OMFG WHER R TEH ACORNS?!?

It is hard to know where to start on CNN.com's December 12th opus, entitled "Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage". Even for the sensationalist game of limbo played by this site, this article marks a new low in "science/technology" journalism. The article presents evidence of an acorn shortage but cannot present one scientist who is 'baffled' by an acorn shortage as mysterious as who in Sacramento reads this blog. An abomination like this deserves to be broken down point by point:

Blagojevich Should Have Gone To Corruption School In Louisiana

Today we have all amusingly chuckled when Illinois Gov. Blagojevich got arrested for auctioning a Senate seat to whomever could muster the cushiest post-Gov position. Of course, the biggest consequence of this is the local pride the arrest stirred within those from the area, which could only be expressed in gleeful status updates and away messages proclaiming "home of the dirtiest politics!" or something to that effect. However, an honest appraisal of the skill of corruption is needed. Blagojegish did the deed himself, on the phone. Any bright-eyed, bushy-tailed grad student with copies of The Wire and The Shield knows that corruption is best administered low-key, in person and through trusted intermediaries.

Stop Sending Us So Many Fucking Catalogs

Living our agoraphobic life, seldom emerging from shelter, we buy many things online to save ourselves interactions with Humanity. However, when you buy one pair of shoes from Eastbay or one frog bra from Title Nine, you are inundated with monthly catalogs that never cease to arrive. Despite buying things online in order to avoid Humanity and enhance our flabby veal-like texture, getting catalogs we don't want forces us to call somebody and have actual interactions. We are then informed that we might still get 4 or 5 catalogs still before we are taken out of their system. Of course, they are just lying to us and we still get monthly catalogs no matter how often we call about it. Well, we couldn't just burn them on the stove and set off our Xtra-sensitive fire alarm, so we felt pretty helpless.

Das Ötmeil

We haven't done a mailbag in awhile, so we'll start out by answering this question from loyal reader Catholic:

Hi DBB. Long time commenter, first time question-asker. I was wondering, when the folks at Das Bloggy Blog wake up and want a Pollanesque, complex carbohydrate laden breakfast, what do they prepare?

As we all know, adherents to the United Church of Poe-Lan are forbidden from mixing dairy with processed cereal. While other value-added concoctions of processed grains such as bread are allowable, new ones are not until they have been traditionally consumed by 10 consecutive generations and thus proven their safety. As shown above, we put two cups of whole oat groats in a crock pot along with some brown sugar, five spice powder, and salt. Then we fill it up with water and cook it for 8 hours. The nutty, textury goodness that results can then be served with raw milk from grass-fed cows.

Our next question comes from our Facebook newsfeed via Random Asshole We Went To Hick Highschool With:

What do Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama have in common?

The only appropriate response to a question like this is immediate defriending. Why don't you move to Canada or Ireland where there are so many more conservatives?

And a final question from an Anonymous reader:

What is the difference between static and dynamic light scattering?

Static Light Scattering measures the intensity of scattered light as a function of angle and concentration; for dilute polymer solutions this yields the weight-average molecular weight, radius of gyration, and second virial coefficient. Dynamic Light Scattering measures the fluctuations in intensity of scattered light; for dilute solutions of particles this yields the translational diffusion coefficient and the hydrodynamic diameter.

5 Foody Things That Currently Are Reflective Of Our Worldview

We didn't have to start cooking for ourselves on a regular basis until we were 20. There wasn't a grocery store within walking distance, so at that point a box of Zatarain's plus sausage and onions equaled haute cuisine. We then moved up in the world to red beans from scratch and various curries. We also went through a slow cooker phase which we may return to at a future date. But Who's Now?

The Power of Marketing

Corona is a bland Pilsner that necessitates a fresh lime wedge in order for it to have any recognizable flavor. Of course, Don Draper would have you believe that it isn't bland, no, it is smooth and drinkable. And, it is the only beer that you can put a lime in. Despite the fact that many beers will taste good on a hot day with a lime, lemon, or orange wedge, many people will protest quite vigorously if you propose such a travesty. In fact, the flavor of many lagers and brown ales are nicely complemented by addition of a lime wedge. But, the manufacturers of those beers haven't put considerable effort in developing a defacto copyright on the practice like the makers of Corona have.

