Current events

If you think everyone around you is an idiot, you may be a jerk -- the "essence of jerkitude":

A day late, but happy 70th anniversary for the GI Bill:

Let's start the week with a soft, non-controversial suggestion. News organizations grant women who say they were raped anonymity because being a rape victim is so shameful the woman's life would be ruined forever if her name were known. So, if the crime is that bad, why don't we withhold the name of the accused until it's dtermined whether he's actually guilty or not?

My apologies for what will be sporadic posting over the next few days. We're going live with a new front-end system this week, and that's taking up most of our time. As long as you're here, check out this paranoid excursion into outer space: "Bid to talk to aliens could doom us all: How the quest to find ET could be insanely risky":

Good Lord, something new we have to worry about -- not turning our dogs into welfare-dependent members of the permanent canine underclass:

I think this is about right -- we have to keep fighting the war on terror, but here, not overseas:

My God, how hideous:

We needed Gallup to tell us this?

The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor psychological well-being. About one in five Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression -- almost double the rate among those who have been unemployed for five weeks or less.

I will leave it to those of you in the liberal/progressive camp to point out the wackiest comments from the right -- go for it, fair game. But It's part of my calling to seek out the looniest from the left. And some days I don't even have to look that hard. Today, there was both this:

I know I've called attention to a lot of frivolous research here, but this just may be the silliest study yet:

People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.