Thank You!

The title says it all: Every Man Is A Sex Addict.

Sex addiction is simply a new name for the old evolutionary concept—the innate urge to impregnate as many females as possible. In this sense, every man is a sex addict or was one at some point in his life.

and

Therefore, the treatment for sexual addiction is a form of pseudo-redemptive window dressing in which no one, especially the addict himself, really believes. But what choices does the wife have? One potential “cure” is chemical or surgical castration—no man volunteers, not to mention the wronged wife would be deprived of sex anyway, a sort of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The second choice is to view the addiction as a time-limited condition, accept the man for who he is, and wait until his desires extinguish. Let's stop pathologizing every human behavior, like male libido.

We're not all sick, addicts, or depressed. We're just freaking people with moods.

More Foundvalue Posts

It's Hard Out There For A Running Back.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

Stagflation.

My blog posts are interspersed with longer-form blog posts written by other authors that are almost always lists of things like 10 Things TV Will Teach You About Finding A Job or 6 Things Everyone Should Know About Having Sex, etc, etc. The irony is, these blog posts get read by thousands of people who somehow find them through the magic of internet marketing and diggs and twitter and reposting. And exactly 0 people read my blog posts. One out of like 35 got picked up and got like 125 diggs. One post. It's actually quite pathetic. I would fire myself -- good thing I'm not the boss.

Are You Kidding Me?

A woman breaks up with a man for using a coupon to pay for dinner. The question posed by the blogger is whether a woman did the same thing, would a man break up with her?

Let me answer this without equivocation: No. Shit, I'd probably like the girl more because I know she wouldn't be a money suck and was generous enough to pay for dinner.

I'd also like her more because she wasn't AFRAID to use a coupon. I get that whipping out a coupon isn't the most romantic gesture in the world. But neither is whipping out a condom. But guess what - it's smart! I'd rather eat a nice meal with a coupon for the same price as a shitty meal without a coupon. Who wouldn't? A dumbass, showoff who is too cheap and too stupid to use a coupon. Since when did everyone in America become such diva show offs? Wannbe big spenders, wannabe playas/pimps/money bags? What happened to this place? Too many rap videos, chick magazines. It's gotten sickening...

...listening to a podcast this AM on Fresh Air with Dan Fante talking about his experience as a limo driver. He paints a portrait of among other customers, jobless, do-nothing 20 year olds renting limos and going to clubs in LA for the evening. I partook in that scene a tiny beat some years ago. What a joke. What evidence of a frivolous poseur culture.

Anyhow, busting out a coupon for dinner, I think, could be considered rather quirky and charming, especially if at a good restaurant -- which demonstrates taste.

I think the lady who broke up with a dude for using a coupon did him a favor.

Credit For Iraq?

Ouch. WSJ opinion slams Biden and other Dems on Iraq.

Less than three years after Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) declared the war lost, less than three years after then-Sen. Barack Obama—with the usual fierce moral urgency—opposed the Bush administration's military surge, and within three years of Mr. Biden's own recommendation that Iraq be divided into three parts, these Democrats are laying claim to Iraq's extraordinary victory.

The vice president wisely made his victory assertion in the television studio of a left-leaning network experienced in fudging Iraqi history. CNN, by its own admission, muted coverage of Saddam Hussein for over a decade.

In the past, American liberals have relied on a sympatico press and leftist academics to obscure or whitewash their grievous historical errors. President George W. Bush, pursuing the global war on terror, encountered the same personal slander Ronald Reagan faced as he fought and won the last major political battles of the Cold War. Both were branded "cowboys" and "warmongers." Now, Reagan's victorious Cold War legacy is claimed by all Americans.

Long Good Friday, Anyone?

Top Helen Mirren movies.

For the record, I hate websites that require you to sign in to make comments.

Is It Working?

The surge in Afghanistan appears to be yielding results.

Read the whole for some interesting theories on why all of sudden Pakistan is picking up high level Taliban and low level Al Queda guys.

So I Lied

Foundvalue is taking away from Public Musings. My newest post on A Crisis of Masculinity.

