Some early Christmas presents for you all

A couple thoughts from my First Amendment professor's end-of-semester lecture. Let me know if you find them as thought-provoking as I did:

• How would you change the way you live your life if you knew that you would receive $5,000,000 a year for the rest of your life?
• For the rest of your life, you will never again be as free as you are right now as a college student.
  

I love the way this is described: The Aids Healthcare Foundation is trying to make sure that all films which "demonstrate unprotected exchange of bodily fluids" are required to protect their actors/actresses from AIDS...

This little post at a site called "The League of Ordinary Gentlemen" may describe a little of why I really do enjoy "The Office:"
"Of course, just like most of us don’t have the body types of movie-stars, most of us will also not be millionaires or celebrities. Most of us will only ever achieve moderate financial success. Most of us will only be content with our work. We will dislike many of our bosses and co-workers and will have to learn to live with them as best we can, just like we learn to live with our imperfect families. Are we all just under-achievers then?...Really, all the characters are in one way or another. I think the show is about hope more than it is about despair. It is about how we achieve something good in our lives beyond our work and career."

In this difficult economics times, it's nice to know there's one industry that's still growing: USA Today reports that "Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted."

I've seen videos like this before, but it never hurts to see it again. The American Museum of National History presents: The Universe, as we know it.

If you haven't been reading Ross Douthat regularly, you should. Here's his take on James Cameron's Avatar.

And this has been making the rounds recently, but if you haven't heard what English sounds like to foreign speakers, it's pretty amusing.

Billy the Basketballer?

I watched my sister's 5th-grade basketball game today, and was reminded how much I dislike the strata of the population who is self-absorbed, insular, caught in the rat race, Starbucks-sipping, North Face-wearing, secular, navel-gazing, ego-inflated, and generally thinking that they're God's gift to the world...And don't even get me started on the parents...Also: This self absorbed little snots are going to be genetically engineered for physical perfection in a couple years. It makes me sick. 

Anyway.

I thought this study was funny; I didn't get a chance to finish reading it, but it's interesting to think that I might have more of a chance to ending up a politician or plumber than I do an architect or toothpaste lid screwer-on-er. (Much love, Charlie Bucket.)

Musings, Edition i

I wonder if more people celebrate Halloween than do Christmas?

It's funny how the NYT and the rest of the media/elite is starting to come to the same realizations that good, old-fashioned (Judeo-Christian?) common sense has been telling us all along..."Stop Being Stupid," by Bob Herbert.

Re: The media frenzy over Obama in Hawai'i? Really? Can we please stop now? Is it not enough that you fawned all over him in the campaign that you have to drool over him and his family eating shaved ice, for goodness sake? With the "First Family" obsession and the hyperventilating over the train from Springfield and the Lincoln Bible, I'm giving it a plus or minus 3 years after he leaves office before the cry to engrave him on Mt. Rushmore is raised...Who knew Hillary was up against a hybrid JFK/Lincoln? Let's just start the human sacrifices right now...