The Determinist Explanation

Because of the autonomic responses of the chicken's internal nervous system in response to visual, auditory, and other sensory stimuli, moving through a complex neural network to stimulate the chicken's behavior. Likely, the neural programming within the chicken's brain was influenced by both pleasure and pain induction, perhaps modeled after previous experience such as when the chicken had previously crossed other roads and located a source of food, or an instinctual response left over from hundreds of thousands of generations of successfully-breeding ancestors which "hard-wires" into the unconscious motive imperatives of the chicken the notion that across the road, a place of apparent safety from foxes or other threatening predators is likely to be found, e.g., a coop. While our understanding of the natural phenomena which are the inputs leading to the particular behavior under examination is admittedly limited, a complete and comprehensive understanding of those phenomena and how they are internally processed by the subject is ultimately unnecessary to come to the realization that in no event can the chicken be understood to have "chosen" to have done this.

Breaking: Favre Seen At Walgreen's

MANKATO, MINNESOTA -- ATSN Exclusive -- We have unconfirmed reports that Brett Favre was seen entering a Walgreen's earlier today in Skyline, Minnesota, and was seen heading towards the "Allergy Remedies" on aisle six.  Repeat, an unconfirmed report that Brett Favre entered a Wallgreen's drug store, near the Minnesota Vikings' training camp at Mankato State University, and apparently purchased a Claritin or a similar product.  So far, we have no official reaction from either Favre or the Minnesota Vikings concerning Favre's health or whether this apparent chronic attack of allergies has any effect on his ability to play.  Also, we have yet to learn what, if anything, Favre ate for breakfast and if this is a repeat of yesterday's "peppered eggs" sneezing incident.  Our investigation is ongoing.  Stay tuned to ATSN for all your sports news, we'll keep you up to date!

More On The Brett Favre Story

[Cue music]

Anchor:  You're watching ASTN, the All-Sports Talk Network, and this is "False Start."  Here with us today is sports physiologist Jimmy Buckley, and Sterling Sharpe, Brett's former teammate and easily the best-dressed commentator on the NFL Network.  Let's start with you, Sterling.  Great suit!

Sharpe:  Thanks, man.

Anchor:  Now, Sterling, you were Brett Favre's teammate for a couple of great years back in the early 1990's.

Sharpe:  Yeah, that's right.  Thirty-four touchdowns Brett and me hooked up for.  We broke the single-season TD record, baby!

Anchor:  Boo-ya!  [Laughter, high-fives.]  Okay, let's get serious.  In that time, did you ever, you know, eat breakfast with Brett?

Sharpe:  Oh, sure.  We'd have breakfast before practice, before a game, or sometimes just hanging out.  And here's the thing that I think a lot of people on this story have overlooked.  Brett likes to eat salt and pepper on his eggs.

Anchor:  Salt and pepper, you say?

Sharpe:  Man, I seen him!  He just shakes that stuff on there like he don't care.  [Gestures wildly.]  Ketchup, too.  I went to Waffle House in Manitowoc with him one time back in '93.  Brett even had cheese on his eggs that day.  He was kind of a wild man back then, hah-hah!

Anchor:  Wow.  Okay.  Now, Jimmy, what's your reaction to this information?

Buckley:  Very interesting!  We can't be sure, because we haven't got this level of detail to know for sure if Brett did put pepper on his eggs this morning.  But if it's true that Favre made his initial sneezes right after eating eggs, this suggests that maybe it wasn't the eggs per se that made him sneeze, but maybe a stray whiff of pepper.

Anchor:  So if that's the case, then how does this affect his ability to play?

Buckley:  Well, that's where the antihistamine comes in.  You see, an antihistamine, sometimes called a "histomine antagonist," suppresses the body's reaction to allergic stimulants.

Anchor:  Stimulants, pills -- uh-oh!  Brett's had enough trouble with that sort of thing in his career!

Buckley:  No kidding.  So if he's using this --

Sharpe:  [Interrupts]  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  You guys are talking about a cold pill.  An over-the-counter thing.

Anchor:  What's your point, Sterling?

