Question #111:

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  I need lots... LOTS of caffeine to get me through my day, but I'm pretty sure that all that coffee is eating a hole in my stomach. Any thoughts on a cleaner delivery system?
- McTwitchy

Dear McTwitchy,
  If you like your addiction to be warm in your belly, tea is the obvious answer. It's available in many different varieties, it smells lovely when you're brewing it and it's amenable to the same milk and sugar modifications as coffee. As a bonus, steeping each cup individually provides an easy way to regulate the strength of each dose. You can choose a gradual comedown or a drastic crash when you're ready to switch back to your resting heart rate.

  If the thought of drinking tea brings up uncomfortable memories of friendless weekends spent holding tea parties for discarded dolls and broken action figures, consider switching to soda. The upside, if the advertising is to be believed, is that you'll be instantly happier and more popular, and your thirst will be so thoroughly quenched that you'll be able to water plants with your mind. The downside is that soda doesn't pack as much caffeine per dose, and it's loaded either with sugar or foul-tasting artificial sweeteners that coat the tongue, making it impervious to pleasant tastes for decades.

  If you're on the verge of injecting pure caffeine into your eyeballs, you'll want to try one of the approximately 80,000 "energy drinks" that have flooded the market lately. They're like soda in the sense that they're carbonated and best served cold. Unlike soda, they may also contain some amount of a dubious "herbal" stimulant, and they don't even pretend to taste better than llama urine. They're also sold in smaller containers, presumably because the caffeine content of a soda-sized serving would kill a rhinoceros.

  No matter how desperate for a fix you are, resist the urge to drink the new Game Fuel variety of Mountain Dew. It has a decent caffeine content, but it tastes like I imagine antifreeze would after being vomited up by a large dog.

Things That I Hear On < 2 Hours of Sleep

RADIO: "The committee hopes to raise enough money to return the house to its original splendor."

ME: "What does a crappy artificial sweetener have to do with restoring a historic home?"

  The only consolation is that I didn't say it out loud. Nobody else will know.

Football: Strategies for Success

  Two important things that the Eagles need to do if they want to win:

1) Score (some number) points.

2) Stop the other team from scoring more than (some number) points.

  It sounds obvious, but this is Philadelphia. The most basic lessons are often the ones that we fail to grasp.

Question #110:

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  I invited two guys - who often cancel plans at the last minute - to go to an event with me. Now they're both planning to meet me there. Awkward city! What should I do?
- Two Popular

Dear Two Popular,
  The answer depends on the event in question. If it's an evening of facial stabbings and light verbal abuse, and your dates are only attending to curry your favor, ditch whichever guy is less amusing and have a good time with the other one. If it's a free money and sandwiches parade, and the ditchee is liable to show up without a date, you'll have to stay home altogether, or run the risk of being the soy cheese in a vegan embarrassment sandwich.

Question #109:

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  What would you do if I was furiously fisting myself all the time?
- Cavernous Vag

Dear Cavernous Vag,
  I'd recommend a water-based lubricant. Preferably, something sold by the gallon and dispensed with a garden hose.

  I'd also suggest buying yourself a webcam. If you're constantly elbow-deep in your own fun bits, it might be tough to keep a day job. Selling subscriptions to the live video feed of your arm disappearing into your distended pelvis might help you pay the bills.

Welcome Skepchicks and Readers

  A long-belated thank you to Rebecca and the rest of the free-thinking females over at Skepchick for graciously linking in my direction. I first discovered the Skepchicks through The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and I've been a fan ever since.

  I'm neither as prolific nor as entertaining as the Skepchicks, but I try to do my small part to popularize rational thinking and objective inquiry. I'd humbly suggest that you might enjoy these recent items. Enjoy, and please comment if something amuses/offends/nauseates you.

Question #108:

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  What do you do for fun?
- I Need A New Hobby

Dear I Need A New Hobby,
  Your question presupposes that I have any significant leisure time. I'm a second year law student, so this "fun" you speak of doesn't sound familiar

  Okay, so I'm being a little facetious. I do occasionally have an unscheduled minute in which to contemplate my bastardly existence. I try to fill these fleeting moments of nagging purposelessness by reading, drawing and drifting bodiless through the fetid, stagnant intellectual morass of the Interwebs.

  Come to think of it, I'm not at all interesting. Not even a bit. You'd better try some other blog for tips on hobbies. The only really cool thing I do is talk to my wife, who took theoretical physics as an elective because "it sounded fun." Unfortunately, one jackass nodding along like he's smart enough to keep up with her is more than enough, so you're going to have to find your own brilliant woman to talk to. Good luck.

Question #107:

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Can you loan me 50 bucks?
- Fiscaliberal

Dear Fiscaliberal,
  Yes, as long as you can accept it in monthly installments of $.05 for the next 83 years. I'll leave nickels on the floor of the Spring Garden El station. Look for the first one in a few days.

In Case You're New Here

  You should know that I have a lot of problems with deism/religion. There is the usual complaint about the exclusiveness inherent in any belief system that purports to reveal the one true path to the divine. But when deists look to their patron spirit(s) as the driving force behind natural events, I start foaming at the mouth and gnawing on chair legs.

  The world is, almost completely at random, a stunningly beautiful and unfathomably horrible place. Invoking a supernatural explanation for unpredictable events is a double-edged sword. Also, both edges are coated in battery acid, and they're aiming for your exposed throat at the same time.

