Who Invented the Flush Toilet?

Apparently, contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper was not the first inventor of the flush toilet.

Who knew? Who cares? Well, maybe some do. If so, here's a well-written, thoroughly researched short piece on the subject.

Animal Soccer: Dog v Deer

Quite possibly the strangest video ever recorded.

[Update: Sorry I can't embed it. You'll need to click on the link.]

I live around deer. They wander through the yard in the summer evenings, eat apples off the feeder in fall, and show up in winter looking for the corn I give them. But I've never seen one be this bold. They're generally fearful and run away at the slightest sound or movement. This video is simply unbelievable, and there's nothing to suggest the deer has been trained (if that's even possible).

Truly odd.

[Hat Tip Jonah Goldberg at NRO.]

The Smartest Guy In the Room, Not

When I started studying physics in graduate school I initially thought I was one of the smarter guys around. It took less than a day to disabuse me of that wholly mistaken notion.

One of the professors was a woman in her late twenties who had her PhD from Princeton and was already becoming famous for her work on solid state materials. I shared pizza at the faculty-student get together with the man who won the Nobel Prize for proving the existence of neutrinos.

Even my fellow grad students would quickly show that most were far superior to me in the gray cell competition. One Russian kid — I call him that because he was literally about 19 — gave a talk to the professors and showed that he knew more about statistical physics that most of them. He was at the board and wrote something that created a literal, loud gasp in the audience it was so brilliant and unexpected.

Still, woefully inadequate as I was, I did manage to get in and could do most of the homework assignments. So, I have some reason to believe I'm not a complete dunce.

CNN apparently believes otherwise.

Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. [Ed note: and keep in mind 10th grade ain't what it used to be.]

That is, as the saying goes, effing hi-larious. The day Obama says something that goes over my head — or that of the average American — I will kiss his butt. Somehow, I think the hygiene of my labia are safe for some time to come.

If Obama is the smartest man in the room, someone has been spiking the water supply with lead paint chips.

Press Mistakes White House Rat Identity

According to Yahoo News:

Obama had just begun an afternoon statement to reporters lauding the end of a Senate filibuster on his financial overhaul plan when some kind of rodent — opinions differ on which — dashed out of the bushes to his right, just outside the Oval Office.

Ok, it's an easy and pathetic joke, but I'll make it anyway: the press is focusing on the wrong rat in this situation.

One bad joke deserves another, so...

The rat's appearance at that moment is not surprising, considering the pile of garbage Obama and his cronies just dumped on the country in the form of the financial 'reform' bill. (Both the House and Senate bills, incidentally, are entirely silent on Freddie and Fannie, the two entities - that continue to receive huge public assistance - at the center of the now-two year old crisis.)

It's anybody's guess when the American public is going to get worked up enough to realize that the current Federal government is spreading plague like it was 1348 and start torching the place.

I think we've reached metaphor overload now. Ixnay to any more hope and change, please.

Brazilian Health Minister Says: "Have More Sex"

The title says it all.

But here's a snippet, anyway, just so you don't think I made it up.

"People need to be active. A weekend football game must not be the only physical activity for a Brazilian. Adults need to do exercise: walk, dance and have safe sex," said Jose Gomes Temporao.

"Dancing, having sex, keeping weight under control, changing dietary habits, doing physical exercise" all help keep blood pressure down, he said.

Now, why can't we get politicians like that? I mean, if you have to endure nagging health nannies, this is the way to go.

Thinking Makes It So?

I guess there are some situations in which the title is true.

According to Flink, hypochondriacs are suffering from a form of ‘health anxiety’ - a clinical illness where the symptom is an obsessive interest in symptoms. Some of his patients are afraid of shaking hands or sitting on a toilet for fear of getting sick.

Er, as Brian said in Monty Python's Life of Brian "What chance does that give me?"

Danish Workers Strike Over Beer Ban

More interesting news from Denmark, my now-favorite European country.

According to the Copenhagen Post,

Brewery Workers Strike Over Beer Ban

Health expert calls it ‘absurd’ that Carlsberg warehouse workers are striking over fewer bottled beers in the refrigerators.

Warehouse workers at Danish brewing giant Carlsberg are striking because management has decided that the employees may no longer have their customary three free bottled beers a day at the workplace, reports Business.dk.

Carlsberg has implemented a new workplace alcohol policy that now limits employees to one bottle of beer a day at lunchtime.

If they keep that up, I may actually become sympathetic to unions. It seems eminently more sensible to me than getting riled over retirement benefits. I mean, life is uncertain, so making sure you've got your daily free beer strikes me as much more rational than whether you'll have sufficient funds in old age.