Sharpe:  Look, Brett went through a rough time back then, and he came out stronger for it.  That's the kind of guy he is, he always comes out tougher and stronger.  That's what I'm saying.

Buckley:  Well, the thing to remember here is that there are some kinds of histamine antagonists that have significant side effects, like drowsiness, dizziness, or even nausea, in some people.  [Sharpe shrugs, anchor nods.]  I can tell you that I wouldn't want to be out there playing football like that, for sure.

Anchor:  So if he suffers these side effects, that might affect his ability to perform?

Buckley:  Sure.  It slows him down, maybe just a fraction of a second, but --

Sharpe:  Man, a fraction of a second is an eternity out there on the field!  [Looks directly at camera.]  Brett, man, stay healthy.  For you and Deanna and those girls, not just all those fans out there pulling for you.

Buckley:  I should add, guys, that eggs are a really rich source of protein, and there's no doubt that for an athlete, especially of Brett's age, getting a lot of good healthy protein is an important part of an athlete's diet.  Now, all that cholestrol, I don't know.  But if it's pepper and not the eggs, that's more good news than bad.

Anchor:  Jimmy?  Does this affect whether Favre is gonna play?

Buckley:  Let me put it this way:  I'm in a keeper league, and Favre's been my guy since nineteen ninety five.

Sterling:  Sure, cause before that, you must have had me!  [Laughter]

Anchor:  Sterling, do you think he's going to play?

Sharpe:  Oh, yeah.  Brett's hungry, that's why he's eating eggs!  If his ankle is in shape, look out for Old Number Four.

Anchor:  Okay, thanks, fellahs.  Exclusively here an ASTN -- but wait, there's more.  Stay tuned for Molly McKleinquist's interview with a guy who used to be the mailroom clerk at Brett's agent's office, who says he's heard Favre sneeze like this in the past.  Is Brett Favre conjuring up old demons?  Find out after the break, only here on ASTN.  You're watching "False Start!"

[Music, fade-out to jock itch relief cream commercial]

...Yes, Readers, I'm getting a little tired of the inanity of sports radio.  I can't wait for the NPR pledge drive to be over and my research for fantasy football completed.

Promise Breaker

When I first seriously looked at Barack Obama as a candidate for President, the thing I liked best was that he took civil liberties seriously.  He really got it that freedom is what America is realy, really, all about.  If he became President, our government would take the Constitution seriously again.

Since then, of course, I've been quite disappointed in how reality has played out.  At first, it could be chalked up to inexperience and needing to respond to things immediately before Obama's new policy positions could be fully worked out.  But after a year and a half in the White House, Obama owns whatever it is the government is doing outright, and if anything, it's worse than it was under Bush because not only has nothing changed, Obama has in some cases literally taken things up to the next level.

Here, I'll let my man Jon Stewart lay it out for you, using video to compare Candidate Obama to President Obama in the way that only The Daily Show (and its spinoff Colbert Report)* ever seems to actually do:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

I've said it before -- where Bush would have read your e-mail without a search warrant, Obama will just plain f-ing kill you.  That's rather a more serious civil liberties problem. 

This guy does not take civil liberties seriously.  He talked the talk as a candidate and not only did nothing, but consciously made it worse.  The one thing I really, really was looking forward to in an Obama Administration turns out to to have been a cynical lie.

But on that super-accelerated deficit spending plank of his platform in exchange for little tangible increase in government or medical services, I've got to give the guy credit -- he followed through on that campaign promise with gusto.

I can't say I'm surprised.  I am, however, quite disappointed.


*  Once again, I throw my hands up in frustration that it seems to take a comedy show to do what the news ought to be doing.

Norwegian Curling Pants

I want me some Norwegian curling pants,
'Cuz then I could go for the gold.
They got room to do the M.C. Hammer dance,
I got moves that never get old.

I love the argyle of white, blue, and red,
And fame from using a broom.
I'll let my ancestry go to my head,
And wear them from Oslo to Khartoum.*

With those pants, I could dress like a king
And no one would notice my mole.
The dry cleaner would always know they're my thing,
And my wife says they'd be great birth control.


