Bed Sheet Insanity

California is in dire straits. The budget is completely out of control. It's going straight down an s-hole, if you will. And with things so freaking bad, what does the state legislature do? They debate whether or not to make it a law that hotels must use fitted sheets. I kid you not. Read on!



According to the lovely LA Times, the law proposal "is intended to address back injuries sustained by hotel housekeepers" And they think they're going to do that by only using fitted sheets in hotel rooms? Clearly, whoever wrote this bill (Kevin De Leon (D-umbass-Los Angeles), I'm talking to you) has never made a bed. Even with a fitted sheet, you still have to lift up the mattress to tuck that little corner thing underneath. So what in the hell good is it going to do to only have fitted sheets?! On top of that, you need to have at least one flat sheet on a bed, don't you?! I'm not going to sleep with a fitted sheet on top of me. That just won't work!


But this is seriously going on. The state of California wants to make it a law that you have to use a certain kind of a sheet if you're a hotel. What happened to "Land of the Free"? You can't possibly tell me that this is it?! I don't think that there needs to be a freaking law that defines the type of bed sheet that a private business uses! The government is going to tell a privately owned business just exactly how to do its business? If that doesn't chill you to your core (AND annoy the holy crap out of you), then you, my friend, need a helmet. We're so doomed.

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Who's Crying For Me, Argentina?

So, the FAA has kind of been partially shut down for a couple of weeks now. I guess there's some sort of political to-do over unions or something. And while the FAA is still up and running, it's not entirely functional. See, they can't take in taxes (to the tune of about $30 million per day) and so the federal government is losing out on that money. Also, about "...4,000 FAA workers furloughed without pay and another 70,000 construction workers without work", according to the Huffington Post. And the other day, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood scolded Congress for leaving town before they had reauthorized the FAA's funding.

And he's acting like he's flipping out (I have no idea if he actually gives a fat rat's ass or not) because there are upwards of 74,000 people who could lose their jobs. Here's my question: Let's say that my cushy ass job (I'm not saying the FAA jobs are cushy ass. I have no idea. I'm saying that MY job is cushy ass.) was endangered at some point. (And knowing me, it's going to be. It's just a given. I mean, I'm good at what I do. It's just a matter of how long I can hold my tongue with some things. And that's when the fireworks start.) Is there anyone who is going to come to my defense and speak up for me and my job to be saved? I don't think there is!

Does this Ray LaHood guy not understand how many jobs have been lost in the private sector all over this country over the past, say....five years? Private sector jobs are NOT sacred. Why on earth, if a government department is going to shut down or need to be scaled back, that everyone acts like there is some great atrocity that is being committed and everything that can possibly be done to save those people's jobs should be done? How in the hell are we supposed to shrink our government (and our government spending) without some of those folks losing their jobs?! We can't!

I don't know when it started that if you managed to land yourself a government job that you were set for life. That mindset has GOT to change! Do I care if more people will be unemployed? Yes, of course I do. But do I think that having a government job means that it should last forever? I don't think that I do. Again, how are we going to shrink the government (and thus, what the government spends) if no government program OR worker is untouchable?! We're not! There you have it. Doomed, I tell you. And screwed. Screwed and doomed. We're scroomed.

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Which Line Is Fastest?

Have I mentioned lately that we're doomed? Yes? I have? OK, good. I just wanted to make sure. Because we are, you know. Doomed. Completely doomed. Here, allow me to give you just one more indicator of said doomnation. Below is a sign that was at the Target in Emeryville. Behold! Good Lord. Really?! How much contempt does Target have for their customers that they felt the need to put out a sign such as that one? I really don't understand. Were people getting in the longest possible line that there was and then becoming confused when things didn't just zip right along? What is the meaning of this?! Are people really requiring of this sort of direction? For reals?! Are you seeing this, Mr. and Mrs. America and little America, Jr.?! Look what we've become! Doomed. Dooooooommmmed!

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He Shouldn't Be Using Food Stamps

Contrary to my tone and demeanor around here, there are very few people and/or things that I actually hate. Sure, I despise things. Many, many things annoy the holy hell out of me. But I don't hate a lot of things or a lot of people. This Leroy Fick guy in Michigan, though? Yeah, I might hate him.

