This is something that has mystified me about conservative thinking in the United States.

The Right is in love with drilling more oil in the United States to reduce our dependency on foreign sources. But even if there is enough domestic oil to satiate our thirst, it will be many years before the production can actually come on line.

Meanwhile, because of the United States’ great oil consumption:
* The United States economy is dependent on potentially unstable regions
* American money is flowing into places like Venezuela and Islamic Middle Eastern countries, some of the Right’s favorite foils

It seems that advocating reduction in oil use and developing oil alternatives would be a natural fit for a mindset that highly values national security. But I’ve never heard a conservative talking head say “Those gas-guzzlers are helping us give Chavez more money”. It’s more like “Hybrids LOL” or “The government can’t tell me what to drive; I have my rights.”

(Alternative energy sources are routinely derided by some conservatives as well, even ones who say they have faith in the ability of humans to make great technological advances. I can’t help but think some on the Right belittle alternative energy simply because the Left likes it.)

Irony is people who complain about how useless science is while typing their opinion on the Internet.

Then when someone points out the Internet required science to be created, they will counter “that’s not science, that’s technology”.

That picture is of the great seer Mascotdamus who lived back in the 1500’s. (Yes, my parents named me after him.) He made all these prophecies in the form of “quatrains”, four-line poems. He was in competition with some human named Nostradamus, but while Nostradamus has been pretty much debunked, no one seems to have challenged Mascotdamus. Here are some of the few that have been translated from Eggish to English:

Half and half, this is a leader
Not how one augments morning drink.
He is limited by his birthright.
Half and half is the support of his people.

This is obviously talking about Obama, how he is half-white/half-black, and his approval rating is about 50%. The morning drink part was to make sure no one confused the “half and half” with the stuff you put in coffee. Compared with that poser Nostradamus, Mascotdamus was very specific.

The northern men were always strong
Until the scarlet-clad rose in anger
And won four victories
Before the north drank from a new goblet.

Amazingly, Mascotdamus even made predictions about Major League Baseball! The Red Sox will win two more World Series while George Steinbrenner owns the Yankees (”the northern men”). And a goblet is a type of cup, and so is a stein. So drinking from a new goblet means the younger Steinbrenner will take over.

One of my own name
From a land of milk and grain
Will use the universal flame.
If [he is] not heeded, there will be needless death.

I was named after him and I was born near Battle Creek, Michigan. That’s where Kellogg’s is located (they make cereal, and you pour milk on cereal.) So the prophecy refers to me. And the universal flame must be the Internet, because everyone can access it. So if you don’t do what I say, you’re all going to die.

Even though most of you probably still eat eggs, I wanted to thank all the humans who patronize this site. As a gift, you will receive my scientific insight into the human mating ritual and how you can harness this power to trick someone into liking you.

I’ve done months of research at the natural courting areas of Homo Sapiens (drinking bars). After reviewing the data, the human coupling process can be summarized as follows:

1. The male of the species attempts to get a female’s attention with a pathetic “pick-up line”.
2. The female rejects the male with an equivalently implausible excuse.
3. A couple is created only after a sufficient amount of alcohol is consumed by both parties.

It’s rumored that if the male is Derek Jeter or George Clooney, step 2 does not take place. Unfortunately, neither of them showed up during my studies to verify this.

So if you want to meet someone special, you need to be prepared. Here’s four introductions that can work for you. Now if you successfully coupled readers want to share your own lines, that’s cool. But for beginners, I’d recommend sticking with one of my recommendations.

Males can open with one of the following lines:

1. My toupee is less fake than Donald Trump’s. Can you tell?
2. Yo, babe, I don’t have any STD’s.
3. Ah eat zee French fries and zee French toast, because Ah am zee romantique French man!
4. We go together like dirty dishes and handwashing soap.

Females can respond with the following shoot-downs:

1. Sorry, I have to scrub my cheese grater tonight.
2. Wow, this sex change operation is even more convincing than I thought!
3. You know that guy Michael Jordan? Yeah, well, I’m waiting for him.
4. Call me! My number is 911-290-2328.*

* If you’re not in the U.S., substitute the “911″ with whatever your country’s emergency service number is.

First of all, is anyone really fooled that a modern chemist sloshes mysteriously colored liquids back and forth in test tubes all day? Did the Times’ photographers say, “Hey, look, we have some orange and purple Kool-Aid here, could you pour some into those beakers so you fit our readers’ stereotype of a chemist?”

