[Bumped]
I just searched for last minute gift ideas and realized that the search results are dominated by folks who don’t have your best interest in mind. So here’s my list of easy to find locally, cheap, and much appreciated last minute gift items.

Manly man gloves, for the guy who would never spend $25 on gloves.

If your man is a home owner with any kind of yard he will love these Sears Craftsmen $25 work gloves that are now selling for $16.87 in store or online–that is if he doesn’t already …

In this video, we consider what might happen when researchers get results that make everyone who signs their paycheck look bad.

Study Accidentally Reveals Psych Differences of Liberals and Conservatives
A study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) shows that there are measurable psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. However, don’t expect to get a fair reporting of the results from Scientific American or even from the researchers themselves. Both have published comically contorted interpretations of the data.

In this morning’s mail was a note from Compass BBVA’s Jon Mulkin telling us some bank fees are changing. It’s a maddening letter that claims to communicate “in a clear and transparent manner” but then uses this paragraph to say that the $2,000 minimum for free checking has been raised to $5,000
Effective September 30, 2011, this charge will not apply in statement cycles during which one or more of the following requirements is met:
- Maintain a $5,000 combined average daily collected balance….
The delta change from $2,000 to $5,000 is impossible …

Below are the finalists as they are being announced. At PowerLine John Hinderaker provides background and insight into the goals of the PowerLine Prize.  Check back for updates.
A favorite of the judges that fell just short of the top 10: “Goldfish”
 
#10: Talking Babies.

#9: Doomed by Debt

#8: Weight

Here is another entry that just missed the top ten, a haunting yet resolve-strengthening song by Fabian Chavez.

Here are the lyrics (copied from PowerLine):
American Dream
The man on TV said my hope should lie in him
No need for faith above we are the ones we …

The Mock the Spending Marathon is now Live. For 24 hours we will try to produce 100 videos on topics suggested by anyone via YouTube comments, twitter, and facebook. Here are the appropriate links. Hope to see you join in.
The Mock the Spending Marathon of 100 Videos in 24 Hours
Videos are at: http://youtube.com/bulletpeople
Details are at: http://bit.ly/pkMEDb
PowerLine Prize info: http://www.powerlineprize.com/
We are on facebook at: http://on.fb.me/pLLYhA
and on twitter: #bulletpeople
Inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/oldspice#g/c/484F058C3EAF7FA6 (Old Spice viral social media event in July 2010.)
UPDATE: The Marathon is over. We broke a light. We lost a lens …

UPDATE: The marathon is over. Here is the “Mock the Spending” playlist, where each video plays one after another. Our entry tied for 3rd/4th place in the PowerLine Prize contest.

And at the BulletPeople YouTube channel you can watch some of our other videos.
***
Starting this Thursday 14 JUL we are launching the “Mock the Spending” video marathon when we make 100 videos in 24 hours that mock what’s going on in Washington. Read more about it here.

Mark Twain said there’s only “one really effective weapon–laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion–these can lift at a colossal humbug,–weaken it a little: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.”*
Is there anything being done in Washington nowadays that you would like to see blown to rags and atoms? We hope so, because this Thursday we start our “Mock the Spending” video marathon.

We have two goals:

Although this is from before the latest round of revelations, it’s still the most entertaining comment I’ve read.
“Weiner is like a rat in a cabin full of drunks holding .22 pistols. He doesen’t know which way to run, and nowhere is safe.”
Posted by maddogg from the comments at Ace of Spades.

For about five years I knew a man casually from his work. We chatted about six times a year as I waited in his shop 15 minutes at a time. He died recently and I learned that he was a big fan of video games.
We had never talked about video games. We had talked about where to go camping, how to keep the pool clear, where to buy decent Italian rolls. We talked about a whole lot of stupid things that neither of us was interested in like whether synthetic …

You know how sometimes two unrelated things occur around the same time to produce something amazing? Well, here’s how you can make a fake miniature photo of your own house just like the one below in the next 10 minutes. Thanks to Bing maps and TiltShift Maker you can do this easily.

The tilt-shift effect of making any photo look like a miniature works best when the photo is a scene from above, with no horizon showing. By a happy coincidence the angle that Bing maps uses for its Bird’s eye view …

Ben Smith quotes a democratic official who said before noon Friday that when Hosni Mubarak fled to his holiday home by helicopter it was great news for the President. He had “played an excellent hand.”
You may remember a similar thing happened back on November 5th, 2008 when the sun rose just hours after then president-elect Obama said that a “New dawn… is at hand.”
In the video below the optimistic democrat is quoted at length as Paul Reubens provides a brief visual summary of the President’s handling of the events of …

Please don’t watch the embedded video below yet. Please take this test first:
Are you a fan of Sarah Palin?
Are you a fan of C.S. Lewis?
Do you dislike the mainstream media?
If you answered yes to all three, you are going to have to approach the video below as you would a bottle of 20 year old scotch. Please do not watch it with Christmas music in the background, or on your laptop in front of your TV. Turn off the TV, take the phone off the hook, and sit down and …

Godwin’s law states that as the length of an internet discussion increases, the probability of Hitler and Nazis being brought into it approaches 1. Below is a video that demonstrates Godwin’s law because at this late date I know of no better way to describe the relationship between the administration and the press than to bring Hitler into the parody.

LiveScience contributor Charles Choi writes that beer lubricated the rise of civilization. Sorry, Mark Twain got there first:
At wwwTwainQuotes.com:
…The van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary — but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey — I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the …

It always seemed a mystery why the many accomplished adults in the Obama cabinet would put themselves in such ridiculous looking poses for the official white house cabinet photo. Take a look at their hands in this picture:

To be fair, previous administrations posed also, all the way down to how they hold their hands.

The poses of previous administrations were, if not natural, at least normal.
But previous administrations had the courtesy to allow people to hold their hands in a way that people occasionally hold their hands by choice.