Matt has a fascinating article today on PopSci.com about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I’ll tell you right now why the American people have never gotten whole-hog behind a alien search program: the names of the programs. Project Cyclops? The Phoenix Project? The Kepler Mission? I’m falling asleep!

I got two words for you, NASA: Project Awesome. Now that is the kind of science I can believe in.

I’ll tell you what, I’m a healthy guy. And thank God I am, because it is a damn nightmare dealing with insurance companies.

I get insurance through one of the companies I freelance with (I’m in the system as a part-time employee). It’s a good deal, because I’m only doing about 20 hours of work for them a week. Very kind of them to offer me insurance. It comes out of my paycheck, of course, but it’s still a lot cheaper than buying it on my own.

I discovered recently that they switched their plans. I mean, I knew they were switching their plans … we got extensive emails about it when it was happening. The cost of healthcare had gone way up, they said, and they could no longer afford the kinds of plans we were on before. I paid little attention, because like I said, I don’t really need to use my health insurance that often.

Well, I didn’t need to use my health insurance that often. One thing I’ve been getting into since I moved to California is acupuncture. I’ve had this pain in my shoulder for years that I never had professionally examined. Some time last fall I figured, all right, I’ve finally got health insurance, why don’t I use it? So I started going to this acupuncturist who told me I had some scar tissue built up that needed to be worked out. Things were going great … my shoulder felt better than it had in years. The acupuncturist called my insurance company - no problem, they said, as long as it was related to a physical ailment, I could get all the acupuncture I needed.

Then in April, my plan switched, and all of a sudden that unlimited acupuncture turned into no acupuncture ever because, after all, it’s not really medicine. Of course, like a fool, I didn’t investigate all the new plan benefits. So I went to the provider’s website to see just what was covered by my new plan. The only info they had available was a 2 page pamphlet with 3 different categories - doctor’s visits, inpatient, and outpatient. Each of these three things was limited to 5 visits. So, for instance, if I get in a car accident and lose all sense of feeling in my legs, I have 5 tries to get it back.

I thought to myself … this can’t be right. What if people have real problems that can’t be fixed within 5 sessions? I called the insurance provider and said, “hey, so, I’d like to get a big book that clearly explains all my benefits to me, please.” The woman I spoke with directed me toward the 2 page pamphlet. “Ok,” I said, “well, this doesn’t tell me much. For instance, what if I need to get psychological counseling? How many visits am I allowed?” “Outpatient services, 5 visits,” she replies. “Okay,” I said, “but what if I’m super crazy?” “Just a second,” she says. She comes back and says, “if you’re diagnosed with a serious mental illness, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, you are allowed unlimited visits.” “Great!” I answered. “Now, can you please send me the book that lists all of those exceptions?” “There is no book,” she said. “But if you want to know if something’s covered, call me and I’ll tell you.”

Now, I ask you … does this seem right? That the only way I can find out what services my insurance provides me with is to call the provider? The provider that makes its money denying people benefits? I mean, everyone knows our healthcare system sucks. I’m not blowing the lid off some hitherto unknown phenomenon. I guess I just didn’t realize we’re in such a bad state that people who have health insurance are only allowed to visit the doctor 5 more times than people who do not have health insurance.

Camille Paglia, America’s favorite self-proclaimed intellectual, has done it again! Check out this insanely convoluted metaphor she dropped on unsuspecting Salon readers today:

Hillary for veep? Are you mad? What party nominee worth his salt would chain himself to a traveling circus like the Bill and Hillary Show? If the sulky bearded lady wasn’t biting the new president’s leg, the oafish carnival barker would be sending in the clowns to lure all the young ladies into back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing.

Okay. So Hillary is obviously the sulky bearded lady, and Bill is the oafish carnival barker, and sword-swallowing is a reference to how Bill Clinton likes getting his wang serviced. From there, I’m totally lost. What’s the “new president” doing at this circus? Do circuses have a president? And who are the clowns? I think what she’s saying is that if Hillary were to become vice-president, she’d either be getting up Obama’s ass about something or her husband would be, um, sending clowns out to lure women into the White House to give him blowjobs? Nope, still totally confused.

Although I have little respect for John McCain, I can appreciate when a candidate makes with the funny. In an interview with Brian Williams today he said:

Obama says that I’m running for a Bush’s third terms.  It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.

I’ll admit, that’s pretty good.

