In a slightly less formal study I did, I found that no one cares.  Nor should they.

And I can only hope that no government agency funded the research that led to this conclusion.

I’m all for studying and learning from history–especially if it leads us to not make mistakes, or go through situations we have in the past.  But studying what killed one guy over 200 years ago?  Especially when you will never conclusively prove anything?  What good does that do?

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Sunday he wants the House to approve the plan by the end of the month, sending it to the Senate in time for action before Congress leaves on its mid-February break.

The new Congress is sworn in this week.  And by mid-February, they need a break.

That got me thinking–just how much are we paying these clowns?  Trusty Yahoo! Answers provided me with the answer I needed–as of 2008, a Congressperson’s salary was $169,300 for the House or the Senate (more for party leaders).  Some people would argue that they deserve this pay, due to having the weight and expectations of the country essentially on their shoulers.

I might even agree–if they actually worked full time, rather than taking a break a month after they were sworn in.  And if we didn’t hear about all the trips they apparently go on (my wife sat by one of our Senators last year on a plane ride to Vegas–just a day trip, apparently, but considering we’re not from Nevada, was it needed?).  And if they didn’t take 3-6 months off every few years (or every other year) to get themselves (or their cronies) re-elected (or while they try for a better office).

And what do they do when they’re in office?  Well, as of late, they spend as little time possible debating ways to “jumpstart” the economy.  Personally, I think maybe we should take the roughly $91 million dollars in salary (not to mention benefits and off-the-book perks), and add that to the money we use for these bailouts.  See how much they like it when we start taking money from THEIR pockets.

Their latest request is yet another case of PETA caring far more for animals lower on the food chain than they do about humans.  They want Ben & Jerry’s, the company with strange but good ice cream flavors and a reputation for being socially responsible, to stop using milk from cows.  And replace it with human breast milk.

Let me repeat that–they think Ben & Jerry’s should make ice cream from human breast milk.

Apparently, the fact that a Swiss restaurant will being to substitute breast milk for 75% of the cow’s milk he currently uses means that an American company that makes massive amounts of ice cream should too.

“The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn’t make sense,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Everyone knows that ‘the breast is best,’ so Ben & Jerry’s could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.”

I’m not so sure they thought this one through.  If we started replacing cow’s milk with human breast milk across the country, this would not be good for dairy cows–it would mean we don’t need dairy cows.  So we would kill a lot of dairy cows.  And that would suck, because I don’t know that dairy cows make that great of a steak, so they’d pretty much go to waste.

Oh yeah, and there’s also no way in hell that there would be enough lactating women to supply the demand for ice cream.  Hell, we’d have to start breeding women just to produce milk, keep them in cages, and pump them full of hormones to produce more milk to try to keep up with demand.  And even then, ice cream would probably cost $25 a gallon or more.

But PETA would be happy, because we saved some cows.

Fortunately, Ben & Jerry’s declined the request.  Unfortunately, they did so in a civil manner:

“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child,” said a spokesperson for Ben and Jerry’s.

Something along these lines would have been better, in our eyes:

“We laugh in the face PETA’s ridiculous approach to bringing attention to themselves, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.  Unless that mother & child are a part of PETA, in which case we think the child should be given up for adoption, so as to prevent the stupidity of the mother from possibly ruining another life that could be spent actually making a difference.”

“We couldn’t take the complaining anymore,” Peebles’ mother Hunter told the News & Observer. “He always told me he thought school was a waste of time.”

Oh, well, if he thinks that school is a waste of time, but playing video games is a good use of time, clearly he must be the one to trust on such a decision, right?  At least they are making sure he’s home schooled.

But hey, at least he’s won some chicken sandwiches with his “talent.”

And who knows, maybe some day he can learn how to actually play a real guitar.

I realize it isn’t really something to joke about–it’s good that the morons got caught.  But how they got caught is just amazingly stupid.

I don’t even begin to know where to start with this one.  Go ahead and read it for yourself. At least she’s now admitting it (she originally said it wasn’t, and threatened to sue anyone who published that it was).

At least they had the good sense to not pay her for her “work” in the video.

Sadly, it wasn’t even the stupidist 911 call of the week–even in Florida.  One man was earlier cited for calling 911 a total of five times, trying to get the police to settle an argument with his brother. 

And probably the crowning moron called 911 to complain that his local Subway left the spicy sauce off his Italian sandwich.

But, not if a bunch of colleges & cities around the US have their way.  Because, obviously the cause of this epidemic isn’t kids not knowing when to say when (very possibly a behavior learned at home in their youth in some cases)–the problem is drinking games.

Specifically, as of late, beer pong.

“Last fall, Georgetown University banned beer pong, specially made beer-pong tables and inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls and any other alcohol-related paraphernalia in its on-campus dorms – even in the rooms of students of legal drinking age.”

Next, the administration plans to outlaw quarters.  No, not just the game–but the legal tender.  Because it encourages drinking.

 ”Recent data from the Harvard School of Public Health’s College Alcohol study, which surveyed more than 50,000 students at 120 colleges, show that binge-drinking habits vary widely from campus to campus. Kids tend to party hardest at schools with few official alcohol-control policies, easy access to alcohol and strong drinking cultures.”

Let me get this straight–you spent money–presumably from a grant–to fund a study to tell you that binge-drinking habits vary from campus to campus, and that kids tend to party hardest at schools where there is easy access to booze and a reputation for drinking?  What 3rd grader came up with that theory?

There was even a big kerfuffle when JV Games intended to release Beer Pong, a game for the Wii, under the Frat Party Games series–even Connecticut attorney general Richar Blumenthal got involved, sending letters to the company (and Nintendo), resulting in the game being re-named Pong Toss, and changing the beer in the cups to water in the game.  Seriously.  Nice use of state funds, there.

Oh, the changes also earned the game a kid friendly T for teen rating, and likely raised the publicity for the game, likely combining to expand the audience for the game.  And here’s a news flash–kids likely still know what the original intent of the game was.

The logical response to that? 

Last year, Dartmouth College banned water pong, the real-world version of Pong Toss, because of the risk of water intoxication.

I wish I was kidding.

“I know that [water pong] seems like a good balance between the Dartmouth drinking culture and just trying to have fun,” Kristin Deal, a Dartmouth community director, wrote in an e-mail to students announcing the prohibition. “However, it can be just as dangerous, if not more so.”

That’s right, kids–just remember, drinking is dangerous.  Any drinking.  It’s better to dehydrate yourself.  Until we come up with a law against that.

That’s right, despite the fact that there are already about 400 fast-food restaurants in the area, they’re going to solve the problem by preventing more from entering.  Despite the fact that it is NOT the fast food industry making people fat–it’s morons who repeatedly eat loads of crap when going to fast food joints (and other places), without bothering to do some basic exercise along the way. 

But, in today’s United States, we need the government to step in and protect us from our own stupidity.  Seriously, did these people ever step back and think maybe this is how humans got to the top of the food chain in the first place, with the strong surviving and the rest falling by the way side?