There ought to be one long national goddam moment of silence for Alyssa Peterson.

Not saying this is heroic.  But at least she for one tried to keep her goddam sense of goddam decency.

On something even more futile than preaching abstinence to 29-year-olds:

"Progress," the White House calls it.

But the big controversy today?  Something John Kerry said that he has already apologized for.  This is because we are not rational, self-aware human beings, but doomed fictional characters living in someone else’s novel.

In mice, anyway.

I’m not recommending anything, you realize.

Still, if the effect translates to other mammals… I am probably immortal.

I got forwarded this video by a friend whose sense of humor is a sometimes little more cruel than I’m usually comfortable with.  But I watched, and I wound up laughing for a different reason than I think he did:

Look again.  What’s funny to me here isn’t just the remarkably unfortunate bounce (although the 10-year-old in me couldn’t help but snicker) — it’s that the goalie inadvertently makes the save.

I will think of this video now every time someone screws up completely and still manages to get things right in the end.  Trebekistan has whole passages about this.  We all screw up, constantly.  Your sympathy here isn’t with the kicker, is it?  It’s with the goalie.  You know the feeling.  That’s a large part of why this is so funny.  But things can still come out OK.  There is always hope.

The kid makes the save.  This video is a tremendous reminder that things can still work out, I think.

Also, well, snicker.

Seriously.  Your money is being spent on abstinence-only programs for people who have already been having sex long enough to think they’re pretty good at it.

Urging abstinence doesn’t work particularly well on teenagers — in conservative Texas, sexual activity actually increased after kids took the program.  And of course, these programs specifically replace teaching the use of condoms.  Brilliant.

Now let’s try the same strategy on people old enough to have kids approaching puberty themselves.