Family: It's great having nieces

because you get quotes like this:

Grandma, in the war, do you remember when Viet Nam played Tennessee? Did Tennessee win?

Later in the convo, she said something about Viet Nam being Irish. So I think maybe she thought Viet Nam was Notre Dame. I was too busy laughing to find out. Btw, the Irish won the game 17-13 against the then-rated #11 Vols.

This quote came after Courtney and I were discussing how Sir Richard Burton was blacklisted by the BBC after speaking out against Winston Churchill.

Evil Empire: Walmart managers shoot stray cats

Is this really "completely inconsistent with the way we do business" as the article claims?

Two Wal-Mart employees who police say followed a manager's orders to shoot and kill a stray cat have been charged with federal animal cruelty.

The men, both assistant managers at the Supercenter, were arrested and released after a court appearance Wednesday.

Christopher Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey Hardin, 21, told police the store's manager ordered them to get rid of the animal that was living in a storage trailer behind their store.

Veggies: PETA's not ALL nuts

PETA has McDonald's looking at a more humane way of slaughtering chickens, a method already used for their restaurants in Europe.

PETA contends that chickens supplied to McDonald's and others are sometimes scalded to death while still conscious, a method it deems inhumane. In controlled-atmosphere killing, chickens are put to sleep quickly and painlessly using argon or nitrogen gas, advocates say.

The article details how PETA is actually a large shareholder in many major food corporations and is pressuring Walmart, Applebees, Yum Brands, etc. to improve their methods of slaughter.

And I think this is the sort of animal rights activism even the hungriest carnivore could support.

Medicine: PTSD and stigma in war time

Here's a nice article documenting the desperate need for increased mental health care for soldiers in Iraq.

Irony: Walmart selling anti-Walmart book

The listing says it all.

Update: Apparently Walmart realized what was going on, but you can still buy How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and The World and What You Can Do About It on Amazon.

Literature: Susan Sontag, dead at 71

The amazingly influential "obsessed moralist" died of leukemia at Sloan Kettering.

Medicine: could breast implants save her life?

Well not quite like that, ya know. But here's some fun data from Breast Cancer Research.

The 21 percent of women who had a breast implant after mastectomy had a 12.4 percent death rate due to breast cancer, compared with a 19.7 percent death rate among women who did not receive a breast implant.

Makes sense, since women who receive implants might have fewer psychosocial issues regarding their personal body image, which could theoretically alleviate some of the depressive effects on the body's natural defenses. The fact that this research likely comes as a bit of a surprise despite its intuitive findings confirms that the medical care of women is a unique enterprise that the medical establishment has not been yet redesigned to fully accommodate.

Politics: Obama, Santorum in Newsweek's 'Who's Next'

"I'm so overexposed I make Paris Hilton look like a recluse." - Barack Obama.

A nice article on the purple potential of the rising Dem superstar.

On the other side of the aisle, a rather disturbing article on Rich Santorum, the Pennsylvania Catholic golden boy who, in a cursory reading of the article, has already compared homosexuality to polygamy, said that no one has a right to privacy and that privacy is a "phony legal concoction foisted on the country by liberal judges," declared that states should have the right to ban contraception (but not to legalize gay marriage, as that's threatening to the fabric of society), and wants evolution taught as "a still-controversial scientific theory that 'has holes.'"

I'm wondering if those holes are in Rich Santorum's head.

Race: Newsweek on Cosby

The Right says that entertainers should stay out of polotics and stick to making movies (even the ones who were better than C students at their Ivy League Universities). And I think the same might be said about Bill Cosby:

In "Code of the Street," sociologist Elijah Anderson wrote eloquently of the war in inner cities between "decent" values and "street" values. That is the war into which Cosby has leapt mouth first—and into which Ameer Tate was born. "I grew up in a bad neighborhood ... and I always had to fight... My grandmother was on crack ... Both my uncles were pimps. My father was never here ... [I remember] being beat up as an 11-year-old by this 36-year-old fresh out of prison just because he wanted to put his hands on my mom," recalled Tate, an 18-year-old San Franciscan.

Telling people born into such circumstances to shape up is not much of a plan. Combating "a history of inequality and disadvantage" requires "systematic solutions," argues Stephanie Bell-Rose, president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, which funds programs targeting achievers in poor communities. She believes Cosby has an obligation to be "more thoughtful."

Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong with preaching personal responsibility, which is clearly the central jist of Cosby's rants. But far too often he progresses into a sort of blame-the-victim type of game, confusing street culture with African American culture and willfully ignoring some of the real struggles those of lower SES must endure and dishonoring the many who, despite their absolute best efforts, will fail against the weight of a situation.

David K. Shipler's wonderful book The Working Poor: Invisible in America does much to outline the traps and pitfalls of the many who will never increase their stations in life despite seemingly following Cosby's prescription to a tee.

Random: Yahoo! UK&Ireland Top Office Attachment Awards

Every really stupid yet funny thing you've missed in 2004.

Education: the liberal bias (and more David Horowitz antics)

This article from AP gives a nice summary of some of the major events in the recent past concerning disgruntled conservatives speaking out against liberal bias in American universities. The latter portion of the article focuses on the activities of David Horowitz, whose disgusting, racist tactics are a discredit to legitimate conservative points in academia, which truly are undervalued in the academic marketplace. However, incidents involving students who are merely angry that their world views are being challenged and that they will be required to actually learn something about an alternate point of view are illegitimate.

