masters of the universe

I don't normally consume The National Review, but I happened to read this article about a current political figure.

The piece discusses in part how some younger men of a certain temperament revere the stridently obnoxious Alec Baldwin character in the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross.

That brought back memories of a time when I danced in a New York club not far from Wall Street that was frequented by aspiring young alpha male trader types who on regular occasion tried to out-crass each other. Some of them were cute while most mistakenly believed they were God's gift to women.

I remembered a recurring thought I would have about them: if you're so winning with the opposite sex, what are you doing here watching naked girls you can never bed? I would never say something like that aloud and instead simply gave cocked-eyebrow little smiles whenever anyone said anything meant to shock.

When reading The National Review piece, I recalled one particularly voluble young guy and a semi-regular who once told a story about some sort of Wall Street boss he had worked for. One day after trading closed, the chief called together all the bond traders and then loudly singled out the one with the worst track record.

The offender was called forward and given a choice: get fired or let the boss piss all over him in front of the others. He chose the latter option and all adjourned outside. Once the chief emptied his bladder on his victim in the alley as his coworkers hooted and cheered, he fired the drenched underling on the spot, saying he didn't want to employ anyone with so little self-respect.

Some other young men in the club corroborated the story, so I always presumed it might well be true. If it is, then it's some sort of commentary on the type of men attracted to Wall Street and other centers of power.

We are a very messed up species.

the pink dress

The British press has been in something of a tizzy because Prime Minister Theresa May not only wore a cheap pink dress on her vacation, she had the unmitigated gall to wear it twice. Oh the outrage!

While I will acknowledge that May has an indifferent and sometimes haphazard taste in clothing -- she usually dresses like a middle-school teacher with her bland outfits -- good for her for wearing whatever the hell she wants. She clearly does not seem to give a shit what other people think about her wardrobe, and I like that about her.

A female politician should be judged by what comes out of her mouth and her brain, not what designer she is wearing or the relationship of her hem to her knees. May is something of a frump like Angela Merkel, and at the end of the day, it matters not a bit.

History will not record what a male head of state wore to a particular event and the same for female heads of state. They will be judged by their words and actions.

Worrying about what female political leaders are wearing now is stupid. Yes, sometimes male heads of state get tongues wagging -- Barack Obama's brown suit comes to mind -- but that is far less common.

So throw caution to the wind and wear that pink dress in public again a third time, Theresa. Mess with people's heads and have a good laugh at the same time.

hacking armageddon

Yesterday I listened to an NPR podcast interview about hacking with a man named Andy Greenberg, a staff writer for Wired magazine. In the interview, he referenced some articles he recently wrote so I checked them out on their website and found this piece quite interesting.

I was thinking afterwards, and later discussing with my husband, about an idea that popped into my head while listening to the podcast: I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet when it comes to hacking. Some really nasty, scary, life-altering hacks are coming.

I would not be at all surprised if, at some point in the near future, hacking terrorists caused some major financial meltdown on a nation-wide or even continent-wide or worldwide scale. Something like a digital financial 911, with half of Americans' or Europeans personal financial accounts just wiped into oblivion.

Or maybe hacking terrorists will digitally melt down a nation or continent's power grid infrastructure, plunging hundreds of millions into darkness for months at a time. Poof, the lights go out, and they don't come back on again until half a year later.

I may be wrong. I might be completely talking out of my ass. But I wouldn't be surprised if some massive hack changes life as we know it not too far down the road.

And it results in war.

I hope I'm wrong.

prime suspect

Over the last several nights, the husband and I watched the first season DVD of Prime Suspect 1973, a prequel to the great classic Prime Suspect, which starred Helen Mirren and aired from 1991 to 2006.

The prequel is meant to show the young Jane Tennison character, played by Stefanie Martini, who in the imaginary world of television will eventually become Helen Mirren of the original show.

If you ever watched the original series, particularly the earlier episodes made in the 1990s, you're familiar with the gritty, frank story-telling and Mirren's superb acting. The original show is widely considered to be one of the best British crime dramas ever made.

In a nutshell, the prequel tries but it's only a shadow of the original. Martini is a good actress but I doubt she'll ever be in the league of a Helen Mirren.

The prequel overall had a well made feel of contemporary British shows but lacked the stark edginess of the original program. It was, essentially, too pretty of a show. The actors were too attractive, the settings too perfect, and everything was just so.

