Archives for February 2012

See Bill not write. Not write Bill not write. See Bill not write about politics. Why Bill not write about politics? Because people who like to read about politics are clinically insane. Even the people who say nice things say them in such a way that makes Bill want to hide sharp objects and hide under his bed. See Bill write more about science. Bill may make mistakes in his research but since he vets everything before he puts it up here only the scientists know his errors. You, yes even you in the back, all benefit from the latest and most accurate information. The fact that Bill has occasionally made a NASA scientist laugh is just a bonus. Bill will also write about the joys of midget porn, Floridians, stupid criminals, robot overlords, odd Asian stuff and the rest. But Bill will not write about politics.

I should note that I am not talking about the adults who posted here. They used their real names and, agree or disagree, shared their opinions in a civil manner. Instead I am talking about the very scary people who think the Internet is a license to kill. I’m talking about people who make the Lost Bunny of the Apocalypse look sane.

One lady, who seemed to agree with me concerning the electability of the current crop of Republicans, blithely noted that all Republicans should be sterilized. Her email had all the passion of a “to do” list; pick up apples, make brownies for kids, sterilize Republicans, meet Ann for tea ….. I went back and re-read what I’d posted to see if I’d suffered a breakdown and forgot the part where I’d advocated genocide.

I hadn’t.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the criminally insane, but fun, people on our planet.

Like the next president of the United States, Phil Hill.

UFO Phil, a self-appointed intergalactic frontrunner for president, announced today he has been granted authority to assume the job without waiting for the November election.

“I’m going to become your new president. … Don’t worry, [Barak] Obama, Mitt Romney and whoever else can still have their little election. That’s not going to affect me,” said UFO Phil, whose real name is Phil Hill.

A published composer, comedy songwriter, documentary filmmaker and self-proclaimed “man of science,” Hill has even appeared on the small screen alongside actor and comedian Tom Green. His single “Listening to Coast to Coast” serves as a theme song for “Coast to Coast AM” on the Premiere Radio Network.

In interviews with Peter King of CBS, The Huffington Post and other media outlets, Hill revealed he is in possession of secret scrolls that are written by beings from another planet. Those documents, Hill claims, give him the authority to assume presidential leadership without a democratic election.

Once he assumed presidency, Hill said he would establish a “Senate for Terrestrial Alien Relations,” to welcome the arrival of “brothers from space.” Hill also said he will decommission all military ships at sea, in favor of a new fleet of flying discs with spaceports in major cities around the globe.

In addition, Phil wants to build a giant stone pyramid behind the Hollywood sign. The pyramid would be similar to the ones he wants to build on top of Pikes Peak in Colorado and on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

The pyramids, however, won’t be the only change coming, Hill said.

“The Statue of Liberty has to come down,” Hill told HuffPost. In its place, Hill said he will erect a much taller “Monument of Zaxon.” Zaxon, according to Hill, is the leader of the good aliens. “He has very nice skin and will look phenomenal as a statue,” Hill said.

If UFO Phil’s campaign promises sound a bit over-ambitious, it’s because he plans to become president of earth, not just the United States.

Hill also plans to hold a live concert for extraterrestrials on June 10, 2012, to correspond with the arrival of aliens on Earth, an event foretold centuries ago by the Mayans, he said. The show will take place in California at the site of the legendary 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival.

“When I’m president we’ll finally have full disclosure,” Hill promised. “I’m going to release all the top secret government UFO files to the public on DVD and Blu-ray, with special features.”

I feel better already. But to really cleanse my palette I needed something just a little more delusional.

THANK GOD FOR FLORIDA!

Mark Roeschler, an admitted half orangutan / half Elvis, was recently arrested in Naples.

If the police officers who arrested Mark Loescher for assault didn’t think he was slightly bananas at first, it’s possible they changed their minds when he allegedly told them he was half orangutan.

Florida police also say Loescher told them he was also Elvis Presley’s brother, a friend of President Bush, and director of the CIA.

Deputies confronted Loescher in Naples, Fla., last week after after a woman said he had threatened her with a gun, Newser.com reported.

When the deputies got to the bank shortly before 5 p.m., they found Loescher still sitting in the driver’s seat while another woman, not the one who called the police, sat in the front passenger seat, according to the Naples Daily News.

The paper also reports that Loescher allegedly told police that he needed to call the “Fusion Center” about his monkey blood.

Just so you know, there really is a Fusion Center but it has nothing to do with monkey blood.

This next one is so obvious I’m not even going to bother sharing the whole story. The TSA has committed more terrorist acts on American soil than actual terrorists.

The list includes theft, race based hate crimes, drug sales, money laundering and so on. Who would have thought that giving barely literate people no training, minimal pay and loaded guns would cause problems?

Oh wait, I kind of mentioned that a whole bunch of times. Well, no one listens to me.

Moving on we come to what made America great (excluding the TSA). Obviously I am talking about the Buffalo Bars Boobs for Beads promotion.

Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

A group of Buffalo bars is offering free breast augmentation surgery to whomever collects the most beads during Mardi Gras celebrations this year.

The winner of the “Boobs For Beads” promotion– technically open to men and women, although ladies get in free– will receive the free boob job from Dr. Lakshmanan Rajendran, and can opt instead for a tummy tuck, nose job or any other cosmetic surgery similarly priced to the breasts procedure.

“I wanted an attention grabber,” Sean Coughlin, manager of Bayou nightclub, and organizer of the event, told The Buffalo News Monday, adding, “As bad as the promotion sounds, I don’t want it executed in a tacky way.” (How could a free boob job contest possibly be executed in a tacky way?).

The contest has drawn criticism from those who say the schtick reinforces poor body image in women.

Sharon Mitchell, director of counseling services for the University at Buffalo, told The News,”I think the overall message is here’s a shortcut to fixing something that’s wrong with you — which may or may not be wrong.””

Although some women on the event’s Facebook wall have commented, “Oh it’s onnnnn!!!!” and “Bigger is better,” at least one woman wrote she’d rather give the money to charity than win a free boob job.

