The antidote for seriousness

Some people are wondering why I suddenly got on my political kick. It's pretty simple really, if I don't have a crapload of really amusing links I come up with content on my own. Mainly, I have noticed that if I don't have a planned out portion for the topical part of the daily blogging, I can just start writing and stuff comes out. Two days ago, I was just a little ticked anyway because of the lack of any good political heroes and started bitching. I consider it part of the personality I'm trying to let filter through. Rarely do I have a chance to talk about politics in my "real life" so why not try to figure it out here? Everyone should do it, I think. Trying to articulate your politics is the best way to reconcile it in your mind. And I'll probably do it again. That being said, this is a double bloggage, considering that I likely won't blog tomorrow. Enjoy.

Maggie and I and Relffits are going camping this weekend at this campground. We're canoeing in to a boat-in site on Beers lake, and let me tell you, I'm going to have a few. (Beers, that is.) We'll likely be several miles away from the nearest human, and it should be an awesome time. Our canoe is designed for trips, so our excess capacity means we can bring just about anything we want, from a big cooler to plenty of food to camp chairs to… well, anything we want, more or less. I'm stoked. Jeff is also going into the great outdoors. He's taking a 17 mile hike to go check out some grey whales on the Washington coast. Pretty nifty, eh? We were comparing notes earlier and I started thinking about how lucky we are to get to do all these great recreational activities. Minnesota is a really neat place for outdoor activities, especially if you can survive seven months of cold. The people here are so fanatical about getting out and enjoying the warm weather. Starting this time of year, there are massive lineups of cars going north out of the Twin Cities every Friday. It's a well known fact that the American Dream, Minnesota version is to have a cabin up north on a lake to be able to retreat to. Preferably, one gets their cabin up north early as a retirement investment, and then after retirement you sell your city house and just go live up there. That is, unless you run off to Arizona during the winter (they call them Snowbirds) and come back during the summer. Check out some of these homes and cabins that are for sale. You can also buy an entire 100 acre island. Ahhh, feeling covetous.

Politics update

Of course I'm not leaving without updating my political diatribe. Upon further reading, I was disappointed I didn't provide any warrants to my claim that corporate welfare was out of control. Well, let me try. Arianna Huffington, a columnist that I generally agree with, outlined the hypocrisy of the Republican leadership with the types of corporate pork that is inconsistent with their campaign rhetoric yet consistently gets added into the budget. She's referring to the Dirty Dozen corporate pork list that was released nearly four years ago, yet keeps getting put back in there. Among the examples she cites:

One of the dirtiest of the Dirty Dozen, the ironically named Clean Coal Technology Program, not only survived the chopping block but gets a major funding bump, earmarked to receive $2 billion over the next 10 years to continue to do what it's failed to do so far -- and what environmentalists contend cannot be done: produce coal that burns without releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide and other toxic chemicals.

I'm also a fan of predictions that you can go back and check what happened with them. This Nation article details the amount of money getting poured into politics before last year's election and points out how corrupt it's getting. And if you don't think there's any impact to the lobbying and corporate money being poured into our system, please consider the amount of money at stake when a drug company tries to get a patent extension on a drug, in this case, the popular allergy medicine Claritin.

Pent up links

This is a fascinating link from the New Scientist about how monogamy may have developed. Basically, if we men don't know when the women are fertile, and the women keep having sex with us, then we're more likely to stay with them and not just dump them after our biological duty has been done. An interesting theory, but I can't help but think what the wives of these researchers (yes, they're all men) say when they come home and explain their hypothesis. "Oh, so you're only staying with me because of my ambiguous fertility signals, huh?"

A huge list of mistakes in movies, where movie makers have little problems with basic facts. Such as Highlander, otherwise a fine flick, but it gets several points about its swordwork wrong, including:

You just don't try to hit something with a Japanese sword unless you're capable of cutting right through that thing, and CERTAINLY not the impeccable swords shown here. It's the equivalent of smashing a Stradivarius into a brick wall.

From LMG. Along the same lines, an American film crew is currently filming a movie that features a castle on a snow capped mountain in Newcastle, England. Only problem? Newcastle is the flattest part of the whole country. (Link from Plastic Bag)

Finally, I would have had this done earlier except Jeff kept bombarding me with a bunch of Wrestlecrap links. This one made me just about lose it. I can't believe people get paid to do this stuff.