Self Trumping

While mogul / reality TV star Donald Trump continues his cocktease of jumping into the 2012 presidential race, there's already sketchy issues shadowing him.

First, his service during Vietnam...or lack thereof, courtesy of The Smoking Gun.  The Donald credits a "high draft number" to keeping him out of combat, though they chalk that up to  five student and medical deferments.

The campaign trail, and even the trail leading up to it must make memories fuzzy.  During a TV interview, Trump said, “I actually got lucky because I had a very high draft number. I’ll never forget, that was an amazing period of time in my life.  I was going to the Wharton School of Finance, and I was watching as they did the draft numbers and I got a very, very high number and those numbers never got up to.” No mention of "deferment" anywhere in there at all.

In fact, his number (356) was drawn during the December 1969 draft lottery, some 18 months after he'd graduated Wharton.  Though if he has memories of things a year and a half before they happen, he should be president!  Here's the Trump draft dodge timeline:

June 1964 - Trump gets a Class 2-S student deferment while attending Fordam University

December 1965 - Trump gets his second Class 2-S student deferment

November 1966 - Trump is reclassified reclassified as 1-A, "available for military service"

December 1966 - Trump get his classification switched back to 2-S

January 1968 - Trump gets his fourth Class 2-S student deferment prior to graduation for the University of Pennsylvania

July 1968 -  Trump is again classified as as 1-A, available for service

October 1968 - Trump's classification was switched to 1-Y, which meant he was qualified for military service “only in time of national emergency.”  This is due to an Armed Forces physical examination that netted a "DISQ” result (though it is not clear why he did not pass).

February 1972 - Trump's classification changes to 4-F, which takes the place of the abolished 1-Y classification, covered those not qualified for military service.

Given Trump's comments against the Chinese, you'd have at least thought he'd fought a land war in Asia, but even without going to Vietnam, ol' Donny still has it in for that region of the world.  "China is raping this country," he said, pointing out that the United States has fallen short on technology and innovation. That quote coming from the official Donald Trump Obama Birth Certificate Credit Tour.

What exactly is the implication though for helping a rapist? Because what is not in that quote, or addressed by Trump - just like his draft situation, are some contradictory things. Like his menswear line is made in China. Now, don't you think that's something he ought to know about his own company if he's going to get on a pedestal and make a issue of foreigners getting their hooks into the U.S.?

Clearly he's jockeying for a Republican nod, as they love to complain about how our country is losing jobs and power against foreign competitors, yet they're responsible for selling out the country to increase their own profits with the cheap foreign labor. No wonder they're the party with harsher immigration policies - it's not about keeping aliens out of our country and from our jobs, but more to keep aliens working in their home countries!

500 Days Of Britta

Infantile Brains And Names

I've noted in the past how LiveScience.com sucks peen and try to avoid their idiocy, but when paired up with another topic I have a virulent response to - shitty baby names - I have a knee-jerk reaction.

To call them the USA Today of scientific websites actually besmirches USA Today worse than that cotton-candy-hollow newspaper is to other print editions. You could call them the People Magazine of scientific websites. Or the WB of scientific websites. Or the Brett Ratner of scientific websites. Or the Nickelback of scientific websites. This could go on and one, but you get the point...

It's insulting to both science and journalism the awful shit they post, and their recent article, "The Most Hated Baby Names In America", is a perfect storm of the mediocrity they represent.

To read a post is like falling into a black hole - time and space compress at the event horizon to become indistinguishable. It completely explains why an article links back to other posts that have no real connection to the present one, yet are being supplied as if they have context or relevance.  Only through the sheer awfulness of their hack writers can they make an article about baby names service links back to articles like such:

•Saying that 10% of people in a British baby name survey said they used the name of a famous person...and that links that back to the article "As Elvis Turns 75, Celebrity Worship Alive And Well", which is about narcissism why society has an obsession with the idea of celebrity - and not a single mention at all about babies or names.

