Priorities, People!

I know what you're thinking:

That costume is a total anachronism!  That's clearly the original Death Star on display, which was destroyed before the introduction of the TIE Interceptor!

It's particularly exasperating because it would have been easy to fix.  Just cut away part of the hull to make it clear this is the Death Star from Jedi.  Sure, it would mean flashing an awful lot more leg, probably some arse too, but how could that be a problem?  It's not like these people are all weirdos!

Oh.

(Actually, that's the world-famous and utterly lovely Llama God, who I've known for several years and has never once threatened me with a giant blue penis.  He does a mean Sookie Stackhouse impression, too.  Having said all that, this is only the second most disturbing costume I've seen him sport.)

(h/t Kudos)

"Oh, Forget To Mention, These Guys Aren't Human Either"

Hmm.  Well, that was certainly different.  For reasons that will likely be obvious to those who saw it, and indescribably spoiler-heavy for those who haven't, it's debatable whether this episode can be reviewed at all.

I'm bored right now, though, so I'll give it ago.  As intimated a few lines above, what's below the fold is massively spoilertastic, so tread carefully.

Hot Air

Good news for climate change truth-seekers: wind farms increase global warming!  And all it took for the facts to emerge was a single brave scientist, and some of the words in his report.  Don't look at all the words, though! That just confuses the issue!  Look at some of the words.  A few of the words.  One or two of the words.  And maybe change some of the others.

Then you'll see the perfectly obvious!  Global warming, which isn't happening, or at least certainly isn't being caused by people, is happening right now, because of people we don't like!  We were right all along!  This proves climate change is bullshit, just like thalidomide proved that pregnancy is actually really easy.  It's now clear GW is all a big hoax, except for this one tiny part which is definitely real because it'll piss off the hippy left! 

Repeat after me: people don't cause climate change, liberals do.  Even though climate change isn't real.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

"I Have Every Right To Be An Utter Tool!"

I haven't said anything about the Komen Foundation shitstorm here because, so far, bloggers across the pond - and with profiles I am both envious of and scared to imagine - have entirely got it covered. In brief, for those that haven't come across this story: the Komen Foundation. a charity for breast cancer, reached critical mass regarding how many conservatives were on their executive board, and all of a sudden, they decided to stop funding Planned Parenthood, an organisation which helps the very poor with access to cancer detection, but also helps the very poor with access to abortion.

Unsurprisingly, this led to a massive outcry from an awful lot of people who kind of assumed when they gave their money to a breast cancer charity that said charity wouldn't pull funding from organisations who are fighting breast cancer, and wouldn't do so with so little warning that the move could plausibly have a body count attached to it.  The original reason for pulling the funding made no sense, a couple of days of coming up with increasingly implausible alternative excuses didn't make any sense either, and the Foundation have reversed their decision, though in a fairly weaselly way that can best be summarised as "We reserve the right to be intolerable fuckers in the near future, so don't get comfortable".

Much of the progressive blogohedron in America is delighted, because as they see it the vicious, callous Republicans (the woman directly responsible for this decision once ran as a GOP candidate, so the label applies) had finally managed what was increasingly seeming impossible: pull something so despicable public opinion would pound them into the ground.

Of course, not everyone is happy with this turn of events: 

[Y]ou’re on notice: If you currently donate to PP, you may never stop doing so... In the NROHQ kitchen just now, Charlie Cooke wondered aloud, and here I paraphrase: “Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?” But in fact, that anyone thinks there is a question here is a sign we’ve already lost. (h/t to LGM for providing the above link).

It's been pointed out by others how breathtakingly hypocritical this whining is, given that the same publication was just days earlier celebrating how conservatives had managed to shout and scream enough to cause Komen to drop PP funding in the first place. I'd also note that PP provides women with vouchers that allow mammograms etc. to be performed elsewhere for cheap/for free, which means that saying the organisation "does not provide mammography" is about the same as saying that my insurance company does not provide a new TV after the last one gets nicked.