I'm pleased that at least the article correctly sites the recent study that shows that humanities and social science professors are decidedly leftist, as Bill O'Reilly and Co. love siting the study in manipulative ways. However, I'm hard-pressed to think that the liberal bias in, say, Economics or Political Science departments could be as pronounced as in Sociology or Geography departments. And philosophy departments have more than their share of conservatives. Not saying the liberal bias doesn't exist; it clearly does. But I think it's also unfair to imply that the leftist intelligentsia blatantly disregards the objective methods that have developed in their fields for their personal politics on a grand scale. All social science fields require objective methods in order for their work to have any real relevance. Of course, I don't believe for a second that there aren't flaws, and politically motivated ones at that, all throughout academia.

Merry Christmas (or what have you) from Sparkgrass!

Doomsday: asteroid headed for Earth in 2029

Chance of asteroid hitting earth: 1 in 300.

Chance of more shitty disaster movies in the next 25 years: 1 in 1.

Media: Moore's next target: drug companies

I don't know whether to smile or to cringe. The best part of this article details how companies are putting out alerts for a fat scruffy dude with a camera. Sicko is slated for a first-half 2006 release.

Medicine: financial conflicts-of-interest at NIH

While I'm not at all convinced that there is systematic distortion of medical truth coming from the National Institutes of Health, David Willman at the L.A. Times points out more than a handful of troubling conflicts of interest:

Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III, a senior psychiatric researcher, took $508,050 in fees and related income from Pfizer Inc. at the same time that he collaborated with Pfizer — in his government capacity — in studying patients with Alzheimer's disease. Without declaring his affiliation with the company, Sunderland endorsed the use of an Alzheimer's drug marketed by Pfizer during a nationally televised presentation at the NIH in 2003.

Dr. Lance A. Liotta, a laboratory director at the National Cancer Institute, was working in his official capacity with a company trying to develop an ovarian cancer test. He then took $70,000 as a consultant to the company's rival. Development of the cancer test stalled, prompting a complaint from the company. The NIH backed Liotta.

Dr. Harvey G. Klein, the NIH's top blood transfusion expert, accepted $240,200 in fees and 76,000 stock options over the last five years from companies developing blood-related products. During the same period, he wrote or spoke out about the usefulness of such products without publicly declaring his company ties.

Etc.

Medicine/Guns: Walmart sells gun used in suicide to schizophrenic

Here's one sticky story--sticky for gun control, sticky for medical privacy, sticky for patient's rights and competency.

Shayla Stewart's mother is suing Walmart for not doing a sufficient background check to find out that her daughter had a history of manic depression and schizophrenia (how Walmart would do this without violating HIPAA, I have no idea). The biggest tip off might have been that the pharmacy at the Walmart seven miles down the road was issuing her anti-psychotic medications, but that sort of information is rightly kept away from the prying eyes of the FBI by 38 states.

So even I, anti-Walmart and pro-gun control, don't have a clue what to say about this one, except that perhaps doctors should be allowed to suggest to courts that certain people be put on some sort of national no-gun list. The centralized list would contain no information as to why the person would be on the list, only the name of the physician, and then perhaps if the patients wished to challenge their position on the list, they could appeal to some sort of magistrate hearing or something similarly fast-track, and the physician would then be required to submit to the court why the patient meets some sort of established medical criteria for exclusion from a constitutional right.

Obviously such a solution is constitutional insanity. But everything needs a first draft. If a person can be committed to a mental institution against their will by a physician, it seems reasonable that their gun rights could be suspended as well.

The most interesting aspect of this entire situation is that personal responsibility has been essentially eliminated from the equation, as a person suffering with an improperly controlled psychotic illness cannot possibly be expected to exercise the sort of judgment required handle a firearm successfully.

Media: Dick Clark's rockin' new year ball droppin' replacement is...

Colin Powell!!!

The buzz now should be whether this is a semi-tacit network endorsement of Bush policies, or the antithesis. Or if, of course, it's because Colin Powell might be the only person in the country immune to the FCC, since his son runs it.

I think it's just because he's so goshdarn loveable! Powell is a product of NYC public schools, too.

Nutjobs: that girl from my high school who tried to wear a confederate flag dress to prom...

I actually found this link to the Herald-Leader on Fark, which just shows how absurd this whole situation has become. Pathetic.

A former Russell High School student sued the Russell Independent Board of Education on Monday, saying her constitutional rights were violated when she was not allowed to wear a Confederate Battle Flag prom dress to her 2004 senior prom.

Jacqueline Duty designed the red, white and blue sequined gown that incorporated the Confederate Battle Flag, sometimes called the Rebel flag. But Duty said when she arrived at the May 1 prom, administrators and police did not allow her to enter the high school. They escorted her off the property.

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington, Duty claims her First Amendment right to free speech was violated as well as her Ninth Amendment right to preserve and protect her heritage. She is also suing for defamation, false imprisonment and assault.

And what is she suing for? Apparently over fifty grand, saying she lost all this scholarship money because she was suddenly wrongfully branded a racist. Blah blah blah.

What a f---ing disgrace.

And who're the jackass lawyers who think this case is winnable on any planet? The right to preserve and protect her heritage? WHAT? We can't get equal treatment based on race and gender in this country, and she's worried about the right to preserve and protect her heritage?

And here's a picture of the dress.

Punctuation: a sarcasm point?

Writing for Slate, Josh Greenman proposes that the world of blogging and instant messaging needs a new sarcasm puncutation point. He proposes a subscript i for some reason, although I'm probably not the first to notice that Blogger has no subscript button :(

Hogwarts: 6th Potter book completed!

A release date for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be announced Tuesday morning.

Update: According to an email from Amazon, July 16, 2005!