Miscellaneous Stew

They Also Ran Good: Michael Dukakis

2011-02-24T19:03:00.000-08:00

This is the second installment of a series on losing presidential candidates of the last 50 years. As always, I will try to indicate [citation needed] when I start making shit up. But I promise nothing.

Michael Dukakis was the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when, in 1988, he won the Democratic nomination for president. He outlasted such political luminaries as Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Al Gore (who will have his own story in these pages despite actually winning the 2000 election) and faced then Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush in a battle for the White House.
Dukakis was the first major party nominee from Massachusetts since John F. Kennedy in 1960; like Kennedy, Dukakis chose a senator from Texas, in this case the estimable Lloyd Bentsen, as his running mate.

Thanks to some minor mistakes by Bush (such as incorrectly remembering the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor and choosing the fundamentally dim Dan Quayle as his running mate, not to mention the embarassment of having been Vice President), Dukakis began the general election campaign as a solid favorite to win the White House.

What Went So Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Delayed Campaign. After exiting the 1988 Democratic Convention with a 17-point lead in the polls, Dukakis saw his lead begin to slip almost immediately. How did this happen? What horrible gaffe did the candidate commit?

In short: he did his job. In the first few weeks after the convention, Dukakis put the campaign on hold while he dealt with the business of governing the state of Massachusetts. This caused a failure to capitalize on the “bump” he had received in the polls during the convention.

But let’s remember one thing: presidential candidates who already hold another office do not relinquish that office (or send back their paychecks) while they seek the Presidency. Dukakis, having at least a few shreds of integrity, decided to show up for work for a few weeks and take care of some shit before becoming mostly unavailable for a few months. This is what you would do, isn’t it? Could you get away with such an absence from the workplace?

“Is it OK if I take a few months off to look for a better job? I’ll give you an address where you can send my paychecks while I’m gone.”

Willie Horton. Like many liberal democrats, Dukakis’ view on the “war on crime” was compassionate, reasoned, and forgiving. The led him not only to commute the sentences of convicted first-degree murderers, but also to let some murderers freely roam the countryside on temporary furloughs. Although the program was not unique, as similar furloughs were granted in other states as well as at the federal level, Bush’s advisors knew a weakness when they saw one. All they needed was a face to put to the issue, and they found one in convict Willie Horton.

Who just happened to be black, which I’m sure the Republicans hadn’t noticed.

Horton, a convicted murderer, had been out on a furlough when he chose to do his bit for democracy by raping a woman and beating up her husband. As governor, Dukakis was obviously responsible for this, despite the fact that the program had been begun in 1972 under a Republican governor, and that it was the Supreme Court of Massachusetts that extended the furlough privilege to first-degree murderers. The only way Dukakis could have prevented the tragedy would have been by tackling Horton outside the prison gates and injecting him with a strong sedative in the back of the head. Failure to do this was to have serious repercussions.

Boston Harbor. One of the more effective commercials run by the Bush campaign was one that called into question the environmental record of Governor Dukakis. It pictured a stinking, fetid body of water, with garbage afloat on the surface, along with a voice-over declaring that under the governor, Boston Harbor had been allowed to deteriorate to an alarming state of filthiness. This would have perhaps been a valid criticism if the images on the screen had actually been scenes of Boston Harbor. But evidently Boston Harbor was not quite filthy enough to score the necessary political points; the republican campaign used some other body of water that they sort of neglected to name.

“Boston Harbor has become polluted beyond belief. Oh, that? Er, well, that’s a sewer. But see, that’s just the point.”

Rape and Murder. Dukakis had repeatedly stated his opposition to the death penalty for many years. Not an unusual stand for a liberal politician, this still left him open for criticism of a particularly low and sensationalist variety (see Willie Horton, above). It was during his second debate with Bush that Dukakis, however passionately he may have held his belief, failed to respond to a question from Bernard Shaw with the proper emotion the voting public felt he should have shown.

The question: If your wife Kitty was raped and murdered, would you still oppose the death penalty?

Dukakis reiterated his stand against capital punishment, but it seemed like the life drained out of him at that moment. What the viewers saw was a man with no soul; a cold, uncaring technocrat without feelings.

It was so devastating, and so pivotal to the election (Dukakis dropped in the polls from 49% to 42% that very night) that the question became a standard one for future presidential debates.

“If Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?”

The Pledge of Allegiance. Another issue that the Bush campaign forced Dukakis to defend himself on repeatedly was the Pledge of Allegiance. Dukakis had vetoed a bill while governor that would have required recitation of the pledge in Massachusetts classrooms. Bush accused Dukakis of lacking in patriotism for this action; obviously, if you don’t force children to salute flags and parrot pledges, it can only mean one thing: you hate America, Mom, and everything that is good in this world.

Your goddamn pie makes me throw up in my nose.

Dukakis, of course, was making the one big mistake that liberals often commit: putting the U.S. Constitution, the basis of all laws in America, ahead of a piece of fabric with pretty colored stripes and stuff. Dukakis’ opposition to requiring the pledge was based on his belief that requiring recitation was unconstitutional.