Anything that ends up with me seeing naked breasts is a good thing. I may have to visit Buffalo more often. Besides being the new home for my buddy Ed, they are the birthplace of Buffalo wings and now this. And they have beer.

Lots of beer.

In the meantime, here’s some “behind the scenes” footage of the World News Center staff gathering nude news for you.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

The other day I wrote about how the four Republican candidates were unelectable. Obviously upset that only a second tier blog like this had figured that out they ramped up their efforts over the weekend to make sure that every breathing sentient being on the planet knew it as well. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich continued to espouse the philosophies of Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, respectively, and that appears to be sufficient to render them harmless. Rick Santorum, not content to be known as the dangerously crazy candidate, upped the ante impressively by letting everyone know that he’s the dangerously bat-s**t crazy candidate.

He started off his weekend by announcing that President Obama was treacherously soft on terrorists. Since killing them is too easy the only thing left, as far as I can tell, is lobbing some nukes and letting God sort them out. His God, that is. Not mine or yours. Radioactive wastelands would fit well with his other theme for the day; humans aren’t the stewards of the planet and anyone who thinks so is a radical environmentalist. While paving the way to start strip mining in Chicago he left unanswered the question of who would be responsible for the planet. My guess would be our impending robot overlords or, maybe, those radiation loving aliens from Alpha-Centauri. Oh, and just as a bonus, he’d stop all that silly funding of public education.

Not to be outdone Mitt Romney spent the day decrying the hazardous political policies of Mitt Romney and promising that Mitt Romney would repeal all of those horrible Mitt Romney programs and replace them with well conceived programs by and from Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was so violently opposed to Mitt Romney that I wondered if we were going to see a scene out of Fight Club where Mitt Romney beat the snot out of Mitt Romney in a parking lot.

On the other side of the coin, the one where there is hope for the human race, yesterday I wrote about the WOW Signal and what it implies. In return for my efforts I received a lovely email from world renowned astrophysicist and international bestselling author, David Brin. He has offered our Hippo-teers (is that the right term?) a chance to participate in the greatest experiment known to man. All you need to do is CLICK HERE to find out all about SETI@Home.

If you have a backyard or a computer you can participate.

If you CLICK HERE you can see exactly what the various arguments are, in a scientific discussion not a bar fight, when it comes to how we should, or should not, make ourselves known in the universe.

It’s not as clear cut as you might think.

As he noted in his email to the World News Center, the SETI-Allen Array isn’t really set up to find pings – quick signals searching for life – or similar broadcasts, which is what the WOW Signal most resembles. While I would, and did, argue that a planet technologically developed enough would be broadcasting all the time anyway (a fact I later discovered is meaningless), I can still see the logic in looking for those pings. Rather than a mish mash of I Love Lucy reruns that no one but us would understand they could send out a dedicated mathematical message. Prime numbers or something similar. Just enough to let everyone know they were in the neighborhood and looking to be friends.

Although, given the level of shockingly willful ignorance displayed above, I’m unsure if anyone would want to talk to us even if they did find us.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

One of the fun perks about doing this gig is learning new stuff. For example, now that I have to take the Metra to the new office every day I’ve learned that the lard laden, sodium infused, heart killer sold at Au Bon Pain is actually called a “Ham and Cheese Croissant.” This is clearly from the same marketing people who tried to convince folks that a 9mm round through the frontal lobe was actually a “Face Lift at Home Kit.” Oh, and just for a bonus, the coffee tastes like someone boiled a rug. I don’t eat there any more. I have learned that typing on the train is a giant waste of time. You’ll be moving along just fine when all of a sudden the car will shake left and right, knock your laptop into the aisle and force the – heretofore sane – woman in front of you to accuse you of crawling between her legs. And then you have to get your seat reassigned.

But enough of that fluff. Let’s chat about something serious. Did you know that, way back in 1977, before my 16th birthday, science proved that there was/ is extraterrestrial life. Simply put, we are not alone.

BONUS: There will be an experiment you can try after the interview. It involves a naked woman and rope.

For decades, Robert Gray has been trying to duplicate the most surprising and still-unexplained observation in the history of the search for extraterrestrial life.

Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope outside Delaware, Ohio intercepted a radio signal that seemed for a brief time like it might change the course of human history. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the signal, though it lasted only seventy-two seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed from another world. Despite its potential import, several days went by before Jerry Ehman, a project scientist for SETI, noticed the data. He was flipping through the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a string of letters within a long sequence of low numbers—ones, twos, threes and fours. The low numbers represent background noise, the low hum of an ordinary signal. As the telescope swept across the sky, it momentarily landed on something quite extraordinary, causing the signal to surge and the computer to shift from numbers to letters and then keep climbing all the way up to “U,” which represented a signal thirty times higher than the background noise level. Seeing the consecutive letters, the mark of something strange or even alien, Ehman circled them in red ink and wrote “Wow!” thus christening the most famous and tantalizing signal of SETI’s short history: The “Wow!” signal.

Despite several decades of searching, by amateur and professional astronomers alike, the “Wow!” signal has never again been found. In his new book, The Elusive Wow, amateur astronomer Robert Gray tells the story of the “Wow!” signal, and of astronomy’s quest to solve the puzzle of its origin. It’s a story he is well-positioned to tell. That’s because Gray has been the “Wow!” signal’s most devoted seeker and chronicler, having traveled to the very ends of the earth in search of it. Gray has even co-authored several scientific articles about the “Wow!” signal, including a paper detailing his use of the Very Large Array Radio Observatory in New Mexico to search for it. I spoke with Gray about the “Wow!” signal, radio telescopes, and the economics of prospective extraterrestrial civilizations.

From a technical standpoint, what makes the “Wow!” signal so extraordinary?

Gray: The main thing is the profile of the signal, the way it rises and falls over about seventy-two seconds. When we point these big dish antennas up at the sky, and a radio source moves across them, they have a special signature, a kind of fingerprint. That fingerprint results from the “loudness” of the radio source slowly increasing, getting to a peak as the dish points straight at it, and then slowly decreasing as the object moves across the dish and past its beam of observation. In the case of the “Wow!” signal, the signal followed that curve perfectly. It looked exactly like a radio signal in the sky would look, and it’s pretty unlikely that anything else—like an airplane or satellite or what have you—would leave a special signature like that.