Here's the story: Leroy won $2 million dollars in a Michigan state lottery game called "Make Me Rich". Interestingly, the show is hosted by Peter Knight who played Peter on "The Brady Bunch". Good to know that he could find work. But back to Mr. Fick. You know. The guy I might hate? Yeah, him.

After Mr. Fick won his two million dollars, it appears that he was given the option of having it paid to him in installments (which usually are spread out over a ridiculous number of years, like 20) or taking the lump sum payment. He took the lump sum payment. Now, while you get a big pile of cash all at once, they do take out a boat load of taxes. It ends up being right around half. So, Mr. Fick still won about a million dollars. He's a millionaire. On food stamps. Wait a minute. He what?

That's right. He still uses food stamps. According to WNEM, there is some sort of idiotic loophole in the federal regulations that are used to determine who is eligible to receive food stamps. For reasons which I cannot even begin to fathom, the system does not take into account your liquid assets when you are applying for aid. Soooo...they don't ask you if you have any money to spend? Thus, if you have money, it doesn't matter because they don't ask you that? What in the hell are the requirements based on? With that low of a standard, I can't imagine that ANYONE would not qualify. Who's idea was THAT?!

He's not breaking any laws by doing what he's doing. He's just a jackass, that's all. A rich jackass who doesn't want to pay for his own food even though he is perfectly able to pay for his own food. And he apparently doesn't care, as he told the reporter guy, "Well, I think it's fair because of the way that they took the taxes." They're supposed to take out taxes, you moron! That's how the system works! Just because they take taxes out doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for your own food when you have the means to do so! He also thinks that using the food stamps instead of his own money is the "prudent" thing to do. Uh, listen here, sir. If you were so worried about being "prudent" with your money, you shouldn't have been spending the pittance that you did have every month on the freaking lottery! Playing the lottery is the absolute opposite of freaking prudent!


The reporter who spoke to this asshat continues to probe into what other services Mr. Fick receives a(s someone who has about a million dollars) and Mr. Fick tells him that he is also on disability. (I could say that he looks like he's fine, but I know that there are things that can be wrong with a person that you can't see. For example, this guy has the moral compass of a jackrabbit in heat. You can't just tell that simply by looking at the guy.) And from his point of view, he thinks that all of this is ethical.

The reporter asks him what he thinks that a single mother with two jobs and working eighty hours a week would think about him and all of his money collecting from social services that are offered.
"If you're going to sit there and try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it. It ain't gonna happen. So you might as well just ship on out. Goodbye." Do you hate him yet? Because I'm pretty sure that I do.

If this guy is able to totally take advantage of this system with as much money as he has, you know that there are others doing it. The country is going freaking broke and yet we have a system that allows for loopholes like this one. The guy drives a convertible Audi and is on freaking food stamps! We are so effing screwed and doomed. We're scroomed.

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Infodots Versus Reality

I'm a big fan of the website Reddit. It's basically just a website for link sharing. The website calls itself "The voice of the Internet". I'm good with that. I realize that it doesn't help in describing it any sort of concrete terms, but since I included the link above, you'll be able to figure it out. I like it because they seem to be able to have interesting and on-topic discussions about a variety of subjects in a rather civilized manner. And oh, the things I have learned. Naturally, first and foremost, I've learned that we really are scroomed.

For example, one Redditor started this topic: "My teacher didn't allow us to say the term "bullet points" because it "promotes violence". Reddit, what are the stupidest rules that your teachers/instructors have made?" (The teacher made them use the made-up moniker "infodots" instead. And you thought the story couldn't get any more ridiculous this early on! That's not a word!) Naturally, I was hoping that it would turn out to be a very short conversation, as I was already in enough pain from smacking my head against the wall after reading about the forbidden bullet points terminology. (For reals? Who are those sort of people? Does the teacher who made that rule realize that the bullet points aren't made out of real bullets? Apparently not. I'm also guessing that the teacher in question didn't realize that the sort of things like the banning of the term "bullet points" is what really "promotes violence". Moron.) There ended up being at least 3,401 comments on this topic. And on the good side, I'm always looking for a reason to drink. Trust me, this gave me more than enough reasons. Let's begin.

