatives.  I'm not arguing that the mocking isn't richly deserved, mind you.  Just noting that the government of hope and change has indeed brought us change – though not of a particularly hopeful looking variety...

What's Wrong with the Federal Government: Chapter 39,743...

Spotted in a news report:

Meanwhile, the Postal Service is on pace to lose billions of dollars this fiscal year, and owes $11 billion, in two separate installments, over the next two and a half months in prepayments for retiree health care.

Subsidizing the U.S. Post Office at levels like this is sort of like passing a gigantic bill that would put 200,000 people back to work making horse-driving buggies.

The news report is all about the Post Office “rescue bill”, and the discussion is laced with the assumption that rescuing the Post Office is a good idea.  I don't know what the hell those politicians are thinking!  Could it be that they're so attached to their “franking” privilege (basically, free stamps) that they're willing to stick it to the rest of us to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year?  I'll bet none of them have tried to get service at a post office any time recently.

It's high time (and has been for decades now) to privatize the Post Office and let the marketplace sort this mess out...

NGC 4565: the Needle Galaxy...

As seen by the Hubble telescope:

Just in case it's not obvious: this is a spiral galaxy seen edge-on...

A Lovely Evening Drive in the Cuyamacas...

Yesterday evening, just before sunset, Debbie and I took off to do a little wildlife viewing.  We headed for one of our favorite spots: the Stonewall Mine area of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  Several times over the past few months we've seen herds of deer up there numbering in the dozens.  This is the first year since the 2007 fires that we've seen the deer in numbers up there, so it's a cheerful sign of recovery for us to see them.

At first we were disappointed.  We got to the little valley adjacent to the mine at just about the perfect time: just as the sun was setting.  We saw one deer, just one.  We did see lots of other things, though – turkeys (a dozen or so), and many other birds of the area.  As we were leaving the Stonewall Mine area, we were just a bit disappointed.

That ended just before we reached the main road (state 79), when Debbie spotted a bobcat.  This was the very first bobcat we've seen in Cuyamaca since the 2007 fires – prior to that, we saw them frequently.  This is another very positive sign of recovery in the area; the bobcats wouldn't return until their prey (rodents, mainly) had returned in numbers.  I had two good 15 second or so sightings with binoculars on it; it looked fit and healthy.  In my first sighting it appeared be stalking something uphill of it; in the second it was just walking along.  We were a bit surprised by its color; more reddish-brown than the bobcats we see around our home, which are overall more grey than brown.  It had the trademark spots and stripes, huge feet, ear tufts, and of course the bobbed tail.  A handsome animal, indeed.

Well, that made our evening!  But there was still more on tap for us.  As we drove home, we decided to make a side trip down Japatul Lane.  This gravel road follows the bottom of a small valley, mostly farmed for forage, where we've seen deer before many times.  It was dusk when we got there, just a half hour or so before dark.  Down in the lowest part of the valley, we ran across a herd of 16 deer, including 5 very young fawns (still in spots).  A mile or so away, we spotted a magnificent 7-point stag.  We were able to park and watch the fawns and their mothers for 20 minutes or so, quite near to us.  We loved seeing those fawns...

What a beautiful evening it turned out to be!

Oriole Feeder Hack...

We've been actively feeding our orioles (Bullock's and Hooded, in roughly equal numbers) for several years now.  This year we have more than ever, the children, we're guessing, of several generations of local orioles that have learned where they can get some easy, tasty chow.

The feeders we use are designed to be hung, so we've been hanging them from the same hangers we use for our hummingbird feeders.  In general, we're very happy with these feeders – the orioles like them, plus they have a clever little “bee guard” that's very effective at keeping the bees out while letting the orioles in.  But the feeders have one attribute we don't like: if you wiggle them in the slightest, the liquid food sloshes right out the holes.  The orioles, being fairly large birds, shake the heck out of the feeders when they land and take off.  We've had puddles of oriole food (sugar water, basically) collected under the feeders.  Our suspicion is that more food spills than is eaten.

So this weekend I embarked on a hack of the oriole feeders – and so far, at least, it seems to have worked very well!  The photo above right shows the hack: a 7/8" dowel poking up into a hole in the bottom of the feeder.  This hole was already there, though it wasn't 7/8" in diameter – it was somewhere between 3/4" and 7/8".  I don't think these holes were intended as a mounting mechanism; I think they're there to strengthen the bottom piece of plastic.  I noticed that the holes had three vertical ridges of plastic in them, just 1/32" or so high.  I ground them down with a Dremel tool, and voila! – a 7/8" dowel then fit very nicely.

