Long Walk Off A Short Peter

So someone ran a study and found that reassuring people actually helps their mental state. Nobel Prize? Here's the article.

Excerpts:
Men worried about having a small penis are usually pretty average, but have a false idea of what the normal size is, according to a report in the medical journal Urology.
--snip--
"Men complaining of a short penis can be treated using the basic principles of sex education with objective methods of penile size evaluation," Shamloul concludes. "This combination can correct any previous sexual misconceptions, relieve unnecessary anxiety concerning penile size, and decrease the desire to undertake still-to-be verified lengthening procedures."

Of course, this study was about reassuring men that they did not, in fact, have small penises. Once again education is touted as the cure for all that ails.

However, it's quite possible that education would be catastrophic for the mental state of some men. For example, the man who promised he would deliver a rather large package to one of our fairer staff members last week, but showed up with a tic-tac container. Would he be able to handle the fact that he's possilby in the 5th percentile in terms of what he's packing? Does he talk big yet all along know he's small (just to bed his prey?)or has he somehow gone through life under the delusional belief that he's got bratwurst instead of a little smokie.

Little Smokie


Bratwurst


Or is he just plain nuts and thinks he's got a summer sausage?


The question seems to be: What is more fun? Is it more fun to make men feel better about their length and girth or is it more fun to let them know how small and unsubstantial some of them really are? Or alternatively, what is the bigger problem for society, men who feel inadequate or men who think they have footlongs?

Man a cure?

A few of our more lovely staff members absolutely love getting manicures and pedicures. How in the hell did Paula Abdul end up in a place that doesn't clean their tools? We thought that she would go to high-end places that throw away their manicure tools after each customer. Ah, maybe these so-called "high-end" places aren't so clean after all. Celebrities beware!

Paula in Pain
Abdul said a trip in April 2004 to a Studio City nail shop that used unclean equipment sent her in and out of the hospital, and made her the butt of late-night talk show jokes.
--snip--
"I was publicly humiliated," Abdul said in her closing statement. "That is why with an open heart and a selfless agenda, I implore you to pass this bill."



Meanwhile...
The "American Idol" contestant who claims to have had an affair with judge Paula Abdul was cited on a misdemeanor battery charge after getting into an alleged food fight with his record company manager at a hotel, Sacramento police said Monday.

Maybe, he gave her the manicure?

First Class Mail

An informal poll shows that 70% of littleboxes staff members found this editorial in the Star Tribune to be "spot on." Another 20% of the staff thinks the tribune is a commie-rag, while 10% were too loaded up on cough syrup to answer the question.

For as long as he's occupied the White House, President Bush has been denying U.S. funding to the U.N. Population Fund, an agency which is generally thought to have averted more abortions, assured more safe births and saved the lives of more mothers and infants than any other entity on Earth. By denying it U.S. funding, Bush is fueling the very fire he wants to extinguish: abortion.

So long as women around the world experience unwanted pregnancies, it's pretty much certain that abortion rates will remain lamentably high. The same goes for poverty- and childbirth-related death rates.

The surest way to reduce all these troubling numbers is to guarantee that women everywhere have access to contraception and other reproductive health services. Yet as the UNFPA notes, nearly a quarter-billion women lack such access -- virtually all of them in developing countries.

That quarter-billion signifies more poverty, more abortions, more maternal and child deaths, all of which the United States should be clamoring to help the UNFPA avert. Yet as the years pass, President Bush has grown more and more steadfast in his insistence that the United States won't support UNFPA. His reason? He seems to have swallowed some serious misinformation alleging that UNFPA's work in China underwrites forced abortions there.

Even the president's own investigators found no proof of UNFPA involvement in such coercive tactics. The administration shrugged off that finding last week -- accusing the UNFPA of giving its "seal of approval" to China's "birth limitation" program and urging the agency to halt all operations in the country.

The charge is as baseless as the call for withdrawal is dangerous. As UNFPA chief Thoraya Obaid frequently notes, the agency's 26-year presence in China has helped nudge the country to back away from the coercive policies of the past.
China's deputy U.N. ambassador Zhang Yishan granted the point last week: With UNFPA's help, he said, China has launched dozens of population-management programs based on "advanced-international concepts" in which strong-arming plays no part.

That's progress -- the sort any fan of freedom should applaud. Bush nevertheless remains resolved to withhold this year's $34 million contribution to the UNFPA. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives rejected a measure that would have required the money's transfer.

The Senate, which has yet to consider the matter, may very well manage a word of protest against this counterproductive parsimony. But the protest won't stop abortion or save lives. President Bush foreclosed that option when he decided to deny UNFPA funding again.

By deprived the agency of U.S. money, the president will effectively keep the UNFPA from preventing thousands of abortions and maternal and child deaths -- not to mention the birth of millions of children destined to crushing poverty.
And the reason the president favors this is ... ?

usability testing

Did you know that it's difficult to find a good picture of a box of Edy's Whole Fruit Strawberry fruit bars on the internet? We thought it would be an easy task. However, all we can find is some tiny-ass pictures that are kinda blury once they become even remotely visible.

We had this entire post planned about how Edy's Whole Fruit fruit bars (like popsicles only better and with actual strawberrys inside!) had changed our lives. How if we purchase 6 boxes of these things for the office they are gone inside of an hour. Really good stuff.

