If there’s a drink makes me wonder if other people actually use their taste buds–is it. Sure it delivers caffeine and sugar to your blood stream, but it tastes like crap. Bawls and Sobe Adrenaline Rush taste far better. But Red Bull dominates the market because of marketing. Here’s the story of how Red Bull came to be. Interesting fact–Red Bull started life as a Thai drink–called Krating Daeng (translation: “red water buffalo”).

There is something seriously wrong in America when a small city has a SWAT team that kills a guy who doesn’t know why his house is being attacked by armed thugs in the middle of the night. This guy had some GHB, three marijuana plants, and some marijuana stored in plastic bags. Whoop-de-do. This guy really sounds like a menace to society.

The guy’s family is suing the city and I pray they force they take the city for everything the city has. More from Radley Balko.

If you are in the market for a new DVD, read this. It’s a great article about what you need to know to buy a great DVD player.

I love Radio Paradise. Below I have pasted parte of their playlist from this morning. I love that they mix great classic songs from different genres with newer or obscure stuff. Give it a listen.

6:42 am – Paul Simon – Proof
6:37 am – Eddie from Ohio – Gravity
6:33 am – Rolling Stones – Back of My Hand
6:29 am – Jethro Tull – Nothing Is Easy
6:24 am – Talvin Singh – Butterfly
6:15 am – Miles Davis – Freddie Freeloader
6:11 am – Beth Orton – Central Reservation
6:07 am – Daude – Vamos Fugir
6:02 am – Anna Ternheim – China Girl
5:58 am – Radiohead – High and Dry
5:52 am – Bob Dylan – Tangled Up In Blue
5:49 am – Over the Rhine – Anything At All
5:45 am – Ani Difranco – As Is

Joel on Software has an idea on why theater owners don’t charge less for bad movies. His argument is that by charging less it would spend a price signal to theater-goers that the movie stinks.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to his argument. But it assumes that movie-goers don’t already know that some movies stink, but want to see them anyway, just not for $9 a ticket. I think there are some bad movies that I’d like to see for $4, but I sure hate to waste $9 on them.

Here’s example 16,786 of why the media ticks me off. Dana Milbank writing in the Washington Post:

In his 37 years in the military, John Murtha won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with a Combat “V,” and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.

Yesterday, he was called a coward.

After Murtha stunned the Capitol with a morning news conference calling for a pullout from Iraq because our “troops have done all they can,” the denunciations came quickly.

What ticks me off is that Milbank writes that “Murtha stunned the Capitol.” Either Milbank has no intellecutual curiousity, or he doesn’t know how to do research. In 1 minute and 14 seconds (I timed it) I found this story from James Taranto writing about how Murtha is a flake.

This is not news. Murtha flaked out on the liberation of Iraq even before Congress approved it. In September 2002, a month before the congressional authorization, an outfit called Veterans for Common Sense reported that Murtha was “questioning a war-powers resolution that even most Democratic leaders seem reluctant to oppose”

Murtha is a strange duck. Read the rest of what Taranto has to say about Murtha.

I never played Sonic the Hedgehog in the day, but here’s a great online version of the game.

Beware of free range chickens. If chickens in the U.S. contract avian flu from migratory birds, it is much more likely free range chickens will contract it because they are outdoors and have a better chance of co-mingling with other birds. Cox News Service reports:

The sheltered lifestyle of American chickens could keep them from catching the deadly bird flu that has led to the demise of tens of millions of their Asian cousins, witnesses told a Senate committee yesterday.

There is a world of difference between being a chicken in the United States and being a chicken in the less developed countries where the H5N1 avian-flu virus has killed birds and at least 64 people, animal-health experts told the Senate Agriculture Committee.

In the affected Asian countries, poultry production occurs on small farms where birds roam free and contact between species is common, said Donald Waldrip, the director of animal health and live production at Wayne Farms. The company, with headquarters in Oakwood, Ga, also has plants in North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.

North Carolina is one of the nation’s leading poultry states, ranked fourth in production of broilers and second in turkeys, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

There is “commingling” between the Asian fowl and wild birds that often carry the deadly virus, Waldrip said. In these countries, live bird markets are popular and “create almost perfect conditions for the perpetuation of avian-influenza viruses,” he said.

I find it amusing that factory farms might actually keep America’s safer than free range farms.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, are great. That’s all I have to say. Here’s an interview on CNN.

Q: Cartman once described independent movies as “gay cowboys eating pudding.” Now we have “Brokeback Mountain,” an upcoming movie by Ang Lee about gay cowboys.

MATT STONE: If they have pudding in that movie, I’m going to lose my mind.

TREY PARKER: No, if there’s pudding eating in there, we’re going to sue.

Q: Are you guys prophets?

STONE: No, but Cartman is. (Laughs) We went to Sundance a lot in the mid-to-late ’90s, and you could just tell it was going toward gay cowboydom.

From the Telegraph:

One of France’s most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein, it emerged yesterday.

Jean-Bernard M