“Fuck the law. We got us a flag.”

The democratic nominee, in fact, had a Supreme Court decision on his side (West Virginia v. Barnette, 1943) but hey, why would that matter? We’re talking patriotism. Yay, America!

Bobblehead Tank. As a liberal democrat, Dukakis was subject to the usual attacks by the Republicans for being “soft on defense.” This has been going on since roughly 1952 and has resulted in such Democrat-led travesties as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam war. To counter this, Dukakis’ campaign strategists cooked up a wonderful photo opportunity for the candidate; stick him in a badass M-1 tank for a short spin.

Of course human memory is not DVR; details get lost and sometimes images get substituted in the recalling. What you remember is probably more like this:

Somehow, the “soft on defense” issue was not defused by this image.

Election Night

In the end, it was the third consecutive drubbing suffered by the Democrats, and the fifth time in six presidential elections they had been handed a defeat. Although he made some inroads in certain areas of the country compared to prior democratic losers, he was able to win a mere ten states, the District of Columbia, and 111 votes in the Electoral College compared to Bush’s 40 states and 426 electoral votes.

Somewhat bitter over what he perceived as improper campaign conduct by his opponents, unfair scrutiny in the media and the rape and murder of his wife [citation needed], he left politics in 1990 when his term as governor ran out.

“It’s the eyebrows, isn’t it? What, I should look like Gerald Ford?”

Related Articles

They Also Ran Good: George McGovern

Cracked Topic: Richard Nixon

Killed By Fish

The 6 Survival Instincts You’ll Need To Ignore When Disaster Strikes

2010-09-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Over the millennia, we humans have evolved a number of instincts, automatic responses to dangerous situations that, in our primitive past, helped us achieve the laudable goals of survival and reproduction. Problem is, these instincts were never infallible (a slight advantage is enough for natural selection to retain them), they don’t work in every situation, and we have altered our environment much too fast for evolution to keep up. In fact, given the nature of many of our modern disaster scenarios, these instincts can be not only entirely useless but inappropriate and counter-productive.

6. Panic

Ever walk through your kitchen in the dark, see movement out of the corner of your eye and leap three feet in the air before you even had time to think?

You likely know that as the “fight or flight” reflex, an automatic response to danger evolved to dodge possible harm coming your way without the slow, tedious process of consciously assessing a threat and deciding which evasive maneuver is most appropriate. Your action is being controlled by the amygdala; no, that’s not an elite organization that secretly rules the world, it’s a part of your brain that gets a quick, low-resolution version of sensory input before your conscious brain does and has the chemical authority to make you move very fast without thought. Only later do you get a chance to logically evaluate the situation and remember that bears do not live in your kitchen.

Panic results when the threat does not abate and the amygdala remains in control, trying to get you to go somewhere safe. Now. If nowhere seems safe, well, that screeching alarm in your head might just stay on, demanding that you move quickly, now, preferably in circles while waving your arms in the air.

And again, it does have the authority to make you do that.

Basically, this guy’s in charge.

Fortunately, when disasters happen to large groups of people (and that is what is referred to by the term “disaster” here, events that effect groups) something else takes place. In catastrophe after catastrophe, people remain reasonably calm and well-behaved; they are polite to and even take care of one another. Hierarchies are maintained. Rarely does the social order actually break down. As Lee Clarke, a sociologist at Rutgers University who has studied disaster behavior extensively wrote, “people die the same way they live, with friends, loved ones, and colleagues, in communities. After five decades of studying scores of disasters such as flood, earthquakes and tornadoes, one of the strongest findings is that people rarely lose control.”

Of course, you wouldn’t know this from watching any Hollywood disaster epic, where the public officials in charge of safety are invariably reluctant to inform the citizenry of whatever danger is getting ready to pounce on them, always fearing the widespread panic it will cause.

“If we tell the public about danger, they’ll completely lose their shit.”

And it’s an unfortunate fact that real public officials watch movies, too.

But in reality, you probably don’t really need to worry about this one. In an emergency, you and your neighbors will behave pretty much as you always do, only better. Only if you are trapped alone or lost will you be likely to panic; without the social influence to regulate your behavior, all bets are off. After all, if no one sees you, it doesn’t really happen, does it?

"If I fall down shrieking and sobbing in the forest, do I make a sound?"

5. Gather Stuff

We are tool-using animals; in the wild, our survival depends on our ability to fashion items needed to perform simple tasks like stabbing, clubbing, shooting and digging graves for which we are denied the natural tools. When we face danger, when we are forced to step out into an unknown world fraught with peril, our instincts tell us that we must equip ourselves.

In a survey of 1,444 survivors of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, 40% said they took the time to gather various items before leaving. One woman grabbed her purse first, then walked in circles around her cubicle looking for other items to take with her. “It was like I was in a trance,” she said. “I was just looking for items to take with me.” Those items included a mystery novel she was reading.

This might have made sense in the ancient world, when fleeing a coming disaster might have meant leaving the safety of your village to survive in an unfriendly wilderness; the instinct to inventory your possessions and figure out what you might need out there would make a positive difference.