Hervé This, the founder of molecular gastronomy, has created a completely synthetic meal. It sounds weird, but this is a great hope for the future once we get used to it. Think about it: If these guys can make fake eggs out of chemicals, people might stop killing real eggs. It would be a major step in our quest for equal rights and justice.

But those scientists are probably going to use real eggs for their experiments. In the picture, you can see that chemist apparently shelled a couple eggs alive, and is brazenly torturing the one on the right by crushing him between his fingers. It’s almost like Mr. This doesn’t even believe his test subject is alive.

How can I possibly support such yolk-wrenching treatment of my fellow egg?

(Note: if there are a bunch of unresponded-to comments, I’m not ignoring you; this post was pre-set to show today.)

Yes, we will do that ESPN March Madness bracket again this year and see if something dethrones Tom. But we’ve also decided to do our own version (”Egg Madness”, I guess?).

This is going to be such a disaster, mainly because of the sheer number of matchups. The idea is that the readership will vote for whoever they want to see “win”. No criteria. No rationale. Just raw popularity. (Of course, everyone’s going to be bracketed-out by the end of the month, but no one said we at LEP were the most considerate people.)

We’re still deciding on the brackets, but we’ll give you a sneak peek at one that’s almost finished. If there’s anyone you want to see in Egg Madness–or even ideas for other brackets–let us know and we might just get them in!

Or if this idea is completely fail, warn us before we look even more foolish.

So BDK references some study that shows women and men have equal chess skill…ok, fine, but who really cares about that?

If I played chess, here’s what I’d be thinking: we do know that there exist some hot female chess players. I’d be much more interested in that percentage than anything.

So if we can compile pictures of female, legal (18 and over) rated chess players, maybe we can do some sort of scientific study and publish it. And if the women want to evaluate the men, well, maybe we can throw that in too. But I can’t help with that part b/c I don’t lean that way. Although I hear some guy Viktor Korchnoi is quite the catch now.

There are 3 major “species” of humans. We don’t call them different species for political reasons, but they ARE different species….

I call them “species” based on the definition that different species won’t try to mate with each other. I find one “species” females…well let’s just stop it at “I wouldn’t touch them with a 10ft pole”. I consider one “races” women to not be “true” women. I find no sexual desire for them. Unless of course crossbred with a LOT of the other races first.

Because there are NO interracial couples in the world. This guy has to be a troll, right? (From same article linked to in prior post.)

“The Bible is not less valid just because some of it isn’t true or factual.”

Found in the comments of the article 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense. Of course, it’s a raging evolution vs. creation debate. LEP will refrain from fruitlessly commenting.

Like fast food, there is a ceiling to the expected quality of most sports articles. But this one made me want to rant.

Some guy Don Borst has a couple beefs with the BCS computer rankings:

1. The computers rank Oklahoma ahead of Texas, despite Texas beating OU earlier in the year.

2. Alabama is no longer ranked #1 by the computers even though they won convincingly last game and are undefeated. (”It’s as if the computers realized that to get their beloved Sooners into the Big 12 title game, they had to push OU past the 12-0 Crimson Tide, too.” lolz QQ moar nub)

He can’t seem to figure out why these situations could happen and blames “ridiculous” computer rankings. Here’s some help for him:

1. He treats the Big 12 tie like it’s a two-way. It’s not. It’s a three-way, including Texas Tech. The reason why humans are discounting TTU is they lost by 40+ to OU. Yet humans are the ones who insisted that the computer rankings not take point differential into account. Mr. Borst does not seem to be aware of this.

2. Most computers give bonuses to teams that beat top 25 teams. Alabama didn’t get moved down because they won 36-0; it’s because Oklahoma beat a highly ranked team, while Alabama beat a scrub. (Texas is also above Alabama due to superior strength of schedule.)

Boise State, Utah, and Ball State are undefeated, yet are not top-ranked because they haven’t played enough good teams. Same as Alabama.

3. The useful thing about computers is that once you determine the formula; the calculations are unbiased. Humans have unreliable memory, cannot take all games into account, are heavily influenced by recent events, and have in-born biases.

This is not to say that’s he’s wrong about Texas being more deserving than OU. The difference in teams’ playing strength is razor-thin, though, and solid arguments can be made for both sides. This is a perfect situation for letting computers determine the outcome.