Ted Rall

XKCD.com

Scientifically, the story of my life. You?

The data so far

XKCD

One for the conference-attenders. I dare all of you…

Otherwise, please. Don’t ever ask people to bear with you.

The 13 ounce rule

Spotted today (huzzah for the camera phone):

(a) “mailpiece”?

(b) What if it’s 13 ounces and doesn’t have a stamp? What if it’s anything and doesn’t have a stamp, or postage otherwise paid? Do those just get delivered now, since we’re too busy being insane? Are the costs of that insanity so great, now, that whether or not the postage was even paid becomes a minor affair?

(c) Was the recent postage increase undertaken to pay for this nonsense, or were this distributed using some other public money that could have been used to do some actual good, instead?

Official warnings are always the best (especially as we go around becoming ever more paranoid).

(d) Is this the result of mere idiocy, or has somebody undertaken a study that demonstrated that, with statistical significance, only parcels over 13 ounces are likely to contain some manner of threat? If not: warning to would be doers-of-wrong: if you’re going to post something bad, make it less than 13 ounces. Postal workers don’t make much, and it would appear that there is now a mandated threshold for giving-a-crap.

Go figure. Just know that now you can’t even put your mail in a post-box without the government reminding you that they’re crazy and moronic and have a nice day. I feel more sympathy for the Austrian school every day.

FreeRice.com

I recommend to you one of the bloody entertaingingest (that was deliberate) ways to waste spend your time.

Originally found over at the Rolling Stone National Affairs blog, FreeRice.com is an advertiser-sponsored site that donates money to the United Nations World Food Program according to page views – you get page views (and accumulate donated rice) by cycling through vocabulary words. How can that not be fun?

They did ask me what Kohl was, though, which seemed a bit unfair – I’m a boy.

Who pays for the donated rice?

The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry). We commend these companies for their participation at FreeRice.

If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?

FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Who distributes the donated rice?

The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. We encourage you to visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending hunger.

Jump right in. I’m clearly performing like someone who’s been at their various economics degrees for 10 years – my vocabularly is not what it used to be.

The second-rate Valhalla of mediocrity in quantity

Do you read Cat and Girl? No? Do.

XKCD

Again. You should be reading this comic.

Serenity II: more awesome

Are any of you fans of Joss Whedon? If not, shame on you. No, seriously. Shame. The Fox network’s crimes against ordinary common sense and intelligence are nothing, compared to cancelling Firefly. Jerks.

You should also be a fan of XKCD, by now.

The myth of GOP fiscal responsibility

Rendered funny (which, of course, it is not):

Trudeau’s sort-of-blog the Sandox is also worth your periodic time:

The Sandbox’s focus is not on policy and partisanship, but on the unclassified details of deployment — the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. The Sandbox is a clean, lightly-edited debriefing environment where all correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted. And contributors may rest assured that all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment.

Bob Geiger sings the news

The war comes in for a drubbing, this week – actually President Bush, generally (and deservedly).

Don’t forget Ted Rall, while I’m at it (I don’t think he’s syndicated in the papers Bob Geiger reads)…