Bones Jumping the Shark?

Some say that Bones jumped the shark by making Zach the Gormogon's apprentice, but I could deal with that because I had just started watching the show at that time and Zach was already seeming creepy at that point. But if any of what is in this article is true, the shark tank is filled and the ramps are in place.

P.S. If Booth keeps hallucinating somebody needs to make him pee in cup.

Be careful how you kid around in Israel

Via MSNBC - Rabbis rule joking teens legally married

It all began as a lark, in a schoolyard where a 17-year-old boy recently declared the girl his wife, reciting a Jewish ritual vow in front of witnesses, and she accepted his ring.

That, and what a spokeswoman for Israel's Rabbinical Courts said was the consummation of their marriage, was enough to make them man and wife in the Jewish state.

I came across this headline in a google search while working on writing my ANG midterm exam questions. Of course, I had to click on the story. Once I read it, I had to share.

The sniping and in-fighting begins

Via the Canadian Press: Knives come out for Sarah Palin; McCain aides tell tales of an ill-informed diva it would seem that the honeymoon was over rather quickly between the McCain campaign and Sarah Palin. Plus, they seem ready to expose her obvious intellectual shortcomings.

If the anonymous McCain insiders are to be believed, Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, was unaware that Africa was a continent, arguing that South Africa was simply a region of the larger country of Africa.

She also didn't know the three countries that are in the North American Free Trade Agreement, namely Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Let us just take this moment to once again thank goodness that this woman will not be a heartbeat away from the presidency and hope against hope that the Republican have better sense than to run her as their candidate in 2012.

A Great Moment in American History

Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. What an amazing day. It is wonderful to see him win and it is wonderful to see so many people taking part in the political process. God Bless America and God Bless our new president-elect. He has a long road ahead.

Go Vote!

Remember, every vote counts even if it does only count within your state.

When my husband and I voted this morning, around 9:30 Central Time, we were the 428th and 429th voters to put our ballots in the optic scanner at our polling station. There was no line, but there were several people at the tables voting. I'm hopeful about the outcome, but unlike my sister, I don't plan to glue myself to the television for non-stop election returns coverage.

I find this funny

Over 100 newspapers around the country have endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President, so one more newspaper doing the same is hardly news. But I do find this particular endorsement rather funny, because of its source. A couple of days ago, the Anchorage Daily News endorsed Obama in their editorial column: Obama for President. Now the piece itself probably focuses more on McCain's shortcoming than it does on Obama's strengths, but to have the largest newspaper in Alaska shun their native daughter for Obama/Biden just strikes me as so funny. I liked this assessment:

Yet despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

It is certainly a risk I'm not willing to take.

Just for fun

I love this song, but I also love misheard lyrics. This is a wonderful song even though I can't understand more than a handful of the words he says. His voice is just so moving he could actually be saying what this video suggests and it would still sound great. But in the spirit of fun, here are the misheard lyrics of Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam

I have to wonder

After watching Obama's "Joe the Plumber" encounter on a YouTube clip, I have to wonder exactly what Joe's real story is. It seems to change from encounter to encounter. In fact, just listening to him talk, it sounded to me like he was making the whole thing up. That he was really proposing a hypothetical situation, not really describing his current situation.

UPDATE: As it turns out, I was right.

When he first begins to speak to Obama, he says that he is thinking about buying the plumbing business that he works for, or something to that effect, but it was clear that he did not yet own the company. Then later, when he was talking to FOX news, he seemed to give the impression that he already owned a plumbing company. In fact, I was reading this article this morning in the Washington Post: 'Joe the Plumber' Becomes a Fixture that said:

There has been a big media market for the plumber in recent days. On Tuesday, just a day after his Obama handshake, Wurzelbacher told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that he lives in a "simple middle-class home" and doesn't want to upgrade because he'd rather put his money into his business.

"I don't want to keep up with the Joneses, and two, I just couldn't really afford a bigger house. I'm going to have to work harder to make that company go. I want to put more trucks on the road, and his tax increases kind of hurts that aspect," he said.

I could be wrong, but saying "he'd rather put his money into his business" seems to indicate that he currently owns one. However, at the end of the article it states:

The Washington Post was unable to reach Wurzelbacher and was unable to verify whether he is a licensed plumber through a search of the database of the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board.

I hope that there will be continued fact checking on Joe the Plumber's story.

