Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: And rain is wet.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

This week's PSA:  But lightning is so cool!





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.) Shoulder pads weren't just for your mom back in the day!
2.) What the hell did that poor park ranger do to deserve seven lightning strikes?
3.) Electrocuting the man is one thing, but burning off his eyebrows is taking it a step too far.
4.) Sounds like he didn't get the hint that God wanted him to die already.
5.) I think we can all agree that young Kristen here seems to get way too cheery about how hot lightning is.
6.) Thanks for the tip about...umm...uhh...how lightning hurts? The more you know!

Or you can go to Dunkin' Donuts and save yourself the hassle.

You'll never look at olives the same way again.

Confederacy of Dunces bridged the gap between Pulitzer-winning cult classic and outright classic sometime in the 1990s. When exactly, no one knows. The 1990s were a confusing time in American pop culture. It was a moment in history when we thought Winona Ryder might have a career, and that Johnny Depp was too odd to maintain one. What'd we know?

I'll admit, I spent the better part of a year thinking Confederacy of Dunces was channeling Doris Kearns Goodwin before I finally knew what it was all about. Not the civil war? It's about an overeducated fat guy in New Orleans who sells hot dogs from a pushcart?

And so it is. And like all pieces of literature that gain classic status in the 21st century, there's now a cookbook in its honor. Because if your nostrils don't flare at the delightful smell of hot dogs stewing in their own juices for a solid 12hrs, very little in life will.

While Confederacy of Dunces alludes to plenty of gastronomical curiosities, the cookbook is really about the delicious coronary bypass that is New Orleans food. That includes a recipe for jelly donuts, which the cookbook's author, Cynthia LeJeune Nobles, shares with NPR.

The recipe notes that the dough only requires 2.5 hours of rising time before you get around to frying--but it's preferable you wait 12 hours.

That's just wait time. That doesn't count making that dough. Or frying it. Or inserting jelly into each. And making a glaze. And sprinkling it with sugar. Sixteen hours later you, too, can devour four fluffy doughnuts in 35 seconds.

But the guilt and shame will last a lifetime.

"Why wouldn't someone want to do Han Solo in iambic pentameter?"

Uhh, because Han Solo is more a free verse kinda guy?

Writer Ian Doescher released the book "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope!" last year--with the third entry in the trilogy "The Jedi Doth Returns" released earlier this month, and now a stage adaptation has come to bear.

Actor and producer Joe Seibert is behind the new creation, which debuts in New Orleans at the Mid City Theatre on July 28th.

No word on how Chewbacca's howls will be interpreted in an Elizabethan vein.

How many public schools teach creationism in America?

It's a question Slate decided to document via a map.

Whether it's a public school, or just a tax-funded charter institution, schools in Texas, Utah, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Indiana and countless others receive some sort of taxpayer money, yet also are allowed to blur the line between church and state.

All public schools in Louisiana and Tennessee--those great bedrocks of forward scientific thought--are allowed to teach creationism (whether or not they choose to do so is unknown), whereas the state's largest charter program in Texas, Responsive Ed, takes it a step further. As Slate describes:

The state’s largest charter program, Responsive Ed, receives $82 million in taxpayer money each year, but that hasn’t stopped its schools from adopting a creationist curriculum that seriously misrepresents the science of evolution. These materials wrongly portray the fossil record and the age of Earth as scientifically controversial, assert that there is a lack of “transitional fossils,” and claim evolution is untestable.

Damn right! Earth might be 4.540 billion years old, it might be 4.54001 billion years old--we can't handle this kind of controversy!




Map: Portion of Slate map, found here.

Study: Poor children are the majority in public schools in America's West and South.

Hooray, America...!(?)








Hat tip to New Mexico, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana for keeping that majority poverty number running for over a decade now.

Stay classy!




Infographic: Washington Post

Louisiana senator wants to know if e.coli can turn into a human.

That whole evolution craze is just hitting Louisiana these days, which means there are hearings whether Louisiana schools should be teaching it in the classroom.

Senator Mike Walsworth asks a testifying 4th grade science teacher if she can offer an example of evolution. He wants facts, ma'am, just the facts. Ever the trooper, the 4th grade teacher explains about recent scientific experiments with e.coli (frozen e.coli swabs never sounded so exciting!)--to which Senator Mike asks if this means the e.coli turned into humans.

Senator Mike might be onto something here. You can never be too cautious.

I, for one, welcome our new e.coli overlords and bid them well.

Which state uses racist language the most?

According to a study that researched racist words searched on Google, the state that searches for racist language most is West Virginia.

The Top Ten:
1. West Virginia
2. Louisiana
3. Pennsylvania
4. Mississippi
5. Kentucky
6. Michigan
7. Ohio
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. New Jersey*

The only surprise here is Pennsylvania. But, really, go fifteen miles outside Philadelphia and the banjos and overalls crowd pretty much dominates.



*Don't even act surprised about New Jersey in the top ten. All the racist New Yorkers move there. It's one pitchfork away from a John Grisham novel.