China Arnold escapes the death penalty.

"Microwave Killer" Mom spared death penalty.

What do you know, another woman commits another horrid act of disgusting infanticide and escapes the death penalty. The only reason I even mention this vile, putrid individuals gender is for one simple reason: invert it, and "he's" off to the gallows before you can turn 'round.

As of Victor L. Streib's #62 issue of "Death Penalty for Female Offenders," women in the modern era through to December 2007 have accounted for 10% of murder arrests, yet only 2% of death sentences, 1.5% of people on death row and 1.0% of actual executions. For the same crime, men are 5x likelier to get the death penalty and 10x likelier to actually be executed.

But of course, there exists no cases whatsoever of institutionalized pro-woman (and in the case of zero-sum situations, anti-male) biases in our society whatsoever. No, no, none at all.

Yet, consider the counterpoint.

Imagine if females represented 10% of applicants for a certain job and only got 1% of the positions.

Imagine if females represented 10% of a Fortune 500 Company's working roster but only 1% of its executives.

You get the idea.

Pac-Man more to blame for auto theft than GTA.

Finally, my opinion has come back! to the Winnipeg Sun.

On May 2nd, Janice Martens published a rather ignorant letter, attempting to blame the GTA series for an increase of car theft in Canada.

Games make criminals

So we still really think that games like Grand Theft Auto have absolutely no impact? Hmmm, let's see ... the first game came about how long ago?

And the major problems with auto theft started when?

Give your head a shake people.

I know these 30-somethings will pout and say there is nothing wrong with them living out their bad-boy fantasies. They don't care if it's at the expense of impressionable eight to 10-year-olds who are playing this at their already dysfunctional homes, getting further lessons in desensitization. Go back to Pac-Man again if you've still got no life. What's next? Rape games for fun?

Janice Martens

Winnipeg

As if the rambling conversational tone wasn't enough to convince you this person was conjuring statistics out of thin air, the rather unbridled assault on video gamers in general was too much to take. So, I had no choice -- NO choice, I say! -- but to do a little 'follow-up research' on her statistics.

The results found their niche in the Winnipeg Sun's letter column today, to wit:

Although Janice Martens wants desperately to blame real-life auto thefts on the Grand Theft Auto video game series, the very information she is citing tells a much, much different story. StatsCan reports that, in 1996, auto theft was occurring at a rate of 607 per 100,000 Canadians. The Grand Theft Auto series debuted in 1997, and auto theft dropped for four years straight to 521 per 100,000 in 2000, and was down to 487 per 100,000 by 2006; in other words, auto theft in Canada dropped 20 % in the first 10 years that "whiny 30-somethings with no life" have been playing the Grand Theft Auto games. Auto theft in Canada was at 383 per 100,000 when Pac-Man came out in 1980, and rose 58% over the next 17 years. Obviously, Pac-Man was leading kids to a life of crime until GTA came out and set us straight.

Charles Raymond Mousseau

Winnipeg

Sadly, they did edit my piece a bit, cutting out some of the better rhetoric (citing Pac-Man and his ghost-eating homicidal spree and hedonistic dot-eating ways) and made it look like I was genuinely trying to blame Pac-Man. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with the result.

One nice thing about the information age is that it's so much easier to debunk nonsense claims. I am old enough to remember the "Super Bowl Myth" regarding an alleged spike in wife-battery that takes place on Super Bowl Sunday, and how it was completely unfounded in fact yet persisted for years and years.

Compare that to now, where WikiPedia, a StatsCan website and the local virtual soapbox can let the record be set straight in record time.

NHL first round "Burma Shave" poetry

As some may recall, I did promise to summarize the first round of the NHL playoffs in "Burma Shave" poetry (that true All-American literary style :D)

Well, I haven't gotten the whole series done, but here are the first two of eight that came to mind. You may ask "where are the other six?" to which I can only say "this is art, not industry, and art cannot be rushed!"

At any rate:

Pittsburgh vs Ottawa:
Therrien's quiet,
Murray's bleating;
these sounds portend
a savage beating.
Burma Shave.


San Jose vs. Calgary:
The Sharks will win,
though Calgary's vicious;
Expect to see
some battered fishes!
Burma Shave

Five cops and a drug dog.

Seriously.

Just came across the border after a little road trip gone haywire. Apparently the border patrol thinks I'm either a drug-runner or a tax-evading professional gambler. On the way down, I got to sit in an hour while they searched the car top to bottom. On the way back, I had the pleasure of waiting an hour and a half while I answered the same litany of invasive personal questions, and saw two officers turn into three turn into five plus a drug-sniffing dog that went through the entire car, looking for anything.