Okay, first of all, this is totally weird. A kid in Charleston, South Carolina drowned several hours after getting out of a pool, because apparently pool water can hang out in your lungs for awhile after you’ve been swimming or something. Expect “dry drowning” to become the “shark attacks” of this summer. But second of all, what the hell is going on in this picture they posted with the article?

About 5 days ago, I announced my intention to write something new every day. I have already broken my new rule twice. The trouble is that I don’t really have anything to say every day. I just started writing a post about how some people believe that 2012 will mark the end of life as we know it. I didn’t get very far, because I really don’t feel like devoting the next few hours of my life to studying up on this topic. Obama is now our official presidential candidate, but everyone knows that already. I have nothing new to offer. I think I’m going to go back to bed.

Honestly, I have no idea. California had an(other) primary election today. I decided to be a good citizen and study up on the candidates & propositions before going in, instead of just voting for the Democrat with the coolest name like I usually do. California is kind enough to send out sample ballots ahead of time … which, of course, I had “misplaced.” So first, I had to figure out which district I belong to. I went to the LA Times website, where they have a handy link that asks for your address and tells you where you are in the grand scheme of things. The link returned 14 different designations, including “33rd US Congressional District” and “26th State Senate”. Cool. Next, I had to figure out who was running in all these elections. I went to the best website for liberal voting info — The League of Young Voters (formerly the League of Pissed Off Voters … I wonder why they wouldn’t want to keep that name?). This led me to another site that contained voter guides for a number of places around the country: theballot.org. So far, so good. I found the ballot for LA County and went to work, writing up handy voting guides for Sarah and myself.

We got in the car and headed toward our local polling place. First problem: I thought it was at the church around the corner, Sarah thought it was somewhere else entirely. The first two times we voted, it was at the church around the corner. Apparently, the last time it was at a school farther away. I insisted it was the church, so Sarah reluctantly followed my lead. It wasn’t at the church. After a brief fight about how I always insist my opinions are correct (hey, c’mon guys, you know what I’m talking about!) we went to the school. It wasn’t there, either. We got on our phones and discovered that the polling place had changed to an entirely new location, several blocks away from our apartment.

Finally at our real polling location, we got our punch cards and went into our separate booths. Lo and behold, I had the wrong information, so for the first three pages, I ended up voting for the Democrat with the coolest name. When I got into my office, I went online to figure out where I made my mistake. It turns out a the major race in my district — the race for US Representative — wasn’t even listed in the handy voting guide I’d spent so much time poring over. In addition, we apparently belong to one district for the State Assembly and an entirely different district for the State Senate. There was also this long list of candidates for Party Central Committee, of which we were allowed to vote for 7 members, who, as far as I can tell, have never been investigated by anyone ever.

So my analysis is that it’s thoroughly impossible to be an informed voter. Researching an election involves coordinating disparate threads of information from a vast array of sources that are only aligned in their mission of being as inscrutable and misleading as they can possibly be. The most infuriating races are always the judges … this is the shadowy network of elected officials who are responsible for creating legal precedent, and they are almost always a complete stab in the dark. My homework helped me slightly in this respect, but I was still voting on a 2 sentence summary of someone’s entire career.

On the bright side, I am proud to say that I got to cast a vote today for a candidate named Rocky Crabb.

Unbelievable. Remember the liquid bomb “plot” from 2006? You know, the one that has forced us all to follow asinine airline regulations involving our hand creams and toothpaste tubes? The one that was shown almost immediately after the threat to be unbelievably difficult to actually pull off? (A brief snippet, because I looove this article:)

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

Well, apparently the suspects involved in this fiendish plot stated in court today that he had no intention of blowing up a plane, but that he was planning on using the explosion to publicize his movie:

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, one of eight British Muslims charged with plotting to detonate liquid explosives aboard passenger jets, denied ever thinking about blowing up an airplane. He told Woolwich Crown Court he wanted to give Londoners a jolt — and attract attention for a movie he was making — by placing a small bomb at London’s Houses of Parliament.

“We did not want to kill or injure anyone,” Ali, 27, told the southeast London court. Ali said he wanted “something small enough to cause a large bang, maybe some smoke. Something that would be considered serious and credible, something to generate that mass media attention.”

Prosecutors accuse Ali of being one of three ringleaders of a plot to kill hundreds of airline passengers by detonating bombs concealed in soft drink bottles as the flights crossed the Atlantic Ocean, or over North American cities. They say Ali drew up a blueprint for building the crude bombs, suggesting the explosive mixture should be injected into bottles using a syringe to keep them factory sealed.

…Jurors were also played footage of what prosecutors say was a suicide video intended to be seen after Ali’s death.

