Comments(0) He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.”
From The Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time.
HT: Marginal Revolution.
Comments(0) I was almost disappointed to find my mystery tenant had moved on to greener pastures. I even brought my camera for the people who wouldn’t believe me when I say there was a bum living in my back yard. Alas, his timing was impeccable as the girl demanded a tour of the back. It’s so cute she said, yes, I thought you could even live here if you wanted…
Comments(0) I went to the city to get my scooter out of the back shed in my house in Baltimore.. And I notice that everything smells like shit… And I look around… And there’s blankets on the ground, in my little back yard. Yes, there’s a bum living there. A freaking bum living in my back yard. No wonder the house isn’t selling.
But this pales in comparison to the woman in my rental house who, after notifying me 2 months ago that she’s leaving, decides that in fact she wants to stay. Only she doesn’t tell me until two days before another family is scheduled to move in, and one week before I sell the house to another investor.
It pales in comparison because unlike the bum, who I can evict by moving his blankets and bicycle into the alley, I have to hire a lawyer to get the woman out. It’s my property, she has no right to be there, yet legally I’m forbidden from removing her. Tell me how that makes sense. If a stranger breaks into your house you can kick ‘em out at gunpoint. I don’t see how this is any different.
Comments(0) It’s so refreshing to see the rebellious kids, skateboarding by my window in tight jeans.
Comments(0) Civ 4 is best enjoyed by people who have no responsibilities in life–no kids, no job, no school, no immediate need for food, etc. If you insist on playing despite your worldly duties, I suggest taking care of anything critical before starting the game. That includes bathing, paying your mortgage, attending a job interview, etc.
Playing “for just a few hours” is not really an option, unless a few hours for you means 14 hours. Once you are in the proper mindset and you understand the implications of getting involved in Civ 4, you are ready to start. Like a strong riptide pulling you out to sea, your best bet is to surrender to the overwhelming force of the ocean until you reach calmer waters where you can tread water until the tide comes back in.
Don’t try to fight Civ 4, it will only make you feel guilty and weak. Ride it out for a few days or a few weeks until you get it out of your system and you cannot bear the thought of playing another turn. Take a deep breath and relax; it’s time to pick up the pieces of your neglected life.
Comments(0) At improv rehearsal last night I had this conversation three separate times:
Other person: How was your weekend?
Me: Pretty good, went to the beach.
OP: Oh yeah? What beach.
Me: Rehoboth.
OP: Oh, isn’t that the GAY beach?
Me: Yeah, it’s really really gay. But it’s cool, they let straight people hang out there too. I have a straight visa because I’m a friend of the gay man.
Comments(0) I’m selling my rental property in East Baltimore–great time to sell, right?
So I was showing it last night to another investor and as we were walking to our cars we heard pop pop pop pop pop. Hey were those gunshots? Yeah, I think so. Funny because I hear that all the time in Baltimore, just random popping–I always thought they were fireworks. A woman unrolled a window above us and said “get used to it, mmm hmm.” We didn’t see anyone running, or police sirens or anything. Target practice?
Comments(0) Or wait, maybe they are…
OK, he hasn’t officially endorsed Ron Paul, but he is blogging about him. You could pretty much replace “Ron Paul” with any other presidential candidate and that would still be hilarious.
Comments(0) Aspiring satirists take note:
“Interestingly, 19% of Americans state that they rely on satire sites or shows like the Daily Show for their [political] information.”
More here.
Comments(1) I wonder at the motives of people who say that setting a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq will embolden our enemies. I admit that they have a point; leaving now would seem to validate the strategy of the terrorists in Iraq. Certainly the terrorists would perceive it and market it that way.
But what are the alternatives? We could sneak out in the middle of the night, leaving millions of vehicles and weapons. They’d never know what hit them! When questioned, we could play dumb.
“What’s that? Oh yeah, I mean, we just didn’t feel like being there anymore. The hot desert sun and all. No no! Don’t think…oh no, we don’t want you to think we left because of you! Oh gosh no. You terrorists are taking this all wrong! No, we left cus we felt like it. I mean, the soldiers dying every day in Iraq–that was annoying to be sure. But don’t get all full of yourself thinking it was just cus of that. There were lots of other totally non-terrorist reasons.”
Alas, they’d probably see through that–and then they’d have all of our tanks and stuff. So we could just stay “until we win.” And we win when nobody wants to kill Americans. But every day we’re there, more people want to kill Americans. Are you trying to tell me that you never want to leave?
Comments(0) Unbelievable:
A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.
Read the rest. Here’s the best line:
“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviwing the documents.
Comments(0) Having heard Ali G accuse so many of his detractors of “racialism,” I thought it was just a word made up by Sacha Baron Cohen. Alas, it’s really used in Britain, and there’s no parody here:
“So she explained. The Green Man, she said, prided itself on being the most racialist pub in England. That was her word: racialist. There were other racialist pubs, she said. In fact there were two more in Bury. But none was as consistently racialist as the Green Man. The Green Man, she continued, had never served a colored person.”
That’s from Among the Thugs
What!? People would rather be blind than fat!?
Apparently, shockingly, most people would rather be blind. “When you’re blind, people want to help you. No one wants to help you when you’re fat,” one respondent (of the 89% who’d lose their sight over slimness) explained.
I’ve never had a whole lot of pity for overweight folks, mainly because there’s something you can do about being overweight. It may not be simple and it may not be easy, but losing weight is at least possible, whereas curing blindness… well there’s not much you can do except live your life and hope that medical technology finds a cure before you die.
This sounds suspiciously like the oft-quoted “fact” that most people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying. Which explains why so many commit suicide just before going on stage. Or not.
Of course, the article that Ben links to floats the idea that losing weight is “impossible”:
But it seems less so by the end of “Rethinking Thin,” a new book about obesity by Gina Kolata, a science reporter for The New York Times. Kolata argues that being fat is not something people have much control over. Most people who are overweight struggle to change their shape throughout their lives, but remain stuck within a relatively narrow weight range set by their genes.
So if your weight is mostly genetic, you have almost no control and what you eat or how you behave doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone seriously believes this. And if weight is purely genetic, then why has obesity increased so dramatically in recent years? Are fat people having more kids? Did something happen to change our genes only recently?
I strongly encourage anyone trying to lose weight to check out Evolutionary Fitness at ArthurDevany.com. Art believes that the way you eat and exercise actually has a profound effect on how your genes express themselves. I’ve been eating “the EF” way for 5 months now and I can definitely say that it works (really really well), even if I don’t entirely understand why. Try it out before you give up.
Comments(0) I may have told you this weekend with great excitement about a groundbreaking new sitcom that takes places in a terrorist training camp. The terrorists were all named Abdul, and everyone was portrayed as an hapless idiot–a terrorist parody. Edgy but hilarious.
And unfortunately, not real. Turns out it was an April fool’s day hoax from NPR’s On The Media. I’m disappointed, as I was looking forward to the show…
A bum knocked on my window…I glanced at him and rolled it down.
He flashed his toothless smile and said “your mother’s my woman!”
Things like that make me love Baltimore.
