Month: June 2009

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Don’t Put Bernie in Jail

I think it is a terrible idea to put Bernie Madoff in jail. I am not saying that I think he is innocent and I am not saying that I think he should not be punished. I think he should be punished and severely.

But if he is put in jail, he will once again be living off other people. He will continue his parasitic lifestyle. He will be sucking his livelihood from the taxpayer. We will be paying for his food and shelter and his health insurance.

Instead of putting him in jail we should make him live in a suburb of Pheonix or Cleveland or Fresno. Make him live in a nondescript badly struccoed apartment complex with meth addicts and hookers. In a small one bedroom with broken air-conditioning and dark wood paneling. With the only view being the back of an equalling depressing building and the dumpsters between them.

Make Madoff work at a minimum wage job that does not provide health insurance. Make it so that he can never be promoted and always has to clean the bathrooms. Make him stay there till he croaks with no retirement and terrible health insurance.

Yes, this might fall under “cruel and unusual”, but shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime?

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Food

From an article in the NY Times –

Chili’s cook up “hyper-palatable food that requires little chewing and goes down easily”

hmm…doesn’t sound hyper-palatable when it’s put that way

and

the Snickers bar, for instance, is “extraordinarily well engineered.”

Now I know why I love Snickers…good engineering!

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Re: G.U.T

G.U.T is this.

An aesthetic has no inherent tool or logic.
A tool has no inherent logic or aesthetic.
A logic has no inherent aesthetic or tool.

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Violence begets Violence

What would have been the worst thing to happen if police and the Basijis hadn’t shown up?
Sounds like the bad stuff started when “police and militia forces used guns, truncheons, tear gas and water cannons to beat back thousands of demonstrators” Where did they need to be back from? Did the demonstrators have pitchforks and torches? Were they threatening anyone?

Trying to use the fear of pain is obviously not working, so why does the government insist on escalating it? It is just making the current Iranian government look bad.

The situation would have blown over much faster if the protesters had been allowed to march peacefully. Let them get their yayas out and then eventually they’d go home.

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Moderate Drinkers

“Moderate drinkers are healthier, wealthier and more educated, and they get better health care, even though they are more likely to smoke. They are even more likely to have all of their teeth, a marker of well-being.”

Maybe also better looking and loads more charm…

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What the Fuck? File # 17-L

A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

“When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road,” Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.

Most meteors vaporize in the atmosphere, creating “shooting stars,” and never reach the ground. The few that do are typically made mostly of metals. Stony space rocks, even if they are big as a car, will usually break apart or explode as they crash through the atmosphere.

There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.

But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks.

According to a SPACE.com article on the topic a few years, back:

  • On November 30, 1954, Alabama housewife Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her couch when she was awakened by a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor that crashed through the roof of her house, bounced off a piece of furniture and struck her in the hip, causing a large bruise.
  • On October 9, 1992, a large fireball was seen streaking over the eastern United States, finally exploding into many pieces. In Peekskill, New York, one of the pieces struck a Chevrolet automobile owned by Michelle Knapp. Knapp was not in the car at the time.
  • On June 21, 1994, Jose Martin of Spain was driving with his wife near Madrid when a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor crashed through his windshield, bent the steering wheel and ended up in the back seat.

In 2004, a 2,000-pound space rock bigger than a refrigerator exploded in the late-night sky over Chicago, producing a large flash and a sound resembling a detonation that woke people up. Fragments rained down on that wild Chicago night, and many were collected by residents in a northern suburb.