Ginger Pains

People with red hair are twice as likely to avoid going to the dentist as people with darker hair. This isn't necessarily because dentists are known to hate gingers and jab mercilessly at their gums with little metal hooks. As unlikely as it sounds, redheads are more sensitive to pain than normal people, which may make them more anxious about the normal pokes and jabs at a checkup. They're so sensitive, researchers found, that standard doses of anesthetic don't seem to work on them, needing 20% more goof juice to get the same numbing effect as others. Scientists think the mutated gene that gives redheads their preternaturally gorgeous hair color and heart-meltingly adorable freckles, the MC1R gene, also somehow affects pain receptors, though they don't know why. Personally, I have no sympathy. A little pain sensitivity is a small price to pay for being one of the chosen few who are more beautiful than all others. I have a thing for redheads, obviously. More details here.

The Lessons of Travolta

Over the last few days, people have been all flustered about John Travolta, star of Wild Hogs and the Look Who's Talking series. He's a prominent member of a small cult based on giving money to the corpse of a mediocre science fiction writer. And his son recently died. According to a disreputable British tabloid, Travolta has recently been questioning his faith and contemplating leaving the cult because they refused to accept the reality of his son's medical condition, possibly leading to the boy's death. These reports were published without any source or evidence other than anonymous eyewitness accounts of Travolta driving a golf cart around his vacation home late at night and stuffing his face with fast food. But there are so many internetters out there with a hard on for Travolta's cult's destruction that this made up story became the talk of the web. Someone even set up a petition where people could pledge their support for an actor they've never met if he decided to leave his cult. See, unsubstatiated rumors also suggest that the cult has information about Travolta's secret sexuality, which they're using to blackmail him into continuing to send money to a corpse. And many people who spend far too much of their time online believe that signing electronic petitions are a viable alternative to actual work. But in the last several hours, Travolta's spokesperson issued a statement saying that all these rumors are completely false and that Travolta still is and always will be a cult member. Case closed? Maybe. But it's important to take a few lessons away from this debacle. It may be true that Travolta's a closeted homosexual. It may also be true that his cult is holding him hostage with this information. And it may be true that based on the teachings of this cult, Travolta's son was denied medical attention he needed. But if so, all of this is still Travolta's fault. He's an adult, and he made adult decisions for himself and his family. He may very well be wrestling with these decisions. If so, very few of us could possibly imagine the torture he's currently going through. So why don't we all show a little human decency and stop harassing a man with a dead child just because we're eager to see the collapse of his dumbass religion?

Unorwellian

When news hit last week that Amazon surreptitiously removed downloaded copies of George Orwell's 1984 from Kindle devices, I didn't write anything about it. For one thing, I'm lazy. For another, plenty of other blogs were all over the story, and there really wasn't much more to add. Also, rash rushes to judgment often turn out to bite people in the ass. Plus, I'm lazy. The whole thing seemed a little fishy, too. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos isn't an evil guy. Like Google, Amazon seems to be a megacompany with a heart and a brain. And Bezos is even a financier of the pro-reality Reason Foundation. Sure, he hocked a few Kindles on Oprah, but it's a small concession to make in the march toward putting an electronic book reader in everyone's home. (A side note: I own a Kindle myself and adore it. Aside from nailing the technical side of creating a device that, like a traditional book, disappears in your hand while reading, it's also an important stepping stone toward a more knowledgeable and informed future. Books are good things not because of the materials with which they're made or how they smell but because of the information in the text. Making that information instantly accessible from a massive database the size of a small notebook can only help us as a species. You pretentious asses complaining about the loss of tactile sensation can go fuck yourselves. I read more on my Kindle than I ever did before, because I don't have to worry about the tactile "pleasures" of folding over pages and lugging around pounds and pounds of paper. The Kindle is the best thing to happen to books since the printing press.) So I'm not at all surprised that Bezos has issued a written apology for the way the 1984 situation was handled. Far from being some kind of shadowy government conspiracy to extinguish the truth of an anti-establishment book you can easily pick up for a couple of quarters at a high school library rummage sale, this was a simple legal issue. Somehow, Amazon sold Kindle copies of 1984 from publishers who didn't have the right to print the book. It was stupid (I feel like Barack Obama here...) of them to simply go into people's Kindles through the wireless modem and delete the things, but they did give everyone's money back. And you can still buy an authorized copy if you want. In other words, this is a non-issue. Though I suppose nothing can convince Kindle Truthers that this wasn't an inside job. More details here.

