Abram Sauer Online

Something tells me this Beaver Dam, Wisc. bar isn’t a legal brand extension.

This charming lady is Laura Francese. Not only a Buffalo Bills cheerleader, she is also a bit of an avid outdoorswoman. And I don’t mean she likes camping in the back of the minivan in the parking lot at Lake George. No, Laura likes killing things that had parents (and presumedly, eating them). This includes deer, boars and fish. Yes, she shoots fish with fucking arrows! Here is her Biffalo Bills “Jills” cheerleader page. Her favorite color is pink and she “adores every animal.”

Here is her personal hunting page of her killing all those animals she adores.

And that’s all well and good. Nothing blows off steam after a season of having to cheer for Terrell Owens like shooting something through the spleen with a sharp rod. But what is this?!

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Student newspaper The Badger Herald recently made the very stupid decision to run a Holocaust-denying ad on its website. The editor’s defense? “As much as I hate what I think Bradley Smith [the man who bought the ad] was trying to say in that ad, and as much as I hate what the Holocaust deniers are saying, they do have a right to say it.”

Um… I see a fine future for this Jason Smathers fellow; In the current climate who doesn’t want an EIC who will take any amount of ad money for any crazy thing?

Following last year’s “East Coast Jewish Honeys” rap, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student body is quickly redefining the campus from a hotbed of crunchy hippie liberal idealism to one of cultural intolerance and antisemitism. That’s not going to help property values.

Full Disclosure: I wrote various (terrible) articles for The Herald’s competition “The Cardinal” years ago just before the Cardinal, the “commie” student paper, went bust after a century.

Russ Darrow, an auto-dealer in Wisconsin, is giving away a free iPad with every Mazda purchase. The commercial in its entirety.

National Public Radio (90.7 in Wisconsin; <3) carried a round-table discussion with scientists on promoting reliable science and technology news?  One subject was how scientists could “spice up screenplays with science.”

The scientists recognized the idea of “product placement” as a powerful force. And some argued that there should eb an effort for “reality-based science” to be the “product”:

“Well, we actually recognize the power of Hollywood to inspire people, to inspire imaginations. When I was working as a journalist, I always would talk to scientists about what made them want to become a scientist. And invariably it would be a book they read, a movie they saw, or someone they met, but in general it was this entertainment industry.

It has the power to reach people with a very strong, inspiring message and it can get across very broad, general messages about, you know, the good or bad of science. And so this is a way of doing that by essentially finding a way to get entertainment people and scientists in a room together and talking.”

The panel discussed very specifically how it could work:

“It’s good when it’s done well. For many, many years I was on and still am - on advisory boards to Hollywood, and I keep trying to tell them that it’s not so much your job to tell the science story, but to tell the science process, because that’s not where people are going to get their science information, so you need an accurate thing.”

With some amusing anecdotes, speaking of The Day After Tomorrow:

“…big special effects. One of the things that our other speaker, Sid Perkowitz, brought up during our session was, okay, yeah, the science was ridiculous in terms of the time scales on which it happened, but it did have a measurable impact on people’s attitude towards climate change. People came out of there with a sense of immediacy and urgency that they did not get had they happen to see “Inconvenient Truth.”

Plus, it has scientists getting emotional about climate change deniers. Something you don’t always se. It is as enjoyable as it sounds:

“I completely agree and I got to put down the blogosphere. The blogosphere is one of the worst places to go for information, because, unlike Paul and others, most public people are not going to spend three hours a day doing this. We really need to reestablish the mainstream media in putting some specialists back in who can smell the north end of a southbound horse, because most general assignment reporters can’t and certainly their editors can’t.”

Listen to the whole wonderful thing.

“…watch TV or have dinner with Brett in your home…”

After pouring over literature, message boards and talking with proponents, it’s challenging not to see those who carry a handgun as dweeby 15-year-old kids who carry a condom everywhere. They’re “prepared,” “just in case,” because “you never know,” “it could happen.” Equally, they both seem to fantasize about situations when they might actually use it. It’s this way that some CCWers emphasize rare or unlikely “tactical” scenarios that will never materialize that make it a test for a rational person to take the movement seriously. And yet, the effort should be taken seriously because the driving force behind much of it is a genuine desire to be safe and protect oneself because “the system” is failing at this responsibility…

READ IT ALL

This is a screenshot of a list of Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Neumann’s position papers. A standard resource of any campaign. Note the “Obamacare”one. That is now the official name of the Republicans position paper that for years has read “Heathcare.”

America!

Here is your Real World: Boston housemember Sean Duffy’s “Duffy for Congress” homepage.  That’s right, Real World cast-members are running for Congress now.

By all means, “Roll with Sean.” He’s endorsed by Sarah Palin!

Good luck, America.

RELATED: Here’s the awesome story of Wiscosnin legislator Jeff Wood who has been arrested three times in the last year for driving under the influence. The charges?

“…drunken driving, marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia possession in Columbia County; driving under the influence of drugs in Marathon County; and driving under the influence of drugs and bail jumping in Monroe County.”

The best part? Wood is challenging the legislature’s powers to boot him. On Wisconsin!

Here is a Wisconsin Public Radio “Here on Earth” show program about Avatar being pulled from Chinese theaters in favor of the Chinese film Confucius. It is elucidating in terms of just how much even smart people misunderstand China. Some of the callers’ assumptions are built on painfully cartoonish perceptions of China. And these are public radio listeners! The best one is the woman caller near the end who is all geared up about the environment; she lumps China and Japan together as citizens with similar lives and concerns. Priceless. And then there is the guest at the end who, after an hour of meta-enabling Avatar’s socio-political meaning to China, says “Or maybe it’s popular because it’s just a wild 3D movies.” Really?