Rick Perry: The Air-Safety Candidate

So, I had previously linked to the story about how Texans are statistically more likely to be executed than to die in a plane crash. It kept rolling around in my mind, though, so here’s this.

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For the record, I’m not actually personally opposed to the death penalty. What I am opposed to is the unequal treatment people receive under the justice system based on factors like race and wealth. Also, when the government is perfectly willing to execute someone whom they know to have been falsely accused in the name of not looking weak on crime.

The numbers I used were based on the 2009 Texas population and a generic American 1 in 11 million per year plane crash death rate, which I got from here.

Duane Edward Buck (whose guilt in a double homicide is not in question) is scheduled to be executed on September 15. Apparently in Texas, likelihood of committing future crimes is an important factor in applying the death penalty. The dubious part was that Buck’s race was explicitly cited as a factor in his future dangerousness. You can read more here.

The Galileo bit is in reference to Perry’s idiotic statement about Galileo and climate change, about which you should read this.

The Week in Hooters (with video!)

So, this week brought us a veritable twin peaks of news relating to Hooters, the restaurant Americans go to for the articles.

First, on Friday evening, there was the Vampire-at-Florida-Hooters incident, which seems to have gone something like this. Josephine Rebecca Smith, a 22-year-old Pensacola resident, was dropped off at a Shell station, where she was waiting for a ride from a relative. While waiting there, she met 69-year-old Morton Ellis.

Ellis was hanging out on the front porch of a vacant Hooters, as you do.

Ellis invited Smith to join him on the porch, and proceeded to fall asleep. Next thing he knew, Smith was on top of him, telling him that she was a vampire, and biting chunks of his face off. Ellis somehow managed to get away from her in his motorized wheel chair, and call the police from back at the Shell station.

When Smith was later arrested, police reported that she was half naked, covered in blood, and recalled nothing of the incident.

Which sounds a lot more like a werewolf attack, if you ask me.

Second, in a move that is in no way a crass exploitation of human tragedy, Hooters released this video, which seems to be titled “Hooters® Remembers”:

To help cleanse your palette, now, I’d like to take you back to 1985. It was a simpler time, when millions of teenage girls had non-ironic crushes on George Michael, the only thing we had to fear was impending nuclear holocaust, and we danced. How did we dance, you ask? Like a wave on the ocean, that’s how.

USA voted coolest nation

So, you remember back in Junior High School, how there was that kid who seemed really cool because he had all this cool stuff, and he was the first one to get a moustache, and everybody laughed at his jokes?

But then you got to High School, and, looking back on it, you think that maybe he was just sort of a bully who picked fights with people for no reason, and stole people’s lunch money?

And then, after college, you go back to visit your parents, and there’s that same guy, still hanging out talking about how cool he is and flexing his muscles, but now he’s really fat, and he doesn’t even have a job?

Yeah, well, according to a poll by the social networking site Badoo, the United States is the coolest country in the world.

The top ten most coolest nationalities are:

1.    American          
2.    Brazilians          
3.    Spanish          
4.    Italians          
5.    French          
6.    British          
7.    Dutch          
8.    Mexican          
9.    Argentinian          
10.    Russian

The five least cool?

1.    Belgians          
2.    Poles          
2.    Turks          
4.    Canadians          
5.    Germans

Celebrate the USA’s coolness dominance over Belgium with this gem. Available for purchase here.

via Yahoo News

Rachel Uchitel, one of America’s heroes

So, there’s this little item from the New York Post, which really should be read in its one-paragraph entirety, because it’s a little bit unbelievable. In it, Rachel Uchitel, referred to here as “Tiger Woods’ alpha mistress” talks about the blessings of the fact that her fiance died in the 9/11 attack. Among the other good things that came from his death is the fact that she is not now a “fat housewife with three kids.”

There’s still time, though, as she is apparently considering having children with her current boyfriend. If you want to know how good an idea that is, she is quoted as saying, “I never wanted them . . . but I know how much I love my dogs, and I think I’d make a good mother to my own kids.”

Yes, we all think that.

Going to the Store (The Objective Correlative of Something)

So, here’s something else for your Labor Day enjoyment. What I particularly love are all of the comments on Vimeo where people are like “Oh my God, this is SO ME,” or “Someone finally understands.”

Apparently, this video represents the objective correlative of some previously ineffable human experience.

Congratulations to “dlew” for finally effing it.

BTW, video is borderline NSFW (but not really), and is best viewed with the volume way up.

going to the store. from dlew on Vimeo.

Happy Labor Day from Darwin Eats Cake

So, today is Labor Day here in the US. Todd and Eleonora are celebrating with story-time:

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Santa Fe Institute colleague Sam Bowles has pointed out (via Ronda Butler-Villa) that:

“Labor Day” was promulgated (in 1892) to distance America from the worldwide May Day celebrations of workers in all countries. It is a working class holiday that was initiated to commemorate a general strike in Chicago in 1886, and the anarchists who were hanged (after a highly political show trial) shortly thereafter, allegedly for their involvement in the Haymarket affair.

 Another successful instance of the “hey, look at this shiny thing” strategy working perfectly.

Jonny Quest Stop Motion

So, if you’re old enough, you’ll remember the short-lived cartoon Jonny Quest.  Roger D. Evans has recreated the show’s opening sequence in stop-motion animation. It’s just . . . wow.


Jonny Quest Opening Titles from Roger D. Evans on Vimeo.


Now go to his website, where you can see just how much work went in to every one of these shots. Then rewatch the video and be amazed all over again.

via Boing Boing.