Welcome to My World

Heh. I haven’t poked fun at Bill O’Reilly for awhile, so let’s fix that with a quick “point-n-laugh” session at an early recording of his calm, gentle demeanor and complete professionalism as a teleprompter fails during a taping of a host segment for Inside Edition.

I guess he didn’t just turn into an angry old fart — he’s just always been an asshole. Bet he fits right in there at Fox I think I’ve figured out why anybody bothers to go on his show at all, knowing he’s a huge fan of the hit piece, the “cut off their microphone” trick, and the “shut up!” maneuver — a person goes on his show in the hopes of pissing him off enough to get an explosion like this one. I suspect that feels even better than winning the lottery

Switching my site back to a more reliable system where I have more direct control over things is both a good thing and a bad thing, but it’s good in that I have a much nicer stats suite available now and it gives me all sorts of funny amusing stuff to poke fun at. It also helps me more quickly find abusers and spammers to [plonk] into the killfile.

Here are just a few of the funnier/stranger search phrases that lead to my web site, along with my ever-so-helpful answers to these meaning-of-life caliber questions.

This isn’t actually a joke — the guy makes horrible films and needs to be encouraged to stop. Go sign this petition, already 250,000+ signatures strong(!), to put a stop to it before he hits us with another horrible film.

Oh, I forgot to mention: you’ll get free gum if the petition hits a million signatures.

My thirtieth birthday is this Friday (April 18, in case anybody’s actually curious ). I’m not one to generally make a huge fuss over my own birthdays (though I’m also not a spoiled-sport about them — I always graciously accept “happy birthday!” notes from those courteous enough to offer them and I always appreciate it when friends decide it’s worth making a big deal out of it; I’ll never forget the whipped cream pie I got in the face last year at R.J. Gator’s ), but for some reason I actually find myself looking a bit oddly at this one coming up tomorrow.

Thirty seems like a bigger number than the other birthdays (duh, it’s larger than 29, or any other age I’ve reached; I mean it feels more significant). The whole week has definitely been on the weird side, but there were two moments in particular that have slapped me across the face a bit harder than usual.

Wednesday, as I bought a couple gallons of milk at Sam’s Club (along with some other junk), a woman walked by, and in a bit of a flirty tone, said “looks like you’ve got some teenagers!” It was the first time it’s ever occurred to me that I actually look old enough to be a father now. Heh. This afternoon, as I waited for the mechanic to finish helping my truck drain another $800 from my pocket, a woman waiting at the shop for an oil change turned to me and said “you look familiar — do I know you from somewhere?” Looking back, this is actually a pretty classic come-on line, but is also a fairly standard conversation starter, too. As I listed some of the stuff I do out in public where she might have seen me, none of them rang any bells, so she asked “wait, do you have kids who go to school here?” D’oh!

In my late twenties, I enjoyed not ever getting carded at a bar. Since I don’t actually have any kids yet, it feels seriously weird to have people now looking at me and assuming I’m old enough that I should have kids. Not strictly “bad” — just weird.

I assume this isn’t a “mid-life crisis” sort of thing; I understand that tends to crop up in a person’s forties, not the thirties, and it only seems to happen to about 10% of people anyway. That and I have no interest in burning bridges, buying a ridiculously overpriced sports car (I did that in my early twenties at the behest of my ex-wife), making drastic lifestyle changes, or anything else like that.

I’ve just never had a woman just “assume” I had kids, much less two in as many days. It’s a bit flattering that I’m judged to be suitable fatherhood material, but it was also the first time it’s really felt like I’m not a grown-up goofball kid anymore.

A short aside: I’m pleased to report that my truck now has working air conditioning again. It’s just such a shame they found random, seemingly-burned chunky goop in the transmission fluid. Sigh.

This may sound like a lame excuse, but the only real reason I bother putting Google AdSense ads on my site is for the interesting reporting and analytical tools I get out of it for free. They haven’t actually paid me anything since 2006, where the site unexpectedly earned a $100 kickback for actually convincing a new advertiser to sign up. Oh, there have been earnings since then, but in nearly 2 full years it hasn’t even come close to that magic $100 mark where they’ll actually send the money to me.

Much more interesting than the non-existent revenue I get from the site are the statistics and information Google gives me. My webhost’s log analyzer gives me other important information (I check once or twice a month now for sites that hit mine with lots of requests or pull tons of data, and blacklist them if they’re not a search engine (a “real” one … sorry, startups) or my own workstation), but Google’s analytics are very fun to study.