Here we have a memory from someone with a clearly psychotic Spanish teacher who may or may not have had some sort of Hispanic 'Easy Rider' complex going on. "My spanish teacher deducted marks if we didn't get on our imaginary spanish motorcycles (hand gestures and everything) when we had to say a word with two r's next to each other (like perro)...Everytime we reved the engine (not quite sure what the correct term is when you put your hand on the handlebars and move your arm in a circular motion), we had to intensify the "rrrr" sound". I understand wanting kids to get the hang of the rolling r, but deducting points if you don't make yourself look like a jackass in class? I'd like to think that I would have failed that class out of sheer refusal to participate in such nonsense.

Reckoning back to a topic I touched on recently, "Children at my kid's school are not allowed to play tag because it would require someone to be "it". Why, yes! Yes, it would require that! It's not like you're going to be "it" forever! And it's not like you would have to do things like that scary-ass clown in that movie of the same name. The people who made up that rule must not understand the game very well. And that really explains a lot.

Even though there isn't any reasoning to any of this, here's one where there really wasn't a reason: "We weren't allowed to say 'brain storm' and had to say 'thought shower' instead. I don't think there was even a reason why." Maybe they were afraid it would offend epileptics? I don't know. Again, I'd like to think that I would have refused to follow that rule out of the sheer principle of the matter. That being I don't like to be told to do things that are patently ridiculous, not to mention completely inane.

Going from ridiculous to absolutely asinine..."A school I went to didn't allow running, you could only skip because some how that was safer. I kid you f***ing not". And as a result, the kids all played a FABULOUS game of flag football.

In the category of "Worst Advice Ever", we have this lovely nugget: "My sophomore High School English teacher instructed us that every essay should begin with "This essay is about..." He insisted that this is the format that college professors would expect." My response is about how completely moronic that is. That is moronic. In conclusion, I responded that it was moronic.

From the "You're Trying Too Hard" file: "We weren't allowed to use "dice" in math class. They were to be called "number cubes". Reason? "Dice" promoted gambling." I can't imagine how someone with such shallow thinking skills is actually a math teacher. Call them what you want, they are what they are. What part of that is confusing to that person?!

"At my school, they allowed us to play dodgeball, but instead of calling it dodgeball, we had to call it "happy fun ball". After a year, we weren't allowed to have the word ball in it. We had to refer to it as "happy fun time". This was high school." This makes me want to cry. Oh, wait a minute. There appears to be a slight salty discharge emanating from my tear ducts. I appear to be weeping for humanity. (I'm going to try to resist asking the question of why they were playing dodgeball in high school. It's really hard. That's what she said.)

And finally, mainly because all of this has driven me to drink (not that I was objecting): "My teacher told us not to use the term "white-out" because it could be deemed racist. We were instead told to use the term "correction paste". You have got to be dry shaving me! It's not even spelled the same! Idiocy has seeped over into phonetics?! Is that what you're telling me? Just because something is white doesn't mean that it is racist! There are lots of white things that are not racist!

In conclusion, I'd just like to reiterate that the inmates are running the asylum and we are all scroomed. Thank you and where's my drink?

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Those Aren't Cuts!

Remember that budget deal that all of those weasels in Congress waited until the very last freaking minute to agree upon? Yeah, that's the one. And remember how they were all smiles afterward and acted like they had accomplished something monumental? (I know that whenever they do nothing they think it's monumental, but this time they were really pleased with their own act.) And then after it was all said and done we were told that they managed to cut about $38 billion dollars? Remember? Of course you do! It was only a couple of days ago for cryin' out loud. It turns out that the $38 billion dollars that they claim to be cutting isn't anywhere close to what they actually cut. No, in fact, the amount that they actually cut is so ridiculous that it seems damn near pointless to cut it at all. It really is a "Why bother?" scenario.

This new but not surprising information comes to us from the fine folks over there at The Washington Post. They learned from the Congressional Budget Office that "A federal budget compromise that was hailed as historic for proposing to cut about $38 billion would reduce federal spending by only $352 million this fiscal year, less than 1 percent of the bill’s advertised amount". Now look, I'm not one to be someone to claim "Oh, that's just a drop in the bucket." But, come on! $352 million?! Less than one freaking percent?! How did this happen? I'll tell you how this happened. It happened in part because "...$13 billion to $18 billion of the cuts involve money that existed only on paper and was unlikely to be tapped in the next decade." Oh, good! They're trying to fix our impending fiscal doom with accounting tricks. Next up? Fun house mirrors! And they act so freaking proud of themselves.

