Ya know, I really wanna get past that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I hear news that, rationally, shouldn’t bother me at all. One of these days I hope it’s fixed.
     But hey, this week is only a four-day work week followed by a four-day pass which intern means next week is a four-day work week as well and then, wait a minute, I have a four-day pass (barring mean-spirited people who already did me in once this past week) the weekend of the 19-22 so that means means, if I’m not mistaken (and I’m not looking at a calendar for this), there isn’t a single week the month of May that will be a five-day work week! Hey, it’s a beautiful thing. Life just got that much better.

*Update & Updgrade*
     I looked at a calendar, and due to the Memorial Day holiday, the week of May 22 will only be a 3-day work week (Tuesday, May 23, Wednesday, May 24, and Thursday, May 25). Yeah, this post just got upgraded from the “Grrr” category to the “Nice” Category.

     Ever had the urge to translate something into Arabic? Google can help you satisfy that urge. View ArmyPostRoad.Com in Arabic.

     Did you really think you could go through life without knowing the history behind the phrase, “going commando,”?
     Punny Money has a fairly detailed post about the benefits of giving up underwear cold turkey.

I was directed to this picture of Alfred Hitchcock via kottke.org.

     Priceless.

I found this in the away message of a friend from high school:

1. don’t stay in 2. don’t exercise good judgement 3. don’t let anyone outdrink you 4. don’t throw up 5. don’t get caught 6. don’t sleep alone 7. don’t regret any of it 8. don’t admit to anything

Pretty funny considering who these instructions were given to.

     For the second spring in a row, the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids community has found itself as the setting for a particularly heinous, despicable murder that was perpetrated by someone who, in all truthfulness, should have had their liberty stripped from them far earlier. In 2005 Roger Bentley brought to an end the life of 10-year old Jetseta Gage in an unspeakable fashion that was only aggravated by the despicable situation that brought the hateful predator into the young child’s life. Now today, in 2006, we’ve learned that Kyle Marin brutally and barbarically murdered two young women in a Cedar Rapids apartment and left them to be found by one of the slain’s fathers.
     Both men had marked criminal histories, Bentley as a child molester and Marin as a violent batterer. In 1994 Bentley was convicted of lascivious acts with a child and Marin as recently as November 2004 was convicted of willful injury after having been convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon just the year prior. Despite having their monstrous criminal tendencies certified in fact by juries of their peers, these men were restored of their liberties and allowed to walk the streets without restriction.
     The more recent of these two cases is the one, however, that lays bare the more perilous flaws in our criminal justice system. Twice in less than two years Kyle Marin was arrested for and convicted of felonious assault and was twice given the creative alternatives of probation, suspended jail sentences, and residential treatment. Had Marin been ordered to serve the five-year prison term he earned himself following his 2004 conviction, he would to this day still be in prison and Katrina Hill and Molly Edmondson would not have found their end at the tip of a knife and hammer.
     These two horrendous cases show how far our society has swung away from protecting public safety and towards coddling dangerous criminals. Criminal codes were not created to nor, I hope, ever become intended to reform the criminals who break them but to safeguard society. And as we have seen lately, the alternatives we have created to that most often result in tragedy.

     Earlier today I started on a doozy of a post linking together why gasoline prices were higher, why it wasn’t the fault of Big Oil companies, why it’s dreadful that Americans as a whole are economically illiterate, and why the Democrats are evil and how that fact relates to the first three points. I had to leave the post after working on it for a few minutes and when I came back to work on it (several hours later), my writing mojo had left me and I couldn’t piece two words together.
     In my research for the alluded to post-that-wasn’t-to-be, I was direct by the good folks at Marginal Revolution to a new (to me), fantastic blog by Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw. As an added bonus, I was thereafter also pointed to this very attractive Dallas Fed Senior Economist.
     I can’t wait to be able to start studying economics again.

     The folks over at National Review Online have a very poignant editorial about the changes in proposed budget resolution that need to happen just to shore up the base for this fall.
     They’re dead on. Some of the less-than-conservative Republican members of the House need to realize that if they don’t shape up and do a little belt-tightening before November that they can kiss our majority goodbye. Clowns like Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA, how apt, huh?) especially need to realize that there is actually a balance sheet that goes along with all the spending they do and that with every extra project they approve they’re only worsening the pain that will come in the future when we come to a drop-dead, absolutely-must-get-done milestone to balance the budget. It seems every year there are news items about countries around the world passing austere budgets for numerous reasons (near insolvency; massive, unserviceable debtload, actual fiscal restraint) and our national legislature can’t even hardly slow the rate of increase in the size of the budget.
     A real post about the budget would require much more time than I have left tonight. But hey, today was a good day anyway.

*Updated*

     A friend passed this video along to me. It’s a French-language (with subtitles) commercial. I found the English-language version and the video resolution is much better. It’s mighty funny. The English voiceover is humorous.



     The commercial is for Zazoo Condoms.

     The Columbia Business School (CBS as they refer to it) each spring has their Follies and for all you econ nerds out there (mainly me), there’s a very funny parody of “I’ll Be Watching You” done nominally by CBS dean and former Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, R. Glenn Hubbard. Check it out here.
     Thanks to Professor Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution for the pointer to it. Here’s his entry about it.

I PASSED

That’s a two-year old monkey off my back.

     Tomorrow morning is the record PT test. Lots of stuff ride on it, my promotion by-and-large hinges on it. Short, curt sentences rock. I go to visit Iowa City next week. Pandora rocks, I’ve been listening to it as much, if not more than, my mp3s since I discovered it on Saturday.
     I feel pretty confident about the PT test tomorrow, I just haven’t passed one for a while and this one is about as important as the ones at the end of basic and then at AIT were. I would like to just get it past me and get this huge monkey off my back.
     I’ve discovered that I like the band Black Label Society. The new Godsmack album, Four came out today, I wasn’t able to go out and buy it. I probably won’t until the coming Monday actually. Sad.
     I’m having a hard time thinking of anything of even meager consequence to say or even really think about at the moment. It doesn’t make for good blogging.