Call me...

... Dr. Stickwick.



I passed my doctoral defense today. I'm officially a Ph.D. And tonight I'm officially going to get the first full night of sleep in a loooong time.

If a Man Wants to Hurt or Kill You, Buy a Gun

Three examples in three weeks in King County, of paper protection orders working about as well as self-defense tools as bathroom tissue.

The three women above were stabbed or strangled to death by their husband, ex-husband or boyfriend. With a gun they could have defended themselves. Note to women who fear for their lives from evil men like these: BUY A GUN AND LEARN HOW TO USE IT! There are plenty of places you can go to learn how to carry, you can get a permit, and while you wait for your permit, open carry is legal in Washington State. For those of you in states that deny you the ability to defend yourself with a gun, move.

I Gotta Learn That

I was reading a website about what will happen if the dollar drops too far. This was one response:

Malor is consistently very doom and gloom and buy gold now and huge economic catastrophes are just around the corner. If he happens to be right, you don't need to worry what currency your debts are in, because when the world falls apart all of those electronic records are going to be lost anyway. If he's right, you should be investing in firearms, ammunition, and learning how to make assless pants so that you can rule the wasteland with your gang of Mad Max crazies.

"Learning how to make assless pants..."

Priceless. That made me spit all over my computer screen.

We're Number 3!

Turns out that carnaby fudge is #3 (out of 4) on google searches for "bad breath during sex." This internet thing really makes life worth living.

Always Nice When...

...your opponent holds their nuts out in front of you so you can give them (the nuts) a good solid kicking. Case in point: LGF siding with the ADL on Ben Stein's new movie Expelled. I normally like LGF, and this doesn't change my mind, but when Charles supports writing like this:

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Like, that's interesting. According to Darwin and evolutionary theory, we are the way we are because that's the way we evolved, no? Now, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with evolutionary theory, nor that the theory caused the H-man to go crazy, but that's not what the quote up there says. It says that "evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."

Well, which is it? Is evolutionary theory any good for anything, or isn't it? What use is theory that says we are the way we are because that's the way we evolved, except when it can't say that we are the way we are because that's the way we evolved?

The problem with Hitler, supposedly, was that he used evolutionary theory to justify his actions. He claimed without proof that the Aryan race was superior and so should go on while the inferior races could morally be exterminated.

While to any normal person this would be seen as an abomination... but if evolution is correct AND there is no God/absolute moral code, then there really wouldn't be anything wrong with people from one race destroying those from another. It's all just part of the evolutionary process you know... survival of the fittest and all.

Miscellany

We're both busy, busy, busy. I defend in about 3 weeks, and am nowhere near ready. UGH. Carnaby defends a few weeks after that. I'm older than my brother, but he's beaten me to nearly everything: first to get a bachelor's degree, first to get a master's, first to get married, first to have kids. But I'll be first to face the firing squad defend, so HA!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of my favorite Basic Instructions strips from the archives: How to Fake a Smile and How to Express Condolences ("ROFG" had me ROFL). There's a blog associated with the strip, and if you're curious enough you can read through it and discover something about the genesis of a comic strip. Turns out the creator, Scott Meyer, is a stand-up comic from Seattle who is now living in Florida and working at DisneyWorld. The strip, which still runs in a Seattle weekly, got the attention of Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, and is getting so popular that Meyer has a book coming out in the summer. I'm definitely buying it.

See you in a few weeks.

OK, one more strip: How to Negotiate with the U.N.

Another Gun-Free Zone Success

We had a late-night armed robbery (at gunpoint) in my building this week. The same scumbag apparently hit another building on campus two weeks ago. As one commenter at the campus newspaper put it, "So much for weapon bans making us safe... "

R.I.P.

Since we've been talking black holes here recently, it's worth noting the passing of John A. Wheeler, a giant in physics and the man who coined the term 'black hole.' He was 96.