Also there’s not much doubt that the “Wow!” signal was a radio signal, rather than something from a natural source like a quasar. That’s because Ohio State was using a receiver with fifty channels, which is sort of like having fifty AM radios, each tuned to adjacent stations. With the “Wow!” there wasn’t any noise on any of the channels except for one, and that’s just not the way natural radio sources work. Natural radio sources diffuse static across all frequencies, rather than hitting at a single frequency. So it’s pretty clear that this was a radio signal and not a quasar or pulsar or some other natural radio source, of which there are millions. It was very narrow band, very concentrated, exactly like a radio station, or a broadcast, from another world would look.

The “Wow!” signal turned up very close to the frequency at which hydrogen glows. Why is that significant?

Gray: Well there’s a little history there. In the early sixties when people started thinking about the possibility of detecting extraterrestrial broadcasts with radio telescopes, one of the first frequencies suggested was the frequency that interstellar hydrogen glows at. At the time, it was one of the few interstellar emission lines that was known, and a lot of radio observatories had a receiver that could pick it up so it was especially convenient to look for broadcasts there. If you imagine that there are all of these radio astronomers around the universe looking at the stars with big antennas, which is what you need to pick up a signal from that far, chances are that they too would be listening at the frequency of hydrogen, because there is so much of it around. It’s the wave you can use to map the gas in galaxies, so it’s a natural “channel” for astronomers to look at. There weren’t a lot of frequencies that had that natural characteristic. So in the early decades of SETI, that’s the frequency that most people chose to listen at.

By the way, not everybody agrees with this strategy now. A lot of new emission lines have been found, and so the current best practice is to listen to millions of frequencies at a time so you don’t have to guess which one ET might favor. And that’s exactly what NASA’s SETI project tried to do, and that’s what the Allen Telescope Array at U.C. Berkeley is trying to do. But it just so happened that the Ohio State people were using the hydrogen strategy when they found this thing, and, it just so happens that the “Wow!” signal was fairly close to where Hydrogen was dwelling. So if you believe the magic frequency strategy, that extraterrestrials would necessarily broadcast in the Hydrogen frequency, then the “Wow!” signal sort of fits that.

Is it possible that the “Wow!” signal is somehow a computer glitch, or a signal from earth that was reflected off of space debris of some sort?

Gray: Of course it’s possible. It could have been any number of things. However, it almost certainly wasn’t a computer glitch, because it showed this rise and fall of intensity that’s just exactly what a radio source from the sky would look like. Also, the Ohio State radio telescope was cleverly rigged to filter out local stuff.

The only thing that conceivably could have made that special signature is a satellite of some sort at just the right distance, going just the right speed, in order to mimic a celestial object traversing the sky. So that’s a possibility, but it seems pretty unlikely for a number of reasons. First, it would have been seen by a lot of people. Ohio State would have seen it repeatedly, because satellites broadcast repeatedly. Secondly, if it was a secret satellite it would have been pretty stupid to broadcast at a frequency that radio astronomers across the world listen to.

For a long time, Jerry Ehman, who actually scribbled “Wow!” on the original computer printout, considered the possibility that it was a piece of space debris reflecting a signal from the earth back down into the antenna. But he no longer believes that to be the case. And I’m not saying that it definitely was an extraterrestrial broadcast; there’s no proof of that. The best way I can think to analogize this thing is to say that it was a tug on the cosmic fishing line. It doesn’t prove that you have a fish on the line, but it does suggest that you keep your line in the water at that spot.

Some have suggested that if the “Wow!” signal was alien in origin, then perhaps it sweeps around its home planet or star, the way light does from a lighthouse, which would explain why it hasn’t yet reappeared. Do you think that’s plausible?

Gray: That’s my favorite theory. And it’s just an idea of course. But when you step back from all of this a little bit, you notice that almost all searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have been surveys that look at all of these different spots in the sky for just a few minutes at a time. And the assumption such searches operate on is that there is a beacon, or a broadcast of some sort, that is on all the time, and so all you have to do is survey the sky and if it’s there you’ll find it. It’s the easiest method, and it’s the right thing to do when you’re first starting out.

But if you look at this in a deeper way, and you calculate the kind of energy it would take to operate a beacon that is on all the time, broadcasting in all directions, strong enough so you could pick it up from many, many light years away, the amount of power is enormous. It’s in the range of thousands and thousands of big power plants. We humans certainly couldn’t do something like that now. So to have a signal that’s always there, you have to assume a very advanced intelligence, and you have to assume that it’s highly motivated to talk to us, and neither of those things may be true of a broadcaster. They might not be so rich, or profligate with their energy, or, for that matter, very interested in talking. They might use some other cheaper strategy—brief periodic broadcasting, a sweeping lighthouse beam, or other methods.

As you may know, there’s another thrust in SETI, which has become the focus of a lot of people’s interest over the past ten years and that’s optical SETI, where you look at starlight and see if you find any sudden, brief, flashes of light that are much stronger than what the star normally puts out. The idea is that you might find extraterrestrials communicating by shining a giant laser at us, and it’s an idea that’s become quite popular. But as with most SETI projects, they’re simply scanning the sky, looking at each spot for roughly a minute. And at the end of a couple of years they can tell you they’ve looked at every spot in the sky and they didn’t see any flashes, but of course there you have the same problem as you do with radio surveys. You look in every direction, but you only do it for a couple of minutes, and so if anyone were broadcasting with the lighthouse method, you’d be unlikely to find them.

Did the “Wow!” signal come from a particular star or group of stars?

Gray: That’s a good question, and the short answer is that there’s no way to tell.