Here's the best part. Even though those $352 million in cuts will happen, for some reason, no one felt like factoring in "emergency" money for military action. You know. Like if we end up in Libya or something like that. (Yeah, like that's really going to happen. Wait. Didn't we....? Yeah. We did. Hmm. Disregard that statement.) Now, I don't know why they wouldn't factor those things in. If I'm doing a household budget and I have emergency money that I have spent or am spending, I'm going to have to factor in that it's going to get used. There's no way around that. You can call it whatever you want, but you still have to count it. But I'm guessing that the reason that they didn't want to count it when they were forming the budget out of snake oil is because if they did then "...the overall spending for this fiscal year may actually increase, by more than $3 billion." Oh, for cryin' out loud!

Their little accounting tricks don't end there. "A Washington Post analysis of the 459-page budget revealed at least 98 cases in which Congress took back unused IOUs and called it a cut." HOW is that a cut? Don't answer that. There's more. "When the Capitol Visitor Center was under construction, lawmakers allotted $621 million to pay for it. The project wound up costing less than $600 million. In the compromise budget, lawmakers took back $15 million of the unused budget authority." Well, I should hope that they took it back! They didn't USE IT!

I'm making myself crazy here. This is insane. Instead of saving any money at all, Congress has very well (and probably very likely) passed a budget that is going to be costing the country MORE money. And people wonder why folks get so up in arms about spending! It's because it is out of control. President Barry said the other day that the greatest threat to our national security was our debt. And if he truly believes that and he ends up signing this budget, then we are so scroomed that there's not even any point. If both sides of Congress are going to flat out lie to us, it's over. And both sides, by saying that this budget cuts $38 billion dollars, are lying to us. Thus, it's over. We're scroomed. Goodbye, sweet America.

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The School Knows Better Than You Do

Goodbye, sweet America. Can't figure out what to feed your own child? Are you addled brained of a parent that you're going to need someone else to decide what you child should and should not eat? Well, if you answered yes to those two questions AND if you have a child and they are currently attending (or going to attend) Little Village Academy in Chicago, then you are in luck! That's right. That's because the Little Village Academy in Chicago has decided that you have no idea how to feed your kid properly and therefore they have banned "...students from bringing lunches from home altogether."

That's right. It doesn't matter if you want to pack your kid's lunch. If your child attends Little Village Academy, you can't. According to the Chicago Tribune, "...students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria." NOT ALLOWED to pack lunches from home. In the land of the free. All right then. How...how...why is this? Well, because the school knows better than you, silly.

The principal, a one Elsa Carmona, explained that "...her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices." By telling folks how to parent. By telling them that they CANNOT choose what their own child eats. By taking away their freedom to raise their child how they see fit. All right then. This is asinine. Oh, and in case you were wondering what sort of meal they will be providing the children with for their own protection, please see the photo below. It is alleged that it is some sort of "an enchilada dish". Behold!

Oh, man. Kid, I feel for ya. Ms. Carmona claims that she created this policy six years ago. The reasoning? She saw students bringing "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" on field trips for lunch. Oh, no! Flaming hot chips! Soda?! The madness! She goes on to say that "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school." Right. Because parents are completely incapable of packing a nutritious lunch for their children to eat. Those poor dumb, dumb parents. She also says that "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception." Wait. She what?

She would make an exception for kids with allergies or some sort of medical issue? You mean, the school doesn't know how to handle things like that better than the parents do? Why not? They seem to know what's best for every other kid out there when it comes to feeding them. Why can't they execute that same sort of care for the ones that really need some help? If you answered because this is an asinine policy to begin with, please come forward and claim your prize.

And in case you were wondering who pays for all of this, let us go to the part of the article that really aggravates me. It explains that "Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch." I see. Soooo...let me get this straight. By doing this, someone actually makes money. By taking away the freedom to choose, someone is profiting off of it. Huh. And the money that someone makes comes from where again? The federal government, was it? Yeah, OK. And that money comes from where again? OH. That's right. ME!

