ready to have your mind blown?

remember that world map we had in school? it used to bother me that greenland was so big when, if you read the actual size data for that land mass, it didn't add up. now i know why: everything we know about the actual size of continents and countries is wrong. (example: did you know that the u.s. only takes up 1.9% of the earth?)

losing the lottery

the odds of winning last night's mega millions lottery were 1 in 176 million - about the same as getting hit by lightning while being attacked by a great white shark in your bathtub.

we spent almost $2 billion in 1 week on this pipe dream.

americans spend more on lottery tickets than on books or movies, and 1 in 5 of us believe that winning the lottery is the best way to achieve financial independence. so while we're apparently not poor enough yet, our national iq has slipped down into the cow range.

we've said it before: lotteries are a tax on the poor and the hopeless, who are the ones who buy most of the tickets (instead of food, clothing, education, or something that might actually make a difference in their lives). the media never talks about that, or about how lotteries encourage gambling addiction, which is just as real as addictions to drugs or alcohol.

the next step will be web-based gambling, because states have become so dependent on this revenue stream that they can't get enough of it. that nonsense about lottery money going to education isn't even mentioned any more.

you might as well set your money on fire.

rapist acquitted over jeans

'kayso, here's the scoop: a rapist was acquitted solely because the victim was wearing skinny jeans. nope, not kidding. and this wasn't something that happened back in the 70's or something, before we all evolved socially and recognized the self-evident fact that even a woman who walks around completely naked is not necessarily 'asking for it', and has total control over where things go from that point... if anywhere. this just happened. the argument: the pants were tight enough that the rapist could only have taken them off with the victim's help. your honors, we present the following clip for your review. the victim, played by elizabeth mcgovern, is wearing a 1930's ball gown - the equivalent of a wedding dress with an undercarriage constructed out of strait jackets. difficult to remove, yes? yet robert deniro seems undeterred. and she's riding around in the back of a limo with him, after a grand night out where alcohol was probably involved, and it's obvious there's some chemistry and a bit of history there. so watch the clips - we'll wait. done? good. now: is there any doubt in your mind over whether ms. mcgovern at any time gave consent? your honors, we rest our case.

7 out of 10 americans ok with torture

in a recent study, it was once again confirmed that 70% of us will torture another person if told to do so by an authority figure.

think about that one for awhile, fellow monkey minders, and what it means for our survival chances as a species and our future.

take as much time as you like.

teachers packin' heat: worst. idea. ever.

if you were a tiny little school district in texas, without gangs or much in the way of violent crime, and you read about shootings at huge schools like virginia tech, we're betting that your response wouldn't be to arm your teachers.

but then, you're probably not from texas.

(if teachers carried concealed weapons at our school back in the day, we're pretty sure that we wouldn't be here now. the temptation to shut us up was just too strong.)

1 in 3 child murders perpetrated by fathers

according to the u.s justice department's bureau of justice statistics, between 1976 and 2004, fully 31% of all murdered children under the age of 5 were killed by their own fathers.

(which is why we aren't kidding when we say that parenthood should require a regularly updated license, no different than a driver's license or a license to teach. if republicans truly believed in the sanctity of the family as much as they say they do, they'd back us up on this. but, of course, it's nothign more than a code word for controlling other people's families.)

does the klan plan to kill obama?

the white supremacist nutjobs (as opposed to all of the other colorful nutjobs that dot our national landscape) appear to be in favor of barak obama winning the presidency. they seem to think that it will lead to an awakening and revolution by whites against minorities.

which is, of course, a delusion. all of the white supremacist groups put together - klans, aryans, nationalists, and all of the other flavors - have no more than 200,000 members, tops. as of this writing, there are 305 million people in the u.s. that means that a grand total of .07% of us are white supremacists.

see the huge-ass hole in their plan?

wethinks that they are all apt to be a bit frustrated when obama is elected, the revolution completely fails to happen, and they are suddenly faced with the ugly truth: that they are utterly alone in their lunacy, they have nothing, and they have no one but themselves to blame for their situation. and where do you think they'll focus their aggression at that point?

if we were barak obama, we'd be bathing in teflon about now.

play the lottery = set your money on fire

your chances of winning most multi-state lotteries vary between 80 million and 120 million to 1. that's a number high enough that most people can't even imagine it. lottery organizations count on that vagueness to sucker mostly poor & middle class folks into spending a sizable portion of their income for nothing every week.

the odds that you will become infected with flesh-eating bacteria is 1 in 1 million - 120 times more likely than winning the lottery.

how many people do you know that have been hit by lightning? you are 45 times more likely to die from being hit by lightning than to win.

finally, according to space.com, you are 450,000 times more likely to die from an asteroid collision in 2029.

but your strong desire to win - that is, your gambling addiction ("i only spend x dollars a week. i only buy them for entertainment. i can stop any time i want." see how pathetic you sound?) is why almost every state now has a lottery: it's a proven source of revenue, and states use 40% - 70% of it for their general funds.

you're not alone: lotteries are an addiction for 1 out of 3 people. it's yet another fine example of the monkey mind at work. as far as we're concerned, the state might as well be selling heroin.

orangutans first great apes to become extinct

based on vocabulary & cognitive studies, an adult orangutan is about as intelligent as an average 6-year-old. which is a shame, really, as it means that they are probably aware that they are becoming extinct. they only exist on 2 tiny islands, now, and recent sharp declines mean that they will probably be the first of the great apes to disappear, followed by bonobos, gorillas, and chimps.

in other happy earth news, our coral reefs are dying fast, mosquitos blanket the flooded midwest (but at least there's no malaria yet), and 12 out of 19 penguin species are in trouble.

causes for the above: climate change, pollution, overfishing, lumber companies, bush meat poaching, human sprawl, & good, old-fashioned monkey-mindedness.

you can see into the future

unfortunately, only 1/10 of a second into the future. but still, it's good.

(now we just need to find an article by stephen pinker that explains why the human brain's hard-wired pattern recognition circuitry causes folks to see images of the virgin mary on their pop tarts.)