“The best way I can think to analogize this thing is to say that it was a tug on the cosmic fishing line”

Even though the Ohio State radio telescope is really big, it looks at a rather large spot in the sky—a spot shaped like an ellipse that’s taller than the moon and about a quarter as wide. In a spot of that size, you have literally millions of stars. I’ve looked at the photographs for that area of the sky, and there are tons of stars there—no particularly intriguing star that stands out as being a likely source of the signal. Now, several years later I looked for the signal with the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Unlike some of the older telescopes it can give you a pretty good radio image of the sky, because its various telescopes make up one giant antenna that’s twenty miles across. And it gives you pretty good resolution, so if you’d seen the “Wow!” with the VLA you really could tell which star a radio signal would have come from.

What was it like working with the Very Large Array in New Mexico? Did you get a thrill out of that?

Gray: I did. The Very Large Array was, until the end of the twentieth century, the largest radio telescope ever built. It’s the same array of antennas featured in the film Contact. It’s an unbelievable machine. It can take pictures of the radio sky with the same resolution as an optical telescope, allowing you to see literally millions of objects across the sky. Most of them are distant galaxies with wild things going on at their core, most likely having to do with black holes.

Getting to use the Very Large Array to look for the ‘Wow!” was very unexpected. As far as I can tell, no amateur astronomer had ever done it. Nobody had ever used the full array to look for an extraterrestrial signal at all. It’s funny when you show up, they give you a rundown of all the technical stuff, but they also give you a brochure on how to survive rattlesnake bites, because if you go wandering into the desert out there you might get bitten.

But it’s a credit to Big Science that they let me use the Very Large Array to look for the “Wow!” signal. I wouldn’t have expected it, and it suggests that Big Science, as an enterprise, isn’t quite as ivory tower or exclusive as you might think.

You’re coming at this as from the field of data analysis, rather than as a professional astronomer, do you think you brought a special skill set to this problem? Were there any insights you had that might not have been as intuitive to an astronomer?

Gray: Well, astronomers generally look at things like stars, things that aren’t quite eternal, but that last for a really long time. As a result some astronomers may bring a certain expectation to a radio signal, an expectation that it’s going to be there all the time. The people who do SETI, who are often but not always astronomers, have a mindset that it’s sensible to look for the really strong signal that is going to be there all of the time.

Because my education is not in astronomy or engineering, it may be that I bring a kind of practicality to this, especially as it concerns the practicality and economics of what it takes to broadcast a signal like that. Broadcasters, just like those of us who are listening, might not be able to command enormous resources, they might not be in charge of whatever political systems are responsible for distributing resources to science in their little corner of the universe. And so as a result they might be forced to use signals that are not present all of the time and therefore those signals may be difficult to find.

The other thing is: Over the years I’ve talked to a lot of astronomers and a lot of people involved with SETI, and whenever the topic of the “Wow!” comes up, they seem to believe that everybody has looked for it, that it’s been checked out. But I’ve never been able to find anyone else who looked for it. In fact, nobody other than Ohio State seemed all that interested in trying to confirm it at all. Now fortunately that created a situation where I was able to convince several scientists to help me look for it, using various kinds of radio telescopes, including the Very Large Array, the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory in Tasmania, and the small one that I built myself. So it’s possible that what I bring to this is simply the willingness to go out and look.

In a hundred years from now it’s likely that we won’t be limited to these giant dish things that stare at the sky and only see one little spot. It’s possible that there will be some sort of technology that can look at the whole sky at the same time, with the same sensitivity as you get with a big dish, and perhaps, when we look, at some interval we’ll see a flash, a signal, and maybe that’s the way we’ll find broadcasters, if any are out there. But in the meantime, you know, you have to keep a line in the water.

Okay, so how hard is it to find a single radio signal in the universe? Let’s find out. You will need the following, easy to obtain, items.

• A naked woman
• Safety goggles
• 10 foot of rope (clothes line is fine)
• A cheap radio
• A blindfold
• 20 BB pellets in a plastic bag

The experiment:

• Allow the nice naked lady to put on the goggles
• Tie one end of the rope to the cheap radio
• Turn the radio on so you can hear it, but not too loud
• Let the nice lady grab the other end of the rope
• Allow her to start spinning in a circle so that she can keep the radio off the ground and moving in a circle
• Put on the blindfold
• Walk 40 steps in any direction
• Without removing the blindfold, try and locate the sound and hit it by throwing a BB. This is why the young lady is wearing goggles.
• Try 9 more times.
• Remove the blindfold
• Reorient yourself (you will be facing the wrong direction, I promise)
• Try again with your last 10 BBs

Your naked assistant is like an alien sun. She demands your attention. You don’t really see or hear the radio in as much as you notice it when it transits her form. This is just like how the Kepler Project is discovering new planets on a daily basis. They don’t see the planets themselves, they see the effects of the planets as they block the alien suns.

Additionally, as you will note when you are picking up 20 BBs that never got close to the source, hitting a moving target (a rotating planet) that is orbiting another object is not as easy at is sounds. Now add on the fact that you are taking aim from another rotating planet (Earth) that circling a second celestial wonder (good old Sol). To make the test 100% accurate you should be spinning around on roller skates as you try and throw the BBs. But I don’t want you to kill yourself and this gets the point across sufficiently well.

It’s not easy. But we know something now we didn’t know before; there is that radio and it is broadcasting and it isn’t broadcasting from here.

First, as regular listeners of the podcast know, we have been getting a growing audience in Asia. Specifically India. They appear to be using the World News Center as a tool to learn more about America. I have no idea how that started and am not sure it matters. They’re here, they’re polite and they have questions. Very intelligent and probing questions. The second thing has to do with a gentleman I know. He is white, Catholic, relatively wealthy, has a wife and a couple of kids and has been a Republican all the time I’ve known him. Yesterday he asked me a question that, to him, sounded perfectly rational; “Do you think anyone’s gonna vote for the nigger in chief?”

Ladies and gentleman, meet the target market for the current crop of Republican candidates.

A buddy of mine works for Super PAC that is pro-Obama. He figures the Democrats could run out Billy Carter in November and win 54% of the vote. That’s how little he, and those who work with him, respect the Republican Party this year. So let’s look at the chances of the four remaining candidates who did not get back into the clown car and drive off into the sunset. We’ll do it in alphabetical order.