In today’s world, however, that instinct tends to result in people delaying escape from a downed, burning airplane in order to grab their laptops and toiletry kits.

They might keep you waiting in triage, so bring some work to do. Multi-task!

Our tendency to build confined spaces and set them on fire or blow them up puts more of a premium on quick evacuation over equipping ourselves for an unknown future. That, and our ability to put up a Wal-Mart every eight feet generally means you don’t really need to gather possessions quite so fervently. Just get out. The only thing you need to inventory is your ass.

“Ass? Check! Now let’s get the fuck out of here!”

4. When In Doubt, Trust The Herd

We all know that humans are social animals; this stems in part from the fact that we are not particularly big, strong, fast, or tough, and we don’t have claws, sharp teeth, poisonous stingers, or any of that good stuff to defend ourselves with. We simply aren’t well-equipped to survive alone in a natural environment, to say nothing of reproducing without help. So our instincts tell us: above all, stay with the herd. There is safety in numbers, and you must never give them a reason to shun and possibly abandon you.

In a famous series of experiments in the 1950’s, social psychology pioneer Solomon Asch showed that people are terribly reluctant to upset the apple cart, even when that cart is studded with 50mm guns all pointed in their direction.

In one study, a roomful of people were shown the following image:

They were then asked which of the three lines on the right matched the length of the line on the left. Obviously, the answer is A.

But here’s the twist: all but one of the people in the room were instructed beforehand to choose B. The real purpose of the study was to see if that lone individual who received no instructions would be swayed by the opinions of others enough to ignore the evidence provided by his own senses and choose B as well. Roughly one-third of the subjects did so.

In another study, a group of people sat in a room and filled out a form. After a few minutes, a vent in the corner of the room began to emit foul-looking smoke. All but one person seated near the vent were instructed beforehand to ignore the smoke, which they knew to be harmless; question was, would that lone individual, who wasn’t in on the secret, stay with the herd and ignore the smoke as well?

Often as not, the answer was yes.

It’s true; even in the face of clear and present danger, we are so afraid of embarrassment, so worried about social stigma, so reluctant to look stupid that we will decide it’s no big deal if the ventilation system has chosen to supply us not with clean air but with something quite possibly lethal.

Meh.

The problem, of course, is that in a real disaster, sometimes everyone takes the same approach; everyone in the room decides not to sound the alarm because no one else is. Freaking out over something that no one else is treating as a problem might cause the herd to abandon you, so it’s best to remain quiet. You don’t want to risk raising a false alarm—what would everyone think?

“Oh, what’s your problem now?”

3. Have a Meeting To Discuss The Situation

According to a study by University of Denver sociologist Thomas Drabek, when told to leave an area in anticipation of a hurricane or flood, a majority of people will check with four or more sources before deciding what to do. These sources may include friends, family, newscasters, or officials. On 9/11, at least 70% of the survivors spoke with others before trying to leave, according to a study by the federal government. They made phone calls, checked TV and internet, e-mailed friends and family. Some took further breaks on their way down, stopping on random floors to call spouses and check CNN.

This is our tribal nature coming to the forefront again, seeking to find a consensus before taking action as a group. As an intelligent species with memories and oral traditions and writing that help us preserve useful information through the generations, we feel a need to consult and tap into those sources in a crisis. For instance, tribal elders may have knowledge and memories of similar situations in the past, and know exactly what needs to be done.

It’s what old people are for.

The problems with this approach should be obvious: it takes time to discuss and come to agreements, and it’s entirely possible the people around you have no relevant prior experience and thus no clue what to do. In a more primitive society, that tribal elder remembers the giant people-eating wave that drowned the countryside after the earth shook and knows that you need to get to high ground now. In today’s world, you put your tribal elder in a rest home, and the guy whose input you’re seeking in a crisis is the same guy who insisted the company absolutely had to install Vista.

“Gentlemen, the room is on fire. I will appoint a committee and we will produce an action memo by the end of the week.”

2. Follow The Leader

As we’ve seen, disasters often cause people to group together against the common threat. And groups, of course, need leaders. Groups that survive are often the ones that someone takes charge of, not by force or bullying but by consensus simply because they are seen to be calm and rational and command respect.

The problems begin when people, responding to the herd instinct, go running off to find a leader, and latch on to and follow one without thinking—and wind up following emergency responders straight back into danger.

There are cases known of people fleeing from fires, running away from danger like any sensible creature would, only to meet an incoming fire truck and actually turn and run alongside it back toward the fire. Jim Cline, a retired New York City Fire Department captain who still trains firemen and emergency personnel, has learned from experience. He now tells his trainees to be wary of this phenomenon. “If something goes wrong, people will tend to follow you,” he says in Amanda Ripley’s The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—And Why. “A very strange phenomenon. People will follow you, even when they don’t know why they’re following you.”

Sometimes, it defies explanation.

Obviously, we play follow the leader in these circumstances because we need someone to tell us what to do. Without that, we just might...