The original program often had ugly, scratchy people in cheap, stained clothes in bleak rooms with grimy walls and harsh lighting. Trash blew across dirty streets with sooty walls scarred by graffiti. Horns blared, cars splashed through puddles, and odious smoke billowed from crooked chimneys.

After watching this prequel, we want to go back and watch the original, which we've each seen but never together.

delicious foods

Last night I finished one of the most original and creative novels I've read in a long time: Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham. The book came out two years ago, but I just read about it recently on GoodReads.com.

The story is told in three different voices: Eddie, a teenage modern-day indentured servant of sorts whose hands are intentionally cut off with an electric saw in the opening scene; his mother Darlene, a young widow whose husband is murdered and who later turns to prostitution; and the drug crack, nicknamed Scotty, a trash-talking demonic chatterbox who addicts Darlene and other indentured workers at the remote farm where both Eddie and his mother are forced to live and toil.

The fact that one of the characters is actually an inanimate drug is part of what makes this novel so wildly inventive and distinctly lyrical. The drug Scotty can leap from character's mind to mind in wide, wild language riffs that give the novel some of its funniest and, alternatively, saddest moments.

Some of the metaphors Hannaham uses are the most innovative I've yet encountered. This is how he describes an anxiety-plagued Darlene from Scotty's perspective: "So before I got done hanging with her that night, her paranoia done hatched five hundred little chicks and they had all took to peeping around in her head." If you've ever watched a bunch of baby chicks, you'll understand why this is so perfect.

Delicious Foods is only Hannaham's second novel, so hopefully he has a long publishing future ahead of him. I highly recommend this book.

fashionable wreckage

Of all the various bizarre outfits I've featured here from various runway shows, I think today's entries take the prize. They're actually from a 2013 menswear show and I'm surprised I didn't feature this before, but I checked my archives and I apparently never did.

Scraps of wood -- I mean, WTF?

Who would wear such a thing? Not only is it wildly impractical, it's hideous.

Instead of clothing, it looks more like a pupal casing that some kind of giant larvae would make on its way into turning into a moth. When I was a little girl, I put some woolly caterpillars in a jar with various bits of grass, leaves, and chips I found in the yard. A few days later, the creatures had made cocoons on the side of the jar out of the chips, not unlike these outfits.

If you wore this shit on the street, people would probably call the police and report that an obviously mentally ill person was on the lose.

because I must

I have largely refrained from posting about the current Oval Office occupant. I could probably write something about him nearly every day because I absorb so much US news now, but I have been controlling myself.

Today, I just can't help it.

Some very clever, creative person from the Netherlands has made dozens of very well done satirical movie posters poking fun at You Know Who. That's a whole lot of Photoshopping going on, and with a few exceptions, they're quite seamless and sharp. I particularly like how he added faux folds to a few of them.

Some political figures would laugh at being lampooned like this because they're mature adults with a thick skin. He Who Shall Not Be Named is notoriously thin-skinned, however, so he wouldn't have a good laugh at his own expense.

miraculous medicine

This article tells a pretty incredible story about a two-year-old girl who literally drowned in very cold water, was revived but in a vegetative state, and then had her brain damage reversed almost entirely to the point like the accident had never happened.

This process could be repeated on any small child with similar brain damage, but it wouldn't work for an older child or an adult. At least now.

Now some people would call this a miracle. I don't believe a deity intervened to heal this particular child. I think the real miracle is human medicine has advanced to a point where this is possible, so you could say a deity created an incredible species who could solve its own medical problems.

While application of this type of treatment is limited, who can say where this breakthrough may lead? Will doctors and scientists be able to refine this in any way so that they could restore an older brain when combined with laboratory-created brain tissue?

Now some might protest at the idea of growing human brain tissue outside of a body in a lab, claiming it was "playing God." I disagree strongly.

Why would a deity create a creature that would be brilliant enough to fix incredible problems but then also limit the ability of that creature to actually use such skills?

opioid free speech

Parts of Reddit have been in a tizzy recently because the site's administrators shut down a forum where people were connecting to discuss and score opioids. As The New York Times recently reported, some regular Reddit users who frequented the forum subsequently died of a drug overdose.