I never knew this, but apparently longer, descriptive titles are more likely to show up on google searches. So from now on, my posts on Found Value will be longer, more descriptive - as opposed to clever - titles.

What else is new? I must cop to having seen Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day. My two favorite parts are the introduction to Julia Roberts dressed in Army fatigues and gay Brett Favre (that was a spoiler, but I don't care, the movie doesn't warrant being unspoiled). We're really supposed to believe Julia Roberts is serving in Iraq? On what planet is a lady who looks like Julia Roberts at at her age doing infantry duty. It is beyond ridiculous and just goes to show the huge gap between the 3 million who serve and the 95% of us who don't. I wonder if this is a problem...this uber minority doing all the fighting for America. Strange. It keeps us so distant from the wars - most of us anyway.

Long Term Joblessness

My newest foundvalue post.

Helloooo There

10 Winter Olympic Hotties.

A Tragic View

Another great article by VDH on America. Money bits:

A State of Mind

The strange thing is that these wild swings in civilization are at their bases psychological: decline is one of choice rather than necessity. Plague or lead poisoning or famine did not destroy Rome. We could balance our budget tomorrow without a great deal of sacrifice; we could eliminate 10% worth of government spending that is not essential; we could create our own energy with massive nuclear power investment, and more extraction of gas, oil, and coal. We could instill a tragic rather than therapeutic world view that would mean more responsibilities rather than endlessly more rights. We could do this all right — but too many feel such medicine is worse than the malady, and so we probably won’t and can’t. An enjoyable slow decline is apparently preferable to a short, but painful rethinking and rebirth.

Read the whole article.

What's great and strange about VDH is how he articulates a lot of ideas I've thought about for a long time and never quite put into full formation myself. I remember graduating from college in year 2000 and thinking about my job options and thinking to myself - I want to work in an industry that makes something. And for some reason this was not easy for me to find. Isn't that bizarre? Isn't the whole idea of business and commerce to actually make something and sell it? I majored in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics because those were the subjects that most interested me and I was good at and seemed somewhat serious (vs. film or media studies or some sort of bullshit major). For whatever reason, perhaps partially due to my lack of imagination or access, all I could think to do after college were the following:

1. Go to grad school of some sort
2. Get a consulting job
3. Get a job in Silicon Valley
4. Get a job in Hollywood

That was really it. I don't remember thinking about many more options and perhaps that was a bit narrow of me. But looking over that list - few of them actually make something - in the traditional sense. Sure, Hollywood makes movies, but the jobs I would get weren't responsible for the crafting of movies. Silicon Valley makes stuff, but so many of those jobs at the time were weird speculative companies making internet crap I didn't understand. One of them became Google and others became Amazon and Ebay, but a lot of those little shops were making totally meaningless things.

In any case, it all felt distant and intangible and odd to me...here I was, a fairly smart person with decent resume and grades with a good work ethic wanting to build something of quality and there wasn't a long list of options in front of me. So much of the American economy had become about "service." Some form of client service. I ended up working for a couple years at a Consulting company. In the rawest sense, we were doing Client Service for law firms or law departments of big corporations. It just seemed strange that there were more opportunities to do service jobs than make something or provide something. Isn't that somehow backwards? How can we have more people servicing than building? There is something very counter-intuitive about how an economy like that can thrive.

Come On, Dude

A fairly nice Biden gaffe.

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer.

You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society.

It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.

Does the Obama Administration really think it can take credit for a peaceful and stable Iraq? What planet are they on? They basically enacted the Status of Forces Agreement the Bush Administration made with the Iraqi government in 2008.

This is why I never thought it was a wise move - long term - for the democrats to get invested in the failure of the Iraq war. Once the debate to go to war was lost in 2003, it still didn't make smart political sense to become invested in failure. An honest, thoughtful, principled person certainly could honestly oppose the Iraq War. It was not a slam-dunk position. There were plenty of ways to legitimately oppose it. Not that much of the main democratic establishment at the time did - Clinton, Biden, and Lieberman were all pretty clear in their support of using force against the Saddam regime. Nevertheless, opposition to war didn't necessitate investment in failure, yet many of the democrats and liberals did so. There were plenty of critics of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq War and some of those criticisms led to improvements in the way we handled it - both from the left and right.

