How I was keeping my mind clean this week:
- Imagining playing with toy cars.
- Feeling guilty about how funny I find news of a priest falling asleep during a suicide hotline call. Spoiler alert: nobody dies.
- Scummy celebrities versus their critics: Baio v. Jezebel and LaBute v. Chicago.
How I was keeping my mind fit this week:
- Wondering with Matt Freeman about raising children in the arts. If the 93% Childless rate amongst NY's Independent Theater as collected by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is any indication, the question is not being answered.
- Weighing Tycho of Penny Arcade's response to Roger Ebert saying that video games aren't art. Shorter Tycho: Don't waste your time, Ebert can't take anything away from you.
Important facts:
- A handy chart of where your tax dollars go: 20% to defense, 20% to Social Security, 14% to the safety net, 6% to debt, and then other smaller things. If those are the accurate numbers... it actually seems to me to be about right.
- Another handy chart of sleep schedules. Bottom line: your 20s are an aberration, sleep-wise.
- As polls go, Rasmussen leans furthest to the right, and not for easily-explainable reasons.
- There are 1.1 Million virgins between the ages of 25 and 40. I'm finally part of a minority!
- Voting Yes on Health Care was a big fundraising bump if you were a Democrat. If you were a Republican? Well, we'll never know.
- California's state constitution is the third oldest in the world, after Alabama and India. All three fail to provide political stability or equal access to public services.
- The Double Down is not as bad as many of its fast-food contemporaries. Thanks again, Nate Silver!
Things to watch in the future:
- Will Nick Clegg win -- or at least, break through?
- Will Harry Reid win his financial regulation game of chicken?
- Will Governor Charlie Crist run as an independent?
- Will AIG get in on the action and sue Goldman Sachs?
- Will Viacom back down on censoring South Park?