* "Khartoum"?  Really?  You don't think you could have come up with a more artificial rhyme than that, TL?

More New Tiger Woods Commercials

By now, you've all seen the Billy Dee Williams thing.  But this one, I think, is new:

Felicitously Named Initiatives

At lunch today, my friend pointed out that the proposed initiative to legalize and tax marijuana in California had recently announced that it has obtained half again as many signatures as needed to qualify for appearing on the ballot in 2010.  I joked that it should be titled "Proposition 20."  That way, the sponsor's political entity could be called "Californians For Twenty."

Weekend Weirdness, Volume VII

Yeah, I pretty much took off the weekend, except to talk about food.  But I wasn't going to leave you without your weirdness.  100% apolitical this weekend.

Consider, for example, the transvestite (female dressing as male) jazz musician who over the course of 54 years fooled at least two wives and three girlfriends in bed, one of whom thought she had been impregnated by her husband.

A better bar bet than "Albuquerque."  Home of the Indians!

Having trouble with your take-aways?  Call 911!

More zombies.  Like cowbell, you can never have too many zombies.

If you don't like your creepiness urban and English-speaking, may I suggest a visit to La Isla de la Munecas?

Stop.  Hammertime!

Good design isn't just for cheese-eaters any more -- it's a national security issue.  The "eye watching you" is not a "really comforting feeling," by the way.

Finally, one guy figured out yet another way to piss off his annoying neighbors.

Deferred Success

Sometimes it's hard to tell parody from what it's parodying. Take this for instance:

Now, I found this on comedy site failblog.org.   That's a good place to go to see things like people not setting their parking brakes, teenagers running out of talent,  criminally bad parental priority-setting, and other sorts of cruel humor.  Almost always good for a laugh.

But there is a good purpose to using a harsh word like "fail."  Some people are simply too dense to understand that being told that your efforts have resulted in "deferred success" means that you haven't succeeded.  To be sure, kids especially will experience a visceral emotional reaction when they are told that they have failed, that their performance is unacceptable.  But how else are they going to know they need to do better next time?

While I can't be sure this isn't a joke about this sort of thing rather than the actual subject of such a joke, it's simply too realistic for me to dismiss it as parody.  But parody is a very good way to demonstrate the problem here:

A doctor who told her patients that they are in a state of "deferred health" would be talking nonsense and potentially putting her patient's lives at risk.  "You are ill," the doctor should say, "and here's how you get better."

A professional athlete who does not win a game has not "deferred victory." He has "lost."

Similarly, a lawyer does not tell her client that the judge has "deferred awarding you a favorable ruling." A lawyer defending an accused rapist with the claim that her client merely "deferred obtaining consent for sex" probably ought not to be in that line of work.

An accountant ought not advise his client that "You are experiencing a state of deferred profits" or it seems that you have deferred responding to a tax liability."  Sadly, this is exactly the sort of language that some accountants do use when breaking that bad news.  The clients need to hear, in plain English, what they need to do.  Just say it:  "You are operating at a loss."  "You owe taxes."  Good accountants break the bad news to their clients straight.

 Of course telling someone they've failed produces an unpleasant emotional reaction; that is the point.  That's how you get someone's attention.  "This isn't good enough."  I get that response sometimes too -- from judges, from clients,* from my employers, from my wife.  I don't like it, especially from my wife.  But without it, I don't know that where I'm going is not where I'm expected to be.  With it, I'm alerted to the fact that I need to straighten up my act and do better.  Learning to accept acknowledge and correct one's own shortcomings is a function of being a mature adult.

I'm also aware from my own experiences as an employer, and as a teacher, that delivering a message of failure is unpleasant.  I work on underperforming students ten times as much as I do on the ones who meet or exceed expectations.  I dread addressing the angst of students who think they have performed well when in fact they did not.  Combine that with grade inflation, in which there are only two grades, "A" and everything else, and then I need to deal with failure-angst coming from students whose performance is acceptable as well, and you've got the real down side of teaching.  But at the end of the day, particularly at a collegiate level, students have to own their own educations, and while I work hard to give the underperforming students ways to do that, the most valuable tool in my arsenal to get them to perform well is the ability to tell them that they haven't performed well.

