Roman Polanski

He's a pedophile. Stop defending him. While he was taking naked pictures of a thirteen year-old model, he got her drunk with champagne and quaaludes, and then he raped her in every orifice. Around that time he also had a romantic relationship with fifteen year-old Nastassja Kinski. Polanski was in his forties during this time.

Stop justifying it. The excellence of Chinatown or the Pianist or Rosemary's Baby doesn't change anything. His pregnant wife being murdered by the Manson family doesn't excuse it either.

On a related note: Mumia did it. He's a murderer not a damn martyr. Kindly stop trying to free him.

Young Adult Employment Stinks

Instapundit points out that the worst job market right now is the 18 to 24 year-old non-students.

My question: does this have anything to do with the skyrocketing price of unskilled labor thanks to recent minimum wage hikes? Congress enacted a minimum wage increase that took it from $5.15 to $7.25 over the last 3 years. Meanwhile the job market has gone in the toilet. Who gets paid the minimum wage? Kids living with their parents. What a surprise 52% of them are out of work.

The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

So Michael Bloomberg's Mayor's Against Illegal Guns is an ideological front for the Brady Campaign? That's amazing, that's astounding, that's... well not really surprising at all. I wonder if the Joyce Foundation pays any of MAIG's bills for them. That would complete the anti-gun circle of life.

Big Screen Goes Bust

The 42" Philips we picked up about 16 months ago died a couple of weeks back while we were visiting Amy's parents. It's going to cost us $700 to fix. Seven hundred minus... carry the one... ah right that equals time to buy a new TV.

This time around we're going to go with a 40" Samsung, either the 40B530 or the 40B550. I'm leaning towards the 550 just because it has a few extras ports and supports firmware upgrades via USB. We'll probably go with Best Buy because we ended up having Geek Squad look at the Philips when it broke. The 4 year extended service contract through Best Buy costs less than a home visit fee from the repairman without it.

But I have to say that I really hate buying TVs. It seems like none of the stores have decent feeds playing on their TV walls. Best Buy's tape loop is all herky jerky so you can never tell what is going on or accurately pair two TVs. Walmart's feed was so fuzzy I'd have thought it was standard def if the pictures weren't widescreen. What I want is still images with good color depth, slow pans that let me pick up on pixelation, and finally quick motion that repeats at least 3 or 4 times in succession so you can accurately compare motion blur on two different TVs.

UPDATE: We hit Sears and Boscov's before picking up the 40B550 at Best Buy. The feed sears had was awful, but it wasn't exactly their fault. They were showing one of the high def ESPN channels which, unfortunately for them, was currently showing a pro basketball slam dunk competition from the mid '80s. This did not make for good high def viewing. Boscov's was showing a different ESPN channel that actually worked very well. Slow shots of brightly colored uniforms, the occasional quick break for repetitive motion, and wide pans over the venue all made for good comparisons. Unfortunately they didn't carry the TVs we were looking for and didn't have the same repair apparatus to stand behind what they were selling.

Trivial Tidbit

Today's Dangerous Book for Boys calendar trivia item: Lewis Carroll invented the portmanteau "chortle" for his poem Jackerwocky as a combination of chuckle and snort. He also coined the term "portmanteau" for words of this type in Through the Looking Glass.

Teen Birth Rates

A long time ago I did a paper on teen pregnancy rates. One of the things I discovered was that in the 1950s teen pregnancy was huge. Just as huge as it was in the early '90s (which at the time was the most recent data). The rub? In the '50s those teen mothers were 19 and married instead of 16 and not.

I'm betting similar phenomenon is happening in the latest study of teen pregnancy rates in conservative and liberal areas Instapundit has brought up. In particular even if the age of the teenage moms is similar, the effect of abortion between the two is probably going to be very different.

Now They're Community Organizers International

Citizen journalists have demonstrated that ACORN is widely corrupt. So what does ACORN do? Reform itself? Nope. Make blanket statements and then change their name so nobody knows that COI is really ACORN in a different hat.

Will It Kill a Zombie?

Important experimental work to prevent the zombie apocalypse:

A Fresh Eye on WWII

The Russians have some sort of internet archive storing military memoirs from the Great Patriotic War. Some are even translated into English. Good stuff. The aforelinked tanker drove a US supplied Sherman throughout the war. He liked it a lot better than the British tanks and even the T-34, but hated the Tommyguns that were issued with them.

Via Tam.

ACORN

The Senate has voted to defund ACORN by 83-7. Call your Senators and thank them, unless you live in VT or IL. Suggest they vote to defend a lot of federal bullshit spending.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

While it sounds relatively harmless, Mayors Against Illegal Guns is an anti-gun group founded by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Because it sounds like group against obvious bad thing, there is evidence that some of the current members don't really know or understand what agenda is being driven. Recent efforts by the blogosphere, pro-gun groups, and the NRA have been making them aware. Several mayors, especially from conservative districts, have left the group.

The mayors of Dover, Newark, and Wilmington are all members. I recently received an NRA flier about Vance Funk. Which would be great if I actually lived within the Newark city limits, but I don't. Perhaps I'll send the letter anyway and hope that he doesn't notice.

Recipes

Amy is paging through a Betty Crocker Microwave Cookbook. One recipe suggests microwaving a pork shoulder in several stages that total over 40 minutes. Look, if you're cooking something in microwave for the better part of an hour, you picked the wrong appliance.

Disney Buys Marvel

For $30 and 0.745 shares of Disney per Marvel share. Speculation abounds about what effects this will have on the Marvel Universe. I'm guessing it really won't have much of an effect on the comics, but will probably change how Marvel Studios and Marvel's merchanising system will work.

The real question is: now that Howard the Duck and Donald Duck are under the same corporate banner, are they still going to make Howard wear pants?