Something wicked....

(At the museum.)

Fishing, what is it really about?

I've heard some interesting theories. Here are 2 ice fishing guys — and, no, they are not holding hands. It just looks that way.

Nina waits.

For all sorts of things.

"This year’s hippie chick also blew and she didn’t make it as they took another nondescript gay dude with a hat."

Trooper York summarizes "American Idol" so I don't have to.

"You cook breakfast. I'll blog it."

The Snuggie is a "cheap knockoff" that "undermines the integrity" of Slanket.

Consider the sad tale of Greg Clegg, who invented the Slanket:

Gary Clegg said it began in 1998, when he was a freshman at the University of Maine in Orono and living in a chilly dormitory. He cut a hole in his sleeping bag because his TV remote wouldn’t work through the fabric, and subsequently asked his mother to sew a sleeve onto it, he said. Mr. Clegg added a second sleeve and otherwise refined the design in the ensuing years.

But it is the Snuggie that has captured our imagination. The place of honor in our culture belongs to the best advertiser:

In October, the company started showing the two-minute infomercial, where Snuggie wearers read, knit and eat popcorn, while a Snuggies-ensconced family cheers in the stands at a football game. Allstar bought more than $10 million in television spots, which offer the Snuggie for $19.95. (The Slanket — larger and made from considerably thicker fleece — costs $44.95.) The ad, by Blue Moon Studios, is intentionally over the top, Mr. Boilen said. “We were definitely in on the joke,” he said. “Do we expect a family to wear these to a football game? No.” Hundreds of videos on YouTube parody the ad, with the most popular garnering more than a million views. “Certain products transcend advertising and become an indelible part of popular culture,” Mr. Boilen said.

Can Clegg sue? No, he doesn't think so, and anyway he won't.

Mr. Leno’s quip about the products looking like bathrobes worn backward, [patent lawyer Clifford A.] Ulrich said, actually resonates legally: because there are many products that are shapeless garments with sleeves, like hospital gowns or religious vestments, and because the sleeved blankets are neither made from innovative materials nor have complicated moving parts, there is little that is proprietary about them from a design standpoint.

And, actually, even Slanket wasn't first. There was also Freedom Blanket, but Clegg invented his invention independently:

“I would never go around saying that I came up with something if it wasn’t true,” Mr. Clegg said. “I would have no right to be annoyed with the Snuggie people if that was the case.”

The problem is that the invention was so obvious that it was destined to be invented and reinvented by an endless chain of couch potatoes who wanted to change the channel and felt conflicted: What is worse, this show or the pain of a slightly cold arm?

***

 

What is the sound of one hand on a children's TV show host?

Fear.

IN THE COMMENTS: "The Absence of a Hand was in my Age... a most disfiguring & distressing Calamity, especially to a Lady." Yes! Our ghost Sir Archy is back!

"Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular 'Logic' on TV Judge Shows."

A college course at Berkeley. From the official description:

TV "Judge" shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years. A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked "Did you hit the plaintiff?" respondents often say, "If I woulda hit him, he'd be dead!" This reply avoids answering "yes" or "no" by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called "a fortiori" argument ["from the stronger"] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on "Judge Judy" and "The People's Court" and discussing why such strategies are so widespread. It is NOT a course about law or "legal reasoning." Students who are interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the application of law or the operations of the court system in general.

Cool. This is the kind of teaching that I liked to do at home with my kids when they were growing up. You know, when you're watching junk TV, there are many creative educational opportunities. Do you help your kids see logic fallacies when you're watching TV? Do you do it in a way that the kids respond to and love or do they think you're weird and annoying?

From "The 15 Strangest College Courses In America," via New Alert.

"Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got."

But there will be no more writing from Philip José Farmer, dead at 91.

Do you think he's gone to Heaven? "I can’t see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality."

"I hate my last tweet."

Chuck b. hates his last tweet. Let's read it an analyze what's so hateful about it:

Waking up, still in bed, cozy in flannel sheets, with cats. Want coffee. NPR in background. Sunny, clear skies, more rain on Sunday. Good!

I'll start: flannel sheets. They're hateful. Rough, hot. Sheets should be super-smooth and cool. You can have rough, hot sex, but the sheets ought to be super-smooth and cool.

"For scoops and analysis, it's a war of all-against-all."

Politico explains it all.

Does sugar make kids hyper?

Apparently not:

Nearly everyone has always accepted the belief that sugar makes kids hyperactive; in fact it's so deeply ingrained that even some researchers have had trouble accepting their own results. In one study, 35 children reported by their mothers to be "behaviorally sugar sensitive" were separated into two groups. Half were told they were given a sugary drink, half were told it was a sugar-free drink. Then the mothers played with the children and were individually interviewed. Overwhelmingly, mothers who were told their child was given sugar rated their behavior as hyperactive. In fact, all children received the same sugar-free drink. In this case, the perceived affect was confirmation bias by the mothers — where they picked up only on cues that supported their pre-existing conviction.

Another similar study found that 50 children whose mothers "knew" that their children's behavior was worsened by sugar were given a blinded test where the children were given either sugary or a sugar-free drink, and then observed — but this time the mothers didn't know which was which. No differences between the groups could be ascertained over three separate trials. And the lack of an effect extends to classroom performance, too. 16 hyperactive boys were given controlled diets of either sugar drinks or sugar-free drinks at measured intervals throughout two school days and were regularly given behavioral and cognitive tests. Again, there was no difference in performance between the groups.

Biochemically, the claim doesn't make sense for normal healthy children. The amount of sugar in the blood is carefully regulated by insulin. Whether you eat a lot of sugar or none at all should make no difference to your blood sugar level.

"Could it be the worst food product ever?"

It's pork brains in milk gravy.

So wrong, on so many levels.

Via Memeorandum.

"All that really happened here is..."

All?

You can assert that, but what makes you so sure?

"I don’t want to attack [Ingrid Betancourt], but the truth is very savage."

“We were infected enough with her behavior in the jungle... Now I just want to get immunized."

After all that...

... Danforth loses.

Click the "Danforth" tag to see how excited I was about Danforth.