Ben Wyatt

The folks at everybody's third favorite PAC have a new blog out, Dumb Laws, focusing on the stupid bills and resolutions that our legislators can't not vote for. (Coming soon: a law against dangling participles.) They limit themselves to contemporary law, and being the Club For Growth, tend to focus on the economic and hypocritical. My favorites so far:

- "Taxpayers in the United Kingdom are paying for the production of salt shakers that were purposely made with fewer holes to prevent people from consuming too much salt."

- "Every year in April, the U.S. House votes on a resolution "supporting the goals and ideals of Financial Literacy Month." I repeat, hypocrisy is emphasized.

- "On Monday, the Senate passed a resolution honoring soil. That’s right. Soil. ... Here are the six co-sponsors:

Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Ken Salazar (D-CO)
George Voinovich (R-OH)"

Both of Iowa's best are figuratively going to bat for you. There's a fairly tasteless joke about flooding to be had here, so if anybody figures out why I'm not telling it, let me know.

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The best satire appears real ...

Google announced today that soon customers of their Gmail service will have their storage size increased to "infinity plus one." The announcement comes shortly after Yahoo's announcement that their Yahoo mail customers would be given unlimited storage.
...
When contacted about the Google announcement, a Yahoo representative said, "We will be making an announcement shortly about our million-trillion-billion infinity storage," and added, "Neener, neener, neener."

Not to be left out of the storage bonanza, a Hotmail representative said that while they "can't offer unlimited storage, they can delete all your e-mail at random intervals in conjunction with their Live OneCare service, to make sure you never run out of space."

The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters [emphasis added -ed], whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

UPDATE: April Fools!!

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (126)

Take a paper clip. Through a series of 14 trades, acquire a house. Sound impossible? Think again.

Too bad the house is in Canada. There's always a catch . . .

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

60 billion e-mails a day, much of it spam is the healdine of a MSNBC article. Imagine my shock when the subtitle read, "58% of all emails are sent to the RockISU mailing list .. or so it seems to Ben Wyatt."

In other "news", this InvestorGeeks post argues convincingly that renting may actually be good, or at least gooder than perceived. No word yet on whether living in the dorms is actually cooler than the Fonz. Eeeyh.

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Top 10 ways to destroy the Earth can be found here, and not a single one of them is global warming. Fairly interesting stuff, even if the commentary is a little absurd. Example: sending an object 10 trillion tons to collide with earth at 90% the speed of light is described as "pretty plausible". I even think they're serious. We should build a Dyson sphere just so I could live on the exact opposite side of the world of their server, so it would take at least 22 minutes for any internet traffic from them to reach my computer. Geeks.

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Scrappleface strikes again.

Update: My apologies to those who thought this may have been a factual story. Scrappleface.com is a satirical news website, and its hilarity is the only thing on my blog remotely resembling a regular feature. It is, however, based off a real story, begging the question of how many times over scientists could have actually cured every disease if they didn't waste resources on such studies.

Prayer Study: Humans Fail to Manipulate God
by Scott Ott

(2006-03-31) — A team of scientists today ended a 10-year study on the so-called “power of prayer” by concluding that God cannot be manipulated by humans, not even by scientists with a $2.4 million research grant.

The scientists also noted that their work was “sabotaged by religious zealots” secretly praying for study subjects who were supposed to receive no prayer.

The allegations came at a news conference where researchers announced their findings that intercessory prayer by two Roman Catholic religious communities and a group from the Missouri-based Unity church failed to produce better results for patients recovering from heart surgery.

“As it turns out, God was not impressed by our academic credentials, our substantial funding base, and our rigorous study protocols,” said lead researcher Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. “I get the feeling we just spent 10 years looking through the wrong end of the telescope.”

While patients who knew they were the targets of the study’s intercessory prayer team actually had more post-operative complications, Dr. Benson admitted he failed to prevent friends and relatives from praying for the “no prayer” control group.

“It really burns me up that we worked so hard, only to be undermined by an anonymous army of intellectual weaklings on their knees,” he said.

Dr. Benson said he would now seek $10 million in grants to explore whether fire can be called down from heaven to kindle a pile of wood. The control group’s wood will be drenched in water to prevent combustion.

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

If you wish to kill 5 minutes, and appreciate homemade special fx and sweet choreography, go here for what is advertised as the "Best Homemade Lightsabre Duel Ever." Did I mention that it was sweet?

Posted by Ben Wyatt at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)