Gingrich, Newt. A serial adulterer, thrice married, member of numerous conservative Christian religions over the years (currently Catholic) and the only presidential candidate in history to have been expelled from, and by, his own party for ethics violations. Oh, and as an added bonus, he’s named after a reptile. He offers no plan for America other than he wants to be its president. The problem Newt has is that he really doesn’t want to be a leader; he wants (needs?) to be a ruler. The smart thing for Newt to do would be to learn Korean and move to Pyongyang. If he doesn’t require nuclear weapons in his realm then that opens up some major parts of Africa and the Caribbean as well. Many of whom already use English as their primary language. Fortunately for America even the crazies shy away from Newt so there is no chance of him becoming the Republican nominee.

Paul, Ron. I’ll give Paul this, he plays his gullible minions like a finely tuned violin. Every time he runs for president they line up to give him money. Goo gobs of it. Then they go online and talk about how much money they’ve given him. Then they put together committees to buy his ads out of their money and then they volunteer to be his staff. At no point does Paul use any of the money he’s been given to do anything other than enrich Ron Paul. Further, two of Ron Paul’s political positions put him in the far corner of Camp Crazy. First he wants to get rid of the EPA. He, like Ayn Rand before him, firmly believes that all companies, if left to their own devices, will do their best for their employees and the citizens of the world. Without wasting several hours on the history of evil corporations and previous economic collapses, I’ll simply point to Monsanto and Enron. If Paul was allowed anywhere near anything more important than a slot machine we’d all be indentured servants with three eyes and a hump. Secondly, he’s a noted fan of Charles “Hey, that Hitler guy ain’t so bad and who needs Jews anyway?” Lindbergh and a strong proponent of removing America from the world’s presence. Which would be completely impossible to do, since the world is round and we sometimes need to buy stuff that isn’t made here, but that’s what he wants. Many people point to the fact that Paul is supported by “Storm Front,” an offshoot of Aryan Nation. Trust me when I say that 30 Nazis in Utah are the least of his problems. Ron Paul has less of a chance of becoming president than I do of becoming a prima-ballerina.

Romney, Mitt. First, let me say something nice about Romney. When he was elected governor of Massachusetts he took all his money and had it ensconced in a blind trust. That way, no matter what, no investment could be tied to him or influence his role as governor. The fact that this also allowed his money to get used for some very creative tax dodges and kept in offshore accounts was just a bonus. After all it was a blind trust, so that means he had no idea what his money was doing. Judging by some recent public statements, that is still true. When he was governor he enacted a health care program that inspired the nation and came down on the side of the angels when it came to LGBT rights. His problem is that he’s claiming to be a Republican and none of those things make Republicans happy. In fact they make some Republicans downright violent. His other problem is that he’s held more political positions than my pal Vicky Vette (NSFW) has held penises. And that’s impressive. I have seen her start her day with one in each orifice and one more in each hand. She loves her penises. Currently Romney is flatly contradicting himself on numerous issues. My personal favorite is his promise to repeal the very health care he inspired. If Romney wins the nomination look for the entire campaign against him to consist of recordings of him saying one thing and then denying he ever said anything like that. Simply put, he’s unelectable.

Santorum, Rick. Yes, thanks to Dan Savage we will forever associate the name Santorum with frothy anal leakage but that’s just one bonus of talking about Rick. You see, of all the candidates, he is, by far, the most honest. What you see is what you get. He is a member of a Catholic sect that compares favorably with Opus Dei and the Dominicans. The former were wonderfully lampooned in The Da Vinci Code and the latter are responsible for the worst case of religious sponsored genocide in history. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, look up the Spanish Inquisition and the history of Gnostics in France and Spain. Sure, the Dominicans gave us the singing nun, but she sings about the Sword of Christ. I know that the bible confuses some people but I can help here; when Jesus was offered the chance to be the king of Israel, first by Simon Zealotes and later by the Pharisees who were trying to trick him into admitting treason, He uttered his famous “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” line. No swords. No violent revolution. Nothing like that at all, just a statement that He was looking to a kingdom in heaven and not on Earth. Going forward, Santorum ignores the peaceful Jesus and does not believe that women are smart enough to know what to do with their uteruses so you can easily envision a future where women will need a note from their husbands to buy tampons. He also does not believe that homosexuals are humans, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word, so look for happy camps to be set up around the country to get those dangerous perverts off our streets. And those are just the obvious improvements he will make to America.

Oy Freaking Vey.

I have said in different arenas that the Republicans appear to have gone straight from 1899 to 2000 without noticing any of those annoying years in between. In any case, I’m not sure it matters who the Republicans choose as their nominee. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell that any of these clowns can get near the White House except as tourists.

And even then they’d need a note. Unless they brought donuts.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

First off some good news; today’s blog has nothing to do with that godawful film full of treacle that has the same name as today’s blog. Nor is this going to be a thrilling – as in “gosh, can we discuss lint instead?” – look at Rap Master Billy S’ classic Twelfth Night. Nor will I delve into the world of bad poetry. In fact I try and avoid that particular world just on general principles. To me the phrase “Poet Laureate” means “person who could not get a real job” or “he/she who has no useful skills.”

That being said, today’s blog does have something to do with language and perception. For example, can you believe that a black man was offended, and we are obviously talking about one thin skinned human here, by being called a McStinkyNigger by a bartender in a restaurant?

A California restaurant has settled a federal discrimination lawsuit filed by a black customer who received receipts using an offensive racial slur. The settlement is the latest bit of cultural controversy to hit the restaurant industry in recent months.

The Orange County Weekly reports that Mark McHenry had been a regular at the Landmark Steakhouse in Corona del Mar for several years. McHenry says employees at the restaurant had made uncomfortable comments to him previously, such as, “black is the new white,” but that he nonetheless continued to patronize the establishment.

However, on Dec. 5, 2010, McHenry visited Landmark twice in the same day. He received three receipts, all containing racist language. Written on the receipts were the derogatory names, “McStinkyN*gger,” “McNigS*it,” and “McCottonwood.”

