A Woodhouse Holiday Show: "Oh, God. It's Mom."

So, there's a documentary, one that has gotten some attention, about the Woodhouse brothers.  It's "A Woodhouse Divided."

Now, we have known the Woodhouses (Woodhi?) for some time.  Dallas, especially, is a regular at events I have attended for years.  Dallas was NC Director for AFP, as noted in this NYTimes article from 2009 on the brothers.

Anyway, last night we were heading to the annual Christmas party (it's a private party, not paid for with public funds, and it is rather emphatically a CHRISTMAS party, rather than a "Holiday Party" or "Winter Solstice Celebration," if that matters) of our friends Art and Kathy Pope.  (If you don't know who Art Pope is, then here

They arrange for off-site parking, because it's a big shindig.  Very nice, terrific food, lots of interesting people.  Including, as it turns out, on the bus on the way over, the clan Woodhouse.  We got to meet Joyce, matriarch of the clan.  And heard about an incident this week we had missed.

Here is the story.  Here is the video.  Millions of views.  Better than anything you could have contrived.



Dallas put it well:  "Oh, God.  It's mom."

It was a pleasure to get to talk to Joyce.  She is a pistol.  And she's fed up with all this bickering.  You go, Mom!

Mom Song

Looks Just Like Me!

Interesting.  Men fool themselves, because it's adaptive.  And it's not like the woman is going to say anything... "Yes, honey, he has your nose! And so did the mailman!"

Fathers See Stronger Family Resemblances than Non-Fathers in Unrelated Children’s Faces

Paola Bressan & Stefania Dal Pos
Archives of Sexual Behavior, December 2012, Pages 1423-1430

Abstract: Even after they have taken all reasonable measures to decrease the probability that their spouses cheat on them, men still face paternal uncertainty. Such uncertainty can lead to paternal disinvestment, which reduces the children’s probability to survive and reproduce, and thus the reproductive success of the fathers themselves. A theoretical model shows that, other things being equal, men who feel confident that they have fathered their spouses’ offspring tend to enjoy greater fitness (i.e., leave a larger number of surviving progeny) than men who do not. This implies that fathers should benefit from exaggerating paternal resemblance. We argue that the self-deceiving component of this bias could be concealed by generalizing this resemblance estimation boost to (1) family pairs other than father-child and (2) strangers. Here, we tested the prediction that fathers may see, in unrelated children’s faces, stronger family resemblances than non-fathers. In Study 1, 70 men and 70 women estimated facial resemblances between children paired, at three different ages (as infants, children, and adolescents), either to themselves or to their parents. In Study 2, 70 men and 70 women guessed the true parents of the same children among a set of adults. Men who were fathers reported stronger similarities between faces than non-fathers, mothers, and non-mothers did, but were no better at identifying childrens’ real parents. We suggest that, in fathers, processing of facial resemblances is biased in a manner that reflects their (adaptive) wishful thinking that fathers and children are related.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

On notes from one's mother

Link for October 25, 2012

This "Zits" amused the LMM.  Because it is entirely accurate.

"Dude!  It has a bibliography!"

And that is just some of her texts!

Police Brutality, or Angry Mom?

Boy meets girl.  Girl invites boy home to her house, because parents are out.  The kids get busy.

Mom comes home early.  Nekkid Boy hides in closet. 

Mom is a cop, mom pulls gun, handcuffs Nekkid Boy.  (This sounds like a great premise for a porn movie, by the way! Cop Mom plus daughter on handcuffed Nekkid Boy action.)

But, no.  Instead, extremely angry Cop Mom tries to get handcuffed Nekkid Boy charged with forcible entry (of the house, of the house).

Not surprisingly, supervisors say that since the boy was invited by the daughter, this is not (in any sense) forcible entry.

Boy, no longer Nekkid, sues Cop Mom.

Judge, using repeated references to Jim Croce, says that the Cop Mom was reacting as a Mom, not a Cop.  Seriously, you can read about it here.  They even have a link to the decision itself.  Excerpt:

"Collier was an angry parent who happened to be in uniform, have handcuffs and a firearm, which she used for the private ends of scaring a young man she caught in bed with her daughter," Judge Carnes found.

"Although Collier did use the pistol that she wore as an officer, any adult without a felony record can lawfully possess a firearm (and tens of millions do)," the judge added.

"If the allegations are true, Collier's treatment of Butler was badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog," Carnes wrote, returning to Croce's lyrics. "She might even have acted like the meanest hunk of woman anybody had ever seen. Still, the fact that the mistreatment was mean does not mean that the mistreatment was under color of law."

Only in Florida, folks!

(With thanks to Angry Alex.  And, to be fair, I think this could have happened in Missouri, also)

Grand Game: Obama's speech edition

Ok folks the transcript is here, and it's chock full of fun. Get to it!

Here is my absolutely favorite bit of economic illogic:

"Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we're going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads, at a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?"

OMG, did you see what he did there? Did debt ceiling budget cuts include laying off professional speechwriters for the President? It's not clear what in the world he's trying to say here but there is no good interpretation.

In an homage to Tosh.0, let's see how many snarky comments I can fit in this blog post.

Mr. President, if China jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?

Mr. President, infrastructure is not a tradeable good.

Mr. President, can our unemployed workers REALLY build China's new airports "right here in America?"

Mr. President, is China really the best comparison country for the US?

Mr. President, do you really think your audience is that dumb?