Maybe the Left is onto something after all when they claim that in many ways America lags Europe.

Sex Ed, The Danish Way

I've been learning a lot about Denmark lately. Apparently, my imagination was not far from reality. From the Copenhagen Post:

Sex ed classes supplemented with orgasm info

Sexologists are traveling to 50 schools in Zealand to give lessons on love, orgasms and the best environment for sex in an effort to round out the sex education currently being provided by teachers.

As part of the ‘Young Hearts’ project, the seven sexologists will visit schools and act as guest lecturers for children as young as 12 to teach them about all aspects of sex, not just the birds and the bees.

‘There’s more to sex than anal sex and STDs. There’s pleasure, games and respect for your own and others’ boundaries. But students don’t know this as their parents don’t talk about sex. Teenagers are often abandoned to shy teachers’ scary pictures of unwanted pregnancies, the boasting of friends or to porn films,’ said sexologist Jenna Harragaard Christensen to Urban newspaper.

Christensen is acting as a guest lecturer at a number of the schools to try to dispel myths associated with sex by young students, saying that many boys she encounters are disappointed not to have ’20cm between their legs’. [ed. note: 20 cm is about 8 inches]

The question is: is Ms. Christensen disappointed?

Can't wait to visit and find out.

[Update: A friend asks if they're going to have group study sessions. At least he didn't make any jokes about lab demonstrations or student-teacher conferences.]

Moe Lane Nails the Left

Moe Lane at Redstate.com is a clever guy. Remarking on the FDA's idiotic proposal to legally limit the amount of sodium in food, he writes:

Look, I understand that the nanny-state Left doesn’t trust its own judgment and ability to make informed decisions, and that’s fine. In fact, I agree with them: I don’t trust their judgment or ability to make informed decisions, either. But why do they insist on trying to interfere with my judgment or ability to make informed decisions? - Aside from them generally being annoying neo-Puritan gloom-magnets, of course.

Exactly. Or, as the wonderful joke in Rob Roy describes them, "RRRRob, why do Calvinists fear shaggin' standin' oop? (pause) 'Cause they fear it'll lead to dancin'!"

Go dance now.

Mark Twain on AGW

Next time you hear some AGW supporter invoke consensus (thankfully, fewer all the time), hit them with this Mark Twain quote:

[I]n the drift of years I by and by found that a Consensus examines a new thing by its feelings rather oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that this is so.…

Do you know of a case where a Consensus won a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus [bets against], bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.

There was that primitive steam engine— ages back, in Greek times: a consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester’s steam engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton’s steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it.

A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name? forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered by doctors alone) who discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke his heart, killed him.

Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone, all ‘toys,’ of no practical value-verdict of the Consensuses. Geology, paleontology, evolution—all brushed into space by a Consensus of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom, assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists.

And do look at Pasteur and his majestic honor rolll of prodigious benefactions! Damned—each and every one of them in its turn—by frenzied and ferocious consensuses of medical and chemical experts comprising, for years, every member of the tribe in Europe; damned without even a casual look at what he was doing—and he pathetically imploring them to come and take at least one little look before making the damnation eternal.

They shortened his life by their malignities and persecution; and thus robbed the world of the further and priceless services of a man who—along certain lines and within certain limits—had done more for the human race than any other one man in all its long history; a man whom it had taken the Expert brotherhood ten thousand years to produce, and whose mate and match the brotherhood may possibly not be able to bring forth and assassinate in another ten thousand.

The preacher has an old and tough reputation for bullheaded and unreasoning hostility to new light; why, he is not ‘in it’ with the doctor! Nor, perhaps, with some of the other breeds of experts that sit around and get up the consensuses and squelch the new things as fast as they come from the hands of the plodders, the searchers, the inspired dreamers, the Pasteurs that come bearing pearls to scatter in the Consensus sty.

These sorrows have made me suspicious of Consensuses. Do you know, I tremble and the goose flesh rises on my skin every time I encounter one, now. - Mark Twain, On the Damned Human Race

[Ripped off verbatim from Peter Cresswell at Not PC.]

I Control The Vertical

Those in middle age or later should remember the TV series that opened by claiming it had taken control of your set. (At the end, they politely gave it up.) Given my thoughts of late, something like that may have happened in a doctor's office down South.

A Florida urologist has gone Galt in a manner of speaking.

"If you voted for Obama ... seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years."