To make the “L”-shaped dowels, I cut each dowel at 45°, then glued the two pieces to make a 90° angle.  I used a fast-curing epoxy glue, and clamped them overnight.  The clamping was a bit tricky, but I used a simple trick: I nailed a finishing nail into the angled end of each dowel (if you look closely at the photo above, you can see the nail hole just above the bottom).  Then I used a small bar clamp to hold the pieces together – the nails kept the clamp from slipping.  Then all I had left to do was to drill level holes in the post, to hold the dowels – this was made easy by a convenient level built right into my drill.  A little glue, and I was done. 

We've already seen that the rate of oriole food consumption has gone down, while the rate of oriole visits has not.  Success!

While I was taking the photo above, I was joined by a fearless female hummingbird, drinking from a hummingbird feeder just below the oriole feeder I was photographing.  Also, a very frustrated bug landed on the oriole feeder and tried very hard to get in the feeding hole.  It failed completely :-)  As always, click to enlarge any of the photos...

Who Knew?

Kangaroos have evolved a special response to shopping bags:


Yes, I know this can't possibly be for real.  I'll bet they had a lot of fun making this video, while imagining all the Americans who would buy it...

One Hardly Knows What to Say...

Welfare Cliffs...

Here's a beautifully simple illustration (click to enlarge) of the problems caused by the “welfare cliffs” (reductions in welfare benefits triggered by earned wages).  This is worth studying, as an example of public policy with unintended consequences (at least, I sure hope they were unintended!).

The example on the chart below starts with a single mom earning (through a job) $29,000 a year.  She also qualifies for several kinds of welfare payments, which (added to her wages) brings her net income and benefits to over $57,000 a year.   Now consider what happens if she gets a raise to $32,000 a year in wages: the welfare payments she qualifies for drop steeply (the “welfare cliff”), and her total income and benefits drop to about $50,000 a year.  So...she gets a raise of $3,000 a year, but gets a total income cut of over $7,000 a year.  If you were in that single mom's place, would you ask for a raise?

The example in the chart below illustrates a slightly different point.  That same single mom would have to get a raise from $29,000 to over $69,000 before she saw higher net income and benefits. This happens from a combination of two factors: the previously described “welfare cliffs” and our progressive income tax system that confiscates larger percentages of your income as you make more.

Only the stupid welfare recipients are going to try to earn more, to make a successful career.  All the smart ones have the game figured out: you win by making between about $20,000 and $29,000 in wages.  Anything more than $29,000, you lose.  The winners coast along, taking in those nice, free welfare dollars...

What's the solution?  It isn't hard.  Design our tax code and welfare system such that no matter what situation someone is in, if they earn a dollar more in wages, an interesting percentage of that goes into their pocket.  Better yet: do away with the welfare entitlements altogether, and turn it back into what it was originally intended to be: a safety net.  There are many ways to accomplish this, but perhaps the easiest one is what some other countries already do: gradually reduce the amount of welfare over time...

Orion Nebula...

Taken by the Hubble Telescope, via APOD, of course:

Police Report...

From the Saskatoon Police Service (for the geographically challenged, Saskatoon is a city in Saskatchewan, Canada), this report on an incident that happened on Friday, July 13th, 2012:

The Saskatoon Police Service responded to a rather curious single vehicle collision at approximately 8:05 pm July 13th, 2012. A motorcyclist, who had been travelling at an excessive speed, attempted to navigate the curve to travel westbound on Circle Drive from Boychuk Drive. The 27 year old male operator was unsuccessful and subsequently lost control of his bike.

The motorcycle and its operator separated as both left the travel portion of the roadway and became airborne. Witnesses report the two had enough momentum that they landed in a slough some distance from where they had departed the road surface. On attending to the scene Officers did indeed locate a wet motorcyclist and nearly submerged sport motorcycle.

The operator was transported from the scene to hospital by MD Ambulance personnel. He is suffering from injuries reported to be of a minor nature and is expected to make a full recovery. Investigators believe landing in the slough prevented him from being far more seriously injured. The motorcycle, being poorly designed for both flight and marine operation, sustained significant external and internal damage.

