So the Green Bay Packers finish the 2011 regular season 15-1

By beating the Detroit Lions.  Again.

In doing so, the Packers became the first team to complete a sweep of the NFC North division (which has only existed since 2002), and extended their Lambeau Field Lions-humiliation streak to 21 straight games.  The last time the Lions won a game at Lambeau was December 15th, 1991, when Don Majkowski was the quarterback.  It was Brett Favre’s rookie year (he was with the Falcons) and Tony Mandarich’s third and final year in Green Bay.  Remember him?

Matt Flynn, who was 6 years old on 12-15-1991, did an OK job filling in for the resting Aaron Rodgers.  Flynn played the entire game, completing 70% of his passes for 480 yards and 6 touchdowns. The latter two numbers are both Packers franchise records.

Matt is in the final year of his contract, making him a free agent at the end of this season.  I would like to be the first to congratulate whichever team signs him.

Th-th-th-that’s all folks!

Kim Jong Il is no longer ill (that joke works better spoken aloud).  Nork dictator #2 buys the farm rice paddy gulag.

About damn time.  I wonder who gets his glasses.  Better keep an eye on Ebay, just in case.

The new boss is Kim Jong Eun.  He’s that pudgy fellow in the black outfit.  Let’s see how long he lasts.  Smart money’s on “not very.”

FREE RYAN BRAUN!

This year, the (inaugural) Big Ten Championship game will be played in Indianapolis.

Which is great, because the Indiana Hoosiers have one more win than the Indianapolis Colts.  Which is to say, one.  Ahem.

So far, anyway.  the Colts could still pull ahead.  Really, they could.

So having Wisconsin play Michigan State in Indy means the nice people there will get to see some good football for a change.

At the sound of the beep, the time will be 11:42 AM, November 11th, 2011‏

A little more than half an hour ago it was 11:11:11 on 11-11-11.  And you really wanted to be looking at the clock at that moment because it would be cool to see that.  By some peoples’ definition of ‘cool,’ anyway.  And you were going to make sure to draw everybody else’s attention to it and make a joke about it being 4095, or 63 on 63, or something even more clever (and okay, you hadn’t exactly come up with a good line yet but you just knew that you’d think of something really funny when the moment came).  And you went to work thinking about it, and you put a little note on your wall to remind yourself, and you even wrote some 1s on the back of your hand to make absolutely sure you wouldn’t forget.  But the phone started ringing, and the guy in the next cubicle wanted to tell you about his fishing trip or whatever, and your manager came around again to bitch about the TPS reports and then Rachel from accounting walked by and it was just one thing after another until it just plain slipped your mind.  So you missed it.  You BLEW it.  And now you won’t get another chance for a hundred years, dammit DAMMIT DAMMIT!!!

Beep.

Obscure Reference Alert*

Football games on TV are interrupted by commercials on a regular basis.  Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of them for a new movie called ‘Tower Heist’.

“Tower Heist” stars Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy.  To judge from the commercials (because research? bah) Stiller is a hotel worker who decides to rob a rich guy who stiffed him and his co-workers on a deal of some kind, and Murphy is an ex-con he recruits to help with the job.

It has been years and years since I went to an actual movie theater to sit through an actual full-length movie.  I can’t even remember the last one that didn’t have the words ‘star’ and ‘wars’ in the title.  But I’ll tell you what: I will make a point of going to see “Tower Heist” IF….

IF Eddie Murphy’s character is named Reggie Hammond.  That would be awesome.

Otherwise, forget it.

*Obscure Reference Alert is a term I’m familiar with from this blog, where I am a frequent visitor and commenter.  It’s fun.  As for this particular ORA, figure it out.  You have internet access, right?

