Wednesday, June 11, 2008

So Where's Our Inflation?

http://www.target.com/Virgin-Mobile-Aloha-by-LG/dp/B000X9IGZ4/sr=1-5/qid=1212246041/ref=sr_1_5/601-9994212-0818526?ie=UTF8&index=target&rh=k%3Acellphone&page=1

Virgin Mobile Aloha by LG

$9.99
List price: $34.99
You Save: $25.00 (71%)
stores only


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That's $9.99 for a device that couldn't be produced for all the money on
earth 20 years ago.

Duncan Frissell

Monday, June 09, 2008

Anal Intercourse and Home Schooling

A California appeals court has ruled that the right to school one's children at home is not protected by either the US or California constitutions.

The US Supreme court had ruled that anal intercourse is protected by the US Constitution: "The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons."

Now back in 1787 when they were debating the Constitution and in 1791 when they were debating the Bill of Rights, home schooling was legal in all the states of the new nation (it was, in fact the most common form of schooling) while sodomy was illegal in all the states (with the death penalty applied to the act in some).

And yet the theory of the day is that home schooling may be outlawed but anal intercourse may not and that the Constitution so holds even though those who wrote the Constitution would find the concept ludicrous.

What if the home schooling is performed in the privacy of one's own bedroom? Would it then gain the protection of anal intercourse?

In fact, a generic defense of the "Natural Liberties of the American People" including such acts as home schooling, firearms possession, financial privacy, discrimination, and the like can be mounted by the simple use of a rhetorical formulation like: "Your honor, how can this court declare [blank] to be illegal when we are all aware that the sainted Supreme Court of this land has held that [anal intercourse] is as legal as church on a Sunday?"

Be sure, however, to substitute the anglo-saxon translation of the French term "anal intercourse".

No, gasoline prices haven't doubled in last year

I read it all the time. Most recently in the New York Times: “Gas prices have doubled over the last year but the economy has not fallen off the cliff,” said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. “

One minor problem. Gasoline prices have actually doubled since March 14, 2005 when national regular gasoline crossed the $2/gallon threshold. See this spreadsheet from the Energy Information Administration's retail gasoline prices history page.

That means they've doubled in the last three years not the last year.