What is pretty despicable, however, from the so-called leadership, is a dishonest and politicized revisionist history of events. Biden seems to want things all ways -

He supported the initial resolution to go to war.
When the war went bad, he argued it was Bush's fault and exploited it politically.
He opposed the surge, and now that it appears to have worked, is trying to take credit for it.

Are we supposed to take this seriously?

Google Buzz

My latest Foundvalue post is guess what? A critique of Google Buzz. Oh hell, I'll just reprint in full here.

Last night my gmail account informed me I was on Google Buzz. As a long time opponent of Facebook, I was horrified. Basically, Google just forced me (and all gmail customers) to join their version of Facebook, complete with pictures and status updates, and all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. Before immediately deleting the Buzz account, which I eventually plan to do, I figured I ought to check it out.

I have.

It is exactly what I expected. A total waste of time. I can’t understand what people are talking about. People email little articles and funny word plays and all sorts of stupid-ass shit. 90% of the stuff isn’t directed at anyone. Am I supposed to be reading? Is this directed to me? Am I supposed to respond? I feel like I’m reading a bunch of gmail chats I’m not supposed to read, and more importantly, don’t want to read.

Email is a tricky thing. I go back and forth with it. On the one hand, I like getting emails and look forward to communicating with friends and family. On the other hand, a lot of emails are about shit I need to do. Order this plane ticket. Read my script. Can you commit to drinks next week? Can you do this? Can you do that? How are you doing? Blah blah blah. And then there’s work emails. Almost always more shit to do. I am complaining right now. Don’t get me wrong. I like getting invited to parties and I like having a job and I like having friends who are thoughtful enough to email or respond to me and to keep in touch. I’m just saying I have mixed feelings every time a new message shows up in my inbox. Sometimes I crave them. Other times, I wish I could just check out.

Google Buzz and I’m sure Facebook and MySpace and Friendster are just like having another inbox – another thing to check. Already today, I see my little Buzz box with 3 new messages and for a moment I think to myself “Gosh, I’m so popular, I have so many friends who want to keep in touch with me.” Then I read the messages-

“Does this work?”

“Watch a video of my baby.”

“Look at my friend Rick singing karaoke last night!” (Picture of Rick=someone I’ve never seen before in my life)

What the f—? It’s like being in a room with a bunch of people constantly shouting stuff with no relationship to one another. I’m now getting Buzzes from people who I don’t even know. They are responding to other people’s buzzes with funny comments that I don’t understand. This is like some sort of nightmare world where you have to listen to everyone and everything. I feel like Gene Hackman in THE CONVERSATION only there aren’t any floorboards to pull up since it’s all cyberspace.

Scary Graphs

A graph unemployment lasting more than 27 weeks.

There are residual effects of long term unemployment beyond not making money and living off the government. Skills deteriorate. Careers halt. But perhaps more than all of those factors, a spirit is crushed. At first it is not totally noticeable and maybe even preferable. People were calling it "funployment" for awhile. That's all good and fine, but over time, being productive is good for the spirit. Laying about on the couch without an obvious reason for getting up in the morning is really, really tough on the spirit. See the Office last week - what has become of David Wallace, the once leader to whom Michael reported. You start coming up with awesome ideas like the Suck It.

What should be maddening is how our political leaders and pundits spin this mess. It is much, much worse out there for regular folks than the numbers indicate. 9-10% unemployment isn't telling the whole story. It doesn't factor in discouraged workers (which bumps it to over 15%) and we already know the government misreported the numbers from last quarter by over 800,000 jobs. Bad commercial mortgages are coming up and the government's only solutions is to borrow our way out of it. What's worse, we're borrowing for unproductive entitlement spending. We're increasing unemployment benefits and trying to pass massive healthcare reform. While these are nice and good things to provide for suffering Americans, they are not productive ways of spending money. They do not provide growth. And what we need is growth. What we need is to build stuff and sell it and to make profit. If we are to go into debt, it should not be for entitlements right now, it should be for infrastructure. And not "green" infrastructure, which as far as I can tell, means basically nothing. I mean roads that people can drive on and dam projects which create power or levee projects that make lands safe to build on, or invest in charter schools to improve the education of young kids in disaffected areas. This type of infrastructure which pays long term dividends and is worth the investment.

