Too Stupid for Words category archive

Nobody could have predicted that this would cause an uproar.

Nobody.

The new pernicious problematic peril to the purity of the pubescent puerile from the Puritanical, who never ever played “spin the bottle” when they were young:

Members of the Virginia State Crime Commission refused Tuesday to recommend legislation concerning sexting, but the issue is likely to come before lawmakers next month.

Currently, it’s up to commonwealth’s attorneys to charge teens and young adults who send sexually explicit pictures or videos through text messages or e-mails with possessing or transmitting child pornography. Several have done so, and some lawmakers say there should be laws to ensure the issue is dealt with uniformly across the state.

But others, like Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax, said taking the discretion away from the state’s 120 elected prosecutors could result in a teen being punished for a stupid mistake while allowing a serious predator to receive a mere slap on the wrist. Albo called possible legislation “a total minefield.”

Meanwhile, Conor Friedersdorf links to a chilling story of dictatorial prosecutorial vindictiveness and stupidity, which says it so I don’t have to:

Interpolation, 250 Miles Later: The point of this is that some kid who makes a mistake, or maybe it’s not a mistake but he or she’s under age (the age limits are, after all, generalizations) shouldn’t be treated like a 45-year-old who snatches a six-year-old off the street, but that is where we are headed.

You may continue

. . . consists of the dumb crassness (or is it crass dumbness?) to convince persons to buy things unwanted for persons unloved at prices unreal.

Alan Leshner writes at the Guardian:

While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote in her recent opinion essay that she did not deny the “reality of some changes in climate,” she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviours. She also badly confused the concepts of daily weather changes and long-term climate trends when she wrote that “while we recognise the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes.” Her statement inaccurately suggests that short-term weather fluctuations must be consistent with long-term climate patterns. And it is the long-term patterns that are a cause for concern.

He opened the column by equating global warming deniers with the doctors who, in the 1950s and 1960s, insisted that tobacco was safe.

I wonder if he listens to GNC? Todd read my email making the same comparison on the air. (The “GW#” links at the GNC link are my submissions.)

I have a quibble. He says she “distorted” facts. I don’t think she did.

Claiming that someone distorted something implies that he or she is capable of understanding it in the first place.

Reuters:

With momentum building in Washington for all 50 U.S. states to outlaw text messaging behind the wheel, there is evidence that the key demographic targeted by such legislation, teen drivers, will not pay much attention.

At least one major study has found that, with mobile devices now central to their lives, young people often ignore laws against using cell phones or texting in the car.

Not that teenagers don’t do stupid and dangerous things (I did, but I was smart enough not to get caught). So do grown-ups. We have a social tradition of thinking that each successive generation is going to hell, doing stuffus horribilus that we would have never done (except that we did).

None of the several cell-phone-using drivers who have nearly killed me have looked to be under 35.

Read more »

It is clear that our public officials cannot distinguish between danger and dumb:

Five students from Miscoe Hill School were suspended, and three questionable Facebook groups were taken offline after school officials learned of them last week. Although Police Chief Ernest Horn opted not to arrest the students late Monday, he said the seriousness of the situation cannot be overstated.

“If any additional information comes to light, I will of course reevaluate the matter,’’ he said.

The author of the online group “If 1,000 People Join This Group, I’ll Slap Mrs. Meyer,’’ was suspended for 10 days, while four others who posted to that site and similar ones were sent home for five days, officials said.

Jeez oh man, if my buddies and I had gotten caught teepeeing Mrs. H(redacted)’s yard these days (misty water-colored memories), we’d probably have been charged with aggravated assault, malicious trespass, and terroristic threatening and sent up the river (well, it was a small place–up the creek) for 20 to 25 with no time off for good behavior.

El Reg:

Cosmpolitan has done its bit to fight the terrifying advance of the H1N1 pig plague by advising its readers to avoid the missionary position during sex and instead adopt the reverse cowgirl (!?!–ed.).

As a long-time reader of Playboy; a common sewer of books by my favorite author, Anonymous; and an internet veteran, and as one who also knows a person whose offspring subscribes to Cosmopolitan, I say unabashedly that Cosmopolitan is the smarmiest, trashiest thing I have ever read in my life.

Not necessarily the most prurient nor the most explicit, but easily the smarmiest and trashiest.