What I really wanted to mention, however, is that this is another example of a conservative trick we've discussed before.  Alas, I still don't have a snappy title for it, but it goes like this: if liberals hate something, argue it isn't illegal.  If conservatives hate something, argue it should be illegal.  Even if the NRO hadn't just finished arguing that brow-beating a company into doing their bidding isn't awesome, the argument that the Komen Foundation had the right to be cowardly gitchimps is entirely beside the point.  The people excoriating them have the right to complain.  They have the right to stop paying the Komen Foundation money.  They have the right to call for and organise a boycott (interesting how all that "free market" bullshit suddenly disappears the instant a company actually responds to consumer pressure from liberals, huh?)

And, of course (and I can't believe I have to point this out, but some people are very, very stupid) Maloy has the right to object to all of that, as well.  Then I have the right to determine his objections as coming from a disingenuous idiot who no-one should ever have shown how to access the internet.  This sort of dispute is, one would hope, supposed to be settled, or at least discussed, using actual arguments.  Stating that no-one has broken the law is the exact opposite of that, an attempt to suggest that argument itself isn't necessary, that until Congress makes it illegal for companies to do what they want with their money, no-one should criticise a company for what they do with their money.

Of course, were Congress ever to pass such a law, it would be ludicrous to expect Maloya and his NRO cronies would shut up.  And you know how I know?  Because Congress did pass a law saying organisations have the right to provide abortion services, and those turdwelders couldn't fall over themselves fast enough to congratulate KF for refusing to put up with it.

Refusing to give money to an organisation because they're not conservative enough: the right of a company.  Refusing to give money to an organisation for being too conservative: "left-wing gangsterism".  One side wants the things they dislike to be banned.  The other recognises the importance in keeping the things they dislike legal, but will call it bullshit all the same.

Remind me which party harps on about small government and the protection of freedom?

A Favour To Fools

I'm still having a little trouble adjusting to being a statistician.  Nominally, I'm half-statistician, half whatever-I-want-so-long-as-I-keep-publishing, but that was an arrangement worked out before it was known (or at least, known by me) that my first major project would require a degree of un-fucking so extensive it almost makes me sympathetic for whomever is running the Kormen Foundation's PR wing right now.

Still, as little as statistics grabs me as compared to probability theory, it's clearly a very important field.  After all, it's thanks to the power of statistics that I can see through high-level political analyses like this one: 

As Mitt Romney dominated the Florida Republican primary Tuesday night, he also captured the bulk of the votes from Latinos in the state, with 54% of their ballots... [T]he independents there who voted for [Obama] in 2008...will be the prize in the November election... Obama -- who starts with a 60% lead among all Latinos in state polls -- may end up battling Romney over the growing Latino vote.

Now, I know what you're thinking, with your pathetic, unscientific minds.  You're all like: ZOMG!  54% is close to 60%, oh noes!  I mean, this shit seems airtight, doesn't it?

Oh, how I pity you people, scrabbling around in the dirt, waiting for someone with Godlike powers of deduction - I'm not saying my skills are Godlike, that's for history to decide - to peel away the layers of reality and reveal the truth, nestled in some hyperdimensional pocket reality that you would have no hope of reaching were it not for the warp-drives of the statistical mind.

Let me lay down some truth on you.  60% of Hispanics say they'll vote for Obama.  54% of registered Hispanic Republicans voted for Mitt Romney.  The missing number that none of you will have thought of, because of how only someone as smart as me could possibly think of it?

31%. 

Only 31% of registered Hispanic voters in Florida are Republican!

Are the deep complexities of this baffling situation slowly swimming into focus?  Perhaps you require further hand-holding.  No, don't apologise: I don't mind.  It's the only way you'll learn.  Obama current carries 60% of the Hispanic vote, which we'll assume, hardly unreasonably, means 60% of the registered Hispanic vote.  Mitt Romney carried 54% of the 31% of registered Hispanic voters who identify as Republicans.  That's less than 17%  of the total registered Hispanic population (Lopez could have worked this out from the numbers he included in his own colum.  Alas!  If only CNN had access to calculators!).

