He's Bound to Make Some Rookie Mistakes

A friend recently informed me that, not only was the annual congressional baseball game played a couple days ago, but that our very own Bruce Braley was participating. Unfortunately, Braley grounded into a double play as the Republicans won for an appalling 7th straight time.

Well, like my mother always said, you can responsibly govern the country, or you can win consistently in baseball. . . but you can't do both.

The WCF Courier has more. . .

Obama's Campaign--I Believe in a Better Song

In 2004 the Dems walked triumphantly out on stage to the Black Eyed Pea's song "Let's Get Retarded." Though the words had been altered to "Let's Get it Started," those of us in the know were still wincing uncomfortably at home.

I was waiting for a hit song to come out this year called something like "Let's Be Idiots." Then, all of the brainiacs at the DNC could change the words to something like "Let's Get Into It," and proudly claim it as their campaign theme.

Luckily, Obama, who just selected Ben Harper's "I Believe in a Better Way," as his official campaign song, is taking a different (non-retarded) approach. Our prospects in '08 are looking better every day.

Major Iowa Endorsement for Obama

I don't know if this has hit the blogs yet so I'm considering it a scoop until corrected. Iowa City speedster Tim Dwight has endorsed Barack Obama.

Somewhere, erstwhile football coach and current political meddler Hayden Fry is sadly shaking his head.

Negative Externality and The Case for Higher Gas Prices. Or, Why Salesmen Love My Mother

I went out car shopping with my mother yesterday and realized that she is the ideal client for any car salesman.

Why? Not only is she polite and inquisitive, but she is also very easily impressed. Any car she gets into she finds something to like. If the salesman says that the contoured seats provide extra support, she starts wriggling around a little bit and then exclaims "I really like these seats." Later that night she will be on the phone with my dad extolling the virtues of the contoured, supportive seats of the Honda Civic and how they are vastly superior to those of the Dodge Neon. You can easily change the volume from the steering wheel? Ingenious. Imagine all of the accidents that will save. She'll take it.

Here is just what a typical conversation with the salesman was like:

Salesman-- As you can see the wheel has the tilt function, allowing you to tilt it up or down to comfortably handle the vehicle.
Mother--Oohh. Yeah, I like that. That can sometimes be tiring if it's not adjusted correctly. Probably even a little bit dangerous, arthritically speaking.
Salesman, pushing button-- Here is the button for the wipers. . .
Mother-- Does it have a rear wiper?
Salesman-- You bet
Mother, exceedingly happy-- I really like rear wipers.

That's what you need to sell a car to my mother. A rear wiper. Nothing more important than a rear wiper.

So the best thing about all of this is that I think my mom wants to get a Prius (because of the ample glove compartment space), which gets around 60 mpg according to Toyota.

Why is this good? Well, not only do I feel that the price of gas will continue to increase, but I feel that it should continue to increase. When this happens, they'll be set.

So why should the price of gas continue to increase? One reason is negative externality. Say it. Don't you love the way that it rolls off your tongue? Negative externality.

I originally ran across this freakonomics post at the John Deeth Blog (a fellow Iowan) and liked it so much I figured I'd pass it on. Here's a taste of the reasoning:

The reason we need high gas taxes is that there are all sorts of costs associated with my driving that I don’t pay — someone else pays them. This is what economists call a “negative externality.” Because I don’t pay the full costs of my driving, I drive too much. Ideally, the government could correct this problem through a gas tax that aligns my own private incentive to drive with the social costs of driving.

I've always understood this as a concept but didn't know that it had such a cool sounding name. Negative externality. It might not cost me much to buy a bottle of bleach and dump it in my friend's milk, but it's sure going to cost my friend a lot. The "tax" to discourage this kind of behavior is called "life in prison."

Despite All I Feel I'm Still Just a Rat on a Wheel

Have you ever been dumped by a significant other and are feeling pretty blue, but not quite as blue as you expected? Often times after a break-up experience, I know I'm sad, but how sad? Do I just want to sulk for a couple hours or cry for a day or two, or am I finally ready to quit my job, sell my possessions and start redecorating my living room walls with my own feces?

This is the kind of question I was pondering as a friend of mine told me that he had been dumped. He was bummed out, but he mentioned that he wasn't nearly as depressed as the first time it had happened with the same girl.

His story reminded me of the experiment with the rat where the rat is on a spinning wheel. Every time the wheel makes a rotation, the rat is shocked. Initially the rat tries desperately to avoid the shock, but over time he becomes resigned to the fact that the pain is not going away. Eventually, he just lays despondently in the same place and barely flinches when it is administered.

Though the initial shock freaked him out and probably provoked all sorts of moody, existential reflection, each subsequent shock became more and more tolerable until, eventually, he was able to lead his life (laying on a wheel) knowing that the shocks were an inevitable part of his existence.

Not being satisfied simply with knowing that my friend was feeling "less" pain than before, I wanted to know exactly how much pain he was feeling. I wondered if there was a mathematical equation that could represent this phenomenon. After dwelling on it for several seconds, I decided that there is, and it looks like this:

Where "i" is the intensity of the emotion felt,"d" is the number of days since the last break-up, and "n" is the total number of times that you have broken up with this person, the intensity of the emotion that you are feeling can be summed up thusly:

i=d/n

Using this formula someone who was going out with someone for 100 days and had only been dumped once would feel 100 units of pain and suffering. If that same person had been going out for 100 days but it was the second dumping, that person would only feel 50 units of pain and suffering. The third 33.3, etc.