This has caused a conflict between the administrators and self-appointed defenders of free speech. Some of the latter group are outraged with angry expressions of "what about my First Amendment rights?"

The reality is that a lot of people who claim to advocate free speech don't really understand what it means. In the United States, the First Amendment protects people against most government attempts to censor or silence them.

That protection, however, does not extend to situations where the government isn't involved. Reddit is run by a non-profit foundation, not the government.

As a private entity, it can freely exert editorial discretion and control. If it doesn't want people talking about where to buy opioids, they have every right to shut down such discussions. Look at the site's user agreement, which is a contract.

While an online forum may be public, it's like your living room. If you don't want people in your living room discussing where to buy drugs, you have the legal right to ask them to leave, and they must comply with that request or risk a trespassing prosecution.

This is a simple concept. Why is it so hard for some people to grasp, particularly those who are so quick to throw down the free-speech card?

lonely hearts scammers

The Huffington Post is running a detailed and fascinating feature article about lonely people who are conned out of money via online lonely-heart scams.

This is the 21st century equivalent of the young studs who used to prowl places like Palm Springs looking for lonely, rich widows and divorcees they could seduce and then relieve them of their jewelry and valuables.

One woman quoted in the article knows she was conned, has accepted it intellectually, but still is in love with the person who preyed on her. That is just so sad.

There are all sorts of online scams that victimize countless people every year. Why can't people realize that when something sounds too good to be true, you're almost certainly being conned? That's just basic common sense.

But I guess with too many people, emotion overrides common sense. They don't have the necessary cynical self-protection gene or something.

I also wonder about the perpetrators of these scams. Are they natural-born criminals and have no empathy nor moral barometer so that they feel bad about what they do? Would they prey on anybody, whether online or in real life?

Or are they otherwise upright people and only see their victims as rich Americans and Europeans who have too much money anyway? At least the latter group could be redeemed.

dead robot

A techie-type person in San Francisco posted the picture below on his Twitter.

"Our D.C. office building got a security robot," he writes. "It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars; instead we got suicidal robots."

Reading through the Twitter comments on his post, I'm reassured that I'm not the only one who finds this funny. There's something so ironically amusing about a security device that can't deal with a simple reflecting pool. I can't imagine that device is inexpensive.

Security -guard work is a dead-end job that is tediously dull. My cousin worked briefly as a security guard when he got out of the military and was bored out of his skull. He said all the good people didn't last long and only the morons stayed any length of time.

So it's understandable industry would look for a better solution. But that solution does not include installing both robots and reflecting pools. I am amazed, however, that no one at that location realized that the creature could end up in the drink before they sent it on its rounds.

The body language in this photo is part of what makes it amusing. The maintenance men seem perplexed while the woman on her phone looks like some kind of cyber detective investigating a tech crime.

Replace the robot with a human corpse and this could look like a scene out of any TV homicide drama.

wristwatch sex

Just as men of the world can be divided between those who hang left and those who hang right, I have always divided the male species between those who remove their wristwatch before sex and those who do not.

This was always something of a litmus test for me. If he took off his watch without prompting, then I was more favorably inclined toward a man. If he kept it on even after I asked him to remove it, then chances are very high that would be the last time we went to bed.

It's no secrets that watches can scratch and scrape during sexual activity, particularly if boisterous. Leather wristwatch bands often have metal buckles, and expanding metal wristwatch bands can nick and pinch. And a watch bezel can hurt like a bastard if he accidentally hits you with it in the mouth during frenzied rutting.

I became sensitive to this issue when a man accidentally scraped my labia with a sharp edge on his wristwatch. It hurt and bled like a bitch. I don't want that ever to happen again.

My husband wears a big-ass chronometer deep-sea watch that looks like it could do real damage. The first time we had sex, he removed it and put it in his pants pocket without prompting. That won him many extra points.

wandered away

The elderly woman in whose house we live wandered away from her care home yesterday about eight in the morning. When she wasn't found within several hours, they called me to see if she had showed up back at her house.

She had not, but I volunteered to drive around the neighborhood and see if I spotted her. I also talked to many of the neighbors and told them to keep an eye out for her.

The care home is a two and a half kilometers from the house (about a mile and a half). She never turned up here nor was she spotted anywhere in the neighborhood.