I am generally disdainful of bumper stickers

I don’t care how much you love your golden retriever, or that your other car is a flying saucer, or how many friggin’ stick figures there are in your family.  And as for political messages, does that ‘coexist’ sticker really reflect your beliefs, or do your beliefs reflect the sticker? If you can articulate your philosophy in six to eight words plus a cute logo, you need to grow up. And if it takes more words than that and you still try to put it on your bumper, only you can read it.  You know that, right?  Bumper stickers are stupid.

Until today.  Today I saw a bumper sticker I can get behind.

Well technically, I was behind it.  Traffic, y’know.

You probably have to be a Wisconsin sports fan to really get this.

Also, I hear it comes in a t-shirt.

How many neutrinos does it take to change a light bulb?

None. They just go back in time until it doesn’t need changing.

Last week, some scientists conducted an experiment where they got some neutrinos to, apparently, move faster than light. It wasn’t the first time this apparently happened, either. They fired the neutrinos out of some kind of big slingshot, sent them through the earth’s crust, and caught them in a second location 450 miles away. The neutrinos hit the finish line 60 billionths of a second before light would have (if light could travel through the earth’s crust which is, after all, opaque).

How do they know its the same neutrinos? Those things all look alike to me.

Here’s my hypothesis: a hidden underground race of mole men superintelligent earthworms (mole men are so cliche) is trapping our neutrinos, while simultaneously firing off others from a few feet to the left, making it appear that the neutrinos are FTL when in fact they didn’t traverse the entire distance. Just to mess with us.

But seriously:

Experiments show that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows down relative to slower-moving objects. If you spent a year traveling at (say) half of light speed, when you returned you would find that what seemed like a year to you was a much longer time for the earth-bound.

In theory, any object reaching the speed of light would experience zero time. A trip taken at light speed would seem instantaneous to the traveler, no matter how long it was*.

The linked Economist article states that going faster than the speed of light would therefore cause time to reverse. This is a nonsensical statement. Would the traveler actually become younger? What would his perception of the trip be like? ‘Reverse time’ in this context is similar to ‘negative length’. You can say it, you can think it, but you can’t explain it. It has no meaning.

More importantly, it’s nonsensical because experiment also shows that as an object accelerates, it’s mass increases. In theory, the mass of an object becomes infinite once the object reaches the speed of light. Infinite (or just near-infinite) mass would mean an infinitely strong gravity field, which would immediately pull in and destroy all other matter in the universe. So who cares about ‘reverse time’?

“Don’t destroy the universe” is one of those little rules I try to live my life by. Unfortunately, it makes faster-than-light travel a lot harder. That’s why they use massless particles like neutrinos in these experiments; because a 1000% increase in zero is still zero.

So if you ever want to travel faster than light, better get started on that diet, lardbutt. What, you didn’t think all those chins could affect anybody but you?

*It occurs to me that not only would the trip seem instantaneous to the traveler, but also to his vehicle.  Which means it wouldn’t require much fuel at all, once it reached light speed.  Think how much you could save in gas money if you could drive at relativistic speeds!

Yes, there are many, many things wrong with that assertion.

UPDATE: “We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Okay, yours was funnier. 

I may be a little late for Thanksgiving dinner

Today, the Buffalo Bills lost to Cincinnati on a last-second field goal, removing them from the something-and-0 club.  However the Detroit Lions (!) put up a remarkable come-from-behind win at Dallas that included two pick-six plays and kept them in.  And the Green Bay Packers stomped all over the Denver Broncos like they were still pissed off about Super Bowl XXXII (side note: we are still a little pissed off about Super Bowl XXXII).

So Detroit and Green Bay, at 4-0, are the only undefeated teams left in the NFL.  And due to the vagaries of NFL scheduling, they won’t play one another until November 24th, also known as Thanksgiving Day.  Therefore look forward to two 10-0 juggernauts facing off for NFC supremacy on that day.

That’s a prediction.  You heard it here first.  Unless somebody else already said it, but that’s not my fault.

So when does the real college football start?