But our political class gives us mealy-mouthed platitudes on both sides. Republicans are trying to make Obama look like a fool to get back into power. Democrats are trying to buy support by making beggars of the entire country.

We are not a rich country right now. We are like a college student from a wealthy family who buys vacations, clothes, and flat screen tvs on her credit card and thinks herself rich. She figures she'll make money down the line and hedges that her parents will pay it off. But this is illogical. What if she doesn't make money down the line - it is perfectly reasonable to assume she won't. But even if she does, most of it would go to paying down her own debt. In the next ten years, even with rosy economic numbers, we still won't peck away at the debt because of the huge cost of servicing it. Her fail safe was that her parents would pay for it. Well, our parents in this case are China. Do we want to relay on them to keep us afloat? What will the long term cost of that be?

Why It's Easy to Be Cynical

Contrasting NY Times editorials from when Bush was Prez to now.

Shoe, Meet the Other Food indeed.

Uh Oh

From Levine:

IRAN WILL DELIVER 'PUNCH' TO WORLD: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran will deliver a "punch" that will stun the Western world during this week's anniversary of the Islamic revolution. "The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned," Khamenei told a gathering of air-force employees, reports AFP. These comments come on the heels of Iran's announcement that it will begin to produce enriched uranium despite worldwide protest and threats of sanctions. Opposition protesters are expected to take to the streets in demonstrations and marches on the February 11 anniversary. "The clerics should know that since imprisonment, beatings, and other confrontational methods are done in the name of Islam and the Islamic regime, it is hurting Islam and we all should try to stop," said opposition leader Hossein Mousavi on his Web site.

Who wants to bet they test a bomb? I hope it doesn't work.

I Sympatheize

Pakistani Ambassador rejected because of his name.

Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name -- which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest dick":

It's been a shameful secret I have kept from most of my peers and readers, but my real name is actually Big, and I changed it to Greg to keep my dignity and various positions.

Women Writers

Nikki Finke posts a fair and in depth response to the question of women writers in Hollywood.

The overly simplistic "only 11% of writers are women, something is terribly wrong!" attitude doesn't really get at any significant insight. The above article does a good job of digging deeper into those numbers.

I am just a lowly peon assistant in the overall system hierarchy, but I do read a lot of scripts and me and my brethren make up the first line of defense for Hollywood of shitty non-readable, non-commercial scripts. I can attest, however, that the script reading process is pretty much as unbiased as you're gonna get - at my level.

My process for script reading: Someone forwards me a script and says: can you read? I print. I put in my bag. I forget about script because I have 101 other things to do that are more urgent. A day or two later I get some time at home either during the week or the weekend. I pull scripts out of bag and begin reading. By this time, I have forgotten most information about the script - what it is about, who sent it, who gave it to me, etc. Among the things I forget is the gender of the writer. If someone asked, I could guess by the name on the cover page, but chances are, when I'm reading, I don't actually know the name of the writer. I could also guess by the content of the script, but I know I'd be wrong sometimes. Point is, I don't even consider it. I report back at the staff meeting on the script itself whether I recommend or not and that's that. That's my process. Granted, in order to get hired on anything, it goes through a lot more people than me and it goes through meetings and selling of the screenwriter, etc, and maybe gender comes into play at other levels. I can't speak to it. All I can say is that at my level, at my job, other than the subconscious gender biases and favoritism towards male-orientated fare that might be hardwired into my mind (this last sentence is to be read with the deepest sarcastic, dismissive voice possible) gender don't matter at all.

Shit is shit and good is good. Don't matter if comes from a vajay-jay or a wiener.

Academic Earth

Can you get an ivy league level education for free on the internet?

Check out my new Found Value post. Hat tip, Gomez.

Where We Are

Yesterday I attended a Super Bowl party after playing a soccer game. I oftentimes get disgusting bruised toenails after soccer, especially when I play on turf or with new shoes, both of which were the case yesterday. My big toes are basically both permanently bruised and mangled and totally disgusting, which makes me never quite understand the whole foot fetish thing.