More than seven hours after she disappeared, she was spotting walking along a busy highway about twenty kilometers (twelve miles) from the care home. She was completely okay and acted like she had just gone out for a little walk. She had never wandered away like this before.

The police don't know if she ended up riding with someone and spending part of her time somewhere. She's 96 and in good physical health, so a walk of that distance would not be impossible for her. Before she fell ill and then developed memory problems, she used to walk miles every day with her dog and still stays very active at the care home.

It's so sad how her memory is just fading away but otherwise she has the stamina of a woman of about sixty. She spends a great deal of time at the care home weeding all the flowerbeds and usually that keeps her occupied, but for whatever reason, yesterday she decided she needed an adventure.

She is being moved into a lockdown section of the care home. Hopefully she will not feel like she's in a prison. She will still be allowed to work the flowerbeds but will be watched more closely.

Curiously, she will not be the oldest person in the lockdown area. One woman there is 102, and her wandering away several miles earlier this year was the cause for her confinement.

hirsute fashionista

I'm hoping this was done as a gag and not meant to attract the ladies. Because if so, I suspect it would fail miserably.

While I believe this would definitely qualify as a mistake if not done in jest, at least it's not a lifelong one like a tattoo. He could shave off the rest of his chest hair and just wait for it all to grow back in.

I am nonetheless impressed by the fact that he has hair growing all the way down his neck into his chest on his left side. I don't think I've ever seen a man with that hirsute of a throat. My husband is a hairy beast, but he does have a band on his neck where no hair ever grows.

chipmunk speed

I happened to read on an online forum dedicated to audiobooks that an entire subculture exists of listeners who prefer to play audiobooks and podcasts at two, three, four, or even more times normal speed.

The idea is you listen to a twelve-hour audiobook in two or three hours or an hour-long podcast in ten or fifteen minutes. This practice is sometimes called "chipmunk speed" by aficionados.

I've been a regular consumer of audiobooks for more than a decade. I find them a great way to expand and entertain my mind while doing ordinary, everyday tasks.

A key part of this process is enjoyment. The readers are all trained actors, many of them household names. They are telling you a story in a beautiful and captivating voice.

Listening to a good book being read by Alvin Chipmunk is not my idea of fun. So, no thanks, I won't be listening to anything at six times normal speed.

If other people want to do this, of course they have the right to do so. Whatever floats your boat and all that.

In reading about this, I got the biggest laugh about one guy who likes to listen to hyperspeed meditation audiobooks. I can't wrap my mind about how that must work for him but I'm glad for him it does.

outback australia

The New York Times is running a comprehensive feature article with lots of high-quality photos about Australia's Outback.

The Outback is often confused with the Bush by non-Australians, and it also took me a while to understand the difference between the two. The dry, remote, barely populated inland portions of Australia, which are vast, are the Outback, while more rural but more accessible areas closer to metropolitan areas are the Bush.

We live close to the Bush but not the Outback. I have seen the Bush many times but never the Outback. Reaching the Outback requires a trek of hundreds, if not thousands, of miles into the heartland where there are few roads and sparse accommodations.

My husband had several Outback treks when he was a younger man. That's not uncommon for Australians, where an Outback quest becomes a rite of passage for many.

James and I have talked about taking an Outback trek as a family when the boys are teenagers. Reading this article and looking at the pictures makes me want that to happen sooner rather than later.

interactive virtual reality porn

The Daily Beast is running an intriguing article about interactive virtual reality porn using a "teledildonic device."

I don't quite understand exactly how this works, but the piece does note that three senses are stimulated simultaneously. The hardware sounds pricey now, but all new technologies are that way in their infancy.

While prudes might condemn this, I think these kinds of developments are a good thing. The more men are able to do this, the less they may be inspired to do things they shouldn't.

I think this could work with couples, too, and maybe also a voyeuristic audience. You see live sex in virtual reality but you can touch the performers while touching yourself, thus making it seem like you're actually in the scene.

Of course, before shelling out hundreds if not thousands of dollars on new technology like this, maybe that money would be better invested in personal improvement strategies to assist in meeting actual humans to nurture actual interactions so that high-tech porn is no longer needed.

king charles iii

The husband and I watched King Charles III last night, a speculative BBC movie imagining a time when the Prince of Wales ascends the throne following the death Queen Elizabeth and becomes ensnared in a constitutional crisis with the prime minister and Parliament when he refuses to assent to a new law curbing press freedoms.