The Wisconsin Badgers rolled through their non-conference schedule.  As usual.  And after seeing them smoke UNLV 51-17,  Oregon State 35-0, Northern Illinois 49-7, and South Dakota 59-10, I (as usual) began to grouse about it.  It’s fine to get some small-time school to come in and trade a payday for a pasting so the Badgers can have a tune-up, but I want to see the team get tested before they start in on the Big Ten games.  I want to see them win a little more respect by facing serious competition.  I want a non-conference game that’s fun to watch.

I didn’t get that this year.  But the Badgers did get to start the Big Ten season by being the first to welcome Nebraska to the conference.  Now that’s exciting!  Nebraska’s Big Ten debut.  Two top-ten teams.  In Camp Randall.  That’ll be fun!!

And then the Badgers smacked the Sooners Cornhuskers around like they were the chess club from Our Lady of Perpetual Groin Pulls U.

And my first thought was, this is a top ten team?  And my second thought was, welcome to the Big Ten, losers Sooners Huskers*!

And then there were some thoughts that were unrelated to football. And then…

I realized that I’ve been all wrong about this.  Those games where they averaged a 40 point margin of victory?  Those weren’t just cheap wins, they were blowout practice!  

Man. Barry Alvarez is a genius.

*Sooners, Huskers, whatever.  Hey, at 48-17 I don’t have to know your name!

Green Bay 30, Carolina 23

A few thoughts:

Cam Newton looked more and more like a rookie as the game went on.

Excluding the final drive (which occurred in kill-the-clock garbage time anyway), Newton threw for 355 yards and the Panthers rushed for 65.  420 yards total is a pretty impressive number for an offense.  Not so impressive for Green Bay’s defense though.  Except… after racking up all those yards the Panthers could only manage one touchdown and 3 field goals.  So maybe it wasn’t such bad defense after all.

Nick Collins: get well soon.

Tramon Williams, Mike Neal, Frank Zombo, Vic So’oto: you too.  Hurry up.

By the way, Vic, how does one pronounce an apostrophe?  Is that a glottal stop?

Donald Driver: With 9665 receiving yards, DD finally holds the Packers’ team record for receiving yards.  It’ll go well with his team record for receptions (647).

I still wish they’d throw to him more.

Finally, the Packers are 2-0, and it’s a good thing too.  We have to keep up with Detroit!

In case of an emergency landing, please lean forward, put your head between your knees, and kiss your benefits goodbye

From this account of last week’s Republican debate:

“Perry offered a full-throated defense of some of his more provocative statements on the campaign trail, including his statement that Social Security is a ‘Ponzi scheme’ . . . the Texas governor repeated his position that it’s a ‘monstrous lie’ for any candidate to say Social Security will be around for younger people. Acknowledging that Republicans have regarded the statement as controversial, Perry insisted it was perhaps it was time to have straight talk from a candidate.
‘Maybe it’s time to have some provocative language in this country,’ he insisted.”

Romney’s reaction: “You say that by any measure Social Security is a failure. You can’t say that to tens of millions of Americans who live on Social Security . . . Our nominee has to be someone who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security. I will make sure that we keep the program and make it financially secure.”

Sure he will.

Social Security isn’t a ponzi scheme, its an airplane with dead engines.  And we’re all passengers.  You can’t fix it midair.  The only question is: can you manage a controlled glide to land it, or will you try to keep it in the air indefinitely and guarantee a disaster?  Don’t forget that plane’s getting heavier – there are more of us passengers every year.

People who are near, at, or past ‘retirement’ age (which the government gets to choose for us) have been paying in all their lives, and many of them are probably counting on Social Security as part of their income.  It would be awful to yank that away from them.  But Romney is accusing Perry of wanting just that.  That’s dishonest.

Will that retirement age still be the same when I get there?  Assuming I haven’t died in a zombie infestation or extraterrestrial attack?  I bet it won’t be.  And it shouldn’t be.  And that’s assuming Social Security will exist at all by that time.  Will it?  Romney (along with many, many others) is trying to tell me that I should count on it.  I would be a fool to do so.