You can view one of the offending receipts here.

MSNBC followed up on the story and obtained copies of three messages sent by a Landmark bartender, who is white, to McHenry:

In one voicemail, the bartender said: “Yo Mark. Hey it’s [NAME WITHHELD]. Give me a call when you get a chance man. Just wanted to apologize for that tab, dude. You know we were totally jokin’ around.”

In a follow-up text message, the bartender said: “I know I made a big mistake by crossing the line. I have a family & mortgage that depend on me.”

In another text message on Christmas Eve, he said: “merry christmas! hope to see you soon. we miss you! please forgive us for being stupid. its not the same without you there. luv u bud!”

McHenry’s attorney Stuars Shanus told msnbc.com he and his client are not disclosing terms of the settlement and Landmark Steakhouse has declined requests for comment as well. However, court documents show the bartender who sent the messages to McHenry was fired a week after the lawsuit was filed last March.

The incident is the most recent in a string of racial incidents in the food industry over the past few months. In January, Papa John’s Pizza apologized after an employee gave a receipt to an Asian customer which read, “lady chinky eyes.” A month before that, Chick-fil-A, better known for filing its own lawsuits, fired a cashier who put the racial insults “Ching” and “Chong” on the receipts of two Asian customers at one of its California restaurants. And also in January, McDonald’s suffered a PR headache when someone put photos of discriminatory signs online, falsely asserting that they were posted in an actual McDonald’s restaurant.

Okay, if you’re too racist to work at the homophobia capital of the corporate world, Chick-a-fil-A, it might be time to just cash it in and join the Klan. Either that or seriously take a long look at your pathetic excuse for a life.

As to the bartender above, not even white people think you’re funny. Also, just because it’s too delicious to pass up, I must note that The Landmark is the official meeting place of the Orange County Young Republicans. Or, as you may know them, those whimsical pranksters who doctored a photograph of Barack Obama and portrayed the president and his parents as chimpanzees.

Of course not all restaurants are staffed and populated by evil morons. Colby’s Breakfast and Lunch in New Hampshire won the hearts and wallets of its customers by banning politicians. Since the restaurant was a popular stop – it’s photogenic and near the highway – for pundits, it’s nice to see an owner put the needs of his regular customers ahead of his ego.

On the other hand, some restaurants may not actually understand what’s going on around them in the first place. For example, Olympic Provisions, a restaurant in Oregon, offered “Salami-Grams” for Valentine’s Day.

Olympic Provisions in Portland said customers can pay $75 for a three-stem salami bouquet or $100 for a six-stem bouquet and the gifts will be delivered between Feb. 11 and Feb. 14 by the lead singer of local band the Tumblers, who will serenade the recipients with his song, “Love Is Where The Meat Is,” KPTV, Portland, reported Thursday.

Nothing says love like “here honey, eat my meat.” Besides, everyone knows that particular holiday is March 14th and not February 14th.

Of course, no blog about restaurants would be complete without the obligatory bit of irony. So a guy having a heart attack at the Heart Attack Grill is a “must read” for you today.

Millions of Americans watch what they eat. But one Las Vegas man has painfully discovered that where you eat can have a big impact on your health as well. In a story almost too bizarre to be true, a man suffered a heart attack after eating a “triple bypass burger” at the Heart Attack Grill in downtown Las Vegas, local affiliate Fox5 reports.

As comically tragic as that may sound, no one can sue the restaurant for not issuing fair warning. Its website proudly proclaims the menu offers, “Taste Worth Dying For!” (Fortunately, the man in question survived his attack.)
Still, it was the first actual known cardiac incident at the Heart Attack Grill. “He was having the sweats and shaking,” “Nurse” Bridgett, who was working at the restaurant at the time of the incident, told Fox5. (Employees at the restaurant are given fake medical titles, including the establishment’s owner, “Doctor” Jon Basso.)

“I actually felt horrible for the gentleman because the tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that,” Bosso told Fox5. “He was sweating, suffering. Anyone with an ounce of compassion would’ve felt for him.”

Basso said the man’s name is being kept private but that he is recovering from the heart attack.

Of course, you can’t blame patrons for being caught up in the overwhelming sense of irony. Not only is the restaurant named the Heart Attack Grill, but its sign tells prospective diners that anyone “over 350 pounds eats free.” There’s even a tongue-in-cheek warning sign at the restaurant’s door stating that the offered dining fare is a health risk.

Some of the menu items available for diners at the Heart Attack Grill include: The butterfat milkshake, non-filtered cigarettes, “flatliner” fries and four different burgers, each rated on an ascending scale of one bypass to the quadruple bypass burger.

There is video of the man if you click the link and, I know you’ll be stunned by this, he’s fat.

Which means he can’t eat at the world’s hottest new eatery, the Hello Kitty restaurant in Beijing, which has tiny chairs.

The face of the ubiquitous Japanese cartoon cat with adorable eyes and a bow in her hair has appeared over the course of several years on every conceivable product, ranging from pencil cases and chainsaws to passenger jets.

The darling icon based on the famous Japanese character has finally found its way to Beijing, China, and more specifically, the western-style shopping complex of Sanlitun Village, where a fairy tale dining room known as the Hello Kitty Dreams restaurant has opened.

A Hello Kitty theme park and maternity ward are currently available in China, but Hello Kitty Dreams is the first restaurant.

This almost nauseating homage to the in-your-face-everywhere-you-look little icon is reminiscent of the ET craze that occurred in the U.S. some three decades ago, except for the fact that the adorable little lost alien finally did “phone home” and leave us alone with the passage of time.

The restaurant opened its bright pink doors on Christmas Day and is so popular that diners have to call a hotline in order to try to insure seating. Often the restaurant is booked solid for a week in advance.

The establishment is filled with images of Hello Kitty. Bubblegum pink cloths cover the tables and prints of the little bobcat and her escapades adorn the walls.

Even the staff reflect the theme and color of the restaurant. Waitresses wear pink dresses and waiters don white shirts with a bow and blue rompers.