My anti-royalist husband grumblingly sat down to watch with me but, by the end of the movie, he found it positively riveting, as did I. The crisis at the heart of the story revolves a real role the British monarch plays in giving required consent to all new laws, which King Charles III refuses to grant for the first time in history, thus blocking the controversial law.

Even James agreed it showed how the monarch could be a necessary check and balance, but of course that doesn't justify the ridiculously lavish subsidized lifestyle for the entire extended royal family.

The only person portrayed truly positively in the story is Charles, played brilliantly by Tim Pigott-Smith, who starts out as a hesitant figurehead but grows a spine by the end of the story. Camilla is a bossy but devoted spouse. Will starts out as loyal but becomes a black-hearted bastard, manipulated by a scheming Kate. Harry begins with a noble heart but ends up a spineless coward.

Sadly this will be one of the gifted Pigott-Smith final roles because he died suddenly and unexpectedly not long after production was completed.

We both thought the film entirely addictive because you're never sure where the story might go and who could suddenly change his or her stripes.

the family slave

I think this article in last month's issue of The Atlantic is the most moving thing I've ever read in a magazine. Movies and sometimes novels can bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes, but I don't think I've ever had that reaction from a magazine until I read this article.

The piece was written by a Filipino-American journalist whose family emigrated to the United States when he was still young. They were accompanied by a woman named Lola, whom he and his young siblings regarded as a beloved nanny.

The reality, however, was that she was an unpaid slave. She toiled tirelessly for the family, whose adults treated her terribly. She worked ungodly hours and slept on a pile of dirty laundry or the floor like a dog.

And she did this for more than fifty years for room and board only.

Because of a type of Stockholm Syndrome, she was fiercely loyal to the family, particularly the children. Rather than run away, she stayed with them and endured terrible treatment.

The author never explicitly says that what his family and he did was horribly wrong and immoral. But you get the clear sense that was the case.

In a great twist of irony, an editor's note at the start of the magazine notes it was the writer's last piece of published writing. He suddenly died shortly before they went to press.

I encourage you to read the piece. It's utterly unforgettable.

time suck

I violated my personal rule yesterday about not spending more than ninety minutes a day online.

I have a timer on my desk that I normally use to count how long I'm online. I was bad and just shut it off after I was sucked into reading all of the scandalous news out of Washington.

It's amazing how much of the day you can waste reading just one more article. I meant to do a whole lot of shit yesterday and never got any of it done. If it wasn't for the children, I probably would've spent the entire day online.

I'm thinking about establishing a new rule. No going online before, say, three o'clock in the afternoon. Or maybe not until after dinner.

I can use radio or TV news to check the headlines quickly to see if anything huge broke but then otherwise wait until toward the end of the day. Unfortunately, Australian radio and TV news generally includes only short mentions of US headlines and doesn't always get the story entirely correct, but I can live if I don't get up-to-the-minute updates.

Notwithstanding the above, I imagine we'll be seeing some indictments of some White House players and family members before too long.

the dumbing of america

I was really amazed to read some of the results from this survey conducted last month by the Pew Research Center. This is what gobsmacked me: a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents -- 58 percent -- now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45 percent last year.

So an educated class is hurting America? Seriously?

They want to be tended by physicians with no formal training? Represented by lawyers who never went to college, let alone law school?

I've written here quite a few times about how I dropped out of high school and later earned a GED, but I certainly would never say a college education is a bad thing. It might not be right for me, but university-educated professionals are essential for a first-world economy.

You want a country where most people have little to no education? Take a look at Somalia. That's really something to aspire towards.

This anti-education idea ignores the last three hundred years of societal advancement and wipes the Enlightenment right off the board. It's narrow-minded thinking straight out of the 17th century or earlier.

I'm reminded of this post I made in April about how people increasingly devalue democracy. Yeesh, since I've been gone, America is turning into something straight out of The Handmaid's Tale.

history in a pod

I've been using iPods for a bunch of years now. Like most people I imagine, I first bought one for music, but for me that expanded to radio and, in particular, to audiobooks.

For no particular reason, I never really got into free podcasts until a few months ago. I guess recently I've been feeling more starved for American culture, so one day I ended up subscribing to a few feeds.