• Using a quote from a baby book author that the top hated name - Nevaeh, symbolizes "what people don't like in modern baby names", - and inserts a link to an article "Babies in Frontier States Have More Unusual Names", which makes no sense.  That article says that as you move west, unusual baby names are more common...so how are they gaining popularity if they're disliked?  And establishing that names are less traditional geographically has no bearing on it...unless the symbolic thing that is disliked is where the people live. Why would this be included in there?

It's also worth pointing out that all of this is before they even get into the substance of the article, which, if you can remember after all the detours and un-relevant paragraphs of filler is to cover the most hated baby names.  I guess they must get paid by how many clicks their links get, so the staff just daisy chain all their articles together...oh, wait, they're also trying to drive up ad views with the superfluous clicks - because nothing screams scientific integrity like deliberately poor writing just to create sponsorship revenue.  But we digress (just like their articles)...

When it finally comes to the most hated baby names, Live Science.crap falls back on Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby.  You see, Wattenberg did an informal survey of hated names for her blog, and because it was Live Science.crap, of course they'd go with somebody who also used poor  methodology.  Like looking at general-interest online message boards online for for conversations about baby names that people disliked.  Or motorcycle travel forum, a video game fan board and several parenting forums.  Wattenberg deliberately avoided loading up on message boards specifically for baby names, with the belief that "name enthusiasts tend to know trends and might skew the results".  Skew what results?  Somebody forgot to explain to her that something subjective as disliking a name is neither a trend nor a result of being a baby name enthusiast (whatever the fuck that is).

Live Science.crap notes Wattenberg is quick to point out that the survey isn't scientific, 'but it does have the advantage of capturing the names people spontaneously hate".  As opposed to calculated hate, right?  "A formal survey that gave people an option to rank names would likely bias people by putting ideas into their heads", Wattenberg said.  No, you can't make me hate Neveah more or less than I already do, whether you include it on your list or not.  And here's the list:

Girls:

1. Nevaeh
2. Destiny
3. Madison
4. Mackenzie
5. McKenna
6. Addison
7. Gertrude
8. Kaitlyn
9. Makayla
10. Bertha
11. Hope

Boys:

1. Jayden
2. Brayden
3. Aiden
4. Kaden
5. Hunter
6. Hayden
7. Bentley
8. Tristan
9. Michael
10. Jackson

So according to Wattenberg, people hate gender-bending names (when a masculine name becomes feminine) or odd spellings.  Similarly sounding boys names and "Mc"-names for girls also made folks cringe.  Not surprisingly, the participants were overwhelmingly female and under 60.  Rather than just end the post there with the info, or only have had a post that talks about baby names (which would have been a very short article), they go on to talk about how parents choose baby names deciding between "easy versus unique", or "why names pop" - and become popular.  Yes, it's more filler and links because neither of those relate to the most hated baby names.

Wattenberg said the response to list was so strong that she's hoping to conduct a more systematic survey of a larger, more defined sample of people (read: correctly take a survey), but stresses she "doesn't want to label names 'good' or 'bad'...but it could be useful for parents to know how others will react to their prospective name".  A little hard to avoid labeling if your list is called the "most hated", wouldn't you say? The real study should be why these names are popular and trending currently even though they are also highly despised.  And in perfect closing, they squeeze their idiot expert for a quote that really doesn't encapsulate anything that was said:   "Everybody is looking for this impossible dream, which is a name that everybody knows, everybody loves and nobody is using."

Cherry Pits

Don Cherry was once known for coaching the Boston Bruins and playing only one professional hockey game for them, but for better part of the last 30 years has been part of the "Hockey Night in Canada" program. And his shitty taste in suits have become legendary. One site attempts to note the worst of the worst...

Guerres Des Étoilles Existentielles

Grab A Food Rake And Dig Into Your Tray Tray

From last weeks episode of Parks & Rec, somebody put together a site with all the different things Tom Haverford has nicknames for...