I have also paid into the system my entire working life, and I will (involuntarily) continue to pay.  And I do not expect to ever collect any of the benefits that I’m being promised.  One way or another, they’re not going to be there.  I need to plan to take care of myself without the government’s “help”, and so do you.

I want a candidate who understands that, and who is willing to say so.  Advantage: Perry.

[This does not constitute an endorsement.]

Parents: teach your kids to be scared of hiccups

That way if they ever get the hiccups, they can cure themselves.

 

Shut up.  You’re just mad that you didn’t think of it.

After a great deal of thought, I have decided not to liveblog tomorrow’s Republican debate

My blog will be much more interesting that way.  Also, liveblogging it would mean I’d have to watch it.  Who the fuck wants to do that?

Liveblogging it without watching it – there’s an idea.  Maybe next time, when I have a chance to warm up.

Or…. deadblogging!  Where do the candidates stand on the brraaaiinns!! issue?

Dear god, what is that thing?

Looks like Westley was right:

Prince Humperdinck, 1987.

Prince Humperdinck, 2011???

Yo, moderate this

So the other day Troglopundit got some other bloggers (including yours truly) to tell him what they’d ask if they could moderate one of the Republican presidential debates.  Which is a pretty lazy way to come up with a post, if you think about it.  Just provide a little intro, and let your corresponding bloggers fill it in. And you got you a post (which will get at least as many readers as bloggers involved, and maybe more).

Then I thought about it a little more and I realized, hey, I’m lazy.  I should do that too.  So I did.

I didn’t query bloggers though.  That’s so three days ago, you know?  Instead I went with the next best thing: fictional characters.  And here’s what they had to say*.

Bugs Bunny (to Santorum): “Eh, what’s up, Senator?  Now, I know you don’t like the idea of gay couples getting married.  Hey, you’ve got yer principles.  But what about cats and skunks?  Dogs and roosters?  Tasmanian devils and cleverly-disguised rabbits in drag?  Not me, of course.  How do you feel about all that muck, Chuck?”

Anakin Skywalker: “My job takes me out of town a lot, and my wife’s pregnant, and I worry, y’know?  Sometimes I have visions of her getting really sick, even dying.  And me being a Jedi, whatever it is that’s going to happen to her, most insurance companies say my visions make it a pre-existing condition so they won’t cover her.  If I can’t get some help, I’m going to have to find another job with better coverage just to make sure she’s all right.  Who knows what I’ll wind up doing?”

Glenn Reynolds: “During the last debate in Iowa, you all claimed that you wouldn’t consider tax increases of any kind, even if it came with spending cuts that were ten times as much.  Really?  Haven’t you heard my ideas about Hollywood’s tax rates, or post-Washington income taxes?  You wouldn’t go for those?  Heh!  Indeed!!”

C. Montgomery Burns: “What I worry about is the little guy.  Oh, I’ve done all right for myself, but there are some poor blokes out there who only have maybe two or three mansions to live in, and if the economy gets any tighter who knows?  A fellow can barely get by on a million or so a year as it is.  I demand to know what you intend to do for those poor souls.”

Doc Brown: “Please pardon the sloppy state of my clothing.  You see I’ve just returned from a successful test of my flux capacitor, v.3.1.6, and first let me offer my congratulations to President Paul… er, I mean, forget I said that…”

The guy with the hat from XKCD: “If I tunnel into a stranger’s VPN via SSH, brute-force the password with a Perl script I wrote myself and execute a man-in-the-middle attack on Paul Erdos’s Facebook page just because I’m miffed that my dihydrogen oxide underwent a phase shift after a low pressure system blew into town, what are the chances that none of you understood a word I just said except for ‘Facebook’?”

