The best way to make up for "lost tax revenue" of course, would be to shut down at least 3/4 of the current federal government: any part of it not engaged in activities supported by the constitution.

Sometimes I think I'm turning into an old fogy. I can't help but wonder what it is with stores like Forever 21 that makes them think that blasting cacophonous noise at you will enhance your shopping experience.

The Internet is. It was created over the 70's and 80's and introduced to the world in the 90's. It metastasized and evolved and is now pretty much an essential part of our civilization; I would not want to go back to a world without it. I think the fact that we can ride on top of it to gather knowledge and entertainment is a wonderful thing, the world at your fingertips, good and bad, and the experience you take from it is that which you choose to take.

What would you all say is the more dangerous trait in a politician, anyway? The tendency to lie? Or the tendency to not know what the hell you're doing?

How about the tendency not to know what the hell you're doing and then to lie about it after it blows up? I guess Western Chauvinist kind of beat me to the punch on this one.

The two songs (hymns) that immediately spring to mind were performed by an absolutely amazing Catholic church choir at the funeral of a coworker who had died much too young from a heart attack:

On Eagles Wings
Pia Jesu

I can't hear either of these pieces now without tearing up.

Sukiyaki isn't really a novelty song, just a beautiful #1 Japanese hit that was brought over to America and named after a Japanese dish because the promoter thought that would be more recognizable than the original title, Ue o Muite Arukou. The equivalent, as I've heard, of the Japanese bringing over an American #1 hit and renaming it "Pot Roast".

I started listening to Dr. Demento in the 80's and his show is the source for most of the novelty songs I've collected over the years. Some of my favorites that I haven't seen mentioned here:

The Urban Spaceman by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
The Scotsman by Bryan Bowers
Star Trekkin' by The Firm
The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun by Julie Brown
The Ballad of Irving by Frank Gallup
Daffy Duck's Rhapsody by Mel Blanc
Elements by Tom Lehrer and
Lobachevsky by Tom Lehrer

I walk past my recycling bin on the way from my mailbox to my front door. It works out very conveniently and reduces the amount of mail I actually take into the house by at least 70%. Among the things I do take inside are those envelopes from credit providers marked "account information inside" (offering you checks to transfer loans from other sources to the card they've provided you) which go through the paper shredder before going into recycling.

As to why the companies send you the junk mail: enough people actually do respond to the mail they send you to more than pay back the money the companies spend on it. If the mailings weren't subsidized by the government that might not be the case.

I fear that I have become a fatalist on the economy now. Recent books such as Aftershock and Paper Money Collapse have given arguments that I find very compelling that our economy is destined to collapse. There has been too much economic malinvestment and distortion over the past 50 or more years for there to be any other outcome; the collapse will be the only way to clear the distortions out of the economy and allow it to start over. The only question is whether the collapse will happen before our money is worthless (as a result of efforts to prevent it's destruction) or after it has been inflated into worthlessness. Sadly, I can't see any politician with the will to allow an economic reversal of the scale necessary to save the currency, which means we're going to end up with both a worthless currency and a moribund economy before things start to turn around.

So many of the economic arguments now going on seem like children on a beach squabbling over the seashells revealed by the waters receding to form the inevitable tidal wave.

My iPhone has a very effective remedy to the omnipresent CNN chatterboxes: a white noise app. I made extensive use of it today in a hospital waiting room which was, of course, blasting CNN from one corner. It's a very good app and it offers many ambient recordings, as well as simple white noise static in several grades (I use the "brown noise" selection as it's not as sharp as the actual "white noise"), and it has the advantage that, while it effectively muffles background chatter, it still allows specific announcements to catch my attention.

Why exactly IS CNN considered the epitome of public entertainment, anyway, when almost nobody willingly watches it?

I haven't eaten brussels sprouts for a long time but to me they always tasted like little sour cabbages. I can't recall ever having a visceral aversion to them, though.

Unlike cilantro, which to me (and my wife) tastes like eating tin foil.

Brussels sprouts may share the trait with other foods like cilantro and broccoli (and, I think, bleu cheese) of containing a chemical to which only some people are sensitive. If you are sensitive to the chemical it tastes absolutely horrible but if you're not the said food can be very tasty.

This story caused my wife and I to both wonder: does the Triumph have only one engine? It seems like an odd optimization for a floating resort that can be hundreds of miles from land.

The only time I was affected by an engine fire was when I was serving on a mine sweeper (naval reserve summer cruise lo these many years ago) and there was a fire in the engine room. Unlike in these more modern ships the engine telegraph was used and that was my introduction to "eight bells from the engine room!" (i.e. "The engine room is on fire"). It was some unexpected excitement, but the crew put the fire out and the engine was out of commission. As a result, we returned to port at half speed on the remaining engine.

This is the second time in two years that a Carnival Destiny class cruise ship has been left adrift at sea for days because of an engine fire. I wonder if the provision of a dual engine in the design could have helped to alleviate that?

I saw this one many years ago. Not strictly paradox, but...

Q: How many zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: A tree in a golden forest.

Actually, transporters in Star Trek were a result of production constraints. They were trying to produce a SF series with a pittance in funding, so they short circuited costs where ever they could. In practical filming terms it was a lot cheaper to show a filmed fadeout with interstitial glitter effects than it would have been to build a shuttlecraft and show it traveling to the planet's surface in every episode, so the transporter entered series canon. I don't think they actually started using the shuttlecraft until after the first season.

Yes, I notice the article didn't mention that the so called "trust fund" consists of a bunch of IOU's the government has written to itself in the form of government bonds and is actually part of 16+ billion dollar national debt that is soon going to plunge us into the economic abyss, while all social security payments are actually made out of current revenues.

As far as movies - apparently they are making Ender's Game. Has The Forever War been done in any decent format yet?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, while I like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a lot (I just reread it this year) what most conservatives remember from it is TANSTAAFL. While that sentiment is approved of in conservative circles, the story itself is more libertarian (as are a lot of Heinlein's stories) than conservative in nature. Don't forget that it is the story of an essentially seditious underground staging a successful revolution. A lot of the roots of the lunar society were outgrowths of russian collectivism, De la Pas (the guiding light behind the revolution) was an unrepentant anarchist, and Manny was a happy member of a polygamous extended family.  The story as written appeals more to libertarians than conservatives and we may not be very happy to see what Hollywood would do with it :-).

Back around the turn of the century I used to read Wired magazine. Every time I hear or read about another government initiative to improve our lives by helping to run them I think of a snippet the magazine had back then about a contest for the submission of dissertations on good government. The winning entry:

Good Government
Good Government
Sit. Stay.