Lost Recap

An Italian family recaps Lost. Excellent.

Oh, the French

Nicolas Sarkozy knows what's best for you, ladies! Women will no longer be able to wear the veil on public property or public transportation, because Sarkozy is a tireless fighter for women's dignity.

Is this for real?

Do people listen to themselves when they speak? A group of parents in Menifee Union School District have requested that the Merriam Webster dictionary be removed from elementary classrooms. The dictionary! One of the kids looked up oral sex, and the description was too graphic. Twenty bucks the parent of that child has internet, where the child can look up things far worse. Seriously, banning the dictionary. Who does that?

South Carolina Dynasty of Stupidity

The Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer, forgot what decade / century he was in and espoused a eugenical view of charity and social support. The boiled down version is that we shouldn't give poor people things like, say, food, because they get horny and reproduce. Let's go to the actual words:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better." Greenville News via Wonkette

Bauer goes on to say, "You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period." That is several shades of special. He clearly missed the correlation / causation lecture in college. I recommend that SC make itself look better by lowering test scores around the country by giving kids free food. That will be a foolproof plan.

Dolphins are smart

A pod of dolphins has developed a new and unique hunting method. To wit:

Duh. Don't Text & Drive.

An 18-year-old Washington kid gets sentenced to 60 months in prison for vehicular homicide -- which was committed because he was texting while driving. (Totally unrelated, why does Firefox not recognize "texting" as a word? Get with it!) But then there's this:

Patterson was riding his bicycle home from school when Cellestine's car trailed into the bike lane and struck him from behind. Cellestine then sped away. He was arrested the next day.

Did he get 5 years because of the texting or because it was a hit and run? Either way, stop texting and driving. Five years in jail won't erase a lifetime of guilt.

Advocate for Care

More evidence that as a patient, you have to tirelessly advocate for your care. The Times has done an expose on radiation errors. A theme throughout the piece is that someone failed to test the equipment after programming it. As a result, a man's entire head (including his brain stem) was radiated repeatedly. A woman had a hole burned into her chest, and the hole would not heal. Radiation has obviously saved a lot of lives, so mistakes shouldn't scare people away. Just hold your health team accountable and make them convince you that they have the appropriate safety measures in place.