Clearly we can assume many if not all of those Republican Hispanics who chose not to vote for Romney when offered Gingrich, Paul or Santorum instead will choose Romney when their only other viable option is Barack Obama.  Indeed, if they all choose Romney then - let me just check my figures using the super-charged Mathematron that is my mind - he could carry 31% of the vote from Republicans alone! Against a mere 60% for Obama!  To reiterate: ZOMG!

Oh, but what about the independent voters, Lopez wonders?  They, after all, are the "real prize" [1]. And if 54% of Republicans like Romney, then how can we know how popular he is with the the constantly obsessed-over swing voter?

Well, maybe we can do some approximating using actual numbers that actual Lopez put into his actual column, like an undergrad who knows they have to include their sources even though they can't wrap their feeble minds around what their betters were saying in the first place.  38% of the registered Hispanics in the state are Democrats, leaving 31% of them unaffiliated. Let's assume every Democratically registered Hispanic will vote for Obama - that means that if the election were held today, 71% of unaffiliated voters would go for the 44th President.

That number again: 71%.

Of course, that number might be too high, but that would only be possible if registered Republicans were planning to vote for Obama as well, which ain't exactly bad news for the Democrats.

Tell me again how the Hispanic vote might be a hurdle for Obama, would you please?

You're welcome, the internet.  Man, but do I need a cigarette...

(h/t Balloon Juice)

[1] It's been said before, but it's a source of continual irritation to me that so much time and energy goes in to working out how best to court people too fucking stupid to have decided whether they want to vote for the guy who'll slash taxes on the rich, dismantle the safety net for the very poor, and announce his arrival in the Oval Office by bombing every brown person between Tunisia and Turkmenistan the instant he's sat down, or alternatively some or none of those things as soon as he's told not to by Donald Trump.  I realise there are people out there who really like all of those fucking bullshit alternatives of shittiness, but I can't understand how there are people who just aren't sure.

A Tale Of Cocktails #22B

Dennis the Menace (redux)

Ingredients

1 oz peach schnapps
1 oz Malibu rum

3 oz pineapple juice
3 drops Grenadine

Taste: 8

Look: 7

Cost: 8
Name: 8
Prep: 8
Alcohol: 5
Overall: 7.5

Preparation:  Shake the schnapps and Malibu along with crushed ice.  Strain into a Collins glass and add the pineapple juice.  Pour Grenadine drops in slowly, down the inside of the glass.

General Comments:  Having been less than impressed by this cocktail in the incarnation tried at the weekend, I decided to attempt one of the common alternatives.  This is definitely the superior drink.  You lose very little by not adding in the cranberry, and the Grenadine provides the cocktail with something a little more interesting in any case.  The density of the syrup also means both that the drink looks prettier, and that it gets gradually sweeter as you reach the bottom.  That's not to everyone's taste, admittedly, but I'm always a fan of cocktails that go through distinct stages as you drink them.

It's also now clear to me how this cocktail got it's name.  It still makes no sense for the previous variant, but - and I can't believe I didn't realise this at the time - it's clearly a reference to the American Dennis the Menace:

Obviously this is the inferior Dennis, but I suppose there's a bit of a shortage of black and red drinks, and probably better names for them in any case.

Next Year: Kittens Bad, Wasps Good

My baffling obsession with the morass of stool water and maggot-filled black jism that is the contemporary Republican Party is finally retroactively explained today: not only are they anti-puppy, they're also pro-snake.

(For context, my girlfriend has pretty bad ophidiophobia, as well as being even more of a dog lover than I am.  She actually mentioned Florida's python infestation to me yesterday, and told me they were trying to get something done about it.  My immediate thought was that I could probably guess why she had to use the words "were trying" instead of "had begun".)