Truth (Plus Lies)

Catch up on the whereabouts of animal actors.

A forum thread of jokes. A lot of them are not very funny, but I liked these two:

Doctor: I have two pieces of bad news for you. One is that you have cancer and is going to die soon. The other is that you have Alzheimers.

Patient: Oh. But at least I don’t have cancer.

A man is sent to prison for the first time. At night, the lights in the cell block are turned off, and his cellmate goes over to the bars and yells, “Number twelve!” The whole cell block breaks out laughing. A few minutes later, somebody else in the cell block yells, “Number four!” Again, the whole cell bloock breaks out laughing.

The new guy asks his cellmate what’s going on. “Well,” says the older prisoner, “we’ve all been in this here prison for so long, we all know the same jokes. So we just yell out the number instead of saying the whole joke.”

So the new guy walks up to the bars and yells, “Number twenty-nine!” This time the whole cell block rocks with the loudest laughter, prisoners rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

When the guffaws die down, the bewildered new guy turns to the older prisoner and asks, “How come you guys were laughing so hard this time?”

“Oh,” says the older man wiping tears from his eyes, “we’d never heard that one before.”

William Saletan sums up my own feelings about eating meat and talks about the real possibility of growing it in labs:

The case for eating meat is like the case for other traditions: It’s natural, it’s necessary, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But sometimes, we’re mistaken. We used to think we were the only creatures that could manipulate grammar, make sophisticated plans, or recognize names out of context. In the past month, we’ve discovered the same skills in birds and dolphins. In recent years, we’ve learned that crows fashion leaves and metal into tools. Pigeons deceive each other. Rats run mazes in their dreams. Dolphins teach their young to use sponges as protection. Chimps can pick locks. Parrots can work with numbers. Dogs can learn words from context. We thought animals weren’t smart enough to deserve protection. It turns out we weren’t smart enough to realize they do.

Awesomely infinite mosaic.

Note: This is a fiction.

And so there was the Nazi Puncher: stuck in an ornate old castle with a raging storm outside, strapped to a steel slab, a giant laser-spike looming over his head. Were his days numbered? If so, was the number one? Or was it LESS?

“You’re probably re-examining your whole life, aren’t you, Nazi Puncher?” said his captor, a hulking figure dressed in a suit of armor and a velvet cape. “You’re probably ruing the day you crossed swords with WOLFGANG, THE DARING BARON.” On this cue, lightning flashed and thunder cracked, and it lit up the room for a short moment. In this instant, the Baron got a good look at the Nazi Puncher’s face. And he saw:

No Fear.
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In Time, the original Wonkette has a nice summary of the current wave of Gore-steria, discussing the new movie and whether or not it means he’s running for president again.

Elsewhere, this cartoonist seems to have an issue with Al’s science:

The joke is that Penguins are assholes.

Holy shit:

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

UPDATE: Maybe, maybe not?

UPDATE 2: This appears, thankfully, not to be true.