Jayne Cobb: “What I don’t get is, what kind of lily-livered, pussywhipped, sad little pantywaists don’t even have a manned space program?  You want to be stuck down here on this crowded rock?  With the Alliance UN eyeballing every move you make?  Gimme the black, where a man can make a living and go where he wants and carry a Callahan full-bore auto-lock with a customized trigger, double cartridge and thorough gauge without needing a piece of paper that says he can.  Whaddaya think of that, pencilnecks?”

New game, tell your friends: what fictional character would you pick, and what would he/she/it ask the candidates?

*The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the Mister Pterodactyl Consortium.

So the Trog decides to pick some bloggers he wants to see moderate a GOP debate

He got the idea from some guy on the “internet”.

He had a few of his six slots filled.  (Why six?  Why not?)  And he emailed me at work to ask me to join in.

I didn’t answer right away.  Those of us who work in the private sector can’t always drop everything to consider hypothetical political questions.  But I jotted the odd note throughout the day as ideas came to me, and after quitting time (I swear) I sent him those ideas.  I didn’t know if he wanted one, or several, so I sent them all and said ‘take your pick’.

Just before I sent, I realized I’d left someone out.  I didn’t have a question for everybody, but I at least mentioned everybody, except one guy.  I left out Huntsman.  Despite my appraisal of his chances I figured I should at least include him.  And I didn’t want to just jam in his name somewhere like I did with Santorum, so I had to come up with another question.  So I did.  It was a quickly chosen, cheap, throwaway one-liner type of joke:

“Mr. Huntsman: given the extent to which China holds American debt, do you think your campaign would be more effective if you conducted it entirely in Mandarin?“  [Note: Huntsman learned to speak Chinese as a missionary in Taiwan and until recently was America's ambassador to China.]

And sure enough, that’s the one Trog used.

I didn’t think he would use that one.  Glad he liked it, but there were a couple others I thought were better.  So without further whatever, here are the rest for your perusal.  Some are meant seriously.  Others are less so.  See if you can tell the difference.

“Gov. Perry: once and for all, are issues like abortion and gay marriage the business of the federal government, or are they solely a matter for the various States?”

“Dr. Paul: you’ve expressed support for eliminating immigration controls and for ending drug prohibition.  What do you envision as a timeline for each, and how will you protect American citizens from border violence until those policies can be fully implemented?”
[Followup: do you see that silver armadillo in the corner?  The one with the big hat?  Just me?]

“Gov. Johnson: Where the f*%$$ have you been?”

“Ms. Bachmann/Mr. Cain/Governor Pawlenty: Following the Iowa straw poll, the media has virtually crowned Ms. Bachmann, Governor Perry and Governor Romney as the front runners.  Mr. Cain and Senator Santorum have all but disappeared from news coverage, and Governor Pawlenty wussed out dropped out of the race entirely.  Do you think that an event in which only 17,000 Americans took part should have such a disproportionate effect on your party’s nomination process?  If so, why; and if not what would you do to change it?”

And one more question for the entire field:

“Show of hands: assuming she was willing, and you knew no one would ever find out, would you do Sarah Palin?”

Rick Perry wants to Amend The Constitution

Just like everyone else.  Amending The Constitution is really, really hard, therefore talking about Amending The Constitution is really, really easy.  That’s why so many people talk about it all the time.

Candidates for political office, especially for the presidency, face two main imperatives: convincingly express their political ideas, and do it with the proper level of I-mean-it.  Amending The Constitution is particularly handy for this.  This is what I believe and I believe it so strongly that I’m going to initiate the long, arduous and uncertain process to alter the very document that our nation was founded on!

The best part is, Amending The Constitution is so arduous and uncertain that nobody will ever blame you for failing to do so.  No follow through expected.  That’s not a criticism of Perry or anyone else (hey, I want to amend the thing too), it’s just a fact.