If a happily married wife of 30 years was to suddenly find herself cast by the wayside (assuming there have been no prior breakups), she would be suffering from a near intolerable 10,950 units of pain and suffering (get your feces brush ready!).

Conversely, if it has only been 1 day since your last break-up, and you've had 5 previous breakups, I have very little pity for you because you're only feeling .2 units of pain and suffering.

And in truth, if this is the case, you shouldn't be suffering as much. Just one day ago a break-up took place and there were no long term consequences. In fact, the same "tragedy" has happened five times now and has failed to significantly alter the direction of you life in any way. Based on the record, you have little reason to believe that this time will be different.

Soon, we will all be describing our break-ups in these numbers. Statements like "Wow, you must really be hurting after that 750," or "Get over it 25," will be extremely common.

I can't wait. If you are unsure of how despondent to feel, feel free to use this formula, as I will do exclusively to judge all of my post break-up emotions from now on.

Hot Fuzz

There may be movies that are cooler and there may be movies that are funnier. But this is the coolest, funniest movie I've ever seen. I defy anyone to dispute this.

Local Tomato Lover Sees Barack Obama as a Plump Tomato

When local tomato connoisseur Doug Schroeder took a little time off work to go watch presidential candidate Barack Obama deliver his stump speech in Iowa City yesterday, he wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. After watching the man for a few minutes, he knew that Obama had clinched his support.

“He just looked like the most ripe tomato I’d ever seen up there on that stage. Big, and juicy and round with a bright green stem for a head. That’s exactly the kind of candidate I want to assume the presidency.”

Political pundits claim that this kind of phenomenon isn’t all that rare.

“Because Obama hasn’t had time to be defined by the media during his blindingly rapid rise to super stardom, people can actively decide who they want him to be. It's like he's a blank canvas on which activists of all kinds can paint their aspirations. Or maybe he's a Rorschach Test, where people see what they want to see," said National Journal correspondent Steven Sax, who became just the 1,435 journalist to compare Barack Obama to the famous inkblot personality test since the beginning of 2007.

Sax claimed that some politicians have identities that are pretty much set in stone. “John McCain is a straight shooting maverick, for example; John Kerry is a white Ivy League liberal; Al Sharpton is a quick-witted black man. Well, Obama is a straight shooter, a white Ivy League liberal, a quick-witted black man, and pretty much anything else that people want him to be,” he explained.

Local hippy Mitch Carlson also saw something interesting in the speech, swearing that Barack Obama looked exactly like Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio as he spoke.

“Barack was jamming for like 25 minutes on health care, and taking it in some directions that I didn’t think he was going to go. Then all of a sudden, wham! he started talking about separation between church and state and it was like twice as fast, like everything had been sped up. It wasn’t planned either; I know for a fact that it was all improvisation. Any politician with chops like that has got my vote.”

Obama was also seen variously as the human incarnation of a lollipop, a soccer ball, an unspoiled beach, a suitcase full of cash, a ring of singing children, a glass of cold milk, the Easter Bunny, and a cloudless day.

New To Catch a Pedophile Channel Makes Debut

A new channel capitalizing on the success of such shows as To Catch a Predator and Help! I’m Married to a Pedophile, will debut this Monday, says CAPC spokesperson Doug Schroeder.

The channel’s mission is simple, Shroeder claims, “to provide quality pedophile catching programming for the masses, all day, every day.”

Fans of the pedophile catching shows are ecstatic about the new channel, which will allow them to get their voyeuristic fix with much more frequency.

“Most weekends, after a week of hard work I just wanna go home home, flip on the TV, and watch pedophiles being caught all weekend long,” says systems analyst and pedophile catching enthusiast Guy Johnson. “Right now I can’t do that, but with this new channel it should be easy. I wish that every channel was the To Catch a Pedophile Channel.”

Funny McCain video

I watched this video a couple weeks ago and was hoping that John Stewart would do a montage like this when he was on the Daily Show. It's a pretty hilarious display of duplicity, and I think the last bit where he does a 180 reversal on gay marriage is at Iowa State University. Props to the Cyclones for booing him and making him look like the spineless bigot he is.

Winterset Featured in International Press

The other day I logged on to the homepage of El Pais, the most widely read daily newspaper in Spain. I was expecting to get some news on Eto'o Fils (who plays for Barcelona) and bone up on my Spanish. Imagine my surprise when, upon arriving at the site, I was met with a picture of Winterset, Iowa and feature about John Wayne.

The sun never sets on Iowa's empire. . .
Although sometimes winter does.

I believe. . .

Of my failings as a human being, one is that I believe that a large monster lives (or possibly vacations) in a 26 mile long loch in the Scottish Highlands.
So, you can imagine my glee at seeing the definitive proof of such a creature.
And, even if it is a bunch of otters tailing each other. . .
that's ok too.



Thank you otters, for keeping the dream alive.