I guess if you rent a car and drive to the States to gamble instead of flying to Vegas with the rest of the frickin' world, and go for more than two days at a time, then you are guilty until proven innocent.

Dear diary. Current mood: furious!

Using my new scale of measuring building anger and frustrations, it weighed in at about 7.5 Cornette's. Worse than the famous "Dairy Queen" incident, not as bad as the famous anti-CZW rants he did as commissioner of ROH.

How could Obama's guys not see this?

Recently, Hilary Clinton compared herself to Rocky Balboa, like so:

Obama responded Wednesday to Clinton's comparison of herself a day earlier to Rocky Balboa, the underdog boxer from Philadelphia in the 1976 film. She said "when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up."

I mean, EVERYONE remembers Rocky.. right?

So, how did Obama respond?

Obama told the union meeting: "We all love Rocky. But we've got to remember, Rocky was a movie."

NO, NO, NO!

Obama, you blew it!

Everyone knows what the proper answer would have been:

Obama told the union meeting: "We all love Rocky. But we've got to remember - Rocky fought hard, but he lost"

"No woman wants this!"

Resting up in my hotel room in Watertown, SD and watching some sick Law and Order offspring show.. I think it's "Special Victims Unit". This show in particular involves a woman who was a murder victim.. the only clip of the show I could bear watching without vomiting involved a female cop grilling a male suspect accused of murdering a woman.

In the scene in question, the female cop shows the male suspect pictures of the bruised and battered victim; he claims that this was the result of consensual violent sex, and she shrieks out "No woman wants this!"

Excuse me, fancy Hollywood Writer, who are you to say? I can say with absolute certainty that I've known several woman who have wanted WORSE than this, and the last thing I need is some ignorant character spouting such generic and needlessly hateful rhetoric just because you have an agenda to push or standards to meet up with.

For all of you who think I'm needlessly overreacting, consider this -- imagine the outrage if a TV show dimissed an actual case of domestic violence as "that's okay, he/she wanted this!".. as did the first Ann Landers column.

Seriously. The things locked away in the back of the human mind in terms of sexual impulses are far more complicated than simply saying "only men want this / no woman wants this!" And labelling anything kinky / violent / perturbing as something "only men want" and "something that no woman wants!" is a flagrant insult to both men and women.

To top this off, the next segment involves some worthless polygraph test being analysed and cleanly beaten by the suspect who is apparenly the murderer. But lo and behold! the polygraph analyst is smart enough to know when the person is cleanly "beating the test".

For the record, polygraph tests are not "lie detector" tests. Do you know why they aren't "lie detector tests?" Because they don't detect lies. They detect physiological responses in a way that the "polygraph tester" can simply interpret to get the results he wants in advance.

Hell, put the writers back on strike if this is the kind of crap that they're coming up with.

Watching "The Price Is Right" in Fargo, ND.

Yes, the road trip has started with enthusiasm. Besides doing my work on the road, there's lots of other treats ahead. TNA Wrestling live in Spencer, Iowa and Lincoln, Nebraska. A couple nights in a nice suite on a Native casino resort. Some time in Boise visiting friends. Really and truly, the stuff that dreams are made of!

For now, though, it's a Comfort Inn in Fargo, ND. I've been looking for a souvenir woodchipper, but no luck so far. So, reclined in the inn, it's time to turn on the tube

It's interesting watching The Price Is Right with Drew Carey. You might wonder what a strapping manly-man might be doing watching such a blue-hair's show, but there's really two primary reasons:

#1> I like game shows, and especially "Everyman" gameshows such as TPIR, Wheel of Fortune etc. -- mostly because watching the contestants on them tend to make me feel very smart and dignified by comparison.

#2> I used to watch this show with my late grandfather, Dick Davies, and it's interesting to see how so little of the show's mechanics have changed over the years, most importantly including the ever-popular "You lose!" brass solo.

(The following will assume you are familiar with the show's mechanics, so if it looks like part gibberish, forgive me.)

Nevertheless, it's amazing to see how the "contestant's row" portion of the show is so stacked against the player who has to go first, simply because placing a bid $1 above another person's bid will guarantee that the other person will have, essentially, no chance of winning, so if the first person's bid looks halfway plausible, one of the other players -- usually the last one! -- will wind up bidding $1 more than it. I'm so convinced that the advantage is this so strong, the first player should bid $1 and hope the second person bids plausibly, the third bids leaving enough room and the fourth person bids $1 over the third. You really, really want the second player to win if you can't -- because the new contestant will come into that spot and have to bid first next time, meaning you will bid last on the next round.

Incidentally, I saw a young blond woman rather pompously wearing a shirt that said "I don't need luck". She was bidding last, the highest bid was $899, and she bid $950. I guess she doesn't need luck because even luck wouldn't help her.