Beer

In honor of me finally making a decent stout, I give you an article on the health benefits of beer.

It really amuses me watching the supporters of affirmative action try to figure out what to do now that a proper affirmative action program in college would kick out about 10% of females so the college sex ratio could be equal(pretty much all the guys who want to, and are capable of, being in college are. The only way to even the sex ratio is not letting qualified women in. Much like title 9 was mostly met by eliminating mens athletics). Not only that but a lot of Asians need to be kicked out to make the race ratio equal the percentage of the population. When it was White Males who were being picked on by affirmative action it was moral. Now that it is Asian Females it isn't nearly as politically correct.

Article that inspired the rambling
""Why aren't they marching in the streets? That's the part that slays me," Delahunty says. "It isn't fair, and young women should be saying something about it not being fair.""

I bet if white males were marching in the streets a decade or two ago over affirmative action that lady would have been just as up in arms.

Oil Discovery

This is one of my favorite graphs.



Oil discovery is in the bars, production is the black line. What this graph shows? That it has been nearly 30 years since we have had a year where we found more oil in the ground than we pumped in an individual year.
Source(I admit thats a horrible source as far as credibility goes, but I have seen this graph many places, that one just happened to have a pretty one. The data itself has a source listed on the graph itself)

Iraq

One of the things the Republicans absolutely have to have happen for them to not get crushed in the fall is a general impression that Iraq is working out alright. A year ago, this seemed pretty far fetched. We are now on 6 straight months of 40 or less soldiers killed a month in Iraq though. This is well below the normal levels for the war, and is happening when we have been increasing both the number and visibility of the troops. Another six months of this, and we may well have a president McCain.



Hmmm... I didn't notice how funny looking a trend curve I had when I made this graph. It doesn't actually touch most the extreme data points. Oh well, it does a good job of illustrating the point. Oh, and the source for my data is this.

I wonder if I do this

"The average American consumes a shocking 150 pounds of sugar a year, or roughly 20 teaspoons every day."
Source

Is the world this insane?

It is pretty depressing to me that we have degenerated to the state where this article is controversial. Kids that age are smart enough to work alone in factories doing dangerous jobs, or lots of farm work. The only reason they don't now days is we decided they need more education to be of value to society. The idea that they might not be able to wander alone in public at a time in American history when crime rates are at a 40 year low is absurd.

The only real risk they face is the police.

Oil for Dollars

This is something that has rather bugged me recently. People seem to believe oil is rising because of the falling dollar. If that was the case oil wouldn't have risen so much against even the euro. This quote pretty much summed it up:

"Moving on to the weak U.S. dollar as a primary cause for skyrocketing oil prices—there is "some" truth in that statement. But consider this: The dollar has depreciated 30% against the world's currencies since 2002, while the price of oil has gone up 500%. So is it the weak dollar that has caused a 500% increase in the price of oil, or is it the extra $241 billion worth of speculation? You can make the call on that one."
Source


Most of that article is clueless, but the part on the dollar hit the nail on the head. The rest of the article he seems to be assuming oil supply will increase dramatically this year(ignoring that it has been 3 years since it has done so) then saying: look! there is no supply problem!