How many times do I have to point out to morons that this stuff happens ALL THE TIME. This isn't a "free" program. It's paid for by the taxpayers! Federal taxpayers! When did it become everyone else's job to feed someone else's kid?! I didn't sign up for that! I can think of about a hundred different ways that I would like my federal tax dollars to be used and not one of them involves feeding school children in Chicago! (And most of them don't include the many, many ways our tax dollars are already being pissed away, but I digress.)

Fortunately, there are some voices of reason with this issue. A one J. Justin Wilson, who is a senior researcher at the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom, which is partially funded by the food industry, said "This is such a fundamental infringement on parental responsibility." Do you think?! Oh, sorry about that. He seems to be on my side. Never mind. I meant, yeah! It's an infringement. (I'm going to have to remember that phrase. Fundamental infringement. It sounds a little more responsible than "moronic" or "asinine".) He also asks the sadly rhetorical question of "Would the school balk if the parent wanted to prepare a healthier meal?" Hard to say, being as how they've banned lunches from home altogether, but I'd still like to know their answer.

Another voice of reason on this topic seems to come from a one Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach who is an "education policy professor" (whatever that is). She commented on the issue of the cost of requiring students to eat a school lunch at the cost of $2.25 a day. "We don't spend anywhere close to that on my son's daily intake of a sandwich (lovingly cut into the shape of a Star Wars ship), Goldfish crackers and milk". That lady is awesome. How cool of a mom is she? I want to know what Star Wars ship. I'm guessing the Millennium Falcon. Her son probably doesn't like crusts, so she cuts them off in a cutesy way. I like her. She's fun, she's reasonable and she's right. $2.25 a day for a school lunch? You can definitely bring a lunch from home for considerably less.

And while not all schools in the Chicago area have implemented this policy that you and I pay for (funny, I don't feel like I live in Chicago), others have come up with their own equally ridiculous policies. Take the Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side. Over there you can bring a lunch to school, but the school "officials" will "...confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt. (They often are returned after school.)" Right. That makes perfect sense. Because the kid won't eat it after school. Noooo. If you're not eating it at school, it takes all of the fun out of it! But do you know why they do it? If you ask Principal Rebecca Stinson she'll tell you that "...most parents expect that the school will look out for their children."

If that last quote doesn't horrify you to your bones, then I can't help you here. Sure, I expect schools to "look out" for children when the children are there. But when I think of being "looked out" for, I think of the school keeping the children safe...and not safe from a Cheeto! Next thing you know, they're going to want to tell the kids what to wear, what doctor to go to, etc. And what, exactly, happens on the weekends when the school isn't around to guide these completely soft-headed parents in raising their children? What are they going to do? How will they know what to choose? Where is the school when we need it?! Holy crap. I think I made myself sick typing these last few lines. Goodbye, sweet America. With policies like the ones described here, we are not only doomed, we are screwed. We are so scroomed.

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Not Intended To Be Factual

Here's a new one. Man, I always hate it when I say that. Only because it means that something more ridiculous than previously thought has occurred. It's almost never really good. And I'd guess that probably only about half of the time it's amusing. And this instance follows those guidelines. Not really good and kind of amusing. But only amusing in the way that is so ridiculous that you don't know what else to think.

Let's take a look at some of the profound statements of a one Senator Jon Kyl (R-eally? Arizona.) Senator Kyl is the Senate Minority Whip. I don't know what that is and I don't think that I care. If I had to make an assumption, I'd probably guess it has something to do with Miracle Whip, but I don't know what. Regardless, Senator Kyl had the floor on Friday during the whole budget showdown/will the government shut down debacle of 2011. He said that abortion was “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” And for the record, really only about three percent of Planned Parenthood's work has to do with abortion. There's a big difference between almost all and almost none. But that's OK. It wasn't supposed to be factual. Wait. What?

Correct. It wasn't meant to be factual. What was it meant to be? According to the thinking folks over at Think Progress, "...CNN anchor TJ Holmes relayed a statement from Kyl’s office walking back the comment". How do you walk something like that back? It's so far out of the gate, isn't it going to be impossible to walk back? Not if you're a moron, apparently, Kyl's office explained that "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions." But....but...he said....what...whatis going on here?!