Charges of Driving at a Speed Greater Than Reasonable and Safe and Changing Lanes When Unsafe have been laid against the motorcycle operator. The Saskatoon Police Service would like to remind motorists that excessive speed is often a major contributing factor in vehicle collisions and that vehicles should only be utilized in the manner for which they are designed and intended.

There's a lot to love in this report. If forced to pick a favorite sentence, I think it would have to be the last sentence in the third paragraph.

I've never met a police officer who could have authored this report. I would like to.  Awesome!

Time to Leave...

Debbie and I finished up a project today: we put trim around the interior side of the new patio door we installed a few weeks ago.  We used three pieces of nice milled trim (vaguely Southwestern in style), joined at the top left and right corners by little corner pieces like the one at right.  It's just a piece of pine about 3 inches square, milled with a simple little pattern.  What could be more innocent – and more harmless – than this little piece of pine?

Well, take a look at what the State of California is now requiring lumber stores to do:

Even in 1890!

Snopes says this is for real.  Read the message in the last photo (click to enlarge).  Via my lovely bride...

Dogs are Family...

Of course they are!  Via my lovely bride:

Worst Job Evah!

The toshers of Victorian England.  There are a lot of candidates for the worst job ever.  This is certainly amongst the top tier, if not the outright winner...

Modern Olympics Started in ... England?

Read about the father of the modern Olympics: Dr. William Penny Brookes of Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England...

Intellectually Stimulating Web Sites...

Starting with:

Videos and Lectures

• KhanAcademy.org
• TED.com
• UnplugTheTV.com

Learn New Things

• FuckingHomepage.com
• IfEveryoneKnew.com

Testing Knowledge

• FreeRice.com
• LizardPoint.com
• MathRun.net

Teach Yourself Something

• OpenCulture.com
• NoExcuseList.com

Youtube Channels

• SciShow
• CrashCourse
• MinutePhysics
• TEDEducation

EDIT:
Subreddits

• r/DepthHub
• r/explainlikeimfive
• r/RedditGuides
• r/TrueReddit

Many more listed in the comments...

Fear...

Via McSweeney's...

Reasons to Fear Canada.
BY Sean Carman
- - - -

Ninety percent of population is massed within 100 miles of northern American border.

Seems not to mind that one of its provinces has turned almost entirely French.

Excessive politeness only makes sense as cover for something truly sinister. But what?

Citizens seem strangely impervious to cold.

Decriminalization of marijuana and acceptance of gay marriage without corresponding collapse of social institutions indicate Canada may, in fact, be indestructible.

Has infiltrated entertainment industry with singers, actors, and comedians practically indistinguishable from their American counterparts.

Consistently stays just below cultural radar yet never quite disappears.

Parliamentary government and common-law judiciary appear to function acceptably yet remain completely inscrutable.

Never had a “disco phase.”

Seemingly endless supply of timber, donuts, and Scotch-plaid hats with earflaps.

Keeps insisting it “has no designs on America” and “only wants peace.”

Plays a mean game of pond hockey.

We Are the Hopeychange!

Mark Steyn at his best:

Thus, in 2008, Barack Obama, being the preferred choice of America's youth, was, by definition, the candidate of progress and the future. In humdrum reality, his idea of the future doesn't seem to be any more futuristic than the pre-Thatcher statist wasteland of Britain in the Seventies, but that didn't stop the massed ranks of fresh-faced youth chanting "We are the Hopeychange!" in adoring if glassy-eyed unison behind him at every campaign rally. Four years later, half of recent graduates can't find full-time employment; Americans' college debt is now larger than credit card debt; the number of young people with summer jobs is at a record low; and men in their late twenties and early thirties trudge upstairs every night to the same bedroom in which they slept as a kindergartner.

And that's before they're permanently buried by interest payments on the multitrillion-dollar debt and unfunded liabilities from Medicare. Yet in 2012 the rubes will still vote for Obama and be congratulated by the media for doing so. Because to be young is to vote for hope and change.

He goes on to talk about the youth in the “Arabian Spring” – read the whole thing...

What a Waste!

Here's a graph that paints a clear view of something I find profoundly sad – the fact that our prison population is dominated by people convicted of illicit drug use.