In it, Ali says he wanted to “punish and humiliate” unbelievers and “teach them a lesson they will never forget.”

Ali dismissed the video as propaganda, saying he wanted to combine it with footage from the Internet to make an anti-government documentary, which would then be distributed on YouTube. The bomb blast, he said, would help publicize the movie.

“We thought: If we make a documentary, how are we going to get everyone to see it and know about it? That is when we thought we would do a publicity stunt,” he said. But he also said he wanted to make the bomb serious enough to cause “general concern.”

I have no idea what to say about this.

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls yesterday. I wasn’t particularly disappointed, because I had been set up to believe that it was really awful. It was ok. A lot of it reminded me of this woman I used to work with who we called No Punch, because she never had a punchline to her jokes. Throughout the movie there were moments where everything pointed toward a laugh line or sight gag, yet the actual content was mysteriously missing. There’s one scene, for instance, where Shia LaBoeuf’s character (Mud) gets stuck on a vine and raised up into a canopy of trees. In a different era, he’d let out some Schwarzenegger-esque punchline, a la “hang in there!” In this film, the punchline was that he looked to his left, and saw a monkey sitting on a tree branch. Now, I love monkeys as much as the next Joe, but the sight of a monkey alone does not constitute a joke. If the monkey had given him the raspberry … now that’s funny.

The other thing that was kind of bothersome about it was the feeling that it wasn’t really aimed at adults. I haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark in years, but if I remember correctly, it was an adult movie that kids just happened to like, too. The new one is basically a kids movie with a few bones thrown to adults here and there. Which is kind of the downfall of a lot of movies lately … in attempting to appeal to everyone, they end up appealing to no one. Sarah tells me Iron Man gets the mix right, but I haven’t seen it, so I’ll have to take her word for it. Maybe it’s ironic that I wanted the movie to appeal more to adults, yet my major script recommendation is that they had more monkeys giving raspberries.

I went to the BookExpo again on Saturday. While I was waiting in line to get a book signed for a friend — from an author who shall remain nameless in case the friend reads this post and has his or her surprise ruined — I stood behind a woman rolling a giant suitcase. One of the perks of the BookExpo is that basically every big name author who has a new book coming out autographs copies of his or her latest release. The books are free with a $1 suggested donation. There are people, like this woman, who bring their rolly suitcases and go from line to line, gathering new books and collecting author’s signatures. I generally only do this if I want the book itself, because having an author’s signature doesn’t particularly thrill me. I am highly advanced in my views of celebrities and their unimportance, yet, ironically, obsessed with joining their ranks.

As we waited, I struck up a conversation with this woman. Or rather, she struck up a conversation with me to which I reluctantly contributed. In lines and on airplanes I have a massive aversion to talking to the people next to me, a tendency that is surprising in light of the fact that my mom becomes instant best friends with anyone surrounding her in the grocery store checkout line. I think living in New York for 8 years left me with the belief that anyone who bothers to acknowledge the existence of those surrounding him must have some kind of serious mental illness. And at first, when I started talking to this woman with the gigantic rolly suitcase who spent the day getting autographs from minor literary celebrities (and minor celebrity-celebrities as well … she proudly showed me her “jump to the front of line ticket” for the Kevin Nealon signing later in the afternoon), I assumed that she must have some kind of serious mental illness as well. Luckily, she turned out to be a perfectly nice conversationalist who had a lot of interesting things to say about the publishing industry.

Somehow, as we were talking, the subject turned to our musical preferences. She mentioned that she stopped listening to music about ten years ago, when the “gangster rap thing started.” She used to be a big fan of reggae and early hip-hop, but she doesn’t like listening to music about killing people and degrading women. I quite like listening to music about killing people and degrading women, but I kept this information to myself. Sometimes it’s best to keep your cards close to your chest.

Anytime a conversation between two white people lands on the subject of gangster rap, it’s a pretty safe bet that one of the two parties will eventually find him or herself in uncomfortable territory. I felt a familiar sense of creeping dread as she told me her theories on how gangster rap was responsible for a dangerous culture of which we should be terrified. I tried to point out that there are positive things happening in the world, and she conceded the point with a great example.

“The other day, I was working downtown, and I saw a kid handing out free trees. And he was,”–her voice lowered so as not to inflame anyone around us who was not as culturally sensitive as we were–”black.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“It was,” she agreed. “And I thought, this is great. Why can’t we have more programs like this?”

“Programs where black kids hand out free trees?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That sounds like a pretty good program.”