  At best, ascribing events like these to the influence of magical sky beings fosters the belief that natural events occur because of the everyday behavior of the persons affected. (At its logical extreme, of course, is the delusion that these events can be influenced or even controlled by good behavior, dietary restriction, virgin sacrifice, etc.) At worst, a default deistic explanation makes us less safe, by acting as a disincentive to actual productive inquiry.

  Our only hope for minimizing the damage from pandemic illness and natural disasters lies with objective scientific investigation. Better prediction of geological and meteorological events. Structures built from modern materials and designed to survive extreme stresses. Efficient, workable evacuation plans. Vaccines to prevent communicable diseases. These things don't just happen, no matter how humbly we petition or how hard we pray. They happen as the result of brain work and perseverance, and the underlying assumption that events that kill a lot of people should and can be prevented. If we call it the will of god(s) and trust in the power of prayer to save us, we're leaving it to chance. Without the will to make our own way in the Universe, and the scientific diligence to learn how it all works, we're signing on as the future test subjects in an experiment testing the power of fervent prayer to alter the trajectory of a civilization-killing asteroid. In that scenario, my money's on the giant rock.

New Posts Shortly

  I've got a couple of things cooking, I promise. Hectic events have put me a little behind with the updates, but there should be two new ones this week. In the meantime, feel free to send a question my way by clicking here.

Boy on a Stick and Slither:
  It brings the funny. I especially enjoyed this recent entry.

Now With 20% More Bells, Whistles:

  I've added some new functionality to Ask LBB. There's a new RSS feed, as well as an email subscription service. Your inbox, it burns us!

One Thing Athiests Never Do:
Pray for the deaths of people who disagree with them.

  When Wiley Drake, pastor of a Baptist church in Buena Park, California, used church letterhead and a church-affiliated radio show to endorse former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's candidacy for president, it raised some red flags. Under federal tax law, non-profit organizations (religious or not) aren't allowed to endorse candidates. Those that do so risk losing their non-profit status, and the attending tax benefits.

  There's a minor piece of oft-ignored legal jargon called the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It's supposed to keep religious zealots from interfering in government, and vice versa. Despite the creeping theocratic bent of the current administration, maintaining federal tax benefits for a religious organization that endorses candidates is still a no-no. So, a group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the IRS to investigate the church's non-profit status.

  Instead of defending his actions, Drake called on his flock to join him in praying to their god for the deaths of two of Americans United's leaders. While I'm pretty confident that there's no grumpy bearded man in the sky, grinding fresh points onto a pair of lightning bolts and aiming for Americans United's headquarters, it does raise some interesting questions.

  Drake is asking for help to petition the omnipotent creator of the Universe to kill two human beings. How is that substantively different from trying to hire a hitman? The question of there actually being an omnipotent creator of the Universe is immaterial; Drake believes a god exists, and he's asked that god to pop a cap in his enemies.

  It's the belief that is the key here. If I believe that I've hired a hitman to kill someone, I've committed a crime. It doesn't matter if my "hitman" is an undercover FBI agent, and my intended target was never in any real danger. I've engaged in a conspiracy to commit murder. In many jurisdictions, the penalty for this crime is on par with what I'd face if I'd actually done some killing.

  I'll say it again, because I think it bears repeating. Drake believes that he and his followers are asking an omnipotent (and not at all imaginary) being to kill his enemies. He has clearly shown the intent to cause the deaths of two people. This has to be a criminal act. If it wasn't all so laughably stupid, I'd say Drake should be prosecuted for his threats.

ReligionNewsBlog
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
LA Times (registration required)

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  I demand that you explain the unfathomable popularity of LOLcats. Get to it.
- Not LOLing

Dear Not LOLing,
  LOLcats and their spawn - LOLPresidents, LOLBots, even LOLJesus - operate on the two bedrock principles of Internet humor:
1) Anything you can do, I can do better. (Ur captions. Let me improov upon them.)
2) Nothing makes a mildly amusing joke more funny that beating it into the ground until the whole world gets sick of it, and it can come back as ironic on a webcomic t-shirt.

  Anybody who tells you that Web2.0 isn't a vast field of suck lit by vanishingly rare glimmers of talent is probably hoping to quit working in favor of blogging full time.

Random Internal Soundtrack

  Ever since I managed to wash my iPod in the pocket of my jacket, the soundtrack of my commute has been a collection of overheard conversation, transit engine noise, and the tinny buzz of music from out of the headphones of the future deaf community. On days when I forget to bring something to read, my brain often fills the background noise with snatches of poorly remembered songs. I can usually only recall a few bars or so, and that short bit invariably lodges in my brain like a tumor with ninja training, repeating on an endless, maddening loop until I get involved in some task or other.

  This morning, for some unfathomable reason, I got brain-smacked by the opening verse of the showtune Big Spender. I haven't heard it in years, but that's de rigueur for these random songbombs. What made it notable was that my stunted, malformed psyche managed to conjure up a version I've never heard before. I was hearing it sung by bathhouse-era Bette Midler. Loud, brassy, lungs that could power a small wind farm. I didn't even know that she'd recorded the song; thirty seconds on Google revealed 2005's Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook, containing Midler's recording of the song, a version arranged by her old bathhouse piano player, Barry Manilow.

  I haven't ever heard this version of the song, nor do I plan to, so I guess I'll never know how similar it is to the one my brain vomited up. I just found the whole episode mildly disconcerting, and I thought I'd share my disquiet with the Internet. Isn't this the kind of thing that convinces the credulous that they're psychic?