1. Freeze Like a Statue

This is perhaps the most common initial response in a crisis. When ominous smoke is filling the fuselage of your plane, when flames engulf the far wall of the ballroom, when the bank robbers pull out the automatic weapons, it’s very probable that you will do...nothing. Maybe stare dumbly straight ahead and blink if you’re feeling particularly energetic.

You, in a crisis.

Why is this a survival instinct? As near as anyone has been able to figure, this phenomenon is similar to the way a mouse goes catatonic while the cat slaps him around playfully before finally getting bored, killing the mouse and leaving him on your pillow as a present. Freezing motionless when threatened is an ingrained response, taking advantage of the instincts that predators evolved to avoid eating rotten or diseased meat. In short, if you don’t move, the critter about to eat you will think you are sick; and if he thinks you’re sick, he loses his appetite and maybe, just maybe, leaves you alone.

Of course, evolution doesn’t like to stand still, so many predators have evolved a response to that behavior. Your cat, for example, has evolved the ability to be fascinated by motionless objects for hours at a time.

Always one step ahead of you.

But the freezing response is so common and occurs so routinely in disasters that people like flight attendants, firemen, policemen and emergency personnel are trained to scream in your face when they need you to move. No gentle suggestion will get through to you in your stupefied state; only the loudest, most urgently expressed commands will get your attention.

It’s like you are a computer and she is trained to punch information into you.

Back to Killed By Fish

Cooking Without Food

2010-08-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in 1983. Somehow, after all these years, it's as silly as the day I wrote it.

With food being the target of an ever-increasing variety of studies, and with its being connected to a growing list of diseases (obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, food poisioning, cancer, choking, malnutrition, starvation) the demand for recipes of this sort has grown tremendously over the last few years.

I first became aware of cooking without food in 1977 when I met a lady who was shopping for her family's Thanksgiving dinner in a trophy shop. "These bowling trophies make excellent potroasts," she said to me in a flaccid whisper. "Is that so!" I cried, cringing at her apparent lack of sanity. To my surprise, she whipped out a huge book of recipes, insisting I try them. I reeled back with aplomb.

Later, though, I studied the recipes with growing excitement. Could this be the answer to my gout? Could it make me healthy again?

For a week I tried the recipes on my family. My husband Cookie really liked the ashtray soup, but said later it gave him gallstones. So, having always been proud of my leftovers, I served gallstones with tarp and undried cement the next night. What a hit!

After that, I was hooked. Now, each night we look forward with glee to our family dinner. And the lunches I fix for the children! And some other stuff.

A Few Things You'll Need

Since the changeover to cooking without food is a fairly radical one for most people, it is quite likely that you'll have to pick up some new appliances, storage containers, cooking pots, and things like that. Here is a list of some things you'll want to have:

sandblaster                 white mice                   construction crew

atomic bomb               pharmacy                     small canyon

lapidary shop              lathe                            force field

welding tools              cement mixer               active geyser

space station               seismograph                Antarctica

Most of these things can be bought wherever such things are sold.

The Recipes

The recipes which I have included here come from many sources: these include the lady in the trophy store, my own vivid imagination, friends of mine, lepers, martians, and sentient measles. Cooking times vary, as you'll find--depending mostly on the density of the ingredients. But none take longer than an era, and all of them are delicious! Usually.

STUFFED FOOTBALL HELMETS

I learned this recipe from an articulate baboon in the outback. This is a handy one, requiring very little seasoning due to the aromatic qualities of the padding inside the helmet.

6 medium-sized football helmets (use ones from different teams for a colorful dinner table)!
2 1/2 erector sets
3 oz. dandruff shampoo
(optional) 8-10 phone numbers
hydrogen atoms to taste

Pulverize erector sets back to stone age. Stir gradually into shampoo and store mixture in a Venusian volcano for three lifetimes, stirring every six seconds twice. Add hydrogen atoms until crucial, and fill helmets .3579 of the way to the top. Sprinkle with phone numbers, and bake in lower one-third of a supernova for about seven. Serve hot.

MISCELLANEOUS STEW

A good one for those cold winter nights. Takes little time, and it's a meal all in itself!

6 hollowed-out dentist's offices
3 plastic dog brushes
2 lbs. styrofoam
cigarettes

Mix everything together in a small agricultural society, taking care not to fall in. Allow to simmer over homework for three seconds and pour into bowls. For a really fancy touch, top with obscure historical novels.

NOODLES & PHILOSOPHY

The best noodles for this dish are those cut by a banshee out of surgical tubing. This was given to me by a matriculating stone giant from the future.

6 cups noodles
the works of three major 18th century philosophers
maybe something else

Liquify philosophy. Mix in noodles and boil long enough. Pour over a chessboard and serve randomly.

POACHED TENNIS BALLS

Serves at least one, and I know that for sure because I did it once and I counted him as he moved to the Ozarks. Later on, he was traded to the Phillies.

6-8 cups tennis balls
4 cups pus

Bring pus to a boil. Introduce them and place the boil near the pus for ten minutes. Then drop in tennis balls (careful so you don't inhale them!) and let them sit with boil and pus for half an hour. Have an abortion, and then exasperate the ingredients. Ponder. Serves one.

