I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat if you don't shut up (idea)

I will REMOVE the fucking toilet seat if you don't shut up

From everything2.com, this is the definitive statement on the man/woman toilet seat controversy. And of course it's hilarious.

Yahoo! News Full Coverage - Health - Study: Random Drug Testing Is Effective at Slowing Student Drug Use

Study: Random Drug Testing Is Effective
(AP) - Student-athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, a study shows. The one-year pilot study by researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University compared Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, where all student-athletes were subject to random testing, and Warrenton High School, a demographically similar school near Astoria, where they were not

This is the "no shit Sherlock" story of the year. If you randomly piss test high school students, they are less likely to do drugs than students that are not randomly drug tested. My complaint here is simple -- the headline. "Study: Random Drug Testing Is Effective" is the header. Unfortunately the study has very little to do with random drug testing. The study researched the numbers at one Oregon high school that did random testing and demographically similar school that did not. Guess what, fewer kids used drugs at the school that tested. Well, surprise surpise! The headline overreaches and claims that random drug testing is "effective" without stating "at what" or under "what condition".

An aside: The study was to be a pilot program for a 13 high school three year study that was suspended after the Office of Human Research Policy "expressed concerns about some of the methodology used in the study's latter two years" that included financial incentives for participating schools and not obtaining consent from the children studied.

Regular Season Standings 

Rank Team Name W-L-T Win % PTS Streak 

1  Bunguls 12-2-0 .857 1062.00 W-2 

2  D-Boys 11-3-0 .786 954.00 L-1 

3  GameCocks 11-3-0 .786 944.00 W-4 

4  Hey Man 9-5-0 .643 903.00 L-2 

5  Nashville Sounds 6-8-0 .429 858.00 L-1 

6  Gladiators 6-8-0 .429 741.00 W-1 

7  McSey and the Macks 5-9-0 .357 772.00 W-2 

8  Extreme Ryders 5-9-0 .357 746.00 W-1 

9  whiteboyz 3-11-0 .214 720.00 L-4 

10  the muff men #2 2-12-0 .143 649.00 L-5 

I got railed all season in fantasy football on Yahoo. That's me in seventh. Man I sucked. Every move I made worked against me. Terrible year, especially considering I've finished in the top two of my league every year since I started playing (98). To top it all off I finished last in the playoffs. I got eighth of eight!

Well it seems the worst thing that anyone can think of to say about Bill Frist is that his family made its money buying up non-profit hospitals, kicking out the dead weight (read poor people), and defrauding Medicare to the tune of a couple billion dollars. The company recently settled with the government for a fine of about $700 million making the total fines for the company since 1997 somewhere near 1.7 billion. As is often the case when companies steal billions, not one individual was jailed in this huge defrauding of the American people, and only two executives were ever charged with crime. Surpisingly those two executives, Jay Jarrell and Robert Whiteside, were convicted of conspiring to defraud the government and making false statements in Medicare reimbursement cost reports. Not suprisingly their convictions were overturned on appeal.

Frist's brother Thomas is CEO of Columbia/HCA. HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) was founded by the Frists' father Thomas Sr. in 1968. Bill Frist's personal stake in the company's stock is in the tens of millions of dollars. 3.4 million of that dirty money is what he used to get himself elected to the Senate as an unknown doctor from Tennessee in 1994. He is in line to head the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees, and is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Public Health... Well of course he is.

The Onion | Horoscopes

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
Certain shortcomings in your education and upbringing cause you to read meaning into the relationships among various celestial bodies.

My horoscope from The Onion. Brilliant.

Yahoo! News - AOL May Strike Gold with Instant Messaging Patent

The patent, issued in September, grants AOL's instant messaging subsidiary ICQ broad ownership rights to the technology, which enables users to chat quickly and cheaply across the Internet.
The broad wording of the patent means AOL could get an important legal leg up on rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo, the other players in the potentially lucrative instant messaging (IM) arena that have their own proprietary technologies.

I always wondered why AOL bought ICQ after they'd all ready had AOL Messenger out for a while. This explains it. Did you know that AOL also owns the patents for cookies and SSL (used in most secure online transactions such as shopping)? Currently AOL doesn't enforce these patents. It doesn't mean they can't though. The WWW could become a very different place if they decide to.

Trent Lott's favorite meal at the Sonic in Pascagoula, MI is a "Number 2" cheeseburger, onion rings, and a vanilla shake. What? You thought it would be chocolate?

Cuz every job I get is cruel and demeanin

Sick of takin trash out and toilet bowl cleanin

But I'm also sick and tired of strugglin

I never ever thought I'd have resort to drug smugglin

Naw, that ain't what I'm about

Cee-lo will just continue travelin this route

Without any doubt or fear

I know the Lord ain't brought me this far so he could drop me off here

Did I make myself clear?

Cee-Lo from Outkast and Goodie Mob's Git Up Get Out

That's about right.

Washington, DC Race Riot of 1919

"They had caught a Negro and deliberately held him as one would a beef for slaughter," he recalled, "and when they had conveniently adjusted him for lynching, they shot him. I heard him groaning in his struggle as I hurried away as fast as I could without running, expecting every moment to be lynched myself."

Carter G. Woodson's description of the lynching of a black man in Washington D.C. during the 1919 race riots. Woodson was the dean of Howard University

I bring this up to jog Pat Buchanan's memory. He just called the Democratic response to Senator Trent Lott's recent racist comments, "The worst lynching I can remember in Washington D.C." on the NBC Nightly News (12/12/02). Great choice of words Pat! Right up there with Dubya's "crusade" against terrorists.

Ah statistics, as Homer Simpson once said, "Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that." To which I add, 37% of all statistics are ironic commentaries on the deceptive use of statistics. All of this of course is leading up to... some economic statistics (from Time Magazine 12/16/02 pgs 36-37).

• Unemployment 6% -- Up 33% since George Bush took office.
  
• GDP Growth Rate down %45 in the seven quarters since Bush took office.
  
• Federal deficit up 167% -- tax cuts and the "war on terrorism" turned a $236 billion surplus into a $158 billion dollar deficit. Ken Lay would be proud.
  

But now that Bush has replaced the Treasury Secretary with John Snow I'm sure things will get better. After all who better than a railroad executive and Augusta National Golf Club member to turn the economy around? His railroad isn't doing so well, but then again, who's is? To be fair Snow will resign his Augusta membership before he takes office, but isn't joining Augusta such a "rich white man good ole boy" thing to do?

Speaking of Augusta, I'm reminded of a letter to the editor of Newsweek this week. The author's point was simple. When they let a rich privileged white woman into Augusta won't that be a huge victory for the rights of women worldwide? I'm sure a Nigerian woman facing death by stoning for adultery will feel much better knowing that a snobby company owning woman gets to place golf with a bunch of snobby company owning men. If I find that copy of Newsweek(12/16/02), I'll copy the letter.

In an attempt to actually use this thing, I will now keep a blog of things that interest me. Furthermore, I'll attempt to update it now and then with, er, you know stuff. Stuff like the very cool Audacity audio editor I found today via Slashdot. Know the GPL. Love the GPL.