Current Affairs

A French TV experiment has duplicated the findings of psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in the 1960s demonstrated that, when encouraged by an authority figure, people would willing administer lethally dangerous electic shocks to hapless victims. In the French version, people didn't even need that -- a shouting TV audience merely had to egg them on:

I think making love with Michelle McGee, the woman with whom Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock, would be like having an LSD flashback.

I had wondered whether Gov. Mitch Daniels was going to show himself more business-friendly or more Second Amendment-friendly regarding HEA 1065, the legislation allowing employees to keep guns in their locked cars at work. Now we know. He signed the bill today and made a few remarks about it. His statements are in an-email, so I'll just cut and paste the whole thing:

Technology benefiting the employee; the company, not so much:

It used to be if you wanted to catch the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, you would need to come down with the "basketball flu" or take an extended lunch hour.

From Hot Air, no elaboration needed.

From Salon, via Reason, a report on a wave of "pretentious, talentless, ironic, beard-wearing 'artists' charing their stupid and expensive began diets to the taxpayer."

She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away."...

I've disagreed with Kathleen Parker a few times in the last year, but it's hard to argue with this:

Deem and pass -- or sneak and sprint -- may be legal, but is it right?

It's right only if your goal is to beat a deadline and pass something -- anything -- regardless of how imperfect the result. Even the majority of Americans who oppose the bill don't know the half of it, because almost no one does.

At least there's one day a year when I don't mind going green.

Brave new world:

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

A choice I could live without:

Pat-down or body scan? Travelers, it's now your call.