But the dominance of drug-related “crime” is actually much worse than this chart depicts.  Why?  Because a significant fraction of the non-drugs crimes at right were committed by drug users to fund their habit.  Depending on whose numbers you want to believe, something between 25% and 60% of all property crimes committed in the U.S. are indirectly drug-related.  The main reason drug users commit crimes to fund their habit is because of the extraordinarily high price of the drugs they crave.  Those drug prices are high only because they are illegal.  Precisely the same thing happened with alcohol during Prohibition.  It's happening here, too.

Many people aren't aware that drug regulations are a relatively recent “innovation”.  The very first law of any kind regulating drugs in the U.S. was passed in 1892, to regulate opium use (restricting it to designated “opium dens”.  This was aimed mainly at Chinese immigrants, and driven by widespread American disdain for Chinese culture.  Very little else happened in the way of regulation until the 1920s – before that, any American who wanted any drug – coffee, alcohol, opium, cocaine, heroin, hashhish, marijuana – was free to purchase and use it.  Drug stores kept opium, cocaine, and heroin on the shelf.  Marijuana was readily available, especially in the American south.  Alcohol and coffee were available nearly anywhere.  There were users of these drugs all across the U.S.  Some abused those drugs (like some abuse alcohol today).  Most did not.  American society didn't fall apart.  In fact, one could make persuasive arguments that our high incarceration rates today (10 times what they were 100 years ago) are more damaging to our society than drug abusers were when drugs were completely unregulated.

I'd sure like to see us going back to our former libertarian approach to drugs: let the use of them be by personal choice, and punish only those that through their irresponsible use of drugs cause harm to others.  In other words, let's treat all drug use the way we treat alcohol use today.  If we did so, we'd “repatriate” tens of thousands of productive citizens, and likely cut our prison populations by two thirds (some think more!).

This is one topic where I'm 100% in agreement with the libertarians (and there aren't many like that!)...

Exactly...

Via my lovely bride:

A Bit of Abe Lincoln's Wisdom...

Via my lovely bride:

The Blond and the Ventriloquist...

Via my mom:

A young ventriloquist is touring Sweden and, one night, he's doing a show in a small fishing town. With his dummy on his knee, he starts going through his usual dumb blond jokes.

Suddenly, a blond woman in the fourth row stands on her chair and starts shouting,"I've heard enough of your stupid blond jokes. What makes you think you can stereotype Swedish blond women that way? What does the color of a woman's hair have to do with her worth as a human being? It's men like you who keep women like me from being respected at work and in the community, and from reaching our full potential as people. Its people like you that make others think that all blonds are dumb! You and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against not only blonds, but women in general ... pathetically all in the name of humor!"

The embarrassed ventriloquist begins to apologize, and the blond yells:

"You stay out of this! I'm talking to that little shit on your lap.."

Ya Think?

Via my mom:

THE HILLBILLY VASECTOMY

After their 11th child, a South Carolina couple decided that was enough, as they could not afford a larger bed.

So the husband went to his veterinarian and told him that he and his cousin didn't want to have any more children.

The doctor told him that there was a procedure called a vasectomy that could fix the problem, but that it was expensive..

"A less costly alternative," said the doctor, "is to go home, get a cherry bomb, (fireworks are legal in South Carolina) light it, put it in a beer can (COORS), then hold the can up to your ear and count to 10."

The man said to the doctor, "I may not be the smartest tool in the shed, but I don't see how putting a cherry bomb in a beer can next to my ear Is going to help me."

"Trust me," said the doctor.

So the man went home, lit a cherry bomb and put it in a beer can.

He held the can up to his ear and began to count!

'1'

'2'

'3'

'4'

'5'

(you'll love this...)

At which point he paused, placed the beer can between his legs and continued counting on his other hand.

This procedure also works in Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and parts of Georgia, Missouri, and West Virginia and...ALL of Washington DC.

The Fourth Time...

I just finished reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the fourth time in my life.  The last time was about 15 years ago; the first time in the late '60s.  It was just as fresh and enjoyable to me this time as it was the first time, and just as terrific an escapist piece.  This is the first time I've reread the books since I first saw the Lord of the Rings movies, and finding the differences between the movies and the books added another bit of interest.

Mozilla Persona...

Another attempt at a universal online identity.  This is one of those easy-looking problems that is awesomely difficult when you start looking at the details...

One Web Site to Rule Them All...

