Glenn Hauman: View From Above

The Abstract Factory: The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject:

The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject

Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the “naturalistic” explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible — it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Oh, read the whole thing. You’ll feel better.

(Via Pharyngula.)

As you may know, I run a website called Lot Auctions, and there’s an auction going on now of 30,000+ comics that you might want to bid on. Every so often, you hear about a collection like this– now you have a chance to get in on it.

This is the personal collection of a long-time employee of the big-two comics companies (we can’t tell you who because of their corporate policy) who has to pay for a college education for his kids– so he’s selling off his entire collection, from Action Comics to Zot!, including complete runs of Avengers, Justice League, Green Lantern, Iron Man, and many others.

Most books prior to 1975 are VG or better, most books after 1975 are VF or better. Many are in mint condition (read once) and many rare issues are to be found, like the Elseworlds 80 Page Giant that includes Kyle Baker’s “Letetia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter” and which was pulped in the United States– less than 700 copies are suspected to exist.

Covers shown are NOT the actual covers, but used only for display purposes. The collection is available for viewing by appointment, and individual issues are also available for more precise grading information on request. Shipping costs will be paid by the buyer for any and all issues purchased.

Timmy’s Super Secret break down of the Bad Bush Poll Numbers:

Timmy’s “super secret” break down of the Bad Bush Poll Numbers

Yikes, talk about bad poll numbers. What the heck, the President doesn’t look at this stuff anyway.

Video-WMP Low res

Video-QT

As Think Progress notes: Apparently, it isn’t working so well. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that just 2 percent of African-Americans approve of his leadership. NBC’s Tim Russert — who called the number “a dramatic setback” — looked into it, and he could not “find a pollster who can remember any President ever getting just 2 percent approval from African-Americans.”

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Brandy points out that is a rounding error. The numbers are so low as to be unstable. It might very well be zero.

UPDATE: I just found out the margin of error is 3 percent. So it could be as high as 5%, or as low as negative 1. I suppose that means unborn black children are against Bush too, which is ironic for someone so theoretically anti-abortion. On the other hand, that might just be a reaction to Bill Bennett’s comments about aborting black babies.

I wonder if we can convince the management at the New York Times that nobody in the blogosphere is subscribing to Times Select as a form of protest against Judith Miller?

I have a new habit that may tick off Hollywood.

I have lately taken to downloading TV programs from various place on the Internet, even though the episodes are already in my DVR. Why, you ask? Because when they’re on my computer, I can control the playback speed. And lately, I’ve been watching many TV shows at 1.5 times the speed.

If you have an hour long episode of, say, CSI Miami, and you take out the commercials (dropping the length to 45 minutes) and then play that back 50% faster, you can get through them in a half hour.

If you get the chance, try it. QuickTime Pro allows for changing playback speed with no change in pitch, depending on how the file was encoded. Anywhere between 1.25 and 2 time speed, depending on the show.

You may discover a few things:

One: most shows are heavily padded. Establishing shots are getting silly– I love Vegas, but I don’t need to see a shot of the Strip at night at the beginning of every act break. I shudder to think how quickly I’ll get through an episode of Jeopardy or a World Series game.

Two: the shows hold your interest better. Most of the time when I watch conventional TV, I’m usually doing something else– writing, answering email, eating dinner, what have you. At higher speeds, I find that I spend more time paying attention, partially out of necessity, but partially because I’m not bored by lulls, and also because of the knowledge that I’ll be done quicker– besides, I can always hit pause if I need to.

(As another data point, I notice that my reading habits are beginning to follow a similar pattern. I’m reading more and more in my RSS reader, and I’m spending more time reading folks who provide full feeds to their posts (like Mark Evanier) instead of excerpts (like Talking Points Memo) because to finish an excerpt I have to click through and burn time. I’m also reading less of people who just have pointer links to other things without much description, because I have too much other stuff to get to.)

As I said, this may tick off Hollywood. On the other hand, it may allow Hollywood to sell more product, because consumers can go through it faster. The biggest drawback to the medium that Hollywood traffics in is that the speed is locked down. When I read, I do so at my own pace– and as a result, I consume more product because I need more of it. It’s possible the same thing could happen with TV. Be honest: wouldn’t you be more likely to watch the nightly news if you got all the information in half the time? Wouldn’t there be more films you would try? Heck, wouldn’t it address most of the problems you have with a lot of films and TV?

Doing this addresses the zero-sum game problem inherent with Hollywood: there’s only so many hours in the day, so there’s only so much time to watch TV. If you’re trying to keep up with a dozen TV dramas, that’s 1/14th of your week gone.

Yes, the tenth planet (Planet X) has been given the temporary name of Xena. (This was after they learned there’s no such thing as aluminum phosdex.)

And now they’ve discovered it has a moon– which has, of course, been named Gabrielle.

Contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do with Disney lawyers pitching a fit if the tenth planet was called Mickey. It was pointed out that if we called it what logically follows Pluto, we’d actually have a planet named Scooper.

That test asked for laws that you would enact. Here’s mine:

“I would dictate that… people have a form on the back of their tax returns indicating how they would like their tax dollars allocated, along with a chart indicating how the budget is currently broken down.”

I think that this would make the populace much more aware of where their money is going, and provide the government with a guideline of where they want it to go.

…although for some reason, the image puts my economic rating so low I’m coming across as a socialist in the images here, when they’re Democrat on the site and on the text part of the test. Go fig.

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

I’ve been told recently that the blog has become incredibly depressing to read, so let me try and find some good news. Something uplifting.

Hmmm. There’s… no, that’s no good.

Well, there’s… naaah.

I know! There’s… man, it’s getting ugly out there, isn’t it?

There’s a certain point where happy talk does smack of denial, and I’ve been trying to avoid such things (denying denial?) in favor of being part of the reality based community. On the other hand, worst case scenarios are often not uplifting, although you can pat yourself on the back for being prepared for them and then if they aren’t as bad as they could be, you can feel much better after.

Nevertheless, you could use a good laugh. Preferably without having to find where The Aristocrats is showing near you.

I know! Head Cases has already been cancelled! First casualty of the new TV season! And it turns out that agave, the principal ingredient in tequila, can help people cut cholesterol and lose weight! Yippie!

I promise to have some more uplifting stuff in the future, or and least put some more efforts into thinking our way out of these messes we find ourselves in. Okay? Okay.

It took me a while, but I finally realized what was so familiar about David Boreanaz in Bones… it was the new haircut that made me notice it.

He’s doing James Garner. Okay, he doesn’t have the great twang in the voice, but it’s there.