Unsought Input

Would you choose to give a child a disability? The question seems preposterous, but as Slate pointed out, a recent academic paper reports that parents at three percent of U.S. fertility clinics did just that.

Are you planning on having a child? Worried about your family’s history of cystic fibrosis, or hoping to protect the next generation from Tay-Sachs or spina bifuda? It is now possible to do genetic testing for a number of diseases well before birth. Genetic screening of embryos at fertility clinics is becoming popular – since the clinics create a number of embryos and only implant one, it is relatively easy to test and select the healthiest of the lot.

But as Slate bluntly points out, not all parents are looking to prevent their children from suffering a debilitating disease. Many parents simply want to balance their families, adding a girl if they already have boys. But in a more shocking twist, deaf parents are asking to have deaf children, and the blind may be purposefully giving birth to the blind.

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Have you seen WordCount?

It’s a genius and insigtful project from the mind of, shall we say, Socialogical Computer Programmer Jonathan Harris who’s work “involves the exploration and understanding of humans, on a global scale, through the artifacts they leave behind on the Web.”

Unlike the Googlesmack which pits words and phrases against eachother using the Google search engine (thus, words written by every goober on the Internets), WordCount is a graphical and interactive ranking of the 86,800 most common words in the English language as written by the more lucid world:

WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus®, a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage. WordCount includes all words that occur at least twice in the BNC®. In the future, WordCount will be modified to track word usage within any desired text, website, and eventually the entire Internet.

Words can say a lot about a culture - in this case, the English-speaking world. The word “Jesus” is ranked #1845, with “liberal” beating it out by 6 at #1839. “Satan” has gotten seriously behind thee at the 12864th spot. But He Who Is Known By Many Names sneaks up at #4802 as “devil” (right next to “femenist” hmm), and sneaks under the radar at 74281 as “Beezlebub” and #84987 as “Mephisto.”

“Evolutionism” totally smokes “creationism” at #37974 to #83461. “Intercourse” is still better than “masturbation” at #7533 to #22131. In an odd twist of events, “Palestinian” beats “Jew” #6460 to #12623.

What are some good comparisons you can come up with?

House
Tuesdays @ 8PM on FOX
In a Nutshell: CSI meets Columbo, or Dr. Monk

It’s been a while since my last installment of “What You Should Be Watching” but that’s because I’ve been doing some research.

In the name of Blog Science I have endulged myself by watching the first 2 seasons of House - all 46 hours of it - within 8 days so I could give the most comprehensive review possible.

By in large…this show sucks. Although I have never actually watched any medical-themed shows with regularity, I can pretty much tell that this show is cliched. Godlike doctors who can perform any surgery on any part of any body, wildly expensive tests and procedures given without the blink of an eye, a little sexual tension, climactic commercial breaks - it’s all there.

If you ever end up at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital with an affliction that cannot be explained by the ER or your examining physician, note that two or more of the following WILL happen to you:

1. You will have an unexplained seizure
2. You will bleed from your rectum without knowing it
3. Your throat will close up and you will be intubated
4. You will have an MRI
5. You will have a rare and debilitating reaction to one or several tests - with the doctor in the room
6. You will lie to your doctor
7. You will either deeply move or deeply piss off the doctor
8. The doctors will break into your home to find the source of your affliction
9. You will be declared healed only to go into relapse on your way out the door
10. You will be cured

All that being said…I still managed to be glued to the television for 46 hours watching this show, so something’s got to be right with it.

Besides my undying love for Sherlock Holmes and the House writers’ attempts to link the two, there is a major reason to watch House. That reason is Hugh Laurie. (more…)

I know a lot of you out there have been reading and enjoying my posts. Some of you do not enjoy them as much. A few think I am a racist, homophobe neoconservative. Well you wrong. I’ve decided to reveal the true D Wallz, which is a side most people don’t see often. I’ll point you to my website, http://www.davidwaldman.org/. Bet you’re pretty surprised at what you see. First off yes I am that handsome, I’m not vain about it, but I did get a lot of ass in my day. You’re probably asking yourself, Dave what made you start on your journey for enlightenment and made you want to teach others; well it’s easiest if I start at the beginning…

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So far we have talked about world population, smoking and death rate, how Greenland has no discernable population and how balconies are not meant for smoke breaks. So, moving on, today we will talk about the sin tax.

The definition of sin tax, according to investorwords.com:

A tax levied on products considered vices.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, says the following:

Sin tax is a euphemism for a tax specifically levied on certain generally socially-proscribed goods - usually alcohol and tobacco. Sin taxes are often enacted for special projects - American cities and counties have used them to pay for stadiums - when increasing income or property taxes would be politically unviable.

Either way, what we discover here is that there is a negative connotation to sin taxes. And there should be. Sin taxes can be applied to anything. Every state taxes things that “may potentially hurt people.” Basically I have learned thought my intensive research for this article that sin taxes were created by the purtians to help control sin using fines and prohibitions. Sin taxes can tax just about anything: tabacco, alcohol, pop, food, gentlemen’s clubs, entertainment such as movies and sports, and pornography. It’s a travesty folks, I know.

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Yet again Japan is beating America with its innovations. Its latest one is called Hard Gay. Japan has finally harnessed the raw energy of a gay man wearing leather and is using it to turn its economy around.

