Oh, God, It's Worse Than We Thought...

Politics Makes You Crazy!

Using MRI scanners, neuroscientists now have tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them.
The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

Yeah. Remember how I'm always saying that all the politicians on both teams are nutso, and should get sent home with dunce caps? Apparently that's not all there is to it. Researchers at Emory University have discovered that discussion of politics can actually change your brain's cognitive function, turning off your logic centers and activating strictly emotional decisionmaking processes.
Admittedly, this doesn't bode well for this blog, but then I've never tried to pretend I wasn't crazy, either.

So what the researchers did was they presented a group of people a series of quotes by various political figures, selected (and in some cases flatly made up) to directly contradict their previous statements, while the subjects were wired to an MRI.
In virtually every case, the test subjects violently castigated the politicians from their opposite political group, while simultaneously letting those from their own team off the hook.
Of course, anyone who's paid attention to the media's slavish devotion to Clinton, despite the fact that he did some of the same, identical things that they now castigate Bush for, should have seen this coming, just like they should have seen it coming when everyone got after Clinton for things that Bush Senior did before him without comment.
But still.
Too funny.

Speaking of politics, but without value judgements of any kind - this is, after all, the age of "Fair and Balanced" reporting, and even I'm getting in on the act - The Honorable Samuel Alito is the next Supreme Court justice, replacing Sandra Day O'Connor. The vote will take place tomorrow - the Republicans broke the filibuster - and he is expected to get 57 votes, 6 more than he needs for confirmation.

The Enron trials are going into jury selection, a process marred slightly today by the fact that one of the defendants got lost in the sea of protesters outside the courtroom. Just to add to the mix, some of the protesters were there proclaiming Ken Lay, Enron's former CEO's innocence, which as you might guess added to the air of hostility outside the court building, especially considering a substantial fraction of the 5,000 laid-off workers showed up to wave banners too.
Picture mounted cops - yes, Houston has mounties of their very own - trying (unsuccessfully) to steer the defendants into the courtroom safely, while one of them just randomly wanders off into a crowd of people screaming for jail time for him.
Thankfully, unless you are a former Enron employee, nobody got hurt and everybody that was supposed to eventually made it to the courtroom.

A really, really lonely and bored old man in Germany tried to turn himself in for a crime he committed 80 years ago today. The cops were amazed, especially considering all he had done was to put a firecracker on a train track. They told him the statute of limitations was up, and he should just go home. They did, however, caution him not to do it again.

Falling smack into the "Duh!" category, Secretary of State Dr. Condolleeza Rice is running frantically around the Middle East trying to convince everyone to stop giving money to the Palestinian Authority government now run by Hamas, until Hamas recognizes the government of Israel, and disarms. I suspect that Hamas will "cave" to this fairly quickly, at least to the point of paying lip service to it, because the Palestinian Authority needs international funding fairly desperately. How desperately, you ask? Well, the Palestinian Authority's annual budget is about $1.6 billion, of which $1 billion is from foreign aid of one type or another, and $225 million of that is from the USA. That's right, folks, we're still subsidizing terrorists. We just can't seem to get past that, can we?

Speaking of Hamas, they're really angry right now. Why? Because the Palestinians are nervous and relieving their tension by text-messaging jokes about Hamas to each other. No, I'm not kidding, but they are. Sad thing is, these jokes really aren't funny:

While an overwhelming majority of people chose Hamas on election day, the wide circulation of the jokes reflects how conflicted people are over their choice, said Nadia Najjab, a social psychology professor in the West Bank Birzeit University.

"The jokes are really expressive of our fears," said Anis Barioush, a 50-year old teacher in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "The new rulers will change our traditions and impose a Taliban rule."

Oh, that sounds appealing, doesn't it?

Now, I am all for extra credit in schools, and I understand that the whole point of the exercise is that you're supposed to be putting in extra effort, but this kid went a bit overboard. Why, you ask? Well, he built a 100% functional, WWII - German style pulse-jet rocket engine in his garage, that's why. Only in South Florida, folks. I mean it.

Speaking of rocket engines, and why it's a dumb fucking idea to build them in your garage, I give you Edward Reiner, of Oceanside, California. And while I'm on the topic, let me discuss the ongoing overuse by Christians of the term "miracle."
What I mean is, let's take a tornado, for example.
If it misses the local church, "It's a miracle the church was spared."
If it hits, but it was an off day, "It's a miracle no-one was inside."
If it hits, and it was occupied, but there were only a few injuries, "It's a miracle no-one was killed."
If they were, "It's a miracle you were spared."
See?
Ok. However, in this case, Mr. Reiner's near-total escape from injury actually approaches the miraculous. He was tamping the rocket fuel into the engine with a METAL HAMMER, and it exploded. (Anyone surprised? WTF.) That initial explosion set off the black powder he had stored in the garage as well, which exploded with sufficient force to blow the garage door in half. Mr. Reiner was standing next to it - with a dumbfounded look, no doubt - when it blew, and came out of it with singed hair and a few cuts on his hands from the engine casing splitting in half. Better watch it, Mr. Reiner, that was a near-pass at a Darwin Award.

Ok. I know we're supposed to buy American, but over the last few years, American cars have begun to suck ass. Why? Well, that's the question they've been asking us. The response from a majority of the survey victims was twofold: quality control, and the unions. I agree that workers shouldn't get screwed, but paying huge pensions to workers for 20 years of turning lug nuts does seem a bit steep. I have to say, though, my favorite respondent was the guy who said the cure for bad American cars was to nationalize healthcare, as though having hospitals that close for the holidays for lack of funding would somehow magically result in a better Chrysler. Think I'm kidding? Here's what he said:

Aaron Blankenship of Durham, N.C., thinks that, for the American automotive industry to remain competitive, the United States must consider nationalizing healthcare. “We simply cannot compete with the outside world by paying these spiraling costs; it’s crippling us as a nation,” he said. The greed of insurance companies needs to be reduced, he added.

No, no agenda there, or anything.

If you ever thought you had seen the absolute worst video game movies have to offer, you haven't seen this.



This is Uwe Boll's trailer for his upcoming movie based (very loosely, I suspect,) on the game franchise Dungeon Siege, by Gas Powered Games. And it couldn't suck more if it tried - in fact, it looks like they DID. One of the users at IMDB.com got there ahead of me; he asked "How does Uwe Boll keep getting work?" Which, if you think about it, sums it up well.

Warner Brothers is beginning to follow the old adage "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em," announcing that they will be launching an online movie service based on the popular peer-to-peer filesharing software BitTorrent. The service, to launch in March, will offer WB movies and TV programming, as well as locally-produced "content."

Warner Bros. is working with Bertelsmann AG and its subsidiary Arvato to create a service called In2Movies, to launch in March. The service will feature movies dubbed into German, including "Batman Begins" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD. It will also offer television shows like "The O.C." and locally made programs and movies. Users, who will have to register for the service, will be able to keep the movie indefinitely. But instead of getting a movie from a central server, pieces of it could come from other people on the network who also bought that movie.

I'm not sure why the movie companies don't get it. Did you catch the "priced similar to a DVD" bit? For a download? Just like the music companies can't sell music at the price they want to, this isn't going to do away with, or even significantly impact, peer-to-peer filesharing. Really, the ONLY THING that will make a serious dent in filesharing is lowering their prices - because the motivation for most filesharers is cost, pure and simple. That seems really easy to me, but executives who make far more money in a year than I am likely to earn in my entire life somehow can't seem to grasp it.