Some months ago, I was taken completely by surprise when Amazon rather suddenly stopped battling with various states (including California) over the collection of sales tax, and instead started signing agreements to phase in sales tax collection.  I couldn't figure out what Amazon would voluntarily give up the enormous advantage they had over brick-and-mortar stores.

Now I know, thanks to this article.  Amazon realized they had another opportunity, and one that they didn't share with every other web store: they have achieved the scale (or at least, they believe they have) required to put the infrastructure in place to enable them to make same-day deliveries to most of their U.S. customers.

That makes for a very compelling online shopping experience.  While drinking your morning coffee at your kitchen table, you can browse Amazon's enormous “catalog” for something you need, order it, and have it delivered to your door in a few hours – or the next day at worst.  At the same time, you're going to get it at an excellent price, and you're going to get Amazon's famous customer service (including return privileges).  Why would you shop in a brick-and-mortar store, if that experience was available to you?  The reasons for doing so just got significantly fewer.

Then think about what Amazon did to its online competitors with this move.  First, by “capitulating” to the states with regard to sales tax collection, Amazon establishes a precedent that will make it enormously easier for the states to go after all the other web sites for sales tax collection – thus leveling the playing field for Amazon on the price front.  Second, damned few of Amazon's competitors – quite possibly none of them – have the ability to put up competitive delivery infrastructure.  The existing retail chains might be able to pull off a reorganization around that theme, but that will be very challenging even for them.  One could imagine someone cobbling together a consortium or cooperative effort – perhaps even something akin to an open source effort – but such will not be easy.  Amazon will be starting off with a huge, huge head start.

If Amazon manages to pull this off, it will be brilliant.  Simply brilliant...

Bird Feeders and Progressivism...

Classic “Maxine” wisdom, via my mom – who's not exactly a raving Progressive, but who loves birds:

I bought a bird feeder. I hung
It on my back porch and filled
It with seed. What a beauty of
A bird feeder it was, as I filled it
Lovingly with seed.
Within a week we had hundreds of birds
Taking advantage of the
Continuous flow of free and
Easily accessible food.

But then the birds started
Building nests in the boards
Of the patio, above the table,
And next to the barbecue.

Then came the poop. It was
Everywhere: on the patio tile,
The chairs, the table ..
Everywhere!

Then some of the birds
Turned mean. They would
Dive bomb me and try to
Peck me even though I had
Fed them out of my own
Pocket.

And others birds were
Boisterous and loud. They
Sat on the feeder and
Squawked and screamed at
All hours of the day and night
And demanded that I fill it
When it got low on food.

After a while, I couldn't even
Sit on my own back porch
Anymore. So I took down the
Bird feeder and in three days
The birds were gone. I cleaned
Up their mess and took down
The many nests they had built
All over the patio.

Soon, the back yard was like
It used to be ..... Quiet, serene....
And no one demanding their
Rights to a free meal.

Now let's see.
Our government gives out
Free food, subsidized housing,
Free medical care and free
Education, and allows anyone
Born here to be an automatic Citizen.

Then the illegal's came by the
Tens of thousands. Suddenly
Our taxes went up to pay for
Free services; small apartments
Are housing 5 families; you
Have to wait 6 hours to be seen
By an emergency room doctor;
Your child's second grade class is
Behind other schools because
Over half the class doesn't speak English.

Corn Flakes now come in a
Bilingual box; I have to
'press one ' to hear my bank
Talk to me in English, and
People waving flags other
Than 'Old Glory' are
Squawking and screaming
In the streets, demanding
More rights and free liberties.

Just my opinion, but maybe
it's time for the government
To take down the bird feeder.

If you agree, pass it on; if not,
Just continue cleaning up the poop!

Governor Awesome...

...being, well, awesome once again.  Via my brother Mark, who resides in New Jersey and who cites Governor Awesome as the singular sign of hope in the blight that otherwise plagues his “Garden State”...

Gimme Half of Them Legos, Kiddo...

Via my mom:

Calm in the Storm...

I've done my share of risky things, and then some.  But I would never have done what the guy in the video below did – and if I got in that position somehow by accident, I certainly would not have been as eerily unaffected as he was.  Pay attention to the phone conversation, and think about how the person on the other end of the call must have been feeling...

Doctors Don't Like ObamaCare...