I don't like displaying my disgusting feet publicly, but because of my blisters and other things, it was painful to wear shoes (as I am doing right now). In any case, a few people at the Super Bowl party asked me, not in a mean or condescending way, but more in a seriously curious manner -

"Do you paint your toenails?"

What does it say about the state of masculinity in our culture that it is more likely that I would be painting my toenails than being bruised from overuse? This is where the minds of otherwise logical and smart people go first?

I can't even take this insult personally because I may be many, many things, but not among them is the type of dude who would paint his toenails. I know, I know, joke, joke, joke, easy joke. But seriously, I'm not even close to that guy. And these people know it. Yet, the most logical explanation of colored toenails is that I'm painting them.

Welcome to the 10s.

Rapid Super Bowl Reaction

The Saints needed to play a great offensive game and a little luck in order to win. They got both. I missed almost the entire first half, but heard the final 2 minutes of the second quarter on the radio. I loved the going for it on 4th and goal from the 1 with under two minutes remaining and the score 10-3. By going for it, Sean Peyton said to his team: "We are here to win."

Everyone knew the Saints were the underdog in this game. Even the Saints knew it. They were going to need a little bit of luck to win. Going for it on 4th down played into both the strength of the Saints and against the strengths of the Colts. If they went for the field goal, the score would be 10-6, the Colts would get the ball at the 30 yard line with just under two minutes and all their time outs and I'm sure Peyton drives down to get at least a field goal and, more importantly, the momentum. This is exactly what happened in the Jets game two weeks ago, Peyton drove down and scored a TD right before halftime. It was the key drive of the game.

As it worked out, the Saints got a little lucky and stopped the Colts 3 and out after turning the ball over on downs. Because the Colts started from their own 1, their incentive was to just get one first down and run out the clock for the half, rather than try to drive 99 yards in under two minutes. That is a tall order, even for Manning. The Saints got the ball back at midfield with about 25 seconds and were able to complete a few passes and get a big field goal at the end of the half to get it to 10-6.

Obviously the onside kick was a risky move, but it worked and paid off. If they lose that play, they probably lose the game. But such an unexpected play probably had a 40-60 chance of working and it did. From there, they played a super smart second half, limiting the number of times Peyton Manning got hold of the ball and you could see the pressure building on the Colts, feeling the need to score every time they had it. They got unlucky on the long field goal and the Saints were able to convert in the red zone on the next possession and get the two point conversion, all huge plays because they put big time pressure on the Colts. Finally, that offensive and clock-management pressure got to Manning and he made a bad throw on a blitz that got run back for a touchdown.

I am positive if either the onside kick failed or the 51 yard field go was made, the Colts win that game. But the Saints, through clever clock management, were able to pressure the Colts and finally force Manning into an uncharacteristic mistake. The Gods were on New Orleans side tonight and good as Manning is, he is still a mortal and unable to escape his fate.

I Just Laughed Out Loud For Five Minutes


Tiger Woods inspired devises...reprinting in full:

Q: I love your idea of the Blackberry Infidel for cheaters, but I have a tweak for it. Instead of having all of them password-protected by default, this Blackberry would be like two devices in one. It is a regular Blackberry that is not password-protected and has all the e-mails from your wife and pictures of your kids. A secret series of keystrokes (essentially a password) would then unlock the Infidel. This mode would use different e-mail addresses, and even a different phone number used only for cheating. That way your phone bill will never show incriminating texts or phone calls. There would be separate storage to keep all of the naked pictures of your mistresses. Best of all, another set of keystrokes would instantly delete all of the memory and restore the Infidel back to its default settings. I think we can build on this.

Still laughing.

Favre Vs. Warner

Simmons mailbag addresses the topic I stayed up late drunkenly talking about (again) last night.

