Dispatch from the dairy underground.

"The [bathtub] cheese was seized last Saturday by a multiagency task force that included CDFA officers, Ontario police and Riverside and San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies. Also seized were wooden cheese presses, molds and other items used in production. Two men at the ranch were cited for illegal cheese production."

[Thx: The Agitator]

Right now there is cyst in your brain, making you think things.

Bad things.

About cat pee.

The Loom:
"It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma."

Parasites bother me deeply. Just the non-brain-controlling kind are enough to make me squirm. Now I start to wonder if my aversion to parasites is actually caused by other parasites humping my spinal column to make me fear/avoid their competitors as an evolutionary advantage.

Excuse me while I go lurch towards the neighbor's pets on the mindless imperative of my catshit masters.

That was a brilliant idea, stuffing the muffler full of thousands and thousands of match heads...

...and igniting them thereupon providing adequate thrust to break free of the earth's pull.
[From "Bad Day on the Moon"]
SAM: So let me get this straight. We can breathe here then?
MAX: I guess those candy-butt astronauts didn't have the stones to try it.
SAM: I could never say that about an astronaut.

Sam & Max are back! As a slick webcomic (mouse over the images).

[Thx: Screenhead]

Cages, poop; the internet comes through for us again.

A couple of sweet links from TheCyanide:

Babies in cages, just as our Founding Fathers intended*.

The Best Poop Report of 2005: The Day I Ruined Thanksgiving

If you pucker up your ass just right, and lean forward just a little bit, you can make any gas you may have inside you leak out quietly, like a ninja. It wouldn't go over well to have forty friends and family members hear a huge ass explosion from the mayor not five feet away.

* Little known fact from the History of our Great Country:
Had the Founding Fathers original intentions prevailed, housing infants in cages would have been Constitutionally mandated. Unfortunately, due to the Rules of Order in place at the time, that clause required unanimous approval. Thanks, Franklin.

Blog worth reading.

Asymmetrical Information

Jane Galt is always posting things that are well written and well reasoned. Her posts are always worth my time to read. So, I am adding Asymmetrical Information to my Links over on the right.

Latest example:

...As bad as terrorism is, there are worse things in the world, and governments that spy on their citizens, and torture them, and imprison them without trial, are among those things. Undoubtedly, if I ended up dying in a terrorist attack, I would wish we had done more. But hey, if I was killed in a car accident, I'd undoubtedly wish that the guy who hit me had had his license pulled. This would not be an argument for shuttering the interstates and making everyone get around on Shank's ponies.

And from the comments on that post:

...It is in the nature of government officials to see all the worthy (at least in their minds) goals they could achieve with a touch more power, and seek to expand their power accordingly. I do not blame them for this, nor am I under the absurd illusion that this is some sort of uniquely Republican vice, as even a brief acquaintance with Janet Reno's tenure certainly proves otherwise. But I do think we've got to watch them closely, all the time, to make sure that they don't expand their power unreasonably--and when they do, to take that power back as quick as we can.

Of course, you should read the whole thing. It's worth it.

[proper name from your favorite party]

From Reason Express, Vol. 9, No. 3, January 18, 2006:

2. Bush Defense: Clinton Did It
[...]
It is the extent of the Bush push that is breathtaking. When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales argues that it is sufficient that the president's Justice Department's has vetted the necessity and propriety of the wiretapping, he is effectively claiming that judicial input is simply not relevant to any matter the president ropes off as involving "national security."

The potential for serious abuse of this standard should be obvious. If not, maybe Bush partisans should imagine Hillary Clinton wielding that power.

You can pretty much replace those proper names with madlib blanks and put in whoever you want. I won't presume to add any more than that. It's just a good thing to keep in mind when thinking about political power.

Hey ladies, how much do you love football. No, really. How much?

Playoff tickets available.

More like:
"Our 850-square-foot hospitality parlors, located on the top three floors of our Denver, Colorado hotel, offer complimentary car service to a variety of discrete vacant lots (includes tools to dig shallow grave)."

[Thx: JaXed]

Fun with data mining.

A while back, I purchased a Haynes auto repair manual for our '93 Geo Storm from one of the used book vendors on Amazon. It has paid for itself many times over. Most recently for the torque specifications for the spark plugs that seem to enjoy wriggling out of their sockets like parasites exiting the corpse of their used-up host.

So, I just got this email from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased books by Robert Maddox, you might like to know that Honda Accord 1998 Thru 2002: All Models (Hayne's Automotive Repair Manual) will be released in paperback soon. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 32% by following the link below.