Now a report says that 83% of all doctors have considered leaving their practice because of ObamaCare.  This jibes with what I've heard from doctors I know, every one of whom is wondering what their future holds under ObamaCare, and whether that future will be in U.S. medicine.  Some are considering leaving the country, to practice where they can make more money.  Others are considering changing careers.  None – not one – believes that they have a viable career as a doctor being paid under ObamaCare.

This flight of doctors to higher-paying careers is actually not new – it began years ago with Medicare and Medicaid, two government programs that pay fixed (and very low) fees to doctors.  That flight, though, was to private medicine: an increasing number of doctors, over the years, refuse to take Medicare/Medicaid patients for the simple reason that they don't pay enough.  Under ObamaCare, however, that choice is removed – and now to make more money, they have to make a more drastic career change.

I would like to live out my years in a country where I at least have the choice to obtain the services of a great doctor, even if I have to pay for that choice myself.  If our great doctors tend to switch to another career, or move to another country, that's going to get a lot harder.  It's going to make options like traveling to India, Estonia, or Brazil for medical care look a lot better.  Some countries are already thinking about encouraging “medical tourism” like this as a major policy effort, most especially Israel, China, and India.  To them, ObamaCare is an enormous opportunity.  Good for them! But not so good for us...

Sounds of the Aurora Borealis...

For years scientists believed that reports of sounds accompanying the aurora borealis were mistaken, or possibly the result of too much alcohol (this was actually posited as a cause!).  But then some scientists heard them, when not drunk.  Oops.  So then they had to figure out where the sound actually came from, because the lights of the aurora borealis are clearly too far away to hear.  Now they have: the sounds come from just 70 meters (about 220 feet) above the ground...

Unions Spend a Lot on Politics...

Well, that's not really a surprise, is it?  But today's Wall Street Journal is reporting that unions actually spend about four times more than what was generally believed...

Dancing Matt...

Matt Harding travels all around the world, and dances with folks he meets.  He takes video of these “events”, then edits them into short videos like the one below.  This one has some places I'm familiar with: Tallinn (Estonia), St. Petersburg (Russia), and the Sibelius monument in Helsinki (Finland).  Watch it – it will put a smile on your face:

Kinda Says It All...

Via my lovely bride, who's taken a new interest in politics now that she understands how it's going to hit us directly in the wallet:

Riddle Me This...

Via my lovely bride:

Queen's Riddle

Barack Obama met with the Queen of England. He asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give me?"

"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."

Obama frowned, and then asked, "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"

The Queen took a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle."

The Queen pushed a button on her intercom. "Please send David Cameron in here, would you?"

Mr. Cameron walked into the room and said, "Yes, Your Majesty?"

The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please, Mr Prime Minister, your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?"

Without pausing for a moment, the Prime Minister answered, "That would be me."

"Yes! Very good," said the Queen.

Obama went back home to ask Joe Biden the same question. "Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," said Biden. "Let me get back to you on that one."

He went to his advisors and asked everyone, but none could give him an answer.

Finally, Biden ran in to John Boehner out eating one night. Biden asked, "Mr Speaker, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

Representative Boehner answered right back, "That's easy, it's me!"

Biden smiled, and said, "Thanks!"

Biden then, went back to speak with Obama. "Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It's John Boehner!"

Obama got up, stomped over to Biden, and angrily yelled into his face, "No! You idiot! It's David Cameron!"

The World Isn't Ending...

Reading the lamestream media news reports about the recent East Coast heat wave, you'd think that the world was coming to an end.  Headlines trumpet things like “3,000+ Records Broken!”, and the text of the articles implies that nothing like this has ever been seen before.

Hogwash.

The graph below is courtesy of the indispensable Watts Up With That?.  It shows the number of heat records broken for each year since 1892.  This year isn't even going to be close to the top.  The early part of the last century (before all those carbon-emitting SUVs!) is clearly far “hotter” (at least in this limited sense) than the most recent decade.

Get a grip, folks...

The Trouble With Models...

Computer models of real-world phenomena all have the same weakness: the value of their output depends completely on the validity of the data and assumptions incorporated in the model.  Business folks are very familiar with this weakness, as it plagues the world of financial forecasting.  Climate models, I (and others) have long argued have the same problem – they're dependent on data and assumptions that have not been verified.