ZESTY SALAD

On a hot day, when you don't want anything heavy, try this light salad. For a dressing, try anti-freeze or boxkite juice.

2 cups microchips
6 1/2 dirigibles, diced
3.14159 Rothko paintings, torn
25% of the Mexican hats you can find, mutilated
6 lungfulls of Pampers, embalmed

Toss ingredients. Retrieve them and apologize, patronizing them with a clipboard. Petrify. Tell them you wish they had more directional sense. Serves three more than it used to.

CANNON BALL LOAF

A hearty one. Will remind you of someone in third grade.

4 cannon balls
1 cup chopped microscope
1/2 tsp aborigine phlegm
3 abandoned meatlockers, retarded
3 cups purified card games

Mix ingredients well. Turn into a breadpan. Then, turn into a bird and fly to New Zealand. Acquire pencils. Localize them for an hour. Turn into a bear. Then, turn into a ham sandwich and let your friends eat you. Serves two.

Good eating on the road to good health! Goodbye!

Back to Killed By Fish

Helpful Hints: Courtroom Art

2010-08-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share the benefits of my experience in doing those wonderful, tastefully colorized sketches we know as courtroom art, the pictures you see on TV when they can't bring cameras into the courtroom. Here are a few helpful hints I can give you for some of the more challenging situations.

My experience, I must tell you, consists of once having sat on a jury in a civil suit trial and doing the sketches you see here. This is where I learned the first tip I will give you, which is this: if you are on the jury, you will have to smuggle out your notes.

Next tip: in order to capture the true uniqueness of each individual you are drawing, try to pick out the one feature that is unusual and exaggerate it. For example, in the sketch below, you will notice that the judge has beady little possum eyes set close to his oversize nose. Successfully capturing this feature lends a solemn dignity to the scene which is absolutely critical to this style of art. Most people have features that can be treated this way; when you get down to it, people are pretty weird looking.

Something that may give you trouble: if the defendant or plaintiff or witness is a celebrity, as in the trials of O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake. There you will be dealing with a face that everyone is familiar with; you will definitely want to capture his/her face in a way that everyone will instantly recognize. Of course, if the defendant actually is O.J. Simpson, be sure to paint the goddamn blood on his hands.

Another possible problem: if the subject is a very attractive man or woman. Such people are usually very symmetrical and have no bizarre features that stand out; your drawings may come out very plain-looking and uninteresting and not very recognizable. Hint: try to draw something you want to fuck.

But the most important lesson to be learned is this: picking out what is unique and stupid-looking about people is most definitely a learned skill. It takes practice. And you can practice this skill anywhere, anytime, in your everyday life; like anything, it becomes habit.

Maybe even more than that; really, it's a way of life.

Back to Killed By Fish

Rejected by Cracked.com, Episode 3

2010-08-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

Once again Cracked.com has seen fit to reject another of my articles in favor of "Eight Utter Wusses That Could Kick Your Ass." Okay, I made that up. But it has enough grains of truth to make a few gallons of beer.
This time, my article was to be entitled "Six Wonderful Things The Atomic Age Was Going To Bring Us (circa 1945).
It would have presented a list of the common, optimistic, utopian and dangerously inaccurate predictions of wonderful things that atomic energy was going to give us following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In trying to find the silver lining in that dark mushroom cloud, journalists, public officials, and others who probably should have known better competed with each other to present the rosiest possible future that would be powered by this incredible new energy source. These people were imagining a Jetsons world in the face of technology that, at the time, was only suited to bombing people back to the Flintstones.

The list:

Car Engines The Size Of Aspirins
Miraculous Healing Of Paralysis And Other Debilitations
A Warmer, Cozier Climate
Artificial Suns For Night Baseball & Stuff
That One World Government We All Really Want
An End To War, Which Is Too Terrible To Even Think About

Here is the sample entry I included:

A Warmer, Cozier Climate

The Fantasy
"No airplane will bypass an airport because of fog. No city will experience a winter traffic jam because of heavy snow. Summer resorts will be able to guarantee the weather." David Dietz, "Atomic Energy In The Coming Era"

"Heat will be so plentiful, it will be used to melt snow as it falls." Robert M. Hutchins

Melting the polar ice caps by bombarding them with nuclear bombs would give "the entire world a moister, warmer climate." John J. O'Neill, " Almighty Atom: The Real Story of Atomic Energy"

Reasons For Optimism
Well, obviously, if you can fire up your own goddamn sun anytime it gets cold you can pretty much design the world's climate to your liking. It's not like anything could go wrong, right? Having the power of the sun at your fingertips certainly means you don't have to settle for whatever weather patterns nature provides--with nuclear energy, we can make Mother Nature our bitch. Or ho, sex slave, really submissive wife, prized goat, or any other distasteful metaphor you care to use. We. Have. The. Power.

Humanity! Fuck yeah!

Why Those Reasons Were Stupid
Well, it turns out that warming up the whole planet might not be such a good thing. Whether you believe in human-caused global warming or not, you have to admit that deliberately making the world warmer, melting the ice caps, raising sea levels, altering ocean currents and causing mass extinctions so we can all have nice picnic lunches with rainbows and shit to look at is possibly short-sighted. Sort of like, well...