This can only be explained by magic! I know they know I bought it and all, but how did they know how much I loved it? How did they know that I have become a Maddox completist? How did they know about the Robert Maddox fan-fiction that I put up on my MySpace page? (I'm particularly proud of my epic ten-parter Corvair Monza 1970 Thru 1972: The Manual That Never Was)

Internets, I love you.

Noble Hardware

Anyone need any premium rowing gear?

You need to go to Noble Hardware.

Not only is he rocking some seriously clever products:

Noble Hardware has in-house capabilities for:

• Complete computer aided design, 3D modeling, and computer aided engineering.


• Full 2D and 3D CNC machining of woods, plastics, and metals.


• Welding of steel, stainless steel and aluminum with TIG and MIG processes.
  

  Rowing-related or not, we can help you with your design concepts.

How cool is that?



(Hint: very.)

Unsafe at any speed.

Ralph Nader's Public Citizen:
"On March 28th of this year, we petitioned the FDA to immediately ban the attention deficit drug Cylert (pemoline--Abbott) and all generic versions of pemoline because of clear evidence that the drug causes liver failure and that it has no unique advantage over other drugs used to treat this condition."

Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
"Cylert (generic name "pemoline") has been the most effective treatment for Teresa's narcolepsy in 24 years since she was first diagnosed. She's been taking it for most of that time. Now it's gone.
[...]
Cylert has been implicated in some people's liver problems. Teresa is regularly tested and her liver is fine. Evidently Abbott, makers of brand-name Cylert, discontinued it in March—but Sandoz intended to keep making the generic version, until the FDA, pressured by Nader's group, weighed in to discontinue it entirely—despite a last-minute appeal from the Narcolepsy Network. Thank you, Public Citizen, for completely shafting my wife."
[... ...]
"Cylert and liver failure: After twenty-plus years on Cylert, my liver is just fine. I don't see why I shouldn't have the option of self-monitoring for symptoms of liver failure plus regular tests."

It's certainly easy (and right!) to blame busybody Nader* and his Public Citizen minions for this, but these nannies would not have the ability to force their values and desires onto the rest of us if it were not for the FDA.  The FDA that has the power to make it illegal for an adult to make a personal decision to balance risks and benefits of a chemical and put whatever the hell they want to into their own body.

[Thx: Hit and Run]

* Yeah, I voted for him in 2000. And I regret it now. To be more precise: I regret voting for Nader, I do not regret voting against those other two jackrods. At that time, I channeled my festering discontent with the political system into a naive faith in the potential for meaningful reform. I was under no illusion that Nader would win, but it was nice doing something about the problem (okay, feeling like I was doing something about the problem). I went to a couple rallies, volunteered at the local campaign headquarters making signs and get-out-the-vote calls, and even waved a sign at the corner of a busy intersection on election day. Good times.

Later, I learned more details (from various sources both neutral and unsympathetic to him) about the various things that Ralph Nader actually did in the past, how they were accomplished, and his various hypocrisies. I became less impressed with him, but still considered him a well-intentioned guy with the best interests of the public at heart. Later still, as my own ideas about the role of the government, collectivism vs individualism, and personal liberty evolved I came to view Nader as a well-intentioned nannyfascist out to coerce the rest of us to conform his way of thinking, for our own good.

I totally have to give him props for the Freedom of Information Act, though. That's a pretty cool legacy. It could be argued that the good of the FOIA might overshadow his general priggishness and the damage his other projects have caused. Or, maybe not.

P.S. If it bothers you that Nader was a "spoiler" who "sucked votes away from", and prevented "your guy" from "getting elected", grow some gonads and field a candidate worth voting for.

P.P.S. That sounded really defensive, didn't it? I should dig out my t-shirt that shows a donkey humping an elephant and an elephant humping a donkey, and reads "SAME F*CKING DIFFERENCE". I will clutch it to my chest and remember the days when my cynicism was a small burning knot in my stomach, inspiring purposeful action.  The days before that knot metastasized into the spine-crushing, bowel-clogging mass of dashed hopes and resentment that makes me the bitter crank I am today.

Remember: the realtor is not your friend.

"If I were a Realtor, I might feel right about now that the entire free world has turned against me, having decided I'm a sharp-elbowed,
greed-driven hustler trying to preserve an advantage that I don't deserve. And I'd probably be right."

From the blog by the authors of the book Freakonomics,
which is excellent. You will learn many interesting things by reading
it.