What would you do for $100,000?

So I was reading Least I Could Do today, and it actually made me think about a few things…

1) It is, in fact, a part of some people’s jobs to extract semen from animals.
2) It’s legal to pay people to extract semen from animals.
3) It’s not legal to pay people to extract semen from yourself.
4) Because it’s not legal to pay for sex.
5) But sex with animals is also illegal.

So: What makes an act sexual? Would you suddenly be in danger of going to jail simply for enjoying extracting semen from the pig? What if you extracted semen from a pig while naked or dressed in lingerie? Would it be OK to pay somebody to extract semen from a human so long as they did it while wearing work clothes and as long as they didn’t enjoy it?

Maybe we should just do away with moralistic legislature and let people do whatever they are willing to do for $100,000.

News flash: dogs get jealous

Dogs appear to experience a range of complex, unpleasant emotions such as jealousy and pride, scientists have discovered.

Duh. Anybody who’s ever owned more than one dog at a time could tell you they experience jealousy. I’ve got one who definitely exhibits pride and dignity. Who pays scientists to “discover” things that common people already know?

“We are learning that dogs, horses, and perhaps many other species are
far more emotionally complex than we ever realized,” Paul Morris, a
psychologist at the University of Portsmouth who studies animal
emotions, told The Sunday Times.

This tells us more about human arrogance than about the animals. Our desire to be inherently different and better than the other species on this planet blinds us to what really is rather obvious. Animals have feelings too.

Scientists noted that dogs hate to see their owners being affectionate
to other dogs and can suffer if a new baby or partner arrives on the
scene.

Seriously. Where do I get a cushy job like this? I could be a fucking brilliant scientist if all I have to do is point out the obvious.

Google Maps: Memory hog?

I have 3GB of RAM installed and 1GB of swap space allocated. I should never even use any of that swap, much less all of it. In fact, I rarely exceed 1GB of memory usage unless I’m playing a video game (while leaving all my other apps open). So I was a bit surprised today to look at my htop and see that I’m using 1282 MB of RAM and 839 MB of swap. Yikes! In a moment of pseudo-panic, I started closing all my apps down that I thought might be hogs. First Twhirl, then Kopete, Amarok, Ktorrent, Konversation. No noticable change. Killed Firefox, which I know is usually the biggest memory hog short of the games. Still not budging. So then I did the smart thing (when all else fails…) and sorted my htop process list by memory usage. Just one process is the problem:

/usr/bin/X -br -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-g8tCHi

This arcane little beasty is using 1094 MB res (1993 MB virt) and 0.0% CPU. So now my question is: WTF? What is this, why is it sucking memory? Why am I using swap at all when my RAM is only about 1/3 full? Why? Time to hit Google…
Disappointingly, it seems this bug was reported a long time ago and called “not a bug”. Also found a read-only thread about people having a problem. Digging deeper, I found more bug reports. Seems to be an issue with browsers looking at Google Maps? Will have to test that out.

Social poaching?

when a friend or acquaintance mines your social network, without permission, for friends or romantic partners

I’m sorry. Permission? I do not need your permission to talk to the people you know. I do not need your permission to become friends with people you know. I don’t even need your permission to have sex with or become romantically involved with the people you know. You don’t own them, and you don’t own me.

Poaching can lead to hurt feelings and broken friendships, says [Jan Yager, Ph.D.]. Some people, she adds, even go so far as to “intentionally
avoid introducing their friends to each other because they like to keep
their relationships separate.”

Again… if you think you need to keep the people you know away from each other, you are seriously fucked up. Seriously. You have problems, and those problems are not “social poaching”. Those problems are insecurity and an insane amount of needing to be in control. Grow the hell up. Social poaching. I think Jan Yager is just trying to drum up some business for herself.

You’ve got to be shitting me…

Robert Jordan wanted to become a police officer. He applied to the New London, Connecticut police force. They administered an I.Q. test to Mr. Jordan. Based on the score of his I.Q. test, the police force denied his application. So far, so good, right? The problem being that he didn’t score too low. He scored too high. Yes, you heard me correctly. He’s too smart to be a cop (despite wanting to be one).

Mr. Jordan filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination. The court ruled that the police force is within their rights to only accept stupid people so long as the test is applied equally to all races and genders. I can accept that it isn’t discrimination under the guidelines of current law, but… WTF?!? What possible reason could the city have for refusing to let smart people be cops?

footnote: It’s curious that this comes out in the July 20 NYT with a small note under the headline that says “published September 9, 1999″. Slow news day?

Say again?

I got two e-mails at work after I left for the day on Friday. I’ll reprint just the first sentence of each e-mail:

@4:54 PM

Today we and <car company> Financial shared plans with our dealers to take advantage of developing trends in the economy and the car-buying environment by enhancing retail financing incentives and moving away from leasing.

@5:22 PM

HUGE Lease Deals Are Back-Only 6 Days to Deal!!!

Slap a warning label on the entire planet and be done with it

New warning label of the day:
Attention stupid people: All animals are alive, and therefore capable of hosting harmful viruses.
Unfortunately, there’s a lawsuit out there, as I type this, against PetSmart based on the lack of this warning label. Three people have allegedly died because they allegedly received organ donations from a woman who allegedly contracted a virus from an alleged hamster that was allegedly purchased at PetSmart. Let’s examine this:

1. You’re lucky to receive an organ that you could not otherwise live without.
2. If anybody is responsible for ensuring the organ is virus-free, it’s the hospital.
3. Viruses are everywhere. You run the risk of contracting a virus if you ever come into contact with another mammal. Possibly even if you don’t.
4. The hamster in question may not have even been infected at the time of purchase.

It’s always a tragedy when a person dies, but that does not mean there’s always somebody to blame, or that the family (and its shady lawyer) deserves some sort of cash payout. How in the hell can anybody expect PetSmart to give money to the family of a man who died without ever actually shopping at PetSmart? (“If you had put a warning label on that pet cage, we’d have known better than to accept an organ donation from anybody who ever owned a hamster!”…WTF?)

Now what was I doing?

A lot of people, myself included, have joked that they’d “forget my head if it wasn’t attached.” Few people, however, can claim to be completely serious when they say that. There is, however, a man in Germany who could say it with a straight face, and I’d believe it. The reason for that is, he forgot his car. At a gas station. After paying to fill it up. He just walked home and left the car at the pump. Now that is absent-minded.

Faith based innocence?

Headline news on CNN (this is a freaking headline story?) is that Martina Hingis is retiring amid the accusation that she tested positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. She is quoted as saying, “I believe that I am absolutely 100 percent innocent”.

Back that up a second. You believe you are innocent? You don’t know? Did you forget whether or not you coked up during that particular time frame, or what? I mean, if you accuse me of something, I will either say I am innocent, or (if I can’t say it with a straight face) I’ll avoid answering the accusation at all. Belief is for things you don’t know. People believe in god, or that they’ll win the lottery some day, or that OJ did it. When it comes to yourself and some rather significant illegal act, you bloody well better be certain. Belief doesn’t cut it.

Voter integrity

Lawmakers are “concerned” about voter integrity, yet display none of it themselves. This video is simultaneously hilarious and infuriating, and every one of these sonsabitches should be thrown in jail. Unfortunately, they both make and (refuse to) enforce the rules…