Back on the Board!

It's embarrassing that Sony caved so quickly, especially since Team America already exists.  It obviously would have been terrible if the people threatening violence successfully followed through on their threats, but whatever happened to standing up in the face of terrorism?  Also, it's North Korea - are we really afraid of them?

Virginia is for lawbreakers.

Get your carnitas while you can.

The cable cartel is slowly but surely falling apart.

Finally, Californians don't have to live like peasants anymore.  Of course, PETA isn't taking the new developments very well...

Responses:

1. Some of the reasons they used seem pretty suspect to me.  It's unclear to me why I'd want to visit Canberra when the appeal is "there's far less to do here than everywhere else in Australia!"  Or Myanmar because "we're not shooting tourists on site anymore!"

2. Good for potatoes.  Bad for still having few answers in the face of an obesity crisis.

3. When I read about the circumstances of the torture memo, I more or less disregarded it as political posturing.

4. I wonder if Facebook breeds neuroticism... Also, resistance syndrome is interesting.  What do you do about it?

5. This seems like a lot of work.  But congratulations on your forthcoming savings!

6. The bull is so iconic - I thought it had been around for far longer.

7. It's a nice story, but I need more information.  How many 4-year-olds know 1) how to operate a telephone and 2) that 911 calls for help?  That number is probably higher than we're led to believe by this story.  It's nice that the kid did it, but if he just sat there and cried the whole time while his grandmother died, I feel like we'd be wondering what was wrong with him.

8. I'll be making that really soon.

9. You should send this link to Dave Chappelle.  (See also here.)

10. My new rule is that at least 10 years should elapse between the debut of a new diet fad and a completed evaluation of its worth.  In other words, ask me again in 2025.

R2R:

2. It's somewhat applicable to me (though my debt amount is higher).  And yes, the stock market could turn, but the variable rates on my loans could also skyrocket.  You make investment decisions based on the information you know now.  That said, given that I owe so much, I'm probably just going to keep paying them down - having a monthly minimum payment of $1,757 limits one's options.

R2R2R:

2. I'm just going to leave this here.  But I'm also going to update bear's insurance policy in case he has to go here...

4. What I mean is that people take pictures and record events more readily now compared to previous generations, so we are already moving in that direction.  Even I (a social media grouch and memory snob) have a better hard record of my life now than, say, my mom when she was my age.

R2R2R2R2R2R2R2R:

Agreed.  But even if we were to stipulate a such thing as a rape culture and its existence at UVA (or any other school), it's unclear to me how the proposed solutions help to diminish the culture.  It is clear to me, however, how the promulgation of a belief in a rape culture, along with the insistence that we believe people like Jackie regardless of actual facts (or people like Liz Seccurro regardless of the irrelevance of our belief), says more about these feminists than it does about culture.

B