We read a story today about how some study found that cell phone use distracts drivers. We hope to hell that they didn't get federal funding for that crap. No shit it distracts drivers. The god damn radio distracts drivers. Should we ban radios in cars? All we know is that a driver talking on the cell phone increases the chances by about 65% that they were the asshole that cut off the littleboxes van at the intersection by Blockbuster last week. Bastards!

Meanwhile, the news of the world is becoming more stale than a opened bag of week old cheetos. Why can't someone just put the media out of its misery? We can't take any more stories about John Bolton or the hunt for Osama. Why is it that everytime someone in the government mentions that we are close to finding Osama Bin Laden that the media reports it without any context? There is no mention that we've been told this at least half a dozen times before with no results. We here at littleboxes hope that the United States is able to catch Mr. OBL Laden. However, why doesn't the government just shut up about it until they actually have results?


Even more meanwhile, here's something else we don't understand: Why is Bjorn [in our product placement department] so damn gassy today? Good Lord. There's only so much that a refillable Glade plug-in air freshner can do against a stench like that.

Dunderbonks

Taibbi (our new favorite person) writes about religion and politics in the good ol' US of A.

There is a feeling among the pointy-headed secular set that the evangelicals are a doomed anachronism who will die out with increased exposure to the open air, and that hitching a political wagon to their causes must result in failure.
--snip--
This is a common belief among the overeducated east coast set. It is also exactly what H.L. Mencken believed 80 years ago, when he filed what he thought was the obituary of American yahoo-ism from Dayton, Tennessee. He concluded from the Scopes trial: "On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. And on the other side was sense. And sense achieved a great victory."

Little did Mencken know that 80 years after Dayton, the supporters of William Jennings Bryan's point of view would still outnumber the supporters of Clarence Darrow's opinion by a ratio of about five to one; not just in Tennessee, but in the country at large. Polls on the issue have been remarkably consistent for decades. A New York Times survey last year showed that 55 percent of Americans believed that "God created us in our present form," while only 13 percent believed that "we evolved from less-advanced life-forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process." A similar Gallup poll in 1997 placed those numbers at 44-10; in 1991, the numbers were 47-9.
--snip--
A large statistical majority of Americans would rather live their whole lives in perpetual fear of the devil than listen to ten minutes of common sense. When you consider where these people live intellectually, the idea that the Democratic Party can somehow succeed in Middle America by making small tactical changes, by waving a few more flags, seems absurd. You either believe in the devil or you don't; and if you don't, you're never going to fool these people.
--snip--
They [Republican Strategists] know that most political trends are fleeting. Liberalism vanished at the first sign of trouble; pacifism disappeared one generation after Vietnam; even fiscal conservatism is easily forgotten. The one thing that never disappears in this country is stupidity, and if you court it, you'll always have votes down the line. Especially when it lives on unopposed.

[see entire article in NYpress]


Update:
Much chatter in the office from a rather vocal minority. This rather vocal minority has as its leader a man who, like the president's brother, likes to be referred to by his initials. As in, J.E.B. for John Ellis Bush. We (most of us) always thought it was a bit weird that saying Jeb Bush was like saying John Ellis Bush Bush, kind of like those people who get upset when someone says PIN number (again, because you're saying personal identification number number). Note that although we do find it odd that our fellow staff member uses his initials as his first name, he has remained employmed here (although he was almost fired after that incident with the floor mop).

Anyway, our fellow staff member, GEN (who is man, GEN stands for Gerald Elias NXXx, we don't share last names) believes that creationism should be taught in college level biology courses.

[Sidebar: GEN is a pretty courageous guy. First off, he goes by a woman's name and second, his viewpoint is not really popular in our office but he sticks to his guns. It was not Gen's parents intention that he be known by his initials, they, to this day, still prefer Gerald. We wonder if Jeb Bush was ment to be Jeb?]

Gen believes that colleges and universities just serve to indoctrinate people against religious thought. He really hates this. It makes him very angry. He doesn't think that people who believe in the devil are stupid or live in some intellectual wasteland. He is a very intelligent guy, at least in terms of test scores and attending a well respected college and having a well paying job.

Looks like Gen is satified at least somewhat by our efforts to inform you, are loyal reader(s) of his opinion. Although he is starting to question the set up of having a narrator who expresses all of our opinions to the world. He is asking us "what would be so bad about having me type something from time to time?" Hold on there, Gen, it is that kind of talk, as opposed to religious talk, that gets people fired around here.

Off With Their Heads!

From the Associated Press: U.S. intelligence and foreign allies have growing evidence that wanted terrorists have been residing in Iran despite repeated American warnings to Tehran not to harbor them.

The evidence, which stretches over several years, includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.S. and foreign officials.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains classified.

There is, of course, no mention of past U.S. intelligence failures. Are these intelligence findings incorrect? We certainly don't know, but you'd think a qualified reporter might mention that intelligence from anonymous sources regarding the harboring of terrorists should be taken with a bit of skepticism. Maybe we missed the sarcasm?

full text

Private Thoughts

We apologize for the lack of new posts. Bad fish. Ugh.