The result is I'm consuming podcasts somewhat regularly now, often between audiobooks or when I want to listen to something for just a few minutes. Because an iPod will always bookmark a podcast where you leave off, listening for a few minutes is super easy.

Somehow I discovered The Washington Post's free "Presidential" podcast, which is an offbeat history lesson of sorts about each of the forty-five U.S. Presidents. I've listened to about a half dozen of them so far, in no particular order, and have found them very enjoyable and interesting.

Most recently I listened to the one about Warren G. Harding. I already knew about his mistresses and his child from an adulterous relationship, but thanks to the podcast, I learned he had a lot more extra-marital sex than I had realized and also that he was a lot more politically incompetent.

Harding was considered very handsome in his day, particularly in his younger years. I can't say I agree -- his picture is seen below -- but handsome standards a hundred years ago probably were a lot different than now.

Given he had so many mistresses, Harding must've been a hot number in bed. Was he well hung? Particularly skilled with his tongue? Sexually insatiable? All of the above?

The team behind the "Presidential" podcast will soon unveil a new free series called "Constitutional," which they say "will explore characters and events in American history as a way of helping us better understand the country we live in today." Well, not all of us live there any longer, but I understand what they're saying.

I plan to listen and hope it's as good as "Presidential."

how not to kill somebody

The woman in this video is very California. So many people in the Golden State feel the need to work something out in public in broad daylight, as loud as possible, whether it be anger or invisible demons only they can see.

With so many headlines about officer-involved shootings that seem way over the top, the cop in this video totally has his shit together. He deserves a commendation.

forcing love

I missed this essay which ran in The New York Times in 2015 and didn't know it had become massively popular. It's now been expanded into a book.

If this worked for her, or for other people, then fine, but I'm skeptical. You can't program love. You can't force it. Love is a mysterious force that can't be broken down like a math formula or a recipe.

If you have to read a book to find love or figure out how to love or make somebody fall in love, then I wonder if you've actually found the real thing. Or do you just think you have?

IMHO love should be like what economists call a "durable good." A car is a durable good, as is a washing machine, a chair, or a basketball. A banana is not.

Love needs to last a really long time -- ideally, a lifetime. So Ms. Lady Bookwriter met Mister Perfect two years ago and they're madly in love. How nice for them.

But I want to hear how things are going in thirty years. Or fifty. Or even more.

Love is an indescribable, uncontainable enigma. It cannot be forced with an add-water-and-stir formula.

the last (porn) picture show

The Los Angeles Times is running a feature story about the decline of porno theaters in America. There are about three dozen still open in the US today, while in the 1970s, there were more than eight hundred.

When I was living in Los Angeles, I went to a porn theater with a group of friends on a lark. To put it kindly, the place was scuzzy. That was a life experience I could have done without.

The linked article waxes nostalgic about porno theaters, but I'm not left feeling sentimental after reading the piece. I think porn theaters can fade into history with things like public telephones -- there once was a need but no more.

Porn seems to require privacy and intimacy IMHO, two things a public theater lacks. But in the pre-VCR, pre-Internet days, if you wanted to watch a porno movie, you had no choice but to do it in public.

a neanderthal in the family

The New York Times ran a very interesting article the other day about how new research suggests early humans migrated from Africa into Europe some 270,000 years ago, much earlier than previously assumed.

At several key points during that history, humans also interbred with Neanderthals. However, there's probably no way of ever knowing how such encounters happened.

I wouldn't be surprised if they resulted from outright rape. Maybe a Neanderthal male lurked around a human settlement and grabbed a human female. Or it could't been the reverse -- a male human grabbed a Neanderthal female.

If time travel were ever possible and I could choose only one time in human history that I could visit, I think I'd pick the era of earliest humans. That's the period where little to nothing is known of our history, so one could be a true explorer.

I imagine early humans would think we were either gods to worship or dangerous creatures to destroy -- and possibly also to eat.

the martian slave colony

Sometimes I wonder how grown adults can believe preposterous conspiracy theories which are so obviously bogus.

You probably have heard the name Alex Jones and also about his program InfoWars, which airs both on YouTube and on various radio stations throughout the United States. He has millions of followers.

Jones is notorious for peddling conspiracy theories. Some of his whoppers include claims that 9/11 was faked, the moon landing was faked, Sandy Hook was faked, and that the US government actually caused the Oklahoma City bombing.