Burgers = Moo Pies

Salads = Leaf Piles

Pizza = Gangsta Bread

Apples = Teacher Candy

Biscuits = Butter Boats

Muffins = Naked Cupcakes

Crackers = Lame Cookies

Shrimp = Tiny-Ass Lobster

Fried Chicken = Fry-Fry Chicky-Chick

Chicken Parmesan = Chicky-Chicky Parm-Parm

Root Beer = Super Water

And there's more...

Certified, Bitches

Dear Birthers,

Fuck you!

Love, Anyone with half a brain in their head.

5 Year Old Fast 5 Furious

For Bakers Who Drink

Can't shake that sweet tooth but still want to get fucked up? Here's your drink!

Flavored vodka is nothing new, but this may be the most disgusting thing in a while - Cupcake Vodka. Fruit flavors I get, but cupcake varities? There's Original, While Chiffon, Devil's Food, and Frosting. Not sold? Here's the official PR slant:

Cupcake Vodka Original is six-times distilled to remove impurities while delivering a mouth-feel reminiscent of an indulgent delicious treat.

How about their featured cocktail? Cupcake Cabana (with Cupcake Chiffon, naturally):

Ingredients
2 oz Cupcake Chiffon Vodka
1 Med Sized Chunk of Pineapple
1.5 oz Passion Fruit Nectar
1 Small Chunk of Banana
Perrier or Soda Water

Yum (not really)...and there's also Apple Crumb Cupcake, Chocolate Chippy Cupcake, and Orange Passion Cupcake.  Hmmm...I'm still not ready to go down a confection style beverage.  I'm not even ready for a vodka infused cupcake.

Superclap!

In 2009, nearly a quarter of strains of gonorrhea in America were resistant to penicillin, as well as and other commonly used antibiotics. Last year, some strains gained resistance all drugs doctors have to treat the the STD. What's next for 2011?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided this scary data reminded all that gonorrhea could spread to the blood or joints, and could be life-threatening if left untreated. Folks infected with gonorrhea typically show no symptoms, although it can lead to complications, such as infertility and in women, chronic pelvic pain, and in men, a painful testicular condition known as epididymitis.

This info was brought to you by the perils of having sex.

Jellymongers

Must Be A Hell Of A Read

Interested in Peter Lawrence's The Making of a Fly?  Published in 1992, it's currently out of print and beneficial to developmental biologists. And if you've got $23,698,655.93, you can pick up a new copy!

A used copy sells for only $35, but brand new, you'll get raped in the pocketbook. It was the work of an algorithmic pricing strategy between two companies, Bordeebook and Profnath.

Michael Eisen, who tracked this price escalation, first noted the Bordeebook was 1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by Profnath. Shortly after another price increase, the Bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times Profnath again. Basically, Profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times Bordeebook's price once a day. The prices would be fairly close for hours, until Bordeebook "noticed" Profnath's change and raised their price to 1.270589 times Profnath's higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week of his observation.

Everybody is worried that Skynet is going to take out the human race, but it could be Amazon and a program that kills it with over the top prices first.

Tunnelban

If the Afghans can't keep their prisoners in jail, then the terrorist have won.

To call 480 inmates escaping a massive security breach is still understating the the issue. Early Monday morning, prison officials found that the inmates - nearly all of them Taliban militants, were missing from their cells. It was then they discovered the tunnel through which they made their getaway.

Boastfully, the Taliban said the prison break was five months in the making, with diggers starting the tunnel from under a nearby house while they arranged for inmates to get keys so that they could open their cells on the night of the escape. Clearly the work of insiders!

Intelligence reports had been given to prison officials a number of times that the Taliban were planning some sort of operation involving the prison. The prison break also came less than two weeks after the Kandahar police chief was killed by a suicide bomber inside his heavily defended office compound.