I think I've had all I can take

After tonight's episode of Heroes I think I'm done with it. Ever since the new season started I've had the feeling that Heroes was more like a Soap Opera than anything else. In fact, I've been calling it "Days of Our Lives with super powers." At least tonight they did explain why Linderman was able to still be alive (illusion created by Daddy Parkman), but when they had Hiro kill Ando that was more than I could take. Even if they explain it away as an illusion or some other lame excuse, it is just not something that I want to watch. It is just not enjoyable anymore. It seemed like something new and interesting when it started. It went downhill some last season, but was still interesting. This time around it is just stupid. They are suggesting things that just don't follow from previous episodes. And the fact that they are turning the good-guys into bad-guys, and vise-vera, is also very soap-opera-esque. I didn't like it on Days of our Lives and I don't like it on Heroes.

This article over at MSN.com ("How to Heal 'Heroes'") has some interesting ideas of how to fix it, but I just don't think I can stomach the trip there even if they decided to try. I particularly liked this comment from the article

If someone were to try hard enough, you could "fanwank" an explanation for these and the various other elements of bizarre behavior on the show. But the point is that you shouldn't have to fanwank anything.

To that I can only say, "Amen, brother"

My current predictions for the electoral outcomes

I was playing around at the NYT website and decided to make a map for the electoral outcomes. These are my meager predictions. Take them for what they are worth, which isn't much. I end up with an Obama win at 293 and McCain with 245. It was tough to decide on most of the toss-up states. I feel like Colorado will go for Obama, but if he only takes Colorado (of the states the NYT deems as toss-ups) then it will end in a tie. That would not be good.

I couldn't agree more

I just finished reading Richard Cohen's op-ed column in today's WaPo online, This Debate's Biggest Loser, and I think he makes an excellent point. After enumerating Palin's lies and shortcomings in the VP debate, he concludes with this observation:

Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been withheld from Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption" -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked.

It seems as if simply because Palin did such a horrendously terrible job with her interviews with Katie Couric, the fact that she kept her head up and didn't wet herself during the debate was grounds to say she did an okay job. She passed the test. I don't think anyone is saying she passed with flying colors, but she passed. It is ridiculous.

And as an adjunct college professor, I particularly appreciated this statement Cohen made in his column:

[. . .] repeated mentions of "greed and corruption on Wall Street" (Who? Be specific. Give examples. Didn't anyone here go to school?) [. . .]

Heck, about half of my ANG students couldn't write a proper essay with actual examples on their last exam. But you know what, they didn't pass either.

McCain's history in financial crises

Quote of the Day

Today's quote on rationality is from Oscar Wilde:

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

That sounds about right to me. Human beings like to think themselves rational and others irrational, but close scrutiny would certainly show otherwise.

Too Funny

See more Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay videos at Funny or Die

Note to McCain, don't insult your rich and powerful campaign contributers

Paris Hilton responds to McCain ad that mentions her.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Now that is fast!

My 17 year old son is really into art. He recently found some videos of people doing spray paint art. I think this is completely amazing. Check it out.


39 Second Painting - For more funny movies, click here

Now he wants me to buy him the supplies so he can try it out for himself. Who knows, I might try my hand at it as well.

Full Circle and Beyond

Well, I've finally come full circle in my exposure to Dr. Who and gone a few episodes beyond. I had heard about Dr. Who, of course, and was vaguely familiar with the character from the first incarnation of show, but had never watched it, neither the original series or the new series. Then one day I watched this clip on a scifi blog:

I thought that David Tennant was pretty funny in the clip and decided that I would give the show a try. A colleague told me that the SciFi channel was going to be running a marathon of the first season of the new incarnation of Who and that I should start there so I gave it a try.

I actually quite liked Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor and thought that there was a good dynamic between him and Billy Piper as Rose. My favorite Eccleston episode is the two parter, "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances".

When Tennant took over at the beginning of season 2 it was a little difficult getting accustomed to the new Doctor. If nothing else, Tennant is just a little harder to understand at times than Eccleston was. But also, I never really liked the dynamic between the 10th Doctor and Rose. It just didn't seem to play as well it had with Eccleston. And in fact, I like Martha better than Rose in general, I think. But I will say, that my favorite Tennant episode so far is "The Girl in the Fireplace", but that was because I thought he played exceptionally well with his then-girlfriend, Sophia Miles.