His remark was not intended to be a factual statement? Why in the hell not?! Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing when you're making an argument for your side? Give your basis in facts?! No? When did that change? Oh, that's right. IT DIDN'T. You can't just say something that is totally false and then pull a Pee Wee Herman on everyone and say, "I meant to do that!" That's not how this works!

I certainly hope that this doesn't become some sort of trend. I hope that all of these clueless politicians don't just start blowing alleged facts out of their arse and then blow over it when they're confronted on their falsehoods by saying that it wasn't supposed to be the truth and that it was supposed to illustrate a point. Oh, believe me. Senator Kyl made a point all right. He made the point that he's clearly not fit for the office that he holds. He made the point that he'll say whatever he needs to in order to sway people whichever way he wants to. He made the point that he isn't about the truth, he's just about what he wants. I can't get behind that. We're just doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

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Jingle All The Way

I know that we live in an overly litigious society. And I know that it is completely out of hand. Both of these facts I am well aware of. So why am I so surprised when I see such a ridiculous result of the accumulation of those two things?

I wish I had the actual video/commercial to post here, but I can't find it online, so you're just going to have to rely on my stellar gift of colorful storytelling in order to understand what it was that I saw tonight. Once you understand that, you'll definitely understand why it was so ridiculous. The incident in question was a commercial for Degree antiperspirant or deodorant. One of those. Maybe both. It was definitely Degree, though. The premise of the commercial was simple. They had a bunchy of women (it's apparently a female under arm remedy) wear what was essentially a bracelet of jingle bells. (They used the term 'jingle bells'. Not me. Bells would have sufficed for me. We're not at the North Pole.) The idea was to get the women to realize how much they moved around all day long. Apparently, they would have had no idea of that were it not for the jingle bells making noise on their wrists.

Listen, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, but if you don't realize that you're moving all over the place all of the live long day, you are incredibly unaware of yourself. Might I suggest a class? Do you really need jingle bells on your wrists like you're some sort of wayward feline to point out that you have a busy day and are constantly moving? Personally, I don't. But the morons at Degree think that we do. And they think that some of the things that we do when we're going about our day are things like catching cabs, roller blading and folding laundry. (OK, she was fluffing a towel over a balcony, but I think that it was supposed to represent folding laundry.) The point here is that the whole commercial was ridiculous.

But here's the kicker: As they start to show their jingle bell wearer montage, a little footnote/caption thing pops up at the bottom of the screen. Guess what it said. Just guess. Here, I'll help you and give you some clues. People roller blading...getting in a cab...fluffing a towel...possibly doing some laundry...come on! You see the connection, right?! No? Do I have to spell it out for you? Fine. At the bottom of the screen it said (wait for it): Do not attempt.

::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

Are you freaking kidding me? Do not attempt...to fold a towel? I don't get it. Are the Degree people so afraid of being sued that they need to put that sort of a disclaimer on the advertising for their product, lest some crazy woman out there decide to get in a cab one day after seeing it on TV? Do not attempt?! Do not attempt every day actions? No one was on fire or anything. Do not attempt what?! To understand the commercial? Done! We are so freaking doomed. Doomed!

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We're Scientifically Doomed

I came across an article over yonder at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that was titled "Why does U.S. fail in science education?" My question after reading that headline was "Why does the U.S. not only fail in science education, but also in proper grammar?" But I digress. Back to science. I really find the scales that they use to be completely meaningless, as they tend to categorize students as being 'proficient' or not. The problem with that is that in order to qualify as 'proficient' one usually has to get a minimum of around 60%-65% of the material correct. Sixty or sixty-five percent of anything is not proficient. It's barely half. And on most grading scales, it's all but failing. So I like it better when I am provided with how many people could actually answer the questions correctly. But let me be clear. I like the format better, not the results.

And that's what the article over at the Post-Gazette provides us with. They give us the percentage of people who could correctly answer some of the science questions. The results are so dismally low that I really want to know what people answered instead of the correct answers, as the correct answers seem to be pretty easy to noodle through. Let's take a look at some of them.