(Yes, I saw the article that El Reg discusses. It was, indeed, too stupid for words.)

And the Power Rangers.

And the Beanie Babies.

So, after 250 miles on the road, the last 60 in a sloppy rain, I didn’t want to either cook or eat out, so I got a package of emergency food Stouffer’s frozen stromboli out of the freezer and found that it didn’t have any directions for cooking it in a conventional oven.

The ex-local rag:

In a report released this month, the (Violence Policy–ed.) center found that the shooting deaths of 67 people – including eight law enforcement officers – had been attributed to people holding legal gun permits. In 10 incidents, the shooters also took their own lives during a murder-suicide, and eight were mass shootings with three or more victims.

The report covers the two-year period from May 2007 through October 2009, not including the Nov. 5 killing of 13 people in Texas. In that most recent mass killing, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is charged with emptying two handguns in a crowded Fort Hood troop-processing center.

All of the shooters – who were identified from news accounts – held legal permits to carry a concealed handgun. As a result, the Violence Policy Center contends that “contrary to the false promises of the gun lobby, the simple and deadly fact is that state concealed-handgun systems are arming cop-killers, mass shooters, and other murderers.”

A yahoo packing heat is still a yahoo–a more deadly yahoo.

Over at Scientific Blogging, the Rubyologist tees off on the anti-vaccine zealots:

Now, we sit in the midst of a swine flu pandemic with a shortage of vaccine. There are a number of reasons for the shortage. The Obama administration blames the manufacturers, but, as this Wall Street Journal article discusses, part of the problem is that we gave in to anti-vax fear-mongering.

The fact that the purported thimerosal-autism link has been completely disproven, has not stopped the anti-vax ideologues. If the science does not support using single dose vials with reduced amounts of preservative, why did we decide to forgo use of mutli-dose vials, which can be produced and distributed more efficiently? May I suggest fear?

In a country that likes to bill itself as the most techologically advanced (it isn’t), the willingness of Americans to embrace and perpetrate fear based on ignorance and lies is quite astounding.

The Booman asks:

What is the difference between rape and forcible rape? That’s a question Bart Stupak wants you to know the answer to before you go trying to abort a pregnancy that has resulted from rape. He also wants your insurance company to ask you and your doctor whether your rape was really, truly forcible.

I know a few women who have been raped. (Hell, I may know some men who have been raped, but, if so, I don’t know about it.) I think they would say that trying to differentiate between rape and forcible rape is just too Stupak for words.

and points out that, once again, working persons are getting the shaft.

There was column in today’s local rag suggesting that walkouts should be banned and that transit should be thrown open to competition.

The reason that SEPTA and other transit agencies exist is because the profit-making railroads and bus companies no longer wanted the business.

The writers conceded that the transit agency had been underfunding the pension fund (the primary issue in the strike, though not the only issue).

I worked in the passenger transportation industry for a long time. I did not work on the road, but I worked close enough to the road to know that it is damned hard work that goes on 365 days a year, with screwy hours and often obnoxious cargo that wants first class service at fourth class rates and thinks it is entitled to treat the employees like dirt.

But God forbid transit employees should expect to be treated like decent human beings and have management honor its promises, like, for example, just to mention one pulled out of thin air, to fund their damned pensions.

In other words, to put it bluntly, workers should just bend over and take it.

That about providing good value for the money?

Nah. Too simple.

From Facebook to Twitter to YouTube, retailers and food chains plan to use social media this holiday season to get their brands in front of consumers and possibly win a bigger piece of their limited shopping budgets.

Never has one of my posts’ titles been so appropriate.

Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic (Connecticut) state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats’ names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards.

(snip)

According to Twitter, Inc., the fake posts violated the immensely popular social networking system’s anti-impersonation policy.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

A catchphrase with credentials: BS, MS, PHD.

Warning: Language

Karen regales me with this picture from a grocery store somewhere in the Wild West, where she resides:

The “Pay Extra for Saran Wrap” movement is growing.

Gag me with a spoon.

Except when the trigger finger combines with reckless dumbness:

A Florida man shot and killed his fianceé early Friday morning after mistaking her for an intruder.

This idea that some have that arming more yahoos with fireamrs somehow increases public safety is farcical.

It has no support in fact, only in ideology and wishful thinking.

Afterthought: Come to think of it, it’s sort of like Republican economic theory.