Do you read The West Virginia Surf Report? You should. It can be a little NSFW from time to time, but consistently high-lair-e-us. The author thereof, Jeff Kay, has produced a boss little e-book that you absolutely must read: A Convenience Story! Enjoy that.
Time Magazine produces a simple poll:
I post this without comment, so that you can admire it and draw your own conclusions. (Blatantly stolen from Matthew Yglesias.)
Over at Andrew’s blog, his fill-ins (particularly Patrick) have been talking a lot about atheism, and posting replies from readers with their own thoughts. This one hit particularly close to home:
Maybe there is a god. Maybe there are many gods. Maybe there’s no god at all … Maybe in the end it doesn’t matter, and I’ve just got to lead the best life I can, as I see it, and if that’s not good enough in the end — if there be an end instead of a simple fading away — then as far as I’m concerned, any god that would condemn me for doing my best to be the best person I can isn’t a god I’d want to believe in, in the first place.
This is a nice story detailing Scott Adams’s problems with Spasmodic Dysphonia. I hope his voice is permanently fixed; I think I’d be suicidal if it happened to me.
Here’s a lengthy commentary on the state of the “drug war,” why it’s always been doomed to failure, and why the administration is legally prevented from even discussing stopping it. Interesting fact:
Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.
The New Yorker explores why we’re mostly fatties. The topic of “Supersizing” is particularly interesting:
In the early nineteen-sixties, a man named David Wallerstein was running a chain of movie theatres in the Midwest and wondering how to boost popcorn sales. Wallerstein had already tried matinée pricing and two-for-one specials, but to no avail. According to Greg Critser, the author of “Fat Land” (2003), one night the answer came to him: jumbo-sized boxes. Once Wallerstein introduced the bigger boxes, popcorn sales at his theatres soared, and so did those of another high-margin item, soda.
A decade later, Wallerstein had retired from the movie business and was serving on McDonald’s board of directors when the chain confronted a similar problem. Customers were purchasing a burger and perhaps a soft drink or a bag of fries, and then leaving. How could they be persuaded to buy more? Wallerstein’s suggestion—a bigger bag of fries—was greeted skeptically by the company’s founder, Ray Kroc. Kroc pointed out that if people wanted more fries they could always order a second bag.
“But Ray,” Wallerstein is reputed to have said, “they don’t want to eat two bags—they don’t want to look like a glutton.” Eventually, Kroc let himself be convinced; the rest, as they say, is supersizing.
Eek. If you have time for a little long-form journalism, check out this GQ piece on a teenage boy in Wisconsin who posed as a girl on the interwebs to lure other male students into sending nude pictures, which he then used to blackmail them into sexual activities. Way creepy.
Mark “The Shark” Titus talks whitewater rafting, The Ladies, and why “I want to put sex on your face” is the only pickup line you’ll ever need.
I have found a new comic that you should read: Girls With Slingshots! Like all good webcomics, you need to start at the beginning and read through. Here’s an amusing one to whet your appetite:
