~23% of Americans think abortion should always be illegal
~22% of Americans think abortion should always be legal
~54% of Americans think abortion should be legal with some restrictions

That means that there are a lot of “pro-lifers” who think abortion should be legal at least under some circumstances. What exactly those circumstances are is going to be an important distinction, but it looks now like the largest group is in favor of a more restrictive policy. Those numbers haven’t shifted too much in the past year except that a few more extremists have moved toward the middle.

So why the apparent discrepancy between the pro-life/pro-choice lables and the opinions on the legality of abortion? One possibility is that lables are closely tied to political party. The greatest upswing in pro-lifers was among Republicans. Another possibility is that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might seem. It is, after all, possible to believe that abortion is wrong (or wrong for yourself), but still feel that is should be legal.

In the latest ad, Giampaolo buys an HP Pavilion HDX instead of a MacBook. The Apple Insider breaks down the features that “G” was looking for. Here’s a quick summary.

Portability
HP: 16″ screen, 1.7″ thick, 7.3 lbs
MacBook: 13.3″ screen, .95″ thick, 4.5 lbs
MacBook Pro: 15.4″ screen,.95″ thick, 5.5 lbs

Battery Life
HP: >3 hrs (>2 hrs in reviews)
MacBook: ~5 hrs
MacBook Pro:~5 hrs

Power
HP: 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB 533MHz DDR2 RAM
(and if he’s not running 64-bit Windows, he only gets to use about 3GB of that RAM)
MacBook: 2.0 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2-4GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM
MacBook Pro: 2.4 or 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 2-4GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM

And let’s not forget the poor 1366×768 resolution on a 16″ screen. Or the hours of time Giampaolo will spend looking for drivers, updating his virus software, and uninstalling bloatware. Try again, MS.

Hey guys todally check this out! This is fricking coll man, so awesome. TUrns out tha if you drink red wine it;ll totally mnake you think better! Yeah! I dunno man, there’s some sturff that scienctists gave poepole from wine taht sends more bloods to your brain or soemthing. I don’t really getit, but it makes sense riight? I mean, when I drank red wine sometimes I can feel blood rush to my head and things seem totally clearrer, you know? It’s like, I dunno, it relazes my minds or osmething and the toughts just come easy. It’s porbably why I’m more clever and fun to be around haveing a good time when I drink wine.

I’ves gtta stsart doing that more otfem. the red winee I meen, S:Tarting to day. I mean WTF??? IT”S SCICENSE BITCHES!!!!

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R3BPVmxsNFYyNU9hbEpGU21oV2JHUk9UVlphV0dNemFGaFNiRm94V1RCYWEx
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I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
I have guessed that the resistance,
of a smaller box of equal weight is heavier.
All lies and jest!
Still a man lifts what he wants to lift and disregards the rest.

A study done at Dalhousie University in Canada says that someone who lifts two boxes of equal weight but different size, will estimate that the smaller box is heavier. They will do this even after examining the contents of the box. What’s even weirder is that a lifter will equalize the amount of force they use to lift each box even while maintaining that one is heavier than the other.

Why do we make this mistake? Well, the researchers were able to reverse a volunteer’s estimations through training so that they would think a larger box was heavier than a smaller box of equal weight. This suggests that our estimations are based on previous experiences.

Makes sense, right? Think back to a time (perhaps as a child) when you struggled to lift a large pitcher of iced tea that your mom made for a big dinner. Next time you went to lift that pitcher out of the fridge, you probably put a little more muscle into it to compensate for what you experienced the first time. And what happens the next day when you decide a little more iced tea might be nice? You grab the pitcher with confidence and smash it into the shelf above. Why? Because your brain stored a short-cut for how to approach that pitcher.

Well, your brain does the same thing with the boxes. Smaller objects tend to be lighter than big ones. So, when faced with two boxes, you put a little more oomph into the larger box and a little less into the smaller which makes the smaller one feel a little heavier since it weighed more than you expected.

The researchers conclude that our sensorimotor system (how our muscles move) and our perceptual system (what we experience with our senses) estimate weight differently. Our muscles act as though they are lifting boxes of equal weight while we consciously think the boxes are weighted differently.

This also seems to show that the way we react to lifting a box has little to do with our reason and more to do with some automated calculations performed by our brains.

PS – My apologies to Paul Simon.

Still, most of us are ever-ready to accept as obvious the interpreted meaning of a few coincidental events. Even if they require that we evoke some vague, supernatural causal chain.

So, to give balance to Gingi Edmonds’ conclusion about this recent plane crash, I have worked up a few alternate explanations.

Scenario 1 – A Naturalist Perspective:
The pilot of the single prop airplane was an extreme anti-abortionist who was aware of the family ties his passengers had. In an act of self-sacrificing glory that can only be described as terrorism, the pilot changed course and then drove the plan down into the ground as close to an abortion memorial as he could manage.

Scenario 2 – A Spiritual Perspective:
God, who apparently enjoys toying with us, caused this plan to crash, killing the family of a family planning clinic owner near an abortion memorial. He then inspired Gingi Endmonds to use the crash as a warning to abortionists thereby showing the cold heartlessness of man by exposing the incredible hypocrisy of thos who claim to defend life and love the unlovable, yet still take some joy in the death and grief of others as long as it gives them some smug sense of superiority.

Scenario 3:
Some people got in a plane and it crashed which is extremely sad, but unfortunately, people die in strange ways all the time. We should leave this poor man to grieve with those who care about him.

It seems that humans will never run out of ways to shock me.

Here’s a short recap of the situation:

• A plane crash in Montana kills 14 people including seven children
• Pro-Life activist, Gingi Edmonds, points out that most of the plane’s occupants were family-members of a man who owns a chain of family planning clinics which also performs abortions (the article can be found here)
• Gingi also points out that the plane crashed in a cemetery that has a memorial for aborted fetuses
• Gingi infers from these facts and the unknown cause of the crash that this may be a wake-up call for abortionists
• It comes out that one of the women on board was 5 months pregnant

This just sickens me from a rational as well as a moral standpoint. To turn around in the face of a horrific event and blame this man for the death of his family seems astoundingly heartless. This is God’s justice? The slaughter of innocent children and one of the unborn babies He is supposedly so keen on protecting? Not to mention their parents and the pilot. In a time when this God clearly does not speak to us in any public fashion, does He enforce His moral law by the slaughter innocents that are tangentially related to a sin and hope that the rest of the world sees the coincidences surrounding the deaths? I suppose this would not be wholly outside of his character.

More on this later.

Also, studies show that college students drink a lot on the weekends.

Bat Hung onto Shuttle During Liftoff

Politics and business must be informed, in some way, by the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You get so caught up in the quest to get things “just right” that you completely forget the fact that Goldilocks just broke into your fucking house and is stealing your shit.

Sleep command doesn’t work in terminal

In terminal, when I enter sleep 20, it waits 20 seconds and then returns to the command prompt without going to sleep. What am I doing wrong? I tried sudo sleep 20, too.

:)

Jeff Tweedy Live @ Foellinger Auditorium 1-31-09

Their style varies a bit across their albums, but Chelsea Diaries falls squarley into an acoustic folk category. They remind me quite a bit of an early, more-upbeat Iron & Wine mixed with some Beatles (that might have something to do with . Listen to their self-titled album and you might be reminded of Beck or Depeche Mode at times too.

The writing is down-to-earth with a poetic modern cynicism that keeps from becoming hopless or depressing.

These guys are definitely worth checking out and the band has graciously provided all of their albums (2 full-length and 3 EPs) as free downloads from their website. Go listen for free, but please buy their music to support them if you like it.

Favorite tracks so far:

• Who Will You Love
• Sodom
• Farther Than You
• New York City Heat

Official Website
eMusic
last.fm
iTunes

Louis CK on Conan: http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/video/item/56

“My birth, death, and high-school graduation should be celebrated with a feast, a day of mourning, and a Sadie Hawkins dance, respectively.”

A good read from McSweeney’s which I really don’t take the time to read often enough.