Jones features guests on his program that peddle all sorts of bizarre theories, often about how various individuals are connected with alleged child slavery or child abuse networks.

Recently, Jones featured a guest who claimed NASA had been operating child slave colonies on Mars for more than twenty years. According to several media reports, Jones certainly sounded like he believed what his guest was claiming during the program.

So to recap: the NASA moon missions were fake, but child slave colonies on Mars are real.

During Jones's recent nasty divorce proceedings, his attorney claimed the public face Jones reveals on his program is just an act and that he doesn't really believe what he claims.
That raises two troubling issues. First, it is morally reprehensible to make claims that you know are lies. Second, why do so many people believe the absolute garbage that he peddles?

So many people believed the Mars blather that NASA actually had to release a public statement early this week refuting the entirety of the claim.

I recently listened to a podcast of the NPR program "On Point" where Jones was the topic for an entire episode. Most of the callers agreed that he was a charlatan, but a few clearly thought he was 100 percent accurate.

How do you even start with people like that?

happy birthday america!

Today commemorates the most important day in American history: adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But the Continental Congress actually declared independence on July 2, 1776, with adoption of the so-called Lee Resolution, formally known as The Resolution for Independancy.

I've never had a satisfactory answer to the question of why we celebrate independence on July 4 instead of July 2. Perhaps because they were no showy parchment -- the July 2 document looks like somebody's shopping list.

It's also worth noting that New York abstained from the July 2 vote. The July 4 vote was unanimous, but only after the one dissenter was hastily replaced at the last minute.

We're not going to a July 4 expat event today. I'm not in a particularly celebratory mood, given the Oval Office is currently being occupied by a hostile force.

Nonetheless, whatever you do today, remember my motto: if you can't be good, be careful.

placenta accreta

I am not currently pregnant, nor are we trying, so who knows when I will next be with child, if ever. Nonetheless, I always try to avoid reading pregnancy horror stories, because I know if and when I become pregnant again, I won't be able to stop thinking about them.

But I couldn't help stop myself from reading this fascinating article about women with something called placenta accreta. This is a condition where, during pregnancy, the placenta grows and grows like a cancer throughout the abdomen.

Placenta accreta potentially can cause horrendous bleeding during delivery. In the United States, one out of fourteen women with placenta accreta dies.

The only fact somewhat assuaging my worry about this is it primarily affects women who have had C-sections. But that won't get it out of my head, because not every woman with placenta accreta has had a caesarean.

It's a good thing I never wanted to be a doctor. If I had, I think I would've been the sort who thought she had half the diseases and conditions she studied in medical school.

Maybe I need to keep some of this in constant supply...

the $2.76 million droid

An R2-D2 droid from the Star Wars films sold at a Hollywood memorabilia auction this past week for nearly $3 million after sales tax.

Other high-ticket purchases at the sale included: $450,000 for Luke Skywalker's light saber; $1.8 million for model spaceships used on Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers; and $1.2 million for the lighted dance floor from Saturday Night Fever.

While this sort of news is interesting, at the same time it's troubling and suggests a society whose priorities are somehow out of whack.

Right now, politicians in Washington are arguing over changes to the healthcare system that could make life much harder for the unfortunate. Those changes would be coupled with a huge reduction in taxes but only for the wealthiest Americans.

I'm a moderate, not a lefty, but I have to say something is messed up in a system that wants to make sure the wealthy have even more money while the most downtrodden in society have an even tougher life.

I don't believe excess is something that should be encouraged or rewarded, and there's something excessive about paying nearly $3 million for a movie prop that doesn't actually do anything except collect dust.

successful bitching

Without any warning, Google News completely changed the format and features of their webpage a few days ago. I have their US feed bookmarked because that's a fast way to check headlines "back home."

Initially, I hated the revamp. They eliminated one excellent feature of their old version -- the ability to expand any headlined story to see other media outlets carrying similar stories.

Apparently a lot of other people felt the same way I did and complained about it directly to Google. I did as well.

Yesterday, the Google News page was changed again, but this time they brought back the ability to expand any headlined story in the new format. So hooray for bitching -- maybe it paid off.

I still prefer the old Google News version because it packed more stories onto the page. But at least this one is tolerable.