Bang, Zoom, Ad

A company called Moon Publicity is offering to draw any logo you want on the surface of the moon so that it's visible from Earth. Using a process called Shadow Shaping, small robots would create ridges in the lunar surface that cast shadows in pre-determined shapes. That's right, for as little as $46,000, you can advertise your Twilight blog on the fucking moon. While this might seem like a crass and borderline unrealistic cash grab, Moon Publicity make a very good case for themselves on their website. For one thing, Shadow Shaping doesn't permanently alter the surface of the moon, so there's no damage done. But more importantly, this kind of space commercialization provided the kind of bottom-up financial motivation to take space travel out of the fickle and stingy hands of government. They argue that seemingly trivial space activity like advertising and tourism will pave the way for more serious endeavors like colonization and terraforming. It's a convincing pitch, though I wonder whether I'll feel as positive about the whole thing once the full moon tells me which attorney can get me a whiplash check GUARANTEED! More details here.

Sext Abuse

You may have heard already, but teenagers are taking nude pictures of themselves and sending them to each other. This should be expected for a couple of reasons. 1) Teenagers now have 24-hour access to devices that can photograph them and instantly broadcast those images worldwide. And 2) teenagers are, have been, and always will be horny. It's just biology. Obviously parents don't want their kids' naughty bits floating around some telecom's data network, but the authorities haven't been responding to the sexting wave as rationally as they might. Since these pictures are often of underage (and nubile) bodies, they count as child pornography. And even though the people looking at them/taking them are mostly minors themselves, they're being prosecuted as child pornographers. This is incredibly serious, since a conviction could destroy some horny kid's life by labeling him or her a sex offender. But New Jersey seems to be on the right track, as there are bills in the state government that would allow teenage sexters to be sentenced to an anti-sexting educational course instead of facing jail time. While I encourage teenagers to enjoy the fruits of each other's sexy bodies as soon as possible, I think it's wise to caution them against sending pics around. I mean, I've seen the photography skills of most teenagers. At the very least, they shouldn't want the whole school to see their naked flesh in such an unforgiving light. More details here.

Cooler Heads Not Prevailing

Those hoping for a more relaxed and mellow stance on federal drug policy under the Obama administration should probably just light up and go back to watching your Squidbillies DVDs. Our new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, has stated unequivocally that the government sees marijuana as a dangerous and harmful drug. "Legalization," Kerlikowske says, "is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine." I'll let the fact that he used a word to say that word isn't in his vocabulary speak for itself. Maybe he just doesn't know what "vocabulary" means. But a subsequent statement leaves no doubt that this guy's an insufferable idiot. He went on to claim that marijuana "has no medicinal benefit". This is just patently false, as evidenced by the many Californians who are prescribed marijuana for chronic pain legally under state law. And it's an especially ballsy thing to say while raiding marijuana farms in California. The facts of the matter are that marijuana has medicinal benefit, is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and its legalization would provide billions of dollars in revenue for states like California that desperately need it. As I've said before, I'm a pussy who can't inhale anything without suffering a terrible headache, so marijuana isn't for me. But this bullshit has to stop. Our federal drug policies are baseless, debilitating, and the last thing we should be focusing on when the rest of the country is falling apart financially. Kerlikowske, congratulations. You're a dick. More details here.

Book Battle

CNN's Jason Hanna has an excellent piece summarizing the kerfuffle in West Bend, Wisconsin over certain books in the young adult section of their local library. Last February, Ginny and Jim Maziarka visited the library and decided that certain books were too sexually explicit to be made available for 12 to 18 year-olds. How they sniffed these books out is anyone's guess, but their reasons for getting all huffy aren't quite so mysterious. See, some of these books talk about homosexuality, which makes Jesus cry. Not only that, but none of them portrayed homosexuality in a negative light. The Maziarkas petitioned the library board to move these gay-ass books somewhere the sun rarely if ever shines and make them unavailable to minors. They also asked that the library pepper the YA section with books by "ex-gays" (i.e. men who flog their boners while weeping for Christ's forgiveness) that made it clear dudes and dudes shouldn't fuck. The board, which is made up of reasonable people who can and do read, rejected this petition. Being a blowhard, Ginny Maziarka set up a blog to rile support from her fellow morons. Fans of free speech and other Satanic ideals rallied behind the library board as well, and the debate has been tearing the community apart. Even their Fourth of July parade was marred by controversy, as one float featured a washing machine to represent how the library needs to be cleaned up. Since their initial petition, the Maziarkases have created a blacklist of 82 books they believe to be "pornographic". And the fight has spilled outside of West Bend as well. Three self-described elderly men in nearby Milwaukee filed a lawsuit claiming the simple act of hearing about these books has damaged their "mental and emotional well-being". I'm assuming this is because their ancient circulatory systems can't handle the rush of blood to their decrepit loins when they hear the words "gay sex". In particular, they've taken offense at a book called Baby Be-bop about a gay teenager, which they claim is "explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian". This may well be true, but so is the book of Genesis. The whole piece is worth reading, but it's heartening to know that the library is standing their ground and seems to have plenty of community support. In the meantime, I encourage all homosexual Wisconsin residents to take a moment this weekend to kiss their same-sex loved ones in public. Ten points for every old bastard who drops dead. More details here.