Preguntas y Respuestas

Q: Are Susan Boyle's 15 minutes up yet?

A: Not quite, but we're at 14 minutes, 38 seconds. 39, 40, 41....


Q: Hugo Chavez is a: (a) menace, (b) comic relief, (c) politician, (d) blowhard, or (e) rogue?

A: (b), (c), (d) and (e).


Q: Will the American embargo on Cuba end during Obama's tenure?

A: Yes, but not until after a lot more Caribbean Lambada.


Q: Does waterboarding work?

A: Probably, in some cases, but at what cost? Assume that the 183 times that Khalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded saved lives. How many lives did it save? Let's say it saved 10,000 lives. It may have saved none. It may have saved 20. It may have saved 2700, like on 9/11. Nobody knows. Let's say 10,000, ballpark. Is debasing ourselves, lowering ourselves to an Al Qaeda in Iraq level, worth the trade-off? Is saving 10,000 lives a fair exchange? Before you answer, consider this: According to the CDC, between 2000 and 2004, there were 443,000 American deaths each year attributable to cigarette smoking. Other sources estimate that alcohol kills about 85,000 Americans annually. Car crashes? 26,000.

We could lower those death rates if we wanted. But instead, we're willing to accept hundreds of thousands of deaths every single year so we can drink, smoke, and drive like assholes. That's all fine, but if a TERRORIST caused that many deaths each year, there would be mass hysteria! Rioting in the streets! If we do it to ourselves though, it's okay.

ASSUME that waterboarding people -- torturing people -- is a sound counter-terrorist strategy. I don't happen to believe that's true, but let's accept that it is. Is saving 10,000 lives, assuming it's actually that many (assuming it's ANY), once every 7-10 years, or even every year, which hasn't been happening, worth our humanity? Our morality? Our identity as Americans? Do you really want to nationally sponsor this medieval behavior? This throwback to the Middle Ages? If so, how are we better than terrorists ourselves? And please don't tell me it's about saving lives. We could save hundreds of thousands of lives every year by outlawing cigarettes, alcohol (!), making safer cars, lowering speed limits and taking shitty drivers off the road, removing the Second Amendment from the Constitution and passing draconian gun laws.

But we don't do it. Why? Because some things are more important than saving lives. Aren't they?


Q: If an Earth Day falls in the forest and no one cares enough to hear it, does it still make a sound?

A: No.


Q: Human cloning, Yea or Nay?

A: Nay. Wait, that's not fair, let me ask Tim's Clone to see how he feels. T.C., what do you think? Yea. That's one Nay and one Yea. The Yeas have it. Tie goes to the Clone.


Q: Is it hypocritical for Dick Cheney to clamor for the release of classified CIA documents that purportedly support the former Bush Administration's policies when he fought to keep these and other documents private when he was in office?

A: Absofuckinglutely.


Q: Is Dick Cheney the Antichrist?

A: No. The Antichrist is much better looking and has a billion times more charisma.


Q: If you're a young, clean-cut medical student embarking on a career as a serial killer, is it a good idea to store your victims' underwear in your apartment after you rob and/or kill them?

A: No.


Q: Is your friendly neighborhood blogger in a new relationship and happier than he's been in awhile?

A: Probably, but don't tell anyone. It'll ruin my street cred.


Q: Does anyone know why I haven't had my Time magazine delivered in over a month?

A: No, that's a real question, does anyone know?


Q: How much would you pay for a Hitler watercolor?

A: $15,000.


Q: Would the average person bankrupt him or herself to save 1100 people from certain death, like Oskar Schindler did?

A: No.


Q: How would the world be different if, instead of rising to power and becoming a mass murderer, Hitler had been accepted into the Vienna Academy of Arts and allowed to fulfill his dream of becoming an artist?

A: We'll never know. History, like life, is a one-way street.