The climate-controlled home of the future.

They Also Ran Good: George McGovern

2010-08-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

This is part one in a series delving into American history. This series will examine the spectacular losers in American presidential politics, the guys who almost reached the top before disaster struck and hilarious pratfalls ensued. Here, my fascination with failure will merge with my interest in history and only occaisionally will my tendency to start making shit up be a factor. I try to use proper [citation needed] markers to note when this happens.

George McGovern was a long-time U.S. Senator, a Democrat from South Dakota. Morally upstanding, proudly liberal, McGovern was an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam that, at the time, had been dragging on for seven long and tumultous years without resolution. He sought to bring integrity, honesty and openness to an American presidency that had been absent since...well, for a long time, anyway.

But McGovern had three disadvantages: 1) his incumbent opponent, Richard Nixon, had shored up his claim to elder statesmanhood with diplomatic openings with both China and the Soviet Union; 2) McGovern was considered an "outsider" in his own party, having won the nomination over the heads of the Democratic leadership; and 3) his incumbent opponent, Richard Nixon, had shored up all the leaks in the Watergate scandal with a cover-up conspiracy that held together until about ten minutes after the election.

Also, McGovern was from South Dakota, which although legally a state and technically habitable, is much like its sister state to the north in having no one who lives there. The only presidents ever to grace the state of South Dakota only did so because they were forcibly chiseled into the side of a mountain.

"Call the police!"

What Went So Horribly, Horribly Wrong

While showing great political acumen in winning the Democratic nomination, McGovern & team forgot all about that "running mate" thing, waiting untill the last moment to select Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri. The vetting process basically consisted of asking him if there were any decomposing bodies in his crawlspace, followed by a thorough, no-stones-left-unturned scrutiny of his arms for needle marks. It was rumoured, but not confirmed, that they checked him for a pulse. Through all this, Eagleton never mentioned having been hospitalized twice for depression, a form of mental illness that people were not accepting of in their potential presidents in those days. Oh yeah, and the electroshock therapy...

Hope, for a Change

When Eagleton's past became news, McGovern publicly and bad-mathically backed him "1000 per cent." For three days. Then he unceremoniously dumped him and replaced him with Sergeant Shriver, better known as Mr. Eunice Kennedy. Seriously. In fact, he was introduced as "Eunice" at a speech during the campaign. But to be fair, most of us would be "marrying up" if we got hitched to a member of the Kennedy family; for that kind of money, yeah, "Eunice" is fine.

Or Sparklemuffins, I really don't give a shit.

With his running mate now chosen (again), McGovern got on with the business of running a presidential campaign. Which, in his case, consisted of: 1) explaining how giving everyone in America $1000 for free constituted an "economic policy," 2) denying that he favored legalization of LSD, and 3) trying to convince a skeptical nation that the Watergate scandal was important and that the Nixon administration was corrupt. You know, he might have had a point there.

No one listened. And, strangely, no one asked if they could get their $1000 in the form of LSD.

Election Night

When America went to the polls that day, many already knew the outcome, there being no requirement for the news networks to wait for the polls to close in the western states before reporting results. In fact, none of them even waited for the polls to open, having officially projected Nixon as the winner three years earlier. McGovern, it turned out, had actually given his concession speech in 1970. In the end, he won only the District of Columbia, which is not a state, and Massachussetts, which is a rental property owned by the Kennedys. [citations needed]

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7 Exciting Ways To Die In Grand Canyon

2010-03-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a seven-part series, an attempt at conveying a sense of danger in a humorous manner. And no, I have no idea if I can pull that off.

7. Lovely Side Canyon —What Makes These Things?

What It Is

A canyon is caused by moving water eroding and carrying away underlying rock. This is not as peaceful and gentle as it might sound.

In fact, America’s national parks are not peaceful and gentle places. They were not built to be your personal spiritual retreats, nor are they theme parks designed by safety engineers and lawyers. They are wonders of nature, created by natural processes, many of which are going on right now. While you cluelessly admire the handiwork of forces you don’t understand, the processes that created the very thing you came to see might be getting ready to do some work on you. Some of these natural processes had very bad childhoods and can turn violent with little warning.

Contrary to the popular image, the Grand Canyon and its associated side canyons were not created by a steady, imperceptible process of erosion over millions of years. In fact, much of the work was done by huge flash floods, giant walls of fast-moving water carrying big sticks and rocks with which to do some serious, medieval-type ass kicking. It’s Mother Nature’s version of the drive-by, and it blasts the shit out of everything along the way.

Here’s the recipe: take a high plateau, and bake the ground hard for months at a time. Then send some moisture-laden monsoon winds up there, drop Biblical amounts of rain, and drain large areas of the plateau through a narrow slot canyon. You’re going to get a lot of water coming down that canyon very fast, and it’s going to pick up a lot of silt, sand, rocks, and other crude weapons. If you happen to be standing in its path, get ready to be swept off your feet. And not in any charming, date movie kind of way, either.