Q: Why is Brett Favre's career better than Kurt Warner's again? Every single statistic that is a "rate" favors Warner as well as career QB rating. Favre playoff record: 12-10. Warner playoff record: 8-3. Why do we stalk Favre's land manor every winter and we're going to let Warner go in peace?
--Dan, New York

SG: Because people care about Brett Favre. Did you see the rating for that Vikes-Saints game? Fifty-seven million people! Highest rated non-Super Bowl since the "Seinfeld" finale. You can call him an attention hog, say he's overrated, claim he's a wishy-washy narcissist, even play the "if Desmond Howard doesn't annihilate the 1996 Patriots, he's ring-less right now" card. But ultimately, everyone else in the room will care about your opinion. He's polarizing, he's fascinating, he's fun to complain about, he's fun to watch, he's predictable and unpredictable ... there's just a lot going on. You couldn't say the same about Kurt Warner. He was just a good guy who played football really well.

As for your Warner/Favre debate, that's a fun one. I never thought about that before. In my book, I spent a lot of time figuring out specific ways to measure careers against each other, eventually coming to this conclusion: I'd rather have 4-5 phenomenal years from Player A than 15 very good years from Player B. Well, I'd take 1999-2001 Warner over any three-year incarnation of Favre in his prime, and I'd take 2008-2009 Warner over any two-year incarnation of Favre after his prime. No contest. But let's say you could start a team with either of them. If I offered you nearly two full decades of Favre (a top-five QB from 1993-2002, and a better-than-average QB from 2003 through 2009) or 11 up and down years from Warner (better peaks from 1999-2001 and 2007-2009, a higher playoff ceiling, but nothing else) ...you'd take Favre. You would. Warner wins the "higher ceiling" and "better teammate" arguments and that's it.

Forgot about the Desmond Howard card...gonna toss that into my future anti-Favre arguments.

My theory on football - in the post West Coast offense game - the difference between good and bad teams are on the offensive and defensive line. 85% of the time, the team with better overall line play wins the game. The other major contributing factor is turnovers. A superior team will lose to an inferior team if they turn the ball over too much. The third most important factor after turnovers and line play is the quarterback...because the quarterback actually influences the first two factors on the margins. A quarterback who holds onto the ball too long in the pocket (Shaun Hill) can negate good line play. Likewise, a quarterback who tosses crazy interceptions (Rex Grossman) also negates good line play. But consider this - even with Rex Grossman - the Bears did make it to the Superbowl.

Now here is the important point - the quarterback - generally - influences the first two factors in a negative fashion. A great quarterback cannot make up for inferior line play. If a quarterback doesn't have time in the pocket, he will be rendered ineffective. Quarterbacks like Dan Marino and Peyton Manning who have exceptionally quick releases and decision making help their line play on the margin by needing less time. But they still need some time and at least a minimal threat of a running game. The almost perfect example of this is John Elway. Elway was a great quarterback, but could never beat top NFC teams because they got beat - badly - on the offense and defensive line. It was only when Elway was clearly in the twilight of his career that he finally won two Superbowls - and when he had the best offensive line in the league. They won as a running team, not Elway at his tip top.

Basically, the most important trait for a quarterback on a superior team is to not render his team's line play ineffective. On an inferior team, the quarterback needs to do more. Kurt Warner's Arizona team last year was a good example of this. While Arizona was an underdog and generally inferior team to their playoff opponents, they had one element of their game that was far superior - the passing game - and got streaky and were able to win despite inferior line play. But examples like this are very rare, and ultimately they still lost the Super Bowl.

Brett Favre is the worst of both worlds. He has never been good enough to win consistently with an inferior team. Sure, he's won a few games, but that simply falls into the 15% or maybe gets bumped to 20% with Favre. Not significant, in my eyes. But what's worse - is that because of his turnovers - he actually causes SUPERIOR teams to lose. Last game was a perfect example - the Vikings were a superior team and they lost to an inferior team because of turnovers. Last year, he contributed to the Jets collapse as a SUPERIOR team on paper.

Hockey Teams Should Be Banned

Simmons mailbag about miserable teams is great except for the inclusion of hockey teams.

Look, I'm a soccer fan, but I keep in quiet while I'm in company of regular Americans because Americans don't give a shit about soccer. I understand it's a niche thing here, like Bridge and Hsiao-hsien Hou movies. Could hockey fans please stop acting like the sport is an American sports thing? Who gives a shit about how crappy the Canucks are? Who even knows where the Canucks come from. Spare me, please.