I hated that they had Martha leave at the end of season 3, but I'm glad that they wrote in her leaving in the way that they did. It preserved the strength that I felt they had given the character to that point, and it makes it possible for her to have guest appearances in the future without the creepiness that went along with Rose's reappearance at the end of "Partners in Crime".

So anyway, I've made it full circle. I started with "Timecrash" and have finally made it back around to "Timecrash" in sequence after the last episode of season 3. I've watched a little into season 4 (I've seen through "The Planet of the Ood") and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to feel about Donna. She's a little annoying, but I'm reserving judgment at this point.

On lying

Recently I've been thinking a lot about lying and why people seem so inclined to do it. Now, of course, I've lied, everybody has, but I just seem to be surrounded lately by instances where people want to lie and or hide the truth from people close to them. In some cases I've understood the motive, and in other cases, not so much. Plus, I have been lied to so incredibly much in my life that I have learned to greatly despise the practice and have a very low tolerance for being knowingly lied to by the people I voluntarily associate with.

So this morning I decided to do a Google search on why people lie. I found an article that I thought was interesting and somewhat helpful called "Why We Lie" from LiveScience.com. Apparently one of the main reasons that people lie is because of self-esteem issues. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. I did find this statement in the article particularly interesting:

Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.

And there was also this statement, which to some degree I already knew:

humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds

Very interesting. But then again, as a social scientist, I've always been very interested in what people do and why they do it. I've always been a people watcher, that is what drew me to the social sciences in the first place. I'm not really good at interacting with people, but I love to watch and study them.

So anyway, my minimal amount of research has led me to the conclusion that I will probably never obtain the truth that I so desperately wish to know. The person in question is probably incapable of being honest enough with himself to give me an honest answer to my questions if I ever got the chance to ask them. I guess I am just left to form my own conclusion and go on with my life, but I hate having unanswered questions floating around in my mind. Anyone who truly knows me knows the truth in that statement.

Dealing with what we own

One of today's quotes on my iGoogle homepage really struck home with me this morning. It is particularly appropriate considering how I have been spending most of my summer vacation so far. The quote is from John Ruskin and it says:

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

For the past month and a half I've been trying to cull through all the accumulated junk in our shed and in the children's rooms to try to make room for my eldest son to return home after a year of dorm life. It is amazing to me how much stuff a family of 5 can accumulate and hold onto over time. As I look through the piles and piles of old toys (many never really played with beyond the opening at Christmas and some never even opened!) I begin to realize the opportunity cost associated with so much stuff. And I being to look at possession in something of a different light. Do you say to yourself "I might as well keep it," or "It's a good price, I might as well buy it" or should you say, "What am I ever going to do with this?" or "Where am I going to put this?" I find myself realizing that we do become wearied and weighed down by our possessions. Sometimes I think it is true that less is more.

A letter (or email) of endorsement for Cheryl Sabel

Kris Kallies, Cheryl Sabel's campaign manager, emailed me recently with a copy of an endorsement email sent out by Randall Williams of New South Books, Inc. I thought I would share it with everyone.

If you live in Congressional District 2, I urge you to vote June 3 for Cheryl Sabel for the Democratic nomination for Congress. As she says in her television ad*, she is pro-choice, pro-worker and anti-war. Those six words alone distinguish her among Tuesday's field (and, sadly, from everyone who has held that Congressional seat in the last century).



But there are even more reasons to vote for Cheryl. She is one of the most decent, most principled, most intelligent people I've ever known. She comes from a working-class Alabama family and has educated herself and learned leadership skills and put them into practice. She has an open, collaborative style that is precisely what is needed in a congresswoman. She speaks plainly but eloquently, and she grasps the significant issues—not the sham patriotism and moralism that passes for political standards among so many of Alabama's elected officials—that confront us.



From the war in Iraq to foreign trade, education, immigration, transportation, economics, energy, taxation, to any other issue I can think of, Cheryl's views are consistently progressive, commonsense, and, if I dare say so, American and small-d democratic to the core. Further, you can count on her to vote according to those principles.



With respect,

Randall Williams

Cheryl has also been endorsed by Alabama New South Coalition, Bullock County Voters League, Democracy for America, Montgomery Chapter, and National Organization for Women PAC

And remember, June 3rd is just around the corner! Vote for Cheryl Sabel in the Democratic Primary!!!