January 20, 2018

It should be obvious why Trump needed a shutdown this weekend

No one's talking about Stormy Daniels now, are they?

January 19, 2018

I see one little problem with making a Trump biopic

You can only do true justice to Trump’s life story by making a porno.

The title’s obvious: American Caligula. Ron Jeremy is the perfect actor to play him.

From this we have two problems: will the people who normally watch political movies accept one that’s rated quintuple-X, and will porn customers flock to a true-life story?

January 17, 2018

Navy filing homicide charges against commanders in 2 deadly ship collisions

Source: Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Navy says it is filing negligent homicide charges against the commanders of two ships involved in fatal collisions last year.

The charges are to be presented at what the military calls an Article 32 hearing, which will determine whether the accused are court-martialed.

Read more: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/navy-filing-homicide-charges-against-commanders-in-2-deadly-ship-collisions-1.506966

January 11, 2018

"Mr. Big Businessman, how did you invest your yooge tax cut?"

"I was able to buy a whole pallet of pink paper!"

January 11, 2018

The "F-52" comment is even loopier than you think

https://theaviationist.com/2017/11/03/norways-first-three-f-35-jets-have-just-landed-at-orland-air-force-station/

Norway currently flies F-16 fighters. They decided to replace them with something a little less worn-out, and picked the F-35. According to the article: "Norway plans to procure up to 52 F-35A, at an estimated cost of $7.3 billion, including weapons and support, to replace its fleet of aging F-16s that will be replaced in 2021."

So...it's not "F-52s and F-35s" it's "52 F-35s." This shit's getting worse than Bush.

January 10, 2018

Why we must elect Oprah in 2020 to advance the radical left feminist agenda

http://scibabe.com/oprah2020/

January 9, 2018

Why the published answer to the "working together" puzzle is wrong

https://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2017/08/13/can-you-solve-a-math-word-problem-that-stumps-us-college-students-a-working-together-problem/

This thing has gone viral for reasons I cannot comprehend. Here's the scenario:

Alice and Bob can complete a job in 2 hours.

Alice and Charlie can complete the same job in 3 hours.

Bob and Charlie can complete the same job in 4 hours.

How long will the job take if Alice, Bob, and Charlie work together?

Assume each person works at a constant rate, whether working alone or working with others.

The published answer is 1 hour 51 minutes for all three working together.

And clearly, that's wrong. Why the hell would we accept a three-person team that performs only marginally better than a two-person one?

Let's put a little analysis into this thing and see if we can come up with a better answer.

What is the job? For ease of calculation, we'll say the job is assembling 240 objects, and each can be assembled by one person.

When Alice and Bob work together, it takes 120 minutes to assemble them, so the assembly rate in the hands of a competent worker is one minute per item.

It takes 180 minutes to assemble the 240 items if Charlie replaces Bob, and 480 minutes if Charlie replaces Alice. The problem, therefore, is Charlie. Notice it says "each person works at a constant rate" but it does NOT say each person works at the SAME rate. The introduction to the puzzle infers that it takes Charlie three minutes to make one item if he's working with Alice (meaning Alice has to make 180 of them and Charlie only makes 60), and Charlie refuses to work when he's with Bob (meaning Bob has to make all 240 because Charlie spent his whole shift sending tweets even Trump wouldn't chance).

If Charlie won't work at all when Bob is in the room, he's not likely to work if Alice is there too. Therefore, under this scenario it requires all three of them two hours to make the 240 items - 120 for Alice, 120 for Bob and none for Charlie.

Second scenario: Before work starts today, Alice and Bob sit down with Charlie to find out what the deal is. Charlie says he doesn't want to work with Bob and his hands don't work well enough to make the items as quickly as Alice and Bob can. Because the work has to get done, Alice agrees to sit between them and Charlie agrees to pretend Bob isn't there. We know he can make 20 items per hour, so we'll divide the pile of work as so:

Alice: 100 items
Bob: 100 items
Charlie: 40 items

It will take Alice and Bob each 1 hour 40 minutes to do their work. When they are done, Charlie will have finished 33 items. Of the remaining seven, Alice gives three to Bob, takes three for herself and leaves Charlie the last one. Three minutes later, all of them are done. Total time: 1 hour 43 minutes.

Third scenario: Once again, Charlie hates Bob. But Alice watches him build an item and realizes he's doing it all wrong. She gives him a block of instruction that gets his speed up to where it should be. We then divide the pile of work evenly - 80 items per worker. Total in this case: 1 hour 20 minutes.

January 7, 2018

A guaranteed way to make Republicans support legal weed

“Marijuana legalization will lead to tax cuts.”

How it works:

1) Marijuana is popular.
2) http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/19/news/colorado-marijuana-tax-revenue/index.html
The state of Colorado is pulling in about $200 million per year in pot tax revenue.
3) There’s no way to say how much revenue will be had at the federal level from pot tax...not everyone who drinks will change to weed, and not everyone who smokes weed will stop drinking. But let’s take the same wild stab the GOP does when it does Laffer Curve supply side job creation estimates and say weed will produce $10 billion in federal tax revenues per year, plus pay for itself by funding the social costs of pot use. (Alcohol taxes do not come close to funding the social costs of alcohol use.)
4) Because “revenue neutrality” is the GOP’s mantra, every dollar gained by taxing pot will have to be offset with a tax cut in another part of the government.

Republicans will sell their own mothers for a tax cut.

January 7, 2018

Trump needs to be quiet about the "libel laws"

In

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-insists-he-very-stable-genius-amid-questions-over-mental-n835191

our ersatz president says about Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury":

The guy who invented the birther lie needs to shut the hell up about "libel laws." If a sitting president could sue someone for libeling him, the building on Fifth Avenue would now be the "Obama Tower."

January 2, 2018

Other things Donald Trump's wise leadership prevented in 2017

This is a Genuine General Secretary Trump Tweet...

Well...if Donald Trump was able to stop commercial airlines from having any fatal accidents, what else did he prevent?

There were Zero dirigible explosions in 2017.
Zero late deliveries by the Pony Express.
Zero steamship boilers exploded.
Zero White House officials were terminated without probable cause.*
Zero nuclear missile silos caved in.
Zero good bills made their way through Congress.
Zero competent, reasonable judges were given lifetime appointments to the federal bench.
Zero well-thought-out tweets were sent from the "realDonaldTrump" Twitter account.
His sons killed Zero dodos, passenger pigeons, tyrannosaurs, great auks or wooly mammoths on any of their hunting expeditions - though not from lack of trying.
And, of course...
Zero Nazi rallies were conducted within 120 miles of the front porch of the White House.
(Oh wait. Scratch that. There was that one...)

All tolled, I'd say Trump had a pretty good year with lots of zeroes.

* There were perfectly good reasons to terminate the battalion of White House staffers who DID get terminated.