Science and Obesity make for an awesome combination.

This comedy was so good I saw it more than once.

Okay so you got me, i only saw it once. I just didn’t want to ruin all the jokes by seeing it over and over again.

Keeping the people safe.

Barack Obama has spent too much time listening to liberals. Someone needs to let him know they are no longer the hip crowd.

Over at Personal Responsibility Diatribe links to a story about how Whitman College canceled class to hold a day long diversity symposium after some students dressed in black face for a costume party. Over at the University of Pennsylvania we find the president posting with a student dressed as a suicide bomber during Halloween costume party.

The question in my mind: why does one costume mandate diversity training while the other gets tacit approval? What’s the controlling variable that explains differential treatment of these two costumes. An easy answer is to say that the universities have different standards. This response would require acknowledging that the president of Pennsylvania would pose next to a student in black face while Whitman University would suspend classes for one day and hold a symposium on the maliciousness of terrorists. This strikes me as highly unlikely, and so I don’t find the idea that these two schools have different standards for appropriate costumes to be cogent.

A more likely explanation is the acceptability of what the costumes represent. I suspect that a terrorist costume is not offensive amongst liberals because terrorists are at least in part, not evil men hell bent on maximizing civilian death and destruction, but in fact some, some kind quixotic noble warrior seeking justice for his oppressed people. On the other hand, the black face costume does not represent a mockery of previous generations bigoted acceptance of the derision of a racial group but, in fact, still represents such bigoted beliefs in contemporary America. Thus while one costumes is to be treated lightly more as a reference of warriors fighting for freedom, another costumes is to be treated solemnly as an actual statement on the racial situation in this country.

In many ways, I think this reveals the problem with liberal thinking. I think the average person would be much more inclined to think that if either of these costumes were in poor taste, it would be the terrorist costume. After all they have been murdering innocent US civilians and our military personal for decades. Meanwhile broad support for blatant bigoted ridicule of a race has been practically non-existent for decades including the elimination of using black face as way of mocking African Americans. This is simply only to state that most in this country would find terrorism to be a bigger problem then racism and through this seriousness makes a terrorist costume a faux pas while a black face costumes more permissible. Liberals have this inverted because their perception of race in relation to terrorism.

Personally, I don’t find either costume all that offensive. One should keep in mind that it is Halloween and part of the tradition has morphed into being allowed to wear politically controversial costumes. In this context, it’s completely acceptable to wear either politically charged costume. I draw attention to it only as a way of revealing a kind of hypocrisy in liberal institutes wear costumes they find offensive require day long symposium while costumes others might find offensive are so acceptable that president of the university has not problem having her taking with a terrorist.

Apparently when a behavioral economists does the numbers on who donates he finds

that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

I’m just shocked. Absolutely shocked to see this. Who would of thought those most opposed to ’social justice’ would be the most socially just. It just baffles my mind. Its almost like social justice has nothing to do with employing the coercive power of the state to force all citizens to universally donate, but rather comes from a genuine sense of wanting to help others. This is some really surprising stuff.

The evidence seems to be trending towards yes.

UPDATE: Maybe not. It appears he hates children.

UPDATE2: Doesn’t even care about children going to utlra conservative schools and being forced to learn the Koran instead of marketable skills.

UPDATE3: He loves Big Business even though he hates the elderly.

This kind of crap just make me sick. The state pays (develops infrastructure) for the homeless because they can’t support themselves, but it turns out they have marketable skill which they are using to make some cash on the side. I bet that money won’t even be taxed.

This mining machine is so large that while moving it a bulldozer got caught in it and was crushed.

Slashdot notes that consumers with Apple ipods are much to use CDs or file sharing networks then purchase music from the apple store. This doesn’t surprise me since the DRM makes the cost of digitally acquired music significantly more expensive than ripping a CD. People really don’t like to be told how to use their stuff and they are willing to pay more to keep the man off their back. The man can be the government or big business either way regulation always reduces the value of a product.