Today comes news of yet another such assumption: how heat is transported from inside the Sun to the outside (where it is radiated to the Earth).  This matters intensely to climate models, as their primary energy input is solar radiation – and if the models use the wrong assumptions, in particular, about variability of solar radiation, then...they'll just be wrong...

Summer of Recovery: NOT!

This pretty much says it all, doesn't it?  If you're not familiar with EMRATIO, it's sometimes called the “participation rate” – the percentage of the civilian population who are working at any given time. This is (to my mind, at least) a far more useful indicator than the “unemployment rate” trumpeted in the media – that number is “adjusted” for all sorts of things, and doesn't really tell us very much.  EMRATIO, on the other hand, is the raw data.

So what does this chart tell us?  Let's look at January 2005, when the EMRATIO was 62.3%.  Now let's look at January 2012, when it was 58.5%.  That's a drop of 3.8% in that 7 year period.  Doesn't sound like much?  Consider this: the U.S. population in January 2012 was about 310 million people.  If the EMRATIO were the same in January 2012 as it was in January 2007, then 3.8% x 310 million more people would be working.  That's almost 12 million more people who would be working.

Obama and his fellow Democrats have cost us 12 million jobs....

Jupiter and Venus and the Moon, Oh My!

We slept in until 4 am this morning, so I didn't get the dogs outside until the sky was starting to lighten in the east.  As we walked down the driveway, the moon was high and to the right behind us, and to the right and in front of us was Jupiter (up high) and Venus (a bit below and to the right of it). Between the impending dawn and the bright moon, the rest of the stars were pretty much washed out.

The dogs didn't care about any of this, of course.  They were intent on reading their “pee-mail”, which apparently contained some exciting news...

Harmonic Motion...

Watch this:


Then go read a bit about it...

Quantum Rhetoric...

Iowahawk is back with another satirical take on Washington.  The lead:

WASHINGTON DC - Jubilant scientists at the DNC's High Speed Word Collider (HSWC) announced today they have conclusively disproven the existence of Roberts' Taxon, the theoretical radioactive Facton particle that some had worried would lead to the implosion of the entire Universal Health Care System.

"I think it's time to pop the champagne corks," said HSWC Director David Plouffe. "Then blaze some choom."

The landmark experiment in Quantum Rhetoric began early this week after legal particle cosmologist John Roberts published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Tortured Logic that solved the long-debated Pelosi's Paradox in Universal Health Care Theory.

But do go read the whole thing...

Musical Flash Mob...

Free USGS Topo Maps...

You can now download free electronic versions of the standard USGS topographical maps, the ones that are familiar to any serious hiker, four-wheeler, hunter, etc.  In many ways these electronic versions are superior to the paper version: you can magnify them to any level (they're vector-based, not rasterized), and they have layers that can be switched on and off.  Furthermore, the few that I've tried include photographic coverage (also in a switchable layer) – not satellite photos, but aerial photos of quite high resolution.  Nice!

What Happened?

Via my mom:

Defense Attorney: Will you please state your age?

Old Lady: I am 94 years old.

Defense Attorney: Will you tell us, in your own words, what happened the night of April 1st?

Old Lady: There I was, sitting there in my swing on my front porch on a warm spring evening, when a young man comes creeping up on the porch and sat down beside me.

Defense Attorney: Did you know him?

Old Lady: No, but he sure was friendly.

Defense Attorney: What happened after he sat down?

Old Lady: He started to rub my thigh.

Defense Attorney: Did you stop him?

Old Lady: No, I didn't stop him.

Defense Attorney: Why not?

Little Old Lady: It felt good. Nobody had done that since my Albert died some 30 years ago.

Defense Attorney: What happened next?

Old Lady: He began to rub all over of my body.

Defense Attorney: Did you stop him then?

Old Lady: No, I did not stop him.

Defense Attorney: Why not?

Old Lady: His rubbing made me feel all alive and excited.  I haven't felt that good in years!

Defense Attorney: What happened next?

Old Lady: Well, by then, I was feeling so "spicy" that I just laid down and told him 'Take me, young man. Take me now! '

Defense Attorney: Did he take you?

Old Lady: Hell, no! He just yelled, "April Fool!"  And that's when I shot him, the little bastard.

How Do You...

Via my lovely bride:

Q: How do you tell a Romney voter from an Obama voter?

A: Romney supporters sign their checks on the front; Obama supporters sign 'em on the back.

I'm afraid there's more than a little truth in this...