But At Least They're Good For The Environment

2010 Prius is having serious braking problems:

FEDS KNEW TOYOTA'S TROUBLES: Prius envy is a thing of the past now that Japanese officials have ordered Toyota to investigate the 2010 Prius braking system. U.S. officials have also announced that they will conduct their own brake probe. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration received 171 complaints from Prius owners by 2010, 111 involving brake problems, and at least 2 leading to driver injuries.

If Toyota can't build cars...well, jeez. What can you relay on anymore?

Racism Against Black Women and Myself

How did Tyler Perry's I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF get neglected from best original song?

Foundvalue

I have several new posts up on Foundvalue.

On the Oscars.

On Saving Your Money.

On Main Street helping itself.

These blog post are more difficult to write than the public musings for whatever reason.

Yikes

When the real data got compiled, it turns out the recession was worse than previously reported- 824,000 fewer jobs.

So if the stimulus saved 650,000 jobs as reported by the Obama administration in December, but the jobs numbers were miscalculated by 824,000...does that mean we did the stimulus in order to lose 175,000 jobs?

Very confusing.

I suppose the logic is that without the stimulus, there would be 650,000 fewer jobs. Per the article, each job cost the Federal government $248,000. Personally, if I had the option, I'd take the $248,000 to ride out the economic storm rather than a job...

Sex Robot

Headline says it all: Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot

How can you not love America?

Roxxxy understands and speaks only English for now, but Hines' True Companion company is developing Japanese and Spanish versions. For an extra fee, he'll also record customizable dialogue and phrases for each client, which means Roxxxy could talk to you about NASCAR, say, or the intricacies of politics in the Middle East.

Mine will be able to discuss Michael Mann movies.

Blowing the Whole Thing Up

Manohla Dargis asks whether we ought to blow the whole system up. Hat tip, Chuck.

Although this idea seems to be working with post-Katrina New Orleans public schools, is it a wise idea for the movie industry?

Like anything, the DYI ethos is should neither be completely neglected nor fetishized. Facts are facts - I watch nothing on Youtube. Nothing. The biggest "benefactor" from online streaming is television, although the benefit is largely from audience and not from a monetary standpoint (yet). I've gotten into 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Jersey Shore all through the internet.

On the other hand, blogs are almost my exclusive new source today. To the extent I read newspapers, I read them more like blogs, selecting certain specific articles vs. the old school way of reading the sports, then the front page, then the calendar.

Can you honestly cite Mumblecore as a revolution? Let's be serious for a moment...is Mumblecore even known outside the film geek culture? Has it influenced cinema? Is Paranormal Activity a new phenomenon or just the latest example of cheap horror films that find a large audience, much in the way the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Blair Witch Project did before?

Content is still king. It's the message, not the medium. Blogs are successful because they provide good reading and analysis and because newspapers stopped doing it. DIY cinema will succeed when the quality surpasses what Hollywood produces. Pulp Fiction revolutionized cinema because it knocked the socks off the audience and was incredible well written, well crafted and fresh.

Dargis seems to long for the blow up moment...but it is happening to her business - the newspapers - before it happens to the cinema.

The Best Laid Plans

Where Jersey Shore meets 1L.

"My score was decent. I had a plan that if my score was really well, then I might of just went to Yale or Harvard,”

Hat tip, Gomez.

A New Decade

At one time, it was considered offensive to wear non-black soccer cleats. If you wore non-black and in particular, white, you were either:

a) a douche bag
b) really really good (and a little bit of a douche bag)

Either times have changed or I've become a douche-bag. Tomorrow night I will debut white boots.

NoKo

A new book about North Korea and how normal comparisons to Stalinism are misleading.

Coupled with this other new book about Al Queda as seen through internal Arab politics, we may be coming upon a better way of thinking about these problematic actors on the world stage.

About time.

First Post

My first post as a blogger on Foundvalue just went up here.

I do not expect this to take any blogging away from Public Musings, but I will be posting at Found Value once or twice a day, in addition to Public Musings.