Still, when I hear somebody talking about Amending The Constitution, I always gotta figure whether I agree or not.  I have several criteria, but one is way more important than the others: will it increase the power of the federal government, or decrease it?  I consider these possibilities as hate it, and don’t hate it, in that order.  And any proposal to Amend The Constitution has to clear this hurdle, or the Official Mister Pterodactyl Stamp of Approval ™ will not be forthcoming.

Here are seven changes that Perry has suggested he’s on board with, in his book or in various public appearances.  Let’s see:

1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
    Neutral.  The function of the courts doesn’t depend on the method by which their members are replaced.  And I kind of like the second method mentioned – “have judges roll off every two years based on seniority.”  Every president would get to nominate the exact same number of SCOTUS members (per term), and it would be easy to keep track of how many nominations for lower courts were being gamed by Congress.

2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
    Increase.  And an enormously stupid idea.  The Court’s role is to be a check on the power of Congress, not a check on the power of Congress except when Congress really, really means it.

Note for later: I’ve often heard people complain about an unaccountable judiciary.  What’s the difference between ‘unaccountable’ and ‘independent’?

3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
    Decrease.  It would mean a lot of new scheming to raise revenues in other ways – fees, capital gains tax,  value-added tax,  et cetera – and probably create pressure for tax increases at the state level as well.  “He became so powerful, the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did.”  This would expose the small-government fakers.

4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
    Neutral.  If you’re a little light on the issue, here’s the Wikipedia page.  Going back to the original method might not produce a better Senate, but it wouldn’t produce a worse one, and might have the additional effect of lessening the influence of political parties and lobbyists.  Explaining how I got that idea would take a much longer post than this.

5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
    Neutral.  But tricky.

6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
    Increase.  And probably an example of campaign-mode politicking on Perry’s part.  While courting the Tea Party he said nice things about the Tenth Amendment; while speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network, he didn’t.  So which is it?  I hope the former.  We’ll see.

7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
    Increase.  See #6.

That’s three increases (two outright statist, one appeal to populism), three neutrals that depend largely on manner of implementation, and only one decrease.  All nothing more than political posturing, no doubt.  Disappointing, otherwise.

Amending The Constitution is still way harder than talking about Amending The Constitution.  I hope they talk about Amending The Constitution a lot in the pretend debates.

I don’t have an ending for this post, and I know it.

Stay tuned!

They said if I supported Governor Walker we’d see massive layoffs

Aaaaaaaaand sure enough: WEAC issues layoff notices to 40% of staff.

For those who don’t know, WEAC does not stand for Welcome Everyone Acting Crabby, Wheat Enemas Are Cool, Whipped Eggplant And Capers, or We Eat Ass Chaps.  WEAC stands for Wisconsin Education Association Council.  It’s the largest teachers union in Wisconsin.  And it’s fallen on hard times.

I know what you’re thinking:

1) Could be all the money the unions have been pouring into their wildly successful opposition to Gov. Walker’s agenda.  Should have saved a little for salaries.

2) I love the smell of irony in the morning afternoon evening daytime.

3) How the hell did Dactyl beat the Trog to this story?

4) Must be time to raise those union dues!  I’m sure all their loyal members will be fine with it.

5) That’s not really what irony means.

6) How many teachers have been laid off so far?  Is it more than union employees?  Seriously, I can’t find numbers anywhere.

What else are you thinking?  I’ll tell you just as soon as I make it up.

Vote against Senator Steitz?

The Democratic state senators facing recall elections in Wisconsin will meet their fates this Tuesday.  Kenosha senator Bob Wirch is one of them, being challenged by local lawyer Jonathan Steitz.

Here’s a web ad I’ve been seeing around (on YouTube and on a couple msn-linked news articles, so far):

Vote against Senator Steitz.

Steitz is not a senator.  He has never held elective office of any kind.  So whats the deal?

It (later) occurs to me that there’s no way to tell who sponsored this ad.  I bet it wasn’t Wirch’s campaign.  The ‘learn more’ appears to be a link but nothing happened when I clicked on it.  Draw your own conclusions.