When a teacher calls a student's performance a "deferred success," the student will not hear the word "deferred" but only hear the word "success," and combined with removing the emotional sting of the word "failure" from the response, this is a sure-fire recipe for additional results of the same unacceptable level.


*  I get it from opposing counsel, too, but that I disregard.

Next Time Ask A Real Doctor

At The Awards Ceremony

Yo, Barack, I'ma let you finish an' I'm happy for you and all, but I jess gotta say, Nelson Mandela had one of the best Nobel Peace Prizes in history. Word up, y'all!

What Should He Have Done?

This skit might seem offensive at first glance, but take a moment to think about it before you pronounce it so. Notice that there is never approval of what they know is about to happen:

Ultimately, this is a restatement of the Argument From Evil. Which is actually an ancient argument indeed, first and best articulated by Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

It'll Never Get Old But It'll Always Be Obscure

I've done enough reading about the seventeenth century recently that this one from XKCD is really funny to me.
\
Which reminds me. Did you hear the one about Beethoven's career after he died? He started decomposing! Har har har!!!

Okay, I'll leave you all alone for the weekend now.

A Simple Lesson In Tactics

Doggie Personal Ads

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Male Golden Retriever seeks female of similar size, build for exercise, play and more???? Interests include playing fetch, eating people food, and harassing household cats. Box 133932.

ME: Fem. Daschund, territorial, likes to do tricks for treats and people food. YOU: Submissive male, Beagle-sized, spayed or neutered, with access to people food, enjoys being licked obsessively. US: Non-breeding companions chasing squirrels and barking and neighbor dogs and passing skateboarders together. Box 310027.

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LET ME SMELL UNDER YOUR TAIL! Active, curious Jack Russell terrier (spayed) seeks pug, schnauzer, or other JRT for tug-of-war, ball games, wrestling with gentle biting and ear-tugging, barking contests. Bring people food! Box 192581.

PORT. WATER DOG seeks poodle or other water-loving companion to share home with pool. Enjoys clogging drains with shed, chasing birds, people food, and sleeping on the couch when people are out of home. Box 208549.

ARE YOU THE LEADER OF MY PACK? Submissive greyhound mix seeks friend with strong herding instinct. Also enjoys people food. You must not bite to assert dominance but wrestling is OK. Box 099813.

Unfunny Conservatives

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, explains humor. Humor has six elements: Cute (as in kids and animals); Naughty; Bizarre; Clever; Recognizable (You’ve been there); and Cruel. To be humorous, you must meld two or more of these elements.

South Park, for instance, combines Cute, Naughty, Recognizable, and Clever with its potty-mouthed fourth-graders and intentionally ill-concealed political and pop culture allegories. The Simpsons combines Clever, Bizarre, Cruel, and Recognizable. I'd argue that for comedy to reach laugh-out-loud portions, there must be at least three elements and one of them must be Clever.

Left-leaning comedians seem able to get laughs. But there's nothing in the formula that suggests that right-leaning comedians are incapable of the same thing. Why can't right-wingers do comedy? I don't mean that conservatives can't tell a joke now and then or include some humor in a speech. But when they sit down (or, often, stand up) to do comedy, it nearly always falls really flat -- other than with the exception I describe below.

Examples: Fox's Half Hour News Hour was painfully unfunny. Its successor, NewsBusted, is only a little better -- this recent episode actually had a funny joke in it (the one about Sarah Palin's future). And this odd story from former Saturday Night Live writer and performer Victoria Jackson is not funny at all, even though it's clear that she's trying to throw in some jokes. But at the end of the day, her story is about her walking in to a store, ranting at the shopkeeeper in a manner that demonstrates she has drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid, and then walking out not buying anything.

Recent P.J. O'Rourke can only invoke a smirk from me these days -- he's not even particularly insightful anymore, either. O'Rourke is a particularly painful example of this phenomenon, because he used to be hilarious. Parliament of Whores remains one of the funniest books I have ever read. But today's P.J. O'Rourke would sneer at his younger self; his idea of a good time now is relaxing in an overstuffed chair with a cigar and a glass of good Scotch -- a far cry from the vision of fun he uses to open up Republican Party Reptile of driving a sports car over a hundred miles an hour while receiving sexual favors from a hot teenage girl in the passenger seat.