The cooking staff, too, wears pink instead of the more traditional white.

So watch out wherever you are. A Hello Kitty something or other may be headed your way and there’s nothing you can do to stop it!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLhQvt6R5Zg&w=420&h=315]

For those of you who have a burning need to get your Hello Kitty Kink on, just click the link for everything from Hello Kitty bras to vibrators.

And you thought this blog wasn’t practical.

Of course, restaurants need to service the needs as well as the moods of their communities. It is with that in mind that I’m introducing you to the 15 Strangest Restaurants in the world. Click the link for full definitions.

Buns and Guns – Beirut, Lebanon

Cannabalistic Sushi – Tokyo, Japan

Cabbages and Condoms – Bangkok, Thailand

Modern Toilet – Taipei, Taiwan

Hitler’s Cross – Mumbai, India

Maid Cafes – Tokyo, Japan

Pitch-Black Restaurant – Beijing, China

Graveyard Restaurant – Ahmadabad, India

Death Themed Restaurant – Truskavets, Ukraine

The Hellfire Club – Manchester, UK

Vampire Café – Tokyo, Japan

Hobbit House – Manila, Phillipines

Robot Restaurant – Nuremburg, Germany

Mao-Era Red Guards Restaurant – Nanning, China

Christon Café – Tokyo, Japan

I have eaten at the Hellfire Club and, while the author found the place to be ghoulish, I thought it was fun and the food was tremendous.

So, as you can tell, the best restaurants in the world tend to feature everything from condoms to corpses.

I bet you’re hungry all ready.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wa95CvhESQ&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

18 people fired up some fatties and got married naked.

Nine tourist couples slathered on ample amounts of sunblock on Tuesday and said “I do” in the nude on a sun-baked Jamaican beach.

Getting married in the buff on Valentine’s Day meant living out a fantasy for Milly Salas, 39, a stay-at-home mom from Bergen County, N.J., who had never visited a nudist resort before.

“It was beautiful. It was like a fairy tale,” Salas said shortly after the nude nuptials at Hedonism II, a resort for the pleasure-seeking crowd in Negril, a western tourist town in this largely conservative, tourism-dependent island.

The promise of a Valentine’s Day wedding and complimentary four-night stay attracted over 100 engaged couples from the U.S. and Canada, but only 10 were chosen as part of a nude wedding contest, according to Zein Issa-Nakash, a marketing vice president of Superclubs, which owns Hedonism. One couple dropped out before the big day, which was filmed by a documentary TV crew.

Kevin Young, of Land O’ Lakes, Fla., said walking around au naturale is what he’s used to since he lives in a nudist community. Getting married without clothes was a no-brainer for Young and his new wife, Shannon Witherspoon. Even body paint was too much for him, he said.

“It was easy for us cause we’re used to it. But some of these other people had never been naked before outside their bedroom. I got to give them kudos, cause they really stepped up and did the full monte thing and got naked,” Young said during a phone call from Negril.

The Tuesday ceremony was the first nude wedding event at the Jamaican resort since 2003, according to Issa-Nakash. She said there were no angry protests of the event by pastors and others as there were about a decade ago when the resort first hosted group weddings in the buff.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s government was quiet about the resumption of nude weddings at Hedonism this Valentine’s Day. During the controversy over nude weddings in 2001, Simpson Miller, then Jamaica’s tourism minister, said getting married without clothes was at odds with how Jamaica should be marketed.

During the past few decades, as tourism has boomed, Jamaicans have quietly endured visitors’ stereotypes of their country as a place to frolic on the beach and leave “civilization” behind. But there has always been a certain degree of tension between the island’s traditional West Indian society and a tourism industry marketed mainly on pleasure.

Just FYI, for those who are new to the world around them. The Rastafari Movement is a real religion and not just an excuse to smoke pot. Most of the natural born Jamaicans I have met hate tourists and the culture they bring

But if you must be married in the buff, there are some precautions you need to take. Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss has the 411.

There are a few things that any couple should consider before even contemplating naturist wedding, holy union or vow renewal. First is the issue of dealing with non-naturist friends and family members. Like any other couple there will be certain people who are “a must” to invite to this special day, but if the couple are both naturists and have decided on having a naturist style ceremony, they better be ready for a couple of “No Shows”. Even if certain non-naturist family members and friends are given the option of wearing clothes at this kind venue, it may be unsettling due to others who choose to go nude. This could affect the outcome of their decision to decline such an invitation. There maybe some of us who are lucky enough to have the support of non-naturist family members and friends who would attend such as ceremony, but there are not a lot of us that do.

Typically, the most logical place to host a naturist style ceremony such as these is within the confinements of a naturist club, resort or on a naturist beach. Having such a location on the invitation could be good enough to receive many return rejections; which makes MCC in the Valley a much better choice for your special day.

Even after a naturist couple is finished with the stress of the mental conflicts with the planning and invitation issues, there may still be another issue with the couple itself. There is an honored tradition with weddings, holy unions and renewing of vows to which some of us are fixated on… the aspect of the beautiful “Wedding Dresses” and/or “Dashing Tuxedos”. The tradition of the wedding dress is embedded so deeply in the psyche of our modern society that the importance of wedding attire is sometimes the main focus of the ceremony.

Still in favor of saying “I do” in the buff ?, raise your hand…

Weddings are an expensive proposition for couples. Think of the things you won’t have to buy for your nude wedding:

• Wedding dress(es)
• Wedding shoes
• Groom’s suit(s)
• Bridesmaid’s dresses
• Usher’s attire

And then consider the frustration you’ll save yourself.

All opposed to saying “I do” in the buff, raise your, errr, never mind…

While a nude wedding frees up the bank account and reduces time spent organizing clothes, it comes with a few challenges:

Excitement is harder to hide – please pardon the pun, but it’s true.

Lack of pockets. Make sure your ring bearer has something to carry the rings in or on.

I don’t know where to look. On the day of your event everyone will figure this out. We guarantee it.
Hidden costs of a naturist wedding

Just because you’re naked doesn’t mean you leave all the adornments at home and put your inner-hippy out there. This is a celebration of the naked body and your time to shine – literally and figuratively.