Wikipedia is not without its critics, and undoubtedly I’m about to give them another reason to hate it. I land somewhere in the middle with respect to Wikipedia — it doesn’t (yet) have the clout and reliability that a publication like Encyclopedia Britannica might, but it most certainly beats those publications hands-down in timeliness, in sheer size, and in ease of access (I can’t carry those hardbound tomes around with me anywhere I go, but I can cram the text-only version of Wikipedia onto a 2GB SD card and read it on my smartphone). I don’t trust it completely, but I also don’t instantly doubt everything I see there. I figure it’s suitable as a starting point for research, so long as you’re actually willing to check all those citations.

Paying attention, fraudsters? Your buddies/role models over at Enzyte just got fried. A guilty verdict just came back on the company’s founder for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Bob’s not smiling so much now, is he?

From the article:

Some former employees, including relatives of Warshak, pleaded guilty to other charges and cooperated with prosecutors. They testified that the company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer-satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

What? You mean an male enhancement product that everyone says works great really doesn’t work? Naturally, we can assume that the purveyors of every other male enhancement product out there would never stoop to such shameful depths to sell a crummy product.

Sigh. Who am I kidding? Of course they would. These guys just got caught. Still, chalk one up for the good guys with this guilty verdict! This guy will be exploring “natural male enhancement” for years whilst in prison. I hope he enjoys it.

Florida has been the butt of many, many jokes in various circles for a long time. It handed George W. Bush a rigged election. It’s a favorite “incubation chamber” for retirees. Its education system has largely been a joke.

Having said all that, the Florida Board of Education just made the single best decision it has made in recent years (honestly — I’m not being sarcastic there). The funny part is, they did it entirely by accident.

This perspective on the recent vote to update the science curriculum in Florida’s public schools just makes me laugh really, really hard. On one hand, supporters of evolution (i.e. “normal people”) are annoyed that “evolution,” which was not even mentioned by name in previous curriculum standards in the state (what … the … fuck?!?!), must now be referred to as the “scientific theory of evolution.” This was a nod to the “other side” of this stupid debate (i.e. the “religious fucking loonies”) so the board could actually revise the aging standards before we produced another generation of idiots with the broken science curriculum.

What makes me chuckle hardest (and what makes this a massive victory for the “normal people” team) is that in addition to that forced title for the “scientific theory of evolution,” the curriculum must include a clear, concise explanation of what the term “scientific theory” actually means. This is a sticking point that many creationist idiots screw themselves up with: a “scientific theory” is not the same kind of “theory” we laymen have. I can say something stupid like “Earth is a flat disc carried on the shoulders of four drunken turtles,” and call it a theory. Discworld fans will chuckle, and everyone else will call me a fucking moron.

A scientific theory is much different. My example above is what science calls a “hypothesis.” It’s an idea that hasn’t been tested, but one that can be tested. It’s not proven, and it’s not supported by any facts yet. It’s an early step in the scientific method. To become a scientific theory, my dumb little “flat world” idea would have to be supported by some testable facts. Because it can’t, it’s a flawed hypothesis, and is one that science rejects.

There is a shitload of evidence supporting the “theory of evolution,” which is precisely why it is called a “theory,” not a “hypothesis.” The creationism version of things, ironically called “intelligent design,” is a hypothesis, and is also one that science rejects. You simply cannot test, in any empirical way, that “god did it.” You just have to take it on faith, and “I believe that’s true!” just doesn’t hold much sway in scientific circles. You actually have to show your work there. It’s a real pisser, I know, but there you have it.

Good job, creationists — you just shot yourselves in the foot with this one. Please, by all means, keep it up!

A couple weeks back I added an RSS feed from Personal Finance Blogs to my Google Reader. I’ve taken a more direct interest lately in my own financial situation and it seemed like a good fit. An entry rolled in this afternoon from http://nedhilldrup.com that included this absolutely hilarious presentation by John Haid, brilliantly (and simply) summarizing the subprime mortgage screwup that helped plunge our economy deeper into the world’s septic tank:

I just couldn’t resist showing this one off. Many thanks to the folks over at nedhilldrup.com for granting their permission to show this here.

You’ve got to love the world of internet media. You’ve also got to love the deluded little world Microsoft lives in, and the world of geeks that enjoy shredding their claims.

Google Reader is a nifty little web-based RSS feed reader that lets you read all your favorite web sites right from one spot, by collecting entries, articles, and posts together, organizing them in (roughly) reverse chronological order, then showing them in a very fast, easy-to-digest format.

It also provides, by virtue of how it does its work, the occasional dose of pure hilarity, just like it did here:

Now that makes me chuckle. One group of geeks buys the Microsoft claims hook, line, and sinker; the other group has already “broken” the new “security” measures. Heh. For some twenty years now Microsoft (and others) have been trying to sort out a way to prevent software piracy. They still haven’t managed to actually do it.