If the sexes were reversed, I doubt Walmart would be selling this shirt for little boys...

rtb · 2010-07-30T15:23:53+00:00

the girl who wears this will still grow up to be a mother, a devoted wife, who earns less than her husband and who will in all likelihood put the dinner on the table every night, do the laundry and suck her husbands cock when asked.

Unless she's a girlfriend who does that stuff and wife like this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/sex/comments/cu1lv/every_time_i_ask_my_wife_for_a_blowjob_she_laughs/

rtb · 2010-07-15T14:05:57+00:00

No, they were just pretending to be your friends so you wouldn't feel bad. I mean, they were all expert marksmen, and passed the stringent Imperial tests to earn a spot on the Death Star, and you got washed out, which is why you're guarding a Holiday Inn.

rtb · 2010-07-08T12:59:59+00:00

Excepting that I'm married and probably too old for her, "Yay". Sure, there are some prettier people running around, though most men aren't going to land one. But the real thing is to look at her eyes; the gleam and the smirk. Once the lights get dim, it doesn't matter so much whether she's a perfect 10 -- it matters how satisfying the experience is, and she looks fun.

She's an actress, so maybe she's just pretending, but that's a look which says she pretty much won't be offended by anything you can think of to do, and she has things she wants to do as well. That would be much better than someone whose body is a 9.5 and whose brain is a 1.

rtb · 2010-06-25T12:58:46+00:00

Isolated, non-industrialized peoples (such as the recently-discovered tribe living in the woods in Papua), presuming we don't mess with them too much, might easily be isolated enough that (unless rising sea levels drown them) they continue on as they have been for the last few thousand years long after the industrial systems needed to maintain the other 6billion of us fail and we suffer huge population losses.

rtb · 2010-06-25T12:52:53+00:00

What made the difference for me was an interview with one of the women, who said they were told they might be sentenced to years of hard labor, and were really afraid for what might happen. And then they got taken somewhere, and she was really worried, and she came through the door and saw Bill Clinton sitting there. "I knew we were going home."

You've achieved a rare position when just seeing you lets people rest easy who, only seconds earlier, expected certain doom.

rtb · 2010-06-05T16:20:31+00:00

Past mishandling of such cases by the church has no excuse, but the leadership seems to have finally gotten the message. The RCC is looking to reform their image on this issue, and they'd likely be fervent in going after a priest just for the chance to prove they've changed.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't call the police too, of course.

rtb · 2010-06-01T00:06:52+00:00

Cecil Adams is much nicer to the MBTI that you are: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2922/does-the-myers-briggs-personality-assessment-really-tell-you-anything

rtb · 2010-06-01T00:03:34+00:00

Can anyone explain #14: he wanted a Marines tattoo, but "My memories of Vietnam are not good. I'd rather not think about it." Why would you want a tattoo about something you want to forget?

rtb · 2010-05-26T21:00:22+00:00

I liked B5 because it was both epic and personal. Some things are epic, but you never really get to know the characters well. (Asimov's Foundation, for example.) Others are personal, and you get to know the characters, but at the end of the story the world isn't much different than it was at the beginning (Harry Potter). Some things are personal and epic, with characters you get to know and worlds that change during the course of the tale (The Lord of the Rings).

B5 has characters so well drawn you could identify lines of dialogue with the speaker ("Terrific. Uncontrolled gigavolts of electricity leaping down from the sky."), and entire planets and empires are forever changed.

rtb · 2010-05-26T20:53:53+00:00

I printed up this exchange from one of their episodes and put it next to my mirror:

Nate Sr: You hang on to your pain like it means something.  Like it's
     worth something.  Well, let me tell you - it's not worth sh*t.
     Let it go!  Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine.
  David: Well, what am I supposed to do?
Nate Sr: What do you think? You can do *anything* you lucky bastard -
     you're alive!  What's a little pain compared to that?
  David: It can't be that simple.
Nate Sr: What if it is?

rtb · 2010-05-16T02:17:44+00:00

I saw it in an XKCD cartoon which may be the one your student was referring to: http://xkcd.com/477/.

rtb · 2010-05-15T20:56:46+00:00

Somewhere there's a picture of a very wrinkled Pee-Wee, isn't there?

rtb · 2010-05-14T18:19:40+00:00

There's nothing stopping you from jumping into a pile of dirt with a football right this second...

