Welcome to the Monday edition of your open thread. Spill your guts below.
Are you confused about what the election means and need someone to put it in perspective? Let Gin and Tacos explain. h/t Daily Kos
The 2010 midterm elections were a mandate for the new GOP sorta-but-not-really majority in Washington. The American voter has clearly demanded:
1. Social Security reform that guarantees my current level of benefits, alters someone else’s, and cuts everyone’s Social Security taxes to boot.
2. A world-class national infrastructure that can be built and maintained without tax dollars.
3. A balanced budget that doesn’t sacrifice any of the government programs – especially the sacred military-industrial complex and the various old age benefits – that we like.
4. Clean air without pollution controls, clean water with a neutered and underfunded EPA, and businesses that do socially responsible things without any regulation whatsoever.
5. Consumer goods at Made in China prices that create high-paying jobs in America.
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9. Wars against every enemy, real or imagined, all of the time, with no U.S. casualties and no effect on the budget.
10. Incredibly rich and rewarding professional lives while supporting our employers’ right to do whatever they want to us without recourse.
11. A vibrant, consumption-based U.S. economy with good jobs for anyone willing to look for one resulting from free trade policies that encourage money and capital flows to cheap labor markets.
12. A highly educated workforce produced by a school system that requires no tax dollars to achieve excellence, students who have no interest in learning, and a virulently anti-intellectual society.
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It couldn’t be any clearer: we want a government that will resolve every problem we currently face with solutions that require no effort, no sacrifices, and no money. And I have no doubt that we have elected a group of people brave enough to promise exactly that.
It can’t get any clearer than that. I’m ready for the GOP to deliver on these promises. Plus I want a unicorn and 0% taxes.
Scientists studied how a cat drinks water to learn about fluid dynamics. Pretty awesome.
Scientists used high-speed cameras to study how Cutta Cutta and other cats lap up water, and the answer, reported online Thursday in the journal Science, was a surprise:
A cat’s tongue scarcely brushes the surface – not scooping up liquid like a dog, but pulling it up from above, in a manner that seems to defy gravity.
More explanation later, but briefly: With each darting flick of the tongue, the animal relies on the property of adhesion and Bernoulli’s principle – the same phenomenon involved in making baseballs curve and airplanes fly. Lions and other larger cats do it, too, though their larger tongues lead them to do it fewer times per second, at a speed the researchers were able to predict with a mathematical formula.
Cat scientists? They’ve got the aloof personality for it, that’s for sure.