Last Call

Republicans are just weird.  They decry that government interference in family life and important decisions are expensive and intrusive, bankrupting the country and bordering on dictatorship.  Then they proceed to send troops in to occupy tens of millions of uteri at taxpayer expense, particularly at the state level.

As restrictions on abortion and contraception have become the subject of state legislative action and Republican presidential candidates’ pitches to voters, arguments have focused on the issue’s moral and religious dimensions.

Less attention has been paid to the financial implications to states, businesses and women if governments impose policies that lead to increases in unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. The economic ramifications of such policies are important as the nation recovers from the worst recession since the Great Depression and governments work to reduce debts and deficits.

“There’s a simple math in place: more unintended pregnancies mean more public costs,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Especially for the deficit hawks, it is a penny-wise-pound-foolish strategy.”

Now Uteroccupiers(tm) know full well that it's not about saving taxpayers money, it's about using the power of the government to go after any group that sides with the Democrats as punishment.  It's also about wasting money on slut-shaming in order to say "Well, we can't afford your schools and roads.  maybe you should have thought of that before having sex."  They can't openly say this, of course, so the Orwellian logic they do employ is quite illuminating.

Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, a Washington-based legal organization that seeks to overturn abortion rights, rejected that conclusion, saying the value of life can’t be reduced to dollars and cents.

“The unknown and absolute value of life is clear in what a person brings to society,” Hamrick said. “Let’s look, for example, at a girl who gets pregnant in college, does marry the father of her child, works to raise this child, and he becomes president. That’s Barack Obama,” she said, in a reference to the life experiences of the president’s mother.

Now let's pause for a minute on the fact that we have a conservative making the argument that at some point, even the hated Kenyan Colonialist was somebody's baby, and that he was loved.  I too am sensitive to that argument, having been adopted myself.  Second chances and all that.  But the thing is that she had a choice at the time, and it wasn't the state's job to tell her what to do, or to advocate for one choice over another when both choices are legal.  An actual conservative would understand that, but then again we're not dealing with actual conservatives, but Uteroccupiers(tm).

To them, it's all about the exercise of power of the state over these women in a cynical effort to trap the ones who deviate socially from their prescribed plan of Dominionist theory.  Nearly everything else that social conservatives do makes actual sense once put in the context of building a theocratic society where the wealthy are the favored people of the Divine Right of Cash, and they are morally superior to the rest of us.  Basic birth control is vital to women being able to control their own bodies, and if you're wondering why the GOP War on Women is so pervasive, it's because it's a keystone to women being independent members of society.  To have that choice available for the unwashed masses is of course an affront.

Bringing in the portrait of the President as a young man is just too much for them to resist, too.  They say that kids have to be brought into the world...and then they're on their own, apparently.

New tag, of course: Uteroccupiers.  Always up in your vajayjay.

Scott Walker Gets That Poll-Axed Look

Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal flags down this poll showing GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is in danger of losing his recall election by 5 points.  What's the catch?  It's a Rasmussen poll.

A majority of Wisconsin voters now support the effort to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker.

A new Rasmussen Reports statewide survey shows that, if the recall election was held today, 52% of Likely Voters would vote to recall Governor Walker and remove him from office. Forty-seven percent (47%) would vote against the recall and let him continue to serve as governor.

That's Walker losing by double digits in reality.  And that's got to frighten the hell out of Team Scott.

Ann Romney Is Mitt's ACME Secret Weapon

Yeah, I call shenanigans on this Politico article this morning:

Ann Romney is the Romney Democrats fear most

No, seriously.  When the hell did Ann Romney even become a factor in this race, let alone become a source of "fear" for the Obama campaign and Democrats in general?

Ann Romney’s unexpected rock star status has the political arena buzzing about how her husband’s campaign will leverage her popularity in an election in which Michelle Obama — one of the most admired first ladies in history — will have an outsized and substantive portfolio.

Indeed, this 62-year-old grandmother’s contribution to Mitt Romney’s campaign could amount to the most relevant role a wife has ever played in a presidential effort — softening the edges of a flawed and awkward candidate who struggles to connect with voters.

Alright, look.  Ann Romney would burst into flames like an exposed block of lithium in a bathtub of water if she ever made physical contact with any human being who made less than six figures last year.  She has been completely irrelevant in this campaign, period...other than maybe the fact she has multiple Cadillacs and that she doesn't consider herself wealthy.  I mean it's not like the bar of "more likeable than Mitt Romney" is some Everest-class feat of unfathomable difficulty.  It means you can keep yourself from saying obnoxious things about how rich you are less than 50% of the time you open your damn mouth.  This does not make you a "rock star", it makes you roughly 99 out of 100 Americans.  The only reason she's the Romney with all the charisma is that she's kept her mouth shut so far, so she's at roughly zero instead of Mitt's negative billion.

And now she's a "rock star" who is even more important and more "relevant" to the Romney campaign than Hillary was to candidate Bill or Michelle was to candidate Barack Obama?  Man, you guys are just absolutely pulling things out of your ass now over there.  And no, the date on the article is April 2, not April 1, which is what I originally thought when I read this.

Naah, this is just egregious ass-kissing on the part of Roger Simon's folks.  This is wholesale fan fiction to try to cover up the fact that Romney is augering into the ground like Don Draper's liver.  Ann Romney certainly hasn't been an asset the other times Mitt has run for President, now has she?

Jesus, Politico, at least pretend like you guys aren't trying to create a horse-race out of bullshit.

Breaking News: Tornadoes Can Kill You

I understand why they are changing tornado alerts.  In a lot of ways, it's a good idea.  Reminding people that they can die from a tornado could save lives if they really listen to the warnings.  The tornado that devastated Joplin had nearly twenty minutes warning.  But tornado warnings are a dime a dozen, and by July any self-respecting Missourian will snort, roll over and know the odds are against waking up in Oz.  If we stopped and took cover every time the skies threatened to kill us, we'd starve and turn ghastly pale from lack of sunlight.

Zandar was visiting me the week that Joplin was demolished.  I don't know if he remembers, but there was a tornado watch every single day he was here, and warnings more often than not.  Of course people are desensitized to the sirens and the map on the corner of the television.

I do have a concern with ranking the severity of the tornado.  It implies that there may be survivable tornadoes. The reality is, even a small tornado has the potential to do huge damage, and it's hard to predict whether it will grow or fade.

The obvious issue is that we have seen little growth in resources given to predicting and monitoring tornadoes.  When technology advances, a little cooperation between Google Maps and The Weather Channel could save lives.  Sometimes you can only warn a wide swath and pray for the best.  There are several times that more specific information can be given, and let people know when the threat affects their neighborhood instead of the "somewhere in the county there may be a funnel cloud" message we see today.

Every improvement is a step in the right direction, but a Suri voice won't change people's reaction to a generalized and unimpressive warning system.

By the way, here's a picture of the tornado system I snapped from work, a full sixty miles after the tornado broke up.  If the sky ever looks like this in broad daylight... TAKE COVER.

Roundup: Good Reads

Please go here and read the Immoral Minority article about the Godless Vagina.

It's short and sweet, and totally worth the time.  Besides his obvious love for the female body, the graphic makes one of the best points I've seen so far in the women vs. government debate about health care.

Meanwhile, Obama stresses yet again the importance of healthcare and that it be available to everyone. While he surely has his own beliefs and morals, he realizes it is his job to take care of all Americans, and he is giving it his best shot.

Last but not least, Nancy Kaufman cuts through the crap and says what's really going on:

The whole environment surrounding a woman's right to access a safe, legal abortion -- the waiting periods, the ultrasounds, the lectures, the so-called informed consent -- is premised on the assumption that women are not capable of making their own moral, religious, and ethical decisions without the intrusion and supervision of the government. These requirements demean women as independent actors, particularly when it comes to making decisions about their own bodies and their own health care. They are intended to dissuade women from making a decision that is legally theirs to make by applying social pressure channeled by a legislative body.

That pretty much sums it up.

Even More Activism, Activate!

And on top of the health care reform oral arguments, please note that it's the same Alito-Roberts-Thomas-Scalia bloc plus Kennedy who have just handed down the ruling that police can strip search any suspect for any offense, period.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs but also public health and information about gang affiliations. 

About 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails, Justice Kennedy wrote. 

Under Monday’s ruling, he wrote, "every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed." 

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the four dissenters, said strip-searches were “a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy” and should be used only when there was good reason to do so.

The decision endorses a more recent trend, from appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia, in allowing searches no matter how minor the charge. Some potential examples cited by dissenting judges in the lower courts and by Justice Breyer on Monday included violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. 

But of course you have no dignity if you're arrested.  You can be subject to strip search for any arrest, period, before being put in the county clink.  And you can bet cops everywhere can't wait to humiliate the hell out of people who get busted for jaywalking.  And Kennedy's logic is just insane:

“It is not surprising that correctional officials have sought to perform thorough searches at intake for disease, gang affiliation and contraband,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “Jails are often crowded, unsanitary and dangerous places.” 

“There is a substantial interest,” he added, “in preventing any new inmate, either of his own will or as a result of coercion, from putting all who live or work at these institutions at even greater risk when he is admitted to the general population.” 

Yeah, we have to protect the criminals from lice, so strip poker for everyone.  Jesus.

Activism, Activate!

President Obama plays the famous "Activist Judges!" card when, for once, the phrase is properly used to denote the Supreme Court remaking one-sixth of the US economy and possibly the entire health care system...or more.

In his first thorough comments since the Supreme Court began weighing the constitutionality of health care reform, President Obama launched an impassioned defense of his law on Monday, and cautioned conservatives against embracing the judicial activism the right claims to deplore.

“Ultimately I’m confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress,” Obama said at a Rose Garden press conference. “And I just remind conservative commentators that for years, what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. An unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Yeah, this is exactly the point the President should be making as former editor of the Harvard Law Review and as a former professor of constitutional law.  The Supreme Court doesn't normally go about overturning entire laws and telling Congress to start from scratch.  There's ample precedent to uphold the law, and even conservative legal commentators admitted that the law would be upheld precisely because of 60+ years of legal precedent in favor of the Commerce Clause.  This weight of the court's prior decisions, stare decicis, should mean that the conservatives on the court are the least likely to impose the court's will over Congress.

Instead, just the opposite is true.  It's a dead giveaway to the "activist judges" having always been the "conservatives" on the court.  Surprise.

StupidiNews!

• Police have taken One Goh, a 43-year-old Korean national, into custody after he surrendered to authorities after opening fire at a California Christian college near Oakland, killing 7.
• The meat processing company behind "pink slime" has filed for bankruptcy protection as sales of the filler have all but vanished in the last month.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to settle on a $68 billion figure for the state's high-speed rail plan, but it faces massive opposition from state Republicans.
• The Kentucky Wildcats ran out to an 18-point lead and held on to win 67-59 over the Kansas Jayhawks, capturing the school's eighth NCAA men's basketball title.
• After years of losing browser market share to rivals Chrome and Firefox, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 is gaining ground.

Last Call

And Bon and I are now live at Raw Story at the new home for Angry Black Lady Chronicles.  Make sure you drop on by and say hello, and stick around for Raw Story's excellent coverage of the latest news without the corporate spin.  We're glad to be but a small part of the team there, and you can always find us here too, but man, we're completely jazzed to be on one of the biggest progressive news sites on the net.

Once again we want to thank you guys and for spreading the word about ZVTS.  It's hard to imagine that three and a half years ago, the thought of McCain as President pissed me off enough to start running my mouth, and the rest is history.  You guys went along for the ride and it's still going strong.

Thanks.

POTUS Nails It Yet Again

President Obama has taped a video message praising Planned Parenthood, and telling members he will continue fighting Republican efforts to cut their federal funding.

"For you, and for most Americans, protecting women's health is a mission that stands above politics," Obama said in the video entitled "a message to Planned Parenthood supporters."

"And yet, over the past year. you've had to stand up to politicians who want to deny millions of women the care they rely on," he said.

"Let's be clear here," Obama said. "Women are not an interest group. They're mothers and daughters and sisters and wives -- they're half of this country."

I'm so relieved and grateful that Obama sees the plight of women and is standing strong in protecting our rights. He understands that this is unfair, and that women are more than pawns to be shoved around in a big boy's game. We are people, not objects to be controlled and manipulated. We are citizens, and our government was designed and charged with protecting and serving us.

Our current leader understands this and fights on our behalf. I pray the next term allows us more of the same.  Yes, let's be clear here.

Voting With My Feet

As doctors are being given protection to lie to female patients, I have a lot of questions.  I'm not past the initial rage, but I understand that explaining the lack of logic in allowing doctors to actively lie isn't going to help.  These guys don't care about logic, only about control and power.

So what can we do when logic fails?  I'm afraid action is going to be necessary, if we can find ways to work around the stupidity that is slowly strangling women's medical rights.

First, if they are really going to allow this degradation to continue, women deserve to know which doctors are participating in this protection.  Why?  Because it will give doctors a huge competitive edge if they see the benefit of showing patients where their ethics truly lie.  If they aren't willing to attach their name to those morals, it kind of makes you wonder how strong those beliefs are, am I right?  So let's see some legislation forcing doctors to identify whether they believe in full disclosure or the protected right to lie.

When a business disappoints us, we boycott.  Doctors are businessmen at the end, without patients there is no income.  Perhaps we should do the same to doctors who would lie to a woman about her chances of surviving pregnancy.  Maybe we should encourage employees to boycott insurance that would deprive women the same coverage as men.  We should definitely show our scorn at the polls.  Believe me, as the time comes around, we will be reminding voters who served their citizens and who sold them out.

Just like any consumer, I'm going to vote with my feet, and I encourage you to do the same.  And while you're using those feet, please do your part in speaking the hell up before this gets any worse.

Sex Ed Shown To Be Beneficial... Yet Again

It has been reconfirmed -- yet again. Research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute indicates that sexuality education does not encourage teenagers to have sex sooner or to engage in more sexual risk-taking behaviors. As a matter of fact, it delays sex.

As governments fail to make sexuality education a priority or continue to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, we're once again being given scholarly, evidence-based data that indicates the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. This complements Douglas Kirby's 2008 review of evaluation studies examining abstinence, comprehensive, and/or STD/HIV sex education programs. Kirby found that two-thirds of the 48 programs teaching both abstinence and contraceptive use had positive behavioral effects.

So given the good news such studies yield time after time, when will the politicians start to listen? How many research studies like these do we need before policymakers begin funding and supporting comprehensive sexuality education efforts? They've been ignoring the evidence for far too long, continuing to cultivate a culture of sexually ignorant youth, who lack the knowledge and skills necessary to postpone sex or protect themselves.

That's a darned good question.  When will the politicians start to listen?  When will hard proof and facts finally speak for themselves?  Will candidates like Rick Santorum stick his fingers in his ears if elected, and sing "nananananana" until the studies go away?  I guess he's so morally developed that he doesn't need for truth to get in his way.  I'll take it another step and ask, what happens if Rick Santorum wins the race?  Can you imagine an United States where global commerce and economic stability take second seat to his pursuit to rid the world of porn?  What happens when government decides it won't serve all the citizens, just the ones that meet their standards?  We are raising kids in a world where they may never know privacy or freedom.  Now, some uptight, prudish, science-hating legislators can start fighting sex education to keep us just how they want us... uneducated and knocked up.

There is also the responsibility of parents to provide The Talk and The Facts.  It's not that hard in the Internet age to get tips on talking to teenagers about sex, and giving them a realistic alternative to "just don't do it because it's eeeeevil."  If the schools won't do their job, it then falls to the parents, or better yet let both educate teens about making smart choices and taking care of their body.  Right now it's being done by HBO and Playboy, so yeah... it can get worse.

Access to facts is never a bad thing.  Ever.  I'm sick of hearing how awkward it is for parents to talk to kids about sex.  You know what's awkward?  Sitting in a doctor's office and learning you are HIV positive.  What about learning that you're about to lose your whole young adulthood to raising a child you don't want?  How's that for unpleasant?  With the way "slutty" females are being treated by government, does anyone want pregnancy or disease for their daughter?  It's already going to be hard enough to get birth control, thanks to Republicans.  Now we need to make sure more than ever that young adults see the importance of using it.

Even More Facebook Stupidity

You can add this one to the short but growing list of employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. After refusing to give her Facebook password to her supervisors, Kimberly Hester was fired by Lewis Cass Intermediate School District from her job as an aide to Frank Squires Elementary in Cassopolis, Michigan. She is now fighting a legal battle with the school district.

This all started in April 2011, when Hester was using Facebook on her own time (when she wasn’t working at the school). She jokingly posted a picture of a co-worker’s pants around her ankles and a pair of shoes, with the caption “Thinking of you.”

A parent and Facebook friend of Hester’s saw the photo and complained to the school. A few days later, Lewis Cass ISD superintendent Robert Colby asked her three times for access to her Facebook account. Hester refused each of the district superintendent’s requests.

Soon after, Colby wrote Hester a letter, a part of which said the following, according to WSBT: “…in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly.” Hester says he put her on paid administrative leave and eventually suspended her. She chose unpaid leave, to collect workman’s compensation, and vowed to put up a fight.

Couple of things here. First, it wasn't smart to post a coworker in a stage of undress. Though they don't say so, it makes perfect sense this was taken in a bathroom. I'd be pissed (pun mostly not intended) if someone took a picture of me in those circumstances and published them without my permission. But then, I also notice the person whose ankles come into play was not behind the complaint. So what, if we offend a third party we are obligated to change our Facebooks?  For all we know the coworker was amused by this joke, and those on the outside just didn't get it.  But does this woman owe an apology or explanation to anyone but Ankles Lady?

I think not.

It is absolutely wrong of the school to demand her password. She could have shown them the page, for that matter the angry parent could have sent them the picture. There is no need to have a password for this. Their comment "because you refused we will assume the worst" tells you what happened. They assumed. There is no context, explanation or law to back up their request. Because she defended her right to privacy, they assume she is completely guilty and will be treated accordingly.

What administrator would consider this a sound strategy?  Idiots.

Romney Gets That Poll-Asked Look

The latest USA Today swing state poll shows a massive shift in the last six weeks as the GOP has gone full bore into their War on Women, and it's costing the Republicans dearly.

In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

The numbers are even worse for Santorum.  It's painfully clear that if this keeps up, President Obama will win in a landslide.  The Tea Party Misogyny Monster has been unleashed and in six weeks it has turned into a 15 point swing in Obama's favor overall.  In these same swing states in late February, Santorum had a 5 point lead and Romney 3.   Now Obama is up 9 on Mitt and 11 on Rick.

The GOP War on Women is rapidly turning into a complete disaster for the Republicans.  No wonder so many GOP bigwigs are lining up behind Romney and want the primary season over ASAP so they can get back to lying about Romney's record and he can stop having to say he'd get rid of Planned Parenthood to keep Rick off his back.

Sadly, it's looking like it's too late.  Gosh, I'm all torn up.

Bully For You, America

Reasonoid Nick Gillespie takes to the WSJ to let America know there's no such thing as a bullying crisis in schools and neighborhoods as he rips into the new film "Bully".

Now that schools are peanut-free, latex-free and soda-free, parents, administrators and teachers have got to worry about something. Since most kids now have access to cable TV, the Internet, unlimited talk and texting, college and a world of opportunities that was unimaginable even 20 years ago, it seems that adults have responded by becoming ever more overprotective and thin-skinned.

Kids might be fatter than they used to be, but by most standards they are safer and better-behaved than they were when I was growing up in the 1970s and '80s. Infant and adolescent mortality, accidents, sex and drug use—all are down from their levels of a few decades ago. Acceptance of homosexuality is up, especially among younger Americans. But given today's rhetoric about bullying, you could be forgiven for thinking that kids today are not simply reading and watching grim, postapocalyptic fantasies like "The Hunger Games" but actually inhabiting such terrifying terrain, a world where "Lord of the Flies" meets "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior," presided over by Voldemort.

Stop whining.  Life is Darwinian.  Deal with it, you little ferrets.

When it comes to bullying numbers, long-term trends are less clear. The makers of "Bully" say that "over 13 million American kids will be bullied this year," and estimates of the percentage of students who are bullied in a given year range from 20% to 70%. NCES changed the way it tabulated bullying incidents in 2005 and cautions against using earlier data. Its biennial reports find that 28% of students ages 12-18 reported being bullied in 2005; that percentage rose to 32% in 2007, before dropping back to 28% in 2009 (the most recent year for which data are available). Such numbers strongly suggest that there is no epidemic afoot (though one wonders if the new anti-bullying laws and media campaigns might lead to more reports going forward).

The most common bullying behaviors reported include being "made fun of, called names, or insulted" (reported by about 19% of victims in 2009) and being made the "subject of rumors" (16%). Nine percent of victims reported being "pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on," and 6% reported being "threatened with harm." Though it may not be surprising that bullying mostly happens during the school day, it is stunning to learn that the most common locations for bullying are inside classrooms, in hallways and stairwells, and on playgrounds—areas ostensibly patrolled by teachers and administrators.

Everything's fine.  You know, except for the kids driven to suicide for being gay or fat or different or getting shot for walking down the street with an iced tea and a bag of candy, that is.  Jesus launch the helicarrier.  It's funny how these guys believe in the free market so much until it comes to the flash mobs actually getting called on ruining a kid's life, but I guess that's just culling the weak, right?

StupidiNews!

• Some 31 are dead in a Siberian plane crash in the city of Tyumen, Russia, with 12 others injured.
• Diplomatic tensions between Argentina and Britain are still running high on the 30th anniversary of the Falkland Islands War.
• The Assad regime is tightening the Syrian borders to prevent the escape of rebels and to prevent aid and weapons from coming into the country.
• UK home prices rose last month ahead of buyers beating out the deadline for a tax holiday.
• Rumored hardware for next year's successor to the PS3 and Xbox360 would put them squarely in the middle range of gaming PCs, a far cry from when the current systems debuted.

Last Call

We'll leave you tonight with Mitt Romney as the embodiment of quantum political science: so completely unknown and unpredictable that he occupies all positions at once and changes policies based on the effects of the observer at any given time.

What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse. 

And all of them losing to Barack Obama. 

Do read the whole thing, it's hysterical.

I've Got The Universe On A String

It turns out buried in the math out of the Large Hadron Collider is an interesting theory, that the weird numbers (if correct, and that a big jump here) may represent something much, much deeper: evidence of string theory.

Complex software models are used to understand the results from the Large Hadron Collider. These include simulations of the particle physics in the proton-proton collisions, as well as of the material and geometry of the detectors and the strength of the various magnetic fields. As more data are accumulated, the required precision of this software increases.

A recent review recommended that the number of decimal places used to represent numbers in the software should be increased. This means all mathematical constants such as e and pi, as well as physical constants and the measured dimensions of the detectors. So far, so routine. But when adding more precision to pi, a strange effect was noticed. The alignment of charged particle tracks across detector boundaries actually got worse when a more precise value was used. In addition, the agreement between simulation and data also got slightly worse.

This really should not happen – more precision should mean better alignment and better agreement.

Boring scientists say this is probably evidence that some physicists don’t know how to write proper code. However, string theorists have pointed out that a firm prediction of string theory is the existence of extra space-time dimensions. In a space which is curved into a higher dimension, the apparent value of pi can deviate from that seen in real life. And thus the LHC may have proved that they were right all along. More data are needed before we can be sure.

Of course, there's a much more interesting explanation involving the numbers "4" and "1" that would explain this mathematical oddity as well...

Breaking News

All the major news sources have broken the following:

People have decided to be kind to each other. Very scientific polls have indicated that regardless of religion, age or sexual orientation, we have become more tolerant and display more goodwill. Isolated problems still (and always will) exist, but overall people have understood that the bullying mentality is wrong. Every single time. Even when they believe or look differently than you do.

After finally realizing that gay citizens are still citizens, all states decided to honor an adult's choice to live how they please. Gay marriage will be recognized, and actually improves society because every single person is treated with dignity and fairness under law.

Women's rights were upheld today as they were recognized as citizens, too. The federal government stepped in and said that a woman's right to medical information should be protected. They also decided it is a direct ethical violation for a doctor to withhold or lie to a patient. It was also decided that gender is no reason to pay a person less, so businesses will be required to pay women and men the same amount when the duties and responsibilities are the same.

April Fool's!

But here's hoping for the day when we can report these things for real. Keep dreaming, in the face of this stupidity, our vision of a better world is the only driving force we have to make it reality.

Barr None... Roseanne Crosses The Line

But according to the Smoking Gun, on Wednesday, Barr tweeted the correct address for Zimmerman's parents, then deleted the tweet, then threatened to tweet it again.

“If Zimmerman isn't arrested I'll rt his address again. maybe go 2 his house myself," Barr tweeted.

Criticism came quickly from the comedian's more than 100,000 followers.

Maybe go over to his house herself? But she didn't, did she? Instead she was a coward and an egotist, deciding for herself to share information that is likely to get someone hurt or even killed. Tensions are rising quickly, and Barr just saw an opportunity to milk for attention. From her tone, she doesn't care a bit that it's at the expense of a murdered innocent. Threatening to retweet it is an abomination.

I fully believe George Zimmerman is guilty of stupidty, murder, and racism. However, his parents might be delightful people. Yes, anger breeds anger. Before condemning his parents think of the number of times you've met an idiot/genius and then their parents, and wondered how their genes produced this.

Don't make this idiot a martyr. Let him stand trial. It's clear he has not had the moral high road, let the other side keep it and not let him have a chance to claim it.