The crazy people are parading around NC, each trying to get someone to pin the SENATOR tag on him/her.

As the sponsors of a group called Lake Norman Conservatives opened a recent candidate forum with a country song [Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA"], ob-gyn Greg Brannon, Army veteran Heather Grant, and Pastor Mark Harris sat down before an enthusiastic crowd of potential voters to answer a wide range of questions.

• Greg Brannon told them a return to the gold standard would help shore up pensions: "With a gold standard, our GDP grew an average of 4 percent a year. We get back to that, that’s being a senator, that’s finding a plan to fix the problem."
• Heather Grant advocated scrapping the EPA: "Your state should regulate your environmental protections. Because who better knows about what your state environment is than your actual state."
• Pastor Mark Harris, made it clear he doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act: "I am one of those that believes you can’t fix Obamacare, you need to repeal Obamacare."

I hope either the gold bug or the scrap-the-EPA woman wins the primary! That will save me from having to contribute any money to Kay Hagan.

Ricky Gervais tweets:

Same sex marriage isn't gay privilege, it's equal rights. Privilege would be something like gay people not paying taxes. Like churches don't

(For reference: don't stamp out conservatives' right to discriminate!)

Worst UI design feature ever? Possibly.

Horizontal scroll bars in iTunes that do not appear until you mouse over them.

What's the point of hiding the fact that there are more items to be found?

Today I crashed a gas station. I started pumping gas and the OS that runs the pump crashed. And I looked around and all the other pumps had crashed too. And they rebooted and then it refused to take my credit card.

This is a shitty way to test for a buffer full of zeros.

bool testZeros(unsigned char *p, int len)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
    {
        if (*p != 0)
            return false;
    }
    return true;
}

It's like a teenager who gets a job doing surveys. He goes to the first house on the street, knocks, gets no answer. He writes "Not Home" in his log book. Then he shrugs and writes "Not Home" next to all the slots for all the other houses on the street, too. Goes home and jerks off for a hour. And he does this every day for a year.

And then someone spends weeks trying to figure out why nobody from that block is ever home.

A $5 million 1715 “Lipinski” Stradivarius violin was stolen from Frank Almond, concert master for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The suspects used a TASER C2 Personal Protector to incapacitate Almond in order to steal the 300-year-old instrument a “literally and figuratively shocking crime,” exclaimed Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn in a press conference.

And how did they find the culprits? Turns out, every time you discharge a TASER stun gun, it celebrates the joyous event by blowing incriminating confetti everywhere.

As the Milwaukee Police and the FBI began to conduct the investigation they reached out to us at TASER in order to identify possible suspects in the case. This was accomplished thanks to our Anti-Felon Identification tags (AFID). The AFID program enforces accountability for each use of a TASER device. This system releases dozens of confetti-sized markers upon discharge of a CEW cartridge. Each AFID contains a serial number that tracks back to the original purchaser of the cartridge. The large number of AFIDs and their small size makes it impractical to clean up. Therefore, law enforcement can pick up one AFID and contact TASER International for a complete trace on the serial number.

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Bob Casale, co-founder of Devo, dies at 61.

Walmart shows its support for the American "working man" by using a song from a Canadian band as the background music to its "Made In America" commercial.

I get up at seven, yeah,
And I go to work at nine.
I got no time for livin'.
Yes, I'm workin' all the time.

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am.
I guess that's why they call me,
They call me the workin' man.

They call me the workin' man.
I guess that's what I am.

So I get home at five o'clock,
And I take myself out a nice, cold beer.
Always seem to be wond'rin'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here.

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am.
I guess that's why they call me,
They call me the workin' man.

And what an inspiring song it is: working a dead-end nine-to-five and lamenting your miserable life. I suppose that's a pretty common sentiment. But the country's biggest private employer rubbing your face in it while playing a song from a Canadian band doesn't really scream "Supporting The American Workers! U!S!A!", does it?