Comments don’t seem to be working and lots of other little things are going weird.

I’m working on it; I think I have to update Thesis. But this may take a while.

Like, several weeks. Thanks to the new WordPress.

Update: Look at the big brain on Brad!

As the kids say, W.T.F.

No really, go look. I’ll wait. Let me know how many paragraphs you make it through before you’re completely lost.

Two thoughts:

1) You thought that there were people with too much time on their hands? You have no idea.

2) Suzanne Collins was basically right: except that America is pretty much the Capital already.

Obligatory Michael Sam content, via Galley Friend X:

In a story on Michael Sam’s move to Dallas, he’s quoted as complaining about the media circus:

“You guys follow me around like hawks,” Sam said after going through his first late-morning workout with the Cowboys. “I’ve been tired of it since February. I expected it.”

That’s pretty rich, considering that he previously signed up to do an entire reality show . . . in May. 

Or, three months after he was already “tired of it.”

The Pentagon thinks that there are 15,500 transgendered people secretly serving in the military.

Some quick math:

There are 1,369,532 active duty military personnel. If 15,500 of them are transgendered, it means that 1.13 percent of our armed forces are transgendered.

For comparison’s sake, according to the CDC, 1.6 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian. So either:

(a) The number of transgendered people approaches the number of homosexual people, which seems, based on most anecdotal evidence to be unlikely.

(b) The military population is significantly more transgendered than the general population. Which also seems somewhat unlikely.

or

(c) The number reported by the Pentagon is a fiction.

The world perked up when a 9.0 copy of Action Comics #1 sold for $3.2 million on eBay the other day. The real news is buried in Chuck Rozanski’s helpful weekly Mile High Comics newsletter:

It might surprise you to know that my reaction to that sale was that it was no big deal, as it was only to be expected. That’s because I was already aware that the owner of the ACTION COMICS #1 copy from the Mile High Collection (which I sold in 1982…) reportedly turned down an offer of $5,000,000 cash, over three years ago. That Mile High copy of ACTION COMICS #1 has never been professionally graded, but having looked at it many times, I believe that it would grade significantly better than the copy that sold over the weekend.

An honest question for super trooper Sunil Dutta, who says that if citizens would like to avoid being shot (or tasered or pepper sprayed or beaten) by their law enforcement agents, they simply must not “challenge me.” Here’s his relevant advice to citizens:

[I]f you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me.

It sounds so easy! We’ll leave aside the First Amendment, which clearly says that you have the right to free speech unless the speech hurts the feelings of agents of the state, in which case the police are free to strike you with a baton. (It’s in one of those penumbras and emanations, I’m pretty sure.) Yes, let’s leave that for the moment and focus on compliance. “Just do what I tell you.” It’s simple!

But what if–just to pick an example at random–you’re a woman and the cop asks you to show him your boobs? You’re supposed to show them, right? Otherwise it’s totes okey-dokey for the officer who wants to see your boobs to tase you, right? Or does it turn out that Officer Dutta’s simple rules aren’t that simple and that there are some actions with which citizens should not be forced to comply?

One other thing: Officer Dutta talks about how hard life is as a police officer, and all of the nasty things he has to deal with:

Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority.

Which, of course, is terrible. We should treat all people with respect–from cops to homeless people to strangers on a train. We’re all God’s children. But it’s worth noting that citizens often have to deal with police cursing at them and screaming at them and acting with aggressive menace, too. Remember this encounter where Philadelphia police tried to arrest a man legally carrying a gun? Go listen to the audio and see how the man being detained addresses the police and how the police speak to him. And remember, in any encounter between police and the citizenry, only one side is being paid to act like a grownup.

Exit Question: How about colonoscopies? Should citizens be forced to submit to a colonoscopy because one of Officer Dutta’s colleagues says so? To refuse a colonscopy is to challenge his authority, after all. It’s so confusing.

The Seven Deadly Virtues is screaming up the Amazon charts already–and it doesn’t even come out until the Halloween book-buying season.

More to follow.

Blogging has been light because I’ve been busy with two other projects. One of which is now available for pre-order.

I’ll tell you more about it later in the week, but the short version is that it’s really funny.