At our departmental BBQ there were many limes leftover from our chicken marinade, and we suggested to others that they try putting wedges in their Heinekins or Amstel Lights. After all, those beers are pretty bland too. However, this usually was responded with a quizzical look, followed by, "But this isn't Corona!". We had to try really hard to get people to think outside the narrow beer + fruit window ingrained in our souls by Don Draper. What we're trying to say is -- put limes in your bland beers. Any brand. It prevents scurvy.

WKCR -- Left of the Dial and Above Your Tax Bracket

We like us some college radio. In fact, we are like that bland SuperTrain guy from Singles who reminisces about the glory days as we flip through our record collection(s). Two things that were as integral to our college radio experience as accidentally dropping the F-bomb before 10PM were:

1. Fundraising
2. Bureaucracy

Now these weren't the fun, glamorous parts of college radio, like accidentally dropping the F-bomb before 10PM. That was as much fun as we'd had since we were children, when we used to seal lit firecrackers in glass jars and fling dogshit at moving cars from behind a fence. Simultaneously. We had a lot of awesome e-coli infections back then, too.

Fundraising and Bureaucracy were the unfun parts of college radio that involved browbeating by our elders and learning something about something as it relates to life, and our world. Like most college radio stations, we didn't set our sights for the stars and envision a future without those things. For instance, we didn't gather up all of our Low-Ivy entitlement and expect an endowment, whose interest would completely fund our activities. This however, is the plan of the 'college' radio station WKCR, which is loosely associated with Columbia University.

Neither a student enterprise nor a club, the radio station exists outside the umbrella of University governing boards, and thus is not in line to receive money from student life funds. Before a plague of monetary problems struck the station, this existence apart from other student groups suited them. But a spate of financial issues, starting in 2001, has decimated the station’s bank account. The station embarked on an initiative to raise a $4 to $6 million endowment, using the interest to pay for operating costs.

Most stations use student programming funding. Of course, that entails dealing with bureaucracy and actually having to accommodate actual students. (the Horror)

“Is conforming to ABC [Activities Board at Columbia] guidelines worth the $30,000?” she said. “The answer is probably no.”

It's certainly true that student programming funding won't cover everything -- so most stations also set aside a couple of weeks every year to roll up their sleeves and do fundraising.

Ben Siegelman, CC ’07 and the 2006 station manager who helped formulate the endowment plan, said he wanted to “come up with some sort of financial plan in which the radio station did not have to rely on on-air fundraising. I was sick of fundraising.”

Well OK, nix that. The article then notes that their antenna was on the WTC and the replacement one only reaches 10% of the former audience. Of course, something like that only is relevant to two things: fundraising (already out of the question), and advertising. So how about throwing a few spots out there?

“We could have commercials, but then we’d have commercials,” Whitcomb said flatly, “and that’s not art.”

Apparently, if you have a trust fund, you expect the non-profit you work at to have one too. And with a $270K annual operating budget, you need a really big trust fund. Some of this $270K goes to actually paying one guy to do a show and live in New York. Seriously, if you are that hard up to fill airtime, just steal somebody's iPod from a Vampire Weekend show and take a nap. That's basically what most college radio amounts to these days anyway. Of course, not being officially tied to Columbia University means that they actually have to pay rent for station space. We're guessing this is probably the most abnormal part of their budget. Additionally*, their pristine, state-of-the-art equipment looks nicer than the 30 year old mixing boards and duct-taped CD players sported by most other college stations. If only they had the kind of bourgeois networking that WKCR thinks** they have, they too might be able to sneer at such non-profit drudgery as fundraising, bureaucracy, and selling out to the man.

*We apologize for whining! And we are referring to the linked article's picture -- not the one we swiped from the Onion!
**We are uh, skeptical of this plan. But we guess if raising 270K a year is hard, pulling in a $6 million endowment should be a piece of cake.