• Make-up – You’ll still want to look your radiant best for your wedding day so, if you normally wear make-up you will still want to take this into account.
• Jewelry – Without the clothing, your skin becomes the canvas. You may want to adorn your body with anklets, bracelets, earrings, etc. If piercing is involved, allow plenty of time for healing before the ceremony.
• Hair – Flowers or jewels can be a nice addition. You might also want to experiment with some creative waxing. A trial run a month ahead of time is recommended.
• Nails – While your bridesmaids may not all be wearing the same color skin, you can still play with color – on your nails, to match your flowers, etc.
• Accessories – While the point of a naturist wedding is enjoying freedom from restrictive clothing, maybe you want to keep a few things to tie it all together. Bow-ties, garters, matching cummerbunds, hats, etc. all make for great ways to identify the wedding party.
• Flowers – Not having a lapel can make wearing a boutonniere difficult. Consider wrist or armband boutonnieres instead, or get creative with body paint.

Naturist weddings are as much about the freedom of expression as they are about admiring the physical beauty of the naked body. If you’re not comfortable being naked in your own bedroom, then being naked in front of dozens of your friends and family might not be your best choice. But take heart, experience at naturist resorts has proven that there’s no such thing as a perfect body. Every shape and size of body is beautiful in its own way – and that in itself is freeing.

See? Helpful information.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuROU4HXukU&w=560&h=315]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

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Neener neener neener.

So, since we did romance to death over the last week, let’s take a look at stupid and dangerous people. First, stupid.

A wanted criminal posted pics of himself on Facebook which made it really freaking easy for the cops to find him.

A wanted Sicilian drug dealer was found hiding in the U.K. after he posted a picture of himself with President Obama’s wax figure on Facebook this week.

Michele Grosso, 27, disappeared from his hometown of Taormina in 2008 as cops sought to arrest him for peddling drugs, The Guardian reported.

Four years later — after cops had apparently been following Grosso’s Facebook page — he was tracked to London. About two weeks ago he took a picture of himself posed with President Obama’s wax copy at Madame Tussauds.

That photo was published with other shots of him on London’s famous double-decker buses, posing at landmarks and, most importantly to police, at a restaurant where he waited tables. That led London cops, working with Interpol and Italian officers, to his not-so-secret hideout in an operation called “Big Ben” and deported him, according to The Telegraph.

He also posted messages on his page that seemed to allude to his drug dealing, The Guardian reported.

In 2010, he posted photos of himself building a snowman, writing, “Have you seen how beautiful it is here with the snow?”

A friend responded: “Why don’t you let me know where you are? Is it in case you get caught?”

Grasso was sentenced in 2011 to five years in prison for dealing drugs, though he was already on the lam, by a Sicilian court. Now that he’s been caught, he was extradited to Italy and will face new charges.

People always talk about how much money drug dealers make and I always laugh. It’s like a pyramid scheme. The dudes at the top make bank but everyone else waits tables – like this guy – or lives in mom’s basement. Drug dealing is a stupid way to try and make a living.

But while it is stupid and has it’s own dangers, it isn’t as dangerous as those predators who destroy people’s lives in the name of “psychic powers.” If you go to a drug dealer you have a pretty good idea what you’re getting; drugs. When you go to a psychic I know what you’re getting, lied to, but too many people skip past that and allow their lives to be ruined by these charlatans and mountebanks.

Fortunately for our amusement, not only are psychics frauds, they’re also stupid. Sally Morgan is suing critics for making fun of her. I’ll tell you why this is funny as hell in a minute.

Last week, Sally Morgan — a performer who bills herself as “Britain’s best-loved psychic” — sued the publisher of the Daily Mail for £150,000 for printing an article suggesting that she and other self-proclaimed psychics might be using trickery rather than mystical powers when they appear to talk to the dead.

Maybe the Mail’s article (by magician and former psychic Paul Zenon) really did damage Sally Morgan’s reputation so much that she needs the money. The irony is that just after that article was published, when the allegations that “Psychic Sally” was a cheat were front-page news, our organization along with peer organizations in the UK offered her $1,000,000 and the chance to clear her name, simply by proving her powers were real. Yet, she declined. Why?

If Sally Morgan is not a fraud, then the preliminary test we proposed to prove her powers should be easy. The test — devised by Professor Chris French, Simon Singh, and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) — was based on the same routine she performs every time she takes the stage: looking at photographs of deceased persons and communicating with their spirits to learn their names.

Since 1996, The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered $1 million to any psychic who can prove their powers are real under fair conditions that prevent cheating. When challenged, many psychics have made excuses for why they won’t put their powers to the test, saying they don’t need the money or that they don’t want to use their powers for financial gain. Neither of those excuses can work for Sally Morgan, since using her “powers” for financial gain is her full-time job, and she’s telling a judge she needs £150,000 from the Daily Mail because Paul Zenon questioned her authenticity.

So what’s Sally Morgan’s excuse for turning down the chance to prove herself for $1 million? She never gave one, preferring instead to respond to the offer with the threat of a lawsuit.

When a celebrity “psychic” spends so much time and money trying to quash reports of fraud and silence people who question her claimed abilities… yet turns down a $1 million opportunity in order to avoid a simple test that could prove she’s on the up-and-up… It makes one wonder if even Sally Morgan believes that Sally Morgan’s powers are real.

Here’s why this is funny as hell, and not very well thought out by her; under British law she’ll have to prove harm. To prove harm she must first prove she’s not a fraud. Which will mean taking the very test that started all this for her.

Under the supervision of a judge.

As to James Randi, he’s always been a hero of mine. I write about his “Flying Pig Awards as often as the producers will let me.

Just FYI, Mr. Randi first put up his $1,000,000 in the 60’s. Not one person has even come close to claiming it.

And there’s a simple reason for that. Every single psychic is a lying piece of scum.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/25406532 w=500&h=281]

Lauri “In the city” from Owe Lingvall on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!