A example leads us to the real issue. Chris Muir's attempt to make a conservative "Doonesbury" is only funny when it avoids politics altogether. Conservatives can be funny -- when they aren't political.

The problem, I think, is that conservatives who try to write "conservative comedy" inject another element into the mix: Preachy. And "conservative comedy," at least the bulk of the examples I describe above, is typically begun with the objective of conveying a conservative message. By definition, the primary objective becomes Preachy, rather than Funny.

Preachy kills Funny, the way bleach kills mildew. Yeah, every once in a while, mildew is really strong, so some of it survives the bleach and the scrub. But if you were trying to grow mildew, you'd want the bleach to stay away. (Yes, I just compared conservative comedy to mildew. See, that combines Cruel and Recognizable.) The best you can hope for when you try to be Preachy and Funny is Ironic, and generally you have to settle for Bitter or Sarcastic.

"But, TL, liberals can be preachy, too!" Damn right. And they aren't funny when they're preachy, either. Example: George Carlin. Very funny comedian, and reasonably persuasive liberal speaker. But both at the same time? That, he achieved only rarely.

Most political jokes at the expense of conservatives seem to be based on pointing out hypocrisy relating to sexual ethics. This combines Naughty, Recognizable, and Cruel, and is therefore Funny. I would argue that poking fun at a hypocrite isn't particularly "political;" we could just as easily poke fun at the sexual habits of a celebrity like a movie star (say, Lindsey Lohan or George Clooney). I should also point out that conservatives have gone out of their way to invite mocking attention to their licentiousnesses, in a way liberals have not.

Conservatives can be funny -- when they aren't Preachy about what they're saying.

Rob Long was the producer and a principal writer of the long-running and quite funny TV show Cheers, and he's conservative. But he didn't set out to make a conservative TV show. His only objective as a writer and as a producer was to be funny, and he's stated on a few occasions that he sometimes put the kabosh on jokes or scenarios for Cheers that were political. Cheers was one of the least explicitly political comedies on TV and also one of the funniest on the air at the time (and indeed, its reruns hold up pretty well).

A conservative friend of mine has been a stand-up comic -- and when he gets on a roll, he can be funnier than any of the professional performers on TV. But he doesn't incorporate conservative politics in his routines, he doesn't set out to do political jokes. Like Carlin, when he even refers to politicians at all, they are foils becaue of their personal foibles rather than their politics. It would be hard to tell, at least from his comedy routines, what his political opinions really are.

These guys said, "I'm going to write and perform comedy." Note the lack of adjectives. A comedian should try to be funny first, and leave their politics to be an outgrowth of their humor, rather than its focus. The result is that they were funny, people liked hearing what they had to say, and they wound up sneaking in some subtle conservative points in there -- like, say, Sam Malone on Cheers coming to terms with his self-destructive womanizing, thereby promoting the ethic of monogamy. It wasn't forced or preached, it just was there.

Preach if you're going to preach. Joke if you're going to joke. Doing both effectively at the same time is extraordinarily difficult. Save that sort of thing for the professionals -- and bear in mind that even they can't pull it off most of the time.

Hat tip to Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Words That Seem Dirty But Probably Aren't

From the writeup of the Brazil-South Africa match in the Confederation Cup today:

Spurred on by the deafening buzz of their delighted fans’ vuvuzelas, South Africa unsettled Brazil with a frantic, hustling game of quick challenges and tight defense.

Normally, if we're talking about Brazilians and vuvuzelas in the same sentence, I'm thinking you probably want to get the kids out of the room first because it's about to get really interesting. But in fact, a vuvuzela is a horn about three feet long that some people say mimics the sound of an elephant trumpeting.

So it looks like S's wish gets granted -- the U.S. has to play Brazil for the Cup. Well, if we're going to win, we want to play against the best available, and we already beat Spain. (She has a nice blog, by the way -- go ahead and give her a few hits, why dontcha?)