How It Kills You

A flash flood has the option of drowning you or beating you to death, and will settle for whichever one happens first.

But the kicker is this: that rainstorm can happen five, ten, or even 40 miles away from where you’re standing. You can be walking under lovely blue skies in scenic splendor and spiritual wonder, gazing up at intricately sculpted stone walls, feeling one with nature, and a storm cloud you can’t even see can reach out, pick you up, and toss you around like a rag doll. It won’t even take the time to say “no, I expect you to die,” much less explain its evil plans for world domination before it kills you. If this seems unfair, take comfort; it will not matter if you forgot to wear clean underwear or even if you wore those stupid boxers with the little sailboats on them. Assuming your body is actually found, it may well be stripped of clothing and battered beyond recognition. This is a violent event.

How Not To Die In This Horrible, Horrible Manner

Monsoon winds usually begin to blow up the Colorado Plateau, which extends to the north rim of Grand Canyon, around mid-July every year; it’s then that flash flood season begins. Your best bet is simply to be aware of weather patterns in the whole area, and avoid hiking narrow canyons from July to September during times of potentially rainy weather. And while an oncoming catastrophe will not verbalize its intentions, it may warn you with a primitive, incoherent yet expressive and passionate roar; it will sound sort of like Sylvester Stallone at the end of every movie he’s ever made, only with a lot more God. There may be other clues, such as a change in the wind and the smell of mud and minerals in the air. This might give you up to a whole minute to get to higher ground. But there will be no RSS feed, and your smartphone does not have a ringtone for this.

Evolving Mousetrap: Irreducible Complexity Reduced

2010-02-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

I will leave it to others to show how to evolve an ordinary mousetrap through a step-by-step process that gradually improves its function at every step. That’s for less ambitious, less creative science-types who don’t like to play with toys nearly as much as I do. No, I will take a much more complicated gizmo with many more interacting parts and show you how even it could be built step-by-step as evolution by natural selection would do. I will tackle the question of how Mousetrap, the game, could evolve.

Mousetrap (TM) is such a complex, Rube Goldberg-type contraption that it was actually designed by Rube Goldberg (or at least was inspired by one of his drawings). It has roughly two dozen separate, readily identifiable parts any one of which, if removed, disables the device. For instance, remove the red ball, and grandpa stops leaping face first into an empty tub wearing a 1920’s bathing suit. And if you can’t laugh at grandpa, what fun is he? It certainly appears to be irreducibly complex.

But the trap can be built up from the simple cage to the complete, functioning machine through a series of gradual additions, each the result of random mutation, each slightly improving its ability to send those cute, adorable little plastic mice to their doom. It doesn’t have to be designed all at once. Here’s how it could evolve:

Begin with the cage. This only traps the mice who wander in looking to feed at the cheese wheel. Eventually, the mice will evolve into a “pusher” species that simply pushes the cage away to get at the cheese. The cage must adapt.

Step 1: A base that is anchored in the board and limits the distance that the cage will move.

Step 2: A tall, widely visible, cheese-colored post to attract mice from greater distances.

Step 3: A round, heavy tub appears on the base. This could have several functions; for instance, a counterweight to the cage would add stability, and would provide a catch-basin for fresh water to attract the mice.

Step 4: A barrier to funnel the mice toward the cheese.

Step 5: A diving board provides the equivalent of a hamster wheel to attract more mice.

Note: By this point the mice are evolving a fear of the orange cage. Further changes in the trap will better enable it to drive mice toward the cage despite this trepidation.

Step 6: A nightmarish-looking stairway leading down to the cheese wheel. Any mouse wandering around here will be led into the danger zone like a teen-ager in a slasher movie.

Step 7: An attractive, cheese-colored bucket that tips over when the mice check it out, dumping them down the stairs into the death zone.

Step 8: A steel ball in the bucket which rolls down at the mice in a Raiders Of The Lost Ark scenario, furthering the efficiency of the stairway to hell.

Step 9: A chute connected to the barrier added in step four that prevents the damn ball from rolling off the table under the couch or wherever the fuck it always ends up.

Step 10: A big, weird-looking thing with three hands to confuse the prey; might also function as one of those stupid, pointless yet impressive things that attracts mates (plenty of examples of that in nature).
Step 11: A post at the end of the chute that further slows down the steel ball, and signals the organism that the ball is no longer in the starting position (sort of like the pain that accompanies a kick in the groin).
Step 12: A big rubber ball on top of the post; it rolls off the hand and lands hard on the game board, causing the mice to scurry and panic and emit adorable little shrieks of terror.
Step 13: A chute that directs the rubber ball to land away from the metal ball, so as not to knock the damn thing under the couch again.
Step 14: A bathtub that directs the rubber ball to land on the diving board, flinging into the air any mice on the other end. Some of them will land in the cage, others will be disoriented.

Step 15: Finally, the cage migrates to the top of the post to hide from prey, giving it the element of surprise. It can not be set off easily, and many times there will be no mice to trap when it falls; still, this is better than waiting for mice that rarely enter the cage willingly.