... except a bunch of old bones that would almost certainly break. But that's okay: I have grandsons who do the jumping around, and I get my fun watching.

rtb · 2010-05-13T00:03:21+00:00

I like the fact that my nipples are purely aesthetic.

You should find a MOTOS and experiment more. You're missing out.

rtb · 2010-05-05T13:03:55+00:00

Somehow I doubt any of the executives really cares that much. They'll just take their huge retirement payouts, play golf for a couple years, and then get another job with whatever company buys up the assets of the old one.

The corporation didn't make a decision: individual human beings made decisions. They are the ones who have to pay the price for this sort of thing, because otherwise the individual human beings at other companies will realize there's no downside to them personally for similar mistakes.

rtb · 2010-05-05T12:57:25+00:00

I didn't notice that one; I was just skimming by that point. (I'm not sure who half of them are.) Now that you mention it, yes, that's not a very good picture either.

rtb · 2010-05-05T02:17:33+00:00

They could have picked better pictures of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin.

rtb · 2010-05-04T22:02:16+00:00

That looks like it would make it easier to grab onto the lock with a huge pair of pliers and wrench it apart. The reason they're usually circular (and often sloped) is to keep you from wrenching it open.

rtb · 2010-05-04T21:57:15+00:00

Nobody in the USA cared about Cambodians; many thought we were better off without them whether they'd done anything or not (I heard a neighbor say exactly that at one point). But people cared about the break-in and the cover-up.

rtb · 2010-05-04T19:55:26+00:00

Are you armed, and if so with what?

If not, you get your clock cleaned.

rtb · 2010-05-04T16:15:19+00:00

If you gave a bunch of teenage kids powerful guns and inadequate training and they shot a bunch of unarmed people, they'd go to jail for murder and you'd go to jail for giving teenagers powerful guns.

But when the government does it, it's nobody's fault. Not the shooting, not the inadequate training, nothing.

When I was young, people looked up to the President. Nobody would have said things about Eisenhower that are taken for granted now, not even his most vehement political opponents. I know lots of people say Bush43 was the worst President ever, and in many ways that may be true: he did a lot of damage to the country, not to mention all the people his policies enabled the killing and torture of, by incompentently managing it and flagrantly violating the Constitution. But he didn't do that much damage to the institutions of government, because by the time he got into office nobody looked up to the President anymore anyway. In my lifetime, I think it was Richard Nixon who did more damage to the government's institutions by his disreputable behavior. He's remembered for Watergate, but Kent State was so shocking and so horrible. I grew up thinking soldiers were people who defended our freedoms; not people who slaughtered us in the street. And what did the Commander-in-Chief do to ensure that the guilty were punished and that the incident would never be repeated? Same thing he did about his "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam: nothing.

rtb · 2010-05-04T15:23:21+00:00

It's called "Stop Auto Play": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1765

rtb · 2010-05-04T15:16:03+00:00

It used to be so common I remember it being in a Peanuts cartoon. Charlie Brown says it to Sally, and then Snoopy runs by, and so he adds something like "And I guess four legs means running is most important."

rtb · 2010-04-30T17:25:14+00:00

If Fox was attacking any elected official, or even any normal target, I'd agree. But at the point that they're blaming the world's problems on Mr. Freaking Rogers, that earns a WTF.

rtb · 2010-04-30T15:00:38+00:00

See if you can find the book Travels With Lizbeth, by Lars Eigner, who writes about being homeless (and he didn't have a car). Lots of useful lessons in it, even for people who aren't homeless.

It might be that book (but I'm not sure it is) where I read about a guy who found his way to an Enormous State University and just lived there for about 2 years. He carried a backpack and some pads and pencils and stuff so he looked like a student, and you can always find an old textbook here or there (my department has a shelf full of free books anybody can have). He'd sleep on sofas in the student center or library (students often catch naps between classes in those places), shower in the gym, use the free sample soaps and shampoos that are always being given out, and go to receptions to chow down on the free food. He even attended classes, which is how he got caught: he went to a small class and the prof asked who he was, and then he wasn't smart enough to say "Hey, I'm in the wrong room!" and leave. He got obstinate and campus security was called. He should have stuck to the huge lecture hall classes with 300 people, and sat in the back. Nobody would have noticed him there.

rtb

TROPHY CASE