From this clip you can see how Hard Gay uses the power from his leather clad pelvic thrusts to turn around a failing ramen shop. Just think how many businesses we could save in this country if we would stop persecuting homosexuals and use them for good, like Hard Gay. Who doesn’t love Hard Gay?  As you can see, even the children love him and get in on the act. In the end isn’t there a little Hard Gay inside all of us, and if there isn’t I’m sure Hard Gay could fix that!

In 1998, there was no bittorrent, no Kazaa, not even Napster. But there was still piracy. Not Johnny Depp piracy, which the MPAA likes, but movie, music and software piracy, which the MPAA hates.

Are you afraid of getting one of those scary letters from the RIAA? In fact, many of the old methods still work today, and so far they are under the lawyers’ radar.

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The attorney general of most states has quite a bit of power over nonprofits. He is generally charged with the responsibility of supervision and oversight of charitable trusts and corporations and can bring actions against nonprofits to protect the public interest. The following are some of the specific powers attorney generals wield over nonprofits registered in their state: the power to investigate, subpoena witnesses, require the production of books and records, annul corporate existence (corporate death sentence), corporate dissolvement (ultra vires), restrain unauthorized activities, remove directors and trustees, enforce member rights, supervise indemnification awards, investigate transactions and relationships between directors, bring quo warranto actions to assure that absolute gifts are applied according to their terms, etc. The attorney general is a necessary party to litigation against nonprofits, he must receive notice when a suit is initiated by others, and nonprofits must register and file annual reports with his office. Judging by this cursory listing of attorney general powers, it would seem as if nonprofits are comprehensively overseen by the government. Yet, despite the existence of such powers, attorney general oversight remains more theoretical than deterrent. Here is why and here is the solution.

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I read a blog entry at ZDNet about Google and YouTube basing their business models on the shaky ground of the fair use doctrine. This could be a very interesting issue to talk about. Even today, 10 years since the web became mainstream, the application of copyright law and the boundaries of fair use on the Internet are not exactly nailed down. For a good intro to intellectual property law, take a look at the video at the end of the article.

Judging by the tone and word choice of the author of the ZDNet article, I think this is an attack on Google and YouTube’s practices and business models. The author constantly uses loaded words and accuses Google and YouTube of trying to

…garner public support for their self-aggrandizing business models based on obtaining, exploiting, controlling, owning and monetizing others’ content cost-free and on a calculated disregard for certain copyright owners’ rights over their own content.

That’s pretty harsh. The word “exploiting,â€? in particular, strikes me as over the top – this is the same word used to describe sexual abuse of children. I guess Google is evil, and YouTube is the IP version of the southern slaveholder, sitting on the veranda with a mint julep in hand while poor, downtrodden multinational media corporations slave away in the fields.

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News broke a couple days ago about California Attorney General Bill Lockyer suing what he calls “the Big Six” - GM, FoMoCo, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Nissan North America and Honda North America - for “contribut[ing] significantly to global warming, harm[ing] the resources, infrastructure and environmental health of California, and cost[ing] the state millions of dollars to address current and future effects.”

Pundits jumped on the news immediately, calling it the next Big Tobacco lawsuit. But I think that Lockyer, if he’s so inclined to believe his state’s fascination with wheeled transport is doing it some harm, could have found a better target.

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So far we have learned that China is going to lose 1/3 of it’s men in a couple of years due to smoking, that the US is not as chartruse as we would like it to be and that no one lives in Greenland. So in installation #2 of why smoking is good I am going to show you a little movie. Please dim the lights and enjoy why smoking is good pt2.

NOTE: I just want to sketch out some potentially abhorrent ideas I had. I am quite aware of the gaping logical holes that follow. Consider this fodder for discussion rather than an attempt to create a cohesive argument.

There are three basic justifications or rationalizations for state punishment: incapacitation, rehabilitation, and deterrence. They are all generally considered to be acceptable to some degree depending on your philosophical disposition. There is a fourth justification that underlies the other three and is the most convincing for the atheist.

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If you read my last article about Harry Knowles of aintitcool.com fame, and how much I hate his fat ass then you might be surprised to read that I now have an even deeper loathing for this walking pumpkin. You’re probably asking yourself, how could you hate that blithering sack of fat any more, well after his latest movie review you’ll see why. In his review of the Black Dahlia he starts it off with this gem, “I love Brian De Palma films. Why? Because Brian De Palma makes movies that speak to my penis. They make me hard.�

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Jason pointed out the potential for embarassment that could be caused when you confuse words that have two or more meanings. Sometimes two words will be different but very similar and one might accidently use the one when they mean the other. This also causes great shame. A common example, which every schoolchild knows, concerns the words Phar Lap and Pharlapsicus.

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Recently after much speculation Fisher-Price has unveiled T.M.X. Elmo. The T stands for Tickle, the M for Me and the X is for XTREME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right this ain’t your daddy’s Tickle Me Elmo! Oh No, this is new hip edgy Elmo for a new generation. Outta the way grandpa cuz theirs a new Elmo in town and this time he’s XTREME. You might be asking yourself what exactly makes this Tickle Me Elmo so XTREME? Well I’ve been able to get my hands on some secret documents that exactly outline his XTREMENESS!!!!!

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