Step 16: Grandpa evolves. Yes, he really is millions of years old. Note that this mechanism has co-opted the original purpose of the diving board. This is common in evolution.

And he links up everything from the metal ball in the bucket to the dropping of the cage; a kind of delayed fuse giving the mouse that sets it in motion at the top of the stairs time to scamper down under the cage to his demise.

There are actually a few steps still to go before the entire device is complete, and we will need to develop a symbiosis with dorky 1960’s children (like little birds that clean the teeth of alligators), but we have reached a point where we have an amazingly complex entity, featuring numerous interacting parts that can’t be removed without not only impairing the function of the whole but ripping up pieces of the board. It is “irreducibly complex” at this stage, despite having been built in steps showing incremental increases in functionality as evolution by natural selection would do. No intelligent agent is required, only heredity, random mutations, and natural selection. Which, I guess, means God vanishes in a puff of logic, and Rube Goldberg goes back to being dead. They are not needed.

The Manson Family Circus

2010-02-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

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The Manson Family Circus

2010-02-20T19:59:00.000-08:00

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The Manson Family Circus

2010-02-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

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The Manson Family Circus

2010-02-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

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The Manson Family Circus

2010-02-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

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7 Great Speeches Ruined In Translation

2009-08-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's 2009 and I still don't have a jet pack, hovercraft, or condo on the moon. When you think about it, this future sucks.

However, we are making progress toward a Star Trek-like Universal Translator; there are many web sites just waiting to translate most any text in and out of most any language. It's fast, it's convenient, and it works about as well as the translator in Mars Attacks.

The following are excerpts from six great works of oration (and one famous bit of writing) run through a popular translation website; once from English into Japanese and again from Japanese back into English. It makes one wonder if Americans and Japanese have ever understood each other. Oh, wait...

7. Genesis

The Speech:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." Book of Genesis, The Bible

The Translation:

"With beginning, as for God the heaven and the earth were drawn up. The earth died, form and the space the darkness was on the surface being deep; And mind of God was moving to the surface of the water."

Although technically not a speech, creation seemed like a good place to start. In the Japanese version, the earth dies in the first 15 seconds or so, which kind of ruins it for me.

Pictured: Moments after creation, God accidentally drops the world and breaks it.

6. The Gettysburg Address

The Speech:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." --Abraham Lincoln

The Translation:

"The score of thing four which is the same where all people were drawn up and 7 years ago this continent, it is brought up with new nation, it is free and our fathers who are imagined, and are lifted up to proposition."

Pictured: Abe Lincoln and his imaginary father.

5. Win One For The Gipper

The Speech:

"I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy." --Ronald Reagan in "Knute Rockne, All-American."

The Translation:

"I go in order to shake, it becomes. That is favorable. I do not fear. Thing is the wrongdoing, when the being broken eye has struck the boy, the team you ask vis-a-vis that it has when and exactly one for Gipper win thing in order to enter there with everything being those, time, the stone. I me somewhere the stone do not know then whether it is. But I know concerning that, it is happy."

"With everything being those, time, the stone!" No wonder he beat Mondale so handily.

4. Pearl Harbor Announcement

The Speech:

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." --Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Translation:

"Yesterday, date December suddenly and was attacked prudently by the navy and the air force of 1941-a Japanese has lived in the dishonorable United States of 7 days empire."

"They will pay for this wise decision!"

3. "We Shall Never Surrender"

The Speech:

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." --Winston Churchill

The Translation:

"As for us those perhaps the air grows with strength and the sea and the ocean which are confided and grow and in France in the edge in field with the land of landing is cost with the beach, us fight with anything, us it fights, us it fights, us our islands which are protected, us it fights, us it fights, us fought with the hill the continuation and as, it fights; We do not hand under any condition."

"Us it fights! Us it fights! Up with which we shall not put!"

2. Old Soldiers Never Die

The Speech:

"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away... And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away — an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye." --Douglas MacArthur

The Translation:

"The old soldier does not die under any condition; They atrophy exactly… And like the soldier where the folk song is old, I that God gave the light/write to him in order now to look at the obligation closed the carrier of my troop simultaneously, the exactly old soldier - tried the fact that obligation is done, it atrophies. Way if."

Way if, dude.

1. I Have A Dream

The Speech:

"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" --Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Translation:

"When and this happens, when us that from all villages and all villages, trying to sound from all states and all cities, us God' where freedom can increase the speed of that day of us; When trying to sound entirely; Spirit song of the black to whom the child of s, Protestant and the Catholic follower of the black man and the white, the Judean person and the strange Japanese are bonded the hand, are old, " You can sing with word; Being last, release! Being last, release! In omnipotent God, being last is we, appreciate freely!"

"Yes, even those weirdos in Japan."

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A Quick Guide To Those Guys On Our Money

2009-07-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

Occaisionally the question arises, usually when standing in line at a convenience store, whether Alexander Hamilton (the guy on the $10 bill) was President of the United States or not.
Not.
Here's a quick guide to some of those guys on our money, and their standing as president/not president.

President.

Not President.

Definitely not President.

Has to register when he moves into your neighborhood.

Hope this clears things up.

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