Fourteen percent of test takers thought that sound travels faster than light. OK, that's a solid 86 percent getting it right. I'm good with that. What I'm less good with is that 33 people disagree with the fact that Earth goes around the sun once a year. What the hell do think happens? Do they think it goes around more than once a year? Less than once a year? Do they think that the sun goes around Earth? There aren't a lot of choices that would make sense. I don't get it.

Here's one of the more appalling ones: 41 percent of people disagree with the statement that astrology is not at all scientific. Almost half. Geez. Just because stars are involved, it does not mean that it is scientific. It's a load of crap. I realize that there are plenty of people out there who really believe in this load of crap. I also realize that there are plenty of people out there who really like this sort of crap. That's all just fine. You can believe in it. You can even like it. But that doesn't change the fact that it is not scientific. No matter how much you like it.

And this one is as troubling as it is mystifying. 49 percent of people think that ordinary tomatoes do not have genes, but genetically modified tomatoes do. This just makes my head hurt to even think about. Where do those dimwits think that the genes to modify the tomatoes come from? The gene store? Even if you don't know squat about genetics specifically, shouldn't you be able to noodle this one through? Apparently not.

Do I take any consolation that, while in 1988 only about 10% of adult Americans were rated to be 'scientifically literate', in 2008 that number had risen to around 28%? No. Not really. 28% percent is abysmal. And who even knows what that means, anyway? We're just doomed, that's all. Simply doomed.

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Bureaucracy At Its Finest

I, like the pelicans, enjoyed the Gulf Coast while it was not so oily. You know, back in the day. Like, March. But I have the feeling that those days are completely gone. It's become clear to me that it is no longer a matter of when the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster will be cleaned up, but it's a matter of IF it will EVER be cleaned up. Actually, I'll take that a step further. It's now a matter of anyone will be ALLOWED to ATTEMPT to clean it up. And if the federal government is going to have much more to do with it, the answer will be a resounding no.

Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Tell me if this does not make you just want to pound your head upside a wall and not stop until you lose consciousness and/or at least a pint of cranial fluids. According to something called the Associated Content and the more familiar ABC News, there really doesn't seem to be anyone in charge of anything. That's why Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana (who seems to act like a distant relative of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock on occasion) has spent the last ten days trying to get a bunch of barges out into the gulf so that they can begin sucking up some of the bazillion-gazillion gallons of oil that is ruining the ocean. He finally got his barges. He got sixteen barges. And they got right to work sucking up that oil. That is, until the US Coast Guard shut them down.

So here we have something finally being done and being effective in the way that that oil that shouldn't be in the ocean was being removed from the ocean by these barges. OK? That's a good thing, right? Naturally, with some progress (albeit a small amount of progress) being made, there had to be a pretty good reason for the Coast Guard to halt the work of these barges and send them back to shore, right? Well, that's what you'd think. But in this ridiculous, utopian world that people are trying to create, that's not exactly what happened here. No, the barges were ordered to stop sucking up the oil and to return to shore so that the Coast Guard could make sure that the barges all had fire extinguishers and life jackets aboard. Um, wait. What the what?!

You have got to be dry shaving me! Fire extinguishers?! Oh, right. Because if there had been fire extinguishers aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded, a fire extinguisher would have been key! And life jackets?! Really? They're BARGES. THOSE are the reasons why you're having those sixteen barges return to shore? Where they would then SIT for another 24 hours?! What in the world is wrong with you people?!

Tell me this: Could the Coast Guard have not sent someone out to those barges to poke their nose around while the barge was at sea and was actively vacuuming up oil to do their little fire extinguisher count? Why did it take over 24 hours to inspect 16 barges? Couldn't they have just checked with whoever made the barges or whatever and asked them how many fire extinguishers and life jackets were provided for each vessel? Oh, well, sure. They could have done that. But apparently, they had trouble finding the barge making folks. So instead of having a barge out at sea without enough fire extinguishers, they decided to have all of the barges stop what they were doing, return to shore and sit there while the oil continues to wreak havoc on the once beautiful and once wonderful ocean.

This could possibly be the stupidest thing I have ever heard. And it's a perfect example of how the perceived necessity of over-regulation is going to be the downfall of this country. It's already proving itself to be the downfall of the Gulf Coast environment. Give it time. It will make its way to the rest of the land. I guarantee it.

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