Provincial officials said troops have already caught 71 of those who escaped and killed two who tried to resist.  Good luck getting the other 307!

Ben Crane, On Dance

The Film Chronologies Of Derek Eads

Derek Eads is keeping track...

Play Time

University Of Prons

Tuition is expensive for college, even with a scholarship, so there's got to be another way for a young girl to earn a few dollars, right?

Elizabeth Hawkenson is your typical girl next door. She's an undergrad persuing geography and liberal arts and even playing in the school band. And she'll have sex on camera for two grand.

It's a simple "casting couch" format: a guy brings a pretty, naive young girl into his office, thinking she’s just auditioning for a modeling job...and has to show how much we wants to get it. Hawkenson knew she was going in there it was for sex (she had been doing clothed modeling and finally gave in when she found herself short for tuition), and was assured the video would only appear on pay site...until it found it's way to free porn sites.

The scene for Backroom Casting Couch showed Hawkenson flashing her student I.D. for the cameras to prove she was over the age of 18, and apparently, it didn't go over well some alumni. A letter to the Board of Regents demanded they revoke the girl's five-figure scholarship:

"As an ASU alumnus, I object to Ms. Hawkenson's choice to identify herself as an ASUASU Student Code of Conduct. On behalf of my fellow ASU alumni, I demand that Ms. Hawkenson's $32,000 New American Scholar Award be revoked immediately. A young woman who brings shame on her university in such a public and degrading way does not deserve the financial support of that university."

There's good news though. The Phoenix New Times reported the Board of Regents said they never received such a letter. Hawkenson's scholarship is still intact and she's still enrolled. Several websites say the letter may have been a hoax from 4chan.

See, everybody loves a porn story with a happy ending.

Welcome Your Pomaceous Overlords

They know where you've been...and they're reaping the profits.

Apple posted a first quarter revenue of $24.67 billion, as sales figures grew 83% and profit lept a staggering 95% - both new records for the company. By the end of the year, the company should exceed $100 billion in sales. for the full-year. Must be nice to get $6 billion in earnings in just a few months...

The company more than 18.5 million iPhones in the last three months - a 113% increase over last year. Mac computer sales were over 3.75 million units (a 28% increase) and close to 4.7 million iPads. Let's hope they keep making money, because there could be a hell of a backlash soon...

Security researchers have discovered that the iPhone keeps track of everywhere you go...and saves every detail, which later gets copied to the computer when the two are synchronised. The file contains not only the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates, but also a timestamp. Yes, that means anyone who stole the phone or accessed the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program. The recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system from June 2010.

In 2009, there was criticism of Google for their "Latitude" system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts. By contrast, the iPhone system appears to record the data whether or not the user agrees. The company did not comment on why the file is created, whether it can be disabled, if if that information is transmitted to Apple itself. Security experts argue that if the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't be stored or archived on phones or computers, but speculate it could be to yield data for future mobile advertising targeted by location.

Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data, based on a paragraph about "location-based services" that's barely 0.005% of the enitre 15,200-word terms and conditions for the iTunes program. It states:

"Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

Nice loophole, which should keep them out of trouble until the info is used negatively by a legal or governmental entity. But hey, there's a reason they call it the "Cult of Apple"...

Luv Deluxe

Sometimes you say, "hey, I know that girl!"...well, I kinda do a little bit.

No Love For Jersey In The Big Apple

I'll just leave this here:

A New Jersey woman was stabbed in the face with a pen on a New York City subway train after she tried to stop a man from lighting a cigarette.

The assault occurred on a crowded No. 3 train near the Chambers Street station during Tuesday's morning rush.

Witnesses told the Daily News and the New York Post that an argument quickly escalated when Evelyn Seeger asked the man not to smoke. The witnesses say two riders were trying to restrain the man when he pulled out a pen and slashed Seeger's face.

Seeger, of Nutley, N.J., was treated at a hospital and released. Police charged the man with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Brought to you by the New York Tourism Board.