Weird, in a wonderful way. This is pretty much what I fantasized the other day every hospital, doctor, and insurance company in the country should do after the passage of HR 3590. I hope it catches on.

It is, in fact, the sort of thing I've been advocating on multiple blogs that everyone should do vis-a-vis Progressives in general. (I admit that Ayn Rand thought of it long before me.) Just stop trading with them. Restaurateurs should refuse to serve them. Auto repair shops should decline to fix their cars. Realtors should forego selling them homes.

To be sure, there are many practical difficulties with the idea and, of course, it can't be applied consistently. But it would be a great tool in the toolbox, and send a terrific message.

And I promise you can watch whatever you want Friday through Wednesday, provided only that you tune in to The Mentalist on Thursday nights.


[Hat Tip: Doug Bandow at The American Spectator.]

Final DBC For Today: Obama's Broken Promises

NRO has posted a lengthy compilation of Obama's broken promises, complete with expiration dates and source links.

My reaction to reading them was: "I'm more worried about the promises he's keeping."

You know, such minor things as bankrupting the coal companies, nationalizing health care, 'stimulating' the economy, and enslaving the financial sector.

Call me a "glass half full (of sputum)" kind of guy.

A Drive-By Comment on the Fiscal Scene

Too often these days newspaper editorialists make me laugh, and not in a joyful way. Fred Hiatt penned one for WaPo titled, "Can Obama Avert a Fiscal Catastrophe?" To which my immediate reaction was, "Er, not when he's busy causing one."

If Obama and the Progressives are so eager to pass laws ensuring people "do the right thing," why don't they outlaw this kind of foolishness from the commentariat? After all, a little thing like the First Amendment would never slow them down.

The UNDO T-Shirt

Sometimes a logo says it all.

As the vendor explains, "This line of logo apparel sends the message that it's time to UNDO the federal leviathan."

Peruvian Law Forbids 'Socially Harmful' Children's Names

Just to illustrate how obviously absurd statism is, consider the following BBC news story.

Names like Cut-throat and Conflict are now out of bounds in Peru. Peruvians are having to choose names for their children more carefully from this week, after a controversial new law banned the use of names considered ridiculous, offensive, or contrary to religious beliefs.

Parents also cannot give their child more than two names, because the Peruvian government says it causes problems in their computer records.

The law also bans parents from giving children names of the opposite sex.

Civil registry officials will decide which names are prohibited.

Opposition politicians and church leaders say the legislation deprives parents of freedom of choice.

"It is wrong that civil registry officials be allowed to determine what names parents can give their children," said opposition Congressman Henry Gustavo Manuel Serapio Pease.

But the Peruvian government says the new law will protect children from the psychological damage caused by such recent names as the Spanish words for Cutthroat, Cuckold and Circumcision.

"People are giving their children names like H2O (the symbol for water) and Ebullicion ('Boiling' in Spanish) and this is going to hurt the child," said Justice Minister Alfredo Quispe.

Of course! We must eliminate freedom 'for the sake of the children'. Never mind that it reduces parents to children and puts the State in the role of parent.

Statism is evil, to be sure. But that doesn't stop it from being silly, as well.

Incomprehensible Headline of the Day

A Townhall story reports: "Army to Oppose Immediate Suspension of Gay Firings"

I haven't read the story, but if anyone can grasp this headline he's better at deciphering crypto-English than I. Does it mean gays will or won't be dismissed from the military? Does it mean the Army is acting at once or deferring a decision? Does it mean anything at all?

Sometimes an editor just has too much to do, I guess.

Chesterton on the Health Care Non-Debate

Apropos the now-invisible health care debate (which, thanks to all the backroom dealing from which even most Democrats are excluded, has virtually dropped off the radar) and the woefully inadequate Republican response:

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
-G. K. Chesterton (April, 1924)

Earth II Discovered 40 Light Years Away

According to TG Daily:

The radius of the planet is about 2.7 times that of earth and its density suggests it's made of three quarter water and other ices and one quarter rock.

Since there's no free country left on Earth, and not too many places to hide, maybe this planet is the next best bet.

G.K. Chesterton On The Current Congress

No, G.K. Chesterton never met Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska). Chesterton died in 1936. But he clearly had someone very much like him in mind when he said,

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." - The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21

I can't think of any time in America's past, except possibly when the New Deal legislation was passed, when this was more true.

Clever Quip of the Day

"I would give the Copehangen Conference a good, solid B+."

(A paraphrase of a commenter on HotAir.)

Now that's witty. Someone should tell Oprah.