The Republican National Committee launched a web site today called America Speaking Out to collect ideas from across the nation. America opened it’s mouth and this came out:

We should get rid of all the govt agencies that are just letters and not words.

Straight up. Like NASA.

Real Amereicans should get a tax cut for every life birth they have. The baby has to come out alive. This way we will take our country back in terms of populaton.

Um, sure. As anyone who’s actually had children could tell you, we already get tax deductions for those wee ones.

Oceans no longer protect us. The U.S. should adopt a CCTV program to monitor all streets in the cities and suburbs nationwide. If England can do it, so can we for the love of jebus. Also, some of the footage is bound to end up on youtube and be hilarious.

Let me send you a copy of 1984.

Even though it is un-Constitutional, I think there should be a religious test to become President. If you have a religion I think you should have to renounce it upon being elected. We cannot have our President playing favorites! Goes for the SCOTUS, too! Matter of fact, let’s put all government officials to the test!

Yes, clearly, because that would be freedom of religion.

Order IMMEDIATE professional psychiatric help for Glenn Beck.

Creating a new line of hot dog marketing where they create packages of buns equal in amount to the number of hot dogs in the package. This imbalance in American Culture has been destroying us at the heart for decades now.

OK, so those last two were actually really good ideas.

In all honesty, I actually like the idea. Unfortunately the implementation is going to take some time to work the kinks out. The site seems rough around the edges, frequently displaying an error page or nothing at all. Furthermore, folks are currently using the site to embarrass the Republicans rather than make thoughtful proposals. It’ll be interesting to see if the kinks can be worked out; I’d love to see this become a genuinely useful tool for surfacing good ideas to our congressional representatives.

• “‘Take Back the Beep’ Campaign”
• “Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now?”

The short version: your cellphone carrier is probably tacking on several dollars worth of unnecessary fees to your bill each month. Do that for millions of customers and watch the money roll in. They have no incentive to stop these practices unless they begin to feel the heat from their customers. Here’s how:

For those who don’t have/use a data plan (i.e., no web browsing, app downloading, etc.)

1. Call their customer service line and setup a data block. Be persistent and stick to your guns should they suggest alternatives.
2. Examine your bills for extraneous data charges. After you get that data block, ask about a refund for those charges. Once again, be persistent (but polite).

Anyone with a cellphone can participate in David’s “Take Back the Beep” campaign:

1. Read through some of David’s “Take Back the Beep” blog posts (just so you know what you’re talking about).
2. Submit a polite complaint with your carrier via the channels listed below.

Here’s where to send your complaint (Sprint already lets you remove the message):

• Verizon: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/FJncH.
• AT&T: Send e-mail to: customerissues@attnews.us.
• T-Mobile: Post a complaint here: http://bit.ly/2rKy0u.

Turns out Canada already has plenty of forest, so they weren’t attempting forest expansion but rather examining the assumption that lots of forest helps suck carbon dioxide out of the air. What they found, at least for the Canadian forests, was a bag of mixed results in the past and a high probability (based on computer modeling) of those forests emitting more carbon than they take in for the immediate future.

“The forecast analysis prepared for the government… indicates there is a probability that forests would constitute a net source of greenhouse gas emissions,” a Canadian Environment Ministry spokesman told the Montreal Gazette. From the Canadian Forest Service’s own web page on the issue:

Each year, the managed forest becomes a sink or source depending mainly on the extent of the area affected by fire and insects. Projections therefore required assumptions about the area that could be affected by fire and insects based on scientific and historical information, as well as the current conditions of the forest. But because the extent of future fires or insect infestations cannot be predicted with certainty, the model was run hundreds of times using different scenarios of the future to estimate the likelihood of the managed forest being a sink or a source.

…the analysis showed that there was a greater than nine in ten chance of it being a source in 2008–2012.

I’m hoping that, at the very least, the monitoring provisions in the bill are worded properly to make sure we avoid paying for forests that are actually carbon sources.

That would be zero deaths so far. Should our health organizations be keeping tabs on it to make sure it doesn’t morph into a 1918 “Spanish Flu” style killer? Yes. Should it be dominating news coverage and Twitter buzz? Nope.

See also: whitehouse.gov.

I find it amusing that the historic inauguration of the first African-American president is being brought to us (at least on Hulu) by the not-so-historic Mall Cop. Only in America.

Updated: I pulled the live video because Hulu seems to be using that URL for broadcasting all the presidential events, not just the inauguration. Interesting, but not helpful in terms of preserving for posterity. I may re-add the video if I can find a permalink for the inauguration.

• sanctioned forms of torture previously prosecuted as war crimes
• reason for invading Iraq found to be false
• Iraq post-invasion reconstruction botched, leading to a much longer engagement
• damaged international reputation, alliances
• economy facing failures in the banking system not seen since Great Depression
• increased national debt by $3,000,000,000,000
• failed to provide adequate disaster relief after Katrina
• illegally spied on Americans via warrantless wiretaps

The summary: if you invested $10,000 in 1929 and only left it in during the Democratic administrations, you would have five to twenty-five times more than if you left it in only during the Republican administrations. The implication is that Democratic presidents do more to stimulate the market and generate wealth.

The piece created quite a buzz on the internet, including some intelligent rebuttals. Most of the discussion centers around how the original NYT graph was interpreted or presented. That is, until a math and statistics geek started digging into the data.

Theodore Gray is one of the co-founders of Wolfram Research, the company best known for its pro mathematics package, Mathematica (we did some basic Mathematica stuff in our college math courses).  He created a Mathematica simulation of the the scenario proposed by the NYT and began playing around with factors such as dividends, including the Roaring 20s, and accounting for inflation (ahem, Carter).  On a side note, I wonder if Theodore is a baseball fan; this is exactly the sort of number-crunching baseball fans seem to relish.

It’s all fine and good, but the icing on the cake is his conclusion; like any good twist ending, I’m not going spoil anything, so go read it yourself.

As Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval tells it, “they have different ideas on how the baby should be raised. Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would ‘claim’.”

Kelly and I will be discussing this important topic tonight, in hopes of heading off a video-rack-upending-computer-destroying confrontation on down the road.